Interview - The Art and Science of Lasting Motivation with Michelle Segar

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in Less Time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimal Living Interview series. Today I am really excited to be chatting with Michelle Seeger, who is the leading authority on what motivates people to choose and maintain healthy behaviors. She's pioneered new approaches to sustainable behavior change in the fitness, healthcare, and wellness arenas, and she's the director of the Sport, Health and Activity Research and Policy Center Sharp at the University of Michigan. And she's the chair of the U.S. national Physical Activity Plans Communications Committee. And she's the author of a great new book, no how the Simple Science of Motivation Can Bring youg A Lifetime of Fitness. It's one of my favorite new books. I've been raving about it on YouTube and Twitter and otherwise other places, and it's just a phenomenal look at how we can, as the subtitle suggests, use the science of motivation to create really healthy, enduring habits. So I'm excited to talk about some of my favorite big ideas and really appreciate you taking the time to connect today, Michelle.

It's my pleasure. Thanks for asking.

All right, so let's jump straight in. I want to start with the fact that meaning matters. So in your book, you walk us through your maps, and the M in maps is meaning. We'll go through each of those. But can you tell me about your research. Tell us about your research that discovered some fascinating things about the importance of our. Why.

Yes. So I just want. Can I start by talking about how I got into it?

Oh, yes.

What motivated me?

Please.

Okay. So I was doing my master's thesis in kinesiology in 1993 and 94, and we were doing a randomized clinical trial to see if, sorry, if cancer survivors could decrease their depression and anxiety compared to a control group who didn't exercise. And so we found that it did. That was really our study question. But part of our study design was to call the participants back and conduct focus groups three months after our study ended. And, you know, in my mid-20s then, really excited about research, and I heard these survivors sitting around in these different focus groups talking about how great exercise was for their health. They spoke about exercise in glowing terms. But we were shortly to discover that almost everyone had stopped exercising three months before when our study had ended, when their commitment to our study had ended. And I asked them, why? Why would you stop exercising given everything I just heard you talk about? It was really a disconnect for me. And I was confused. And they said, oh, my goodness. Well, we have to go to work and we have to take care of this and that in our house and we have aging parents. And what became very clear to me in that moment was that these people had stopped exercising not because they were cancer survivors, but simply because they were busy adults taking care of business, you know, living out the roles and responsibilities that we all internalize. And I had literally a light bulb go off in my mind and I said, wow, this is a real important societal problem because if people who faced a life threatening illness feel comfortable prioritizing their own self care, then we have a real problem in society. And I said, this is my problem and I'm going to go after it. And really everything I've done that's been about 21 years has been in service of understanding what truly gets in people's ways of staying motivated, but also of prioritizing a self care behavior like physical activity and developing interventions and activities and questions that can help shift this so that it goes in the other direction.

That's amazing. Thank you so much for providing that context. And then that I imagine led you to do the research where you really drilled in and empirically looked at the whys.

So that's exactly right. So I was getting my master's in kinesiology at the point. And so I knew what I needed to do then was get educated in how to develop and evaluate programs. So I got a second master's in health behavior health education. And when I was in this program, you know, I had my purpose and it was to understand these issues. So as I was getting trained in this very practice based degree, I started studying Brian physical activity within the context of culture. So it was clear to me, and I guess I've always had an interesting culture. My undergraduate degree was focused on socialization and culture. And because of these survivors responses, it was clear to me that what was getting in their way was related to society. And so as I was trying to understand physical activity motivation and adherence, I studied it from a contextual perspective. So, well, what does exercise mean to people? What beliefs did they have about exercise? What reasons do they approach exercising for and how do those actually undermine them wanting to do it and staying motivated to do it and prioritizing it. And so I think that might be one of the most unique parts of my approach is that I address head on in my method and using science why people actually initiate exercise. And it's inextricably connected to culture.

Amazing. And then the why that they choose is equally related to whether they actually do it or not. I was just blown away by your research where you ask people their why and I'd love to hear you describe that. The 75% that said one thing, the 25% that said another thing. And then as you track them over the year to see how much they actually exercise, can you tell us about that research?

Absolutely. So we wanted to know in general why people initiate exercising. And our findings align with other research showing that about 75% of people exercise for weight related or health related reasons. And 25% of our sample exercise for quality of life benefits such as increased energy or feeling centered. And then we followed them over time and actually what I don't even think I wrote another related study is that we actually evaluated Brian, how much they valued those outcomes, how much did they value exercising for health and weight and how much they value exercising for quality of life. And what we found is that people highly valued equally the health related benefits from exercising and the quality of life related benefits. Weight was rated a little lower, but still very high. So they were equally valuing these reasons for exercising. Yet when we followed them over a year, we found that the people who exercised for daily quality of Life did between 20 and 32% more exercise than people who, who are exercising for the health or weight related reasons. And what's fascinating about this and that extra piece of it is that people believe that health and weight are going to motivate them to exercise. And it's because that's again, here's culture. This is how we've been socialized to exercise. But when we actually track what motivates people to do it day in and day out to make the decision decisions, things that are going to bring us immediate positivity and help us renew ourselves are actually much more potent than these future rewards like health and weight loss.

I love it. And the way that I love you described it in the book of abstract. Logical reasons to decrease weight or increase health over the long run or even in the near term are good reasons, but they're not effective reasons. Right. And that we're not motivated by the logic, we're motivated by feeling great. And that we know that when we work out we're going to have a much better day than if we don't. More clarity, more energy, more vitality. It's just so cool to see your insights in that with your early research and then to again empirically validate that. And it's changed how I work out now. So I've always been pretty motivated. Not always, but since I've been into this stuff motivated to train over the last X years. But. But even as I read your book, I realized, wow, I can make this even better by really articulating the fact that how I feel before I work out vis a vis after the workout. It's amazing. And just really honing in on that, as you would say, right why versus the wrong why of the more abstract goals.

Right, right. And what's been really interesting to me is to hear both men and women, you know, I think we can't get the right answers unless we ask the right questions. And because people are asking themselves after reading this material, gosh, what is my why and how does that make me work out and how does that make me feel? And is it actually helping me feel good or bad or keeping me motivated enables people like you to then say, you know what, I can tweak this or I couldn't do this, I can completely overhaul it because what I've been doing isn't working. I did a keynote a couple nights ago in Minneapolis and someone who was in my keynote came up to me and told me again, she'd been a regular exerciser, but after reading the book, she gave herself permission to start walking more because she realized that the running, while she liked it, was also feeling, wasn't kind of giving her the energy renewal that she needed. And I mean, ultimately that's what it's about. Each person has to identify for themselves.

Yeah, you do such a good job of articulating that in the book. And let's go to that. So the idea of moving from exercise as a chore to a gift that we give ourselves, and then you kind of extend that throughout the book to fuel for our lives. Can you walk us through that frame and finding things that we truly enjoy as it relates to that?

Yes. And I think what I want, the background I want to give is that basically I found in my coaching work that there's two primary barriers to sustaining a physically active life as well as, you know, and then when you reverse those, they're the drivers. So before I walk you through Chore to Gift and Essential Fuel, it's important to know that, and we touched it at the beginning, that our reasons research shows and it's actually a really isolated group body of research and that's why a lot of people don't know about it yet. It comes out of self determination theory, although there is some research and marketing too that addresses this. Our reasons for initiating a behavior, or what I call our whys, determine the quality of motivation we have for that behavior, and that determines whether we persist in the face of challenges. So that's why we have to go all the way back to our reason. So we need the driver. We need a driver for our behavior, and that's how we feel about it. That's our desire or our motivation for doing it. So in order to have that positive driver, we need to have a positive relationship and a desire to do physical activity. And what determines that, again, is our why. Is our why somehow controlling? Is it based on future and abstract outcomes that honestly obviously are not very compelling to fit in when we're juggling and putting out fires? So we need to switch our why if that's the case. But the other component of converting a behavior from a chore to a gift so we can have that positive, stable driver motivation is how we exercise. So typically, we choose to exercise in a way that's going to help us realize our why or reason for exercising. So if our why or reason is to burn as many calories as possible to lose weight, you can imagine that people often choose to participate in very high intense exercises, yet the same people often. Some people do, but I found in my work that actually most people don't enjoy engaging in intense exercise that makes them breathe really heavy and sweat really hard. And it's not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just a matter of personal preference. And so if people are exercising like that and it doesn't feel good, that's going to cause a negative emotion or meaning for physical activity. That's going to turn exercise into a chore. So to turn that around, people both have to change their reason away from something that might feel like a should or actually not be very relevant to who they are today into something that is very personally meaningful and in some way positively gonna help them feel better. And they have to choose physical activities that either feel good to them, either that they enjoy or that they help them relax, whatever the experiences that they're looking again, the why, what are you looking to get from it? And they wanna move in ways that are gonna be pleasant if not tolerable. So I don't wanna ass can get some type of positive experience from being physically active. My mom, many years ago, when she was starting to follow my program, she said, you know, I don't actually feel anything when I walk. And she continued because of the philosophy that she wound up adopting. But after a couple years, she did start to notice. So I think some people might be less connected to how they feel, but we don't want to assume that everyone feels, but we don't want it to be painful because that is absolutely a negative motivator for most people. So that's the conversion, that's the formula. And I explain in detail how people can make that transformation from a chore into a gift. But consider this. I love to go to movies. They feel good, I enjoy them. But I don't fit that into my life because it's not a priority. So there's this second level and this gets back to the cancer survivors. Remember I told you that they were sitting around talking in such positive ways about physical activity, yet they had stopped doing it three months before because of other important priorities. So the second lever is this notion that we don't just want physical activity to feel good, we want it to be a priority in our daily to do list. And that's a completely different issue that has to do with a deeper issue and challenge related to how do we prioritize our own daily sense of well being, our own daily self care. And, and what I found is that in general, both men and women don't prioritize these things. And the reason is again, here's culture and society. Society hasn't taught us and hasn't valued and we don't get rewarded for taking care of ourselves. I do think it's gonna change with our change in the healthcare system because how we take care of ourselves ultimately is gonna determine whether we prevent illnesses and whether we effectively manage the illnesses we have. And what's awesome is that we've got people like Arianna Huffington who had her own aha. Realization about not taking care of herself. That really transformed from my understanding and from her book, thrive transformed her, her feeling about self care and the role of well being in her daily life. So we've got people like her talking about her experiences and how important it is and supporting her employees in making sure that self care is a priority. So the barrier to the second level is what I call not giving ourselves permission to prioritize our self care. And the solution, which is easier to say than to do, is to give ourselves permission to prioritize our own daily self care and well being. And what I found is effective in doing this is once we start to realize both intellectually as well as in our core, that when we do things like get enough sleep or move our bodies or meditate or whatever, whatever it is, we don't just feel good, which is a great outcome and is going to actually be that positive driver for the behavior that we need, but we Also convert it, we understand then that becomes our essential fuel for what matters most in our life because that determines our priorities.

So good. So the chore of oh, I have to do this. And often doing things we don't even enjoy, as you said, is one of the best ways to demotivate ourselves and not actually even do it to wow, this is a gift. And I can enjoy this. And I can see the benefits immediately too. Wow. This is the. I love the phrase essential fuel that helps me show up most powerfully for my family. And it's not a thing I squeeze in at the end of the day or when I can. It's a fundamental need that I'm going to honor, give myself that permission, which is the perfect segue into I love your self care hierarchy idea. And it's how we connected when I created that little video on it because I just thought it was such a cool idea. Can you walk us through the concept behind the self care hierarchy and the number one non negotiable behavior that we can integrate in our lives?

Absolutely. And thank you. So the need for the self care hierarchy really came out of the recognition from research and cognitive psychology, from the learning that I've done in that area, that we have a limited capacity of cognition. And so I'm not saying that properly. We have a limited capacity for self control. And the more we make decisions and the more we use our self control or willpower muscle, the more literally it uses glucose in our brain so that the next time we need it, we have less of it. And so there's been some really fascinating research in this area and you know, from coaching clients and behavior change for two decades, one of the things that, the things that have become very clear to me is just how busy everyone is and how tired they are and really how many limitations we truly do have. And so given the science in this area and knowing that in our society we get bombarded with messages, get eight hours of sleep, exercise five days a week for 30 minutes, you know, eat kale instead of cookies. And we're bombarded with these messages and we're constantly feeling like, I should be doing this, I shouldn't be doing that, I should be exercising more, I need to get more sleep. And the reality is that with in our modern world, we simply don't have the cognitive resources to start to learn how to integrate a behavior into our lives in a way. And sustainability is the key in a way that we can sustain. And why would we initiate a behavior change if we didn't really want to make sure we kept it as an ally in our life through the ups and downs. Right. To help us get through the tough times, to help fuel us for the good times. So given this, I found it was crucial to help people focus on one behavior at a time. Learning how to integrate it in a way they can sustain and really learning to sustain it before they even chose a second behavior. So then it comes to, well, if we're going to start this, what's the one behavior that you know you need? And that word need, Brian, is key. That you need to feel better and be your best every day. And that becomes your non negotiable behavior to start with. If you're going to adopt a new behavior. And then on any given day when you have to make a choice, you know that if you can only have time to do, you know, one thing, it's got to be that non negotiable behavior.

I love it and I love the way you frame it too. Of what's the thing that if you don't do it, your day's likely not to go too well. I also love the way you framed it. Can you walk us through your self care hierarchy vis a vis your husband's? Because I thought you did a great job of kind of saying, well, look, not everyone's going to have the same thing for you. If I recall, it was sleep that was at the base, which it is for me as well. And your husband's was exercise. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

Sure. About the differences.

Yeah, just identifying that one and the fact that, that what we're told we should do isn't necessarily the thing that actually we feel builds us the most. For you, exercise was more mellow, you can get away with a little bit less. But your husband really felt that that was essential.

Absolutely. And so for me over the years, it's very clear. I notice on the days that I don't get enough sleep, you know, like I do not have a good day. It's fascinating to me the difference with not enough and enough sleep. So. And I think this is what non negotiable behavior is really about. On the days I don't get enough sleep, I mean, I'm a very enthusiastic, happy person. I love my work. On the days that I don't get enough sleep, you know, I don't really feel like doing my work, it's really fascinating. The enthusiasm, enthusiasm just goes away and I don't feel as happy. And so that's what a non negotiable Behavior means. And for my husband, he actually feels that way about exercise. If he can't exercise first thing in the morning, his day is not going to go well and he doesn't feel as accomplished. And so for him, that's the need he has. So identifying for yourself what is the one thing that truly makes a difference is really crucial. And then to understand, well, you know, what's the next thing I encourage people. I think the most important thing out of everything, Brian, is for people to truly identify what their non negotiable is. And after that they can start experimenting. But it's this non negotiable thing that is so fundamental to get into our lives because if we don't have it, we simply aren't going to be feeling good or realizing our full potential.

I just love it. And it's the non negotiable word phrase, depending on the hyphen, I suppose, is a big part of my work as well. And the way you break that down and say, what's the one thing that's non negotiable? I like to say 100% commitment. It's not 90% in or 95% in. It's 100%. And then this kind of dovetails nicely into the experimentation side of things. And the way you described your relationship to not getting a good night of sleep, I thought was awesome. You find it fascinating. It's data. It's not a sign that something's either wrong with you or whatever that a lot of us can get into and we're feeling a little down. It's data. And I love the way you described having a learning mindset. And again, we talk a lot in my work about fixed mindset versus growth mindset or Heidi Grant Halvorson's being good versus getting better. But your phrase of learning mindset, I think, captured it so well. So can you tell us about what that means and why it's so important to have that orientation?

Sure. So I want to make. It's actually not my phrase. It comes out of Carol Dweck's work, who I've been, you know, she's really, she's done a tremendous amount of research on mindset. And, you know, I guess there's different terms that people use. Mastery learning, you know, with Locke and Latham too, you know, so there's people who are talking about this in different ways. But I think for a lay audience, considering it as a learning process. Because what the research shows is that when you're learning something new in a complicated environment, that's dynamic that changes a lot. Having a learning mindset is consistently more motivating and delivers better outcomes. And let's just consider this. You know, I'll use the word learning versus achievement or performance. If you're caught up, which we all are, right? If we are aiming for a bullseye, if we don't come close to adds all this negativity. So we have to go towards it with worry. Am I going to make it? Am I going to make it? Am I going to be good enough? Is it going to work out? Think about all that energy that gets wasted and then if we don't get it, then there's all this other energy which is going to make us doubt ourselves, etc. But if we convert it to, gosh, I'm excited about this. I want to learn how to get better at it. I want to learn how to integrate this into my life in a way that can sustain it. Then what we do is we are open and curious. And when something goes awry or we're not sure how to do something, instead of it being a sign of our failure or a threat that we may not be successful, it's just information. And so I take that data point and I go, you know, I thought I was going to enjoy doing yoga and I actually didn't enjoy it. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm not going to learn how to successfully integrate physical activity into my life. It could mean that yoga is not for me. It could mean that I had a teacher that wasn't the right teacher for me. So I collect data and, you know, this is how we do research. We have an open mindset and we collect data. And then we say, okay, now, after, you know, a certain amount of learning, what do I know and how can I apply that? And the beauty of the learning mindset is also that we never stop. We never stop learning. And it gives us permission. Instead of feeling like failures when two years after, you know, you've been regularly exercising, you've been regularly getting enough sleep, you get this curve ball, you have a new job, or, you know, you have an aging parent move to town, instead of it threatening your success, go, okay, now I've got a new context, I've got new points that I've got to work around. So now I've got to be flexible, which is a really important point of this. And I want to say more about that after this. And now I have to learn again. I have to figure out what can I fit in. It might mean the same activity, but it Might mean for the next six months, while my parents in the hospital, I'm only going to be able to do 10 minutes instead of the 45 I like to do. And it's not about failing. It's about really getting real with what's possible and not judging yourself and continuing to nurture yourself in a changing environment.

I love it. I love it. And of course, Carol Dweck's fixed mindset versus growth mindset. And I just hadn't heard the phrase learning mindset. So I just loved that because to me, it's more practical, it's more. I can feel it versus the growth mindset. It's like a little more abstract for me. So that idea of data, fascination, curiosity, not a fixed on or off, something's wrong with me if I don't have a good day. It's just what did I do or not do today that might have contributed to that? So cool. Tell us about flexibility. You said you wanted to talk a little bit about that.

Well, because our approach to all these behaviors, sleep, physical activity, eating, diets, all this comes out of a medical paradigm. There's prescriptions. Eight hours of sleep, 30 minutes of exercise five days a week, you know, this many calories, this many fruits and vegetables. Right. So we're being, We've been prescribed how to do things and we. So that sets the bar. That's the gold standard. That's the right way to do it. However, these recommendations and maybe 8 hours of sleep isn't an official recommendation. Like 5 days a week, 30 minutes is a physical activity. These recommendations create standards and they're kind of developed basically out of science that's either been conducted in labs or epidemiologic data on populations. They come out of research, not how people in real life actually live and the constraints we have and the curve balls that get thrown at us. So if our approach to any of these behaviors is too rigid, when life throws us a curve ball, which for most of us happens frequently, and we can't achieve that ideal and standard, we don't do anything and we feel like failures. And, you know, some people, there's a caveat there. There are some people who thrive with rigid standards and goals. And, you know, my husband is one of them with his physical activity. I mean, he, you know, he has to do the same thing every day and, you know, and that works for him. But I don't think that type of mindset actually works for most people. And so what I have found through coaching and there's even different bodies of science That I found over the years that really support this idea that if we're flexible, if we understand that on any given day we may have to flex our goals, shrink them, change them, move them, then we are more likely to be consistent because it's consistency that's really the holy grail. It's not, you know, exercising for 50 minutes on any given day, it's whether you can stick with it through the ebbs and flows. So I have found that having a flexible mindset about what we do is also a key lever of ultimate lifelong success.

So good. So good. And just that individuality of us, again, experimenting to find what our path is and our truth is, and, and to take whatever suggestions might be made and apply it to our lives and see how it works. And that leads us to another idea. I wanted to chat about the OTMs. So I think that's a flexible mindset, right? It doesn't need to be a 50 minute workout. You talk about the fact that everything counts. Opportunities to move. Can you tell us about that?

Yes. So opportunities to move. You know, in my work, in my research, I've been really interested in how we frame that, the power of the frame on the behavior and the choice. And so I devised the notion Opportunities to move to be really compelling. Like, it's not just exercise, it's not just movement. It's an opportunity, it's a gift to move. And so the idea is that throughout our day, there are these natural spaces and times that if we notice them and then chose to take them, or we could even create more, that exists because we want the gifts of energy and a lifted mood. They're there and they're really, they're easy ways to move a little bit here and a little bit there instead of needing to pack it into a session. Because a lot of people, the way that we live, I mean, some people are juggling two jobs. So some people who work and have kids and have aging parents, they simply, simply don't have the luxury of fitting in kind of a more structured session of a certain duration. And so opportunities to move opens the door to think about movement in a different way and choose to move so that we can give ourselves gifts of movement. And what's been really interesting for me over the last, you know, 20 years is to follow up with clients and ask them, you know, can you tell me how you're doing? You know, what's going on? And can you, what, what do you think were the most helpful part of the parts of the program? And, you know, sometimes, well, not sometimes. I mean, sometimes we're not aware of what makes the deep change, but we're aware of the conscious phrase and concept that helps us. And without a doubt, people, you know, most people have said the idea that everything counts, that there are opportunities to move throughout my day has absolutely been a bridge to me to know that I can be physically active every day. And even on the days when I can't do my scheduled more formal workout, I know that I can claim opportunities to move or OTMs. And I feel good about myself and I consider myself a physically active person. And that's continuously reinforcing the choice to move.

Yeah, it's so good. And you told some stories in the book about someone who couldn't make a yoga class because they thought they couldn't do anything because they were going to miss the first 10 minutes of the class in this idea of, well, who said you had to have a 60 minute workout in order for it to count? Everything counts. And such a powerful idea. Well, I like to wrap up our chats with a couple of questions. But before I do that, did we not cover anything you want to make sure we talk about?

We covered meaning. Awareness is about becoming aware and mindful of the beliefs we have that are limiting us and undermining our ability to want to exercise or do another behavior as well as prioritize it, as well as becoming aware of key strategies that can help us prevent and negotiate or dance with our challenges so that we can, you know, again, sustain and be consistent through the ebbs and flows in life. So I think, you know, and that's the learning process and that we should all give ourselves permission to, you know, we didn't go to school, no one taught us how to do this. People, you know, when people are expert, they play a musical instrument. They don't start playing piano with Mozart, they start with chopsticks. So we need to give ourselves the same permission to learn how to master the integration of our non negotiable behavior in our lives. So I think that would be it.

I love that we don't start with Mozart. We start with chopsticks, just the very basic fundamentals and then grow from there. And I loved your point too. You talked about it a little bit, but just to highlight it, build consistency before you build intensity or load. It's such a big idea. Well, so a couple of questions I like to ask. They kind of step back from the specific stuff that we just talked about. And I like to ask people I admire and whose work is doing such profound Stuff in the world. What do you do? And we talked about it a little bit with your sleeping stuff. But what are your fundamentals that help you stay plugged in? Again, our audience or group of people who are passionate about optimal living. I stress fundamentals again and again and those things that keep us plugged in. Can you describe for us what your kind of days and weeks look like and what you employ to stay really connected and plugged in?

Sure. So, you know, I have to say that sleep is by. It's really on another level compared to everything else for me. So that's important to know. I am physically active. When my husband and I bought our house, we made a very clear choice to invest in living in an area that would permit us to walk and bike to work year round instead of buying a bigger house with great closets, which I wanted, that were further away because of the value. And I think one thing I want to say is people often don't consider the choices they make when they purchase houses or what schools they attend with optimal living and fundamentals. But I want to encourage everyone to know that these kind of choices that don't seem related to optimal living actually are key to optimal living. So being able to walk regularly to my office, being able to walk downtown where over the years I know who I say hello to, and staying connected to community, those are fundamentals for me. Being with my family and not traveling too much, you know, that is something that is. Those are choices that I make. I just don't accept every offer I get because I have made a choice and a decision, both in relation to my family as well as just my own integrity, that I can't be away too often because of how that will impact the quality of my personal life as well as the life of my family. My husband and I like to get away every few months because I think part of optimal living for me is staying connected in my relationship. And it's hard to do that when we're, you know, flying around, driving, you know, driving and dropping off and working and cooking. And so. And I. And I try to, you know, I don't know why, as a kid, I didn't like vegetables, but as an adult, I love them. So I enjoy eating fresh food. I love good food. And I have to say, it wasn't until I stopped shooting on myself regarding food choices that I actually was free to eat whatever I wanted. So that's a whole nother conversation we might want to have one day about how when we create rules around food, it actually creates Resistance to wanting to follow the rules. And once you kind of open up that door, it's amazing what can happen psychologically. It's kind of the opposite of from chore to gift that we talk about with physical activity. And I do try to meditate and that's, you know, I'm not perfect. And I struggle. I struggle with all these things. And I think that's a really important thing for everyone to know, to stay. Despite me being a physical activity researcher and passionate advocate, it's still challenging for me. You know, I don't do it right every day. And, you know, I wish I meditated more. I try to be consistent. And sometimes that means I set my app, my meditation app, for one or two minutes just to know, just to continue to see that I am committed. But I'm doing what I can do. And I think doing what I can do and is kind of the best we can ask for.

So good. Again, I really appreciate you sharing so authentically and just again that permission to be human, really. Right. And to do what we think is best for us most of the time and also give ourselves the opportunity to appreciate the growth that's involved in the whole process. And I made an asterisk on the yes, there'll be a fascinating. Another conversation related to food and motivation. And it's so interesting what happens when we get too strict with those rules. So I look forward to that. And then the final question. If you could only impart one piece of wisdom, kind of one tip for optimizing our lives and actualizing our potential, what would that one big idea be?

Wow, that's a hard question. I think if I had to focus on one thing, it would be to tell people, to help people understand and get curious about looking into that, how we've been socialized to live our lives, the choices we make, the behaviors we do, has been pretty much determined by our socialization through culture, through the media, through our families. And so if we want to live better through changing our behaviors and making different choices, the place to start is to examine the beliefs we have and with the understanding that those beliefs are not truth. They're simply the result of our socialization. And so through that examination, we're able to liberate ourselves, to know whether those beliefs are valid for us ever or now, and to reject them if they're not, if they're not helpful and they're harmful, and to give ourselves permission to re socialize or re educate ourselves to develop beliefs that are going to help us affirm who we are. As individuals and the lives we deeply want to live.

Beautiful. So good. Well, again, no sweat. How the simple science of motivation can bring you a lifetime of fitness. Highly recommended. So appreciate you and your passion and enthusiasm and brilliance, Michelle. And if people want to connect more with you and your work beyond getting a book, what's the best way?

Going to my website. There's a contact form and they can email me there. And I so appreciate you inviting me to share my thinking and my work with your tribe. I really thank you so much. I'm honored.

Well, I appreciate that. And again, I'm just so inspired by you and your work and your book and excited to help you get this wisdom out there. I think it's so important and just appreciate the fact that you've dedicated your life to this and it's an honor for me to be able to connect as well. And just the beginning. I look forward to those next conversations.

Me too.

Okay. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that interview. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson. Me. Two basic things. One our free newsletter. It's called the Optimizer. Over 50,000 people start their day with it and they tell us it's pretty awesome. And 2 our optimal living membership program. This is where I put all my best stuff. 10 bucks a month for a ton of wisdom. Two primary things in there philosopher's notes plus optimal living 101 classes. When you sign up, you'll get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes, which are basically six page PDFs and 20 minute MP3s where I capture my favorite big ideas from great books. The PNTV episodes are kind of a mini version of all that goodness. You'll also get instant access to all my Optimal Living classes. This is where I take all the ideas we cover in the Philosopher's notes and boil it down to the most practical stuff you can apply today. Classes include Confidence 101, Getting Stuff Done 101, Relationships 101 Habits 101, etc. You'll also get access to what we call micro classes that I think you'll love. We aim to astonish and we're blessed to have thousands of members telling us we're helping them change their lives and that this is the best 10 bucks they invest in themselves every month. Go to BrianJohnson ME membership to learn more. Thanks for your support and have an awesome day.