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I'm Mike Boris and this is Straight Talk.
On earth, I'm going to tell a bunch of hard-hitting commandos
You know, I'm a bit of a pacifist,
and I was thinking, man, they're going to be,
you know, like a bunch of knuckle-dragging,
you know, silverbacks on crack.
I actually know a couple.
They're not like that.
Dr. Jim McKing, welcome to Straight Talk.
Being emotionally intelligent
actually is a protective factor against stress.
How do you optimize your biochemistry?
Causal just doesn't happen to affect people in the battle.
We're in battle every day.
Causal really changes the lens with which you see the world.
You become reactive.
You become hypervigilant, have a bias for negativity.
Stress is the worst time to make cognitive decisions.
You really need to understand
that what you bring into a meeting will be contagious.
What is money to you then?
A means to an end.
It gets me what I think I need to get.
And what do you need to get?
I need to seek simplicity and peace of mind.
But I want to get back to you.
That's my human marriage.
You can't help yourself.
Dr. Jim McKing, welcome to Straight Talk.
Thank you for having me.
How's your voice?
Well, I was just saying I sound like I've been on a heavy diet
of whiskey and cigars.
I just went to the Austin Rodeo last night
and there was an Australian bull rider there.
It's in Texas and you can imagine it was an incredible
cultural experience with these, you know,
big-ass hats and boots and, you know, buckles and, yeah,
it was really, and, you know, American flags
and everybody stood up and sung, you know, the national anthem
and they did a collective prayer and it was really interesting.
A collective prayer.
You're a behavioural scientist.
Yeah, turbo nerd, really.
And why did you choose to do your PhD and I guess
or your thesis and whatever things you try to get published
in human behaviour?
I've always been fascinated by people and I think that, you know,
I wanted to do medicine when I was, you know, younger
and I just found myself reading psychology books for fun
and so I thought, you know what, I might as well do what I'm passionate
about and I'm reading anyway and thank God because a lot
of my friends who are in the medical fraternity,
it's a really stressful job.
It's a lot of responsibility in mine.
I don't have as much responsibility in my job but I just love,
you know, understanding the nexus between the brain and the body
and then how that, you know, translates into behaviour,
how you think about yourself, how you think about others
in your vicinity, your relationships, more broadly how you show up at work
and then more broadly how you show up in your community.
I'm totally fascinated.
So I see this as like concentric circles.
So there's the physiology, then there's the, you know,
you with your, you know, immediate people.
And so I spend a lot of time researching it now
and my PhD, you know, was around stress initially.
I chose that subject because I was pretty stressed myself.
I had three kids.
I'd gone through a divorce and I was like, oh my God,
there must be a better way.
This is really tough.
And so I decided to study it.
When you say stress, you're talking about the effects
on our behaviour.
As a result of being stressed, are you talking about the effects
on our physical self?
So I started off actually in honours doing,
so just to go back, I did medical microbiology, immunology,
then studied psychology and then went to the business school
in UQ and did business management.
And then during my honours I was looking at stress
and I knew that people were really not that honest,
whether deliberately or unknowingly,
about their stress state.
Either they would under-report or catastrophize
or somewhere in between.
And so I was really interested in getting an objective measure
So then I looked at cortisol, which is the stress hormone,
and then looking at immune function, IgA.
And so in my studies within my honours,
I looked at cyberbullying or cyberincivility and teamwork
and then, you know, orchestrated these experiments
where I got the results.
So I got people to get stressed by getting ostracized or rejected
and then I tested their cortisol
and then I also tested their emotional intelligence.
And then I went on to do my PhD.
So my PhD was basically a preemptive approach to stress
using biomarkers and then using emotional intelligence principles
as a moderator of stress.
What was your novel finding?
Being emotionally intelligent actually is a protective factor
So therefore, okay, then my obvious question to you is
what does emotional intelligence mean?
You know, there's a big fight amongst academics, of course.
You know, everyone holds on to their model like a religion.
And so, you know, academics like to fight and say that my model's right
and that one's not.
So the one that I did in my PhD is out of Yale and it's called
the, we test it using the Mesquite.
The Myosalivet Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test
and it is made up of four sub-factors.
And so basically the first sub-factor is emotional perception.
So that is looking at understanding and perceiving
when emotions start to arise in yourself,
sort of like when you start to feel your, you know, jaw clench
or you get tight in your chest or, you know,
those first instincts.
So for instance, indicators of stress or looking at the ability
to see emotions in other people's faces, emotional perception,
micro-expressions, body language, vocal intonation, even atmospheric.
So knowing like the emotions of a room or a group of people,
So that's the first factor.
Then there is emotional understanding.
So why am I feeling these emotions?
Why is that person feeling?
Why is that emotion?
And so emotions can transmute, blend.
They can, you know, you can have two seemingly opposite emotions
co-exist in the same person and then, you know, if they exist,
the next emotion is probably going to be this.
So it's a little bit of like you can future tell if you understand.
So for instance, melancholy.
So you're looking at a picture of your much-loved, gorgeous grandmother.
You were at the beach that day.
It was a happy time, but she's dead.
So then you're feeling, you know, happy and sad at the same time,
which turns into melancholy.
And so once you get a good understanding of the different blends
and how emotions work, it's very advantageous for many things.
Do you mean a conscious understanding?
And then so the third component is emotional facilitation or use.
So, okay, you saw it.
How are you going to use that emotion for the betterment of your goals,
your team's goals, life goals?
And so that would mean like, okay,
I am going to orchestrate the meeting in a certain way.
I'm going to, I don't know, say,
use intonations in my voice a different way deliberately.
I'm going to use certain words that I know will create an emotional,
will evoke emotions in another person.
As you know, data doesn't move people, emotions does.
So just knowing how to use emotional data.
Emotions are just data.
They're signs from all of your physiology and it's your interpretation of them
mixed in with memory, your construct of the world,
social conditioning, cultural conditioning.
And that's how you know when or what to use what when.
And then comes in the fourth component, which is emotional management.
So this is managing emotions in yourself so you can feel the heat rising.
You can feel yourself getting agitated.
Now's not the time because your boss doesn't want to hear it or, you know,
there's something bigger at play.
Your child's sick or even, you know, you're in a team.
So it's about managing emotions in others.
So say you have to get through some very arduous, you know,
like a bid proposal and there's a lot of, you know, technical considerations.
How do you, you know,
regulate, motivate your team in an emotional way to get that thing done?
So it's about self and other and also more broadly like a system.
Do you determine using this particular model from that universe,
I think it was Yale, to underpin your definition or your recognition
of what emotional intelligence is, okay?
How did you then do the rest of your thesis?
In other words, what was the point of arriving in that position?
Yeah, really good question because, you know,
there's a big debate about what's more important, emotional intelligence or IQ.
I think they're both very important for success.
But so I was at the University of Queensland, you know,
and studying, you know, emotional intelligence and using, you know,
cortisol testing and the Australian Army came around
and they were looking for research to fund.
And, you know, I'm a bit of a pacifist,
sort of a little anti-war.
And so people were saying, you should go and try out for this funding.
And I'm like, no, I don't really want to work with part of the PhD.
And so I was like, oh, I don't know if I want to do that.
And they're like, you know, cortisol testing is pretty expensive.
And I was like, okay.
And so there was like 250 students going for this money.
And I thought, okay, I'll use my emotional intelligence to, I don't know,
set myself apart.
So it's really funny that I found out who was interviewing from Defence
and he had a PhD in war history or something.
So then I read all of his white papers, like not my field.
And so when I, you know, he'd seen all these students.
And so then I walk in with my supervisor and sit down and he's like, okay,
what's your thesis?
What are you studying?
I said, before we start, I was just wondering,
could you like explain this thing about this thing that you are like?
And he's like, oh.
And then he started, you know, talked about himself for 45 minutes.
And he's like, oh, what's your research?
And I said it was a preempt approach to stress using, you know,
biomarkers and using emotional intelligence training.
He goes, I love it.
I've suffered myself from mental health disruption.
And then we walked out and my supervisor was like, yes, that was so good.
And then I went away.
I didn't hear anything for ages.
And I was like, oh, I bombed that one for sure.
Or I should have talked more about my rather than that research.
And then I got this email saying that I'd won.
And I was like, oh, my God, now I actually have to go and work with defence.
And so through, you know, a series of different, you know,
serendipitous events, I ended up at the Australian Special Forces
in Holsworthy down in Sydney.
And so I don't know if you know about Australian Special Forces.
There's like Special Operations Command.
There's the SAS over in Perth.
And there's commandos in Sydney.
And they're like do a whole range of things.
But they're more like the six-man assault teams that do counterterrorism,
very different, culturally quite different from when I was there.
And so I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
I didn't have no idea what these guys did.
And I was thinking, man, they're going to be, you know,
like a bunch of, you know, knuckle-dragging, you know,
silverbacks on crack.
They're like, you know, you can just imagine the prototypical.
Well, I actually know a couple.
They're not like that.
So then I get there and I'm like, oh, okay, this is different.
You know, and we IQ tested them for my research.
You know, IQs up of 140, really smart guys.
And they actually were the best students I've ever had.
And I've lectured for years at unis.
And so basically what I did, I did two years of research.
So we were looking at a preemptive approach to stress.
So getting all of these tools into their vernacular
into their muscle memory, into their ecosystem.
So then when things did go wrong,
they already had these things available to them.
And so what I did was I had a treatment and a control group.
And so firstly I thought I really need to understand this culture.
So it was sort of like ethnographic research.
I sort of immersed myself in this environment,
really unusual environment for a female.
There's hardly really no females there.
And so then I spent a lot of time researching and talking.
I was talking to the guys who'd been to war,
I'd seen a lot of combat and I'm like,
what do you do when you're stressed and what is that?
And then if that happens, like, what are you actually doing?
And it was for a lot of them,
it was the first time that I'd actually been asked these questions
and asked to introspect about, you know, what was their methodology?
I'm like, what did you, what went wrong and what did you wish you knew?
And, and so basically I, as a human behaviorist,
I kind of, you know, got this taxonomy of what they did and who they were.
And they sort of, like,
you know, I had to go back to them.
And so the really fascinating information came out of them.
So I, I extracted it, I distilled it down, I put science behind it and sort of, you know,
put the rationale.
This is why you did this, this is why it worked, this is why it didn't work.
And then, so when the candidates were coming through special forces selection, we had this
really great model where there would be green hat, white coat.
So we'd oscillate between stories of guys in combat, you know, they'd tell worries,
this is what I did.
This is what I saw.
This is what I wish I knew.
Now listen to her.
Because otherwise, why would they listen to me?
And so it was a really effective way of, of getting the stories and the science across.
And so basically, you know, I was teaching emotional regulation, emotional intelligence.
I was using a biopsychosocial model.
So looking at the holistic person and, you know, you can imagine, I'm thinking, how,
how on earth am I going to tell a bunch of hard hitting, you know, commandos about emotions?
You know, I was thinking, they're probably not going to want to listen to this.
So then I knew, I realized I needed a hook.
And because I'd spent a lot of time researching psychoneuroimmunology and endocrinology, I
said, okay, guys, you all want testosterone, yeah?
Like you, testosterone is important for you, makes you faster, more aggressive, more dominant,
You know, more muscular, more muscular, you know, heavier bones.
And they're like, yep, yep, yep.
I said, so did you know that cortisol blocks testosterone?
And they were like, Oh, and I'd give the science behind what the evolutionary perspective,
all my stuff was through an evolutionary lens.
And I'm like, yeah.
In other words, why?
Genetically, why were we, why was it best for us to block it?
So from like, so I, um, I call it the F switch.
So from Hunter-Geller perspective.
So you know, like.
We've been homo sapiens for like 250,000 years, which literally is a blink in an evolutionary
Like you get a 12 hour clock, like humanity, like modern societies, like a four second
So the better part of 250,000 years, humanity's lived in savannas of East Africa and clans
where all of our physiology, our neuroarchitecture was very, very adaptive for the types of stresses
that we were faced with back then, you know, threats of predation, cold, violence.
You know, those basic things.
And so, um, being, having high testosterone was really important in terms of, you know,
being able to fight forage, um, but also procreate.
Now, if, um, your brain detects high levels of cortisol, it thinks there's some pretty
bad stuff going on.
I need to enroll my fight or flight system, which is basically cortisol is a mechanism
to release, you know, resources that you need.
Resources that you need to fight or flight, glycogen out of your liver, into your bloodstream
and all these biochemical cascades that just make you be able to run or fight.
But also it shuts down your, um, ability or even want to procreate because if there's
violence, something, you know, something stressful going on, you don't want to be shagging like
So, um, so, so what happens is cholesterol comes in, it's quite complicated biochemistry,
but it'll either go to test.
Testosterone, the sex hormones, or it'll go to the stress hormones to cortisol.
And like, so it's a, it's a switch.
And so I'd, I'd say to the guys, okay, so if you don't control your cortisol, everything's
They'd be like, what, and I'm like, what's this emotional intelligence stuff you speak
Like, how do I stop this cortisol?
And so then they became very interested in managing emotions because, and all the things
that I spoke about that would help you drop your cortisol.
So my whole, I suppose, narrative or thread that, that went through every single module
I taught was how do you optimize your biochemistry, cortisol.
Basically hacking your biochemistry.
Testosterone, oxytocin.
So oxytocin is an interesting one.
So we teach the collective challenge state.
So it's this really intoxicating mix of testosterone in a whole.
And testosterone in a heightened stress, like stress state where you've got brotherly love
and what this does, it makes men fight to the death for each other.
That's when, that you, are you saying though, that's when the hormone oxytocin is present?
So you, and so you, do you, is there some way to manipulate the production of oxytocin
in your brain to put you in that state?
So of, of course having sex, kissing, hugging, lactating, giving birth.
Um, laughing, eye contact, petting animals.
Um, the funniest one, and this became quite a joke, um, in the training is tweaking your
So before, before the guys have got to do something stressful, that'll be like, you
know, squeezing each other nipples and slapping each other on the bum as a joke.
So it became quite funny.
Um, and so oxytocin is this incredible hormone, like it is, um, anti, um, anxiety, antidepressant.
It, um, increases your blood sugar.
It, um, increases wound healing.
It makes you more generous.
It makes you more trusting, more trustworthy.
Um, it, it, it, you know, increases cellular growth.
It does make you jealous though.
So it has this in out, it has this pronounced in out schema.
So I will die for you, brother.
Like I love you to death, I'll do anything for you, but those bastards over there, they
So that's what it does.
It gives you this rule.
Does MDMA have the same effect as oxytocin?
Um, no, I think that what MDMA does, it hits the serotonin pathway.
And so it's, um, I do believe it's a, like a serotonin reuptake inhibitor.
So you've got more serotonin hanging in the, um, between the synapses.
So it's not oxytocin.
It's not, it's not.
No, but interesting to do that research because I know that when you are on it, like you,
you love everybody.
And it's, and there's some really, like, I think they've just made, like made it available
I really, really am a strong proponent of MDMA on a, you know, in clinical trials under
certain circumstances for, you know, for relationships, for PTSD, for, um, OCD, like I really do believe
it's a very, um, worthwhile drug of research.
No, cortisol just doesn't happen to affect people in the, in battle, we're in battle
You need it, right?
You actually need cortisol.
And it doesn't affect a stack of things.
If it's sort of rushing around your system at 10 o'clock at night, you're not going to
be able to get to sleep.
Immune function, digestion, gut biome, sleep.
So what do you say about that to somebody?
So I mean, you showed me these glasses here because you just got off a plane and they're
about sort of trying to set your, um.
Circadian rhythm.
Circadian rhythm.
It's not just your circadian rhythm that'll stop you from sleeping or put you to sleep
or help you go to sleep.
I've got lists of things of what that will stop me from sleeping.
Things you don't even know.
So like, let's say days finished at work, had a rough day.
All of a sudden, um, I get an email, a bank in the United States has gone broke.
And, uh, it's just the start of the GFC, which I might've experienced.
And you know, you're starting to imagine all the worst things and, uh, you get stressed
Humans are really amazing cause we can imagine.
We don't know if what other animals can do that, but your brain, um, cannot tell the
difference between imagining and imagining.
And actually seeing.
So there's, I've got this great picture.
And so they put someone in a scanner, an MRI, and they showed them a picture of a white
bear and their occipital lobe, their visual cortex lit up.
Then they said to that person, imagine a white bear and similar region, the occipital cortex,
visual cortex lit up.
And so when you're imagining all of those catastrophic events that could happen, um,
your brain will activate your fight or flight.
So the brain is in a very primitive system, even though you're sitting at a desk, there's
no bear like trying to tear your throat off.
Um, but your brain is like, that's a very primitive system and it has a better be safe
than sorry policy.
So it thinks, Hmm, I'm thinking these things.
I don't know if it's real or imagined.
Um, I better just produce some adrenaline and cortisol just in case.
And that's got a 30 minute half-life.
So if you're trying to go to bed and you're like, Oh, go to sleep.
And then 30 minutes later you're still like, Oh, I gotta sleep.
It's, you know, it's a vicious.
So 30 minute half life means that absolutely nothing.
But at 30 minutes, half of that's still, half of that is still in your system and half's
gone out of your system.
So you're saying that your brain will produce, um, a amount of cortisol and adrenaline as
if it was happening in front of you.
As if someone was coming to steal your money, like, like literally like with a knife or
So what, what's okay.
So, you know, cause I'm immediately thinking you should, I should get all my money out
of this particular place and move it out of this bank to another bank or have I got my
money in the Silicon Valley bank, I've got to move it out of there to some other place.
What's going to happen?
Am I only going to get 50%?
You start to panic.
Stress is the worst time to make cognitive decisions.
If I've got cortisol running in my system, I'd imagine my genetic evolution, my system
is such that my judgment becomes impaired with all this stuff racing around.
Really all I'm able to do is take off that way or wrestle the bear to the ground.
It's zeros and ones.
So I just, are you asking me for financial advice?
But I'm asking you, what do I do in this situation?
I'm asking you, what do I do in this situation?
So because my brain doesn't allow me to make good, good judgments.
Cortisol really changes the lens with which you see the world.
You become reactive, you become hypervigilant, you become, um, have a bias for negativity.
You become quite myopic in your thoughts, you become less generous, you, your, um, your
delayed discounting.
So your short term, like you, you know, that delay discounting, do you want a hundred bucks
Do you want a hundred and fifty dollars tomorrow?
That totally changed to become like, I want, I want to fix things now.
And so, yeah, it is, it is really dangerous to make big, big decisions in that moment
when you know that you're physiologically activated.
So if your heart rate is over a hundred beats per minute, you you're, you've gone into like
an amygdala hijack.
Like you are not, your, your access to your prefrontal cortex is diminished.
Which is, which is where all your, your, your decision making is done.
Um, and so there's no one answer for everyone, like, so everyone experiences stress in a
We can't, um, it's dependent on your genetics, your interuterine environment, when you, how
much stress your mum was under, your own blood glucose levels at that moment, how much sleep
you've had, what you've eaten, and also, um, the, the culmination of what other events
have happened that day.
So I've actually got a decision making, um, which I've given, I'm giving to the guys,
um, who I'm working with in the financial, um, industry.
Before you make a big decision, these are the psychophysiological factors you should
So you see, you know, you're monitoring stuff.
Have you, have you been drinking?
Have you, what's your heart rate?
Have you had a good sleep?
Have you had an argument with your partner?
Um, have you had, have you exercised?
Uh, what have you eaten?
Um, what are, what, what are the high stakes?
Like, who's going to hate you if this happens?
So this, this makes sense.
What's the gravity of the decision?
What's the gravity of the event or should I say?
And so depending on like your history, because you know, your history really plays into it.
And so you've gone through the GFC, so you would have some, some pretty big failure scars
and it'd be terrifying for you, you know, more so than someone who hadn't, or maybe
if you've come through it really well, you've got a little bit more resilience.
Maybe you've, you've kind of like, I've seen this before.
I know I'll be fine.
So that's why there's a difference.
So, so just practically, if you're like freaking out, you literally should distance yourself.
Disengage from whatever you are doing and you should look at something that you know
that you're good at.
So read something that you've, like I said, if you've written an article and you've got
heaps of likes, just go and look at that again.
Look at some kind of success factor in your life.
And so what that does, it just sort of reminds you that you're not a terrible human being
and you know, you're going to die.
Connect even if you've got this, I hate people feeling at the moment, try and get some oxytocin
It's the best cortisol antidote.
You know, do whatever you can to downregulate that cortisol.
Definitely do if you can run.
But no more than 60 minutes.
If you run more than 60 minutes, your cortisol will go up and your testosterone will stop.
So you've got to like, not all, not all stress is equal.
So if it's a mental stress, a physical stress, it's a social stress, it's a memory stress.
What the, the, the protocol for that stress is different.
If it's a mental stress, maybe you should go and do a float.
As in a float tank.
Um, if you can meditate, do that.
I'm actually really bad at it.
Um, if you, if you like swimming, do that, distract, distract, distract if you can.
Because if you say to your brain, don't think about that thing, what does your brain do?
Thinks about that thing.
So, um, so what we have, if you're trying to go to sleep and you really stress, I have
this thing called an ASTAD, um, an alternate slightly technical distracting activity, and
you should have a bank of them next to your bed.
So these are five things that your brain can go to, to stop you thinking about that big
And there'll be things that should be, um, relatively repetitive, um, will not evoke
emotions and something that makes you feel good.
So cooking your favorite meal, doing your yoga asanas, going, um, visualizing your running
track, um, visualizing out on your surfboard, and then you have them listed down.
So my, one of my favorites is.
Imagine if you won $500 million, who would you secretly help?
And so that, uh, that's the one I go to if I'm really sort of like activated.
And so you need to have a set basket of safe thoughts ready to go, um, to distract you
from that, from that fear and you've got to look, if you've got a wearable, make sure
your heart rate's gone down under a hundred beats per minute, if you can try and have
Because, um, during sleep, there's some very important parts of your sleep architecture
that are very, very good for, um, anxiety and stress.
So, you know, do you know about the sleep architecture?
There's, I can't see.
You mean, you mean the different stages of sleep?
Yeah, the stages of sleep.
So you've got, you know, awake, light, deep, slow wave sleep, REM.
And so what happens is throughout the day, particularly if you've had a very tumultuous
day, you've, you know, you're under threat.
And it's not a tangible threat.
It's a ephemeral, like in the space kind of which money is, right?
It's not like in your hands.
Um, so it's particularly if you've had that type of threat, your brain is going in overdrive.
And whenever you think, um, whenever you look at something, whenever you memorize something,
um, talk, walk, whatever, your brain uses energy, right?
And so your brain lives on glucose and some other, um, fats if, if you're fat adapted.
But, um, so in the process of, um, your brain accessing energy, you have something called,
uh, an explosion with adenosine triphosphate, you know, ATP goes, okay.
So the phosphate bond comes off, creates the energy and what's left behind is the metabolic
byproduct of thinking, which is adenosine.
Have you heard about this?
And so adenosine we know gives you an impending sense of doom.
Like it makes you feel terrible.
And we'll, you know, if we feel terrible, obviously post-rationalize it, go, oh, it must
be my wife, my dog, my job, my money, my whatever.
You find something to blame.
But you actually have just got this product and we know that it's makes you have an impending
sense of doom because it's used as a, um, medication for tachycardia.
And when doctors administer it, they have to hold people's hands and say, no, you're
not going to die.
It's just that it's just the, um, adenosine.
And you know, there's only one way to get rid of adenosine.
Do you know what I mean?
It's deep, slow-wave sleep.
Because the release, something gets released from the, from your spinal column.
So the cerebral spinal fluid.
But you don't get it unless you've been asleep for a while.
Well, you've got to get exactly 90 minutes sleep cycle.
Um, and so it's really important to have that.
People may sleep, but they may not hit deep, slow-wave sleep.
That's why I'm really into wearables.
Um, anyway, and then there's REM sleep, rapid eye movement, and that's when you dream.
But it also, this is when you consolidate memories and then you make sense of emotional,
um, data throughout the day.
But what people often don't know, it's the, the forgetting component of your sleep.
There's a heap of crap that happens during the day you don't need to remember.
And if you don't have that REM sleep, it's like the defrag of your brain.
It's like sleep, keep, delete, you know, keep.
And if you don't hit that, you feel very, very anxious.
And this is particularly why alcohol, um, makes you get anxiety.
Um, because alcohol pushes off REM sleep.
Because it is because alcohol doesn't let you get into that deep sleep.
And so, so it pushes off the REM sleep, then it pushes off the deep, slow-wave sleep.
So you wake up, haven't cleared the adenosine, it's double whammy.
And you've still got all these memories you should have shelved like, oh my God, did I
say that last night?
Um, and so, so if you are going to have, um, have to make a big decision, I, I really recommend
like a 90 minute nap.
You know the science of napping?
Like do not nap for more than 20 minutes, or.
I try not to sleep more than 30 minutes.
Like if it's during the day.
Well, 30 minutes is cutting it close.
You can, you can end up waking up in deep, slow-wave sleep where you get sleep inertia
and you feel like you've been hit by a bus for three hours.
I feel like then I've got to have a coffee or something.
And that's the worst thing I could do.
Because it's the mid-afternoon.
Well, coffee blocks adenosine.
It's, it's a very similar molecular structure.
Um, but, so going back to your point, what do you do?
Um, try to do something physical together.
Physical to, to get rid of the, the biochem, the biochemistry of stress, connect, um, read
success statements, try and remind yourself of all the things you've done.
I've seen this before.
Write a letter to your younger self, giving them advice on what they should do if they
This is a really interesting science.
So by giving another advice, you actually trick your brain into thinking that you have
the resources and the capabilities.
You have the capacity to get through this, even though you're like, oh my, I have no
idea what I'm going to do.
Just by the essence of pretending that you're in the teacher's mindset will actually make
you think, you know what, I've got this.
And then if you write this to a younger self or you pretend that you're writing to a mentor,
it really does down-regulate your cortisol.
So that's another strategy, write, write an advice letter to someone else.
Or to your younger self.
Does it mean any alcohol?
Well, yeah, this is a really good question because I love red wine and people say to
me, how much is too much?
And this is why I love biometric capture devices, because they will tell you that like you wake
up in the morning, like, yeah, that was too much.
And it's very much predicated on your ancestry.
So you know the story about who can handle alcohol and who can't, do you know this?
No, tell me that.
So, you know, back, you know, Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, the water supply industry,
The water supply, you know, back, you know, a long time ago in the Middle Ages was terrible,
the deplorable, full of bacteria.
And so all the babies were dying.
And some really clever person realized that if you fed babies beer, most of them didn't
die because of the fermentation process, you had to heat it up, that would kill some of
the bacteria and the little bit of alcohol would also kill some of the bacteria.
But those babies that couldn't methylate the alcohol, they were the ones that died.
So literally, if you had a little bit of alcohol, you could kill some of the bacteria.
So literally, you've got Darwinian development right there in front of you, genetics, you
know, coming through.
So anyone who's of Irish, you know, British extraction, my genes, you know, you can handle
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We didn't have a lot of exposure.
Asian, for example?
Yeah, Asia, you get the flushing, you don't have the enzyme, indigenous, Pima Indians,
they just don't have the enzymatic.
They don't have the enzymatic processes within their systems to process alcohol.
So this is why it's really important for you to be intuitive about, A, what you eat, and
B, what you drink.
And different types of alcohol will actually have a different outcome.
So I know what I can drink.
I can drink margaritas, vitamin C. I can drink red wine, and I can drink rum.
Anything with sugar sets off, and I'm really into gut biome research at the moment.
So I'm really into that.
I'm doing a project at the moment.
And I know that if you have alcohol that has a higher sugar content, that will just add
to your hangover and mental fogginess the next day.
So it's individualized, just to answer your question.
But how does someone know this?
So I guess what you're sort of saying here is that it's important to understand what
your advantages are and what your disadvantages are.
And that largely depends on, in the case of alcohol.
So alcohol, for example, where your genetics originate from.
And how much you've practiced as well.
And how much practice.
And therefore, you know, physically know what the effects are.
But it's about noting these things and understanding this sort of stuff.
But then it's about understanding, again, understanding your emotions, and probably
more importantly, what causes these feelings, these emotional feelings.
Attending to it, just knowing it's a thing.
And then the next thing is about, how do I hack into it?
How do I manage it?
What you're talking about?
See, what you're saying here is that, like, understand your physiology, know your limitations,
be intuitive about what you put into your body, and how you sleep, how you eat, all
those things that you ingest.
Can I function on this?
Don't worry about it.
Well, just avoid that.
And actually, like, you've got to also be careful.
For women at different times of their cycle, there are tolerances for food and alcohol
There's anti-inflammatories, Panadol, that also changes.
And also, like, how much sleep you've had and how much sugar you've got in your system.
So just be really intuitive about those things.
And then understanding your emotional world, that it's really important because emotions
do affect your decision-making processes.
And also, what's really interesting, which I love looking into a lot at the moment, is
Have you heard about this?
So have you ever walked into a room and you've gone, whoa, something's gone on in this room.
I can just feel it in the air.
And you think it's your gut instinct.
Well, we know now that there are lots of receptors in your paranasal sinuses and also just found
on your skin that detect the chemo scent of those in your close vicinity.
Again, going back to hunter-gatherers.
I think it was very adaptive for humans to understand the stress state or the emotional
state of the clan because, you know, if you're still sitting there, you know, like whittling
sticks or foraging, and then one of your clan members looks up and sees a saber-toothed
tiger over there and then lets out this pheromonal alarm signal, you don't have to go, hey, everybody
And so it was a very adaptive way to keep us safe.
But also, you can infer people's intentions and emotions.
Do they have nefarious intentions?
Are they attracted to you?
Do they want to hurt you?
So humans are very, very good at picking up these things, but we pick it up on a subconscious
And it's literally millions of data points that are hitting us and we're getting processed
through our olfactory bulb and that we're-
That's through your nose.
And so we're getting this intuition.
And so you should always listen to this because it's not like just woo-woo science.
It's actually science.
And so what was I talking about?
So understanding how other people's emotions are highly contagious, we call it emotional
And so this is what I teach a lot in sport, with executives, with leaders.
You really need to understand that what you bring into a meeting will be contagious.
It's like a virus.
And with athletes, they go, oh my God.
If their coach has just had a fight with their wife on the phone and they walk in and they're
in a bad mood and athletes are very good at watching the faces of their coaches and they're
like, oh, it must be about me.
What have I done wrong?
And their performance will go down.
Or if you're a leader and you walk into a meeting and you're in a shit mood, you just
spread that amongst the team and they'll become more defensive, less innovative, less creative.
They're less likely to share.
And my research I did recently with Harvard professor Amy Edmondson, we found that sleep
deprivation, those leaders who were sleep deprived, had lower ratings of psychological
safety within their teams than those who weren't sleep deprived.
And what does sleep deprived mean?
So it means 60% of your sleep needs over two days.
So that's about three point, if you're only getting three and a half hours for two or
three days, that's sleep deprivation.
And you think you can get away with it.
And my research has shown that it really does affect your team.
So understanding that there is another level of communication going on with humans that
we're not conscious of, but we do get that feeling, you should very much attend to that.
You're talking about the internet of things in a human being.
So we've got all these sensors around our body.
In our skin, in our nose, our eyes, ears, smell, taste, et cetera.
That's our internet of things that we've got data sensors all around our world.
And then all that data gets gathered and goes to our brain and then the brain then does
something that goes into administration and starts making us get into a certain state.
We've got to stop being so instinctive in our responses to the way we live our lives
and start to become more logic based by having a better understanding of how all these things
Depends on if you're not like, what's your operationalization or definition of instinctive?
Well some people just work on instinct and they walk in a room and there's an instinct
about there's something heavy going on.
Should I invest in that person or not?
I think that life is so complex now, it's so sophisticated, there's so much that not
one human neuron can ever hope to understand.
So we need to use, I don't know, chat GPT, you know, systems that are better at logic
And I don't think there's like one's good and one's bad.
I think we should absolutely use a hybrid model in the way we function.
In some environments you should be maybe more logical, in others you should be more instinctual
And that's what emotional intelligence is.
That's what it is.
Is emotional intelligence, though, understanding?
Is that what your emotions are telling you, or is it?
Oh, it's like today's not the day to be using like purely emotional data.
Today I actually need to look at some spreadsheets, you know.
That's what emotional intelligence is, is knowing the value of it, that, you know, where's
the assets, where is the most advantageous line of inspection.
To some extent, like Instagram and all those, all the organizations.
They're always playing with our emotional intelligence to some extent.
AB testing us all the time.
And they're feeding us what we need to see.
I think it's bad.
Like I say to my teenage kids, they'll come out with something like, oh my God, what algorithm
Like, come on, get off that one.
In the case of your teenage kids, arming them up with the logic of how they're living their
So like giving them proper understanding in a sort of really mathematical sense.
Like how your brain and body interact with, in relation to things that you might be reading.
And because for me, Facebook, Instagram, all those things, their game is to understand
you as a user better than you understand yourself.
And to nudge you into places they want you to go.
They'll predict your behavior even before you know you're going to do it.
It's quite terrifying.
And feed you what they think you need.
And starve you of what you don't need.
Which means you don't get a chance to see anything broader than what you need.
That's precisely why I, like I was in the States and I was watching Fox News one morning
and then CNN the next morning.
Just to stuff them up.
Just because I, I mean.
The opposite ends of the spectrum.
Absolute opposite ends of the spectrum.
And it was like diabolically like so different.
Diametrically opposed to like these truths was just insane.
Neither one of them is a truth.
It was pretty whack.
I was listening to Sean Hannity.
It's, it's frightening.
There's the, the.
We're, we are post-truth age.
It, it doesn't exist.
And there's just absolutely no way for us to, I think, feel safe that what we're being
And is this a reason why people don't trust governments?
It's a sign of trust in all institutions, religious institutions, academic institutions,
governments, even doctors now.
Like do you remember before, like, you know, our parents or like in the fifties, like you
always respected the priest, the teacher, the, the politician or whatever.
And the doctor down the road.
Like you, you really respected them.
Like it was God's word.
But now like my generation, they're highly skeptical and highly suspicious of everything.
Because, you know, everyone's just been lied to so much.
Given that is the case.
And I think I agree with you.
I, I feel that about, way about just about every one of those categories you mentioned.
But I might have, I think I've always been a bit of a skeptic, generally speaking, because
I'm anti-authority generally.
Um, so, but how do you.
Why are you anti, yeah.
I actually don't know the answer to that.
Um, I just don't like authority.
I don't like people telling me what to do.
Um, I don't know why.
I've never sat down and examined it.
That'd be really interesting for you to think about.
I get better, I get better outcomes when I'm anti-authority.
I get, I get better reward.
Have you been, like, have you respected authority?
I have also, but I have been through the process of playing the game, so to speak.
And I've worked in those environments where I am a, a compliance person.
Interpreting law, the law, to comply with the rules set by parliament, which is written
by politicians who are reacting to social environments.
I've been in all categories.
And I've been like you, I watch CNN one minute, I listen to the ABC one minute, I'll listen
to Sky News in the next minute, you know, like I'll, I'll listen to, uh, yeah, so, but
I prefer to play the game.
I'm actually exploring all these things.
Like what do you, like, so what are you saying?
Like one minute I can be representing, um, one minute I can be representing when I was
younger, um, somebody doing something completely compliant and then the next minute I can be
representing someone who's completely non-compliant and I enjoyed both.
And seeing how both operated.
One minute it could be Alan Bond, for those people who knew Alan Bond.
Who was the, you know, what, he got results by being non-compliant.
Then five minutes later I could be representing, um, an institution who's, you know, you know.
Totally compliant.
Um, it could be a government institution.
Um, and then, or it could be the police department.
But at the end of the day, to me they're all the same.
What motivates you do you think?
Um, because I think, I know I, I enjoy, um, playing around in the fictions of the world.
So everything's a fiction.
Everything's invented as a fiction.
Everything is fiction.
Is everything someone made up?
Pretty much everything.
There are some basic things.
Laws, like gravity.
Newton's laws, three laws, you know.
All those sorts of laws.
Of physics, yeah.
Those physics laws.
Um, but to me they're the only real rules.
That make sense to me.
Mathematical rules make sense to me.
But everything else to me in a qualitative sense.
In a humanity sense is probably a fiction.
And therefore I, and I enjoy looking at all the fictions.
So do you enjoy being surprised that your world view has been-
No, I rarely get surprised.
I rarely get surprised.
I'm a lot older than you, so maybe when I was younger I, maybe when I was younger I
Because surprise is so like-
Yeah, no, surprise and delight is really important.
I mean, but I rarely get surprised.
I'm a lot older than you, so maybe when I was younger I, maybe when I was younger I
Because surprise is so like-
Yeah, no, surprise and delight is really important.
I mean, but I rarely get surprised anymore.
Mainly because I'm, those things that I'm interested in, I rarely get surprised about.
There, there would be things that I'm not interested in, or I have no area of exposure
to, which I probably would get surprised, but I don't play in those areas.
I just tend to stick in my various lanes.
So you never, you never surprise yourself anymore?
I haven't been surprised-
So, because I probably have, you know, I only have a certain amount of capacity in,
you know, time, mental capacity, et cetera, so I choose maybe 10 streams.
I don't have two or three streams.
I have quite a number of streams that I find interesting, but I, that's all I got time
So I play in those 10 streams because I, I'm a student of every stream.
Well, what motivates you to choose those streams?
Just, I, what motivates me is just-
What motivates me is just to continually underpin, in my mind, the fiction of life.
Underpin the fiction of life.
How everything is a fiction.
How everything is something we've developed neurologically to believe to be the story
that we relate to.
How is that helpful for you listeners, do you think, to-
Well, I don't play that game with my listeners.
My listeners are here to listen to you.
And my game with you is to hear what you've got to say.
But is it a luxury though, do you think, to, to know, I think that life is a game.
Like when you've got a massive mortgage, you're a single mum, you've got a, you know,
base, you know, base pay job, your kids are sick, like-
That's a shocker.
Is that an indulgence to, to then say, oh, it's all a game?
No, I don't say that to anybody.
I'm, I'm answering that to you.
You're asking me that as a behavioural scientist.
And, and I'm being honest to you about it.
Because that's what I believe.
But I wouldn't say that to somebody else.
Because that's irresponsible.
For me to say that to them.
Because that's not reflecting on how they're feeling.
And they don't think it's a game to them that it's life and death or whatever, it's major.
And in fact, recently I put out a, um, a post talking about that, how I've experienced these
things in the past, where you have to sell your house and tell your, your wife or your
husband, and you've got four kids in my case, and you have to go through these things.
And how did, did you cope with that?
I'd love to hear like what happened.
I was younger then, but, uh-
How did you feel?
And who did you feel like you most disappointed at that time?
My family, my wife and my children.
So not so much yourself, but it was your kids.
I didn't care about myself that much.
Um, no, it's more them.
But I was more concerned about them, how they felt.
But also I was, I was pretty sure I could rebuild.
So, just, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,
it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,
It's more though.
Did you have a mentor?
Um, yeah, I sort of did.
I had, in a professional sense, yeah, I like the senior partners the law firm I worked
at were mentors of mine.
That's important.
But, but in a, in a more skill sense.
Not in a lifestyle sense, you know.
Well, how did you know what was the right way to go or what to do?
As I'm a student of what I do, so I took the view that it's time to sell,
sell, sell now because it's going to get worse, which it did.
Sell now, get out now, get rid of the interest rate stress.
Repayment stress.
And in those days it was okay, go and rent something.
So you were flexible, agile.
Yeah, be different today because it might be harder to rent.
You might be getting into a worse trap.
You might not be able to rent.
You could rent then.
But I made decisions based on the premise that existed at the time.
But I sort of had a bit of sense of what was going on.
Like academically I know how these cycles work or I thought
any of those cycles worked at the time.
And I just backed my own judgment.
But I would, but I also know it's, it is a game.
And why I say it's a game, I don't mean it's,
I take it for granted.
But the money game is a game.
But it's, money doesn't exist.
It's a made up construct.
As I said, it's fiction.
And it's made up by somebody.
You know, it doesn't matter.
I mean, I can, it's real and that is actually happening.
Aren't we funny humans we're so obsessed with this game.
Well, we get caught up in it too easy.
Illusory concept, yeah.
Yeah, don't be a loser.
What is money to you then?
A means to an end.
It just, it gets me what it is, what I think I need to get.
And what do you need to get?
And a good night's sleep.
Well, that money can buy you peace.
For me, money's freedom.
That's all it is.
It's just a like.
Yeah, it gives you options.
But often the options, too many options is a problem.
And you've got a boat and house and car.
You've got to insure that stuff.
You've got to look after it.
But you've got to manage it.
And you've got to use it.
And you've got two houses.
You've got to think,
which house should I stay in?
I'm not using that one.
And should I rent it?
Okay, I'm going to rent it.
Then there's a problem with it.
So it gives you options.
So you're going back to simplicity, you think?
I'm not, I don't have a simple life.
But I seek a simple life.
I seek simplicity and peace of mind.
As you get older.
I seek simplicity and peace of mind.
In other words, not too many aggravations,
not too many things to worry about.
When you were 30, could you imagine these words coming out of your mouth?
No, in 30 I was ambitious in reflecting what I didn't have
and what I wanted to get and what others had.
Were you like more about deficit-driven or passion-driven back then?
I don't want to lose.
Probably between 20 and 30 more deficit-driven.
Interesting question.
After that more about what I wanted to have as opposed to what I didn't have.
Scared of losing.
I've been through different phases.
I mean, I often explain to people the concept of hard work.
And for me, the concept of hard work was when I first started working
was driven by monkey see, monkey do.
My father worked hard, my mother worked hard, therefore I work hard.
That's what you do.
After a certain period of time, I saw people,
I realized hard work gave you reward.
So I wasn't working hard just for the sake of working hard
because that's what I always saw.
I was working hard because it was about reward.
I could get myself that.
The Mercedes-Benz, the BMW, the harder work,
the more expensive things I could get, holidays, houses, blah, blah, blah.
We're lucky we live in this formula in Australia
where work in equals output out.
Not every society has that.
And obviously I'm talking about my specific society.
And then, you know, I could have been in some part of India
at that period of time.
The harder I work, I get nothing.
I just get a bag of rice.
And then finally I worked out now, I work hard because I can.
No, I respect it.
I honor the fact that I have the capacity to work hard.
I've got friends who've had strokes, dead, cancer, heart attacks,
drug addicts, criminals in jail who can't do what I do.
It's a great privilege.
It's a privilege.
So exercise it and make use of it.
And that's the thing.
So they're the different stages I've been through in my life.
So to answer your question...
But I want to get back to you.
That's my human marriage.
You can't help yourself.
I was going to ask, how's your relationship with your mother?
Well, my mother was great.
She's passed away.
But she died from MND.
But she'll be proud of you, you think?
My parents are unbelievably proud because they probably lived through me a bit.
And my brother and my sister, yeah.
Vicariously, yeah.
But not in an evil sort of sinister way.
Yeah, it's a proud way.
It's not that sort of...
You're the golden...
I was the eldest of the family, yeah.
So I was the first to do all these things.
But my brother and sister have gone along and done exactly the same stuff.
But it's an interesting thing you talk about sleep.
That you raised my mother.
My mother died at 86, 87, a couple of years ago.
She died from motor neurone disease.
But she never had any symptoms.
And my mother's Irish background.
And motor neurone disease is a heavily...
Can be genetically acquired.
For Irish, for my blood too.
And one person on an island per day gets diagnosed with motor neurone disease.
They don't know what...
Gut biome, maybe?
When I took her to the BMC Brain Mind Centre, they were telling me that some of the things
they discovered was it can be offset off with alcohol.
My mother didn't drink, but a lot of Irish people drink.
The second one, it can be set off by any form of poison.
Like you could have been subject to chemotherapy or something like that.
So, it's those sorts of things.
So, you mean not offset, like it actually instigates it?
Oh, it potentiates it.
When you've got a genetic...
Oh, yeah, disposition.
Disposition for it.
So, in other words, it's been genetically...
Is it like genetics loads the gun and your environment pulls the trigger?
So, and there are, you know, there's a hundred tests...
...that they do and that they've seen that are correlated to MND in your bloodstream.
No, I've had it tested.
So, I have none of them.
Because my father's Greek.
So, I must have got more of that.
But those things can stay dormant in your system forever.
But there are things that will set it off.
And I often thought about my mother and it's interesting you should say about sleep.
My mother was a chronically bad sleeper.
Well, we never knew and mum wouldn't get tested and...
But she was like...
She would go to bed at 10 o'clock at night but she'd be up at 1 or 12.
I wish you had that gene, DEC2 gene.
You know, it's like...
I think it's 410.
It's like 1,100,000 people and you only sleep like three or four hours a night.
And she would do that for about six nights in a row and then...
What would she do when she was up?
Watch television, make hot...
Did all the things that she thought would work, make a hot chocolate and stuff like that.
And I always wondered to myself, like you were saying before, when you get into that deep
sleep, MND, I wondered, you know, people who get things like Alzheimer's disease and
dementia as well.
I wonder if it's because...
They haven't had it and they drink a lot, they don't have a chance to clear the debris
And I don't know if there's any studies on this.
There's heaps of studies, yeah.
But the sleep factor in your life, I think, is critical to living a longer life.
It's like, honestly, I thought sleep was super boring and if I could take a pill and get
my sleep needs in a pill, I would have absolutely done it.
I don't like sleeping.
But now I've been doing all this research and literally, if you want to change your
life, it gives you the biggest bang for buck.
It's the most free, democratically available, most effective, performance enhancing activity
And it's unbelievably potent.
And what is most potent is sleep consistency.
So if you can't get much sleep, because a lot of people can't get much sleep, right?
It's just if you've got kids, you've got work.
So if you're going to do anything, at least try and get to bed within a 15-minute window.
Don't go to bed one night, 10, one night, two, one night.
Eight, one night.
Make it 11.30 every night.
And it will literally change your life.
Because every little clock in every cell in your body wants to know what's up, right?
It's like you've got to, as Matthew Walker says, you've got to sleep like you're landing
There's these biochemical processes that need to get into play before you can hit your body.
Core temperature needs to drop two degrees to get into deep sleep.
So lots of food things can mess with sleep, like MSG.
I think this is a really...
I think this is a really, really under-known sleep disruptor.
It gives you terrible nightmares and gives you terrible...
It does to me, which is why I don't eat certain types of foods.
And it's in everything.
It's not just, well, the Chinese food.
No, it's in Mexican, Italian, it's in...
Like I had Domino's pizza the other day and I was just, I could not sleep.
I had crazy dreams and I woke up just like feeling terrible.
So if I've got a big day, I make sure I've got nothing with sauce on it, nothing packaged
and nothing, no takeout.
And then, so would you say to have your best life then, that you sort of have a little
bit, it can end up being a bit of a boring or regulated environment, no?
Because, don't get me wrong.
I used to be, but yeah, I totally...
You know, you eat at a certain time of night.
You eat a certain type of food at night.
You down-regulate yourself between that point and the time you go to bed.
You try to go to bed the same time every night.
You try to not spend too much time on one of these things and get into some sort of
habit that allows you to drift into sleep.
It sounds so boring, doesn't it?
It does sound boring, but if you want to live for a long time in a good life, a quality
life as opposed to being completely fucked up, you need to live like this.
Exercise is important.
Yeah, well, this is really interesting.
So I've come up with seven pillars of a healthy life.
Actually, when I was in the States, we were doing a documentary on this.
And I can't use the word because I'm under NDA, but we're doing a whole franchise on
this, my formula for a good life.
And what it basically says, so you've got all these factors like eating, moving, your
relationships, how you think, your actual environment and your life purpose.
Now, at any one time, it's like a wheel.
At any one time, not all of them are going to be like in the green.
And okay, so if you know that you're going to be...
If you're eating crap food, at least make sure you exercise.
So they're levers, right?
And so it's a formulaic approach.
So you have like this, I suppose, like a metabolic score at the end.
And then what you do is you go, okay, I'm feeling a bit lost in my life purpose.
Well, then we're going to put a lot of activity into my relationship or moving more.
Instead of backfill.
Because there's no way...
And getting stressed about, oh, I shouldn't be eating that.
I should be in bed.
And the cortisol...
It's probably so much worse than, you know, staying up.
And you cannot, cannot deny the absolute importance of having a drink with your mates.
You know, the social connectivity about, you know, staying up one night and watching that
movie, eating that block of chocolate, like do it.
But what I do is I know my limitations.
I know I can go out.
So we're over in Austin at South by Southwest.
I was going to bed at three, four.
Every morning we were drinking margaritas.
We were eating, you know, crappy food and no sleep.
But it was so much fun and so exciting.
And I know now how to go back and I know how to get my gut by them.
I know exactly what to do.
So I do have the bandwidth to like, you know, have a breakout every now and again.
But I think what is the most important factor is happiness.
Because when you're unhappy, if you've got a toxic relationship, if you have a toxic
relationship with someone, you're not going to be happy.
You're not going to be happy.
You're not going to be happy.
You're not going to be happy.
With your own body, with your work, with your future, like that stuff kills you.
That's the stuff that kills you.
It's your perception of how well you're doing in all of these factors, which is worse.
So if you are going to, you know, I don't know, drink or eat or, you know, put on weight,
You should do it.
The consternation around it.
And then the guilt.
Guilt is such a topic.
Guilt is such a topic.
It's such a toxic emotion.
Because you produce all these stress hormones.
It stops you from sleeping.
You don't regenerate.
So I'm all about being happy, having a really good laugh.
A laugh all the time.
And I think that keeps you young.
It keeps you vital.
It keeps you from taking yourself too seriously.
And then good things just come around, you know, just because, I don't know, you're
just maybe more happy, more fun to be around.
People will give you opportunities.
You've got lots more energy.
And I really want to, because I'm starting to build out this lab.
Like one of the experiments we're going to look at is the metabolic cost of negative
So we're going to get people in the lab and see their metabolic basal rate at baseline.
Get them to like think shameful, embarrassing, negative thoughts or happy thoughts.
And we'll see just how expensive it is.
It's metabolically expensive.
You mean in a sense of what's good?
You mean what's floating around in their blood or in terms of how their brain's going?
Well, it's actually how much energy they're going to be using.
Like everything's, you know, work-life balance, that's all going out there.
It's energy management is the key now.
Know what depletes you.
Know what replenishes you.
And be really clear about that.
And know where you're, what I like to use the word, like the analogy of, you know, a
deep sea saturation diver.
When you're down at depths and you're breathing.
You know, you get nitrogen into your bloodstream.
And if you come up too soon, you get nitrogen bubbles and get the bends.
It's very painful and can kill you.
And so you've got to go into a decompression chamber.
We all know that life's going to be stressful and hard.
We'd be naive to think that, you know, it's not going to be.
So if you're down at depths for a couple of weeks and you're like, you're slugging it
out, you've had stressful stuff in the news, banks going down, your kid's sick, whatever.
Know how to get into your space.
You've got to go into a specific decompression chamber for you.
And it's different for everyone.
Someone might be going and playing golf or going to the pub with their mates.
Someone's might yoga.
Someone's massage.
Someone's walking in green, but like, know it, know what's your decompression chamber
and know when to oscillate between going at it hard and then going into that replenishing
rejuvenation mode.
And if you don't, it's a matter of science, right?
It's not like it's indulgence.
It's not like, oh, you're weak because you've got to decompress.
It's a matter of physics.
And that's what I do.
I'll work really hard.
Not sleep that much.
But then I'll always know.
Well, actually, my partner knows.
We're booking this.
I'm booking you in for a massage.
We're decompressing today.
You just reminded me of when I was in my 40s, maybe 50s.
My decompression chamber, and I've realized that as you just told me, is that, you know,
I live across the road from Botanical Gardens.
I live in a building.
It's called the Astor Building.
And when I got really stressed out, like fully stressed, my thing was to go downstairs, get
dressed, summer or winter, go downstairs, walk across the road, go across McCrory Street,
I actually found a spot where I could climb under the fence because the Botanical Guards
This is your anti-authoritarian nature coming out.
And the Botanical Guards were locked off.
And there was a spot I could get under and walk around in the dark of the gardens.
Well, the smell of the green, we know it's a cortisol antidote.
So there's a chemical in grass that actually down regulates cortisol.
I know this because of the study at University of Queensland.
And it goes back to the evolutionary thing.
If you're around green, it means there's been water, there's food, there's probably animals
you can eat, and you're safe.
So being in the dark is an interesting thing, maybe because you were unseen then and people
couldn't see that you were stressed and maybe-
Adventurous and scary and stuff like that.
But at the same time, it was cool.
That's an interesting point.
So you were probably stressed about things that weren't tangible, really tangible, right?
So if you go into a dangerous environment and give your brain a reason for that anxiety,
it goes, oh, it makes sense.
You're in the dark.
Of course you should be stressed.
Do you know what I'm saying?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I always say, if you've got this social stress and there's this feeling that you just
can't get over, go and have a cold shower because then your brain goes, oh, you're cold.
That's why you're stressed.
And when you get warm, you've solved it.
So you go and do something scary and then your brain can attach that anxiety to a thing.
To the scary thing.
Then I could come back and go to sleep.
I walk around for half an hour.
Maybe your brain just wanted to make sense of it.
And it was also naughty.
So it was something I shouldn't be doing.
Dr. Gemma King, thanks very much.
Nice to meet you.
It was a pleasure.
Thank you for listening to another episode of Straight Talk with Mark Boris.
Audio production by Jessica Smalley.
Production assistants, Jonathan Leondis and Simon McDermott.
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I'm your host, Mark.
Thanks for watching.
I'll see you next time.