Greg McKeown:
Welcome back, everybody. I am here to learn with you to figure out how we can operate at our highest point of contribution and make sure that we don’t get to the end of our lives and say, “We missed it. We didn’t do what we were supposed to do. We didn’t fulfill all that we could be.” And this is part two conversation with Doctor Josh Axe. Now, he’s many things. He’s a doctor of nutrition. He has all of those accolades.
He’s an author of multiple books. His new book is called Think This, Not That it’s a New York Times bestseller. And it’s about twelve mind shifts to break through limiting beliefs and become who you were born to be. And who you were born to be. I mean, what better question can you ponder? What is the next version of you? Maybe you are right now 2.0. You 2.0. But what’s 3.0? What does it look like? And I don’t mean to take simply the goals you’ve had before and add a zero at the end or double it or more of the same. It’s to become something you weren’t before. And that’s where mindsets, I think, can be so limiting and also such an opportunity for breakthrough.
Doctor Josh Axe, welcome back to the show.
Josh Axe:
Hey, thanks for having me, Greg. Great to be here again.
Greg McKeown:
In the last conversation, you mentioned a very particular approach to learning about mindsets, which I thought was really helpful. The idea of going and looking at the one percenters, the people who have already in, results in fruit, the thing that you want to do. So whether that’s in health or whether it’s in relationships or in any area, you can do that to try to then extract from them the way they see things and the way they think about things, that is different than the way that you did before.
And you mentioned Michael Hyatt, a mutual friend of ours, and how he, even now in his sixties, maybe even late sixties, maybe now, is having one one-on-one date night with each of his five daughters every month that that’s built into the system of his life. And a question I wanted to put to you about that was, well, what mindset do you think he has when you think about what he’s doing? What is the breakthrough mindset?
Josh Axe:
Yeah. So, and I’m so glad you asked because I thought, here’s what I think. I think that he defines success in a very specific way. You know, there’s this word telos that, you know, that’s used by a lot of these early on greek philosophers, and it’s really purpose. And when you get to the end, the final end, what matters most, you know, I’ll give you an example of this, too, and then I’m going to bring it back to Michael as an example.
I had this moment that totally changed my life. I was at my grandfather’s funeral. This was about seven, seven years ago now. And I. My grandfather was amazing, man. World War Two, veteran in the navy, lived to be 96 years old, had this pretty amazing life. And I was at his funeral, and we were at the. There was a point in the. The funeral where the pastor said to the audience, he said, were all the family and people there?
There were hundreds of people. And he said, “Does anyone have any final words about Howard?” And the man next to me?
Greg McKeown:
That’s a lovely thing to do, by the way. You don’t often have that in my experience at funerals, but that’s a nice moment to be able to sense the impact beyond just the people who were assigned to speak.
Josh Axe:
Yeah, well, it was interesting because it was the only time I’ve ever been at a funeral where they’ve done that. And so it was. It was a unique thing. And the man next to me, I mean, seconds later, blurts out just in tears, sobbing. “Howard was my best friend.”
This was a man in his late seventies. And I’m a little ashamed to say this, Greg, because the thing I did is I looked over who the man was, and the first thing that entered my head was, I don’t think you’re my grandfather’s best friend. Now, the only reason I thought that was, like, my. My grandfather had a really close best friend. That’s the way I thought about it.
But then. But then, seconds later, I thought, “Oh, you know what? I know he was.” And the reason I thought that was, I bet half the people in the room, and this is. This is a little bit of an exaggeration. Maybe it’s close to 25%. But so many people in that room, if you were to ask them, “Who’s your best friend or your closest friend or the person you can count on?” Most, a load of them would have said, my grandfather.
So many of them. And I had this, like, sob. Like, I almost started sobbing thinking about it, because I was, like, I realized, like, at the time, I was writing books, and I was, you know, building this clinic and building this business and trying to go after all these accomplishments in life. And I had this epiphany. Like, nobody was talking about his accomplishments. My grandfather, accomplishments wise, was poor. He did not have much money at all just was not. I mean, again, nobody would have thought, hey, he was successful.
But I thought, you know what? My grandfather was unbelievably successful. Unbelievably successful in his life. Like, that is. Success is when you’re at a funeral. And by the way, it didn’t stop with that man. I had another person afterward said, “Howard saved my marriage.” And this man told a story about how my grandfather saved his marriage. Another person said, “Howard loaned me a few thousand dollars when we couldn’t pay rent.”
And people started going around all sharing these things and then conversations afterwards. And so I started thinking back. Growing up, my grandfather volunteered once a week to go through church, to go and spend time with people in the hospital. So when I was a kid, we would go visit, and I would go stay with him. He lived about an hour away. And we would go and sit with people in the hospital. He’d bring them their favorite meal, put his hand on theirs, talk to them, pray for them.
It was just. It was so amazing. And if you can imagine, even at 95 years old, 96, he would go up, put his withered hand on your shoulder, look you in the eyes, and say, “How are you doing today”? And people would just. Most people aren’t doing okay. So people would, like, break down. I remember seeing him just do this and then pray for them or serve them in some way or go and do something to help them or give them a piece of just amazing advice.
And, you know, for. And just to go back a little bit about his story, when he was in his forties, my grandfather, after he got out of the navy, he worked for a company called Ohio Bell, where he worked on fixing telephone pole lines. Okay? So he did this for 20 years, 20-some years. And he got to the middle in his mid forties, 44, and he decided, this is not what I’m called to do. And so he talked to my grandmother, and they took their life savings. They bought this plot of land that had a lake on it, and they built out a campground and turned it into a retreat center and, like, a swim park for families.
So, growing up as a kid, I would go to this park, and we would be on diving boards and swimming and, you know, running through the campground and just having a great time. And it was just an amazing, amazing place. And so my grandfather had this campground and swim park. It was like, it was his mission field, like his Calcutta as Mother Teresa had. Like it was his place. He just served people and loved people.
And so, like, I, again, after this thing, and I had all these things flooding through my head. For instance, one of the first people I really admired years before this was Lance Armstrong. And the reason was, like, I was a triathlete in college. I love, you know, and so for me, and then my mom was a cancer survivor. So Lance Armstrong, when he was at the top, at the peak, I was such a huge fan. He was this philanthropic hero. He was the best in the world at this thing that I love to do.
And then, when I found out he cheated, I felt pretty betrayed. And then I started kind of thinking about, okay, what was Lance’s mindset versus my grandfather’s? And I remember this quote from Lance’s biography, and it was, “I will win at all costs.” Doesn’t matter. And the idea there, it didn’t, it cost him his family, it cost him his reputation. It cost him all these things. It reminds me of this Bible verse of what good is gaining the world if you lose your soul?
And so going back to this, I think for me, like, I had to redefine success. Success is not what I accomplish. It’s who I become. And so when I think about Michael Hyatt, his definition of success is not the typical definition, the definition of what you’d see on Forbes magazine or Fortune or whatever it is today. It’s not making a certain amount of money. It’s not achieving a certain level of recognition or success.
Success for Michael, is really defined by creating an incredible family life and raising up amazing, amazing daughters and amazing kids. You know, there’s a, there’s an interview recently with a man from Kinko’s, and they said, “Hey, what’s your greatest thing you’re most proud of in this world?”
And I thought for everybody who thought in this interview, he was going to say, well, I built this billion dollar company.
And he didn’t. He said, “The thing I’m most proud of is all of my kids; they all come back for the holidays, and they love spending time with me.”
And so that’s what I take away from Michael. I think his mindset is all about creating world-changing daughters who are incredible people in character. And so, for me, I think that Michael, his mindset is very much all about prioritizing family.
Greg McKeown:
So there is this simple, great truth that is the most essential thing in life is relationships. And that’s a restate of what you’ve just described from your grandfather. And then secondarily, Michael Hyatt. But my, how life seems to complicate that. And at one level, it seems to complicate it by saying, well, almost nobody gets plaudits through their life for this. So it’s pretty rare that you’d see any kind of article in any kind of media praising this, even a story being written about it.
Occasionally, you do. There’s some human interest story that is unusual or remarkable in some way and so you get an article about it. But so often, people are celebrated for an achievement when they have explicitly made the trade-off with relationships and in their own life.
I saw somebody online recently say that they’ve been searching to find a single example of someone who’s a billionaire, still married, you know, good family relationships. And then there were a few more things, and I can’t remember exactly the criteria, but he said he has been searching and has not found a single one.
That was the punchline of his research. And I don’t know, I don’t know the details of his research, whether that is, in fact, true, but there’s something about it that certainly feels true. So that’s the, you know, one level that’s just the point I wish to make is that you start applying essentialism, and you eliminate the nonessentials from your life. Like what you’re left with is relationships. That’s what remains. That’s all that remains. And we know that that’s true because on the deathbed, no one’s talking about the accomplishments, then that’s irrelevant. But at one sense, you can say, well, that was always irrelevant. It’s just now it becomes clear. The truth is clear at this moment. So, I suppose the question I want to ask you is, to what extent is that true? Because if we just say, okay, well, you’ve got this new book that you’re putting out there, but does it matter? Does it not matter? Where does achievement matter? Where does, is it, is it, it must be an oversimplification to say that only relationships matter. And I just wanted to have something like a real conversation about the tension that actually exists when you, on your deathbed, you don’t have to do anything else anymore, you know, because it’s done. So, of course, only, the only thing that remains in that moment is relationships.
But if you suddenly on your deathbed, got another ten years, you’d still have to do stuff. So anyway, I just wondered what your thoughts are about the real tension that exists in life here.
Josh Axe:
So here’s how I would think about this, is that if you’re going to accomplish anything great in life, it should be done through the, really with a mindset of relationships are first and this comes second. It’s a, let me, let me give you an example.
Greg McKeown:
So, relationships first. That is a mindset.
Josh Axe:
Yeah, it’s in. So it’s kind of like, okay, I want to get clean water to somebody. And I hope this analogy works out because I’m just making this up right now. But we need water in order to live. I need to get good clean water to people. But the water I have access to right now is very polluted. Okay? So if I just give people the water directly or if I just try and accomplish this thing without focusing on people at all, I’m just trying to accomplish something for the sake of accomplishing it. Well, I’m just dumping this sewage water, this lousy water, into the world versus if it goes through the filter of “No, I’m doing this because I want to bless the lives of other people. I’m doing this because I want to enrich relationships. I want to love people and love God.”
Like it’s the first two commandments in the Bible. It’s love God, love people. Those are the things that were said to be the most important. So it’s like if I do things with that lens in that mind, it purifies this thing that I’m now putting out into the world.
And so I think just to kind of, you know, here’s the other thing. This idea I mentioned, this becoming versus accomplishing, I think when you have, let’s say, you have a to-do list and let’s say you have a to-be list. If I just try and go through the to do list and just check off all the items. Okay, I’ve got to schedule my next flight. You know, call customer service and do this. I need to run this errand. I need to talk to my podcast producer. They do all these things. Okay.
You could get all those done. I could just drive and just get them done. But you could also hurt feelings. You could ruin relationships. You could cuss out the customer service representative. You do all those things. But if you also know, I want to become a certain type of person, I want to be generous, I want to be kind, I want to be compassionate, I want to be wise. And you do that as the main focus of becoming while then doing those accomplishments.
You’re going to bless the life of your producer. You’re going to get on the phone with that customer service representative, and maybe you’re out to eat, and you see that you want to be generous, and you give a bigger tip. And that really made their day and changed their life in some way. And so I think that’s the thought is that I think that we should try and accomplish great things to bless other people with the mindset of those relationships are sort of that primary thing or the filter we do that through.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, so. So, the mindset is relationships first. It’s different than relationships only. It’s relationships first. And then I think there’s an additional point, which is which relationships are first.
Josh Axe:
That’s good.
Greg McKeown:
So, I mean, I’ve shared this before, but one of my daughters was really, really ill. And, I mean, actually, it’s such an interesting matter, for example, given your journey and your work. But she was finally diagnosed by one doctor as having encephalitis. And then, the treating doctor thought that she had a genetic disease. So, from his point of view, the treatment was pointless, wasting resources, and we should just stop and basically manage her to the end.
And as it turns out, she did have encephalitis. And so that was a really, really important moment that we had somebody that got it right and understood what was happening versus reading only their own experience onto it and acting. But then when I dropped her off for a mission to Brazil for a year and a half, there was this ten minutes that completely caught me off guard, where I had a sort of. I don’t know; I’ve described it before as a sort of essentialist judgment day.
But when I was on Tim Ferriss’s podcast, he was like. He said it was sort of like a Christmas Carol moment where you have the ghost of Christmas past comes to you, and you suddenly see the whole of her life, and this haunting question of, well, did you miss it? This is it now. It’s not the end of the relationship by any means, but it’s the end of childhood. And in this moment, if the answer is you did, you cannot change that.
You have to come to the truth of it and then make decisions for the next phase. And it was really terrifying. And in the end, and not too long into it, I really felt, “Yeah, we didn’t miss it. You know, we traveled together, she would come on keynotes with me, and we played together, and we had so many memories together.”
But it was one of those moments of facing the reality of life. And I concluded from that that life isn’t divided between 1X, 2X, and 3X tasks of importance. It’s divided between 1X, 10X, 100X, 1000X relationships. That is really the. Let’s say relationships first, that’s the first lens and then the second lens. The second adjustment is, there’s a few that matter so much and really matter in this Telos way. This purpose, the end, right? That’s the idea. It’s the greek idea. It’s not just purpose, but the end purpose. And that hospital room test of who will be in the hospital room.
And you say, “Oh, those are the 1000X’s. And making sure that no achievement and no goal, and no project stops us from seeing that reality and living accordingly. That, to me, is a mindset that was expensive to learn in a sense, but to me is a real game changer.
Josh Axe:
Did I, you know, will it ever be the same again? And I realized, you know what, I just need to make the best of what I have right now and cherish the moments right now. So, for instance, I had a really hard time with, like, I wanted to be able to throw my daughter in the air again like I was doing, but I was bedridden. I couldn’t do anything except for I could have my daughter, who is two and a half at the time, crawl in bed with me and watch Paw Patrol and, you know, Peppa Pig and whatever show she wanted to watch, Veggie Tales and like spend quality time with her in that way.
So I think sometimes people allow their circumstances in life and just again, these are this limiting beliefs thing of like, well, because I’m in this situation, I can’t do this or I can’t do this, or I can’t have a great relationship or. And I think those really keep people from fully living their life. Oftentimes, we have these things that we just decide, well, this is going to be the mountain, and there’s no way I could ever get around it, you know, versus saying, “You know what, I’m just going to make the best of this situation in order to live my best life possible.”
And that’s going to look different for everybody.
Greg McKeown:
You’ve identified these twelve mind shifts that you feel are key and, you know, important to be able to fulfill a potential. At the meta-level, if you summarized, not summarized, condensed, the very essence, the twelve from this to this mindsets, what is it? What is the single mindset shift that would most clearly define what limits us and shift to what would help to liberate us? Do you like analyze everything you’ve thought of all these years of work?
What’s the single priority from this to this mindset shift?
Josh Axe:
Be absolutely all in on finding out what the real truth is. There’s only one truth in a situation. Be very aware of doing everything you can to find what truth is and then living out that truth in your own life to the maximum extent.
Greg McKeown:
That’s a great answer.
Josh Axe:
And when you go back and read, like, I know you, like, I know you’ve read a lot of this, and I have, too. Like, when you go back and read the Greek philosophers, when you read Socrates and Aristotle and Plato, like Plato, they really got this. I mean, they really got this. When you go and look at the Judeo-Christian saints, those people, they really got this as well. These people changed the world. I look at other people today who are doing big things, and this is really what they’re committed to. You know, it’s really interesting if you follow somebody like a Joe Rogan or a Russell brand or a Jordan Peterson. I know I’m saying names that are, like, very controversial right now, but I think one of the reasons why these people are successful and why they’re living lives that are influencing a lot of people is they’ve become very dedicated to I just want to know what the truth is. I don’t care if people hate me or don’t hate me.
They care far less about that. They really care about I want to uncover the truth. That’s one of the things I’ll say. They’re very, very committed to uncovering the truth. And that’s what the Greek philosophers were. More than anything, they wanted to uncover the truth. Then those Judeo-Christian saints were saying, well, we want to live the truth. And so it’s this thing of, you want to find it, and then you want to live it.
And what most people do today is instead they say, “You know what? I don’t care what the truth is. I just want whatever my current ideology, whatever I like, whatever my feelings, whatever is going to satisfy my feelings and make me feel good. Just today only. I don’t care if something’s true or not. I just want to be popular. I don’t care if I’m if what I’m living out is truth. I care if what I’m doing is popular. Because if I’m popular, I’m more likely to be praised. I’m more likely to feel good about myself because I’m in line with what the current narrative or the celebrity says is great in life.”
And what Aristotle says is that will not lead to fulfillment. The only thing that will truly lead to fulfilling, meaningful life, Aristotle, and I’m summarizing him, is if you find the good and do the good, and if you don’t find the truth and live the truth, you won’t be happy. You’ll end up being miserable in the end.
It’s amazing, Greg, when we look at studies that examine happiness and how to truly be happy. What they found in these studies is that if your goal is to be happy and that’s what you pursue directly, you are more unhappy than the average person.
Greg McKeown:
It’s crazy.
Josh Axe:
Yeah, it’s counter, and it’s that thing we said earlier, right? If you just go for the accomplishment without first the relationship and having that as the primary, you’re unhappy. It’s the same thing here. So, we have to be committed to finding the truth. Listen, whether you’re a conservative or a liberal or you’re a man or a woman or whatever else in life, if you just say, here’s, I’m going to be committed to finding the truth, even if it offends me, and everybody else, if I discover the truth and live out whatever that truth says, in the end, that will lead to the best life.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, I really like this because in a sense, it helps to make sense of the whole mindset conversation. There’s no question in my mind that mindsets shape us massively. You want to make incremental progress, fine. There are ways to do that. Just be slightly better at a certain thing today, and that can have huge positive effects. I am not suggesting that that is not true, but quantum shifts, your really big upgrades, our mindset shifts.
Until you gave that answer, the way the conversations have flowed has left me with the sense of, well, okay, you have to just keep on trying to find out, okay, what mindset does that person have? What mindset does this person have? You know, and that’s not wrong, but somehow it’s like, oh, there’s any number of mindsets out there, and it’s a bit overwhelming, and how would you know if you have the right one and so on.
But to simplify it, to uncover the truth, suddenly you go, right? That’s what it is. An ineffective mindset is one that isn’t true. It’s one that is keeping you from reality. You’re limited by a lie, you know, by a lie, like you were in your life. And I have a different story, but a non not dissimilar moment in my own life, educationally, where you suddenly go, “Oh, intelligence isn’t fixed.”
What a difference that makes.
If you really inherently thought it was before, whoa, now, it wasn’t fixed before it was growth, that it’s not that you just have a new mindset, it’s that you now understand something that is true, where you had had something that was a lie, which, by the way, suggests to me that the truth must literally be extremely encouraging. You know, like, whatever the truth is, it must be really marvelous. And that has been my experience, is when you, when you have a piece of truth, it opens you, you’re more open minded, and what is possible increases.
And somehow, we’re afraid of finding more truths in case we find something that’s going to limit us or keep us back or hold on to us. And this idea of seek for the truth, speak the truth, I’ll add one. Listen truthfully. That’s a big deal because I think it’s very easy to listen dishonestly, listen untruthfully. I see it all the time in the media. People. It’s almost like they’re listening a lie.
Josh Axe:
Well, Greg, let me say, it’s almost all they do today. I mean, I would say 80% of the time, it’s what, what they’re doing.
Greg McKeown:
I think it’s at least that because even where you don’t see it explicitly, where people are just talking over each other and, you know, whatever this idea of. I’ve just got to keep to my, whatever the lines are that I’ve been given, these are the bullet points. I have to say these things. That’s what I’ve been given, you know, the talking head. I mean, it’s not, it’s not the truthful head, right? It’s just I’m, I am for sale, you know, I will say whatever, whatever I’m told to say and get paid to do that.
That was true in ancient Greece as well, by the way. I was fascinated by that. We went to Greece as a family last summer, and as we were going through one of the ancient temples, the tour guide explained that, at the time, there were all of these very polished orators who were being paid to say certain things. And it was, I was like, well, I have to have to do some. I have to constantly think about that myself. As someone who speaks at conferences and so on, is make sure are you speaking the truth? Are you listening truthfully and speaking the truth? And then, of course, are you acting according to the truth?
That’s the cycle, isn’t it? That takes courage, but it also takes the awareness that there is more truth, and it is hidden. I loved how you said it, but it’s hidden under the surface. It’s under the surface in our own lives. It’s under the surface of other people we’re listening to and talking to in our relationships. There is truth under the surface. It’s extremely valuable, but it seems to be extremely vulnerable.
That combination seems almost universally true to me. And so that would explain why it’s hard to express it, hard to get to it. You really have to have. I suppose we could say it’s like the optimal mindset, like the very best mindset of all mindsets, is I will relentlessly pursue the truth and speak that truth and listen with that desire for truth and then act upon that. That, to me, is truly, that’s the mindset shift. That is the mind shift of mind shifts. What a great place to crescendo to.
Josh Axe:
Yeah. So, I absolutely agree. You know, I would just, and let me say this. It’s hard. It’s hard to do that, I think, because if you have any sense of wanting to please other people and if you have fear in your life around any backlash at all, which all of us do to some degree, then if you let those things run your life, fear and wanting just to be recognized, it makes it harder versus saying, you know what? No, even if it’s uncomfortable, even if it’s the hard thing to do, I will find the truth, say the truth, listen to the truth, and live out the truth.
And so I would just encourage people to do that. I think the best way to do that is, well, how do we know who to listen to and discover the truth from? Again, it goes back to this thing of who’s getting the best results towards the good of the world, what’s truly doing good, not who the good orator is, or the person who has written the best-selling book, or the person that’s the most popular. It’s who has the most great fruit in their life. Again, Michael, if you want to have a great relationship with your daughters, what does Michael Hyatt share? What does he have to say about, if you want to know what to do with your finances, who teaches the most truth about it? Well, who’s had the greatest results in a good way? Again, it’s a Ray Dalio. It’s a Warren Buffett. If it’s, you know, who lives the best spiritual life, you know, what did Mother Teresa do? What did she think? What was her truth?
Don’t find your truth. Find their truth. And that will tend to lead you to the truth. I hope that makes sense for people. And so, because this is what people, the thing today, it’s really based on relativism. And it’s just where there’s multiple truths, there aren’t. There can be individual preferences, but in terms of truth, there is gravity, and there are actual truths. And so, again, I think most of the time, we just want to.
It’s a fixed mindset. It’s I want to believe what I already believe. And so I’m going to read things to basically strengthen my own belief that I already have versus saying no. I want to keep changing and growing, and so I want to adopt beliefs that are more true than what I currently have.
Greg McKeown:
I think that’s the biggest single temptation. What you just said at the end, there is. I just want to believe what I already believe, that there is the tension rather than whether it’s learning from the one percenters, which I think is a perfectly good strategy, high leverage strategy, even, to learn the best of what others know. To learn the best of what the best know. Well, that makes sense. Reading from the best books. I mean, all of this makes sense, and I think is correct.
And in addition to that, it’s just this. The courage to admit we don’t know it yet, the courage to not go well, I’ve arrived. And to keep that pursuit and that, that really is at the very heart of why this podcast even exists, because I truly in my own life, want to learn. I’m appalled still at all. I don’t know. And I think there’s something about that for every person listening, every single person listening is on this journey with me, with you.
The very fact that they’re using the time to do this instead of listening to something else or being on social media or whatever is evidence that they’re on this journey to learn, to learn what is true, and then to be able to live by it. Doctor Josh Axe, thank you again for being on the podcast.
Josh Axe:
Greg, thanks so much for having me.
Greg McKeown:
It was an honor, everybody listening. This was Doctor Josh Axe. He just came out with a marvelous new book, think this, not that, of course. We’ve referenced it and touched upon key stories and breakthrough moments in Josh’s life and also some of the key insights that he’s gained as he’s been thinking more deeply about mind shifts than most of the people that you’re going to have a conversation with today, let’s say, and I just want you to pause for a moment as we come to an end of this conversation. What is something that stood out to you? To you? I mean, not just something we said, but something from within you? What truth did you feel? What is something you can now do differently because of that? And who is someone that you can share this with so that this conversation, your life, continues now that this conversation has come to an end?
Thank you. Really, thank you for listening.
