Build Your Autonomous Self - Ep 1

Hi, everyone. We are streaming live today. A big improvement from last week when we did this via Zoom. This week, we're hoping that the benefit is that we can all have a conversation as we are discussing today. So if you would give us a little bit of slack, we're trying to figure out a few things here and there. Can I see the screen for stream?

You are currently seeing it.

All right, cool. So we're going to start today with a few little warmups. First is would invite everyone to try to get into good posture. Posture is something that I never learned in life and recently. And I have internal jugular vein stenosis, which means these little pipes inside of my neck are narrow genetically. And I found out that in fixing my posture, I was able to dramatically increase the flow of blood from my brain. And I didn't realize how much posture had to do with that. So the simplest way I think about doing this is if you look at it from a side view. Typically I was kind of like this. And if you think about a little string going through your neck and up your head and being pulled straight up, that's been the little trick that I think about a few dozen times a day. And I try to maintain this posture. It really helps me be attentive and ready for what I'm doing. All right, number two is during our conversation today, if we all could put aside distractions. So phones aside, anything else on the screen that would otherwise keep us from focusing, we'll all get a lot more out of this. And then three is a warm up exercise to get us in the right frame of mind. So if you could each think about an accomplishment you have in life that you are most proud of, it could be anything from something you've done this past year to an earlier time in your life. So give that some thought. Something you're immensely proud of accomplishing. Now think about what happened in order for you to achieve that. What obstacles did you encounter? What sort of discomfort did you feel? How did you negotiate and work with and feel through that discomfort? And then what was that feeling when you finally did achieve what you were after? And if you can pinpoint, were there moments in that process where you felt like giving up, where you were close to giving up? Or maybe you did give up and then you started again? And this exercise is to remind us that in our lives, I think most of us could say that the most worthwhile things are on the other side of discomfort. And the way in which we can negotiate with and overcome that discomfort is what brings us the most joy and satisfaction in life. So today is really about us learning tactics and strategies on how each of us can identify what we really want to become in life and negotiating with the discomfort that comes along with that. Okay, so now I'm going to give you three ideas as we head into today's conversation that are hopefully going to be useful for you as you rebuild this identity of your autonomous self. So first is the frame. You are a trillionaire. Now this frame is referencing you and I are each made up of three 35 trillion plus cells doing the various functions of our body. So we are, and the autonomous self is trying to get all of our 35/trillion cells pointed in the right or I guess in a similar direction. And so for me, the single unifying principle I have in my life is I'm trying to slow my speed of aging. If something is going to increase some behavior, habit activity is going to increase my speed of aging, I typically do not do it. If something slows my speed of aging, I then go after that. And what's been helpful for me is as I've measured myself with blueprint and become the most measured person in history. I have a lot of numbers to work with. So I know what kinds of things generally increase aging, what kind of things slow aging. And so that's useful to me in that I have a single orientation of a principal slowing my speed of aging and have numbers to play this game. And so for you, it may be you're optimizing for performance, you may be doing something where you're trying to manage a health issue, you may be trying to do something else in life. But it's really useful to say if you are a collection of 35 plus trillion cells, getting a single orientation of an objective is really useful for yourself. Number two is grind culture is out and not dying is in. And so specifically, it would be a common opinion for somebody to have in the 20th century to live fast and die young. And that's reasonable because you would say, I want to get the most out of life because there's just no reasonable way for someone to imagine living for some extended period of time in the year 2023. That is not true anymore. With the speed of speed of progress in anti aging and health and wellness, it is unknown and quite possible that we could live dramatically longer lives and a lot better. And so this idea, a lot of people feel pressure that you need to participate in grind culture to not get behind. And that means going to social events late at night and drinking. It means doing all sorts of things that would otherwise be detrimental to your health because you're trying to achieve a certain status or stand or you're signaling to the world. And we humans play really well within norms. And so if the norm were to shift to say grind culture is out and do not die is in, it would be a lot better. And there's a meme someone shared with me this week that I thought was helpful to capture this. Can we pull that one up? There we go. Yeah. So there's a lot of expectations we have socially about what we do to participate with the tribe and get along with everyone else. And oftentimes when we don't participate in the norms, and that could include drinking or eating bad food or participating in other things, it sometimes can upset people. And so even though we are the ones choosing to do this thing, others get upset because we're not playing along. But hopefully, what a lot of people have said to me since this last week discussion is they felt like for the first time they had permission to prioritize their health in life, that they no longer felt overwhelmed by this grind culture. And I hope that's what you get from today, is you're part of a community of people who, who are going to prioritize health and wellness. Now, this does not mean you're any sort lesser in your professional work. You can be actually even better, even more extraordinary, because you're putting your health and wellness first and you'll perform better. So first is, you are a trillionaire. Number two is grind culture is out, not dying is in. And the third one, building your autonomous self. There's a few ideas in here that I like about this. It's a reframing of how we understand ourselves. If we could pull up the second one, I love this comic because I think it captures a lot of the discussion I hear around the autonomous self. So without Cookie, me, just monster. And so when I've held these blueprint brunches and we talk about the autonomous self, this idea that our bodies are 35 plus trillion cells, if we inquire of these 35 trillion cells, hey, how are you doing? What do you need to be your best self? It can report out its status, it can report deficiencies, it can report ways in which we can intervene to get it better. When that is processed by a lot of people, they think through their understanding today of how they decide what to eat, when to eat, and. And all the cultural nuances and relevance around that, and if that's taken from them, they kind of fall apart. Like the Cookie Monster, where he's in, you know, like he doesn't understand himself if he doesn't do these things. That's natural and understandable. When a new thing comes along, it takes us a little bit of time to adapt. And what the autonomous says at its core is it says we humans have done a remarkable job at building society using storytelling. We have stories about where we came from, why we're here, what's going to happen after death, what we should aspire to, what is meaning making. They're all stories we've created to help us understand a complicated reality. As science and technology and engineering and math came along, it gave us additional tools to build in the world. Sometimes they compliment stories, sometimes they are additives, sometimes they are in conflict, for example, like evolution and creationism. But that's okay when it comes to our health and wellness. What I have observed is I would rather a system of science and technology and engineering manage my health and wellness than I would stories. Now, I come from an origin where there was an ideological list of eat these things, don't eat those things. So it's kind of a story based narrative, this one. I'm just saying let's just look at the biology and the science and the technology and let my system build on by itself. And so the wisdom of our age is discerning what topics of society should be in the realm of story and what topics are better addressed with science and technology. So in building your autonomous self, this is, we're relying upon technology to get readouts from our body and then do what's in our best interest. And so the autonomous self is kind of like this reframe of we are going to do amazing things with our existence. Right now we spend a lot of our time and energy on health and wellness, deciding this and that. And the idea is to automate all of it so we can try to achieve optimal and perfect health. And so today, the building blocks we're talking about are the foundational building blocks of how you build your autonomous self. With blueprint. I've done all these different measurements and I've made all this public so that even if you cannot do the measurements that I've done, you at least have a starting point to know how to get going in your own efforts. Today we have a specific challenge. Last week was orientation on getting our heads around this idea that we are different versions of ourselves. If we can look at the next slide, this is the introduction that we think of ourselves as a unified whole, but we're actually many different versions of ourselves. For example, you see here with family, you self sabotage you, evening you6 validation you where all these different kinds of people, we have these different biochemical states when we start thinking about our behaviors and how we achieve the change we seek. Understanding through this frame is really useful. The goal this week is you can do the beginner version, intermediate or advanced. The beginner version would be identify what one self destructive version of yourself and try to get the score to zero. So let's just say that you identified like me, it was Evening Brian. Evening Brian would show up at 7pm he would eat way too much and are the wrong kinds of food and he would do it every day. And so my goal this week would be to say would be to identify who evening Brian is, how he thinks, what his needs are, what he's trying to address. And then I would set up a protocol to say, all right, evening Brian, not one time this week is he going to eat food that is going to be inconsistent with what I want to become. So the goal, the goal is to get to zero. Now let's just say I go about these seven days and evening Brian gets the best of me for two days. So it's five wins and two losses. It's still a great start. So an intermediate would be you're identifying two versions of your sad self. And sad means self aided destruction. And then three would be, you're doing three versions, which is hard. Now what's useful about this process is when you go about doing this, let's just say you're identifying a particular version of you that does something every day you're going to encounter something that you're, you're going to size up the significance of the challenge. You may start day one and say, oh, that's so easy, I can just change. Or you may say, oh boy, this is, this is pretty serious. And it's kind of as strong potentially as an addiction. And so you need to size these things up. Like how significant is that change going to be? And then what are the tactics you're going to employ in life to bring about that change? All right, cool. Then the last one is number four. And then we're going to get into tactics like we did last week of specific things each of us can do to start making practical gains on this. Number four. Okay, great. So a practical thing for me is if I look at myself and I try to assess where are my bad decisions in life, it's really right before bed. And so evening Brian zone. And so if you're like me. And a lot of people have said they are, uh, that evening part of the day is the one where most people get tripped up. And so this is a, a strategy to say, okay, if this is true on a daily basis, what would you do to try to minimize that? All right, so in summary, we have your trillionaire, your goal, aligning your 35 plus trillion sales towards a single single objective. You are part of this new culture grind. Culture is out, not dying is in. And you're going to build your autonomous self, starting with this. Different versions of yourself. All right, with that said, let's check in. Let's do what we did this last week. We'll start by talking with Sarah. Sarah observed all the conversations last week. And this is going to be identifying the different versions of Sarah. Sarah, are you ready to go for this?

Yeah, let's do it.

Okay. Okay. So, Sarah, last week you got to see two other people go through this exact same process. And so you've had a week to think about it. So if I inquire of you, when you imagine becoming your very best self, when you're looking at that version of you in the future, what do you see?

She is very disciplined and very accomplished, very ambitious. The discipline is the key piece, I think, because right now, while I, while I have achieved a lot of things and I have a lot of ambition, I don't have a structure that I use that is like, replicatable. So it's the discipline that I really aspire to have in my future self.

And so in this future version of yourself, what are the characteristics of discipline? Like, can you give me an example? When, when, let's say, Sarah wakes up in the morning and doesn't want to work out, what's the discussion that happens in the different versions of Sarah?

So at the moment, in current Sarah, the way that I get that discipline is by being accountable to somebody else. I work out regularly because I pay a personal trainer who is expecting me to turn up. But I want to have the kind of internal discipline that I can keep that commitment to myself and do it even if there wasn't somebody waiting for me. You see what I mean?

Yep. So what's the dialogue that happens? So, and you give me the example, where do you struggle the most? So where does the conflict happen between your best desired future self and the discipline you want to see?

The main struggle for me is with sleep. I have zero discipline with sleep. It's complete chaos, and it always has. So firstly, the conversation sometimes doesn't even begin because it's not like I look at the clock and think, oh, it's kind of bedtime. I just think, oh, I'm exhausted, maybe I should go to sleep. And my sleep saboteur Sarah thinks, well, maybe you've got a little bit more juice in the tank. Maybe you could just do a few more emails or maybe you could do like a few more chores. It's only half an hour. If you do them now then you'll be more productive in the morning when you wake up and, and you don't have to do these tasks. Oh well, that's kind of reasonable. So I guess I could stay up another half an hour and just do a take a few more things off my to do list and suddenly three hours have gone past. It's now 3, 4am, I have to get up in four hours. And suddenly the sleep saboteur Sarah is nowhere to be found. She's clocked out and doesn't want to be accountable anymore.

In that, in that moment when sleep saboteur Sarah shows up and it sounds to me like she's pretty charming.

She is.

She's offering up all the right words. It sounds like she's saying we're going to be productive, we're going to do things on our to do list. We're going to, we're going to do all the things that best Sarah wants. Yes. So she sounds charming, she sounds persuasive, she sounds like she's well intentioned.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I think because the sleep saboteur Sarah can see the to do list and can see the productivity that we can do by staying up and by minute and by sleeping less and having more hours in the day to do things. It's quantifiable, right? Immediately quantifiable. Whereas the benefits of sleep are harder to immediately quantify. There are the obvious, obviously I understand logically the long term impact of not having a regular sleep cycle and not getting enough sleep every night, but those it's harder to see how the benefits and the negative implications manifest immediately. Right. So it's that trade off that I can see that I'm being more productive and it's really hard for me to say yeah, but I might have better focus, but I can't quantify how much better my focus will be tomorrow if I did get enough sleep tonight. So it seems like it's more worth it to stay up and just thrash through more tasks. Yeah.

So in your mind, yeah, so in your mind it's really the time of the reward. You get immediate rewards from the tasks you're doing, it's harder to quantify whether you know sleep. And so you're willing to forego those.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly that.

So is this something that you. You do want to change, like you, you do want to prioritize sleep?

Desperately. I feel like it's the final puzzle piece. I feel like I've got food down, I've got exercise down. It can be optimized. Obviously there's other areas, but I feel quite confident with the trajectory that that's going in. And I just feel like I'm 32 now. And I think while I couldn't get away with this chaotic sleep, perhaps in my younger years, it's not sustainable. And I think I am already starting to see some of the negative impacts of that on my health. And I just think now is the time. If not now, then when? Right. Okay, so it's time.

Let's imagine tonight, right before bed, you're going to probably repeat a predictable ritual. So you are going to identify your ideal. Bedtime is arriving and then sabotage Sarah is going to show up and she's going to start making these compelling arguments. What conversation are you going to have?

Firstly, I think there needs to be the idea of the bedtime. So already that's like new Sarah has to say, bedtime doesn't happen just when I feel exhausted. Bedtime is a time in my calendar, like a meeting, like anything else. So that's already a new conversation is starting. We have a bedtime sleep saboteur. Star up will be like, this is. This is wild. But you're not even tired. Why, why sleep now when you're not tired? You've got so much more juice in your tank. New me. Well, this is part of our new identity. We are building healthy habits that are going to help us tomorrow. Let's treat it like an experiment. You know, let's give this a month and see if we're feeling better and more productive. Let's see if we can still get through our to do list because we'll be more focused because we'll be better rested. And let's see how this goes and we can revisit this saboteur Sarah and see if you actually have some compelling arguments about if our productivity was greater when we weren't sleeping. I think sleep saboteur Sarah would be quite happy with that logical sort of argument because she has lots of logical arguments herself. And the idea that it's an experiment that we see if I can still be as productive while I'm not being awake as Many hours in the day. Sleep saboteur. Sarah can be on board with that, I think.

Okay, so there are these. That's a rational, logical approach. What is the underlying emotional driver here?

There's so many. Brian, I think you hit the nail on the head with the Cookie Monster meme. I didn't realize a Cookie Monster meme could like cut so deep. There is so much identity tied up with staying up late. I think it's like the first rebellion that you have access to before you have access to parties and all the fun things of being an older teenager. Like when you're 13, the way you rebel is by staying up late. Right. And there's all this identity about the culture of nighttime and the kind of person you are if you stay up late. And things like, I'm a creative person, I work in products. So there's this narrative in society that creative people stay up later. And. And there is some truth to that. I think some of us have like different sort of natural circadian rhythms where we might want to stay up a bit later. But that still isn't an excuse for like chaotic sleeping, irregular sleeping patterns, things like the kind of culture of the kind of conversations, not even as parties in nighttime culture, but the kind of conversations you have at 2am spontaneously are very different to conversations you have at brunch. Right. So there's all of that identity that I think I'm so attached to. And the idea of being somebody that has a bedtime has always been like, this is. This is not going to sound like very grown up on my part, but there's something about the idea of having a bedtime that feels juvenile to me, which is ridiculous. It's juvenile in itself to think that it's juvenile to have a bedtime. But I think there's just something in my identity that is so tied to the idea of staying up late and having a chaotic sleep pattern as somehow being rebellious. I don't know who I'm being rebellious to, but it feels rebellious to me. Yeah.

Do you think that this could potentially fall under the category of the tensions we feel on building our autonomous self where we're accustomed to living based upon story based narratives? So I think you were articulate in identifying that this is a cultural norm, this is perception, this is identity. This is. And you just started unpacking the various layers. And if we, if we think of our. Our health and wellness not as run on stories but on run according to science, I wonder, is that frame helpful to you? Where.

Yeah, I think the idea of Leaving behind that first identity and having that middle ground where I feel like I don't have an identity linked to that part of my personality. It feels like a vacuum. It feels like a void is being created. And it's, and it should be, to be fair, it should be okay to not have your identity linked to every, every part of your life. Right. But it helps to be able to hold on to something else and build a new part of your identity instead of having this void. Because it seems like, you know, there's all this, all that culture and all those narratives attached to staying up late and having a chaotic sleeping pattern. It helps to. Yeah. Transition to something new. And this is such a strong identity and one I can really relate to because I, I'm so logical in other areas of my life. Right. That, yeah. Tying my identity to this is something I can get behind.

Yep. Yeah, it, yeah. Cultural narratives can be like a straight jacket.

Yes.

Where it pins us down into this via these invisible forces that we face, feel helpless against. And this is kind of, it kind of comes from grind culture. It kind of comes from these other narratives, like you're saying. But if we separate and we say the best way to solve the problem of optimal health and wellness, we know story based, you know, it has a role, but ultimately it's the precision of science and technology which is going to get us where we want. And I'm guessing that if you did adapt to this and you, you had a bedtime and it was non negotiable every day and you had that conversation and said, all right, sabotage, self sabotage. Sarah, I know, I understand you're wanting to be your best self. You're wanting to fit in with these social narratives. You have these ideas of social narratives and you confront those things. However. Right. You come back with your, your approach. Um, yeah, it's really great. I think a lot of people I've heard feel bounded by cultural expectations and they don't feel like they can just put them aside themselves. They need permission to change their, their behaviors. Like. No, we're not up and down. Okay, cool. This is great. So do you think this, for this next week, do you think you could be a zero? Could you score zero in the number of.

I, you know, I think, I think I've got a good shot. I actually did quite well this week. From our last session to now. I managed to be pretty consistent. I would give it a 4 out of 7. I actually blame you partially for a break in my consistency because I had dinner with someone I met from this Community. And we got on so well. We stayed out all night talking. So point minus to Brian for that, but I don't regret it. It was great. But yeah, I think that's a good challenge. And I'm also very competitive, so I think that's another thing that I can use, I can tap into when creating this new identity is I'm incredibly competitive with myself more than anything else. So if I set myself a challenge, I have to, you know, I have to get eight out of seven this week. So. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, let's do it.

Okay, great. You. You're on. You're going seven for seven and get good. And then I also like framing it. We oftentimes think of progress in terms of positive numbers, and that's where our. Our intuitions go. I also like thinking about it in the inverse where we're going for zero, zero, sad, zero, self fitted destruction. And so sometimes I would prefer being zero rather than number one. Zero is just a different way of being. Okay, cool. All right, this is great. So let's bring in Dr. Hirschfeld. So for those of you who didn't have the. See, can you hear me?

Yeah, sorry. Hey, Brian, I'm just getting my camera on here.

So for those of you who didn't meet Dr. Hirschfeld last week, he specializes in studying behavior as it relates to time negotiating between our current selves and our future selves. So, Dr. Hershel. Yeah. If you can't get your camera on, great. If not, then feel free to chime in via audio. What are your suggestions to Sarah as she goes about her activities?

Yeah, thanks, Brian. I apologize about the camera. I'll probably sign up after this and send back in. But I think this is such a fascinating conversation. So one of the first things I'd recognize here is how pernicious the sleep problem is, because as you mentioned earlier, I love your little graph. Right. The bad decisions happen the closer we get to the end of the day. And so it's like you're within the domain that you're trying to worsen by the fact that you are tired. In fact, there's great research suggesting that doctors, as the day goes on, are more and more likely to prescribe antibiotics that they're not indicated to prescribe for because they get more tired. So it's kind of like. And judges are more and more likely to, you know, just throw a prisoner back in jail rather than give them parole as they get hungrier and as they get tired. And what's interesting there is if you think these super rational People, you know, judges and doctors. So it's like, if they can't do it, what hope do we have right now? I mean, I would add one thing to this, which is I think I love your, the goal of, you know, seven out of seven this week. And I have like a ton of confidence that you will hit that. Especially like, because you mentioned that sort of competitive almost that like intra self competition, you know, there's some other. One way that we can persist with our goals over a longer period of time is to give ourselves what's called goal reserves. So essentially, sure, you might say, I want to hit seven out of seven. Well, how about one week of the month it's going to be five or two weeks out of the month it's going to be five. And the nice thing about that is if you find a night where you end up staying out talking, whatever it might be, rather than consider that a failure, consider that tapping into your goal reserves. And the nice thing is there you say, okay, I'm going to use up one of those. And it, it's reframing because now it's not as if you've fallen off the sort of path, but okay, I'm just tapping into this sort of buffer here and allows you to keep going. And the other, the one other thing I would say is I love what Brian, Brian, I love how you mentioned this sort of, you know, making it non negotiable to some extent. You're coming up with that non negotiable, you know, that non negotiable state when you're in your sort of cold state of saying I want to go to bed earlier tonight. And it's really hard to tap into that, you know, future Sarah at night who's in the sort of like, you know, the researchers call it a hot state of like there's something else you want to do. You want to clean up the house, you want to stay up later, you want to watch something, whatever it is. And so that tension is really a difficult one to navigate. And so the recommendation there is, you know, to try to make compassionate goals for your goals because it's really hard to fully step into the shoes of that, you know, nighttime Sarah self.

That is super helpful. I love the idea of the goal reserves. That is, that is great because I think it's one of those things where I think we all have experience with that where you make you mess up once and you're like, well, that's it. I guess, I guess this is me forever now. So, yeah, so it's a really, really helpful, really helpful thing to keep in mind. Thank you.

Yeah.

Because I think it's. I mean, I could totally imagine you doing it this week, but then, you know, if next week comes along and you're. What if it's two months from now and, you know, we haven't had the Sunday brunch, it's easy to sort of fall off. Right. You know, one of the things we know in psychology is it's a lot easier to reach a goal and a lot harder to maintain it. So figuring out how to maintain it is, you know, that's really difficult.

Absolutely. That is super helpful. And also the idea of hot and cold space, that's something I'm going to keep in mind when I'm decision making as well.

Yeah, excellent.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Dr. Hirschfeld. And then by the way, Dr. Hirschfeld is a professor at UCLA. He has a book that came out this past week on your future self.

Yeah, your future self. That's right. Thanks, Brian.

We'll post that in the show notes. And then those of you who are asking, Sarah is a volunteer. We announced that we were doing these live streams. I asked if people would be willing to volunteer. And so she raised her hand and courageously did so. So, Sarah, thank you for making yourself vulnerable and having this conversation live in front of others.

My pleasure. This has been fantastic.

Now we're invested in your sleep score. What time is your bedtime?

Oh, my God. Good question. I think I'm going to. This is probably not very blueprint, but it's realistic for me to begin with midnight at least five minutes before midnight. So at least I'm going to bed on the day before tomorrow. So.

Yeah, yeah, 11:55. That time sounds fine. Blueprint does not actually specify when is the right time to go to bed. It just uses data. And so it's basically trying to find your circadian rhythm and it's maintaining that consistency so it's less relevant what time you go to bed and more important that it's consistent. Consistent. And you're getting the sleep performance that you, you need. Okay, cool. So midnight and you're going to go to bed within how many minutes of midnight? All 7 days this week I will.

Be, I will be getting ready, but I will be head hit the pillow at midnight. And so I will be winding down in the hour leading up to that. Unfortunately, I have a pretty good track record of falling asleep very quickly once I get into bed. We'll see how that continues once I'm going to bed when I'm not exhausted. So that's going to be interesting to see how long I now stay awake when I'm in bed. But we'll see. I'll give you feedback. I'll make notes.

Okay, great. Sarah, thank you very much.

Thank you. This has been great.

Okay. Judd, are you here on.

Yes, I'm present.

Fantastic. Okay, great. Let me get you up so I can see you.

Perhaps an ironic way of saying, I'm here, given the conversation.

All right, Judd, so what's happening in your world? What. What version of yourself are you identifying?

So the version of self I've identified is a little bit tricky. Maybe it's different than the previous people because I've identified what I call gonzo Judd and gonzo Judd, someone who values experience and values a story. And I think when I do that, I'm sometimes driven to sad behaviors. And the reason I call it gonzo Judd is it's from the Hunter S. Thompson quote, which is, life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid and skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, worn out, and loudly proclaiming, wow, what a ride. And so I guess, Brian, the conundrum I'm having this exercise is that I feel like some of the things that I value for my future self don't have a Manichean relationship with my sad behaviors. It's hard for me to isolate one, like, version of self that's totally detached from a future self that I would like to be. Does that make sense?

It does. Can you identify a. A conflict that happens where the two feel strained between each other?

Well, for example, in my future self, I hope that I am in a loving relationship and say, for example, if I meet a woman that I really like and. And she, you know, there's a window of opportunity where we could get to know each other. And. And she asked me for a glass of wine or if I want to do something like that. I could definitely see my. See myself saying yes to perhaps the slight detriment of my health. My health, for the trade off of having the opportunity to meet someone that I could later be in a relationship with.

Could I restate that and say, there are cultural norms that feel like they serve as social cohesion and the bridge from one human to another. And if you violate those social norms, it may eliminate the connections or the bridges you're trying to create in your life.

So in the Instance I brought up, would not drinking be that norm?

That's right. So I mean, for example, if this person enjoys a glass of wine and it's a cultural norm that people are familiar with and it's not something you prefer to participate in instead of bring up, instead of raising this uncomfortable topic. And you know, because I can imagine that you model out the conversation and it's something like, I think I'm going to have, you know, this non alcoholic drink or this other beverage, it would probably raise the question, well, why aren't you drinking wine? And it's like, well, shoot, now I, I feel burdened with having to explain why, alcohol or no alcohol, and it just creates a burden. You'd rather have the social ease of the interaction. Is that roughly?

Yes. Or I would, I would regret not being on the same level, if that makes sense or not. Just. Yeah. Playing along and going down the rabbit hole.

Yeah, okay. I completely understand that. Would you say there are some similarities here in the conversation that we had, that Sarah and I had, where the forces we are identifying of cultural norms and cultural expectations that feel formidable, they're expectations that society has on us, that we put upon ourselves and that we grapple with? Would that say, even with that quote, where that was a quote by a human who was trying to frame out an ideal life and one that is appealing to you, where you read that and you say, boy, I can see myself in that and I can see myself being the hero of that journey, you're accepting a frame of how life, an ideal life, how it could be lived. So are you basically grappling with societal expectations on who you should become, want to become, need to become? Would that be an accurate description?

Definitely. Grappling with societal norms and then just also, what trade offs would I prefer to make in order to live my life the fullest? So I, I think maybe the inextricable relationship is between the longest life and the fullest life. Are, are those. Because it sounds like for you that those are the same thing. I worry that for me that those are very different things.

Yeah, a lot of people point that out. It's, it's one of the top five comments that people have is they, they observe my behaviors and they say, you know, they'll say, you only have one life, live it, you're wasting your life trying to live longer. For every, every extra day you're earning longevity, you're spending it via longevity efforts. And I appreciate that. I mean, they can maintain those expectations. My thought on that is that this is why I brought up that quote in the 20th century. I think it was reasonable for someone to maintain the idea that live fast and die young because it was unreasonable to expect to live a long time. If you want to forego the last two or three decades of your life, you know, to live fast when you're younger, fine. And what, what I'm saying to my, my understanding of reality is we may be entering into a time period where we have an unknown extension of time frame. So if I can live an extra, if I can, if I can exist into that time frame, I may live an extra 20, 30, 40, 50, 100, 200, 300 years, who knows? We don't know what lifespan can be extended to and how well we can live. And so I'm saying that I, I would prefer to roll the dice and live for this extremely long option. Even though what I'm doing now I don't consider to be a sacrifice. I love every second of it, so it brings me joy in the meantime and I get to play this long option. So to me, it's a clash of culture, of how to understand. And it's basically, people are basically arguing on meaning, making games. And this goes back to that first meme of someone saying, eat the cookie. You know, it's like it's very uncomfortable for other people when you don't play the games they're expecting you to play. It makes them feel very uncomfortable. And so I think what you're saying is in the conversation with someone who says, let's have a glass of wine, you don't want them to feel uncomfortable because you don't want to raise it. You'd rather just roll through it. In doing that, of course, you're also, you just don't know what territory you're seeding in terms of what that person's expectations are. But are we any closer to the conflict you feel internally?

I believe so. I could give a separate example. Let's say. So I do filmmaking kind of as a second career. Let's say I'm tracking down a story and I like and the character or the subject that I'm following has a trajectory that has me following that person long into the night and being in uncomfortable and risky situations. But I need to capture the story. I mean, there, it's not so much cultural, it's more like self requires me to engage in non ideal behaviors relative to my longevity. What about there? I mean, can you see an inextricable relationship there?

Yep, I do. I see the conflict. You're saying it's Nuanced. There's gray areas. There's not clean lines on. Like, this is a version that is clearly your self aided destruction. Yep. So I guess what I'm hearing you say, Judd, is the. And this is your opening statement as well. The nuances of your complications and conflicts are inherently nuanced and therefore it's hard to draw these lines.

Honestly. Yes. I mean, I can. I know, I know the discussions before. I can. I can do that too. But it's been really hard for me. I've had the week to think about it and I wish I had made more like progress in the direction that everyone else had, but it's been really hard for me, Brian. And that's what I love about. That's what I love about this actually is I may not have even thought to be tripped up in the way that I am. And maybe that's the cultural norms you're talking about. If you were to create new ones, at least it would create the obvious contrast that people may be overlooking.

Yeah. So maybe I'm thinking through. I guess I'm now engaging in trying to do productive problem solving. Maybe one way of approaching this would.

Be.

Inviting a version of yourself where you are you. You're trying to more clearly see what cultural norms are and the expectations they're presenting and questioning what you yourself want. So whether the expectation be from a quote or from dating or from work or from some other narrative based perspective, what are those things and what are they inviting you to do and why? And then maybe a self reflection process of given those things, what do you want and why and where are those things? Where do those things have conflict?

That was excellent. Yes, for sure.

It reminds me a lot of when I had depression, I guess maybe weirdly, embarrassingly, something that when my brain would say something to me like life is not worth living or everything is hopeless, or you know, some other statement that would just be. I would feel really bad. I learned the tactic of those thoughts are not me. They're just thoughts that my brain generates. And when I became an observer of my thoughts instead of being my thoughts or thinking I was my thoughts, it was this huge weight. And so maybe you could watch these cultural expectations. Same thing as they're just things floating through you and you're observing them for what they are, but they're not attached to you. You're not owned by them, you don't owe them anything in reciprocity. They're just things you observe and you get to then choose what you want.

Do you think that Evening Brian was more thoughts with identity.

I mean, to be fair to evening Brian, he had a pretty difficult situation. He showed up on his duty when all of the world was falling apart. You know, he had multiple fires on going on at work, the kids, little. Three little babies, challenging relationship, leaving a religion. Like the weight of the shoulders was on his, was on him. And he was just trying to deal with it and trying to find escape. And so I have empathy for him. You know, his problem solving skills weren't great. You know, eating, eating a lot of food to try to hit that momentary relief was not a good long term solution. It didn't. So I empathize with him. I also see his cleverness in getting what he wanted, and I also see his stubbornness in defending his behaviors. As you know, that was the thing that would bring relief in a pretty challenging moment.

But do you think that different versions of self are more, More or less inclined to associate like or more. More or less inclined to be capable of observing thoughts rather than identifying them?

Yeah.

Or with them?

I think you're. I think you're spot on. I mean, Evening Brian, his. He was in a desperate sprint to relieve the pain and would offer up any rationalization he could to get what he wanted. I think that's a great observation. And other versions of myself would be more. They be more open minded and contemplate the situation more as a good observation.

I feel like you're tripping or I'm tripping you up or I feel. Hal Hirschfeld coming in soon.

This is great. Dr. Hirschfield, what do you. What do you. What do you think about this?

Yeah, no, I. I think this is a great conversation. Judd, you're. Your vulnerability here is really admirable. I mean, this is. You're talking about big questions. You know, there's a couple of observations I want to make here, which is that times we pit happiness against meaning, and there's, you know, research suggesting that people think about our lives in this way. We can have a happy life, we can have a meaningful life. There's been a new perspective that I really find engaging and compelling, which is that you can think of your life as happy or meaningful, but also psychologically rich. And what that means is that it's a life that's marked by experiences, not all of which are necessarily positive. You know, you could look at a life that has difficulties and heartache and pain, but say that that person had a rich life. And to some extent, I think some of the stuff you're grappling with, I think on the surface, you know, your glass of wine example is like, it's a great example, but that's that surface level to some way. I think you're kind of grappling with, how do you play into a culture that I think you sort of want to be part of? It's not that you don't want to be part of it, but also, how do you stay true that you want to do? One perspective that I really like is what some researchers call grappling with the big why. I think that maybe that sounds more sort of high level than needs to be, but essentially the gist is trying to figure out what the why is.

What is.

The thing that I really sort of subscribe to the most is that health for you is that deepening relationships. And it may not be that these things are necessarily mutually exclusive, but the reason I like it is, is because one of the things that it suggests is that as we face difficult decisions, am I going to or not? Am I going to stay up late or not? Whatever these things are, bring it back to my big why. How does this particular action play into this thing? It may make it a little easier to decide yes or no, and you may say, you know what? This particular one, it doesn't fit in, but I'm still gonna do it. Because here's the rational. Have to be rational to some extent. I mean, I think a lot of this conversation is highlighting. We're sort of a bundle of both, you know, rational desires, but also, you know, irrational impulses and urges. Right. So figuring out sort of how to fit these things together may be particularly difficult.

I don't.

You know, Judd, I don't know. This is. Your questions are so much more abstract than some of the other ones. So I think that the conversation that both Brian and I are having is, like, necessarily more abstract as well. I don't know if that's helpful, though, to consider, you know, what it means to have a psychologically rich life, and also what it means to think about that big why or not. Does that resonate at all?

Yeah.

Like, I thought I had completely derailed our discussion, and somehow you brought it full circle. The only problem is, I feel like the big why is even more difficult challenge than identifying the. I gave myself a bigger homework project than I had signed up for, but, yeah.

Yeah, if you don't finish it in a wonderful, you know, that's okay.

Seven out of seven, I'll. I'll do it.

Yeah.

So, Judd, what are you taking away from this conversation?

Well, I think what you had said Brian, about identifying moments where I can observe a thought relative to a cultural norm, such that I can identify its meaning rather than perhaps thoughtlessly partaking in it or being influenced by it. And then maybe combining that with what Dr. Hirschfeld said, maybe trying to orient it relative to a bigger life goal or a bigger question of why. So maybe it is a more abstract endeavor that I'll partake in, and that's combining those two things and trying to answer those questions.

So when we check in with you on progress, what would you like us to inquire of you?

At what moments was I able to observe cultural norms coming into contact with. With a potential conflict of a larger why? And what can I learn from those?

Fantastic. What an energizing intellectual endeavor. These things are the most in our lives, invisibly all around us.

I totally agree.

Cool. Judd, thank you for again being courageous enough to volunteer to have this discussion in front of other people. Appreciate you and looking forward to checking in.

Thanks so much. It means a lot.

Okay, we're going to do a quick check in now with the. With. With Asta, who participated this past week, and Kieran. So, Austin. Hey, nice to see you.

You as well. Boren.

How did your week go?

This is actually a perfect time because I'm traveling and it's been going pretty well so far.

Oh, great.

Yeah, no, it's. It's pretty. It's interesting because when I first got of the call, like, last week, I was telling my partner, I was like, oh, shoot, now I don't think I have an excuse to have ice cream when I'm. That was good because it kept me. In the last few days, I packed my food when I was traveling.

But.

I think last night there was this moment when I walked for a lot and I was like, maybe I can have something else for dinner. I had the salty munchies, and I was talking to my husband. He was like, well, is that part of travel Asta? Is that allowed? So I think the public commitment and the accountability aspect has been amazing. And there's also been almost a mindset shift where I don't even have to debate with myself anymore. It's freeing in a way, which is really good.

So you would say you've been successful thus far in identifying travel Asta, and you were able to successfully come up with a strategy to avoid those behaviors that you didn't want her to have?

Yes, I would say.

In fact, it. I didn't even have to come up with a strategy. It was new. The few things that I'm going to eat, which I find tasty anyway, and I don't even have to think and debate and use up mind space on, oh, should I eat this? Should I not eat this? So it's been great from that perspective too.

That's amazing that you didn't need a strategy. Just. Just the meta awareness alone was sufficient to correct for the behavior you're trying to correct for.

Right. Yeah. I think it's just been more about reminding myself that, okay, this commitment to everyone and travel, Asta is going to not go off the rails, at least so far. And that means that I know I'm going to be eating these salads, which I love anyway, and that's it. I just don't have to make any more decisions going forward.

With this success now completed, are you now taking this to other versions of yourself?

That is the plan. So I have, I've started thinking about it. I haven't taken it yet, but I think I want to take it asleep now, because that was the other one.

Yeah. Did you hear, did you hear what Sarah had to say today?

Yes, I did. Yeah. Yeah. So. Which was really good. I think it was a great conversation, which is very helpful too.

Okay, so you're the intermediate stage. You're tackling two versions of yourself. Travelasta and then also now sleep.

Yes, that's right. Yes.

Okay. Excited to follow on this?

Yep, I am too.

Okay. Nice to see you.

You too. Thanks. Brian.

Hi, Kieran.

Hi. Hi there.

Hey. Nice to see you. How did the week go?

It's gone pretty well, thank you. With the risk of turning this into a sleep workshop, this is also something I've worked. I've been listening very carefully to Sarah.

Yeah. So is your focus going to be primarily sleep going forward as the.

Yes.

So I was trying to identify what gets in the way of my future self and what might cause grumpy or stressed self. And I recognized the big sabotaging behavior at bedtime, which is essentially going on screens, which sounds sort of petty or ridiculous, but I didn't feel like I had any control over doing this. So I picked this and I decided a time to be off screen. Off screen's half eight. And I've done it every single night. So it's been pretty good. It's been really useful.

Any advice you'd have for others who are starting this process themselves?

Yeah, absolutely. I was thinking of some of the things last week that I used. So being very specific, setting quite clear goals and targets, identifying this behavior, but choosing a time, obviously it'd be too woolly. Also really thinking about my values and my future self and who I want to be and just being aware when the self sabotaging self comes up. Just being aware of that has been brilliant. But also just to throw in there, the accountability, I think has been important. I suspect I might have broken by now if I wasn't reporting back to someone.

Well done, Karen.

Thanks.

Yeah, we received a lot of messages about your vulnerability this past week and a lot of people connecting to what you talked about. So thanks, Ian, for that.

Thanks, Brian. Thank you.

Okay, great. So we're at time we're going to answer, I guess, take a few, answer a few questions that people have brought up and then we will sign off. So I guess for context on this whole thing, these discussions we're having are about our individual lives. They're about how we struggle to do the things that help us become our best selves. This is really in the larger context for me. If you do a thought experiment and you again, imagine we're in the 25th century and though the intelligence that exists then are reflecting on the early 21st century and they're contemplating or they're observing what we changed in the early 21st century, the time you and I live, what did we figure out that propelled humanity forward in a unique way? And I would suggest that it's goal alignment. We've heard that word a lot with AI, that we're building this new form of super intelligence and we want it to not destroy us. We want it to be cooperative with us and we want it to help us achieve our objectives. And as we're having ever, as we're seeing this in this conversation, oftentimes we don't even know what our objectives are. And even if we do know, we don't behave in a way that allows us to do, do that. And so there's a discussion going on with AI alignment of how do we build constructive, positive, useful artificial intelligence. There's this other conversation happening in parallel which no one is talking about, which is human alignment. We're ignoring this. The fundamental problem of all the all that exists on planet Earth. And it starts with ourselves. And so when most people talk about how to build the future or how to change the world, most people are pointing outwards or they'll point at technology, wanting to build technology that does it. Very few have a first intuition of wanting to work inwards. And that's what this is about. It's about goal alignment and it's initially about ourselves, but it's really A way to scaffold, to think about goal alignment across all of humanity. And I wonder, as a species, would we have the courage to. To reimagine our own alignment? Could we imagine ourselves becoming a completely non violent species? Now, nonviolent, of course, means many things to many people. But could we imagine ourselves walking into a future that is more harmonious and more cooperative, Just better ways of cooperation? And I'll give you a tangible example in doing these efforts on myself, what I was trying to figure out is how can I. My unifying objective for my 35 trillion cells was how do I slow my speed of aging so that I can be around to participate in this extraordinary future we're going to have the species. And in doing that, I made a simple change of frame where I identified that behaviors that I participated in that accelerated my speed of aging. I reframed them as acts of violence. Now, violence is a very strong word. We use it for a very narrow set of activities. So when we go out in public, most of us don't resort to physical violence in trying to resolve our conflict. We have these other means that are not that don't involve violence. When we think about our behaviors that accelerate our speed of aging. I reframed it to say it was an act of violence against myself. So the cultural norms to drink and stay up late and eat junk food and do all manner of things that would accelerate my aging. Once I reframed it to acts of violence, I just said violence is not acceptable to me and I'm going to take my violence to zero. And so in measuring my body things that accelerate my speed of aging, I've been able to work on myself to say I'm going to get goal alignment with my 35 trillion cells and try to get my acts of self violence to zero. And that's what blueprint is about. And so if you imagine, could we build a society where this is just standard? And if you would imagine for most of history, humanity solved their conflicts by using swords. And them imagining a future where people would use rule of law and other societal mechanisms to resolve conflict would have probably been unbelievable to them. But that's not. Just because we can't imagine our current time does not mean it's possible we would just adapt to it. And so I hope you see in these conversations, these are about highly practical, tangible things like sleep and understanding cultural norms and other things. It's really this bigger discussion of what we're going to become as a species. It starts with our individual behaviors. And if we truly can structure our existence in a way that matches what we want to become. I'll look at a few of these questions and we'll wrap up for the day. I really enjoy seeing the comments real time and getting a heartbeat of where you're at. So thank you everyone, for being here and for offering this up. All right. Okay. How do you maintain discipline? I tried to. I've tried to remove my mind from having to make decisions on a daily basis. And so you could call it habits, you could call it systems. I call it my autonomous self. Alfred North Whitehead, a mathematician, made this observation that society advances according to the number of. Number of actions that can be automated. And so I've been trying to scaffold up myself to say, can I achieve this autonomous self by stacking my daily interventions, by making them habits for my autonomous self? So I know that when I put my mind in a situation to say, am I going to eat dessert or not, or I'm going to go to bed on time or not? And I make it a choice, I will make the wrong decision almost all the time. And so I had to identify that I was reliably unable to act in my best interest. And that's when I made the big change to say, I need to find an alternative source and I want to put my body in charge of maintaining my health and wellness. I'm going to inquire of all my biological processes and let my body, married up with science and technology, maintain my health and wellness. And so it's very counterintuitive where we oftentimes think of our minds as our very best problem solving tool. We encounter something, we need to think about it or come up with an idea. And in this case, my mind was my nemesis and I needed to find another version of me, in this case, all my biological processes, a version that was more peaceful and constructive and reliable than my mind. Okay. And then I'm getting a note from my team. Thank you, team. We also ahead of this, we, we invited several people to be audience participants in today's session who are going to offer up their viewpoints of what they heard, what they learned, anything they want to share. Because we all know that we have different experiences. So let's, let's have someone chime in here and love to hear what you thought of today's conversation. Hello? Yes, we got you. Hi. Oh, hi.

Hi. Hello, Brian and Tim. Well, I'm taking my chance to say thank you for everything you do. My question was if one is not aiming for a caloric deficit, nor Trying to address any deficiencies. Do you think it's possible to achieve optimal nutrition as a vegan with. Without any supplements other than B12?

I would think that question would land in a scientific setting. I wouldn't dare for that in my opinion. My opinion for sure.

Do you have any scientific data about that?

What I've learned in my time spending in. I'm getting an echo.

I'm sorry, I'm muted myself.

What I've learned in the past two years of being in the world of anti aging, that there's not a lot of convergence of opinions. So you can. My experience has been you can give three anti aging scientists five different papers and they will read them and then you can say, I'd like to have an anti aging protocol optimal for me. You will get three different plans. There's just not a lot of agreement. What we've tried to do with blueprint is we've tried to say human opinion is great and it's viable in a certain area, but really we've tried to focus on the data and that's why we share all the data, even though It's n equals 1. Data is more valuable than human opinion at this point. And so we've really tried to address it that way. Cool. Thank you for your question. Stacy.

Are you able to hear me?

Yes.

Okay, great. You know what, I just wanted to say that we were talking about visions of future self, right. And I just remembered that in my early 20s moved to a big city, right. And I had a vision in my early twenties of my future self. I was, you know, at peace. I was, you know, envisioning myself just very happy in a room with lots of light and plants. And guess what? Maybe I was just naive, but my. That vision did not quite match my current reality. How do you reconcile that? Or does it not even matter?

Hmm. What would be your take after listening to the conversations today?

Well, I guess my take is, you know, I have had, you know, periods of pure happiness. I've had my experiences of stress just like anyone else. Right. And so I just keep going. Right. Just keep making those future visions and hopefully some turn out.

Yeah, my. I guess my personal experience on this has been that. It's pretty difficult to have a conversation between the various versions of yourself as things now. And it's equally as challenging to have conversations with your future self. So imagining what you're 30 and 40 and 50 and 70, 80 year old self will be like. And then when you arrive there, of course looking back at your former self. And so this understanding yourself over time and having fluid conversations is. Is quite a substantial task. I mean, again, in the moment it's hard and then let alone over a decade or a few decades. And in that situation, I myself have been. I've been basically trying to say the one thing that all my selves can probably agree on is being in optimal health and wellness, that things that are going to compromise, that are not going to be worth it in the moment and a longer term strategy is going to be everyone, all the different versions of myself are going to agree on that, that we can unify.

That. That's excellent. And you know, my, my. That previous vision of myself in my naive 20s, and of course now I'm in my 40s, but it did involve me being healthy. Right. Living a healthy life. And I think in general I've kept that up. It's just. I wouldn't say that my life has been right, carefree and, and, you know, stressless. But maybe that vision, now that I'm thinking about, maybe it did help me out. Maybe it did come to fruition just a little bit.

Yeah. I mean, this is the thing. A lot of alignment is a problem. So, like, alignment as it applies to each one of us. Becoming, being, I guess, becoming what we want to be. One, do we even know that? And two, than grappling with all the different versions of ourselves who are always in seeming conflict with each other. So it's just like we're trying to wrestle ourselves into some kind of cohesiveness. And it's probably the hardest task there is as a human is this constant reconciliation process. And. Yeah, so I think maybe the first step is just being aware of. Of the conflict that it exists and maybe going back to like, what Judd was talking about, which is like, just being aware of the forces at play so we at least have a better awareness of what's happening.

Exactly.

That's great.

Cool. Thank you, Stacy, for chiming in. Thank you. We'll do one more.

Can you hear me?

Hello?

Sorry, Bill, my cursor died. Okay. Do we have someone else chiming in or. Okay. All right with that, Doc? Oh, no, we do. I'm sorry, there's a delay here.

Can you hear me?

Yep, got you. Go ahead.

Okay, awesome.

So my question, I've put a lot of thought into this, and I'm curious what your perspective is. Having worked on Blueprint and just been in this space of thought for such a long time, it seems like humanity has optimized for, and maybe unintentionally prioritized writing. Stories that encourage sad behavior to a high degree. And we've. We've normalized it to the point where it's just become default and standard behavior and where we actively question and encourage people against kind of behaving in alternative ways. And it will take energy and effort to shift this. But I'm curious what your thoughts are on why we've optimized for this in the first place.

I mean, it seems to me that we spend the majority of our life like, basically life is us trying to address the discomfort of our conscious existence. And so the behaviors we choose, they provide relief. There are behaviors we can do, for example, like doing hard things, which are just uncomfortable in the short term and provide more pleasure in the long term. They also help address discomfort. But we, I mean, currently, today, we've built a society based upon addiction. I mean, if you look. I mean, it's. It's extraordinary how powerful the addiction forces are out there. And it's entirely supported by our culture. We've built legalized drug dealer in society, and we're all addicted. So I don't know. I don't know why. I just know each one of us. We're always trying to address the discomfort of our existence, and it's very hard. What's your take?

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. I think the humanity has been obsessed with the question why? For a very long time. But we've been actively interfacing with so many directions.

We lost him. Okay. We. We lost you on your connection. Okay, so let's wrap this up. Dr. Hirschfeld, do you have any final words of advice for everyone who's tuned in today?

Yeah, I mean, I again, love this conversation, Brian. It's been such a great, great community. Great chat. One thing I'll say is I love the, you know, the conversation two conversations ago about the sort of visions of the ideal future and then the sort of realization that it doesn't quite work out that way. And I actually find that sort of. I feel it's so realistic that, you know, that we can plan for the future, but I think one of the wisest things we can do is recognize that the future won't necessarily work out the way that we think it's going to and that, you know, this is actually. It's actually one of the things that I talk about quite a bit in my book is that the way that we can be truly mature about this is to sort of adjust our plans as the future comes along and realign. I love your concept of alignment. Realign with what our values are and recognize that those values may shift over time and that. I think one other thing I'll say is that we can incorporate the sort of notion of change, notion of improvement as well. Right. And so I think sometimes change is scary, but we can change for the better. And. And that is a concept that we naturally think of becoming more of ourselves. Right. So it's. It's a weird thing to say I'll become myself once I change, but in reality, if I incorporate that into sort of who I am, I think it can help us then sort of orient toward the. The behaviors and actions that. That let us do the things that become more of that sort of ideal, actual self, even if those notions change over time. I'll stop there, Brian. I know that's still pretty abstract, but. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you, Dr. Hirschfeld. We appreciate you being here. Community is a bunch of us working hard to be better versions of ourselves, and there's a lot of. Yeah, I guess, you know, where do you turn when you want. When you want to try to make that happen? You can read books and you can listen to podcasts. There's few communities who are dedicated to this in a way that. Yeah. So I guess I appreciate you being here. I hope this is useful to all of you in ways where. This is week two. We're learning we're much better than last week. We have a long ways to go, and the overall goal here is to be agnostic in terms of the approach or tactics and more of the general intent that we want to become our best selves and participate in this extraordinary future. So. All right, we'll end there. Thank you, everyone who has attended. Appreciate it, and your feedback is wonderful. Really appreciate it. We're wanting to learn very quickly and to see how we create value with the community of people.

And.

And so hearing your experience and what you'd suggest we can do to be better would be great. So thank you, everyone, for tuning in, and we'll see you next week, same time.