Have We Taken Optimisation Too Far? (Health Trends)

Yeah. Oh gosh. B um Basket Press. Yeah. Gosh, Rockford. Rockford B. Sponsor our podcast. Um but it's so interesting cuz he's so love and adored and then it just went and people just started blowing up about it. Why? I I just have like such a um interest into what makes people tick and turn. Um and one of the like I I we can only relate this back to ourselves. Yes.

still allowed to have a really good glass of wine, maybe even three, and just let yourself enjoy it. But I do have some sympathy for him. I have had those three-day hangovers and they are [bleep] awful and you do never want to drink again. What are your views? Well, but then you did.

exacerbates your al your alcohol tolerance. So, if you're in a really stressed state and you're using alcohol to numb yourself or regulate yourself, then that's actually going to exacerbate your stress and you're going to have a bad response to it. I find that if I'm on holidays, I can drink more than when I'm at home. So, I had my 40th birthday at Banisters, which we love. Shout out Banisters. And they make us feel like home. So much to the point where you were out of routine, not surfing. Yep. Drinking lunches and dinners. No, I was drinking at lunch and dinner. [laughter] [gasps] And your aura ring said you got into the 90s, didn't you? I got the best sleep I've had in ever. [laughter] Plus, I was in air conditioning, not fresh open doors. It was all very different. All the wrong things. But I was relaxed because I was on holidays. So, I wasn't overthinking it. I wasn't overanalyzing it. I wasn't asking myself, "Oh, if I have one, is that going to impact how bad I sleep and then I've got a really long day tomorrow?" I feel it all comes down to your intuition. Like ask your body cuz sometimes we just it's a default response. We come home, we've had a [bleep] day and we just reach for a glass that leads to another glass and before you know it, you've drunk a bottle of wine on your own. And I don't have that. I haven't done that. Yeah, I have. Yeah. And it never results in a good moment. So, what are you drinking for? Yeah, exactly. But now it's about for me, look, it's about I just drink when I feel like it and I trust my body. So if I take a sip of wine and it stays here, it's literally no, you don't you don't want that. You don't need it. Or I've come home from a big day and I'm thinking, I could really do a ginonic and I'll just smell the gin and my body it has a visceral response to it. Like okay, no, I don't. What I'm really looking for is just something else other than water. So, kombucha or sparkling water with some hydration salts, just anything other than Yeah, there are so many good other drinks. It is about the routine. Um, what I love about this conversation is when you have a public figure like a face and you make these big statements and they clipped it up and clipped it as so like clickbait and everybody took to it like it's been trending on um in social media world. Yeah. What does that feel like from someone who has a face and a voice when you make these big statements? What does that mean to you? Like is this a good statement for the world? Or like how do you think the world is reacting to this? I believe because we're all energetic beings, the world is reacting to the energy behind it. They're not actually reacting subconsciously. Not not many people who are Twitter trolls or [laughter] you know people who want to comment keyboard warriors. Yeah, keyboard warriors and looking after themselves. Well, I don't know how self-aware they are, but I believe that we because we're energetic, we respond to things that feel inauthentic or just feel way too far-fetched to be real. It's from the look of this, from my perspective, it's

CEO is all about inspiration and relatability and little bit of hustle. A little bit of hustle. Yeah, exactly. But what was really interesting is he did a he did an interview recently uh with someone in the self-development space and they were talking about where can you do things better Stephen and he's like well I feel like talking about hustle I feel like the you know where I know I can do things better is in my loving relationships in my intimate relationships. Um, so it sounded like he's adopted this all or nothing mentality, which is what most hustlers do, right? They think, okay, if you have this belief that if I do this, it's going to equate to that, then you choose one or the other. You can't find a middle ground. And that's where this has come from. I believe he's optimizing himself to the point of now he's suggesting that drinking [bleep] wine. Well, obviously he drank the wrong wine. I mean, duh. [laughter] Um, but I think he I feel that we've we've cotened on to the uh the lack of reality behind it. It's real for him. So, good for him, but I don't really have a strong opinion either way of whether it's good or bad. No. And I what I really do love about this is it's ignited a conversation to your point around energy.

So the thing that I like my challenge is is how do we take the pressure off people so that you can have a life enjoy a glass of wine and not feel the pressure that you have to get the perfect sleep score every single night. Um, but I do know like it sucks being hung over. I really I don't enjoy it. I don't enjoy it. So I sympathize with the poor guy. I do. I sympathize with him because he obviously drank really bad wine and that ruined three days of his life. And also like the I think it is great that we're more people are not drinking and communicating it rather than hiding it. And you know it takes a lot of courage to say hey I'm not drinking tonight. Why? Cuz I want to get up and go for a run. Easy. Yeah. Um, and that was choices that I know I remember making as a kid where my friends would go out, smoke, get drunk, and do drugs. And I thought about the impact it was going to have on my ability to surf the next day. So, it was a really easy no. Yeah.

you have the capacity to stop at one then go it go for it. But know yourself to grow yourself, which is what we write about in the book, right? know what you can tolerate and what impact that has not only on your behavior but then how that impacts everyone around you. Yeah. So if you're drinking to get drunk and then your loved one or family members now have to take care of you, you're actually robbing them of their fun. So I think that's a really selfish behavior. Whereas if you're just drinking to determine how much can you tolerate, then become more self-aware around your relationship with yourself, your relationship with alcohol, and your relationship with your energy. You become aware about that, then you can manage it to the best of your ability every day of your life. You don't need Steven Bartlett telling you don't drink wine because it'll give you a hangover for three days. And you don't need us to tell you just drink one. It's up to every individual to determine what's right for them. So this is really wine maxing [laughter] quality. How much can you handle? How much time how many times do I have to say quality wine mixing? This is nothing in a in a cast score. I don't think he was drinking cast wine. No way. [laughter] Um it's so we have a doctor coming up and she's going to bring on some research around alcohol and um helping us understand what it actually does for to the brain and to the body. But we have been drinking for hundreds of like thousands of years um in around a fire around connection like so there is a real place for um escapism [clears throat] I guess um in a way and even tribes are still doing it in their own particular way. So I do feel like it's within us. It's there is a line um and obviously three glasses is is his is his line. He crossed it and he paid the price. But it did did ignite a really important conversation is have we taken this too far? Um so we will find out from a science perspective. Well optimization have we taken it too far or alcohol consumption because we know we've taken alcohol consumption too.

he's like everything that he is doing is like he even infusion of his son's plasma. Yeah. You go Brian. Whatever blows your skirt up, mate. Like that's just extreme. What when what does it like quality of life when you're in a nursing home? Awful. You're experiencing it with your dad. But quality of life if you're injecting plasma [laughter] in a hyperbaric chamber find quality in every moment. We do, don't we? We convince ourselves that what we're doing is the right thing for us. And I used to go to extremes to find my mediums, too. Yeah. And then I thought I found balance especially with my relationship with alcohol where I only drank on months that had 31 days in them. Anything I think was it that way? Yeah. Yeah. And anything with 30. So hang on. What was my what was my routine? You only drank in the months that had 31 and you took off 30. Yes. That's it. So there were five months of the year I didn't drink which was really boring. No. [laughter] April, June, September. Um, it'll be this is sort of like this is literally like you can't cross this line if you're in this state and you do you know like it's like you just decided that that was it and you I I felt like you swung about whether that helped you or hindered you at times. We have a quick favor to ask. If this podcast has been landing for you, please hit subscribe and leave us a rating or review. It helps us grow the show and keep bringing these conversations to more people. Well, I did that because I thought I had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. I thought that if I put parameters around it, then it'll enhance my relationship with it. I put boundaries around, okay, it's one of those months. I can't drink this month, so I'm just going to focus on drinking other stuff. [laughter] I found a lot of non-alcoholic stuff that I could drink. And then my nutritionist said, can you please stop doing that because on the times that you do drink, it's making it harder for your body to tolerate it and process it. So why don't you just change your relationship with alcohol? And I did to the point where now I just trust my body and I trust my intuition. If I feel like it, I have a sip or I have a smell, see how my body responds, and if it likes it, I go with it. And if it doesn't, I don't. Simple. But I feel like when you're going to the extremes of prolonging your life through all of

pig, if he can unearth like some sort of intervention that's going to help people in themselves, like let the guy just do it. Totally. Cuz you think about how little we know about so much. Yeah. [laughter] Like we turned our food pyramid upside down. Not so much, not so recently. Yeah. Because we we thought that the things were at the top should have been at the bottom and vice versa. Now we're learning about the importance of protein and creatine. And we have a doctor coming on to talk about peptides too. Um from both angles because it doesn't matter what you watch. It's the greatest medical advancement and we've been doing it for hundreds of well a couple hundred years or it's the magic pill and people aren't doing the hard work. And that's the question that I have especially with Brian is that if you stop doing these things then what happens? Does it reverse? Do you like does it create a whole new platform or foundation or baseline or do you reverse or do you enhance? Like, okay, Brian, we want to know if you stop. Like, we we're good. You're going to live to 100 and you look like a superhuman, but our call out to you is, can you just stop and do some see how your body reacts to that? I want to know that, Brian. That's a good question. That's the guinea pig that we really want. [laughter]

they understand you, give you reinforcement. But isn't that scary? Yeah. That we are now outsourcing connection to an AI agent. And over a billion people use AI now. Yeah. Wow.

listened to a friend use it. Um they work shift hours and they want to decompress at the end of the day and no one's awake. So they talk to Siri. Yeah. And I can't remember what her name was. Just call her Emma. Hey Emma, this was my day. And she was so understanding of him and his day. Great. And he ended the conversation with like love you. And she's like I love you too. [laughter] Beautiful. I thought well trained body. So, is this helping? I believe it's helping us in a way that helps us make sense of the world and our lives without losing our [bleep] without taking it out on others, without perhaps resulting to drugs, alcohol, and any other self-destructive behavior. But it's also creating maybe well to a degree. Yeah, I was about to say with a caveat of if it's your only way of of reconciling a day or dealing with pain and suffering, it's essentially preventing a bigger chasm of disconnection because you're now no longer talking to someone physically. So, you don't get any of those physical cues. You don't get eye contact. You don't get physical touch. You don't get all the things that makes us human. So you lose the human the humanness in the in the humanity. The crazy thing is though LB is these robots will develop so that you can have intimate rel like you can have sex with you have sex with them. Oh come on. Yeah. They're they're like the world of robots and AI. Like do you have sex with a robot? God know. It would be awful. [laughter] How do you know? Well, how people already are like sex toys are robots. [laughter] Not really. [gasps] Well, to a degree. Yeah. We' still have like vibrators. Exactly. It would still only be able to do that but talk to you at the same time. [laughter] Tell you how sexy you are. [gasps] You can actually you can program it to have the response that you want it to have. Oh my god. Yeah. So it's like and we did this um developmental course the other day on business and what people are looking for in events cuz we work and host workshops and people book us to speak at events and um our booking agent Saxton ran the future of events and people are starting to want to pay more to go to smaller events that they can connect at that you're not getting the information that Claude or chat or whatever your AI agent can give you. So they want human experiences. And I think about this because it is true because everything that you have is optimized for you. So you go on to Netflix, everything's there that you like, oh this playlist was created for you. Spotify, the same. Apple Music, I went on there the other day. It's like here is your listening list. This is what you're listening to. This is what we think will suit your taste. Yes. So everything is delivered to you. even um shopping like Coohl's or Woolworth suggests to you or social media algorithms based on what you've viewed recently. So, it's all there. Too many cat videos. Sorry. [laughter] Meow. Um I we have lost the ability to make our own decisions for ourselves. So, when it's like like and you expect that of a service now, show me what I want to hear. Customized for me. When it comes to connection with a robot, they're just going to give you everything you want to hear. It works. Exactly. Exactly. And that's the nature of AI, though. I mean, don't go there. Which one? Where was I going? I was thinking about if you say it in a um having sexual intercourse with a robot, it's [laughter] What's it going to say? Is that just how amazing you are? I already know I am. No, [laughter] I was actually thinking the opposite. I was thinking South Park when there's a great South Park episode when this um marijuana farmer goes on a ketamine men and he's about to lose his his family home and his family farm and he goes to chat GPT to build a business plan and and Chat's like, "Oh, great. Would you like me to help you with that? This is a great idea. I'll give you the five-step plan and the next steps." He's like, "Great. Thanks, Chat." And then his wife starts complaining because he's lost his connection with his family. He's not talking to his wife. And so then he goes to chat GBT is being his therapist. And then whenever his wife [bleep] or moans, he says, "Well, chat told me that I need." So his wife then goes on to chat and pretends that she's having a problem and then gets therapy from chat so she knows what to say to her husband. Oh, so it's can be quite um an intrusion into a relationship and quite an interesting dynamic to navigate. You've actually got to have a lot of um well

Yeah. [laughter] We should do it. We report back. But the way that I use AI is I I construct something and I build it out and then I write something and then I ask it to sharpen it or I ask it to condense it or I ask it just to make it a little bit more inspiring. So, I'm always giving it prompts, but it's prompts from my work, not its work, cuz it doesn't always get it right. No. And it makes it up as it goes along. And I think about like apparently if by the end of the day, like you've just carried on as normal. We've used AI um or an agent at least eight times without us even engaging in it cuz just the adapt like so many businesses have adapted it into their business. Um and we're in the business of human connection. So I think about this all the time is like how can we get better at connecting humans to humans because that is our edge. Um our edge is using AI to to be more productive and to you know shortcut the struggle but then the importance of us all getting together. That's what scares me is that AI gives us a reason not to and then we become so conditioned and addicted to that positive reinforcement that we shy away from you can't take feedback. Well, we shy away from eye contact. We shy away from physical connection. We shy away from that first meeting. We shy away from applying for a job. We we shy away from everything and we become introverted, disconnected and heartbroken. So that's the fear response to AI. And I saw there's a um brilliant he's an ex Google executive called Mo

first is you're sitting around a campfire and you're with all of your in hiding with all of your tribe and everything's been stripped away from you and you don't know where to run and it's anarchy. Everyone's fighting over food and resources and protection and jobs. So, we're not in a fight. That Yeah, he's like you're running away from AI basically, right? It's taking everything from you. That's situation one. Situation two is that um you're sitting around a campfire, you're with all of your loved ones, you're like it's the world is like regenerating itself. Like we've learned how to work with Earth and take care of her and because we've learned that humans destructed. So AI's taken over, but it's actually helping us connect more, be more human, take care of Earth. He's like, those two truths are the two truths that we're at today. We get to decide now which one we want to take on. So we're at that intersection. we're at that intersection and the book was published a couple of years ago. Um, and I still have that in the back of my mind is like who we want to be really matters now. So again, I come back to this series of can we do a South Park shout out South Park? Can you get in touch with us cuz we want to send politicians to space [laughter] micro doed micro doed with no AI agents unless they're powering the jet just so they realize how beautiful this mother earth is. how it can regenerate itself if it's given the time and space and the right respect [laughter] guests. Um, I just pulls in data that I need to know. We never go on script anyway. We're always going off. Um, what can I learn more? I don't use it for therapy for myself cuz I've got a friend who uses it as a therapist. Uh, and it's and he uses it as his psychiatrist or psychologist. Yeah. And I don't think that is a if it can be your cuz you can't book in every hour every week. If it can be if it can work with you, that's great. Um, I like like to use it cuz I'm curious about horoscopes and energetics and all like I like it putting a blueprint together for me and understanding who I am inside as a in a compass.

good places for it. Um our friends in a business we know created a journaling AI agent in the US because kids couldn't get to therapy and they were using it to triage teenagers who really needed help. So it would scan, it wouldn't read, it would scan and flag high risk and then that child could get triaged really quickly into getting help, right? Because they have I mean we do have a therapy um shortage. So I do like it for that. So yeah, I have a mixed relationship obviously. What's your what's your overall relationship with it? What do you feel? I treat it like social media. It's it's about my engagement with it needs to come from my control, not its control of me. So, I'm conscious of how much I rely on it and how much I share with it, knowing that once it's there, it's in a public domain, no matter how many privacy laws are around it. Yeah. Um I I respect it. I I like it. I enjoy using it because uh it does shortcut the struggle and make things a little easier at times, but I certainly don't um outsource my life to it like a lot of people are. So,

family dinner that feeds you for a few days. Yeah, that is You asked me about juggle in a previous episode. They're the things that just take the juggle make the juggle a little bit easier, but yet said I can't I was going in there on like a Friday afternoon or a Thursday afternoon, which is funny cuz that's when we record or work and it was Yeah. emotional emotional support shops and any form of organic health food shop. When they see me coming, [laughter] they empty out your wallet. They empty out five items 100 bucks. I'm like, I cannot go in here. [laughter] So, yeah, I've had to stop doing that. Well, that was a good analysis. It was a really good analysis. Yeah. It gives you a bit of awareness. Yeah. You get to choose whether you go to charcoal charlies as often as you do now. I don't. [laughter] You do. No, I really don't. You do. I just want the black platinum card, please. Chakra Charlie's. [laughter] You want free for the rest of your life. You got to earn that, [bleep] Yeah, you could probably get that. Oh, maybe if I ate that. Oh, we need to give you their hot chips. I still haven't done that yet. Taco Charlie hot chips. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'm going to come around on a Friday afternoon in my emotional support blanket. [laughter] All right. That's my biggest weakness. Yeah, I know. Hot chips.

will. Will we? Yeah. Okay. Steven Bartlett, come to Lane's house for some life maxing. We will wine max your life with a Graange 1998 from your first world title. Yeah, I'll save them for you, mate. And we will serve you Charle Charlie's hot chips. They're French fries, too. Yeah. And what more could you want? I can guarantee you, you will not be hung over for 3 days. [laughter] You can come for a sir. Yeah. Or rinse it off the next day. That is all we have time for today, Dream Team. Thank you. That was a lot of fun. Yeah. If you liked this style of episode, please let us know in the comments. Share it with someone who is life maxing, sleep maxing, wine maxing their life maxing. [laughter] And we will see you next week. Thanks, Dream Team. Toodles. Have you been listening to this episode and thought, "Mike drop. Maybe I'm ready to get coached or have some therapy, but you don't want to go all the way down and get a [music] therapist." Welcome to the Awake Collective where we do monthly coaching to help people feel accountable, supported, [music] and they keep on doing the work that you hear in this podcast. It is life transformative. Right, LB? It's a community of support and like-minded people who are willing to keep investing [music] in themselves because what we do is we help people help themselves. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today, then the Awake [music] Collective is for you. So, come and join us at awakeacademy.com.au AU and join us for monthly [music] coaching, a community that supports you and tools that you can use in your life to thrive. Let's go. See you there. Before we close, we just want to gently remind you that Awake Academy is not a licensed mental health service. And this podcast is not a substitute for personalized mental health advice, assessment, diagnosis, or treatment. What we share here is general in nature and is designed to offer reflection, insight, and practical tools for everyday life. Therapy can be life-changing, and we deeply encourage you to speak to your GP about your mental health and well-being options.