66. Utilizing Good Stress with Jeff Krasno
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December 17, 2024
TLDR: Jeff Krasno discusses how modern culture promotes unhealthy comfort at the expense of long-term wellness. He shares his journey from burnout to better well-being by adopting practices to manage stress and find balance, emphasizing the benefits of short-term stressors for fostering resilience and longevity.

In the latest podcast episode of "Why Isn’t Everyone Doing This?", host Emily Fletcher engages with Jeff Krasno, founder of Wanderlust and the Commune podcast. The discussion revolves around the often misunderstood role of stress in our lives and how certain kinds of stress can lead to increased resilience and long-term well-being.
The Dual Nature of Stress
Jeff Krasno highlights the distinction between negative stress and good stress, which can actually enhance our health. Here are some key takeaways from the episode:
- Good stress, or eustress, enables personal growth and helps to foster resilience. Activities like cold plunges, intermittent fasting, and engaging in difficult conversations are examples of self-imposed stressors that can benefit health and longevity.
- Modern society often emphasizes comfort and ease, which can lead to chronic health issues such as inflammation, diabetes, and emotional dissatisfaction.
Jeff's Personal Journey
Jeff shares his personal journey from experiencing burnout to achieving well-being:
- Experience of Burnout: He faced chronic fatigue, insomnia, and significant health issues, serving as a wake-up call about the pitfalls of a comfort-driven lifestyle.
- Return to Practice: Through various wellness practices, including physical fitness and mindfulness, he regained his health and ultimately founded Commun, a platform dedicated to personal and societal well-being.
Jeff underscores the importance of reconnecting with our bodies and aligning our health practices with our biological design.
The Impact of Modern Culture
- Chronic Comfort: In a world engineered for comfort, there exists a detrimental cycle of isolation and poor health. The cultural move towards digital communication has replaced vital face-to-face interactions, leading to an increase in loneliness.
- Biological Disconnection: Our biological makeup is still fundamentally Paleolithic, and many aspects of modern life disconnect us from our evolutionary roots, causing health issues that weren’t as prevalent historically.
Harnessing Good Stress for Health
Effective Practices:
- Cold Plunges: These induce acute stress that encourages the body to foster resilience and metabolic efficiency, promoting long-term health benefits.
- Intermittent Fasting: By restricting eating to specific windows, this practice regulates blood sugar levels and can reverse issues like prediabetes.
- Difficult Conversations: Engaging in uncomfortable discussions helps us grow emotionally and socially, driving connection and empathy in communities.
Connection to Community and Society
Jeff emphasizes that well-being extends beyond individual health; it's about fostering community:
- Collective Healing: By participating in these hard discussions, we can create safer spaces and build a more positive collective environment. When we speak our truth while allowing others to do the same, we create a better society.
- Unity in Dialogue: The podcast mentions the importance of bridging differences through conversation, leading to what Jeff refers to as forging proactive, healthy communication pathways.
Long-term Vision for Well-being
- Vision for the Future: Jeff’s aspirations reveal a desire for a society where wellness is prioritized and achieved not just for the present moment but in planning for a vibrant old age.
- Balancing Growth and Rest: The pursuit of health requires complementing hard work with rest and recovery, much like physiological systems thrive on balance.
By adopting these principles, listeners can mold their lifestyles to restore health and happiness from within while collectively enhancing community resilience.
Conclusion
This episode with Jeff Krasno is a call to action for viewers to engage intentionally with their stress, seek discomfort, and connect deeply with those around them. The insights offer practical strategies for integrating good stress into our daily lives to live more fulfilling, meaningful lives.
In the end, as Jeff aptly puts it, "why isn’t everyone doing hard things so we can live with ease?" Embracing the right kinds of stress can transform not only individual lives but also the society we belong to.
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Sweet friends, today I am joined by an extraordinary guest. His name is Jeff Krasno. He is the co-founder of Commune, where he has interviewed some of the most brilliant minds on the planet and the co-founder of Wanderlust, which is a wellness festival that became a global movement.
So this is why isn't everyone doing this, the show where we inspire you to solve those big challenges that we're facing as a species and have a great time doing it. I am your host Emily Fletcher, Broadway performer, turned meditation teacher, turned magic maker, and this show is brought to you by every single person who has enrolled in Ziva Meditation or Ziva Magic. So if you want to learn more about our two flagship offerings, you can go to zivameditation.com.
You're going to learn how you can truly optimize your physical and your emotional health through good stress. Jeff shares how modern life has disconnected us from our biological and social roots. He's also going to share his specific formula for intermittent fasting and cold plunges, one that helps you to burn brown fat and boost your immune system. He also talks about the magic and power of difficult conversations
and powerful insights on how we can start to live our lives from our true nature. He also shares about his new book, Good Stress, the health benefits of doing hard things, which is in pre-sale now. So I'm so excited to see what you learned from this episode, so please welcome to the show Jeff Krasnow.
You know, the show is called Why Isn't Everyone Doing This? And you've had such a unique opportunity to interview some of the world's most brilliant and most advanced, most evolved thinkers, philosophers, activists. And so I'm wondering if there's something that's really struck you of like, wow, this thing is so good. Why isn't everyone doing this? What comes to mind when you think of that question?
Yeah, it's funny when I was thinking of that question as I was, you know, perusing your feed, you know, like 20 things came up. I'm like, why isn't everyone, you know, doing, you know, cold water therapy or fasting or resistance training or leaning into hard stressful conversations or, you know,
I mean, I've started to adopt all sorts of bizarre protocols, or like, I don't sit in chairs as much, you know, I squat. Are you squatting right now? No. That would be tricky. I can make it through an episode of peer-viewer enthusiasm in a squat, but I don't think I can make it through a whole... Like a chair pose?
Uh, no, just like a squat, like, you know, just on my heels. Like you're in India taking a couple on the side of the road. Yeah. Exactly. And really that's, that's a lot of how I started to think about my own body and health is how do I align how I live, my culture, my lifestyle with my inherent engineering. So,
we developed this genome that is still quite paleolithic over hundreds of thousands of years and millions of years if you include our hominid ancestors. And in a very, very short time,
we have adapted our culture in a way that hijacks our biology. And there's so many examples of that from sedentary living, to temperature neutrality, to our constant 24-7 eating cycle, to on-demand entertainment, to comfy chairs and couches, and
shoes made of like tons of plastic, etc. And I remember we were just talking about before, you know, we started recording, you know, also just that we replaced face-to-face communication with a form of sort of, you know, digital warrior ship that, you know, that really it doesn't just
create a more invidious culture, but it also flies in the face of our evolution. We were really evolved to be in community and to cooperate. In fact, our biological imperatives
necessitated that form of community that we actually counted on each other to live. And we've sort of misunderstood and twisted this sort of notion of survival of the fittest. It's actually adaptive to be in community. But now, of course, we have sanctified the individual in our culture. And we've created kind of all of this technology
that ends up in a lot of social isolation and loneliness. And so we need to really take a hard inventory and look at our lives and try to essentially realign ourselves with this miracle that is our biology. That's the product of like tens of thousands of years of nature's tinkering. And so when I think about
just why isn't everybody doing this? You know, like four years ago, I hit kind of my own kind of rock bottom. And I started to interview hundreds of doctors and mystics and sages and regenerative agriculture. It was between the 2020 to the rock bottom before 2020. You were just ahead of the curve.
I did, actually. Yeah, I was slightly ahead of the curve. Yeah, I had a very acrimonious exit from my last concern, which some people are aware of, called Wanderlust, and... It was a little thing from Wanderlust.
Yeah, well, not everybody knows, but, you know, just for the five-second nickel tour there, Wanderlust was a big series of wellness events that I co-founded, and we spread them all over the world, and there were thousands of people that would come to each of these events, and kind of at its peak it had, I think, 68 events in 20 countries.
in LA and amazing events in the Prospect Park in Brooklyn, which I spoke at, and it was a real movement, festivals in the summertime, ongoing events, a community all over the world. And so when you say an acrimony sex, it was tricky, like, and that started the rock bottom for you.
Yeah, well, I mean, it was a process. Sometimes I refer to myself as the insoluble fiber of wanderlust, like I kept the company regular, but eventually it expelled me out of town. And I mean, that whole period that my whole adventure in health and wellness with wanderlust
really ended up consisting of like seven day, 20 hour per day work weeks, you know, wicked insomnia, traveling nonstop, brain fog, chronic fatigue, you know, when I left, waterless, I think it was 210 pounds. So, you know, and then I had all these other presentations that were violated my vanity, like, you know, kind of dad bod and
sort of just ghastly protuberances on my chest that are sometimes known as man-based. More clinically gynecomastia, I've learned.
And then, you know, I kind of spiraled into a significant depression, you know, after leaving. And I really had to take sort of a close look at like how my foray into health and wellness became an adventure in wealth and hellness, is what I call it. And the gray line.
I know it's a little glib I realized but it was it is true for me and you know a lot of the symptoms that I just outlined are just so. Anodyne you know they're so present in our society who doesn't have brain fog and chronic fatigue like ho hum you know like and how that's normal.
All that's exactly it. It's like my story is only interesting, not because it's extraordinary. It's that it's so utterly ordinary and that we've normalized these conditions, but as I started to unpack them more and more, it's these conditions are just upstream from diabetes, heart disease, liver disease, kidney disease, dementia, cancer, et cetera.
And, but they're so easy just to sort of pass off of, it's like, oh, I'm just having a bad day. I'm just taking a good night's sleep. Yeah. And then I put this little device on my triceps. So I know this is an audio podcast, but some people watching a video, it's a little disc that sits in my triceps and it's a continuous glucose monitor. And I peered into the app and my fasting blood glucose was 125 milligrams per deciliter.
And that is basically borderline diabetic. And so I was like, wait a minute. Me? No. No, I'm like the waterless guy, you know? It's like I shop at Whole Foods, like I pay my taxes, I raise my kids, like I don't know. I pay my taxes, I love it, that's your glucose marker.
I'm like, I'm an upstanding member of society. What happened? And I went to my PCP. Of course, I canceled every annual visit to my primary care physician. Something always came up. So I went to my PCP, and sure enough, she took my hemoglobin A1C, and it came back at like six and a half percent of the borderline diabetes.
And I was like, oh my God, I'm living in the American nightmare. It's not just America. We've exported sort of the more detrimental aspects of America around the world. But 50% of us here in this country have diabetes or prediabetes. And like 90% are metabolically dysfunctional. And most people like me had no clue, had no idea. We're just living in this nightmare completely unaware
And I have a very different vision for my life, my dream. I want to walk up into some mountainside cabin when I'm 118 and have my 100th anniversary with my dear Skylar and pass off without
Without a lot of poppin' circumstances, you know? Yeah, always dim, like, calling my death date, of being like on the banks of the Genji's River and be like, meet me on Wednesday. And just like, my body feels not that relevant anymore and just dropping it into the Genji's River. Always invite the death fantasy. There it is. Like 120 or so. Yeah.
That's it. I mean, these dreams are slightly modeling. But I think the real point is that we want our health span to match our lifespan. We want to, as Mark Hyman says, die young at an old age. And we want to be vibrant and free of the more common decrepitudes of aging.
But most of us have this suffer from this morbidity distension where the last 20 years of our life becomes a limp, where we're on multiple cocktails of pharmaceuticals, managing different symptoms of chronic diseases, et cetera.
And I was kind of like, fuck that, you know, no way. A, you know, that's not the life I want to lead. But I also don't want to lead that for the people around me because, you know, that distention and morbidity can radiate out into your family and into caregivers. And it can be really like the source of a tremendous suffering, not just for the individual.
And then I started reading about the societal impact. So now we're 20% of GDP, like $4.5 trillion on sick care, managing the symptoms of preventable diseases. It's nuts.
I mean, it's a big giant you're taking on. I just recently learned from our mutual friend Zach Bush that the pharmaceutical industry is bigger. It's a bigger business than defense. It's a bigger business than energy. I thought surly petroleum or arms was bigger than pharmaceuticals, but it's like many times bigger. So this is not a small mountain that you're climbing.
No, no. And there's these other dimensions of it that I think are sometimes overlooked. My dad is 82 now, and he's been in and out of cancer treatment for the last five years. But fortunately, he's coherent and cogent. And I look to him
you know for a lot of wisdom and advice you know still and you know that is the great exception though you know are are
Our old people used to be, we used to consider them elders, these kind of fonts of wisdom, and that we could, through years of experience, they would sort of accrue a very insightful understanding of how the world works, such that the younger generations could tap into that wisdom.
But now, of course, our elders have become the Elder Lee. You know, Chip Conley often uses that turn. And so often, we're considered a nuisance and we've shipped them off somewhere. And so, you know, there's just like every reason to focus a lot of time and energy. I think on these topics about how do we live healthy long into our lives?
I mean, I even think like the political morass sits atop the information that we're holding in our personal bodies spills over into the body politic. Yes. I remember, I think during the 2016 election, when things were first starting to really heat up and get so divisive,
And I was like, and maybe not engaging with like watching some Facebook comment battle happening. And there was just a woman who was just so diametrically opposed to everything that I believed. And I was like, let me just go and look at her profile. Let me just try and understand this human who like vehemently agree, disagrees with everything that I'm saying and meet her. And all her feed was, and who knows is even a real person or a bot, but her feed was like pictures of her, like drinking giant, like gallons of margaritas.
and like out with her girlfriends and I was like, oh, her body is inflamed. Her brain is inflamed. That sugar and that alcohol has created fire and heat in her body and it is being expressed through rage online. And so I could not agree more that the chronic inflammation that we're holding in our nervous systems is showing up in some of this political fiery debates.
Yeah, I totally agree. I don't think one particular party has a monopoly on that either. I mean, if you are working two part-time minimum wage jobs and have diabetes and can't afford your insulin, and the only place that you can shop is 7-Eleven,
I mean, you're probably pretty pissed off. And you're probably very justifiably pissed off. And that inflammation, as you say, that we hold in the body punctuates your interactions in your daily life. And so again, so there's just, I think, like every reason in the world to be focusing
you know, on these issues. And I think we can do a lot to solve, you know, so many of our different societal ills by focusing on, you know, what it means to be truly well. So, you know, I took that upon myself, you know, and jumped into kind of my own Petri dish and became sort of the end of one experiment on
on the organism that I had the most agency over. And honestly, because of my, that I do have access to a lot of very interesting people, I tried quite a lot of different pills and praxis and mushrooms and modalities and whatnot. And I will say, our world is rife with people selling things.
You know, I had to sift through a lot of grift. But at the same time, I think I was able to kind of distill a number of protocols that were really, really effective for me. And I think are very generally effective because, you know, we do share, for better or worse, Emily, 99.1% of our DNA. Sorry about that. 99.1% we share in common.
No, that's right. And so this is like the basis of the book. It's like what worked. You used your amazing role at X of contacts. What I'm hearing is that you found the things that really worked for you and that you feel like are universally applicable. And this is the basis of the book. Is that correct?
Yeah, yeah, really, I think when I started to unpack why I was so sick, and by extension why I think most of the world is so sick, you know, I put my thumb on one central idea.
which is chronic disease is really the result of chronic ease. We have engineered our lives for comfort, but that actually leads to a lot of long-term, uncomfortable realities.
And so, you know, many of the artifacts of modernity that I listed off earlier, you know, this kind of overabundance of shelf stable calories, sedentary-ness, indoor living, you know, total reliance on digital devices, social isolation, sort of perpetual drip of cortisol dysregulating, you know, blue light from her omnipresent screens, et cetera.
All of these reflections of ease have really hijacked our biology. I went deep down that rabbit hole to really, really understand
the mechanisms at play, like what's really, really happening there, kind of at the cellular level in a lot of cases. And it was sort of like an autodidactic medical school that I put myself through. It became kind of like amateur everything along the way.
But really got a very, I think, a very solid understanding in terms of how physiology functions, how my body functions. And in a way, it was like sort of a metaphysical quest too, because as I started to study the human body,
I saw these kind of concepts that appear kind of more in Eastern religions and Eastern thought I saw them mapped everywhere in human physiology and I really came to this realization that if you really want to understand the metaphysical then study the physical because this is where the cosmic intelligence of the universe is patterned and it's just it was like every day it was like a satori you know there for me.
We'll see more about that because certainly this podcast leans a little bit more metaphysical. Sure. And I know that you, you know, through all the amazing people that you've interviewed through commune, you're very well versed in the metaphysical, but what did you find in your own physiology or as you were studying the actual 3D human body that was a fascinating overlay?
Yeah, well, so there's these concepts like in Buddhism or in Taoism, you know, around Madhyamaka, like the middle path, for example, or in Taoism, kind of everything, every phenomenon that emerges within the universe, you know.
has its opposite. So there's this concept of the coincidence or the coincidence of opposites. And we know that kind of through hot and cold and bright and dark and damp and dry. A lot of the stuff that has been actually
studied in Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine. But when you actually apply a Western empirical lens onto those things, you actually see them in molecules. And what I started to understand is that the human body
is actually engineered, its core intelligence is to foster balance, is to foster a middle way between different pathways. So when you started to look at like a hormone, a chemical messenger in your body, like insulin, you would find that insulin, which could be considered sort of a yang molecule, a growth molecule, had its yin partner, glucagon.
If you started to look at like a neurotransmitter, the things that kind of flow into your brains, these chemical messengers that either excite the brain or inhibit what's known as an action potential, you can see that glutamate which sort of excites the brain and
and excites and stimulates action potentials across neurons is also balanced by GABA, which is sort of the relaxation neurotransmitter. And so I began to unpack like so many of these oppositional forces within the body, and they all have their yang and their yin.
And, you know, that's a little bit of a simplistic way of looking at it. But the body is really designed to create this tenuous little balance. You know, for me, I had super high glucose levels. But the body, the liver, really is designed.
to sort of maintain this middle way, to titrate just right, to keep this like 90 milligram per deciliter, tiny little balance in your body. And so, so much about being healthy, both kind of in your psychology and your physiology, are doing the things that foster this kind of balance. And you know, balance like really,
In every single expression of it is really a reflection of balance. You know, obviously we talk about kind of psychological balance or centeredness or emotional regulation, etc. But you also see, you know,
Like, what does a balanced economy look like? It's generally one with a big bell curve, thriving middle class or, you know, what does a balanced agricultural system look like? Well, generally one with like a diversity of plants and et cetera. But so that is 100% true for the human organism too. And in the body, balance is called homeostasis. In a nursery rhyme, it's called the Goldilocks Zone.
you're always looking for the warm porridge in your body. And so when I hear words like middle way or homeostasis or Goldilocks or balance, my attachment to that would be one of stillness almost, or that I need to, my interpretation would be like, oh, for me to achieve this health, I need to stay in the middle.
versus what I am so excited about what I am studying. And so I'm obviously hearing it through that lens is one of polarity, right? Of this masculine charge and feminine charge of this like yang output and then this yin restoration. And so I would like to hear you explain more like, did you find that it really is about finding that homeostasis in that balance in that middle path?
Or is it about going and doing the big exertion and then making sure that you're balancing it with rest? Is it that you eat the fat that you're doing the vinegar? So if you're eating the sugar that you're balancing it with fat and vinegar, I would just love to hear you speak about the magnetism, the aeroist, the polarity versus the stasis.
Yeah, it's interesting. I think, you know, so many of these concepts in like Eastern thought have a kind of paradoxical nature to them. So when I sort of think about the feeling of ultimate health, it's kind of a
a passionate tranquility, or sort of a vibrant serenity. And those terms seem mutually exclusive, but we know they aren't by product of our own experience. We know that when we're immersed in some sort of collective enterprise, or creative endeavor, or playing sports, or dancing, or singing, that's it.
complete awareness of yourself in space and time. It's a passion, but also a centeredness. And that's kind of that place on the seesaw where no one's feet are touching the ground, right? It's like this beautiful little moment. And to foster that, sometimes you need to self-administer acute forms of short-term, like stress or shock.
And that's what I'm finding. So for example, like for me, I'm a regular ice plunger. There's so much psychology and mindset associated with that, and we can unpack that. But just from a physiological perspective, what that's doing to your body, it's plummeting your core body temperature. And then your body goes into like,
you know super overdrive like you say that kind of polarity moment to up regulate your temperature back into again that Goldilocks zone to that 98.6 zone and it does that through activating the certain tissue in your body these
brown fat that is rich with mitochondria and it's the most incredible way to burn fat, particularly if you're in a fasted state because you need a tremendous amount of energy to make all that heat and if you're in a low glucose state.
Your body has to burn fat or rely on a fat substrate to make that energy. And that is a very intense kind of acute form of stress. But what it actually leads to is an ability for the body to foster balance in the long run and foster resilience and to activate these kind of longevity pathways.
That's a great example of a self-imposed stress that actually in the long term is incredibly adaptive. And you can look at that in tons of different ways. And we talk like you can think about that even just interpersonally. What does it mean to have an intense, acute, stressful conversation with someone?
So easy to avoid doing that. I'm professional at avoiding conversations. But long term, that's maladaptive. Sure is. But if you actually self-impose that stressful conversation and you go into it with the right intention and with the right tools, that's an acute stressor. But what that actually fosters in the long run
is the middle way. It's cooperation. It's common ground. It's finding ways to work together. And this is what we call hermesis. Yeah, like a cute, good, good stress, right? Hermesis. 100%. Yeah. And this hermetic response that is essentially the body's adaptive response to short-term stress.
And I just want to clarify, because I've spent 13 years proselytizing against the dangers of stress. And so I really want to highlight the difference between this hormesis, this acute good stress, things like ice plunge, sauna, yes, having the difficult conversation, high intensity interval training. If you think back even 100 years ago, what were our great grandparents doing? How much acute stress were they under that we've now, like you said, created ease that is creating dissies?
How are we avoiding any acute stresses and then slowly killing ourselves in the long run? Totally. It shouldn't be stressful to sit on your ass and do nothing. But it is. Because we're not designed to do that.
Yeah, it's like when we live kind of within this attention or persuasion economy where every single person, brand, family member, colleague, job person is vying for our time and attention. We live in this permanent state of distraction such that actually sitting and doing nothing has become stressful. It's very strange, right?
There's this fascinating paper written by these guys at Harvard. We might have talked about it once before, but I think Matthew Killingsworth and Dan Gilbert, they wrote this paper called A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind.
So they were saying that the happiest people in the world are actually people that are thinking about what they are doing. So this is very like tick. Yeah, this is very tick not on like when you wash the dishes, wash the dishes, whatever.
but that the moment that we start to, our attention starts to drift away from the thing that we're actually doing, that is a determinant of unhappiness. And so this is- How you would conflate that with, or juxtapose that to Dr. Sreeni Palais. He's a Harvard psychiatrist. He wrote Tinker Devil Doodle Try, and he's basically pontificating of the benefits of
Non-structured time like daydreaming really which but then this is different That's like oh, I'm putting time my day to not focus He talks about focus fatigue which is different than this where you're saying if I'm watching the dishes My attention is on washing the dishes and I'm not using dishwashing time to daydream That that's a separate time. Is that would that be accurate?
Yeah, I think it's interesting. He's fascinating, by the way, and his wife is a wonderful physician. And so I think that there's two different things here, because a lot of
A lot of knowledge and learning is actually consolidated in these times of sort of, like you say, will gathering or daydreaming or in times of sort of deep rest, meditation, sleep, et cetera, meditation. So that is true. And at the same time, you know, practices that focus on the single-pointedness of mind.
You know, it offer an incredible opportunity, I think, for long-term happiness. Like, ski-shooting archery? Like, what would be an example of that? Sure. Those, or just having a drishti, or a mantra, or a bead, or anything that essentially, or obviously your breath is a very good one, just because you always have it until you don't. But... We're all gonna buy 100% death rate. Yeah.
But what this paper suggested also that was interesting is that thoughts obviously will never turn off that spigot. And that's often a confused target of meditation. But it's really our ability
to follow the thought, watch it disappear and then come back. The opportunity lies in the coming back to that single-pointedness of mind. So whether that's coming back to the breath or the gaze point or the mantra. And the people that develop that ability or capacity to continue to come back
appear to be the happiest people. So it's interesting. Certainly, I have found by dent of my own experience that engaging in a single-pointedness of mine practice eventually began to punctuate my life in other ways. I became less distracted, more able to read or, God willing, even write a book.
And that certainly was not the case five years ago. I think I read zero books in 2017. Wow. I think I'm on the opposite direction because my life now, I have a five-year-old son, post-divorce, post-pandemic, certainly more online, more social media, more employees.
Versus I think back now of like writing my book while pregnant and in launching the book while breastfeeding like I still am like I don't I don't understand how how I did that and now I feel a little bit more Distracted by all of the social media and just like like you said like all of the inherent like the number of people with their own brands the number of people who are entrepreneurs the number of people who
who are vying for our attention, even forget about a social media feed, but just in your text messages, on your WhatsApp threads, it's like everyone's selling something, everyone's trying to get you to come to their retreats, whereas the same people who were insurance executives four years ago are now wellness entrepreneurs. And so it was just a fascinating change where everyone is selling their own wellness products now.
Yeah, yeah, there's a neuroscientist named Adam Ghazali, a really interesting guy, and he has a really interesting metaphor that uses kind of hunter-gatherer culture, so it's appropriate here, where he causes information foraging. So imagine you're out kind of on the savannah looking for food.
and, you know, 10,000 BC or something, and you come across a solitary fig tree. Well, Hallelujah, you know, you're going to completely denude that fig tree of all of its figs. You know, you're going to, you know, be gorging on some and then, you know, stuffing some in your satchel for the tribe, etc.
until that fig tree has no figs left. And then back off you go, back to your tribe. Now imagine a situation where you came across like a cop's, a grove of fig trees. So then you're going to pick the ones that are right there at shoulder height.
And then your attention is going to drift over to that one next door and you're going to say like, oh, there's some really easily procurable figs right there and then you go over and you pick that one and then your attention goes over there and you go and pick that one and go and pick that one and what you have at the end of the day.
There's a lot of trees with just the most easily procured figs gone, right? So apply that now to kind of modernity and the information architecture of modernity. So what we have now is like you open an article or something on your phone. And within the first 100 words of that article, there's essentially another fig tree.
There's a link to click over here and you do this sort of little cost benefit analysis in your brain. You're like, I kind of got the gist of this thing. I'm going to go over here. And then in the first like little paragraph of that, there's a link to go over there and then go over there. And of course, that is the ad revenue media model in a nutshell. It's like the more clicks that you have, the more opportunities there are to serve you up ads, et cetera.
And that's how publishers make a living. But what we have now is this kind of information foraging where we'll never sit down in a
chair or squat and read Moby Dick. There's just not the environment for that. And so we're constantly taking in these tiny bits of information and then moving on to the next thing. And I would argue that that's not
particularly profitable long-term, if you are really trying to accomplish something with depth or develop a true and profound understanding of something or write a book. It does give me heart that podcasting is so popular, and I think it does speak to the way that we used to disseminate information, receive information.
The fact that we are ingesting these long form conversations ensure they're spotted with ads as well, but at least it's like a bit of like an hour long conversation or a two hour long conversation feels like such a luxury.
to have that depth of exploration in a world of clickbait and scrolling and memes. I think Elena Broward, mutual friend, posted like, I miss my pre-internet brain. And so it does give me hope that people are consuming podcasts the way that they are, because at least this is an opportunity. And I do think some people are still reading, or audiobooks at least while they're also on the treadmill and also cleaning their homes.
Yeah, no, 100%. I'm obviously kind of over generalizing there. And yeah, I mean, I think podcasts are a silver lining here. And I think podcasts honestly serve the podcasters as much as they serve the listeners because as a podcaster,
it is I'm never more present than when I'm conducting a podcast. And like how much it can learn. So that's what I'm interested is like as you've been doing this guinea pig experiment on yourself, putting yourself through these good stresses, like what did you find to be the most effective? What changed things the most for you? I mean, no cold plunging.
Yeah, so I would say that there's two different categories of them. There was the stacking of a number of physiological good stressors. And I would say for me, that was intermittent fasting, cold plunging and resistance training. That sandwich was particularly gluten free. So you do intermittent training or so you would do intermittent fasting and training and cold plunging while you were fasted. Is that correct?
So basically, I became sort of a 16, 8 person, so I would consolidate all my consumption of food within an 8-hour time period. And again, I was addressing pretty significantly overweight and borderline diabetic. So there was good reasons to do this.
And I tinkered quite a bit. And again, it's not for everybody, especially for women who are menstruating or pregnant or even in menopause. You really need to tailor these protocols for yourself. But for me,
16-8 worked really, really well. It began to bring my blood glucose levels down and that what I found was that I would start my cold therapy, my ice plunging or my cold showers prior to breaking my fast because at that juncture, I had very, very low blood glucose levels because I wouldn't have eaten for 15 and a half hours, let's say.
And then my body would need to thermoregulate and it would need a fuel source to be able to do that. And it had no choice except to break down my ample fat reserves into ketones and free fatty acids for energy.
So that was really, really helpful. And then combined with resistance training, now I would eat generally before I would train. I would break my fast and then go eat, although I did do a little bit of fasted training. I didn't really like that. I know some people like that and talk about it. And in my circles, people are trying to have the protein like eat before you work out.
Yeah, I mean, you want the available, that's the only time I will eat significant carbohydrates is right before a workout because I know that they'll be kind of immediate uptake of that. But, you know, I was this kid. It was a really chubby, teased kid. Don't cry for me. I had a decent life. But, you know, this was a trauma that I've had to confront as a kid. And, you know, I remember there were these like presidential fitness
test that used to be, remember those things. I do. And one of the categories was pull-ups. And I could do a grand total of zero. I'm still a zero. But,
I was too vain and embarrassed. So I would put one on my little scorecard. And I had this draconian gym teacher, Mrs. Brody. She wore like a kind of a referee's uniform and had a whistle and was like very tight. And she called me out in front of the entire gym class. I actually never thought about this until like yesterday.
And she was like, Jeff Krasno, you cannot do one. Let's see you do one pull up. And I was like, oh my god. This is just horrifying. I lied. I'm getting caught in my lie. And I'm getting shamed. All of the above. Yeah, it was awful.
So, you know, I had a chip on my shoulder, literally, in this case, around pull-ups, and so I became an avid pull-upper, and I started, I could do zero, then I could do one, and then I could do three, and then I could do, like, eight, and now I do a hundred a day. You do a hundred a day?
I do, although I got just pure candor. I've fallen off a tiny bit. But for about a year, I did 100 a day. That's amazing. I'm still working on my first one. I'm holding myself for like 45 seconds. And that's my starting point right now.
That's key. That's hard, actually. It's really, really hard. And that's definitely the place to start. But I always had a trouble developing muscle mass. And I'm certainly not bulging out of my shirt here. But as I found over time that the establishment of more muscle mass serves as essentially a glucose disposal. It's like an incredible glucose sink. Muscle's just vacuum glucose.
out of your bloodstream, even at rest. But when you contract them, you don't even require insulin to uptake glucose. So it's not as stressful on the pancreas, et cetera. So there's three. I don't hear it. When we hear, obviously, the benefits of strength training and aging and certainly from a vanity standpoint, but you don't hear that much about
muscle metabolizing glucose, except for maybe Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. But I'm glad to know that that's been your experience. Yeah. Gabrielle Lyon was a huge influence in JJ Virgin. Both of them, I interviewed both of them. And that kind of idea, muscle-centric medicine and muscle as a metabolic tool was huge for me. So those were the three more physiological
good stressors that I focused on to reverse my diabetes and to get into better physical condition and to lose weight, et cetera. I would say the most powerful psychological stressor, in addition to meditation and single-pointedness of mind,
was engaging in these stressful conversations. And in 2020, as we kind of anchored into lockdown, I started to write a column, a newsletter every Sunday called Commusings, sort of dubiously named.
And I was right. I mean, 2020 gave me a lot of fodder in terms of subject matter, given the pandemic and obviously the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing national inventory and social reckoning around racial justice and then the election and every other possible emanation from Trumpistan.
So I had a lot to write about. And of course, it was a very kind of triggered time. But the idea was like, OK, I'm going to send out these little buoys of hope every Sunday, such that people might feel less alone. And these were very rigorously researched papers and thoughtful, I thought, anyways.
And I included my personal email on them. And that database was like 1.2 million people. So on Monday morning, I would get, you know, five to 600 emails incoming. And yeah, it was like cresting my inbox, like a tsunami. And many of them were sort of
you know, adulated the ego just enough. You know, oh, this was great and interesting. I enjoyed it. But I would get like 100 a week filled with some sort of, you know, acute criticism, often like replete with many expletives. And people that were, you know, had found some issue with an idea or a turn of phrase or something.
And some of these were just like, there was nothing I could do with them. You know, sometimes people would like copy and paste like Trump 2020 5,000 times and just send ads. I don't know what to do with this. But it was, you know, but then some people were thoughtful in their takedown. And I would, I basically vowed to have an exchange. I would, I would
respond to every single email. And then, you know, after the exchange, you know, there was sort of a repartee that was developed, I would say, hey, do you want to join me on a Zoom call? And this was my great David Copperfield act because generally people just disappeared in the juncture.
Um, yeah, it's like put me on a stage in Vegas and watch me watch me watch me get people disappear. Um, you know, anyone want to have a zoom call? Um, but I had about 26 hour long zoom calls in August, September of 2020 with people that vehemently disagreed with me.
And the result was I built my psychological immune system. Oh, that's what Skyler calls it. My ability to remain centered, not to take things kind of overly personally, to basically disarm insults by not giving them any power. But I also
inadvertently learned a lot of skills around having empathetic and non-violent forms of communication. Emily was so interesting. These conversations took on such a recognizable pattern.
So they were with people on the farthest edges of like QAnon and Trumplandia and that world, but there were also a lot of people like on the far left, you know, kind of the defund the police crowd or people that just didn't feel that it was appropriate for a white man to be kind of centering himself in a conversation about race or whatever. There's a lot of people from all sides of the equation.
And I would get on these Zoom calls and, you know, there would be kind of an exchange of pleasantries and sort of a hello. And then kind of unlike this conversation, I would say basically nothing. And for 45 minutes, these people would just kind of gish-galop their life over me. Which are personal stories or they were going on about the topic?
No, they're personal stories. Yeah, I mean, you're right, the former. They basically just told me their life story. And I would say 5% of the time, we would get around to actually talking about the issue that originally had put us at loggerheads. But for 40 minutes, 45 minutes, they would essentially just tell me their entire life story.
And it was just fascinating, especially like the third or fourth one, I'm like, whoa, this is just the same pattern every time. And so I just, eventually, I didn't have any training at that juncture in nonviolent communication. I mean, that's a real approach. This guy, Marshall Rosenberg, built this whole system around nonviolent communication.
I eventually got into it because I was talking to my friends about it. They're like, you gotta check out this whole system for this stuff. And I'm like, okay, but I was kind of instinctively doing some of it. So people would be talking about their life. And I would be like writing down, I'm like, ooh, I have daughters too.
Like, oh, I was born in Chicago. Like, oh, yeah, I drove cross country. I'm a car broke down. You know, I would write down kind of places of life convergence between me and these people's stories. And then by the time they had
exhausted themselves. I'd be like, oh, that's, you know, I have three daughters too. We're in the three daughters club. And they're like, oh, my God, what's that like? And I'm like, well, you know, mine are teens now. And it's crazy. And they're like, oh, mine are already full on the coop. And you know, you've got, you know, empty nesting is hard, but you know, you've got a whole life in front of you know, it basically like just changed the whole tenor of the conversation.
And I started to develop all these skills around it where it's like you'd walk into these conversations and you would not be looking for agreement. Solution was not the goal. Connection was the goal.
And from that place of commonality and shared experience, I like made two dozen frenemies who I still text with. And these people are like still trumping about or still on the far left or whatever, but we found a way to see humanity in each other.
And in the end, what I realized, Emily really, is that people just want to be seen, and they want to be heard. And if you can create a safe and secure container for people to be seen and heard, there may be nothing better to spend your time on.
I want to celebrate you for writing those emails. I've read so many of them and they just felt like they spoke directly to my heart. And I feel like such a gift that you were giving humanity using your outrageous depth of intellect, your vocabulary, the life experience that you have engendered through interviewing so many world leaders.
and then to apply it to these very inflammatory and divisive subjects. But I had no idea that in the aftermath, you were going and doing these conversations. And it speaks so much to what I believe is some of the most important work that we could be doing on the planet right now. And what we were speaking about before we started the interview, which is that you are about to be brokering a conversation
between some Palestinian folks, some Israeli folks, section of their Israeli or Jewish. But I would just love to speak to that a bit because speaking of a subject that we might never find common ground on, we might never find a solution on
But can we find humanity? Can we find unity? And in so doing, in creating an environment where people feel seen and heard, which I 100% agree with you, that is all we're really looking for is to feel seen and heard. Can we then find a way to peace, to collaboration,
to some flavor of unity, even if we disagree. So I would just love to know what inspired this. Can you give us a little bit more context? What is your goal in brokering these conversations? Anything you feel comfortable talking about? Yeah, sure. So for me, kind of my selfish goal is to really try good stress.
on a situation that is highly... And at what point does it turn into bad stress? Like, are you... You know what your line is, personally, where you're like, oh, I'm no traumatizing myself. That's right. So, you know, essentially fostering thorny and hard, quote unquote, stressful conversations, you know, with the goal of really trying to forge a path forward. So, last fall,
I interviewed a historian on the socio-political geographic history of Israel, Palestine, because I felt like, okay, before we go spouting off a ton of opinions, let's ground ourselves in three, 5,000 years
3,000 to 5,000 years of history, such that we can understand with greater nuance the socio-political unrest that exists within this region. So we did. I did a tremendous amount of reading on the topic and did a three-hour podcast on the history of the region from
as an objective of a place as possible. Now, of course, every sentence could be subjective on through someone's eyes or ears. But that was the goal to really educate people and to ground people in the history. Though I did realize in the aftermath of that podcast is that
You know, history then provides also the opportunity to accuse and to finger point and to say, well, but in 1918, there was the British Mandate. But then you didn't accept the peace deal in the Peel Commission. But in 1948, we were displaced too. But then in 1967, you guys were going to attack. But then so we had to do a preemptive attack. And then in 1973, you attacked again. And then the Antifada. And then we gave you the, and like you said,
This will just go on forever, the leveraging of history to assign guilt and blame. So, my goal here is that instead of that, let's actually forge a path forward. You know, what is the world that, as Charles Eisenstein says, our hearts know is possible? Yeah, let's birth the word beautiful earth, that our hearts know is possible. I quote him all the time.
And so in order to do that, for me, I believe that we're going to need empathetic communication. We're going to need a tremendous amount of trauma work. And then we're going to need ultimately institutional cross-generational forgiveness.
What does that even mean? Institutional cross-generational forgiveness. I mean like political organizations nations forgiving the past.
Yeah, I mean, that certainly I think is an end point. I think kind of the starting point is even groups of 20, 30 people, you know, being able to, from different sides of the equation, being able to sit down and forgive the people, forgive the sons and daughters of the people that killed their parents.
or that oppressed their parents. And this work has been done. There's a brilliant doctor named Robert Enright. He's made his life's work forgiveness, both on the personal level, but also on the societal level. So he's gone into the most immiserated
war-torn areas in the world, you know, and sat down with, you know, the Tutsis and the Hutus and, you know, said, okay, you know, there has been unimaginable harm done here. But can we forgive each other? Not just in our heads, but how does that forgiveness eventually take hold in the heart? And, I mean,
It's some of the hardest work anyone might ever know. But I think these are the conversations that we need to begin to plant, like trees, because how else would we move forward? What is the alternative? We play this timeline out. We know where we're heading. And so at what point do we jump timelines? And even to bring this back to the metaphysical,
And JJ Virgin, so many of our mutual friends, there's a thing called 40 Years of Zen, where you go into these chambers and you do like 10 hours a day of meditation while your brain is hooked up to these devices. And I had a bunch of my friends, Dave, Vision, JJ, they all did it all in the same week. And they all changed dramatically. Their psyches changed, their emotions changed. And I was like, what were you guys doing in there? And they said, actually, forgiveness. We were just doing like 10 hours of forgiveness. And they were on lie detector tests.
and like heart rate variability monitors, and they would get to the point where they had, could they actually forgive themselves? And could they say that they had forgiven themselves under a lie detector test? And this was the product of the seven days of doing this very advanced quote unquote meditation, but it was all about forgiveness.
And so this, I would love, I don't hear anyone talking about forgiveness as a political strategy, forgiveness as a way forward to birthing a new earth. And so I'm so grateful to you for starting to broker these conversations. Like if someone's listening to this and they were to want to take, you know, think globally, but act locally, how would you recommend that they start?
Yeah, so there are a whole bunch of, I mean, this is certainly not a new idea. I mean, there have been truth and reconciliation commissions, et cetera, and for most famously in South Africa, where I spent actually a bunch of time in the 80s there. I was a kid.
But there are, you know, certain methods that are available to learn to then become a facilitator and a broker of these conversations. So for example, if you are interested in pulling people together, you know, over any divergence of opinion, you know, political or otherwise, it doesn't necessarily have to be history of Palestine. It starts small. You could start with a brother and your sister. Yeah.
I know Tommy took your Barbie. You're upset about it.
There's the empathetic communication here. We know Barbie. She has a very lovely outfit. It's probably much nicer than Ken's. There are these very codified approaches, like nonviolent communication being one, where you can become a facilitator. It's quite rigorous, but you can become a facilitator in that approach to communication.
I've sat now in a number of those sessions. In fact, we hired a brilliant guy named John Kenyon to come and do our company offsite. Not that there's that much disagreement within the company, but we thought it was an interesting set of skills to learn.
And we did a whole afternoon session around nonviolent communication. Certainly, there's so much discussion, thankfully now, about trauma work right now. But how do you foster safe and secure environments for conversation?
Because that's the key, right? The set and setting for these kinds of conversations needs to be safe and secure. Because as you know, and as probably all of your listeners know, essentially if you are not safe and secure, if you are in sympathetic overload or amygdala hijack or whatever, you're not going to be able to leverage reason and rationality and compassion in your conversations.
You're going to be in in Perma fight or flight mode. Yeah, and you know the knock on impacts of of being in that state You know that that is a more passionate violent state and so
You know, how do you then foster safe and secure environments? And you know, you go again, you can just start the head at the most benign or I wouldn't say benign I would say the most common everyday level started in your home You know, are you getting your own nervous system? Are you feeling your own feelings?
And if we start there, then we will help to contribute to every space we enter. If we bring a dysregulated nervous system into a yoga studio, we're going to dysregulate that yoga studio. If we bring our regulated nervous system into really chaotic subway station, we're going to help to regulate that subway station. So I think it's always starting within. And even just to bring the conversation back to, even if you don't want to study non-violent communication or broker other people having conversations,
I think to your point, if you can start having your own difficult conversations, like say the thing to your mom, talk to your ex-boyfriend, say the conversation with your roommate, and do it from a place of regulation. You know, there's some really basic, I would say, like, guidelines that, you know, ask for permission, make sure the other person consents to it, write down, like you were doing, take notes, say back what you heard, help them to feel seen and heard. Like, there are some basics here that can go a long way.
But what I've found just from my own experience is that when I have those difficult conversations, when I clear up those lies or, you know, have the conflict that I've been dreading so deeply for decades, that actually I get so much happier. And my coach says that lying is not a morality issue, it's a happiness issue. She's like, we're all liars. Just, you know, what are you lying about into what degree? Just take your morality off of the table and just look at it as like, oh, the more honest I can be,
the more happy I'm going to be. And then it feels like you're building up those muscles to be able to broker those conversations for other people as well. Yeah, 100%. There's so many elements there to refine or capabilities to refine. Nonviolent communication specifically centers atop of feelings.
So before you even really confront, you know, the particular issue at hand, it's like, how does it make you feel understanding each other's feelings in that way? And then moving from feelings to needs. So like, okay, what is the specific need that I have in order to feel a different way and to be able to express that need with clarity and to hear other people's needs with clarity such that that we can
such that we can feel a certain way. So just like grocking some of these basic techniques I think are really helpful. And then there was a whole other technique that I got interested in called steel manning, which is sort of it's kind of like a not a great name for it, but it's supposed to be kind of the opposite of straw manning.
So a lot of people, you see this on the internet all the time, where people essentially ascribe an opinion to you that they can easily knock down as easily as they could knock down a straw man, basically. Can you give us an example of that? Or what would be a real-life application of that? Yeah, like, I'm trying to stay away from his real palace. Let's see.
Like.
you know, just in the family, like someone borrowed someone's charger. This is what happens in my family a lot. It's like, you stole my charger, you don't care about me, you know, or whatever. Like, that's not the greatest example, but it's a decent one. But I think where steel manning gets interesting is that you can sit down with someone with whom you disagree.
and you hear their particular argument, and as you're hearing it, you're notating the best, most convincing parts of someone else's argument. And then instead of issuing a rebuttal, you actually regurg, well, not regurgitate, you actually summarize the best part of their argument back to them.
And it's very, very interesting practice. It can both help you see other people's opinions and equal proportion to your own. And candidly, it can also fortify your own position. Because you are now, instead of like straw manning, just like basically saying, ah, that doesn't make sense. You're actually taking the best parts
of someone else's position and then having to actually, you know, put them through, you know, your own analysis. Well, it can debate that way. You're in the debate club in high school. You have to debate both sides of an argument. That's right. And I think it also goes back to the original thing of what we're saying is that everyone wants to feel seen and heard. And so if you not only receive them and let them know that you really see and you really heard, but then make them look good,
right, that you're like amplifying it as you mirror it back, that's going to not only let them feel seen in her but validate them in a way that will likely create more unity. And like you said, it will either allow you to change your mind or strengthen your position. Yeah, so I think the
You know, these are, you know, some of the techniques and into what I call stressful conversations. And I think the moral of the story there is that, you know, short-term pain generally yields long-term gain, right? So, you know, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, et cetera. There's a lot of, you know, maxims that get a lot in this concept. How to even pop content written about this.
Yes, I'm never sure if that was Nietzsche or Kelly Clarkson. Same same same pretty much. I'm curious. I mix them up all the time. What have you changed your mind on in having it doesn't have to be from these particular conversations, but I'm always fascinated with the humility that it takes
And you're very public with your opinions, very public on the podcast. Has there been something significant where you have changed your mind? And if so, what? No, I've never changed my mind. No, just kidding. Well, there's a few different things. I mean, there was this one particular situation where I remember I wrote an essay for the 4th of July.
And instead of calling it Independence Day, I called it Interdependence Day. And I think the metaphor was, you know, I use sort of the highway as a metaphor for like true equality and where our self-interest and the communal interests are one and the same thing. It's like, you know, you can't drive dangerously on the highway because you're not only risking someone else's life, you're risking your own life.
And in a way, I don't remember all of the nuances of this particular essay. But I kind of harkened back to our founding fathers and the principles that they had laid out in the Declaration of Independence and then, of course, sort of the messy history of our country to better align ourselves.
in our human condition with those high principles. And of course, the intention was, I think, good and admirable there. But there was a woman who took great offense, great offense to the phrase founding fathers. And she was an African-American woman, and she's like, they're not my fathers. Nor did they give me any independence.
And I'm like, yeah, but come on, I mean, I'm just using that phrase. Everybody knows what I mean. I'm trying to write an essay here about the fact that we're all in this together. She's like, yeah, but that phrase, you need to expire that phrase. Nobody should use that. And I'm like, yeah, come on, but you know what I mean. She's like, what you mean might not be what I hear.
I was like, okay, so I actually took that home for a moment, and I sat with it, and at first it seemed kind of petty to me. I was like, this is Jefferson and Madison and whatever.
But then I started to think about the fact that words do matter and words do get retired. They do expire.
And just because I meant something in a particular way doesn't mean that someone hears it in that same way. So it's like, I think of like, if we want to modernize this, like from the river to the sea, for example, some people don't mean that as the extermination of all Jews and like the, you know,
the end of Israel, but that's the way a lot of Jews hear it, you know, for example. So in this particular case, I was like, you know what? I'm ready to expire that phrase in my own lexicon.
and I'll use something else. I'll use framers, like our founding framers or whatever. I don't have to, if this reads as patriarchal, then okay. I can see that and I can hear that.
And, you know, I'm not saying I'll never use that phrase again if the literary context called for it. But in my mind, I kind of just expired it. I heard her, I recognized her point, and I was sort of willing to change. And I told her that.
Mm. Bravo. It was so interesting. And I don't know if you, if there was like an energetic weight on the way that you said founding fathers, but when you said it the first time, it jumped out at me in a different way. And I was like, Oh, it felt abrasive to me. And maybe it was just me psychically, like knowing what you were going to go with the story. But then I wrote in my notes, I wrote founding mothers. And I was like, where are the founding mothers?
And would we perhaps have more interdependence? And would we have perhaps more of that polarity and that middle way that you spoke about if we did have more of the feminine in the generation of the declaration of independence? And would perhaps more people have been given their independence if we had both a masculine and feminine viewpoint in the room where these laws were being?
made. I don't know the answer, but it's an interesting inquiry. Well, I mean, candidly, I think a lot of the concepts, the highest principles that were etched on these parchments in our Constitution were very feminine in nature, and that many of the
the most long-lasting components of liberal democracy were perpetuated and taught in the home by women. So if you actually read like the Constitution, it sounds, you know,
the language that is used like we the people in order to form a more perfect union, general welfare, common defense. It's using language that one might ascribe to being kind of more feminine about cooperation around community, around bringing people together.
And, you know, it's obviously like the application of all of that language didn't apply, you know, equitably. Same with the Bible. Like we've got a lot of really beautiful teachings in the Bible that are being used as weapons.
But I would say that some of the best ideas in our founding documents were ideas that one might kind of categorize as a yin in nature.
And I mean, you know, Lynn Twist, I remember, we talked about this, I think, when we spoke a couple of weeks ago, that she has this kind of a wonderful prophecy, right, of the great condor unfurling, its feminine wing, and this is kind of in the
I can't remember what she calls this generation, but it's essentially like, you know, a bird that has been flying in circles because it's only been flapping. It's one masculine wing. And so now we're kind of living in this moment, you know, where
where we were unfurl both wings and soar. And, you know, kind of bringing it back to balance and, you know, physiology, for example, it's like we live within a culture of growth, you know, and we sanctify that growth at every turn, whether that's kind of, you know, in our biceps or, like, in the bank accounts, industrial or whatever, in the bank accounts.
But we know that nature requires this balance between growth and repair and restoration. And that's why I think we need to focus on mechanisms of repair and restoration. And we can do that through a lot of these protocols, whether it's actually having conversations or not stuffing our face 24-7.
Okay, you're going to eat a meal. Now we need to digest the meal. You've avoided the conflict. Now we're going to have the conflict. It's like dancing in that polarity, the action and the rest, the intake and the, the digestion. It just, it makes so much sense. And I really appreciate the, the microscope with which you have looked at this and then the macro scope that you've really been studying it with such intricacy inside of your own physiology. And you've been studying it for so many years inside of these
spiritual philosophers and these spiritual texts, and to see the intersection of them. Because at the end of the day, there really is only one thing, and we really are it. And we just keep trying to complicate it and avoid it. But it's like, oh wait, as within so without, as above, so below. And it's really beautiful to hear.
the way that you articulate this with such a wealth of both intellectual knowledge and now lived experience inside of your own body. So I'm not sure that we ever landed, but if you had to name this episode, why isn't everyone doing this? What's the one thing, if you wish that everyone was doing, that you found it so good, what would you say? How would you answer that question? Why isn't everyone?
Don't seek out endless comfort and ease in convenience yourself. Because in the long term, that inconvenience is going to lead to a lot of resilience, a lot of longevity.
And in the end, I think we want to live with ease and we want to die with ease, but not the chubby, hubby, Netflix lie on the couch kind of ease. What we're looking for is a vibrancy of soul and a tranquility and a centeredness of mind.
that will let us, you know, enable us to live and die with ease. And, you know, in this day and age, what that often means is self-imposing some things that don't seem easy. And, you know, what I've found in my life is that doing harder things makes doing other harder things easier. And, you know, that's my, that's my MO.
Yeah, it feels like why isn't everyone doing hard things so we can live with these? Yeah, there you go. Thanks for that. You did it for me. And so I'm quite sure that people are going to want to soak in more of your wisdom. You are the host of an amazing podcast, which I've been a guest on twice now, I think. So where can people find you? I want to know if you want to share about the books more. I know that people will be curious about that as well. Yeah.
Thanks for the opportunity to speak with you and your community. So I pretend to run a concern called commune. I do run it, but it's really a team effort. And that website is 1commune.com, so that's ONE commune.com. And we have just the most wonderful teachers there, many of whom are very recognizable.
And I have a little imposter syndrome sitting up next to them. But I have my own course up there on stoicism. And then I'm launching this course called Good Stress. So you can go to onecoming.com slash good stress. And the book will come out not for another year.
you know, chop wood, carry water until then. And I do, I host the Commune Podcast where I get to embarrass myself publicly on a weekly basis. And if only out of vanity, I read a lot of books in preparation for those podcasts. I hope people continue into that.
You're such an amazing interviewer and truly your vocabulary. I feel smarter just listening to you. I think it's one of the sexiest qualities in a human is their vocabulary. You're one of the most eloquent verbose humans I've met.
So Jeff, thank you so much for your lifetime of dedication to finding your own truth, finding your own way, using yourself as a guinea pig, for highlighting and creating a platform for so many of these messages to reach a wider audience and for the introspection and honesty that you have with yourself. It's really, really beautiful.
So thank you for joining me and thank you to everyone for listening. I hope that you have enjoyed this podcast. I hope that it has inspired you to do some hard things that you can live a life of greater ease. I hope that it has inspired you to find that middle way within yourself. And if you've enjoyed it, then I would love for you to maybe take a screenshot. You can post it on Instagram. Jeff, are you on Instagram? If they tag you or should they tag you?
Just at Jeff Krasno. Yeah, at Jeff Krasno with a K, I'm at Ziva Meditation. And if you've enjoyed this media as medicine, the best thing you could do for us is to share it with your friends and your families. Anyone who you think might be slowly, I mean, don't tell them I said this, but like slowly killing themselves with ease. Maybe you could send them this episode with a little inspiration to take that cold shower or to do that high intensity interval training.
But we love you so much and we will see you next week on why isn't everyone doing this.
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