69. Jade Teta on how to change our identity & what it means to be a man today

In this episode, I'm chatting with someone I've admired in the industry for a long time, not just due to his expertise, but due to the way he carries himself as a person. In today's divisive callout culture, Jade is a great example of someone who leads with humility and integrity. We cover a wide variety of topics in our conversation, so there's sure to be something for everyone!

We cover:

• The connection between trauma, stress and the metabolism
• Callout culture online
• The importance of identity
• Shifting our identity to change our reality
• Who to trust in the fitness space
• Men's mental health
• and more!

Follow Jade on Instagram: @jadeteta
Follow his Next Level Human personal development account @nextlevelhuman
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Jade's website

Next level human website
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Transcript

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Jade, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Jesse. Appreciate it. It's good to be here and I'm looking forward to having this conversation. Yeah. So as I was telling you, my family and I, we've been following you for years and years and years and I learned so much from you. I feel like you're one of the first people to start talking about the metabolism and stress. What led to you talking so much about managing stress and how important that is to weight loss? Yeah. You know yeah, this one's a tricky one, right? Because we usually think calories and we think that's all there is to it. And partly what happened for me is just using that model and then realizing it was failing most of the time. And then going, okay, what else is going on? And that sent me down sort of this deep study into you know, hormones. And then I started going, that's not necessarily it either. And so just diving deeper and deeper and deeper into sort of the basics of physiology and what we're ultimately responding to. And of course you come to this idea that, okay, well the metabolism is just this sensing apparatus and it's also a responding apparatus. And then you have to ask the question, what is it sensing and responding to? Yes, it's sensing and responding to calories. Yes, it's sensing and responding to hormones. That's actually what it uses to sense. And respond in a sense or, or send signals back and forth. But then you have to go underneath that and go what is driving all of that. And that essentially is you know, the imbalances of our environment and the imbalances inside our environment. So what I mean is the things going on outside that we must adjust to. And the same, the things going on inside our body that we must adjust to. And if you wanna boil that down to its simplest format, that really is stress. And I know that that is confusing for a lot of people. Cause when they think stress, they think psychological stress, right? That's what they think. But when I'm talking about stress, I'm talking about what I would call metabolic, maybe a better term is metabolic tension or metabolic imbalance or just metabolic challenges. And whenever you, you know, encounter these metabolic challenges, your body has to respond. In fact, it's built for that. However, some of these challenges can last. A very long time. Right. And so from my perspective, that is ultimately what we're talking about when we're talking about stress. And that is why I began, you know, really speaking about it in a, in a different way. Although, and you could probably appreciate this too, cuz you and I do the exact same thing, people don't necessarily appreciate that term because it's such a ubiquitous term. It's so cliche in a sense. And so they don't necessarily understand it cuz it is psychological. We do have to respond to that for sure. And the metabolism is responding to that. In fact, it might be one of the most important, if not the most important thing, our belief around what's happening to us. But it also is these hidden forms of challenges that we honestly can't feel psychologically. And so that to me is where sort of the rubber meets the road in this whole discussion. And it's why people like you and I teach and talk about it. It's also though why a lot of the people we teach and talk to. Tend to miss the point because we have to really dig into what we mean by stress, if that makes sense. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I've been seeing in your content lately, you've been talking a lot about trauma and that obviously is a large overload of stress on the system. The nervous system and the nervous system and then metabolism are very, , intertwined. So have you noticed any connections with people in trauma and then health issues, weight loss, et cetera? Yeah. You know, so Jess, this is really, and I know I'm kind of speaking to the choir here, so I want your opinion too cuz we're both experts sort of in this space. But here's what I've seen and it's this really weird sort of, , dichotomy. What I've seen is people who've had a lot of trauma, , tend to do very well. And people who have a lot of trauma tend to do very poorly, right? And there's this very, so it's like, well, what do you mean by that? What I mean by that is that there seems to be people who've had a lot of stress and difficulty and trials and tribulations and traumas in their lives who just excel and seem to have somehow built some kind of resilience, metabolic resilience, psychological resilience from it. And then there's these people who suffer from trauma trials and tribulations who seem to be metabolically challenged and almost destroyed. By the trauma, and this is still something I'm trying to unpack, but to answer your question sort of more directly to me, there is absolutely a direct correlation between trauma trials, tribulations, chronic sort of stress around the stories we've written about our traumas and how it translates into how our metabolism functions. Yes. Even right down to a body composition and the inability to sustain. A diet, maintain fat loss, all those kinds of things. And I know that when people hear that, it's just something they just go, that can't possibly be. But if you just understand, and I'll just briefly state this, there's just one very simple way to look at this. The command and control center of the metabolism is the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus drives lots of different things. Most importantly, , appetite, regulation and cravings is, is kind of being controlled there. The hypothalamus also is the crossroads where we deal with our, , metabolic. Challenges in terms of trauma and psychological stress and things like that. And where those early adverse events that we might have in childhood tend to disrupt that crossroads. So actually once you understand the science, you go, oh, that's not that esoteric. You know, that actually makes some sense. There's this area that is in control of response to stress that also is in control of response to hunger and cravings. And if you put those two together, you can see that a lot of issues we may have around food and cravings and hunger and the inabilities to, to sustain or maintain dietary control and regulation and that kind of stuff absolutely are coming from the same area that we may have issues with if we had stress. If that makes sense. So once you get down to it, it actually is pretty simple, straightforward physiology. It's just that most of us don't put those two things together. Yeah. I do think it's so interesting and I. Would agree that it's, I think we need a more holistic approach when it comes to weight loss and health that we can't just say, oh, it's just focus on the food and the exercise or just the physical. I do think you have to look at the whole entire person, their emotional health, their their mental health. And I noticed actually was just looking at a post of yours about the nocebo effect. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Something I have found is that when I was suffering with, I mean people called it adrenal fatigue, and then they called it hba access dysregulation. Now it's like nervous system dysregulation, whatever you wanna call it, was having a bunch of chronic health issues. And I got to a point where I realized, oh, I'm making this worse by the beliefs I'm having about it. I was victimizing myself to the whole situation and that was perpetuating all of my symptoms. And it wasn't until I said, I have to completely shift my identity away from this and pretend almost like I, none of these things exist, that I got better so much quickly after that. Yeah. That's, that to me is such a beautiful sort of succinct way to say what we're talking about here. It's also incredibly difficult. In fact, I'll tell you, you and I are very much alike on this and that I have this same belief, but right now I'm going through, as we talk right now, I'm going through some really stressful business stuff, stuff that I haven't dealt with in like a decade. And and I'm trying to, you know, sort of balance this. And my girlfriend is basically, she's very much into belief and communication and other things, and she's having to remind me to sort of look at this differently. And in my brain I know that, but in my you know, sort of response, I'm having a difficult doing it and a difficult time doing it, and it's incredibly Frustrating. However, what you're speaking to, and just to frame this up for the listener, and I know you educate them on this kind of stuff probably all the time, but just to kind of frame this up, this effect is this idea of, you know, it's the negative belief effect versus the placebo effect, which is the positive belief effect. And it is the most powerful thing in all of medicine, the placebo effect. In fact, we can't do any good trial unless we account for the idea that people might believe just by getting a treatment that they're gonna get better. And just by that belief, something like 30% of them do. And this is why we have double blind placebo controlled studies. So now if you understand that as the listener to this, to me and Jesse having this conversation, you can understand how Jess and I, you know, have this experience where if Jess is in this position where she is believing negatively and catastrophizing every aspect of her health, then absolutely that could be making things. Worse. Now, we haven't unpacked in science exactly how this works. Obviously we don't actually know how the placebo effect works. We just know it works. But if the placebo effect works, then we absolutely know that no placebo effect works both work. We just don't know how they work. And so we are in this sort of gray zone. I think when you're talking to people like Jesse and me, or listening to us talk practitioners, working with people where we know it works. We just don't know, necessarily know the best practices to get it to work in people. We also know there are certain people who are more or less susceptible to no SIBO and plus sibo. And we also don't necessarily know if there's certain conditions that it works better for or not. You know what I mean? So it is, it is an interesting aspect of this, but yes, to me this is 1000% going on. Our belief is impacting our physical conditions. We just don't know to what degree we don't necessarily know all the interactions. And there, of course could be, as you know, if me and you are talking five to 10 years from now, Jess, we might be saying, oh, like we now know that this is more prevalent for things like autoimmune conditions or, mental, emotional. You know, sort of mood issues, but not so much for things like muscle function or whatever. Maybe we'll find now, I suspect, my guess is this permeates every aspect of our being and every aspect of our, our physiology to, from my perspective, it just needs to, however, I'm also an evidence-based guy who goes, I really wanna understand this, you know, and, you know, figure out what it is. So you and I can give, , evidence-based approaches, but that doesn't mean that people like you and myself are not using, you know, , tools right now that are evidence-based. For example, things like written exposure therapy, things like, meditation, things like what I would call something that I'm developing, which is sort of this be it until you see it action in the world and actually showing up a particular way, that you may not necessarily see yourself like. Currently, but you can play a role as if you are that thing, kind of like a method actor. And I believe these things make a profound,, difference on sort of our outcomes. And, and of course I wanna study this stuff, you know, so I'm going back to get my PhD with everyone's, thanks. I'm crazy, but I wanna do some direct research, sort of in this, this area. I think it's incredibly powerful and I think people like you and me are you know, there's not many practitioners doing, you know, and talking about these things, to be honest with you. I love that you're going to get your PhD to study the impact that beliefs have on our physical reality. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, my PhD work is in trans, is gonna be in transpersonal psychology. So I'm already you know, basically enrolled and I'm beginning that process. Of course, you know me, so I'm, I've been doing this research for years, but for me, I want to get, you know, just more involved. And, and to me, I'm definitely one of these people that goes, you know, you know how people say you gotta be an out-of-the-box thinker, you know? And to me I go, well, if you don't know what's in the box, you can't think outside the box. And so I wanna know what's in the box. And so when we talk about transpersonal psychology, That is the psychology of how we relate to ourselves. But more importantly, like how I relate to Jess and how, you know, oh, I relate to the environment and how those things are impacting me to a very large degree, you know, your, your emotions, Jess are contagious upon me, right? And mine are contagious upon you. And even our energy that we are bringing to this conversation is contagious upon the listener. Now, of course, there's ways that we all can talk about mitigating some of that because yes, you know, we know this is the case in real world, but we don't wanna just be, you know, sucker punched by other people's emotions all the time. So we have to work around that. And so for me, trans this, this study that I'm gonna do in transpersonal psychology is really about how we see ourselves, how we see the world, and how we see our relations. Between ourselves and the world. Because in a sense, if we get a little bit woowoo and spiritual and into some consciousness stuff, you and I are not separate in a sense. We are sort of you know, like different tentacles in the universal octopus, so to speak, right? So like we, we have different perspectives on, on what the ocean is and our little neck of the woods, but we really are connected. To this thing. And that's what this study is about. It goes right into noce, placebo belief effects, and then it goes right into what, where you and I spend a lot of our bread and butter, which is at least up to this point, which is, you know metabolism and physical change. That's how come I don't think you can separate physical change and physical development from personal development. So when people ask me what I do for a living, I say I work in the fields of physical development and personal development. And usually I say what a lot of people don't know is the personal development is probably the more important of those too, in, in my opinion, if that makes sense. Completely agree with you. I really don't think you can see any lasting physical change or development without doing the personal development work. Yep. It's, I almost view it as identity work, which is sounds like kind of what you're saying, that you have to shift who you believe yourself to be. Show up as that person. Kind of the, there's a book, I still need to read it, but I was listening to a podcast about the alter ego. Mm. Kind of like Beyonce shows up as Sasha Fierce. That's her alter ego, and then eventually you kind of become that person. Yeah. And I have, I have experience with that myself. I just to give the listener some context, when I was coming up in high school, right? And Jess and I were talking offline before we got on with you guys about our, about our siblings. I have two brother, two older brothers, and a, and a older sister. And you know, my older brother was the smart one and my middle brother. This is the story I told myself, right? My older brother was the smart one. My middle brother was the really good looking one. My sister was the really sweet and kind loving one, which left me trying to find a role for myself and the role that I. Played was the dumb jock, you know, sort of tough guy image. And I played that role to such a strong degree for so long that it was very difficult for me to get out of that. And, and people often laughed that, you know, I had, I barely got into college. I almost flunked outta high school, you know, because they, I missed so much school. I would skip school and then, you know, go to football practice basically, cuz that that's, that was my identity. And then right around 18 years old, I switched that identity. I started, and I didn't even know why I was doing it this, at that time we didn't have books and research studies. I wasn't necessarily into all that. I was reading muscle magazines and stuff and I just started, I started dressing differently. I put on glasses. I didn't even wear glasses at the time. I started, you know, I, I put on like, I started just dressing sharper and paying attention to the way I walked. The way I moved, I started to, you know, make sure I articulate better, you know, cuz I was very self-conscious about my accent at the time. And I played into this. This role. And at 18 years old, I went from essentially not barely getting into school, almost failing out of high school. And I made straight A's through college my first year. And everyone Wow. Freaked out, including me, right? And so this sort of, you know, I was just like, wait a second. Like, and it took me a while to walk fully into that and I was like, wow. I didn't even realize I was playing a role of the, of a smart kid, but I didn't necessarily believe it, but I was being it until I see it. That's why I don't like the term fake it until you make it, which we can talk about. But I was being it until you see it playing this role. And of course it showed up because I had to take actions in the world and this is what we're talking about here, and that little anecdote works in every single aspect. Of our lives. I had to rewrite my story. So if you're listening to this and being like health and fitness is hard for me, that's a story. If you're listening to this and saying, career is hard for me, that's a story. If you're listening to the same, personal relationships are difficult. For me, that's a story. And those stories come along with patterns. Patterns that repeat, obstacles that recur, emotions that stay stuck in your body, and those repeated patterns, recurrent obstacles, stuck emotions, tell you and point you towards your story. And then once you uncover that, you can begin living into a different story. And that different story has different actions in the world. Obviously if you're reading Peter Pan and you switch to, you know, the, the, the Seven Dwarves, there's a whole different thing that's going on. And so what happens when most people are trying to make change is they go, well, I'll. Stay partially in the Peter Pan story and partially in the seven dwarf story. No, you have to shut the book on Peter Pan and you have to open up Seven Dwarves and immerse yourself in that story. And this is to me the beginning of, of the magic that you have experienced when you went through your health difficulties and you were just like, I'm just not going to relate to this in the same way anymore. Same thing that's happened to me. And actually right now at 50 years old, right? I'm actually going through it again. I think because I've had some really difficult business struggles as of late. And I'm like, okay, it's hard, right? I'm like, I have to rewrite that story now. And here's another beautiful thing, Jess and I, I wanna see what you think about this, cuz I just think this is really cool. Partly as I've dovetailed into this Personal development work and away from metabolism work to some degree. You know, I, I'll always do both, but as I've done that, life has said, okay, Jade, you, you want that? Like, here's the new story. Here's the new page. Right. And it's so as much as I trust to some degree sometimes I trust, sometimes I don't. As you go through stress, you'll find you, you, you vacillate back and forth. Oh, I trust it's gonna be great. Oh my God, it's gonna be horrible. Mm-hmm. Right. But it's basically, that's what I'm doing right now. I'm like, here's the old book I was reading. Here's the new book I wanna read. And life has a funny way of going. You said you wanted to read this new book, you said you wanna be in this new story. So here you go, figure it out. And any new story is a little bit. Disorienting at first, cuz you don't know where it's gonna go. It's far better after you finish the book. And I could go, Hey Jess, you would love this book. I read it's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Versus you catch me and me and you are talking and you're like, what book are you reading? I'm like, oh, it's about, you ever catch someone when they're first in a book and you're just like, you know what? I'll ask 'em again after they finish it cuz I have no idea what they're talking about. Neither do they? Yes. Cause they're like, they're in this, they're excited about it, but they haven't put it together yet. Mm-hmm. So that's kind of what it's like, but you have to own it completely. So I guess the, the final thing I'd say about that is, you know, for any of you struggling through these processes in, in what I would call the four jobs, there's really four areas, health and fitness, finance, personal relationship and purpose and meaning. When we struggle in those four things, you have to ask yourself, what, what storybook have I immersed myself in? You know, am I in Harry Potter or I am, am I in the matrix or am I like, what story am I actually living from? And you can't live. You can't do well or make sense of life if you're living from trying to live from multiple stories at the same time. That's why you have to get rid of these traumas and or not get rid of them, so to speak. I don't think it's that you have to go back and look at them and understand how they influenced your story. Cuz a lot of the stories that we live are these knots, these tiny little knots that we tied in our subconscious mind a long time ago. Mm-hmm. That we don't know about. You know, again, Jess and I are talking about siblings, right? Like I, so I tied a knot of, you know, I'm the dumb little brother kind of thing. And that story by the way, that dumb little brother story you know what's Jade's role like, I'm not worthy or whatever. That comes up. It even comes up now cause I got that little kid living in me. You know what I mean? And so and so in a sense, we have to be aware of that. Now, this is not a conversation most people have cause they're just not aware that that entity, like Little Jesse and Little Jade, right? They're still alive. We have to be in dialogue with them and they have a story. And when we get stressed and scared, their story comes out. It comes out pretty strong. And then we have to come in and step in as the adult Jesse and the adult Jade, and go, Hey, you know, okay, calm down. Like I know. And we have to parent ourselves in a sense. And in doing that we can begin to transcend some of this. And in doing that, we can begin to accomplish things in these four jobs that we had not been able to conquer previously. Not agree more with everything you just said. I love the book analogy. I view it, I ask myself when I'm in a state where I'm trying to shift, I say, okay, what glasses do I wanna wear today? Am I gonna wear the glasses that. Okay, I'm gonna victimize myself today, or I'm just gonna stay comfortable. Or am I gonna wear the glasses that are, have the beliefs and the thoughts and the actions of the new version of me that I want. But to your point, it sounds like you're kind of in the, the goo phase of the caterpillar before it becomes the butterfly, where it's just feels like chaos. Yeah. Yeah. I am. And I love that analogy too. I'll probably steal that from you too. I love, that's why I like having these conversations, right? Cuz we can take different things from each other. So I'll probably take Jess's glasses analogy. Cause I like it. It's like, okay, I'm wearing a yellow filter today, or I'm wearing a red filter today, or I Yes. Or I have the polarized filter on, you know, or I've got the very clear filter. But yeah, I think so. I think that you know, what I'm reminding myself is that you know, ultimately there's, you know, there's only one real certainty in life, which is change and change. You know, you could say change and death, but they're both, they're basically the same thing. I. We die one physical death, but we die a million psychological deaths. At least we should. And I think I am killing off another psychological, you know, Jade and hopefully birthing a new one. So I love your analogy of the butterfly too, cuz it's sort of just like you go into the cocoon phase, then you come out and then you run into another pattern, then you come, go into the cocoon phase again and then you come out, then you run into another pattern and you have to make these cycles. And let's face it, many of us get stuck in certain areas our whole lives. Like I have a contention and this isn't a judgment so I hope the listener doesn't feel this way, cuz I'm this way too. But I think we mostly die, we mostly go through our lives and we mostly die as teenagers, you know, struggling through this culture level lens of am I good enough? Did I do the thing? But when we're. When we're in our power. And to use your example of, you know, sort of the butterfly, when, when we're in this process, it's never complete by the way. But when we grow and change and grow and change and grow and change and uplevel mature and uplevel mature and gain wisdom, and gain wisdom and gain wisdom, we're in our next level human state. And that states you know, about a sort of growth and not being authentic to our current self. This is the mistake when you think about self-development, people go be authentic to yourself. And I'm like, yeah, not really, because you don't wanna be authentic to your current self. You wanna be authentic to that future self. Like what, what Jess was describing about living into that feeling state and that action state and that aligned state of her future reality. You know, the future, Jess, that is, you know the powerful, you know, coach and whatever, I don't know what you're, you know, how you, you see it, but whatever it is that you see, you know yourself living into that. And so we need to be authentic to that versus authentic to. The other place. And when we do that, we can ease up a little bit on the culture level needs of safety, security, acceptance, and belonging. And that's what I'm going through now, by the way. Right? So I just go, Jade, I know you wanna be safe and secure. Little Jade, I'm talking to him jd, you know, so like, like you wanna be safe and secure. And then my, you know, tough guy, teenager, self, you know, he wants to be accepted and belong. And I go, but what do you really want? At the end of your days? What you really want is you want to have grown and learned and made a difference and mattered. And in order to do that, you have to break free from that, that those other pieces. And it has everything to do with how we show up in, in those four areas of life. Hmm. I love that what you said about the reparenting too, because I've noticed that if I'm not aware, I. The way that I quote unquote, would parent myself just unconsciously, is by being overly controlling. That's kind of my, my mode that I can easily get into is just going into hard push grind, because that's what was modeled to me. That's how I was literally parented, was, yes, you messed up, you need to go harder, get yourself in line. But that's not actually what's healing to me or that little inner child in me. So have you noticed for yourself that when you are talking to that little version of you, that you have to kind of change the way you're talking to it? Yes. And actually it's so funny because I will even get into a very aggressive sort of stand toward life, like a con, you know like a competitive. Aspect of things. It's, it's sort of like I can easily fall into the work harder. Yes. Just grinded out thing. Whereas the dowist side of me and, and the stoic side of me goes, the stoic side of me goes, relax, you know you don't need to, you don't need to make this a thing. And the dowist side of me goes, you'll know the action when the action is, when you're ready for the action. Right. So, you know, I, I, the, to me, and this is a really hard thing, actually, it's still hard. So the listener, I wouldn't be surprised if you're just like, oh my God, shut the hell up. What are you talking about? Like, it's super hard because Daoism essentially says the way to you know, emotional freedom and sort of is to, is no way in no action. And, and most people, when they peripherally read like Daoism and then some of the stuff, they go, that's ridiculous. You know, because you have to work hard and this and that, whatever. It's not saying that, it's just saying the, the action will become apparent to you. When it is time. And I still can't own that fully, because to your point, my little kid and the way I was sort of parented and just with my siblings and everything else, and what, to a large degree has worked for me is let's go, let's get it. Let's grind, let's let you know you can, you know, you just work. You just work, you work, you outwork it. And I do think you can't forget as you go through this, yes, that absolutely works. For sure. But what you forget is that it play, it's, it's a role in the process. It's not the process. So I would argue, and I'd be interested in what you think about this is I would argue, so like if we're talking about me and Jess and the, and you all the listener listening to this, just think about how you were parented or what your early upbringing would be. So what will happen with Jess is there's probably an aspect of that controlling aspect of her that is useful in some way. It's at least to little Jessie or little Jess, I don't know what your little girl's name is. Right? But, you know, but what, but at least useful to her. In some degree and probably has some use as your adult self. The, the key though is to integrate it in a healthy way and not to let it dominate in an unhealthy way. Right. And so, same with me. So my ability to work and my capacity to just grind and get lots of things done really quickly is very useful. And I don't wanna, so to me, one of the things is, you know, the ru, the Russian nesting dolls. I forget what they're called. You know, where there's a doll, a tiny little doll, and then another doll on top of that, then another doll on top of that, right? And you kind of, and you, there's, there's sort of like these boxes within boxes, within boxes, within boxes. To me, what we tend to do is we, we tend to throw out things like the con your controlling aspect that you wanna have or my sort of competitive aspect and grinding aspect that we wanna have. I think what a better approach is, is to integrate those things. And the whole world, by the way, if you just look at spirituality and you look at nature, it's integrative. Everything's integrative. Like, you know, the molecule has within it, the atom. It doesn't, it doesn't disqualify the atom. It includes the atom, the cell includes the molecule, the tissue includes the cell, the body includes the tissue. Like it's just this. You know, this never ending thing and nature does not dis, you know, just discard that way it uses, right? And it evolves from those, those lessons. And so what I would say to that is, I would say what we need to do is we need to take all the lessons. Cause that's what makes Jess unique and what makes Jade unique and what makes all of you unique is that our trials, our tribulations, our pain, we don't wanna discard them, actually, we wanna look deeply at them cuz they point towards our purpose and we wanna look deeply at them and integrate the lessons and discard the things that are the, the stories that are unuseful. So in a sense, take the experience that you've had, take the lessons from it and try to get rid of the judgment, you know around it. Right? And that's very hard to do because we can't always see how the world necessarily. Sees us. And so we're, we're, we're all a little bit in, in my mind, I think we're all a little bit we think a little too highly of ourselves and we think a little too and we're a little too hard on ourselves. Agreed. Agreed. We, we vacillate back and forth between, we think we're super special and we think we're, and to me I go, actually, we should use that because I think that's the right place to be, to be like, I am powerful and I can do anything I want and I'm also not special at all. And in that place you find your, and, and again, that's Daoism, right? Yin yang. In that place, you find your, your balance, the, the insecurity and the sort of, I'm not special, keeps you down to earth and lets you know that you gotta pay attention and stay open and learn. But the, the sort of arrogant part of you, the, the powerful part of you goes, I will take risk cuz I can do it. And, and if you let either of those sides get too out of control, you're in trouble in my mind. I completely agree. I think that's really interesting. I forget who was listening to. He was saying that he studied the most powerful or successful people in the world, and they had those two qualities that they simultaneously had a deep insecurity that they were trying to overcome, but at the same time, they felt like they were almost better than everybody else at the same time. Yeah. And I struggle with both of those, don't you? Right. I, I bet you Oh, yeah. Completely. Sometimes I'm just like, can't believe like this and this and this. When I'm being caddy and being my base level selves, I can't believe this person or that person. Then I just go, oh, I'm being ba, I'm being base level. And then at other times I'll be like, I'm horrible. Like I can't believe, you know, I can't believe how dumb I am or how, you know, how stupid I am or whatever. And I go back to that, you know, dumb jock thing or whatever. And now I go, I think the first step to this is, and there's a whole, there's a whole therapy based on this acceptance and commitment therapy it's called. And so we use this when we're. You know, sort of working with people that you essentially go, you accept both of those sides. So not only do we have to integrate our little child's self and our wounded child, and our, and our rejected teenager, right? We have to integrate those, those two, we have to be in dialogue with them. We have to also be in dialogue with these other parts. Of, of ourselves and you know, just accept that this is partly who I am and instead of rejecting it, cuz if you do that, it's gonna come out even stronger. It's very much like if I tell myself, you know, I'm Italian, I'd love cheesecake and wine and pastas and stuff like that. And if I just go, I'm not having any of that stuff. Inevitably I binge all day every day on those things. Mm-hmm. Instead of being like, okay, like, you know, I'll, I'll have a little bit and I'll indulge a little bit and I'll find some balance in that. I think if you look the degree to which you are an extreme, extreme in your thought process about yourself and don't accept, you know, sort of these various aspects of yourself is a degree to which you will find wild swings. In the other four jobs, right? These are the people who have wild swings in their romantic relationships or wild swings in their health and fitness pursuits or wild swings in their financing career or wild swings. And sometimes they feel purposeful and sometimes they don't. It's the people who, you know, get into this acceptance place. And if you love Brene Brown like I do and other people do, she speaks a lot to this. She just calls it vulnerability. You know, for me, I call it, you know, sort of being open and available for the mess. Hmm. I love Brene Brown. Yeah, I think that's a really beautiful way to look it up. And one of the things I think you model so well, Jade, I've seen a lot in today's online space. There's a lot of mistrust because you see a lot of people, big names, and I see this more with men. I don't know if it's just my, the way I'm looking at things, but the call out culture. Mm-hmm. And people creating camps against one another. I mean, and these are grown men doing this, and then everyone has different letters behind their names, so people get very confused and say, everyone's pointing the finger. I don't know who to trust. Yeah. So how do you recommend a listener sift through that information and handle that? Yeah, that's, that's really great. We all get it right. And I'll tell you something about this. I do think this is a masculine trait, so I actually think you're correct. It's just that when we talk about male female sex, right? Versus masculine feminine energies, masculine and feminine energies are an I archetype. So we're not necessarily saying, cuz I agree with you. It's, it is a masculine trait. It's a masculine trait to be segregative in your thought process to be very logical, to be kind of competitive to, you know, sort of be sort of singular, single-mindedly focused, right? It's the feminine quality to be more flowy, more integrative, more inclusive, right? And so there, and there are plenty of women who are having masculine. Type of coming at this from a very masculine perspective as well. Like you'll find that same behavior in women who are who their sex is female, they're cis hetero females, but also masculine in their energetics. And I do think that masculine energetic of call out culture and exclusivity and all of that is not the way forward. It's not where we are in the world right now. I definitely am a big believer in the feminine you know, sort of archetype needs to be very much included. And it, and I do agree that from the perspective of culture, it's mostly men. Who have an imbalanced masculine. It's just unfortunate cuz a lot of women are also now having an imbalanced masculine as well. And so now what we need is males and females to balance their masculine and their feminine. And when that happens, you won't find that kind of behavior. But let me speak to it directly to your question cuz your question was how do people move through this dynamic? You know, from my perspective, you stay open to it and to me, you look at, you'll find very fast. It's like how I, how I look at politics and leaders, not to get political, but I just go any leader who is divisive, dehumanizing, exclusive in their rhetoric. Is not a leader I want to vote for. And unfortunately in our political culture in the United States, both sides and the leaders from both sides are often like that, which leaves me in a very peculiar place cuz I'm like, I don't like either place because they tend to be, I do have my druthers in terms of who I think's worse in that regard. But I won't necessarily get into that cuz I don't want to trigger people. But to me what you can do is you can look at in the nutrition space too, and you can see who's being divisive, he who's being dehumanizing, who's being trying to be exclusive. And from my perspective, if you find that. I would suggest humbly that you begin to take what they say with a bit of a grain of salt. That doesn't mean by the way, that they don't have very important things to say and, and very important things that you might need to know. But the thing is, if you make that your religion and your identity, you're falling into the same trap they did. Instead of going, oh, that's interesting, I'll just take that and I'll see the rest as their insecurities. And I would say find people who are a little bit more inclusive, open, and interested. You know, and you can hear it like it, there's language that is used perhaps. Maybe more studies need to be done. I'm interested in their perspective, like these are the, these are the ways that people who are more balanced and masculine and feminine qualities approach things. And also, you know, like a, for example, a very feminine quality is, I want to hear what they have to say. I'm very open to what they have to say. And a very masculine fem a very masculine trait in this field would be, I'm interested in the evidence. Right? What, you know, so to me it's like, it's both, right? So I'm like, I'm interested in what the evidence says, and I also don't think all the evidence says everything there is to say, right? Like, people like you and I you know, I were, I'm a clinician primarily, and so are you, right? We work with people. And so the more you work with people you realize a lot of this evidence base falls apart very quickly in the unique physiology, psychology, preferences, and practical circumstances that a human brings. To the equation. And one of the things I'll say for people who talk about evidence-based practice, medicine, nutrition, fitness, whatever it is, is the true definition of that actually has it. Right? Yeah. Evidence-based practice is know the research, know the client sitting in front of you and take their individuality into appreciation. And also trust your intuition and clinical judgment cuz you'll need it. And that's really what evidence-based medicine is. And those things, when you're listening to people talk you should you know, be able to pick that out. I'll just give a couple examples. If you're someone following someone who's like, keto is the answer, it's the only answer. Everyone else is an idiot. That's an example of what I'm talking about. Or fasting is the answer. It's the only answer. Everyone else is an idiot. That's something I'm talking about versus someone who goes, you know, I really like keto because it has X, Y, and z. I've had a lot of good practice, but you know, also Paleos great. And I've certainly seen vegetarians and vegans who've done well and there's lots of different ways to approach this. That's a different way. Now, one of the things you and I would probably agree and it's frustrating for the listener is, Okay, that's great. But we all know that our base level selves want safety and certainty and security. So there's something very nice about having someone go, this is the answer, the only answer, this is how it is. So I can understand why people gravitate towards those types, but invariably, inevitably, right? What happens, they find it doesn't work and you know, and, and then they have to go find something else. And so yes, it's a little bit more confusing and a little bit more uncertain and scary at first when you start in trying to incorporate all thoughts and opinions. But very quickly your identity comes around. You know, this idea of, oh, I'm someone who's open to all these answers, and that's how you build wisdom. No one overcomes, you know, their, their ignorance. By staying singularly focused in one aspect of thought, right? And we're all ignorant by nature. Of course. You know, the only way to get better is to open yourself up. That's how it come from me. I wanna learn from you. That's why I love these sort of podcasts. You know, people might say, well, Jade has this degree and Jess has this degree, and Jade has this thing and Jess has that, and Jess's weighs better, right? And I go, there's no, no there's no question in my mind that certain things you're doing, I just don't know. And I wanna learn them. And there's no question in my mind there's certain things I'm doing and saying that you certainly don't know, and I wanna learn them by you and I coming together in conversations like this. And we've kind of been buds online for a while. So we, we kind of, you know, know each other's work, but I've certainly absorbed. Some of your perspective from following you and being exposed to you and vice versa. And to me, whether we realize it or not, and this is in every aspect of our lives, we are an experience and an example for the world. And when people interact with us, we are passing on some of our essence, energetics, intelligence, emotions, et cetera, to that other person. And from that perspective, that's how I show up and approach the world actually, Jess. Cause I just go, my intention today is to do the best I can despite what I'm going through and, you know, whatever I'm dealing with, my intention is to show up in a way that is a positive contribution to my personal growth their personal growth and the evolution of the world, right? That's how come I say in my company, next level human. I'm like, we're only here for three. You know, sort of reasons, in a sense to learn, to teach and to love. And to me you do that by setting your task to go. I want to grow myself so that I can enrich others. So that I can evolve the world. That's a very, by the way, that's a very feminine you know, sort of way of seeing things. The masculine part would come in there and just be like, and I want to do so by being honest, being in my integrity, like, you know, having, you know, not taking on you know, being very, you know, sort of solid with my alignment and my authenticity and that kind of stuff. Like, you know, this sort of solid, rigid honor code. Like, let's go in this direction and both matter. Yes. I, I think that's such a beautiful way, and I'm gonna take that from you, is the waking up in the morning and saying, how can I show up? And I'm responsible for the energy that I'm giving the world around me. Yeah. And I too often am focused on myself rather than how am I showing up and impacting it's my responsibility to impact those around me positively. Yeah. You know what I'd say to that? That's really interesting. I feel the same way you feel is almost some guilt we have around saying I'm a little too focused on myself. What I would say to that is when you're in your authentic alignment in terms of being self-centered in that regard, but you're in your authentic alignment and in your, your and in your, in your purpose, right? So what happens is a lot of people go, if you're sort of self-centered in, you know, self-centered in the way of I want the world to give to me, that's a whole different thing than self-centered in the world of I want to grow so that I can give to the world, right? And so there's nothing wrong in my mind with being self-centered in a way that I want to grow so I can enhance the world. That's sort of the next level human way of looking at it, that I'm always integrating myself and other simultaneously and certainly. That means I'm somewhat self-centered. It also means I'm also equally other-centered. And that's how, you know, right? You know, you wouldn't be doing this work in my mind, you know anyone who sort of knows this knows, like, there's a lot of great things you can make your own you know schedule and time and, and that's a lot of the self-centered stuff. However, you're also putting out a ton of energy. You're exposing yourself to a lot of hate and a lot, you know, so this is definitely other oriented, you know, like, you know, when j you know, case I, I'll just, you know, come to your defense here in case you guys don't know this, Jesse and I don't know each other that well. We have followed each other, but in case you don't know, you know, as she puts herself out and does her work, She's being exposed. You know, you might love her, you listen to her stuff, but she's being exposed to a lot of negative trolling and hating and this and that and all these other things. No one, no human voluntarily exposes herself to that stuff if it's just about them. Right. They do it because they, they want to matter and have a sense of self-assurance and self-esteem for themselves, but they also want to have impact with you. That's what sustains it, right? Like you're not gonna just with all the, the kind of hate that's out there in the world, that can come your way when you're exposing yourself and doing your work, you wouldn't be able to do it and sustain it over the long run if it was just about you. Which is why I would say, if you really want to know who's in it for, you know, sort of purpose versus ego, that's one good way to tell that they keep doing it, despite the fact that they get a lot of hate, and you do. When the bigger you get, the more exposure you get, the more hate you get. And you have to just take it and be like, this is, this is a challenge for me to step up and keep being authentic. Life just does that again. You're a great model for that. I thi I take a lot of inspiration from you in the way that you handle those situations when you receive that hate and. Particularly for the guys in my family. I think that's been really inspiring because I don't think, and I'd be really curious to hear your state of men in society today, it seems, I don't, haven't validated the statistics, but that their mental health is on the decline for men. Yeah. And from a lot of the men. I love talking to the men in my life about this, why that is, A lot of them say they don't have role models. It wasn't modeled to them. They just had the toxic masculine traits that we were just talking about. What is your take on that? Yeah. You got what, two brothers, right? Yep. Hopefully one. Hopefully one day I'll get to get to meet your, your two brothers in hang. Yes. I would love that. I do think that this is a. It's a sad place where men are, but I do have, to me, what I think is a, an incredibly solid answer. And you can ask your brothers whether they agree with this or not. Here, here, to me, is the issue with men. Men have this deep need to just like, just like, I think women have this deep need now. We all, we all we're humans before, we're males and females, by the way. Right? So let's just, and, and as humans we need safety, security, acceptance and belonging. But what I think may be unique about men is the, and this may be I, I haven't figured out whether this is completely cultural and or built in, you know, sort of the genetics or differences or whatever. I have spent my, my whole career trying to understand the differences between the biology and biochemistry between men and women. One of the things I think I understand about men is they want to win and be of service at something. And they need to see to, to feel. Like they are winning. The worst thing you could say to a man if you're a cis hetero female involved with a cis hetero males to tell him he's a loser. It's literally the worst thing. Or make him feel like a loser. You know, men want to win. And culture in my mind, and this is the problem that men are having, culture is a game. This is what it's like to be a man. Imagine imagine you are tossed into a game that you don't necessarily completely know the rules, but you know, there are certain things that you must get for people to accept you. And if you don't have those things you Will be seen as lesser than, and those things are gonna be like money, car house, you know good looking girlfriend or partner or whatever it is. And you feel like if you don't have those things that you're rejected in that way, you're somehow losing. And the problem to me with men is men are supposed to stand for something authentic within themselves, not stand for something false within culture. And what they're doing is they're standing for something false within culture. So they're, they're falling headline and sinker into this hook line and sinker into this game. This false narrative of you gotta work and you gotta be powerful and you gotta be strong and you gotta be a monster and you gotta be a dangerous, but you gotta have that under control and you gotta make money and you gotta have a nice car and you gotta have these things. And if you don't do that, you're not a true man. Right? And to me, I go, no, A true man is simply a man who knows who they are, knows what they love, and steadfast chases that, whether that's gardening, whether that's being an artist. Whether that's just being out in the woods with, you know, an and a saw, whether that is being a nurse, whether that, whatever that is, men need to own what they love and they know what it is. When you know when it's there. They just also go, I can't love that and do that, and also have all the things that culture says will make me a man. Culture cannot define you as a man. What defines you as a man and as a human? I'm speaking to women too, is you saying This is who I am in the world. I am a unique spiritual fingerprint. I have a unique s time. I'm in, in the history of humanity and I'm here. I occupy a unique space. I'm unique in my personality, my pain, my passions, my superpowers, right? My personality, and I own that. And I have this deep need to do something that I love and know I can do in a way that only I can, and I will do it regardless of what culture says is valuable about that or not. And as soon as I don't tap into that, don't find that and or abandon it, I will be miserable. I will put myself in an incredibly difficult state, and I'll give you an example and then I'll shut up. But I'll give you an example for my father. My father to me, epitomizes. What a man is. Now, he decided when he had his first child, my oldest brother, that he was gonna be the best father that he could be. And what that meant for him was move outta New York City so that, you know, he stopped drinking and hanging out with his buddies. Go down south to North Carolina work at a bank g ask, you know get his schedule so that he could go in at 6:00 AM and get off at three so he could be at all his kids' practices. There was not a practice that he wasn't at for me and my brothers and my sister. He took an hour and a half to be with my mom for every lunch, which, you know, I oftentimes wow. Joked that, I'm gonna tell, you know, that was against the rules. But he did it throughout the 30 years he was at this particular bank and he used all his income. He has no retirement cuz he spent it on us sending us all to school. And he's the most respected, well loved man that I know, right? People love and respect my father. He's the epitome of man. He basically people, people still come to him that I'm not even friends with from high school and go see my dad. You know, because they were like, this was my father too. Right? And, and, and my father to me is a very purposeful, now none of that looks good from culture's perspective. We start, he started out as solidly upper middle class when he had my older brother than he was middle class by the time my sister came along. By the time I was graduated from high school, we were lower middle class because my dad was pouring everything into his kids. But we weren't lower middle class in terms of love, in terms of a father that was there for us, right? And the legacy of that, the, the fact that my dad played his own game. And that's what men need to do. They're struggling cuz they're not playing their own game. I'm not saying go be my dad. Go be what your essence tells you to be. Make the choices for what you want to do and when you're living from that place as a man. And it's same for women. Right is, I just think men suffer from this a little bit more because we are still, unfortunately in a male dominated culture, you know, I really do like, people might get mad at this, but to me I'm like, there is such a thing as masculine toxicity. We are in it, men are dominating. They, you know, they, they still dominate our culture. We need that to end in a sense. We don't need it to end by women being toxic, masculine. We need it to end by males and females balancing their masculine and their feminine. And a male that is completely in culture level mindset can't do that in the same way that a woman that's in completely culture level mindset can't do that. So the idea is play. Your own game. And when you do, you escape the matrix. That to me is the matrix. The fact that you think you gotta play this culture level game, it's not built for you. You gotta decide your own game and you have to play it out fully. And when you do that, no one can take that away from you. And, and you're shielded in a sense from everything. You know, when I started medicine, I was looking at, I was gonna go to conventional medical school or naturopathic medical school. This is going back to 1997. Right. And back then, like, it's all popular now, but back then, you know, it was like I was a witch doctor and a quack. And I just said, I'm gonna be a witch doctor and a quack. Which is why today when someone calls me a witch doctor and a quack, I go, yeah, you're right. Because I, I chose, I chose that like I am a witch doctor and a quack and I love it. That's awesome. That's hilarious. I love that too. Cuz they, they can't own anything about you then because you're owning that within yourself. Yep. That is, and from a, a straight woman's perspective, that is actually the most attractive thing I find in a man is when he just, he has his own values, not what everyone told him to value his own values and he's willing to live according to them and get uncomfortable when necessary to stay in congruence with those values. To me, there's just inherent trust and safety in a man like that. Yeah. And so I think, and same with me with a woman. Hmm. I, I would be most attracted to a woman like that as well. Ah, that's interesting. Yeah. This topic fascinates me because I do think we've, women have become over masculinized in that toxic masculine side. As well. Yeah, and you know what I, I just had, I, my ex-wife and I just had, we just did a podcast on this together with Jill, Jill Coleman's, my ex-wife, and our good friend Danny Jay. And one of the things we were talking about is that that idea of, you know, sort of the more masculinized woman, thank God for those women who did that, right? Because they needed to, to battle the, the toxic masculinity that was there. I just think, and perhaps I'm wrong and, you know I won't speak for women, and women can maybe, you know, think, you know, say this is good for them or it resonates or not. But I go, those women thank God for them because they, they did get. You know, they did allow women to get to where they are in culture. And however now I think it's time to go back for you know, to that, that balanced masculine feminine in, in both, in all of us, you know regardless of how you, by the way, regardless of how you orient in terms of your sexuality, like, you know, these are just archetypes. You know, it's not male female, it's just masculine feminine archetypes. Mm-hmm. That integration of the feminine that you were talking about. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. Ugh. Well, Jada was not expecting our conversation to go this direction. I had some other wellness things for you, but we'll save that for another podcast at another time. We have to do, we definitely have to do another one. You, you and I definitely think along a, a lot of the same lines, but yes. This, yes, it's super fun. It was long awaited for me, something I've had on my list for a long time. So where can people follow your work and how can they work with you right now? Yeah, you right now I'm on social media, like all of you, right? So at Jade Tida Jade, like the stone, j a d e t e t A on all the social medias, I have a website jade tida.com. And like Jess, I have a podcast. It's called The Next Level Human Podcast, and that's the place to look at me there. And if you want my metabolism work, if you know me from that space, metabolic.com is where to get me. So next level human.com, metabolic.com, j teda.com. And yeah, just love your work too, Jess. Thanks for, thanks for what you do. Seriously, and hello to your family, and thanks for having me. Oh, thanks for coming on, Jade.