Modern-Day Alchemy with Shawn Wells

In this Episode

• [03:04]Sean Wells recalls his difficult childhood, including bullying and a challenging home environment. He highlights the link between mental and physical health, delving into the cycle of self-gaslighting and perfectionism.
• [10:13]Sean reflects on viewing his struggles as a gift and a part of his intended life path.
• [17:09]Sean shares his realization of the importance of play and flow in life.
• [25:34]Stephan and Sean discuss the addictive nature of sugar and its impact on willpower.
• [33:21]Sean provides tips for improving sleep quality, including creating a sleep fortress and avoiding blue light before bed.
• [43:39]Sean offers further insights on improving life in areas like health, wellness, longevity, mindset, and spiritual connection.

Jump to Links and Resources

Shawn, it’s so great to have you on the show.

Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. It’s good to be here.

I think we met at the Biohacking Congress in Miami if that’s the case. Or was it a biohacking conference? I forgot. It’s great to finally have you on the show. I’m curious to hear more about your origin story, how you ended up focusing in this area and how you had all these health issues. That was quite a ride, I’m sure.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, for sure. It’s been a journey, and now it feels like the hero’s journey, but in the process, not so much. It just felt overwhelming. And really, it led me to points of very dark places with suicidal thoughts and some pretty heavy depression along the way, just from a difficult childhood, bullying at school, things were difficult at home, and two brothers ran away. It was difficult to get into too much detail. It led to me being a junk food junkie and eating everything and anything that had sugar or caffeine and becoming morbidly obese, becoming the butt of everyone’s jokes, including teachers.

What led to my passion for nutrition and supplementation was finding my way out of bed and then finding my way out of my head to where I could find mental health and physical vibrance again.

It was just a difficult process that ended up leading to a lot of sickness, physical and mental, where I had fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, Hashimoto’s, and Epstein-Barr. I’ve had brain tumors. I’ve had about 30 different surgeries where things were failing. It’s been a lot. A lot of that was just because of my mental health and then how I was fueling my body.

But along with it, I had this gaslighting of myself, this perfectionism, where I was now the abuser, the worst abuser to me, that led me to be in very suicidal places. At one point, physically, I couldn’t get out of bed for about six months with all these autoimmune issues. That was another point that I was just ready to kill myself because I thought I could never contribute to the world. I could never have my dreams, and I could never pursue these things. 

But that’s what led to my passion for nutrition and supplementation: finding my way out of bed and then finding my way out of my head to where I could find mental health again and physical vibrance again. I’m here before you after all that. And it’s not like I’m all better. I think I have a tendency towards being an empath, a deep feeler, and a deep thinker, and I tend to be more introverted, and it can be. Even now, I can have some dark moments, but now I have the tools to get myself back on track very quickly.

Thank you for sharing what you went through so candidly and with such vulnerability. What was the darkest part of all this? What was the point where you hit bottom?

Where did I hit bottom? It was a few places. I went from being morbidly obese to being anorexic, where I went from about 300 pounds at 6’3” to 150 pounds in a very short period of time. People were clearly worried about me. I looked emaciated. I had severe body dysmorphia and disordered eating. I think that was a very dark point where I almost didn’t physically live, but I also mentally considered food my enemy. It went from being something I was obsessed with to being my enemy. I had dreams of hacking fat off my body with a cleaver and hated the way I looked.

Even when I was 150 pounds, I still thought I was fat. Those were dark points. And then again, that period where I was just in bed for many months, really couldn’t get out of bed because of the chronic fatigue as well as the fibromyalgia. My whole body felt inflamed, and my nerves were just wringing pain constantly. I didn’t know how to get out of bed and live again. But it was me digging into nutrition and these supplements that really helped me find my way through that.

What was the biggest improvement in terms of getting out of chronic pain and chronic fatigue? There must have been one supplement, regimen or modality that made a huge impact on you at the beginning of this healing journey.

Well, one that the mental shift that I’ve been working on for many years, probably the last 20 years, and plant medicine helped dramatically with. I could tell you a lot about that. It was probably the biggest game changer, but it was only four years ago. But it’s really granting myself grace, a thing I had to learn when I was gaslighting myself, abusive to myself, and expecting perfection all the time. I think pre-supplement, it was me getting on a paleolithic ketogenic diet that really switched up a lot for me. 

When I ketones, I was always metabolically dysfunctional because of all the sugar, transfats and calories I was constantly consuming. Or there were periods when I was consuming nothing. I was rarely getting proper nutrition. Getting on a paleo ketogenic diet really helped me get back on track, get my metabolism back on track, and get the nutrients I needed, and then that’s when I could start just walking outside.

It took many months for me to get back up to full speed, maybe even years. So it was a slow process. As far as supplements, there are a few supplements that really got me out of autoimmune hell. And I would say that was AHCC, which is a compound that comes from certain mushrooms that have a lot of research on cancer and autoimmune conditions. That was a powerful one. 

There’s an amino acid called L-lysine that was a reverse trigger; arginine is the trigger to autoimmunity quite often, and L-lysine is kind of the reverse of that, the counterbalance to that. Those two things are probably the most powerful.

I kept going down the rabbit hole of oregano oil and garlic and liposomal vitamin C and mitochondrial ingredients, and there were a lot of things I’ve done to get myself to kind of full brightness, but at the time, those two were really big ones.

How many years ago was it when you hit bottom?

That was about 25 years ago. That was really the precursor to me pursuing this path of supplements and becoming a registered dietitian and all those things.

Do you look back at all that hell as a gift, or do you still see it as just an awful chapter in your life?

No, 1000% a gift. All of it’s been a gift. Everything along the way, everything that’s been difficult and some of the plant medicine work I’ve done, and some people might think this is woo or not. I do believe that I’ve chosen this life and that I chose these lessons for this life. And there’s a whole lot there. If you watch a short seven-minute film called The Egg on YouTube, it might give you some perspective on what I’m talking about. It’s really amazing.

You may or may not agree with it, you may or may not agree with me, and that’s fine. But I do believe, even if you don’t believe, that maybe prior to this life, you chose this life for a reason: to learn these lessons. I think you’d have to at least agree that during this life, we’re making a lot of choices, and these lessons can be used in your favor or not. It depends on how you reframe, and I always choose to reframe. 

I’ve studied a lot of NLP, Neuro-Linguistic Programming. It’s about reframing a lot of the energy formula and mindset, whether it’s stoicism. That’s a resilient mindset. I believe absolutely everything that’s happened to me along the way has given me the ability to understand, like other people, what they’re going through. It’s made me that wounded healer that’s giving me my purpose and passion.

This is so critical to who I am. It’s made me an empath where I feel other people’s feelings. People come up to me all the time and tell me about their health conditions and their suicidal thoughts. Because I present these things, I make myself vulnerable about these things. And that’s a beautiful thing to have this impact. I would not have become what I am.

As far as a formulator, had supplements not changed so much for me, had nutrition not changed so much for me, I wouldn’t be at the top of my industry, I wouldn’t have written this book, I wouldn’t have been on the stages.

I’ve been on documentaries and TV. Even if you remove accomplishments, it’s not about how hard you work. That’s part of it, but it’s about your passion. I can take down someone who works as hard as me every day of the week because I’m more passionate than them. So if you combine hard work and passion, the sky’s the limit.

I wouldn’t have the drive had it not been for who I was. And so I recognize that and appreciate how hard I have been grinding, even though I don’t want to be in that space anymore. It still served me, but my passion is still there and has always been there, and it just continues to grow. So it’s all important. Honestly, I’m so happy about everything that happened to me.

How beautiful. If you chose this life, I totally am on board with this concept of us choosing the life that we’ve been given. All the turmoil and challenges and everything, then it’s the little things as well as the big things that you chose ahead of time, such as getting teased by fellow students, getting teased by teachers, and the things that came out of their mouths. It would make educators cringe that a fellow teacher would say that to a student.

As we get older, we also lose the ability to play, which is, to me, the ultimate expression of God.

So, do you see those words as coming essentially from God, or do you see that as part of the script that you co-wrote with the creator about what your life would be like when you signed up for this? How do you think through about this?

In other words, that’s very beautiful. Honestly, I’ve never put it in those words exactly, but I really took a second to just process that, and that’s really beautiful. I like the way you put that; I co-scripted it with God. I really like that idea a lot. 

Yes, I fully ascribe to what you just said. Now, that’s a great way to word it. And truly, I believe that it’s divine, and it was my intended path, and I’ve learned my intended lessons.  It’s all like a quilt that’s being woven and that French teacher who would bully me. Like her path, she had her lessons to learn, too. We’re all playing out against each other and projecting on each other. It’s a fascinating path and a beautiful quilt we’re all building.

There’s a children’s book by Neale Donald Walsch that I’d recommend you check out. You don’t even have to have kids to benefit from this book. It’s kind of a short version of Conversations with God, the book he’s most known for. The premise of this children’s book is that we choose to incarnate to have these life lessons and learn how to be who we already are. 

We are already forgiving, and we’re already loving, we are already generous and kind and so forth. We wanted to experience that we already are the light, but we wanted to have a chance to feel like we’ve earned it and not just been given it. So that means in order to have this opportunity to be the light in the form of, let’s say, forgiveness, we need to have somebody that needs to be forgiven and be like, “Oh, sorry, I bumped into you.”

“Oh, no, that’s fine.” It has to be something pretty awful that makes it very hard for you to forgive, so you have to flex that muscle and grow that ability. So, somebody has to be the bad guy. In other words, like the French teacher. The French teacher had to volunteer to be the bad guy or girl in this movie of yours, and then you had to get the lesson and then choose whether or not to forgive the teacher and whether to take that lesson and do something amazing with it or just feel wounded by it. It’s a beautiful book. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it before.

No, I definitely would love to read it.

The Little Soul and the Sun. Pretty powerful. What resonates there? From what I was just describing.

I think of it as we get older, and my biggest lesson is just that: the love from God is unconditional. And we feel like we’re further and further from that. As we get older, we also lose the ability to play, which is, to me, the ultimate expression of God. Scientifically, I would refer to play as flow. If you think about when you’re running around in recess, and you had your just joyous times, like you were stimulated, you were in the sympathetic nervous system, but you were also relaxed in the parasympathetic nervous system. So there’s this flow state of the joining of the two where you’re chasing but also in surrender. 

That’s a playful expression. That’s when you’re stimulated and relaxed. That’s such a beautiful space to be in. To me, that’s play. That’s why play is so important as we age, but also remembering that we’re loved. When I went through my first plant medicine journey, that was profound for me. You could have told me before I went into that experience that I could have loved. I can be loved. Love is unconditional. And I would have said, “Yeah, okay, cool.”

But it’s not until you feel it. I went into this experience surrounded by all these celebrities and people in some pretty influential circles and very famous people. I was intimidated. This is already my first experience, so that was a little scary. I was intimidated by the people there. Normally, when I walk into these big rooms, I have imposter syndrome and insecure. I’d give them my whole resume and tell them why I’m important and should be valued because that’s how I’d get approval. That’s how I would feel needed.

Otherwise, if I didn’t get their approval or they didn’t see my value, then I thought I was worthless. So, getting into this space, I was in this cuddle puddle on the floor, as it’s called, surrounded by all these really important people. They kept coming in and out of my circle, like one of those movies where the time lapsed, and people kept coming in and out of my circle, holding space for me, looking at me, and helping me. I thought the whole night because I took a pretty heavy dose for the first time. 

Unconditional kindness transforms you from a ‘human doing’ into a ‘human being.

It kind of cracked me open. The whole time, I think, “Why are these people here? Why would they want to be here when I’m no one? I didn’t tell them who I was to even earn some kind of love from them, so why would they just be nice to me?” That idea blew me away; people would just want to be kind to me, and someone would want to hold space for me even if I had no value. I just always thought of myself as a human doing, not a human being. 

I couldn’t just be Shawn and be loved. But that was like the epiphany that night. I stared at the ceiling for three or four hours after everyone else went to sleep, just mind-blown that I could have loved and be loved. That love wasn’t conditional. For me, that was a massive game changer, a huge shift in my mentality. It radically changed my life path and how calm I feel internally. The inner peace I now have.

If we tie that into what we were talking about just a couple minutes ago about The Little Soul and the Sun and how your French teacher and everybody else was kind of in on the game, this script to this movie you co-wrote with God. That means those famous people were also in on it, too, and they opted to be supporting actors or even just extras in your movie.

That’s beautiful. That is so beautiful. That also reminds me of another. I had a really famous hypnotist who was at a mastermind I was at, and he worked with elite pro poker players who needed to be really dialed mentally. You just have to be completely bulletproof. You know how it is. For example, if someone sees your story, you’re done. Some of these guys are going for about 16-18 hours in these tournaments. 

I realized that, at this point, I am the father to my inner child. I have to adult and protect my inner child, but I also have to let my inner child out and take care of my adult.

Sometimes, they don’t even get up to pee. It’s just pretty intense. This guy was working with me, and he told me, “You know, he did the whole regression back to my childhood when I had a traumatic incident. I had heard of this before. Like see yourself as the child in this traumatic incident. Like, walk into that frame and see that child that’s hurt and crying, and hug them.” And that was already powerful. I was already sobbing tears. I’m just feeling what it feels like to be an innocent child, and that’s hurting. And then he said, “This was pivotal for me.” He was like, “Who does that child think you are? What does he see?” I think I spent my whole life desiring validation, which was the first time I ever gave it to myself. 

He’s blown away at this seven-year-old who is blown away about what I am like. At the time, I think a 47-year-old had accomplished this point in his life. My dreams as a seven-year-old were one-tenth of what I achieved. It was a beautiful thing that I realized that now, at this point, I am the father to my inner child, and I have to adult and protect my inner child, but I also have to let my inner child out and take care of my adult. 

I think because I wasn’t able to have a child in my prior marriage, we tried for seven years and did in vitro fertilization, and then we even lost it after we did a really complex process called ICSI. That was seven years of my life and then losing one, and it was gut-wrenching. I had another beautiful journey where that was the message, where it’s like you’re both the parent and the child to yourself. That created a wholeness in me. That was all I needed.

That hypnotherapist wasn’t Elliot, was it? There are no coincidences, right? I was just having a conversation with my oldest daughter a couple of hours ago before this interview. She brings up the Primed Mind app, and it’s like, “You know, I had Elliot on my podcast, right?” She’s like, “Really?” She had no idea. I actually had his web page and my interview of him up on the screen from just a couple of hours ago, and here we are talking about him. There are no coincidences. It’s like the whole game is rigged in your favor, and the sooner you realize that, the sooner you can bend reality. Do you remember that scene from The Matrix where the boy is bending the spoon?

Yeah. There is no spoon.

There is no spoon.

Yeah, exactly. That’s amazing.

Amazing. This is going in a different direction than I anticipated, but I love it. I thought we were going to geek out on a bunch of supplements, but this is even better. I wanted to touch on the angle of addiction and how sugar is super addicting. It’s like cocaine.

Somebody with a bad sugar habit will have a hard time, let’s say, throwing out all the cookies, candy, and ice cream in the house. But they really need to do it, get it out of the house and into the trash, because otherwise, they’re eroding their willpower as the day goes on. Then, eventually, they give in to the vat of ice cream in their freezer. But what else do you want to share about this issue of sugar and getting off of it? What are things that you’ve learned, and what tools and resources do you recommend to your clients?

Somebody who has a bad sugar habit is going to have a hard time throwing out all the cookies, candy, and ice cream in the house. But they really need to do it.

It’s a great point. This idea of the bliss point is that foods are engineered to elicit a bliss point. It’s essentially a foodgasm. So we now have heavily engineered foods that mostly elicit dopamine release, and it’s a high spike and a high fall. Now, healthy dopamine releases can make you feel productive, inflow, and swagger, and things like working out or cold plunges or things like this can last for many hours. And those are healthy dopamine releases, like relationships and playing. As I said, all these things are great for extended healthy dopamine releases. 

The reason that example comes up a lot is cocaine is kind of this super high dopamine spike, and that super high crash. It’s why people keep going back to cocaine over and over and over. It’s just like sugar. Once we have some sugar, do we feel satiated? No. There’s like the huge glycemic spike and then a crash. Then we want more and more and more. We were literally addicted. If someone tells you that it’s not nearly as addictive as something like cocaine, I would argue if I tried to take that candy away from that child or even this adult. Tell me what happens.

Tell me how people don’t sneak it and hide it. People get this candy at the register. Why is it by the register impulse? It’s addiction. It’s playing off your addiction. When you go into these convenience stores, you see a sea of colors when you’re looking at the candy, or you’re looking at all the beverages in the cooler. Why are all these beautiful colors there? Because that’s part of the addiction, the visual attraction. When I drink a soda, not only is there the sugar that’s addictive but then they’ve engineered this, the PSH. That’s an anchor. 

You get the bubbles and the acidity, and you have the sweetness, and then there’s the mouth feel of the bubbles. Sometimes, they even add a little bit of gum or resin, so it has a little thickness to the feel of even the soda. What they do is they flavor the front end and then leave nothing on the back end. And you’ve seen people do this with the bottle. They’ll take the lid off, they’ll drink, put it down, put the lid on, instantly take the lid back off, drink, put it down, put the lid on, pull the lid off, drink, and it’ll just keep happening over and over. This is truly an addiction and a process. People say, “Oh, we need to have things in balance.” Ice cream, cookies, etc., all this stuff is great. But all those things weren’t there a couple hundred years ago.

If you go to other places in the world where there are tribes or whatever, like they were eating meat, fruit, and vegetables, but they weren’t having cakes and cookies and ice cream, refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup and these things that literally hijack our brain. So that’s not about balance. And then you add in further hijacking the brain, the artificial colors and flavors. There are so many chemicals that are literally messing with your brain chemistry. Even artificial sweeteners do this to your brain chemistry. And there’s an element of addiction to it. It’s absolutely problematic. For example, when I went on a whole food, like paleolithic kind of diet, it helped me rewire my heavily addicted brain. So absolutely. That’s a real thing.

What are some of the easy wins for somebody who’s addicted to sugar? Besides, if they’re willing to get the stuff out of the house and into the trash can, what else?

That’s a big step. There’s a study where they had M&Ms on a table within reach and then M&Ms on a table out of reach. The person that had them within reach because it’s like our lazy brain, they consumed like three times as many M&Ms. So just having these things out of reach and out of your house is a huge step. Just say, “Look, I’m not getting off it, but I’m not going to make it easy for myself.” 

It’s just like the positive habits you want to do: make those easy for yourself by pre-packing your gym clothes, sneakers and gym bag to work out right next to your bed in the morning. That’s one less hurdle. You make those things lazy, thoughtless, and easy, and then you make the things you don’t want to do harder, putting more barriers to them. One of the other techniques, especially with kids I’ve worked with, is to include more of the good things and naturally push out less of the “bad things.”

Include more foods with color, and include more whole foods so you have a colorful plate. When you’re full, you don’t have room for that stuff. Getting enough sleep is going to be a massive part of this. When we don’t have enough sleep, we have an insufficient cellular energy state where we need more ATP. Your brain has essentially the same idea. It’s called the brain energy gap, where there’s just not enough energy for the brain to function properly. It’s going to seek out quick energy, and it’s tired, and your synapses are actually firing slower. You’re going to have one decision: fatigue. You’re going to have neuroinflammation.

You’re going to have a shortfall of ATP. Your neurotransmitter is already down. Then, you’re going to seek that high dopamine spike because you’re already addicted. “After all, this is my way out of it. I’m going to feel good for 15 to 30 minutes,” and you’ll probably add caffeine to that.

Include more of the good things, and you will naturally push out less of the “bad things.”

Then a couple of hours later, you’re going to feel like crap, and you’re going to go back to the vending machine, you’re going to get another pizza, a donut, or whatever, and you’re not going to make healthy choices. So, getting enough sleep is key to not eating as much sugar or having less productive behaviors.

That’s great advice. Now, to get even more specific, if you wanted to get better sleep or more sleep, what are some of the most impactful sleep hacks and sleep hygiene regimens that you would recommend?

Keeping your bedroom a sleep fortress that’s the actual term. That means that when you go into your bedroom, it’s anchored to sleep. It’s not a place to have your office; it’s not a place for arguments. It’s not a place to have your TV. It’s a place for sleep and potentially sex-like intimacy. But that’s it. It’s supposed to be a feeling of relaxation when you’re walking into that room. You protect it, and you call it a sleep fortress.

You have plants in there, so there’s a carbon dioxide-oxygen exchange. You put a little tape over like LEDs because those can even disrupt sleep at night on your smoke detectors on your TV if you have one. Those LEDs can be a nuisance, whatever little devices and things are around.

Yeah, get that TV out of the bedroom.

Exactly. Filtered air is definitely a big factor. We often have a lot of allergens in the bedroom, especially pets are in there. I encourage you not to sleep with your pets. That can disrupt the quality of sleep. I encourage you to leave them on the floor, in their own bed, etc., especially if they’re bigger pets. Moving around at night can contribute to you not sleeping as well. Even just frequent wake-ups can ruin your quality of REM and deep sleep. Using a red light at night, if you have to get up and go to the bathroom, use a red light flashlight. 

You don’t want to get blue light, which is like your standard white light in your eyes, because that means that you will block the release of melatonin, making it harder to sleep. This certainly is true, getting to sleep at the beginning of the night. But certainly, even if you get up to go to the bathroom or do something else, it can also prevent you from getting back to sleep. So be mindful of that. That’s so along those lines. Make sure that before bed, probably two to three hours before bed and no devices. That’s hard for a lot of people, but this means cutting out TVs, phones, tablets, computers, and stuff like that.

Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest, and all this stuff are probably the worst imaginable. I can’t think of anything worse. I thought a phone was bad at night right by your face, but now we have a thing strapped to our eyeballs that’s firing bright light into them. You are guaranteed to not sleep from that. You’ll literally block melatonin from releasing at all. You’re going to have to drug yourself. Some people resort to alcohol, which actually worsens the quality of sleep as well. So that’s another thing.

Getting enough sleep is key to not eating as much sugar or having less productive behaviors.

Avoid alcohol in the evenings. If you’re going to drink something, make sure it’s earlier in the day and not later in the evening. It’s also not healthy to eat too late because your body will be digesting that food and that tends to worsen the quality of sleep and HRV (Heart Rate Variability), which is a marker of how well you recover and how well you’ve slept. I would say those are some big things that come off the top of my head, and I certainly cover them all in my book. One more interesting sleep hack that you’ve probably heard of, but a lot of people haven’t heard of, and it is pretty much free, is taping your mouth because many of us are mouth breathers.

Even if you’re not apneic, where you’re kind of choking and have huge gaps between breaths that aren’t healthy, and that’s really a concern because that can put you at risk for stroke and heart attack, diabetes and a lot of very serious conditions. Apnea is very concerning. But even if you’re just breathing through your mouth and you’re just snoring your sleep quality, your recovery could be so much better through the nose because the nose is where we’re supposed to take in air, and it’s naturally filtered, and it’s moisturized, the temperature is correct. It has a very different effect on recovery and oxygenation when breathing through the nose. So, if you just tape your mouth at night, try it and see what happens. The first time I did it, I got 4 hours of sleep that night and felt like I got eight and a half. I didn’t realize how bad my sleep was breathing through my mouth, even though I was getting enough.

Those are all great tips. Is there a particular device that you recommend for tracking or sleep improvement? So, for example, I use an Oura Ring to track my sleep. I used the Zeo way back in the day, a strap around my forehead that measured my brainwave state while I was sleeping. There are different kinds of devices to help you get into a deeper sleep prior to going to bed. Like a brain tap, for example. Do a brain tap meditation shortly before you go to sleep. Are there any particular technologies you like?

I like several of those. I do use the Oura ring. I’ve also experimented with Garmin. They have a great watch with the idea of a body battery, which is essentially the same as Oura tracking HRV. I just read that Aura is launching a new feature around this time, so it should be out any day. That is called resilience, which is taking the body battery by Garmin, which kind of one-ups the idea of HRV and makes it more accessible. Oura is going to take in levels of stress, your heart rate, and HRV and process the whole thing together to give you a resilience score throughout the day. I think that’s really exciting.

I think WHOOP has a good one, especially more for athletes. That seems to be more accurate than Oura Ring. I think Oura Ring is great all around, and several companies are now coming out with rings. Samsung has a well-rated ring in their whole Galaxy line, which I’ve been reading about. I know Apple’s supposedly working on their ring, and there are two other companies I’ve been reading. So the ring thing is about to take off, and Oura is about to get a whole lot of competition, which is good for us. I like the Apollo Neuro, for the vibrations helped me get into more of that parasympathetic state. Now, I’m actually friends with the CEO and founder, Dr. David Rabin.

What’s really cool is it’s now attached to the OURA ring so that it can sense that you woke up and you need to get back to sleep, so it will turn the device back on and vibrate on your wrist or your ankle and so that you fall back asleep more quickly. I have a manta mask that I use at night. Another important thing is blocking out of this blue light, especially when I travel. 

It’s not healthy to eat too late because your body will be digesting that food and that tends to worsen the quality of sleep and HRV (Heart Rate Variability).

The light comes in from these windows, these curtains that don’t fully close, and there are street lights out there and then parking lights and whatever. Then you could be by a highway, and there’s a lot of noise, like noise in the hallway and light coming in under the door. I used to use just the sleep mask, but now I travel so much. They have an upgraded one with Bluetooth right here at the ears and these light little speakers that you can sleep on your sides. It’s still comfortable; you can move them around to fit you perfectly.

That’s helped a lot. I used to use brown noise, which I thought was the best of all the noise, pink noise, white noise, etc. But now I’ve been exploring some of these more binaural-ish things that are on YouTube, that are free, that are like eleven-hour recordings. And it’ll be like the 432 HZ, or this one’s a healing frequency. I’ve been exploring all these different frequencies. This one’s the God frequency. I don’t know a lot of specifics about these different frequencies, but I have been exploring them and seeing what my HRV is on different ones. This is just something I’ve been doing over the past month. I’m trying to figure out which kind of thing is best for me. But I’ve noticed a deeper sleep using these different frequencies and eleven-hour recordings. And it seems to be better than just brown noise, which is just, you know, that kind of thing.

Have you tried to Focus@Will?

No.

You might try that. It is a paid subscription, but it’s very inexpensive. Will Henshall is the founder. I’ve had him on this podcast. By the way, it’s a really interesting technology. It helps you get into either a flow state if you want to be productive or a brainwave state if you want to relax and sleep. It’s like a Netflix for different kinds of music, including background noise and background sounds for whatever you’re trying to accomplish. It’s all based on science and everything. If you had just one or two tips to share in these last few minutes that we haven’t discussed making one’s life better, making it better in terms of health, wellness, longevity, mindset, spiritual connection, or any of that, what would it be?

What I’ve been exploring is that I did a conscious uncoupling, and that was very powerful. She’s still a best friend and a business partner, and a lot of that came out of my work in psychedelics to get the courage up to do what I needed to do. It was nice that we had a great friendship and we relied on each other, but there wasn’t that intimacy, that deeper love that I longed for. Now that I’m in my relationship, I’ve been for a year and a half, and it’s a powerful relationship where she’s been through a lot, and she’s a mirror to me, and I’m a mirror to her. 

There are two things that I’ve found new that are epiphanies to me: the dopamine detox. Speaking of that, before just getting rid of all the things that were dopamine addicted, like I was talking about before with food and sodas, even sugar-free sodas and even sugar-free BCAA drinks and all these things that are just hyper-palatable, getting rid of that masturbation and porn, that’s a huge thing. I noticed myself desiring that often when I was bored, when they fill the time, like when I was hurt or sad, and it’s a downward spiral. I also noticed myself making more impulsive decisions. Sports cars driving really fast and weaving in and out of traffic. 

It’s vital to step back, practice dopamine fasting, and focus on real relationships and being present.

“Why am I doing these things?” Or there were so many decisions that were more impulsive, reckless, and short-term thinking. And how I’m spending my money instead of saving it. It’s like all of these things I found were because of dopamine drive, because I didn’t have enough inside. I wasn’t spending enough time inside my heart, inside my soul. Here’s my test for you that I can tell you if I put you in a float tank for one hour, if it’s your hell for that one hour, to have no light, no sound, complete deprivation, and you think you cannot operate, and you cannot wait to break that thing open and get out of there, that is a sure sign. 

And you want to talk about the ultimate dopamine addiction is this thing, this thing, this thing that’s in her hand, in her pocket 24/7 that when I walk around an airport, and I see everyone just looking at the phone instead of, like, acknowledging the person next to them. I mean, tell me it’s not an addiction if someone has it out on the table at a dinner table. I mean, I tell them to put that thing away. It is literally, this is impulse all day long, and it’s firing notifications at you all day long. It’s terrible.

You’ll even get phantom vibration. You don’t have it in your pocket. You check and, “Oh, yeah, it’s not in my pants. Where is it?”

And now people are wearing the watches, and we’re even more connected. As I said, these vision pros are disturbing to me, like how productive I get them, but they also come at a cost for me to detox from dopamine. If you look up dopamine fasting 2.0/dopamine detox, things like that. I found abstaining from masturbation and porn completely and just focusing on my relationship and intimacy. I avoid any snacks whatsoever, just focusing on enjoying a meal and taking bites, but chewing many times and enjoying that. 

Being present means noticing the air, the sun, and the sounds around you instead of being distracted by the cell phone or whatever else, the TV, whatever else is around you, and being truly present. The dopamine fasting thing has been very powerful for me, and that’s led to me being able to do the next one, which is getting in line with who I want to be spiritually, physically, and mentally and keeping my word.

Most importantly, I want to thank you and everyone around me, not only myself. The things I say I’m going to do, I now do. If I say something to myself, I’m very careful because I need to follow through on things I don’t want to have. I call it spiritual dissonance when I don’t keep in line with what I said I’m going to do. If I said I’m going to the gym tomorrow morning, I will come hell or high water. If I said I’m going to show up at this event, I’m going to show up at that event. That’s the way I have to proceed with my life. It has that radical integrity, and everything starts to change from there. But also, like the two things I mentioned earlier, it is very important to grant yourself grace and forgiveness. How beautiful this life is. And life isn’t about perfectionism.

If you want to be better at your business and be more successful in life, figure out how to play more.

And certainly the concern for making mistakes. Almost every beautiful thing that’s ever happened in this world has come out of a “mistake.” That means that you have to have a mindset for play instead of a mindset for perfectionism. When you play, there’s nothing wrong. There are no wrong situations that come up. You’re just in your heart, and you’re in your flow. That’s where creativity happens. That’s where the beautiful things get constructed and created. That’s where collaboration happens. We need to play. If you want to be better at your business, you want to be more successful in life, so figure out how to play more.

Amen. That’s amazing. Well, this was a whole lot of wisdom. Thank you so much for sharing from your heart, from your incredible experience and your expertise. You’re an inspiration.

Oh, thank you. I didn’t talk about supplements at all, and I’m a supplement guy, but maybe I can come back on for round two, and we can talk about supplement stats.

That would be awesome. All right. Thank you so much, Shawn. And thank you, listener. Thank you for being open-minded and full of hope and trust that everything will always work out for you. Well, I’ll catch you in the next episode. I’m your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

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