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All right, let's get into it.
Hello and welcome back to the show.
As we get close to wrapping up yet another year, i wanted to do something just a little bit different this week.
I wanted to take two of the conversations that i think are perhaps our most important or foundational conversations from this year, put them together in a single episode.
Think of it as a reminder, as we exit 2025, of some of the big ideas that we want to carry with us in our mental backpack as we welcome january.
Both of these are actually from the beginning of 2025, so they're both from January, so they'll be forgiven if you haven't thought about them in a minute.
And, in fact, that's why I wanted to bring them back, because it has been 12 months since we released them.
The first conversation we're going to replay is the very first episode of the year, as it happens.
We called it The Hidden Path from Pull-Ups to Peace of Mind.
In it, Ben and I were really excited to do something that we don't do very often.
I don't think we had done it before, which is zoom all the way out.
We try to connect all the dots of things we talk about here on Chasing Excellence.
We start with the end in mind, which is peace of mind, that context, independent sense of fulfillment.
And we work our way backwards through chasing what truly matters, through health and freedom, all the way down to the five factors of health.
It's the complete framework.
It's the roadmap.
We did our best to bring everything from the last eight or nine years into a single conversation.
And then the second episode we're going to bubble back up is one that we called The Crew Effect.
It was also from early on in the year.
It's a deep dive into one of those five factors that, quite frankly, I think is the one most overlooked.
It's connection specifically connection with other people, your crew, the people you surround yourself with.
Because, it turns out, the people around you have a massive outsized impact on your health, your happiness and your success.
We're talking about 95% of your success or failure.
It's absolutely wild and incredibly important that we keep that front of mind.
So if you think about it, peace of mind is the destination.
These two conversations show us the map and the people we need on the journey with us.
It's the framework and the crew.
I think these are two episodes absolutely worth revisiting.
I like revisiting it for myself, so I thought perhaps it would be useful to you.
That's why I wanted to bring them back.
If you happen to know somebody who could use these reminders as we head into 2026, please share it with them.
It's the single best and most impactful way that we can continue to build our little virtual crew here at Chasing Excellence.
One thing we talk about all the time is beginning with the end in mind, right?
And so I want to talk about what the end in mind is for you and I, as we have this conversation, as we've had this conversation over the last again, whatever it was seven eight, nine years.
And obviously it's changed.
It's changed a ton since when we began and today.
And so I wanted to ground us, again, entering into this new year with like, what is the end in mind?
And specifically, what is the end in mind?
And how does it connect to...
The things we do often talk about here, whether that's thrusters and pull ups, whether that's carbohydrates, whether that's sleeping eight hours, you know awareness intention action, the mindset continuum.
Where do all of these things fit into the broader framework of chasing excellence?
And so to begin the conversation around how we begin with the end in mind.
The thing that you and I have with intention, but also just with growth and age and time have come to, is the end in mind for us is really peace of mind.
It's really being able to do the best we can to live with the deathbed exercise in our mind.
And so I want to start there.
I want to start with peace of mind and the deathbed exercise.
And I want to move us all the way back down to the five factors of health, which is what we do talk about quite a bit.
So let's begin with peace of mind.
Why is that the thing, that our argument, that the case we're trying to make is the thing we should all be chasing?
How do we get from sleeping eight hours?
Thrusters and pull ups and carbohydrates all the way to this peace of mind.
Yeah.
So I think it's a great conversation because if you, if we, if we don't connect those dots, they can seem very disparate, unconnected.
And honestly there, if we were to just follow the reason most people are doing thrusters and pull ups and limiting carbohydrates if they are not connected.
Yep.
We are saying that they are very, very much connected and they are the means, the mechanisms, the tools and the daily practices to get there.
So this idea that the end game, the thing that we're trying to strive towards is peace of mind.
The contention is that this is the shared human pursuit, that what we are all actually striving for is what we tend to experience as very fleeting, very small moments.
Most of us live with more persistent levels of pain, uncertainty, angst, anxiety, stress, guilt.
And every now and then we get these little moments of clarity, calm, and peace.
What our shared purpose of this conversation, 10 year now.
Conversation is to bring to light the ways in which we can experience those in greater portions.
Instead of slivers, we get pieces.
Instead of pieces, they become the majority. we will never get to where it is constant and forever.
Like that just is not the case.
Even if you are a monk who has dedicated their lives to creating peace of mind, which is what they do.
This is what they are trying to do.
And they are the ones that have done this the best of all.
They still have moments of self-doubt and stress and anxiety.
It's a natural part of life.
So we have to accept that part of it.
But with the right work, with the right intention, with the right practices and frameworks in place can we bring more to our lives.
And I like what you said.
What we're actually trying to do here is that deathbed experience is when we look back on our lives.
At that moment can we have peace of mind?
Because if we can have that, To me, we have a well-lived life.
Yeah.
If that is the shared human goal, if we were to put everything together and go back a few dominoes, we have these few moments of like feeling awesome.
And usually that comes with like you get a raise.
You feel awesome, right?
It's a beautiful, sunny day and you feel awesome.
Someone says something really nice about you.
You feel awesome.
You get an award.
You feel awesome.
Those are...
Short lived, little hits of.
You know the number of different hormones for different reasons, whether it's oxytocin endorphins dopamine serotonin, they all feel really good and they come in different ways.
But the big thing that they would all have in common is they would give you peace of mind.
So if that's the case.
We just want to set our lives up to where that is.
We have more opportunities for that.
And, unlike a lot of those which, if it's more like the pirate ship ride or the pendulum, if it swings one way, it actually swings really far the opposite way.
We're trying to create a more sustainable level of that so we don't get the high spikes and big troughs.
We're just getting this constant low level of peace of mind.
So that is the goal.
Basically be – as Michael Singer would say, what we're trying to be is a bird on a still lake.
Right, that's just.
That's peace, that's calm, that's nice.
I have options, i can fly away, i could go swim deep down for food.
If you're in this tumultuous ocean in a storm, nobody wants that, and this is where people go like i want to achieve more, i want a more salary, because when you do that and you get more earning power, that gives you peace of mind for a moment, then your expenses rise, your responsibility goes up and it goes away.
Right yeah, You win the championship.
You feel awesome for a moment until it's time to go back to work.
It's very similar to you win the championship and then, shortly after you win the championship, all those same insecurities pop up and you have to go back to the grindstone just to prove yourself again, to get that feeling again for that fleeting moment.
So, instead of chasing all these little things here or there, let's just create the more sustainable model for greater levels or greater chances of peace of mind.
Yeah, I like that.
For the first time.
A thought popped in my head as you were talking there, which is like what we're trying to do is build context, independent peace of mind right.
Peace of mind that is not reliant on any of the things that you listed, right?
A raise, winning the championship, the girl said yes, right?
Whatever it might be.
What we're trying to do is figure out how do we live a life that...
Peace of mind is independent of what might be happening in our lives at that exact time.
That's really hard to do.
But I think that that's ultimately what we're trying to do.
Context independent peace of mind.
Yeah.
I love that.
Thank you for being so much smarter than me and taking the 10-minute ramp and putting it into six, five words.
So let's take one step backwards.
So we talk about peace of mind.
We've talked about the deathbed exercise.
One of the things that has been certainly a through line in our conversations over the last few years is this idea or this phrase of chasing what truly matters.
Where does that fit in or how do we fit that piece of the puzzle into peace of mind?
Yeah, so we're going to get distracted.
We talk about this a lot.
Right, we're going to get distracted if we don't take the time to figure out what truly matters to us.
We're going to chase the things that.
We're going to get distracted by the noise and all the distractions and society parents um, everything else that's been built into us um, the capitalistic society, like our society, says chase one thing.
Other societies say chase another.
It's What we have to do is really figure out what truly matters.
And to do this, we have to figure out our values and values.
It's such like it's the word like trust.
It's like these big like they've lost meaning at this point.
Values mean what really matters to you.
And not just like you have to do a little bit of work to figure out like on a deep, fulfilling level.
Not it matters because, again, it felt good when I won the championship.
So I got to make sure I win the championship again.
Like what really matters to you?
And that's where you come up with things like being honest.
Being honest, it's really hard in the moment, but it feels really good in the long term, right?
So like honesty might be one of those things.
Like integrity, like much harder to do the right thing.
You know takes more effort, takes more energy.
Might not be understood by a lot of people, but in the long run on your deathbed, how are you gonna feel about that?
What are those things that are deeply deeply intrinsically, bring you true fulfillment, true sense of self?
And that's what we have chasing.
What truly matters, not the thing that the next pull on the slot machine, the next drink, the next zero on the paycheck.
But like what actually?
What we talk about is fulfillment.
When you walk through your door every single day, whether it's at work or at home, when you walk through doors, what's the feeling you get?
That's your life.
You know, Jordan Peterson, you are not the five days in Jamaica sipping margaritas.
That's not your life.
You are every single day the feeling you get when you walk into your door after a hard day of work.
The big thing here is like to chase what truly matters.
You can't... It takes work.
And this is where we have to figure this out, either through meditative practice journaling stillness exploration reading,
This is not something that we are pre-programmed for.
We're pre-programmed for the opposite.
We're pre-programmed to just follow the tribe.
The tribe has done this.
The tribe says...
You, going out in the wild and killing the wolf is the most important thing you could do as an adolescent.
So that's where you put all your – no one in today's society does that.
But if you were a Spartan warrior, that is the thing.
So it's like we have to do the work to figure out, not what the tribe says but, intrinsically to me, what matters.
And is it safe to then connect those first two dots that we've laid out here?
Peace of mind and what truly matters.
What truly matters is what will lead to a life where at the end of your life, you will have peace.
You will have calm.
You will feel like you have done the things you were supposed to do.
Exactly right.
So, if you're thinking of like the honesty example well, if you were dishonest to move up the corporate ladder at the end of your life, are you really going to have peace of mind?
At the end of all days, when you're looking back, are you going to be proud?
Are you going to have fulfillment?
That word fulfillment means you have fulfilled your purpose.
You have lived a full life.
You have experienced a well-lived life regardless of the length of it.
The time that you were here, you did it in the most meaningful, best way that you possibly could.
And that's where, knowing your values, knowing your purpose, avoiding the noise, you know, the long-term approach to this, the relationships, all the things that like chasing what matters, living authentically, not in, not in pursuit of what other people, but you.
That that's kind of the crux of this whole thing.
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So let's take one more step backwards.
Then we've got peace of mind.
We've got chasing what truly matters.
And now let's enter into the conversation where a lot of people, I think, find us and where we spend a lot of time, which is health.
Where and why does health live in the line of succession between where we are today and where we're trying to get to in that peace of mind?
Health gives you freedom.
So without health, it's gonna be really challenging to sustain your energy, to have focus, to have the resilience required for anything else.
So what we're trying to do is, create the ability to meaningfully engage.
And the saying that we've said before is, he with health can have a thousand wishes, freedom.
I can have a thousand wishes.
He without health has but just one wish, and obviously that is to be healthy.
If you are in a hospital bed, How much freedom do you have to go and experience life on your terms?
And let's say you define that as, I want to give back to others.
I want to have meaningful relationships.
I want to better the world.
I want to live and have impact.
If you're on your hospital bed, that is not an option.
At least it's a much more challenging option, like in a hugely more challenging way.
If you have health, you can then chase those things with a lot more vigor, with a lot more vitality, with a lot more impact.
It's a phrase that I love, which is that it puts you in the position to be an asset and not a burden.
You're the driver, not the passenger.
You have the potential to make decisions instead of a lot of decisions being made for you.
If you are basically incapacitated on your deathbed, you don't even necessarily have the choice of when or what you eat.
It's what's brought to you.
Obviously, you don't have a decision in terms of how you're going to impact the world.
So let's be the driver.
Let's be the ones that can make the decisions.
One more step backwards to the five factors of health, which we always say are the behaviors or the actions or the habits that we can put into practice every single day to build real health.
Is that the next logical step backwards from again?
Peace of mind chase what truly matters health in pursuit of freedom and fulfillment.
Okay, now here's how we actually do that.
Here's how we train, how we eat, how we think, how we sleep or rest, and how we connect.
Absolutely.
So if you're thinking about kind of going back up, right?
So, if we decided that health is the pathway to freedom, and freedom gives you the opportunity to chase what truly matters, and chasing what truly matters is the thing that's going to lead to ultimate fulfillment peace of mind.
Cool.
Then let's define what health is.
Health is a function of 10 different components.
Five of which are more a function of luck and five are a function of your daily behaviors.
Those ones that are a function of luck are your DNA, your genetics.
If everyone in your family has had cancer, the chance of you having cancer, go up.
That's just, that's unlucky.
The next one is your age.
If you're 18, the chance of you having better health than if you are 88 is is massively bigger.
So just your age uncontrollable, your access to high quality health care.
So if you live in Boston, surrounded by the best hospitals in the world, your chances of being healthy are much, much better than if you live in Rwanda or a third world country and you contract some disease, which leads us to a next one, which is exposure to toxins poisons, viruses.
You grew up in a house with radon and you got or lead poisoning, something like that.
And the last one is kinetic or accidents.
You're, you know, a tree fall on, fell on your head and your brain dead.
You got in a car accident and you're paralyzed from the waist down.
Those are the five that are essentially outside of your control.
Those that are inside of your control are the ones we really want to focus on.
Now you could move and you can get better access to high quality mountaineering care.
You can take care of your environment, like all those things for sure.
But the ones that – this is what gets us down to if we kind of think about the domino effect.
This gets us to the conversation we have all the time.
And it's why we have these conversations is we're looking for that high level of proactive health right.
Resilient health, which is – a function of how you train.
And I use the word train, not move, not exercise.
It's how you train.
It's how you eat, how you sleep.
Those three now are kind of commonplace in the vernacular.
Everyone's kind of like, I understand, which is new.
We fail to realize no one was having the sleep conversation 20 years ago.
It was the exact opposite.
We thought it was a badge of honor to be someone that was busy and didn't sleep a lot.
Now we look at that as like that's insane.
Like you're going to – it's so detrimental to your health.
Similar to that is the health movement.
In terms of training, exercise is really new, as new as, like the 80s.
Health clubs didn't even exist in the 60s.
It wasn't a thing.
Jogging became a popular pastime in the 70s and health clubs were on the heels of that in the 80s.
Now people accept it as like, yeah, of course you got to exercise to be healthy.
So again, how you exercise, how to train, how you eat, obvious one, how you sleep.
The ones that aren't quite as obvious are, are really broken into two categories that really have to do with psychological, emotional and mental stress.
And that is how you think.
So your, as Chris Irwin would say, your mind fitness.
And then the last one being connections.
That is, connections with yourself, understanding your purpose, your passion, your values and lining your mind up.
What truly matters.
What truly matters.
Exactly.
So that's important, obviously, but also connection with other people.
And then lastly, nature like this is just a big one that you know, if we take those last, I would say for your mental health, how you connect with yourself others, nature those are the ones that are not in the conversation just yet.
If you go to the doctors, a good doctor now will talk to you about exercise, sleep and nutrition.
Very few of them are talking about the other ones.
They might talk about stress, but they're going to talk to you in terms of like work and only work.
Are you stressed at work?
But those are the other ones that matter a lot.
And that's, if we're to frame up the totality of health, it's those 10 things.
Well, let's pay attention to the five that we can, are inside of our circle of influence.
And let's do real quick, let's do first principles or first dominoes of each one of those categories.
Because there are multiple things we can do inside of each one of those.
But we've also narrowed in on the most important actions, the most important habits.
I would just lay it out as a prescription.
It's a one sentence per pillar.
And it is train five to six times per week.
Eat real foods.
Sleep. eight hours, think like a warrior and connect with yourself, others, and nature.
And then from there, you get to like, okay, what do we mean by training five or six days a week?
When we say sleep eight hours, what do we mean by sleep?
That sounds so weird, but what do we mean by sleep eight hours?
Well, that means sleep.
It means you need to give yourself probably a sleep opportunity.
It's lights out to lights on of nine hours.
Real food.
What do you mean by real food?
That means that it's probably a single ingredient food that exists in nature, you know and we get kind of down the pipeline of what I think like a warrior.
It's not like I want to go and kill somebody.
It's in our paradigm of not like a victim, not like a pessimist, not like an optimist, hopefully more like a realist.
And we can strive to think more like a warrior.
Somebody actually looks forward to challenges and they connect.
We kind of lean into the other ones of connect with your self, others in nature.
And those are the conversations that we have often is the practicality of it.
Cause it's it's.
I mean, I don't know how many conversations we could have on peace of mind, because ultimately they all come down to well, how do I get it?
And hopefully what we just did was lay out, well, here's how you get it.
It's not a 30 day challenge, right?
It's not something you can put on as a smart goal, but it is the lifelong pursuit of excellence in our definition is it's Take it from the daily towards the thing that we're all trying to get to, which is a life where we feel like we've done what we came here to do.
First figure out what that thing is and then figure out how to actually put things into place so that we can move ourselves from where we are to that place, and we'll be fulfilled when we get there.
So figure out what it is we need to do, put them into place and do them on a daily basis.
That's the framework that we have of awareness, intention and action.
Figure it out.
Let's wrap out on that.
Figure it out.
Right.
That's what we're trying to do here is lay out the framework.
If we're trying to all search for peace of mind, it's kind of crazy.
But this whole thing starts with. the five factor prescription.
So what is that thing we're looking for?
It's not that we're looking for to be better gym-ers.
I don't want to be better at the gym.
That's like, I just want to like, this is not about being good at the gym.
This is the framework.
This is the awareness that being better in the gym, being disciplined with your nutrition, sleeping well, having the daily practice of mental fitness to be able to handle hard things, and doing the work to figure out what truly matters to you.
Building these really strong relationships and getting outside, into sunlight, into nature, is the thing that's going to give you health.
And if you have that health, you now have the freedom to chase what truly matters.
If you chase what truly matters, you will have success fulfillment, or at least a better chance of it, on your deathbed.
This is like the begin, with the end in mind the awareness, the intention strategies, frameworks and tactics to be able to achieve, to be able to put them into action on a daily basis, to get to where you want to be.
All right.
So we just laid out the complete framework peace of mind, chasing what truly matters, health as a foundation of freedom and, of course, the five factors how we train, how we eat, how we sleep, think and connect.
And that last one connection is one that we talk about all the time, but perhaps the one that we give the most lip service to.
I don't think we talk enough about connection with other human beings, aka your crew, the people you're surrounded by day in and day out.
Because here's the thing you can have your goals dialed in, you can have your training and your nutrition dialed in.
You can get your sleep and your mindset work dialed in.
But if you're surrounded by the wrong humans, or if you're isolated, even worse, none of that other stuff is going to matter as much as you think.
So in this conversation, Ben and I talk about why the people around you might be the single most important factor in whether or not you actually achieve that peace of mind we just talked about.
In this second conversation, we talk about the biology of relationships, the science of social isolation and what it actually means to surround yourself with people who want to see you win.
So without further ado, here is our conversation on building your crew.
We're going to talk about something today.
This is months ago and I made a note and I finally got around to chatting with you about it, which is in a Comptrain meeting again months ago, you started talking about some I don't know if you want to call them core values, but we were talking about some things that are sort of essential to the brand of Comptrain.
And you laid out three of them, and in your way, of course, they all share a letter.
So you laid out crew, capacity, and character.
As again, I don't know if you use them as core value, like you can.
You can tell us where this kind of this big picture came from?
But I really wanted to talk to you about the first one of those, which is crew.
In large part, because we talk about connection all the time.
It's one of the five factors of health.
We talk about connection with self quite a bit.
We don't talk too much about connection with nature, but that can maybe be on our list for things to dive into this year.
And we talk about connection to others and we often talk about it in the context of a relationship, or certainly you and I talk about it a lot in terms of being a parent, being a dad.
But I want to broaden this out.
I want to talk about crew a little bit as it relates to this connection with other things.
But if it makes sense, why don't we start with the comp train end of the things.
Crew capacity character where did that come from?
What did that mean?
And then let's move ourselves into a conversation around the importance of crew.
You're right that this was laid out as the values, our core values, if you will, in terms of the business jargony part of it.
It's what you value.
It's what do you think is important?
And I think it's really important to define that as an organization.
The way that we've defined that is, of course, it's an alliteration because I think he keeps it.
It's not that it doesn't.
It just needs to be memorable.
So crew capacity and character.
Character is not how you act in peacetime, but that's your personality.
Character is how you act when you are challenged, when things aren't going your way.
Capacity is your health, your vitality is what can you do?
Are you a high performer?
Are you reliable?
Are you able to help others?
Are you an asset, not a burden?
And then the first one is crew, which is purposely on first.
I think it's probably the highest of those.
So when i laid this out to the team, I laid it out and the example I gave was the parable.
The story, if you will doing meaningful things with other people, I just think is so vital to what we are trying to do, which is live a meaningful life.
And the example I gave was on my bucket list.
It's been on my bucket list and everyone that listens to the show regularly knows that I'm very regimented in terms of the structure and the vision I have for my life and the way I track this and every it's been on my three year call it bucket list three year picture, since I started doing this was to go heli skiing.
Like that's just one of the things I want to do with the next three years of my life.
And it was six years ago.
And honestly, but here's like, if you go like, well, why haven't you done that?
And the reason I haven't done that is because I haven't found the people that I want to share that experience with.
To me, that it could be the most enjoyable thing that I could do.
And I want to do it with people that first can ski.
But I want to do it with people that I really – Right, capacity and character, right?
And character, yeah.
But I want to be able to like – I want to have – I don't – like me going heli-skiing by myself.
I have zero interest in that.
It would feel more like a chore than something that would be exciting.
And it's the same thing like I've had epic, amazing powder days and I have them by myself.
They are not the memorable ones.
They're just not a thing.
To me, it's about doing these cool, awesome things with other people.
Okay.
So how do we then – I like this.
In some ways, it's crew capacity and character.
But it's almost like crew colon capacity and character because it strikes me as –
The crew you want and maybe I just have heli-skiing in my head too much are like you want them to be capable and you want them to be of high character.
Am I reading into that too much?
Yeah, of course we want that.
That's like what we're actually trying to do when we do this if we were to back up a little bit is try to like what does the ideal team player look like right?
And that's what you want to do is surround yourself with those type of people, people that have – high character, people that are incredibly capable and people that want to be a part of a team and part of something bigger.
The saying that we've used a lot internally, and I didn't create this, but I kind of morphed it off of other stuff.
I think Warren Buffett actually had the original thing I saw of this, which is surround yourself with people that want to see you win.
No drama, no gossip, no toxicity. people that challenge you, but it's about good vibes and growth.
Surround yourselves with people that want to see you win.
That not just cheerlead, they challenge you, call you on your crap, but also not in a negative, toxic way, in just the most positive good vibes and growth way.
If you surround yourself with people like that.
Here's Going back as well.
What we want to do is we talk about this all the time is the five factors of health.
We want to create an environment which makes it easy to.
Train five or six days a week.
Eat real food.
Sleep eight hours.
Think like a warrior and connect with yourself, others, and nature.
The environment is going to be mostly impacted by the other human beings in that environment.
You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
That's the cliche thing, but the science is backing it up.
There's so much robust science to back that up.
There was Dr. McLeod of Harvard.
I have this written down.
Dr McLeod of Harvard states through a big study, the people you habitually associate with will determine as much as 95 of the success or failure in your life.
Hmm.
And the reason for that is we have mirror neurons in our brain which subconsciously mimic the behaviors and attitudes of others.
So if you surround yourself with driven motivated, positive people that look for opportunities, that don't complain, that want to go and better themselves and want to lift up the other people around them, you're more likely to do just that.
If you surround yourselves with victims or violence, or toxic relationships or abuse neglect addiction, you're more likely to be.
The single biggest thing we can do is control our environment.
And the single biggest thing that influences our environment is not the temperature or the sun, or urban or living in the farmlands.
It is it is the people you surround yourself with.
It's interesting.
It's slightly tangential, but what I think about is what we've talked about a lot before, which is the concept of owning your attention.
I mean, that really is what it comes down to is whoever or whatever is getting your attention, is creating the reality in which you live.
And so obviously, when we talk about this or when we think about this, it's often couched in whatever screen you happen to be looking at.
But In a very 3D kind of way.
If I spend a lot of time with you Ben, you're getting my attention and whatever you're giving back to me, I will then reflect back right back to the idea of the motor neurons.
And so it's in real life and it's also in not real life in digital space.
And so it's not.
So this idea of crew, while I think we're going to mostly talk about the people that we surround ourselves with, I think it extends beyond just the individuals in the room with us, but also becomes who do we listen to?
Who do we watch?
Who are we paying our attention to?
Because they are in fact creating our conception of the world and our conception of ourselves.
So, Yes.
That is a little bit different, though, than what we're talking about when we say crew.
Agreed.
I think the principles are the same is what I mean.
Yeah, the next kind of line item to this is you can get wrapped into that – because I would call – we did a whole show on this right.
Which is if you get into – because yes, it is the movies you watch, the books you read, the things you follow.
But the big one there is the two old guys complaining about the social media.
Oh, tick-a-tock.
So if you get kind of so deep into that and –
Even if you're surrounding yourself with the good ones, social isolation.
This is actually like crew in real life.
Totally.
So I forget if it was, what's his name that wrote the Harvard Study of Adult Development?
Robert Waldinger.
Thank you.
So it's close relationships.
And maybe it was also the build a life you want.
The way that they said that is one of the Fs that they focused on was friendships.
Yep.
It wasn't just a matter of like, are you sending the text messages?
Even if it's like a really deep relationship but you only see the person once a year.
It is the frequency matters.
So it's truly like the words there matter, like surround yourself.
Surround yourself with the people that want to see you win.
Surround yourself with people that lift you up.
Because BYU, Brigham Young University and University of North Carolina did a study on isolation.
And this is the crew thing.
You need the people around you, actually around you.
And this is bonkers.
This is a meta analysis, meaning it's a study of studies.
So they studied 148 studies with totaling 308 over 308,000 people.
The studies over a seven year period is published in the Science Daily in 2010.
What they found was social isolation is worse for you than smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
So if we're thinking about how this pieces into health, Like, it crew matters.
It's huge.
And this is what the whole Harvard study for adult development was about.
Their whole thing was, they're the ones that brought this to light.
They're actually the reason.
We found that in about 2010.
It was when we came across that study.
That's where we put Connect into this framework.
Because it was so important.
It was as much as smoking.
To kind of put some other numbers to that...
Not smoking improves health outcomes by 40%.
What they found is that those with strong social connections increase their health outcomes by 50%.
That's huge.
We're talking 15 cigarettes a day.
Having strong social connections is better for you than quitting that.
This is something that can't be ignored in terms of the health outcomes, in terms of chasing what truly matters.
This has to be up there with the other ones.
And yet it's interesting, we did an episode on the surgeon general put out a report on parental stress.
Before that he had put one out on, that he called our epidemic of loneliness and isolation.
And I only bring that up to say like how are these things true at the same time where we know how important crew is to our health, our happiness, our fulfillment, et cetera?
Right,
Whatever that 95% stat that you gave us of like 95% of your success or failure.
And at the same time here.
Yet we are in a place where the Surgeon General of the United States says we're in an epidemic of loneliness.
The contrast is so strong.
But it's the same thing with everything else.
Very few people aren't aware that processed foods are bad for you.
Yep.
Yet we are in an epidemic of obesity and chronic disease because people eat too much crap.
Yep.
Dot, dot, dot.
It's not just eating the crap though.
It's what everyone points to when they go chronic disease.
It's just like this, this is what also leads to disease.
So let's just talk about this from the biological perspective.
And this is where you are not just biology.
It's all intertwined.
This is the psychological, biological model.
Like the brain, the emotion, it's all one thing.
It's not like you have your body and then your mind.
It's like, obviously, we started, it was like, oh yeah, it's all connected.
And here's there's a great book by Bruce Lipton called The Biology of Belief.
It's a pretty dense science, but the premise of it is incredible.
And the premise is.
Every cell on your body, every cell that, the trillions of cells in your body, are trying to understand the environment in which you're living in.
Because based on the environments, they will act in certain ways.
This is a really efficient system.
If you are in an environment of threat, meaning starvation attack, whatever it might be, they are going to act in a certain way to keep you alive.
If you are not under a threat, they're going to act in another way.
The threat one puts the central nervous system into the sympathetic state which diverts blood away from the gut, shuts down the immune system and the 13 different systems in the body, from the reproductive to the immune, to the digestive, to the muscular and cardiovascular, all respond.
They all respond in an effort to help keep you alive.
One of those things, and this all matters, one of those things is the immune system deregulates.
If the cells on your body perceive a threat, They will tell through – basically, every cell has a little membrane around it, called a receptor.
Inside is the effector.
The receptor takes in info.
It goes, hey, we're under threat.
Effector, go do this thing.
Switch to the sympathetic state.
Fight or flight.
Immune system suppress.
Very efficient.
Meaning like all hands on, don't fight the pathogens.
Don't fight the virus.
We got bigger things.
The saber-tooth tiger is going to get us.
So let's get the immediate threat out of the way.
That's really efficient for real perceived threats.
What we all understand, that except that we don't understand, is that your body should respond to that in the same way.
If like you almost get in a car accident, same thing.
But then we get into road rage and the actual real threat, that shock in this you feel like everyone feels that and knows that sense is like the shock of it.
That's the shock of epinephrine cursing through your body.
So you respond like crazy.
That's built in.
That's awesome.
That serves us so well.
You don't have to think about it.
You just swerve the car.
What then doesn't serve us is the after effect of that, which then you stay in fight or flight and you have road rage.
And then you chase the guy down or you live with this stress, that freaking guy.
And you're like that is what creates the longer prolonged is not helping.
Not even that big of a deal if it's gone after a minute or two or something.
But what if every time you get in the car, your cortisol goes up?
Every time you get the car, your immune system goes down.
Every time you get the car, fight or flight.
Okay, we're not even in the car that much.
But what if you have bad relationships?
If you have a bad relationship, that is the equivalent Of a twig going snap in the woods and you, as the caveman goes, fight or flight.
Because I might get kicked out of the tribe.
Bad relationship, I might get kicked out of the tribe.
If I'm kicked out of the tribe, I die of exposure.
This means that if you don't have strong relationships, your body is in a prolonged, chronic state of stress, not just the stress you get from the project being due.
This is the emotional stress related to bad relationships.
Your body can't tell the difference, remember.
It's in a dark cave.
It's trying to take in the information that comes in through the five senses, in this case mostly through your eyes and ears.
You see or hear something, And then your brain then interprets that as whoa, we don't like this.
It then goes down to the cells in the body, which don't have brains.
They just go fight, fight, fight, fight.
It's the same thing.
And then what happens is you depress your immune system.
And then when the immune system is depressed, when an actual thing happens like a pathogen or virus comes in or the cancer cells that we all have in our body all the time anyway, that we're constantly fighting with this really effective immune system.
When that gets suppressed, they don't get to do their job.
And now we have the big issues.
This is not the fufui thing of like just like make sure you hug somebody and you'll feel better and like, even like.
Oh, and then you have oxytocin and that's a feel-good hormone on a cellular level.
Your body doesn't understand if this is a real threat or not, and it's going to lead to a chronic disease.
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I brought up the social isolation.
We've talked about bad relationships.
Are those equally dangerous to us? in your mind in other words are bad relationships worse than having no relationships at all or are they just different problems that we all collectively need to solve for it's it's like what's worse ice cream or uh a candy bar like it's like i don't it's clearly a candy bar two flavors i agree with that i the the honest answer is i don't know that i don't know which is worse yep i almost want to say isolation is worse I think there's nothing worse than not having any contact with other humans.
You think about in terms of prisoners.
The worst thing you can do to a human being is put them in solitary confinement.
Worse than physical torture.
When, given the choice between the two Prisoners, choose the physical torture over the solitary confinement.
Now, I've never put in either of those, so I can't speak firsthand.
I don't have the research to back it up, but my gut level says that isolation is the hardest things for humans to endure.
So how do we start rooting the problem so that we can fix it in your mind?
And again, maybe we stick with the toxic or the bad relationships, if that feels like it's the more prescient one.
Well, I think the problem is the antidote, which is surround yourself with.
So if you don't have people in your life that you feel like in your life in a meaningful way, this isn't like.
I had that coach one time when I was in high school.
This isn't like I had that one mentor.
This isn't like I have that one friend that I see once a year.
This is are you surrounded by?
Are you surrounded with people that want to see you win?
That don't bring negativity, drama or gossip.
That challenge you, that lift you up, that challenge you to become a better version of yourself?
If you don't have those, we need to start seeking them out.
This is the awareness, intention, and action.
Now we can bring awareness to that.
Maybe I don't have that.
And by the way, outside of my family, My family is certainly that.
I have that in a big way with my family.
I am lucky enough that my profession has that.
I'm surrounded with people just like that.
My gym, the place I work out, there's 300 other people like this.
This is why...
This is why the CrossFit movement has been so meaningful.
Before this, the gym environment did not have that.
The gym environment was put your headphones on, go to your set of bench press, do your pec flies.
And then maybe on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the elliptical reading people magazine.
It has holistically changed that.
It's why we seek out church.
It's why we seek out community.
It's why we seek out people of similar values.
So what I this is, you know, for myself.
Personally, I feel like I have this in a big way in terms of my family life and in terms of my professional life and both – and in terms of my fitness pursuits, but I feel like I could do a better job on this with friends.
And I have a couple of really good close friends, but I had this conversation with my best friend a month ago.
And I was like, we're not seeing each other enough.
Like when we see each other, this is so uplifting.
This is so powerful.
We both know how much we love each other.
We end text messages with, I love you.
You know, We need to do this more frequently to actually get the benefit that we want to this.
It was like, is that the case?
Like, does it matter like this?
I was like, I really think it does.
Like, if we're going to surround ourselves, us seeing each other, we would always schedule once every other month we would get together.
This should be the norm, not the exception.
Yep.
Yeah.
That word that you just hit on, I think, is the until you hit on it it, it.
I think.
It floated past me, but the idea of surround, I think, is really important.
And it's it's.
You know we use the word with intention, but again, you can hear it and not think about it.
But surrounding yourself with people who want to see you in is not.
I see you once a quarter, right.
I see you every once in a while.
I see you when our our calendars collide and it just so happens that we're in the same place at the same time.
Surround demands intention.
It demands intention. effort.
And the thing about relationships, the thing about especially non family relationships, is that they're so wildly inefficient that you have to be, you have to be okay with that.
It is not efficient to go.
You know I've got a good friend in New Hampshire.
It is not efficient for me to get in the car for three hours and go see him.
Sorry, but that is what it demands.
And if we're going to surround ourselves with people who want to make it, who want to see us, when sometimes we have to do the really inefficient thing.
Yeah.
And we do what we can with what we have as well, right?
Very few things that are meaningful in life act as light switches.
They're not binary.
It's not on, it's off.
So your friend in New Hampshire, if you're not going to drive the three hours, is it more of a daily text where there's this constant conversation, instead of the rare one which is every three weeks you get something?
It's this constant conversation.
And this is what I've...
You know, in terms of where this is the early part of the year, we're in January.
I always set up my one year goals.
This is my one year goal for myself.
This year is to create you know, it's written out more meaningful, deep friendships.
This is the thing that I'm going to be incredibly proactive about this year.
And I don't have all of the.
I don't have all of the ways to do that, but I'm taking small, meaningful steps now.
The example is like that best friend.
We have something scheduled in two weeks instead of two months.
I just saw him two weeks ago.
So it's like it's going to be more frequent.
I'm doing a daily text to somebody to try to like keep the ball rolling.
And I envision this being like a, you know, I get the five, six, seven people that I try to pull in.
And then from there it turns into a conversation instead of a conversation.
I talk every five, six days.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I am similar to you in terms of a focus for the new year.
So cool to hear.
We're going to keep talking about this.
Anything as we wrap up anything else on this conversation or this topic of crew that we want to hit on before we bounce.
I would go to the high level part of the whole prescription, which is create an environment in which makes it easy to
Yeah.
Right.
And that's it.
That both is easy to create the crew, but also recognize that as you do, that the other things get easier.
There's a similar study, which it is you are 45 more likely to be overweight if your friends are overweight than if your family is overweight.
Yep.
I went back and looked at the – I think in previous episodes I reported that as 161%.
I went back and looked at it.
And there are some people that are kind of like questioning the methods of which that study was conducted.
So the more robust one now is it's a difference – it's actually 42.5%.
The number doesn't matter.
It's not the letter, it's the spirit.
It's not necessarily your genes that are determining if you're overweight.
It's your friends.
Because if your friends are going to Buffalo Wild Wings and ordering pitchers of beer and wings slathered in barbecue sauce four nights a week, the chances of you doing that are really high.
So the idea is create the environment which makes it easy too.
The other part of that is okay.
How am I going to get like?
You got to put yourself out, create it, get it like.
This is why the CrossFit gym space is so powerful, right?
Because people connect so well in that environment.
All right.
Thank you so much for sticking with us through that.
And I hope you agree with me that those two conversations felt like a good one-two punch.
Because here's what it comes down to.
Peace of mind isn't just about having the right framework or knowing the right strategies.
It's about the map. and the people you are traveling with.
You need to know where you're going.
That's the framework, the five factors, the awareness and attention that leads to action.
But you also need to surround yourself with people who want to see you win, people who challenge you, lift you up and make the hard work easier just by being in your corner.
As we head into the new year, I hope you'll think about both of these things.
Where are you going?
And who are you going with?
If you want to go deeper on any of this, we've got resources at chasingexcellence.email.
That's where also, you can sign up to join us in the Chase Club, get our newsletter, connect with a community of people who are all chasing the same thing.
Thank you for being part of our crew, and we'll see you next week.
Thank you so very much for tuning into the show this week.
Two quick things before we go.
The first.
If you want even more from this episode, I do recommend you check out the full listener guide, where we break down all the big ideas.
We ask reflection questions.
We give you steps to put these ideas into action.
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