Willpower - with Dave Asprey - Genius Network #61

Dave Asprey once weighed 300 pounds. He took back his life, got healthy, and offers a different look at willpower in this episode of Genius Network. Dave is an entrepreneur, businessman, author and biohacker who created the insanely popular Bulletproof coffee. He's the author of the Bulletproof Diet, Head Strong, the Bulletproof Diet Cookbook, and more, recorded live at the Genius Network annual event. If you'd like access to the full video presentation, the show notes and the special resources for this episode, please visit geniusnetwork.com61 that's geniusnetwork.com61.

How would you like to be better at everything you do? With more energy and higher performance is your everyday reality? How would you like to make feeling good your new status quo? That's what Dave Asprey, founder of Bulletproof, has discovered after investing. It was over 15 years of his life and $300,000 of his money. He figured out his own body. The results were amazing. Dave lost over 100 pounds, increased his IQ score by 20 points, and lowered his biological age. You too can achieve amazing results with your own body. And you'll learn how in the next 10 minutes. Day's best selling book focused on how his now famous brand Bulletproof. Many of you in this room have been drinking his bulletproof coffee. How many? How many of you have been drinking it? Yep, quite a bit of you. Look at that. But there's more to Bulletproof and more to Dave than just coffee. So today, Dave is going to be discussing willpower. Please welcome my friend, Dave Asprey.

What up, brother?

Thank you.

Did you guys hear that? When John Mackey said he's a nice man, holy crap. Like that blew me away. Lots of gratitude. Now, if you look at this photo, you might see some resemblance. This is a picture of me in the early 90s. It turns out I'm the first person to sell anything over the Internet. We didn't have the word E commerce yet because we hadn't invented it, but I did it. And it's because I sold a caffeine T shirt out of my Dorm room to 14 countries to pay for my tuition. But you might also notice a couple other things about this. I was a little bit fat. As in I weighed about 280 in that photo. I hit 300 pounds at the height of my weight. So I lost 100 pounds. I also lost $6 million during that.com time, which can be a little bit stressful. I also lost my brain right as my career in tech was going up. I started having a Hard time remembering things. I didn't have enough energy. I was kicking ass. I got my MBA at Wharton, working full time at a startup that we sold for $600 million. But it took every ounce of willpower and energy to put one foot in front of the other. It was not a fun experience. And I kept pushing and pushing and pushing, and then I got this. Can't read it. It's from a doctor. Let me zoom in on that for you. I'm 29. Increased risk for stroke or myocardial infarction. They're like, you're gonna die, like you're old. Your brain works like you're old. Oh, and by the way, I also had arthritis since I was 14. So I'm kind of old when I'm young, and it sucks. So I went and saw Dr. Amen, who's a member of Genius Network. That was my brain. And here's what they called me. An interesting referral. Oh, man. So what do you do when you're faced with something like this? You've already made and lost a fortune, and you're a little stressed, and your body and your biology will not do what you want them to do. Well, I decided yoga. Became an advanced yoga master. If you were at the party last night, I put my ankle behind my head just to prove a point. It was not a pretty sight. I went to South America, did ayahuasca with a shaman way before. It was cool. I shaved my head, went to Tibet, learned meditation from the masters. In fact, this photo was taken on Mount Kailash. It was on that very day that I had my first cup of yak butter tea. That was the inspiration of bulletproof coffee. But that wasn't all I did. To upgrade my brain and whatnot. I went to this cave and I fasted for four days, led by a shaman that's actually called First Woman. It's shaped like a certain anatomical part. And this is where Adam and Eve emerged from that local tribe. So that was a very holy place to go meditate for a while. And I finally hooked my brain up to electrodes and I listened to the sound of my own brain waves. Radical storytelling, understanding. What's the story that I told myself inside my head? What do I believe versus what's real? And how do I get control of my own brain? Because, after all, my body wasn't doing what I wanted. I got that to work, kind of. But my thoughts weren't stressed all the time. And today I actually run a neuroscience institute on the side because I needed the world's best brain mechanics for me. And in Seattle, this is something that I do. Eleven weeks of my life have been invested in this, which is the most important thing I've ever done. Here's what I learned, and here's what's in it for you. After I did all this stuff, I'm going to read a few sentences to you. This is where I ended up after that. Incredible. Dense. Every day, think as you wake up. I'm fortunate to be alive. I have a precious human life. I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to use all of my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others. I'm going to think kind thoughts towards others. I am not going to get angry and think badly about others. And I'm going to benefit others as much as I can. That's what I learned from that incredibly long path. And now you're going to learn exactly what's going on inside your head that prevents you from having those thoughts all the time. Sound useful? All right, let's do that. I can't believe I can fit this in 10 minutes.

This is cool.

If you were to, say, design a species to live forever, which we are designed. You really only need three behaviors for this species. The first behavior. Well, make sure that you eat everything. It's an F word feed, right? Eat everything. And you recognize this in a big Labrador. I call this a labrador brand. Labrador retriever walks down the street. Oh, a gutter taco. I think I'll eat that. You'll eat everything. It's ok. You're wired that way so the species doesn't starve. The next thing that you'll do is fear. Another F word. And that one is run away from or kill anything that might be scary. Pretty cool stuff, right? Well, the third F word required to keep the species alive is one of Joe's favorite words. The other F word. Come on.

Right.

You gotta reproduce the species. Fornicate. Fornicate. Thank you. You can always count on Sean to take it up a level. That wasn't where I was going. But we'll deal with that F word. So here's what you can do. You look at how much energy you have. Every single day, there is something you can do that turns off the voice in your head that says, eat the cookie. You put the cookie in front of you and the voice says, eat the cookie. And you say no. And the voice says, eat the cookie. And you say no. And eventually you say, I'll just have half. And then you say, I'm a bad person because I failed, because I didn't have enough willpower. It's all a lie. That's the story you told yourself. The real story is that willpower is finite. You can run out of it. It is a function of how much energy you have and a function of how many decisions you make. What if you could turn off the voice in your head that said, eat the cookie? So when someone puts the cookie in front of you, you're like, oh, a cookie. And blissful silence. You've probably experienced that because you had bulletproof coffee this morning. The whole point there isn't to buy my bulletproof coffee. The whole point there is that when you eat the right kinds of fat and you don't eat foods that cause cravings, it frees up one of the only three things that you are biologically wired to do all the time, which is think about food all the time. And if you don't waste your energy thinking about food all the time, might you waste that energy building another company, playing with your kids, or binge watching your favorite Netflix? It doesn't really matter. It's free energy, and you can do anything you want with it. But it's unacceptable to have food cravings. And one of the first things I learned is that if I have a food craving, it's my fault. And if you have one, it's your fault, too. And the whole basis or the whole teaching behind that is in the bulletproof diet book. And I'm not telling you to buy the book, because at the end of this, I'll send you one for free, because this is the most important knowledge that I can offer you. One of the three things that gets in your way all the time can be turned off by what you put in your food, which is more plants and more of the right kinds of fat and less toxins. You get that right? And the toxins are a little bit different. Based on your genetics, you will not yell at your employees as much. Your middle finger will actually shrink as the muscles atrophy because you don't want to use it as much as you did before. I think I lost a pound in just my middle finger. It's that big of a deal. And one of the things that happens, that other F word we talked about, fear. When you run out of energy because your blood sugar dipped, you know what happens? Your body is afraid you're going to die because there's not enough blood sugar to run away from tigers. So it triggers adrenaline and cortisol and all the fear and Stress hormones. So when you don't control your hunger and your cravings, what happens? Your fight or flight response gets kicked off. And then you sit in the meeting and you yell at people and you say things you're ashamed of. And you go back to these words, which, by the way, I completely copied from the Dalai Lama, and you say, I'm not going to get angry and think badly about others. But you know what? You get me? A little bit hypoglycemic, a little bit hypoglybitchy hangry. I might think bad thoughts about others. And I don't like myself when I do that. And I don't think you like yourself either. So that's the number one thing. The number two thing is that fear response is inside of you is a story that you tell yourself from all of this neurofeedback I've done. Here's what happens. Something happens around you. Your nervous system picks up on what happens. The actual thing that happens, it responds with an emotion that may or may not include fear. And then about, oh, 300 milliseconds later, you think about it and you tell yourself a story. For instance, you lean on a hot stove, you don't go, ah, it smells like bacon. I guess I should move my hand, right? Something moves your hand, and then you say, whoo, good thing I moved my hand. That's bullshit. You did not move your hand. Another consciousness within you that is far faster than you and far dumber than you, meaning to keep you alive, moved your hand. And that is the part of you that gets triggered when you're hungry. And it's the part of you that feels like you are going to die when your business is at risk. It's the part of you that John talked about. When someone goes after your baby, your company, it's a visceral response. And that response can be absolutely reprogrammed using 20 or 40 years of meditation in a cave, which is the way we used to do it. Or you can do it with neurofeedback much, much more quickly.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Genius Network. If you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network annual event, please visit geniusnetworkevents.com that's geniusnetworkevents dot com if you would like access to the full video presentation, the show notes and the special resources for this episode, please visit geniusnetwork.com61 that's geniusnetwork.com61.