Unleash Your Potential: Peak Performance Insights with Dr. Greg Wells

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Broke my neck when I was 15. That was super sketchy. I was just pissed off about the situation. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. My own mindset was not in a great place. When you're in the darkness of your life, it feels lonely. It's been a pretty wild ride. Psychologically tough to be there through that. 70% of the deaths in the Western world are caused by stress related illnesses, skyrocketing rates of burnout. People was so burned out. That technique does kill people. So be very, very careful. Breathwork and meditation without question saved my relationship. It's not easy to build a world class life.

Welcome to Lead On Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion and now international keynote speaker and high performance leadership trainer. Each week I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you lead your life and business on purpose. Thanks for helping us be a consistently number one ranked show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I hope you enjoy today's show.

Today's episode is made possible by our sponsor, NZ Mortgages. You can check them out at NZMortgages Co NZ. Greg, a huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

James, it is so great to speak to you. I'm so psyched for this conversation. We're going to have so much fun.

Oh, I absolutely agree. I've been looking forward to this for a while now. Look, I feel that we speak a very similar language. I've been following your work, reading your work and I'm like, yes, Greg needs to come on the show and share his insights, stories and tactics with our listeners and viewers. So just to get started, what is peak performance?

Wow. You know what, in all of my years of podcasting, I don't think anyone has ever actually asked me, what is the definition of peak performance? That's crazy. Crazy. What a great way to start. So I view performance now at this stage of my life as where we are able to be healthy. You're free of disease, you're free of any sort of Illnesses, you are well, which means that you are thriving. You are not just free of disease, you are actually, you have energy, you have your cognitive abilities, and you are allocating your potential to, and directing it towards what matters to you the most in your life. And then you are going to generally reach your potential. So although I might think of peak performance as Greg delivering a speech on a stage somewhere, Michael Phelps might think of it very differently, as, you know, as an Olympic swimmer and an executive might think of it differently. And someone who's super into coaching their parent, their child's soccer team might be, or football team might think of that as peak performance. So it's very individual, but it really revolves around the ability to be healthy, no disease, to be well. You are thriving and you are doing what you love to do at the highest possible level. So for me, that's peak performance these days. And it's been a journey getting to that mindset, but that's what we go for every day.

It's incredible. And let's talk about your journey itself in terms of when you talk about peak performance. I always love the believability factor, which is the person who's talking about it has walked the walk. Not only studied it, but walked the walk. And I know that you've done some incredible things with marathons in the Arctic Circle, and I think there's a lot of other amazing things. So talk to me a little bit about your story. What led you down the path of pushing yourself and trying to find your own potential?

I've been thinking a lot about that recently because I'm actually going back to do a presentation at my university where I used to teach for their undergrads. And I've got to tell the story of the career, right? And it all definitely started as a. As a child. I was super interested in swimming. I became a competitive swimmer. I was reasonably good at it and was on track sort of for national team in. In Canada. Broke my neck when I was 15 in an accident in the ocean, swimming in the waves and did neurosurgery, rehab, all that sort of stuff. Ended up getting back into competitive swimming afterwards. Swimming all the way through college didn't make the Olympics. Most of my friends did, but I did not. In fact, you know, a good friend of mine made the Olympics out of New Zealand. So some colleagues down there and in Australia as well, that made it. So that was the genesis of everything that led the breaking of the neck definitely led to my interest in anatomy. So I took kinesiology as an undergrad and then out of my undergrad after swimming, did some consulting work with financial and professional services companies in Canada. That led to sort of understanding the business world. Went back to do a master's PhD, consulted with Canadian Olympic team all the way through grad school to pay the bills. That led to a job with them as a director of sports science for Canadian summer sport athletes. And at the same time as that, I built a lab at SickKids Hospital in Toronto doing exercise medicine for leukemia and cystic fibrosis patients. Wrote a couple book, actually five books now, and also commentated a few Olympics for Canadian television. So it's been a pretty wild ride, I think. I've had like eight different careers. Everyone in my family jokes that I change career paths every three to five years. And right now it's about being an author and a speaker and a podcaster. So I'm, you know, like, this is the sweet spot for me at the moment. I have no idea what I'll be doing in five years, but that's been the journey. And not to mention the expeditions which we've, which we've done just sort of for fun on the side. But cycling across Africa from Cairo to Cape Town, that was a big one. Helping my buddy Ray Zahab run from the Pacific to the Atlantic across South America, that was a good one. Too few marathons in 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle, those were fun. So I've tried to gain as much experience as. As I possibly can to go along with, with the academics. And I think that although the academics is amazing and super important, you need to know the research and understand really does help to have that. That lived experience. I think you can explain heat stroke better when you've had heat stroke to students. So that's the, that's the. That's the game. I love it.

It's just incredible. Like, what a career. And we could kind of dive deep into many of those face. For me, I'm fascinated by you pushing yourself. And so let's pick one of those. Whether it's the Arctic Circle or Tour d'. Afrique. Which one do you feel really challenged you mentally, physically?

Oh, the Tour Afrique for sure. I thought the marathons were hard. They weren't hard, relatively speaking. And the Tour de Freque kind of arose out of. I was doing my PhD at the time. And in the last stretch of your PhD, you have to write your thesis, and that basically involves sitting at a desk for like six months, and you have to sit there for eight to 12 hours a day, every single day. You've got all of this stuff in your brain. You got to get it into a book and publish it and defend it and all those sorts of things. So I was really just writing nonstop. And I love cycling and my sister had been to Africa and I love world travel. And my dad called me one day, said, I've heard an interview on the radio, there's a couple people that are going to go try to ride their bikes from Cairo to Cape Town. And I was like, well, that sounds cool. He's like, yeah, it's called the Tour d'. Afreque. So I looked it up and it turns out they were based in Toronto. So I went over and I walked into their office one day and I was like, that sounds cool. And there was a map on the wall, and it was a big, huge map of Africa with a highlighter that basically went from the top to the bottom. And I said, what's going on? They're like, well, we're going there in about a month. And I was like, I'm in. So I took out the last little bit of student loan space that I had, sold everything that I owned, broke up with the person that I was seeing at the time, finished my thesis, handed it in and flew straight to Africa. And I went from minus 30 Celsius in Toronto in February to plus 52 degrees in this in the Sahara Desert on day one, which was 172 km of. Of cycling. And that was just like a being hit with baseball bats everywhere. And then that led into, you know, slowly adapting to the heat. But then you go into the altitude in Ethiopia because we don't realize it, but Ethiopia is actually quite high. They're plateaus. And you basically go down into a canyon, across the canyon, back up across the plateau. So it's sort of high altitude, low altitude, high altitude, low altitude. And I drank local water all the way through Ethiopia, so violently ill. Into northern Kenya bandit territory, like right near the Somalia border. So that was super sketchy. Riding into Nairobi during the initial stages of the Gulf War. So it's super tense because there was a fairly big Al Qaeda presence at that time. Down into Tanzania, which is one of the most beautiful places ever, into Malawi, which was hot and, you know, very, very, very humid, very low levels of. And extraordinarily challenging from an economic perspective, like very, very poor. So psychologically tough to be there. Through that into Mozambique, which had just gotten out of a civil war. So our mines all over the place that we needed to Be careful of. And then into Botswana and Zimbabwe, there was a. When we went through Harare, Zimbabwe, there was a national strike against Robert Mugabe, who was the president at the Times. That was super tense. Into Botswana, stunningly beautiful, spectacular. And then South Africa, which would basically just coming out of apartheid still. And so there was so much hope, so much positivity there. And I rode my bike through one of the townships in South Africa where people, you know, certainly not a lot of white guys in spandex are supposed to go cycling. And I certainly did. And it was incredible. And it was amazing to meet people and sit on the side of the road and talk. So, like, it was. It was challenging in every way, mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And it was the highest highs ever and the lowest possible lows I've ever experienced. So, I mean, every range of emotion at its most intense was that. That. That all happened on that expedition.

That's amazing. Thanks for sharing that. And my question is, why? Why did you say, that's what I want today?

Isn't that crazy, right? Like, what should I have done? I probably should have gotten a job and paid off my student loans, but I actually did the opposite. I sold everything, got rid of everything in my life, grabbed a tent and a backpack and a bike, and went and cycled across Africa for five months. And I think I've always had a bit of a love of travel and a bit of a sense of adventure. I had previously been to Peru right after their civil war to go traveling through that incredible country, up into the mountains. And I loved cycling. And so it was the experience of a lifetime. Ironically enough, when I got back.

That trip is what got me my job at Sickkids Hospital because I couldn't get a job. I couldn't find any work. Apparently, once you have a PhD, no one will hire you. I didn't know that at the time. And so I was interviewing everywhere, getting nothing. Rejected, rejected, rejected. I actually did an interview from Africa on a satellite phone. Colossal disaster that did not go well, and ended up having a conversation with someone and they were like, what are you doing? I'm trying to get a job. Where have you been? Africa. And, you know, what are you trained in, by the way? I know Africa is the continent and, you know, multiple different countries throughout Africa. So I told them where I'd been, and I call it, you should go talk to Dr. Alan Coates at Sick Kids Hospital. He's building out an exercise lab for cystic fibrosis. And I said, well, I have absolutely no experience in that whatsoever, but let's go for it. And I've done all of my research on breath work and breathing in high performance sports and adaptations of the respiratory system and hemoglobin. And that is cystic fibrosis, it's a respiratory disease. So I felt like I could probably contribute to that in an exercise setting and sat down, met with Alan, talked about what he was doing, but 98% of the conversation was about the Africa expedition. And he basically said, okay, well, there's your desk, see you on Monday morning. Let's get to work. Doing research on, on CF, which then led to a 20 year career. I'm still, I'm still appointed there 20 years later. So.

Pretty amazing that that's actually what happened. I don't know why, to be honest with you. It just sort of tugged at the heartstrings at that moment. I went for it. And that actually might be something that every listener can lean into a little bit, is that we do have these opportunities that present themselves in our lives and whether it's asking someone out or taking the job or quitting the job or.

Moving countries as you have done, changing careers, as many people do, I think that there's so many opportunities that we maybe don't give ourselves permission to go for because we're so afraid of what the outcome might be. But the reality is the vast majority of time it's probably going to work out and something incredible might happen. So why not, you know, like, why not go for it and see what happens? I can't do that right now. I've got kids, I've got some responsibilities. But the second that they're at university, I'm probably going to start doing some pretty radical stuff again. We'll see how it goes. And they'll be like, to me, that's amazing.

I meet so many people that don't want to change, they're afraid of change, they resist it, they stay in relationships or in jobs that are mediocre. They become very unfulfilled. But what I see with you is you understand human needs and one of those key core human needs is variety. And it's trying new things and exploring the world and exploring yourself. So that's not a normal trip. Most people don't explore that variety trip very much so. I love that you do.

Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlan.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show. Notes.

Yeah, I joke about the fact that I have sort of like training and like training deficit disorder. I'm like, I get bored very, very easily. So when I go to the gym, I probably should just ride the bike for an hour, but I end up doing some sort of ridiculous circuit instead or, or vice versa. And I think that we know there's that expression that variety is the spice of life, but I think more, more importantly, it's that when some, we need to be aware that when something is working. Fantastic. Go all in. More of that. And when things are not working to give yourself permission to have the faith in yourself that you can actually make a change. And we're afraid of change. We don't like change normally, yet it's the one consistent in our life. And when we do give ourselves permission to go after the new thing, try the new job, maybe even try the new career, change the relationship. And that might just be working on your current relationship. Have the children, like whatever it is, that is the next big step. Amazing things are going to come from that and you can't see it. We often get caught up looking into the future and trying to imagine what the future could look like and trying to predict what the future could look like or work towards what the future could be. It's often interesting as well to look back. Think about 10 years ago. Could you even imagine that you are in the place that you are right now? Could you even conceive of how far you have come, the things that you have done, the experiences that you have had? Absolutely not. If you went 10 years ago and you told me, greg, you're going to be an author, I would have laughed at you. My grade 8 teacher would have a nervous breakdown like it was. I've not done well in writing ever. But yet that was an opportunity to present itself. Went for it. Now we're five books in. So we have to have faith in ourselves, right? We have to be able to have that confidence that it's going to work out. We are going to be able to overcome the obstacles that the Obstacles and the challenges are what create growth in our life and sometimes you just got to go for it.

Great advice and I love the fact that your teachers might have not seen an author in you, but in fact you're a five times best selling author. And I want to talk about Powerhouse and why is that your most recent book? What compelled you to want to write that?

In the middle of the pandemic, when I was.

Looking at what was going on and talking to people, even if it was only on Zoom or whatever platform. And then we started to emerge from the pandemic, we saw how people felt and the experiences that they were having and the mood and the energy that was just so low. People were so tired, people were so burned out, people were so overwhelmed by everything that happened. That hasn't stopped by the way. Geopolitical issues are significant right now. Socio cultural issues are massive at the moment. There's a lot of work that humanity needs to do to try to create a better future. And that doesn't even get into things like global warming and other major, major, major challenges that we need to overcome. There's a lot for us all to do. And when I was looking at the energy levels and just saw people were depleted, I said, okay, so how do we get people out of languishing? How do we get people out of the state that they're in? What do people need? The answer to that is energy. We need more energy. Not in a toxic way, like you need to do more, but more. Just like you need to thrive. Like, I want you to reach your potential. I want you to do what you love and to have the energy to actually do what you love to do at the highest level that you can do it at. And that is, as we talked about at the start of this conversation, is peak performance. So how do we get people more energy? Well, the structure inside your body that creates energy is mitochondria. And I'm a physiologist, so I love studying the human body. And mitochondria are present in almost every single tissue and every single type of tissue inside the body except red blood cells. They're pretty much everywhere else. They are what fuel your muscles, they are what fuels your thinking, your digestion, your, the communication between all of those different structures inside your and organs within your body through the nervous system. Like it all happens via mitochondria. They are also involved as regulators of aging. They are also involved as regulation, regulators of healing and repair. The inflammatory process often runs through mitochondria as well, and it influences and is influenced by mitochondria. Obviously a lot of people are talking about inflammation lately. So mitochondria was the key to me. And when I began to dig into it, I realized that mitochondria are hyper adaptable. For better or for worse. If you do nothing and sit on your couches, the couch, your mitochondria will get worse. If you go for a walk, your mitochondria will get better and it doesn't take much to change them. So I became super hopeful about how we could help people navigate forwards through things like sleep, through exercise, through breath work, through antioxidant nutrition, through anti inflammatory practices, and then ultimately craft a life where we thrive thinking about the power of mindsets like joyfulness or altruism that ultimately truly unlock our human potential. So that was why, you know, that's, that's what it was about and that's, that's why I wrote it was people were tired, people were languishing and I wanted to come up with a solution for them that was accessible, gave them more energy. And when you look at it from a physiological perspective, it's mitochondria.

Incredible. Thanks for going deeper on that. And I want to just kind of look at some of those things that you've explained that actually help us. I'll give you a bit of context from my end. So I recently met with an endocrinologist and it was kind of the end of the health journey, waiting for the last green light. And he finished a conversation with saying, james, you're a disgustingly healthy human. So I high fived him. Awesome news. But rewind five months, I find a lump in my left pec. And I'm a bit concerned about that. So I get some bloods done, I get a mammogram done, bloods come back and they say I've got high DHEA sulfate, I've got elevated prolactin, my IGF one's a little high. And then the mammogram states it's not cancer. So I'm like, okay, that's a high five. But it's gynecomastia. So I've got extra tissue growing here. Why is that happening? My hormones are so the estrogen and testosterone all normal. This seems odd. So been researching, meeting specialists, trying to figure it out. I meditate every day. I'm a big believer in breath work. I move my body, I'm not overweight, I'm plant dominant. I eat probably 99% plant based, I drink no alcohol. I feel like I have a Happy life. I'm like, okay, there's not a lot of stress, I don't think. But as I got further down the track, I'm meeting with the endocrinologist. He says, what do you do for work? I says, well, I spend a lot of time on stages. He says, what do you mean? I say, I'm a keynote speaker. I speak about leadership and high performance. He says, okay, how do you feel on stage? I say, I love it, it's great. I love connecting with the audience. I'm passionate about it. He says, do you get nervous? I said, when I was like 15 years ago, the thought of stepping up in front of two people would have been dread. I said, but no, I love it, I love it. It's so engaging. He says, tell me about your body, what's it doing? I said, well, I sweat a lot when I'm on stage. He said, oh, that's interesting. So he says, look, your body thinks it's under attack. And he says, you're speaking two, three, sometimes four times a week on stage. He's like, that's not normal. And so you've got this elevated stress. So I got the information. He said, I'm healthy, there's still gynecomastia there. But I'm like, what else can I do? So when you talk about mitochondria, I'm selfishly thinking, what could I be doing here to elevate my health even more, Greg has got to have some tactics.

Isn't that interesting? What a fascinating story. I'm glad that that work, quote unquote worked out for you. My brother in law actually had breast cancer and had a huge chunk of his pack taken out all the way around through the side of his rib cage and other things. So you're just high five. Good job. Glad you're healthy. That's, that's amazing. Let's keep that going for both of us. And even though we love what we do, I'm a speaker as well. I love being on stage. I get off stage and I'm exhausted. Like it, I pour it, it is all out there. It is a performance, right? Like when we love what we do. So we're passionate about it, we direct everything, everything into it. I had someone who was coaching me once saying, it's a performance, you shouldn't be tired at the end. I'm like, well, I'm throwing my emotions out there, like I'm going to be. This is going to take its toll on me. And that's a type of stress called eustress. It's positive challenge. And if we have no eustress or no positive stress in our life, we get very, very sick. There's another type of stress as well. It's called distress. And that's the negative stress. That's like relationship problems, financial problems, health problems, like overwhelming volumes of chronic elevated tension in your life for a long period of time. Let's say it's work challenges or all sorts of other things that we don't feel is basically positive and challenging. They're what are problematic for us. And in both cases, the magic of that is to try to create this balance between distress and eustress. You want some challenges. You don't want things to be always perfect. You need some ups and downs in life as well. You want to be happy, but you also want to be sad. You want to be excited, but you also want to be a little bit anxious every once in a while. You want to feel joyfulness and fulfillment at the same time. It's okay to feel a little bit down, not chronically depressed, but it's okay to have the full range of human experiences and that stress is included in that. The super interesting thing is, if you are stressed, positively or negatively, that includes, like, lifting weights, your muscles get stressed, you go to work, you get tired, your brain gets stressed. If you then have a period of recovery and regeneration, if you give yourself permission to have rest, it is in that rest phase when the body heals, repairs, and regenerates itself. It's called adaptation. And the body will always heal, repair, and regenerate itself to be slightly stronger than it was before. Think about lifting weights. You go into the gym, you lift weights, you get sore, you get tired, and your muscles hurt, you've broken them down. That is a stressor. But if you have a good night's sleep, if you eat some healthy food, especially protein to rebuild your tissues and carbohydrates to refuel, and health for your NER or fats for your nerves, then all of a sudden, the next day, you're stronger. Similarly, cognitively, if we work really, really hard to figure something out, learn something, memorize something, deconstruct something, you get cognitively tired at the end of the day, you've got that brain fog. You're reading the same line on the computer screen three times. You're exhausted, you just cannot do anymore. You go have a great night's sleep. You go have some healthy food, especially with some healthy omega 3 fatty acids to help with myelination of neuron neural pathways inside the brain, and you have that rest, you will become more resilient. Go for a run, get tired, you will get fitter. And so when we alternate these patterns of stress plus rest, that's the spark that leads to positive adaptation and growth. And that's what most of us don't have enough of in our lives. We are quite good at the stress part. What we're not so good at is, and I'm as guilty as anyone of this because I'm a type A overachiever for a whole host of different reasons that are not all positive at all. But when we give ourselves that permission to rest, to recover, to regenerate, to eat healthy food, to go for the massages, to do the meditation, to spend time in nature, to hang out with your family, to put away the electronic devices, to read a book, to do the journaling, whatever that happens to be, that's what gets us on the growth trajectory. That's what enables the body to heal. That's what enables us to get rid of the oxidation from all of the oxygen that we have pulled into our muscles, into our brain, which fuels the fires of our productivity and performance, yet has a negative impact. Just like if you cut an apple and you leave the apple open to oxygen in the air, it turns brown. That is happening inside of our brains and our bodies every single day. We need to clear out that oxidation. Similarly, stress leads to inflammation, which is a powerful stimulant for positive adaptation that creates IL6, CRP, like all of these molecules that then circulate around the body and stimulate positive growth. If you have that background of rest to enable it to happen, otherwise it makes you sick, Otherwise it increases your risk of cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, neurodegenerative diseases, depression. And so that's the key, is to try to create this cycle between peak performance, high stress, challenging situations, maybe some distress, but then giving yourself permission to recover and to regenerate. Our mutual friend Robin Sharma would call that the twin cycles of deep rest and high performance. In one of his books, it's how he described that, and that's one of the major things I try to teach people and help them with, is to understand that we cannot simply be redlining all the time. To use a car analogy, we need to give ourselves permission to go back, change the tires, refuel the engine, clean things out, and then you can get back and get out on the track again. But trying to do it all the time is a problem. And that's, I think, one of the major reasons why we're seeing skyrocketing rates of burnout, increasing challenges with regards to mental health around the world, and we definitely need a new approach. So hopefully that's helpful for people.

That's massively helpful. And I want to talk about the rest because I think we all know the word and we all know that we need it, but we all, like many of us, don't know. What does good rest look like? Is good rest on the sofa, Netflix some popcorn and wine every night? I don't think so, but we might call it rest. So what do you think are some of the basics? You've talked about breath work quite a bit so far, so I'd love to talk about why that's important and how we do that. Well, for the busy person who thinks, I don't have time for breath work, how can they integrate it? How simple can it be?

The beautiful thing about breathwork is that its effects are almost instantaneous. We can all feel it right now. Just take a deep breath in.

Long exhale. Like instantaneously. You feel better.

Yeah.

And I, when I was doing my PhD work and research, we figured out some of the neural pathways involved in that. And it turns out your breathing center is in the medulla of your brain, the base of your brain, your brain stem, the very foundational part of the brain. And when you do slow exhales that the electrical activity in that region of the brain decreases. We see similar patterns happening in the stress regions of the brain as well, and they're mapped. When you do short, fast exhales like.

That increases the stress levels inside your increases the electrical activity inside the stress regions of the brain. Whereas when we do the.

Long, slow exhales, it calms the brain down. This is why special forces soldiers, first responders, medical technicians and professionals are taught box breathing. Four seconds in, four seconds hold. Four seconds out. Four seconds hold on. To make sure you're oxygenated, calm, clearing that CO2, and that you can keep breathing throughout an extended period of time when you're under significant pressure and stress keeps you calm and able to function cognitively. But the easiest things for the easiest thing for everyone listening to do right now is to begin the practice of we just call it the birthday candle breath. Right? Imagine that you're seeing all of the candles on the cake in front of you. It's your birthday, if that's in your culture. And deep breath in and blow out all of the candles. That is a very cool practice to do when you're stressed in the moment. Let's say you're about to walk into a board meeting. Let's say you're about to walk into a job interview or you're about to walk into your home after a difficult day, one or two or three long slow exhales to calm your body, to calm your mind, to settle your emotions, then gives you the opportunity to walk into that situation and actually perform to your potential under tremendous pressure and stress, even if it's at home. Because I've walked into my house a couple times after a difficult day of work and I have not been a good dad, I've not been a good husband, not a good father, good friend under other circumstances. So when we get ourselves into that state where we can be that better version of ourselves, I think that it's awesome. And breathwork is a pathway that we can use to practice getting into that state. That way, when we do it under normal, easy circumstances, it's all good. But then you know what to do when things get tough and you can use it in those times as well.

It's amazing. Thank you. And do you think that's a compounding thing? So let's say someone starts breathwork today and does it once or twice throughout the day and does it every day for five, six, seven, eight years. Do you feel that there's a compounding effect in autoimmune and longevity?

I think that our ability to manage the cycles of stress and recovery throughout the course of our lives is without a doubt related to our longevity and our health. We know that 70% of the deaths in the Western world are caused by stress related illnesses. By the West, I refer to obviously North America and Western Europe, obviously that includes many developed nations around the world, all see the same pattern. And when we are able to have those moments of recharging, of recovery, breath work being one of them, meditation being another, healthy food, sleep, exercise, companionship, community, all of these factors work as well. When we have that cycle of stress and recovery over an extended period of time, that absolutely creates compound well being. Just like we have compound interest. If you save $20 a month, every single month for your entire life, the longer that you do that, even at 1, 2, 3, 5% interest rates, at some point you're going to be a millionaire. And that is exactly what we want to try to do with our body and our mind and our emotion and our spirit, which is just so cool because it means that we can make progress. And although you won't, we can make progress under almost any circumstances, actually. And although you may not see the results right away, if you can stick with it, if you can be consistent even at 1% per day, which is only 15 minutes, that compounding will aggregate over time to completely change your life. The.

Data shows that if you do 15 minutes of walking a day, there's a 24 to 40% reduction in your risk of 13 different types of cancer.

Wow.

If you do 40 minutes of light, easy physical activity, walking, that will cut your risk of cardiovascular disease almost in half. We know that physical activity reduces your risk of depression and instantaneously lowers anxiety. These are powerful tools at our disposal. I think breath work and meditation without question saved my relationship with my family during the course of the pandemic, because when I noticed that my own mindset was not in a great place, about six months in lockdowns and all that other stuff that was going on, um, my brain was not in a good place. And so I was able to notice it and through breath work, settle myself down, use meditation to get some perspective, separate myself from my own thoughts so I could see what was going on. Then I could actually figure out how do I move forwards from this scenario, get the support that I needed to get in order to navigate the way that I was thinking, and get to a much, much better place, which made me able to be a better father, better husband, better friend, all those sorts of things. Uh, so, yeah, it absolutely compounds, and I know it might be hard for people to think about three, five, seven years down the road of doing a practice, and we don't necessarily need to do that. I would just encourage people to string together micro wins. If you can do one little thing today, that's fantastic, then just try to aim for one little tiny thing tomorrow. They don't even need to be the same thing. It all counts, it all helps, it all moves us in the right direction.

It's brilliant. So achievable when you think of that 1% a day. What could I do for 15 minutes? What, walk? Park the car further away and walk into the office, or take the stairs or go and sit in the office, go to the toilet, sit down in the cubicle and breathe. Have your water beside you that you're holding up right now. I love it. Simple things done well lead to sublime results. And we see that in high performers, peak performers of all backgrounds. When you say that, what comes to mind for me is common sense isn't always common practice. You know, like our grandmothers could have told us some of these key important things. They didn't know the science back then. But we tend to not engage in them for whatever reason. So what do you think it is that holds us back and might have held you back at times from actually doing the meditation, from drinking the water, from avoiding that third beer.

Third beer? Yes.

Back in my younger days it was a lot more than three. But.

Anyway, we're not there anymore. Thank God. But.

What holds us back is.

A really, really, really, really important question. And I think the answer to that question is unique for all of us. And when we think about making changes and we want to make changes and we set goals to make changes, we hopefully then incorporate that into our life. If we don't, that's a powerful signal that something else is more important to you right now. Let's say you want to go to the gym, but you don't. That's totally okay. Not saying it's good or bad. The information is that you chose not to go. Or let's say I want to get up in the morning and go for a run. You chose not to get up. So something else is more important to you. That might be. I need rest. Fair enough. Why do you need more rest? Well, I actually want to feel good at work. Why is that more important to you than your health? Well, I really feel like I need to make money to take care of my family. Why is that? Well, maybe when I was younger I didn't have any money to, you know, or it was rough for me. When I was growing up, we didn't have enough money in my family. Therefore I really want to provide for my children. And when we go back far enough and we deconstruct the signals that we're getting. Your actions betray your priorities. Your calendar betrays your.

Procrastination. Basically gives you astronomical amounts of data about what you actually think is important. It's just info. Not good or bad, just info. But when you go back and you figure out why you're actually truly doing something, then you understand and you realize that there's no way that getting up for a run first thing in the morning is more important to you than providing for your family. You always want to provide for your family. That will always win out. Therefore. So now what? Okay, well now I need to provide for my family and maybe figure out a time for me to get my exercise in and also be do be doing the high level work. At the same time it just guides your decision making and guides your. Your construction of your life. Because as you live your days, so you live your life. And it's not easy to build a world class life. It's not easy. And by the world class, I just mean you reaching your potential. I don't mean you compared to everybody else, just mean, like you getting close to what you're capable of, what you want to be doing, what, what, what makes your own heart sing. And that deconstruction is important. It takes time, it requires journaling, it requires testing, it requires experimentation, and it requires a lot of deconstruction and reflection. One of the things I learned from being at the Titan Summit with our mutual colleague, Dr. Or, sorry, with Robin Sharma. So that's, I think the game is really when you ask, like, why don't we do it? Or like, what's it take to actually make that change? We have to understand why and we have to analyze what we're doing and we have to give ourselves a ton of grace and a ton of acceptance and no judgment. It's not good or bad, it's just information. And when you find things that work, we go all in on that, we support it, we make it easy to do the right thing thing. The Sunday morning run is a great example of that. If it's just you going for a run, that's one thing. But if eight of your buddies are showing up at your front door to go for a run at 8 o' clock in the morning on Sunday, guess what? You're probably going to go, right? So we have to build these communities around ourselves. And that's why surrounding yourself with people that want to do the same things as you is so powerfully important. If you want to decrease the amount that you're drinking, don't go to the bar, right? Go to the gym. Just, people don't drink at the gym, they drink at the bar. Don't go to the bar, go to the gym, right? So this is just like surrounding yourself with excellence and ultimately making success inevitable. And when we understand why we're doing things, truly at the real core, that I believe is the key to ultimately unlocking that answer to the question which you asked is like, why don't we make these changes? Or what do we need to do to make the change? Which is also probably even more important.

It keeps coming back to why, when I asked you, why did you do Tour d'? Afrique? It's like, well, actually there was a reason and why do we exercise? Why do we not? Why do we drink? Why do we not? So what I'm hearing from this is we need to spend more time exploring why we do what we do or what we don't do. And it's Interesting. You talk about journaling. I've been journaling once a day, sometimes twice for years, maybe seven, eight years. And it has been the most transformational thing. Now I remember sharing this, it was at like a wealth summit and I was speaking and I was sharing about journaling and someone at the back of the room went, that's for 13 year old girls. And is that right? I was like, would you mind coming and joining me on stage? So this gentleman came up, he's probably in his mid to late 50s, sits on stage, his face has gone a bit red. And I says, hey, I've got a surprise for you and everyone in the room today. I've actually got three SAS soldiers who've flown in from Britain who are going to come in and talk to you guys about what it is to be a peak performer and still do your work and have relationships and deal with stress. But before they come in, I want to tell you a story. When they graduate, they get given a gratitude journal. And in that journal they write down three things every day that they're grateful for. And they write down what they've learned, what they've maybe not done so well.

And what has went well.

And that gratitude builds resilience. So when the crap hits the fan, they're ready to go. They've got enough resilience in there because they've spent time developing gratitude at a neural level. Now when they come in the door, all I want you to say is, welcome to the 13 year old girls. Everyone put your hands together.

He starts giggling and he goes and sits down and the SAS didn't arrive.

But I wanted to make the point.

That we've got this belief that journaling is a very feminine, passive thing. Whether it's feminine or masculine, I think actually doesn't matter. But people have believed that this is not going to help me tactically. This is not going to help me solve. This is not going to help me be better. I strongly disagree. I think it's one of the greatest tools that we have. So with journaling, you've mentioned it a few times. What do you do, what do you explore, what do you write in your journal?

It's funny, my 13 year old daughter journals. So it 100,000% is for 13 year old girls as well as 52 year old dads apparently. So I've got a few different strategies that I use for journaling. I learned it from Richard Branson, had the chance to meet him in 2013. Never goes anywhere without a journal because he uses it to Capture his ideas 2016, I think I had a chance to hang out with Steve Wozniak and from Apple Computer and once again, journal. And over and over and over again, when I run into people that have accomplished incredible things in their lives, the vast majority of them have some form of a journaling practice. Whether it's gratitude journaling, which is absolutely incredible, the research on it is outstanding with regards to its actual impact on cardiovascular disease, on clinical mental health challenges like it is a powerful tool that absolutely works. What I have settled on with my journaling practice is a fairly detailed week planning system. I use the full focus planner. If anyone wants to look it up, I find it helpful. I do it about 70% of the time. Some weeks I don't bother, but some weeks that are high pressure, I absolutely do. Keeps me on folk on target. I actually do a fair bit of writing when things are really, really challenging. So if I have something that's bugging me a lot, I will write about it basically as a stream of consciousness out onto the page. And the reason why I do that is it gets it out of my head onto the page so I can see it and I'm not part of it. And then when I read it, I'm like, okay, that makes sense. That's clearly made up, and here's probably where the solution lies. So that's one thing I do, is that when I'm struggling with something, personally or professionally, I will write about it in a stream of consciousness in a journal until I can see what's going on. More importantly, though, I Learned from Matthew McConaughey, the actor, and his the interviews that he did all around his book Greenlights. I was driving across the country 35 hours in a car, listened to probably about a dozen of his podcast interviews, about two hours each, all the way across the country because they were so fascinating. And over and over and over again, he talked about journaling, but he only journals when things are going well because he wants a record of the positive stuff, not the negative stuff. That way, when something's not going well, he can go back and look at what was I thinking, feeling, doing act, think, feel when you, when I was crushing it. That way you have a record of what's going on. So I also think that's something that people could do is when things are going fantastic, you're on fire. When you've just made a sale, when you just crushed an exam, when you've just dominated an athletic event, whatever it happens to be, you're doing great at home, write about it because that's your record of excellence. And when you're in the darkness of your life, it feels lonely. You can't see around the corner. You don't know what's going to happen. You have no confidence in yourself. Sometimes going back and reviewing those notes can make all the difference of the world because it's you having a conversation with yourself that you otherwise would not be able to have. So those are a few tactics and a few ideas. The full focus planner, the stream of consciousness. Writing when things are not going well and making sure to gather some notes about when things are going fantastic so that you have a frame of reference when things are not going so well at some point in the future.

That's really valuable, Greg. And I really love the whole idea of kind of deconstructing our successes rather than always deconstructing our failures. And I feel like because of our negativity bias, we tend to spend more time focusing on why did I screw that thing up? Why did I destroy this? Why did I say the thing? And we spend way less time focused on, hey, remember that one thing I achieved or I actually made it through high school, or I bought my first house, whatever it might be. We spend a lot less time focusing on our wins. So I love that Matthew McConaughey approach. That's really cool. One other thing that I've been following some of your work for a while now that I've seen come up recently. And I've seen this trend certainly in New Zealand and Australia. A lot is cold therapy and you know, peak performers. Obviously athletes have used it for a long time. But I'm seeing a lot of executives and corporates doing regular daily cold therapy. So my question to you, does it work?

Cold water immersion is what we'll, what we'll talk about. That's getting into ice water. There's also cold, what's called cryotherapy, which is when you get into a very cold air. Basically it's like minus 170, I think degrees Fahrenheit or something like very, very cold air has completely different effects. So let's not talk about that. Let's talk about cold water immersion. Cause that's the all the rage. We actually did research on this in my lab at University of Toronto probably about 10 years ago. Clearly no one read it back then. So if I'd done it now, it would have made a lot more of a more difference. But I think six people read the paper back then and we found that it was helpful for athletes in some circumstances and not helpful for athletes in other circumstances. If the water is too cold, it has a negative effect. If you're in the water for too long, it has a negative effect. It helps to get rid of soreness so that you can perform the next day. But it also blocks long term adaptation because it has a. It sort of blocks some of the inflammatory pathways. So I am currently a practitioner. I believe in it. I really enjoy it. I like it. Again, during the pandemic, walking along the beach near the house, near the house where I live in Toronto, Canada, it's cold. It's March in Canada. It's very, very cold here. It's terrible in the winter. That's our winter. And I was just walking along the beach and I was just pissed off about the situation and just like, oh my God, my business has gone to zero. Like, this is crazy, right? Like, it's bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. And I had been doing cold water immersion. I had actually done it in Zurich at a conference with a bunch of people in December. And so I had been doing it for a long period of time. I'd learned the Wim Hof method. He's problematic and I love his energy and what he brought to the world. But that technique does kill people. So be very, very careful if you are, you know, get some help, learn how to do it right. But I'd learned that, that technique and I had a PhD in respiratory physiology, so I knew how to do the breath work and I'd done the research on cold. So I was walking along the beach one day, not in a good place, and I was like, screw it, I'm going in, snowing, ice on the ground, stripped down in my underwear, walked into the icy, freezing cold water and stayed there for about five minutes. And I got out and it was absolutely horrible and it felt terrible and my brain was so much better. I was clear, I was sharp, I was focused, I was energized. The endorphins were pumping. This depression was zero. I could not get over how much of an impact it had on my brain, not my body. And so ever since then, whenever I have been feeling not awesome, I go in the lake and the river or the ocean or a cold shower, wherever it happens to be. And I find it is a hard reset for my nervous system. And the data is starting to back that up. There's been a number of case studies. So not peer review, like not.

You know, blind placebo controlled. All, you know, like it's just single individual case studies reported in the literature of Cold water immersion having a positive impact upon mental health. There are larger studies that are starting to be done in that space and the data is quite compelling and I'm hopeful about it. There is some evidence that seems to suggest that it has a blunting effect on inflammation inside the body. But as I mentioned before, too cold, negative effect, and for too long, negative effect as well. There's also data that shows that it doesn't need to be cold water immersion. You don't need to get into an icy lake. You can simply take a shower in the morning and at the end of your shower, finish with 30 seconds of cold water on your forehead or between your shoulder blades. And that has a powerful positive impact on your immune system and your resistance to upper respiratory tract infections. So I believe that the data is compelling. It is dangerous. When you get into cold water, you hyperventilate. When you hyperventilate, you can pass out, you drop below the surface, no one will ever find you. You can die. Don't do this alone. Get some training, learn how to do it right. Be very, very, very careful with it. Obviously the cold shower, you're just going to inhale some water and cough a little bit when it's not that big of a deal. But I'm a practitioner, I'm a fan, I believe in it. I think that the data in the research is quite compelling. Obviously there's, it's still super early stages, there will be some positive data, some negative data and we're going to navigate all of that as it comes out. And that also leads us then into heat, which is the other side of the equation. So just as a lot of people are discovering the power of cold, also there's a trend towards people discovering heat and the benefits of getting into a sauna or a hot bath, which is equally powerful. What we think heat does is release heat shock proteins which help your cardiovascular system improve. I almost view cold water immersion is good for your brain, your spinal cord, your nervous system to calm down and get you into a rest, recover and regenerate mode. Whereas heat is so fantastic for your cardiovascular fitness. So the practice I have at the moment is cold water in the morning, 1 to 3 minutes and heat in the evening, either a hot shower, hot bath or sauna, if I have access to that at the gym, if I'm at the gym late at night, so that cold in the morning to get sparked and get going for your day, heat at night to help you calm down for your cardiovascular system. And that bookends my day, which enables me to help my brain and my body at the same time.

And so tangible for many of us to give it a try, especially the cold shower. Any of us can try that. And what's interesting there, I understand, is when you heat, you're in heat, your body's core temperature actually drops, which improves our sleep. So I can, I can really understand that. Sauna and heat, at the end of the day, it makes sense.

Do you have any feelings around terrible, by the way? It feels awful. All of it. It's the worst. Like, this is not fun. They do not feel good. You're not gonna be like, oh gosh, I'm so glad I listened to that podcast with Greg and James. You're they're gonna be swearing at us like, this is not good. Cold showers feel awful. After about five minutes in the sauna, you want to get out. But stick with it, give it a shot, breathe your way through it. It's a mental exercise as much of a physical exercise as well. And you're right. When you get out of the sauna, your body temperature drops. That triggers the release of melatonin, which makes you sleep so well. It is fantastic. So feel free to experiment with that and give it a shot. But like I said, be very, very careful.

I love it. And what's your thoughts just before we wrap up, I've got a couple more questions. So one is, I see a lot of people doing cold and then straight into the heat, and then straight from the heat, straight into the like 3 degree water. Is that anything you've got any experience with? Is that good or bad for us?

Yeah. So like hundreds of years of trial and error, error, error in Scandinavia have led us to that contrast. The hot sauna and then out into the snow or heating the body up and out into the cold water. And there's definitely some benefits of that, without question. Heat the body up, get the sweat going, get out into the cold, rinse off all of that, that sweat contract, constrict the blood vessels in the skin, drive that blood back deeper into the tissues and you're basically like treating your body like it's a sponge. You're squeezing out, you're just wringing out that sponge over and over and over again. The data on the sauna slash cold contrasting is again very, very compelling. And people who do that consistently over an extended period of time in Scandinavia appear to have.

Significant differences in terms of longevity and lifespan and chronic disease and risk of all cause mortality. So the data on that is quite compelling as well. The person who has written. The best summary of that is Dr. Rhonda Patrick. So if you search Dr. Rhonda Patrick Sauna, you will find all of her work on that. It's complex, it's a very, very long, long article, but that's a great place for people to go if you want to learn more about that as well. She's also done a parallel post on Cold. So again, if you search Dr. Rhonda Patrick Kold, you will find those two articles and they're both incredible resources if people want to dig into that in more detail.

Amazing. I'll make sure the team gets it and we'll put those in the show links. And also before I ask you last question, Dr. Greg, where can people find you? How can people buy your books and get to connect with your great work?

Amazing. I really appreciate the opportunity to come and share these ideas and talk to you and connect with your audience. And I'm honored every single time that it happens. I'm just so deeply grateful for it. So if people want to reach out and chat, I'm@drgregwells.com all my social media are there. I post pretty regularly on Instagram and especially on LinkedIn. But if you use the contact page, that goes to me and me only my books are there. So drgreguels.com books, they're all there. Podcast is there, Blog is there, all of our research is there. So we'd be honored to connect with you and answer your questions.

It's incredible. We'll make sure to put that in the show notes as well. And just for one last question, I like to leave this one right to the very end. So if we were to fast forward many, many years into the future and you're highly aware that it's your very last day here on Earth and someone very young that you care deeply about comes into the room and says, greg, how do I go about leading my life on purpose? What would you say to them?

Wow.

I've had strange visualizations of this scene for some reason. I don't know why. This is a very. I feel comfortable and I feel like I've had this thought before and let's say it's my grandchild. And they come in and say, you know, grandpa, what, what do I do now? Like, what, what? You know, what's the what? What do I do? And I would probably look at them. I, I have a deep feeling that I'm going to be in a contented place. I don't know why I feel like I'm going to be in a state of contentment at that particular point in time. But I do feel like I will be content at that point. And I hope that I can smile at them and I hope that I can connect with my eyes at that point. And.

I think the answer is love. Like, do what you love, spend time with the people that you love. And the most powerful force I've ever encountered in all of my wild and crazy experiences in 53 countries around the world and climbing mountains in the Himalayas and cycling across deserts in Africa or, you know, jumping into oceans in the north and swimming with sharks in the south. Like, out of all of those crazy experiences, it always comes back to the most powerful experiences are always related to love and love of the people, the places and the pursuits. And so that's what my, you know, I've got to refine that answer. I probably won. Not going to be cognizant enough to be able to give the five minute explanation. But I would probably look at them and if, like there was one word that I would just say to them, I would probably just like, love more. Love, deeply love. That's the answer.

I think that's beautiful. Greg, thank you so much for sharing that. I know that what you've just shared in this moment will land perfectly for many listeners and many viewers right now. And I believe this is the first of many conversations for us. You're fascinating, your work's incredible, your books, I just think everyone should be grabbing them. So thanks a million for creating this space today.

James, thank you so much for having me on the show. Deeply honored and grateful. I'm sure we'll chat again.

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