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hello and welcome back to the show i am patrick and here with dan we are joined by our friend jameson how's your summer going jameson it's good man i uh yeah i think maybe it is unique to us but i have a sense that it's not summer is a weird time inside of gyms particularly like ours lots of travel classes like the big classes become the small classes and the small classes become the big classes and the dynamics all messed up and you don't get to see your friends that you normally work out with and the vibe is just different but the summer energy is cool people are just kind of like chill and um
it's also been cool for us to see our people very specifically start like applying fitness outside of the gym very intentionally this summer and i think i'm just more like in tune to that in general right now and so maybe Maybe it's always been the case, and I'm just seeing it more now, but that's been really cool to see as well.
Cool. Well, last time we had you on, we talked about yours and Ben's respective decisions to exit out of the CrossFit affiliate space and kind of go your own separate ways.
But in truth, the conversation we're going to have today was actually the one I wanted to have with you the last time.
It was just the timing made sense to have that one then.
But I've been sitting on this question from a listener.
His name is Drew. Sent this to me probably over a year ago, and I've literally been sitting on it like, I want to have this conversation with Jameson.
We just need to find the time for it.
So that's what we're going to do today.
Here's Drew's question.
It's quick, and I think we're going to have a kind of a fun conversation.
He says, my thought exercise, if you could realistically form a Five Factors community, how would you?
I'm not talking about a commune, but maybe a neighborhood or network of like -minded individuals.
I'm inspired by homesteading, sustainable microgrid, et cetera.
So I thought it'd be kind of fun, you guys obviously running gyms, doing your best to To bring this idea of the five factors sort of into a real -life space, the space that Ben and I have been trying to occupy for the last number of years.
So, maybe we can talk about that.
I think we're going to start, though, with just Drew's question.
And, Ben, I'll throw it to you first. First, initial thoughts on this idea, this five factors community.
Where does your head go?
Where do you want to start?
I want to start by let's do it.
Let's make one. Let's do it.
So, this has been, you know, Heather and I, we talk about this all the time.
even like our own little small micro community that we have here is we've talked about like, put the, put up the bubble, you know, like just, you know, we have a doctor, we have a dentist, we have people that can grow plants.
Like, it's like, we would just, this would be super cool.
Those are the only three things you need.
Doctor, dentist, person, who can grow plants.
Right. That's right.
Yeah. So that's my take on it.
I'm done. Jameson, just kidding.
Right. So we, we've talked about this and we've also talked about, you know, what would be next.
And this is just such a cool thing to romanticize about, to envision, to imagine, to storytell and play the game of what would this look like if you were to take the thing that we've done for the gym and turn it into literally a, from a 60 minutes, four times a week to a 24 seven.
Like what would that look like?
And And, you know, I've given this thought.
Oh, my God. Good, Philip.
Let's get the conversation started.
Give us where you're at.
All right. So, I'll go step by step and then we can talk about each step if we want to.
Cool. Okay. First step.
Create the ethos. Create a manifesto.
What are your shared codified values?
Step number one. Step number two is start with a distributed but connected network, meaning it doesn't need to be in local.
It doesn't need to be in a neighborhood, but connect people from afar, network, not land type thing, create an online community somewhere where people are congregating, sharing values, having conversations.
Then have like a little bit of some monthly meetups, and maybe it's the same people every time, maybe not.
And then from there, kind of step 2A is do a founders weekend.
Like where everyone comes together and we kind of like, hey, this is what we're going to try to create.
From there, pick a location.
Location, close to an airport, lots of sunshine, close to nature, walking trails, mountains, rivers, oceans, something like that.
So you can get out and do it.
Also, ideally, a place that doesn't have lots of, I'm going to call it regulations.
So you can build stuff without going through lots of red tape to get businesses set up, put up structures and stuff like that.
From there, create a hybrid where people are sort of coming and spending time, but they're also going and living back in their own place, connecting online remotely in between.
Next step, geographical local cluster.
Like we're moving to this place, building the infrastructure, building the shared barn, gym, the outdoor kitchen, the shared community eating space, the living space.
Everyone owns their own.
This isn't like a commune or a camp.
Everyone owns their own home, but like someplace where you can imagine if it was a cul -de -sac type thing where one of the lots was communal.
Right. But everyone owns their own homes.
But a communal one with the barn and the outdoor kitchen and the eating space.
From there, host regular experiences to bring the whole thing to life.
life uh a couple nights a week community dinners every morning workouts evening wind down text free meditation hikes walks stuff that gets people together with shared activities that we all believe in i would keep it very social very optional so what does not become like rules like you have to show up to this thing it's like you live here you want to participate participate if not if don't but like you you kind of get as deep into it as you want to to keep it autonomous um then from there once you have that core group set up you name it you invite others and then i think the best step is the last
step you create a school and i have another additional five or six steps on how i would do the school all right let's go but the school basically like you put to start the school would be set up on what we'd be teaching is health wealth and wisdom health wealth and wisdom so health five factors wealth like truly like how do you truly create not like what normal academia teaches you but like how do you actually navigate like I this would not be like a hippie commune like let's go go in like make and earn and create financial freedom and prosperity.
And money is, it gives you so much opportunity to do so much good in the world.
Let's go in like teach people how to actually do that from entrepreneurship to leadership, to emotional intelligence, to investing, to what is your relationship with money actually look like.
And then wisdom, meaning like wisdom is not just knowledge.
Wisdom is how, how to live a good life.
The you know discipline courage love things like that okay that's my model that's how i'd roll it out all right i want to come back to the school thing because i think it's really interesting but let's maybe go back to the beginning jameson just hot take on whatever popped out at you in those i think there were six steps maybe maybe maybe seven so i yeah i mean i am also i'm also in um i I hard sell Jameson.
You're a hard sell.
Yeah, dude. I think that the very first factor that comes to mind across the five factors of health, whenever we're talking about a dynamic like this is the connect factor, the relationships factor.
And I have for as long as I can remember, been a proponent of like committing to these like monastic style relationships that you're just in it for life and it's not just entering into like marriage is the only one that you're committed to forever but so are friendships and relationships and in large part i mean we know this like primarily it is how we were really designed to operate in community and in relationship with other people anyways the there is there is definitely uncertainty involved but there's a lot less uncertainty than currently exists in our relational temperature in our relational
sphere of this person may move geographically, but there's also just this really high level of acceptance that relationships can be very transient.
Not only are they mostly transactional, but they can be very transient in terms of they come and go and, you know, they don't impact you that much whenever you gain and lose relationships.
And so when I think about it, just from the connect factor of health this idea of a long commitment of relationship in community is really significant i think that's where like you begin to actually learn more about yourself and learn more about the people around you is when you make these long -term commitments that regardless of the growth that occur that needs to occur the friction that occurs in the relationship you know that exiting the relationship is like last option like it maybe it's maybe there but your commitment is to working through the friction together.
And oftentimes that kind of commitment and relationship is reserved particularly for marriage.
And unfortunately, not even then in a lot of ways now.
So it's really attractive to me, this idea of like creating truly deep transformational, like soul level connections with other human beings.
And it's really hard to do that without being in the day to day with people.
So I'm, I'm really compelled by the the concept, uh, regarding the other factors of health, I think what it does is it practices this idea of rather than, um, having to work so hard to make good decisions, you are designing your environment to support the decisions that you want to make.
And that is, I mean, that's like behavior adjustment.
One -on -one and growth.
One -on -one is create more friction between you and the things you don't want to do and create less friction between you and the things you do do want to do and that's what ben's talking about is creating of a not a frictionless state because we're humans and you're not going to put humans in the same place together and have a frictionless state but one where it's easier to focus on the most important things because the stuff that creates distraction from that is managed so i guess that's my take on why i'm in the part that i would not push back on but just ask is it feels like this stuff falls apart
even when you're like conceptualizing it.
It feels like this stuff falls apart and it creates this cult -esque feel whenever you bring in regulation.
So step one for you was to develop shared values, a shared vision, a shared mission and purpose statement that becomes codified through principles and practices and priorities and all that kind of stuff.
What happens whenever you get to step five or six and people are geographically in the same location and people start to operate in the antithesis of those values.
Who implements the, for lack of better terms, disciplinary measures that upholds the culture.
That's where I don't know how you manage this relationship between autonomy in a community like this and staying true to principles and values.
Like that's where it's different than a company or an organization.
So I'm curious how you would manage the leadership of that.
I don't know the answer to that, right?
So this is a thought experiment, right?
So this is not like not the 2026 rollout plan.
If this was the type of thing that I kind of laid out, which is it's a neighborhood, right?
And you buy a plot of land and build your house and there's this shared space, you don't, you don't.
But I don't want to live in a neighborhood that has values different than mine.
I want to live in a neighborhood that's similar.
So I think that there would be a big self -selection process that people would kind of like seed themselves out of that.
It's much like what happens, as you know, in our professional organizations.
When you are so clear about what you stand for, people don't sign up for it in the first place that don't agree with it.
If you're like, we work our asses off.
We work so hard. We are going to be here at 10 o 'clock on Friday nights.
There is no work -life -family balance.
I'm not saying this is ours, right?
But there is no work -life -family balance.
Goldman Sachs. You're going to work 20 -hour days.
You're going to sleep under your desk.
It's going to be a grind.
This is the Navy SEAL hell week of the financial world.
Are you up for it? Most people are going to go no, and only the few people that are are going to say yes.
Any people that think that they are, after three months, are going to go, this is it for me, and they move out, right?
So I think that it's less about policing than it is just espousing and living out and keeping it alive, keeping them real.
Like, we do get together for workouts.
We do go do these things together.
This is what we believe in.
We are doing these things.
And if somebody is not going to be a part of that, then I don't know.
Like, okay, you're not going to be a part of it.
I don't know what the benefit of what you get out of living here, though, because everyone else is a weirdo to you.
But everyone else that is that is like, this isn't weird. This is exactly what I want.
And it's very much what we've talked a lot about is just create this environment of, you know, it's, I love the quote, and I know you do too, which is it's no measure of success to be well adapted to a profoundly sick society.
And that's where we are right now.
So what we're saying is let's create a society that doesn't measure ourselves based off of other values, the wealth and the status games.
That's not what we're about.
We're about living great lives by our measure, right, which starts with health because if you don't have health you really are don't have a lot of options so can we create a lot of freedom and not like rules and regulations but yeah people go off and do their own things as well I think that that's the place I don't want this to be a yeah a place with rules and regulations and if you don't do it then you get kicked out like that's not the way I would set this thing up cool yeah that feels how many people how big would you imagine in an ideal state ben that that i mean i think what we're talking
about is a neighborhood so we can use that as the phrase just for now but like how big is that neighborhood in your mind before it gets too big or before it's too small to be as impactful as you imagine it is yeah i you know i would say probably about like 150 people yeah you know i always think that's always the kind of the defaults like as big as you can get before losing real relationships with everybody which Which if there's families of four or five, if that's kind of the way we're doing this, maybe there's some individuals in there.
We're talking somewhere between 40 and 60 families.
Yeah, that's the Dunbar number, right?
Like 150 is where you start to have a loss of actual connection and authenticity with people.
But I think that even if you were to do this as like, start off with like a dozen or half a dozen families.
Yeah, man. Like that.
That's where I would start with.
and if it grew to 4x that cool right but even if you had like imagine having 10 families in the neighborhood that were like this is what we do like we have a shared garden we have this plot of land that we take care of and protect we have this community gym that we do and every one of the school thinks that this is the way we should be teaching our kids and we have a every call it every Friday or every other Saturday, there's a dinner, every other Saturday there's a dinner together.
I, that seems, I seems really cool.
Yeah. I would think that you should consider yourself like very relationally wealthy.
If you have one other family that you can practice that kind of connection at this point, right.
Um, or one set of friendships that you can do that that with.
I think like to to your point, Ben, when you're talking about behavior modification and behavior management, that is like the opposite of what you want this to be, because that doesn't make it really autonomous, authentic or free, I guess.
And so we've talked a lot about this, you know, our kind of our tagline, our slogan at the gym is the better way.
And it's a bit ambiguous in that it doesn't really mean anything specific other than this constant invitation or challenge to go is there a better way to do this thing that's a good street yeah the better okay so we got that we got the street name that's gonna be on perfect i live on better way dot you just made it you just made it a website yeah the better way Yeah.
But I think, yeah. And I think ultimately it, if you are operating the way we view that is if you're constantly inviting or challenging yourself to operate with this concept that there could be a better way to do something, first of all, that's constantly iterative and just is committed to constant improvement because better doesn't mean best or final.
It's just, I'm at this point now is there an opportunity for me to elevate the way that I am doing this thing seeing this thing or operating in this way but it also is more of an intangible thing where if you are committed to that lifestyle it should create such a compelling picture of how you could live and how good life could be that like you said the people who see that are like oh that's fascinating and I want to do that and it's way more about creating a compelling picture of what's possible than it is about like demanding that people adhere to some certain behavior or like code of conduct,
which is a much looser way and human way to do something like this.
And it takes the control out of the quote unquote leader's hands and instead puts the responsibility on the leader to constantly align with those values and create a personally compelling picture of what's possible.
And so it's just like a much more authentic human way to do it than this idea of like regulation and modification i don't think that lasts very long at all yeah i don't think it's needed it's oh sorry uh uh yes there are but they're voluntary and they probably rotate so a part of this is what the way i'm modeling this off of is um in the summers we go to like there's a community club yep that we go to it's about 800 people and there's a someone runs it every two years.
You take it before, before you run it, you are the vice.
So you're that for two years before that you're the assistant to that.
So you kind of take these six year stints of where you're like just getting your feet wet, two years of helping out in two years of running it.
Different people take different positions from somebody handles the, the, the finances of the club.
Somebody else runs certain programs. So, and they're all voluntary.
No one gets paid anything for it.
And people do it. They raise their hand.
The cool part about it is some of the things I mentioned are already there.
There are these activities.
There is a routine yoga already.
There is these biweekly dinners that happen.
We celebrate holidays together.
And what's really cool is no one ever said anything about this, but I really appreciate it.
There's this sort of unwritten rule, at least amongst the adults, that you're not on your phone.
so everyone's hanging out no no adults are on their phone it's really cool now the teenagers are still kind of doing it right but the little little kids aren't and the adults aren't and that's pretty neat and no one said anything is the big thing no one ever said like we don't use our phones here and that's where i think that if you are just you instill this culture right it's It's a culture thing, not a rules thing.
So it's one of those that you can have leaders, but they're not voted on and they're not the ones that hire and fire the others.
They're just like you take your turn, kind of the way that government used to be.
Government used to be that, which is after you had enough success individually or as a family professionally, it was your turn to give back.
And that's how you gave back was what was called public service.
That was a governmental rule, public service.
Now people go there to get wealthy, which is kind of wild and famous.
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What is lacking in your minds that makes this such a radical idea?
I'd be curious to walk down that road a little bit.
Like, this really is a radical idea if you look at the way everybody lives currently.
why is it in your minds that we've gotten to a place where an idea like that for people like us are like sign me up for that immediately because it's it's so the opposite of how we seem to have sorted ourself why is that well there's it's all based off of values it's all based off what do do you think is important and as jameson said if you're lucky enough to have a family near you that has the same shared values that should you should feel lucky um we're just very back in the day the chances of you having a shame shared values as all of your neighbors was very very high because you were all farmers
you were all the same religion and you all were born in the same country it's this idea right of like we all came from the same path it's not a good or a bad thing it's just that there's more information there's more opportunities there's more things to say this is what I want to go down so it's the reality of the world in which we're in right now is that you can have access to something and go like oh wait a minute no like I was brought up this way but I actually don't believe that I believe this and now you have this dissension even inside your own family.
For survival reasons that couldn't have happened 100 ,000 years ago or even a few 10 ,000 years ago, you needed total alignment amongst the tribe.
If there's one dissenter, we'll call them, that dissenter either broke off and started their own where everyone believed that thing or they went off as a recluse and lived in the woods by themselves or they were shunned from the community and or killed like so it's this idea that we all have this so much safety is the real thing now that we are free to go and do this thing that it's an opportunity so now what we have to do the flip side of that is now we have to search for it it's not the default just like everything now we have to be intentional with trying to create the tribe because it's not there
for us like it was before.
In the Native American community this was like the default, right?
Like, great book, Sebastian Younger, Tribe.
It's phenomenal. Like everyone there feels so much connection because of the beliefs and the rituals and the tribal aspect to it and the the heritage and the ancestors and all of the stuff that came with being a part of that, of that group.
We don't have that now that we don't have these strong tribal alliances.
Yeah, I mean, everything Ben just said, I feel like lit up so many different parts of my brain that wants to go so many different directions.
And interestingly enough, I think the one I will go with is what it reminds me of is all time great movie from the jungle book, which is the strength of the wolf is the pack and the strength of the pack is the wolf.
And honestly, man, the wolf individually has become so emaciated and weak.
And to put that into human terms, as people in society, typically, like the standard has become distracted, weak, wildly purposeless, um, to use some language Ben and I have talked about, it's just like the, the individual is drifting through life.
Now, uh, there is not awareness, there is not intention, there is not action.
And so I feel like the key component is the fact that maybe it's like a, a dual partnership between distraction and adversity or lack thereof.
Like we've, we've gained too much distraction and we have, and we lack enough adversity that we've been able to live without out any real sense of awareness, intention, or action.
And the result of that has been just a community filled with these individuals who have over indexed on, uh, separate being separate and being isolated.
But at an individual level, we're also so weak in our identities that if what Ben is talking about is a community is essentially a group of people who have chosen chosen to grow together a community is a group of people who at the fundamental level see and believe the same truth you can't do that in a group of people if you don't even know what you believe individually and I just would argue that most people don't know what they even believe like they just believe kind of automatically whatever it is they're ingesting and consuming on a consistent basis so yeah I feel like it's the it's that concept
of the pack is weak because the wolf is weak and the wolf is continuing to become weaker and weaker and weaker and domesticated and whatever.
And so the pack is just like is suffering because of it.
And I think to use Ben's safety word, I wasn't going to press on this.
I wasn't going to press on this, but him saying And I'm not saying that safety has been a.
A real trigger that has led us in this direction, I think I think of it, in fact, in related to religion and nothing will really reveal to you your belief systems. And if you are actually going to align belief and behavior, like being persecuted for the things that you believe.
And so this like really intentional adversity against the thing that you believe is going to wildly refine your behaviors and beliefs.
And we just don't have that anymore.
Like we're not challenged with that kind of adversity in any way whatsoever.
So what you're basically doing is just asking a bunch of distracted and weak people to gather together in a community.
What do you think is going to happen?
in. Like there is no identity, there is no shared vision, there is no shared value.
There is no shared purpose or mission because there isn't that at the individual level.
And I guess it is this idea of just like consumption distraction and a lack of healthy adversity that's led to that.
Yeah. James, just to see if I can understand what you're, what you're saying is one of the things, please help me understand what I'm saying.
No, no, no. I think it's clear.
But one of the things I think that I'm picking up is this idea of like, if you were to commit to a thing like A neighborhood like this, a community like this, you are.
And you this ties even a little bit to what you said at the start of this, which is like truly committing to relationships, not dipping your toe in and saying, is this going to be is this going to be good?
Oh, no, it makes me uncomfortable.
I can I can exit this easily and quickly by committing to a to a lifestyle like this.
you have to truly first believe it but then you have to prove to yourself continually that what you believe is what you believe and not what you said you believe because you thought it was popular or easy or what would get you approval from strangers or whatever it might be in other words like it's the commitment in and of itself almost that is part of the value stack of a community like this?
The fact that you are being made to commit every single day in a world that almost to a T is trying to make it really easy for you not to commit and, and be able to pull yourself out of discomfort whenever you'd like.
Yeah, man. I mean, that's it across the board, uh, in all areas of life, regardless of which factor of health we're talking about.
It's very much a, I want to be the kind of person who commits to long -term relationships and authenticity authenticity and friendship, or I want to be the kind of person who eats healthy, or I want to be the kind of person who exercises and trains every day.
And there is a big, okay, we'll see that should be tacked on to that because you don't become that kind of person through the desire to be that kind of person, but rather through the discipline of actually being that person on a consistent basis.
And I don't, I don't know who the model is from, but it's the model of the, the, I think we talked about this actually, this concept of being, being, doing, and then having.
So of course you're the kind of person who wants to have wildly fulfilling long -term relationships.
Are you willing to first be the kind of person that does the kind of things that gets that result?
And yeah, I think it's exactly what you're talking about, man.
It's like, yeah, we'll see.
Like, do you want to, do you want to be the kind of person that would contribute to and enjoy joy existing in a five factor community.
We'll see. Like you have to become that person.
And that's done behaviorally on a consistent basis.
I can even see it working as like you sort of, when you, when you were to first come into it, it's almost like an apprenticeship apprenticeship program where basically you rent for a year or two years.
And then once you do that, then you're like everybody around is like, yes, this makes sense.
you fit you want to be here dot dot dot and now you're you're the because then it does give you enough commitment to do all the things that you're talking about jameson but it actually kind of removes some of the logistical hurdle of the buying and selling and all that stuff that would just like have to come along with it but if you were to first like if there was an entry point and say okay at the end of a year at the end of two years yes no come or go i think what i think I think that would make a lot of sense.
Hmm. Yeah. Be a cool way.
Yep. It's also a timeshare opportunity.
Yep. Yeah. It's basically a giant Airbnb scheme.
That's, that's what I'm setting up here.
Um, the, the one thing that I think we're, I just want to hit on, cause I think it's really interesting.
It's like, there's three things in this conversation that kind of keep bubbling up a little bit, which is this idea of like shared effort or struggle, shared experience and shared values.
Is there anything else worth talking about in terms of like the connection of those three things or the bringing together of those three things that would make a community like this, a neighborhood like this, what it ultimately could be?
You said effort, values and struggle?
Yeah. Or struggle, experience and values.
use and the effort and struggle is kind of like there's something interesting in there like i don't know that it's just we we train six days a week together and that's the effort slash struggle just like we see in the gym all the time that's that's such a powerful connector or if it's hey we also do this together i don't know i think that could also be an interesting thing i think that that's super interesting and that would probably yield to the level of this thing right Right?
Is it actually more like a commune?
Are we actually raising crops and livestock together?
Right? Are we running a business together?
That's not the way I envision this.
That, to me, is then getting into that next level with James.
I was like, okay, then, who's kind of regulating this thing?
Who's saying, you're not doing your job, you're fired.
But I think that the more ritualistic it became, right?
Right. And, and, and not like we all, you know, face the sun and kneel and bow and like, and kill the gods together.
Yeah. Right. But more in terms of like, like you started off with this, Patrick is, yeah, we all do.
This is when we train together.
Yep. Right. This is when we have a meal together.
This is when we, and it doesn't have to, the other part is like, it doesn't have to be everybody, every time, everything.
thing it's more like if you went to one of those holistic health retreats they have these in like western mass they're probably in tennessee as well jameson where you go and there's a there's a gazillion different options and you're like you could sign up for one every hour every day to do everything or yeah you could go and just get cucumbers on your eyeball have someone rub your temples wearing a robe and take the rest of the week is like are you wearing the robe yeah and And so I see it kind of like that is there are these things.
It's sort of a perpetual menu of options.
Yeah, and people gravitate towards certain ones, right?
Some people gravitate towards the garden.
Other people gravitate towards the hikes.
Other people, the meditations.
Other people, the fireside chats.
And the other ones, the men's groups and the book clubs.
And somebody loves the cooking.
Exactly, yeah. So I kind of see it like that type of thing.
You know, funny enough, we, Heather and I, we just got a barn.
So we're kind of like thinking about this in a much smaller scale, right?
Everybody meet up at Ben's barn.
Yeah. I'm okay. I want to shift gears just a little bit.
But we're not skipping steps.
We didn't do steps one, two, and three.
We just went right to the barn.
That makes sense. This is so like my MO, right?
It's like, let's just go.
Just go. go all right there's there I want to I want to shift gears just a little bit because I do kind of want to get at the school thing because Ben I think there's a lot there's some stuff there worth talking about but I want to first start I want to I want to bridge into the schools by talking about kind of families and parenting a little bit because one of the things that I think this scenario or setup does really nicely and you guys know this as well as anybody is like what is the biggest barrier in today's world to all the things we talk about all the time all the habits all the activities
all the actions etc and it's often i don't have enough time to do that i don't have enough time to work out five days a week i have to i have to also make my own food and i have to find time to connect with my my my significant other and my kids and my neighbors and all the other things and one of the things that this does really really nicely at least for parents is it builds a community and a neighborhood in which you are not constantly parenting your your kids, which sounds weird, except when you recognize that our parents were not parented to the degree that our kids are parented.
My father, my mother, and even me to a degree was sent out into the neighborhood to find the gang of kids who also live there.
And my parents could do the things that parents need to do, whether it was clean the house.
They obviously weren't working from home, but, you know, doing all the things that have to get done for a house not to implode.
But one of the things I really like about this is that it creates a community of eyeballs to watch the community of kids such that parents now have the time to do the things that they say, especially if they're in this neighborhood, that they say are important to them, right?
And so it's this weird thing that I think is, back to kind of what my question was earlier about, what are we lacking that makes this so appealing to us?
us and it's that we've set up a culture where none of us have enough time to do the things that we know or at least we say matters and so doing creating something like this putting yourself in an environment like this knocks down what i think is the biggest barrier which is how am i supposed to do these things even if i say that they are important you know i love what you said is like how cool would it be to be in that environment where you know your kids are first off that that they're safe.
Secondly, that they're with other really good kids.
Thirdly, that if they are at someone else's home, that they're not on video games, that they're not on screens, that they're not eating goldfish and Doritos and Pop -Tarts.
You just, like, that has a shared value.
That'd be like, man, like, that is...
Okay, after this call, guys, we're going to have a little brain session of like how to actually do this thing.
Uh, but I agree with you, Patrick.
It's like the, one of the big things is we all, I am, I'll raise my hand first. Like I don't have the time to, and that would be, I think one of the big things that we would want to instill in this is we lead busy, free lives.
You know, this place is not busy.
You're not over -scheduled, not over -committed, not running from meeting to meeting, from kids thing to kids thing, from job to this.
Status game. Exactly right.
It is, we're going to enjoy the small moments and the things that other people don't.
I again think it just comes down to values.
You said effort and struggle, values.
That's why I think that when you start there and we start with values it just like it filters through and fixes so many other things we're sponsored this time around by massa chips creators of the delicious tortilla chips made with a hundred percent grass -fed beef tallow that supports your journey toward peace of mind through better nutrition head to massachips .com slash excellence that's m -a -s -a chips .com Enter the code excellence for 25 % off your first order.
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If you really like zoom all the way out to the the really the point and then we've had this conversation before but like why the five factors of health in many ways it's to reduce stress and increase peace of mind right and so that's really what this in an ideal form in an idyllic form that's what we're trying to build is a space in which peace of mind is prioritized and stress in all the ways that stress shows up is decreased as much as is feasible or at least that the the sort of the the kind of stress that too many people feel stress to a degree is great stress is fantastic stress makes us
better but it's the it's the chronic stress that we've talked about that our culture does not work to decrease but in a In a situation like this, a context like this would work actively to decrease.
Yeah, I think when I think about this environment in particular, that the peace of mind thing is massive.
I feel like the two things we're trying to accomplish here that ladders up to or leads to this type of communal experience that we're envisioning is at an individual level.
people joining the environment with a personal peace of mind and a presence of soul.
And those two things are so eliminated by the natural order of our modern society.
Things are constantly pulling at both of those things.
And... Give me it again, Jameson.
Peace of mind and presence of soul?
What do you mean by presence of soul?
Yeah. So those two things I feel like are components what exists inside of a person, that if your mind is wondering, or you have been so, so busy, that your soul meaning I know that that can mean different things for different people, but like the very just general internal essence of who you are as a person that it feels a bit intangible, like it can't catch up to your body, like you're moving at such a pace that you're not fully there for it.
And I think everybody knows what that feels like, though.
I think it feels differently for a lot of people and people would use different words to describe it.
To me, it's like my, my mind is not at peace and my soul is not present in the moment that I am in.
So I am therefore not really being a whole person that exists in this present reality.
So of course, I'm not really going to either contribute to or receive from this environment that I'm in.
And I I think that the five factors are a to go back to what Ben was saying regarding it not being regulated or rule based.
The five factors are really like a prescriptive way of living.
It is a better way to live.
And it is fundamentally rooted in a singular kind of foundational truth of honoring our biology as human beings.
And then also respecting that there's also more to us as human beings than just biology.
and it's controlling what we can control so that we can better let go of what we can't and all of which is just this like kind of prescriptive way of life that I think allows us to have more peace of mind and presence of soul in whatever moment we find ourselves in and I feel like if we're going to wildly oversimplify an example like a manifested or tangible example it's why Why someone being on their phone while in the room with us bothers us so much or why we do the same thing because our mind is pulled in so many directions and we're so distracted and we're so uncomfortable by just being.
We can't just be anywhere anymore that we need to be somewhere else because we're so uncomfortable inside of ourselves that we have to distract ourselves.
And so instead of being able to sit in a room with Patrick or sit in a room with Ben, I need a thing to distract me from myself, which is therefore going to mean, well, I'm not really here present with Ben or Patrick either.
And so when you gather together, that's so cool.
Like to know that in this environment that Ben, that you've been in at this club, like people not being on their phones is a major sign of health, like presence of mind or presence of soul and peace of mind.
If you can be in a room with other human beings and not have your phone on you and not be distracted by your phone, this is a lot of how you as a person regarding your own like identity so yeah i think the five actors man for me have been this prescriptive way of going what is pulling you out of being peaceful and present in this moment which is therefore robbing you of the ability to make an impact on the people around you or just frankly enjoy the people around you and how do you eat sleep train think and connect in a way that takes back agency over those things because there's There's going
to be plenty of stuff that you don't have agency over, but you can control a lot of it through curating your environment.
And that environment is not just this like commune that we're talking about.
That environment is also internal in a lot of ways and has to do with your own disciplines and behaviors.
So I think the peace of mind and the presence thing is massive without that, without every individual having that, you're going to have a little success in coming together as community to have it as a whole.
segue a little bit as we close this conversation to the school idea ben i've i've been sort of randomly but i'm i'm reading the book spark for the first time even though it came out like i don't know 20 years ago spark is that book that uh sparked this idea that of of like getting kids to specifically getting kids to move before school because what they found is getting kids to move before school improves their ability to pay attention and conjugate and all the things like that our brain needs to do to learn.
So I'm reading that book.
I'm also randomly learning about this thing called the alpha schools.
I don't know if either of you have come across this, but there's, I don't know exactly what they are.
They're private schools.
There's only a couple of them in the country, but they've been around for a little bit.
And what they do is they've got this really interesting two -hour learning model where the kids, I think it's like elementary school to maybe middle school, they'll spend the first two hours of school in a classroom session or classroom setting.
But what they're doing is they're using using adaptive AI to learn at their speed and not the speed of like the 12 kids around them.
And so they do all of their learning and their test scores are at the top of the rankings.
So they do all their learning in this two -hour block.
And then in the afternoon, they tackle projects, they do collaborative tasks, they start businesses, they run 5Ks.
They do all these, they sort of do all these interesting things that I think kind of align with some of the things that we've been talking about.
So I bring all of that up just as fodder for conversation I would love to know more about this school based on health, wealth, and wisdom if you've got more thoughts to it.
Well, I mean, it's something that probably 2012 -ish, Heather and I started exploring.
We had young kids in elementary school at that time, and we were planning on getting pregnant and doing it all over again.
Again, we were kind of like, how cool would it be to create an actual school based off just the way that we think about the values of life?
And to me, we come down to those three things.
So the health is the five factors, right?
It's getting a moving understanding, physical literacy, right?
Right. Like what does it mean to actually have fitness, not abs, not, you know, be able to whatever other way people measure it.
But true capacity and get them like really fit like like it'd be amazing.
Right. There's no reason that they can't be have anyone can't have the benefits of really high levels of physical capacity.
I think it'd be amazing eat you know you get them not only to actually eat good awesome amazing food but you teach them about it and the benefits of and you can use that as a as a segue into biology and chemistry and so many in nature and ecology you know so much other stuff that goes into that to weather patterns and all the rest in terms of sleep again you get into understanding understanding how important that is and circadian rhythms and all the science that goes into that in terms of thinking getting to understand like the things that we were never taught you know how the brain how the mind
works how it interplays with your guts and vice versa the bi -directional what happens when you see things that you when you get triggered when you things things come in how the prefrontal cortex works versus the amygdala like and just truly understanding the the the how the this thinking machinery affects us and then connection starting with as james said connecting and understanding yourself this is what i think when we talk about connection we so quickly go to connect with others in relationships it starts with ourselves.
So what do you believe?
What do you think is important?
What are the stories you tell yourself?
Are those true? Are they not?
Where did they come from?
How are they influencing your lives?
Like this idea of truly connecting with ourselves would be so powerful.
And then connecting with others, emotional intelligence, perspective, mirroring, truly become active, sincere, Sincere, empathetic listeners, good conversationalists, how to do public presentations and speaking, how to navigate the world with other people in it, all the way to connecting again with nature and getting out and understanding the world and minerals and rocks and water and weather and mountains and everything that comes along with that.
So the health one is where the obvious principle coming from the five factors.
Then I would go to wealth and wealth would be, again, financial literacy, understanding things like budgeting, savings, compound interest, entrepreneurship, investing principles.
Investing is like fitness.
Once you understand it, it's very simple.
It's not easy, but it's very, very simple.
simple I would then I mentioned but entrepreneurship is I have people everyone in the school would start a business I have said this before like if you were to instead of go to college college costs about fifty thousand dollars a year right now right so that's a quarter that's two hundred thousand dollars across four years imagine if instead of spending four years going and doing Doing what I did, which was skiing a lot, drinking a lot, and smoking a lot.
Going to class sometimes.
Imagine instead of doing that, if someone handed you almost a quarter of a million dollars and said, I want you to start a business for the next four years.
And at the end, it has to fail.
Because when you come out of school, you have nothing.
At the end, when you come out of this, you're going to have nothing.
nothing but think of the think of the the learnings that you would have along the way of starting that business versus what i the goofing off thing that i did in college you know and whether it fails or not we get to you know meaning if it fails okay if it doesn't you have to pass it along to somebody else like that type of thing like it's not the thing forever this is your experimental time to actually try to just like colleges except i experimented with other things i experimented with pizza a lot yeah there's the freshman there's the freshman 15 you know you gain like 15 pounds your first year
of college i doubled it i did the i did the first semester 30 oh my gosh you're always been a high achiever ben so speaking of what you did not have wisdom how do you get yep yeah so so what is wisdom right wisdom is the wisdom really comes through experience so in elementary school you're not gonna have tons or elementary school middle school high school you don't get experiences you just read from textbooks so we'd want to to give them experiences by starting businesses getting out in the world working for a non -profit going and going with a group of uh there's a really cool place called the island school
which is in the bahamas or bermuda i don't know you're gonna say rhode island no it's in the school you go down there and you're you don't have you don't have a phone you don't get to to call your parents the entire time it's run by a former navy seal during the semester you're there you either train for a half marathon which you have to do or a five mile swim you also as the culmination have to spend three days in the woods by yourself yourself all you get is like four granola bars like experience right now i'm not saying it needs to be that but like let's build a boat and sail a boat across
a lake like experience like that's everything with friends with other people like with directions and that type of thing so build a wisdom treehouse build a tree yeah yeah so but really what wisdom is is knowledge knowledge, through experience, I get it, of what is and how to live a good life.
That usually comes down to a life filled with virtue and purpose.
So we have to learn about virtue and purpose, and that's going to come from philosophy.
So now we're going to teach philosophy.
We're going to spend time learning about the Stoics and what the Stoics were influenced by you know the ancient Greeks and we're gonna learn about courage and humility and discipline gratitude honesty and perseverance you know we're gonna through wisdom we're gonna learn about how to how to have a healthy disagreement you know like you don't have to agree with everybody so good but like how do you navigate that and then you know also like where's your place in the world Like you're one of eight billion.
Like what does that mean?
So you know this idea that like knowledge is useful but wisdom is transformational.
And that's what we want to do is give people wisdom.
Last words on this subject of building not a cult not maybe a neighborhood?
Maybe a neighborhood.
We'll go with neighborhood.
Any last thoughts, Jamison?
and i'd love to hear any last thoughts wrapping this up uh i think i mean i have a lot i connected to what you guys were just talking about with the school though that's certainly not the model that i practiced but i did grow up with a fairly unconventional like participating in a fairly unconventional approach to education i was homeschooled my whole life and there was a lot lot of travel that occurred throughout being homeschooled as well.
And so if I pointed to one particular thing that I experienced most growing up that I feel like is a major advantage as an adult, it is, it is experience.
It is the wisdom that was gained that at the time I wasn't aware was wisdom until I later learned how to apply it.
That came from just the things I saw, the the expanded worldview the expanded perspective the fact that I'm the youngest by quite a bit and I was just taken into growth environment after growth environment because I just did stuff with my family and so I'm not amazing really at much of anything but I do have like a pretty broad skill set like I'm kind of good at a lot of stuff and just like and possess a general knowledge and people have asked like, well, how did like, how did you develop that?
And the answer to that is what's what I spent time on as a kid.
And it was by no fault or choice of my own.
It's just what I did.
And so as a kid growing up, I didn't really know that what I was doing was investing into my future.
I was just living the life that had been curated around me by the way that my family operated.
And so instead of, I mean, I certainly wasted plenty of time.
Don't get me me wrong.
And as I got older and could make my own decisions, opted for the stupid stuff instead.
But as I was growing up, like I just hung out with my brother who 10 years older than me was already starting businesses and learning web design.
And then I learned to do those things.
And I was hanging out with my two brother -in -laws who are a musician and a doctor.
And like, and so I'm getting my worldview expanded by what is around me.
And so I feel like that just connects back to this concept of you become what you surround yourself with.
And as a kid, when I didn't have the agency to decide that for myself, I feel like I was given such an advantage because of the people around me, what they decided for me that I was going to be influenced by.
So I feel like that's just an argument for like, yeah, do school that way.
Do community that way.
Do life that way. Because as I then got past the lack of wisdom, immaturity and stupidity stages, I then looked back and went like, man, I have a, like a treasure trove here of experience I can pull from and develop wisdom out of.
And like, that's a major advantage and gift that I was given because of the environment I grew up in.
So that's just another, uh, check one for in awareness, intention and action, because it doesn't just benefit you.
It is constantly benefiting the people around you as well.
The thing you said, I didn't know that that stuck out to me as this idea of curation and for you at that young stage life was curated for you but i think if we were to summarize or encapsulate this whole conversation it's the idea of like can we build an environment that creates the kind of life that at least the three of us right now believe is one worth pursuing and can you build the physical environment that allows anybody in that environment to have a life that is curated in this particular direction.
I think that's really, really powerful.
Totally. Cool. Jameson, always good to talk to you, my friend.
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