The #1 Daily Habit That Changed Ben Greenfield’s Family Forever (& It’s Not a Biohack or Supplement!)

My name is Ben Greenfield. And on this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast. I play with oxygen and carbon dioxide and now hydrogen quite a bit. I'm actually building a bathtub in my garage that adds hydrogen to the water so you can bathe and absorb the hydrogen transdermally. And then next to that Shiftwave chair, I have a mask connected to a hydrogen inhaler and I put that on. I can breathe 4% hydrogen the whole time that I'm laying in that chair.. And for, for soreness, for recovery, for anything related to inflammation, hydrogen is incredible. And then most of the time, if I'm gonna like nap in the afternoon, I have a soft shell hyperbaric chamber that I crawl into that uses pressurized oxygen. And then you're breathing oxygen through a mask in that pressurized chamber. And that, for just recovery, for sleep, for a nap, anything like that, is pretty incredible. Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist. Nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond. I was recently in Austin, Texas. I connected with the fantastic co-hosts of the Meat Mafia podcast, Brett Ender and Harrison Gray. We had a great chat. They had a lot of questions for me. About topics I haven't talked a lot before about on podcasts: faith, family, legacy, my spiritual practice. I thought it was a great conversation and I'm giving it to you right here. All the shownotes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/MeatMafia. These guys make some kind of crazy like liver chocolate protein powder nutso stuff called Noble. They're giving me a discount code for that too that I'll put in the shownotes. And, that'll also be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/MeatMafia. Can't say it's a bad flavor. I mix it with water when I was down in Austin and put it in the refrigerator overnight. It made me nutty chocolate pudding in the morning. It's really good. Alright, anyways, all that's at BenGreenfieldLife.com/MeatMafia. Let's get down.

Well, as Brett was saying, super excited to have you on. It's been a long time coming for us. Just huge fans of what you do, your books, your podcasts that you've been on, and just love the work that you've put out. So, appreciate you coming on the Meat Mafia Podcast.

Thanks.

Yeah, you're both responsible for us getting red lights back in the early days. I have a good story where I share. I had a roommate. We shared this little studio apartment in New York City, probably like 2020 or 2021. And I had just listened to one of your episodes where you were talking a lot about the red light and it was so convincing that I'm like, I need to get a red light. Yeah, but I share a room. Have this. Yeah, I must have this device. Exactly. So I finally get one. I'm all excited. And if you— he's got the best perspective on it where I would just— he would be trying to sleep. And I would just be blasting this thing, dude, and it would piss him off so much. But I'm like, dude, I need the benefits. I need the red light. Yeah, that's because of you.

Yeah, yeah. I, I run into the same thing quite often with my wife. Like, there's some new toy, some new technology, and it's not allowed in the bedroom because she just— all the vibrating and the lights and the whistles and the bells, she's like, have— so we just moved into a new house and she's very happy because there's like the one place by my office, the room beside my office, where just all the crap gets dumped into, all the electrical machines and doohickeys and bells and whistles. Tools and widgets so she just can relax. Yes. Yeah.

Well, one of the things we love about you is that you're a great mixture of like this ancestral approach, but then also the biohacking, like new forward-looking tech. And you were talking about walking inside before on the treadmill.

Yeah.

And red light, like those are both like alternatives to like what you could practically be doing, you know, outside otherwise. Where do you kind of draw the line on, the ancestral side of things versus the more biohacking side of things?

Like we were talking about this outside in the parking lot about how there was just the Health Optimization Summit in Austin and it's a bunch of people trying to be healthy walking around under bright overhead LED fluorescent light all day in big built-up rubber-soled shoes on some kind of non-conductive surface and poor air quality. Yeah, I mean, like I don't have like a metric or a system that I use to analyze whether I'm, something's ancestral enough or whether there's too much of a shift towards just being inside biohacking in a hyperbaric chamber sucking on a bee propolis lollipop, listening to binaural beats or whatever. But, you generally kind of know like, "Hey, I need to get outside. I need fresh air. I need sunshine." And, I always know how I feel best. For me, I would much rather be swinging kettlebells outside with my sons, cranking out some push-ups in the morning sunshine, and then going for a walk when I can instead of using the indoor walking treadmill. And yeah, I think the advantage of a lot of the biohacking technologies is that you can kind of like concentrate in a pretty quick dose some of the stuff you'd have to spend a longer time doing outside. But nothing beats the outdoors. I mean, we just built this super tricked-out house in Idaho, you know, and, and the air and the electricity and the water is just incredible. You know, we pulled out all the stops, all the coolest technologies. And part of that was trying to mimic the natural spectrum of sunlight as much as possible. And to do that, you need a blend of incandescent and what's called OLED or LED lighting. So we have mixes throughout the house that kind of get close to this full spectrum of sunlight, you know, from the blue light all the way to the infrared and the near-infrared. And I had the guy who I've been working with on this project named Brian Hoyer, who's incredible. I got lucky that he lives in Sandpoint, Idaho, close to my house. We just did a whole podcast. We was like MTV Cribs for nerds, where we went through and just demonstrated, you know, how he grounded the floor and, you know, how the cables are shielded and all the different things. But he has this super cool meter, uh, that measures lights. Like, it'll show the full light spectrum, you know, whatever is in the 450 nanometer range, you know, up to the 850 or what. And so there's little peaks on the, on the screen. And we went into the main room of the house that we have all this fancy lighting in, and we did the screen test and it was pretty good. And then, we walked out in the sunlight and we did the test and it was 100 times better, more powerful, better in all the spectrum peaks. So, you can't beat God when it comes to biohacking technologies versus nature, but it's convenient. And for me living in Idaho, it's way easier to just get it from nature. And then, part of my job is to be the immersive journalist guy who's trying out a lot of the technologies that the person who's maybe relegated to a downtown Vegas or a New York City condo would want to use because they don't have as much access to sunlight and grounding and clean air and nature.

You almost make me think about just the definition of what a home is. And I feel like as Americans, we've almost gotten lost in the sauce of, hey, I just go here to sleep and do a little bit of work and just get out of the house as quickly as possible versus what you're talking about. I think it's a great goal for a man to put yourself into a financial situation where for your family, you guys build this place that you just absolutely love, where you, your wife, and your sons want to be there all the time. This is like—

This is a topic near and dear to my heart because there's like the scientific, you know, I want to live a long time and feel good and have good healthspan and lifespan part of it where you're almost like biohacking your own blue zone, like creating an environment where the rooms have low electricity and they're cold and there's low amounts of blue light and the flooring is grounded and, you know, the air is clean and scrubbed well and the like The water filtration system we use is just like 14 stages of filtration and oxygenation and structuring and unicorn tears and whatever else. Um, but then there, there's also the mentality that I think is more important, and this is the way that I think about a home, is to me a home is like a man's castle. It's like a place to come back to after all the travel. It's a place where your family really wants to be. I have friends who are like the homeschooling nomadic family, and if that's the adventure that you want to choose, I don't have anything against that. But when it comes to community building, setting up roots, knowing your local biome, knowing your local plants, knowing your local animals, developing friends, developing neighbors, knowing, you know, where Grandpa was buried and Great Grandma was buried, and just like living in a place where you have roots, to me that's, that's important. That's like high on my priority list. I don't think it's a necessity. I don't think people are doing it wrong if they decide to go the nomadic route. So, the way I think about this is I want to build a compound that, yeah, is like healthy and has all the biohacks and whatever, but more importantly, is such a cool and fun place to be and a place that is so identified with the Greenfield family name that my grandkids and my great-grandkids want to come over every day and play and hang out, and my kids want to like live in the same community 'cause we've just built a fun place to be. So that's why, you know, I view my home as almost like a mini Disneyland without all the woke PC crap. Yeah.

That's an important caveat.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Without the new Snow White and the Little Mermaid. So we've got, you know, at the other house in Washington, you know, I built a huge obstacle course that surrounded the whole property with ropes swinging from the trees that the kids could play in and log weaves and army obstacle courses. Balance beams and little 3D animals out in the forest that you could shoot your bow at and cornhole and bocce ball and a ton of different outdoor games. And, at this new place in Idaho, we've got 8-cage frisbee golf course. We're converting the old red barn into indoor basketball and pickleball. We're putting up all the archery 3D targets for shooting. You know, we're converting the big pond on the property in almost like a swimmable pool, you know, and then we'll put a bunch of floaty toys in the garage and just make it like a fun place for the family to hang out. And I would say that there's not— I'm not a spendthrift. I'm not into fashion. Like, I drive the same car into the ground for 20 years. Probably the two things that I spend money on are the home and then like taking my family out for an experience, like to a restaurant or, you know, travel or something like that. Yeah, but the home is something I kind of splurge on because I view it as not only a way to create a healthy living environment, but more importantly, like a way to create legacy.

Mm-hmm. Have you always kind of, have you always had that thinking around legacy or was there a moment in time where you turned a corner and started thinking more deeply around like what you want that family to look like? I feel like legacy is something that, It almost comes across, or I feel like just like in like modern culture, it's almost lost on people. Like the idea of having a multi-generational family, having a relationship with your grandparents.

It's like— Because you don't need to now. Yeah. I mean, you can be disconnected. You can move on. You can be your own person. If your dad was a butcher or a blacksmith, like it doesn't mean that you're going to grow up as a butcher or blacksmith or shoeing horses or whatever. Like we live for better and worse in an era where a young man or a young woman can grow up and just like be who they want to be and also be, if they choose to do so, disentangled from their family. I think you do see like everything from broken families to, you know, a lot of, you know, blame by kids on their parents for some kind of trauma that they had early in life, you know. And it's so easy to do things like that when the family is not a cohesive unit. And when a child does not necessarily place a great deal of pride or meaning upon their last name and like what the family stands for. I grew up in a family, no surprises here, like North Idaho, homeschooled K through 12. You know, I'm a second-generation Christian. My parents placed a pretty good deal of value just based on that demographic on family. So I grew up in a family where family was important. But we didn't have what I have for my family and what I've learned over the years, honestly, from like podcast guests. From— I wrote a book called Boundless Parenting a few years ago, and I learned a ton just interviewing parents during the process of writing that book. We didn't have a family constitution, a family trust, a family logo, a family mission statement, a family core set of values, you know, family traditions that are clearly spelled out. And that's something new, like, to this generation of Greenfields that I've put the emphasis on developing. What kind of started me down that path was I was all over the world. Like, this would have been about 10 years ago. So I'm racing Ironman triathlon. I'm speaking, I'm running all my businesses, I'm doing the podcast, I'm in full-on build mode, and business was at the top of the list. And it got to the point where I was not a present father, I was not a present husband. Um, my wife and I started to have a really rocky relationship. I didn't feel like I was seeing my boys growing through their formative years, and, um, there was a series of weeks where my wife and I were just like getting really distant from each other. And, you know, like the scary D-word was starting to go through my head and we were wondering if it was going to work. And that is when, even though I was, you know, I was still going to church and, you know, kind of sort of occasionally, casually reading my Bible and praying, that's when I really got down on my knees and started to pray more intensively and come to God and begin to rebuild my spiritual wealth, my spiritual fitness with, you know, just time spent in devotions and in the Bible and in prayer, but also realized that like you can have the best business in the world and, um, you have a lot of unhappy shit going on at home if the family is not something that you're also taking care of. So I kind of reprioritize at that point. This is like a decade ago to have my spiritual walk come first, my time with God come first, and then my connection to my spouse. Because if you and your spouse don't have your oxygen masks put on first, it's hard to take care of the kids. And then the kids, and then— and this part wasn't hard, you know, just making sure I take care of my health and fitness— and then the business is kind of like the last thing on the totem pole. Um, as a part of that process of realizing how important family is to just general happiness and fulfillment and meaning. And kind of like ironically, I think a lot of working professionals don't check themselves and ask themselves, wait, I'm out here like making all this money to provide for my family, but I'm never even with the people who I love that I'm providing for. And then they keep telling themselves, well, when I'm 35, I'm gonna have enough money to really like be able to take care of the family and, you know, have wealth creating wealth, and, and that's when I'll spend time. And then 40 happens and 45 and 50, and then your kids are 18 and they've moved on and gone to college and you haven't seen them because you're still just building, whether because of escapism or selfishness or addiction or, you know, the idolatry of work or the idolatry of money. So, um, as a process of buckling down and starting to focus on family, one of the things that I realized is that when you look at a lot of families who are successful financially or successful from a legacy standpoint, they have avoided the all too common rags to riches to rags scenario or, you know, silver spoon mentality, you know, in which, you know, one generation becomes wealthy, the next generation gets comfortable, abuses and uses that wealth, and then the next generation after is back to poverty. When you look at families who have avoided that, they typically have some type of a family trust in order to distribute wealth in a systematic and clearly defined way, meaning that if the parents pass or give a fortune onto their children, it's to be used in specific ways and not all at once. And, it's not just prostitutes in Vegas and gambling, whatever you want to do. Here's a bunch of money from mom and dad. Core set of family values, whether it's adventure or joy or love or curiosity or creativity or whatever it is that that your family holds dear, which we identified by just sitting down as a family and mapping this all out. A family mission statement, which just like a business mission statement, is usually crafted from that core set of values. So you identify the family values first, then you go on and say, okay, so what does our family stand for? What is our mission statement? And then from there, you can start to put together what would be called the family constitution. Where you have the values, you have the mission statement, and then it gets super fun because then, for example, we took our family mission statement and we graphically visualize that as a family crest. Meaning if you look at the Greenfield family logo, which is on like our pepper grinders, our throw pillows, our pickleball paddles, you know, giant flags that hang outside the front door, a huge like awesome like metal sign when you're driving up the driveway has the logo on it, uh, it's on our like hoodies and hats that we wear if we go out on a family date night. Um, that's all worked into the family crest, that logo. It's like I'm a tree at the top and my wife is the seed from which life springs forth at the bottom. And then my son River is like waves of water on one side of the logo, and my son Taren is a leaf to represent earth on the other side of the logo. And then you could probably Google Greenfield family crest and see it, but there's like a a lasso going around that logo, which represents my wife's Montana rancher background. And then, that goes down into an anchor that represents us anchored into the living waters of our belief in Jesus Christ and our religious beliefs. And then, on every side of the logo, there's a quadrant. So, the lower right quadrant is our love for creativity. So, there's books and paintbrushes and and, and art and music and treble clefs and, you know, violins. And then in the upper right quadrant is each of our spirit animals. So one of my sons is a gray wolf, the other one is a white wolf, um, or white fox rather. And then my wife is a dolphin. And it's kind of like all of our spirit animals like running through the universe. The left side of the quadrant is, um, like a long table that represents our love for like entertaining people and hospitality. But then there's bread and wine on the table, which also represents again our faith, like the Eucharist, the communion, bread and wine. And then the lower left side is our love for recreation. So there's like, you know, Frisbee, golf cage, and pickleball, and bocce balls, and, you know, tennis rackets. And so then surrounding all that are all these little stones. So the crest is in the shape of a shield. And if you look at the stones, you can barely see it, but there's like embossed in 4 of those stones the tree, the seed, the water, and the leaf. And every time we have a new grandchild or great-grandchild added to the family, their new logo will get added to that stone. And then the top of the crest— and this is an example of weaving elements of your mission statement into the crest— is our whole family climbing up the side of a mountain in lightning and thunder, because one element of our mission statement is we're— the Greenfield family is content no matter our circumstances. And then The Gates of Heaven are at the top of the crest, which represents our desire to help to teach people about Jesus Christ and salvation. And so that crest just basically hangs in the study, and then the actual Constitution, the big book, which we have digitally and also printed at our house, has everything else. Like, here's what we do on Thanksgiving, here's what we do on Easter, here's what we do on Christmas, um, here's when the boys do their rite of passage into adolescence, here's when they do their rite of passage into adulthood. Um, here's how we do our morning devotions and our evening time and how we have our mealtimes together. So in the same way that you'd create like a playbook for running a successful business, we have a playbook for the Greenfield family that when my sons get married, they each get a copy of that book that then they take with them to continue building upon. And it's also got like important things in there, like, you know, the the names and numbers for the people who run the family bank and the family trust and the family insurance policies. So it's just got everything in there that you would need to continue to build a generationally successful family. And I guarantee, like, my sons, based on all this, know what it means to be a Greenfield. They don't have a desire to just be nomadic and move on from the family because it's just like a temporary place to be until they're 18. Like, they pride in this idea that they're helping to build a generation of Greenfields that all have really good purpose statements and want to make a really good impact in the world. I mean, the Constitution even has like our memorial service plans, our funeral plans, which is a super powerful exercise for a kid to do, like write your own obituary. You know, what do you want at your funeral? What songs do you want sung? You know, what do you want people to be talking about? What kind of food do you want served? Like, that's even that's all mapped out in the Constitution. So there's a little bit of like the memento mori type of thing in there.

That's incredible. Yeah. I feel like the word that keeps coming back to me is intentionality as you're speaking too. And you think about— I love that. I'm thinking about that question, what does it mean to be a Greenfield man? And the goal is that 5 generations down the road, your great-great-great-grandchildren will be just as connected to the crest and the legacy and the mission as your sons are right now. And I've been thinking a lot about— I, I'm going to transition where I'm about— I'm getting married in June, Harry's getting married in August. So it's, it's very cool, just like the sparks and the changes that come from even just being engaged and ready to take that next step with your woman. And I think a lot about, um, just the sacrifices that my ancestors made just to get us here and how easy it is to overlook that. Yeah, I feel like what you're doing is the opposite of that, of honoring that. And, you know, your sons and your great-great-grandchildren are gonna they're going to ask themselves, what does it actually mean to be a Greenfield man? Or how would a Greenfield man respond in this situation?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Was— what's the saying? Strong men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make bad times. You can— I think you can make good times for your family and avoid creating weak men or weak people if you have, like you mentioned, intentionality and purpose built in to the actual, you know, like, mission statement of that family. So I think you can kind of like have your cake and eat it too. You can create good times and also create strong men and women.

Yeah, lineage is something, you mentioned Jesus, and I think like in the Bible, there's a clear connection to lineage playing an important part of understanding the spiritual family that you come from. Like for most people that are represented in the Bible, there's connection back to prior generations. And I love, like, I was almost speechless just listening to you talk about, you know, the level of intentionality that you are putting into just developing that family unit. Was that after that kind of like 10 years ago period? Was this kind of like the reformation of Ben and your family? Yeah. Okay, cool.

It was a decision about whether I really wanted to buckle down and double down on family and the things that I knew in my heart were important, family, my relationship with God, really, um, and now increasingly, you know, community and our neighbors and the people who we live around, um, or just continue to like build a business and make more money and whatever, like move to LA and be a celebrity trainer, like all those things that I think are attractive, but at the end of the day, you know, not as meaningful. You know, it's like the palliative care practitioner Bonnie Ware, I think her name is, she wrote like this viral article and then followed up with a book called Five Regrets of the Dying. And the 5 regrets are, I wish I had worked less. I wish I'd shown my true emotions more. I wish I'd chosen to be happier. I wish I'd been my true authentic self instead of who I thought the world expected me to be. And I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends. And I mean, that's a pretty powerful thing to think about because we can not only learn from our elders, but learn from the dying. It's like nobody actually says, I wish I'd whatever, you know, spent more time in the office replying to emails or, you know, working, you know. So yeah, I think you have to pair that with the idea that like if you, if you do a good job identifying your purpose statement and your so-called ikigai in life, like work can be such a self-actualized process that you could work a lot and not have regrets about that work. Like I work a lot, but I don't feel like if I'm on my deathbed tomorrow I'm gonna wish, like, man, I wish I'd done fewer podcasts, like, because doing stuff I love to do and still have time for the family. So, um, yeah, I think that, uh, that it is something that for me was just like a come-to-Jesus waking up moment where I realized, hey, I can either like lose my family and keep going down the road I'm on, or really start to focus on what I know in my heart matters the most.

Are you feeling more of a deep alignment with your work now as well? Like, it sounds like you've also placed Jesus at the center of your work, which, like, I feel like work, there's a word in Hebrew called avodah, and it's the combination of work and worship. It's like those two things, those two things can like come together, but you just need like the right alignment. And if your heart's in it, and if you're doing it for the right reasons, then your work is something that's actually good.

Like, right.

It's not something that's taking you away from your family and making you feel like you're making these unnecessary sacrifices for things that actually matter.

Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. Um, I feel like I have pretty good work-life balance now, especially when I'm at home working. Um, what I mean by that is if you're looking at the order of priorities, you know, I get up pretty early, I have my own quiet time, I usually will listen to the Bible. I use the Daily Audio Bible podcast, basically. So that's about 30, 35 minutes of Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms, Proverbs. So as soon as I wake up, I'm kind of filling my head with scripture. And just because I'm walking around the house getting things done anyways, heating up the hot water for coffee or tea or whatever, it's a good way to just fill my ear holes with God's word. And then I pray, and then I've got typically like some stretching and some foam rolling and go in and check in on the emails just to make sure there's nothing crazy I got to take care of later on in the day. But then 7:00 AM, like clockwork, our whole family meets for a morning family huddle. And this is all in the Constitution too. So my sons will be able to build on this. And that is reading the Bible. And I have a big study Bible and I open it up and I read to the family and I teach the family from the study Bible. And then we pray together and even our prayer, it's not boring and dry and stale, but it is systematized. We use the ACTS acronym, right? So we start off with adoration, thanking God and praising God for who he is and being able to read this wonderful word at the beginning of the day. And then confession where we're talking or praying that God would forgive us of our shortcomings and our sins. And sometimes just to set an example for my sons, I will name things, you know, whether whatever being short with an employee or, or, you know, slacking off on something or whatever so that they can hear the type of things that I'm confessing in public. And then Thanksgiving, so just like gratitude practice, thanking God for the home and the birds, you know, the sunshine, or if it's rain and snow, for the rain and the snow. And then supplication, like we have a prayer book, a family the prayer book. So who are the people that we've told that we would pray for? And so we'll lay them out before the Lord. And then we have a family chat. And this is all in like 15 minutes or so that we're doing all this. It's not like hours and hours on the living room floor. Family chat about like, oh, who's making what for dinner and who needs the car to go here today and who's going to be where and, you know, does anybody have anything we need to talk about, any blockages, any needs? And then we have a big family hug, and then we all go about our day. And then 7:00 PM, again, like clockwork, everybody meets in the kitchen, and we've all brought whatever food that we've been assigned with preparing for dinner earlier that morning because we all like to cook and help pitch in for dinner. We sing a song together. We pray together. We usually have about 10 minutes of me and my sons talking through the book assignment for that week, because every week I take them through several chapters of like a book that I've read that was an incredible book that I wanna like pass the wisdom onto my sons from. So every night there's usually at least one chapter that we're going through, and then we bust out games and play games all evening, and it's incredible. And so at home, I feel like work-life balance is amazing 'cause we have like the morning and evening family huddles and we're just like together all day. There still is an element when I travel where I like, I wish I could just pack them in my suitcase and take them with me. But I think every guy, you know, until the end of all time, until, you know, we die and go to heaven and, you know, and we don't have to, I shouldn't say we don't have to work anymore because, you know, even before sin, you know, in the original Garden of Eden, You know, when the world was perfect and newly created, our job was to be a gardener, which is technically work. So I don't think there won't be any work in heaven. I just think that work-life balance will be even better. Work-family balance will be even better. But traditionally, men in particular, you know, we've gone off to war, we've gone off to fight dragons, we've, you know, disappeared for weeks or months. It is something that's just kind of built into life. So yeah, travel is a a little tough. But I feel like when I'm home, I'm really home. I'm really with the family. And then we, you know, we're talking a lot when I travel, just phone calls every night or, you know, making sure we keep in touch.

Are your boys at that age where when Dad's gone they can kind of step up and maybe quarterback it a little bit?

They're starting to get to that point. That's cool. So they will help with leading devotions, um, they'll help with like, you know, the the morning coming together. You know, it's not like everything falls to crap when I'm gone. Like usually mom and the boys, and it's the same thing when my sons travel. Like my wife and I, 7:00 AM, we're sitting together on the living room floor. I wish we'd started doing that when we were first married. And so we do devotions together. It's not just a, you know, when the whole family is around, it's, you know, mom and I are there, or Jessa and I, my wife's name, we're there sitting on the living room floor, same thing. If the boys are gone, my wife and I are literally praying together, singing together, busting out Scrabble or whatever other game we're going to play that night. And, we do the same thing even when the boys are gone. And, I wish we'd done that when we first got married. And so, yeah, there's little habits. Last thing we do when we go to bed before I put my mouth tape on is we pray together. So, my wife and I together for like— and I think that's important, you know, especially for you guys getting married, to know is, um, it's really hard to do something spiritual and sacred. You know, I would name like sex and prayer as being two of those when there's something between you and your significant other. So prayer especially is just like this built-in mechanism to like— I can tell if my wife and I are laying in bed and our heads are on the pillow and I'm attempting to pray and there's like this blockage just because we both know there's an unresolved argument that we just had sometimes about something stupid, sometimes something bigger. That idea of praying together each night almost reinforces this mechanism of ensuring that there's nothing between the two of you before you go to bed at night so that you're not, as Scripture says, letting the sun go down on your anger, which I think has biological and psychological and relationship consequences. Yeah. So, yeah, it's a good hack. A lot of that in.

Yeah, such a good advice.

It's a biohack.

Yeah, you cannot be upset with that. Yeah, if you have to pray together, you literally have to resolve that thing. And then you probably realize, like, why were we just upset at each other for 5 hours over this, like, dumb thing that happened?

Yeah. And it's never worth it. And we are really good at that, like, um, And it's something, I mean, I've been married for, uh, 23 years, and so it's something that I've just learned over years and years is like most arguments are not worth it, and most are rooted in pride. It's like you want to be right and there's no way that she can be right, and sometimes you're both wrong and sometimes you're both right. But no matter what, like, as soon as you can just like go eye to eye and duck away into a room and like, I'll skip a call or skip a meeting or show up to a podcast 20 minutes later, whatever, just to make sure that I put it right. And sometimes it takes swallowing your pride and just basically doing whatever you can to get rid of any friction that's between you and your significant other. And it's just like such a better way to live.

Yeah. You mentioned that you were a second-generation Christian. Was there something that you observed about your parents? Like your parents were obviously first-generation they instilled that in you? Was there something that you kind of saw through that process of them becoming saved and teaching you guys about the Lord that you want to pass down to your kids?

My parents were already Christian when I was born, so I didn't like see them have like a come-to-Jesus moment, or, you know, they weren't like, whatever, living in horrific sin or doing all sorts of bad things, you know, until I was 6 years old, and then, you know, I saw them change. So I was born born into a family that was, that was pretty full-on, um, Christian. And my dad, uh, he grew up in Miami. My mom, uh, grew up near Detroit, Michigan. They both wound up in Idaho. Both of them came to Idaho due to all sorts of like spiritual and personal and relationship struggles that they were having back in their other states. And they basically started to form their faith in Idaho, and then they started a family out there. So I was born into that family and born into a family that, again, didn't have the whole family constitution and everything I've built for this generation, but was still pretty dialed as far as having a good set of absolute morality and right and wrong and truths taught to the children that I think at times I was embarrassed about growing up, but now looking back, It was really, really good to grow up in a household like that.

Yeah.

What would you say has helped you the most when the flesh, maybe you have moments where the flesh wants you to put the business and the needs of the business on a pedestal, but then you know deep down that you're called to be a servant of the Lord. That's something that I struggle with where I notice I might have a period of time where I'm in the audiobook reading or I'm reading scripture and I'm doing the right things, and then these blessings will happen. And then I— it's, it's very humbling how quickly good things will start to happen. And then I start to put the business first, and I'm getting better at recognizing that and doing, you know, doing the things that I'm supposed to be doing. But I'm just curious how, you know, if you struggle with that at all, or how—

what works for you. I mean, I think, um, every man, especially men like us— and I'm gonna assume this about you guys, you actually like to do this shit, and this isn't torture for you to sit here and just like chat. So it's great. Like, you guys have created a great career, it appears. And when you have that going on, kind of paradoxically, it can be even easier to check out from family or make an excuse to work just because it's so much freaking fun. I've seen some people make their family a part of the business. That doesn't work for me. I don't like to bring my work home. My wife and I tried to start like a healthy living membership website for a while and it was just like, it's like catfights all day long. So I don't recommend that, or at least I recommend proceeding with caution. My sons, they started a card game company. They got so into like all these family dinner games and stuff that we play at night that they wanted to, so they're launching a card game on Kickstarter and they wanna go into the gaming industry, which is great 'cause they love, design and telling stories and graphics and humor, and it kind of like fits their personality and their creativity. So I'm not in a position where I can just like bring my family to work with me or make them a part of the career, even though that's something I've seen some friends do and it works out pretty well for them. I think the thing that has worked the best for me when it comes to the temptation to just like buckle down and disappear into the office and work are A, the boundaries that I just described. For example, if I'm diving into the email inbox at 6:55 AM, I know I literally have 5 minutes before my whole family's going to be in the living room at 7:00 AM wondering where the heck I am and why whatever I'm doing in the office is more important than the Bible and prayer and being with the family. And same thing at 7:00 PM. If I, whatever, schedule a Zoom call for 6:45, and it's on there as a 30-minute appointment, like I'm cheating on my family. So, setting really hardcore boundaries unless it's like an emergency situation, occasionally, whatever. I've got some client in Dubai who has to have an 8:00 PM call and so I'm cutting dinner short to duck into the office. It's very few and far between. So, setting boundaries and then, and maybe this is because we're all still kind of sort of little kids at heart in some ways, back to the fun aspect. I mean, like, baking fun times into your relationship with the family, you know. And so, uh, typically I'm wrapping up work closer to like 6 PM because I know, like, we're gonna be out shooting guns and playing pickleball and shooting the bow and, you know, playing cornhole on the patio. Or, you know, my wife and I are out in the sauna doing a little sauna and cold plunge before dinner. Like, there's so many fun things to do beyond just, so I just got to go visit with the family and check in at the end of the day. So, I think creating a home environment, especially if you have a home office, that helps me a ton too, just like having lots of fun things to do with the family. And then finally, like when I travel, like I buckled, like I will work hard when I travel and just go from morning to evening, you know, podcasts and meetings and business and consults and Uber rides and airplanes. And so, when I get home, it's a lot easier to just like not slack on work, but slow down work a little bit and be with the family more. Because, um, even when I travel, I don't— I'm not one of those guys who does like coffee and lunches and hangouts. Like, when I travel, I'm like, I'm gonna be working for the most part when I travel, because when I get home, I don't want to feel like I have to catch up on a bunch of work. I want to be with the family.

I've been dying to ask you this question, but I'm curious what your thoughts are on Bryan Johnson and just his approach to biohacking, which like you're biohacking, optimizing your health, bringing in the faith component, which I think is like, is really interesting and unique. And then like, he's out on the internet saying like, he's competing with Jesus.

Yeah, I was gonna say he's bringing the faith component. Yeah, yeah, I think I've seen him say the word of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, in that way. And I watched his documentary, "Don't Die," and I've talked with him and I've interviewed him on my podcast and I've spoken with him at conferences. And, um, I think that he's kind of like a pioneer. He's like a guinea pig, you know, he's testing out all these protocols that, um, I think that's kind of interesting because obviously based on biochemical individuality, what works well for him and his longevity might not translate to the general population. But I think that he has found out some interesting things about human longevity that can help some people with healthspan. Watching the documentary and seeing his routine. And, you know, like, for example, like, if you're finishing up your last meal by 11 AM or noon, um, for me that'd make like family dinner and family game night and all that stuff kind of— and we could still, I guess, play games and fast. It's not as fun though. Yeah, eating chicken and playing cards. Um, so like, that's not that relatable. I think he spends a lot of time on the daily routine, on eating the same thing for breakfast and lunch and dinner, and I respect dedication and the self-control that it takes to do that, but I just don't know how relatable it is. And some people like, what are you talking about, dude? There's like a million videos of Ben Greenfield out there in a hyperbaric chamber and doing red light and, you know, laser probes and, you know, these elaborate routines. But if you were to come and hang out with me at my house, like, it's, it's not that extreme at all. I mean, I have like that time when I'm listening to the Bible in the morning, doing some foam rolling and stretching and using my BioCharger, my PMF or whatever. And then, I've got my family time and then I'm dragging my sons into the gym. So, all the gym biohacks and everything, I'm in there cranking it out with my sons. And then, just about everything else is just woven into the workday, whatever, walking on the treadmill or breathing carbon dioxide while I'm cranking out an email or whatever. So, a lot of the stuff I'm just stacking while I'm working anyways. So I feel like I balance it out pretty well. Um, so yeah, I just don't know how, how relatable Bryan's stuff is or how applicable it is to the general population. But I, I respect his, his dedication though, because I, I could not have a— whatever, I forget what his 3 meals are, but I just, I'm too much of a foodie. And yes, go check out new restaurants at night and not bring my I'm allergic to seed oils card. Yeah.

Oh, so you're not bringing the seed oils card.

Yeah. You know, and I snowboard and swim with sharks and go out in the sunshine probably too much and, you know, do all the things that are probably gonna take more years off my life than Bryan Johnson's, but I'm having fun and I don't feel like it's too hedonistic, you know.

Yeah, what I really like about your approach is how it seems like you're blending like the practical aspects of like these new technologies and just like implementing them in a way that's not over-indexing to like, I need to do these things because if I don't do them, I'm gonna like die or shorten my lifespan. It's like, no, I'm doing these things 'cause it's kind of the best version of an otherwise alternative that could be bad. Like, you know, instead of sitting, you're on your treadmill during the day doing your work and emails, which is a great alternative.

Yeah, and I think part of it too, is, and I know you guys understand this, this idea, this belief that we are not a bunch of chunks of flesh and blood floating on a giant rock through space who are eventually just going to die and then game over. So we might as well try to stick around for as long as possible and amass as much money and cars and homes and sex and whatever else we want to dump into that hole during our time here on this planet. And we instead believe in this beautiful afterlife. I mean, my belief in the afterlife is that there will actually be a new heaven and a new earth made perfect, and we aren't going to be like a bunch of angels on harps, you know, angels, harps on fluffy clouds, but like it's gonna be like earth as it is now but amazing and incredible and perfect and still include things like work. And, you know, I don't know about family because Some parts of the Bible, you know, say like, "We will not be married or given in marriage," but I feel like there will still be relationships, right, with other humans in heaven. And so I'm not that desperate to stick around for as long as possible on old earth. You know, I feel like a better way to look at it is you want to equip yourself to make as much impact as possible with whatever purpose for your life for which God has put you on this planet and to constantly check yourself about whether or not you are doing something that allows you to do the best job you can with your body and brain and whether you're doing something because you just don't want to die, baby, and you just become self-obsessed with all of the biohacking. I think also, For me, I think I've got a little bit of a different stance too because it's part of my job to try out a lot of the biohacks and to do some of these things and show people how they work. So, I probably do even more of that stuff than I would advise the average person to do because some of it is just like my job. Like, I would rather just have like whatever, one meditation headband that I'm using for 20 minutes in the afternoon or whatever, but I have to try out 12 different ones because I'm doing a podcast or an article or a story about meditation headbands. So, yeah, sometimes there's too much time spent with the meditation headbands for the average person, but for me, it's like my job. Yeah. Journalism. So, yeah.

You must have some unbelievable biohacking requests in your DMs to just try out everything.

Yeah.

Like, Ben Greenfield.

Yeah. There's like just, yeah, box cutters, you know, getting dulled pretty quickly at our house because so much stuff just like shows up every day. Yes. You know, the latest kratom kava spirulina drink that you gotta try, and you know, the newest red light panel that's better than the older red light panel. Yeah, it's like, it's almost, you know, it feels like, you know, even though I'm podcasting and writing and coaching and doing all these other things, sometimes it feels like a full-time job just like opening up boxes. And plugging things in and reading manuals and figuring out how stuff works. And I, I mean, I like it, it's cool to learn about new things, but sometimes it gets like— I'm in Austin for 8 days, I guarantee when I get home there will just be like a stack like as tall as me in my office and in the kitchen of just like all the books I'm supposed to check out and all the things I'm supposed to try. And yeah, I mean, I realize that, that, you know, a lot of people are probably thinking, well, cry me a freaking river, like, yeah, just getting stuff sent to your house to try. But yeah, yeah, like it can get a little bit intimidating. Overwhelming. Yeah, overwhelming.

Yeah. What's, uh— oh, sorry, I was going to— I was just going to ask, what is the favorite part, or your favorite part of your work? Is it the journalism part, the trying the new products, coaching?

Podcasting, by far, I think. Yeah, cuz, um, I, I think at my heart I'm a teacher, and I also love to learn, but I love to learn for the sake of teaching. I don't just like to learn for the sake of learning. And so for me, like, the coolest thing coolest part of my job is I can read a book, I can read an article, I can watch a video, and while I'm learning a ton of stuff from that book or article or video or whatever, I can at the same time be thinking about all the questions I want to ask the author or the producer or the scientist or the person who produced the content, because I get to spend like an hour, an hour and a half with them that week in an environment in which they'd normally never give me the time of day, but because I have a podcast, they'll talk to me. So for 17 years, at least a couple of times a week, I've been able to interview people who are way smarter than me and just learn a ton from them and have this conversation that allows me to both learn and teach other people. I guess it's amazing. If I could not do anything else, I'd podcast.

Yeah. I'm imagining when you you were describing everything about how you changed your perspective on, you know, the Greenfield name and culture. Did that come— was that a book? Was that a podcast episode? Was it both? Because I would imagine when you figure that out, you're like, this is probably, this is probably one of the most important things I've ever done with my life.

It wasn't like one source again, because, um, even Boundless Parenting, which didn't come out 10 years ago, that one came out like 4 or 5 years ago. You know, I've been built on this concept of legacy from that book because I wrote it kind of like tools of titans. I sent this identical set of 30-some questions to a bunch of different entrepreneurs and parents who I saw had remarkable and amazing children and who I was super curious about in terms of their parenting approach. So, learned and refined a lot while writing that book, but I would say probably the most formative touchpoint for Legacy was when I was introduced, and I forget who introduced me to him now, to this guy named Rich Christiansen who lives in Utah. And, he used to be a business branding expert and realized that there was a need for family branding. And, me and my family flew down to Salt Lake and spent 3 days at his cabin with him just learning from him and seeing his family's constitution and Crest. And you don't have to fly to Utah to be with him. And I think he still does this work, but, you know, he— his, um, business is called Legado Family Foundation, and he does like online coursework. Um, he does like boots-on-the-ground intensives for families like that. But he's probably the guy that I learned the most from. And then my pastor in Moscow, Idaho, his name is Doug Wilson, and Doug has a a lot of really great books on parenting, um, on family, on marriage, on like dating and courtship. And so I've also learned a ton from him. Like, I've read all of his books. Uh, he puts out a new article on Mondays and Wednesdays, and I've read like every article he's written for the past 10 years, you know, plus heard him preach a ton. So I've learned a lot from him too. Got it.

One of the things that Harry and I were thinking about is, like, what we noticed when we started the podcast, the Meat Mafia, 2022, it was just pure research and creation. And there was, there was no business plan. It was just, it felt so good as men to go from being in corporate to just talking about nutrition and trying to impact people. So it was pure creativity. And then I would say the previous 2 years, the businesses had started to compound and take off. And I've always really struggled balancing the creative aspect and the business aspect together. And I'm curious for you, like, when you think about researching and being creative and like taking in those really good inputs, is that something that you're pre-scheduling into your day? Are you just someone that's kind of like constantly tinkering and reading throughout your day? How do you, how do you go about balancing all that together and making time for the research?

Yeah, there's like two ways to look at it, um, and I forget exactly how this phrase goes, but it's something like, if you're waiting for the muse to strike, it probably never will. Like, at some point you just got to open up the blank a word processor, for example, if you're an author, and just like start to write something, you know, just do something. Um, so even though it's difficult to force creativity, you also have to be careful not to just keep waiting for the perfect moment to implement the next creative idea or to have the next creative brainstorm. At the same time, and, and I don't know how much research there is to back this up, but certain people have their productive hours and their creative hours, and some people creative creative hours are like 10 PM to midnight. For other people, creative hours, like me, are about 10 AM until around noon. And then there's like the productive— or I shouldn't say the productive, I should say, because creativity is productive— the reactive work, right? Like replying to emails, doing Zoom calls, you know, checking Slack, checking Asana, getting back to team members. And that stuff also can fall into a certain time window in which you do it best. I think I've noticed personally that as the day progresses, decision-making fatigue sets in, sleep drive increases, creativity drops. And so, most of my creative work is done before noon. And then, afternoons and early evenings are saved for all the phone calls or the consults or the Asanas and the Slacks and the emails. So, if I'm writing a book, like I just finished "Boundless." and that a book is usually for me like a 2 or 3 year project of collecting materials. Um, I write from Google Drive because I like everything to be in the cloud, so I typically have a separate folder in Google Drive for each chapter and then a number of documents in each folder devoted to that chapter of the book, whether it's research or people I want to interview or things I've come across that would be interesting to include. And when I'm in book writing phase, even though my creative time is typically around like 10 AM to noon. That's when I'll be like cranking out, you know, copy or headlines for an article or interviewing somebody for a podcast. I have to have like a second creative time baked in if I'm in book writing mode. And for me, that's usually like early, early morning. So that would be, you know, typically if I'm working on a book, I'm getting up closer to 4 than 5 and giving myself at least an hour to just be in the office working on a book before the world can get to me. It's a little bit harder to be creative in that environment. The only trick I found, like, for me as an author, is you never— like, if you're writing a book, you never finish a bout of writing with a fully completed sentence. You always stop when you're in the middle of, like, a really great thought or a really great sentence, because as soon as you dive in, especially if it's like 5 AM and you're still digging eye crust, you know, out of your— out of the corners of your eyes, like, you at least have kind of like a little bit of a cue to start back into writing again, and you're kind of excited to finish that thought. So that's, that's how I will almost like, you know, fabricate or hack early morning creativity, even though if I could snap my fingers and like, I would write between 10 AM and noon, but that's usually when I'm podcasting or, you know, or doing stuff with other people.

Super interesting. I like that approach. Would a younger version of you would have expected you to be an author? Like, is that something that you—

Oh yeah, totally.

You were kind of always on that path.

I wrote a 400-page fantasy fiction novel by the time I was 12. Like, my happy place was the library. Really? Like, I was a total book junkie. Probably my two favorite things academically growing up was reading and writing. Yeah, so absolutely. If you'd asked me and I was like, 12 or 13 or 14, I would have said fiction. And I even started to get back into fiction a few years ago, uh, and wrote, uh, the first of a 5-part fiction series I still plan to finish. The problem with that was like, so my sons are the protagonists in the story, and most of my writing I was doing between about like 6 PM and 7 PM when everything else was done for the day. And I realized, dude, I'm like sitting here writing about my sons when I'd much rather be out playing with my sons. So I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna wait until they're 18 and they're out of the house and I'll get back into fiction writing later on. But yeah, I, I would not have been shocked at all if you would have told me, you know, 20 years ago or whatever, that would be an author.

That's cool.

Yeah. Do you ever read fiction too?

Not really. No, I haven't been—

I started getting into Game of Thrones like a year ago, just before I would go to bed. It's so— it just felt so good be like, for years you're like, oh, I've got to be reading business books and biographies. And that feels great too, but just exercising a different part of your brain and just like getting enthralled in the story. I'm like, this is my favorite way to fall asleep.

Yeah, I usually have like a religious or spiritual book by the bedside these days. I probably haven't done much fiction for like 2 years. My problem, I started Game of Thrones, but I started on Kindle, which was super depressing because I read for like 3 months, Kindle percentage bar, like, oh crap, not making progress. Um, but once I get back into writing fiction, because input equals output a lot of the times, like, I'll start reading fiction again because it's a great way, you know, it's just, just like, you know, if I want to really buckle down and start doing more on guitar, I'll listen to music a lot more, listen to music when I'm working out and instead of listening to podcasts when I work out. So yeah, yeah.

There's definitely a certain level of mysticism in reading like a piece of scripture. Like, I don't know, like I just feel a connection to a world that seems like it is the past, but it feels like you're just going to a new place in the way that some of this stuff is described.

You always find something new that you hadn't come across before. Even I've probably read the Bible fully at least 6 or 7 times. And every time you read it, there's something new that you come across. But, and this is kind of interesting, I think you said mysticism or something like that. The Bible almost is a little bit magical, like not to get too esoteric or woo, but I have one friend and then my wife who are both dyslexic, who hate to read. And the one book they can pick up and like read perfectly is the Bible. Which is really weird. And no scientist is going to believe that. And anybody who specializes in whatever, dyslexia or learning, would understand how that is. And I don't understand how that is, but they could— like, it's the one book that they can actually read and understand and not get super bored and frustrated with when they're reading it. It's just weird.

I'm trying to maybe like put a pin in, like, just a guess on why that might be. One of the things that I think is super interesting— have you gotten into the Bama podcast?

You guys know this at all?

The Bema? Bema, B-E-M-A. It's, I think you'd really like it. So it's basically a rabbi who's converted to Christianity. It's basically his understanding of the Bible. He walks through kind of like the Eastern and Western brain and how both of those interpret the Bible. And the first part is talking about the chiasmic flows in the early, in Genesis. Just the way that it's written was designed so that you could easily tell these stories. 'Cause these aren't written traditions, they were oral traditions. So it's like, I feel like that might be part of it. It's like, these were meant to be captivating oral stories that people would remember so they could use it. Not just like learning it to learn it, they're learning it so that they can be like, "Oh, this is this story that like is relevant, like in this moment." So I don't know, maybe there's something there.

Sure, I'm hypothesizing that something that was, written from stories traditionally passed on orally would be something that someone would find easier to read. More enjoyable with reading. Yeah, more enjoyable.

Yeah, yeah. This, this podcast is— Harry got me to start listening to it, and I listened to the one on Genesis, and he makes the argument that this is not anything close to a scientific proof. It's really a treasure map. Yeah. And he, he kind of— he shows you why it's a treasure map, and it changed everything that I thought I knew about the New Testament. I literally had to like turn it off and then just like sit by myself for 3 hours because my brain was just bursting with ideas.

Yeah, I think that's probably one of the things that people misunderstand about the Bible is they think the entire thing is meant to be taken literally as pure historical fact, for example. And yes, the Bible of all ancient manuscripts has more manuscripts and evidence to back it up than I think any other religious text that has ever existed by far. But yet it's not just history, right? It's allegory, it's poetry, it's parables, it's proverbs, it's stories. And even though whatever you read, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they all read a little bit different. Differently, but they're all telling the same story from different perspectives. And every author has their own perspective. And so when people point out, well, whatever, Matthew says this about Jesus, Mark says this about Jesus, it's just simply two different authors writing from two different perspectives. But the amount of manuscripted evidence, and who was it that actually went on the Joe Rogan podcast, a great biblical scholar. Wes Huff. Yeah. He has some great videos about the actual verification of the Bible and the specific books that are included within the Bible as being the ones that are in the Bible because they actually have the most evidence behind them.

Yeah. The Wes Huff rabbit hole is worth going down if you're interested in the topic.

Yeah. Very well spoken.

Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that the Bema Podcast talks about is that like the, I guess the Jewish brain, like in storytelling, they'll, if your neighbor's house is right next door to you, they'll take a right turn to go all the way around the block to tell the story so that you like learn the lesson as opposed to just like going right next door. So like, that's kind of how the Bible is written. It's written to drag you through the learning and the experience, which I think, you know, the Western mind is just like, literal. It's like, give me the, I want A plus B to equal C. And that's not necessarily the case.

Yeah. Yeah. You know what's interesting too is, and again, I can't cite the research on this, but this was something I came across last month. The idea that memorizing and specifically memorizing pieces of scripture is directly correlated to decreased risk of Alzheimer's and dementia. And there's something about even the fact that people with Alzheimer's and dementia, if they have memorized scripture, that's something that they can actually repeat. And I don't know if you guys do scripture memorization, but it's incredible. We do it as a family every night. We average a verse a day.

Wow.

And we started doing that not super recently, about maybe 6 years ago. And it's incredible. And I do that when I travel and we just text back and forth about which verse that we're on. But memorizing scripture, like placing it on your heart, is so incredible because when you're falling asleep, you can recite it to yourself to fall asleep. When you're tempted, you can recite it to avoid temptation. When you feel like you're lonely or in a time of need, you can recite it. It's just, it's so useful to be able to draw upon scripture from your brain, even if you don't necessarily have like a Bible around.

Yeah, we've been in a discipleship group When did we start?

Was it July, August? Uh, end of August.

End of August. And part of it, it's, it's 10 guys, and then the account— part of the accountability piece is a new piece of scripture a week. And so it's been really cool for Harry and I where there's so many moments where you're like, you're gonna check your phone or scroll or do something where you're like, no, the accountability of, hey, the 10 guys are going to show up Thursday morning and I don't want to be the guy that lets the group down. So you go hard to memorize it, and then you start to notice this.

Yeah, accountability is huge.

It's huge. And then you see the renewing of your mind, like you said, where there's something about memorizing it. It kind of like imbues it in your heart. And the guys that run the group, they're both in their late 30s, but they said they noticed a pattern of the older Christian men that they respected the most all pointed back to scripture memory being the most impactful thing you can do.

Yeah. Healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit. A diseased tree cannot bear good fruit. That's my verse for today.

I love that.

We're in Matthew 7, working through the Sermon on the Mount, which is a really, really good one. Like Matthew 5 through 7, like even if you were to memorize that alone for your entire life, like, you know, it's basically some of the most important words of Jesus.

Do you have any pieces of scripture that maybe like fit into your family crest or something that you're like, this is what I want my great-great-great-grandkids to be talking about, these few verses?

Oh, I mean, like, you know, the piece I mentioned earlier about contentedness no matter your circumstances, um, the, uh, the section from 1 Corinthians about how love covers all and endures and perseveres, um, the part about perseverance creating character and character producing hope. A lot of that is woven into the crest. Um, I would say probably the one chapter of the entire Bible that my family and I like the most and read the most, and we memorized it like 2 years ago, and there's no way I could recite the whole thing now, but it's Romans 8. Yeah, Romans 8 is just— it's incredible. And as a matter of fact, if you want the most epic reading of Romans 8, there is a pastor named John Piper, and you can find it on YouTube. You can just search for like John Piper Romans 8 recording, and you want to get amped up. I mean, I mean, that is incredible, an incredible reading of Romans 8. And then, I worked with this company called The Breath Source. They're a breathwork app. And, one of my beefs with a lot of modern secular breathwork is it is very inner-focused, it's very shamanistic, it's very much like, "I'm good, I'm great, I'm wonderful. Gosh darn it, people like me. These are my affirmations." And, I'm just full of goodness that can seep out of me all day long. And, you know, I believe that humans can actually be pretty crappy people and we're not naturally good and we need God's grace in order to even, you know, do anything good. And I saw like this hole for being able to use our breath, which God gave us, which is an amazing tool for turning up and turning down your nervous system or adjusting your physiology for more nitric oxide or blowing off carbon dioxide, decreasing stress, helping you to sleep better. But, I wanted to tie breathwork to Christianity, to prayer, and to scripture memorization. So, I approached this app company called The Breath Source. And, the way that company works is there's a different instructor you can choose from and just go through their course and did about 12 5 different breathwork sessions and one's like an hour long. There's one called Strength of the Lord, which is all of the verses about finding your strength in the Lord. And, you're pairing some pretty intensive breathwork. And typically, on the long exhales or on the long inhales, it's my voice reading scripture verses to you. And then, have you guys seen the BrainTap, the light sound therapy?

No.

I think I've tested it out at one of these events.

This is biohacking meets Bible. You download the BrainTap and you search for Romans 8, there is a full BrainTap session that's using light and sound to like deliver you Romans 8. And that's also like super powerful, dude. So, so I managed to sneak a little bit of, of the, of the, the Christianity into the biohacking world. But yeah, the Breath Source and the BrainTap both have like Christian sessions on them now.

Wow. So like instead of binaural beats, imagine just going into sleep with that baking in your subconscious mind. Yeah, yeah, probably be so powerful.

I wouldn't sleep with a BrainTap because it's like clunky and, uh, you can't— you can't— it's hard to sleep. You can like fall asleep with it on, then you wake up at like midnight with a piece of plastic, you know, shoved up against your nose. But, uh, for, for just like whatever, an afternoon checkout or something like that, that's a— it's a pretty cool tool.

That's very cool though that you're combining like the love of biohacking and breathwork that can be so beneficial through a biblical perspective as well.

Even the Jesus Prayer, like there's a session on there, it's just 12 minutes long. And all you're doing for 12 minutes is you're breathing in, "O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God," breathing out, "Have mercy on me, a sinner." And you almost get into this trance-like state over the course of the breathwork. And it's just an incredible way to— Wow. It's kind of like confession, adoration all at once. And that Jesus prayer, you know, it's kind of like an ancient prayer used by the early desert church fathers and mothers and something that I will often use when I'm tempted. I will say, "Oh Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." And it's almost, again, back to like the dyslexic reading the Bible thing. It's almost magical. You can almost just like escape really easily.

I might add to the pile of boxes outside of your door, 'cause there's just a book that I wanna send you. It's, man, I'm gonna butcher the title, but it's about meditation and Christianity. And them actually being like this longstanding practice of meditation within Christianity that I feel like maybe like the West kind of misses a little bit. And I do feel that like when I practice breathwork before I practice Christianity, like, and I feel like breathwork does have a powerful grounding presence that is undeniable in the effects that it has on your body and mind. And then I can't even imagine like the power of like orienting that towards the thoughts and the scripture, the word of God, like what that would actually feel like and do.

Yeah, and secular meditation, much of it is emptying your head, right? And I think that the way that we are told to meditate in the Bible is to meditate on the word of God. And on prayer. And so I think it's more beneficial to be filling your head with good things than to simply be emptying your head during meditation.

Yes, filling your head versus with good things versus emptying it, because then when you're done emptying it, you might just focus back on the bad things, but you can override that with the good, right, to propel you forward, right?

Exactly. And again, like, you're very— when you're just emptying your head and not focus on focusing on anything but yourself and whether your head is empty, I think you're also susceptible to, um, to again beginning to think that you can create this great amount of inner goodness coming from within. Um, I think that, you know, as Marxism and socialism and many other, you know, uh, I guess elements of running of society have shown, you know, when left to our own volition, you know, Despite thinking that we might just share with everybody and be really good creatures, human beings, when left to their own volition, can go down some pretty scary paths.

Yeah, 100%. I wanna touch on some of the biohacking stuff too, 'cause you've talked about mouth tape and you talked about the treadmill, red light a bit. Is there anything that you're just like super consistent on? You mentioned mouth tape.

Super consistent on?

Yeah, or just like—

Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I guess mouth tape's biohack. I don't know, it's a piece of tape. Yeah, that's true. Um, but yeah, I do like that, that it helps you with nasal breathing and seems to improve my sleep architecture. Uh, as far as things that are like dailies for me, I use haptic sensation a lot to relax. So I have that Apollo wristband and this other device called the Sensate, and the Sensate kind of like vibrates like a purring cat on your chest and, uh, ties to audio cues through an app. That you listen to. And so, there's 20 to 30-minute sessions on there, actually more like 10 to 30-minute sessions that are great if, I don't know, you wake up at 4:00 and you want to sleep till 4:30 or you just want to check out for a quick catnap. It also works really well on airplanes. And then, there's another one called the Apollo. You guys seen this one? No. Put on your wrist, your ankle, and you can put it in focus mode or energy mode, but there's a sleep mode and a recovery mode that again, I don't have a hard time getting energy. I have a hard time relaxing. So most, most of the things I like for recovery, they're relaxing me. Like, I don't, I don't need a pre-workout as much as I need like an adaptogen to help me, you know, relax in the afternoon or whatever. Um, so those are pretty cool. And then kind of like the big version of that, and this is something I do a lot of, it's, it's in the lounge next to my office. There's this chair called the Shiftwave. Have you guys seen this? No. It vibrates your whole body and it's super intense vibration, and then you wear a fingertip sensor that monitors your heart rate and your heart rate variability. And when you're wearing the sensor, it will start to tie the vibration to your breath. And then you've typically got over-ear headphones and a mask, and some of them are voice-guided, some of them aren't. But there's something about the shaking, you know, and you see a lot of like whatever, you know, um, prey animals that have been chased by predators, if they escape, they kind of shake it off. There's something about shaking especially for mammals, that seems to relax us or increase our heart rate variability or cause more parasympathetic drive. So I use a lot of these like haptic vibrating type of tools, and the Sensate and the Apollo are tiny. I travel with them. And then the Shiftway is kind of like— think of like a gravity chair that's lined with like super strong vibrating discs. So I do that a lot. Um, I play with oxygen, uh, and carbon dioxide, and now hydrogen. Quite a bit. So I have a, you know, putting hydrogen tablets into water as a really great antioxidant. It seems to have some really great system-wide effects. That's pretty cool. But you can also now get hydrogen bottles that will concentrate hydrogen. Some of them work, some of them don't. But then if you want the equivalent of drinking like hundreds of bottles of hydrogen water, you can either inhale hydrogen or you can bath in hydrogen. So, I'm actually building a bathtub in my garage that adds hydrogen to the water so you can bathe and absorb the hydrogen transdermally. And then, next to that Shiftwave chair, I have a mask connected to a hydrogen inhaler and I put that on. I can breathe 4% hydrogen the whole time that I'm laying in that chair. And, for soreness, for recovery, for anything related to inflammation, hydrogen is incredible. And, if you visit the website of the Molecular Hydrogen Foundation. There are literally thousands of peer-reviewed studies on the benefits of hydrogen. And then, oxygen usually before a workout or during a workout. I have two different oxygen concentrators in my gym. I have the 10X Hypermax concentrator and then one called the LiveO2. The LiveO2 lets you go from sea level to the top of a mountain with the flip of a switch. So, I can go from hypoxia to hyperoxia and just like flush my body back and forth from hypoxia to hyperoxia while I'm riding an exercise bike or doing any type of cardio apparatus. And then the other one, you breathe 93% oxygen, which is great for like a warm-up, just super saturate the body with oxygen. You feel like you've gotten a shot of steroids once you go hit the weights after that. So oxygen, um, and then most of the time if I'm gonna like nap in the afternoon, I have a soft shell hyperbaric chamber that I crawl into that uses pressurized oxygen. And then you're breathing oxygen through a mask in that pressurized chamber. And that for just recovery, for sleep, for a nap, anything like that is pretty incredible. Wow. And then like you mentioned with the red light, still doing a lot of red light. Yeah, red light helmets, red light panels, red light bed. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, oxygen, connection to the planet, like PEMF, earthing, grounding, and then light are 3 really cool modalities that a lot of biohacking technologies are based around. And I actually do use that stuff a lot and feel incredible when I do.

You ever stack, uh, oxygen and pre-workout together just for the full trip?

You mean like a, like a pre— like a pre-workout?

Like a beta alanine?

Yeah.

And then do some oxygen and just turbocharge it?

Uh, The oxygen doesn't turbocharge it as much because you need something when you're breathing a lot of oxygen. You, uh, the, the vasodilatory part that you're getting from a lot of pre-workouts based on nitric oxide, um, is in the form of nitric oxide synthase, and you got to somehow like kick that off of the complex in the mitochondria that it's attached to. And so supersaturating your body with oxygen pre-workout is great, but then if you want to feel like the pre-workout effect, you have to add some type of light spectrum that will kick nitric oxide synthase off. And that's why red light is so popular and can be great pre-workout, is that it kicks nitric oxide out of the mitochondria, and then you've got more vasodilation. So I actually have— don't laugh— uh, red light panel that is right over my exercise bike. So, I'm basically, if I'm warming up, I can be breathing oxygen under the red light while exercising. So, I'm getting the oxygen in and then the nitric oxide kicked off. So, you don't even need a pre-workout.

Wow. But, what if we come out to Idaho, we'll use the red light, we'll use your tools, but we'll bring some old-school Jack3D and then we'll combine those two things?

Our heads will explode.

Did you ever mess around with any of the old—

Oh, yeah. I did bodybuilding in college. I 215 pounds, 3% body fat, and didn't have enough money to afford gear. So I was like, creatine, protein, and whatever— what's the Redline one? I think Redline was like an early Jacked, kind of similar to early Jacked. So I use a lot of Redline. So yeah, I, I abused pre-workouts, just dry powder, those back in the golden days, pancakes.

Yeah, yeah, we— because did you graduate high school 2020? 2012. Yeah, me too. We— that was like— 2012 was like right when they changed the Jack3D formula, which is when I first got in a pre-workout. So we never got the special sauce. But yeah, is there ever any part of you— do you ever miss like just the bodybuilding, Ironman? I know you did SEALFIT too. Just those days of just like just the crucibles. Yeah.

Is there ever—

is there ever anybody that misses it? I, I think, um, if some people have like an identity that's tied into that or a highly addictive personality that— and they haven't figured out like a you know, not that I want to like throw him under the bus, but like a David Goggins who just seems like incapable of stopping despite the damage being done to his body. I think he inspires a lot of people, but I also think he's doing damage to his body and some people don't need to hear the message that, you know, they need to go out and do that. I managed to replace a lot of that masochistic drive with family, with purpose, with meaning, with building my company. And I think importantly, you know, to, to the physiological piece of it, the realization that there's a so-called Goldilocks zone of exercise. And I feel incredible. Like, I'm 43. I feel way better, way fitter than when I was doing, you know, Ironman and Spartan racing and bodybuilding. And, you know, I still work out for around an hour a day, and then I'm typically walking for another 60 minutes to 2 hours every day. Um, but I feel so much better, so much stronger, so much fitter, so many fewer injuries. Um, and I have way more time in the day. I, I can't— I think it was a cool chapter of my life, and I learned a lot about perseverance and endurance, and even like used a lot of those, those fields of battle as places to test, you know, nutrition and, you know, keto versus high carb and different forms of recovery and whatever. But no, I don't miss it.

Yeah, yeah. You were like the one guy back in the day on YouTube where if you wanted to do a low-carb Ironman, like, you were the guy whose content you would watch. And it's cool that you have like you, you the confidence of like, hey, I stack those bricks, and then you use that to like go out and do great things, and then you rewire your relationship with it over time.

Yeah, and I think part of it is also like, I'm, I'm a curious guy, and I think if you want to be like a Renaissance person, like if you just get stuck in like the Ironman rabbit hole, you're spending most of your time swimming and biking and running, and I never would have discovered kettlebells or pickleball or picked tennis back up or started playing Frisbee golf, or doing a lot of the things that I do now. And who knows, you know, like 5 years from now might be, you know, whatever, spearfishing and regular golf, you know. But I really like to stay open to possibilities and basically, you know, never, never become so attached to one modality or sport. Because if you would have asked me when I was doing Ironman, I would have been like, dude, I'm gonna do this forever, you know. And I've learned since then, and same thing with bodybuilding, it's the obstacle course racing, and your identity gets so tied up in those things when you're doing them. But I think maybe just because I'm like old and maybe a little bit wiser now, I don't get attached to anything that I do. Like, I always— when it comes to like a sport or a fitness modality, I pretty much just keep myself open to trying anything new, uh, and, and not having my identity wrapped up in a certain sport. Like, I'm the kettlebell guy, I'm the bodybuilding guy, I'm the Ironman guy, you know.

What's your typical approach when you're learning a new modality, just trying to get better at stuff? Are you kind of just like, let me just go all in, immerse myself in this, try to become an expert as quickly as possible?

Uh, like what? Give me an example.

Like, you know, you mentioned learning golf potentially at some point. Yeah. What would be kind of your approach to getting good at something like that?

My wife learns things really fast. I learn things really slow. So if we're gonna, whatever, take up ballroom dancing, which we've attempted a couple of times, I got to be like locked in my room practicing for like an hour a day and she just like goes out there and sails through it. And then eventually what I do is like I get better and better with practice, but I am one of those guys who will collect as much information as I can about a certain activity— podcasts, YouTube videos, gear, meeting with people, you know, going out and watching the sport or the activity. And then tons and tons of practice by myself. Like, I like to just like get in my zone, practice by myself, collect as much information, see if I like it, and then go out there and start competing or doing it with other people. But I almost like, um, I almost like don't like the embarrassment of learning publicly. I like to just like learn it. I like to learn it on my own and then go out there and start doing it with other people.

Have you done any mixed martial arts or anything like that?

My sons rolled for about 5 years and I went out with them maybe like a dozen times.

Dang.

And that's what everybody tells me with my paws and my double-jointed limbs and, you know, that I should do jiu-jitsu, but I just haven't taken the deep dive.

Yeah, that's one where your body's constantly not appreciative of you doing that.

Yeah, yeah.

Just lots of injuries.

Yeah. Yeah, a lot of you guys, you do jiu-jitsu.

Yeah, I did a little bit a while ago, and it was— you're just— when you were talking, you reminded me of just the feeling of— I was definitely one of those people similar to you where I would like to, like, learn something, you know, in private, just, like, study it, deconstruct it.

Yeah.

And put it together myself.

Yeah, deconstruct is a good word.

Yeah. And then, like, jiu-jitsu, you can't really do that. You need, you need somebody to go against.

So you tell me, I was Elon develops the jiu-jitsu robot or whatever.

Yeah, or shit out of luck.

Yeah, yeah, just getting tapped out by high schoolers, you're like, this sucks, and I don't feel like I'm learning anything other than just like how to—

I experienced the same thing. Yeah, yeah. So like the next thing I'm doing is, uh, close quarter combat. I have a course coming up in May that'll be a lot of like pistol work, knife work, um, there'll be a little bit of wrestling or jiu-jitsu thrown in, and so, uh Yeah, and that one you kind of have to do publicly and, you know, yeah, it's good.

It's good for us as men to do that though. Yeah, I hate looking like a beginner. I got to get over it. It's all pride.

Yeah, it is. It's just all pride and ego. And then like I have like a little bit of a perfectionistic drive to where like I want to be good at something before I unleash it on the world. Yes.

So yeah, so golf, you need like 100 private lessons before you don't play.

Build a golf range. Yeah, like when I got into obstacle course racing, I literally I did one Spartan and started to build an obstacle course on my property. It's like, I want to get good at this, but I don't want to get good at it by signing up for like 12 Spartans and failing them all before. So I just started practicing at home.

Yeah, just going to— just going to the cave, and then when you're ready to unveil, just unleash.

That was one of my favorite movies growing up, was Rocky III. So maybe, maybe part of it's that. Yeah, yeah.

Well, dude, this has been great. This has been great. We really appreciate you coming on. Yeah, they're awesome. So much wisdom. And I just, I really, I do, I feel like what you have to say about that crossover between health and faith is incredibly important. I feel like we're like walking through this period where faith is making a bit of a comeback and health is obviously a huge part of what people are talking about these days. So yeah, it's just awesome being able to just sit and listen to you talk about it.

Yeah, faith is making a comeback. And maybe I'll just say this last thing. So is being spiritual, not religious. And I think that's a dangerous path to go down because it's very easy if you are spiritual, not religious, to be a spiritual loner and also be susceptible to a lot of these spiritual rabbit holes that I think leave people dependent on something other than God. Plant medicine would be an example of that, like finding your spirituality through ayahuasca or you know, psilocybin or whatever, and then that becomes your path to spirituality. And you wouldn't want, like, to convince a billion people in the world that you gotta use psilocybin to find God. Um, but perhaps just as importantly is this idea: when you look at deaths of despair, deaths of suicide, all the diseases that we see related to loneliness, those don't necessarily disappear in someone who's spiritual. But what seems to make the biggest impact on them is organized religiosity, actually going to a church, actually having a body of people who you depend on and who depend on you, having some kind of a systematized meetup where you're singing songs together and praying together and being part of a communal body of believers. And so I think that if you want to go down the faith rabbit hole, and maybe someone's listening right now and they haven't been down that, yes, just simply talking to God, because he's there, he's listening. You don't have to know how to pray. You can literally just start talking to God. Reading the Bible, Romans 8 being a perfect example of a great powerful place to start. Those are important and those are going to just be like a rocket ship to the moon. But I also recommend finding a church that you can go to where you can sing with people and you can have people to talk to and people to serve serve and people to, you know, see the rest of the week and, and engage in companionship and communion with. So, so yeah, I think being spiritual and religious, um, is an incredible way to live.

Yeah, man, I don't think there's a better way to put a bow on the conversation than that, man. Thanks for being outspoken about your faith. And as Harry said, dude, you've had a really strong impact on our lives from afar, so it's great to just get to connect with you and build a friendship and just excited to see where it all leads to, man.

Appreciate you. Cool. I'm glad we hooked up, guys.

Yeah, this is great.

Yeah, thanks, man.

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