Dave Asprey: The Art of Biohacking, Sleep Mastery, and Lasting Leadership
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McCrispy strips are now at McDonald's. I hope you're ready for the most dippable chicken in McDonald's history. Dip it in all the sauces. Dip it in that hot sauce in your bag. Dip it in your McFlurry. Your dip is your business. McCrispy strips at McDonald's. Now you can hack it because you can track it. You cannot hack what you can't track. And that's one thing. And if you're saying, I don't want to do that, that's too much work.

One of the cheapest biohacks of all that improves leadership and performance and longevity and aging is darkness. Welcome to Mick Unplugged, the number one podcast for self-improvement, leadership, and relentless growth. No fluff, no filters, just hard-hitting truths, unstoppable strategies, and the mindset shifts that separate the best from the rest. Ready to break limits? Let's go.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Mick Unplugged. And today I just told him offline, this is probably the highlight of my 2025. He didn't just spark a movement. He built a blueprint for human potential. He turned aging into a choice, coffee into a weapon, and biohacking into a global revolution.

best-selling author, relentless entrepreneur, the original mind behind the upgrade. I call him the OG of biohacking. Ladies and gentlemen, this is David Asprey. Dave, how are you doing today, brother? I'm doing really well. Wow, what an intro. I've never thought of weaponizing coffee, but I like your words. Hey, you did. You did. I love it, man.

Dave, you know, I have so many questions I want to ask you from my soul. I told you, you know, Gary Brekka, Damon John, all been telling me a lot about you towards the end of last year. And I really started diving deep into you and all the things that you're doing, man. And so I wanted to tell you face to face, even though we're virtual, but face to face, I just respect and appreciate the heck out of you, man. Like the lives you're changing, the insights you're giving, um,

I know you don't get enough credit for it. I know you also don't seek credit for a lot, knowing the soul that you are. But I just wanted to tell you, bro, freaking appreciate you. Thank you, Mick. Just freaking appreciate you, dude. And I know this. You've spent a lot of your life building systems and protocols to upgrade the human body. But I want to go a little bit deeper.

I'm interested in the man, the person that needed it. Like who was Dave Asprey before the hacks, before the tools, before the protocols and what, what broke Dave, man? Well, I had Asperger's syndrome when I was younger and this is on the autism spectrum. I learned to read when I was 18 months old. So when everyone else was figuring out,

You know, how do you socialize? How do you crawl properly? I was just soaking up info. And the reason that I was so attracted to that, by the way, it's not because I'm super smart because my dad read a book that said how to teach your baby to read and he taught me to read. So, you know, any baby can do that. It's just not good for them. So what autism does to you is it means that your brain is running on low power.

And it means that all the signals that are coming in, like sound and light and touch and vision, even smell, it's like there's static on the line. So you're constantly like struggling and striving to make sense of things. And you don't have enough energy to do it if you had a normal nervous system. So that combination forces your brain to

to be really good at using small amounts of energy to find patterns. Of course, you miss things like social interactions and subtle cues and facial expressions and all this stuff that's well known. You also don't learn to pay attention to what's going on from the neck down. But fortunately for me, I have high functioning and I come from a long line of scientists and inventors and deep nerds. So that served me. And...

I find myself when I'm 26 and I have weighed 300 pounds and I have struggled to lose the weight. I went to the gym 90 minutes a day, six days a week, religiously without fail for 18 months straight. I'm on a constantly hungry, low fat, low calorie diet. And I never lost a pound. And I'm just like, I'm strong. I can max out all but two of the machines, but I'm still fat.

And I'm sitting at a Carl's Jr. with my friends and I'm having the chicken salad with no dressing. Oh, and no chicken because calories. And they're all eating double Western bacon cheeseburgers and fries. And I eat less than any of my thin friends and I work out more than all of them together. It must be because I'm not working out hard enough or eating enough. Like, I just realized what I'm doing isn't working. Like, I did what they said and it was not real.

And I made a decision, well, okay, I'm a computer hacker. That was actually my career. So if I can hack the internet, why can't I hack my own body? And I'm just going to do things that work. I'm going to measure it. And if it doesn't work, I'm going to quit doing it. And that led me pretty soon to meet a group of people three times my age running one of the first longevity nonprofit groups in the world in Palo Alto near Stanford University.

And we'd meet every month with a leader in the field of longevity in the 90s, back when only crazy people do it, except these were doctors. These were people who were already doing it. They were just underground. And so I learned what became biohacking from my elders. And it allowed me to lose the weight and to fix my brain, get rid of the chronic fatigue syndrome and the arthritis and the brain fog and the prediabetes and the obesity and all the other things going wrong with my biology. Yeah.

And that's what got me on the path. But eventually, if you start biohacking, and I built it this way, first, you're gonna say I came in because I wanted to fix, you know, the sore shoulder, I wanted to lose weight, or I want to do something. Pretty soon, you're gonna say, you know what, I got my energy back. I want to live longer. Like, I have more to give, I have more to do, I have more to offer. So suddenly, now you're into longevity. But then you go, you know, maybe that mean bitch in my head can just shut up. Like, I'd like to be happy.

And for me, I didn't know there was anything from the neck down that had any meaningfulness. So I went through and I learned each of the emotional states. I did a whole bunch of yoga. I've traveled around the world and I've studied in monasteries and with different leaders of lineages and things.

The results have been profound because it's helped me to build at least a portion of the operating system for our consciousness. So there was no manual for this operating system. So now we at least have portions of the manual. All of my books are a part of it, depending on what your goal is. And heavily meditated is the most important. It contains all the stuff I couldn't talk about.

15 or 20 years ago, back when I was starting the biohacking movement, if I'd have brought this stuff out, then people would have said there's no credibility, putting butter in coffee, and earthing and putting a laser on your brain to change your car that was edgy enough.

But biohacking is now a global force. It's a $63 billion industry. And I never trademarked the term. I could have, but I didn't because I wanted it to be a movement. And as a result, it's a new word in the English language. In 2016, Webster's added it. And my name's in the online dictionary. Like what? How did I get from being a fat computer hacker to

to this? Well, because I'm curious. And because I really would like to not suffer. And I'd like to be able to show up at any moment, anytime at my full power to do what I'm here to do. And I was not motivated by this. In my 20s. In my 20s. I was like, I want to be happy.

Didn't recognize how stressed or anxious I was. Like, I'll try being famous. I'm in Entrepreneur Magazine in a double extra large t-shirt as the first guy to sell anything over the internet. And, you know, I got 15 minutes happiness out of that. Like, that doesn't work. Fame's no good. Okay.

I'll try getting married. So I'm not lonely all the time. That didn't work. Got divorced before I was 30 or around when I was 30. I'm like, I'll try being rich. Made $6 million when I was 26 pre Biden dollars. That was actually real money back then. I lost it when I was 28. And when I had $6 million, I looked at another guy at the same tech company and I said, I'll be happy when I have 10. And I just realized, man, happiness is up to me. And now my goal, which is written up in heavily meditated is,

The first step of all this is learn how to feel empathy for others. But that's not enough because if you just feel everyone else's pain, go to McDonald's and feel empathy for everyone there. You'll just feel like crap all day. You don't want to pick that stuff up. The step above that is compassion. So I want to teach my body, my nervous system to automatically wish other people well, even people who are trying to harm me.

Yeah, so that I don't become reactive to them. And that lets me step to my real goal, which is called equanimity or resilience. And that means I choose my state, even if there's a storm, even if there's all sorts of stuff, even in war, it doesn't matter, I choose my state. And that means I get to be in charge of myself. And if anything on earth can trigger me, it's in charge, not me. And that is a very high standard. And I meet it most of the time now, but not all love it, Dave.

I can only get this from you, man. That's why you're the OG, you're the inventor, you're the originator. And I want to go to the very beginning. You said you were a computer hacker. And you said, if I can hack the internet, I can hack my body. Dave, you were the only person that really ever had that thought in life. You know that, right? Because you were not the first computer hacker, right? No, not at all.

So how does the thought of hacking your body come into play? But more importantly, what was the first step? Like what was the first hack for, for the body? Like what was the first thing you realized when you started this? McCrispy strips are now at McDonald's. I hope you're ready for the most dippable chicken in McDonald's history.

Hey, all. I'm Jamie Lynn Sigler, a mom, actor, and advocate. I know how overwhelming it can be trying to decide which treatment is right for you. I've been there. But you should know you're not alone. You can do this.

Start with some research, talk to the community, and most importantly, don't be afraid to ask your doctor questions. You might find results that speak for themselves. That's how I landed on Kesimpta. Ask your doctor if Kesimpta, Ofatumumab, could be right for you. You can check out the details at kesimpta.com.

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I tried all of the different diets in the early 90s. I tried Atkins. I tried Zone. I tried Vegan. I tried all this stuff. And you could say that that's hacking. But I think the real thing came when I worked at a company called 3Com. It was one of the big networking companies in Silicon Valley. And

My first real corporate, you know, big tech job. I worked in the IT department and I was sitting there going, my brain is cooked. Like I cannot remember anything in this meeting. I'm really trying to focus. And then I noticed some days I think are better than others, but how do I know that? So I started playing this game called Free Cell. It's a dumb little solitaire game on your phone. But if your working memory is intact, you can play it quickly. And if you can't remember anything, it takes forever to

And so I would play this for probably more time than I should. And on the days when it flowed, my brain was working on the days when it didn't flow. My brain did. So now I have a signal outside of myself. Like, aha. So what do hackers do? We're trying to break into a system, but we don't know what's in there. So there's something called a threat surface. And this is all the exposed interfaces that we could poke at to see what happens. So now we're,

for my own consciousness, my own cognitive function. Like, well, let's see, is today a good cognitive day or a bad cognitive day? Rather than my opinion, what's my quantitative ability? And from there, because I was desperate to preserve my brain, I spent $1,200 on a brown, unlabeled box of nootropic pharmaceuticals, smart drugs from Europe. And you could not buy them the way you can today. They're very hard to find. I discovered these from...

a 1980s newsletter called Smart Drug News. And I, because I'm an early internet guy, I found them online. And so I did all that stuff. And a few years later, I met the author of that. He became a mentor of mine who's been on the show, Steve Folks. So it turns out there was this whole universe of cognitive enhancing substances that no one knew about. And I started taking them. And after a week, I was like, God damn it, these don't work. But then I

Two things happened. One, I looked at my score on that little solitaire game. I'm like, oh, it's better. And two, when I quit taking them, I noticed the lack. Because when everything is flowing, when your brain is working, you feel like yourself and it's hard to notice.

So all of a sudden when I'm taking these things, I don't drop words. I don't forget things as much. And it used to be in meetings all the time, I'd start talking and I'd forget what I was going to say. And I would just sound like a politician. I would just make a word salad while I was waiting for my thoughts to keep up. I don't do that anymore. If I drop one word in a day, like something's off and I know what caused it because I hacked it. Genius. Yeah.

Genius. So for the listener, for the viewer, what's one thing they can do today? What's one hack? What's one biohack that I'm going to say the everyday person can do, but they don't realize they can do it? Well, there's kind of two directions. I'm going to give one that's a little, well, they're both a little bit of work, but one costs something. The other one's almost free. Okay.

If you were to pick up any of the sleep tracking technologies, like a ring or a mattress cover or a strap, your Apple Watch, whatever you got, just track your morning readiness score. This is a beautiful thing. This is how well did my body and mind recover yesterday? And therefore, how much of a load should I put on it today? And if you did everything right the day before, you'll be full of power and you'll be more recovered. And if you had a couple glasses of wine, ate the French fries, stayed out late, you'll

Well, then you'll see it in your score. So all of a sudden now, how does my behavior influence my recovery? And that is a major signal. Now you can hack it because you can track it. You cannot hack what you can't track. And that's one thing. And if you're saying, I don't want to do that, that's too much work. One of the cheapest biohacks of all that improves leadership and performance and longevity and aging is darkness.

What I'm talking about is get yourself some blackout curtains and put tape over every single source of any light in your bedroom. And if you have to put a towel under the door, no light at all. Sleep in a cave.

And people say, oh, but that doesn't really matter. No, it matters far more than you might imagine because your body is desperately trying to figure out what time is it? Because if it's nighttime, I should be recovering. And if you look at the last 2 billion years, there was never any bright light at night except for firelight and maybe lightning. That was it. So now you turn on your bathroom lights or you have a little blue or green or yellow or white LED in the bedroom. The cells in your body are going...

there's light, it must be daytime, and then it doesn't do what it's supposed to do. And my evidence, a study in Japan of 800 people show that the amount of light that leaks in around your curtains from streetlights increases depression by 69%. It literally makes you old, it makes you insulin resistant. So black out your room, you don't have to do any of the tracking, just do that. Because now we understand why we understand the science. Blackout curtains are cheap. Dave,

When I see you in person next, I'm giving you a big hug and I might give you a kiss on the cheek from me for my wife. I have been telling my wife for over a year, babe, turn the TV off when it's time for bed. Like I traditionally was always, it has to be pitch black for me to sleep. Now I know why. You just explained to me why. My wife, on the other hand, TV's on, she needs the sound. And I'm like, we can get noise machines.

You, Dave, proven my point, probably saved my marriage all at the same time. You didn't even know that. I appreciate you, brother. I got two more hacks for you around that because you shared that with me. There is a good chance that you might not succeed in getting her to do the TV thing. You can get the True Dark glasses. True Dark is a circadian biology company I started 10 years ago. These are the daytime glasses I'm wearing right now, the yellow ones. We make glasses for sleep.

that are on the truedark.com website. And we just published in a medical journal, a study of brainwaves. And 15 minutes of wearing the true dark glasses, put your brain in a state of meditation and they trick your brain into thinking it's pitch dark, even if there's light. So even if she's got those on, you put on those glasses, you'll look a little bit like Cyclops from the X-Men.

And then your brain will know it's dark, even if the TV is on. And that is a massive thing. It's what I do in hotel rooms where there's always bad lighting. I'm literally buying them right now. They make a really big difference. And I mean, even my girlfriend, who's super cute and didn't know any of this stuff,

It's so funny. We fly somewhere. We're in a hotel and we're both walking through with these red glasses on and people think they must be celebrities or something like, sure, whatever. We just want to sleep tonight. The second thing that is profound, and this is necessary, the higher up you are in leadership in an organization, in a community, in your family, or just self-leadership, the more recovery and self-regulation matters.

And that means sleep is important. So we talked about light exposure. We talked about the true dark glasses. The other thing that's crazy easy to do is called mouth taping. And you get something called sleep tape. You can buy it on Amazon and you put it right here over your lips and it holds your lips together.

And that means you breathe through your nose at night. When you breathe through your nose at night, it increases oxygen levels in the brain dramatically. So you get better sleep and your brain recovers and then you are more present and grounded in the morning. And for anyone in a relationship, the more time you spend with tape over your mouth, the better the relationship. I don't know why that is, but it seems to be, it works for me. It's going to work for me. You know what, Dave? I think I'm going to record this on like a docu-series.

Right. I'm going to be not that not that anyone ever needs proof that anything Dave Ashby says is not warranted, but I'm going to be the proof of this for you. So I'm going to order both of these today.

I'm going to put it in play and we're recording everything. And you talked about devices. I use whoop 4.0. So it has the recovery. So we're going to see, and I'm going to show everything and reveal that my man, Dave Asprey always tells the truth. You want one more sleep hack that I don't talk about enough. Let's go. If you were to put wooden blocks under the head of your bed to raise it between four and six inches. So your bed's just at a slight angle.

There are really good studies out of Germany that show that it helps your brain dump toxins and recirculate them. And it has a very good chance of reducing Alzheimer's disease and you get better sleep. So just a slight angle to your bed where you raise the head.

And again, it's by a couple of wooden blocks. It's not that hard to do. And then magically you recover better. So I'm all about the things that take very little effort and create the most results because I got a lot of stuff to do and heavily meditated. The whole theory of this is you want to enter this altered state, whether it's for deprogramming yourself, whether it's for intuition or creativity or to be grounded. There are ancient technologies and new technologies that will put you there quickly and

faster than just meditating. And I'm a fan of meditating, but go through the whole menu of all the options you have, and you're going to read it. And some party is going to go, that one's really cool. And then go do that one. That's what the book is for.

Okay. So last sleep question, because you're helping me personally now, because I'm somebody that four hours is usually all I can sleep. And the reason I have this is because I've been, I have to sleep seven or eight hours and whatever, Dave. Yes, sir. I see you just scolded me with your eyes. I saw it. I'm working four hours. You and Robert Irvine have been telling me how much sleep I need. And I did this for you guys. I promise. Okay. So what's the best position to sleep in?

Traditionally, I am a side slash stomach sleeper, and I know that's not the best. I have to train myself to sleep in a different position. So what position should that be? All right. This is in, I think, my book on brain function. I went through the research on this, but I have it in my brain. So...

If you don't have apnea and you don't snore, and taping can help with that, sleeping on your back is good with a little pillow under your neck. So it kind of pushes your head back like that, like a rolled up pillow, but not so your head is kind of crunched in like that. And a lot of people snore. So then if you're snoring, then you don't want to sleep on your back. The reason you sleep on your back is the gravity will pull evenly on both sides of the face and evenly on the body. So a lot of people can't do that.

And the worst position is stomach sleeping. I know. Right? Side sleeping, though, is actually not a bad thing. If you're going to sleep, the right side, sleeping on your right side is better than your left because of where it positions the heart and the pressure on the organs. Yeah. But if you always sleep on your right side, you're going to smash the right side of your face. And you do that for 40 years, you're going to have asymmetry in your face.

So what you do is you rotate back and forth, left to right. And you always have a pillow that's the right height for your shoulder to your head. Because most pillows are two things. So your head's tipped like that. You got to get enough under there. You got big shoulders. So you might need two pillows when you're on your side. And then you put one pillow in front of you. So your arm is on it. So you're not smooshing your arm. And that stops you from tossing and turning as much. And then get a weighted blanket.

And a weighted blanket calms the nervous system and it helps to hold your body down and you'll see improvements in your deep sleep and recovery from that. Okay. I took all the notes starting now, Dave.

And it's funny to be talking about this, you know, on a leadership and mission podcast. Look, if you suck at sleeping, you will fail at all the stuff you try to do because your brain can only bring it when it's not tweaked. And if you want to have an untweaked system, you've got to learn how to do the nightly stuff. Yeah.

Throughout your nervous system is the real CEO. And when you regulate that, everything else follows. You regulate whoever it is you're leading if you are regulated. And if you slept like crap last night, the best thing you can do is you can sit down with your team and be, guys, I got crappy sleep last night. If I'm cranky today, I'm going to sleep like crap.

you know, let me know. Cause I, I know I'm not at my best and I'm working on it. Right. And I do that with my team. I usually sleep really well and I track it and all that stuff. But there's been times when I guess I'm, I'm a zombie today doing my best. Like be real. Yeah. McCrispy strips are now at McDonald's. I hope you're ready for the most dippable chicken in McDonald's history.

♪♪

Start with some research, talk to the community, and most importantly, don't be afraid to ask your doctor questions. You might find results that speak for themselves. That's how I landed on Kesimpta. Ask your doctor if Kesimpta, Ofatumumab, could be right for you. You can check out the details at kesimpta.com.

Summer's here. More light, more heat, and more to do. The one thing you don't want to do is spend it stuck in the kitchen. And that is why I use Factor. These meals are chef-made, dietician-approved, and ready in just two minutes. They show up fresh, never frozen, and packed with real flavor.

I've been loving the protein plus meals, the sun-dried tomato chicken, barbecue shredded beef. It's fire. It keeps me fueled and focused no matter how busy the day gets. Factor gives you over 45 meals a week to choose from. Calorie smart, keto, vegan, whatever your goals are, they've got the options. They've got your whole day covered too. Breakfast, lunches, dinners, even snacks and desserts. It's simple. If you want to eat well and actually enjoy your summer, Factor.

is the move. I use it, and you should too. Get started at factormills.com slash mick50off and use the code mick50off to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. That's code m-i-c-k 5-0 off at factormills.com slash mick50off for 50% off plus free shipping.

So you've referenced heavily meditated a few times and you were gracious enough to send me a copy before release, which is out now at the time of the release of this episode. The book is out. One of my favorites, by the way, Dave's going to sign a copy for me when I see him. Absolutely. There we go. So I have a lot of quotes from this book, man. You said that if something can rattle you,

It's like you're walking around with a loaded gun. Yeah. Talk us through that one. There's so many people online say, Oh, that triggered me. You have to change. No, no, no. If something triggered you, it means you're walking around with a loaded gun. That's what the word means. Right? So, I mean, in Texas, that's legal, but in a lot of the, a lot of the world, you probably don't want to be doing that. And maybe in your marriage or in your business, you don't want to be doing that. So,

Your inability to self-regulate is not anyone else's problem. It's your problem. And if you're in leadership, it is actually your problem and it's their problem, but it doesn't give you a license to make them change. It means others are in charge. If I can make fun of you right now,

And it pushes any button, makes you tighten your jaw, makes your stomach flip. Even if you're smiling, you're pretending like it didn't. Dude, I'm in charge of your nervous system. If you're in leadership, you have great power over others. You cannot allow anyone else to change your state. It is the fundamental thing.

So if your body's in survival, your business will be in survival. And if I can put you in survival by acting like a seventh grade bully, because they're still driving you or like one of your mean parents, because that's still driving you and you don't know it's still driving you, you are not doing what you can as a leader. And there's nothing wrong with that. We are wired. All humans are wired to process reality according to specific rules that I figured out through this hacking stuff. And, and,

It's not you. It's your operating system doing that. And there's no shame in it. There's no guilt. It's not you. The mean voice in your head is not you. It's a separate consciousness keeping your meat alive as if you were not in there. And let me walk you through those steps because I think our listeners are going to love it. And this is right at the heart of what's in heavily meditated. So...

All life, I don't care if you're a blade of grass, a tree, or a slime mold like a politician or anything like that, or a human being, you are following these rules. And this is happening in one third of a second before your brain gets to grasp reality. So this is provable that there's a window where it happens. And your cells do this individually, even inside your cells, your mitochondria do it. Number one.

is fear. They're all F words. So fear, if something is scary, run away from kill or hide, and your body will put nine times more focus on things that might be scary. If you have a normal system, and if you hack your system, and you meditate or do the things in the book, you can put six times more energy. This is really useful. Because if a tiger jumps out, or you lean on a hot stove accidentally, your body will react before you can think. And that's good. But you don't want to be reacting to your mother in law, like it's a hot stove. Right? Yeah.

So fear. The second one is food, right? Because all life has gone through famines. One third of the average person's thoughts are about tacos. Well, it's about food anyway. So this is, there are studies of this. So if you have a mean voice in your head going, I can't believe that person said that mean thing about me and they cut me off in traffic on what's for lunch. How are you supposed to lead? You can't, you have to figure out how to turn it off. And what they teach you in your therapist's office and psychology is

or even in a Buddhist monastery where I've spent a lot of time, sit in the lotus position, notice the feelings flowing over you, gently set them aside. And I'm like, screw that noise. I don't want to spend the energy on these feelings that do not reflect reality. They are not helpful. So step one to be a good leader is learn how to set them aside so you don't punch people. That would be helpful. That's what all adults learn how to do if we don't go to jail.

Step two, learn how to not have inappropriate triggers so you don't have to set them aside, which frees up so much energy because you're not thinking about scary stuff. That's not scary. And you're not thinking about being hungry because you learned how to eat. So you turn fear into peace, which is the opposite of fear is not love. It is peace because you can have love when you have peace. And then you turn hunger and cravings into nourishment.

But if we have fear and then food, all life has to think about another F word to stay around forever. You know what that F word is? Tell me. You can't guess it? Forgiveness. Oh, that's at the very end of the list. It's actually the other F word. We're going to say fertility because this is a PG audience. I knew where you were trying to get me to go. Man, you did not jump for that one.

So well played. It's kind of funny, but if something comes into your awareness, your body, before you can think, literally says, is it scary? Can I eat it? And can I hump it? Okay. Is there anything you've ever done you're ashamed of that isn't one of those three things? Probably not. I haven't found anyone yet. Probably not. We feel guilty about having an operating system designed to survive for billions of years.

Like we are the result of billions of years of training and perfecting a system that can survive. And the system does that for a very specific reason. And there's nothing wrong with it. It's just that it hasn't been programmed very well. And it got programmed from the moment you were conceived, trying to figure out how to survive best in the world we live in today. So all the things that we're ashamed of are not even us. There are bodies doing it, their jobs to the best of their abilities because we didn't train them right.

And thank God there's more F words that all life does automatically. So fear, food, fertility, and then friend. This is because all life on earth will support its community. Lions form a pride. Trees form a forest. Humans form a tribe. And we form families. And we are wired in our bones to be kind to other people, but not if we're scared, not if we're hungry, and not if we're lonely, right? So you can turn...

into lust, which is that third F word into sacred intimacy that nourishes you. And you can turn your community into something where you serve the community and it serves you back. And you're wired to do that. And the final F word is forgiveness. And if you don't waste all your energy on the other stuff, and the other stuff is nourishing you, you have so much left over that you can improve yourself every single day because you have energy left over and you are wired to do that. And when you do that self-improvement,

That turns down the fear. It turns up the nourishment. It turns up the connectedness in your relationship. It turns up your community connectedness. And it creates this spiral of more and more and more energy and more, more purpose, more mission and more power. Yeah. And all life does this. We're just stuck because social media makes us triggered. So we get stuck in fear and we eat some weird junk food that gives us cravings all day long. And then we look at OnlyFans and

And then we wonder why we don't have time for our friends. And we wonder why personal development just feels like it's so far away. Can we go to the gym? It's because of this process. And it is not you. It is your body making scary things look attractive because they might be useful. It's making junk food look useful because you need calories. It's making porn look useful because, well, it's wired to do that. It doesn't know the difference between a screen and a set of legs. Like our bodies are dumb.

Right. It's why training the system is important. And the way we used to train, let's go to a monastery and let's spend 20 years sitting in a cave in a special pose and chanting some stuff. And eventually you'll be good at that. Of course you didn't do anything else in the world. So maybe there's a better way. That's my thing. And that's why about,

Oh, I think 11, 12 years ago, I started 40 Years of Zen. This is a neuroscience company in Seattle that does brain upgrades for CEOs. So we have 10 years of data for more than 1,000 high-performing, world-changing people looking at their brains and working out the process of meditation that resets triggers so they never get triggered again. It's not about managing. It's about reprogramming. And I give that away. This is $20,000 a week.

And we run it every week. And I'm giving away the reset process from that in heavily meditated. It's better with the electrodes and the facilitators and technicians and all that. But at home, you can run the reset process. I know this thing pushes my buttons. I'm tired of having that button. Let's erase the button. That's what the reset process is all about.

Man, so simple. You know, I've known, you know, in my house, I call you the philosopher, right? Because we don't get this type of communication anymore, right? Like Socrates, Plato, Dave Asprey. That's kind of how I look at that. Well, I'm being so serious, though. But we don't get that type of information of insight simplistically anymore. Right.

And going deeper into heavily meditated, you know, I just talked about forgiveness. And then I have this line that you said in the book, you know, forgiveness is about letting go of pain. So it doesn't control how you treat yourself. Like, and when I read that line, Dave, I literally put the manuscript down and I had to have a conversation with myself. Right. You know,

It is so spot on. Forgiveness is about letting go of pain so it doesn't control how I treat me. A lot of times we think about forgiveness on the other end. But when I saw that, Dave, I took a step back and said, this is what I've been struggling with personally. So thank you. You're so welcome. And that resonated with you because you've clearly done some of the work already.

It turns out the more successful you are as an entrepreneur, the more likely that you haven't turned the reset process around on yourself and forgiven yourself. And when I work with these really high performance people, they've built $100 million or a billion dollar industries, and they're so hard on themselves. That voice in their head is just a mean critic. And one of the guys who went through runs a 1200 person company, he said, I'm not going

I just realized that all of my success is from the bullies in seventh grade to prove I'm good enough. Now, you can be successful with that as your motivation. It's just miserable. And I freely admit my early career successes because I thought money would make me happy. And I was really pissed when I found out it didn't. And if you turn that forgiveness thing around and you say, you know what? I've done all sorts of shit I wish I didn't do.

And I did that because this is what my body's programmed to do. And my body takes action before I can think. And because my body changes how I perceive things based on its programming. And I didn't know, well, what is forgiveness then? Forgiveness is not saying that something that happened is okay.

And is not telling the other person you forgive them. In fact, most people get triggered by forgiveness because their mom made them, you know, tell them that you forgive them. And you're like, I don't forgive them. But your mom makes you do it anyway. So then like, ah, forgiveness is a bunch of lies and nonsense. No, forgiveness is a specific neurological state in the body that we can measure. And when you do it the right way,

Forgiveness is simply about turning off the grudge and the anger and the negative emotions. And if you have those aimed at yourself, and you do if you had parents or teachers or coaches or people like bullies or trolls or anything who said bad stuff about you, right? And when you just sit down and say, you know what? I'm a flawed human being. I've done all sorts of stuff. God, I used to be a total asshole. I don't know if I can swear on your show or not, but I just did. Absolutely.

So I used to be just a total, total jerk. And it wasn't because I chose to be a jerk. It's because I was anxious and triggered and fearful all the time. And I didn't even know it because it was my constant state. Right. So I've done all sorts of things that if I knew what I know now, I wouldn't have done them. And everyone alive says that probably the Pope says, well, he just died until he just died. He would have said that. Right. And I'm sure even, you know, the enlightened beings, you know, the Dalai Lama or some of the other gurus, right.

who I've had the pleasure of learning from, I'm sure when they were young, they made a mistake, right? And you have to beat yourself up for the rest of your life. You go, oh, what can I learn? And when I work with my kids, the most important thing that I've ever taught them perhaps is making a mistake, being wrong,

it doesn't mean that you are wrong or bad. It means that whatever you did was. And there's a very distinct difference between guilt, which is I feel bad over something I did, and shame, which is feeling bad about something I am. McCrispy strips are now at McDonald's. I hope you're ready for the most dippable chicken in McDonald's history.

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You're cooked, you will, you'll be stuck. And society sets you up that way. So if you want to step into leadership, you want to step into power, you've got to understand you're going to make mistakes. And some are because you tried something, it didn't work. Other times, your nervous system did something because you were triggered. All that means is you didn't know about that trigger yet. But now you have the tools to just write down, I got triggered by this today. And you sit down, you run the reset process, and you'll never be triggered by it again. So I collect triggers, if someone can get under my skin, and

It's like, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I didn't know about that one. And I don't have very many left. And if I find it, I'm like, that is so cool. How did I miss it? Love it. It's like whack-a-mole with your nervous system. Right, right, right. So last part of the book, you have a term that I have used. I run three different businesses and I've used them in my businesses and I have clients that are now using them. So make sure you trademark this because we're all giving you all the credit for it.

Energetic peace. And you define it as choosing peace no matter what. And I know on a personal side, it makes sense. But for leaders, choosing peace no matter what

Gives you clarity in business decisions. It gives you clarity in team functions. It gives you clarity in creating the vision of where you're trying to go. Like I literally redid my three year business plan because I do it every year. Right.

But I redid it with energetic peace as a leading core value of what I was trying to do. And it completely changed where I was going. Wow. And so now that we're eye to eye, I wanted to tell you, man, energetic peace is changing literally all three of my businesses right now. That makes me so happy. Yeah.

There's two kinds of peace that are possible in the world. And there's one kind of peace where everyone is so tired and malnourished and lonely that you wake up and you just don't have any energy to do anything. And you'll be peaceful because you can't do anything else. And the other kind, energetic peace, you are abundantly powerful and full of energy. And you choose to be peaceful because no one can change your state except for you.

And another way of putting this is it's better to be a warrior in a gardener or it's better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.

So you want to be energetically peaceful. In fact, my new coffee company is called Danger Coffee. And people are like, you can't call danger that's negative. No, no, it's danger. Who knows what you might do? You might ask the girl out. You might start a company, right? You might say no when a dictator tells you to do something that you know is wrong because you have inherent innate power. And the more energetically peaceful you are, the more danger you embody because no one else –

can tell you not to do what's right. And for a lot of leaders say, well, there is conflict in business. If I choose peace, I will be weak. Peace does not mean nonviolent. I don't be really clear about that. One of my favorite stories is from the Bushido code in Japan. And

There's a samurai whose master is killed by another opposing clan, and he swears vengeance because it was, you know, some sort of vengeance thing.

And he goes through the country and he kills all of the opposing, the opposing bad guy sort of thing. And he basically was like, I have to avenge my master's death according to our values. And at the very final thing, he finds the other bad guy, the other samurai who actually killed his master and they have a sword fight and he's coming in for the killing blow. And the bad guy spits in his face and suddenly he's,

The good guy stops and he puts his sword back. And the guy said, you could have killed me. Why didn't you kill me? I said, oh, when you spit in my face, you made me mad. I didn't want to kill you in anger. So I'm going to come back and kill you after I'm calm. So here's the deal. If you are a CEO who embodies this energetic piece, you are unfuckwithable and your opponents will know it. And when it's time to file the lawsuit or defend yourself, you will do it. But you will do it without emotional pain, without anger, right?

without suffering and the other side they're gonna feel it because they don't have that energetic peace i love it man dave i just want to thank you again i've been thanking you a lot because i'm practicing gratitude because you also talk about that in the book as well too but i i feel like sometimes our soul needs to know that we are worthy of the praise that we're getting and so i want you to know man like you are worthy of all of this praise brother it's received thank you

Yeah, I know you're busy. I know you have a lot going on. If there's one thing you want the listeners, the viewers to know about the book, about Dave Asprey and all the things you have going on, what's the one or two things you want them to know now? Well, let's talk about the book. I am absolutely certain that my name will be lost in history at some point in the future, and I'm okay with that. So don't worry about my name, but pay attention to the book. When you read Heavily Meditated...

It is the laundry list of everything that we know about that you can do to be in charge of your state. You are not meant to do everything in this book because it's going to take a long time. And I've spent a lot of time on doing all the things in the book. So I want you to read it.

With your intuition. And one part of the book is going to stand out and you're going to feel the hairs on the back of your neck go up or you'll feel like a sense of like, like energy flowing over your body, or it'll just catch your attention. And the way things catch your attention, we just know that's interesting. That's the one. Go do that. There's a chapter on psychedelics. There's a chapter on this little unknown way of entering altered states. 20% of people report meeting God during orgasm.

At least once in their life. So maybe when you read the book, you're like, oh my God, the thing that actually regulates my nervous system the best is really being great with my partner. So like, let's go take a class. Let's read a book. Let's work on that. Great. You found the thing in the book that was for you. And maybe it's the chapter on psychedelics. I'm going to tell you how to not do the ones that are likely to wreck your business. Right? And maybe it's, oh, I was trying to meditate. It never worked for me. Great news. You're an entrepreneur. You probably don't have a normal nervous system.

There's 98% of us. Well, we worked in agriculture and farming to feed humans. 98% of people are farmers. And we selected ourselves that way over thousands and thousands of years. Wow. Most meditations are meant for farmers. And if you're the kind of person who runs towards an emergency to go fix it, instead of the kind of person who runs away from it, like most people, you're going to be in trouble.

The meditation meant for someone who pushes a plow or plants rice every day may not be the meditation for you. And that's okay. So choose the type of meditation or breath work or other things. There's technologies, there's techniques, there's all this stuff that will help you get in the state and try it. Your body will know the right one if you listen. And the cool thing is the less triggers you have, the more in tune with your intuition you'll be. That means the next time you're interviewing someone for a job,

Your intuition is going to say they look good on paper. They're probably a slime ball. And then you won't hire them. And it's going to save you so much money and time because you got rid of the triggers. You got your intuition, but use the intuition when you read heavily meditated, just do one or two things first, get the results and then move on. Yeah, man. Love it. Love it. Love it. Dave, I could talk to you for hours. I know you're busy, so I won't do that. Definitely need to come visit you.

I'm going to come spend some time with you because you've changed my life. You don't realize it. You are continuing to change my life and you're giving me longer purpose for my life. So brother, thank you so much. Make those are, it's incredibly high praise. Thank you so much received. And I appreciate you sharing this with everybody and say hi to Damon for me.

I will totally do that. I will do that for sure. And for all the viewers and listeners, remember your because is your superpower. Go unleash it.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Mick Unplugged. If today hits you hard, then imagine what's next. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and share this with someone who needs it. And most of all, make a plan and take action because the next level is already waiting for you. Have a question or insight to share? Send us an email to hello at mickunplugged.com. Until next time, ask yourself how you can step up.

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