David Amerland, Built to Last

[00:00:11] Speaker A: What's worthwhile, worthy of our time, energy, belief and action. I'm Ramsey Zimmerman. To me, it's building mind, body and spirit wellness towards peace of mind, vitality of body and joy of spirit. Let's pursue these topics together to find holistic health and wellness. [00:00:32] Speaker B: So you know, if you have, for instance, if you have every day with you a fitness instructor, a chef and a psychologist, you're going to be an amazing human being because those three people are going to make sure you're always on point. But none of us have have that. So now you have to be your own fitness instructor, your own psychologist, your own nutritionist. And you have to understand not just the practicalities of what it is you have to do, but also how can you do what you need to do within the means that you have. [00:01:07] Speaker A: Hey there, it's Ramsey here. That was David Amerland. David is a pretty exceptional guy. He's a champion martial artist, a successful corporate business person, a technologist and a philosopher. He's written a string of books over the years and his most recent book is about health and fitness called Built to Last. But to really understand David and his advice on fitness and health, you also need to consider his previous two books called Intentional and the Sniper Mind. I had the chance to speak with David about all three books. Even though David is clearly a disciplined and high achiever, he still understands that people struggle to keep up their efforts and, and his books have a lot of insights on how we can keep moving forward even when we live with many distractions and challenges. Let's jump in. Hi, David. How are you doing today, Ramsey? [00:01:58] Speaker B: I'm really, I'm really, really good. It's early in the week, so the week started really well. So I feel really good about this. [00:02:04] Speaker A: Oh, fantastic. Good. Well, yeah, I'm excited that we met. Thanks for taking the time to, to speak with me today. I'm really hoping to tap into your brain and find out, think about some ways to succeed that people can succeed in health and wellness life goals. And you're a good person to talk to about that for a lot of reasons. You are a prolific author and I'd like to really kind of focus on your three most recent books. But before we do that, I'll just say that, you know, before becoming an offer author, you were also a champion martial artist and a corporate technology consultant. So why don't we start with some background? How did you get into physical fitness and martial arts? [00:03:03] Speaker B: Well, I started training in martial arts when I was 13 and I primarily did that because it was my family moved around a lot in Australia, so moved states, so went from state to state. So I didn't have any. We changed schools. I was always like the outsider in every school I went to and I didn't have many friends and it's difficult to sort of put any roots down. So you kind of, you know, not the age when you're 13, things sort of, you know, get into a pressure cook environment in your head. And I needed an outlet and I discovered martial arts. So I started doing it then and it helped me, it helped structure my brain a little bit in terms of how I felt, but helped guide a lot of my angst into a more productive kind of environment. So, you know, I didn't get into any trouble that I shouldn't. And it went from there. Well, good. [00:03:58] Speaker A: So you started training when you were 13, so teenager. And how did that sort of early teenage life of discipline and fitness, how did that sort of set you on a track and a trail for your life as you were, you know, going through your school and, and starting off in your career? [00:04:23] Speaker B: Well, it's funny, I mean, whenever you do any kind of structured sport, you learn very quickly that you can't change physically if you don't change mentally. So essentially every obstacle are met in terms of performance, whether it was gradings and competitions and physical performance, in terms of endurance and strength and speed, all those things you're trying to build up through sheer physical work. In order for them to work, your own perception has to change, your own limitations, your own motivation, your own ability to focus, your inability to sometimes get past the perceptual barrier of your own fatigue, your own limitations. So I learned very quickly to sort of be introspective, analyze why things aren't working, and then apply the solutions that I'd come up with as a test to the outside and see if that worked, if that would unblock me. And in most cases it did. So that gave me a very early on and I was fortunate to sort of stumble across that. He gave me a template that could actually apply pretty much to every part of my life moving forward. And that one thing has actually helped me so much. So here we are now. [00:05:41] Speaker A: And you eventually became a writer and you really, you know, it seems to me like your books really build upon one to the next. And you've followed a pretty interesting course in terms of the trajectory of your books because it seems like your, your book started out with a lot of sort of it kind of technical technology kind of focus, but then you've gotten more introspective and sort of life goal oriented. Can you briefly sort of describe that authoring trajectory that you've had for us? [00:06:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. So a lot. All my books, on the surface of it, appear to be different in subject matter. There is a connective thread to all of them, and the way I actually started on them is by following the easiest path, like water. I understood mathematics, understood, because of my chemical engineering background, understood technology. So I started with search. And that appeared to be a domain where I was actually able to translate a lot of the technicalities, because at the time was very opaque into everyday language for a broader audience. And then that allowed me to understand a lot of the basics in terms of the human behavior through a technological interface, and then how that is sometimes mutated and sometimes it's not. Because everything which we do always has fundamental drives. The things which we are compelled to do or have the motivation to follow through on come from something deeper, which is always the same, whether we actually are discussing it now through a computer interface, or we go back 100 years and we're in a coffee shop or a beer place talking across the table. So basically that comes through on everyone when we talk about search and marketing and social media, and then we talk about decision making, we talk talk about life choices, and then we talk about health. And the connective thread in all of these is us. Why do we do the things we do? What is it that compels us to do certain things? And by the same token, what is it that's actually holding us back? Why can't we be better marketers, better business people? Why can we make better decisions? Why can't we be fitter? We certainly have the information at our fingertips. It's not for lack of knowledge. So there are fundamental stumbling blocks which are not a bug, but a feature of who we are. And overcoming those fascinates me because essentially we have it within us to engineer our own success. We can optimize ourselves, if you like. And the only way we can do that is by better understanding the faults we have, accepting them, embracing them, and then finding workarounds which are not energetically costly. So, you know, if you have, for instance, if you have every day with you a fitness instructor, a chef and a psychologist, you're going to be an amazing human being, because those three people are going to make sure you're always on point. But none of us have that. So now you have to be your own fitness instructor, your own psychologist, your own nutritionist, and you have to understand not Just the practicalities of what it is you have to do, but also, how can you do what you need to do within the means that you have? You know, you don't have ample time. You don't have ample resources. You don't have an inexhaustible amount of energy. The external world makes constant demands on us and constantly wears us down. This is a fact for all of us. So how do we, within that context, learn to be better? How can we be fitter? How can we be healthier throughout our life? How can we be mentally sound when the world is so crazy at times that we feel like screaming inside our head? So these are the things that actually drive me, and that's the things which I explore through my books. [00:09:48] Speaker A: No. That's fascinating. So I believe you're most. The recent three books kind of are books that you. You wrote. You wrote a bunch of books about search and technology, but then you wrote a book called the Sniper's Mind, and then Intentional, and then your most recent, Built to Last. Yeah, and I'd like to spend a bit of time sort of talking about each one of those. Do you think that it makes sense to take that from most recent to least recent, or the. Or the first to the most recent? I'll let you choose. Which one do you think? [00:10:28] Speaker B: Let's go from the sniper mind to the most recent, because that's the kind of arc that kind of gradually brought us here. [00:10:34] Speaker A: Good. Let's do that. So. So how would you characterize a sniper's mind? And. And how is a sniper's mind useful to kind of anybody and everybody in dealing with difficult situations? [00:10:49] Speaker B: We have a significant misconception of what snipers do, which is enforced and reinforced and created by mass media expectations, because snipers are very reclusive by nature. They don't often talk about what they do. And certainly there's no army publications explaining that to the public. Essentially, although they are loan operators by design, they usually work in groups of two. They're embedded in units, so they have to coordinate with a lot of people around them. They have to work under pressure, highly pressured environments. A lot of the times they're under fire or they're in exposed positions, and they do surveillance, collect information, make decisions, and obviously, they provide cover for, especially in armed conflict or in hot environments, they provide cover for the units they're responsible for protecting. And from all the combatants in a battlefield, they're the ones that have the most oversight. Every single shot they take is recorded. Every single kill they make is actually poured over by lawyers back home to see if it was legal or not. So the pressure they have is immense because they can potentially go to jail, which is something most combatants in a battlefield don't face. They have almost a life and death situation in terms of what they're going to do. And have to make those decisions really quickly and be confident in their accuracy. And they succeed by essentially applying a certain amount of training to their human nature, which creates. They feel the same kind of fear and stress and panic that everybody else does. But they're able to emotionally regulate. And the moment they do that, this is what happens to the human brain. We're able to tap into higher analytical centers which allow us to think more clearly in complex situations and make better decisions using the same facts. And this is fascinating because they obviously get to it after a lot of training. And for some there's a little bit of an aptitude. But they're trained to be who they are. And if we understand how they do it without going to sniper school ourselves, then we can become better at emotional regulation ourselves. And that's the fundamental basis of the sniper mind. So essentially it takes those situations and I use a lot of real life combat scenarios and analyze them and see how they went through. I've talked to write the book, I talked to, I interviewed 100 snipers from all over the world. And they're really fascinating people. So I sort of used a lot of neuroscience afterwards because we had a lot of neuroscientific studies which were kind of a breakthrough at the time because we had new technology to study the human brain while I was thinking. And then I brought all that into the business world where we synthesize part of the skill set so that we can actually become better ourselves. So we become better emotional regulation, we become better at situation, situational awareness, we become better at information, informational processing. These are things which we can do in our everyday life. We don't have to be snipers for that, but we have to learn how to do them. And if we learn how to do that, then we just instantly become better. [00:14:07] Speaker A: And it might be really difficult to answer with one or two things, but what's the primary takeaway there? Like, what is that thing that can make us better? [00:14:24] Speaker B: The primary takeaway from all that is emotional regulation. We tend to think of snipers as the kind of cold killing machines. And they're not. They have the same emotions that we do. They are subject to the same physiology. The substrate of their brain is no different to ours. So if you think that in their shoes, you would experience fear and uncertainty and panic and pressure, as in stress. You're correct. They face all those things themselves. What they're good at is basically synthesizing from all those things and acceptance that allows them to not panic. And we know now that if we panic in any scenario, in everyday life, if you wake up in the morning and you feel overwhelmed by the number of things you have to do in the day and you think, well, you know, things are tough, I can't cope, there's too many things and I just don't know how to get through my day. Well, if you feel that panic, then the higher centers of your brain which you need in order to make critical decisions, they don't function. They don't function because it's a physiological survival mechanism. Your body feels under stress, it feels under attack, it goes into a fight or flight sort of situation response. In order to do that, it needs to conserve energy. So it doesn't allow you the luxury of actually taking a step back and analyzing the situation you're in. So you go into reactive mode. We know that if we do that, then we are not in control of our lives. We're constantly reacting, constantly firefighting. And yet if we were able to take half a step back, take a deep breath, calm ourselves down, looking at the same facts in front of us, we would behave differently because we synthesize them differently in our brain. So that's the one thing that anybody could take away from the sniper mind. Emotional regulation can be learned and it makes you a much better human being. [00:16:17] Speaker A: Emotional regulation, don't panic. And then I feel like that does lead into intentional. [00:16:27] Speaker B: Yes. [00:16:27] Speaker A: And when you're looking at the idea of being intentional in life and doing things deliberately, working towards goals, how, how does being intentional in life create more opportunities for us? And how do we have a greater likelihood of success in pursuing those opportunities? [00:16:52] Speaker B: That's brilliant. Okay, there's two things which you put there together and they kind of tend to go together, but they're not related really at all, although they're kind of tangentially connected. He said opportunities and he said success. Now opportunity is something we either create most of the time or if we don't because we don't feel we can create them, sort of stumble across them. Success is something which is our goal, so it's goal orientated. If we were to basically control our life ourselves, then we have to take responsibility for the reactions we have to the external stimuli that we come across. Now if we don't take responsibility for that, and it's easy for us not to, because it's hard. What happens is we wake up in the morning and depending on the label you decide to wear, well, there's a whole world of expectations and a whole world of actions you can engage in to meet those expectations. If somebody says you are a good father, for instance, that's it. You accept that blindly. What does a good father do? Well, you're going to take your kids to school. You are going to. Before you do, you make them lunch and you dress them. You're going to go and make sure that they have whatever they need. And your whole day sort of goes into that. You can spend easily half a day being a good father without actually thinking about that, because the expectations are set, the actions are automated, and you think, you know, that's great, but that isn't your life unless you choose to be a good father. That's just what the world expects you to be. We can put any other label there. A good worker, a good boss, a good neighbor, whatever it is. Obviously we can go on the opposite side of a bad neighbor and a bad boss and a bad father. Although I don't think actively we try to be bad. We just fail at being good. So if we then decide that our life is our own, we need to engineer it. And to do that, we need to do two things. The first thing is we need to understand that we react to the external stimuli of the world, and then it's up to us what reaction we need to have to that. So we start filtering it so it doesn't control us. Now, obviously, we're not in total control of everything. Controlling the world is impossible. We can control our responses to it. But if we go down the path where we understand who we are and why we do the things we do, then we begin to fashion our own step. And if we begin to fashion our own step, essentially the direction of our life becomes different. And that's when we create the opportunities we need in order to take us to the goal that we set. So if we actively decide, you know, you can say something simple. You can say, I want to be, I don't know, the bed. The best podcast in the United States. Okay. That's the end goal. Then we reverse engineer that. You say, what do you need in order to be the bed? The best podcaster, perhaps? There might be a number of steps. You need to win some awards, you need to have some kind of recognition, you need to have some kind of audience. You need to be able to explore something very Specific. And if we put those things in line, well, there are the opportunities you need to create, because in order to do that, you say, what is the action that will take me there? So if, for instance, the first thing is to be noticed and have an audience, and for that you need to be everywhere, you can say, okay, within the year I'm going to have perhaps 200 podcasts, which is a lot. So this is your, this is how you break things down and you put them together and you go towards that and that creates then the next opportunity, which is manufactured by your activity. So this is where opportunities and success come together. But it's not something which sort of kind of happens. You come across opportunities and you find success. It has to be engineered. And that's what intentional is all about. [00:20:35] Speaker A: And tell me more about how people can go about engineering their success through intentionality. [00:20:43] Speaker B: Well, success means different things to different people. So it's always a personal thing. Success could be. You could well be. We decide to be the best father possible for your kids. And if that's enough for you, that's success enough for you. It make you happy, it'll make you feel fulfilled in your life. You could do that for your work, you could do that for your hobbies, you could do that for the people around you, the community or whatever it is that actually makes you feel fulfilled and makes you feel alive and a better human being. So you start with the end goal and that will change over time as we change, our perspective and our experiences grow and our knowledge increases and our awareness of the world changes as well. Our own capabilities also change with it. Then that goal will change. So it's not something which you're going to start off at age 16, for instance, and say, okay, that is the ultimate goal for me. Sure it is. But from your 16 year old point of view, so you start with the end goal and then you break it down, you say, what is it I need to achieve through that? What is it will make me happy? And that's part of success, feeling that what you're doing is actually fulfilling. We can choose to measure success by the conventional means, which is, you know, material possessions, the number of people who look up to you publicly. And we know, especially nowadays, how empty that really is, what a big hole it leaves inside, inside of you, because it's never enough and it never does what it's supposed to do. So we know from neuroscience that feeling successful means you feel not exactly content, but you feel happy, you feel that you're contributing, you feel connected, you feel that what you're doing goes beyond just you, so you're not just working for yourself. So, again, if we take your own podcast as an example, if you're just doing it for you so that people can listen to you and feel that Ramsey is an amazing guy, well, after a while, you know, you get a big audience. Sure, they kind of adulate you while you're there, but then when the podcast is off, they're not there and you feel empty. But if you feel that your podcast is actually contributing to their knowledge, it makes them more capable in their life, makes them healthier, it makes them better in their own mind. It makes them able to go from there and become a little bit better every day. That's an amazing feeling. So you're contributing to something which exists independently of you, but came from you, and that. That is the true meaning of success. [00:23:18] Speaker A: Well, and that's wonderful. And does that. Does that flow into helping people with longevity and, you know, being healthier throughout their whole life and. And make having a prolonged period of being, well, as they're alive? In other words, being Built to last, you know, does that kind of flow into your. Your next book where you sort of take on health and fitness, but you really incorporate a lot of these, a lot of the same mindset that you've been exploring for a while through your other books. But tell me more about. About Built to Last. Like what? Start with, like, sort. What is that kind of a mindset that people that need. Tell me more about that. [00:24:14] Speaker B: Okay, you're right. Built to Last sort of came about from discussions I had with a friend over a period of three years, and that became the seed that then led me to basically spend the next three years researching and writing it. And it's an unconventional fitness book. Sure, it talks a little bit about fitness and it gives you fitness plans because it's a complete package. But it starts from the inside out. It starts from the understanding that unless we change ourselves inside in terms of what we want and how we want it and how we think about it, then being fit is something we'll achieve, perhaps for a while if we really want it, and it won't last, and then we won't have it. And really, fitness is a right. It's not something which you should have for a little bit. It helps you throughout your life. It helps your brain. It helps your ability to enjoy life. It helps your ability to enjoy freedom in yourself and happiness inside you. So it's fundamental. So coming back to the mindset now, we talk about Fitness. And usually we have this kind of perception about it. We talk about big muscles and six pack because we're conditioned by movies and popular culture and the gym industry and the fitness industry. And there's nothing wrong with all that. Sure enough, there's a package that goes with it. But if that's all we understand, then we trap ourselves into a situation, we chase some kind of ideal that isn't really feasible for us to achieve because most of us haven't got the required amount of time to put into it. And certainly we're not motivated enough to go through the certain amount of physical discomfort that's required in order to change physically to that extent. We don't have a real reason for that. So we're trapped into a sense of failure. We think, oh, we can't do it, but we must be willed right? We mustn't be motivated enough. It's not that at all. It's just that we, we are chasing something which is not real. It's not really meant for us. So we have to start with a simple question. What is fitness for me? What does it mean for me? It has nothing to do with scales, has nothing to do with six pack or big muscles. These are kind of external things that kind of happen as a side effect a little bit if you begin to get fitter and fitter. But you don't have to go to any extremes for that. Fitness is about freedom inside your own body. So you feel your body is your own. You feel that you control it. You feel that when you move your body, you feel happy in it. You don't groan, you don't think, oh, I can't move, it's difficult. All those things would create a kind of negative sensation about things which we feel if we're not sufficiently fit. So we start with that, and once we define what fitness is for each person, it's going to be different for everybody. Then we say, okay, how do I make this last? And this is where it gets interesting. Because we are different people from year to year. We're different people from decade to decade. Neurobiologically we're different our capabilities and our makeup, certainly our knowledge is different, our sort of memories and sort of experiences are different, and their expectations change as well. So when we synthesize all that, then we begin to arrive at a kind of formula which is going to be different for every person. So really it's no formula at all except for that particular person. And that's what Build to Last is all about. [00:27:41] Speaker A: And why do you Think that it is difficult for people in this sort of time, the civilization that we live in. What. Why is it. Why is it fundament? What is fundamentally different about today's civilization that makes it difficult for people? Just have a baseline of fitness as compared to 100 or 200 or a thousand years ago? [00:28:07] Speaker B: I'm glad you asked. Well, life is different. Things have changed. Technology has come in, and that has changed our behavior. I mean, I take myself as an example. I can quite happily most days, spend about eight to 10 hours in front of a screen working. I don't have to travel anywhere. I don't have to lift anything. Nothing will chase me. I don't have to run for my life. My heartbeat won't go up, my body temperature won't change. But throughout those eight to 10 hours, I have access to my refrigerator, which has about 10,000 colors inside. I can just walk, like 10 steps away, grab whatever I want, get back to my desk. [00:28:40] Speaker A: I don't think I ever. I don't think I ever thought about just how many calories, like, hang out in a refrigerator at any given time. But 10,000, that's a. That's a good number. That ought to be sufficient. [00:28:51] Speaker B: Yep. [00:28:52] Speaker A: So I distracted you. Keep going. [00:28:55] Speaker B: That, in a nutshell, is what's. What's wrong? And I won't say what's wrong. It's what's. Why is it so difficult today to remain fit? We have an environment that's designed to keep us in one place. We have a civilization wrap around us that keeps us physically safe, more or less, so we won't have to fight for our life every day or run to escape certain death any day. We have access to an incredible amount of calories at the drop of a hat. You know, you can reach for your phone and you can get, you know, a pizza delivered to your doorstep or two pizzas delivered to your doorstep. Okay, so we have all this access, and nobody tells us that the body that we have is actually ancient. It's designed to move, it's designed to run, it's designed to dig. It's designed to feel elevations of sensation where our heartbeat goes up, our body temperature goes up, our cardiovascular system works, and then we can rest afterwards. So that disconnect between where we are and where we used to, where we came from, is what causes those problems. In the past, certainly, we were active every day as part of our life. We didn't have a choice. The environment around us then made us work out. We had no choice about that. The food supply back then Made us eat organic and lean. So fatty foods were rare. Organic foods were everyday food because there were no other farming methods. And certainly the meat we ate wasn't fatted up because we didn't have the means to fatten up the livestock that we had. So we ate well, we exercised well, obviously we slept well because we're tired after a day's work. So we repaired our body, we let our mind rest, and we're fresh the next day. And obviously the other thing is we didn't have the technology that gave us a 247 lifestyle where two or three in the morning, I can still feel warm, I can still have plenty of light around me with no material cost to me, which is sort of. I don't have to chop wood and light things up and then have to go around lighting light bulbs, you know, just press, press a switch or in most cases, you know, Yask Alexa and the lights come on. So we do those things so easily, and that really messes us up. And that's what we fail to understand. We, we say, you know, we all want to be. We all understand the logic behind fitness, we'll understand the logic behind losing weight, we understand the logic behind good nutrition. But everything around us is there to actually tug us towards the wrong direction where we sit still for long periods of time. There's no need for us to exercise, we eat the wrong things, we don't sleep enough, and when we do, we sleep during the wrong times of the day. We synthesize all those things. And that's why today we're facing a health crisis across the world. I mean, WHO organization figures, the World Health Organization, are really tragic. By the year 2050, which is 25 years from now, half the world's population is going to be either obese or seriously overweight. And that goes a whole lot of health problems with it. So life expectancy, which has been going up, is beginning to go down. And certainly the quality of life for those people who live longer is also dropping exponentially. So we need to understand that and take the kind of action that doesn't require going to the gym, because nobody has time for that. And certainly a lot of people haven't got the extra money for that. But you can say, okay, what do I need to be more active? Can I take a walk during the day for 20, 30 minutes? Can I go up the stairs instead of taking a lift? Can I do the lawn outside myself so I actually do something physical? So those little things, they're very little, but they add up. So if we integrate them into our life in a smart way, then we begin to become fitter without realizing. [00:32:58] Speaker A: So what are some of the ways and things that you recommend in the book that people do in order to, you know, kind of shift, shift away from the sedentary push button life that we're in? Short of just going out and living in the woods and chopping your own wood and you know, slaying your own, hunting your own. Although that does sound kind of nice for vacation, but it's probably impractical for many people. So what are some of the things that you sort of focus on in the book? [00:33:31] Speaker B: It sounds lovely as an experience, as you say, but yeah, totally impractical. Okay, so essentially the book itself actually incorporates some workouts we can do and they don't take any space, they don't require special equipment. So if you don't know where to start, the book actually gives you answers in that respect. And they're field tested across different age groups and different levels of fitness so that we know they've actually worked for other people. And even if you don't have time for that, because what happens in the best of circumstances, we say, okay, I'm going to exercise for an hour a day. That becomes sort of kind of certain. I head. And we can probably keep it going for if we haven't exercised before, we can keep it going for a week, two weeks, three weeks, and the fourth week, what happens? Well, an emergency happens as they do. So then we stop, we don't exercise that day. We're going to say, oh, don't worry, I'm going to exercise twice as hard the next day. But for sure we're not going to do that. And then we're going to feel guilty about it. And then we're going to fail to exercise the day after that and the guilt levels increase. And because we don't feel good about feeling guilty, we stop thinking about it and say, oh, you know what, I'm really busy right now. Life is really hectic, I'm going to pick it up in a month. So now we've lost the continuity we had. We lost a kind of everyday thing, which we did. We dropped off the wagon and we're going back to the beginning. So a month from now it's going to be even harder. So the book gives you contingency to the contingency. It gives you basically little workouts you can do. It's last a minute, two minutes, three minutes, and everybody can, anybody can find three minutes. And you think, well, three minutes, I'M not going to do anything. And that's where you're wrong, because we know from, again, neuroanalytical studies, when you're from neurobiology, that the moment we start exercising, a whole host of changes happen into the neurochemistry of our body in our bloodstream, and they happen irrespective of whether we actually exercise for a minute or an hour. The body doesn't differentiate. So since they happen exactly the same kind of degree, they impact our vital organs, they impact, they change our hormonal profile and they help us become fitter in tiny little ways. But they're incremental. They're sort of collective as they happen because it's sort of one adds to the other and over a period of time, they take us in the right direction and make us feel better. And if we feel better, then we tend to be more active anyway. That's how we get around this because, you know, let's face the hard facts. Life is so complicated that if we say, oh, I'm going to exercise regularly every day, no fail for an hour, well, yeah, that the bar is so high, we're setting ourselves up for failure. And the smart thing here is to say, okay, I know that this is going to be impossible to keep every day for a year, but for those days when I can't do this, I'm going to do 10 press ups. And anybody can do 10 press ups. It doesn't matter how you do them on your knees, if you do proper ones, it really doesn't matter. You do them to the level you can, you do 10, you. And then you go away and do your day. And that really helps you. [00:36:36] Speaker A: Yeah. One of, one of the things I really liked about the book was all of the little exercises that you have incorporated into there. You have pretty neat little diagrams and little routines and there's a title at the top. I believe it's Dare Be. Right? And what is Dare Be? And. And tell us more about that. That seemed pretty cool. [00:37:01] Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you for asking. Like a Derby is essentially a global fitness resource. It's stuffed by volunteers, it's crowdfunded. It's Nayla Ray's dream baby. It has a motto which says, fitness is a right, not a privilege. So it shouldn't be behind paywalls. It shouldn't be for those who can only afford a gym membership. It shouldn't be for those who can actually spend money. And we can always argue that people who are least able to spend money are the ones in most need of fitness. It has at the moment two and a half thousand, I think almost no, 2,700 workouts. They've all been field tested. Every workout goes through a test period which is a three or four week cycle. So once it's ready, it's sent out to volunteer groups around the world. They test it across different age groups, different levels of fitness, different environments. We have groups in the Philippines doing it, they have groups in South Carolina. So, you know, it's very different in terms of culture. We use images because they are easy to sort of get through the language barrier. You follow me through. And once we are confident the flow is right, the accessibility level is right and it works the way that we want it to do, we publish it and it comes out. We have about, between four and five coming out every week because the pipeline of workouts always coming in and we have about, and I'm going to lie here, I think 100 programs, but it could be more. And a program is usually 30 months, 30 days, sorry, which is a month. So basically you start a program and takes you through everything going through a month. And the difference between workouts and programs is that workouts have a built in progression. So basically they're going to take you from the level that you started at and they're going to get you to some new level that you're going to finish at. So you actually feel that you worked through a level and you achieved something quite tangible in terms of how you perform. And there are different level of workouts as well. And there's a lot of information we also publish every month in terms of fitness guides which help you understand better how we operate. So that's what derby is. It's free. It's dbe.com you go there and you just consume the information and helps you get fit there. [00:39:22] Speaker A: Awesome. So D A R E B E E.com dareby.com and are they presented in. You mentioned the diagrams and pictures. Do you have videos also sort of demonstrating, you know, how to do that and then the pictures become like a reference. Reference guide? [00:39:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Every workout these days comes out with a video. Most times we still have a bit of a lag on this because initially we moved, we didn't, we didn't have a studio for that and we didn't have money to actually get one. So it was very difficult getting studio time. And every time we did we had extra money. Usually in the summer we'd spend some time shooting some videos and then putting them up. So there was always, we were, you know, woefully behind the number of workouts we put out, the number of videos we could shoot. At the beginning of last year, we started working it out a little bit better and we came to a format that is very accessible. So rather than taking you through an entire workout, and workouts have, you know, they're customizable to your level, you can do level 1 or level 2 or level 3 within the same workout. Rather than taking through a whole workout and talking to you, it's, you know, sometimes it's off putting. Certainly creates for us from our, from our, our perspective, it creates a kind of personality cult. We don't like that. So your fitness shouldn't be linked to the person doing it because for them it's a job most times, or if it's not, it's their hobby. They're actually putting a lot more time and effort into this than you. So that creates a lot of unrealistic expectations and also creates from us a kind of parasocial relationship where you think that, you know, if you're not as good as the person on the screen and you're failing, and it has the opposite effect of helping you. So we tried to go away from all that and we put a lot of thinking into that. A lot of, A lot of psychology and science went into all these decisions, as you can imagine. So we had, you know, endless number of internal discussions and we came to the format where we have basically a video, a quick video shows how the workout is done and then you just go and do it yourself. So you have no sort of questions on, you know, I don't understand the move. I'm not sure about this. It's all clear and it gives you the confidence to do it. [00:41:41] Speaker A: Now that all. That all sounds terrific. And in the book itself, you have sort of a bunch of these sort of integrated within the chapters kind of as a reference. So I'm. I'm curious, do you have another project in the works? Are you, are you working on the next one? It sort of seems like I. I kind of suspect that maybe you are, but I'd always love to hear what people are working on. What, what are you excited about? What, what's coming up for you? [00:42:11] Speaker B: I am. I'm. From my personal perspective, I'm constantly exploring. I use my writing primarily to help me understand the world. And the better I understand it, the better I can sort of take it to others. The writing is an amazing technology. It allows us to take the thoughts that reside inside the one person's head and we make the technology speak into another person's mind. And it's like the moment they hear those words, what they understand, and how their brain changes, it's. For them, it's amazing. They're transformed. And we know from neuroscience that if we read a book, it doesn't matter if we don't read, if we don't remember a single word afterwards about that book, our brain structure has changed. And the reason it has changed is because as we read the words, our brain basically remodels itself to give us a clear perspective of what it is that we are reading, which is why we understand those words. So if I tell you right now the sky is red inside your head, there's all these connections being formed. You know what a sky looks like, you know what the color red is, and now you can imagine what a red sky looks like, and it has nothing to do with the color red itself, because the red sky has particular hues and particular kind of feel, and you can visualize it. So now, basically, you have that connection in your head, and that was formed because I said the sky is red, so it's magic. So I'm very conscious of that. I. I sort of am putting another book together, obviously, and I'm exploring avenues where my writing can do a lot more stuff, a lot more good. So I'm, you know, I'm experimenting, You know, I'm playing around with fiction a little bit because essentially, a fictional environment allows us to create models which are realistic enough for us to test reality without them being anchored into hard reality itself. So it gives us plausible scenarios which expand our worlds inside our head and allow us to explore things like morality, for instance, and ethics and our behavior within certain contexts. So that's what I'm playing around with at the moment. [00:44:21] Speaker A: That sounds great. Thanks so much for kind of taking the time. It's really. I find it to be really great the way that you deeply integrate sort of this discipline and mindset and expansion kind of all at the same time. And I find it interesting that even though you yourself are clearly sort of really intense and disciplined and have a sort of a tremendous amount of structure within yourself and your life and especially in your early years, your early career, but you also had the sort of the prescience to realize and understand that, you know, for most of us out there, it's. We need to have incremental improvements, and we're not going to sort of always be perfect, and we're not going to grab onto and do the most difficult things. And so I really appreciate how you sort of made the point of not giving up and continuing to grab on to the things that are realistic and incremental in order to, you know, can have us, you know, your audience, your readers, continue working forwards and towards fitness goals. And that's something that I really agree with as well as we talk to people. You know, life today is, is definitely very different from what our ancestors had and sort of the. Our lifestyle is really kind of stacked against us in terms of meeting or even sticking with our health and fitness goals. And I just found it really refreshing, your approach to, you know, come to that realization that, hey, you know, finding ways to get up out of your chair and take the stairs instead of the elevator, you know, those things stack up because it's part of a way of thinking about and a way of life in order to be more healthy and all of that. So thank you for that. And where and how can people get a hold of you? How can they learn more, all that good stuff? Where can we find these books? [00:46:54] Speaker B: Right? You can find my books on Amazon.com and pretty much every other online retailer. Some of them are in Target as well. I learned the other day somebody sent me a picture. [00:47:07] Speaker A: Oh, that's exciting. [00:47:08] Speaker B: It is, yes. You'll find me@david amerlin.com David, thanks so much. [00:47:14] Speaker A: I appreciate you coming in. [00:47:15] Speaker B: Thank you. I really appreciate the invite. I really enjoyed myself here. [00:47:20] Speaker A: Where to go from here? Visit whatsworthwhile.net to learn more about me, Ramsey Zimmerman and please reach out to me and let me know what you think. I don't want this podcast to be some message in a bottle thrown out to sea. I want to hear back from you. Please send me a message or an email or hit me up on X, LinkedIn or Instagram. And please leave a rating and review the what's Worthwhile podcast on Apple, Spotify, Iheart or Amazon. Thanks.