How To Find Your Purpose In Life In 40 Days Or Less: Dissolve the Hidden Blocks That Keep You Stuck

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I finally got my friend Masten Kip on today's show. This is Ben Greenfield. I. I have to remember to introduce myself. I realize you might listen to more than just one podcast, so I have to remember to tell you. This is the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show. My friend, Mastin Kip, he's amazing. You're gonna meet him in just a second. This podcast is brought to you by Aptiv. AAPTIV is how you spell that. Aptive. What is Aptive? It is an app. You put it on your phone. Duh. Because it's an app and it's like putting a personal trainer in your pocket automatically. You have over 2,500 personal trainer led music driven audio fitness workouts. You can take them wherever you want, where you want, the way that you want. They've got treadmill workouts, outdoor running workouts, yoga workouts, strength training workouts, and then all that is backed up with these trainers who help you achieve your goals. Music that moves you, even meditation. Everything is in that app. Like, you don't need any other exercise app on your phone. If you have this one, I'm going to give you a special URL that automatically gives you 30% off an annual active membership. Super duper easy. It's that simple. So here's how you do it. You go to aptiv.com that's a. A P T I V dot com Ben. That's aptive.com Ben. Automatically, they'll knock 30% off and you have a little personal trainer in your pocket. Hello, little personal trainer in your pocket. Isn't that cool? This podcast is also brought to you by Gainswave. Gainswave is a bedroom biohack for guys who want sexual performance. I just did my seventh Gainswave treatment a couple weeks ago down in Florida. No needles, no drugs. They just wave this magic wand over your crotch. It uses these pulsating sound waves. It increases blood flow to your nether regions. Automatically, you walk out of there. As soon as the numbing cream wears off, you get these amazing erections. Your orgasms last like 30 or 40 seconds longer. It was originally designed for erectile dysfunction, but it can also take people who don't have ed from good to great. No drugs or little blue pills, if you know what I mean. Required. So you can get your Gainswave treatment for free. How? Well, what happens is, if you get six treatments, they're just going to throw in another one on the house. If you get 12, you get the 13th free. Very, very simple. And you don't have to Go to Florida. They have practitioners all over the US of A. You just go to gainswave.com be that's gainswave.com Ben. To find a provider near you and go and upgrade your sexual performance. Fellas, in this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

And there's a belief or a context that's made that says, you know what, like, I'm not enough or I can't do this, or I don't deserve that. And over the last 10 years, I've been able to create a type of life coaching called functional life coaching that's basically been inspired by functional medicine. And my whole thing is about trying to figure out what's the root cause, emotional block that's holding you back. And what's a very interesting thing, Ben, is that whatever pain someone's been through is directly correlated to their life purpose.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. Power.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And as you no doubt know, if you've been paying attention to my anti aging and my longevity writings of late, one of the things I've really talked about is this idea of the, the blue zones in these areas where people live a disproportionately long period of time. One thing that I've talked about in some of the articles that I've been wr of late has been this idea that they know why it is they're getting out of bed in the morning. Whether it's the, I believe it's called the, the Pura Davida that the Sardinians wake up with, that reason for life, or the ikigai, the Japanese call it, this reason that you actually get up in the morning, what your purpose in life is, having that purpose, having that drive, having that reason that you actually live appears to be not only incredibly important for anti aging, for longevity, but also for happiness and for meaning in life. And the thing is, a lot of people don't know how to find that power, how to find that purpose. My guest on today's show is probably one of the world's best people when it comes to being able to learn how to find your purpose and then not, not just how to find your purpose, but how to do things like.

Create a strategy for putting that purpose into your life and even hack your nervous system. Hack your nervous system, which we're going to talk a lot about today. And.

When you hack your nervous system, be able to actually develop that purpose even more and make it a real part of your life. So my guest on today's show is a guy who I've known for a couple of years now. His name is Mastin Kipp. And Masten wrote this book called Claim youm Power. Claim youm Power. It was beside my bed. I didn't even tell you this. MASTIN for about three months it's dog log eared, pages are turned over. I've got all sorts of notes in it, as I do when I get somebody on the podcast. I, I highlight, I circle, I underline. And there's a lot of stuff that I want to ask you about this book. And I don't just want to ask you about the books. Obviously people can go out and, and buy it and I'll put a link to it in the show notes if you guys wanted to go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Mastin BenGreenfieldFitness.com mastin and everything is in there. But he walks you through everything day by day in this 40 day book. But first met Mastin, he was actually, correct me if I'm wrong, Masten, I think you were writing this book. We were at a health conference and I showed up at the gym and it's kind of ironic, at a health conference, the gym seems to be empty every morning, except there's just a very small handful of people in the gym. And one of them is this guy who I see, I didn't even realize he was attending the conference. The first morning I saw him there, he's walking on the treadmill and he has this elaborate like writing desk that he set up on the hotel treadmill. And we work out and everything. And then I see him there the next morning and the next morning and eventually I meet him and it turns out to be Mastin. So were you actually working on this book there in the gym?

Mastin I was. And you know, it's funny actually, so you don't know this, but I actually set an intention for that event because I knew you were going to be there. And whenever you're ever at an event, it's like, oh my God, Ben Greenfield, he's so ripped. He's Always at the gym, he's there early. I set my intention to get there before I knew you would get there so that there would be some. How should I put this? Friendly competition. I'm a competitive person by nature, but I like to do it in a fun way. And I had no idea it would sort of blossom into a great friendship and stuff like that. I just wanted to be the guy that was at the gym before Ben.

Well, you have my admiration, because I thought, well, here's this dude. He's obviously got work to do. I thought you were replying to emails or something. I didn't find out later. You're writing this amazing book, but you had my respect for being that guy who appeared to be taking his 10 or 15,000 steps on the treadmill. What is your desk setup, by the way? Because you had some kind of a special travel deal that you were using.

Yeah, sure. And by the way, I'll tell you this, and I know that you know this and you live this and preach it, but there's a reason why I do that. In the morning. I do steady state cardio that's directly related to regulating the nervous system, which we can talk about later. So there's a very intentional purpose to it. But the actual desk itself, you can just go to Amazon and just Google treadmill desk. And it's this little kind of white plastic piece that you get. And you can attach it. There's these holes on both sides, and you can attach it to whatever treadmill you're on. And then I get a secondary device that's kind of like a device that unfolds to different heights and levels. And then that goes on top of the desk because the last thing you want to be doing is bending forward, and it will mess up your cervical thoracic area because your head is too far forward. And then you just kind of just stand straight up with good posture and you're there. I got my blue glasses, the blue blockers on, and get my work done. Especially because in a health summit like that, you're in it all day. So I'm just trying to get as much done and scheduled as possible for the day. But that's really what it's all about. And that movement's so important, but that's what it is. It's a simple hack. And it's funny because.

Across the country, there's this weird gym response because people get in the gym early and they think they're crushing it, but then when they see someone doing that, it's almost like there's like a, like, wait a minute, what happened? So it's always funny to watch the reaction to it and hopefully more people will do it because it's a fun way to get both done, especially conferences and stuff, stuff like that. But yeah, it's always funny to watch what people do.

I'll find a link to it and put it in the show notes because I think they, you, you mentioned two different pieces, but I think they sell like one piece that you can use now. Like one done for you. Piece a little attached to a treadmill. I think it's a little more expensive. It's like 100 bucks. But I'll, I'll do. I'll find it and link to it. It's probably even more beautiful than your, than your Mac.

I bet it is. Anyone can. If anyone can find a cooler gadget than me, man, it's you. That's for sure. For sure.

I'll hunt it down. Challenge accepted. So tell me your story. You have really interesting story that I think people should hear that leads up to this book. And obviously it's kind of a long story. We have time, so fill me in.

Yeah, let me just put some context to this conversation ahead of time because we will end up talking about emotional trauma. And I know this is a high performance and fitness podcast and why the heck does that matter? So emotional trauma, as it turns out, everybody has it. Whether you had abuse or hurt in your childhood or not, there's lots of things that produce emotional trauma besides the obvious things. But if you're a human being, you living and breathing, think of it like emotional inflammation. The environment will create it one way or another. What you're consuming, who you're around, relationships. There's lots of trauma everywhere. And doing the emotional trauma work and regulating and learning how to hack your nervous system is the most important high performance tool that's available. And it unlocks so many biohacking capabilities, it unlocks earning potential, it unlocks relationships, purpose, so many other things. So that's the context. And to me, it's the missing piece of the conversation, especially when it comes to biohacking trauma. Hacking really, to me is the root, root, root cause. So just like in functional medicine, you go look for the root cause of whatever the medical issue is, the same thing's true emotionally. And so I wanted to create some context around this conversation because I feel like I have to do a little bit of marketing to get people to want to talk about trauma because it's kind of like talking about cancer or a Horror film. Some people probably like that. But in general, it's like, why am I listening to this? Why do I care?

That's what I get, too. And I appreciate you bringing that up because I actually kind of turn off when I hear trauma because I. I don't feel like I had a traumatic upbringing. I don't even really put a great deal of credence in the idea that everybody, when they're born and passed through mom's vaginal canal, are extremely traumatized because it's a horrific thing. I don't. I don't really feel as though nature would have. Would have actually created a scenario or, you know, where the very first thing a human being goes. Intense and extreme trauma. But I'm glad you bring that up, because a lot of times I do kind of. Kind of resist listening in or tune out when someone starts to talk about trauma. So I'm glad you brought that up, but delve into your story. I know we'll get into hacking later.

We'll get context. Yeah, we'll get. I just want to create context first and foremost. So. Yeah, so for me, for the context. My mother grew up in an abusive, emotionally abusive household. She had a major injury as she was a horse jumper, jumping over lots of cool things in competition as a teenager. And she fell and broke her back at L5S1. And they didn't discover it till she was about 20, which is about five or six years later. My father was a medic in Vietnam, and for three years he served on the front lines in some of the most traumatizing sort of environments out there. And they met on a hippie commune in the 70s with no concept of what PTSD is or addiction or any other type of stuff. And 70s commune, there's all kinds of drugs and crazy stuff happening. And I was a product of their relationship and the doctors. My mom not to have a baby because she had a broken back and it would make her worse. And she said, basically, screw you guys. I'm gonna do it anyway. And so she had me, and then that was it, because her back got really bad after that. And I knew a mother who was in and out of hospitals my entire life. She was bedridden for the first 12 years of my life, and all the focus was on taking care of her. So I was trained from a young age to really look at what's her facial expression, what's her tone of voice, Is she in a safe environment? How do I sort of. How is my biology and physiology affecting her? And I didn't know it at the time, but I was getting really great training to do what I do now because I was so focused on just making sure that she was in as little pain as possible and she was in and out of doctors. And the thing that bothered me the most growing up, Ben, especially in the context of this podcast, is that there were some doctors where it felt like every time she went to see them, she came back and I had less of my mother that was there. And she was on prescription grade fentanyl since it came out, which is I think either 100 or 1000 times more powerful than heroin. They combined it with benzodiazepams and Xanax and we had to send her to treatment about six years ago and do a major intervention. But that's how I grew up. I grew up in an environment that was sort of predating a lot of the me too stuff because there was just so much abuse in my parents background and I had a front row seat to the opiate epidemic because my mom has been on opiates basically my whole life. And so I grew up asking the question, how can I take her? How can I help her? How can I take this pain away? And then when I moved to Los Angeles to get in the mutual music business.

I had no emotional resilience and fell right into an addictive relationship with a woman. And she did cocaine. So I started to do cocaine. I started to feel pretty good actually.

How old were you when you started to do cocaine?

I was about 19, 20 ish, probably right around 19 years old. So that would have been like 2,000, probably 1 ish. And I actually felt really good on it for a period of time. And I started to use it because it helped me get more work done.

Gun for people who haven't, who haven't used cocaine. What do you feel like?

Imagine coffee times a thousand plus any self esteem issues that you have are gone. And you feel like literally you're Superman and anything you do will turn to gold. Like that's kind of how. But it's only for 15 minutes.

You're doing a good job selling cocaine to people. So what were the downsides?

The downsides was it's illegal. I deviated my own septum. All kinds of relationships fell apart. I mean dysbiosis that was created in my body, I'm still working on repairing to this day. And many years later when I got my brain scanned at the Amen clinics, I told them my drug history and they said, well that makes sense because I have two or actually three traumatic brain injuries and three forms of ADD patterns in my brain and the parts of my brain that were non functioning. The cocaine stimulated, similar to Adderall.

Wow. And that's a legitimate brain scan. For those of you listening, in the Amen clinic, they do SPECT scan that's called single photon emission computed tomography, and they combine that with blood flow. So it's different than like the. So I do the QEEGS at the Peak Brain Institute, they're kind of similar, but the SPECT scan is. Is almost another level up as far as a really accurate 3D image of the brain. So they basically found that your brain was. Was relatively messed up from. Was it just the cocaine or was it other things too?

It was. No. I had traumatic brain injuries from childhood and I was hitting the head with a baseball bat accidentally at practice. I dropped a big rock on my head. I fell out of bed once, and so my brain wasn'. Functioning, so I was self medicating. And so I, you know, in context of what I know today, I was biohacking in a really bad way. You know, in a really bad way back then. But, but, you know, there was a whole history of addiction in my, in my past. And I was an entertainment manager. I worked a lot of celebrities, a lot of a listers in the early 2000s.

And that world. My focus was I want to be like the most successful person in the music business. I want to have a client, one of my clients that I manage. I want them to win a Grammy, and I want to, you know, be like a David Geffen type of person.

Who's David Geffen?

Okay. Okay, cool. So for context, just to put.

To give. To give you context real quick. I am an idiot savant. I know nothing about pop culture or politics or the music industry. I'm a health and fitness and nutrition nerd and know nothing else.

I love it. Okay, cool. Yeah, so the idea that there's something I can teach you about is kind of cool because, you know so much so. Yeah. So David Geffen is one of the classic sort of Hollywood mogul types. He was famous for coming up in the William Morris mail room, which is an agency out there, and he founded Geffen Records, which signed, you know, I mean, gosh, Nirvana, so many incredible bands. Joni Mitchell, to this day, it's still a large label. He also started DreamWorks, the S.K. spielberg, Katzenberg, Geffen. So he's a billionaire and.

He was a badass. And there's a whole book called Hitmen on him. And Stuff like that, that I kind of idolized at the time.

That's kind of how I saw myself. And so I got in working with this large management company, and we were working with all the celebrities, all the bands. We had clients that were selling out 50,000 person arenas in every town. And that became the new normal. And drug use wasn't overtly encouraged. It wasn't discouraged, but it was just sort of assumed it was in the culture. And so I did that. And I was trying to use cocaine and drugs like that to really push myself, and it all came crashing down. I lost my dream job. I left the management company, became senior vice president of a Geffen imprint called Flawless Records, which was created by a gentleman named Fred Durst, who was the lead singer of a bank called Limp Bizkit that was very popular back in the 90s. And that was my dream job at the time. I grew up loving Limp Bizkit, loving Fred. And I lost that job a couple months after being in IT because of some political issues I had with the founder of Geffen. And it actually wasn't drug related. It was actually just I didn't get along with the main guy. But when I lost my job, I was working my ass off in Hollywood. First one in, last one out for three, four years, and everything came crashing down. I felt like I had no purpose. And that's what sort of started me on this personal development journey. And the technology was advanced enough that when I bought a book on Amazon or on itunes, the recommendation engines had already begun. So it's like, hey, you bought this, you might like this. And I just started to consume personal development like I did drugs and became very interested in it and started sharing it back on MySpace, different quotes and inspiration stuff like that. That's how long ago it was. Even Friendster just thought, if I keep publishing, if I keep putting myself out there, if I keep being consistent, maybe I can serve folks. And after that, that developed some other businesses and eventually into what I'm doing now. I had a blog for a long time called thedailylove.com and at our peak, I think it was about 8 million views a month that we were getting. And this is way before all the personal branding stuff that's happening today. This is back in circa 2010.

But the more I started putting myself out there, the more I started to learn that it's about serving people and caring about people and adding value to people. I attended a Tony Robbins workshop and that was extremely inspiring to me because I love his facilitation sty. I'm an instigator. And he seemed to be able to make a profession with it. And I just. People just mad at me when I instigated my family. No one wanted me to do that. But. But he seemed to be able to get away with it. So I was like, how is he doing that?

So I didn't even mention this, by the way. Now, now you get a chance to hang out with Tony Robbins quite a bit. Yeah.

Yeah, Tony. Tony's awesome. He's amazing. Yeah, we can talk about him. He is. He's a. He's a great soul, and he's way ahead of his time.

Later, later on, I'm going to ask you about Tony Robbins and Oprah because I know you're. You're one of the few people who's been on this podcast who has had a chance to hang out with both of those folks and learn a little bit from them. So I'll ask you that later. But so, so, so you went through that. And by the way, this concept of, you know, buying books to absorb people's thoughts and then taking immediate action on what you learn, I actually folded over a page in your book where you talk about that because, for example, like, one guy who, who I would love to hang out with. Right. He's on my bucket list to hang out with. I haven't. Haven't met him yet. Is Richard Branson. I just love his attitude towards life and his love for life and his passion for adventure and his, his business. And so I buy his books and I read his books and immerse myself in his books because he's one person who I aspire to learn from and be like. And that's one piece of advice that you have in the book is even if you can't hang out with somebody, just soak up all their information.

That's right.

So you went and you got all these books and you eventually got to this point where you wrote this book, Claim youm Power.

Yeah. So what happened was I was sort of in this weird in between where I hadn't quite fully quit my music business stuff and I hadn't fully gone into doing inspirational sort of blogging and personal brand stuff. And my wish came true and I had a client that won a Grammy. We won lots of Grammys. We performed at the Grammys in 2006 or 2007. It was a band called Gnarls Barkley. They had a huge song called Crazy back then in and, you know, it was crazy. The pinnacle of what I wanted.

I do remember crazy. I do remember crazy.

That's good. Okay.

I do know that. Yeah. That I'm crazy.

I know.

Okay.

Yeah. So. So they were like everywhere. And, and I remember producing, helping produce their Grammy performance. And, and when I got on the red carpet and I walked the red carpet with CeeLo green, I felt like I was in high school again. And I was like, this is, is bull. Like, I don't. This, this entertainment stuff is not for me. It's vapid, it's shallow, it doesn't matter. It's of the moment. It's, it's, it's ephemeral. And I went into the restroom to go to the bathroom. Stevie Wonder was next to me. And I said, if I can stand next to Stevie Wonder in the bathroom and not be happy, this job's not for me. I decided to quit basically the next week and dive all into what I'm doing now. And I had to make sacrifices. I moved back in with my ex girlfriend's parents in a pool house that was so far away from their house that there was no Internet. And I was too ashamed to go close to the house. So I, I'd go bum Internet from people on the streets like we didn't.

Have before phone tethering or before you could afford it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I had no money. Had no money. And then, you know, I'd get like hot water at Starbucks to use their Internet and my shirts always smell, my clothes always smell like coffee for years after that.

I've actually done that before at restaurants. Still to this day, I've walked in the coffee shops and asked for hot water and put like four Sigmatic Chaga in there. Just to use the WI fi.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that's the hack if you have no money. Right. And then I started publishing consistently online. And the first book I wrote was called Growing into Grace. And I wrote it very intentionally as a biography of sort of what my life had been up until that point. Because the early days of someone is always the most interesting. Like, how did they make the switch? And I wanted to write it when it was fresh in my mind, with a legacy in mind. Because I want to do this work for the rest of my Life. So in 70 years, once I've added value, 80 years, however much longer, I get a chance to be around 100 years, who knows? I want someone who finds me then to go, how did this guy get started and be able to have a first hand account of it? So I wrote it with a Lot of legacy in mind, because I knew I'd be doing this for the rest of my life. Claim youm Power is the first how to book that I've written. And it comes from about 10 years of working with clients and essentially asking the question, why? Why can't you do that? Why? So you say you don't have the money for it, but what else can we do? Well, I can't do it because of this. Well, why is that? And I didn't know it at the time, but I was and have always been programmed to be a root cause person because I was always trying to find the root cause of my mother's pain. And I knew that there's always got to be a solution. There was always ingrained in me. And so with clients, I get so frustrated, like, you're not getting the result. Why? And what I found was, across the board, everybody had something painful that they went through that sent some signal to them that, like, moving forward is not safe. That's kind of the bottom line that I figured out. And it didn't have to be something egregious. It could be something very small. Like, my dad was five minutes late picking me up from school. And there's a belief or a context that's made that says, you know what, Like, I'm not enough, or I can't do this, or I don't deserve that. And over the last 10 years, I've been able to create a type of life coaching called functional life coaching that's basically been inspired by functional medicine. And my whole thing is about trying to figure out what's the root cause, emotional block that's holding you back. And what's a very interesting thing, Ben, is that whatever pain someone's been through is directly correlated to their life purpose.

I want to back that up and get into that in just a second. But when you talk about your story, there's kind of a disconnect for me. Like when. When you were writing these books at the point where you were unsuccessful, where you quit the music business, where you were living out by your ex girlfriend's parents house, did you have, like imposter syndrome or anything like that, where you felt like you. You weren't really the guy to be writing a book about how to find your purpose in life.

I think I still have that to this day. I do have that. I've always had that. And I have a name for that part of my personality, actually. I call him Ro Fraud.

And I talk to Rod every once in a while, and I'VE kind of come to terms with the idea that the bigger the imposter syndrome, the bigger the integrity of somebody. Because someone who doesn't have integrity doesn't give a f, don't care. Right. They're just like, I'm gonna put myself out there and I don't care about the people. But the people who really have like significant imposter syndrome, I found those people who have the most caring. I don't know if you've seen that too, but I've really seen that the ones who care the most are the ones who are worried like that. And the ones who don't care, who are more sociopathic in nature, they don't tend to have that.

Yeah, you're, you're more, I think you're more conscientious and mindful when you recognize that maybe, you know, you're not God's gift to mankind so much as you're still trying to figure things out and share with other people as you're trying to figure things out what's working and what's not working for you even before you've actually made it.

That's right. And I've to this day am so transparent about my lack of credentials, so transparent about that. And people don't seem to mind because what people really want is they want results and they'll go to where the result is. And word of mouth spreads. And my Ph.D. if you will, is my results. And similar to you, I haven't spent time focused on the inner workings of my physiology as much as I have been focused on the emotional context and nervous system stuff.

Well, at that conference where we first met, someone pointed you, pointed you out to me from across the room. And I recognized you because I'd seen you at the gym. That was the first time I realized that the same guy from the gym was also attending the conference. And they said, have you met this guy? What he can do in terms of taking past experiences that you've had and helping you to find your purpose and find your power is mind blowing. The guy has a gift. And at that point I was very curious and very intrigued about you and what you do. And so I think that this is kind of the perfect opportunity to segue into what exactly you do, like how you hack people's trauma and allow them to find their purpose. I realize that the loaded question, and it's going to take a little bit of a detailed response, but get into what you actually do for people.

Yeah, well, I mean, I like to have the deeper conversation with People, I hate surface level conversations. I think that's one of the reasons why we get along.

I just can't stand small talk. And there's a lot of small talk and self help. There's a lot of like, just think a positive thought, change your thoughts, change your life, use an affirmation, do this type of stuff. And even in the biohacking space, people think that a certain supplement is the answer. And you know, I know I buy your supplements every month. Month. But I also get my ass in my gym. I work out, I work hard. And if I have dysbiosis in my body, I gotta figure that out.

You don't just smear kion skin serum on your face and sit back and eat Twinkies.

No, I wish, I wish. But if that's a recommendation, if that's your next fat loss hack, I will do it. I will do it faithfully. But to this day, I still do the protocol that you gave me for the morning AM cardio with the aminos. I still do that every day.

That's right.

That's right.

The idea of maintaining muscle by doing your fat, fat loss with high blood levels of amino acids so you can burn fat and build muscle simultaneously.

That's right, that's right. And I switched from the pills to the powder because I drink it in some water and it seems to the lime. I like that powder stuff.

Lime powder.

It's good stuff.

It's a little more flavorful. Yeah. Okay. So we digress.

Yeah. So anyway, so the idea is that I like to have the deeper conversations. And so what I do is I create a type of coaching called functional life coaching. And I help people very rapidly, rapidly identify the emotional blocks that are holding them back and where that originated from. So I am a human quest labs for your trauma. Think of it that way. There's a lot of diagnostic tools that are coming out these days to help you figure out what's happening. I know we both love viome in your microbiome and stuff like that. I sort of help figure out what is the emotional diagnostic of your past trauma. And it doesn't have to be something significant. And then we help you essentially, if I put it in sort of scientific terms, perform different neural exercises to help your nervous system no longer anticipate threat associated with that event. And it's amazing how that one event can bleed over into everything else, because the nervous system is very binary of either safety or threat. And so we want to start to create more safety and less threat in someone's life. And what's very fascinating is, is when you look at the pain of someone's past, whatever makes them compassionately angry or something that just where time just flies by, or the skills that come really easily to them, or the cause or mission that they're serving, there's always a direct correlation between those two things.

And so when you start to leverage, like, hold on a second, what I went through helps me serve in this way. And the best way for me to heal is to start to serve other people in a similar sense or with similar.

Intentions or context. People change fast. And I'll give you a very grounded example. We had, I think one of the most extreme cases is we had a woman who joined one of our high end programs on food stamps. She had just got off of food stamps and I was not entirely sure how this person was going to be successful, but this person showed up consistently and she came to one of the retreats where we do a lot of this deeper work. And what we found out was, is that there was a significant, in her case, a significant trauma history. And she had complex trauma, which is shock trauma and relational trauma. And what happened was, is that she had learned a couple things. One, if I speak up, I'm going to be hurt more, because when she would yell out, she would get more pain. But the other thing she learned and made a decision unconsciously was, is that if I speak out in my business, that will happen. So her body made an unconscious decision that anytime I'm visible, anytime I make up, take up space, anytime I use my voice, I will get pain. And she even extended it to her family where she said, not only would I get hurt, but my kids will get hurt too. This is all unconscious decision making. It's not a conscious awareness. But when we helped her understand that the people who hurt her are still winning by her not speaking up and that her kids are suffering by her not speaking up. And that by speaking up, by putting herself out there in her business and by taking up more space and being visible, that's the best way to get revenge and to take care of her family. Within 45 days, she had a $50,000 month from food stamps.

So I don't understand. What exactly are you. Like, is there, can you walk me through the steps that you actually took with her? Like, is there a system that you use?

Yeah, so. And some of this is outlined in the Claim youm Power Book. But what we do is we look at the easiest thing to identify is the behavior that you want to change. So maybe it's you know, I don't know. I want to do less Spartas every single month because I'm a crazy Sparta racer. I'm addicted to them. Or maybe it's I want to stop drinking glass of wine at night. Or it's I want to stop yelling at my girlfriend. Or it's I want to go with.

The first example because I talk to a lot of people who listen to this show and they identify themselves with their fitness and with their body and with their physical performance, and that is their outlet in life. That's something that, that I've had to fight an uphill battle against a guy who I think, you know, Lewis Howes. Oh, yeah. You know, I read his book the Masks of Masculinity, and one of them is the athlete mask.

Right.

Like you find your identity, which I've done since a, you know, since the age of 14, through being an athlete, through having a body, through going out and doing hard things. And that's to a certain extent like my identity, almost like this rat on a wheel. And I don't want to paint it in full negativity. Right. It's an enormously important and healthy part of my life. But at the same time, I had to find balance. I know a lot of people listening maybe haven't found that balance. So let's go with that as an example.

Sure. Okay, great. So let me put some context around this. That then. So the most important work that's being done in personal development and human development right now is the Polyvagal Theory by Dr. Stephen Porges. It's more important than brain health and it's more important than microbiome health, in my opinion.

And what Dr. Porges found out and is talking about is there are three phases of the nervous system. There's safety, and when I'm safe, think of it like a stoplight. Green, yellow, red. When I'm in safety, I have social engagement, I have better healing responses. My body is emotional and physical regulation and I'm digesting well. Everything tends to be in balance. Yellow is more a state of hypervigilance or anxiety, and red is isolation and withdrawal. And what's interesting is the vagus nerve has an automatic isolation response. So it's not just when we have threat that there's a fight or flight response. That's the famous response, or mend and attend. Fight or flight is very, well, well known. But what's less known is that it's also an automatic response to isolate. And so that's withdrawal. So if you think about it. Like we have evolved from reptiles. When a turtle is threatened, its head withdraws back into its shell. So withdrawal, isolation, separating, being invisible is also another way that someone can survive. And the other thing is it's automatic in mammals. So when someone, sometimes some people will see blood, they pass out. That's called vasovagal response. Why we have an automatic isolation response in the presence of threat is that that fight or flight is only possible if our nervous system believes that escape might be possible. If I can escape this, I'm going to fight or I'm going to flee. If I believe that life threat is imminent, then I will isolate because it's basically going to. Also in psychology, you're dissociating. It's another version of isolation. You're dissociating from the trauma or the event. And the reason why we do that is because from a mammalian perspective, who wants to be conscious when you're being eaten, right? So that's one of the reasons why there's an automatic shutdown response. Response.

That's why shark attacks don't hurt very much. That's right, because as you're being eaten by the shark, your entire body creates enough endorphins and enough nervous system down regulation where you don't even feel the pain.

That's right. And that's all regulated through the vagus and the unmyelinated vagus. But that has a direct correlation to the conversation on exercise. Okay. Because mammals have a morbid fear of immobilization. If you think about being immobilized, physically restrained, trapped, nobody wants to be trapped. And the thing about fitness, and I'm guilty of this too, is a lot of people who have that sort of athlete mask that we referenced from Lewis's book. My hypothesis is that they have such a morbid fear of stillness and mobilization that they're in that yellow where they're in the anxiety and they're always moving. They're moving, moving, moving, moving, moving. Because stopping is death. Stopping feels like isolation. Stopping feels like I am in completecompletely immobilized. And the goal is to get your nervous system to a place where you can have immobilization with a safety response in your nervous system.

Hey, I want to interrupt today's show. You ever heard of Kanewa? Kanewa is kind of like that superfood quinoa, but it's crunchier, it's tastier, it's a natural gluten free source of B vitamins and minerals. It's got a bunch of flavonoids in it. It like kercetin. Tons of research behind this stuff. It's called Kanewa. If you've never had the mouth pleasure of consuming Kanewa, here's what I've done for you. I've blended it with a whole bunch of other real superfoods. Cocoa butter, cocoa nibs, coconut flakes. Can I say cocoa anymore? Organic honey grass fed gelatin, wonderful almonds, organic rice protein, organic pea protein, organic sesame seeds, sea salts, jam packed with over 60 trace minerals. I have managed to pack all this into one tiny little wrapper that's gluten free. It's dairy free. There's no artificial sweeteners. My kids eat it all the time. I mow down these things like crazy. Now it's called the Kion Clean Energy Bar. The Kion Clean Energy Bar. It's literally real food in a wrap wrapper. Totally guilt free. Toss this stuff in your gym bag, toss it in your car, put it in your pantry. I even put them in the freezer and I sprinkle them on top of ice cream. Yeah, you're welcome for that tip. You're never gonna go back. It's just a big tasty punch of mouth watering, chocolatey, salty, coconutty goodness. So you can get it@getkion.com I'm super proud of these bad boys. Get K-I-O-N.com and grab grab yourself a box of the brand new Kion Clean Energy Bar. This podcast is also brought to you by something you could, you could dip that energy bar in. I haven't tried this yet. I should. So there's this golden milk. What it is is it's smooth coconut milk, cinnamon ginger, lemon balm and super mushrooms like reishi. So you get this warm relaxing beverage that you can sip on at the end of the day and it just tastes so good. Sometimes I'll put a few drops drops of like CBD in there to add the relaxation effect even more. Sometimes I'll like blend it on a hot day with ice on a cooler day just in some some water or some extra coconut milk or almond milk. The sky's the limit with what you can do with this stuff. But it's golden milk and turmeric is the base. So you get this awesome anti inflammatory effect and it tastes like gangbusters. So it's called Organifi gold. You can get 20 off of this stuff. You just to go to Organifi.com Organifi spelled with an I Organifi.com and use code greenfield, to save 20% off of anything from organifi. Check them out. I want to ask you how to do that in a second. But one other person who comes to mind when you describe that not from a fitness standpoint, but from a moving, moving, moving standpoint, is my mom. And she is very hard to sit down and just talk to because she's always. It's always got to talk to this person. I'm going to go do this. I've got this going on right now. I need to walk here. And it's hard to just get her to stop. And I think I get a lot of that from her. Like, it's hard for me to sit in silence and listen to that still small voice. It's been 10 years of being immersed in a culture that fortunately now is very focused on meditation. Meditation and breath work. And, you know, my time sitting in the sauna, staring at the sand, in the hourglass or the candle. Like, I've had to train myself to be still and to listen to that still, small voice in the silence. But I look at my mom and it's always just like, go, go. Hey, mom, can we talk? Yes, but I got to do this and do this, and why don't you hop in the car with me? We'll drive here. We'll talk while we're driving. Yeah, I. I get it.

Yeah. So, but. So this is, this is. So this is the. This is one of the big missing pieces, right? Is that like. But no, meditation is going to really help you. If your nervous system says sitting here, being still means you're about to get eaten. Right. Your nervous system will resist it all day long. And this is where you get into sort of exercise mania. And movement is fantastic. But there's a lot of guys that I know who, they move too much and then their body sends them a signal through the form of an injury. And it's really hard for them to slow down when they get injured, even.

Though they keep trying and usually injure something else.

That's right. Exactly 100%. And the ironic thing is that great sleep recovery and even think about all the things you want in a relationship with a partner. They're all immobilizing behaviors. Lovemaking, cuddling, hugging, all those things. Being present with your partner, you're immobilized. So if you have a fear of being immobilized, if you have a trauma around that you're going to not be present in a relationship, you're going to be moving around really quickly. And if I sort of May offer some insight. One of the things that may have been a really good part of your makeup and also a part of what you've maybe been working on with being able to be able to be still is that the way that you were able to sort of bond with your mother was through movement. Right. And that would then mean that stillness would be on a certain level to your nervous system, a betrayal to her because she has a hard time slowing down. And so if you say, I'm going to slow down, there might be a part of you that says, and then I won't get my mom's love. And that's where we start to really look at. It's not exactly abuse, but there's definitely an emotional work to be done in a situation like that, and we all have it. For me, my father gave me cinnamon rolls. Excuse me, cinnamon rolls and cinnamon bread toast in the morning. And so to me, anything sugary and cinnamon like, is love. So I have a hard time with those flavors. I have no problems passing on chips or whatever. And that's been one of the reasons why I got pre diabetes is because to me, sugar and cinnamon was love. And Domino's cinnam sticks was how I coped with being alone and isolated for a long time. So there was a direct dysbiosis produced because of the emotional issue. So when it comes to the athlete as an example who's always moving around, let's just say that you're, you know, let's just say you're somebody who's moving fast and you're getting injured, but you want to keep moving. We would look at that behavior, and we'd ask you, what story are you telling yourself about this behavior? Well, I got to keep moving. I can't stop. I got to get after it, whatever the term is. Then the question I'd ask is, okay, well, how does not getting after it make you feel? Then we would drop down into the emotional body, and now we're getting into what's called neuroception. Neuroception is a great term coined by Porges. Dr. Porges. And Neuroception is basically the perception of our nervous system. And it's afferent, which means it sends data from our body up to our brain. Efferent is from our brain down to our body. And so we have afferent information coming up from our body from every organ that's connected to the vagus nerve. And they're all making decisions about what's safe and what's not safe. That's what neuroception is, it's the perception of your nervous system. So if the afferent information from your body is saying, this is dangerous, you're gonna feel stress, anxiety, all kinds of things to be able to keep you from moving. So we drop you into the emotional body and we say, okay, how does not getting after it make you feel? And most people, especially if they're masculine, will say, I don't know, and the tone of voice will drop a little bit. And if I push a little bit further, then it's like, I don't know, not good. And if we push a little bit further, eventually we'll get to a stress. And if we push a little bit further than that, maybe I get the angle. And if we push a little bit further than that, we might get the sadness. And then if we get to a deeper emotion, I say, okay, well, what do you have to believe about life? That not getting after it means creates sadness. Like, what's the context that you're viewing this? And that takes work to get there. But it might be something like, well, if I'm not moving, then my mom won't love me. That's a context. And the whole nervous system has been trained. And then you go, well, when did that happen? And you do a regression and it's always before the age of 10. And at some point someone decided, well, movement. And I have another dear friend of mine, Adam, who has a fast moving mom. He's a coach, I think you guys have met, actually once, Adam Cobb. And he loves his mom. And his whole mindset is movement creates momentum.

He has an ACL injury right now too, and so he has to be still right. Right now. And it's ironic in a sense because four or five years ago I was not moving and he was getting me to move. And now he's not moving and I'm moving. It's pretty ironic in our friendship, but the idea is that we make these decisions about how to survive and then our whole nervous system gets on board with that and we get all this information from our body that's sending up all this information and context basically through our vagus nerve, through the cervical 10C 10 nervous nerve. And all that gets interpreted by the amygdala, the hippocampus, et cetera, as what's the intention of this experience or this environment. And then that's why you have a hard time sitting still, is because all this information and basically all these neural pathways say stillness equals no love for my mother. And it's crazy to think about it. Because no one consciously makes a decision like that. But when you start to get into the decisions that the body is making without your conscious awareness, there's all kinds of decisions that are being made that you don't know are being made. And so I like to kind of get people in touch with that. And what we do is we help people revisit those uncomfortable places where there's a moment of sort of immobilization where they're back there, and then we get them out of that into, like, more of a movement pattern or a dancing pattern or a happy pattern. And then we take them back to that hard place. And then we bring them back to a happy place. And that's called somatic experiencing. And what happens is if you can go to a darker place and then go to a lighter place and then go back to a dark place and then back to a light place, your nervous system won't start to just anticipate. Every time you go to a dark place, you won't be able to get out of it. And it starts to produce emotional resilience. And you start to. And your body starts to realize, well, not every single time that I'm still, am I not going to get the love from my mother, or not every time am I still, am I going to be eaten by the tiger? And of course, consciously, we would never decide that. It's all the unconscious systems. And so I really dwell in the realm of the body. And not the body as it relates to physical fitness, but the body as it relates to neuroception and the data that's being afferently sent up to the brain. And it's amazing when you start getting in there that people start to realize they've made some very interesting decisions at very young ages. That is creating a context, a filter that they're viewing the world through. Through. That's not entirely accurate. And here's the thing about context is that the context that you view life from, which is, for example, if I'm still, then I won't get the love of my mom. That sends a signal to your nervous system that says stillness is a threat. And so anything that makes you still will be interpreted as a threat, even though that's not entirely true. And so context is everything. Because context basically helps you figure out the intentionality of the world around you. And if the intentionality of the world around you tends to be a threat, no matter what's actually happening, you will experience threat in the body if you perceive the intentionality of what's around you. As generally safe, you'll experience safety in the body. And so there's a combination of making sure that your outer environment is safe and healthy and looking at the neuroception and the decisions that's happening on the inside and going, is that the best choice for me to make? Is that always true? Because our nervous system generalizes all the time, the time. And we can get into isolation. And that's the one good thing about movement and exercise is the second you start moving, the second you start doing the treadmill, the second you start doing the circuits or whatever you do, you break that isolation signal in the vagus and you activate the vagal break and you can come out of isolation. Because it's impossible to have isolation in your nervous system when you're moving. The problem is it's not just enough to move. You have to feel safe when you're still too. So it gets into a lot of nuance when we start talking about the nervous system and how to regulate it, how to regulate emotional states. And depending on your trauma history, this type of stuff can be either very simple or very difficult to complete. For sure.

Well, yeah, I know it's involved. That's why there's an entire book about it that you wrote that walks you through this concept of getting out of that stuck state.

That's right.

But kind of really relevant to the topic at hand is this. A lot of people are listening because they know they want to their find purpose in life and they need to get out of that stuck state. How do you go from being in that stuck state to actually finding your purpose in life?

Great question. So let me define purpose first and foremost. Okay. And let me also just tell you this. So there was a study that had 136,265 participants and there was nobody paying for it. It was all self funded. So there's no bias. Okay. And the study was published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine.

Excuse me, the Psychosomatic Medicine Journal of Behavioral Medicine. And the conclusion was that possessing a sense of purpose in life is associated with a reduced risk of all cause, mortality and cardiovascular events. So what that means is you can live up to 10 years longer and HDLs improve, LDLs improve, A1C improves, HRV improves. So many things improve when you have a sense of purpose. So it's not just how do I find my purpose? But when you have purpose, it literally puts you in a place of emotional and physical regulation as well. And that comes from a very large data set.

And I can back that up by the way, because I have found my purpose in life and outlined it along with the help of your book, actually even more clearly over the past year than it ever has been.

That going through the Lifebook course with Joe John and Missy Butcher. And I'll eventually be doing a podcast on that too. And, you know, a big part of having your purpose in life is it's incredibly convenient and gives you this spirit of clarity because you can feed everything through that filter. Like, my purpose in life is to empower people to live a more adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. To empower people to live a more adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. And I pass everything through that filter. Like, you know, someone recommended the other night that I really get into this TV show, Westworld, and they described it and it sounded intriguing. These people go into the, into, you know, like a virtual wild wild west and they get to, you know, like do whatever they, they want there. And, and it's this, this crazy woven tale of mystery and tree and violence and, and it sounded incredibly interesting. And I actually turned it on on the airplane. I watched 30 seconds of it and immediately thought, is this empowering me to enable others to live a more adventurous and joyful and fulfilling life? And the answer was no. So even though. And I turned it off and I turned to do something which was equally fun for me and potentially not what people might be considered to be productive, which was reading this new fiction book I'm into called the Earth Sea series. But by me reading fiction, that actually fuels my ability to be able to write fiction, which is something that I love to do. And through writing my fiction, I actually do empower people to live a more adventurous and joyful and fulfilling life. So for me, everything, even those tiny little decisions about how I'm going to entertain myself, come down to filtering it through my life's purpose.

I love it. And that is the whole, whole point of it. Purpose is the emotional immune system of your life. That's what it is. It is something that can filter out the things that are not supposed to be there. So that was a great, great, great, great example because in the highest sense, it's a doorway between your inner experience and your environment. And you get to choose what you let in basically through that lens, right? So 100%, right? So the technical term for purpose, okay, from the Psychosomatic Medicine Journal, is that purpose in life can be defined as a self organizing life aim that stimulates goals, manages behavior and provides a sense of meaning. Right? So you just nailed it with how you like Using it as the filter, I make it way simpler. And the way that I view it is even simpler than this. Because anyone who sets a goal, I don't care what the goal is, Sparta, race, billion dollars, meet Richard Branson, meet Tony Robbins, lose £100. Like whatever the goal is, you're going for the emotional payoff of that goal. You want the emotional payoff of the goal. So everything I do is in the context of emotion. And so my definition of purpose is simpler. My definition of purpose is basically this. It is an emotional state that you generate within yourself and express to others in the form of service. That simple. It's an emotional state that you cultivate within yourself and generate within your yourself and then you express it to others in the form of service. And there's a hierarchy of those emotions. You have to focus on making yourself generating those emotions within yourself, then figuring out a way to connect with a higher power. And that doesn't have to be God, it could be nature. But we can talk about spirit in a second and then also then serving other people. And most people have an others focus only and they forget themselves. And so you want to figure out what are the emotions that you want to feel most of the time. And we have a process in the book that helps you figure that out.

It's a very cool process, including like things that you like to do when you were a kid and your fondest memories when you were growing up. It was a really cool process for.

Me to go through. I love that you went through it and that you actually can give me the details on it because you just do the research, man, I just love that it's so cool. So 100%. We go emotional mining and I could give a list of emotions in the book and just say pick one. But something happens when you really make it a personalized process. So you figure out what those emotions are and you look at have I been living my life this way where I'm generating these emotions in myself and then serving others with them. And if you, if that sounds too woo woo. If you think about a culture like in a company, a culture in a company which is like one of the most important things for profitability and long term success is basically a group of shared emotional states. When you look at having raving fan clients, you're transferring the company's emotional states to those raving fans. And the guy who wrote the book on culture, Tony Hsieh from Zappos, literally wrote the book called Delivering Happiness, which is an emotional state. So it's all about emotional states. In a relationship, romantically, emotional states matter. It all helps regulate the nervous system. And I've never met someone who says, you know what? We are just always so happy together. Let's get a divorce. No one's ever said that to me. Right. So it's always about figuring out those emotional states that you got to feel. And. And then exactly as you said, Ben, putting it through that filter and starting to realize, for me, my top emotion is nurturing. So the question I would ask is, is this nurturing for me? And is this nurturing for my connection, for my higher power? And does this help me nurture other people? And does it produce excitement, which is my second emotional state? So those are my top two. If I can figure out how to feel nurtured and excited in my business, in my relationship, in life in general, I'm going to have an amazing life. And if I can focus on helping other people feel nurtured and excited, I'm never going to run out of clients. We're always going to be growing. Our social media will be super engaged. Everything that we're doing will be great. But that's the name of the game. So you have to figure out what are the emotional states that you want to feel. And then the hard part is. So that's called emotional awareness. Then you need the emotional intelligence to say, how do I feel that way? And that gets into all kinds of behavior change, from what you're eating to what you're consuming, to perhaps relationships that you're in. It also probably is going to require some type of environmental change because your environment really informs what you're feeling most of the time. And then the hard part and you'll get this is it's not just emotional awareness and intelligence. The third part is the emotional fitness, which is doing this shit every damn day. And people come to me and they're like, how long does it take to change a habit? And I'm like, okay, it depends on the research. Anywhere from 30 to 60 to 90 days. But who wants to change a fucking habit? Change your life. To change your life, you have to make a lifestyle change every day. Don't worry about the next 30 days. Just worry about today and focus on doing it today. It drives me nuts. And people like, change a habit in 30 days. I don't want to change a habit. I want a lifestyle. And when it comes to personal development, for some reason there's this idea that I can go to Masten's four day seminar and if a year later My life hasn't changed. The seminar didn't work. But if I go to Ben's four day boot camp and a year later if I'm not fit, it's my fault because I ate pizza for the rest of the time. And it's the same thing is true in fitness fitness and in personal development is that you've got to have that emotional fitness which you earn every single day through your own efforts. And so it's just like the gym, right? Like the barbell or the kettlebell is not going to lift itself. You got to do the lifting. And so you. And that produces new neural pathways, it produces new habits, you have a new environment, you have different ways that you show up in relationships. Your tone of voice changes, your facial expressions change, how people perceive you changes, what you're expressing goes from complaining and victim to more what you want to create and survivor mindsets. And so it's a big shift and it is a lifestyle transformation. It takes a lot to change your life at that level. You got to have a mentor, you've got to really have an environment that is encouraging the person that you're becoming. You cannot.

Think your way out of a bad environment. It's impossible. Just like you can't exercise yourself out of a pizza. And so the environment has to shift and you've got to have support. And the most important thing is you can't do it alone. So many people use social media and these online courses or books as a reason to say I read the book and I'm going to isolate and I got it. But you've really got to learn how to do it with other people. Because one of the things that we're learning about regulating the nervous system is that the mental health world kind of preaches self regulation like learn how to manage your own emotional states. The problem with that is that if you really look at how we're wired, regulation of our emotional states, meaning feeling good, how to have mental health is built into relationships. So we can only self regulate if we co regulate. But the mental health world says you have to self regulate or we're gonna medicate you, but we have to learn how to co regulate together. And so there's a whole conversation about who you hang out with, your tribe, all that type of stuff as well, and your day to day environment. But if I had to sort of summarize all of it as concretely as possible, that would be it.

Wow. My primary motion by the way, was acceptance because one of my earliest fondest memories was laying in the Field back behind our house outside of Lewiston, Idaho, staring up at the sky, surrounded by all these gorgeous wildflowers that were growing up around me. I would just lay there as a boy with my boxer Bruno sitting beside me. And we would just lay there, there for sometimes an hour or two, just staring up at the sky. And I remember one of the most distinct feelings that I had was I completely accepted myself in the moment for who I was. I didn't care what anybody else thought of me. And I would just lay there and be me, enveloped in my own thoughts and my own dreams and my own just, you know, complete carefree moment of just being a boy laying there. And so when was I. Of the primary emotions I wrote down was acceptance, right? I accept myself for who I am and don't allow others to determine who I'm going to be and don't judge myself based off of what others expectations of me are. But going through the process in the book is what allowed me to really dial that in.

That's awesome. That's so good.

One thing I wanted to ask you was, can the purpose change during life? Do you find people whose purpose changes during life? Because like I said, I want to empower people to live in more advanced, adventurous, and joyful and fulfilling life. And if that's different in 10 years, does that mean that I didn't identify my purpose correctly?

So in the context of the book definition, the way that I would describe my purpose, because the top two emotions for me are nurturing and excitement. So the way that I would phrase it is the purpose of my life is to nurture myself and my higher power and express the excitement that results while inspiring others to do the same. That would be sort of the technical definition of it. And what happens is that the way that you would encourage people or help them live an adventurous life, or in my case, help them feel nurtured, the expression of that might change. There's many different business vehicles that can produce that experience. There's many different relationships that can produce that experience. The emotional states don't really change. What does change is you might refine them over time because especially if there's a lot of trauma and or lack of emotional awareness, the more that you get into your body and notice how your body's feeling, you're going to have more clarified words that are going to work for you and resonate in a different way. But really what you're looking for is you're chasing, everyone's chasing an emotional state. So you have the power at all times to generate emotional states within you. And when you know what you need to feel that way, then you're in the state to serve other people. And the way that you serve them, them will always change. One of my dear friends and mentors, Carolyn Mace, if you ever want to go down a deep spiritual rabbit hole, her book Sacred Contracts is like an anatomy of the spirit. They're just mind blowers. It's very woo woo and amazing. But she's also very direct. And I was talking to her in my late 20s, I said, Carolyn, I'm the guy who teaches people how to find their purpose. And I don't know what my purpose is. I lost it. And she looks at me, she goes, sweetie, you're going to ask that question once a decade. And if you're not, you're not doing anything important, you know. And so the idea that how I express my purpose, I think will always shift and change and grow, especially because technology is expanding so quickly. But the emotional states are going to more or less, the emotional targets are going to more or less stay the same.

It still scratches that same emotional. It makes perfect sense. So since writing this book, you have, you've, you've kind of exploded in terms of popularity. I know that you've, you've shared stages with guys like Tony Robbins and you've been able to hang out with Oprah and you've been able to get some amazing pieces of life advice and soak up knowledge from some of these people that you've been able to hang out with. So first of all, how'd that happen? How'd you get to the point where you're such an icon? You have one of the most popular podcasts on itunes now as well. How'd that happen?

Well, I mean, I got on the Ben Greenfield podcast is how it happened. So of course. And this podcast.

And you started taking amino acids.

That's true. It's of lot a all true. No, I think, I mean, I'm gonna give you a really lame but important answer and then I'll get more detailed. Okay? And it's not a sexy answer, but it's the truth. My mindset has always been one of contribution and trying to add value as much as I can. I am the worst. I am the worst at transacting on my relationships. The worst at it. Like, I'm not like Keith Ferrazi or any of those guys that can, like, you know, never eat alone, stuff like that. Like, I'm never, I'm not thinking about that relationship economics. I just don't do that. I just get around. I'm around people, and I always ask, how can I help? What do you need help with? That's always been my mindset. And because I had that sort of early Hollywood experience, celebrity doesn't really impress me because there's lots of famous people who are not nice human beings. And what really inspires me is the type of person that somebody is. And with Oprah, what happened was, is I just was consistent online from 2006 to 2012 or 11, whenever she found me and her staff had found me, and they reached out, and I thought it was spam at first. There's definitely not someone from Harpo reaching out to me. That's definitely from Nigeria. It was spam, is what I thought. And someone was going to ask me to send them money for their prints or something like that, those Nigerian emails. But it was a legitimate email.

I responded, and they had wanted me to participate in an online class that she was doing, and I did. And then they wanted me to participate in a tour that they were doing and blog about it. So I was being of service, and I did that. And the way that it was able to get to Super Soul Sunday was a really interesting story. I also am very competitive, and it was hard for me in the early days of being online to help people and also not be competitive. I had to reconcile that. When the Oprah folks called me, they said, hey, Masten, do you want to go on tour with us? The answer was, yeah, and they want me to blog. And they asked me, they said, do you know anybody else who has a large following online that could blog about that? We could add. We could ask. And I knew a couple people, but I didn't sort of, like, offer them up right away because I went right into scarcity. I was like, you know what? If I tell them about this? My inner monologue was, if I tell them about these other people, then they're going to find out about them and they're going to forget about me. I was operating from scarcity at that moment. So I called a friend of mine who always tells me the right thing to do. And I knew what I needed to do, but I just had to call my friend to have him smack me in the face. Do it. And I said, here's the situation, Tommy. What do you think I should do? He goes, mastin, don't be an idiot. I ended up inviting some of my friends to be on the road, much to my ego's demise. But I knew it was the right thing. To do. One of those people was a guy named Eric Handler. He had a Facebook page called Positively Positive with a million likes or whatever.

Fast forward to the last day on tour. We were in Toronto on Life Class tour. Oprah was speaking. Iyanla Van Zant, Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra. And There was, like, two groups of 20,000 people or 10,000 people each. It was like two events in one day. It was crazy. After the event, I blogged it and shared about it online and fulfilled my duties. And I went back to the hotel, and I was going back to my room, and Eric from Positively Positive was like, mastin, come here. And we were in the lobby, and he called me over, and he brought me into the restaurant that was in the lobby, and we started talking, and there was a woman there that. That he was having dinner with. And we just started talking. And within about 20 or 30 minutes, I started to realize that this person is someone who was a part of Oprah's team who was helping run and coordinate her life. And she basically said, you guys seem really cool. Do you want to come to the after party for this tour? And when you get that invite, you say, yeah. So we went. And I thought it was going to be some big after party with hundreds of crew members, but it was a very small party, probably about 20, 30 people. And in the room was Oprah and all of her producers. Tony was there, and Deepak, and everyone was there, and then me and Eric. The thing that you do in a room like that is you don't go up to anyone who's well known and start asking them questions. You just kind of keep a low profile and be cool. So I just started talking to a couple friends of mine that were there.

After a while, Oprah came up, and we started talking. We ended up hitting it off, and we had a really good conversation for about an hour and didn't ask her for anything, just conversed with her like a normal person and was fluctuating between, oh, my God, that's Oprah. And just having a normal conversation. And then we went about our day, and I left, and she left, and everybody left and then went home and didn't think about it. And about a month later, I got a phone call from Harpo, and they said, hey, Mastin, we want to do a super soul Sunday with you and some of the young people from the younger generation. And I just kind of dropped the phone, and I was like, holy cow. She's like. They said, yeah, Oprah really enjoyed her conversation with you, and we want to have you on the show. And I was like, oh, my God. What? That's crazy. There was no tactic. There was no strategy. It was just being me. And back to your point about acceptance. And so then I said, okay. And they asked me who else should be on the show. So I said, well, my friend Gabby Bernstein and my friend Marie Forleo should be on the show. Show. And they brought Gabby on, and then they weren't entirely sure if they wanted Marie on the show because business and spirit don't really go together. But I talked to them about how empowering women financially is a really important spiritual thing and important for women's empowerment, and they said yes. And then the three of us were on the show. And I've just maintained that same service mindset. And the same thing's been true. When I was introduced to Tony and anyone that I've met. When I met Naveen J. From Viome, you know, the first time I met him, I thanked him for Viome because I hate kale and told me not to eat kale. And he asked me to say that from stage, and I did at the biohacking conference and. And made him laugh.

I think mine was corn, by the way.

So you hate corn and you were told not to eat corn?

Actually, I don't mind corn, but corn was a biggie for me. By the way, I'm going over to Naveen's house in a couple days for dinner.

Oh.

I said, hey, he has. He has a very big moon rock collection, by the way. For those of you listening in, I'll put a link in the show notes to my previous podcast with Naveen from Viome. Very interesting guy.

Yeah, I love him. So, anyway, the next time I see Naveen, I'm at the Genius Network event, and he's literally sitting right next to me for a whole day. And we were talking, and instead of going up to him and saying, hey, can you help me because you're a billionaire? I just said, hey, Naveen, what do you need help with? And we started talking about marketing, and I started giving him ideas for marketing stuff. And then finally he got so frustrated with me, he said, madison, you do it. And somehow convinced me to help him out with marketing. And I've been doing that for the past seven months, and we've been working together, and I don't take a dime. I don't get paid a dime for that work. I'm just literally just trying to help them with direct response and stuff like that. And we've done some webinars that I've helped create for them that are coming out soon. I helped us script a four part video series with Deepak Chop Oprah, that's going to be coming out soon. I was directing it. I was with Deepak, making sure that he was saying the right stuff because he can be very hard to get specific sometimes. And the microbiome stuff is so confusing that I had to be on set to make sure he was saying the right stuff because laypeople have a hard time comprehending it and even scientific people have a hard time comprehending it sometimes. But all that came from just being of service. And then I've met amazing people as a result of that that learn so much. And so, you know, I'd be able to add value to that company at a period where, you know, they were just getting started. And so to me, like that there's an intangible in that, you know. And so I just think that that's always been my mindset. So whether it's Oprah or Tony or Naveen or anyone else that I've met, I do my best to always lead with service. And I'm really bad at transacting on things. And I could probably leave money on the table all the time. Time. But the relationships are there. And that to me is the most important thing. And I believe in relationships that produce transactions, not transactional relationships. They're too hard to keep up. It's just not.

That's a great piece of advice. Always lead with service rather than trying to determine what other people can do for you. And looking at every relationship from a transactional standpoint, which a lot of people, you know, especially, you know, when I'm going to freaking Mastermind and conferences. I mean, a lot of times, you know, when people are apparently following Keith Ferratzi's Never Eat Alone book and come to your table to chat with you, a lot of times there's always that ask at the end that just, you know, kind of. It, it irks me sometimes when, when you realize at the end of a relationship that someone was in the relationship just to get something out of it from you.

Yeah, it, that's the thing. It doesn't feel good. And like with Naveen, his whole thing is like ending chronic illness, right? Like that's what he wants to do or ending, you know, making it optional. And like my whole moonshot is ending emotional trauma in my lifetime, like, that's my moonshot. They're so directly correlated that I made the decision to work with him because it fits in with my purpose. It fits in with my, that was a filtered decision. And what I've learned about the microbiome and being able to speak with them on a regular basis and be up on the data is like so relevant to what I'm doing in my work. And so there's just, and the money has been there, you know, for my company and stuff like that. So, so there always is a larger payoff. And Naveen is a righteous dude. And here's the thing about Naveen too. I'm going to brag about him for a second. Just like you, Ben. I know so many entrepreneurs in quotes, right? And these guys sometimes, or women sometimes, they'll take forever to get back to you. Naveen writes you back before you finish sending the email.

Trust me, I know where you can see the little, I don't know what you call them on the phone when they're, when you message someone, you can see that they're typing or texting back. Yeah, I don't know how he does it. I don't know how he accomplishes everything he does. I'm actually, when I'm at his house, I'm going to interview him and I have plenty of productivity questions I'll be asking him. So again, for those of you listening and I'll link to that, I have a couple quick questions I want to ask you. Also, Mastin, what's the number one thing you learned from Oprah? Like the number one piece of advice you got from her? The number one insight you got from her after hanging out out with her?

I think it's sort of a two part piece. Again.

She'S probably one of the most grounded people I've ever met. She knows that she's an icon, but she doesn't really care and she makes you feel welcome in her presence. And I think that is so incredible because I've seen her treat the person who's serving dinner or love exactly the same as her best friend Gail, exactly the same as anybody else. And she embodies it and she really, really lives that. And it's so impressive to see that because at that point when you're someone at an iconic level like that, most people would have license to be not nice to people, but she literally is everything. Every time I've ever met her, been around her, she is literally the most gracious person I've ever, ever met. And that I'm not kissing her ass, I'm being so honest and genuine because it's just amazing to see that level of presence and that Level of like, she's with you, and she's with you no matter what your role is. And to me, that's huge. The other thing about Oprah is when she. She gave me some feedback on my first book, and she said it was okay. And that was, like, stabbed to the heart, but it was. It was a stab of the heart. And she said to me, she said, pick up your staff on the next one. And I said, okay, because she felt like I was apologizing in that book a lot. And that was some really direct feedback that I had to get. But it really. I stopped doing the daily love. I stopped doing everything I was doing, and I pivoted my business into. I don't even know what it was going to be, but it's led into doing the trauma hacking and the work that I do now. And so that's a direct. Direct. I've actually never told that story. That's a direct impact on her feedback. And it was really hard to hear, but it was so necessary for me to hear it at the time.

Wow.

Essentially, you could tell, you could think of it as. She told me to claim my power.

She said, knock off his apology crap, man. Pick up your staff. So that was, that was. That hit me hard in a really good way.

I like it. Yeah. What about Tony Robbins? Have you learned anything from. From him?

I mean, so much. I think Tony, in his facilitation style and what he understands about the human nervous system is ahead of his time. Still to this day, he's way ahead of the mental health world. And I think a couple things I've learned about Tony, I've learned some things to do and some things not to do from Tony. As far as what to do. Making sure that if you're working to change your life, focusing on your state, the state of your emotions, the state of your nervous system, getting in the right state is so, so, so, so, so vitally important. I've also learned that I can take my personality of instigating and use it to break patterns in a really healthy way and not just, you know, cause relationship problems and push people away, you know, burning things down, but actually lift people up with it. Because when he does his interventions and he does his work in a room, he can be very irreverent, but he uses it to lift people up, up. And I've been so inspired by that. He also. One time I was at his house in Palm Springs, and I was getting some advice early in my career, this is probably about eight years ago, and I said Tony, I told him my story and kind of asked for some general advice. He goes in the way he does Maston, that kind of low voice. He's like, you're going to be very successful in your life, but it's going to take you longer. And that's again, not something that you want to hear from someone like that. You want to hear like, oh, man, you're going to crush it. And I said, why is that? He goes, because you do things the right way and you have integrity and you lead with your heart. And it's going to be longer for you because you're not going to take the shortcut. But when you get there, you're going to be a late bloomer. But when you get there, you're going to blossom bigger and faster than anybody else. And he goes. And that pissed me off and inspired me at the same time.

And it was like sort of these two truth bombs between these two folks that really hit me in the heart and I needed to hear it at the time. And it was also post hypnotic suggestion because I've always thought about that ever since he said it to me directly. So those have been some very powerful lessons I've learned from Tony. And then recently, what I learned not to do is the way that he conducted himself at UPW with the MeToo commentary.

I think that there was a gaffe there and I think he messed it up. And I think he meant well, but he did not produce a very good result there as a facilitator with that woman and with the MeToo movement. And the thing that I learned.

I don't know anything about what you're talking about.

You can Google it, it's on YouTube. But there was a lot of backlash a couple months ago at one of his seminars about how he handled a moment of me too question. And one of the things.

I've also never been to a Tony Robbins seminar, so.

Well, you should go. Date With Destiny is like one of the most, probably the best seminar I've ever attended. It's incredible. UPW is awesome, but Date with Destiny is incredible. But what I learned to not do is to take down the instigation and. Or sort of the intensity in our seminars and create a lot more psychological safety in the room because we work with. Primarily with. There are a lot of guys that show up. There are good guys that show up. But there has to be an elevated conversation about trauma in the MeToo movement and a witnessing of the wound in a different way. And I think he's going to recover from it for sure. But for me, my dedication is to make sure that every seminar that we do is always a safe place for our people and that they're never going to feel sort of pushed the way that he did that. And it's not a blame. It's just I think that that was a moment that is a learning lesson for anyone who doesn't this work?

Well, there is. First of all, if you're listening, you need to follow Mastin because he's obviously a wealth of knowledge. And what I like about you is you're transparent and, you know, you can admit that whole, that whole imposter syndrome piece we talked about earlier and you're simply sharing what you're learning along the way and changing a lot of lives as you're doing. I mean, I love your approach and I realized that, that it's, it's few and far between that I get into things like self improvement on the Ben Greenfield show versus, you know, fitness and nutrition and biohacking and smart drugs and whatever else. But Masten really has created a great work with this book. And if you are trying to find your purpose and you kind of like me, just want to be able to name it and say what it is, but go through a system to be able to identify what your purpose is, I can't recommend his book. Highly inspired enough. And.

I read it of my own volition because it looked interesting and I heard a lot of good things about Masten and it turned out to be as good as I had hoped. So not just blowing smoke. Not just blowing smoke.

That means a lot.

It really is an amazing book. So go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Masten I'll put some links to some of the things that we talked about, even the Amazon treadmill desk that you too can use at 5.

I can't wait to find it.

Hotel Jim. Yeah. And I'll see you. I guess I'll see you in September down in Utah. We're both an event down there.

I can't wait. Well, Ben, thank you so much, man. This has been a great conversation and I really appreciate the time and the opportunity to share.

Thanks for coming on the show, Maston. And again, folks, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Mastin M A S T A N and also grab the book claim your power. Till next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Maston Kip Sign signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week.

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Sam.