Written by Christopher Kelly
May 1, 2020
[0:00:00]
Tawnee: Okay. We are back with Christopher Kelly and Julian Abel, both no strangers to Endurance Planet. Chris, gosh, it's been years since we've had you on the show, so it's so good to have you back and see your face. I know our listeners can't see your face, but it's been a long time since I've seen you, so, welcome!
Christopher: Well, thank you so much. It's truly an honor to appear on the Endurance Planet Podcast and alongside Julian, who I have tremendous respect for, so thank you so much for the opportunity.
Tawnee: Yeah. Julian, it's good to have you back so soon already. There was just so much -- our podcast that we did was such a hit recently. People emailed in saying how refreshing it was to have something that was a little slightly different than what we normally do, and then within like, what was it, a week or two, maybe three at most, everybody's told to self-isolate and we'll talk about these terms today, but oh, the irony of it, right?
Julian: Well, I think that's right and I think it's great that Chris is on here as well because Chris has been interested in community and pushing and doing stuff to help people for so long, and I've definitely been listening to Nourish Balance Thrive for years. It's an honor for me to be here as well with you both.
Christopher: That's amazing.
Tawnee: Yeah, absolutely. Where I want to start today is a little exercise for all of us and for you guys listening, is a little bit on having our two experts today talk to us about some self introspection. We're now over a month into most of us being in some form of shelter in place due to COVID-19. Let's check in and see how everybody's doing on the inwards. Chris, I know this is something that you recently covered in a webinar that you did with your colleagues, Simon and Lesley, who we've had on the show before too. I'm blanking on their last names right now, so please remind me.
Christopher: Yes, Simon Marshall and Lesley Paterson over at Braveheart Coaching.
Tawnee: Right. You guys just spoke to this and especially with Simon and his expertise in psychology. I'm curious to hear what you guys talked about as far as how we can evaluate ourselves right now and see how we're doing and some tools maybe. Julian, you come also from the more Buddhist meditation side of things where diving inward is like second nature for all of us who are heavy into meditation. Chris, starting with you, what did you guys speak to on the webinar as far as experiencing anxiety throughout all this, and what tips and strategies that we can implement if we're still struggling with all the changes in our lives?
Christopher: Yeah. For people that don't know Simon and Les, Simon is a former Professor of Public Health at San Diego State University and a performance psychologist. He's been working with our clients at NBT for a few years now and I've seen firsthand what he can do. It's pretty spectacular. He's an expert in behavior change. He's an expert in helping people deal with unwanted thoughts and feelings and it's quite remarkable what he does. Most of it, you can get in "The Brave Athlete: Calm the F*ck Down and Rise to the Occasion", which is an excellent book I'd recommend to anyone listening.
Tawnee: Also, we've had a podcast specifically on him talking about the book, so we'll link to that in the show notes because I think that was --
Christopher: I do remember that now.
Tawnee: -- close to three years ago at this point, I think.
Christopher: Yeah. Wow. Yeah, so perhaps the key insight is that we're not wired for uncertainty like that. When you think about -- there's an infinite timeline that extends beyond the horizon and our brains are literally not wired to cope with that. So for all the athletes listening, you know the FTP test. If I say to you I want you to go as hard as you can for 20 minutes, you can do that. It might be a little bit anxiety-inducing, but for the most part, you can do that. If I say to you I want you to go as hard as you can and I'm not going to tell you when to stop, that is literally torture. People have weaponized that type of uncertainty. To put it a different way for someone that's never done an FTP test, imagine you were stranded on a desert island and I was to give you two weeks worth of food and then I say to you in two weeks time, I'm going to be back with the same amount food, you'd be able to cope with that no problem. If I give you two weeks worth of food and I say I'm not going to tell you when I'm going to be back, that's torture.
That's the situation that we're dealing with right now, is this uncertainty. And together with some degree of loneliness -- and I think Julian would probably like to make this distinction as well -- not social isolation. Social isolation is the total absence of connection, probably not what you're dealing with right now, but together with loneliness -- that's solitary confinement, right? I guess that is social isolation, but the combination of uncertainty and loneliness has been weaponized, so it's literally torture for everyone. It's really not surprising that people are not handling this very well and that Simon is currently very busy.
Tawnee: Why is it that some people seem to be more prone to the anxiety-inducing aspects of this where some people tend to be a little bit more able to see the bigger picture, reel themselves in, and not go down the rabbit hole so much?
Christopher: Yeah, I think there are some existing tendencies and I'm not sure I have all the answers, and I'm not sure that Simon does either.
[0:05:00]
Certainly, we know that people that would maybe describe themselves as trait anxiety or perhaps you have a pessimistic bias -- Simon talked about that in himself that he tends to have a pessimistic bias and a tendency towards catastrophizing and awfulizing like if every cloud has got a silver lining, it's got mercury in it. If you're one of those people, you're probably not doing very well right now.
Tawnee: Gotcha. Julian, talk to me a little bit -- because I feel like this has just been an opportunity for us to actually maybe even explore some sides of ourselves through this time to slow down our lives and maybe get into more of a meditative state. It's maybe difficult for some people, but also an opportunity. In this time of quarantine that we've been faced with, from a perspective of somebody who wants to meditate and be more connected with themselves in that way, what is the best way to go about checking in with yourself and figuring out how you're doing right now and assessing your anxiety levels if they're present or stresses and worries in dealing with that kind of stuff?
Julian: I think the first thing to say is that by physically isolating ourselves, we're doing good. Actually, if we're not going out and we're not meeting people, even though we're hardwired to do the opposite of that, you have to remember that you're doing it obviously because you don't want to get ill yourself, but you don't want to spread the infection, so just understanding that everyone is participating by sticking to the physical distancing. Somehow, it's about connecting with your compassionate motivation and finding different ways of doing that, and I'm sure we're going to talk more about that. Having done that then you have an opportunity to see what's going on inside yourself. Because we're somehow more isolated and more akin perhaps to a retreat environment then what goes on in your mind becomes even more apparent and that can be worrying for people.
I think that as a general first aid, it's good to do some meditation which calms your mind because then at least you have a bit of distance, a bit of space. One of the things in particular is calm-abiding meditation such as mindfulness of the breathing. One of the things that that does is it calms your emotions down. Merely participating in the meditation means that your mind becomes slightly calmer which means that the things that do arise in your mind are slightly less intense and a little easier to cope with, but there are other things as well. If you can go for a walk, even spending a few minutes outside, if you can manage that, or looking out the window and somehow connecting with nature and that kind of stuff, that all helps to make your mind a little bit calmer. I don't know what it's like in the US, but in the UK, actually there's a recommendation that we go out and exercise every day, and so being outside, actually we know the impact of it. I know that you've both talked about this in the past particularly for athletes, go outside and go running or swimming in open seas or whatever it is. Just being in contact with nature like that has an impact on calming the mind. I would say on the one hand that some kind of calm abiding is helpful just to calm your minds down a bit, and the other is to use your faculty of awareness to really see what's going on in your mind. Have a look inside and check it out and see whether it's healthy or not, and then you've got a chance to do something about it.
Tawnee: It's funny. As you're saying that, I think of so many people who are now forced into working from home and whether or not that buys them more time in their life because a lot of people have kids and other things going on too, but I can imagine that a lot of people are now faced with their own thoughts a little bit more aggressively whereas maybe in their previous routine, they were more easily distracted through commutes or whatever it may be, or co-workers in the office and not even thinking about what was actually going on in their minds. Now that we're here alone with our thoughts, so to speak, it could be overwhelming for somebody who doesn't really have any training in mindfulness or meditation to all of a sudden be faced with all these thoughts especially in the context of it being a pandemic right now, anxiety producing fears and all that kind of stuff that that can bring, right?
Julian: I think that's exactly right. Somehow being aware of that and then taking steps to mitigate it is really important because it can be very tense.
[0:10:00]
I think that from a public health perspective, because the downsides of lockdown are deeply profound and so many anxieties and worries are going to be made worse, people worried about their income, in confined space, maybe in a small flat with children and can you even buy nappies for the kids or feed them, there's so much stuff to worry about. The other unique thing that we have to acknowledge is that nobody knows when they might die. Anyone could die within two weeks. You could get the infection and die, and although your chances are less if you're younger, you're not safe from it. Facing of your mortality is all part and parcel of people's mental experience of what's going on with the Coronavirus. There's plenty to be worried about, which is why it's even more important to think about the steps that you can make to really try and improve your mental health.
Tawnee: Chris, you've been working from home for a long time just like me and you're also a small business owner, so no doubt, you've been faced with all this stuff well before Coronavirus ever set in. What are some things that you've learned in your history of giving up the job that you had, starting Nourish Balance Thrive, working from home alongside your family, two kids, working alongside your wife too as part of the business? This is something that's your territory quite frankly, so what are some tools that you use and are using extra potentially right now?
Christopher: I'm kind of lucky in that we were perfectly set up for the apocalypse.
Tawnee: John and I are kind of in the same boat too. I've been working from home for ten years now, so I get it in that sense.
Christopher: Yeah, and even more so, I identify with stoicism, minimalism, tribalism, living in the mountains and being somewhat self-sufficient and unschooling. We were already into all that, so yeah, I'm very lucky in that there were no changes. I also think I'm very lucky as an athlete because I think athletes understand this deficit model of happiness and the juxtaposition of feelings. You can't have a perpetual state of happiness. You must feel some adversity in order to feel the happiness. The athlete knows this. When you're going really hard on your bike or running or swimming or whatever it is that you do, it really only feels good once you stop. If you never started, it's really hard to feel good and you're never going to do it all the time, right?
Tawnee: Interesting.
Christopher: This was something that Simon thought was important to bring up, is this deficit model of happiness and that we're literally getting stronger right now. I know you can't see the end, but this too shall pass and then you're going to come out of this so much stronger than you otherwise would. You think that with all emotions, what is comfort? Well, comfort is really only something you feel juxtaposed to discomfort. You have to feel a little bit uncomfortable to feel comfort afterwards. I think all of that is important, but yes, sure, working from home, that's something I feel like I'm still figuring out. It's really hard when you've got a six-year-old and a two-year-old running around in the house. What the heck? How do you get any work done? It is challenging. My best advice is noise-cancelling headphones.
Tawnee: Or just any kind of headphones.
Christopher: Yeah, and stimulus control. I feel like stimulus control is my thing at the moment. I think about stimulus control all the time. This was first brought to my attention perhaps by Cal Newport. I interviewed him about digital minimalism, which again might be relevant right now, but his book "Deep Work" I think talked about stimulus control and the importance of having a sanctuary in which you do deep work. Then later on, clinical psychologist Ashley Mason talked about stimulus control with respect to sleep. So many people that we work with, they have bedrooms and they've got all this stuff going on there. You basically got a studio apartment inside your bedroom. You've got a TV, you've got the kitchen, you've got a bath, all this stuff in the bedroom. So I think a lot about stimulus control like I'm in this environment. What's happening right now? At the moment, my wife, believe it or not, is sleeping in a tent outside with our two-year-old boy because nothing else can happen in the tent. Once you go in the tent, this is what's happening. Sleep is happening now, nothing else, not eating. Stimulus control, I think, is also important to think about.
Tawnee: You know what's funny? I was just doing a little research this morning on neurotransmitters as I was reviewing a Dutch test, and speaking to that, something that was interesting to me was people who show elevated levels of dopamine and norepinephrine and epinephrine that can be metabolized that we see on the Dutch test, going through a list of things that you might want to be cautious of like something as simple as having background music on, independent of what the actual music is, but background music could actually be overly stimulating. For some people who are already in a neurotransmitter imbalance, that could just set them over the edge and something that you might want to consider eliminating, so little things like that.
Christopher: Yeah, absolutely.
[0:15:00]
The other thing I said earlier on -- this again came out of Simon's webinar. Actually, there's a more in-depth coverage of this discussion on Simon and Lesley's new podcast on XTERRA. They've launched a new podcast recently.
Tawnee: Oh, cool! We'll definitely link to it then.
Christopher: Yeah. It's super good. I think everyone listening to this will enjoy that. So the question becomes how do you create certainty in an uncertain world, and the answer is habits. You've got to think about the trigger, the routine, and the reward. In the early days, Simon was recommending "Willpower" by Roy Baumeister. Roy Baumeister was the pioneer on self-control and his book "Willpower" is very good. Since then, he's been recommending "Atomic Habits" by James Clear. It's really habits and routine. How do you create certainty in an uncertain world? Well, through habits and routine. I think those are -- certainly, "Atomic Habits" by James Clear is an important book.
Tawnee: Julian, there's something else that you brought up in the pre-chat conversations that we had that I want to touch on right now. I feel like we're kind of there, but you said in one of our email exchanges that we've become distracted from what is important through the stimulation of our desires and our compulsion with external sources of happiness through acquisition, and instead, what we have right now is an opportunity to focus on what is important. I just thought that was a truth bomb that's like, dang, we should all sit on those couple of sentences for a few minutes. I'd love to hear you elaborate on that a little bit.
Julian: Well, you have to stop me because then I could just go on forever about this topic.
Tawnee: I'm watching the clock. We have a big agenda.
Julian: The first thing is, and we talked about this last time, which is to say that we are evolved to be compassionate beings. We evolve to be social beings. It's not just a nice thing to have. It's actually fundamental to our survival as a human species and it's not just in our mind. It's in our physiology, our biochemistry, and everything else that we care to look. I think that what's happened is that recognition of the value of compassion of our social nature has actually been downgraded and there's not necessarily a point at which we go, "Oh yeah, it all changed at this moment" but I wanted to read you something about -- there's a book called "Propaganda" that was published in 1928 which was around the time of the Great Depression. Somebody called Edward Bernays, who was a nephew of Freud, came up with the following thing in his book "Propaganda". He said, "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed. Our minds are molded. Our taste forms. Our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of. A single factory potentially capable of supplying a whole continent with its particular product cannot afford to wait until the public asks for its product. It must maintain constant touch through the advertising and propaganda with the vast public in order to assure itself a continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable."
I think that the point about that rather lengthy quote is to say look, go back to 1928 and that was the beginning of the deliberate selling of stuff we don't need. That's the beginning of the marketing industry and it's been a continuous theme since then that happiness comes through acquisition. I think it has led us into a very, very strange place and particularly thinking about -- I know Chris is really interested in ancestral health and thinking about hunter-gatherers, about their lives and how it wasn't full of acquisitions, and yet people lived to a ripe old age and that it's the simple things of life, about how we relate to each other as human beings. It absolutely takes us back to the thing that I mentioned about Robert Waldinger in his talk about happiness. Just to remind you that the study, the Harvard great study which began in 1938, looked at the lives of men every couple of years and they measured everything. They looked at men who were in Harvard and they looked at people, poor men who came from the town, and the unifying feature in this incredible study is that the quality of relationships determines our health and well-being, our happiness, how long we live.
[0:19:58]
I think there's something about shifting our focus away from the external possessions, thinking that we gain happiness through acquisition, and refocusing and saying not only do we regain happiness, but we regain health and longevity as well by focusing on our compassionate nature and our relationships. I think that we were talking about our mental state right at the beginning. I would say the first step for that is to really determine that being a compassionate, kind person is the way to physical and mental health and happiness and longevity. In this time where we are locked down, it's an opportunity to delve deeply into this and come to a firm conclusion that if we want to be happy and healthy then actually not going for external possessions, but seeing that our relationships are our source of wealth. If we do that, we can then figure out about how we maintain our relationships in the context of physical distancing.
I would say that the phrase that has been banded around up until now has been social isolation and I think that's totally the wrong phrase. Actually, what we're doing is physical distancing, but we don't want to socially isolate. If we really deeply understand the importance of our compassionate nature and our social relationships then we can start to figure out the ways in which we are able to maintain those relationships whilst maintaining physical distancing. We can use our imaginations and the way that people are doing this all over the world is phenomenal. It's absolutely amazing.
Tawnee: It has been really interesting and thank God we live in the era that we do, that we can connect so easily virtually and have those opportunities which have not been there for us in the past decades, so that has been a silver lining in all of this, even just the simple things like being able to see your faces right now. Julian, I was planning on visiting the UK this summer and it doesn't look like that's going to happen, but at least I get to see you right now here.
Julian: Exactly.
Christopher: Tawnee, could I generalize on something Julian said there?
Tawnee: I would love to, yeah.
Christopher: Simon's brought this up many times before as well, this acquisition of external resources. For all the athletes listening, is that external resource your race results? Is that the only reason you train, is so that you can get on the podium?
Tawnee: I know. It's such an interesting question.
Christopher: Because if it is, you're probably going to be unhappy. You're probably going to be hurting right now whereas if you're more committed to the process of getting better, if you ride your bike or you run or you swim just purely for the joy of it then you're probably not going to give a stuff about the fact that your race has been canceled. The race is just the icing on the cake whereas really it was the process of getting better that you're in love with. If you're hurting because your race has been canceled then you've probably got some introspection to do.
Tawnee: I love that so much and it's something that I think we, as all athletes, really need to ask ourselves. What was our reaction? How has that reaction evolved over the past several weeks? How has our exercise/training/workout regimen, whatever it is at this point, evolved as well in the context of external validation, external sources, all these kinds of things that we're discussing right now? I think especially for the Endurance Planet audience, this is such key, key points. I love it so much.
Julian: We've spoken about this in the past, Tawnee. We judge others by who they are as human beings, but we judge ourselves by what we do. There's a great disconnect on that. There's something about spending time thinking about the people you know and love and thinking about why do you love these people, why are they important to you, and it's not because they run faster than someone else or it's not because they've got bulging biceps. It's because they're a great person. Actually, it's that whole thing about trust in relationships. If you can think about that then you say, "Well, okay, those are the positive qualities. Why don't I work on building those things rather than thinking about if I run that little bit faster, everyone else is going to love me a bit more." It just doesn't work like that.
Christopher: That's a very narcissistic view of the world. It's super important for parenting as well. If you love your kids for what they've achieved rather than who they are, you want to avoid that at all costs. That's trauma.
Tawnee: Brad Kearns actually had a really good podcast on that, Chris. Did you listen to it? He just went off a little on tangent on parenting and was basically speaking to just that.
Christopher: Oh, he's super good on that, yeah.
Tawnee: John and I went and relistened to it again because I'm taking notes. I'm in this position. What was one of the things that he mentioned? Oh, I can't think of it right now, so I'm not going to waste time on it, but it was a really good show. I'll link to that as well in the show notes for you guys to listen to.
[0:25:02]
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense, praising them for who they are rather than their accomplishments and stuff. One of the things is if they draw a shitty picture of something, don't necessarily tell them that it's the next million dollar painting and it's going to be hung in museums. It's okay, right?
Christopher: There's a really famous old book called "The Drama of the Gifted Child" and there's another really good book I've read recently called "Will I Ever Be Good Enough?" by McBride. She paints this Miss Mary Marvel character who's frenetically making all these incredible achievements in the hope that eventually her mother will love her. Of course, you'll never be good enough and sometimes it can be a gift. This person goes on to achieve great things, but they're truly miserable in the process.
Tawnee: Yeah, absolutely.
Julian: I'm sure we can look around our world and see people who are simply tortured throughout their whole lives because either they were deprived the love in their early childhood or love was so conditional. "If you do this, I will love you, and if you don't, I won't." Actually, in the Harvard study, it's interesting. The young men, they wanted to achieve so much, but when they talked to those young men by the time they got to be grandparents, it was all about relationships. We can learn from each other and we can go, "I'll tell you what. I just love my kids for who they are. Give them a big hug and a kiss. It doesn't matter what they achieve. I just love them." That's how your kids grow up healthy.
Christopher: Right.
Tawnee: You know what's hard in all this though, tying even to just how we're all staying connected right now during these times -- and Julian, something you and I touched on a little bit last time was the idea of social media. Sure, right now, it's a blessing that we have this ability to connect and be with each other in that way, but it's also this double-edged sword because it's also the place where people get to paint the perfect picture of their ideal life. You see somebody who gets more likes because they're a faster athlete on Instagram or something like that. It has the potential to make us feel more poorly about ourselves if we're not careful, so how do we manage that especially in this time when we're in quarantine and probably seeking out more social media for some of us? I don't know. You guys can speak to that a little bit too, but getting in that trap then of actually feeling worse about ourselves or more depressed if we're not like the person that we follow.
Julian: I think it goes back to what we were saying about why do we appreciate the people around us, the people we know and love, seeing that as being important and then saying, "Okay, I can be a good person like that" and sharing that love and that kindness, and making sure that if you're connecting with people through social media that you're doing it with that motivation in your heart because that's the thing that makes relationships work. You think about people putting -- if somebody says, "Look at me. I've just come first in this race" and they get lots of likes on social media, you can see that in a way that the people who are putting the likes are being kind to that person and that's a bit that's important. That doesn't mean that coming first is important just because there are other people being nice about it. It's just being really mindful of your motivation about why are you doing this. As we were saying before, Tawnee, about the trolls and how unhappy they are, oh my God, be careful about what you put out there because it might manifest your anger, your sadness, all of that kind of stuff. That's not how you stay healthy for longer.
Tawnee: So we're in this quarantine state, most of us at this point. It looks like by the time this podcast comes out, we might start seeing signs of certain things starting to reopen here and there, but this is something that we're in. Unfortunately, we don't necessarily have the finish line for it, as you're speaking to, Chris, but you guys have some really interesting ideas, differing yet very convergent that you both share on just us as social beings, these different concepts of tribalism. I feel like in the conversations that we've had leading up to this podcast, you both agree that taking away our connectedness as humans and taking this away from each other has consequences because it's really not the natural way that we function. We could look into history at this, so whether it's Julian, your compassionate communities, or Chris, you're going to talk to us more about things like co-housing, just the simple idea of connections with our friends, families, neighbors, the bottom line is that we need this interaction and closeness.
So what are we to do right now? Speaking more to even just the physical closeness like you, Julian, you've mentioned how it doesn't have to be complete self-isolation. We can still stay connected virtually and whatnot, but eventually, there will be that need for physical connection again and I want to hear you guys talk a little bit about why as humans, this is such an important thing for our species.
[0:30:11]
Julian: Chris, I'm going to leave this one to you to start.
Tawnee: I know that you want to.
Christopher: I would like to -- Julian's a doctor and I'm just a douche bag with a podcast, so maybe I should ask Julian. I don't like this word "quarantine". I don't think it's appropriate. I don't think it's accurate. Also, physical distancing, I'm not that keen on that idea. I think really what we have now is a cordon sanitaire. You can look that up on Wikipedia and learn about the history of the cordon sanitaire. In essence, it's the restriction of movement. That's what we don't want. You could have a million people living in close proximity and they'll be fine as long as nobody from a food market in Wuhan turns up and starts kissing people. That's what you're trying to restrict. It's the restriction of movement. What do you think about that, Julian?
Julian: From a medical perspective, actually, if everyone stayed two meters apart and were really careful about cleanliness, if everyone did that perfectly, the virus would disappear because the virus needs a route of transmission. What we're fighting against is our nature, and our nature is to connect. So there's a question about how much can we do that and still be in keeping with our nature because it's so fundamentally important to us, our health, our happiness. Now, I'm sure we're going to come on to this, but there's a bit about the aftermath. How are we going to deal with what will be for many the psychological trauma of what we're going through now because there are many people having a really miserable time.
Some of us, we're very, very lucky in the environment in which we're in that we can go outside and we've got our family around us. Even this thing about we're talking to each other, even without the COVID-19, when we talk to each other -- I love these conversations. Tawnee and I, we've been friends for years and we never met face-to-face, but we still have a nice friendship. I'm very happy to meet Chris like this, so these are all really good things, but the role of community, the role of our social connectedness is just absolutely deeply ingrained inside of us and we now have to figure out immediately what we can do to respect that and then what that means afterwards. How are we going to connect with each other afterwards? For sure, this pandemic is likely to be one of many because of the nature of the direction we're going in the world, so we have to figure this out.
Tawnee: Chris, when you say "movement" in the phrase that you used, are you talking about more like global rather than just like I'm doing a walk around the block in my neighborhood?
Christopher: Yeah. I'd recommend people go look up the Wikipedia page on cordon sanitaire because it's just a restriction of movement. You tell people to stay where you are, don't go to market and come back and infect everyone. It's a restriction of movement. You can still be close to the people that you're living with right now. Just don't go over there and interact with these people that you don't normally interact with and then come back and bring whatever it is back home to your tribe.
Tawnee: To Julian's point then, in theory, that could work. However --
Christopher: No one's going to do it.
Tawnee: Yeah. The practicality of it is zero especially because we need to go to market. We can only have maybe so much delivered to our doorstep at this point. I know John and I even had the discussion where it's like we could get grocery deliveries, but let's save that for people who probably are more high risk and can't leave their houses right now and could really benefit from that, so we will make John go to the store with his mask on and all that kind of stuff. Do you know what I mean? There are things that we have to do in order to live and that in essence then takes away that perfect ability to restrict movement and then also just being social beings.
Chris, you've actually been speaking to a lot more anthropological studies and anthropologists. You're just interested in human nature and looking back to more tribalism and even the way that you want to reformulate your lives as the way that your family is living right now. I'm so curious to hear your thoughts on that and even how it ties into the pandemic and just what things that are on your mind in that sense.
Christopher: Right. I first became aware of the loneliness problem -- I'm really new compared to Julian. Julian has been looking at this stuff for decades, I'm sure -- around 2016. I read John T. Cacioppo's book, which is very, very good. He's I think of one of the preeminent researchers in the field, sadly now deceased. It's a very, very good book.
[0:35:02]
We have data at NBT. We have this subjective life assessment questionnaire and tens of thousands of people have done it, nearly 13,000 people now, I think, and consistently, we see this problem of loneliness. People don't often report being part of a group of friends or they're dissatisfied with their level of social connection, which is indeed loneliness, and so I've been interested in the problem.
How the hell do we solve this for our clients? The way that I've always operated is I try and understand the underlying root cause of the problem like how is this system supposed to work. I'm an engineer and we have this old saying that if you want to fix a TV, you first have to understand how it works. That's been the way that I've tackled the problem, is to go back and understand how the system is supposed to work and then understand where it went wrong. That really came to focus only about a year ago. I did a podcast with a fantastic woman, Stephanie Welch. She describes herself as a disruptive anthropologist, which I love that term. Somewhere in this -- it was not even an interview on co-housing or any of that stuff -- she used this term "nuclear family unit". I said, "What the hell is a nuclear family?" I honestly didn't know at that time. She described it to me with two adults at the middle like the nucleus and then you've got the dependents that orbit like charged particles and there's a white picket fence around the whole thing. It's like a cell membrane. That's the way that we do things now.
When you look at the history of this, there's a really nice David Brooks piece in The Atlantic where he talks about the history of the nuclear family. It's really new. Even Julian can remember probably before the nuclear family. It's something that came along maybe in the '50s or '60s and it never really worked. And if it did ever work, it only worked for a very brief moment when it was possible for one person to go off to work and the other person to stay home and look after the kids. I think it was a terrible, terrible mistake. It reminds me of the story of butter. Everybody used to eat butter and then some food scientists came along and used the cosmetic and superficial components of science to tell us that butter was actually bad for our health and that you should start eating this low fat margarine and we all fell for it. I fell for it. My dad still got that crap in his fridge today.
Tawnee: Oh no.
Christopher: It drives me bonkers!
Tawnee: You need to do something about that.
Christopher: "It doesn't even taste good, Dad! What are you doing?"
Tawnee: No! I need to send him some letters, anonymous letters, "Get rid of the margarine."
Christopher: I'll give you his address so you could send him. What I'm saying is that the nuclear family is like margarine. It doesn't work. It doesn't taste good. I'm suggesting that we all go back to eating butter, which is more of a tribal-based way of living. I think people from a long time ago -- this is not new. It's not like I came up with this idea. I'm just suggesting going back. What we go back to, I'm not exactly sure, but we've been thinking a lot about intentional community and the word "co-housing" comes up a lot. Actually, they're on the way as I speak. I have another family, a previous podcast guest back in 2016. I did an interview with Megan Sanctuary and she talked about her PhD work investing the human milk microbiota. Very briefly, there are these long-chain carbohydrates called oligosaccharides that are in human milk and they're purely for the purpose of prebiotics, so they don't nourish the infant directly. They're there for the microbiota. It's a fascinating story. Anyway, we did a podcast on that.
Two years later -- no, it's four years later, I did a podcast with Judy on co-housing where we talked about some of this anthropological stuff that I've been studying recently and the need for tribal living. She heard the podcast and she reached out. Yes, finally, someone that I met at the Ancestral Health Symposium reached out. They came and they lived with us for a week with their two-year-old twins. Megan is married. Her husband is Eric and they have two-year-old twins, which really brings the problems into focus. Imagine whatever you know about living with a two-year-old. Imagine two of them at the same time. It's kind of crazy. They are currently on their way. They did live in Chicago. They moved out of the house. They bought a 40-foot trailer and they're going to come and park it on our property and we're going to live together as one family. It's only temporary, so the idea is that this is just going to be a base camp and we're going to try and find some other families that also share our values of ancestral health, and then hopefully, we can find a new home that's better suited to accommodating all of us.
That's why I think this distinction of cordon sanitaire is important because if we are already living together, effectively, I am breaking the cordon sanitaire. This is something that we planned before the lockdown and hopefully it's just a one-time risk and then that'll be the end of it, but if we were all living together in our tribal unit, however many people that was, when the lockdown comes in place, we don't really care. We have our little isolated unit. Sure, it's like a membrane like the nuclear family, but there are a lot more adults in the nucleus, so I think we'd be in much better shape than anybody that's currently living in a nuclear family.
[0:40:07]
Tawnee: It's so interesting. I can't say that I necessarily agree, but I am super fascinated. I have to say on one level, having done the van travels that we have, one of the things that we've done is find friends across the country and stay at their house for a week, fully get there and be like, "All right. Where's the washing machine?" and just make ourselves at home. Let's borrow your fridge and do all the things together as if we're co-housing like you're speaking to. We have very short-term experience, a week, two weeks at most maybe. I can't say that it's personally a way I'd want to live and I don't know if that's the way society --
Christopher: Why is that?
Tawnee: Because I'm so particular. I am also a little bit -- I need to shut off and not be so turned on as far as constant communication or interaction. Sometimes I just want things to be at a low level. You know how it is with your spouse sometimes like you're together, but you don't necessarily need to be holding a conversation the whole time. Maybe that's how things evolve in a co-housing situation where it's not like you have guests over and you're entertaining them.
Christopher: Oh, yes. That's a big difference.
Tawnee: That would just be exhausting, right?
Christopher: Yeah.
Tawnee: So maybe it does kind of evolve into more of this chill environment.
Christopher: Right. You raise a very important point that came up in my interview with Cal Newport. The problem is not just loneliness. It's also of solitude deficiency. Cal introduced this term "solitude deficiency" and what he meant by that was this constant notification hell like lock screen notification hell and the white earbuds. Nobody has a moment to themselves with their own thoughts. They don't have the time or the space to process their own thoughts. I think that's part of it, is turning off the notifications, getting off social media for 30 days, all this stuff. Give yourself time to maybe not take your phone to the toilet, for example. I'm sure, Tawnee, you know this. You can't even take a pee without your kid bothering you.
I think there's a paradox here with co-housing. Initially, it sounds like I'm bringing you closer together and you're going to have less time to process your thoughts, but I think eventually, it will be found out that you have more time because now, you can just go for a run, go for a walk, go meditate for two hours, and I can look after your kids and it makes zero difference to me. I've already got four kids. What difference is another one going to make? None at all. They're all going to have a really good time.
Tawnee: To Julian's point earlier, during this time, we're looking to find ways to maximize our mindfulness and not be overly connected and stimulated by so many external sources whether it's notifications on our phone or scrolling social media. I see your point there. Yeah, I don't know. It's definitely a fascinating idea and I also don't know if I agree that the nuclear family failed because it just seems like -- maybe it's failed in other ways, although it still seems to be what societies worldwide for the most part are doing, so how has it failed in that sense?
Christopher: Just look at the rate of divorce. How many marriages end in divorce? The official answer is about half, but that's somewhat biased by the fact that most people, they get divorced more than once. If you're going to get divorced once, you'll probably get divorced again. What we really have is a serial monogamy with adultery and then divorce and it makes people miserable, then you look at the rates of postpartum depression. Why is that? That was the beginning of the investigation. I started reading really important books like Sarah Hrdy's "Mothers and Others" and what you'll learn from her book is that humans are unique amongst the great apes in that they can reproduce more rapidly than an orangutan. An orangutan has a baby about every eight years, and during that eight-year period, the infant is completely dependent on mom, hangs on to mom all the time. That's easier to do when you've got fur whereas humans, they have this neat trick. They can reproduce every four years, and even that sounds long compared to what some people are thinking right now listening to me. You're botching them out once every year.
The reason humans can do that is because they have this neat trick, which is to recruit alloparents. An alloparent is just somebody who contributes to child rearing, but doesn't necessarily share DNA with the offspring. Quite often, it's an older sibling. It could be somebody else in your tribe. This is super duper important. This social support is what allows humans to breed so rapidly. The thing that's unique amongst humans, amongst the great apes, is that if you don't have this social support then you may abandon your child. This is maternal ambivalence. There are all these women that think there's something wrong with them because they're ambivalent about their mothering. Actually, no, this is the important part of being human. The problem is you don't have enough social support. There's no one there to look after the kids when you go to take a shit. That's the problem. That's what I think. To understand how the system is supposed to work I think is really important before you get to the remediation part.
Tawnee: Isn't it in Asian cultures where I think the mother doesn't do anything for 40 days or something like that and everybody just cooks and takes care of her after the baby is born?
[0:45:09]
Christopher: Yeah, and then shared breastfeeding. Imagine it. You've just been through this, Tawnee. Imagine if somebody else --
Tawnee: Oh, I'm still breastfeeding. Court has no desire to slow down.
Christopher: Of course, but what I'm saying is in those early days, imagine if someone could breastfeed your infant while you take a nap. Can you imagine that, how amazing that would be? Yet that is not what happens ever in Western societies.
Julian: What Chris has pointed out is that our nature is to be social and it's more than just a nice living arrangement. It's deeply embedded in us, in our microbiota, like you were saying, our physiology, our biochemistry, everything. Once you have that recognition then you can think about different solutions. The solution that Chris is talking about, that's not going to capture everyone's imagination, but if you recognize the importance of that kind of social connectedness then you can think about different ways in which you're able to achieve it. For example, the way that we solve that problem with our kids, we brought our kids up in a small village in Somerset. It's rural England and a lovely place. As it turned out, there were quite a few people at the same time who had kids of a similar age. We found solutions, some of which involved money and some didn't, about childcare. Because both Caroline did our own stuff, we worked, so we wanted to find ways in which the childrearing could be shared out. There was one person in particular. She wanted to earn a bit of money and then it was like, okay, it's just a little nursery and everyone's friends and it's a great social arrangement. In that village, when the kids run around the village, everyone knew who everyone else was. So in that sense, that social connectedness is maintained by the physical environment in which we lived.
Then if you think about how might you achieve that in the city then you think about your circles of friends. It's interesting. When you look at things like the classes, your prenatal classes that you go to to learn about it, part of the benefit of that is that you develop a cohort of friends. You stay in touch after the birth and then you meet each other for coffee and then you start figuring out how you build these relationships. You can share the kids at different times so everyone gets a break and everyone gets a chance to socialize, and on and on it goes. One of the very joyful places for us was when our kids started doing sports. You would go and watch your kids do sports and you chat to other parents. You end up sharing lifts and then you make friendships and on and on and on it goes because it's just totally a natural part of life.
Tawnee: I guess you have to just -- it comes back to this idea of awareness. Chris, you're going from the bottom up, inviting people into your living space to achieve this. Julian, it sounds like you're saying it doesn't necessarily have to be at that level of intimacy if that doesn't jive with you. Even in a city environment, as long as you're cognizant of this need to connect and have your tribe, your people, you can still achieve that. It's funny. As you were talking, Julian, actually, the way you described Somerset reminded me of the studies that we talked about on the last podcast that looked at those who are living the longest in these tiny little Italian villages that they were just so intertwined with each other. The community was so close and tight-knit and yes, they weren't necessarily co-housing, but it was practically like they saw their neighbors and interacted with their neighbors and people at the market, whoever, every single day. So whether it's living together or finding that close-knit idea of community, that seems to be the central theme that we're looking at here.
In context to the pandemic though, again, this is what's being taken away from us unless you go to a degree that Chris is going to by saying, "Hey, look. We've all been in this position for a while. Let's just bring it together." I actually have some friends who they've decided to -- and Chris, I think this is one of the questions that you had. Can you shelter in place with your neighbors? I had some friends who decided to make a pact with their best friends and say, "Okay. We're going to be away from everybody for two weeks and then we can hang out together with each other." They didn't live together, but they were neighbors, so they just saw each other exclusively. It's like an exclusive relationship or something. I don't know. Weird stuff is happening. What are some loopholes to how we can still stay connected?
[0:50:03]
Even putting aside the virtual way, are there things we should be doing right now, Julian, to still have this level of human connectedness or should we just wait for it when it returns?
Julian: I think this was the main reason for getting in contact and thinking about following up on the podcast that we had because I think people have got the mistaken belief that what we should be doing is not developing our social relationships, and that's not the case at all. I'm going to direct you towards the Public Health Palliative Care International website, PHPCI, because we wrote something about how you develop compassionate neighborhoods. It's www.phpci.info and then follow the link for COVID-19 resources. When you think about how you do that even in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic then you can see that the people around you are full of rich resources. The skills in any community of the people you know are enormous. Then you can think about, okay, look, if people bring friendship, bring love, bring physical skills then maybe they know how to cook, which is really important to somebody who doesn't know how to cook. Maybe they know where to go shopping. You think about somebody who may be very chatty and is happy to do phone calls. Then you can think about okay, let's just list it on a spreadsheet, people's phone numbers, and then you can develop your local communication network. It might be over the garden fence. It might be through a window. Actually, you can still talk to people through a window and maintain a safe distance, or it might be electronic communication, whichever way works for you. Then you can start paying attention to the people around you, and in particular -- I think this is especially true of cities. It's not quite so true of small villages and towns and stuff, but who are your neighbors? Are they isolating? What help do they need? Then you can think about -- that whole thing about we were taught never to invade people's privacy, don't look over the garden fence, for goodness sake, look over the garden fence and ask people how they are.
Christopher: I think it's really important to point out this is not the way that humans are supposed to be. I just interviewed an anthropologist, Kristen Hawkes, and she talked about her time investigating the Achi Indians and she talked about how where they live, it actually gets quite cold overnight. It can get down to zero, and so they sleep around the fire in a big pile of humans. I thought, yeah, that's great. It's very different. I talked to my father-in-law about this co-housing stuff and he said to me, "The best neighbor is a six-foot fence" and I started cracking up. It's a totally different way of thinking.
Tawnee: Even travel around the US like we have and you see how that changes and evolves. Over here in Southern California, hell yeah, you better believe there are fences everywhere and the taller, the better, but the more you get into more rural areas in the south, for example, fences disappear. There is a bit more of that community sense among neighbors.
Christopher: I think you're onto something important there. What you're noticing is the difference in affluence. This is what we tend to do with our money, is we --
Tawnee: Build a higher fence.
Christopher: Yeah, we build a higher fence and we put more space in between us, and rather than riding the bus, we buy a nice car. Rather than rearing our children ourselves, we pay someone else to do it. We create space with the money that we earn.
Tawnee: Julian, what you're saying then is actually -- I think one of the things that I've started to conclude, and I want you to maybe elaborate on this a little bit, instead of thinking -- going back to this original idea when we're talking about how are you doing, how are you doing with all this, we talk about anxiety or whatever, money, financial problems. All these things we're talking about are fine, be self-introspective, check in with yourself. However, there's been so much focus on how is this affecting me. What are the problems, the new problems, the ongoing problems, whatever complications in my life right now whereas what about your neighbor across the street? What are they maybe going through? Let's shift and reframe our thinking to what are the people around me dealing with? Should I go leave a pot of soup on my neighbor's door because she's 80 and can't go to the store comfortably right now?
Julian: Even better, go and ask your neighbor how she is and whether you need to go shopping for her. There are friends of ours who live close by. They live in a small village and you can't get any new deliveries from the supermarket now because they're overwhelmed, so the neighbor said, "Oh, that's fine. Just put the order in with us and we'll get it for you and we'll share." There are two things that have happened in UK and I'm sure these things are happening all over the world, which just absolutely emphasize this.
[0:55:11]
The first thing was that as soon as the COVID-19 crisis started, a whole load of people got together and started doing the things that I've been talking about, making compassionate neighborhoods and compassionate streets, just caring for the people around them. So far, some bright sparks, socially-minded people thought mutual aid, COVID-19. They started out a website for people to register these websites so that there are local support groups. Now, there are 4000 of these things. You can look up and see whether there's a support group in your area so you can access support. The second thing that happened was that the NHS, the National Health Service -- I know we agreed not to talk about politics, but --
Tawnee: I know. You should've seen the laundry list, folks, that I had for these guys. We don't need to go there in this podcast. It was long.
Julian: NHS is a jewel in the world's crown. This is free healthcare at the point of access. Nobody is denied it. The motivation of the people who work in healthcare is incredible. At eight o'clock every Thursday evening in the UK, everyone goes outside and applauds what we're calling our heroes because they're putting their lives on the line to look after anyone. What they figured out was there's going to be -- they understood that illness is more than just the impact of an infection. There are all kinds of other things going on, and so they put out a call for -- initially, it was 400,000 volunteers. In fact, I think it was 250,000. Within a space of about two weeks, a million people stepped forward. That's two people out of a hundred in the UK who want to be NHS volunteers simply to help the people around them.
Christopher: That's because you've got trust, right? See what happens when you don't have trust in the authorities. All that goes to --
Julian: If you don't have trust, it falls apart, but you can see that that is an aspect of our good-naturedness. This is absolutely who we are. Participating, it doesn't matter how you do it. The thing is just help. It doesn't matter. In fact, this takes us directly into the discussion about what happens afterwards because these precious community resources that are springing out now will be our savior because when you think about how people are going to be psychologically traumatized by what's going on -- I'm a palliative care physician, so the fact that people are dying in nursing homes, in hospitals, and they can't go and see them, the long-term impact of bereavement is heartbreaking. Actually, professional resource will not solve this problem, but peer support will, by people getting together and celebrating each other's company and supporting each other through the hard times.
There's now a really good evidence base particularly around bereavement to show that the most effective form of support is peer support and the least effective form of support is professional support, so friends, family, neighbors, community members are the thing that keeps us alive. Actually, what we need to do is we need to be organized about making sure that everywhere has that capacity in place. We're thinking about talking cafes, friendship cafes, peer support bereavement groups, peer support cafes. They need to be everywhere so that everyone can access them and somehow share the experience of what happened. What you really need to do is get people together and they will figure it out themselves.
I'm going to mention one more thing with this. It's worth thinking about and having a look at. It's something called asset-based community development. You can see that on the website called nurturedevelopment.org I think it is, if you look up Cormac Russell. They're a whole foundation of -- the way that they work is that communities are wealthy and wealth has nothing to do with money. All you need is people to get together and they'll come up with ideas themselves. It's worth looking at a book called "Rebel Ideas" by Matthew Syed where he discusses that.
Christopher: Oh yeah, Matthew Syed, he's the guy that wrote the book "Black Box Thinking" on the growth mindset.
Julian: That's it.
Christopher: He's super good.
Tawnee: That sounds familiar. I actually know that too. I have so much that I'm feeling on this particular topic of the reopening especially at Laguna Beach here in Southern California.
[1:00:04]
It's a relatively small-knit community being surrounded by disconnected cities. We are an artist community of so many levels and it's heartbreaking right now to think that that community sense won't really be there in the way that it typically is for us come the summer months when the community tends to thrive and really come together for all sorts of events and gatherings and all that. I see it going around already, just the sadness surrounding our summer events. Our lineup of activities and all that are being taken away. It's kind of this conundrum a little bit of understanding 100% the need to distance in order to prevent the spread and flatten the curve and all these things, but it's the big million dollar question of when do we start reopening and feeling comfortable with doing that.
The question I have for you guys is once we are to that stage where authorities or those in charge agree that it's time to reopen, how do we as community members reintegrate ourselves without fear, without shaming others for not spraying hand sanitizer or something? How do we reintegrate without these new feelings of hate for whatever it may be, or worry? There's so much that has happened to our psyche in the last five to six weeks at this point. It's going to carry over. How do we comfortably reintegrate the way that you're describing, Julian?
Julian: I think the point of having this podcast is to say we naturally need to engage with each other. The solution for everyone is going to be different, but if you go with the motivation of understanding the importance of compassion and care and kindness, linking together and developing social relationships, you will find ways of making that work for you. I would point towards, Tawnee, one of the things that you started with, the math test on a Saturday morning in the athletics track.
Tawnee: Which was supposed to be a few days ago for my group and we had to cancel it, but yeah, that's one thing I'm super looking forward to.
Julian: That's a place where you get to meet and chat with people and that works for you. I'm sure Chris has got equivalents where he is. It's just figuring out. One of the great things that I mentioned previously was talking cafes. Talking cafes is you go down to your local cafe and say, "Man, it would be good just to talk about this" and just people get together and talk. You take a couple of tables on a Tuesday morning, put a sign on the tables going "friendship café", "talking café", whatever you want to call it. You go down there every Tuesday morning and then you just sit there and chat. That will work for you. People will find their own ways of doing it. There are no rules. It's the motivation. It's what's going on in your mind that we will work out how to do this. What works here will be different from what works in Brazil or what works in the US or what works -- it doesn't matter. People have to figure this out for themselves and they will.
Tawnee: Chris, what do you think -- especially tying in your idea of co-housing with friends, just bringing the community in to yourself and being your own entity in that way, how does that tie into then reintegrating yourself into the bigger community? Is it enough just to co-house and have your own little tribe isolated on your own or do you foresee also this need to get out there too? Also, the same question to you, how do we do this without having this new level of fear just by being out at the grocery store now?
Christopher: Right. Charles Eisenstein wrote a really good article called "The Coronation". That is a really thorough examination of what Roy Baumeister -- I just finished Roy Baumeister's book "The Power of Bad" and in the Baumeister book, Roy describes the crisis crisis. That is the crisis that comes after the initial crisis that's worse than the original crisis. Think about the TSA rules.
Tawnee: Right.
Christopher: It's worse than the original problem. The Eisenstein article, I think, is a really thorough examination of this. I think it's good to think about the opportunity. This is opportunity now. Maybe you've been thinking about how this nuclear family thing isn't really working so well and perhaps there's an opportunity and the motivation to do something differently in the future. What Julian has talked about, it's not a choice. You can be compassionate and part of a compassionate community and do co-housing at the same time. Even when there are two families living on this property, I can still talk to Elizabeth who's just over there and she's a woman I think in her 70s living on her own now. Her husband died recently. We can still go see Elizabeth. She loves the kids. It's not a choice, I think.
Julian: It's not either/or.
Christopher: Exactly.
[1:05:04]
Julian: I'll point you towards an article I wrote called "Circles of Care" which is related to end of life care, but it's a naturalistic description of how our social circles are structured. Very, very naturally, we have a core of inner people in a network and that can be anything from 2 to 20 people. It needn't necessarily be family members. It can be anyone. Then we have an outer network of anywhere between 10 and 200 or 500 people. When you start counting the people that we know then you see that there are these light social connections that we have all the time that nourish us. I think we spoke about that before about how when you go down the shops and all that kind of stuff, you meet people, et cetera, and then you have community and the community of people you may not know, but the sense of the people being around to help out and just be there and be friends, all of that kind of stuff.
Actually, when you start looking at the numbers that are involved, you start to see that we actually know hundreds of people. We are wealthy through all of this knowledge and it ranges from deep personal relationships to very light social contact, people we may meet once and never see again, knowing all the rich resources going on in the community. We're naturally surrounded by all of this. If we can appreciate that then we can deliberately put effort into developing that and maintaining it. It's really, really important. It goes back to the Harvard study of Robert Waldinger. If you want to be happy, healthy, live longer, put effort into your relationships. Be compassionate because if you're not compassionate, there are no relationships. It just doesn't work. If you don't care about the person that you're talking to, they will not bother talking to you. They just think you're cold and weird.
Tawnee: Tying it in before we close up today, let's go back to athletes for a second and something you brought up earlier, Chris, about people who really maybe need to evaluate if they were super disappointed that their race was canceled and evaluate what that's about. Rather than it being such a selfish thing of like, "I don't get to set my new PR" or get this race pace set or whatever, and this was something that actually choked me up personally when a song came on and it had the vivid memory of a mass swim start in an Ironman. The song just takes me there and I just had this feeling of like, oh my gosh, what it would be like to be surrounded by 800,000 plus people getting into a body of water to go swimming together right now. That's not something that's happening anywhere in the world and I'm mourning that a little bit.
What if the racing piece is not just so much like this selfish endeavor, but this desire to pursue something together with your community, this athlete community? That's maybe something to think about too when you're mourning the loss of your race that was cancelled. I think a lot of people, especially -- I argue even more that the longer the distance gets, the more this maybe becomes a case. We're in it like this weird niche group of people that does weird things and we miss that community that we get to embark on together when we tow the line together, so it's not just the selfish, "Let's set a PR" kind of motivation. These are my people. I miss being able to race with my people right now.
Christopher: Let me read you a quote from Christopher Ryan, who's been hugely influential on me. His new book, "Civilized to Death", I think is brilliant. There's a quote from that book. "We declare fanatical allegiance to arbitrarily chosen sports teams or to street gangs that live and die over the sacred color of their hankies. We clamor toward tribalism: anything that promises group identity, mutual protection, and even a faint echo of belonging. We are starving for what our ancestors ate every day of their lives." I think that's perfect. That's what we're talking about there. Those athletes about to dive into the water or the people who are standing in a nightclub cheering the DJ, they're all doing the same thing. It's that sense of belonging.
Tawnee: Yeah.
Julian: Yeah. I think that's a great quote. I'd also recommend Chris McDougall's latest book "Running with Sherman" because he talks about -- obviously, it's his friendship with the donkeys, which is terrific.
Tawnee: Yeah, I know. I love it.
Julian: But then he lives in the heart of Pennsylvania in this Amish community and he really describes the friendships that happen around that community and he describes the friendships, the incredible people he met through burro racing. It's hilarious. He meets these most amazing people because he runs with donkeys. It's fantastic and he embodies it somehow.
[1:10:10]
Tawnee: Yeah. Well, folks, I think we're going to wind down with that. I think that's a good place to leave off and give people some thoughts to pursue on their own right now, but this has just been such a fascinating conversation. Hopefully, to all you out there, hopefully a helpful conversation, if anything, like with many of our podcasts just to get you to think about some things because that's what's important here, is to think about things and not get too stuck in one train of thought or way of being.
I want to thank my guests, Chris Kelly and Julian Abel, and holy moly, head over the show notes because after the trio of us talking, there is going to be a list of resources. I swear, I think this is probably the number one podcast of recommendations for books and other podcasts and other resources. We've never listed off that many in one show, so thank you for that. Head over to the show notes and we'll try to get as many of the things that were mentioned on today's show into the show notes for you there if you want to dive in. In the meantime, this is your host, Tawnee Gibson signing off, wishing you success in all of your training and racing.
[1:11:14] End of Audio
© 2013-2024 nourishbalancethrive