Interview - Crazy Sexy Awesome with Kris Carr

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Optimal Living 101. Today. I am so excited to be chatting with the wonderful one and only Kris Carr. Chris, how are you?

Hi, Brian. I'm great. I'm so happy to talk to you too.

Likewise. Thanks so much for taking the time and I want to jump straight in. So we've got 30 minutes. Going to be high energy, all that good stuff. Tell me about crazy sexy wellness.

Well, you know, it started with crazy sexy cancer. Literally almost 10 years ago this Valentine's Day, I was diagnosed with an incurable disease and I was told that there's no treatment and I had about 10 years to live and I, I decided in that moment that I had to figure out how to take care of myself. And thankfully that information was incorrect. It turns out I have a slow moving disease. But one of the things that was true and continues to be true is I had such a thirst for life and it really woke me up and made me think, how am I going to spend my time? What am I going to do with my time? How do I want to feel? What do I want to put out in the world? And how can I better serve myself and others? And so from crazy sexy cancer, literally, because it got a lot of exposure through my film books and Oprah, etc. I started to get emails from people all over the world who didn't have cancer and who really liked what I was saying, wanted to learn more about plant based living, wanted to learn more about how to feel good and how to be happier. And that's when it branched out to include everybody.

Right on. Well, I'm happy it did. So crazy sexy. Let's just talk about that for a second. Crazy sexy. Tell me about the origins of that, what that means for you.

Sure. Again, it started with cancer and it started as mass emails to friends and family. They were crazy sexy cancer updates. And I'm glad you laughed because it really was capturing my humor and disarming people because everybody was scared, not just me. And then as the years went by, I defined it for myself. And crazy, as I often say, is out of the box, forward thinking. It's that kind of speak when somebody says, oh, that'll never happen, that's crazy. And Brian and I say, really watch us. You know, sexy is empowered and cancer Wellness Life Kitchen, they're all teachers and they're all opportunities.

Beautiful. Well, let's talk about one of your recent posts that I just loved on purpose. You talked about the fact that your purpose, and I'm quoting you, has nothing to do with what you do. And you go on, the whole thing is worth quoting. It's just a fantastic discussion about the difference between purpose and. I like to juxtapose purpose and mission. And you talked about kind of the difference between that. Can you talk about, talk to us about that and the important distinction between our purpose and our mission and goals that might inspire us.

I'm so glad that post resonated with you. It was something I had been thinking about and I was so surprised by the number of people who responded to that post because I think we were all thinking about it, especially at the start of a new year. I was struggling with it because I felt as though I had found my purpose. My purpose is to be a crazy sexy revolutionary. My purpose is to spread the message. My purpose is to create more books and serve more people. And then I started to think, well, what happens when I stop getting book deals? If that were to happen, it's highly possible. What happens if I am no longer the top keynote speaker at the conference and perhaps people aren't even interested in me? What happens when crazy sexy menopause doesn't sell? Well, I started to get depressed and it brought me back to my acting career when I didn't get the job and I couldn't express myself and use my creative force. And then I realized that maybe we just have this wrong. You know, maybe purpose, as I said, has nothing to do with your vocation, has nothing to do with your goals, nothing to do with the plaques and the trophies. Maybe your purpose is really to develop that divine, all loving, nurturing relationship with yourself. Maybe your purpose is to deeply befriend yourself, to deeply know yourself, to deeply care for yourself. Because when you think about it from that space, all good things happen, all the missions you're calling your passionate hobbies, all of those things ignite, right? But if we feel like crap and if we're self loathing and we're running for some sort of out there purpose when we can't even put together the broken pieces of self, I think we find ourselves kind of chasing our tails and ending up really depressed. So I put this out there and it's something I'm still, you know, metabolizing myself because I write for myself, not just my audience. I never call myself an expert. I'm a seeker. And I loved hearing the hundred reading rather the hundreds and hundreds of comments and insights on that post. So I think it hit A chord?

Yeah, I think it's a powerful chord. And I think, you know, in a world so obsessed with the extrinsic markers of success, you know, the fame and the wealth and the hotness and all these things we're constantly chasing and then kind of that unique, what am I here to do? I'm going to figure it out once and for all. I call that a holy grail chase. You know, we kind of get lost on that. And you summarize it, too. You said that you are the light. Your inner purpose is to connect with that light. Everything else will follow in time. And I just absolutely love that. And, you know, I think, you know, our business entheos is named after the root of enthusiasm. So entheos the divine within. And that process of our ultimate purpose, our highest goal, is to connect to that highest within ourselves. And everything else takes care of itself from that place. And I want to chat with you about some of the things that you do, you know, on a consistent basis, maybe on a less consistent basis sometimes. But when you're most plugged in, what are the things that you do that help you stay radiantly enthusiastic and really plugged into that highest within yourself. Can you tell us about some of those things?

Yeah, I mean, the basic thing that's really easy for people to do is I am the queen of juicing. I love juicing. I make green juice every single day, usually without fail, unless I'm traveling. And it has really transformed my body and my energy and my immune system. As I mentioned, I live with cancer. It's something that I may have for my entire life. And again, luckily, it's slow moving, but it inspires me to take impeccable care of myself. And juicing is probably the quickest way to get there. So that's one tip. And it's, you know, we like to keep it green and clean and not too much fruit and not too much sugar. That would spike your blood sugar and, you know, tickle your adrenals, etc. So that's one piece. Another piece for me is I have again, I think part of that first conversation on purpose is I have a very special relationship with myself. So I don't know how to break it down for you, but I will say that you might. If you didn't know me and you saw me walking down the street, you might think I'm crazy because I constantly talk to myself. I constantly check in and say, how are you feeling? What's going on? If a project comes up, I ask myself, would that Tire you? Would that inspire you? I try to constantly have dialogue. Part of that dialogue always leads to a higher dialogue. It can seamlessly go into prayer. And all of a sudden I don't know who I'm talking to. Am I talking to me or am I talking to God or are they one and the same? And when I don't have time for those conversations with myself or I've over committed to a project in some way, then I really pay the price. It's kind of that simple. I eat well, I exercise, I do everything that we're told to do. Chatting with myself is probably the greatest spiritual practice that I found.

That is awesome. And I look forward to walking behind you or next to you one day.

Oh, that's just Chris.

What is she saying? That is fantastic. Let's go back to your juice for a moment. I should have left my juice. I just rinsed out my little juice glass, my 30 ounces, whatever it was today. What was in your juice this morning? What was your little recipe this morning?

Oh, this morning it was kind of like the basic 101 day. Cucumber, celery, kale, romaine, lemon, apple.

Nice. I think we did the same thing, except what was yours?

Cucumber, celery, romaine and apple and lemon.

That is fantastic. I think we had the exact same. Although I'm not sure if kale made it into ours this morning. I'll have to check with the master recipe maker. Alexandra, that is fantastic. Well, love it. Love the self dialogue. And as you said, you get into that rhythm and who's talking back. And again, that entheos the divine within you kind of offering that perspective and we get wobbled and we don't pay attention to that voice. Right?

Absolutely. And as soon as we stray from that voice, I think that's when we open ourselves up to a world of suffering.

Well, you talked about a lot of other things recently too. I want to talk about acceptance and a couple things actually. You wrote a big idea for us that I loved, which was about suffering. And we were talking about. You were talking about kind of. Some people say suffering is optional. I'm not sure. You kind of talked about the importance, the role that suffering kind of plays in our lives. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah. I was a big believer that suffering was optional when I was Yay, rah rah. Cancer cheerleader. You know, I'm not going to let this take me down. I'm the most positive cancer patient out there and you know, I have to go the marathon with this disease. And look at me. I'm so positive. Well, 10 years in, I can tell you that there are. There are deep moments of suffering. And I don't think that they are optional. It's not like I can just tap them away. But what I have found is that when I can go into the suffering and really see what's hanging out there and I can take the nugget and move on, there still might be some residual pain, but there isn't that trauma, that deep suffering. I come out the other side with so much more information, so much more knowledge, and one of the reasons why I love what I do is I get to go through the tunnel myself. And then on the other side, after I've metabolized it, I share it with my readers to see what they think and they teach me more. And hopefully I give them some peace through these words. And you think about all the tragedies going on, and you just even think about recently, the school shootings. You tell me that those parents would say that suffering is optional. It's not. But it doesn't have to define us. It doesn't have to take us down. It doesn't have to destroy our lives. And the difference is, will you do the work around the suffering? You know what I mean? After while, it's up to you.

Yeah. I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on how to go about doing that work. And it actually is related to another one of my favorite things from you recently, the acceptance. So you juxtaposed unconditional acceptance with quitting. There's a big difference, as you say, between unconditional acceptance so that suffering occurs. There's. We don't need to resist. We need to embrace and not deny either. Right. And kind of wave the pom poms and pretend like we're not experiencing some challenging moments. I'm going to quote you one more time, and I promise this will be the last time I quote you directly. But I just love it.

This is very pattern.

This is great. You said acceptance means we let go of who we think we should be and fall in love with who we currently are. So can you talk about that and can you talk about that? Acceptance versus quitting? Some people might confuse the two.

Absolutely. You know, I was giving a keynote recently and I was talking about this and I was on a break and I was talking to another speaker and she asked me what I was talking about. And of course I said, I'm talking about plants and juicing and acceptance, you know, so we talked a little bit about the acceptance piece and she quickly got her back up and said, you're teaching people to quit. You shouldn't be teaching that. And I realized in that moment that this person had never had to truly accept something really challenging. And for me, in the beginning of my journey, I really wanted to cure myself. Quite honestly, I'd gone full tilt boogie in integrative medicine. And over the course of the years, I had gotten letters from countless people who had healed their own bodies. Some of them from cancer, completely cancer free. Some of them from rheumatoid arthritis or type 2 diabetes. And there's a part of me that was, I was so happy for them, but I was really sad for myself. I thought, wow, I can teach this and I can show so many people how to cure themselves, but I can't cure myself. And I wasn't accepting it. And then I had this big turnaround in 2010, I think it was. I had done some experimental treatments that were not chemo or conventional. I'd done some experimental treatments using oxygen based therapies, and my tumors had shrunk dramatically. The price that I paid over the course of those month of treatments was excruciating, just from a physical perspective. And because I don't have an aggressive disease, I asked myself, what are you doing? You know what I mean? Are you going to work your entire life to make this go away? And then when you're 90 and you die naturally and you had these little dormant little slugs living inside of you, will it all be worth it? How much of your life will you have put on hold? And what if you could truly accept all the parts of yourself, even the parts that make you angry or sad or terrified, what if you could accept those and make peace with those, those parts of yourself? How much space would you open up for joy, for spirit, for love, for creativity? And it was a profound moment for me because I stopped doing those treatments that would have continued to possibly shrink my tumors. And I started to say, I love you the way you are. I accept you the way you are. I'm working with you exactly the way you are. Now here's the part about not quitting. There's no way to know if my tumors would have grown back. There's no way to know what would have happened. What I decided to do was take even better care of myself. Not to do things that were totally extreme, that damaged the quality of my life, but to be more consistent about my self care game plan, to make it a part of my Everyday being just like brushing my teeth to not do it for cancer, to do it for me. And I promised myself that I would never abandon myself. And I think that's why I talk to myself like a crazy person. That I had my back, that I would be my own best buddy and that we would make a game plan together. And from that place of acceptance and relaxation and rejuvenation, I have been able to create the best care for me. I don't know if that makes sense.

No, it does. Yeah, it's beautiful. And I think that just that deep relationship with ourselves and being able to kind of just be present to that and use it as the catalyst to as you said, be more committed to the consistency. Another phrase I like to use is consistency over intensity. So it's, you know, we go to the weekend workshops and check us out, you know, we could do anything and it's, we go back to our normal lives and a week, two, three weeks later we're kind of back to where we were before with in some ways feel even more deflated because now we know we're capable of doing all these things but we didn't take consistent action. So that impeccable consistency and letting that be fun, letting the day to day mundane be exhilarating, I think again is a shift that's in the face of our current culture. That's all about the quick fix and the intense everything, right?

Oh, I love what you said. And honestly those treatments were so intense my body couldn't take them on a consistent basis. You know what I mean? And I will just put it inject a slight caveat in there. If something were to change in my life and I were to get pretty sick pretty quickly, yeah, I'd work my ass off, there's no doubt. But I have this very strange spiritual disease. I have this very strange teacher in my life that doesn't behave like any other cancer. And yet it's, you know, end stage. And so, so that's why I take that perspective just in regards to that specific situation. And you can see based on your quote how it can apply to every aspect of your life. I don't think we can make huge progress when we do stops and starts. It's like turtle power, baby.

That's awesome. Little by little there's so many different things we can talk about. You mentioned creativity as just. It's one of the words I think of when I think of you is just you are so creative both in terms of your innovation and in terms of your actual productivity. So I'D love to hear some of your thoughts about how you approach your creative life. Do you have any things you can share with us? Maybe some big ideas, some aha's you've discovered as you've approached creativity?

Yeah. You know, really it's about time management for me because we're all creative, and I'm assuming everybody listening, they have a creative spark in their life so that I don't have to say, you know, first step, get creative. You are creative, you know, but how do you protect the space around your creativity? That's been a big challenge for me. And one of the things that I know to be true is if I have too much work on my plate, then I can't be productive and I can't let my creativity pour out. And my creativity is, you know, she's a muse, She's a unicorn. She can't be pushed. You know, she's like, you want to try to herd cats? That's my. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

I just have to have space to do it. And, you know, like this morning I'm working on a post for next week and from 8 to noon that nobody can get in touch with me. Right. I'm not writing that whole time. I might be folding my socks if I need a break to figure it out, but nobody can touch my creative time. And I think all too often we insert so much multitasking in with our creativity that either the end result isn't as good as you want it to be, or it's easy to get stuck and negotiate your sacred time away. And I say sacred because I think it is the time that you tap into the most divine, universal aspect of yourself. So it needs to be treated with white gloves.

Yeah. Unicorns need to be invited to come out and play. Right?

Yeah. Get them out of the stable.

And then is this 8 to 12? Is that a Monday through Friday kind of thing for you or how do you frame that?

No, basically Monday, it's today because I'm a little behind and I've got a tele jam that I'm doing this week, so I had to take Monday. Monday's usually the most busy day in my calendar, but creativity first. So everything else has to move. And I block out Thursdays and Fridays. Those are my days to write. There's no meetings, there's no Skypes, there's no hi for tea. There's none of that. It's purely a time to create content.

Yep. That's awesome. Protecting the space for your creativity, as you said. Right. And Kind of inviting the muse in. She needs to be consistently invited so we can let her come through, eh?

It's so true. And you know what? She needs time off, too. So if you worked over the weekend on some sort of project, you need to find a day off during the week. And I think all too often, and I don't know about you, but I do this. Like, I'll be working all week and then I'll have to get on a plane and give a keynote or do an I can do it conference and then hit the ground running on Monday. That's seven days a week. That's seven days. One week that I had no time to be a kid.

Yep.

Oh, bad. Yeah.

Oh, no, no unicorns. No, lucky. No, lucky.

They bite you.

That is awesome. So the downtime, the focus, the downtime, the playfulness, et cetera. This is great. How about fear? How do you deal with fear?

You know, I have a terrible fear of public speaking, quite honestly, which people think are so funny, because, you know, especially at the I can do it conferences, I get in front of two or three thousand people and then there's thousands at home that I know about that I'm thinking about, you know, And I have used Tapping Emotional Freedom technique for fear. I've used therapy and I've used a lot of other things, hypnosis and whatnot. But I find tapping to be the best result for me when I'm scared. And even if it's before a CAT scan or it's before getting in front of a big audience or, you name it, whatever scares you. I'm really scared of snakes. If I'm going into my garden and I know I have to pull some weeds, I might do a little tapping.

That's awesome. I know you've worked with Nick Tapping Solutions. So much great stuff there. And he's got something going on coming up soon. Can you give us the quick synopsis of why you love tapping, what you get out of it?

Well, one of the things that I know to be true for myself and I believe to be true for others is that we store emotions in our body. And, like, I don't know where you store your fear, but I store mine in my throat. Right in your chest or your belly? I store mine in my throat and probably in my chest as well. Like you, like a shortness of breath, my armpit starts to sweat. Like, there's a real physical reaction that happens when I'm scared and those fight or flight chemicals start to course through my body. And what I love about Tapping is you're literally tapping on the meridian points while giving yourself some good old therapy and positive reprogramming. And, you know, even Nick says, I'm not sure how it works, but it works. And it certainly works for me. So I might say, even though I'm terrified, I love and accept myself anyway. Even though I'm so scared, paralyzed even, I love and accept myself anyway. You know, I deeply and completely love and accept myself. And. And then going through the tapping points and really letting your body, letting yourself be honest as opposed to just slapping an affirmation, whatever's going on, right. You move to. If this is new to people, eventually you move towards the positive statement, but you're really tapping on these points on your body. Very easy to learn. And getting honest. Like, I'm terrified I'm not good enough. You know, I feel so much pressure. So, so, so much pressure. I'm afraid I'm gonna fail. I'm afraid I'm gonna disappoint people. And breathing through what's really there so that you can let it go and you can start to feel this sense of relaxation course through your body. And in some ways what's funny is I always end up. There'll be some tears and maybe some shaking, but after a few rounds, I start laughing because the things that we're scared of, most of the time, they're not going to happen right now. You know what I mean? I'm not going to poop my pants on that stage. It's not going to happen. I have more control over my bodily functions than that. Right. But we get ourselves so caught up in some imaginary future script that we're no longer in the now, just being led by our voices.

That's awesome. And then we want to make sure you get back into your acceptance and into communication with yourself. This is another really cool way for you to actually be in dialogue with yourself. Checking in.

Good point.

Yeah, here we go. That's awesome. I like to joke during these chats that we can talk about that for a weekend. But moving on. So tell me about. We've talked about some of the other principles. Tell me about love. Tell me about your relationship. What are some things you've learned relationship wise? Big ideas. Aha. Practices that you engage in with your love and just generally speaking, in your relationships?

Well, you know, I met my husband through the process of filming my movie Crazy Sexy Cancer. And we started as DP and director and ended up walking down the aisle. And I really thought that when I was first diagnosed that I would never meet anybody, that nobody would want to be with me, that I was damaged goods and it was a shame. In my mind, I was like, you're cute. You have so many good years ahead. Hopefully you're never going to get laid again or experience love. And I think to the point that we've been talking about true purpose, acceptance, learning to care for self, learning to love self. I became such a radiant being in so many ways. And here was this guy that I never would have seen because I was really interested in the deadbeats prior to him. And everything came into focus for me, including a healthy relationship. And so I don't have all the answers because Lord knows I mess up all the time. Or so I'm told. But I will say that we rarely fight and we do have such a good friendship. And I think it's because we both work so hard on our communication, you know, keeping our side of the street clean and coming from that place of loving, open, honest, vulnerable communication.

Awesome. And I just love your playful humility as well. I think there's something. So part of your radiance and part of your magnetism is just that humility and the fact that you don't have it all figured out. And here we go. I'm passionate seeker and here we are on the journey and here's some things I've learned and very much in the process. So I just want to appreciate that with you. So thank you so much for shining that through. We talked about, just to kind of conclude, we talked about some of your fundamentals. I'd love to hear you mentioned the juicing and the talking to yourself. Is there anything else that you find yourself doing on a consistent basis? Maybe we've talked about it already, but you can highlight there for us.

Yeah, I'd love to talk a little bit more about just what you put in your body because obviously when we don't have energy and we don't have a sense of overall well being, it's very hard to be consistent, as you would say, with these practices. So one of the things that has totally transformed my life is eating more plants and less animals and really thinking about where my food comes from and then ultimately the world around me. Meaning like what am I putting out in the world? What am I putting on my body? Who am I supporting financially, like with my dollars, what companies am I support? How can I really align my sense of what I value with what I actually consume? And just to really briefly break it down, I teach an anti inflammatory diet and lifestyle because lifestyle Stress, Stress creates a lot of inflammation and inflammation is the root cause of most if not all chronic diseases. And so more plants, a lot more plants, a lot less garbage. You know, the processed foods, the refined sugars, dialing down the amount of animal products we're consuming and choosing safer products, certified humane products because we know they've been treated better and from birth until slaughter, it really matters. It matters to your health and just connecting the dots for yourself because nobody's going to do it for you. We don't live in a world where your government will take care of you or the insurance companies will make sure you're all safe and sound. We don't live in that world. So we have to be smarter consumers. Ultimately as we get smarter, we hopefully if all goes well, increase our longevity.

Yeah. Fantastic. And again, another week long conversation on that. Your passion and commitment to the plant based nutrition, reducing inflammation through just a more conscious approach to all of this. So many great books you've written. We're going to send people to kriscarr.com is the new best place to get all that is good in your life. Correct?

Yes. Yes sir.

Right on. K R I S c a r r.com and how about a number one tip? Do you have a number one tip for people who want to optimize their lives, optim 101, whatever stage they're at, what would you say?

Oh gosh, number one tip. You always ask the best questions. You know what, a lot of this information is new, some of it you've heard before, but maybe it's not sinking in. If you could do anything right now, the simplest thing that you could do is literally close your eyes and take a deep breath. You know, all too often we move from a place of scarcity and literally even when it comes to the amount of oxygen that's in our body. And I think some of the best decisions that I've made in my life have come from that place of I breathed through the issue and the solution and the idea and the answer came. So breathe. Breathe your way to happiness.

I love it. It's funny because I'm teaching this afternoon in the very first big idea. It's a class on action and time management and self management. The very first idea is breathe. That's fantastic. Love it. Well Chris, thank you so much. You're amazing. We love you and appreciate you. Keep on shining.

Thank you.

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