Living Open: Mindfulness, Mental Clarity, & The Path To Freedom With Nate Klemp
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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Finding Genius podcast. My guest today is Nate Klimt. He's the author of Open, Living with an Expansive Mind in a Distracted World. He's a New York Times bestselling author, philosopher,

founding partner at Mindful Magazine, co-author of the book, The 80-80 Marriage, and now this new book called Open. So welcome, Nate. Thanks for coming. It's really nice to be here, Richard. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Tell me a bit about your background. What led you to creating the Open book? Yeah. Well, my background is really as a philosopher. So I

There was a junction point in my life when I was in my early 20s where I was deciding between being a jazz piano player and a philosopher. And I decided philosophy was like the more pragmatic option for me. So.

So that's what I ended up doing. And then somewhere along the way, I was actually getting my PhD right at the end of the process, had a pretty serious bike accident and fell into a lot of anxiety and depression and realized that while I had been accumulating all of these amazing theoretical tools, I didn't really understand the basics of how to manage or navigate my own mind. And so that really set me off on an exploration of tools like multitasking.

mindfulness, yoga, things that I would call technologies of the mind that are really tools for forming new experiential habits versus writing really interesting theories. And so that's what I've been doing for the last 15 or so years. And really the idea behind Open is I wanted to approach our current condition with tools that we can all use to live more skillfully in the modern world. And as you know, we live in a world where

where we are just deluged by distraction, deluged by political polarization and outrage. And so that was kind of the goal of the book. So is the book an instruction manual for people to live a less distracted life? Or is it more your, you know, your recollections and reminiscences of what you did to help yourself? Like, what's the focus of it? Yeah, I would absolutely say it's a manual on tools we can use. And

Maybe the best way to get to how that works is I like to think of key distinction in the way we approach life. That's sort of the starting point of the whole book and my perspective. And that is that in any given moment, we're either closed or closed.

or open. And what I mean by closed is closing down could entail basically finding ourselves falling into a pattern of digital distraction, closing by going on social media or getting addicted to our email or our texts. That's one more internal version of closure. But then another more external version of closure is this kind of closing down to anyone who disagrees with us about politics that arises as political polarization. So

The thesis of the book is really that we are caught in a unique moment of closure.

where we are just closing down both in the form of digital distraction and polarization. And the question then becomes, okay, well, for living in this more closed state, and that's undesirable, and I think for many of us it is, what are the tools we can then use to cultivate more openness in our experience, in our mind, in our interactions with others, people who disagree with us, you know, people who vote for the other political candidate, etc. I don't

I don't know if it's closed. I mean, the people are siloed. They're still getting plenty of information, but it's just kind of a narrow spectrum from a few people. But I don't know if they're closed to information. Yeah, but so that's what I would incorporate that into my definition of closure, that if your information is all coming from one particular vantage point, yes, you're getting information, but

Are you encountering the world in an open way? I would say no, because all the information that's coming to you is supporting one particular perspective. And as a result, you're sort of clashing

closing in on a particular point of view with no challenge, no contestation, no attempt to really understand the other side. Okay. Yeah. And someone that's on social media all the time. I mean, again, they're not closed, but they're closed to everything outside of that. They're this strange echo chamber of people commenting with no faces. It's weird. Yeah, exactly. Well, and not only that, but I think that the behavior is often happening automatically when

without a whole lot of thought and without a whole lot of awareness. And so that's another, if we were to sort of like keep defining this closed versus open distinction, when we're more open, there's a little bit more awareness. Psychologists call this meta-awareness. That's the ability to like stand back from our experience, see what's happening in our own mind, change our mind,

choose more freely how we want to be in the world. And for many of us, our relationship to technology has become a kind of addiction. In fact, most scholars who are looking at this say it's very similar to other forms of behavioral addiction. Things like

an addiction to gambling, an addiction to shopping. And so that's the kind of closure I'm getting to is that there's not a whole lot of freedom going on. But I think the good news is we can cultivate that kind of freedom. We can cultivate that more open perspective and way of living. It's just a matter of breaking some of those habits. So, I mean, what does the instruction manual of the book tell you to do?

How do you cultivate better virtues and what's going on right now? Well, lots of different ways. You know, there are tools for breaking this habit of screen addiction. There are tools for cultivating the practice of mindfulness. We're intentionally developing this more open perspective. There are tools for opening to the other side politically. So there's a lot of different tools. I can just drop into one set and we can go into others if those are interesting. In terms of screen addiction,

Some of the tools that I think are most powerful are really thinking about like the way we design our environment and our time. So in the field of habit research, they call this environmental design. And the basic idea is you want to put friction between you and the temptation and remove friction between you and the thing you actually want to spend more time on. So as an example, kicking your phones out of your bedroom is...

something that a lot of people find they experience resistance to, but that can be a really powerful practice. Having certain family commitments around like, hey, when we do dinner, we don't have phones with us. One of my favorite time-based practices is what I call dopamine dessert. And the basic idea is to actually schedule time in your day for distraction. So what I mean by that is like, for me, it's about a half hour in the middle of the day

That is my dopamine dessert time. I allow myself to just like gorge on a buffet of digital mind treats, you know, Instagram, news, all the things. But then for the rest of the day, I'm able to say...

oh, I don't need to check that now. I've got my dopamine dessert. And just like dessert in food, if you're eating chocolate cake and ice cream all day, every day, when you eat it at the end of the day, it doesn't really taste that good. But if you save it, if it becomes dessert, it's actually more pleasurable. And the same is true with digital distraction. It actually becomes more pleasurable when you have those periods where you're not reaching out for it all the time. Yeah, that's smart. And then, you know,

You don't feel like you have to constantly look at it or you'll be out of the loop or behind. You're doing your daily pilgrimage to social media, seeing what's going on. Yeah, exactly. And for me as a writer, it's really important, especially in the morning, that's when I primarily write, for me to be able to

So what does that do for you? I mean, it allows you to be less distracted during the day or what's the effect? Yeah.

Exactly. I mean, I think that's the primary thing we're trying to create here is periods of life where we can...

interact with our work, other people in the world without this continuous drag of distraction, without the notifications flying at you at all times, without the internal, you know, the part of you that's craving it. That might still exist, the craving part of you, but there's just something really powerful about creating those spaces. And the thing about it is you

Because it's an addiction for many of us and the habit is so deep, we have to be really intentional. We have to be somewhat disciplined sometimes to get some of these habits off the ground. Well, even if you take away the social media, I would think that people would, you know, without training, they would still they would not know what to do. Maybe they go into like a procrastination mode because they're not getting the dopamine hit. And the prospect of now having to buckle down to work is like, if you're not trained to do it.

So what else is needed to not be distracted and to actually get work done?

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You bring up a really good point. Often when people create space in their life from busyness or from distraction, what you just said is exactly what happens to many people. So there's this experience of... I've never felt it, so I wouldn't know. Yeah, but it is true that there's this experience for many of us of extreme discomfort, which...

when we have space. And to your point, we usually then reach for some other habit or some other way to just like fritter away our time. So what we need to do if we're really interested in cultivating a more skillful way of living in this kind of fashion is we need to think about, OK, if I'm going to interrupt this habit of digital addiction and distraction, then I need to have some other habit that

I want to build instead. So to your point, it's really helpful to have that moment of reflection to think like, hey, I always say I want to read a book, like a real book, physical book, but

but I never do it. So maybe that's the thing. I always say I want to be able to walk outside without earbuds and just like enjoy nature. Maybe that's the thing. But to your point, you really do, you're well served to have something you're now pointing your attention toward. What else is needed? Like, is this like a muscle that you can only do for maybe a few minutes and you need to build up time? And if so, what would be like the optimal amount of time of focus on a task, like 30 minutes, an hour, long?

Yeah, well, I'm glad you brought up the idea about this being a muscle because that kind of gets into some of the other tools we can use for cultivating a more open approach to our life. So obviously, if we can interrupt this pattern of digital distraction, digital addiction, that is a really great place to start. But to your point, our mind always

also is well served by having a kind of training and how to be more present and available and open in each moment. And that doesn't happen naturally for most of us, especially those of us who spend a lot of time on our screens and our phones all day. So that's where some sort of practice of mindfulness can be really powerful. And I think of mindfulness really as just the practice of

shifting our attention from either mind wandering, which is what our minds are doing most of the time. So they actually did an interesting study at Harvard University where they found the average person spends 47% of their day just lost in the state of mind wandering, thinking about the past, thinking about the future, what they're going to do later, etc.

And then mind wandering is actually correlated with things like anxiety and stress. So if we want to break that habit, it's simple but not easy. And what I mean by that is we're basically reorienting our attention from the wanderings of the mind or the random scrolling on Instagram to whatever is happening here in the present moment right now. That might be a sensation in your body.

that might be the sounds, that might be what's happening in the visual field, but just basically coming back into contact with the present moment. That is the essence of mindfulness. And that really is a muscle that we can train every time we do that

It's kind of like doing bicep curls for the brain. That's an expression that was Dan Harris, the author of 10% Happier, came up with. But that's the basic idea is that we are building this muscle of bringing our attention back into the present moment. But what do you notice as you're training this muscle? What's, how do you know when it's fatiguing and it's giving out? You know, do you do this like in the beginning part of the day, the end part? Do you need a lot of willpower for it? What does it feel like?

Yeah, well, so there's an important distinction here when we talk about training mindfulness or training this practice of present moment awareness between formal practice, which is where we actually take a dedicated time out of the day. Maybe it's 10 minutes, maybe it's 20 minutes, maybe it's 30 minutes. And we do this intentionally. So this is meditation practice, essentially, where you're sitting there.

You're following some object of attention that's based on the present moment. Usually that's the sensation of your breathing, but it could be sounds, could be sensations in the body. So that's one way you can do this. The other way you can do it is more informally. So basically just practicing mindfulness, practicing this shift to the present moment as you go throughout your day.

So rather than, for example, sitting in the doctor's office and whipping your phone out, that might look like just taking a few conscious, intentional breaths. And it's...

A practice that I think is really valuable for all of us because a lot of the experience we have of stress and anxiety is based on a certain state of mind. It's when we become totally identified with that wandering mind. I mean, anxiety, the definition of anxiety is having these kind of catastrophic worst case scenario thoughts about a future that doesn't exist. So if we're spending a lot of our day in that state, then we're not going to be able to

then coming back to the present moment and realizing that is all just like our imagination running wild and coming into contact with everything is okay right here, right now,

That's a really powerful anchor. That's a powerful way to shift out of this perpetual state of stress and anxiety that many of us find ourselves in. But if everything is OK now, then why wouldn't you say, well, what about the future? What about tomorrow? That's what's bugging me. That's what's worrying me. Right. And that's fine. And I think there's certainly a place for thinking about that.

But the ordinary habit of the mind isn't to just think about that once or twice. It's to obsess. It's to ruminate, right? So it doesn't really help if I'm thinking about that future presentation that's going to happen tomorrow a thousand times, right? It's good for me to think about it like five to ten times. It's good for me to take some time to plan it, to practice it. But the rumination, the obsession, that can create a lot of suffering in the world and for ourselves. Right?

So that's where if you can have an anchor or a practice of mindfulness that allows you to come back into the present moment without checking out, because that's kind of what the

But the whole digital distraction thing is all about it's just a powerful way of then experiencing those challenging moments in a way where we're not like creating more suffering for ourselves. We're actually dissolving some of that suffering. Yeah, I think most people go to they want to go to a state of mindlessness. I don't want to think about it. I just want to zone out or get high or whatever it is.

Totally. Mindfulness, I mean, is it, how difficult is it? You know, how do you get absorbed in something and not keep ruminating about the future? Like I've said to myself sometimes, stop it. There's nothing I could do about it right now. I've got an hour or two where I got to sleep, whatever. I just got to take care of it in the morning or something, you know, and then go to sleep. And that seems to help, but sometimes it breaks through. It's very hard not to. So what do you do? Well, yeah, and this is one of those really nuanced areas of mindfulness practice that

One of the main traps is people will aspire toward that state you were talking about of no thought, of just like a blank mind, right? And they will think like, oh, that's what I should be doing when I'm meditating or when I'm practicing mindfulness. The goal is just to like empty my mind of thoughts and just be like sitting here in stillness and bliss. And that may happen. And when it does, that's awesome, super cool and interesting, but it often doesn't. And

And so the practice then becomes, OK, my mind is all over the place. Can I see that that's happening? So they call this like the magical moment of awareness or mindfulness. There's a way in which ordinarily we don't even see that we're lost in the stream of mind wandering and thinking.

Like it's happening below the level of awareness. So simply seeing that that's happening, I mean, that is like the magic moment. Because at that point, you actually have a little bit more agency and choice and you can think to yourself, okay, like I can keep obsessing about this thing and that's fine. Or I can see if I can come back and arrive here in the present moment. And I might do that by...

Just taking a few breaths by noticing the sensation of my breathing, by noticing like the sensations that arise with the thought. So these are all things that are happening now in contrast to the mind, which is always happening in the future, in the past, 10 years from now, all over the place. A weird thing that I learned from acceptance and commitment therapy is you state a feeling, you know, let's say you're feeling anxious. You don't say, I am anxious. It's like there is anxiety.

It's weird. It doesn't 100% do it for me. It takes the edge off. I have no idea why it's very strange to depersonalize it like that, but it does. Well, and that right there is that idea of meta-awareness. Because without meta-awareness, without awareness at all, I am my thoughts. I am my emotions. So, like, I am depressed. I am sad. I am...

am afraid, right? We basically attach our entire sense of self to this emotion. And that's where we get into trouble. That's identification, where there's a just like pure identification between who we are as a person, our identity, and this emotion. And what you're pointing to is this very subtle move of saying like,

There is anxiety. There is sadness. The reason I think that works so well is you're creating this moment of awareness where you can see that you are not totally identified with that

emotion. Like the anxiety is happening. You can watch it happen, but it's not you. It's like happening in your body. It's moving through your mind. Yes. But there's something that's watching that whole experience go down. And that's that's probably more you than the experience itself. So it really is a powerful thing to do. I think that's something that people who are listening to this can experiment with.

Next time during the day when you feel anxiety or you feel stress or sadness or a challenging emotion, see what happens when you just make that little shift to like,

Like there is anxiety, there is sadness, there is stress. Yeah, I liken it to, you know, again, taking the edge off. Like I've seen, you know, I do yoga sometimes and, you know, three or four sun salutations that are less than anxiety, you know, again, maybe 10, 20%. And then sometimes that allows you to be free enough to act or to help yourself more from there. So I guess if people can cultivate a few different things they could do, like go out in the sun, close your eyes, you

Just sunbathe for like 15 seconds, 30 seconds. All these things, if you take the edge off, you can get there. You can help yourself better. Yeah, I think that's right. And I like that you brought up yoga. I also do quite a bit of yoga. And I think that it's important to remember that when it comes from shifting out of those traps of closing the mind, things like screen addiction, political polarization, we can have a really expansive toolkit.

And we can all have our own unique toolkit. So, you know, we've talked about things like mindfulness and breaking the habit of screen addiction. Those tools are amazing, but

I am very aware that there are so many different tools we can use to make this shift. So it could be like travel or like you say, time in nature or being in the sun or taking a walk, right? The toolkit here is huge and expansive. And I think the real practice, maybe the most important practice is for you as an individual to just think through what are the things I do that give me access to

to this more expansive, more free way of experiencing my own mind and my life that are, that helped me break out of that state of feeling gripped by stress, gripped by anxiety, gripped by political outrage, gripped by your device. And how can you then build those into your day? Also to the time duration, it seems like when, you know, when I'm overwhelmed or I know people are overwhelmed, it's like, all right, what's one thing I could do or, you

And I do something for like two minutes, literally with a timer or five minutes without a timer. These small bite sized, again, remedies seem to help, you know, again, they're really quick, but they're really small things. So they're not overwhelming to do and you feel better. I don't know if you go into time very much on these interventions or self interventions. Yeah. Well, I mean, so a lot of people, when they hear a podcast like this or read a book like mine, they will immediately say, I don't have time. And

And on one level, that's true. But on another level, if you look at your day closely, for most of us, we have hundreds of these little throwaway micro moments. Maybe that's the time between meetings or it's the time you're walking from your car to Home Depot or it's the time you're in the elevator, right? Like we have hundreds of these moments. So we have the time. We're

We're just choosing to use that time looking into our phones. And that's okay. Like I'm not anti-phone, right? So I'm not saying never look into your phone, but what if you were to take 20% of those moments and use them to make one of the, or have this like micro experience of mindfulness, a micro practice of gratitude, a micro practice of, you know, movement or whatever it is, all of a sudden that is radically transforming your day.

So that's kind of the practice that I encourage people to think about is that really integrated practice of how you just transform some of those ordinary moments from being an opportunity to go on Instagram to being an opportunity to cultivate something.

some other more wholesome, more rewarding quality of mind. Other tactics or techniques in the book that we haven't spoken about that would be very useful for people? Yeah, well, you mentioned breathing and yoga, and I think that's a really powerful technology. The way I would differentiate that from meditation and mindfulness is that in mindfulness practice, you're really training the skill of being with things as they are. So training

training your ability to stay with anxiety, training your ability to stay with stress. That's super powerful. But what mindfulness often doesn't do is change the underlying biology that creates stress or creates anxiety. And that's where practices like breathing and yoga can be extremely powerful.

So just to give you a simple one, there's a practice that I call extended exhale breathing, where you're just breathing out twice as long as you breathe in. So exhale for eight counts, inhale for four counts. Super simple practice. But one of the things that happens with this practice is you're actually hacking into your neural biology to slow down your heart rate, to initiate the relaxation response. So that's a really simple version.

doing yoga practice, that's a longer, more formal way to do it. But there are a lot of ways that you can basically change the underlying biology of stress in the moment. I have a strange question about the breathing. I don't know if I'm the only one, but I had to sit there and think about it. I thought, okay, if I'm breathing out twice as long as I'm breathing in, how can my lungs take this after a while? Am I getting enough oxygen and stuff? Then I thought, well, oxygen is 19 to 21% of the atmosphere. Carbon

Carbon dioxide is like, I don't know, parts per million. So one breath in, you're getting a ton more oxygen than you're breathing out carbon dioxide. So maybe it's okay and I'm not going to choke or not be able to breathe or pass out or who knows. Maybe it's ridiculous, but have you ever had anyone that worries about the breathing for that reason or for any other reason? Yeah, no. I mean, I think it's a legitimate worry and the

I'd say a couple of things. One is you want to make sure if you're doing any sort of breathing practice, you're doing it in a place where you feel really relaxed. You never want to force the breath. It's always like from a place of relaxation. And if you feel like you're straining, you want to pull back on that.

So that would be thing one. But then the second thing is when it comes to stress and anxiety, often it's because we're over inhaling. We're like loading our system with too much oxygen. So sometimes like cultivating, like building more CO2 in the body and the bloodstream is actually a really powerful tool for ameliorating some of that anxiety. And the body has a way of making sure that it's well fed in terms of anxiety, but like

If you think about stress, like you just got really tragic news. The first thing you do is like a huge inhale, that sort of thing. And that's fine. But if you never exhale that inhale, then all of a sudden you're creating an imbalanced pattern that's actually like driving the stress and anxiety. So what I would say is like your body will tell you when it needs more oxygen, but generally we're over inhaling and under exhaling. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. One of the things I've learned too, if you're having a stressful day, if you could find a place to lay down, even for five minutes, you know, even if you're laying on the floor, throw a blanket down or a towel, whatever it is, or just totally, you know, if you just lay, it really like calms you and resets your system and takes the weight off your joints and all that. That seems to be a really good intervention. You don't need to sleep or anything, but it just helps. Well, and there's a beautiful practice from the tradition of yoga that's called Yoga Nidra, which in Sanskrit means yogic sleep. And it's

And it's exactly what you're describing. And there are all sorts of tracks you can get, guided practices. I actually have some on my website, nateclemp.com for free. But you can get them anywhere. There's tons of YouTube videos, apps on your phone. They're Yoga Nidra guided tracks, which basically will guide you as you lie there

to just systematically relax your body at different points and cultivate these ultra deep states of relaxation, which aren't quite sleep. I like to think of it as you're just like hovering between that boundary of waking and dreaming, but you're still conscious and you're still aware. And they've been doing a lot of research on this practice. It's

It turns out to be incredibly beneficial for stress, for anxiety, but also interestingly for consolidating learning. So I think there's a couple of Andrew Huberman episodes where he talks about doing a practice like Yoga Nidra after you've learned a language or you've studied or you've learned something new. It actually helps the brain consolidate all of this new information. When my eldest daughter was young, like a year and a half, two years, sometimes we'd

we put her to bed and we would hear her like talking kind of to herself and my wife and I thought that she was just processing the day and just you know she would do that for a few minutes and then fall asleep so we figured that's what she was doing and sounds similar to what you're talking about here yeah and I actually do that with my daughter every night we do a basically yoga nidra practice where we'll do a body scan and she's been doing this now for four or five years and it's oh

Yeah, it started during the pandemic when we were all stressed out and she was really stressed out. And it has just been like a daily ritual. It's like part of our life now. And I think it's really helpful now that she's a teenager to have that place where she can kind of like let go of some of the stress that she accumulates through the day and transition into sleeping. That's really cool. That's great. Yeah. So what kind of commentary have you gotten from your open book? What are people saying about it? Yeah, I mean, I think that...

Mostly what I hear is people really resonate with this idea that we're closing down both in the sense that we're like compulsively checking our technology. But also, I think people really resonate with this idea that now more than ever, we see our political opponents as the enemy, as somehow, you know, deranged and rather than just having a different perspective. And so my hope is that these tools can help us at a time where the

These divisions are just so deep. And my ultimate goal for this book is not only the goal of helping individuals live better, less stressful lives, untether them from their phones, but also that...

We could start having more conversations across party lines and conversations with people we disagree with, with the relative we think is crazy, whatever it is. Right. Just like like I think that's a real powerful antidote to the forces we live in. Yeah. I've heard people say, oh, I don't know, so-and-so is conservative, but they're actually OK. They're not so bad, you know, or so-and-so is liberal, but, you know, they're OK. It's like as if they were a monster. But then you met him and talked to him. They're not a monster. You know, it's weird.

Exactly. And so I think one of the practices we haven't talked about, which I think is really essential, is to intentionally spend time talking to people who you disagree with. And in the book I talk about, I live in Boulder, Colorado, which is this very like liberal enclave. And, you know, for me, I'm sort of one of these like pro gun control, like never had a gun kind of people. And so I spent time getting my concealed carry permit from the National Rifle Association.

And it was like completely mind blowing. I mean, these are people who I would never interact with in my ordinary life. And it was really powerful for me to see that, yes, I might disagree with these folks politically, but there's a shared humanity here that I'm

often falls out of the conversation that we often forget about. So I think that's a really important thing for us all to cultivate because we're living in media ecosystems that promote the exact opposite of that all day, every day. We're often living in social ecosystems where we tend to cluster with like-minded people. We tend to talk about politics with like-minded people. All of that makes our views more extreme and closes us down to each other.

Yeah, it's really too bad. What kind of commentary have you gotten from the book? Have people used it to bridge the gap with people in their family maybe they don't talk to or with friends that they've fallen out with? Like, or are they using it more personally for anxiety and mindfulness and feeling better?

Like, what are you seeing the actual uses of the book are predominantly? Yeah, I would say that probably the primary use is that individual case study you were talking about. So people using some of the tools and tactics on screen addiction, people starting to practice mindfulness. There's a practice I call street meditation, where you bring mindfulness into where

wherever you happen to be, whether that's like Costco or, you know, your local Walmart. So I'd say predominantly I hear about that, but I have heard some people who have read the book who say to me, you know, this really gave me the motivation and the courage to start researching

reaching out to people who I kind of wrote off as being politically crazy, you know, or voting for the wrong person. And yeah, so I think that's really heartwarming for me. Yeah, it's terrible. I've, you know, I've experienced it. I've heard from many people, oh, I don't talk to my brother, sister, mother, whatever friend, you know, because they're, you know, this way or that way. It's nuts that it's gotten to that point with people that they've been manipulated so much that they won't even talk to their own family sometimes, you know? Yeah, I hear you. Totally. Totally.

So what's the next for you now, now that you've done this? Where else do you see that you need to apply your knowledge to? What need? Yeah, well, my wife and I, we also write about relationships. So we wrote a book called The 80-80 Marriage, which is a critique of the 50-50 mindset in modern relationships and an alternative model. And so we wrote that book about four years ago, and we're working on a new book now.

It's going to be called Busy Love, A Sexy System for the Overwhelmed. And it's basically a book about modern relationships, how we can find more moments of connection in the midst of the sheer insanity and busyness of everyday life. So that's mostly where I'm focusing my energy right now. We're writing it. It'll be out in a couple of years.

But yeah, that's what I'm up to these days. Very cool. So what are some resources for listeners? You know, they should get your book open. It sounds like if they have, if they're a human being, because it's the anxiety and depression, which

I mean, everyone is. What are some other resources for people or how can they start their journey with, you know, with your philosophy and your thoughts? I would say the main thing they can do is if you go to my website, NateKlemp, that's K-L-E-M-P dot com or 8080marriage, 80marriage.com. Either of those places, you can subscribe to our newsletter. It's called Klemp Insights. And basically, my wife and I, every couple of weeks, write a newsletter about

with tactical tools you can use in your relationship or in your life. So I think that's like the main place that I would have people start. Obviously, we're on Instagram and all that stuff. But

But but that's probably the best place. We also have a guide for couples date night guide, just giving couples ideas on how to make date night actually happen, how to and what to do, those sorts of things. So that would be my main recommendation. OK, well, very good. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast. And they're revealing all these not really secrets, but just super useful, practical, helpful downer tips to help people in their state of being, you know. So thank you. Of course. Well, thank you so much for having me, Richard. I appreciate it.

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