Chapter Content
Okay, so let's talk about fearlessness, or really, what I think of as the highest level of good energy. Humans, we're wired to feel fear, anxiety, even judgment, right? And for good reason! Those feelings are there to, like, keep us safe, they're unpleasant sensations that, you know, they get us to react when we're facing a real threat to our survival. Without that, we'd be goners, you know? Throughout history, most of those threats were pretty immediate: like, a natural disaster, a snake, or, you know, an invading army.
But here's the crazy thing. In just the last century, like, BAM!, we have the ability to be exposed to threats facing ANYONE, ANYWHERE, twenty-four/seven, live-streamed to our phones. Suddenly, the traumas and fears of, like, eight billion other people are... ours to process? That's, like, maybe the most abnormal thing we face as modern humans. More than processed food, more than sitting all day, more than artificial light, more than, you know, being comfortable. Our minds and bodies, they were never built for this constant barrage of terrifying information, and we can't really escape it, can we? Billboards, news, social media... TV! And we also can't seem to look away, because, well, we're biologically programmed to pay attention to threats. Technological connectivity has brought on this era of, like, digital terrorism that we're, strangely, addicted to. It's like that saying, "If it bleeds, it leads." Morbid stories, they grab our attention. And on top of that, we all have our own personal problems and traumas.
So, what does all this mean? Well, we're getting crushed. So, um, lots of women report a diagnosis of depression in their lifetime and a full third of Americans report an anxiety disorder in their lifetime. Three-quarters of young Americans feel unsafe *daily*. It’s easy to gloss over these statistics, but take a moment to take them in: in a time when life expectancy and standard of living seem to be higher than ever, hundreds of millions of people in the wealthiest country in human history—including children—are suffering from sadness, fear, and profound stress. There has always been suffering in the world, but now we can see exponentially more of it than ever, all at once, on screens we hold in our beds and at the dinner table.
So, we're searching for a fix, right? We’re looking for anything that gives us a hit of dopamine-fueled "pleasure" and distraction. Things like processed sugar, alcohol, soda, refined carbs, vapes, cigarettes, weed, porn, dating apps, email, texts, casual sex, online gambling, video games, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat... you name it, the relentless novelty of experiences. You know, someone said that we've created a culture where a ton of people can't stand to be present in their daily lives, so they need to medicate themselves all day. The impact of this modern psychological reality, and these unhealthy coping mechanisms, is that our ability to produce good energy is dimmed. It’s a vicious cycle, it robs us of the full potential of our human experience.
See, a cell living in a body that's constantly scared? That cell can't fully thrive. When our cells sense danger, they basically divert resources to defense mode instead of their normal functions that keep us healthy. So, even if you have a perfect diet, you exercise, you get sunlight, and you sleep well, if your cells are swimming in a stew of stress, all those good choices are going to, kind of, fall flat.
So, I think, it's our most fundamental job to really take stock of what triggers our persistent fears and then, you know, work to heal them or limit our exposure. And we can do this through things like setting boundaries, introspection, meditation, breathwork, therapy, spending time in nature. I mean, don't think that setting boundaries about what information you let into your eyes and ears is like, putting your head in the sand. It's about protecting your biology so you don't just completely fall apart. This then allows you to show up with maximal energy to positively impact the world.
Everyone's threat signals are different. Could be work stress, childhood trauma, feeling unsafe at home, a news article about something horrible, worry about not being good enough... Take stock of YOURS so you can protect your cells from constant psychological harm and create, like, a peaceful environment for them.
Now, something I was taught in medical school, it always bugged me. It's like anything, *anything*, is justifiable to prevent death, even if it just adds a few more painful, vegetative days. The message isn't "Let's keep you healthy," it's "Let's keep you ALIVE." Go to your physical, get your screenings, take your pills, get the surgery... or else you MIGHT DIE! The fear of death gets weaponized to get patients to do anything. More meds, more procedures... The unspoken message is, like, if you say no, if you delay, you might die sooner. It's especially powerful in the West because, unlike some cultures, we avoid talking about death, which makes it a huge existential fear for a lot of people. So many ancient texts tell us to face death, to trust that it's natural, not something to fear. But that hasn't made it to mainstream health care.
You know, death was actually my biggest fear, and I had to address it head-on. I'd spent more of my life worrying about how I or my family could die than anything else. It was the reason for countless sleepless nights, the reason I went into medicine. Then, uh, a few experiences with my mom changed my perspective on worry forever.
Concerned about her health, I took her to Sedona for a "bootcamp" of healthy actions. One night, after not eating for days, standing and looking at the towering rocks, I got this idea that the mountains and I were made of the same stuff. The atoms that make up my body have been on this Earth for billions of years. And for a little while, my mitochondria are working to organize them into... me. I talked with my mom about how the ideas of "self" and the finality of death are illusions.
Actually, large portions of our bodies are dying *all the time*. We shed more than a pound of cells every day. Our cells make up most of the dust in our homes. Under a microscope, you can see life and death happening *inside* what seems like a "living" body. Cells are dying, dividing, being born, aging at different rates. On a cellular level, we die and are reborn trillions of times in one lifetime. And that discarded matter? It returns to Earth, and eventually creates something new. Fossil fuels, you know, they're just the remains of plants and animals that existed millions of years ago. So, we're literally powering our lives with the atoms of our ancestors. It's just our limitations that we don't see those reactions happening every second.
My mom and I talked about how my discarded bits might become a piece of broccoli that feeds a child. Or carbons that'll be in a perfect diamond. Or maybe I'll donate some atomic dust to a gust of wind that helps form mountain ranges, who knows? The impact we have on others, the people we love, the people we mistreat, literally changes their biology and lives forever. What you do physically encodes itself in you.
Then, out of nowhere, I got a call from my mother. She was dying. She had pancreatic cancer, softball-sized tumors all through her belly. Over the next couple of weeks, she got tons of letters about the impact she'd had on people. I'll never forget the gratitude on her face as she read them. Every note was from a human who'd been, you know, biochemically changed because of her. Just like we'd talked about, I could feel that she was fundamentally immortal, her energetic effect on everyone. She held my hand, told me she could feel her life force fading. She was without fear.
A few days later, we buried her in a natural cemetery. It was so powerful to put her body into a patch of dirt near the ocean. This woman... disintegrated to feed the trees and flowers above her in an eternal cycle. All my anxiety about mortality had been wasted energy. Death is uncontrollable, and it's okay. I felt that when I held her as she took her last breath. She was okay. Her last words were to protect the energy of the universe. That it all, the life, the death, was perfect.
As she went into the soil, I deeply felt that my mother and I were intertwined, and nothing about death could change that. In order to exert power, create dependency, and extract money from humans and nature, forces create overwhelming perception of separation, scarcity, and fear. Despite this, as the specialties of medicine obfuscate the reality of one body, we can push back and we can embody a different truth of total connectedness and limitlessness. I felt Rumi’s words wash over me: “Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form” and “Why think separately of this life and the next when one is born of the last?” My fear of existential worry and chronic low-grade fear started to release, my health started to shift, and I wanted to continue to be empowered by my true nature as a dynamic, eternal process, a concept I’d never been taught in my medical training. My mind was relaxing and my cells were becoming free to do their best possible work. And that... that's how I found fearlessness.
Because, in many ways, our mind controls our metabolism. When it comes to good energy and the brain, it's a loop. Bad habits weaken the brain's defense against stress, and chronic stress causes more metabolic dysfunction, worsening mood and resilience. A lot of human diseases are linked to activation of stress-related biology, with a connection between psychological stressors and metabolic problems. Your cells "listen" to your thoughts. And if they're getting a constant message of stress, they stop producing good energy. Intense or chronic stress triggers all the hallmarks of bad energy.
Inflammation, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, high glucose levels, worse metabolic biomarkers... Traumas crush good energy. Adverse experiences can affect how stress hormones are regulated. Some studies say that 80 percent of people experience one or more of these events, and they contribute to increased risk of developing conditions such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and metabolic syndrome.
So often in my practice, I would ask patients if they were “stressed” or had past traumas, and they would flatly say no. But in digging into the details over a two-hour visit, they often had significant childhood adverse experiences that had not been fully processed. Many times, they also reported feeling trapped in their job, being overburdened by caregiving responsibilities without adequate support, experiencing strained family relationships with parents, spouses, extended family, or children, social and financial anxiety, loneliness, a history of intimate partner violence, and many other traumas or negative situations in their lives that they didn’t necessarily label as “stress” or “trauma” but that were still very real and present.
No matter what's happened, we have to find a way to feel safe in order to be healthy. Feeling safe is something we can cultivate through intentional practice. It's lifelong work, and it's different for everyone. Awareness of triggers and traumas, that's the first step. Then we need to improve both the "hardware" the body and the "software" the psychology. The hardware involves good energy habits, food and lifestyle, to create a biological reality conducive to mental health. The software involves pursuing modalities that help manage and heal the stressors, traumas, and thought patterns that limit us and contribute to our poor metabolic health and thriving.
Eating well, sleeping well, exercising might seem small when facing existential dread, but I promise: if you get your heart rate up and follow some food principles, you will improve. If you sleep enough, the world will look more awe-inspiring. Focus on the inputs, the habits, and the results will follow. It can be really hard to get motivated when you're stressed or scared. So, find something healthy that inspires you and give it a shot, because small wins lead to more wins.
We're like animals in cages now, surrounded by threats that enter our homes through technology and chemicals. Since the brain uses a lot of energy, dysfunction at the cellular level hits it hard. Focus on good energy habits, and good energy will take over your life.
So what work can you do? Healing trauma, developing self-love, feeling limitless, making peace with death... Big asks, right? Here are some strategies that are research-supported.
First, form a relationship with a therapist, coach, or counselor. We have pros for everything else: physical health, cars, taxes, investments... So, ignore any stigma around "mental health" and see therapy as a high-leverage investment. I call it a "brain coach," an hour of introspection could make the difference between being trapped by negative thoughts and being psychologically free.
Track your heart rate variability, or HRV, and work to improve it. Use wearables to identify triggers that lower HRV. With some devices, you can see your HRV in real time and see what experiences cause HRV to drop (indicating more stress) and which interventions—like taking a deep breath—help when HRV is low.
Practice breathwork. It's a powerful way to stimulate the vagus nerve and activate the parasympathetic nervous system, you know, the "rest and digest" part of the nervous system. It can calm you down rapidly. You can also try simple breathwork techniques like box breathing.
Practice mindfulness meditation. Even sessions as short as twenty minutes can decrease metabolic biomarkers and improve mood, anxiety, and depression. It lowers stress hormones and has positive metabolic effects. You can change your genetic expression, blood glucose levels, and immune system activation through your mind.
Meditation can seem intimidating, but it doesn't have to be. It can be as simple as sitting quietly and mentally noting when a thought pops into your head. Let it go, and reset. In doing that, you flex the muscle of returning to the “present moment.” By simply noting the thought, you get off the “train of thought” and back to the present moment. In doing this, you solidify the understanding that your identity is separate from the rush of stressful thoughts running through your brain. Most of us spend the entirety of our life jumping from thought to thought, never getting off the “train,” thinking that this is “reality” or “you.” It’s not: you can simply step off and reset into the present moment, and this is like waking up from a dream and stepping into a blissful spiritual space.
The voices in our head? They're not us. The point of meditation is actually the distraction. It shows us that our head will produce thoughts, and we can choose to let them pass or change them. Then we can take this insight to our daily life, letting us disassociate from the weight of the out-of-control inner voice, so we can more clearly tune into our limitless spiritual nature, while also being more present to fully experience playing with our kids, taking a walk, or having a conversation with a loved one.
Another way to practice mindfulness is to close your eyes and scan every sensation in your body. It takes you away from anxiety and stress. Even a ten-minute meditation can transform a day.
Try movement-based mindfulness practices like yoga, Tai Chi, or Qigong. They improve depression, anxiety, and stress. They increase activity of the PSNS, lower cortisol, reduce inflammation, and change genetic folding and expression (epigenetics), all of which can positively impact metabolic issues.
Spend time in nature. Nature lowers stress hormones significantly, and it increases the PSNS and mood. In closely observing nature, we get the opportunity to meditate on the profound harmony, interconnectedness, and cycles that thread through the natural world. We see many polarities and cycles that surround us to create life, health, and beauty: polarities like sleeping and waking, night and day, cold and hot, parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system, high and low tide, alkaline and acidic. Cycles like spring to summer to fall to winter, new moon to first quarter moon to full moon to last quarter moon, and menstruation to follicular phase to ovulation to luteal phase. These rhythms surround us in nature, and they are our best teachers in achieving fearlessness, because they show us that the world is fundamentally harmonious even when things swing between different states. But in the modern world, living inside and so separate from nature, we have begun to ignore, fight, or suppress polarities and cycles, under the illusion that they are suboptimal and we can outsmart them. The results haven't been good.
We've become separate from nature, so we've become fearful and controlling of its rhythms, getting stressed by a sense of scarcity. When you really spend time with nature and learn from it with humility and awe, you realize that you have nothing to fear. Get outside often to feel more peace.
Read inspirational texts about mindset, trauma, and the human condition. Keep these works around as a constant reminder of the "bigger picture." I find that listening to ten minutes of books, podcasts, or texts that address mindset and mental fortitude while I’m getting ready for the day puts me in a positive headspace.
Try aromatherapy. Natural scents can trigger relaxation. Lavender oil is well-studied. Rub a few drops of lavender essential oil between your hands, cup your face, and inhale deeply a few times.
Write. If you're feeling down, set a timer and write about your problems for five minutes. Positive affect journaling can reduce mental distress and improve resilience.
Focus on awe and gratitude every day. I like to start with a list of what I'm grateful for. Take walks and focus on the awe in the things around you, a cloud, a tree, the moon, let yourself be humbled by things that are bigger than you. Until recent history, humans had space to be humbled by the grandeur of nature and life cycles, with animals, harvests, the sun, the moon, birth, and death being experienced as cosmic powerful forces. We’ve been robbed of this connection to our bodies and nature and need to make conscious efforts to train our brains back to being able to see and appreciate the majesty of all of it. Miracles are hiding in plain sight everywhere, obscured by the “distraction industrial complex” in the zero-sum game of attention. It is an act of rebellion and independence to refocus your attention on awe.
Practice active self-love. Be mindful of negative self-talk and become your biggest supporter. Change the narrative. Talk to yourself with kindness and support, as you would to a newborn in your arms.
Be less busy. Embrace JOMO, the joy of missing out. Get comfortable with unstructured time, alone, without distractions. Find pleasure in saying no when you aren't completely excited about something. When missing out feels uncomfortable, remind yourself of the abundance of opportunities in life, such that “missing out” is really a scarcity-based illusion. Every no to something you feel lukewarm about is a yes to time that can be spent doing something more meaningful.
Cultivate community. Loneliness can directly contribute to poor metabolic health, given that social connections are evolutionarily valuable for survival, loneliness is thought to have “evolved as an alarm signal, akin to hunger or thirst, to seek out social contact to promote survival.”
Commit to a digital detox. Reduce smartphone use, as research suggests that excess smartphone use is associated with negative “psychiatric, cognitive, emotional, medical, and brain changes.” Choose activities that force you to be away from your phone.
Consider psilocybin-assisted therapy. It can be one of the most meaningful experiences of life. Some compounds come directly from the earth to induce profound, consciousness-expanding experiences.
A study showed that “67% of the volunteers rated the experience with psilocybin to be either the single most meaningful experience of his or her life or among the top five most meaningful experiences of his or her life . . . similar, for example, to the birth of a first child or death of a parent.” One participant said the experience “stimulated my own consciousness’s ability for self-healing . . . You understand why it’s OK to experience unconditional love for yourself.”
Trust the process. After my mom died, I traveled to New York City. I looked out on the street, the exact spot where she kissed my father on their first date in 1981. It was there I noticed a book lying on the ground. It was called The Odd Woman, and it was written by Gail Godwin. I was compelled to walk over and pick it up. I opened the book. The page read,
One day the whole universe will accept: that there isn’t any struggle essentially, except what our self-created ego tells us is a struggle.
All the disharmonies, conflicts, conversations, love affairs and failures and death are superficial events. None of them are significant, really.
The only significant thing is how we enjoy the moment, our attitude toward the moment. One should simply give himself up to the moment, enjoy it, even if it is horrendous.
Are you saying that if a person is getting murdered at a certain moment, he should enjoy that moment? Why not? Why not enjoy it? It’s his last moment, the last personal, superficial event in his finite life. Sure, why not enjoy it? What else better is there to do?
Even in the most extreme case, we should have awe and appreciation for life and see the illusion of our ego.
We have no control over so much. In the face of inevitable mortality, chronic stress triggers, and traumatic childhood experience, an unshakable sense of safety can be elusive. Of course, we should take reasonable precautions for our own safety, but living in chronic stress or fear is neither optimal nor rational.
The road to maximal human well-being is not paved with more pharmaceuticals for isolated conditions. Improving our health requires understanding that we are interconnected with everything else in the universe, including soil, plants, animals, people, air, water, and sunlight. The more advanced our understanding of life sciences gets, the more convinced I am that achieving our highest potential as humans involves recommitting to many natural basics that modern living has separated us from. This doesn't mean we reject modernity. Instead, we can use cutting-edge tools, technology, and diagnostics to understand more deeply our relationship to the world around us, and to help us align our daily choices and investments toward the metabolic needs coded deep within our cells. At this moment we have the understanding and the tools to live the longest, happiest, healthiest lives in human history. And the foundation of this is helping our cells make good energy.