Epic Ideas for 2020: Revolution over Resolutions

Living a life in full is a conversation you always wanted to have with that person who gave an amazing TED Talk or the author of one of your favorite books, or that inspirational Olympian you always wanted to know more about. It's graduate level conversations with those making a difference in the world and in the lives of others. This show brings you new ideas and approaches so that you can live a life in full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout and I hope you enjoy this episode. This episode is brought to you by the nonprofit I founded, the center for Global Initiatives. The center is an all volunteer organization so there are no salaries and thus all tax deductible donations can go to the work. While our key country partner is in Tanzania, our work is global and generally focused in the areas of education and healthcare. We also help others to get their nonprofits started or augment others project based initiatives. It's our goal to open source humanitarian intervention and to help make it easier for others to do more good in the world. We are proud to have been ranked a great nonprofit every year since 2011 and to have achieved a Platinum level rating by Guidestar Links. In this episode's show, notes will take you to published articles on our outcomes, a number of helpful tools and downloadable resources which are all free always. Please Visit us at CenterForGlobalInitiatives.org and be sure to watch our video at Patreon.com DrChrisStout to learn more. Thanks welcome to another episode of Living Life in Full. I'm your host Dr. Chris Stout. Before we start, I want to give you a sneak peek as to 2020 and season three of Living A Life In. We have another deep bench of inspiring accomplished guests that includes a Guinness World Record holder, numerous best selling authors, world travelers and adventurers, a Quantum computing expert and X Prize trustee, serial entrepreneurs, a forensic psychiatrist who's also a musician, a healthcare changing Stanford physician, a world changing psychologist, a former mayoral candidate for New York City, ultra running experts, researchers and if we can work things out, a Nobel Laureate who has a reconnected friend that am blessed to know along with other accomplished technologists, physicians, producers, polymaths of all stripe sharing their stories and their work to help you live a fuller life. Stay tuned and thanks again for being a listener. A quick show note as we start this third season of the show, I want to first of all thank you for listening. The core ethos of the show will be steadfast to always have amazing guests talking about important topics. My goal is to also experiment and learn via the mechanics of the show Last year on New Year's Day, I did a monologue on healthspan and my personal experimentation and rationale behind it, and to my nice surprise, it was a very popular episode. I got to thinking I'll try another new or I'll try a new tradition of doing something different from my usual conversations and do a deeper, more personal dive, but work to make it useful for others. So here goes. I hope you like it. This is the first day of the new year and a new decade and I want to think out loud about getting things done in 2020 and beyond. This past year I turned 60 and after my initial freak out past, I set out to make my 60th year somewhat of an adventure. I don't want to squander any remaining years and really no one should at any age. And with all due modesty, I am not a newbie when it comes to doing a number of dumb things. In my first 59 I decided to do what I called Epic 60. Not that I was going to do 60 things, but more so whatever I did would be epic for me to achieve while turning 60. And that's epic for me, not necessarily epic for everyone, as I have not gotten them all done in the time frame of one year. I then thought I would rename this endeavor as epic 60s, but that sounded like a tribute album to an old rock and roll band and potentially limiting or confusing. I realized with the help of my family pointing out to me that most of what I want to do, so do others of any age. Thus I rebranded it to Epic Living and what follows herein is one approach and some tips and ideas that I hope may resonate for you. And now on with the show. Epic ideas for 2020 revolution over resolutions Since I was a teenager I've been cooking up and doing a bunch of challenging or interesting things of which I keep a running tally that combines the to do with the done. I call mine the List or Life Resume. While my life list is both my go to manual and logbook, I have also become more focused on catchy titled goals with a self imposed deadline. Like the 275x60 project, it refers to visiting all 50 states plus 100 countries plus 125 World Heritage Sites. Add that all up equaling 275 by the time I hit 60. So 275 by 60. In making these kinds of things public, I hope to perhaps inspire or perhaps inform you to think about your life and what experiences you may want to add and by involving others it helps not to only motivate me, but also hold me accountable. Please note in what follows I reference a lot of companies and a lot of products and I only do so as a user. I have no advertising, compensation or affiliate marketing or anything else to do with those noted herein other than being a happy customer. To begin, here's a summary of what I did in my 60th year trying to live epically. My wife and daughter and I went to Medellin, Colombia for our New Year's celebration, which was wonderful fun that got me to my hundredth country and thus qualified me for membership into the Travelers Century Club. When possible, I try to have an activity do double duty. I did two challenges, the Gallon a Day Challenge wherein you drink a gallon of water a day for a month, and the proverbial Winter Polar Bear Challenge. I should note here that in the process of some activities you may find that some you adopt I have very much and pretty consistently increased my water intake. More about that in a little while and others are one and done. For example, I will never again jump into cold water in Chicagoland in the winter on purpose I got to go on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for the ringing of the opening bell. Something that I've always wanted to do that coincided with being an early money in investor in a company that had IPO'd bonuses were seeing CNBC's post and celebrity show hosts meeting some of the market makers and then climbing to the top of the then newly opened vessel and seeing Hudson Yards. Along those lines. I've also wanted to go to the annual shareholders meeting of Berkshire Hathaway and with a daughter majoring in finance, now seemed the time we were able to get passes from a friend and I have to say it was a hoot from the folks on the flight from Chicago to Omaha who all seemed to be going there as well to the fun exhibits and the jam packed stadium for the actual meetings. Question and answer with Warren and Charlie. It did not disappoint. We were even lucky enough to get close to the dynamic duo Goosebumps. I launched the second season of this podcast which gives me great opportunity to reconnect with old friends and make new ones in a way that I hope is of help and interest to others. My five year motorcycle project was finally completed and the result was accepted into the Ultimate Builders Competition at the International Motorcycle show in Chicago, the Milwaukee Builders Invitational and featured in Pipe Burn, Dime City Cycles and Low Brow Customs, Weirdo Artisanal Motorcycle Magazine and twice topped over 1,000 views and likes in a week on Pinterest via my podcast episode with Daniel Rins and Joy Fluor. I wound up collaborating with them as an executive producer on their upcoming documentary. There is a link to the trailer in the show notes so I hope you take a look. It was great fun and their movie is amazing. The nonprofit I founded, the center for Global Initiatives, was recognized for its eighth consecutive year as a top ranked healthcare nonprofit and we also achieved platinum level recognition by guidestar. This year one of our talented volunteers was able to get an ambulance for our partners in Tanzania which was incredible. This work is very near and dear to me. I did what I believe will be my last ultra distance self supported run. It was a 100k mostly on the wonderful trails near me where we live, which are both mercifully kind to my joints and allow for being bathed in nature. In training beyond just putting in the miles, I stopped lifting weights and substituted only bodyweight exercises and core with the once a week exception of a kettlebell routine that I just really like. I cycled off creatine monohydrate and boosted my magnesium and augmented that with zinc as I had some bothersome cramping. I think this will be my last and also the furthest ultra distance challenge for a number of reasons. First, it takes quite some time to train and with wanting to do other things, there's an opportunity cost to that for me. While I do run when traveling and very much enjoy it, I also find it a wonderful way to explore a new place. Doing a few miles in the morning in a new place is very different than logging a half marathon and then touring or worse, doing that and then sitting on a plane. Second, my feet seem to suffer the worst. I've done everything shoe and sock experimentation and swaps, dust clouds of powder, mummy levels of tape, moleskin and super moleskin secured with tincture of benzoin and even superglue, which actually is what worked for me. Third, and to me a bit surprisingly, there was a study involving 25, or pardon me, 52,600 people that were followed for three decades. The runners in the group had a 19% lower death rate than non runners. But among the running cohort, those who ran a lot, which was defined as more than 20 to 25 miles a week, lost that mortality advantage. And finally, while I will keep running, I do feel a bit of been there and done that when it comes to ultras. I know that I am so slow as to never be competitive enough to get into western states, states or bad water and Being competitive was never really in the cards for me, so my next experimentation will be with shorter distances and attempting to be a bit faster. More on that later, and that's pretty much the opposite of what my approach has been for the last 20 years of my running. According to my 23andMe data, I should be good at shorter distances, genetically speaking, at least my blisters should subside and I can regrow most of my toenails. I also did a wacky thing on the eve of my epic 60 vision quest as it were called Everesting or in this case 29029 an homage to the height of Everest. Jesse Itzler rents a mountain. I did the Vermont version and builds a base camp village with bands, bonfires, glamping tents, food and drink, and hike up the mountain as many times as you can with the goal of hitting a cumulative total of 29,029ft. He thinks of it as Burning man meets Iron Man. This, like polar bear dipping was a one and done for me, but it was a hoot. I also learned about and became a power user of topical DMSO Dimethyl Sulfo cream as a base and then applying magnesium oil for pain topically and swelling with a knee injury that I was dealing with while I was on the mountain after Be aware of side effects and uses, proper uses of it before you consider it and get a professional consultation as well. Things I didn't do I was hoping to write lyrics for a favorite instrumental. It's still on my list. I have a decent start, but I need to find software to get the words to the notes and then fiddle with the technical. More so really than the lyrical. So it's a work in progress. Complete the El Camino Santiago Compostela pilgrimage by running a half marathon a day for this, timing was the problem. I'd hoped to be able to use the benefit of my 100k training to kind of keep that level of fitness up and then be able to do this in the fall, but it just wasn't in the cards. So hopefully in fall 2020 and my wife now is interested in it as well, so it'd be awesome for us to be able to do that together. Try to set a land speed record on a motorcycle if you know me. I've been working on this in a number of ways for a number of years and still no luck. I've had two motorcycle speed racing record holders on my show, been to events, picked brains, and had three different bike team sponsors flame out over the course of six years of trying. I really thought I had it set in 2019 and it's a long shot for 2020, but I'm coming to grips that this just simply may never happen. Climb and participate in the Bhutan Wilderness Medicine Conference again, hoping to keep the momentum of fitness level up from the 100k prep and the hoped for Camino. I was hoping that this could happen in 2019. It didn't, but I'm keeping it as an option for 2020 though. Master the Crane pose and not yet. I've been working on increasing my consistency with yoga in general and it's on my to do list really for yoga to do forever. I'm just too tippy at this point for the crane pose, but that will change, I hope. What I plan to do, picking, planning and performing generalization is hard, so none of what I say next may be of interest to you or a good fit for everyone. Certainly use good judgment and seek professional advice when need be before doing anything that could backfire. I cautioned in a prior post that we are very complex beings, biologically and psychologically in managing our lives. We begin at a point in time when we have some options and choices. I simply recommend that we all experiment, that we try things out and on for size. Keep what works, discard what doesn't, tweak, iterate, experiment, rinse and repeat. Our bodies and psyches change over time and situations, so we will always need to monitor and course correct as need be. I have found that as I age or my body changes in a better way or because of an injury, I may revisit an approach that I had discarded in the past, like getting back into foam rolling or blowing the dust off my estim device. Not everything works the same all the time. Be open to adapt and tweak as need be. Okay n of 1. What follows are my experiments in trials. I show them as more so structural or process examples rather than as a playbook or a checklist for you, as we each need to tailor to our own specific needs. I've just kind of broken them out into a few categories. So let's start off with the cognitive intellectual plans for things to keep me sharp, happy and intellectually challenged and growing. I plan to make more time for chess and I call it Chess on Demand because I have a really nice helpful app on that Jeopardy. Big Nerd Geek fan of this. I have an app for it. I like to watch it on Hulu. I play it with Alexa meditation. I'm experiencing, pardon me, experiencing. Experimenting with some apparent a variety of apps actually calm, which is currently my favorite headspace Oak Waking up and I also periodically do transcendental meditation with which needs no app humor and laughing. I'm a big fan of like watching Conan on YouTube, little cutouts of that and stand up specials on a variety of streaming channels. Podcasts. Very much enjoy both as a consumer and a producer. Music and curated playlists, reading everything. I also curate content for my LinkedIn posts and I love having authors as guests on my show, which I first consume their book before the interviews, writing original content for LinkedIn and for Medium and for Geekly, as well as periodically being invited to do a book review. Working on meeting the needs of those that we work with through the center for Global Initiatives. That's always a creative aspect too. Money and Finances as Now being part of the financially independent, retired early or fire crowd, it's even more important for me to be on top of all things financial. I like to avoid an epic fail in the financial area of our lives. Being a metrics and performance nerd, I've switched to having most of our investments be with personal capital, their aggregating dashboard, built in spending tools and great advice. This coupled with our frighteningly smart accountants makes for a better night's sleep for us. Here's what I also find helpful and enjoyable I read and love the Wall Street Journal every day. I watch and love CNBC and Bloomberg TV almost every day. Minimalism A quick word on this. It seems that for our whole family, independently and really rather organically and or trans transitionally, has evolved into a less is more perspective on life. Use it or appreciate and value it or donate it. We also tend to value experiences over possessions. We're not evangelistic or kooks about it, but again, everybody has their own. Ramit Sethi to the rescue. I love his point that one should be unrelenting on saving on things that really don't matter to you and counterbalance that with splurging on things that do. His book is fantastic, especially for younger folks. I bought my son and daughter their own copies and gifted 17 more for my son's friends as high school graduation gifts. I even bought the second edition that just came out for them. Body and Fitness I have what I need for most all of my needs for working out trails to run and ride, chin up bar, dumbbells, adjustable bench, push up stands, kettlebells, yoga mat and blocks, Bosu, Swiss and medicine balls, balance board barbell plates with hand grips and a spin bike. Those are all in the basement. I'll keep using them all but for 2020 I have for the first time bought a gym membership. It's at a new place, it's actually not even opened yet so memberships were discounted and there is a no risk quit anytime clause to it and they have the following which I want to experiment with in terms of efficiency and getting results and to try something different and have fun ropes. Very curious about that rowing. I'm a fan of and want to get more into that and sauna for a variety of reasons that I have links to in the show notes. However, one really needs to have a physician's clearance before experimenting with heat as it seems that longer duration at higher temperatures is the secret sauce in its effectiveness. But obviously there are risks for some folks so be safe and smart. In general, in addition to trying out all the above, I plan to decrease distance and running for the reasons I already noted except when I'm training for the Camino. Increase sprints and drills and more fast twitch speed work which should make my jeans happy. Increasing my gravel biking for fun and exercise. Increase my exposure to and thus enjoyment of nature via more trail running and gravel biking. Decrease my concern with times and to be clear, I will not beat myself up if every time out is not a personal record, but I do like to keep track of my heart rate and some other metrics in my Suunta 9 Lime watch and app and get help with that. As for the watch, it was a Ramit approved splurge that I can use to measure heart rate in the sauna or really anywhere else for that matter. Plus to help me not get lost on a run, my prior antique watch could not do any of the hardly any of the things that this new watch can and actually went kaput after a couple of hours of use. So it spurred me to buy this watch was that I needed to have a longer charge to be able to be able to cover my turtle like 100k. Also, it was an unexpected treat to get so many other features that I'll likely not outgrow for some time. Increase experimenting with high intensity interval training a little bit that I've developed or pardon me, a little habit that I've developed that might sound a little goofy is that I keep a heavy tension Gripmaster hand exerciser in my car and every time I first get in I do three times 100 in each hand. I also want to increase my movement and standing throughout the day. Again trackable with the watch. When working I go for a two minute walk every hour. I try to sit no more than 20 minutes at a time and I break things up with yoga squats. I also want to increase my yoga consistency and master that darn crane pose. A nice pairing with yoga is on its unbreakable It's a free downloadable ebook. I'll put a link in the Show Notes with companion videos. That's a comprehensive collection of some pretty difficult exercises to help mitigate athletic injury risk. I also opted to get a heart scan, also known as a coronary calcium scan, to see how my ticker is doing. Simply, when calcium is present, the higher the score, the higher the risk of heart disease. It cost me $75 out of pocket, was painless, and took all of three minutes. It can be worth the peace of mind if you get a low score or even more valuable if there's an issue. Please do keep in mind though, that CT scans can expose you to a powerful dose of radiation, and in some cases it's equivalent to about 200 chest x rays. So again, use good judgment. Seek medical advice Speaking of heart attacks, every day I finish off my shower with the faucet turned to a full blast of cold. Science says the cold water exposure can help your body's immune, lymphatic, circulatory and digestive systems, as well as help with help in the weight loss department, presumably because it seems to boost your metabolism. So see if you like that. I've included some of my best fitness tips and links pardon me, and findings in the Show Notes and the companion LinkedIn article. So please take a click and see what's there. Health Nutrition Diet the Yin to Body and Fitness's Yang is health, nutrition and diet. I plan on continuing to use my wonderful chilipad to optimize my sleep. My wife and I have our own controls and I have to say we are big fans to help with sleep if need be. Kava Tea by Yogi is a favorite. I added an echo device under our bed and can ask for rain sounds to drift off to sleep if need be. Breathing I've been experimenting with various breathwork exercises and apps a la wim, HOF and others. I also on a daily basis after each workout I blow into a peak flow spirometer to five times. I do this not only as a measure, but I also feel like I get a bit of an airway clearing oftentimes and actually sometimes I get some coughing going too, which I think is therapeutic since I've had some pulmonary issues in the past. It's something I like to keep an eye on as well. Metric wise, I plan on eating more raw foods, less processed foods and sugar. Duh. No rocket science there. I'll remain plant based. As to my diet, I know it's not for everyone and I'm not an evangelist, but I am a fan. I enjoy Michael Greger's work on his in his book and his book how not to Die and I have a link to a great Google talk on this topic as a primer if you're interested in the show notes. I also have a link to some of my favorite vegan resources. Again, if that's something you want to kick the tires on. I'm always tweaking supplements in response to what I'm doing, how I'm feeling and how I'm eating. So that's never static and really don't have a model for that. I just experiment and rinse and repeat. Lots of folks, from Tim Ferriss to Donald Lehman, who's a professor emeritus of nutrition at U of I University of Illinois recommended consuming at least 30 grams of protein for breakfast. I like it post morning workout or recovery, usually when I really need it, getting it get it however you wish. Being plant based for me makes my choices legumes, greens, nuts and seeds. More so on the weekends when I have more time and pea, rice or hemp protein shake on the weekdays. Microbiome this, as you may know, is a huge interest of mine and I'll and to reprise what I've written before. I've come close to being evangelistic about this one in the role of gut health and well being as of late. Personally, I like inulin, which is a prebiotic that's actually sweet and can be sprinkled on or mixed in just about anything that you'd like. Just a tad bit sweeter. And in pill form I supplement with a capsule that's a strain of 1 billion Lactobacillus vegan sourced of course once a day. I'll spare you all the details, but let's just say that I have noticed a number of benefits more on dietary aspects of boosting your microbiome. Kris Carr has a nice piece on three ways to boost your digestive digestion and improve your gut health, which I have a link for, and dietary options to help out. Such can be especially important if you have a history of antibiotic use that could have knocked out your GI's Flora. I try to drink an ounce of apple cider vinegar a day and I oftentimes will mix that with water or have water as an immediate chaser. I try to still drink close to a gallon of water a day. Personally I like to add lemon juice for taste. I'm not sure if there's a great empirical basis for adding lemon. I've read theories and have some links that it helps with a variety of things, but I'm not familiar with any good peer reviewed or human studies for this. If you know of evidence for or against it, please post it in the comments. That would be awesome for everybody. Note both lemon and vinegar can be hard on your teeth and your gut. Also, in my daily regimen I try to drink an ounce of tart cherry juice and I have links as to why I do that. Substituting tonic for alcohol or having a non alcohol beer when out with drinkers is a habit I'm trying to work on and will continue. And also working on taking less ibuprofen which I'm seeming to be pretty good at. Time Restricted Eating When I was much younger, in my teens I was also much heavier. I had a BMI of 33. I did a fair amount of fasting to lose the weight and as true to the cliche, the best diet is actually the one that you stick with. So these days to fit my lifestyle I try to practice the 168 protocol in that I don't eat anything for 16 hours and whatever I do eat I do. So during that other eight hour window some have suggested 14 hours of fasting rather than 16 for women 16. So again experiment, see what works for you. It's fairly easy to fit into most lifestyles and folks can further tweak it based on if you have goals of weight loss or fitness gains with whatever meal and workout timing that you're doing. For me, I'm not a big breakfast fan so it was fairly easy for me to push back the start starting to eat during the day to noon or 1 o' clock for most days, but not not all, not yet. So still tweaking and working on it. This also gets messed with when I'm traveling or if there's holidays or events going on, et cetera in the early part of the day with a brunch or later part of the day with a dinner or something like that with friends. So of course just do the best you can most of the time. Also in the show notes I provide a piece on time restricted eating and coffee consumption that I found helpful because that was a question that I had. So there's links in the show notes for that. As a reminder, there's a lot of woo woo out there when it comes to nutrition, so vet things that are of interest, including what I say as well. And please see the long form influencer post that I wrote on how to protect yourself from fad science. That was the title of it. I'll also have that in the show Notes Relationships I tend to be more of an introverted person and social anxiety is not unknown to me. Yes, in spite of all outward appearances, but nevertheless, this does not mean that it's a goal to be alone. In fact, a recent article in the American Psychological Association's monthly magazine entitled How Close Relationships Help Us Thrive notes the scientific evidence for this from the work that's been done at the University of California, Santa Barbara's Close Relationships Lab. There'll be links for that. Their work examines how romantic relations relationships can help with coping in the face of stress and adversity. I can't really give much in the way of romantic advice. I'll leave that to you and the web. But I will say that I do make it a priority to be a good partner to my wife, good father to my children, good collaborator to my colleagues, and supportive pal to my friends. And to be honest, I don't always measure up in all of these or any of these, or do a great job all the time. But I do mindfully try to work on it or do work on it. Creativity, Lifelong learning, Personal and professional development. My creative outlets are varied if not manic. I will continue to futz with bikes, both fixies and Ducatis draw, albeit poorly. Work on those lyrics and that song that I was talking about earlier. Continue to work on my podcast. Doing the background research and managing post production are always major learning experiences of very different types which I really like and feel like I really need. I also need to keep my clinical license up, so I'll be taking continuing education classes and attending professional conferences for the foreseeable future. I also like MOOCs, especially like edX with Harvard. I just did one on analytics and it was a doozy. Really pretty amazing. So highly recommend those. A lot of them out there free and with minor minor charges. Fun. This area is a mix of spontaneity, other people's ideas, my plans and just really what may come. What I know at this time My daughter and I have long awaited the time for her college graduation which has just recently happened as I'm recording this and her first job which will be later in this the summer of 2020. So our plan is to have a circumnavigation which is an around the world trip. I've even had David Mink, the former president of the Circumnavigators Club on the show to learn tips that we can all use. I also made a collection of travel tips and hacks which are available in the show notes and will be using almost three quarters of a million points that I have earned and saved over the years to make it a reality. So thanks for those kinds of suggestions. Ramit Being a combination travel and motorcycle nut, I hope to do either in 2020 or 2021 something called the Great Mal or Mallee Rally from the south of England to the tip of Northern Scotland on a motorbike. I've got links about what that's all about in the show notes too. Climb and participate in the Wilderness Medicine Conference that I mentioned earlier, or maybe even the more challenging High Altitude Workshop at Everest Base Camp and also complete the El Camino Santiago Privilege Pilgrimage. It will be a privilege Some general tips to wind up with Try to get many birds with one stone I have found many activities can augment one another like the point of crossover of a few circles of a Venn diagram. Some examples Traveling, which would be travel with a loved one which is good for relationships to go climbing, which is also a nature bath and exercise and fitness. When I bought my first and only new car which was a life list goal, I did so with their European delivery program which was an adventure. Doing so saved me 5% on the cost of the car, saving money and spending it on what's important. Allah Ramit's advice with my wife Good for the relationship and we went on a trip to Germany which was travel and had access to the factory and museum tours, unique experiences and some meals and hotel cover. Saving money. I have long wanted to drive on the Autobahn life list goal and got to do so in my new A7. Coincidentally it was October and we were in Munich, so bonus Oktoberfest Unique experiences. If I go on either wilderness medicine conference, that'll be travel. I'll also get to hike and climb, which is adventure and fitness. I'll do it with others so it's also relationships and get continuing education credits needed to maintain my clinical license and to be able to learn, which is also personal and professional growth and development and lifelong learning. Eating healthy and exercising consistently help keep a person in ready mode or at least reduces the 0 to 60 time that you might need to prepare for a physical adventure that may come your way. And then content stacking. This is something I haven't coined the term, but I have been doing. Unbeknownst to me that it had a label so for example, when I do a podcast episode, I not only post it on just about every audio platform that I know of, but I write it up and I take that write up and then post it as a LinkedIn influencer. I also post it in Medium and academia. Eduardo I save the audio file as an MP4 and then post that to YouTube and Vimeo with a static image. Thus one episode can be found and consumed in various preferred ways that an audience member would want. So the point is Experiment. Tim Ferriss is one of the best examples of being a human guinea pig. Decades earlier, Buckminster Fuller referred to himself as Guinea Pig Bee. One of my favorite writers, AJ Jacobs, has wonderfully and mostly publicly self experimented in his documented Guinea Pig Diaries. My Life as an Experiment and Drop Dead One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection. Thank you my transparent friend. To repeat, we are very complex beings biologically and psychologically. In managing our lives we begin at a point in time when we have some options and and choices. I simply recommend that we all experiment, that we try things out and on for size. Keep what works, discard what doesn't, tweak, iterate, experiment, rinse and repeat. Our bodies and our psyches change over time in situations, so we will always need to monitor and course correct as need be. Please consider this an open invitation to join me with any of these yet accomplished activities. Many of you have already done them, so I would warmly welcome any tips and tools and methods or recommendations or leads or hacks or contacts and or sharing of your experience and advice. Bottom line, see what works most of the time just for you. Now go do something epic. Living a Life in Full is a production of Stout Media, a subsidiary of Gordian Knot, LLC. Assistant producer Gracie Wong Music Dan O' Brien executive producer and host Dr. Chris Stout to learn more or stop by our website Alifeinfull for show notes and please recommend us to your friends and subscribe on your favorite platform. And as for the obligatory disclaimer, this podcast is for general information uses only and does not constitute the practice of psychology, medicine, nutrition or other professional healthcare services, including the giving of medical or psychological advice. No doctor patient relationship is formed. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I take conflicts of interest seriously. For all of my disclosures as well as show notes, please see livingalifeinfull. Org podcast and my LinkedIn profile. Thanks and until next time,