Joe: and just walk in the woods with my wife. And so I think it actually pushed me deeper into the free medicine, the sun exposure and all that stuff. Because all of a sudden, when I looked in places like California, where we where we live prior, like you weren't allowed to go to the beach.

Chase: Yeah, yeah, quite literally. Right? A lot of these free things could recharge you quite literally were forbidden.

Joe: Right? So I think I started to focus on the free medicine, and also reducing what I could in terms of reducing harm. So not consuming.

Chase: go deeper there for me, please. Why did you choose to consume less? I'm assuming consumption of mass media news, even probably people in your local community? Why did you choose to consume less? And what benefit? If any, did you have from that?

Joe: Great question, man. And I think that when you're when you're in a state of consumption, you're turning the switch down. So if we think about, like, all sorts of different hormones in the body, it's like, one is up, one goes down, right, you know. 

Chase: usually yeah, we can all just be running hot, hot, hot or cold, cold all time, there's that homeostasis, we need to work on our present.

Joe: And so when you think about like, your, you have your consumption, creativity spectrum, yeah. If you're deep into consumption, you're losing that creativity, you're further from your creativity or further from your, your, your most sort of just aware, self, right? Because as soon as you're consuming, and it's why I tell people not to look at their phone for an hour or two when they get up in the morning, because you don't get to decide what Chase posted. And what if, like you said, like, you know, I don't know, something that I can't imagine anything you would say, but like, what if you said, like, no one should have kids, right? And I just had a kid.

Chase: I'm gonna kill every puppy I ever see. Right? Exactly. I'm not by the way.

Joe: And so like, right, so that's like when you just open the phone. So as soon as you're in a state of consumption, you aren't controlling your hormonal state, you're not controlling your emotional state or your mental state. In fact, if you're in a state of consumption, you're by necessity, you're in a state of reactivity. And so if you feel like more information that you might consume is going to push you into that area, then it's your utmost responsibility to just avoid that particular situation. You know, avoiding harm is the Hippocratic Oath, right, do no harm. And so when we think about I guess this would be another biohacking principle in terms of what I said about like light charge and air. While avoiding harm is obviously that's why, you know, hunters and gatherers, if they have a tough day hunting, they always take the next day or two or three off, not because they couldn't do it again, but because the risk reward man like I, I get to avoid overuse.

Chase: and at the risk of deviating from my own original question here, but I think this it all pertains. Could someone make the argument that that's just sticking your head in the sand? What if you could break is maybe just your personal experience of what really is going on when we are consciously choosing to control what comes into our lives, our minds and our hearts? How is that not just running from problems?

Joe: So here's the thing, I think it has to do more with well, I guess I could start with dosage. But timing, so if I, if I wake up in the morning, and I have a pregnant wife, and we're in a foreign country, 

Chase: we're speaking from experience, I'm running low on vitamin D.

Joe: So if I'm, if I've identified that the things that I'm consuming have a tendency to have a negative impact on me, which is huge for stuff and awareness. That is huge first step, right. But I think now it's, it's glaring everyone in the face, you know, I was talking to somebody the other day, and it's, it seems today, like 60% of people don't agree with you, no matter where you are, you know, at least. But, so, so in terms of okay, so let's say, you know, you have you have a couple podcasts today, and you've got like your, your jobs and your, your responsibilities and your self-care, most importantly, right? Because you're number one, like, you have to make sure your cup is full before you start doing anything for anybody. And all we ever get paid to do is make other people's lives better. Right? But how can we do that? If we're not taking care of ourselves? And so I suppose what I'm saying is digging the head in the sand, it's a good point. And I think that when you when you look at this, I think number one is like okay, so you know, you're going to be exposed or you know, you're going to consume at some point today, okay. So why don't I just put that off, until I get my stuff done? Or do the things I need to do for my highest responsibilities before I even risk getting sucked in absolutely, to Instagram or something like that. Now, I also think many of us probably in 2020 reached a point where, like, we were pretty decided how we felt about a particular subject.

Chase: I'm sure we all reach kind of reached a boiling point a saturation point.

 Joe: saturation, a good way to put it. And so in that vein, it's like, why would I consume more? So it's kind of like if you've listened to 30, cold immersion podcasts. And Joe releases a podcast on cold immersion? Well, what if you know, someone else released a podcast on sauna? Well, you've, you've kind of saturated on immersion, like you kind of get it

Chase: we get Joe; cold is good.

Joe: so I think that I think that that's our utmost responsibility to avoid harm. And if we have identified that we don't have the emotional bank account to absorb. And this is why when I look at some of these, some people that are really outspoken about how they feel about this whole situation, I give them a lot of credit, no matter which side they're on, just because I know how your cups got to be overflowing to keep that I also do, because I posted a couple of things last year, and it was just wasn't whatever I felt about it, like it just didn't make me feel good. And I knew that I wasn't, ultimately I want people to walk outside with, with their skin exposed bare feet on the earth, I want him to swing kettlebells and to go to bed early. I want them to breathe differently. What do I like anything outside of that? Like if I start talking about it, especially if I over index on it? This is not it's actually getting in the way of my message. 

Chase: I like that the analogy that came to mind for me was kind of takes me back to like my health coach days of I'm sure you can relate how many times have you heard, oh, I'm going to be on track. I'm going to be good here Monday through Friday. Because I know my tendency is on the weekend or I know I've got this event coming up. It this analogy I think can be painted can be applied to this, this this heart path. And this this mind security really of I know I'm going to be exposed to this stuff anyway, most likely, unless you're completely living off the grid, no phone, no internet, you know, whatever. It's kind of the same thing if I can just commit for these times of the day, these days of the week to control the controllable. And by that I mean beyond just my fitness and my nutrition, but what is coming into my mind and coming into my heart. Because I live in a modern world and I'm going to step outside or I'm going to have a text or a phone call or scroll through social media. And whether I asked for it or not. There it is. It's going to be there. That's a powerful concept that I think I haven't quite connected those dots in that way. So that's, that's appreciative. Thank you.

Joe: Hey, sure, man. And, and I think I guess you know, back to your original question that I let's go way back. I think the biggest thing and it's something thing that I've done for a long time, but I think in the last year, I've probably done 10 times more. And that's journaling. And that is an even free writing.

Chase: How do you differentiate those two? What do you mean? 

Joe: literally stream of conscious journaling, but like brain dumping, seeing what comes up, and sometimes it's literally a picture of like a dog. Right. But I think in the past, I've used a lot of journals that sort of nudge you.

Chase: They have prompts, prompts, what are you grateful for? What are you working on? 

Joe: those are great. My fear with those is it gets you into that same problem, or to do list item, like I got, I got to put my six things I'm grateful for. 

Chase: I have to be grateful today to be in a good mood. That's an interesting perspective. 

Joe: But I think in the last year, an outrageous amount of stream of consciousness writing, and, in particular, honestly, about my dad and my family, and my wife, and, and, and no filter whatsoever. Like, if I think it if it if it creeps I write it.

Chase: No editing, no, no shame.

Joe: And it's interesting how that sometimes you go back and you're like, What the hell was I talking about? Like, I can't believe. But other times you go back and you say, wow, like that really, that really helped me, helped me grow, it really helped me connect the dots. And I think the other thing that I've probably done, that's a new one, maybe for people, and I'm digging, you know, it's funny, I haven't shared this stuff. When I happen, you know, when I am in my hyperbaric chamber, it's like a really cool. It's a really cool environment, just in terms of like sensory depth. So like, it takes me a couple of minutes just to get in the thing. You got to you know, wait for it to you know, fill up and like, it's a little bit of a process. It's a little bit like a cold immersion thing, but you literally to get out you can't get out. So well, you know, if you want to do it responsibly, you know, you can do it by yourself. But like if you're, if you're, you know, at four psi or something, then you can't just go back to the start. You're in a submarine. Wow. So like, you know, you got to come up slow. So there's this, you know, I think for people The cool thing about the hyperbaric even if you weren't if it wasn't hyperbaric chamber, if you just locked yourself in a room, that was a little bit of a pain in the butt to get out of put a bunch of boxes in front of the door. Like that's a cool, but what I do in my hyperbaric chamber and you could do this any in any kind of meditative state. I put my noise cancelling headphones on and I put on like, you know, whatever, like Journey music, I put on you know, chants where the chant rhythmic right? Like, whatever. And then, what I do is I completely, I use something called the mind fold, which is this blindfold on Amazon that's like, you know, 15 bucks. And you can have your eyes completely open, but it's pitch black.

Chase: Wow. Okay. This is like the, the eye mask head wrap kind of thing.

Joe: Kind of it's just an eye mask, but it's basically like, it's a like a, you know, like a cheap like, kind of like foamy. Yeah, I mask, but then it just has like a piece of plastic, like over the top. And so it's pitch, pitch black. And so when I'm in my hyperbaric chamber, and I'll usually do like three rounds of like a Wim Hof breathing when I first get in, because in hyperbaric chamber, you can honestly, you can hold your breath, like forever. Oh, wow, interesting. So you do three rounds of Wim Hof you're, you're in a really cool state binaural beats whatever in the ears sensory depth. No, no vision. I'll, before I do all that, I'll take my phone. And I'll put the recorder on. And I'll put it next to me. And audio recording audio recording. And then I'll be in there. No one can hear me. And I'll just say whatever comes up. And then when I finish, I'll go and actually transcribe what I said.

Chase: Wow. So you're just kind of like dictating a stream of consciousness. 

Joe: stream of consciousness. And sometimes in that I remember doing that once and just saying some things I was I was trying to figure out what was I trying to figure out? Oh my gosh, I had this just ended up being one of the most profound journaling and I can remember the original question, but basically, it was it was this love respect wheel concept. And you know, as you know, like you do you do a couple of rounds of Wim Hof and hold your breath for five minutes because you’re in a chamber it's like, you know, you're in an amazing state. And so I just started asking myself like, what is love? How do why? Well, I'll tell you, you know, what's funny is that particular day and now I'm just really opening up I guess, but that particular day it was about some things with my dad and like my relationship even with other men, and it was identifying like, where my weaknesses are and things and I was asking myself like, what is love to me in this context? What is respect to me in this context, what is and anyways when I when I started to hear what I was kind of like just stream of consciousness is saying.

Chase: what do I really think and feel about this?

Joe: All of a sudden, I started to put and then later on, I just ended up writing like I filled like a bunch of pages. And so I just think that that's where I guess in this next phase of my life, I'll be I'll be talking more about which is not only the free medicine but just really some of this this kind of inner work yeah. And removing shame and I think we get so like we get so in our heads.

Chase: The aspect of shame. It's really interesting that you said that word as it relates to doing self-care going through the work the personal development stuff and even a lot of the training modalities and recovery modalities you're talking about like ice bath deprivation chamber. Because that's something that has kind of come up for me as of late as well. It's weird when you think about I'm doing something I'm intentionally writing, doing, thinking, acting in a way that's going to serve me work through trauma helped me heal or just, you know, tap into new ideas and creativity. It's very weird sometimes like that aspect of shame at least personally speaking does surface; has that happened with you? Why do you think that is and how have you navigated going through the work while dealing with shame?

Joe: Yeah, and you know, I think that shame is a it's funny, right? Like I literally for me, you know, it's funny we always want to blame our parents right. And you know, it's really funny because my parents I you know, it's funny I joke like I've been an adult since I was like eight like I was unbearable. Had a job. I was you know, I ended up I was very entrepreneurial, very entrepreneurial as a kid and So there was this, there was this interesting thing I identify that my parents are like, I'm kind of a tornado. And they're like, you know, they kind of they kind of stay away. But like, shame. They never got upset. I never got grounded. I never, I, they treated me like an adult. But the biggest thing that I feared and what guided me, was not letting them down. Not feeling the shame of them being disappointed in anything I'm doing. Right. And so I'm super sensitive to shame. And so I think wherever we pick it up, shame is a, it's an emotion, that is very destructive. It's an emotion that can immediately take someone from a creative place, from a loving place from a place of belonging and, and just, it's one of the most it's like poison. And therefore, it's one of the tools that a lot of people A are super sensitive to. But B it's overused. It's overused. And so there's this a lot of people struggle with this. And we get so used to it. I suppose. We get so used to or we fear it. We fear it. So much. That we it's like, you know, maybe it's like the dentist chair or the ice bath. We fear it so much that we bring it in before it's even here. And so I think that it's but you know what's interesting about it because there's shame from the outside in. There's so there's you feeling a certain way about me and me feeling ashamed that you

Chase: I'm ashamed. Like I am ashamed of this person or thing.

Joe: there's Chase, feeling ashamed of me. There's me feeling ashamed of me. And then there's like the made up shame. 

Chase: What do you mean by that? 

Joe: Like the fear of shame. The precursor, a precursor hasn't even really happened hasn't even really happened. And we know that like, you know, there's studies on like, dehydration. And when someone just meditates on drinking water, they actually reduce their symptoms of dehydration. Right? There's, yeah, so the brain whenever we think we basically receive, and so I guess, here's the answer for you. I think it's super normal. But when I started to get into real stream of conscious style, journaling, you break you practice breaking through that no different than, like breath work, right? So you're, if you're getting into cold, plunge, practicing, overcoming adversity,

Chase: like just coming up against that threshold of pain and discomfort in the ice bath, or pushing through a rep in the gym, or something like that you're saying is kind of equivalent to this aspect of the hard work the self-work in pushing through that shame kind of wall that friction. 

Joe: And I think that when because imagine, Chase, you know, it's, you know, for me, like some of the stuff I've written about, before I even write it. I'm like, where am I gonna hide this journal? You know, like, not that I've done anything too bad, we all have that stuff. 

Chase: if anybody saw this, if anybody read this, I can't believe I'm even saying and writing this sometimes. Yeah.

Joe: But if you don't put it on the paper, it's gonna stay in there. And, you know, the interesting thing is, I again, we just talked off the air about this, like, new concept that I'm kind of working on, which is this and I don't know, I probably picked it up from a podcast, I just have at this point, who knows. But this one, my wife and I are calling this like constellation of support for our marriage, our personal lives. So I told you about, like the doc my wife's working with now. And my son works with a woman named Lois and, you know, trying to like optimize all these different areas. 16 months old, he's already getting optimized. But um, so when we think about that, so I guess what I'm getting at is I have actually now gotten to the point where I've shared my transcripts with somebody else and actually gone through them and some of the most embarrassing awful stuff that I've ever written or thought about like

Chase: you passed off your journal, your personal intimate thoughts with another human being that for feedback

Joe: and paid them

Chase: wow. That is some next level shit.

Joe: don't take yourself too seriously. Right? And but it's funny because I remember the first time I did that, I was literally like, sweating. Like it was I shared it. I put it into a Google Doc, shared it with her, got on the Zoom. And I'm just like, profusely to sweat. I get nervous and it but it literally she then pushed me towards two books that were like, amazing that like were like it 

Chase: you had an ROI. 

Joe: Huge, amazing, massive ROI. So and I'll even tell you the books. So it's the first one is King warrior magician lover. Yeah, you know that book?

Chase: that book set me on my path for everything. Like I found it in 2014 I think yeah.

Joe: It was just what I needed more archetypes for male archetypes for me, and it's so interesting because I am now like,

Chase: that book is just awesome. 

Joe: and when we look at ourselves as this, you know, as a man, and I'm just talking to my wife as I think this would work with women to, like, it's sure the four male archetypes, but ultimately it's sort of like, you know, in a way like the old like the caste system, right? Like there's the warrior, the

Chase: Queen warrior magician.

Joe: And so I think that that book has a lot of usefulness these days. And the way I look at it, you know, it's, it's, we've all got, like all four. Yeah, and many of us, depending on all of our lived experiences, and our and our genes and our personalities. And whoever knows, I think most of us are just, let's say for a second that we're supposed to be like 25-25 25-25. And I'm supposed to be a little bit of King, a little bit of a warrior, a little bit of a magician, and a little bit of a lover. But I think, you know, of course, each of these can be regressive, and more, you know, you can have a really dysfunctional lover, especially these days, as a young guy, you can have a really immature King, you can have a warrior, that's just too hard all the time. And so we see how these things. But when we look at it, you know, and I haven't worked with other men on this only myself, but like, what if we think of, for me, like the gold standard, maybe it's 25-25 25-25 as a starting point, everyone's probably like, got their own mix,

Chase: you get your own ratio. 

 Joe: But I think nowadays I think that we, we may it's an early hypothesis, but like, I think men are stuck in one of them at the great detriment of others. And sometimes, and this gets into like Dharma talk and finding our purpose. And this is a big pursuit I'm on right now. And sometimes it's not our dharma. So in other words, like, if, if I'm really in my magician, which maybe would be these days, like, you know, podcasting, the super creative, super creative, super creative space, and let's say I'm supposed to be more of a king. And I'm spending just immense energy trying to be the best magician I can. Well, now I'm in someone else's strength. And I'm put on this planet to be something else, potentially, for people that are supposed to live where I'm living. And I think that that particular example, these days with what we talked about, about information, it's so available that everyone's becoming a type a marathoner.

Chase: Yeah, yeah. Because we think because we have access to it, and we can do it. And we can see it more often. And we can achieve it maybe a little bit quicker we should.

Joe: right? Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's become I mean, let's look at this might be loose, but let's look at like New York City Marathon in like the late 70s. And I don't have the stats in front of me, but New York City Marathon in the late 70s. A couple of 100 finishers, all of them are long, lean, and type A CEOs, right? They were all the same person. Like they were all they were all the same body type. They're all ectomorphic. They're all, they all ran 100 miles a week, because that's what you did. And now today, we had 55,000 finishers, I think as of like, 2018, or something, maybe the last time it happened, who knows? But there's like 55,000 finishers. So like before marketing, and before the obesity crisis, of course, but like before marketing and fitness and health and before health and fitness became the same thing. And before, like no one that wasn't a tall, long, lean, gifted runner, a person that we could see on the street could be seen as a runner. That was the only guy running until it became the thing to do to be healthy and cool for Instagram and show your metals and all this other stuff. And I used to be in the business right? But like, ultimately is a ton of people doing that. And one of the things I say to a lot of coaching clients is like hey, by the way, like I know you dig running allegedly, but like you might love like sailing. You might love like bowling.

Chase: It doesn't have to be this thing that you think is a man is a woman is this whatever you're in pursuit of here.

Joe: in the exercise realm, we're looking for caloric expenditure. So it's like, I like the thing that burns the most calories because I've associated with calories with health and fitness and all this other jazz and image of somebody else and my job, when in fact, it's like no, man, that's not what it is at all

Chase: I have a question. Just I'm curious, your feed, but your feedback here, and just kind of taking the whole umbrella picture of, of life of health and fitness. When we look at these different slices of the pie, right? When you look at our fitness or nutrition, a lot of the personal development, the mindset, the self-help work we've been talking about recently. I think it's safe to say the argument we made that the work in those pieces of the pie serves that piece of the pie and if you got enough of those pieces of the pie, you got a whole right. Does the personal work carry over for you? Or do you think for all of us as human beings, significantly to everything else that we're in pursuit of? And kind of my back up question to that is because I think I hypothesize that the reason why most of us focus first on the exterior on the Marathon Man on the body builder on the external self is because we think that is going to get us to the finish line sooner, or that's what we need to do in order to get to the finish line. But in my personal experience we eventually all wind up realizing that it's the personal work that really moves the knot the needle the most. So do you agree? And if so, or if not, like, how does it actually correlate and come back to serving the rest of us?

Joe: Great question, man. I wish it did. Right. So in other words, when we look at how we pursue this stuff, from Unlimited, let me let me say this, when I used to have people run through really challenging events, throw a spear, climb up a mountain, whatever. That was such, it was such it was so outside their comfort zone, that when they cross the finish line, they decided this job wasn't for them anymore. They decided I do have more than I thought within me. So there's carryover in terms of if you do something, and there's like user bias. So if you, if you spend enough on running shoes, it's likely you'll go for runs more, maybe it's likely you won't, but you want to keep them nice, who knows. But I think that overall, we shy away from the stuff that in our heart of hearts, we know is the most important. And we over index on the things that are the least important. So best example is probably nutrition. If you look at like how our body responds to, you know, well, we die, you know, three minutes if we don't breathe three days, if we don't drink water. It's like nine or 11 without sleep. And it's three weeks without food, approximately, but it's like decades without exercise. But we focus on exercise and food, before air, water, sleep community, respiratory rate. So I think that there's a certain there's a certain belief that if we maximize a certain area, like nutrition, if we get it perfect, we will achieve our results. If we maximize if we run enough, you know, it's crazy, right? Like I donated blood yesterday, and I'm leaving, and they hand me a sprite.

Chase: And sugar back up, son

Joe: seriously. And I was just like, isn't it so funny, because it reminded me of like, running a race and going and crushing a pizza. It's like, it's when we do the thing. It's when we do something healthy or good. That we tend to like, celebrate with like something that's terrible.

Chase: So interesting. When we reach a moment in life where a cup has probably never been fuller, or at least is very full, we tend to seek things that are just going to be a hole at the bottom of it and drain it back out again.

Joe: And isn't it interesting, right? Because there's a certain here's the and here's, I guess this all ties together now, when we think about making things easy for ourselves when we think about whether it is the bare feet on the earth, or the sun exposure or the morning routine. When I say like if you do them on purpose, it's not going to work. It's kind of like, you know, beginner's luck, right? But it's interesting because you Chase sees you, you see you in a certain way, and how you eat and you know, I see all your healthy stuff here. Like you see yourself a certain way and the supplements and the foods and the things that you gravitate towards are on that level. Now, if you see yourself a certain way you have a certain belief about yourself or whatever, and it's, let's say it's shame. Let's say it's shame that you're like, earmarked. Maybe that's like your, your, your guiding emotion, I always, I have a few people in my life that say, like, you realize guilt is your guiding emotion like you, you bring people into your life that make you feel guilty. And you create scenarios where you will be guilty, you know, you will have that emotion. And I can go into some really crazy stuff on that in a second if you want but so when we see ourselves a certain way, it's interesting how we actually if we're, if we're outside of that, and this happens with like, the first time I made a lot of money, I went and quickly got back to where my parents expected me to be, or my upbringing, like this, you know, I'm supposed to be broke.

Chase: Yeah, same thing when we hit like a massive payday, or we get a big bonus. Let me go blow it. Let me go spend it. 

Joe: Like, you know, and so we end up in this state where it's like, we get ourselves back. And so sure enough, you'll lose it on this happens all the time, right? Which is kind of fun. But we bring us up. So in many ways, like when you achieve something great, you like quickly, potentially using food, bring yourself back to where you actually do well, yeah. So it's, it's a, it's a wild ride and or you have a dysfunctional kind of understanding of, of celebration, and you know, it's like this you know, I deserve it. Or, you know, we think that there's too much carryover that, like, I exercised and ran a marathon, so I deserve a pizza, when in fact, these verticals are they don't touch each other like you said.

Chase: to me, I got to tread lightly there, because I'm a sucker for pizza. I am that guy. I'm not gonna lie.

Joe: But it's so you can win and lose at the same time. So like, if your goal is to, is to look good. Like, run the marathon, eat the pizza, like, you'll like there's a there's a bioenergetic like, or like equation that could like figure that out to some extent. But the problem is, when we eat the pizza, that's becoming your neurotransmitters tomorrow. So if that was a, whatever, something healthy, if that was, uh, yeah, if that was something really healthy and high, you know, high nutrient density and high maybe it was like, blessed by somebody or something. Like some really, like, all of a sudden your brain chemistry the next day is actually going to be better, huh? So when you think about this addictive nature, we get hooked on all sorts of things. And then all of a sudden, we run the marathon for the reward we get, you know, it's like this. So there's just kind of sloppiness in a lot of areas. Now, it's not to say, here's the other big piece, though, is like, I think there's a I think that there's also a, an opportunity to venture out, you know, it's like, you know, I I'm, like, pretty sensitive to not so good food. So I'm like, probably more over here. Because, you know, would me it's like, whatever,

Chase: but you've done the work to realize that you've gotten to that point.

Joe: right? Yeah, if I eat gluten, I get literally a rash the next day. So it's like, you know what, it's not worth the exact it's not worth it but it's funny, because I think that like, ultimately, most of the time, if you eat the pizza and feel bad about it, the pizza will literally be worse for you than if you just said, Yeah, I'm doing this. And just be maybe in your king. So if you're in your whatever, if you're in you're making it up, but if you're in your dysfunctional warrior, eating the pizza, that pizza associated, this gets into Heart Math, in terms of the different emotions that are tied to each beat of our heart and how blood moves around circulation. But it's if you eat the pizza as a dysfunctional warrior, you're sending that pizza around in a negative way. But if you eat it as a as a king in his in his power, like that pizza just going to be like fuel.

Chase: Yeah. So I really liked that. I liked that a lot. Because it kind of I think that that model, that analogy can be applied to so many different things right now. And I'm sure the Rolodex is spinning in the listeners mind right now. But just specifically where we are as a country as a world just as a species. And we said earlier, I'm not gonna like go down the pandemic rabbit hole a little bit, but I think it's so important to kind of just bring this to life. Can we all like, get there right now? Do you think? Can we all get there? Is there too much, too many weapons of mass distraction? Is there too much polarity? Or can we get to the point to where we can recognize individually and collectively just where we are as a people and just try to just become better versions of those instead of trying to cram you need pizza? I need pizza or wouldn’t it? Is my question making sense? 

Joe: No, I got you. And, you know, I'm concerned, like, I think that I'm concerned with. I'm both concerned and excited. Like, because ultimately, one of the principles of being in your king, one of the principles of being in your power is to is to know your circle of influence. And so like, when we look at this, you could say that you have maybe your higher power in there, you have your family in there, you have your close friends in there, and you have your maybe yourself in there. And so in that vein, for some of us, like, we're actually more easily able to control our circle of influence today. And, and it's more clear who's in that. And so there's an interesting, you know, polarity. And, you know, like I it's, it's, I'm, I'm both optimistic, and not fearful, but concerned. I don't know what like unifying event would need to take place to get like some of these walls broken down. And I think that ultimately back to shame. Fear is, maybe even I'd have to look at like the Hawkins scale, but like fear is potentially even more harmful than shame. Right? I think it is. I think it's like, it's like, below shame on the hierarchy.

Chase: I'm not so sure. I don't speak enough on it right now. Yeah. So

Joe: there's a book power versus force, which is really awesome. And then there's like, 10 of them after it. And basically, he has this like hierarchy, and I'm butchering it, but like hierarchy of emotions, right. And so you have like fear and shame in the bottom. And then as you like, raise your vibration. You get into like, love and openness, and all this other stuff. And so, ultimately, it's like, when you're feeling shame, or you're in fear, it's impossible, it goes back to the creativity thing, too. It's impossible to rise. So it's impossible to be it's impossible, impossible to love, if you are afraid. And that's purely chemical, too. We talked about hormones and stuff. It's like if you're running from a lion, in my TEDx talk, I say, you know, you can run through if you were running for your life, you could run through a like a cactus patch and not feel a single prick. Because you've got so many hormones and chemicals running through your blood to numb you because you're just in fear. Everything else is just turned off, everything else is turned off. Love is turned off fear, creativity is turned off. Everything that we love and aspire to be, is turned off. If fear is on, or shame is on.

Chase: think about that real quick, just like this funny analogy popped in my head or this experience. Like for the listener, you're running for your life, you got a mountain lion coming after you're running through a cactus patch, and your significant other calls you wanting to just like talk about your day, check in with you. How probable is it that you could actually hold space for them to have the conversation like you normally do every day your life like, I love you, honey, tell me about your day, like no be like, Shut the hell up, I got to go, I got to go. It would just be consumed. Like, that's a very real scenario that we're all going through, like very often these days.

Joe: And it's, it's crazy. And here's the thing is when you are in a state of stress, stress, you are selfish.

Chase: That's what your body is striving for the most. It's stress equals survival, stress equals survive survival equals selfishness,

Joe: So when you think about like, you know, it's funny, and sometimes when you look at things, and someone says, like, I'm just making easy stuff up, but my kids are my top priority. Well, like, how many of their like baseball games if you've been to this week? Oh, how many board meetings have you been to this week? So there's this like, there's this, we tell ourselves a certain story about what's the most important thing to us. But in fact, it rarely checks out the way we use our time and the way that we actually apply our energy, right. And so someone might say that my wife is my top priority. But if she calls me at this time, I'm going to resent her for trying to steal my attention from this or that. And by the way, like, just to be clear for your listeners, like I'm a work in progress as well. We're all works in progress. Like we're all trying to figure this like thing out, and we're all like, everyone's a little messed up truly. And so again, like don't take yourself too seriously. And that's kind of the path. You know, when you start to step back and just sort of a lot let it be, I suppose. I think that that back to the question about, you know, community and things. So it's so weird how like you are very likely many of us are maybe more connected with some friends and family, coworkers or whatever. And some of us are, like, have never been further. Like I have a lot of people that say like their families don't talk to them anymore. And like all this other stuff.

Chase: Unfortunately, that's the case. More often than not right now I think

Joe: it is. And it's because people are in fear. And so until that goes away, until and so yeah, sure if like, if like the power went out globally, and the news turned off, and all we had was, and Oliver Berkman talks about this in the book called The antidote, which is great. Okay, it used to be required reading for Runga check it out. It's the antidote happiness for people that can't stand positive thinking. It's idle, it was an I bought it at like the peak of my like Tony Robbins loving, like cult of optimism. Impossible doesn't exist, you know, all this. And then it like, kind of like, threw me under the bus, like, because it's all about kind of courting the negative and understanding the worst case scenario. But one of the things he talks about that, in that book is, is just kind of back to this hardwiring, where, you know, we're wired to survive in the minute to minute, and we're not we're wired to deal with stress, because back in the day, and you've probably talked about this on your podcast, but you know, when we were hunters and gatherers and whatnot, stress came and went, it wasn't like chronic debt. It wasn't like chronic, like, job responsibilities stress

Chase: there was nothing lingering, nothing lingering, except maybe a hunger a little bit.

Joe: Exactly. And so here's the thing about fear. There's a and this will be an interest, I think this will if I if I can articulate this, right, it'll be a good maybe a segue for us. When we think about our evolution in our DNA, and the way we're wired to survive, it's like, when we feel stress, we turn off creativity, love, you know, all this stuff. And we focus on the hormones and things to help us fight or flight escape, whatever. Now, when we think about fear, especially in the way that it's being communicated. Today, through TV and social media, and all this other jazz everywhere, the way that we evolved to fear things. First of all, they were usually staring us in the face. So threats were usually literal, and right in front of us. Yeah. And if they weren't, they were close by. If they weren't one of the warriors sprinted back and said, we're being invaded, we have 20 minutes before they get here. So today, and it's a little bit like, and he talks about this in the book. And so today, where much of our fears are based on complete lack of understanding, lack of reference. And the damaging part about it, the most damaging part about it, is when it pushes us in a direction that actually makes us less safe. And so the best example is like you. You hear about, well, I guess, hey, well, let's just stick with the times you hear about COVID. So you stop seeing your kids. Or you hear about COVID. So you stopped going to the gym is maybe a better example, wow, you hear about COVID It puts you in fear you stopped going to the gym, but COVID a large percentage of the time relates to your weight, and your insulin sensitivity, which are both improved by the gym, and your fear. And so second worst COVID Is fear fearful COVID. So all three of the things that make COVID the worst and this is based on like I think it was 8 million COVID Asians study came out like in March or something. Obesity is the worst , worst thing with COVID Fear is the second worst, the diabetes is there. But all of those things actually improve if you go to the gym, but we're not going to the gym or staying in home eating Doritos because we're afraid to go to the gym because of the COVID thing. There's winning. Fear is winning. So we're actually making ourselves less safe. It's the same thing if like, Chase is in Austin, and he hears about a plane crash in Malaysia. And so he decides to drive back to LA. Well, statistically, you're going to be a lot safer flying. But because you heard about the plane issue, you decided to drive which is many times more dangerous.

Chase: What you're talking about, I think is not to like beat ourselves up over it. It just it is what it is. But it's a level of grace that I think we need to learn to have when it comes to these fear inputs. And honestly, I think it's a great kind of opposite to the whole shame aspect we've been talking about as we're going through the work as well. We're growing and evolving as humans physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, growth will be had progress will be had. But it will be sometimes ugly growth and shameful process, progress, excuse me. But I hope that all throughout that this level of grace can be had for myself and for you and for everybody listening, so that you can keep that momentum going. And if you can give yourself grace, especially when it comes to fear right now, I think that will be I think Grace inserted during a time of fear will be just enough of a pause to help you fall back on these modalities, these habits that no doubt anyone listening here has, or is on the path to creating. It can be just a small, little time, small little time to remember, oh, this is the world taking me away from my path. This is fear getting in the way of my children, like you were saying this is insert anything here deviating me from the things that I know are going to serve me. It just takes a little bit of time and grace; I think if we can remember that.

Joe: Right. Well, between stimulus and response, there's a pause, right?

Chase: Yes, sir. Hopefully, hopefully, man, hopefully. Yeah. Well, speaking of keeping you from your kids, I'm doing that now. I could talk for hours more, man, I don't have to have you back on the show. But I think this is a great moment to kind of bring us into my final question I ask everybody in the whole concept of Ever Forward, living a life ever forward is to bring awareness and attention into these details that move the needle in our life through fitness, nutrition mindset. And a lot of times this, it's kind of rare. When I say I live a life ever forward, let's keep going when everything's good, right? It usually happens when things are fearful, when we're uncertain when the going gets tough. So when you hear those two words, Joe, what does that mean to you? How do you how do you live a life ever forward?

Joe: put down what's heavy. So, you know, it's, it's where I'm at right now, in my own life. I'm realizing like, I've got a lot of responsibilities right now. And trying to live more in alignment in 2022, with my stated goals, which are my wife, and my son, and then everything else. Looking at my life, right now, as I said, off air is like, I'm probably literally going to take the rest of the year off. And sure, like economically, like whatever. But I know, from my past experiences where this conversation started, when I used to take December off, because I knew in my heart, I can only do this 11 months a year, I can only travel the world and I need to unplug before I can start to do it again. I've got more on the line. Now I've got a son and probably another baby on the way in the next year. Not officially yet. But we'll see. So for me, it's like, okay, like, I'm at a point where I'm trying to move ever forward, especially in the direction that I know I need to be. There's a lot of these projects and things that I do. It's challenging, but I got to figure out what I can put down. And that will and at what cost and it's challenging, but it's also, if you if you kind of identify something as the thing that if it wasn't here, I would actually be able to achieve this. It's very easy. And let's just say it's like a job. For me, I'm self-employed, and I have a lot of different projects. So if I have this job that's like, you know, maybe it's financially rewarding or whatever. But I know it's the thing that stresses me the most. It's the 20% that causes 80% of the stress. Right? Yeah, the 20% that causes 80% of the stress. And hopefully, it's not 80% of the income. But it's when you identify like, okay, like I want to invest more heavily on this side. If I had to pick something to drop, it's painful as it is, I know it's this but I want to move ever forward. So I have to figure out a way to put it down or change it. And then with those resources, where am I going to allocate it on this other side? And so I talked about this sometimes in terms of like optimization, verse maximization. So a lot of times we get focused on maximizing usually money but we don't realize when you maximize just like your warrior king everything else if I maximize my king, and I want to be 100% King, well then I'm zero warrior zero lover, zero magician. So optimization verse maximization, it's like okay, well, I have certain financial goals, perhaps. But I can't try to achieve them at the expense of like, not making my kid I make my kid breakfast every day and I put him to bed every day except today.

Chase: thanks Chase.

Joe: worked out. I took him to the pool in the afternoon. So there's like I don't want anything to disrupt those two habits because I like him starting and ending his day with his dad no matter what. And even if the world goes crazy, and we end up somewhere else, or who knows, right, I can always start my day with my kid and end my day with a kid. And now he has an anchoring male experience, right? And so over here, it's like, okay, well, what would be the things? Well, you know, this job, this this thing is the thing that like you talked about is the thing that stresses me out, and therefore disrupts my energy. So that when I try to go read the Gruffalo, then it's, you know, it's like, oh, my God. So I guess that's what said, I think it goes back to do no harm. And I know I'm being long winded here at the end of the show, but in terms of Ever Forward, oftentimes, we try to think like, what can be our supercharger? What can be our propeller? What can be our, that thing that drives us? But oftentimes, it's the do no harm, and it's what can I put down? What's weighing me down? And it could be relationships, it could be, you know, could be whatever. And when you when you identify something as a relationship as an example, or maybe let's just say a job, because it's easier. Let's say, I've identified that this job is just killing me. Right? This job is just taking more than it's putting back and it's like, all that stuff. And when you start to come up with the buts, but it pays me well, but it helps, but it did. It's time to really do some work on that, because that's all ego. Yeah, truly, you know, that's when you know, you're in that, yeah, you're in that ego, you got to let that go. So that you can actually understand your situation. So put down what's heavy and, and in terms of ever forward, I think, and can I say one more thing? 

Chase: please, please; there's never a right or wrong answer here.

Joe: I think there's a lot of I've worked with a lot of people and tried to get them you know, I say I'm more healthy to fitness. And so whether it's breath or anything else, it's meditation. I my first meditations, I used to jump out of planes. So it's for fun, not maybe how you did maybe. So I think that there's a certain I've seen a lot of people that have, you know, they're doing they have a lot of information, a lot of knowledge. They don't know why they're not happy or healthy or fit. And so maybe they and I identify that we need some inner work. And we need to create a scenario where we're working more from the heart and all this other jazz and, and the path there is stillness and silence and meditation. And that's like the only ticket. It's like the only, but to your point. So we're going to incorporate meditation to move ever forward. But the funny thing is, if you've got a lot of junk, and you've got a lot of ego, and you've got a lot of and I don't say ego is a bad thing, either. Like it's just you. So you've got all this stuff. When you begin to peel the onion, you actually have to feel the stuff. And so I think it's Tara Brock has a really effective system here rain, it's like recognize, allow, investigate, nurture rain, right. My wife teaches mindfulness and things like that to, it's really effective, too. And, and so when you start to peel back the onion, you want to move ever forward, you identify there's an emotional block, you start to do the work to peel back the onion on the emotional block, and you have to feel the stuff and you quickly scurry back to not doing the thing that peel the onion back because you're you are more comfortable having this health problem. comfortability is huge, or this. So in terms of being ever forward, put down what's heavy, and then be prepared to take two steps back to take three steps forward. Often I think that's been my year, honestly, in truth. It's been like, from an emotional some of this work, like I imagined any steps back. And you know, my sort of trans personal commitment is my son and just saying, like, I want the buck to stop here in terms of maybe some of this stuff that I carrt, right. 

Chase: I always appreciate interpretations like that. And like I said, again, there's never a right or wrong answer. But it's just, it's a good reminder. Because in the pursuit of more in the pursuit of a healthier life, more successful life, more fulfilled life, we just tend to think that I need to do more, think more, be more achieve more, I need to find a hack, I need to find a supplement, I need to find a trick to get me there to push me more. But I agree man, I can tell you and I appreciate responses like that many, many times, especially these days, getting more comes from less. Doing more tomorrow comes from doing less today. Having more in your life next year, next five years, whatever is when is when you really stop to take inventory what you already have and just work on preservation. I mean the whole fitness concept of honestly how more difficult is it sometimes and how more important as it is that maintenance phase of fitness of body composition, changing it. You know, we can work on that all day long. But if you want to maintain what you got and keep it for the long haul, like, there's the work. Where's the work, man?

Joe: Right on brother. It was a pleasure, man. I really enjoyed the conversation. Likewise, man. It was just a ton of fun. And it was just a pleasure to hang with you. And I'm grateful for you. And I appreciate it. And yeah, it was it was it was interesting for me as well. I didn't know exactly which roads we were gonna go down.

Chase: I love that. That is the best part of this. Well Joe I am going to have all of your information, your show and your content, everything down on the show notes for everybody. So if they want to connect with you real quick, though, where are you hanging out the most online? Where can they go? 

Joe: Well, I'm Coach JoeDi just about everywhere. That's dot com. And that's my Instagram and all that but I'm as you know, super excited about Runga. And then Runga’s handle is Rungalife.com. And so they're you can check out what we're up to. We've got a lot of content from articles and you know, some mobility tools and stuff on our web a lot of great tools. And you can actually download a morning routine, oh, on our website as well. It's I breathe better mood better routine, okay, which is a, it's a really cool, I really like it, it's kind of my morning, I would imagine it a bias. But it's I took a lot from Kundalini Yoga, which I got really into when I was in LA and I kind of blended it with some of the stuff that Paul taught me and, and it's this. It's basically a morning mobility routine that really focuses on synchronizing your breath with your movements. So in a nutshell, you know, our when our spine moves a certain way, we're supposed to inhale when it moves the other way, that's supposed to be the exhalation. And sometimes we get that flip flop when we're sitting in chairs and on the phone and busy and all this other stuff. And, and the way the nervous system works is like if you're in a position, you your body responds in a way in other areas to reflect that position. So if I'm in a stressed position, you know, there's research on like, if I was sitting like this all day talking to you Superman, but the Superman position, if I was doing the podcast like that, maybe my testosterone would have been a little higher, maybe, maybe I wouldn't have shared a lot of my innermost secrets like I did. And so there's a lot of science to that. So I think one of the really great first steps for people, especially if they want to get into meditation is to work on synchronizing their breath through different movements, especially in the spine, to move energy. 

Chase: Again, that'll be down in the show notes for everybody. This is great, Joe, thanks so much.