Dr. Jeffrey Martin: Founder of Transformative Technology Space | The Authors Unite Show #969

All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Authors Unite show. Today we have Dr. Jeffrey Martin with us, so welcome to the show, man.

Thanks, great to be here.

Great to have you on. Um, if you can start us off, um, a little bit more about you and what you do.

All right, sounds good.

I am, uh, I really have a very strange and long background that ranges from everything from broadcast television and radio and things like that to computers to being a professor and a researcher.

We like strange.

That sounds, you know, a little bit of a lot of things. Investor, serial entrepreneur, You name it.

Okay, gotcha. So I guess let's go back to the, uh, beginning. Like, so, so investors, so obviously you, you need to have had made some money to be able to do that. So what was kind of your first, um, profession that really, you know, took you to success, if you will?

It's different for everybody, but good question. Yeah, broadcasting and, uh, also computers, technology.

And so broadcasting, I understand that. As far as the computers and technology, what like part did you have, uh, in that realm?

Well, actually it was kind of interesting. I started off really with computers and then got into a little bit of trouble with them as a hacker in my, uh, okay, about age 13.

I want to hear about that.

So when I was a young kid, you know, and then, um, went into TV mostly because my mom was a TV show host. The only other computer that I knew of that hadn't been taken away from me at that point was at her TV studio. I pretended to be interested in TV so that I could get access to the computer, then I fell in love with TV technology and spent about 10 years doing that. Then I was one of the people that was on the forefront of taking television and turning it digital. And so that eased me back into the more computer side of things where I spent probably another 10 or so years teaching and building businesses and stuff like that.

Okay, so tell us, um, if you can, I want— if you're willing, some more details on this 13-year-old hackathon that you did.

What did you hack?

What happened? It might be better to leave my sort of 13-year-old past alone. I don't know. Okay, that's over.

It's over.

Okay.

As far as we know, as far as I'm saying on camera, anytime. Yes, that's long gone. Sounds like a story though.

Um, okay, gotcha.

So then with computer, it only costs you $10,000 to unlock your computer after this interview, but don't let that concern you.

I've gotten those messages before on my, uh, What is it? On my iPhone, like sometimes it'll like literally pop up and it'll be like, yo, like to unlock your phone you need— and I'm just like, what the heck is this crap? Like, I don't even know.

You know what happened about, I'd say, 17, 18 years ago is that I was quite successful. And yet I didn't feel like I was as happy as I could be. I wasn't miserable or anything like that, but it just seemed like there were people that were out there that were happier than I was that I would run into. And I was like, you know, I'm working my buns off here doing everything the world has told me to do in order to get happier. Like, how come, like, these people who don't seem to be working nearly as hard as I am and therefore don't deserve it nearly as much as I do? And, you know, all of those thoughts that you sort of have. How come they're so much more happier? They seem so much more happier than I am. And so, by that point, I had really done a lot of personal growth work, personal development work. I don't think there was anything out there that I really sort of hadn't bought or tried or whatever else. And it made it clear that there wasn't anything that was going to change that for me. And so, I just decided to change my life. I went back to school. At that point, I had graduate degrees in things like technology and management. Stuff like that. And so I went back to become more of a scholar, more of a researcher, and to really sort of find the happiest people on earth and see if I could join them. So that's really the breakpoint, you know, in the story.

Okay, now find the happiest people, like, did you like interview or like you actually like went searching for these people?

Did, yeah, looked across different populations to try to figure out, you know, who's, who really seems to have found the next level of human happiness, if you will. By this time, you're talking about the early 2000s by this point. And so in that frame, Marty Seligman and Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi and others were really pioneering positive psychology in the academic world, which is exactly what it sounds like. Instead of researching pathology, it's researching human happiness and flourishing. But that still seemed to have its limits compared to some people that I met that seemed to really exceed it. It seemed like there was this whole other level that was out there that really didn't seem to be being focused on or anything like that. So I set out to find the people that were at that level.

Okay, got it. And I— well, obviously, next question that would come to mind is, you know, what did you find? I guess, what were— let's start with some surprise. What were some surprising things that you found that kind of led to happiness that you didn't really anticipate or expect?

That's a good question.

I found that there—

I think the most surprising thing that I found is maybe the least surprising thing in hindsight. And that is that we're all basically just animals. And like every other animal, we're fundamentally wired in our nervous system to be discontent in this moment so that we are on edge so that we can survive. Because the number one goal of our brain and body and nervous system is surviving from one moment to the next. It's not being happy, or it's not, you know, any one of a million other goals that we might think about. It's literally just trying to live from moment to moment. And so a consequence of that is that we wind up basically you know, with this sense in every moment that something is not quite right. And every animal really seems to have this. So what was different about the people that I found, which at the time weren't really being studied in any meaningful way— were, now they are because, you know, we've had a really successful project over the last 15 years all around the world. But at the time they weren't. And what was different about them is that their brains had fundamentally rewired around that. It was almost as if their brains had been rewired for what's more appropriate in the modern era, because let's face it, you're not worried that you're going to die from somebody shooting you or a wild animal ripping you to pieces or getting bad food or starving to death or anything like that. And these are all things that we were wired for 100,000 years of evolution or whatever, and more than that, really, if you depending on what degree you buy into evolution or are a creationist or whatever else. Right. But either way, for a long time, we've really been wired for this type of survival instinct. And as technology and culture has really rolled ahead and accelerated so much over the last 10,000 years, we really haven't kept up in terms of our own nervous system and subjective experience of the world and stuff like that. And so humanity is fundamentally out of phase with the reality of modern life unless you're living in a tribe in the Brazilian rainforest or something.

So I guess it's— I remember I read this article. There's a couple thoughts going on. So I read this article, it's probably like 10 years ago. I was in college and the article said like people that make 70 grand or more, like above, which at that time it's probably a little bit higher now. But at that time, that amount basically would, would cover your family. You could do pretty much whatever you wanted and live a good life. And like, say if you made $500K a year or a couple million a year, your happiness level was very marginal. Like, it didn't increase in proportion. Um, did you find like similar to that, or—

Yeah, all that stuff is on the positive psychology side, right? Which is there's been revisions to those studies over the years, as one might expect. And there's a lot of politics in the academy. So you've got the people on one side of the positive psychology stuff for income that are like, we're going to prove that income doesn't matter. Their studies are like, it doesn't matter if you're whatever at some level, and then at another level, and you get the incremental argument like that. And then you have studies that are like, oh no, people that have millions of dollars a year coming in, they're happier. And so, you know, which is a little bit, you know, I mean, for us it's different than that, right? And so we, we, I really feel like there's, there's 3 ways to look at this. Most humans are really just sort of going through life and unconsciously driven by their nervous system. You know, we're, we're basically around age 2.5 to 3.5. you have something called episodic memory come online, which literally means just like life history memory. And that life history memory is what allows a certain type— it's basically what allows your sense of self or what you think of as you to come online also in about that same sense. Well, if you think about what's happening around age 2 and a half and 3, right, you're basically just trying to survive. Your needs are all being externally met by these magical parents or caregivers or whatever that come and give you stuff. And so what happens is that we're wired from a very early age to sort of an external way for goals and satisfaction and happiness and survival and things like that. We can't take care of ourselves. We're not going to survive on our own. At age 3, we're not thinking about our marriage or our career or anything like that. We're just trying to figure out how to get mom to bring us more food or something. So, that wiring basically is what sets the foundation for us. And as we roll forward, it's the reason why we think about things like, oh, it's more money that'll make me happy, or, oh, it's the third Tesla that'll finally do it for me, or it's the next relationship or another kid or the right kid or a kid getting into college that's the right college or me getting into college at the right college or this career thing or whatever it is, prestige or all of these different things. And I spent a good chunk of time in the advertising industry, even sort of running a chunk of the world's first advertising conglomerate. And if you think of a major advertising conglomerate, and so if you think about that, that's what drives all of advertising is the fact that we have sort of this externally oriented fundamental sense of discontentment that's driven from a survival instinct. And so, you can do a lot of things. Once you realize that, then you sort of have a choice in how you deal with it. You really have two choices. One choice is the traditional choice, which is the positive psychology choice. You can try to make more money, right? You can try to focus on having the best relationships that you can have. You can try to find meaning and things like that. But what we know is that all of those are relatively ephemeral. Relationships change. Change over time. Your kid might be a nightmare at age 3 and awesome at age 20. And that affects your own happiness when the kid is age 3 and age 20. Right. And so there's all sorts of variability if you're anchoring your happiness on external stuff like this. You might wake up tomorrow and discover that Tesla has basically been demonized because of some business practice or something.

Right.

And the day before, you were deriving all this meaning and happiness from how people viewed you because you were driving your Tesla. And then the next day it's like, oh crap, how do I unload this thing? And so there's the other side of it, which is what we discovered, which is just a fundamental rewiring that can occur in the brain that solves that problem. One is really a trap, and you're really just sort of trying to rewire the 3-year-old you or whatever, and you can never really do that to any great extent. And so I had maximized my life to a tremendous extent, you know, by my mid-30s or so when I started doing this.

But still, there was— I know I could recognize that there was this huge gap between my happiness and a tiny fraction of other people that I would occasionally meet's happiness. And so I'm like, okay, how do I get that? And that really requires what we've spent the last 15 years sort of pioneering and research, which is this rewiring, this fundamental rewiring that just solves this in the brain.

So yeah, let's go through the rewiring, obviously. But before, I think what it is, I've experienced this as well. I think what it's the same kind of what you were saying is like every mountaintop, and I'm just using mountaintop, but like every—

Absolutely.

—or whatever, there's always another one. So it's like, when you get to this point, then you think like, oh man, life is going to be so much better there. And then you get there and it's great, but then you're like, okay, well now I want this next one. And exactly, that never ends. And then the happiness kind of keeps getting put on hold until the next thing is achieved. And then it's, I don't know, uh, the chemicals, but maybe it's just like a hit of dopamine. You achieve it, dopamine, and then ready for the next one. And it's so, I guess the rewiring, let's walk through that because selfishly I'm interested.

Hey, listen, this whole project started because of my selfishly being interested in it, right?

So hopefully the audience gets some value, but now it's about me. Go ahead.

Yeah, so, you know, the interesting thing is that the people that we found initially to study were really making very extraordinary claims about their well-being. And they're often people that we think of as being more religious or more spiritual, things like that. And so these— the interesting thing is that these states have been— these sort of ways of experiencing the world, they're not really states, they're traits, they're persistent— have been known about for at least as long as there's been human writing. And religion and spirituality have sort of been the cultural carriers of this across the rise and fall of empires. And so We've always sort of known about them, but they've kind of been on the fringes. And I think they've had sort of a mystique to them or a mysticalness to them, you know, in Christianity or the Abrahamic traditions, it's like the mysticism side and Buddhism, it's like the enlightenment stuff. And so you have these, you know, these things that make it seem very inaccessible and there's beliefs around it like, oh, it's almost impossible to reach that. You know, maybe there's 3 enlightened people on the planet right now, or, you know, something like that. And science had looked at these claims as just being so fantastical that they didn't really warrant investigation. And so we were really the first ones to come along and systematically try to dig into them, which took a long time and an enormous amount of resources and a giant global project, you know, involving thousands of people and all of this. But we were able to basically, you know, when someone is saying, "This is how it feels to me," Generally speaking, there's going to be a correlate to that in the nervous system, right? I mean, you can believe two things about it, right? Everything is mysterious and there is no correlate to anything in the brain or whatever else, or any experience you have, there's going to be correlates to it in your nervous system. And so what we basically did was sort of what was done with modern medicine. You know, if you were alive 150 years ago or 200 years ago or whatever, and you had a fever, you'd be like bleeding yourself or drinking mercury or something like that, right? We would not do that today because science Science has told us there are better ways to deal with the fever, like take an aspirin or take a cold bath or whatever it is. And so, we've done really sort of the same thing over the last 15 years or so in dispelling sort of these— the same level of sort of myth and mysticism and whatever else around these forms of human experience. And by doing that, we've made them much more systematically and reliably accessible. We think they're totally accessible. To anyone, really. I mean, probably there's some people out there with some mental diseases and stuff that can't get to this. We don't allow people that have those types of things to participate in our research, so we wouldn't really know that. But for ordinary people, I don't think there's anybody that can't have this rewiring of the brain. And I think actually that nature is moving us more in the direction of this rewiring in the brain because it's more in tune with our environment, with our day-to-day environment. Again, as long as we're not living in a tribe in the Brazilian rainforest, or something. And so it's a really neat thing that we've uncovered over these last years.

So can we walk through, I guess, out of the thousands of people, and maybe you might not be able to say like their name or whatever, but maybe like their circumstance? Because I would just be curious of like the transformation of the rewiring. So like, if— and maybe we could make up a fake one in a sense, like somebody comes to you and they're depressed and let's just— we'll paint the picture. They're making $50K a year and they're depressed. And then they come and they're like, I need to rewire.

Like, what's that process look like? That's a great question.

And so one of the things that differs in these methods than traditional positive psychology type methods is that they don't actually make any sense to your brain. And so, for instance, one of the classic things is meditation right now. We've cataloged a ton of different meditation techniques, and some are way more effective than others. And so step 1 is you sort of have to have an effective technique. And so let's say you have an effective meditation technique. Step 2 is that even if you have an effective meditation technique, not all meditation techniques are good for all people. And so one of the, one of the things that has made this, I think, is kind of kept this hidden is that you have, let's say that I give you a list of like the top 10 meditation techniques. There might only be one on that list that actually works for you. And so what happens is people like just randomly sort of try something like meditation and it doesn't really work for them because the odds are it's not going to work for them. Only some, you know, one in 100,000 or something is probably going to work for them, right? And so even if they have a list of one out of 10 that are most likely to work for them, the odds of them picking the one off of the list is pretty remote, right? And so what happens is people are then like, you know, oh, well, yeah, I tried that, and that didn't really work for me. And then they sort of give up on that, right? And so there's a few different phases to this process. The first is you really need a list of the best stuff. And then the second is you need to sort of systematically try the best stuff until you figure out which ones you are more in sync with. When you find one that you're in sync with, it's going to work for you pretty quickly over the course of just a week or two, really. And so the transformation can happen very rapidly. But it's the search process really that is the slow part of the deal. And then you might find a method that takes you part of the way and that method might stop working. Then the third thing to know is really that you need to let that thing go that stops working and go find the next thing. And people are very reticent to do that. You know, they've like spent their whole life looking for something that'll work just a little bit in this direction, right? And so when they find that thing that works for them and then it stops working, they just tend to like hold onto it as tight as humanly possible. They just keep trying it and trying it and trying it and trying it, thinking it'll kick back in, you know, and that kind of spirals them back down because what happens is they found a method, it worked for them, it progressed them, but now they've, where they're at is different than when they first started using that method. They're out of phase with that method. And you need to let that method go and find the next one that they are in phase with. And so our experimental protocols for this were actually very simple. You know, we were fortunate because we had thousands of people to draw on as a data sample, right? And so we were able to narrow down, the top couple dozen methods, say, right? And we just basically systematically put people through them in our program with the right length and the right amount of time for each one. And so that over the course of— initially we had a 4-month program, now we've got about a 6-week program. And, you know, basically it just allowed people to figure out, okay, this one isn't for me, this one isn't for me, oh, this one's for me, this one seems good. And then, you know, you'll be like, okay, we'll stick a pin in that because we're going to go on to another one that might work even better for you, or it might not work at And over the course of a period of time, you wind up figuring out, okay, this is— these are the things that work for me right now. These are the things that don't work for me right now. And they allow you to make a very, very rapid change in your nervous system.

So a couple things there. It seems that— well, first off, the meditation example is an awesome example because I feel like a lot— and even me, I'll even just call myself out. Like, I got into meditation in my early 20s. And I'm a big— like, if you know Alan Watts, I'm a big Alan Watts. And he has a guided— and I don't even think it was— he didn't put it together like this, but somebody on YouTube put together some of his talks together, and there's a guided meditation that I love. And, um, and then there's some other ones that I like. But ultimately, meditation is just kind of like this big word, but there's a lot of different types. And most people— in fact, I actually never even heard it really be said like that. Like, I would just tell people to meditate. And that, that is kind of faulty in a sense, when you realize that there's so many different types of— it's like, okay, well, in silence, is it guided? What's the intention? Like, there's a lot of different variables that could spew out something dramatically different than what they're trying to do. So it's not just like meditation will solve your problem.

So that's it. And then you think of— then there's— it's actually even more complicated than that, right? Because meditation can can make you less happy.

And so I agree with that. While you're doing it in silence, meditation sometimes makes me angry.

It's hard. Yeah. And so one of the things that we had to do in our experimental protocols is we basically combined meditation and positive psychology. And so we would use the positive psychology to really sort of support We think of it— there's two different ways that we think about things. We think about things that are happening in your mind and influences that are happening on your mind, right? And so, your mind is really kind of a small part of your overall brain and neural processing and stuff like that, right? Neuroscience really thinks it's maybe 5% or even less. There's some arguments for like 1%, 2% of yourself that's actually conscious. And then everything else is really sort of unconscious processes that are going on in the brain. And so it's really like a kind of a tiny part of your brain that is what we would classically think of as the mind. Right. And so most things like positive psychology or, you know, all of the self-help programs that are out there and stuff like that, what they're really trying to do is they're working in the mind. They're sort of working in that 5%. If you want to think of it that way. And it's not that you can't get some benefit from working with the 5%, but obviously if you think about like, okay, the 5% versus the 95%, where am I likely to get more impact? Right. And so if a good meditation makes no sense to your mind, right, your mind, like when you sit down to do it, you're like, why in the world? Your mind is like, why are we sitting here doing this? We have so much other stuff to do. That is really important for our life. Like, come on, hello, stop meditating. Like, we've got a life to live here, right? And it's because the process of meditation makes no sense to the mind from within the mind itself. It's because a good meditation is designed to actually act from without, from outside the mind, from all of those other neural processes on the mind itself. And that's where the transformation actually takes place. But as you say, like sitting in silence, you know, that can really drive people crazy, right? And so, we found that we had to combine positive psychology techniques with things like meditation or cognitive science methods or, you know, sort of the other things like that that work on the mind in order to have it be tolerable in some sense for people, you know, in order to get them to actually follow through and do it and, you know, have the transformation.

Okay. So, there's a couple of— So one thing, and I don't know if Alan Watts originated this, but one thing he says is, he's like, if you don't have time to meditate for 15 minutes, then you should meditate for 4 hours or something like that. Or maybe it was a monk or something. I think he was like quoting a monk that said that. It's something funny. And I don't know if that's true or not. Again, I guess it would depend on what your goal with it is, right? Maybe 15 minutes is great. Maybe, you know, maybe a whole week. I've heard of these retreat centers that have like you go a week in silence. Um, I can't remember the name of them, but one of my friends has gone and he said it changed his life.

So probably like a Goenka Vipassana type of retreat.

Yeah, yeah, a Vipassana, that, that's ringing a bell, something like that. It's that one. Um, so I guess the question I wanted to ask, uh, is I think it's kind of on self-sabotage. So you had said like we, we as like humans, we will, will continue down a path even though we know that it's like not working in a sense. So like, did you find, did you come across any measurable things like that of how to break out of that pattern? And just to give a side example to make sure I'm being clear is, um, there's an investor that I watch. I'm kind of into cryptocurrency and stuff like that. And he's like, a lot of people, what they do when they get into cryptocurrency, they will invest like, and we're talking now in the present, They'll invest in a lot of these like very, uh, smaller, um, altcoins, right? And this is a funny example, but just what came to mind. So they invest in that even though if you're a real believer in cryptocurrency, you would probably, you know, believe more of the Bitcoin, Ethereum, like those are the top two. But because you like missed out on when it was so cheap, you self-sabotage yourself into putting your money into something that like has the potential but really isn't it, you know what I mean? Like, it's not the actual— so either way, having said that, I guess, what did you find in that regard?

Absolutely.

And let me go back to something you said a minute ago. The amount of time that you meditate really does matter for this. Oh, okay. And so for like 15 minutes, um, you know, you're right. I mean, if you want to just relax, uh, 15 minutes is great. Right. But if you want to actually rewire your nervous system in the way that I'm talking about, then you're really talking about an hour or so of meditation as a minimum. What happens is right around 40 to 45 minutes, and it's different for different people. And it seems to primarily relate to their level of heart rate variability and stuff like that. If you're familiar with that, lots of people that exercise today are familiar with HRV. Um, Yeah, exactly.

The Oura Ring has done like probably more than anything else to popularize that. Yeah. In the day, I have no idea. It's actually at my place right now, so I don't even wear it.

So if you think about it, there's this threshold that you cross when you're meditating right around 40 to 45 minutes. And sort of before that, it's lightweight stuff. It's, you know, it'll help you to relax. If you were to meditate for 30 minutes a day, you could probably increase your focus. You know, there's, you could do some pain management with it if you do it in certain ways. You know, there's sort of different things that you can do, but past the 40, 45-minute mark, that's really where the action starts to happen in terms of actual rewiring of your brain. And it's really funny because people, you know, it's like a universal thing. People will get to like coming up on like 40 minutes or 45 minutes or whatever their particular number is. Right. And all of a sudden their brain will just get like super insistent with them that it's time to move on with the day. Right. And they'll be like, okay, good job. You know, you've done it for 40 minutes now. Let's now take a shower and let's get on with things. You know, it's like there's this enormous amount of pressure that sort of comes in at that point. And that's a really good indication of the importance of that point. Right. So when you cross over that threshold, that is really when the action starts happening. And to some degree, the more time you can spend across that threshold, the better. But even if you can just spend 15 minutes across that threshold and you do an hour, you know, that is huge. That is such a monumental difference between anything that comes before it. And so that is actually a really good, really, really important point. And regarding the self-sabotage stuff, you know, absolutely. Listen, you are living a completely different way. Once your brain rewires. Before that, all of your conditioning, all of your psychology is primarily driven from your neuroses, right? And I don't mean that in a negative way or a bad way per se. All humans are fundamentally sort of wired from their neuroses. All of our goals come from our neuroses. And all of that goes back to that early childhood stuff and just the reality that our nervous system is trying to survive. It's not trying to thrive. It's not trying to make us happy. It's just trying to survive. And so from that, we have a lot of these neuroses that sort of come up and out and whoa, and my cats are fighting like crazy in the other room. And so realistically, you know, if you think about this, being driven from your neuroses is a fundamentally different way of experiencing life. Than being driven by a sense inside that instead of everything being— something being wrong in this moment and your system constantly being on the lookout for it, if you think about the opposite of that, it's everything is fundamentally okay in this moment deep down. Now, you might be getting divorced, right? Or you might be getting fired, or you could have just been in an accident. It's not that there isn't something at the surface that might be even emotionally disturbing or whatever else. But paradoxically, somehow, if you look deep down below the surface, everything still somehow seems fine, even if it doesn't intellectually make any sense. And because our brain is built up in a series of layers from the lowest to the highest, instead of having your neuroses and whatnot sort of guiding your life, you have sort of a sense of peace or a sense that things are fundamentally okay guiding your life. You have much less reactivity. And over time, after you have this transition, your entire nervous system systematically reprograms itself in this direction. And things like self-sabotage and whatnot basically just become a thing of the past because you've spent however many— 10, 20, 30, 40, however long you are before this transition happens— being programmed from that self-sabotage, these sort of negative neurotic-driven sort of side of things. And now your nervous system begins from that point on to be reprogrammed in this very different way with life showing up from a very different perspective, and it just changes everything.

I love it. Well, I think I'm personally at a point where I want to learn more, so I'm going to leave the floor to you. Tell us where people can— website, social medias— and if there's anything else you want to share, the floor is yours. But I think from where I'm at, at least in the interview, I think the audience would be the same, is I want to I want to extend it. I want to learn more. So I'm sure you have other content.

Yeah, sure. You know, if you want to see our academic site, it's at nonsymbolic.org. You can see a publications page there where there's all sorts of information and whatnot for people. I think it's very important for people to keep just the 3 things that I said in mind, really, which is, you know, that it's about finding methods that work for you and making sure that if a method isn't working for you, if you've done a method, any kind of method for a week and you're not seeing significant change, stop doing the method. It's not going to start. I mean, it may start working for you a year from now or 2 years from now or something. Right. But there's another method waiting for you right now that will work for you this week. Right. So why keep working with a method that you're not in phase with, that you might someday magically come into phase with depending upon how your system changes and whatnot. And that's some of the best advice. That you can give. And then if you want to participate in our program, certainly, you know, people are welcome to. There's a program that we have right now, the 6-week program that I mentioned earlier, which is at something called 45daystoawakening.com, which is sort of a nod to its traditional roots. You know, it was sort of a spiritual type of thing. The spiritual people tend to call this stuff awakening, which is— which, you know, what's interesting about that is that it's a real way of describing it. I think this is something that's really misunderstood about people when they look at this mystical type stuff. What's happening is that these people are trying to convey what it's really like when this transition happens. And it's like the best thing that you have for an ordinary person is waking up from a dream to what reality is really like. And so you have these terms like this, like awakening, they're used, and people try to make them into these mystical type of sounding terms, right? But it's actually just a a practical description of what it feels like to make that transition. On the sort of, for the more high performers out there, which is kind of a different way that you wanna program yourself around this to retain a really sort of high performance edge as you go through it, we've learned that we have to have a separate program for those people. And so you can find that at, nextlevelchallenge.com. And so, you know, those are the best places to find stuff.

Okay, perfect.

And thank you again for coming on the show.

No, thank you. This was great.