#22 This week my fantastic guest is fitness expert and entrepreneur Ben Greenfield.
We discuss topics that Ben has not spoken of before including how he finally found his purpose, is hack to rule all hacks and one of his lowest point in life that later turned out be a blessing.
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About Ben: He is currently the founder and owner of Greenfield Fitness Systems, a company that develops innovative and cutting-edge fitness and nutrition services and solutions to help people reach their physical and mental performance goals, whether that be to defy aging and achieve longevity, cross the finish line of an Ironman triathlon, or simply shed a few pounds.
Ben coaches and trains individuals for general health, longevity, weight loss, lean muscle gain, holistic wellness, and sports performance, both from his physical location in Spokane, Washington and Coeur D’ Alene, Idaho as well as all over the world via online training and consulting.
Ben is also the CEO & Co-founder of supplement company Kion.
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Transcript
Please note, this is an automated transcript so it is not 100% accurate.
Guy: Ben, welcome.
Ben: What’s shaking dude?
Guy: Good to see you man. It’s been a while. It has been awhile.
Ben: I like your shirt. No pressure, no diamond.
Guy: It’s my new mantra. It’s a, it got me through last year mate. So, uh, I thought I turned into a t shirt to remind myself. That’s right.
Ben: That’s right. I mean I designed one and call it pressure. No constipation.
Guy: Yes, exactly. Exactly mate. You do a lot of traveling. It’s clear to see. Yeah. And a, so I’m guessing you would sit to a lot of new people, strangers say, and uh, if you were on an airplane and one of our mass, you, what do you do for a living? What would you say F off?
Ben: Uh, honestly not, I’d tell him a, I’d tell him I’m an author because that’s pretty easy to explain. In reality, you know, I’m a human performance consultant, blogger podcast or a nutritionist, speaker. Uh, you know, I, I own a supplement company where we kind of try to stay on the cutting edge of developing formulas for, you know, and he gets it in the body and then he has in the brain and you know, I’d do some do some investing and some bitcoin mining and you know, so yeah. I mean like I can tell anyone. Yeah. I tell it a little ladies though that I’m an author so their eyes don’t cross over.
Guy: Yeah, fair enough, mate. I’m the one thing like is obviously like I’ve seen you be following me for years made on the net, right? And, and what you’re doing in euro is evolving. You’re always growing, you’re always doing that. But one thing I keep asking myself is how that, how the hell does he retain all this information? Like is there a secret formula to mate or do you, or does it just skip right past or what goes on in, in that mind yours? Ah, you
Ben: know, I, I typically have a few rules set when I’m learning. For example, I have a rule that when I’m reading, I’m not allowed to turn the page backwards ever or on the kindle, flip the page backwards. And that ensures that no matter what is on the page in front of me, I am reading with intention because I know I may never see it again. And that that’s a huge boon for me. When I’m kidding though, you know, I read about a book a day and for speed reading that helped tremendously. In addition for the, for the book a day peace, you know, reading is a muscle. The more that you do it, the better that you become at it. But I will generally review the table of contents, Skim each chapter, skim the index, skim the front, skim the back and then go through each chapter and tasks will expand to the time allotted.
Ben: So I’ll generally allow myself between about nine and 10 did you most of my evening reading, you know, I just have a little red light set up in the bed. You know, I don’t have a, a, a, um, I don’t have a completely absent social life or sex life. And so sometimes, you know, it’s 10 to 11 or 11 to 12 sometimes depending on how the day happens to be. But I always finish with back. I always have a pen in my hand so I can circle anything or I’ll use the kindle highlight and that helps me know that if I do see something very interesting, if I want to interview somebody about it on my podcast, I fold the page over and underline it or I highlight it on kindle. Um, that’s, that’s generally how I’ll go about learning from books. I, if you see me working out, I will a lot of times have earbuds in.
Ben: You know, when I’m cooking all of your buds in, I’m exercising when I’m cleaning, it’s always some kind of an audio book or a podcast. And so I generally don’t waste a lot of time listening to, I shouldn’t say waste time. Music is amazing. Music is a wonderful tool. Music enhances your vagus nerve health and music is a great way to even increase your, if you believe in quantum biology, like the vibration of particles within the body. I mean, music has a lot of great effects, but I’ll generally save music for dancing or for sex or for, you know, some kind of a fun background, dinner, music, if I’m just, you know, banging away at something. Nine Times out of 10 it’s an audio book or a podcast. So I do a lot of learning through my ears. I do a lot of reading.
Ben: And then the one thing that I don’t do a lot of is park myself in front of a screen because typically the human brain can process information faster than a documentary or a film can present it. And so when I’m listening to audio, I can multitask, right? I can work out or I can clean the house or the garage or whatever. When I’m reading, I can read it the fastest possible pace that my mind can process information when I’m watching a documentary or film, I can’t do that. So generally, even if I’m, you know, wanting to digest a documentary or go through a documentary, someone has recommended to me, I’ll often convert it to audio and then speed it up a little bit and listen to it that way. So, uh, so yeah, I mean I have a constant stream of information and probably the one last thing I’d say about that would be that I try to keep a clear head, meaning that I’ve got Evernote sinked on my computer or my kindle and my phone.
Ben: And so anytime I think of anything that needs to be done, I’m either opening Google inbox and adding a reminder or I’m adding it to Evernote. So I mean anything. My wife knows that she can’t tell me to like go get the milk at the grocery store unless it’s written down because I’ve trained myself kind of like Sherlock Holmes when he first meets Watson and says, oh, I’ll try to forget your name because Sherlock Holmes wants to keep his head clear for the group that he needs to draw upon. I try to keep my head clear of all the clutter and the to do tasks and things like that so that I’m able to focus on the, on the very relevant information that I need to process during the day.
Guy: Yeah. Amazing. And you’re hungry for it, right? Which is a key ingredient as well.
Ben: Yeah, absolutely. You, you have of course have a way to apply the knowledge and that’s a really great point too, because you want to be able to digest knowledge in a manner that would allow you to teach that knowledge. So whenever I am listening to a podcast or an audio book or I’m reading a book, I am imagining that at some point I’m going to need to teach that to someone, right. I’m going to need to be talking about it on a podcast or teaching it to my children or talking about it to my wife or the Oil lady on the airplane who asked me what I do for a living. I just gotta be able to rely upon that information and present it. And so I listen or I read with intention and purpose. And if I’m reading something or listening to something and I realized that there is no intention, there is no purpose and it’s not going to serve my purpose in life.
Ben: And my purpose in life is to empower people to live a more adventurous and joyful and fulfilling life. If something doesn’t pass through that filter, um, you know, I’m sorry. Even if it’s entertaining and it’s funny and it’s, you know, p people send me these podcasts that are, you know, like the Joe Rogan podcast and you know, some of these comedy episodes and some of these things that talk about politics. And frankly, I’m a complete dummy and I turned most of that stuff off and I don’t know anything about it because my passion is health and fitness and nutrition and empowering people to live this joyful and adventurous and fulfilling life. And so entertainment doesn’t fit the bill for that. No. Probably the one exception of that would be fiction. I do like fiction, but even fiction, I really appreciate that. Even the fiction that I write, I, I appreciate fiction that kind of reflects some, some real world. Um, some were a world application or that really kind of allows me to even distress and remove myself for a very brief period of time from, from being in the real world, which I realize might sound like it stands in stark contrast. What I was just saying about, you know, nothing serving my purpose but if, if, if it allows me to just briefly kind of check out in distress. Like I do enjoy a good work of fiction every once in a while.
Guy: Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. Now Mate, just to play in the picture, this podcast, I kinda generally go for things that inspire change in people that you know, want to overcome different parts of themselves and move forward in life and not feel like they kind of been held back in different areas. And with a guy that’s going so much, got so much going on, like I know you, you’ve started new supplement company Kian I’m not sure exactly when it was, but I kind of started seeing that coming up on the radar as well. Like do you ever doubt yourself and how do you, what is your relationship with them? If you do and how you get through it.
Ben: Okay? Yeah. I dealt myself every day, every single day I ask myself, am I doing the right thing? Am I in the right place? Am I fulfilling the purpose for which I’ve been placed on this planet? Have I developed the wrong sense of purpose? Should I go back and start over again and be a poet or a musician or an you know, or a painter or you know, or, or a, you know, stand up comedian, which would really suck, or something like that. And ultimately, you know, when I, when I questioned that and I have that doubt, you know, one of the things that helps me best is to identify the activities in which I enter a state of flow. Now I enter a state of flow. When I am writing, I enter a state of flow. When I am speaking on stage, I even enter a flow when I’m podcasting, which is kind of like speaking on stage.
Ben: I enter a state of flow. When I’m competing on the field of battle in a spartan race or a triathlon or a tennis match, for example, I enter a state of flow. When I am painting, I enter our state of flow. When I am playing music or singing music, those activities I have all identified as key activities that fulfill my purpose in life. And when I’m engaged in those activities, those feelings of doubt completely melt away. So I think that you need to identify not only your purpose in life, but you need to make sure that when you are engaged in the activities that you think align with that purpose in life, that you really are able to enter a state of flow without the use of say, you know, siliciden or LSD or holotropic breathwork or any of these other hacks. And if you can do that, then it’s a pretty good sign that you’re doing what you’re meant to do and you really don’t need to doubt that.
Guy: Yeah, fair enough. Good answer. Mine. And regarding them purpose, have you always kind of being like fortunate because it’s clearly you’re on purpose now, but have you always felt like you found your purpose early in life? And I’ve been able to just refine it because when did, when did that start to kick in and how
Ben: maybe two years ago? Um, and while I have always had those activities that I enjoy, I’ve always had that childlike approach and wonder and curiosity for all things having to do with the human body and the human brain and physiology and biomechanics. It was really just a passion and a personal interest. And you know, it really, until a couple of years ago I was just a dude running around in the forest with my off throwing spears at Hay bales and you know, writing books and I have my own personal brand, but I was just, you know, Ben Greenfield, the kids running around there. There are probably two things in life that happened that gave me a distinct sense of purpose. One happened before that point that kind of started me down the road to wanting to identify my purpose. And that was the birth of my children. When you have children, you really developed a distinct, um, uh, a distinct interest in legacy, in building something greater than yourself in creating human beings who will grow up to be resilient young people who can live to make this world a better place.
Ben: And I would say that that gave me, it kind of put me into a tight funnel that began to push me in the direction of finding purpose, but it didn’t exactly give me purpose, but it pushed me in that direction. And then really, I, I discovered my purpose through a great deal of prayer and meditation and solitude and even the use of some of those, uh, some of those entheogens. I’m earlier, uh, silicide in particularly, uh, along with a great deal of journaling. And I came to the realization that my purpose in life was greater than just, you know, playing around in races and writing interesting blog posts and, and you know, creating books, not, I instead wanted to create a company that would empower people and equip them to get the most out of this amazing life that we’ve been blessed with on this planet specifically to live this, this adventurous, this joyful and this fulfilling life, right, to, to enhance mind, body, and spirit so that you can go out and you can climb your own personal mount Everest.
Ben: You can have a hell of a time doing it and you can be fulfilled in the process because you’ve identified your true purpose in life. And if I can help people to do that, to, to empower people, to live a more adventurous, joyful, and fulfilling life. And if I can create a company, in this case, key on my company and key is Prawna life force, Chakra, Spirit, soul. You know, it really is that, that essence of living out your purpose. Then I’m pretty damn happy with that. But it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I really made the commitment to go big or go home and to actually really identify my purpose in life and really live that out to the fullest.
Guy: Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. I mean, you mentioned about journaling, meditation, prayer and having that, that that downtime a long time, and I heard mark, Mark Devine say this one, bring the silence. He found his, he found themselves. Is that what you’re kind of finding from from that? Because it’s very easy to tell herself one thing that we could be on purpose and so forth, but there might be deeper truths underneath that we haven’t even considered or looked at.
Ben: Silence is so
Guy: underemphasize. You know when you, when you as I believe it was, well it was Dallas Willard who said this, that you must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life and when you do that, you identify little spots of silence and solitude that you can experience in your life. My children just this morning, both spent 15 minutes doing their, their sit spot, which is a native American technique where you go out in nature and you sit and you simply observe with your eyes and your taste with your mouth and you smell and you’re here and you feel the ground and you’re just sitting there mindful and solitude. And my children have been doing that since they were five. They have their own sits spot in the forest that changes with the seasons and sometimes if the weather’s really bad, they’ll instead go into the sauna and I have an hourglass and they just watched the sand fall and they’re quiet and they sit in silence and sometimes we’ll do a candle instead of an hourglass.
Guy: And I do the same. And the reason for this is because yes, you find direction and purpose often not in the conferences and the Tony Robbins seminars and the inspirational podcasts and the books and the go go, go mentality with the masterminds and the meetups. But you instead find it in the silence. And actually the prayer that I say every morning, every morning I swim in the cold cold water. And I like the idea of having a sacred place that you go to when you’re going to pray, when you’re going to come before your higher power. And for me it’s typically the sauna or it’s the cold pool. And when I go back and forth in the cold pool, my prayer is as follows.
Guy: It goes like this. Um, my father and heaven, please turn me into a man who will honor you, who will be a good father and husband and who will fulfill your great commission. Please remove from me my worldly temptations. Fill me with your heavenly wisdom. Grant me your peace, your love, and your joy. And teach me how to listen to your still small voice in the silence. And that’s how I end my prayer. And so every day I’m praying that I would receive direction and wisdom in the silence, which means that every day I am actually kind of, uh, um, I’m obliging myself to identify a time when I actually actually sit in silence cause it’d be kind of a hypocritical to pray in the morning that I would get wisdom in the silence and then never create silence in my life. Oh. So yeah, there’s a great deal of benefit that comes from the solitude and the silence. Yeah. Beautiful. Thanks for sharing that Ben. Appreciate it man. No hope. Need to ask you before we change gears into a few questions, ask everyone on the show, man. Uh, it’d be rude not to have a podcast without hacking
Guy: with everything you’ve experienced in all this time that you’ve been, you know, searching, look in, investigate and apply and practice and measuring whatever it may be. Like as said, anything that’s been like a standout that’s kind of caught you and gone, wow, holy shit man. Even I didn’t expect this. So in all that time,
Ben: probably the power of breathwork, you know, which we know is Prada in eastern medicines. One of the reasons that I named my company, he on after the, the idea of key, which is what I actually have tattooed on my shoulder now, uh, that is Japanese Kanji symbol for Qi. And the reason for that is that from breath flows life, even if you look at the story of, you know, creation for example, that was how it’s, you know, it’s written that God, you know, breathe life into man, breathe life into dust. And that’s how he brought men forth. And we also have this idea that if we stop breathing, we die. And yet so many people underestimate the power of breath. The highest I’ve ever been drug free was via the use of Holotropic breathwork, uh, which you can identify or learn more about if you look up the work of Stanislav Grof.
Ben: And the idea is that the uh, uh, exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide, you can bring yourself into some really interesting states of decreasing emotional stress and ansing health and oxygenation, enhancing alkalinity, blowing off acidity, retaining carbon dioxides that you deliver oxygen more readily to tissues entering into states of meditation, into states of trance, into states of higher mindfulness, into states of greater consciousness. This idea of knowing how to breathe is incredibly useful. My boys and I am a bowser at 10 years old and we went on a walk yesterday and on our walk yesterday, and we’ll often do walks like this. The walk went as follows, you breathe through your nose or count counting, four count how old, four count out and four count hold all the way to the first telephone pole with your hands on your stomach. So you’re engaged in deep diaphragmatic breathing.
Ben: And then you take a giant breath and you hold your breath for as long as possible as you approach the next telephone pole you were cover through your nose and then you rinse, wash and repeat to the next telephone pole. And we do this for a half mile out and then a half mile back. So it was like a 25 minute walk and the whole time the boys are learning how to breathe properly, how to control their breath, how to hold their breath, how to exchange Aki and dioxide. And I really think the, the importance of breath is severely replayed in our modern society of, you know, shallow chest breathing and uh, and, and stressful breathing
Guy: and the impact on it. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn’t, I wasn’t sure what the answer was going to be abroad. Certainly agree with the all the breathwork. That’s for mate, mate. Um, I’m, I’m pretty aware that we’re pretty tight for time, but, um, I have a set of questions I ask everyone on the show and uh, what new habit have you had over the last one to two years? It’s had the greatest impact
Ben: on new habit. My, my longstanding habit has been a really good cold shower each morning or jumped in the pool. But for a new habit, I would have to say the use of what is called a photo biomodulation, meaning that I own a infrared devices, one called the Juve, another one called the vial light. I also have been doing a lot of nude sunbathing. Uh, you gotta be careful, make sure your neighbor doesn’t own a drone or live in a house if you do that. But the, the use of near and far infrared light to enhance collagen production, beauty, nitric oxide production, even testosterone, which is why I do it nude sometimes. It’s pretty profound and I’ve, I really underestimated the power of, of light to affect some pretty cool physiological change.
Guy: Yeah. Cool, cool. And um, well it’s one of the low points you’ve had in your life, but as later in life to note to be a blessing.
Ben: Um, one of the lower points that I had in my life was, you know, I, uh, I guess it would have been about six years ago. I cheated on my wife. Um, several times I’ll, you know, just drunk at parties and off just, just not being a good person. And, um, you know, when I eventually told her about that, uh, you know, just seeing her, her slip into a state of depression for weeks and seeing our relationship completely dissolve before my eyes and feeling like I’d lost everything and hurt her more than a human being could, could, could ever hurt another human being, just tore me to pieces. And I entered an extreme state of low and thought about just giving up and walking away and meeting the fact that I’d failed as a father and failed as a husband. Um, what I decided instead to do is just, you know, pour as much love on her and on my children as possible.
Ben: Be there for them, sacrifice for them, spend time with them. Um, you know, just basically be fully present for my family in every scenario possible in an attempt to, to mend that relationship and show that I really truly was committed to the legacy of my family more than I was to some kind of polyamory or you know, or some type of, of cheating type of relationship. And I was able to come out of that, you know, through sacrifice. And through love, but I was at a pretty low point where I really thought that I just kind of, you know, I, I lost all that legacy that I mentioned earlier. So important.
Guy: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for sharing that man. Um, what does your morning routine look like? And you can do a brief version if you want. That’s fine.
Ben: Yeah. How much time you got? Uh, basically I get up, I put on the coffee after I do my gratitude journaling and while the coffee water is boiling or heating, I do a series of stretches and deep tissue work to kind of wake up the body a little bit of inversion hanging upside down, you know, just kind of see. I don’t wake up the body to get a feel for how it feels for the day. That gives me good momentum going into the day. And I grabbed my coffee and I’ll typically slip downstairs and I’ll do at least 20 minutes of writing if nothing else. If I can get 20 minutes of writing done during the day, you know, I can write a novel a year doing that. And then once I’ve gotten my writing done, I will a, I’ll go upstairs, I’ll use the restroom. Uh, and then, uh, in a fasted state I’ll do about 30 minutes of very easy exercise, preferably out in the sunshine to jumpstart the circadian rhythm. And then I’ll finish with that cold soak or cold shower that I mentioned. And then I launch into the day of work.
Guy: Yeah. Wow. Do you ever feel like going, you know what? Screw it. I’m to just lay in bed. You just, every day you just can’t wait to get out.
Ben: Never. I can’t tell you the last time I had that feeling now. Aye. I, I, you know, there’s purpose in life and even before that, you know, I’ve just, uh, I think I’m a little bit hardwired for productivity as it is. You know, I was, I was homeschooled and never really learned this concept that you can’t just, uh, we’ve got a bed and accomplish a ton of stuff every single day. And so I, no, I was never into like video games or TV or anything that would be considered a waste of time. I’d just get up and go and crush today.
Guy: Yeah. Beautiful Man. Beautiful Man. A couple of questions left. If you could have lunch with anyone tomorrow from anywhere in the world at any time frame, who would it be directed would you choose?
Ben: Uh, at this point I choose Richard Branson. A Guy I haven’t met yet, who I’d love to hang out with. He’s got a real joy for life. He’s smart, he is successful, and he seems to have a pretty good purpose for life. And I think you’d be a real fun guy to have lunch with.
Guy: Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah, he would be a great guy. Um, what’s the one thing about yourself? Most people wouldn’t know if that’s possible. Cause he put everything on the intimate,
Ben: I’m not naturally an athlete or a physical specimen. I have to try really hard to maintain everything from coordination to balance to mobility. I don’t come from an athletic family. And so for me to be a pro athlete is a constant uphill battle, but that actually fuels my fire, you know? And in terms of, you know, really ensuring that my fitness, my nutrition, my biohacks, everything is just spot on. Uh, because of I’ve had to really kind of fight an uphill battle to, to really be able to compete at the level I tried to compete at.
Guy: Interesting. You’ve just given a lot of people hope, man, that’s for sure. Is there anything else you’d like to add for our listeners over everything we’ve covered today from purpose to this half and everything that you’d like to leave them to ponder on before we wrap up the show?
Ben: I guess the last thing I would leave you with this, one of my favorite quotes, uh, this one comes from the Bible and it goes like this. What does a prophet, a man, or it could be a woman, it was a profit of human. If you gain the whole world, but you lose your own soul if you gain the whole world, but you lose your own soul. So remember that as you pursue anything from a six pack abs to cognitive enhancements to running a marathon, to, you know, playing a new instrument to anything that you’re trying to develop, remember that the most important part of you is your spirit. It’s your soul. That’s the one thing that people can’t take away from you. So make sure that you really develop a good spiritual practice of gratitude and peace and love and joy and everything necessary to enhance the health of your soul along with your body and your mind. Because if you have a whole body and a whole mind and a whole spirit and a sense of purpose, like I discussed earlier, you’re going to be a pretty damn happy and fulfilled human being.
Guy: Yeah. Amen to that, man. Thanks for sharing that man. And um, for anyone listening to this that wants to check out more for Ben Greenfield, where can we send them to buddy?
Ben: Uh, Ben Greenfield, fitness.com is my blog and my podcast. And then key on my company is just yet keon.com k. I. O. N. But if you just go to Ben Greenfield, fitness.com you’ll find links to key on, so,
Guy: okay, cool. Yeah. Well, we’ll link the show notes anyway when this goes live next month. Thanks for coming on the show, Matt. Appreciate it.
Ben: Thanks for having me on, man. You all can do a cheers. Cheers.
Speaker 2: [inaudible].