Break Your Expectations, Get Closer to Your Heart – Kyle Cease – #606

Bulletproof Radio, a state of high performance.

You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. This is an episode recorded live in person at the Consumer Health Summit in Scottsdale. Today's cool fact of the day is that giant pandas eat bamboo like a wolf in vegan clothing. What does that mean? Well, pandas started out eating meat, then they evolved to strictly eating bamboo. And since they have the digestive system of a carnivore, they forage for about 14 hours a day and sleep pretty much the rest of the time, like I did when I was a raw vegan. Researchers in China's Qing Ling Mountains wanted to see just how much protein those giant pandas were actually getting from their bamboo. So they fitted them with tracking collars and then sneakily collected their droppings for research. About 120 droppings from each panda a day, which also described me as a raw vegan. And detailed analysis of the dung discovered that the pandas digest the bamboo so efficiently, they're extracting about as much protein from it as a wolf gets from its carnivorous diet. There's really not a lot of protein in bamboo, the researchers noted. And they said, quote, that's why a panda spends a lot of time eating the bamboo. Now, when I was a raw vegan, I spent a huge amount of time, two or three hours a day, preparing food, which was super weird. And I had these special giant bowls to eat enough salad and I put huge amounts of fat and I was always hungry. But I did lose weight and I caused some autoimmune harm and did some other bad things to my biology. And I've heard this over and over from people. So, like, hey, you want to try a vegetarian diet? You can probably pull off bulletproof vegetarian. But if you want to try bulletproof vegan, if you're young, you're going to feel good for a couple years. If you're old, you're going to feel good for a couple months and then it's a slow decline. So now that I'm a farmer, now that I have pigs and sheep and I've seen the effect of animals on regenerative agriculture, on soil health, on vegetable production. Animals are necessary for human life. They're a part of the world around us. And I don't want to live in a world full of people and, and monoculture vegetable crops because it doesn't work. Now, if that was kind of dark, the guy who's our guest today is even darker. He's known as one of the most evil humans on Earth. Okay, not really. He's a guy named Kyle Seas, and he's New York Times bestselling author, a well known comedian, and a transformational speaker who helps people release anxiety and fear on stage. Which sounds weird, but this is the guy who's had two number one Comedy Central specials to his credit. But he turned comedy into a way to help people release stuff. I did not know who Kyle was until last night. I sat next to him at dinner and we started talking like, this guy has an amazing brain where we can talk about humor and we can talk about how that turns into letting people really talk about what's going on. So you guys are going to learn a lot today from this interview, because Kyle can go from that sort of making fun of you in a not unkind but not really kind way, but it's a way that gets underneath what's really going on. And I mean, I've seen people on stage cry and have these personal transformations through comedy, which is unusual and cool. And we're gonna walk through how he does it. Kyle, welcome to the show, man.

That's awesome. And it's fun to have the raw vegan opening because I also went raw vegan for six months.

No, I did not know that.

Yeah, and it was crazy because it did. My life changed more than anything then in a good way. But I also now don't credit it necessarily to the raw vegan as much as that I was evolving. In other words, recently I tried to go raw vegan, and it didn't do anything. In fact, I got really tired and I felt like crap. But the first time I did it, I got to. I went 90 straight days raw vegan. And I had announced to my following as a way to leverage myself that I couldn't eat anything. I said, if I eat one cooked thing, I'll give away $10,000. Whoa. And so I went raw vegan for 90 days. And that became the change of my entire career, of everything. So you didn't even know I was raw vegan. But you saying that is like, that was actually the pivot out of standup comedy and into my new life. But it's not just because of the way I was eating. I believe it's because I was leaving my old story of eating the way I'd been eating before and creating a new pattern and a new habit where all the old things that I was were falling off and creating a new alignment. I don't know if that makes sense, but, like, so when you fall in love with someone, you go On a date, you really get excited sometimes. If it goes well and you create all these things, this person's the one. This is amazing. How can that happen? And then three months later, you can totally not like them or feel that. Wait, I. I thought you were the one. I.

Right.

Well, maybe they're not the factor. Maybe the factor was you were evolving and getting away from the attachment to your old story of the past relationship or nobody likes you or whatever. You were actually evolving forward.

And I did go back to my old lovers butter and rib eyes. Was that bad?

Oh, no, that's great. But if you. But if you. But, yeah, but I'm. I'm in a debate in my head on if I answer that comedically or actually give you a coached answer. But I find that every moment we have decisions to make that we can feel in our body, we can feel in our body, does this expand me or contract me? And I don't mean like a pros and cons list. I mean, you can feel in the first second, there's no one I've ever met in my life that I didn't feel was slightly vibrationally heavy. Like that kind of. That didn't become way heavy if I keep them in my life.

So you're saying it's not a cognitive thing at all. It's a visceral felt, immediate knowing.

For me, that's what I believe I can feel in my. You know how we have those two voices? There's a first voice that says. There's a first voice we have that has these little inspired moments, like, what if we just went to Italy right now? Or what if I left this company? Or what if I asked that person out or started a band? You know, those first. That feeling, it feels expansive in your body, and you can't see what'll happen because it's never happened. So your mind can't put anything vision to it. It just is a feeling. And then we have the second voice. Whenever that first voice shows up, it's in your body, it feels like up and expansive. And then there's the second voice that always shows up that we're more addicted to. That's really got a stupid reason, but it comes up with why you shouldn't.

Right.

So this first voice will show up. And I'm sure you had those moments like, what if we create Bulletproof? And this second. Yeah, but no one's going to want to. Or that kind of thing. So the first voice goes like, what if we left this company? And then the second voice comes in with these really stupid reasons, like, you'll die if you do, Right? Yeah. Or, yeah, it'll be, you'll go broke. But sometimes it'll even come up with dumb reasons. Like, if we do, we can't go to the Cheesecake Factory party next Thursday, you know, and the first voice can't tell you this, but it's like, dude, if you'd learned to listen to me, you'll own all the cheesecake factories in a month. And the second voice is like, yeah, but they have those Thai lettuce wraps. And if you've ever stayed in a relationship too long that you don't want to be in because you know that eventually the two of you are going to go camping. You know what I like? You're like, I hate this person. But we already bought the tent and we're going in a month. So I guess I'll hate him for the next month and then hate him in the woods.

I've done that earlier, earlier in life where you, you stay dating somebody because you have something planned. It's like the, I don't want to look dumb at this event and show up by myself. So we'll just be unhappy for another couple weeks, right? Yeah, okay, I hear you.

And how many people do we know in the world out there? And probably so many of us. And probably there's other areas where am still. And people listen to the podcast that are in a situation they don't want to be in, but they're still in it. Like, I hate this job. I've been here too long. And then the yeah, but comes in, well, I've been here so long, so I should keep being there or I'm going to get promoted soon.

It's the sunk cost fallacy where you say, oh, I've put so much into this, I have to keep putting more in, even though the return on that is not very good.

Right. So I have a rule that if I justify why I'm keeping something in my life, that I'm supposed to let go of it. Because everything in my life that I truly want, I never would justify it. Like, I have a 21 month old daughter and I'm never like, well, she gets good medical, you know, or. Or like, you know, I love what I do for a living. I'm not like, well, it does this and that. That's you explaining it to yourself. Of why you're ignoring your body of why. Do you get what I'm saying? Yeah, your body can feel. I don't. This doesn't align in my life. But. But at least that person was nice to me that one time. So I'll keep letting them treat me like shit.

Now, it seems like you have spent an unusual amount of time looking at your inner dialogue like way more than normal people.

That's honestly the only thing I work on. And then the business and the jokes and the comedy and the career all are a byproduct of the channel that I'm on internally. So I believe that if I'm not working on me and then I change the external, the me that's here won't be able to match the external that I make and it'll still fall. So, for instance, let's say you're someone who thinks who I am. Okay? We all have this. Who I am is someone who makes $20,000 a year, okay? That's who I am. That's not what I have or what I've done. That's my identity, right? And we all have that. I have this anxiety. I'm this achiever, I'm this victim, right? I am this relationship. Well, if someone offers you a million dollars, that's death to the story of who you are. So you're going to sabotage it, right? So there's people that have in their body that their value is very low or it's in their nervous system. Like I got love for being broke in my childhood. Yeah.

It's not conscious, right?

So then you force yourself to try to make a ton of money. But the inside goes, this is not in alignment with the soul of what I am. So we actually sabotage the abundance that we've just created because it would be death to the story of what we think we are. So a huge shift for me started when I started meditating and listening to silence for two hours a day for four years. And transcending all of those who I ams and getting much more to, even though it sounds airy fairy, getting much more to understanding that I'm just this moment. And this moment can receive much bigger than all of those stories. I don't know if that's making sense.

But it makes sense. My experience is that the people who have the most screwed up childhoods end up being either psychologists, psychiatrists, or comedians.

Sure.

And you sound like you're some unusual mix of those. Although clearly not licensed in any of that stuff. So did someone drop you on your head or something? Why did you. Why are you this way? Because most people just don't obsess about their inner dialogue the way you do. Yeah, frankly, I Have until I erased most of my inner dialogue.

I would say instead of like, it's. It's not that I'm obsessing over it, it's that you're aware of it. I'm seeing something. It's. It's a matrix kind of thing. It's like, there's like a. This. All of the things we stress about, they're not real. They're not real. And I find that one illusion that every human is in is the illusion of when something happens, I'll be happy.

I used to be in that big time. That is totally not true.

Right.

Because you can actually make it happen. You're like, oh, I have. For me, I have $6 million. I'm 26 years old. I'll be happy when I have 10. But learning that I'm like, money didn't make me happy. I was in Entrepreneur magazine at 23 and I'm like, oh, fame will make me happy back then. So I'm in this thing. As the first thing ever sold over the Internet. It was a caffeine T shirt. And after that, I'm like, you know what? This fame, whatever. Being in a magazine when you're 23 feels like fame, it didn't move the needle at all. And it was really disappointing. I'm like, okay, so fame and money, stupid. They're both useful but not happy generating. And actually it made me feel really sad because I'm like, wow, I thought I was going to be happy. Now I'm not. You have to do something else. Okay, so you went through a similar path, it sounds like, because at 12, you were doing stand up comedy.

Well, I was. So I would say actually my screwed up, dark moment was more at the end, near the end of my comedy career. That got me so, like, I think that when we have these breakthroughs. Oh, and just as one finish on the when something happens, I'll be happy thing, the shift that I went through was the revelation is it's not, when something happens, I'll be happy. I mean, everyone, we all know what it feels like to constantly think, when I get that job, when I get the woman, when I get the guy, when I get the career, the money, when I get over this addiction, when I get in the moment even is a lie, right? Because you are the moment. So the shift I had was going from that to when I'm happy, things will happen. And what I mean by happy is okay with all of my emotions, okay with my sadness. Like actually sitting there feeling totally depressed and going, I love Feeling this way and being in it because it's a passing phase, but it's a deepening phase if you let it. And so I had a major incident happen at the end of my comedy career that I'll tell you about. My childhood was not too bad. It was pretty fun, actually. And I grew up in a family who. We had entertainers. My. My dad's uncle was the prop man for Gallagher. His. His mom. My grandma was on the Carol Burnett Show. She was a famous puppeteer.

Because this runs in your family.

Yeah. I mean, it's definitely something I was. It was a world I was born into as more than just the genetic side. It was a world that I was born into as possible. Like, it was just normal to see, like, my dad build company after company out of thin air. And I had another uncle that's a jazz musician, and he's awesome. And so we just saw entertainment as normal. And so as a child, I have a similar story to Jim Carrey. But in second grade, I told my teacher that I'd be good if she let me have five minutes at the end of the week to do standup for the class, because I was goofing off. And she's like, I was being funny. And she's like, you're interrupting the class. I go, well, can I do it like a scheduled thing? And she's, yeah. And then at the end of the week, I did five minutes, and I did Gallagher's material, which is funny because if you don't know who he is, he's an old Southern comic that was like a carrot top of the 80s. So I'm talking about sex and taxes with a Southern accent to. In what grade? Second grade. And I didn't get the jokes, and.

You didn't know what they were.

I could hear patterns of how things sounded. Like, I knew the beats of Gallagher and the delivery, but I didn't get any.

Like.

And I would just repeat it as if they'll get it. Like, I'd be like, women, you go out shopping, you buy us underwear that fits cardboard. Am I right, guys? And I'm, like, holding up my dad's underwear to second graders and doing sex jokes and talking about taxes. And so every teacher just lost it. Right? The teachers were loving it, but also, like, trying to. And also, I'm not knowing what's wrong.

You know, if you're a healthy, normal second grader, you don't know anything about sex. You're not supposed to know then, right? Wow.

Yeah, but.

So you didn't know the context of it. Okay, that's fascinating.

Right. I didn't know it was weird or bad. So then third grade, fourth grade, I was re negotiating with teachers. I'll do stand up if I can. You know, can I do a set every once in a while? And then, you know, at 12, I was starting to do open mics at comedy clubs. And around 15, I was really starting to work doing corporates and things and having these little kind of creative ways, you know, I don't think that our nerves are necessarily as much something that we have when we're kids. We actually learn why we should be nervous on stage. Like, kids wouldn't have stage fright as much as an adult. So I got to be. I got to be so young that I was oblivious to stage fright and oblivious to working through my emotions. And basically I learned how to be a comedian before I learned how to be a person. So I would go on stage and saw that as normal, I mean, and thought, you know, who you are is how good your set is. And. And I didn't know about human emotions and working through things. And my comedy career as a kid went really well. And at 18, I was a headliner. 19, I booked the movie 10 things I hate about you. Right. And at 20, I did the movie, not Another teen Movie. And then I spent my entire 20s doing over a thousand colleges and headlining all the comedy clubs and had a crazy, amazing career. And I still was just in the showbiz side of it and not really learning too much about emotion. I didn't need to, because every night I go on stage and get on a high. And not ever were you, like, dumping.

Your emotions on stage sort of thing. Are you, like. Was it a release for you or a flow state thing?

It's more. It was more like a high. Like, imagine if every night you could throw a party and everyone loves you and you're getting paid a lot.

It was an ego thing for you.

I mean, without knowing it, then, okay, you know, when you're in your 20s, I think you still. We don't know who we are still.

In a lot of ego.

Yeah, yeah. And so I would just constantly go perform and basically I'd get enough external love that I wouldn't have to do any inner work. Right. Like, I wouldn't have to hit lows and you could go through a breakup, but immediately I'm on stage that night, you know, so I'm not feeling. I'm actually talking about the breakup on stage and then getting love that way and, you know, getting A lot of approval that matched the approval I was hoping to get from mom on the stage.

Okay, that was putting it right out there, right?

Yeah. And so I think that it constantly put me in a high that was big enough that made me not have any reason to grow internally because I could just go on stage and there were so many sets that eventually I would be able to do a set in my sleep and have a really good reaction when you say do a set.

Last night at dinner when we were just sitting chatting and, and I was getting to know you and going, man, I should interview this guy, you talked about how you hadn't prepped at all for what you were going to say on stage last night at this event and how you just go up there and you just allow it to flow. But when you talk about doing a set, did you used to prep and make up your jokes? And I mean, I've seen some of what Seinfeld does and I once played poker with Larry David. Didn't get to ask him. But from what I read, these guys really seriously prep for days and all that. You do none of that.

I'm the opposite of how Jerry Seinfeld created his act. Like, I'm more like, as far as preparation's concerned, on the Robin Williams Y kind of riffing way. But I still would have a file of jokes available, but I would be much more on the improv side. So there's a lot of videos of me with hecklers online. There's a lot of in the moment old stand up videos that basically I would go on stage and you know, I was doing maybe 200 to 250 nights a year and I would go on stage and just do a show. It was so easy. But it was also like I would be in the moment and then I would have this file of jokes available, but also have this very loose context that I could riff in and then pull whichever joke fit and then kind of string them together. But at one point I did like 200 colleges in a row and I would just literally take two, three flights a day and get to the next gig and was in this oblivious giddiness of, of a high that I wasn't sleeping or taking care of myself and just thinking, oh, I must be invincible. And then ended up getting pneumonia at the end of the tour. Almost died. I was hospitalized.

It's really common by the end of a tour. I've worked with a substantial number of, of big rock bands and all and they're all just wrecked. And I imagine with Comedy, it's even more brutal because there isn't all the setup of gear as much.

So yeah, it was crazy. And then that would be like the way that I would finally hit a low was when it was like all of it coming at the same time. Like, it was just like, you're perfect, you're perfect, you're perfect. Our show's great, everyone loves you, you're doing awesome. Everything. This is great. Dead. Like, it wasn't like, I feel a little tired. There was no pneumonia will take you down. Yeah, it was so. It was so bad. I couldn't. I was in Vegas and I couldn't even fly home. I had to stay in the hotel and. And just. It was. It was a crazy time. It was. That was 2004. And one of the things that happened was the first shift of my life was when I went into kind of an achievement phase out of this kind of story phase. So in 2005, I would go on stage and do my act in my sleep and basically just perform and not be creating new stuff. And I believe if you're not continually creating, your mind will creatively sabotage you. So I ended up on stage one night performing and started creating anxiety based thoughts. I thought to myself, I wonder if you could think about it enough, if you could make yourself faint. And then my mind started thinking about it more and more and more and I started creating an anxiety that was so big that it became a stage fright. After 15 years of being a comic, I suddenly had this crazy stage fright. I had this exhaustion and all this different stuff. And that stage fright led to the world fright. Like I was actually scared to walk in public. I was scared to.

You got like agoraphobia.

And I think the reason that I didn't understand till now was that I was worried that this will ruin my career. And I'm under the illusion that who I am is my career.

Well, that's a really common thing. It seems like it comes around 30 to 35.

For me it was like 25, 26.

It made me moving younger. That wouldn't surprise me. You get the. I'm a gig economy. I don't care about my career. Which is the same as caring too much about your career. If you don't care at all or you care too much, it's the same thing, right? Like if you're in the middle of the coin, you're good. If you're on one side, either side, you're pretty much.

Because what if I had this anxiety and started thinking to myself, like, now, with what I know now, I would have looked at it. And if I was working with someone who had that anxiety right now, I would have them accept it, because one of the biggest causes of anxiety is trying to get out of anxiety. So anxiety is when our mind is spinning and it's doing all this stuff and we're trying to fix it because we don't like how we feel, which is more anxiety. It's more resistance to what is. And anxiety exists in the mind, but if you connect to a space that's deeper than it. This sounds corny, but it's real. If you connect to your heart, like, actually feel it beating, then the mind can keep rolling, and the heart is just the space that's looking at it, and then eventually it's going to stop because it's not being fed. So the first thing that I went through was a Tony Robbins phase where I learned how to get out of it. I learned how to focus on what I do want. And I went from suicidal stage fright anxiety to number one Comedy Central Special in 2006. Then this is what actually the big shift was in my life. So I started getting.