Learning to Live Better Using Evolutionary Psychology With Tim Ash

Unleashing Your Primal Brain: Learning to Live Better Using Evolutionary Psychology With Tim Ash – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWxbOA0ND2s

Transcript:
(00:00) the idea is simple it’s the operating system that all human beings have in common all 8 billion of us on the planet and in order to understand how we think and why we act which is the subtitle of the book you have to go through the whole Arc of evolution we share a lot of things with the most primitive life on Earth and then there’s some things we share only with herd animals other mammals and then there’s some things at the end of our Evolution that are bizarre and uniquely human like our highly social natures and polarization
(00:30) tribalism and so on and and so you have to kind of retrace that whole Arc to understand what makes us tick so I cover uh memory learning sleep language gender differences our highly social Natures it’s all in there and just kind of in a from the very deepest stuff that we share with all life to to uniquely human stuff hello everyone and welcome to the flow over fear podcast where it is our mission to help you to rise above fear and realize your ultimate potential in leadership and life I’m your host Adam
(01:08) Hill and it is my goal to share with you the human side of high performance my guests share their experience with fear anxiety struggle Challenge and most importantly despite all of it how they Rose above it to achieve incredible results so if you’re ready to rise up let’s get started hello everyone and welcome to flow over fear thank you so much for being here I am really excited about our guest today because I’ve had that opportunity to get to know Tim Ash uh for the last few months in this program that we’re both involved in
(01:44) called heroic public speaking which is helping us uh build our Keynotes to deliver our powerful messages and I’m excited to have him here because he’s just such a genuinely caring and wonderful individual with so so much value to give and he’s given so so much value in the world here’s some of his uh here some of his resume it it’s incredible Tim Ash is he’s a highly sought after International speaker uh an authority on evolutionary psychology and digital marketing and his bestselling
(02:13) books have sold more than 50,000 copies his most recent of which is Unleash Your Primal brain demystifying how we think and why we act and I just finished this book on a uh Drive I didn’t read it by the way I wasn’t reading while I was driving I was listen listening to it and it was uh it was incredible uh so give it a give it a listen give it a give it a read uh for 19 years Tim was the co-founder and CEO of site tuners a strategic dig digital optimization agency and he helped create over 1.
(02:46) 2 billion with a B of value for companies like Google Expedia e-harmony Facebook American Express Canon Nestle semantic in it human seens and Cisco and many many others and today he speaks all over the world to audiences in the thousands and he’s likely the best colleg Collegiate saber fener and self-taught salsa dancer you’ve ever we’ve ever had on this podcast thank you so much Tim for being here that’s quite a that’s quite a mouthful quite a resume yeah ad great to be with you yeah well I I I I I
(03:23) know that I mean you’ve been speaking for a very long time and and you you’ve got so so much Authority and I really want to dig into a lot of this EV evolutionary psychology concept because it’s so so intriguing but I also want to kind of get back to where you started and and how your career evolved from you know being in marketing do you know being basically one of the Pioneers in the digital you know website space and evolving into evolutionary psychology can you kind of take us back uh and to
(03:51) where your journey started uh sure well actually it’s more of a full circle situation uh I I started out at University of California San Diego I had a double major in Computer Engineering and cognitive science uh and I stayed there for graduate school in what would now be called artificial intelligence I seven years in the PHD program trying to come up with computers that can learn from experience and but I I’m a quitter so after seven years I I quit the PHD program and I started my first company instead I’d been working in a some some
(04:23) large companies defense contractors and others and I decided to start my own digital marketing agency and so for about 25 years I was involved in what’s called conversion rate optimization or cro and that’s essentially making websites more effective so a higher percentage of your website visitors will act once they get to your website and what is that if not persuasion and what’s persuasion if not psychology and so after 25 years of that and as you mentioned getting some great results for our clients I’m back to my first love
(04:56) which is explaining how human beings really think and make decisions and and that’s the basis for my latest book I love that and and I’m going to jump way way ahead because you kind of mentioned Ai and everything like that and sure and and and it’s intriguing to me because every it’s on everybody’s mind everybody’s talking about it but you know when we talk about this space and and and how that plays a role in it having come from that beginning stages where you’re working on your PhD in in a
(05:22) similar concept seeing where it is now what do you believe are the implications of all of that oo well I’m glad you asked the easy question questions first yeah well let’s let’s put it this way back in the in the stone ages when I was doing my my work what we’re working on was the algorithm side how do you design computers that can learn from experience and from example and so is the algorithms what we were missing were these giant data sets to train them on like and obviously with the Advent of
(05:51) the internet that’s no longer an issue now we have the giant data sets and the algorithms to learn that know how to learn and so we’re putting those together and we’re getting these crazy fast advances in artificial intelligence um my own personal view is I’m not sure what’s going to get us first the climate crisis nuclear apocalypse or the AI Singularity uh it’s it’s kind of a a race uh among the three no no joking aside though I think that it’s not going to be some rise of the Machines where
(06:23) they’re going to try to eliminate human beings it’s much more likely to be your Siri talking to your toaster to your garage door opener and they’re each trying to optimize something in their limited blind local little way but what you can’t tell is like the the network effects that are going to come out of millions of those things doing their own little thing um so they’re all trying to in a way optimize and if you look at human beings broadly speaking we’re not very optimal so they’re going to try to
(06:54) work uh us out of the system you know unintentionally because we’re we’re not efficient or optimal so it’s I had this professor at UCSD and he said you can look at a million different ice crystals you know they just water right little little crystals they all have different shapes and sizes and you can examine ice crystals till the cows come home but you’ll never be able to predict an avalanche by studying ice crystals so to me it’s that kind of thing where there’s going to be uh this emergent behavior
(07:27) from a bunch of simple little things yeah that’s the part we can’t predict yeah and that’s that’s a big part of not being able to predict for sure it’s just and and I I I know very very little about that space only enough to know that I saw Terminator 2 and know all about that and so so my judgment address but uh yeah it’s it’s but it’s fascinating that you had so so much uh uh so so your so your experience is is baked deep into a lot of that cogn itive science and and and computer science
(08:03) which blends well and mens well into into how evolutionary psychology kind of leads into how we think and what we do yeah yeah absolutely excellent so I and I also kind of want now I want to go way back um to because I’ve heard your story made me sound really old you know like way back when the Dead Sea was only six the Dead Sea was only sick I love that one um but yeah no I cuz we’ve rehearsed together we’ve talked through our speeches and things like that we’ve and you’ve been kind enough to spend a
(08:34) lot of time with me on that and I’ve heard your talk which is incredibly powerful the new one that you’re working on and you know you share a lot of your story in there and your story is profound and inspiring uh to hear where you’ve come from um because you came originally from the USSR when you know when there was we were full-on in Cold War mode can you share a little bit about when you came over here and and how that changed cuz that’s a big jump from you know uh uh from immigrating to the United States to uh attending
(09:04) college for computer cognitive science and and really leading the way to be a Hu a very impactful entrepreneur and speaker yeah you you really don’t know where life’s going to take you I mean in my case it took Brave parents um as you mentioned we were in the Soviet Union during the the depths of the Cold War and my dad was ethnically Jewish and there was a lot of discrimination around that and so he had straight A out of high school but he couldn’t go into this Aviation Institute he wanted to attend
(09:31) because they considered Jews a security risk and just wouldn’t let him apply so that’s how he ended up getting a PhD in civil engineering instead U and uh so he knew it was going to be discrimination against me and my my younger brother as well and he just uh had The Bravery to leave when they just cracked the door open in the 70s and uh so he brought us here as a kid actually I didn’t know where here was at that time you could end up in Israel Canada Australia or the us and we were thinking of going to
(10:02) Canada no nothing wrong with Canada we have lots of mutual Canadian friends uh but it’s freaking cold up there not any colder than Moscow in the USSR but U so my dad happened to just call up his uncle who immigrated to the US in the 1920s and was a business success so this is like a transatlantic collect call that got connected through his Madison Avenue apartment in New York to Florida where he was wintering and my dad’s like hey Uncle Saul we’re U thinking of going to Canada and um and my great uncle said
(10:34) no no Sasha you you come to the US and I’ll take care of everything so the fact that that five minute call was collected connected rather is why I’m an American and not a Canadian right it’s just such a weird life that’s amazing so so and and the fact that it was connected was there actually trouble with connecting to the United States back then like connecting calls where people you know 1970s and giant cable going under the ocean and you know to collect call I mean it wasn’t all just like
(11:06) instantaneous instant messaging or you know highspeed bandwidth stuff like it is now right yeah yeah I I was thinking more along the lines of just security and and like the communications between USSR and the United States because my perception of it being from this side was like when we were closed off from each each other no we had already been kicked out of the USSR in fact stripped us of our Soviet citizenship so technically we were stateless so we were in Rome Italy at the time deciding where to go I see I see that that makes a lot
(11:38) of sense but yeah that is incredibly incredibly Brave um and then what was it like can you just kind of give us some details on growing up in the United States uh kind of getting getting familiar in here and then what drove you to want to actually get into and pursue computer science and cognitive science and all that I’d say it was the the typical uh first generation you know immigrant thing or your parents are like you know go into engineering you’ll have a good career you know they were right about that but but uh you know my
(12:08) parents were both civil engineers and with the help of my my great uncle you know they had a soft Landing here back in the day that was the same as being a software engineer now so there were a lot of Russians Indians Chinese you know people with technical educations that could make a go of it and uh so my parents had a pretty good run and um they always moved to cities about 100,000 or so that had good Public School Systems and uh so it was like I was on the Glide path there like yeah you can do that artist thing why don’t
(12:38) you do a a minor in Visual Arts and do do computer engineering as your major yeah well reading yeah I’m reading through your your bio like your longer your longer bio I didn’t know this about you but you are an artist you’re a marshall artist you do you do a lot of different really cool things I I love that was that something that was was kind of created in you that creative Spirit at an early age did you is that when you fostered a lot of that well I I think it’s people’s personalities I mean
(13:07) you could also say I’m the uh jack of all trades and master of none you know just stick my nose in a lot of things but I just follow my curiosity which is Big Picture paid off I would say in my life uh but uh there is a bit of you know both of my parents are dead now but there’s an element of yeah everything that they sacrificed just for me to not take full advantage of of you know this Society or what’s possible here you know I just keep pushing myself I think most immigrants and children of immigrants
(13:39) are a bit driven yeah yeah and that that’s um I you you said something there about curiosity and it really sparked kind of my spidey sense a little bit because I’ve been thinking that curiosity is kind of the antidote to a lot of different things but um can you kind of expand on how that Curiosity drove you like what and and should we be more curious about certain things o well I think that’s an unequivocal yes I have a friend Dove Baron I’ve also been on his podcast and the title of it is curiosity bites and he does these
(14:15) extended long form interviews like we did two hours that he chopped up into four separate episodes and but according to him and I agree with this curiosity is one of the most fundamental human values because all other values are built on top of it if you don’t have curiosity you’re just a lump on a log and your life’s useless so without that what do you really stand for so if you’re not growing and learning and stretching and pushing beyond your fear uh which I think is a perfect tyeing back into the topic of your
(14:44) podcast then then what’s what’s the point you know yeah and I’ve been I’ve been toying with that a bit I I love that that that idea that getting more Curious I mean it not only expands your your uh your views and and your knowledge and all that kind of stuff but but helps you to kind of get more in touch with your fear I from my perspective looking at it just in terms of that Curiosity so yeah that that kind of reson well I’d say it’s even an antidote for fear it’s what what you’re
(15:11) doing is you’re not just like pushing through your fear or denying your fear what you’re doing is you’re saying here’s something else that outweighs my fear if my curiosity outweighs my fear in the current setting then then that’s another way to deal with fear yeah yeah I I get to I I feel it I feel it a lot like where I am fearful or I I feel afraid or anxious about something and I will all the and you know it I I just find that my my mind seems to be so certain on the uncertainty that I can’t
(15:43) resolve it or whatever if that makes sense and then yeah but just asking the questions is this true is this this it it’s just so so helpful but uh you know in my book Unleash Your Primal brain I talk a lot about kind of fear-based responses and pain and the things that actually motivate us and where that came from from an evolutionary standpoint I mean you can’t get rid of this stuff for sure you have to learn how to work with it yeah well that’s a great segue into into your book because again I had the
(16:12) chance to listen to it recently on a on a long road trip which is it’s a great great listen and um and a great read and um here it is here again uh so yeah you can find it on on Amazon and where books are sold yeah or Primal brain.com book primal brain. book and we’ll get that in the show Notes too um but it’s such a it’s just such a great read on like what makes us tick and what I was what I was taken by with it is that it’s so I mean for a very very complex process I mean you wrot it over the course of eight you
(16:46) know over the course of 8 billion you know years of evolution but just this idea that you explain it so simply and with profound short paragraph or short uh uh chapters uh it was it was really helpful so who um what what do you hope people can get from this book and what what’s the what’s really the goal for for writing this this book and what’s it about U this is a great question so what it is is uh first of all thank you for your kind words I was trying to do a very difficult Balancing Act explain
(17:17) evolutionary psychology and do it in a fun way and uh so I tried to make the writing exciting and when I was done talking about something I was just done there’s no there’s no Bluff there there’s no fat there just there just meat on the bone and so uh I’ve distilled about 30 books down to one readable one so that’s what if if I succeeded at that that’s what I consider to be the real accomplishment but basically the idea is simple it’s the operating system that all human beings have in common all 8
(17:47) billion of us on the planet and in order to understand how we think and why we act which is the subtitle of the book you have to go through the whole Arc of evolution we share a lot of things with with the most primitive life on Earth and then there’s some things we share only with herd animals other mammals and then there’s some things at the end of our Evolution that are bizarre and uniquely human like our highly social natures and polarization tribalism and so on and and so you have to kind of retrace that whole Arc to understand
(18:18) what makes us tick so I cover uh memory learning sleep language gender differences our highly social Natures it’s all in there and just kind of in a from the very deepest stuff that we share with all life to to uniquely human stuff H it’s yeah it oh go ahead no I was just going to give you a quick example so for example people talk about brain chemistry and dopamine is like one of those like oh the payoff for getting to a reward or something like that and we think of it as uniquely human right it’s like oh that’s those three little
(18:52) flashing dots when someone’s typing a response on our messaging app and that’s dopamine well yeah that an ipation is is dopamine but we freaking share dopamine with fruit flies I mean 500 million years ago this idea of metering out energy in order to pursue goals was built into all life forms on Earth you know that had a brain so there’s a lot of things that have nothing to do with human beings they have to do with pretty much all animal life or insect life in this case yeah so yeah and and from what
(19:25) you what you describe in the book it sounds like a lot of the driving force behind that is just is simply survival I mean that evolutionary point is just we want to we want to keep surviving right yeah and and so it’s not to thrive it’s to survive and so a lot of people think that uh there’s like some kind our brain is there to optimize things or our memory is perfect and no the purpose of everything the brain does is keep it at a fairly low energy level we’re already burn up massive amounts of our our
(19:55) energy just powering our brain and and it’s to be to help us survive that’s it it’s that simple it’s not any higher goal than that yeah and and what I really like about the way you lay it out too is is talking about the evolution but what I was what I was thinking through constantly as I was listening to it was you know over the last say 150 200 years we’ve just had this hockey stick of advancement in our in our I mean maybe you could maybe extrapolate that out longer but but the but the key
(20:26) point is it’s only in a recent history that we’ve seen this this this uh huge advancement in technology and and uh uh how we interact and how we you know live and the Comforts of Modern Life and first World’s you know Comforts that a lot of that survival stuff maybe isn’t serving Us in the same way right I mean so I was kept on thinking like yeah well well no so if you want to think about just the uniquely human evolution so 200,000 years ago there we are in the plains of East Africa we’re wandering
(20:58) ing around with our tribe which is anywhere from 100 to 200 people probably a third of them are genetic relatives close or distant and um really it was like our whole cultural package was carried by that tribe our politics our weapons our technology our medicine our entertainment our values and belief systems religion everything came from that unitary tribe and now as you say we’re in this modern society and now we belong to overlapping tribes um as you if you watching the video you can see I’m a member of the aerodynamic haircut
(21:32) tribe for example I shave my head U you know I’m a currently a parent of multiple teenagers I’m in that tribe uh let’s see what else the Mercedes driving tribe the salsa dancing tribe you know so we can we really have overlapping tribes and so the question is which one is activated in a particular situation mhm um and so it makes it very complicated because originally we evolved to just be one tribe and our survival depended on repeating and paring the cultural beliefs of that tribe even at the expense of our own
(22:11) direct experience it was more important for us to be loyal than to be right yeah because if you’re not a cohesive loyal tribe the other tribe is going to come along and either out breed you kill you um or convert you or you know there weren’t the stakes were pretty high and so right now we polarize over stuff that’s not life and death as if it was life and death yeah yeah it do you think that’s leading to that the fact that we’re in overlapping tribes maybe even some of them that might be at conflict with one
(22:43) another or what have you do you think that’s leading to more of our mental health issues or or or burnout or or anything like that that that’s that is kind of destructive to humanity should we put that in in the category of oh this might you know uh this might be up there with nuclear war or Global let’s just let’s just put it this way we have a negativity bias because you know the bearers running at you you know you need to know about that before deciding whether this Berry you’re looking at is
(23:13) going to poison you or not right so like certain things you could take time with other things you had to react to immediately so we have a threat Focus there’s about a two two and a half to one bias of negativity to positivity which by the way which is why entrepreneur NES have to be almost relentlessly optimistic to get over that like two to1 bias um you know so that’s that’s why they’re successful because they in effect have a more realistic view of the world but again before when the stakes were are you going to be dead
(23:44) or lose an arm because the bear attacks you that stuff you have to pay attention to now there’s rarely life and death consequences but our psychology is still designed to treat them that way so like oh my God I got voted out as the president of my chess club you know that’s not a life-threatening event you know I’m sorry you didn’t get invited to someone’s wedding or you’re sitting at the side table when you get there you know it’s these but we experience them as if they’re threats to our social
(24:11) standing and our survival because we’re you know we’re not in the heart of the tribe anymore yeah so so that’s where the problems come in is we essentially equate real survival challenges with just the mild psychological analoges in the modern world yeah well and that’s kind of what gets to my question because I was as I was reading through your book I was reminising on on this time where when I was in high school I you know we everyone high school is like that feels like that epitome of of tribal
(24:46) communities where you have different clicks and different clubs and all that kind of stuff right dos and nerds andas and the academic ones yeah yeah and so I Breakfast Club for all of you you know gen xers right um but but there there was this class that I was in called Marine ecology and we were in Southern California and um and and this class was going to take a trip down to Mexico where we’d spend 10 days and every year this uh uh this class you know that stayed on on the sea of Cortez in Mexico for 10 days you know came back
(25:22) transformed having a transformational view on like their community and everything like that and they became their own tribe but I remember when I went down there for you know just for these 10 days it was transformational because I almost let go or transcended that idea of all those little clicks and all of those other things that are in the modern society and it was just about that Community yeah well you you just talked about wow uh you just talked about how to intentionally polarize a tribe and it’s something I talk about in
(25:50) my latest speech uh which is the evolved leader guide to leveraging polarization like we can’t get rid of polarization but if we understood it and how it works we could use it for good we can turn it into an ally and so one of the things I talk about that is how to intentionally polarized tribes and there are five strategies you have to apply them all ideally at the same time so the first is create uncertainty like you didn’t know what was going happen on that trip down there right what you’re going to be
(26:18) doing the full 10 days uh peer pressure ideally unanimity you see everybody else around you acting a certain way you fall into line I mean it takes a lot of of backbone to stand against unanimous action by others like you have to be Nelson Mandela or Gandhi or something and there’s a high price to pay for that yeah um the the third would be synchronized group activities I’m sure you did those on your trip I’m guessing right the fourth is the difficult initiation uh if it was easy you wouldn’t value it and then the final one
(26:52) is the example of the leaders and whether they actually embody the cultural package and the value of the tribe so I’m guessing if you’ve ever been strongly bonded to a group some or probably all of those elements were present yeah yeah it’s what I call the Primal polarization toolkit Primal polarization toolkit yeah I I I’d love to expand on that a bit more um because those yeah out of those five things it sounds to me that yeah we can use it for good but the implication there is that it’s often used for bad is that true oh
(27:26) yeah I mean you see this in political iation first thing you do is create uncertainty you just start rocking the boat and flinging crap on the walls right uh and saying what you believe isn’t what what really is happening you know and try to attack truth okay so and then you know you try to have uh difficult initiations you try to have people you know really demonstrate uh their commitment to the tribe and then you try to uh put peer pressure on them and shame them and do other things if they don’t fall into line of course the
(27:57) example of the leader in a negative situation would be like a wannabe dictator um so they’re definitely unhealthy ways to do this um and synchronized group activities you know whether it’s a church choir doing the wave at a sports Stadium it could also be an assault on the US capital you know that’s a synchronized group activity right yeah so yeah that’s and that’s so there’s a lot of powerful implications here I mean of using this these evolutionary uh you know psychology it’s um
(28:28) I I you know and and and and it sounds like there’s a lot of implications for business for leaders for for people to use this to their abolutely yeah so there there’s great yeah I mean again so one of the things I I do tell people in my speeches is that you know you have to make a commitment that you that you when you understand these things that you only use them for good for building positive intentional tribes in your in your workplace or your community because you’re absolutely right it’s the same
(28:55) evolutionary toolbox for doing freaking evil stuff and just heinous stuff yeah well I and I love that you addressed that in your book I don’t remember if it was the very beginning or the very end but I remember you saying that specifically you got a we’re going to make a PCT here that yeah this is used for good because it is it is powerful powerful stuff and I mean it’s it’s it’s uh in our our um our psychology you also kind of talk a lot about how we are a rational human beings we are irrational human beings not
(29:28) rational um can you kind of expand on that like what what what you know what makes us irrational but still able to thrive or still able to survive so to speak yeah so that’s actually chapter one of my book I call it the the LIE of rationality and in in Western thought especially going back to the ancient Greeks we have this notion of oh well The Logical mind’s in charge and if we could only harness the power of our strong emotions and instincts so it’s kind of like the charioteer controlling the wild hor forces of his emotion well
(29:59) that’s total actually our Primal mind’s the one in charge our Primal brain and that’s what the basis of the book is to explain that um all that the conscious mind can do and by conscious I mean anything that can introspect understand its own thoughts use language plan all of that all it can do is give us options that’s it it doesn’t actually say which one should we do the prioritization of those options and whether we do anything at all because most of time the right answer is do nothing because it requires energy but
(30:31) if we’re going to do something that’s decided by our emotions and instincts the stronger the reaction that you have to something the more likely you are to act on and that can be for good or bad as we discussed there’s definitely a negativity bias uh pain gets our attention quicker than pleasure let’s put it that way um but uh there’s there’s no such thing literally as a quote unquote rational decision yeah and for of you like uh Star Trek nerds if you remember like Mr Spock was The Logical Vulcan well if you go back into
(31:03) Star Trek lore Vulcans were like this violently emotional race and they had to almost like will rational thought into existence to control those emotions and it was at a very high price that they had to pay so even Vulcans weren’t rational by Nature it’s amazing how Star Trek is such a great uh teacher with regard to our our society I mean it it has been for a variety of ways the 60s y yeah um and and that’s that’s powerful I mean so we’re we’re driven more by our emotions than we are by rational I mean look it’s
(31:41) like Robert heinlin he was a science fiction author said had this great quote he said man is not a rational animal yeah he’s a rationalizing animal and it’s true like they can show and brain scans you guys like have somebody make a decision or do something and then a fraction of a second later if you then they if you ask them to explain it then those parts of the brain light up but they’re just giving you the Alibi the after the fact reason not the real way the decision got made yeah that’s uh no
(32:13) that that’s that’s so powerful so how I mean so if we’re we’re driven by our our emotions rather than rationality how how do we use that to our advantage or do we need to fix it if that question Mak sense well and that’s the thing I’m not in a in a way an optimist I think that most people have this notion that they can fundamentally change themselves and you can if you go back over your life you become a different person and you change and hopefully collect wisdom but you can’t get rid of these mechanisms
(32:46) because that irrational part of the brain is never gets tired it’s operating 24/7 making super quick decisions that allow you to survive uh the rational part gets depleted very quickly what’s it called executive function just phase during the day or if you don’t have high enough blood sugar there’s this famous study of judges in Israel uh considering parole applications and what they found is in the morning and right after lunch you had your highest chances of getting paroled as a Criminal by the before
(33:17) lunchtime or by the end of the day your chances plummeted but if you ask an Israeli judge like hey are you making your parole decisions based on your blood sugar level they’d say go pound sand right I mean nobody would admit to that but that’s in fact what’s happening that’s so that’s so I mean it’s it’s not funny I mean it’s obviously that the implications there are tragic but it’s it’s it’s funny that it that that that’s what it leads to and that we that we
(33:45) continue to try try to convince ourselves in this world that we’re changing that we’re rational yeah um so so then how do we how can is there a way that we can use that to our advantage like I you know my my whole philosophy is that you know we’re going to experience fear it’s a given that’s what you know human beings experience it but at least we can we can use it to our advantage that we’re that it’s signaling something that yeah we’re either signaling danger look if you want to
(34:12) make better decisions in the face of risk and fear and uncertainty I mean there’s a couple of tips I can give you okay so one is get sleep 7 to n hours not optional it’s daily life support every form of life that lives long in a few days on this planet has some form of sleep it’s not it’s daily life support so people talk about diet exercise sleep you know sleep’s like the afterthought or the redheaded stepchild no sleep is foundational the other stuff layers on top of it okay uh because your decision-
(34:45) making your creativity your ability to read nuanced emotions from other people not become aggressive and paranoid all depend on sleep so don’t short change your sleep don’t stay up and watch one more episode on Netflix and you know 7 to n hours uh that’s my number one priority um the and the second thing that you can do is make the hard decisions at the beginning of the day don’t check your email first there was this uh when I was in the entrepreneurs organization we once had a a speaker and he said something like
(35:22) Kiss the biggest frog first yeah don’t put that thing off because that’s the thing that requires good judgment is the limited amounts of it that you have you’re going to have earlier in the day so save those for the important decisions and then check your email at the end of the day so what I what I’m doing which is just putting that off and just ruminating on it and getting all anxious about it until the wrong thing to do that’s the wrong thing to okay well this has been worth its weight in gold then yeah cuz that man
(35:54) that’s hard to do though make that make those big decisions early early in the day that’s always early in the day before your executive functions used up I mean if you ever been to one of those time share things where uh you know they they show you around they spend two three hours they wear you down and then they put the papers in front of you and say wouldn’t you want to own this wonderful time share that happens at the very end when your executive functions all used up yeah that’s not an accident
(36:20) or you’ve had one too many my ties or or something ex that’s why I don’t drink anymore right no uh yeah it’s that’s that’s interesting and you know our our our Collective friend Nina nezoi who uh who recently gave a Ted Talk on on that rest that sleep is so so important I mean and just I I’m glad we’re starting to have that discussion more that that idea of rest and Recovery making sure that we’re well here’s a little tidbit for you there is no major psychiatric condition that doesn’t involve a sleep
(36:55) disturbance yeah that’s how fundamental it is yeah you know it’s interesting because one of the things that was related to my anxiety growing up or guilt and a lot of so the feeling that I want to that I’m trying to run away from a lot is shame right I mean that’s just and I used to feel so deeply ashamed when I slept in like as a kid like sleeping until noon you know which teenagers do they sleep oh yeah they’re in a later sleep schedule and need more sleep yeah yeah but I felt so much shame
(37:27) around that and even into college and and and when I got into work life it was like oh man I can’t sleep in because there you know it’s it’s it’s like ingrained in our culture and that and I’m so glad that that’s shifting and I feel good now about sleeping in until 8 8 or 9:00 in the morning because that’s just the time I need so yeah I absolutely honor honor your sleep and uh another thing that helps me is I do U some people right at length I just do little bullet points and capitulate
(37:54) gratitude like just little good things that happen happened during the day my daughter I said I love love you she said I love you too or I love you more you know I like I got to bank that one at the end of the day or I was on a walk and little kitty came up and I petted it I mean so I just do these little bullet points it’s nothing I’ll ever go back or read but it turns out that the things that happen in the final hour before you sleep are uh processed five to six times more than the rest of the days events
(38:21) combined so I also strongly suggest not only you get sleep but that you have a coast down routine that’s healthy huh that gets you to sleep yeah can you can you expand on that a little bit because I’d love to know like what what we should be doing before sleep I’ve heard a lot of like well you should meditate you should do you know this but at a minimum you should turn the the lights off yeah okay you should not staring at your phone in fact ideally and there have been studies that even the phone in
(38:47) the same room as you is a problem so like literally putting it in another room not in your bedroom yeah oh my God I know I’m talking heresy now and so the other is like I said anything that um you want to think about which is usually good stuff gratitude recapitulating that that’s why people like religious people will like say um you know prayers or you know thank you for remembering you know my mom and dad and keeping us all safe or whatever those kind of things are really good before you go to bed because you’re
(39:19) putting them into your mind uh the other thing I recommend is that anything you don’t want in your mind you unload now I keep a Post-It pack by my by my nightstand and it’s like oh I just forgot something well jot it down that way you don’t slap it on on your night stand and then you’ll see it in the morning but you don’t have to remember it uh your brain doesn’t have to feel anxiety about it at night yeah so load up your brain with good stuff gratitude for what happened that day also any
(39:49) creative problems like if you want to just remind yourself yeah I got this decision to make in the morning the important one and your mind will go to sleep and it’ll solve that creative problem at night if you get proper sleep so load it up with the creative stuff I like that a lot so think about the creative problems that that’s kind of yeah that’s that’s that’s a that’s a new one I and I really like that one is is think about the creative problems before you go to bed so that you can resonate
(40:17) so is it is it fair to say and is this is it true that you know what we like the attitude that we take to bedtime you know can can carry over into the morning so say it’s always said don’t don’t go to bed angry kind of thing right yeah absolutely and that that’s good that’s just good relationship advice you know that’s it’s related to but uh yeah absolutely you want you want calm you want positivity you want gratitude gratitude is one of the few non-addictive non- escalating things
(40:49) that we can get pleasure from yeah I mean you could go um so you know everything else whether it’s uh drugs or or dancing or alcohol or sex I mean you need larger and larger amounts of them to feel the same there’s this kind of addiction pattern to it that I talk about in in the book but gratitude is like this renewable resource it’s it’s infinite it does wonders for you and it doesn’t cost you a thing and there’s no bad side effect there’s no hangover from gratitude yeah gratitude is the best
(41:21) drug in the world let’s uh let’s keep it I love that yeah yeah absolutely uh um yeah so I so I mean you’ve answered a lot here as far as like that as far as why we think the way we do and there’s so much more value in this book um and it’s so good this is this is one of my new favorites I’m I’m really really glad you wrote it thank you so much and really because it is so simply put on such a complex complex thing I mean we we all think through a lot of these things of like why do we
(41:50) feel this way and and um and yeah a lot of it comes from evolutionarily psychology uh but the um and and you mentioned something about our negativity bias and that is a that’s a survival Instinct for us am I right about that absolutely yeah no it’s not going away right so two to one byas so we tend to think of negative things more two let me give you a quick example so I’m G give you like so you’re you’re you came you had some kind of groin or stomach pain you came to a doctor and he’s like okay so there’s two scenarios
(42:21) you know so imagine these happening separately so the first doctor comes in and goes hey yeah so it’s this thing we got to do this operation you know 98% of the time works out great pain will go away no no no issues in the future okay MH right okay so then so or you know this other doctor different training comes in and says oh Adam so you know there’s this this thing and you know like uh if we don’t you have to have the operation if you you know 2% at a time you’re going to die on the operating
(42:52) table but that’s like really rare so uh you know don’t worry about that how you feeling now not not great on the on option two but really it’s the same thing it’s a 2% chance of not having a good outcome right I remember when I got my lasic done it was like some tiny half a percent chance of something going wrong but I was freaking out um you know just at the thought of being blind or something if they use the scapel wrong you know so you know you always focus on the negative because this the the the
(43:23) price of the bad thing happening is much higher yeah well and I’ve and I’ve heard you discussed before that this that this idea of thinking about the negative is actually while while on an individual basis we should we should strive to be think of the positive from a from a from a marketing standpoint when we’re when we’re pushing out something that we’re selling we almost want to sell the pain because that’s what people are focused on oh it’s the only thing and a lot of marketers are like oh that’s off brand
(43:51) for us we’re we’re the nice brand we don’t say mean things it’s like so if I was selling tooth paste or tooth whitening toothpaste that sound something like this um your yellow and gray teeth you bet you’re ashamed to show them so you keep your mouth closed all the time probably have resting bastard face and that makes it hard to get dates and chances are that you’ll end up dying alone and the only way they’ll find you is because your cats start meowing because you’re not feeding
(44:23) them anymore okay now you can you should probably get the tooth whitening right as opposed to you’ll have a bright smile and fresh breath you know that that’s you need to really rub salt into the wound to move me off of my comfortable spot yeah otherwise again the default reaction of the brain to 99.
(44:45) 99999% of things coming in is do nothing because that requires energy yeah well now I’m super self-conscious about my teeth and yeah well buy my toothpaste no more coffee for me oh that’s so it’s it’s so fascinating this is such a incred I love this subject because we have so I mean even trying to conceptualize The evolutionary history that human beings have had compared to the small fraction of that time in which we’ve been you know settled into like this first world that that we’re that we’re in it’s it’s so
(45:19) profound what we can learn from our ancestry and I really really recommend that everybody look up uh Tim’s book at that unleash the Primal brain Unleash Your Primal brain Unleash Your Primal brain I’m sorry I got that Unleash Your Primal brain and and and give it a listen give it a read um and Tim reads it himself and you know Chinese editions Russian if you read that Brazilian Portuguese if you’re if you’re listening to this in sa Paulo so yeah or the audio copies behind you right yeah yeah
(45:51) some of the yeah some those are all the different editions of all of my books but yeah that’s aming if you want spend like Adam did five five plus hours listening to my soothing Berry White voice uh then just get the audiobook version cuz I recorded that yeah well as a professional speaker it’s it’s done very well and and much better than than the quality of many of the uh for higher speakers or for higher um you know voice over people that are out there but uh yeah it’s it’s a great book and what
(46:20) what are you up to next so you’re working on more Keynotes you’re on more stages you know you’ve you’ve basically exited all of your your company and so you’re you’re developing this speaker career what what are you hoping to uh how how are you helping to help people is well it’s a I’m trying to figure out how to leverage it and I do that in a variety of formats I have a LinkedIn learning class on the basics of neuromarketing and introduction neuromarketing if you’re a LinkedIn
(46:46) learning person uh I’ve got the books um and uh public speaking uh I’m mostly speaking to Executive audiences these days about how to use evolutionary psychology inside of their organizations to deal with polarization and tribalism and and corporate culture things like that and I also work with senior Executives on an advisory basis so uh essentially me unlimited on call for them yeah just so that that allows me to really be of service and to give and to share what I’ve learned well I love it and you have so so much to share and and
(47:22) and give and um and I thank you for all the you do because you like I said at the beginning you’re such a caring and giving force in the world and I know that’s that’s part of your mission and you told me your mission a few like you you’re you what your purpose on this planet is do you mind sharing that here uh no not at all this is I’ve I’ve come up with Mission or vision statements three or four times in my life this latest one came out of an initiation I had through the mankind project which is
(47:51) a fantastic organization um and it is as follow follow uh I co-create a world of Peace safety and love through joyous expression and service I love that it’s so it’s so beautifully put and so so much representative of who of who you are Tim thank you so much for being here and sharing that with us uh the book is called Unleash Your Primal brain uh and it is available now on Amazon uh Tim Ash where else can people find you where would you like people to just Primal brain.com we’ll get you there awesome
(48:29) Primal brain.com thank you so much Tim for being here and thank you so much to everybody for listening and we will see you next time hey everyone Thanks for tuning in to the flow over fear podcast if you’d like to learn more about getting into flow and learn the foundations of flow I have a free video series on my website at www.
(48:51) adamclick hill.com called the foundations of flow feel free to go there there and download it and start your journey to Rising above fear and achieving greater flow in your life if you like this episode and I’m guessing you did if you stuck around for this long then please do me a favor and hit the Subscribe button and you will receive notifications when I have new interviews new Recaps and new trainings that pop up on YouTube thanks again for joining us