Daniel E. Lieberman
Appearances
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
We focus too much on weight. I think, you know, your health is what really matters. And there's so many other benefits of just being fit. And so even if you're not losing weight, you're still getting all kinds of wonderful benefits.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Well, that's a good question. And to understand the answer to that, it's important to make a distinction between physical activity, which is moving, right? Doing anything, right? You know, sweeping the floor, buying groceries, you name it. And exercise, excuse me, which is a discretionary, voluntary physical activity for the sake of health and fitness. And we evolved to be physically active
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
But we didn't evolve to exercise. And the reason for that is that until recently, people had to be very physically active, but they're also energy limited. And when you're energy limited, doing unnecessary discretionary physical activity is crazy, right? Like, so for example, I ran five miles this morning, which cost me about 500 calories.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
You know, when you're struggling to get enough calories, wasting 500 calories on a completely useless run in the morning is a really terrible idea. And so it's an instinct to avoid unnecessary physical activity, which is exactly what exercise is.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Life is really just about, you know, food in, babies out, right? And the reason we eat food is for nutrients and calories, and calories is a unit of energy. So until recently, people struggled to get enough calories. It takes, you know, about 2,000 to 3,000 calories to run a human body for a given day. And if you're a farmer or a hunter-gatherer, getting those calories is not easy.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And you also have to pay for your children's caloric needs, their brains and all that sort of stuff. And so you're struggling to get enough calories. And so spending it on a treadmill to spend even more calories is a very odd modern thing.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Yeah, well, I mean, it's a paradox, right? We evolved to be physically active, and we have all kinds of mechanisms that reward it, right? So one of the reasons I exercise every day is that I'm addicted to it. I have a dopamine. Dopamine is the molecule of more. It's the chemical, the neurotransmitter which says, do it again, right?
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And I have lots of dopamine receptors in my brain that are thirsty and hungry for more dopamine. And when I exercise, they get that dopamine hit. And if I don't exercise, they make me crabby and unpleasant. But the thing is, if you're unfit and or struggling with your weight, those dopamine receptors are going to be fewer in number and possibly even impaired in their function.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And so people who aren't already exercising a lot or being physically active
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
don't get the same reward so it's a it's a very strange mechanism and the reason that you might ask you know why why is that work the way it does is that in the past nobody ever was physically inactive that that just wasn't possible to you know to be active every day in order to hunt and gather or farm or whatever and so we never evolved to cope with um with a persistent physical inactivity
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
I was doing research in actually northern Mexico among the Tarahumara, who call themselves the Rarámuri. They're famous for long-distance running. They have these incredible races where they sometimes run 50, 60 miles. I was being a good anthropologist and I was going around and talking to folks and asking them about their running and And about their training.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And of course, the idea of training is when you run to prepare yourself for a race. And when I was asking all these folks about training, the word didn't even exist in their language. I was working through a translator. And so I was explaining, this guy here, the translator was explaining that I ran every day.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
in order to get ready for races, and the guy looked at me, and I didn't even need a translator to figure this out, and he said, why would anybody run if they didn't have to? And for me, actually, that was the beginning of the book, because I suddenly had this realization that my exercise habits are really weird.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Well, it's not entirely true. So there's a very famous paper, one of my favorite papers, let me put it that way. There's a biologist in the Netherlands who puts mice on treadmills. And she noticed that she had mice in her backyard. And one day she thought, you know, what happens if I put a little running wheel in my backyard?
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
So she put a running wheel in her backyard and put some cameras on it, night cameras, went to bed. In the morning when she woke up, she looked at the camera feed and to her astonishment, wild mice in her backyard had gotten on this little running wheel and had run for a while. In fact, other animals had gotten on it too. I think a frog got on it and even a slug had gotten on the wheel.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
So, you know, other animals do physical activity and why they do it
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
know well nobody knows right um and mice are really interesting because mice will naturally run you know several kilometers right they're a little bit unusual but uh it's certainly part of their behavior they're wired to do it but the vast majority of animals avoid unnecessary physical activity and humans are no exception except we now live in this very strange modern world where we've got elevators and shopping carts and
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
you know, electric can openers and you name it, right? And so basically now we don't really need to be physically active anymore, and yet our bodies require physical activity in order to turn on a whole variety of repair and maintenance mechanisms that keep us healthy. And so we've had to create in the modern industrial or post-industrial world this really weird behavior called exercise.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Which people resist like crazy. Yeah, and there's nothing wrong with them, right? It's normal. I mean, I think one of the problems with the way we think about exercise is that we make people exercise about exercise. We make them confused and anxious and feel bullied and shamed about it, right? But it's a fundamental instinct not to do physical activity unless it's rewarding or necessary. And
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And so we need to be more compassionate towards our fellow human beings who are struggling to do something really weird, like get on a treadmill and run for five miles and get absolutely nowhere in a really kind of, let's face it, a very unpleasant kind of context.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
That's exactly the point, right? Which is that we evolved to be physically active, you know, not a crazy amount, you know, two to three hours a day, basically. But that's a normal part of our environment, right? And when you remove that, then all of a sudden, all kinds of natural mechanisms which our bodies mount get turned off. And so...
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And so we often say that exercise is medicine, but a really more accurate statement is that the lack of physical activity makes us more vulnerable to disease and accelerates the aging process. So exercise isn't really actually medicine. It's the lack of exercise that causes problems.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Yeah, I mean, I think we sometimes exaggerate that stuff. I mean, look, if running was that dangerous, you know, then there could be no runners left, right? You know, I think we sometimes exaggerate injuries and that sort of thing. I mean, it is true that people exercise has trade-offs. Everything has trade-offs. There are costs and benefits to everything.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And so injury is always a potential there.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
But again, remember, our ancestors weren't like running marathons, you know, they were, you know, occasionally running, they were mostly walking, they were carrying, they were doing things that don't cause injury that a lot of the stuff that we do today that causes injury is because, you know, you get weekend warriors who aren't really all that fit there, you know, they're, they're, they're, they're not, you know, prepared for the stresses that their body
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
then encounters and then of course they overdo it and then they get injured. But that's again a kind of weird modern way in which we exercise. And so what is your general prescription for exercise? I think we can say a few things. The first is that always some is better than none.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
You know, if you just get just a little bit of physical activity every day and you just look at the outcome of that, it has enormous effects on people's health. It increases people's longevity, it decreases their vulnerability. to a wide range of diseases. And that curve continues, right?
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
So for example, on average, for most people, if they exercise about 20 minutes a day, which is 150 minutes a week. And it can be just like walking. It doesn't have to be running. That can decrease your overall life history, your longevity by about 30%, and reduce your vulnerability to a wide range of diseases enormously.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And then the curve continues to go down, and then eventually it kind of tails off. um and so if you do anything more than an hour a day you're not going to get any more benefit from doing an hour and 10 minutes a day or two hours a day or whatever so so basically the answer is that some is better than none more yields greater benefits but those benefits begin to tail off
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And then, of course, there's variation in the kind of exercise that you do. I mean, you know, are you running? Are you walking? Are you doing strength training, you know, weights, etc.? And the answer is, you know, mix it up, right? You know, it's good to do a little bit of strength training, especially as you age.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
But it's also, you know, aerobic physical activity is really important for kind of your base core, your fitness. You know, some kind of mix is always kind of important. But there's no one prescription. There never will be.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
There is no question about it. I mean, there are maybe a hundred studies by now, epidemiological studies, which show a dose-response curve to, for example, steps per day and various kinds of outcomes like cardiovascular disease or diabetes or just how long you live.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
so for example let's take steps per day you know for most studies if you look at that curve the more steps you take the the better the outcome up until about seven or eight thousand steps a day and then the curve begins to start leveling off again these are big epidemiological studies there's a variation from person to person but sure there's no question that this physical activity has important benefits and and importantly we understand a lot of the mechanisms behind it right because when you're physically active you're
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Your body produces antioxidants. Your body produces enzymes that repair proteins and repair your DNA. Your body produces all kinds of genes that work on your brain and your liver. I mean, every system of the body pretty much is affected, your immune system. People who exercise 150 minutes a week were shown in a study to be 2.5 times less likely to die of COVID.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
This is before the vaccines were produced. So it affects every system of your body. And so, yeah, those folks who are out there walking are doing themselves a real benefit.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Well, for one, exercising on a treadmill is boring, in my opinion. I mean, I have a hard time. And I put people on treadmills for a living, right? I just find them...
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
um really hard to do but apart from that um there are if like if you just compare running on a treadmill versus running over ground um the treadmill is a little bit different because after all the ground is moving underneath you uh so it's actually pushing you in a slightly different way so a lot of people for example put the treadmill at a at a one percent incline to equal the to kind of compensate for the fact that the treadmill belt is moving
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Of course, the other thing that's different about the treadmill is that every step is exactly the same. Whereas when you're in the real world, every time you land, your foot's at a slightly different angle. There are rocks and inclines and turns and all that sort of stuff. So I think treadmill running makes people much more susceptible to repetitive stress injuries.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
But, you know, if you like running on a treadmill, if you like listening to a podcast on a treadmill or, you know, watching a movie or whatever, all power to you. There's nothing wrong with it. I think, you know, I think we should be, you know, whatever works for people is good.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Yeah, well, I mean, I think part of the problem is that we've tied so much, we just, we focus too much on weight. I think, you know, your health is what really matters. And the reason to exercise is not solely to lose weight. There are so many other benefits of just being fit. And so... even if you're not losing weight, you're still getting all kinds of wonderful benefits.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And, and look about thinking about, you know, it doesn't have to be exercise in the gym. Like how many, how many people think of dancing as exercise, but you know, go, dancing with some friends for, you know, people often will dance for hours.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
We don't think of that as exercise, but it's darn good for you in all kinds of different ways, or playing a game of soccer, or playing a game of tennis, or going for a walk, or hiking with a friend or something. You know, the point is that physical activity has all kinds of benefits, and weight loss is component, but it's not the be all and end all.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And what we should really be is promoting people's health and wellbeing. And if that helps them lose weight, that's fine, but it's not the only reason to do it.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
average everyday human beings are really extraordinary athletes and can do amazing things. And you don't need to run a marathon. You don't need to
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
be able to run to the top of the you know you know the empire state building or or or whatever to get the benefits of just moderate levels of physical activity and it and it affects every single system of your body it affects your immune system it affects your your brain it affects your metabolism and prevent helps prevent diabetes and heart disease you know we talk about Breast cancer.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Cancer, for example. The number one cause of death in the United States is heart disease. The number two cause of death in the United States are cancer. And both of them are majorly affected by physical activity. Women who exercise 150 minutes a day or more can have 30 to 50% lower lifetime risk of breast cancer. How many people know that? And we're not talking a huge amount of physical activity.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Physical activity is the number one way to help prevent heart disease. If you care about Alzheimer's or dementia, again, nothing comes remotely as close to physical activity as a preventative form of Alzheimer's. Now, will it guarantee that you won't get Alzheimer's, guarantee that you won't get heart disease, guarantee that you won't get cancer? No, of course not.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
But nothing really comes as close. And you get all kinds of other mental health benefits. You get you know, the dopamine reward, you get serotonin reward, your brain turns on all these wonderful chemicals that affect mental health. Physical activity has been shown to be as effective as any known medication for treating depression. Now, again, will it mean that you'll never get depression?
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
Of course not. But all of these things together mean that, you know, there's really a lot of positives. But at the same time, I think we should also acknowledge it's also completely normal and natural to avoid it, because after all, we evolved to have to work and have to do all kinds of stuff, but we also evolved to take it easy when we could.
Something You Should Know
Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice
And so our inclinations to avoid physical activity are also deep and innate and normal and functional, and we shouldn't shame people and make them feel like somehow they're lazy for wanting to take the escalator instead of the stairs.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
You know, it's something that we don't often like to think about that we are not alone inside of our heads. But if you think about it, you're really not in all that much control in terms of what goes on inside your mind. You don't get to choose whether you have a good day or a bad day, what your emotions are, how much psychological energy you have.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
In fact, you don't even get to choose the things that you want, the things that you use your time and energy to pursue. These are all things that are chosen by the unconscious mind And getting to know that other person, that other inhabitant inside your head can be very valuable.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
I think it's difficult to say why. It's simply the way that evolution has formed our brain. Like all animals, the vast majority of it is unconscious. And another word for the unconscious mind might be the uncontrollable mind. It's only this tiny sliver of consciousness that we have control over. But that's the part of our brain that we identify with.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
And so as a result, we don't always give the unconscious mind the credit that it deserves.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
And I think that that is so misguided because in some ways that's saying, well, we should be able to fly. The truth of the matter is that we simply can't. And if we try to deceive ourselves, if we give ourselves more credit than we deserve in terms of what we're able to control, We become delusional about it and that's when we get into trouble.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
I think that we've all had experiences of being overwhelmed by our emotions and saying things that we should not have said. We've all seen news stories about highly accomplished people completely destroying their career because they gave into an unimaginably stupid impulse. We've got to stay humble.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
We've got to realize that there are these forces inside of us, and we have to learn how to come to terms with them.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
Well, I think that all of those terms are good except control. Because again, we're stepping away from this attitude of humility that I don't completely control everything that goes on inside of me.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
And so when I say come to terms with it, I think that it's almost as if we were making friends with this other person inside our mind, or I should say people, because there's all kinds of agents in there all pursuing their own goals. We come to terms with them and perhaps we can even tame them the way a rider might tame a horse.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
Well, I think we can go back to the metaphor of the horse and its trainer. One mistake the trainer could make would be like thinking the horse is like a car and he just presses a button and the horse goes where he wants it to. Obviously that's not going to happen.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
The other mistake he could make is saying that he has no influence over the horse at all and that the horse is simply going to go where it wants and he has no say in the matter. And of course, that's not true either. He needs to take a sophisticated, skilled approach to forging this partnership. And the same is true with the unconscious mind.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
We cannot control it directly, but we can learn strategies to develop a better relationship with it. And let me give you a very simple example. One of the very simple things the unconscious mind does is it controls the physiological balance within our body. For example, our blood pressure.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
You can't consciously will your blood pressure to go down, but if you happen to have a pet dog in the house and you consciously will to go over and pet your dog, your unconscious will drop your blood pressure. So there are ways that we can learn how it works and we can use that knowledge to forge a better partnership.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
As a psychiatrist, I do a lot of work with people who engage in self-destructive behaviors. And they're immediate instinct is, well, I just need more willpower. I need to just say no, or as you put, I need to not give in. We find that that generally doesn't work. Willpower is like a muscle in that it fatigues very, very easily.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
So for example, if you're on a diet and you say no to a chocolate chip cookie, that's going to make it much harder to say no to the angel food cake that you're faced with later. So I would take issue with that, that there are people who just don't give in.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
And I would say that the people who don't have difficulties with unconscious contents disrupting their lives probably fall into one of two categories. One is that some people just don't have very strong unconscious drives. Their passions are relatively weak, and as a result, they're very easy to go against them if that's not what they want to do.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
That's not a great situation to be in because these unconscious drives that can destroy our life are also the things that give us motivation and energy and the passion that we need to achieve very difficult goals. The other category they may fall into are people who have suffered a great deal, people who have had very, very difficult lives.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
And one of the sad facts of life, of human nature, is that it does seem to be hardship which moves us down the path of developing this good working relationship with our unconscious mind. So I don't think this is anything that comes easily. I think it's something that has to be earned.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
I think that the first step is, if you wanna make friends with someone, the first thing you wanna do is get to know them better. You ask them, where are you from? Where did you grow up? What are your hobbies? The first step here is getting to know your unconscious mind better. And you do that by becoming simply a better observer of what's going on in your head.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
The technical term for it is the observing ego. If you're angry, you don't identify with the anger and say, oh my gosh, I'm so angry. You take a step back and you say, hmm, my brain is generating anger. Let's see what that feels like. Let's think about why that is and see what I can do with it. You just try to notice more. When are you having a good day? When are you full of energy?
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
Or when is the opposite occurring? The second thing you do is you do what you can to meet the needs of the unconscious mind. I was just talking to a gentleman who was telling me about this work retreat they had. And originally they planned to rent out some hotel ballroom and simply have it with a bunch of folding chairs, et cetera.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
But at the last minute, they decided that they were going to spend a little bit more money and they were going to go out to this nature preserve and have it among trees and sky and clouds. And it made a revolutionary difference in the quality of the meeting. And it wasn't because they had any different presenters or because the topics were different.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
It was because it was an environment that was conducive to stimulating the best parts of the unconscious mind. So I think that just like a horse trainer is going to exercise his horse and feed his horse, we should pay attention to the needs of our unconscious mind and try to meet them whenever we can.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
It does, and yet how often are we tormented by desires that we know are bad for us? Many of us have had the experience of having an incredibly strong attraction to someone that we know would be a terrible partner for us, and we wish we could just put them out of our head, but we absolutely can't. Primitive desires like junk food often torment us.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
or even more sophisticated things for example we may be very ambitious we we may want to get great prestige we might want to have a huge bank account while deep inside knowing that's not going to make us happy and it's going to distract our attention from the things that we find truly fulfilling
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
It's unfortunately part of the human condition for us to experience this split. We all know the saying, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
human condition is is this very strange combination of spirit and matter of mind and body the unconscious is much more associated with the body with the flesh we tend to associate ourselves with the mind and the spirit but it it's the fundamental reason why it's basically uncomfortable to be a human being And we often try to flee from this split, this division that's within ourselves.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
And one of the easiest ways to do it is to try to take out the unconscious mind, at least temporarily. That happens every night when we sink into sleep. Sometimes we get into a hot bath or we watch mindless videos in order to turn off the unconscious mind. In extreme cases, we shut it down with intoxicating drugs. But it can be exhausting having this split to constantly be at war within ourselves.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
But unfortunately, that is the human condition.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
Yeah, that's a very important thing to keep in mind. Within every single human being in the world, there are horrible drives and urges within them. And it's not a good idea to deny them. Obviously, we don't want to act on them. But if we deny them, if we push them away and we don't accept them,
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
paradoxically, that makes us more likely to act on them because then they're hidden in the darkness and they can ambush us when we're not prepared and sometimes take over and make us act out these terrible impulses.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
I think that there's two reasons for that. One reason is that, as I mentioned, you're more likely to act on them if you try to pretend they're not there. Unconscious drives can express themselves in one of two ways. One way is through behavior, and that's what animals do. That's instinct. But the other way an unconscious drive can be expressed is simply by experiencing it consciously.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
So if I feel like I'm so angry with someone, I want to punch them in the face. I might say, oh my gosh, I'm not a violent person at all. Where did that come from? I'm going to forget about that as soon as I can because it's very disturbing to think of myself as violent.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
Alternatively, I could allow myself to feel that urge, to feel that violence and say, yeah, this is part of me, but I have a choice. I don't have to act on it. So, that's one way that we can avoid acting on these destructive urges. The other way is to build up our ego strength, to build up our willpower.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
Willpower is not such a great tool, but it's certainly a tool that we have and that we need to use. And there are ways that we can build it up and make it stronger.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
The only mind that I have access to from the inside is my own. And so I can speak from my own experience. And there are moments where I feel that I don't have that ability to pull back. I know times when I've been in an absolute rage And I hate to admit it, but it's been actually pleasant to say hurtful things to people that I actually care deeply about because I was possessed by this rage.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
There are other times though, when I do feel I do have a moment. For example, I want to eat a piece of chocolate and there is a moment when I can say no. But in my mind, what I tend to do is I weigh the pleasure
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
Well, you know, the unconscious mind has about half a million times the processing power of the conscious mind. Just to give you an example of how powerful it is, when you simply walk down the street, your unconscious mind is coordinating literally millions of individual muscle fibers in order to maintain your balance, your tone and your forward locomotion. It has enormous processing power.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
There have been a number of famous people in history who have talked about being struck by inspiration. They've been struggling with a difficult problem that their rational mind was absolutely unable to solve. And then all of a sudden, boom, out of the blue, the answer comes ready-made right into their mind and it completely solves the problem.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
That's one of the amazing things the unconscious mind can do. And I think we've all had the experience, whether we're writing a presentation, writing a report, maybe doing something creative, when ideas just pop into our mind that solves problems our conscious mind was not able to figure out.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
It happened to me many times where I would hit a problem where I just couldn't figure out how to explain something. And then invariably it would happen when I was drifting off to sleep at night, the solution would hit me and it was far better than anything else I could come up with myself.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
I think that that is largely true. But I don't think the unconscious mind is ungenerous. I think it gives us more than we realize and we need to cultivate the habit of paying attention.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
What I want them to get is that forging a good relationship with the unconscious mind may be the single most important task in life. Think about the time when you said to yourself, I've never felt more alive. That's what we live for. We live for those moments when we feel most fully alive. It's not about prestige. It's not about money. It's not about pleasure.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
It's about the feeling of being full of life. And we often call those moments magic moments. That's what we want. And they seem to come out of the blue by chance. It seems like we have no control over them. But in fact, there are agents underneath there. There are agents creating those magic moments, those feelings of being fully alive.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
And by recognizing those agents, learning about who they are and establishing good relationships with them, we can deeply enrich our lives.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
Oh, thank you so much for having me back. It was a pleasure.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
Another word for the unconscious mind might be the uncontrollable mind. In every single human being in the world, there are horrible drives and urges. But if we deny them, if we push them away and we don't accept them, paradoxically, that makes us more likely to act on them. All this today on Something You Should Know.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
and then strength or resistance physical activities and they have different kinds of ways in which they slow various properties of senescence which we you know colloquially call aging and all of them are important and i think one of the things is really interesting about humans in fact i think it may be the most important thing about this book and you asked about myths earlier the most important myth i think by far is this idea that as you get older it's normal to be less active
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
And that is just not true. We evolved to be grandparents. We evolved to live. One of the things that's most interesting about humans, maybe, is that we evolved to live about 20 years or so after we stopped reproducing. No other animal does that except orcas, maybe killer whales. But with the exception of killer whales, humans have this really weird life history. We evolved to be grandparents.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
But grandparents in the old days weren't, you know, retiring to Florida or I don't know what they do in England or whatever, go to Mallorca or whatever, and kick up their heels and play golf or whatever with carts. Grandparents in the olden days, or in many cultures still today, are working.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
They're working in the fields, they're hunting, they're gathering, they're getting food for their children and their grandchildren, they're helping with childcare. And that physical activity that's what their job is to be physically active.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
But in turn, that physical activity turns on an amazing suite of physiological processes that counter aging, turns on repair and maintenance processes that not only keep our muscles strong, but also keep our DNA from accruing mutations, keep our mitochondria numbers high, keep the cells in our brain from accumulating gunk so that prevents Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
I mean, for every system of the body, physical activity has benefits that slow the aging process. And so when you stop doing it, and that's the way in which you perceive it as accelerating aging. But really, it's the absence of physical activity which lets aging run amok.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
Yeah. Yeah.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
Well, I mean, I think part of that is depression, right? When you lose a partner, I mean, grief and depression, your cortisol levels go up, your immune system goes down. I mean, it's really tough on your body. I mean, psychosocial stress plays a serious physiological toll. But also, as you just pointed out, when people retire, they become less active.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
And that loss of activity has enormous effects on every aspect of our body and our minds. I mean, physical activity is important not just for physical health, but also vital for mental health and health. And I think a lot of the problems that mental health issues we have today, depression, anxiety, some of them, to some extent, we can attribute that to less physical activity.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
The technical term for that is sarcopenia. Sarco is the Greek word for muscle, and penia is loss, so muscle loss. So as people get older, they tend to lose muscle. And when you do that, you become frail and you lose functional capacity. And then that starts off a vicious cycle, right? Once that happens, then you'll be less likely to be physically active.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
The more I study the importance of resistance training and the more I study the importance of doing weights, especially as you age, the more I started kicking myself for being lazy about that. So now I try to do a good two strength workouts out of every week at least and take it more seriously because especially as you age, loss of muscle mass can be really debilitating.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
And as people age, becoming less physically active, again, makes them much more vulnerable to a wide suite of diseases.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
Or if you do retire, I mean, retiring is, again, another modern weird thing, right? Nobody retired in the past. I mean, if you're a farmer, it's like a subsistence farmer and name it any place, right? It's not like suddenly you hit 65 and all of a sudden you no longer have to work in the fields. You work in the fields until you're dead, right? And hunter-gatherers don't retire.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
They continue to be physically active until they die, right? Or until they get too sick. So it's a very modern Western concept. And yes, we do pay a price for it. But you, of course, can replace... work that you do with challenging, rewarding, fun things to do. The important thing is just not to stop being physically active.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
One of my favorite studies ever published, without a doubt, is a study done by a guy named Ralph Paffenbarger. He realized that places like Harvard are fantastic for studying aging because Harvard, like other private universities, never lets go of their alumni. So until the day you die, they're asking you for money on a regular basis.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
And so he got the Alumni Association, the Harvard Development Office, to let him follow a series of Harvard alumni from several years and keep asking them and questions about their physical activity levels and also their diet and whether they smoked and stuff like that. And then you track them for 25, 30 years.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
And what he found was that the alumni, we have to correct it for every factor you could think of, that as the alumni got older, the effect of physical activity on their health outcomes was bigger and bigger. So alumni who were in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, for example, who were exercising four or five times a week, they had about 20% lower death rates.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
By the time they got to their 60s and 70s, the alumni who were exercising more had 50% lower death rates. So as you get older, and this has been replicated again many times, but what he showed was that as you get older, exercise becomes more, not less important for maintaining your health.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
And then, of course, when you're less physically active, your muscles begin to waste away more. And it's very debilitating. So I think as we get older, and I'm getting older, it's more and more important to kind of incorporate that. So I think that's the one thing that I've taken to heart.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
yeah look we have this expression in my field which is that genes load the gun environment pulls the trigger right some of us have genetic predispositions towards being you know more likely to get diabetes or heart disease or this or that or the other but our great great great grandparents in different environments weren't getting these diseases or they were getting them at much much much lower frequencies it's not because they were dying earlier it's because these diseases were less common
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
So I think we too often blame our genes for many of these diseases, many of these health problems. And I'm not in any way denying the role of genetics, but that environment is way more important. And we have control over our environment to some extent.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
And so if you want to reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, reduce your risk of diabetes, reduce your risk of Alzheimer's, dementia, exercise isn't a magic bullet. It's not going to prevent you from getting those diseases completely, but it lowers your risk quite substantially. And we know why, too. I mean, we have an immense amount of data on why that's the case.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
For every single one of these diseases, we understand the mechanisms by which physical activity has important mechanistic effects on these diseases. So there's epidemiological data, there's mechanistic data, there's personal data. The problem is that it's hard to do, right? It takes willpower to overcome... the inertia of doing what's completely normal, which is wanting to take it easy.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
I just flew yesterday from Denver to Boston. And in the airport, you know, there are these escalators right next to the stairway, right? And the escalator and the stair, it wasn't a huge stairway. Everybody's lining up to take the escalator and like the stairs are totally free. So I, being me, of course I can't, I'm not allowed to take the escalator unless, you know, I have to, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
So I ran up the stairs, but those people taking the escalator, there's nothing wrong with them. They're not lazy. It's just an instinct, right? It's an instinct to take it easy when you can, right? And we now live in a world where everybody can do that, right? Because we have escalators and lifts and cars and shopping carts and all these wonderful devices.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
to make our lives easier and now you have to overcome this fundamental basic instinct to take it easy in order to be physically active and that's basically what exercise is and so and and furthermore if you're out of if you're unfit and you're not really you know exercising isn't any fun right it's it's it's it's unpleasant you you know you sweat you get hot and you get cranky and you know and and it's not that rewarding uh until you get fit
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
And so people hate it, right? And then we blame them for being lazy. But they're actually just being normal. And I think we need to have more compassion towards people who struggle to exercise.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
Well, I wouldn't use the word lazy, but we are evolved to take it easy, to rest whenever possible.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
Right, right. And well, it's also, it sells, right? I mean, comfort, I mean, who prefers to sit in economy as opposed to business class? Nobody, right? Comfort is nice, right? Who prefers shoes that are uncomfortable, right? We, you know, comfort's... Comfort, you know, we love comfort, right? But since when is comfort necessarily better for you, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
I mean, are comfortable shoes actually better for you than going barefoot? Are comfortable chairs better for you than we're taking the lift better for you than taking the stairs?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
Yes, because we often value the short-term benefit over the long-term cost, right? That's hyperbolic discounting is the technical term for that. But so we live in a world where we pay extra for comfort and we'll prefer it. But now we also live in a world where we have to now go out of our way to be physically active because it's no longer necessary.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
And so again, I go back to my original statement, which is that people evolved to be physically active for two reasons and two reasons only. When it's necessary, rewarding. When we don't make it necessary, we need to figure out ways to make it rewarding. And that's hard. It's very hard.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
Yeah, I'm not sure if I'd think about it that way, but I'd kind of reverse it slightly, which is that You know, aging is just the clock ticking on, right? There's nothing we can do about age. But senescence is the way our bodies degrade as we get older.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman
And what physical activity does, maybe the most important thing about physical activity, is that it slows senescence, especially for certain organs and systems. And there are different kinds of physical activity. So there's endurance physical activities, you know, like running, walking, et cetera, swimming.