Clint Murphy  00:03

Welcome to the pursuit of learning podcast. I’m your host, Clint Murphy. My goal is for each of us to grow personally, professionally, and financially, one conversation at a time. To do that, we will have conversations with subject matter experts across a variety of modalities. My job as your host, will be to dig out those golden nuggets of wisdom that will facilitate our growth. Join me on this pursuit. Today’s episode is one that you are going to enjoy. Two things that are always important for me for life advice. One, it comes from lived experience.  Two, it’s actionable advice. Nate does both. We talked about his book, You’re Too Good to Feel This Bad. And Nate shares simple actionable advice he tested on his journey of recovery. It was as if I was talking to myself, because a lot of these things also worked for me on my journey. And I hope they work as well for you.

Enjoy the conversation. Nate, welcome to the pursuit of learning podcast. For our listeners who don’t know you yet, can you give them a brief history of your backstory and why you wrote your book that we’re here to discuss today?

Nate Dallas  01:32

I guess so, I’m not exactly sure where to start with that. But I am a serial entrepreneur, I am a creative, I am a father of six, and a husband, and have been a fairly productive person my entire life, and somebody who kind of gets after it. And there was a point in my life where I think by most metrics, I was being pretty successful. And it wasn’t like the typical cliche, I made money and then I realized it didn’t buy me happiness. It wasn’t about that. For me, it was about the way I was feeling. So I did not like the way that I was feeling/ I was concerned with how things were going physically, as a young person who otherwise should be feeling great. And started discovering a lot of things that were broken with myself and with culture. And with medicine and with lots of other things. And long story short, went on an odyssey to try to figure out what was causing all of this stress and anxiety and emotional, physical, spiritual gridlock and break down that I was experiencing that doctors really couldn’t explain. And I thought maybe I had a brain tumor or something really strange. And it turns out, I was just under a lot of stress, even though I was happy, even though things were going well. And I had to start to figure out how to convince my body that I was not in fight or flight mode all day, every day. And that was a multifaceted journey. And at the end of that journey, and a lot of lab work, and a lot of hard data, I put it all together in a book to share with hopefully a few people never expecting it to catch fire like it has and become an international source of help for tens of thousands of people. And that’s, I guess how you found me? So here we are,

Clint Murphy  03:33

You bet. And Nate, how old were you when you experienced that?

03:38

I’m gonna say that when I really got aware that I needed to do something or that maybe something could be done. Maybe 36 is when it started. And then I was really deep into it at 38. I’m 42 now, so I’ve had a couple of years of functioning well, and so I have something to compare it to. And kept lot of notes, and a lot of interesting lab work along the way.

Clint Murphy  04:03

It’s interesting, because I went through the same thing somewhere around 37, 38. I’m 44 now so as I was reading your book, it was very relatable and I can share with you a bit of how it felt for me and get your feedback on how it was feeling for you. And as someone who, like you said, gets after it and had a history and a track record of always running hard. You know, when I was younger, I’d be able to take a weekend, maybe a week, recharge the battery and all right, we’re back at it. We can run hard again, but all of a sudden, around 37, 38, it just stopped working. The engine wouldn’t refill. There was no more gas. I took a weekend off, I took a week, I started sleeping a little earlier, but just nothing would refill that tank and joke when you’re young about running until you burn out the adrenals but you actually, to some extent can do that and shut your body and system off. So was that similar feeling for you were there like the gas was just out of the tank and there was no recovery, like when you were younger,

Nate Dallas  05:09

I don’t think it was as much feeling out of gas or out of energy. And I think I did recover, I was still able to recreate and recover some. But I was having a lot more physical problems, stomach pain, headaches, insomnia, like crazy night terrors, skin problems, just all this weird stuff that didn’t seem to relate. And there was some of the, you know, you feel like you don’t have as much gas in the tank. But stopping was never really an option for me. And until I deliberately made that a priority to slow down, so it just kind of kept going. But my headspace was falling apart. And so it got to a point where I think I’ve trained my body to be high octane, and go, go go, and maybe somewhere the age factor kicked in, maybe just good old fashioned burnout. And you can’t keep doing it that way without a new source of nutrition, without a new source, a new schedule, you know, a new recovery modality, or whatever it is. But so yeah, for me, the thing that worried me the most is all of these weird, physical things that were happening, all these food allergies and other stuff that was coming out of nowhere. And I just didn’t feel good. And I don’t want to hurt, you know, back was hurting, my neck was hurting. It’s like, I’m in good shape. This is not supposed to happen. But it wasn’t a muscle problem at all. It was a focus of breathing, of sleeping, of how you’re thinking problem. And yeah, man, I was in a bad way. But I was still performing. I was still high functioning. Nobody knew I felt like trash, except maybe my wife, but I did. And I really thought something was really wrong. Like they were going to do a scan and find some sort of pituitary tumor, you know, something weird, that would explain all of this. And nothing explained any of it. There was no science for it.

Clint Murphy  07:13

It’s interesting, because I mean, it’s not funny, but interesting. Because lately, I’m so tired right now. And I just keep thinking to myself, maybe I have a tumor or something instead of, maybe I should just go to bed earlier.

Nate Dallas  07:26

Maybe I’m just tired. Yeah.

Clint Murphy  07:30

Maybe I’m actually just tired. So I love that.

Nate Dallas  07:32

Yeah, I do. There’s something to do with stages of life, though. And men are bad at talking about the reality of life, because we have this persona, and the ego and you know, I’m not struggling and I’m out competing everyone else.  You know, everybody’s got all this smoke and mirrors. But maybe if we were all honest, we would find that at 36, 37, this is a normal phase, just like if we talked about year seven of your marriage, there’s probably something that we all experienced, and year 10 of having children or I think that after 15 years in a career, you need to go do something else, because there’s just burnout. But like, we don’t talk about that. And it’s almost taboo to talk about it. So maybe there is something that you and I experienced together that is purely predictable if we just talked about it, I don’t know.

Clint Murphy  08:24

And it is interesting, because we both use very similar language about the way we were approaching life leading up to that. And I mean, even as I read your book, and read the ways you remedied it, the one that we’ll talk about early that I’ve never been good at is the sleep. But almost everything else on your list is stuff, I’m like, oh yeah, tick, tick, tick. And so there are ways that that we can address it. And what I really appreciate about the book is that you wrote from a lived experience. So for those who are listening, we’re talking about Nate’s book, You’re Too Good to Feel This Bad: An Orthodox approach to Living an Unorthodox Lfe. So we’ll talk a lot about what’s in there and take you through some of it but not the majority. So you can go and buy the book and learn the rest in nature. One of the things you point out in the introduction that I think is a very good ground work framework for our listeners to think about, as they start to listen to what we talk about, is the importance of small decisions. And I always like to illustrate that if you make those small, smart decisions, plus consistency, plus time, you’re going to get the exponential results. Can you talk a bit about the importance of the small decisions and the consistency and what we’re talking about for the listeners who are going to hear what we go into today?

Nate Dallas  09:41

Well, I think that when it comes down to it, all of the important decisions in life, have small steps, have small components. I don’t know how to differentiate what’s a small step and a big step because if you’re moving in one direction, and you stop, well, physiologically that’s a small step. But as far as your life track goes, that’s a huge step. If you turn and just face the other direction, and you haven’t even taken a step yet, you’ve just stopped what you were doing and turned to get a different viewpoint. That’s a massive thing. And so it’s like, Okay, pick anything that you want to work on. And there is a first step, and it should be small. And I think we should never discount a step that is a legitimate change. So if I want to get healthy, well, at some point, I have to start doing easy workouts, I have to stop buying trash food. And it’s like, it may be that simple. Today, I’m not going to buy Oreos at the store, I’m not going to buy cookies, like how laughable is that. But if that’s your vice, and you actually refrain from buying it that day, that is potentially going to change your life, your relationships, your income, your happiness, your energy level, and all it was was not picking up that one thing off the shelf. So the sleep thing, if all it means is, I’m not going to drink alcohol, that’s huge, or I’m not going to drink caffeine anymore. That’s huge. Or I’m just gonna have a bedtime, like that’s massive, it actually moves things. So you know, if we’re talking about relationships, if you’re in a bad way, with your partner, or your spouse, and things are on the rocks, well, you can’t fix it all in one day. It took you a long time to get there. And it’s going to take a long time to get back. But today, I’m not going to raise my voice whatsoever. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to speak to my significant other like a dog. That’s something. It’s huge. And it may not change anything tangibly that first day, other than you got a small win,  you did something hard. And I was coaching a guy this week, and we were talking about new habits. And I said the first time you do something, you’re no longer someone who hasn’t done that. You know, the first time you go skydiving, you’re no longer a person that won’t go skydiving. You’re a freaking skydiver, you just did it. So what do you want to change? I’m not a person that likes the gym, I’m not a person that works out, I’m not a person that is thoughtful or not, well do something and erase that from your resume. Because you’re no longer that. But it can happen in an instant. One of those things can actually change your identity. And that, and I’m not saying that like in some sort of manifest destiny, you know, power of positive thinking, you know. If you actually do one thing that you don’t normally do, you’re now a different person. Something has shifted. And so you know, I love Jordan Peterson, his 12 rules for life. And, you know, the rules themselves are so simple, but he talks about cleaning your room, making your bed. I mean, but this is a metaphor for the rest of your life for everything. If you can get up in the morning and do one thing well. One simple thing, well, then what will you do the next day? What will you do a week later, you know, so I think it’s all incremental. And I think we, we are impulsive, and impatient. So we want to take big swings. But you know, homeruns are rare. Hit singles, man, hit good singles, take a walk, get on base, move in the right direction. And then things start moving, but building momentum. Everybody that we see in life that we want to be like, want to emulate. It took them 20 years to get there. And we think, Oh, well, I want to know your morning routine. And I want to be like you tomorrow. Well, that’s not how it works. You know, and we have to heal. You have to heal ourselves. We have to learn as we go and live it out. So the little steps are all big. They’re all big if they’re positive.

Clint Murphy  14:02

I could spend the entire time talking about just what you said right there. But the one of the key things was you said, when you know what you want, how important is it for our listeners when they’re making that first step? I think we both agree it should be small, it should be the easiest step they take, but it’s often the hardest. And how much of that comes down to they don’t actually know what they want.

Nate Dallas  14:24

I think that we lie to ourselves a lot because we know what we are supposed to want. We know what we should want. So we pretend like we want it but people go get what they want. They really do. If you really want a motorcycle, you’ll go get a motorcycle. If you really want a girl, you’ll go find a girl but you can’t say it and not make any effort towards it. Either, you’re lying to yourself and you don’t want it or you just don’t want it bad enough to make sacrifices to get it.  So it’s like I want, everybody wants to be rich and wants to be healthy. But it’s just a flippant thought, unless you are making positive moves toward that. I want a lot of things that I don’t go get. So maybe we should differentiate what is a want? And what’s an actual desire? What’s a passion? What’s a necessity versus a fantasy? You know, but I just think if you really want it, you’ll get it. And if you don’t want it, I think it’s good to be honest, and then say, Okay, should I want it? Do I need to want it, what would make me want it. And this is what I, when I’m coaching a lot, I’m trying to frame these desires. And there’s only two ways to motivate people, there’s only two.  Pleasure and pain. So if you’re not moving, either that the pleasure of attaining it is not compelling enough to pull you towards it, or the pain of not doing it is not great enough to repel you from it. So if those things aren’t grossly out of balance, you just hang out in the middle, and you just talk about your wants, but you’re not hurting bad enough to move, and you don’t see anything that’s good enough to go chase. And so then you have to play it out in your head. Do I really want it? What would it feel like to attain it? What would it be like in a month to sit on top of that little mountain? And know that I did it? What would it feel like a year from now? Who will it affect? Three years from now, five years from now? Like you have to have some vision for it so that you craft something compelling enough to chase? Otherwise, we’re just talking.

Clint Murphy  16:43

And how many of the people you work with, when you have this conversation? When you share this with them ,how many of them decide no, I do want it? And I’m gonna go after it. What would you put that percentage at?

Nate Dallas  16:54

I think it’s about refining the list, I think everybody’s got a few things that they really do want to go after. And maybe they’re not sure what the first step is, or the second step, and they don’t have a roadmap. So we can help that. But the first thing is refining the list and telling yourself the truth. And is this really a value, do you really want this, is this really a pain point that needs to be solved. And for the ones that, you know, we usually chop that list up and we say, okay, there’s eight things on here, and we narrow it down to there’s really two that matter. There’s really two that are causing most of the pain in your life and two that would actually make you fulfilled and feel good about your life. Let’s just focus on that and stop all the other noise for now. And then, you know, people, when we start painting a picture of what it’s like if you don’t change and what it’s like, if you do. I would say once we refine the list, 80, 90% get after it, and start chasing it, and maybe they need some accountability, maybe they need a little help along the way. And they stumble and you get lost or you get down because it’s taking too long or whatever. But progress is progress. If you’re moving toward the goal, you’re seeing progress, and you can’t deny it. And I think fulfillment and happiness come from progress. I really do. Whether it’s tiny, or monumental. If you can look at yesterday and today and say that you’re moving towards something good and beautiful, and holy and better. Well, then you can be happy with your life. Even if you haven’t gotten there. And getting there is not the fun part. It’s the journey.

Clint Murphy  18:31

It’s a journey. Well it should be and if you can align that journey with your mission and purpose, it’s even better. And so when you do that deep work to figure out why am I here? What do I want to be doing. And now let’s take the baby steps so that I get there over time. But let’s dive into the book. So the first area we’re going to start, we’ll jump around probably throughout the conversation, but mostly go in the order of what you talk about. And this is the one I suck at. And I know it’s the one I need the most work on and that’s sleep. You know, the last couple of weeks, I was averaging four and a half to five and a half hours per night. I don’t think that was good.  Yesterday, or I decided I would cold turkey quit coffee after reading the book and commit that by the time I got on the show, I’d be at least 48 hours without coffee. Not a great combo. So why is sleep so important for us? What determines whether we have a good or bad sleep? Like what are the rhythms and etc? And what are two or three of the ways that you say hey, here’s two or three ways that you could easily improve your sleep for anybody.

Nate Dallas  19:30

Yeah, well, it’s so important because all of our recovery happens while we’re sleeping. Our neurology our physiology, like everything, benefits from sleep, and you cannot do peak work. You cannot be creative. You cannot be patient. You cannot be level headed and clear thinking. And so those are all more mental things but also your muscles don’t recover, you know, so there’s all of these things.  Your digestion doesn’t process food correctly if you’re not sleeping, so now you’re malnourished. And then it’s just such a cascade. But it’s a critical part of healthy living. And we culturally have been extremely disrespectful to that truth. And we now work all the time, we drink alcohol all the time, we drink caffeine all the time, we kind of do this thing now where it’s I want to work like, I don’t know, 12 hours a day. And then I want to hang out and have fun a few hours a day. And then I want to sleep like four, and I need to get up fast. So give me the triple espresso. And then at night, I need to go down fast, so give me the vodka. And it’s just a train wreck. It’s a train wreck. So we can talk about killers for sleep. And then we can talk about things to get it back in line. But the biggest thing to getting on track with right sleep is simply rhythm. It’s just rhythm, our bodies want to be in a rhythm, your circadian rhythm, your natural rhythm wants to go to bed and wake up at the same time every night. And your body, when it gets on that schedule, starts to learn and can trust you so that it knows when to digest food, when to produce energy, when to actually relax. But if you’re like me, there was a time when I would go to sleep, I would lay there forever, without spinning and going crazy. And then I would wake up in the middle of night with 7000 thoughts. Like I never actually shut it off. My brain still just rocking the you know, the hamster on the wheel, and then fall back asleep. And then two hours later, you wake up and you’re problem solving again. And I just don’t do that anymore. I’ve broken that cycle. But when I started tracking sleep and realizing how little of the REM sleep, the deep sleep was actually happening, it was jarring. I mean, and I thought maybe I was one of those few people that just doesn’t need a lot. And for years, I convinced myself that that was the case. But I can tell you now that was an absolute lie. I’ve manufactured that idea.

Clint Murphy  22:12

We tell ourselves that as we gulp down the espressos.

Nate Dallas  22:16

Right, well, then other people would tell me that I don’t see how you have this kind of energy. Yes, amazing. And so you know, oh, yeah, I’m Superman. That’s what the deal is. So I can just do this forever. But you’re not doing peak work if you’re sleeping for five, six hours or not, you’re not and you don’t realize what you are capable of, until you get on the other side of it. But emotionally too, man, like when you’re tired, everything irritates you, you’re impatient. So all day, you’re in this kind of just tense, crazy mood. And you’ve run a marathon all day. And that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. So the rhythm thing is huge. And the way you establish a rhythm is so ridiculously simple. You have a bedtime, and you have awake time. And you set an alarm for both. And you actually live by it. That’s how simple it is. This is free. And you can take all the sleeping pills you want, and do all this other crazy stuff. But it comes down to I need to go to sleep at the same time and wake up at the same time every day. And it takes about three weeks to convince your body that you can be trusted. And then you start getting in that rhythm. And it works. But caffeine has a super long half life, it’s 12 hours. So if you have a cup of coffee at noon is still in your system affecting melatonin release, which affects you going to sleep at midnight. It’s still in there, and it’s still working. Alcohol absolutely kills sleep because you’re not sleeping even though you’re tired. You’re sedated. And it’s just like if I gave you an IV in the operating room, and I’ve zapped you for eight hours while we’re having a procedure. And then I wake you up, you’re not rested. You were just sedated. You weren’t sleeping, you’re not doing a sleep cycle. So alcohol sedates you, so do other drugs that people take for sleep, like prescription drugs for sleep, you’re not sleeping, you’re just being sedated and tricking yourself that you’re getting good sleep because you didn’t wake up or at least you think you didn’t wake up but you’re not getting sleep. It’s not real sleep. So sedation and sleep are not the same things. What’s happening in your body is totally different. So those are things that are when you put them in line, you know, things start to get back in balance. So I still drink a cup of coffee every morning, but it’s a cup of coffee, and it’s over. After that first cup at six in the morning. That’s it. I don’t reintroduce caffeine throughout the day, and I don’t drink alcohol. I used to drink wine every night. I just quit because it’s terrible for your sleep. You’ll will fall asleep fast, but then it’ll be very broken and you never get high quality sleep. So those are two but also lights, screen time is a big one. We do everything on screens all the time, people will scroll their phone mindlessly for an hour and a half to get tired. Well, the light receptors in your brain as they’re seeing all these lights and all this scrolling and all the stimulus are staying awake, they’re not going through the normal cycle, to wind you down so that you can get good sleep. And that’s the way we do it now. Everybody’s watching Netflix for two hours, and then scrolling Instagram for an hour.

Clint Murphy  25:29

Straight to bed, yeah, we’re doing them at the same time.

25:32

Or at the same time, right. And that’s one of the things I say in the book, your bedroom is for sleeping and for sex, that’s it, there’s no TV in there, there’s no eating in there. You have to train your body to know, when I’m here, we’re going to sleep. This is not entertainment time. And so that’s another one, the screens and the LED lights and all that kind of stuff that some people wear the blue blocking glasses. I tried that for a while too. They’re like a yellowish orange lens. And so it protects the photoreceptors in your brain. But it still doesn’t cut out all of the constant stimulus that you don’t need late at night from jump scenes and just a scrolling screen. Man, that’s a lot of brainpower to process that even if you’re just doing that. So all of those things that are stimulus have to be wound down and canceled out. There’s about, I don’t know, 10 different things in the book that I talked about that you don’t need to do, and that you do need to do. But those are some easy points, that they’re not terribly difficult to implement, just discipline.

Clint Murphy  26:39

And what does bedtime and wake up time look like for you.

Nate Dallas  26:42

I try to have eight hours in the dark in the bed. And that means that I’m probably sleeping for seven hours and 20 minutes, if you actually track it, you know, because you’re gonna wake up a few times and the wind down in the wind up. But you’re supposed to get eight hours of sleep, most people are supposed to get eight. But for me, I’m going to bed at 10. And I’m waking up at six. So if I fell straight asleep and slept the whole time and woke up, it would be eight, but actually, to get eight hours of sleep, you probably need to be in the dark, about eight hours and 50 minutes. So most people need to be in the dark for about nine hours. And the first few nights you do it, it doesn’t work and it drives you crazy. But you just have to trust the process. And you have to keep doing it. Even if you’re lying there awake, at least you’re chill, at least you’re not getting stimulus. And over time, your brain starts to change those cycles. And then the biggest thing I think even more important than the bedtime is the wakeup time because you want to keep that consistent.

Clint Murphy  27:46

Same time every day.

Nate Dallas  27:48

Yep, wake up at the same time every day. So because sometimes you’re gonna go out with friends, you’re celebrating you’re at a wedding, you’re out to dinner, you’re something and you’re late getting home. Well, then you would think intuitively well to get eight hours I need, to since I’m going to bed an hour and a half later, I need to sleep an hour and a half later. But that disturbs the rhythm. So you still need to get up at the same time so that your body stays in that rhythm. And then maybe you take a nap during the day or maybe just the next night you really crash it at the correct time. And you reset but you don’t need to change the wake time.

Clint Murphy  28:21

Yeah, that’s a big one. Yeah, that’s usually how we screw up on Mondays because we sleep in on Sundays and then the rhythm’s broken. And okay, so the next one is, we pivot so we covered sleep. The next one, you may laugh at me, because on Twitter, I wrote a thread about this. And people had said that I jumped the shark. But I pointed out that a majority of us don’t actually breathe properly. And for many of us, it seems like you and I were aligned. We went through a lot of our lives as mouth breathers and then learned all the bad things about it and tried to convert and learn how to breathe properly, learn how to become a nose breather, etc. So what does that look like for you? What is proper breathing? And what are some of the areas where you see people making a lot of mistakes in how they breathe.

Nate Dallas  29:08

I think that proper breathing for me and for I think everybody should be using the diaphragm so your stomach is moving, not your chest. You know, when you take a big deep breath in, your lungs are triangular, and they’re water at the bottom.  All the air the maximum airflow is at the bottom. And there’s more alveoli in the bottom section because the trunks of the tree branch out. So all of the most efficient exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide happens in the bottom. But most people are breathing with their chest. So they’re overworking to get the same amount of oxygen into their bloodstream where they can move less oxygen, less muscle movement into the correct areas and get more bang for their buck. So it should be in the diaphragm. It should be further down so your stomach’s moving, your belly button should be moving and not your chest. But most people when they get stressed, when they get winded from exercise, when they’re breathing heavy, you’re seeing a lot of shoulder movement, you’re seeing a lot of chest movement. And that’s all wrong. So it should be low, physically low in the body, and it should be calm, even if you’re working out, it should be calm. You should be taking slow, full breaths, not fast panting, not shallow pumping, but slow, methodical stuff. And if you see yourself throughout the day, and catch yourself, being anxious, being jittery, being impatient, being irritated, and you simply decide I’m going to be aware of my breathing and do it right. It’s incredible, how fast those things will change, how fast your attitude will change. And there’s a lot that goes with it too. Because to read correctly, you have to sit up taller, you have to have your shoulders back.But there is some amazing, freaky research about the power of posture and what it does neurologically for your brain. You can literally get hits of dopamine, just by standing correctly. And by poking your chest out and putting your shoulders back, raising your neck up. Like just by changing your pose, you can make depression cycles stop and get a hit of dopamine or hit of adrenaline. That’s crazy man. And it’s free, all you have to do is be aware of it. And this is not some cheap little thing that so negligible you can’t notice.  This is measurable in lab studies, immediately massive changes in hormones, in minutes, just from changing the way you’re sitting or standing and breathing. it’s fascinating stuff. But most people just go about life, unconscious of their breathing. Never think about it. And the thing that we do all day, every day more than anything else we do in our life. No one’s ever told us how to do it. No one’s ever taught us how to do it correctly. That’s crazy man.

Clint Murphy  32:12

And do you practice any breath exercises, whether it be box breathing, breath holds? Are there anything you do in your breathing regimen that help you with that. For me as an example, box breathing, if I’m in a meeting, super easy way to just get the heart rate down, get calm, get comfortable and in the flow. What’s that like for you, Nate,

Nate Dallas  32:36

Whenever I catch myself in a bad way, when I’m a little off, I’ll always try to recenter and do some breathing exercises. I do throughout the day do breath holding exercises, I can’t say that I recommend that for everybody. Because there’s some technique that has to be observed. And I don’t have the time to go into all of it here.  In special situations, if I’m about to compete, If I’m about to hike up a mountain, on an elk hunt, if I’m going to do a heavy lift in my garage, I may do some special breath work for those acute situations. But for the most part, it’s just trying to recalibrate all day long, and be aware of how I’m breathing. And just try to consistently breathe well. And anytime that anyone in my house, there’s eight of us that live here. So there’s plenty of opportunities. Anytime anybody is upset, angry, irritated, nervous, whatever, I stop and make them breathe, and they call me out on it too. And whether it’s a four year old, or a 42 year old, it’s the right thing to do. And it works every time to get your head back, get your feet under you, and to refocus. It’s super important. And it you just have to be aware of it. And in the beginning for me, I wrote sticky notes everywhere that just said breathe on them, and stick them all over work, all over my vehicle, all over my computer, wherever. So I was constantly seeing these notes all the time, and reminded me, but I don’t need the notes anymore. It’s part of daily life, you know, to do that, and I’m conscious of it all day. And when I sit down to read, I know that’s a time to breathe. When I sit down to meditate, I know that’s the time to breathe. And when I sit down to eat, I know now, breathe well while you’re eating. So I’m thinking about it all the time. But it takes a little while to be aware

Clint Murphy  34:30

For a while you were doing taping not only while you sleep, but during the day.  Was that one of the ways that you, you know when we look at how we learn things it’s at first, it’s we have a bad habit unconsciously, then we’re consciously aware of that bad habit and then we have to be consciously aware of the good habit. So your way of doing that step before you have the awareness you do now, was to just tape your mouth closed during the day while you weren’t, you know, at meetings or in public.

Nate Dallas  34:59

Yeah. So that was, in particular to learn how to stop breathing out of my mouth, and to start using my nose, and to make that a permanent change. And that was very effective for me. I know that’s a weird one. Some people probably would not want to do that. But yeah, I taped it up, I mean hours every day. And that was just to make the switch from mouth to nose and, and I have some broken bones in my nose from fights and things over the years, and I had obstructed airways. And it took a while for me to be able to breathe well through my nose. But over time, the body adapts, and it worked out fine. But so that was one of the ones I just forced myself to do. I also put a velcro strap around my chest, like at nipple height, and wrapped it around and close it tightly on an exhale. And then I would wear that strap all day. And when I started chest breathing, I would hear that Velcro strap making noise and stretching. And it would remind me push the air back down. So lots of little things like that, just as reminders and techniques for me to break bad habits. I guess electroshock therapy would work too. But I didn’t try that.

Clint Murphy  36:09

Have you been successful converting from mouth breathing to nasal breathing overnight?

Nate Dallas  36:15

Oh, yeah, it’s, you know, I’ve never filmed myself sleeping. But I have done some sleep studies and things like that to monitor total oxygen throughout the night. And I think that my body permanently made the switch to breathe through the nose even while sleeping at night. So but it was being conscious of it all day, working those muscles, opening the airway. And eventually, I think my body preferred it because it’s a better way to breathe and you’re getting more benefits.  I go into those into the book, nitric oxide and things like that, that come through the nose. And so yeah, I think it’s on autopilot now.

Clint Murphy  36:52

Oh, I love that good during the day, but I’m still working on the night.  So it’s interesting, people are so surprised by it. But when you go 35, 36 years, not doing it properly. It’s not a simple, oh, I willj ust stop the first few for people that are listening. If you’re hearing us and you’re first starting, when you first start, you’ll feel really almost might say claustrophobic. Like there’s a constriction, like I’m not getting enough air, this can’t work. But over time, you’ll just get used to it. And you’ll realize how much calmer and peaceful it is, as opposed to breathing through your mouth and effectively hyperventilating all the time. So the next one, and the first few that we’re going through, these are the ones that like really, and like most things in life, when you get down to it. They’re really simple. They’re not always easy to do, but they’re really simple. And the next one is simply we’ve got to drink more water.  And for you this looked like, I love how you go all in on things, was for two months: I’m not going to drink anything that isn’t water. What was the reason you dove in that hard, which meant that you cold turkey quit coffee, alcohol, carbonated sugary drinks, sodas. You just, it’s all gone? I’m just drinking water for two months. So why that hardcore of a way to go about it? And how did you feel after a week? And then how did you feel after two months?

Nate Dallas  38:19

Well, the first part of the question is I did it because I wanted measurable data. I didn’t want it to be a subjective thing. Like I think I feel better. I actually measured blood work, urinalysis, hair samples, all this stuff all along the way, doing all of this stuff in the book. And I really wanted to know, how effective is this? What actually moves and changes if I do this? And I can’t just say, Well, I’m going to up my water intake, because I’m still ingesting all this other stuff. And the truth of it is, is when you’re drinking all the other stuff, you have to drink more water to properly filter all of the other stuff, even if it’s healthy stuff, even if it’s green tea. It dehydrates you. So I wanted to know, hard data, if I’m just on water and go to that extreme. What does the lab work look like? So that was the reason I went all in. And I’m not saying everybody needs to do it that way. But I also never drank water before because I was never thirsty. It wasn’t that I disliked water or that I loved sodas. I just was never thirsty. I mean, I would have a whole meal and never think to drink. And maybe that was a terrible thing. I don’t know why it was that way. Now I’m thirsty all the time, which is pretty strange. But I used to never urinate either. So I think I was chronically dehydrated and not filtering the way your body is supposed to. So I was probably storing up lots of bad things in my system that needed to be cleared. So that was the first part of the question.  The second on how I felt and how the first week went It was just boring to me in the beginning, I didn’t like to drink water. I think that I like flavors. I like variety. I like something different. And so it was boring. And it was work. I mean, I had to set reminders on my phone to drink another water. Because I was trying to drink a bunch. I was trying to drink the required amount, according to I think it was the Mayo Clinic, which was like, you know, 10 glasses more than I had ever had in my life. And that was every day. So I was just drinking all the time. And I felt great. I mean, I was bored. It wasn’t exciting. It wasn’t like you drink a glass of water, and you just feel like conquering the world. And you didn’t feel like an accomplishment. You know, it didn’t feel like anything. It was like God, like nobody pat’s on the back and says, hey, great job with that glass of water man. So it was just boring. But the lab work was undeniable. I mean, it was I can’t go back now. I know too much. So I do have my coffee in the morning. If it’s a special occasion, I’ll have a beer or have a glass of wine. But I don’t really crave anything else like I used to. And I like water. It feels right. And it. I think my body is pleased for me to be drinking water. I’m sitting here not even realizing, til you just said this. I’ve probably sipped my water 10 times during this interview, because I just it’s all day now. There you go. You got yours, too. So yeah, it’s a switch that came with zero fanfare, zero fulfilment, no excitement, it was just the right thing to do. So I’m keeping it.

Clint Murphy  41:36

And no early headaches from the caffeine withdrawal. That was all right?

Nate Dallas  41:41

Yeah. Because at that point, I had already tapered down some of the caffeine. I was I was just the coffee. Okay, yeah. Now, if I had gone from my old routine, which was to have a cup in the morning, and then another one at 10 o’clock, and then another one early afternoon, and then you know, I think I probably it would have been hard, serious withdrawals and headaches and that sort of stuff. And I’ve coached some people that have had pretty severe reactions from as far as the headaches and the cravings and stuff from cutting it out. But you know, that’s an addiction. I mean, it’s just like, if you went to drug rehab,

Clint Murphy  42:15

It’s the exact that’s the issue. Right?

Nate Dallas  42:17

Yeah. So it just tells you, you’re on the right track. But yeah, I mean, if you go to a drug rehab facility, that first week is probably really bad. You have a lot of headaches, it doesn’t mean you need more heroin.

Clint Murphy  42:32

Great example,  and so even the green tea’s got enough caffeine going on in there that it’s doing the dehydration thing?

Nate Dallas  42:41

Well, it’s less than an espresso. And you can check caffeine content, it depends on which green tea and that sort of stuff. And look, I’m a fan of green tea. The research on green tea is pretty amazing. Just about everything they test with green tea improves with green tea. It’s one of the only things that’s out there that really fits in that category. There seems to be nothing wrong with it, unless you’re doing it in copious amounts, and getting tons of caffeine and but you could get decaf green tea, you know, they make that. So I think that there’s a lot of benefits from it. And the what’s the concentrated form, Matcha, some cool stuff with Matcha too, but so I’m not telling you to give up the green tea, but give it up if it’s 9pm. And you’re supposed to be in bed at 10, for sure.

Clint Murphy  43:27

Gotcha. Okay, I love that one. While I’ve stopped coffee, that was my replacement. And I definitely don’t feel as much, you know, jittery or hyper as with the coffee. But I hear you that if I’m testing out going caffeine free for a while, I ought to truly go caffeine free and take a look at the decaf green tea. So that may be the next one that I target. So something we’re talking beverages, we’ve talked sleep, we’ve talked water, the next simple one is food. And that’s an area where we probably all make too many simple versus easy. We all know that if we want to eat the right foods, the choices we make are really simple choices and they can often be hard to make, marketing, the way they manufacture food to appeal to our taste buds, etc, etc. What are the some of the simple choices that you make at home to make sure that the right stuff’s in the fridge and in the cupboards so that I’m going to make good choices?

Nate Dallas  44:34

Well, what you left out one of those in there that makes it hard and that’s the good stuff is more expensive. The cheap stuff that’s easy to get and you can get tons of stuff that’s worse for you, so there’s also an expense factor in there. But for us at our home, we’re pretty extreme. We are all natural. So that means no food dyes, no artificial sweeteners, no preservatives. Nothing on a label that you can’t pronounce, or that has nine syllables, and three numbers in it. I mean, there’s so many things on these labels. Nobody even knows what they are. We don’t do any of that. So everything we either grew out of the ground, or had a mother. I don’t know how else to say it simpler than that. But, you know, this is stuff that naturally occurs in nature. And now maybe it’s put together in a combination, where you put four things together, and you can still make a brownie with real cocoa. But it’s not all of the other stuff. And so what that looks like in the supermarket is you shop the perimeter and never go down the middle aisles. Everything in boxes and bags is pretty much out. And you know, there’s a lot of food companies that are getting on board now and making better products, and they’re leaving out all of these extra things. And I think we’re making big progress. But culturally, the food business has been producing a lot of really, really bad stuff. And there’s a lot of research on all of these different components individually, but we really don’t know what it’s doing to our bodies. But the way that a lot of bodily systems work is let’s take a, I’m trying to think of a good example.  Okay, like an allergic reaction to somebody. So if a bee stings you, and you have an allergy to it, and this bee venom is in your bloodstream and going through your body, well, these molecules come in, these histamine molecules come in to try to arrest that venom and get rid of it. And the way that it gets rid of it. It’s like floating puzzle pieces. And so the bee venom, and the good cell comes in, and there’s a match. So it grabs it because it’s the right shape. And it takes it away and disposes of it the way it’s supposed to. Well, now we’ve got 100,000 molecules that never existed before, that we’re ingesting. And our body doesn’t know what to do with these. But sometimes the shape fits the receptor and so we get these crazy reactions, where all of a sudden, you’re allergic to all of these foods that aren’t actually dangerous. Well, it’s a hyper response, an immune response to something that’s gotten confused, okay. And it’s not just allergies, sensitivities, it’s some of the skin problems and some of the breathing problems and all this other stuff. But we don’t know what floating that molecule down through your system or some detergent, or some, whatever it is to prevent caking in your cereal, we don’t know how the body processes that and we don’t know what receptors it bonds to that are incorrect. And so if monopoly saccharin 4 red dye is attached to all of my histamine receptors, and then I actually get stung by a bee. Now it’s life threatening, because all those receptors are clogged up. And they’re busy fighting with these plastic molecules that should have never been in my body. So I mean, this is kind of an out there example. But I’m just saying like, we don’t know, we don’t know what’s happening. But we do know that there’s a huge amount of cancer diagnosis that we didn’t have years ago. Certain countries are way more than others. There’s also an epidemic of autism, and some of these other things that we don’t know why they’re happening. But I think we would have to say somewhere along the line, we’re eating some things that we’re not supposed to be eating, and our bodies don’t know what to do with it. And so I’m just saying, I know people talk about Paleo diet and caveman and that kind of stuff, you know, that’s probably the way to eat. That’s probably what we were evolved to eat, not things that were made in a lab, and added to make sure that your food doesn’t decompose on the shelf. So there’s so many directions we could go, we could talk for four hours on just this one conversation on different compounds, and things that we know are problematic. Things that are in food all day, every day that are actually toxic in higher doses. But we need food, we need real food. We don’t need food-ish substances that are being marketed to us because they’re easy to produce and high in calories.

Clint Murphy  49:23

Well, it’s not only marketed. I mean, you can’t help but notice when you’re traveling, and as I love America, so I don’t want this to come off the wrong way. But as a Canadian, if I’m traveling in Europe.

Nate Dallas  49:35

Oh, we’re very sick here.

Clint Murphy  49:36

Yeah, you’ll know what I’m saying. If I’m traveling in Denmark, I mean, I just don’t see the fast food restaurants. And they’re not allowed to put the chemicals in their foods that you’re allowed in America. So they might have the same cereal, but it doesn’t look remotely alike. And one of the things you don’t really see is the epidemic of obesity. And when I come down to America, we’re in San Diego for a week, just couple weeks ago, there’s fast food everywhere and the quantities of the servings. Sometimes it feels like I’m eating double what I would eat if I was here at home, and I’m just blown away.  Like, is the purpose to like to make people at the obese? Like, it just doesn’t feel like it’s setting humans up for success?

Nate Dallas  50:26

No, and it’s so out of whack. I mean, because we could scrutinize the fast food chains for a portion size, which is out of control. W could scrutinize the actual growers of the product for what they’re putting in it and the way they’re processing it. We could scrutinize the government for allowing it in the school system. So that children, you know, 11 year olds are having Coca Cola with their lunch at school. And we’re getting them addicted to this behavior and normalizing it to the point where, yeah, man being 100 pounds overweight is normal. Well, that’s a broken society, we have failed in a huge way, in America. And it’s cheap. And it’s easy to come by. But it’s so convenient. It’s so convenient. And I think that’s the hook for most people. I mean, people where I live, most people don’t cook anymore, they don’t grow anything. It’s all fast. It’s all convenient. It’s all in a microwave, or in a drive thru, and you pick it up, and you eat it in your car. It’s all messed up. And in America, we don’t walk anywhere, we don’t do that. Everybody has a giant SUV, and they drive in it alone to get their french fries. You know, it’s just, there’s so many things wrong, culturally, just I mean, I’m embarrassed, I’m disgusted by it. And it’s these kids. I mean, I’m a clinician, I’m a dentist, and I see a lot of nutrition problems, a lot of them. And I’m seeing children with totally bombed out rotten teeth at eight, nine years old. And it’s like, these are supposed to last you for 80 more years. And you’ve already ruined them. Like, what in the world?  And the sugar, it’s nonstop sugar all day long. And that’s part of our culture, but it’s a big mess. So but I do think we need to, as consumers, be aware of what we’re eating, and what we’re drinking, and where it comes from, exactly what’s in it.

Clint Murphy  52:32

Yeah, not only for ourselves, but I mean, you have six kids, which just blows me away. The amount of energy, you have to have just to do that. The I have two boys, 14 and 11. I think a prime responsibility is making sure that when they go out into the world as young men that they’re physically, and we’ve talked a lot about the body and physicality in the first half, we’ll talk a bit more about the mental side, but it’s just arming them for success in life. And I think food is one of the biggest ways we need to be able to arm our children for success.

Nate Dallas  53:07

Yeah, well, and it’s a drug. It’s a way that a lot of people find comfort for a lot of other problems. And that’s something that isn’t talked about enough, either. But it is a drug, it is an addiction. And it’s no different than you over drinking, or smoking, or taking controlled substances, or whatever it is, it’s to pacify an uncomfortable spot in your life. And if you’re addicted, and have to have that, well, at some point, we have to have a hard conversation about what’s really going on in your personal life that’s making this so hard because nobody wants to be obese. Nobody wants to be obese, and it’s happening all over the place. Well, there’s got to be a reason it’s meeting a need, or you wouldn’t do it. So that’s another chapter, I guess

Clint Murphy  53:56

We’re gonna get there when we talk about the unconscious. So next one, we’re going to shift a bit to the mind. And I love this one, because you actually referenced it a little earlier when you were talking about shoulders back. And the idea here that we’re talking about is how throughout the day, we can make subtle shifts in our physiology that actually rescue us from suboptimal states and a few things that you talk about: power poses, deliberate movements, and I love you know, you’re going into a meeting, throw on a Superman pose, hold your Superman pose for 30 seconds, 60 seconds, you go into that meeting, higher testosterone, higher energy, you’re ready to take on the world. And so we’ve got power poses, deliberate movements, mindful thinking, I love and so all of those are ways you talk about to change our state. And one of the things I thought it would be important to mention to the listeners, what do you mean by states and state management? And then we can talk about how we’re going to actually manage those states.

Nate Dallas  55:02

Yeah, well state to me, when I talk about in the book, I try to define it. But that’s one of those things, it gets a little difficult to define. Because everybody has a different idea of what it means. But I’m talking about your emotional state, where your mind is, what you’re thinking about, how you’re feeling would be the easiest way to break it down. Now that does involve mental, and physical, and maybe even spiritual and emotional, but it’s really how you’re feeling in the moment. And so if your state is “‘m depressed”, well, you will manifest visible signals to let me know that.  Even if you don’t want me to know that, and your physiology, and your language, all of these things go into that state, and that’s a learned state. And so you realize, think about somebody right now that you know is depressed. There is a certain universal body language for depression. So you’re slumped over, your shoulders are forward, it’s the shallow breathing, your voice is a little lazier, slower cadence with your speech, there’s no volume, there’s no power, and you’re thinking about what’s wrong. You’re thinking about everything that’s negative. And so my question that I pose in the book is, okay, if we change the physiology, if you sat up straight, if you took a big, deep breath in your diaphragm, if you put your chin up, if you put your shoulders back, if you started speaking with some boldness and some clarity, and you started thinking about everything that’s going right in your life right now, everything that you’re grateful for, with the depression change, and it’s a 100% affirmative that it does because this is measurable with brain scans. So all I have to do to change your depression is asked you a few questions and get you to answer them in a different way than what you were thinking. And that changes. So what comes first, the thinking, or the physiology? Well, it doesn’t matter which comes first, they’re both ways you can control the state. So let’s do them both. But they come together, it’s a package deal. So we do have to manage our state to determine the outcome of what we’re about to get into. I don’t know the examples that I gave in the book. But this just happened recently, before I go travel, I travel a good bit, I always run scenarios in my mind, so that I’m prepared for things to go wrong. So if my flight gets delayed, if I’m dealing with somebody at the baggage counter that’s totally rude, if they’re out of rental cars, if I can’t get a cab, or you know, whatever, something goes wrong. They misplace my luggage, I get pickpocketed, I lose my wallet, whatever. And I go ahead and premeditate how I’m going to behave, how I’m going to respond. And man, it’s amazing because I used to just go about it. And if something really ticked me off, I would react. And I would react to the person at the counter. It wasn’t even her fault. But I was going to react, and then I was going to let it affect my day in which affects the people around me, and all of this stuff. And it’s a cascade and everything falls apart. And then you get to your vacation destination that you just paid out the wazoo to go to, and you’re pissed. And now you’ve just ruined it for everybody, when it should be like, you know what, this is an imperfect world. Luggage gets lost. It doesn’t matter. That lady is doing the best she can. She’s probably had a worse day than me. Matter of fact, I know she has. So how about offer some encouraging words, maybe give her a tip? I don’t know. But I’m not going to let acute events drag me into a bad state, which then ruins the 1000 things that come next. So sometimes it’s prevention. And sometimes it’s rescue, because I’ll realize that I’m in a bad state, or someone will let me know that I’m in a bad state. Because of my thinking, because of my physiology, because of my attitude, I’m just so triggered and so angry and blah, blah, blah. It’s like, whoa, this is not right. Everything’s wrong. Everything’s wrong. I’m gonna change everything I can. And so I mentioned in the book, some of the crazy stuff I do, but my goal initially, as soon as I recognize I’m in a bad state is to break the pattern immediately, by whatever means necessary. And that literally means sometimes I just sprint out the door. Just go sprinting down the street as fast as I can run because now I’m breathing, now I’m moving, now the scenery is changing, and now I’m thinking about something else. Sometimes it’s flipping the switch of positivity and gratitude and stop reflecting on the bad stuff. Sometimes it may be a cold shower, it may be doing jumping jacks, Anything, but like break the pattern, because your brain is running that familiar pattern. And there’s about 40 things that are contributing to it. And you have to break the cycle. So then you can redirect it in.

Clint Murphy  1:00:11

And do you ever use almost like a version of a safe word with your wife or kids and say, hey, if you ever see me getting into one of these states, just tell dad breathe, whatever the word is, and because you mentioned earlier, when someone when one of your kids is getting in that state, you’ll have them calm down and breathe. Like, is there a safe word that triggers for you that you’re like, okay, wait, okay, I hear you. Let me step back from this situation where I was going into a wrong state. Let me check myself. And now I can fix it.

Nate Dallas  1:00:42

Yeah, well, in my house, there’s two words, and sometimes they’re not safe, but they’re necessary. And that is state change. That’s it. I mean,

Clint Murphy  1:00:51

So state change. Okay, so straight up.

Nate Dallas  1:00:55

Yeah.  Everybody in the house knows about it. We live this stuff, man. I didn’t just write this to try to become an author and sell a couple cheap books, like I do this stuff. And everybody’s doing it in our house, all of this stuff. And so yeah, sometimes I will be the one to tell one of the kids, I think we need to state change. Sometimes my wife will tell me, I think you need a state change. But it used to be that everyone was reminding each other. Now it’s to the point where it’s kind of self policing. And we’ll catch it before it gets to that point. And now instead of my wife saying you need a state change, she’ll say, just made a stage change, didn’t you? I’ll disappear for a minute, I’ll come back and I’m all better. Geez, you just did it, didn’t you? I was wondering when you were going to do that. I was just about to tell you need to do that. But it’s part of our routine. And look, man, you’ve got to have credos in your home, you’ve got to have rules to live by, and you got to have a vision. And for us, it’s about peace. And so when there’s this many people living in a small space, there’s going to be conflict, there’s going to be annoyance, and there’s going to be triggers that gets you off. But if the goal is actually peace, and everybody in the house knows it, then you can call somebody out and say, hey, I think you need to state change, because the peace has been violated. And it doesn’t have to be accusatory, it doesn’t have to be rude. It’s just I think you’d benefit from a state change right now, don’t you?

Clint Murphy  1:02:22

Yeah, that’s a beautiful way to do it.

Nate Dallas  1:02:24

We actually appreciate you’re like, Yes, I do. Thank you. I’ll be back. I’m going to do that right now.

Clint Murphy  1:02:29

And one of the ways that you were able to get to this vision of where you are now was you decided to flip a bit of the questions. So everyone always says, you know, what should I do in life? What should I do? For you, a big way of doing it was instead saying, well, what do I definitely not want to do? And how do I need to behave so that I don’t end up there? What made you decide to invert the question, and what impact has that had on how you live your life, Nate?

Nate Dallas  1:03:02

Well, I think what led to inverting the question is, what should I do? What do I want to do when I grow up? What do I need to be doing tomorrow? Those questions never got answered. So it was just an open ended question forever. I still don’t know what I want to do when I grew up. I just do a lot of stuff. But I don’t know where I’m going. But I know what I’m not going to do. And that for me is a roadmap, at least it’s something. So I think that it came out of necessity, because I wanted some answers, and I wanted to know what to do and it just felt better. Because I definitively know what I don’t want to be the way I don’t want to act, what I don’t want to feel like so I just know what I’m not going to do. And the rest is kind of exciting, because I don’t know where I’m going. And it seems to work. And I like it that way. So yeah, I mean, I don’t know if that’s the answer you wanted or not. But that’s the truth.

Clint Murphy  1:04:01

No, I love it.

Nate Dallas  1:04:03

I would love for somebody to tell me, this is what you need to do. This is your calling in life. And this is where you need to focus. But I’ve never received that.

Clint Murphy  1:04:10

Now we’ll dig a little deeper because you also talk about the importance of understanding who we truly are. And that can help shape the not to do list, it can help shape the to do list. And it also, you know two things when you write about that, that jumped out to me. One is the concept of either radical or extreme ownership. I always like to refer to it as own your shit. And the other is, it’s the quote we probably use the most on this show and I think it’s driving what one of the next chapters of my life will be which is Carl Jung who says “Until you make the unconscious conscious, you will forever be led by it and call it fate”. And so when you were talking about earlier, our friends who are just eating the sugary Twinkies until they’re hitting a level they shouldn’t They’re doing it for a reason. They just don’t know what that unconscious reason is. So can you expand on these beauties for us and why it’s so important that we get that deeper understanding of ourselves?

Nate Dallas  1:05:13

Well, I’m gonna do you want to get into the human needs category? Now? Is that kind of where you want to go with this or…

Clint Murphy  1:05:19

Yeah, yeah.

Nate Dallas  1:05:21

Okay, well, you know, there are universal human needs. And there’s so many models, different psychologists, over the years have laid these things out. And a lot of them are related. But I go through one in the book that I found very practical, very useful, and for self diagnosing, for policing, and also for actionable steps. And so, yeah, everything we’re doing, every behavior that we’re doing, maybe in the beginning, something is just by chance, but any behavior that you repeat, you’re repeating because it’s meeting a need, and any behavior that you hate, that you wish you couldn’t do, that you wish you would stop doing, rather, but you’re having trouble getting rid of, you’re having trouble getting rid of it because it’s meeting needs, even if it’s hurting your life, even if it’s negative, it’s meeting a deep emotional need. And so I think it’s necessary to explore the human needs, to explore which ones are most in deficit to you, the ones that are most important to you, the ones that carry the most weight, because then you can start seeing so many of these behaviors are a result of being hungry for that need, or being negligent in that need. And it’s hard work to do, because we have to be honest. And we have to start seeing pain points, weaknesses, insecurities, all of these things that we really don’t want to look at. But if you sincerely want to grow, if you sincerely want to elevate past these things, and mature, you have to see them for what they are. And sometimes you need a therapist to pull these things out, and to talk them out. And you know, we think by talking, it’s good to have long form conversations with people. And I would argue that that’s one of the problems with society today is we’re so isolated, and so closed off, and people aren’t talking openly. And we’re not allowed to reach out to each other. And we say, hey, Clint, man, I think you needed a state change. You acted like a moron in there, or whatever. And let’s talk about it, are you okay? Like, but you should be able to reach out to me as a friend and say, man, I noticed last week or two you’ve just been off or you want to talk about it, are you okay? And then we would find out pretty quickly that some need is not being met. And if you can identify it, okay, well, now we have a target. Now we know what we have to do so if a need is in deficit, if you have a need to be significant, which we all do. But if that bucket is empty, or really low, and you’re desperate for it, well, you can get the need for significance in positive ways, or negative ways. And so you can dominate people, you can be a bully, you can be an abuser, you can be the loudest person in the room, you could be a terrorist, you could be whatever to feel important. Because if I walk in the room with a gun, I’m the most important person in the room. And everybody’s focused on me. Well, so some people get it that way but you could also meet the need for significance in positive ways by being the most charitable, the most loving, the most caring, the most efficacious in your work, or the one who’s the most helpful, or whatever. But usually, the faster way to get it is the negative way. Because the fastest way to have the tallest building in town is to burn down everybody else’s buildings, instead of building it one brick at a time and doing it the wrong way. So yeah, we have a need for significance, we have a need for certainty, we have a need for variety, we have a need for love and connection. Well, that’s another one that if you have good relationships, then that category is not starving. But if you don’t have it, you’ll seek it out in one night stands and pornography and whatever, you’re not getting in love, but you get some connection. And that will suffice for a little while. But really what we need to do is figure out how to positively fill that bucket. And maybe you can’t find a spouse tomorrow, but you could get love and connection by going down and volunteering at the soup kitchen. You can get love and connection by volunteering to be in a big brother civic organization and helping out a troubled kid, you know, or whatever it is, but if we’re needy, we’re dangerous. So we have to identify the need in deficit and then figure out what’s the positive way to rescue this and bring it back into balance. So I don’t do something stupid.

Clint Murphy  1:10:04

And for you when you first started doing this work, Nate, what were some of the ways that you started to dig into what are my needs? And how are they not being met? And how was that manifesting for you in your life at the time,

Nate Dallas  1:10:19

Mine change a lot over time. One of the practices that I do when I’m coaching is we talk about these six needs, and we try to identify the two that are most important to you, because about 80% of your behavior is coming from those two. And so my top two used to be significance, and variety. And so I would try to mix life up so much for the variety. And because I just hate monotony, I hate doing the same thing every day, I want to have multiple businesses, I don’t want to do the same job all day, every day, I want to go different places on vacation, I don’t want to go to the same place every time, you know, whatever. So there was a way to meet that need for variety, and also new friends, new experiences, new books, new foods, everything. But along those lines, as I’m exploring all that variety, I also need to feel significant and important in all of these other arenas that I’m dabbling in. And so I would run over people, I would kind of muscle my way into positions that maybe weren’t right weren’t earned. And I would have to be a loud voice in the room, I would have to prove myself and some of that came from my insecurity, as always being the smallest kid in my class, and always kind of being joked on about that as a as a as a weak, small person who wasn’t as important and wasn’t as celebrated for athletics and whatever. So then it was a lot of leftover stuff.  I was still running the same patterns. And that’s the thing we have to realize sometimes, okay, maybe I was coaching a guy last year, he had some major anger problems, and didn’t even realize he had them. But it turns out that there was a point in his life where his mother and father were separating, his father was abusive. And then a stepdad came in, he was abusive to the mom. And this guy had to be a physically aggressive person to survive. He had to be angry and protective, and had to be combative. So at that phase of his life, it was necessary for survival, for self preservation, and to protect his sister and his mother. But fast forward 10 years, 12 years, 15 years and if you tick this guy off, he’s ready to fight. And even little things, little comments, posturing, all of a sudden, he just blows up. And it was like, Man, do you realize you’re sabotaging relationships, you’re losing promotions, you’re losing friends, because you’re overreacting. But it’s just a leftover pattern. But you’ve got to realize you’re standing here on a battlefield with a sword and a shield. And the war has been over for 15 years, like everybody else is just going to Starbucks to get a coffee. And you look like a maniac. Like, you don’t need a weapon right here. You need to learn how to acclimate to normal society. That thing was good at one time. But now it’s overstayed, and now it’s bad. So I kind of got off track there. But my point was, some of these needs are leftover from long ago. And when you see them for what they are, these dark things, especially, you know, the definition of darkness is the absence of light. Well, when you shine the light on it, and see it for what it is, you don’t need that anymore. It’s not even a necessary part of your life. It’s just leftover. And so when I realized, I don’t have anything to prove anymore, I don’t need to flaunt success, or to tell you how much I can benchpress or whatever other stupid thing. Well, now the need for significant is not so needy. And so then something else can swap places. So things change over time. And there are temperaments, there are personalities, and maybe your two stay that way together. And they’re not all bad. I mean, my need for significance is still there just like everybody else’s. But now I can do things that actually help people and feel special for doing that. And that’s a lot better than really hoping you said the wrong thing. So I can hit you in the mouth and prove to everybody watching that. I’m a man. That’s just ridiculous.

Clint Murphy  1:14:36

Yeah. And I think what’s super important about what you’re saying there that we want our listeners to realize is and that’s what Carl Jung was getting at is you don’t realize how much of your hard wiring happens in your childhood. We’re not even aware that we’re still behaving at 44 the way we did it eight years old when our dad screamed at us or he told us, we weren’t good enough. Like that’s literally driving us for the rest of our lives. Until you sit down with either you know, your psychoanalyst, therapist or you sit down and do some shadow work. You do some, you join a men’s group and they take you through a father wound exercise. And you’re like, holy shit, I’m still wounded by what my dad said to me when I was six, or that my mom always forgot to pick me up after school. So I feel abandoned, I feel alone and I chase the wrong thing to make that feeling go away. So I love that you went there, and that you gave those examples that more and more people need to do that deep work and coming out of that work, and the need for significance, you were able to make massive change for yourself, which was the pursuit of a 29 hour work week so that instead of focusing on significance and money, you were able to focus on peace and well being. What drove that decision for you? And how has that looked, you know, where years after you made the decision? How’s it looking for you today, Nate?

Nate Dallas  1:16:16

Well, it’s less than 29 hours now. So it’s looking better. But, you know, this was this was loaded on so many different levels, I guess I have to choose a pathway for the sake of brevity, for the conversation. But one of the big things for me, with the work in particular, and there’s a whole chapter about work in the book, there’s also one about money, and those are closely related. But it just dawned on me one day, that it’s very odd that in my country, at least, everybody works basically the same schedule every week, about 40 hours at the workplace. And everybody works about the same number of years. And everybody retires at about the same time. And there’s people that make $40,000 a year, and people that make $400,000 a year, and they work the same amount for the same number of years. And I just thought this is crazy. This doesn’t make any sense.

Clint Murphy  1:17:12

It doesn’t math out.

Nate Dallas  1:17:13

No, it doesn’t. And the reason it’s that way, is because we perpetually level up our lives to match the income. And it’s expected that you do that. In fact, it’s so normal that if you don’t do that, you’re the radical, which is where I’m living now. I’m so ordinary that I’m extraordinary. But I just thought this is crazy. I’m making a bunch of money. And I’m working really hard. And I like working hard. If I’m working, I want to work hard. But I don’t want to work this many hours, especially at a job that I really don’t enjoy, when I could be doing something else. And I don’t want a vacation home, I don’t want a really fast car, I don’t want any of that stuff. And if all of my peers and my colleagues have all that, that’s great, fine, help yourself. And I love when you invite me to go fishing on your boat.

Clint Murphy  1:18:08

You don’t want a boat, you want a friend who has a boat.

Nate Dallas  1:18:11

That’s right. And I’ve had boats and they’re are a lot of work. But so for me, it was like, okay, so that was one part of it. Okay, if I am actually productive, and efficient and intelligent, I should be able to work less, and still make my family work. So that was one part of it. But also, there was stuff about, I wasn’t having the time and the margin to do a lot of the things that I really think are important, and that matter. And that and that actually give me life and juice me up. And so well, that’s another part that factors into that. But then there was this thing of the realization that every job swells to the time you allot for it. If I say hey, man, I need you to make this presentation and make a nice slideshow and do the speech and blah, blah, blah and I need you to show up and do it in two weeks. You’re going to work on it for two weeks. But if I said I need it tomorrow at four o’clock, you’re going to work on it for one day, and the product is probably going to be pretty close to the same. So I really just started testing at my own workplace. Okay, what if we took our fiive day workweek, shaved it to four and a half. And my goal is we’re going to do the same amount of production in less time. So we cut out half a day on Friday, which everybody loved because now you have an extra half day for your weekend. Well, unbeknownst to me, it was pretty easy to produce the same amount. Everybody was happier. Everybody was motivated. It worked easily. And so then I said, Well, that’s pretty remarkable. We’ll do that for a little while and see how long it lasts. Maybe this is a fad. And maybe people are just trying to impress me. And you know, kissing up a little bit but it maintained, it sustained. So I said okay, well let’s go to four. What do y’all think about us not working on Fridays and you’re making the same amount of money will work four days a week. That’s it, as long as everybody puts out the same amount of product, then we’re going to cut it to four. And y’all will still make the same amount of money. And you’ll have an extra day off every week, everybody was down with the plan. We tested it out and it worked. We didn’t lose any production. The same revenue came in the same paycheck has went out. And so then it was like, Well, how far can you go with this idea? Like how much waste is there in a typical work day, that is normal and permissible? But what if we just eliminated all the waste and decided, when we’re working, we’re working and we’re playing, we’re playing, but we’re not mixing ever. And so we just kept pushing it. And I ended up when I wrote the book was 29 hours as the sweet spot. But I can tell you now, I’ve cut that two more times since then. And I’m essentially working two days in my private practice as a dentist, which is a nice job. It’s a high income, but I’m doing two days a week there. And then I’m homeschooling my children, three days a week, spending time doing other recreational activities. I’m doing volunteer work, I’m doing charity work. I’m having time to say yes when people say hey, can we talk, which happens to me a lot. I’m sure it happens to you too, because you’re a knowledgeable, nice guy. And they’re like, I can trust this guy. And so it just happened. So they say, hey, man, you got any time and the next like month we can get together? And I’ll say how about tomorrow? How about now? What are you doing right now. And so I’m available, because there’s margin. And that’s work I want to do. And along the side of that, I’ve been able to launch a few other little products on the side, launch some other businesses, get into some other endeavors that are more passive income. And I enjoy those things. I enjoy building things. I like making things, I’m a creator. And so now, okay, I don’t make as much money as I would if I were doing dentistry. But my enjoyment and what I’m doing and my fulfillment in life and my availability, all of that stuff is better. And the bottom line is, I don’t need the extra money to buy the thing so that you think I’m successful, I don’t want it. I want to actually feel good. I want to feel good. And I want my wife to say I can’t believe that we get to live this way, which she says every single week on less money. So I’m here man, I’m not going back. I’m not going back.

Clint Murphy  1:22:27

I’m sold. I’m in. That’s a beautiful spot to end it for the listeners. So much more in the book to read. Nate, do you have time for a final fast four question that we do with all of our guests

Nate Dallas  1:22:39

Man, just told you I’m available hit me.

Clint Murphy  1:22:41

I love it. Okay, so we’ll fire four quickly at you. What’s one of the most influential books you’ve read?

Nate Dallas  1:22:47

Oh, so this is always hard for me to recommend books because I batch books, I get on a topic, and I’ll read four or five. And they all get squished together. And I don’t know who said what, but one of my and I read a a lot of spiritual books too. And I know that’s not necessarily a good recommendation for a lot of people. But one that I just had pure delight in reading was The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Have you read that one?

Clint Murphy  1:23:13

You know, it’s one of those interesting ones, there’s three or four. And this is one of them is because I share a lot of similarities to you. It’s almost like for a lot of our conversation, it’s like I’m talking to myself.

Nate Dallas  1:23:26

We even look like brothers.

Clint Murphy  1:23:27

Yeh, I know, resistance has never been one of the things that gets in my way. So I got 25% of the way through and thought I’m good with this, I’m gonna put this one down and let it go. But the 25% I was like, this is a book I could recommend to a lot of guys that are in my men’s group, a lot of people who lik, you talked about it earlier in this conversation, the first step, the baby step, they don’t take that step. And so this is a book where you want to hand it to them and say, hey, you need to take some steps. Here’s a book on how to do it.

Nate Dallas  1:23:57

Well for me, it wasn’t just the resistance page was I think, is what speaks to most people most prominently in that book. But for me, it was him kind of framing and Seth Godin, I don’t know if you’ve ever read any of his stuff. He’s good about this, too. But it’s like, if you are a creator, if that’s part of what you do, and you have drive, and you have juice to do it. It’s not just that it would be good if you did it. And you shared this with the world. It’s an obligation, like you have to do this. You have some unique skills that you need to put forward and you need to spend time on this. And so for me, it wasn’t just resistance and it wasn’t even just permission, which I think a lot of people need. I gave a TED talk one time and it was about permission to fail. And I think sometimes people need that permission and they’re waiting for someone to tell them it’s okay to go for something. But for me it was no, you have an obligation to put forward things into the world, and to develop things and to move them. Because this is what you were made for. This is specific to your makeup. And so that was a good one.

Clint Murphy  1:25:11

Oh, I love that. What are you reading right now let’s you know we pop the bookshelf, what’s near the top,

Nate Dallas  1:25:18

I am going through at the moment, some Thomas Merton. I don’t know if you ever heard of him, he is a Catholic monk, I am going through his lectures that he used to give to the young friars, the brothers who were becoming monks in their seminary school. So he’s talking a lot about your vocation, your calling, but he’s also talking about self sacrifice. He’s talking about humility. He’s talking about the pursuit of what is good. And what is beautiful. He’s talking about brotherhood and tribe, a lot of cool stuff, but but I’m consuming it as if I’m a student in his school.

Clint Murphy  1:25:59

Yes, as if you’re one of the young friars, I love it.

Nate Dallas  1:26:02

Yeah, yeah, he’s got several books and several audio things, because he is recent enough to where there were still recording devices available and stuff when he was doing this. So this is not like ancient stuff. So lots of fun, but it’s one of those, once I get on that track, I’m going to consume everything that he’s put out, because I’m a fan. And every chapter, everything that I get into is just so, it just cuts me man, it just cuts to the bone. And I’m seeing all of these things that are necessary that I need need to work on. And he also talks about cycles, and the trajectory and the steps involved and just growth in general. And you shouldn’t be blown off course, when this happens, or that happens. Like that just means you’re at this level. And this should be expected. And so there’s a lot of that kind of stuff, the journey of wellness and spiritual usefulness, and that sort of stuff. It’s not easy. And so you have to prepare yourself, especially when things are going well. When it’s raining, you prepare for the drought.

Clint Murphy  1:27:08

And have you had a chance to read Resilience by Eric Greitens.

Nate Dallas  1:27:13

I just skimmed it in the airport. I know it was getting a lot of attention. And that was one of those. It’s on my list to read fully. I just picked it up and look through and definitely think I would like it. So it’s on my list, but I have not been all the way through it yet.

Clint Murphy  1:27:27

It sounds based on what you’re describing of Thomas Martin, that I have a feeling you’re really going to enjoy it. I’ve never read writing that is nonfiction that good. I just finished the book thinking I don’t know how to write. And I think I’m a decent writer. So it was really, really humbling.

Nate Dallas  1:27:50

Well that’s good. Every time I read even nominal work, I realized I’m a terrible writer. So you’re a step ahead of you there.

Clint Murphy  1:28:00

What’s one thing you’ve spent less than 1000 bucks on in the last year or two that you think wow, I needed to buy this sooner?

Nate Dallas  1:28:06

Well, man, I can spend a little time talking about several, I want to give you a really, really easy one. We did not talk about the chapter on play, recreation, leisure and play. But there’s this little tiny device that I buy the box load now it’s a disc about this big, maybe three inches across, it’s a rubber disc, like a miniature frisbee, and it the way you hold it, you wrap your finger like in this little groove on the side. And instead of throwing it backhand like a Frisbee throw a forehand, and you zip this thing. Well, I keep them in my back pocket. I keep them in my work bag, I keep them in my vehicle. And I’m always ready to play. So no one’s ever seen the thing before. So I’ll be inside outside wherever. And I’ll just nod at somebody and say hey, catch, and I’ll zip it to him. And it’s so satisfying to throw this little thing. Everybody likes to throw a Frisbee, especially once you get the rotation right. But it’s so small and so easy to travel with. So I am engaging people in play all the time, even strangers, like I’ll just, I can be walking down the sidewalk and yell at somebody say Hey, catch, you know, and we’ll throw it back and forth a few times or something or a friend or we’re in the office and we’re talking and I’m like wow, we’re talking, catch this. And we’ll just we’ll problem solved while we’re playing with this thing. It They’re like 12 bucks, which is a total ripoff but because it’s like 10 cents worth of rubber. But anyway, if you look on Amazon or something, search or eBay, you can search for a zip chip. There’s another one called a Dynamic Disc and I can’t remember those but it’s like bright yellow color

Clint Murphy  1:29:53

Zip chip or Dynamic Disc. Love it.

Nate Dallas  1:29:56

Yep. But it’s I’m going to so smaller fit in your back pocket and if you get it out and start playing with a friend, they will immediately ask where did you get it? And how do they get one? Because it’s that much fun. But it’s 12 bucks, and it brings joy to people. And it makes people forget what they’re doing for a minute and just play.  For that reason, I think it’s very valuable.

Clint Murphy  1:30:19

Oh, I love it. I’m on it. I’ll be on Amazon tonight. The And so because we are on a show about growth. What’s one habit, mindset or belief you’ve changed in the last year that’s had a big impact on your life?

Nate Dallas  1:30:31

Man? That’s a big question. I think one belief that I have tried to seal as law is that every conversation matters. Like you never know where people are. You never know, really the question they’re asking, you never really know what they’re trying to tell you. But if you pay attention, and you actually listen, and you’re not thinking about what you want to say next, you’re not thinking about what you need to be doing instead of that, or what a hurry you’re in, or judging the person thinking, oh, my God, this person needs this, that whatever, you just listening compassionately, you will hear dramatic, important, really critical things from people. And all of a sudden, you’re in a position to help. And I don’t mean fix people, I don’t mean rescue them from the pit of despair, just to be a friend, just to be ears,just to let them think out loud while speaking. And maybe,maybe you have some wisdom to offer. Maybe you have something they need. But if nothing else, know that in that moment, that conversation is important. It’s valuable and every single conversation, even if it’s just, Hey, man, how you doing? How’s your wife and kids, how’s the blah blah blah, it’s all the normal stuff. And then at some point, maybe you give an honest answer and a response that goes one step deeper. But since I’ve been trying to keep that front of mind, I’ve had so many situations that would have been 30 seconds long, that turned into 45 minutes and turn into a real friendship, turn into tear, turn into enlightening conversation, or just burden, just somebody unloading something and you being able to say, Hey, man, I’m with you. I’m on your team. And I will pray for you. And I will call you next week and check on you or whatever. But so that’s one that I think I can’t ignore anymore, because I’ve seen it. And I don’t exactly know where it came from. I don’t think I read it. I think it was just one day sitting in my meditation chair. And I thought today I’m going to make every conversation matter and respect it as if it matters. And it just blew up.

Clint Murphy  1:32:44

It’s just massive. And I mean, the whole premise of this show is we can learn something from everyone and Nate, is there anything we didn’t cover that you want to make sure the listeners hear.

Nate Dallas  1:32:57

I would just say that if you do pick up the book, if something in this conversation resonated with you, and you’re curious, and you pick it up, don’t feel like you have to do it in the order it’s laid out. I laid it out in a way that I think makes sense, building with sleep and physiology first so that then hopefully, you have the energy to do some of the other stuff. But if you just want to go straight to rest, recreation and leisure, if that’s something you know, you would like to get into, just do that. But this is a very easy to read book that is chock full of fun things that are useful, maybe funny, maybe enjoyable to read. I hope they are. But more than that, I tried to ask more questions than I answer. And if you will, give yourself time, real time contemplate the questions and maybe come back to them. I think each chapter has got some questions in there that we all need to answer. And don’t feel like you have to do the whole thing. Don’t be in a hurry. Just go to whatever is kind of peaking your interest. And the way we started this conversation was talking about small steps. Identify one and murder it.

Clint Murphy  1:34:06

Love it. And where can people find you?

Nate Dallas  1:34:08

Well, all over the place, in real life. I don’t know about virtually. I do have an Instagram account, because I tried to be findable on there. I don’t post a lot. I don’t get on there a lot. I actually delete the app after every time I post something. And then maybe a week or two later, I’ll download it again and post something else and check the messages. But so I’m on there, but I have a website and natedallas.com There’ll be some little clips and interviews and things on there. But there’s nothing to see. I’m not that interesting. I don’t maintain a presence. I just pop up here and there. So if you look for the book, it’s on Amazon, but otherwise, hopefully, you’ll see me somewhere.

Clint Murphy  1:34:47

I don’t know. I love it. Thanks, Nate. And thank you for joining me on the show today.

Nate Dallas  1:34:51

I had a blast and it’s good to know that my brother separated at birth I finally got to meet him.

Clint Murphy  1:35:00

Thank you for joining us on the pursuit of learning, make sure to hit the subscribe button and head over to our website, the pursuit of learning.com where you will find our show notes, transcripts and more. If you like what you see, sign up for our mailing list. Until next time, you’re hosting learning Clint Murphy