Okay, I figured it out. This is why I'm launching an aromatherapy brand.

I’ll say this: I’ve put myself out there more than most & thus subjected myself to more judgement, criticism, “cringe” than most Two things you need to understand: 1) anyone who’s gonna judge you, fuck em. You don’t want judgmental people in your life. Jealously is an ugly trait. 2) what matters is the people who love you for you. I read a great quote that said: “share your world so those who want to be a part of it, can be” And that’s what matters. All the beautiful & amazing people you meet along the way. The friendships, business relationships, fun you all have together It puts life on easy mode. Nothing has changed my life more than the people I’ve met in my journey Just have to have thick skin to start.

"How are you always so positive & happy" Let me explain: Life has risks. Accept them. You could get hit by a bus tomorrow. Life may not end up the way you want it to - you may never find love nor make it big. These are all very real possibilities. They could happen ! But they probably won't so just assign a 0.00001% probability to them...and never think of them again So why would you ever think about them? All thinking about them does is increase their odds of happening. The strong possibility is that life goes far better than you can ever imagine. Your thoughts create your reality, so ensure 99.9999999% of your thoughts are in that bliss-like stake and thus, you should be happy 99.9999999% of the time

What if we don’t simply move through time and physical space the way our current scientific model suggests? What if there are endless possible realities, with endless versions of us within each, and the reality we experience is simply chosen by us through our emotions and intentions? Those emotions and intentions operate below our conscious awareness. We can’t simply decide to change them through our will or willpower. But we may be able to train them. Like building a strong body, changing these deeper patterns takes practice and repetition. They are shaped over time by our identity, our thoughts, our actions, and the meaning we give to what happens to us. If those deeper patterns help determine which reality we experience, how would that change the way you live your life? It's taking me years to figure it out, but this is what I mean when I say "everything is mental"

What does it mean to "feel energized?" My car makes me feel energized, but not in the sense of the energy that coffee or nicotine gives us. We don't have a good word for this type of energy in English, so let me explain. The energy I'm speaking about is not the kind that jolts you awake or papers over tiredness for an hour. The energy I mean is what you feel after a good vacation. It is what you feel after a day away from your phone, or after hours spent on something you love, when the noise and the mental chatter have drained away and what remains is calm, clear, and ready. It comes less from adding something than from taking things away — everything that leaves us burned out, tired, busy, and wired — until only a calm, relaxed awareness is left. The closer word might be poise. You know the feeling. You unplug from everything, and something in you clarifies and settles into place. But Western culture has no good word for it. Our culture thinks of energy as tension, as a kind of upward strain. It treats energy as the opposite of calm. I think energy and calm belong together. In fact, this kind of energy requires calm. It is the refreshed feeling after a vacation. It is the refreshed feeling after a day with your family and no phone. It is the refreshed feeling of going for a drive and coming home clear. And once you have that energy, you live differently. Your decisions get clearer. You start listening to your intuition and acting on it. You work on the things you actually want to work on instead of falling into the things you merely have to do. Most of us never get there. We drink the caffeine, we keep grinding, we push through — because that is what every message in our society tells us to do. And so we never feel this other energy, the aligned and clear kind. The best word I have found for it is Totonou, a Japanese concept of alignment, of everything in mind and body settled into its proper place. People know it most vividly after moving through heat, cold, and rest — an onsen or sauna, then cold water, then stillness. What follows is a calm alignment in which mind and body feel ready for whatever comes next. It is energy, but it is not manic. It does not burn you out. It is the opposite of burnout. You feel deeply relaxed and precisely aligned for the next step. You carry a clear, calm energy that lets you move forward with purpose and with grace. This is the feeling I'm aiming for with the first products of my new brand.

The ultimate two car solution

Literally changed the life of several riders, more than one of whom moved to Thailand after the trip

Filing a petition with management to rename "offices" as "playpens"

Awesome bro. We are pushing our Run for Freedom brand into health and longevity. Just hired our brand manager today. Using the 10M views we obtained over 16 months as the spring board.

I’m launching a wellness brand. We need to start this conversation by understanding the big driver behind wellness itself — it's not as simple as asking "which things are right for my stack because I have these demands in my life and want to achieve these goals." Before we think about that, we need to think about life. Why do we need to get well? What is the driving force behind doing all these things in the name of wellness? I think that opens a bigger conversation about the state many of us are in, the state we're in as a society. This is a generalization, but I noticed it so much when I moved to Thailand and then interacted with Americans back in America: We are stressed. You see stress all over the world, but I noticed it especially reflecting on the American culture I grew up in. People are so stressed and wound up. It seems like everyone's trying to claw their way out of something. And if they aren’t, they’re running — fast. Going where? Everyone has a number or a dream. But they’re grinding towards it, not joyfully lifting towards it. I get the sense most people are not going where their intuition/heart wants them to go. They are going where their fears and anxieties are driving them. So there is this palpable craving for tools to keep moving at a high pace — in order to push forward harder and faster. So getting back to the question — what is wellness? ⭐ Tenet 1: Wellness is subtraction, not addition Wellness to me is less about adding all of these things and more about remembering what we already have. It can sound trite, like "be thankful for what you have," but I think we've forgotten a lot of that. You can take every supplement in the world and you're not going to become the person who wakes up grateful, who takes pleasure in the little things, who takes setbacks and disappointments in stride. These are little mental things we all have the ability to embody, but so many of us don't, or we forget to. We think that if only we had the right external thing to add — the right supplement or routine or practice — but I think it really is a lot simpler than what the market is trying to sell you. Because just like me, there's someone behind all these products trying to sell them to you. Of course, I'm trying to sell a product too. But I want to articulate what wellness means for the brand I'm building, because it doesn't mean adding a lot of things. It means honing what you already have. And it means appreciating the divine being you are, and the power you have within you to create a life you love to an irresponsible degree. I'm not saying you shouldn't add anything to your life. But be very judicious about what you add. Evaluate what you're adding and why, and think about reducing before you think about adding. That's a core tenet of wellness to me: wellness is less about what you add and more about what you take out. It's not about adding a meditation session to every day. It's about asking: What is the thing that really stresses you out every day? Can you eliminate it? Can you reframe it? Can you think about it differently so it doesn't stress you as much? Let that elimination drive your improvement, not addition. Before you add, subtract. ⭐ Tenet 2: Reframe negatives, don't eliminate them I think wellness is also about acceptance more than perfection. There is no perfect. Life will never be perfect, because if you chase perfection, you are always looking for the next problem to solve. You are tuning your attention to see the negatives. A big part of wellness to me is accepting the negatives — there always will be problems, discomforts, and difficulties — and welcoming them with joy. Seeing what positives can come out of them. Reframing those negatives in ways that make me feel happier. Asking myself: How can I look at this disappointment in a way that makes it positive? Where’s the silver lining? You see the funny thing is, the more you follow your intuition/heart and do the things you really want to do, the further you walk the path of making your dreams your reality… the more “problems” you will encounter. Recently I’ve felt a new stirring within myself; that there are no “negatives” in life. There are only the labels we’ve assigned to events. This breaks my brain a bit. For the first time in my life, I am noticing things which previously were unequivocally negative suddenly appearing amusing, even joyful. I now know this kind of automatic re-interpretation of negatives is possible; but I digress. I interpret much of “Eastern” and particularly Buddhist thought as essentially saying “Just give up your dreams, give up the things you're striving for, because it's all an illusion anyway. It’s all holding you back from nirvana." That always rang a little false to me. How is realizing my power to create beautiful objects and experiences taking me further away from nirvana? How is driving a Ferrari taking me further away from nirvana?? This reflection came to me recently: think about the amount of effort it likely takes to truly release a desire — not fake it, but actually no longer have that desire for the thing you've been obsessing over. I’m talking monk-level, completely at peace without that thing your heart desires. How does that compare to the effort it takes to just follow your heart? Because you likely aren't trying to conquer the world. Maybe you want a comfortable home for you and your family, supportive friends, some adventures now and then. Maybe a nice Italian automobile like me. Maybe if you had that, you’d want the next thing and the next thing, but I think a lot of people would just be happy with that. So, is your time and effort really better spent meditating every day to delete those desires from your layer of reality, or would it be a bit easier to just do what it takes to make those desires a reality? The effort it takes to get rid of your desire is probably equal to, if not greater than, the effort it takes to just realize your desires in your life. So, tying back to reframing versus eliminating negatives: we're always going to have these negatives. If you're going toward your goal — if you say, "I do want that thing, that lifestyle" — you're going to encounter a lot of disappointment, difficulty, and rejection along the way. So it flies in the face of the idea of eliminating the negatives. You have to learn to work with them. You have to learn to manipulate that part of your reality. I see this a lot in wellness, not directly, but in the vibe of their branding and marketing: it’s all about eliminating discomfort. A wellness retreat is about perfect comfort the whole time. When you look at the ad, the website — it's gentle, elegant, beautiful. There's no discomfort in that experience. Maybe that's fair, because your life is uncomfortable and you go to a wellness retreat to escape it. But it builds this image of a “good life” overall as a life defined by comfort and ease. And I just don't think that's true. I don't think a life lived well is about optimizing for comfort and eliminating negatives. I think that’s a life of spiritual poverty, and your mind and body will revolt against that with addictions, anxieties, and pain on a scale nobody should have to endure. That's why I went through all of this — about pursuing our goals, life always having negatives, and pursuing goals bringing more negatives into our lives. Setting your motivation behind “wellness” as elimination of discomforts, whether conscious or unconscious, will not do the trick. Eliminating discomfort from our outer world is not wellness. Reframing discomfort and removing negativity from our inner world is true wellness. ⭐ The hard part is sustaining, not reaching Reframing negatives is a mental task. It's not a difficult task — we all have the ability to think — but it requires constant reminder and refreshment. I've heard this said about nirvana too: we're all capable of reaching nirvana at any minute. It isn't like we need to practice techniques for 10 years; we can reach it immediately. The difficult part is sustaining that state. Many people have ways of reaching it in their lives. Sustaining nirvana is the hard part. Reframing negatives is no different. Having the ability and doing it are fairly simple. Where it gets tricky is remembering to do it, over and over. Building it into a habit, a practice, a reflex — so that when something negative happens, you automatically respond with a reframe rather than doubling down, being grumpy, or feeding that negative energy. And like I said earlier, eventually this slips somewhere in to your unconscious; and you don’t even have to reframe. You don’t even see events as negative or positive. You see the step in between the events and your coding of them: your beliefs about what those events mean for you and your life. ⭐ Building a product as an anchor to center I’m in love with Thai herbal inhalers for a simple reason. For me, a simple sniff of these little pots of herbs are an anchor for me to this state of flow, to everything I’ve described about wellness thus far. Maybe it’s the olfactory sense’s deep connection to memory, but nothing else does this for me in quite the same way. When I was starting one of my first businesses I was traveling by motorcycle. My workstation was a laptop, a water bottle, and an inhaler in whatever random little hotel I was at in a small village. The inhaler didn’t fill one bucket. It wasn't "this is for me to focus" or "this is for me to relax." It was something that centered me. When I was a little tired, it woke me up a little. When I was a little stressed, it took the edge off. It was just a gentle reminder: everything is good, you're refreshed, you're ready to keep going a bit more. Little by little, those little sniffs developed in to an anchor that brought me out of the “constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing”; and back to that infinite thing. With just the smell of a couple dried herbs. ⭐ Tenet 3: Wellness comes from within The final thing I want to say about wellness — and maybe this ties back to the original idea — is that it's ultimately about understanding what it means to ourselves. This is not a journey someone else can take for you. It cannot be given by a product, a person, or anything external. We are each in the driver’s seat of our own wellness. We have to want to be well and actually take the steps to make it happen. You can take Xanax or antidepressants to treat symptoms; but you are not fixing the root. Only you can do that, through your own intention. The cool part is, the power we have over ourselves — which many of us forget or ignore — is limitless. I really do believe that, and I have felt it within myself. I want our products to support that philosophy. You are not buying a fix. You are buying an aid to your own quest. You are not buying a bus trip up the mountain of life. You are buying a pair of boots that help you use your own power to summit your life. There's scientific evidence supporting that things like depression or bipolar disorder are at least observable, chemically, in the brain. I think that's also true, and I don't think it's incompatible with my philosophy: that you have agency over how you feel, that we all have agency over how we feel at the end of the day, and that the only limitation we have is our own belief. You are the core of your own wellness. These other supplements and routines — all they can do is assist us in our own pursuit of getting well. If you don't believe you can be better, or you can have more, or you can improve your life — then these external things will not give you the wellness you’re seeking, no matter how much you take or how many retreats you go on. You will be stuck in a loop. You will not get better if you don't intend to improve. A core part of our brand philosophy will always be that these are tools to help us get better. They are not the thing that makes us better. It's a subtle distinction, but to me it is critical. We need to remember that we control our destiny, we control our wellness. We are at the center, the source of it. The other things around us are just tools. ⭐ Why start with the herbal inhaler I'm starting with the herbal inhaler because I went through a big reductivist & minimalist phase, with a heavy dose of skepticism: of drug companies, pharmaceuticals, doctors, and not science itself but the scientific apparatus, the systems that run science. So for me, the herbal inhaler is a low-impact way to provide a tool for our minds that is not aggressively changing our physiology. It's simply nudging us to better ways of living. I also love that it's something we can take into everything we do. A small herbal inhaler you can take in the car, on the plane, or keep it in your desk. It can be everywhere with you. It's a little reminder of these philosophies, and that's how it's evolved in my own use. It's a reminder to be calm, a reminder to pursue my goals, to love my life. That's how I use it, and I want our customers to understand that: this is a tool you can use anywhere to find your center, to remind you of what wellness is. You deserve to be well. You are well. I want you to understand and embody that truth, so you can live out a life you are irresponsibly happy with. Peace!

At 32 I finally feel like I am myself again. Feel like a kid playing in the sandbox every day. Anything is possible. Everything is beautiful and perfect. If you don't have this feeling in your life, I hope you can find it. I'll help you in any way I can.

Thoughts lead to feelings. Feeling lead to actions. Actions leads to results.

Stop. Take a deep breath. Let any racing thoughts run away. Good, they’re gone now. Pranced off in every direction. This conversation will change your life. It is truly “magical”. I have nothing to sell you. I have no relationship with either of the people in this conversation. I am taking the program talked about in the convo, and I can say after just ~3 weeks I would describe the results as magical, in the most grounded way possible. I could not conceive of the way I feel now from where I was 3 weeks ago. I’ve listened to ~25 podcasts with Chris, and this one so far has been the most approachable for me. Let the words soak in. Allow your mind a moment of rest. Come back here and let me know what you think. open.spotify.com/episode/0Ul…

Avoidance solves the feeling produced by the problem while worsening the problem that produces the feeling.

Human Intelligence has plummeted in value My brain used to be pretty valuable to me Now I'm like oh you know some stuff? Who cares. You're straight up dumber than ChatGPT Ability to connect with others, human experience/emotion, and enjoying the moment are where the value is now Heart > Brain How much can you feel? World is changing incredibly fast. There's still time to do that thing. But who knows for how long. Do not wait