Welcome to the Dr. Gabrielle Lyon show. In this episode, I sit down with my good friend Greg Scheinman. And I have to tell you, on this podcast, we always talk about science. And the science is amazing. But if you do not have a real-life framework for the practical, the practical for life will become impossible. In this episode, I sit down with Greg, and we talk about how to avoid burnout. Do you really have to do dieting extremes or training extremes to get to live the life that you want? This episode is going to be extremely eye-opening. And as always, it is free content. And I’m so grateful to our sponsors. That allows us to produce these shows so that you can enjoy this content. If you want to hear more and learn more of the science or mindset, any of the things that we produce and talk about, please go to my website, drgabriellelyon.com, and sign up for the absolutely free newsletter. Now, on to the show. [MUSIC PLAYING] Greg Scheinman, welcome to the show. It is great to be here. Thanks for having me. I mean, we’re not even in workout gear, which is typically our usual Sunday meetings. We are not. It’s a little bit different, OK? Like, what are we doing now, face to face, across the table? But we’re going to have some fun. Yes. You are the ultimate midlife male. And I just want to lay this out for people. There’s a few reasons why I wanted you to come on the show. Number one, we are great friends. And you are an extraordinary human. I also think that you are an amazing example for the midlife male. You are a 51-year-old man, father, husband, business owner. And typically, on the show, we always talk about optimal performance. And that idea, I think, can be out of reach for a lot of people. And it’s not, because you can still be super fit, capable. You don’t have to be a Navy SEAL. You don’t have to be training for something crazy. But an individual can be extraordinarily well-rounded, super fit, and it’s all obtainable. Would you agree with that? Absolutely. And thank you. First and foremost, thank you. I hear what you say.

 And it’s great to hear. It’s tough to swallow in certain ways.

 But I completely agree with you with what you’re talking about in terms of possibility and probability for what success looks like in midlife and how we can reframe the positioning and messaging of what middle age typically is for guys. And when I hear that from you, it’s like, I’d like it. I’m living proof of that. I’m not the guy who did anything special or really, I think, does anything special. But what I really try to do, and I think one of the reasons that we’ve connected and gotten along so well, is that it’s simple. Simple is hard. Put a plan together, set standards for yourself, operate off of those. And it’s amazing what actually happens. Yeah.

 I wholeheartedly agree with you. You are also a patient. We’re going to talk about what middle-aged men should do. Also, how often they should do blood work. What are some of the things that may happen? But before we get into the details of your journey, who you are, I wanted to share some statistics. Because quite frankly, you’re not in any of these statistics. And I know that you have some suicide rates among older adults are rising. And the most at risk are men.

 And this is from 1990. 8.7% of all divorces in the United States occurred among adults 50 and over.

 By 2019, the percentage had grown to 36%.

 Also, there is a growing longevity gap between men and women. In the United States, life expectancy in 2021 was 79 years old for women. And for men, it’s 73.2 years of age. There is a 5.9-year difference. And this is actually the largest gap

 that we’ve seen in a quarter of a century.

 Let me humanize it for you also. Yes, please. Life expectancy for a man for me was 47.

 That’s the age my dad was when he passed away. And I was 17. That’s what I saw as the end of the road.

 And while I loved my dad dearly and would give anything to have him back, he was a smoker. It was not an optimal lifestyle that he led from a health and longevity sustainability standpoint.

 And that’s what I saw.

 17, two younger brothers, my mother, and he passed away. So I always saw 47 as the tipping point. How did he die? So your father died at 47? 47 of cancer. He died of cancer. January 16, 92, it’s tattooed right on the inside of my arm.

 Whether it was lung and pancreatic or pancreatic or lung, it really didn’t matter. They gave him six months from the diagnosis. And he survived two years, hard, horrible, grueling years of chemo and surgeries. And it was awful.

 So I saw 47.

 47 is what the life expectancy– that’s what the life plan was. And when I hit 47–

 and I was in a lot of the statistics that you talk about actually there. When I hit 47, it really became, OK, I can squander these opportunities that are ahead of me, or I can pour some rocket fuel on the next phase of my life and really make the best of it. What kind of man do I want to actually really be?

 At 17, did you fall into bad habits? That’s a very significant loss. And you have two younger brothers. Now your mom is a single mom.

 I was not ready to be a father figure to my brothers. I was not ready to be the man of the house. I was very reckless. I went right back to school, right back to college in Michigan. And I had nobody really watching over me. I never really dealt with the trauma, the loss, any of it. We never unpacked it. We never really talked about it. The friends of my dad’s had said that they were going to be there. They weren’t there. And the new friends that I had at college, I had no history with them. So they didn’t really know either. They were there to have a good time and learn and study and party and everything.

 So I was reckless. I mean, for years, I drank too much. I smoked too much. I had a very live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse kind of attitude for a really long period of time. And I think, again, in these situations, there’s a couple of ways you can go. You can go that path, which is really dangerous. It’s going to shorten your runway. You’re going to make a lot of mistakes and missteps, and I did. Or you can go the other way and see it, again, as an opportunity to live better and happier and healthier and longer and stronger, which I didn’t pick up until much, much later in life. When did you have a aha moment or a come to Jesus moment with yourself? Like, I’m a slow learner and a late bloomer. You were a slow learner and a late bloomer. And for a lot of years, people would say that, everything looked great. I would say that everything looked great in my life from the outside. I’m married, I have two amazing boys. How old are your boys now? 20 and 17. And I’m 51, as you mentioned, and my wife Kate is 54. I Kate. You look 35.

 Thank you. She’ll be so happy right now because I call out her age and you tell me, perfect. She’s very happy with her biological age is now too. The actual age and biological, we can get into that. But from the outside looking in for a lot of years, everything looked great. The marriage, the kids, the career, multiple careers, entrepreneurship, all of that. And I was even in pretty good shape.

 Like I was in great shape as a teenager. I went from being bullied to being a bodybuilder. I was in good shape even in my 20s, but you just rebound. Back then you could go out drinking all night and you could wake up and lift a little bit and still look good. My producer Matt does that all the time.

 So it was like this mask. It was like this mask of what the perception was versus what the reality was because I still harbored a lot of resentment, anger,

 never really dealt with the trauma, never really felt healthy, never truly felt authentic. And it wasn’t really until 47. You stack all those things up over the years. It wasn’t until really 47. 10 year anniversary with my firm. What were you doing before? Cause you’ve had multiple businesses that you have exited to. You now run your own entrepreneurial business, which is. You know, I, look, I thought I was going to have it easy. We grew up very privileged, very entitled, North Shore of Long Island. I thought I was going to go work with my dad.

 You know, I wanted to work with my dad. What did he do? He was in the cable television business for years. He was in the auto business for years. I really didn’t care what my dad did. He was very entrepreneurial too. I thought my path was graduate and go work with my dad and my best friend. And that was going to be my life path. And that was taken away. But at the same time, what I’ve come to realize now is that that was also, it was a gift in a certain way. That now this opportunity for me to be able to do anything I want to do and be anything now that that was available. There wasn’t a family business to go into or anything like that. And I tried a lot of things because I was rudderless for a while. I wanted to be in the film business cause I thought that was cool.

 So I ran Harvey Weinstein’s office for two years right out of college, 30 years before the me too era.

 And you know, my quote unquote claim to fame there was I told him to F off before the rest of the world did. And it never occurred to me that I couldn’t go on and produce other movies. I never understood that victim mentality part of like anyone could control you. Maybe that was narcissism or ego or again, the chip on my shoulder, but I went out and I made a few movies after that and they were moderately successful. And then I- – Would we know what the movie is about? – You could turn on Netflix or Prime or whatever. And you can see two Nina’s with Ron Livingston and Amanda Pete and Joe Hennessey and like amazing cast. And then this hip hop movie called “Boriqua’s Bond” that to this day I’ve never watched myself, but it had like Wu Tang Clan and Naughty by Nature and Mephin Man and Red Man. – That’s pretty cool. And you and I are great friends and I didn’t know this. – That was like my twenties was part of that whole, you know, chase that. And then- – The chase that mentality. This story is unfolding a little bit differently. This is almost a coming of age story. And I think that a lot of the listeners can relate. It doesn’t really matter their age if they’re in their twenties or thirties, but we do go through, I would even say by decade,

 go through life and we don’t know what we’re gonna do. We do have family traumas that come up. All of this affects our self worth. It also affects our fitness, our families. And you know, you have six Fs that you always talk about.

 You in your twenties are in a very different place. So I just wanted to mention this kind of coming of age story. – I was flying private, running this office, doing all kinds of amazing things in my twenties and then didn’t want it. Realize that wasn’t the lifestyle that I wanted a little bit. Be careful what you wish for. Check the box, got some movies produced, put my dad’s name up on screen, honored his memory. Great, now what kind of thing? And I didn’t know. And if you would have told me I’d be married with kids living in Houston, Texas, I would have told you to bet the under that that’s not gonna happen. And I met my wife 25 years ago. – And you’re still married, which makes you way outside of the statistic. – Still married, very happily, very fortunately.

 And Kate really helped me turn things around. She was very grounded. – How old were you when you got married? – 27, 23. – 27 years old.

 – And she’s very grounded, born and raised in Houston, Texas. I’m a Jewish boy from Long Island, spoiled. And she’s a Catholic, you know, a girl from Houston, Texas. And we decided to move here.

 And my friends thought I was crazy. How do you go from what you’ve been doing and where you are and to down to Houston, Texas and do that? – What’d you do? What’d you do for work? How were you thinking about, yeah. – I didn’t, so that was, I didn’t. I knew that we were in love. We were gonna be, we were gonna get married. I didn’t wanna go back to New York. There were bad memories there and baggage and– – From your father. – From my dad and from the community and so on and so forth. I didn’t wanna be there. I didn’t wanna live that Groundhog’s Day and go to the same country clubs and eat at the same restaurants and be reminded of my dad and where I came from all the time. And when we got down here, we had about six to eight months worth of runway, financially, from the film stuff. I had no idea what to do because this was not exactly the hotbed of the entertainment industry in Houston. And the short version is I’m sitting on the couch with Auden, who’s a baby, our son, and we’re watching Baby Einstein on TV, on DVD. And in the corner, I put SportsCenter on because there used to be picture in picture.

 And I’m watching this stuff day after day. Yes, the runway’s getting shorter and shorter and I don’t have an idea. And one day it goes off, I can do this. – And this– – I can do this. I can make sports, there’s gotta be other guys out there that wanna watch sports rather than Sesame Street and Baby Einstein. And I could flip this. And I created a company called Team Baby Entertainment. And I went to all the sports leagues and I asked them for their footage to get a licensed deal. And they all told me I was crazy. And don’t do a licensing deal, we’ll just give it to you because nobody’s ever asked before. And I made sports DVDs, dressed all my kids’ friends up in play group in these outfits and did it and sold them out of the trunk of my car for like a year outside of stadiums. Baby Longhorn, Baby Aggie, all these different teams and put every buck I had into PR.

 And we got some great PR. Fortunately, it was read by an article in the LA Times, it was read by Michael Eisner, who was the chairman of Disney, former chairman of Disney. And he called, we had a meeting and we were the first acquisition he made after leaving Disney and invested a couple million dollars into the brand and we went on a seven, eight year run. – And then did it fizzle out? Were there CDs, internet? – Crashed and burned as quickly as we went up. And it was meteoric for a while. Now all of a sudden we had celebrity narrators on everything, we were in all these stores and then the DVD market started to collapse.

 Things changed, pediatricians started going on television saying, don’t put your kids in front of the TV for hours at a time. That we weren’t raising the next generation of fan, we were brainwashing, we do all these things. All these things. And Toys R Us, KB Toys, Circuit City, Barnes and Noble, Borders, remember all these, but they’re all gone.

 And we were getting DVDs shipped back to us just as fast as we shipped them out. – Did you pick up bad habits? I mean, was this a stressful time for you? – Incredibly stressful time. And we also had another child around that period. So constantly head on a swivel, trying to run a business, build a business, now report to a high profile, highly demanding partner. I wasn’t taking good care of myself, it was hard to exercise, I was smoking. – And how old were you now? Was this in your mid 30s? – Yeah, in my mid 30s. – You were smoking?

 You’ve definitely made up for that because you can crush all of us on the air done. – Smoking, drinking, again. – Did you gain weight? – I was almost 200 pounds. So for example, I’m 170, look, I’m 175, around 10% body fat right now, feeling at the top of my game better than I ever had. 32 inch waist, I was up to almost 35 inch waist, almost 200 pounds, soft. Like muscly soft, like you could tell that I used to under there, smoking and drinking, not paying attention to sleeping or quality of life or anything. – This is an important point for the listener or the viewer because people will think, okay, I’m 51 now, it’s too late. Or the people that are young and listening or watching this saying, you know what, I’m 32, I don’t really care about my health, I’m so stressed. What you are showing everybody is that it doesn’t matter how old you are, it’s possible. You can actually get better with age. And I’ve seen your labs, we’re not talking about high amounts of testosterone, we’re not talking about additional anabolic, we are not talking about crazy nutrition, health and wellness strategies. – No, look, there’s a lot of white space between the sedentary middle aged guy, the guy who’s overweight, the guy who’s doing the hustle and grind. I’ve done all that stuff, been on the treadmill of life. The 12, 14 hour days as a husband, as a father, as a provider, as a man, you’re networking, you’re doing all the things. And your waistband’s getting a little bit bigger. All of these other, there’s a lot of white space between that guy and then these quote unquote elite high performers that are out there. The Navy SEALs, the high performance lifestyles, the marathoners, the jacked guys, whatever you’re looking at. And what I focus on is mastering the middle.

 Say that again. – Is mastering the middle. The middle is messy. The middle of life is messy. Nobody says midlife and has a positive connotation to it. And we’re gonna change that. I say midlife and the first word you think of is?

 – Lamborghini. – For you maybe. – Midlife crisis. – There you go. We hear crisis, we hear conformity, we hear complacency, we hear redundancy. We hear that 58% of middle aged men are unhappy, they’re lonely, they are 61% are not financially stable or where they thought they were going to be.

 I mean, these are alarming statistics. And I focus on men, but they’re alarming for women too in a lot of these areas. But middle aged men are suffering

 and they can’t connect the dots, a lot of them from where they are to what they see as extreme. So mastering the middle is very important. You mentioned possible.

 I believe that. It’s not only possible, but it’s highly probable to maximize middle age wherever you are right now. And it is not complicated. – But why do you care about it? – I care about it because I don’t wanna see men end up like my dad and I didn’t wanna end up there myself.

 And I want guys to stop seeing aging as something to fear. I wanted them to start seeing it as something aspirational. And I believe that our best days are still in front of us and not behind us. And I also believe that it is never too late to start. That what are we hearing out there? We’re hearing that we have this opportunity to live healthier and happier and longer and optimize and all of these things. So do it, which means that the middle is not the end. It means that the middle is very much the middle and that the next phase of your life should be the very best phase of your life. I think fifties to seventies are gonna be extraordinary for us. I can’t and I talk about that all the time. Our kids are getting older. We’re almost empty nesters.

 We’ve got some financial stability right now. We’re in the best shape of our lives. We’ve experienced so many highs and so many lows. We can apply all of these experiences. We wanna climb the mountains now.

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 Did that take time to reimagine midlife?

 – Absolutely. I get told or said all the time, like, oh, how did you reinvented yourself? And okay, well, not so fast. I don’t think I reinvented myself. I think I released myself. And I think this is a thing for a lot of guys. It’s there.

 You gotta release yourself into being who you truly are. We know the answers to the test. A lot of us, we’re just not using, we’re just not doing the things. – What do you mean? And I know that you coach a lot of guys. You coach a lot of very successful guys. And you would think that a lot of very successful guys would have it all figured out. You learn from old experiences. You understand that this too shall pass, all of these things. But what you are saying, and I fully agree with, is that midlife has a negative connotation. And it is something I think people are very afraid of

 because what is at the end and what is at the next phase? – Well, I’ll give you some examples.

 And these guys, we would never accept underperforming quarter after quarter in our businesses.

 So why do we accept them in our life? If I ask any successful middle-aged guy, I ask him for a business plan. Can I see your business plan? Can I see your tax statement? Can I see any your KPIs, your quarterly reviews for employees, yourself, any of these other quantifiable, measurable metrics? They have them.

 When I ask you for your business plan for your life, nobody can produce it. – Why do you think that is? – Because they put everything else before themselves, or they think they’re doing what they are supposed to be doing. – Do you think it is that, or that individuals are just not taught how to design a life? – They’re not taught, and it’s not the priority. The priority is we’re supposed to go to school, we’re gonna get married, we’re gonna have kids, we’re gonna chase salary and title, we’re gonna achieve, we’re gonna want to accomplish,

 and what gets lost, we forget to put ourselves first. – Did you have a moment where you woke up and said, you know what, I’m gonna transform the midlife male into something different, more capable, more quote, themselves? – Absolutely, it’s a persona. I mean, again– – But what happened? You just woke up one day and were like, okay, that’s it. – So here’s the thing, I knew why. I was in that car, 47, ages my dad died, 10 year anniversary with my firm, multi-million dollar book of business now, two kids, beautiful wife, everything, and I was afraid to go inside the office. I was just paralyzed there. It was one of those, is this what my life has become?

 And it can’t be this. And I knew all the whys, why I wanted to be a better husband, why I wanted to make more money, why I wanted to be a better dad, why I wanted to be in better shape, why I wanted to quit drinking. What I lacked was the how. – Even though maybe you could have just said, you know what, I’m not gonna drink, or I’m gonna streamline my life. – Yes, but I still didn’t have the discipline,

 the accountability of how, and I had a big ego, like a lot of times I was afraid to ask, who am I gonna ask, who am I gonna vent to, who am I gonna talk to? I’m not gonna talk to my partners at my firm and tell them that I’m unhappy, because that’ll be one step closer to the door. I’m not gonna come home and throw up all over Kate about how unhappy I am. – Because maybe that would be a perceived vulnerability. – Right, I’m not gonna do it with my kids, because I’m supposed to be big and strong and masculine about this. So I created the persona. I said, here’s what I’m gonna do. I don’t know the answer to the questions. I don’t know how, I’m gonna start asking really smart people the right questions.

 And that’s when I launched the podcast. And I started inviting guys on, the best and the brightest individuals in the world, family, fitness, finance, food, fashion, fun, the things that I was into that became my six Fs. And I started asking them the questions, because now I was supposed to ask the question. I was obligated to as the host. I was responsible for helping other guys. What I was really doing was looking into the mirror. I was helping myself.

 And I was taking everything they said, what I call my ACE principle, aggregate, curate, eliminate. I was aggregating from every piece of information I was getting out there, curating it down to what works for me and eliminating what didn’t. And I was testing and retesting all this. And from 47 to 50, everything in my life changed. And every week I would write about it. And that became the newsletter. And then the podcast and the newsletter became the book. And I’m not even a writer.

 It was like my publisher called me and he goes, we’re gonna do a book.

 Book, I’m not a writer. He goes, you already have the book. You have all of these interviews with amazing individuals. And then you have your take on every single one of these situations. And now you have living proof that it actually works and you’ve transformed from mediocre to maximize. He’s like, you’re the midlife male. And I’m like, I guess I am.

 Yeah, and then that’s how this has happened. And then the book led to speaking. And then the speaking led to coaching. Guys calling me up. Nobody in the audience ever, you could speak to a entire room full of guys and everyone needs help. And they get to the Q and A part and there’s not a single question, it’s crickets. These guys are afraid of that. And I wanna raise their hand and be like, I’m unhappy. I’m lost. I drink too much. But I get off from these speaking gigs and I would got guys would be pulling me off to the side or I’d get emails and text messages and everything. And that’s how the coaching business started. And now it’s developed into this lifestyle brand of really helping men maximize middle age and being real about it. Authentic, relatable, credible, aspirational. And talking about the stuff that guys don’t really wanna talk about. And not in this like woo woo way. You know, like in the way to let’s share experiences that help you make the best decisions that are right for you. If you wanna go pass a stick around in a circle and cry, I got a place for you to go, I’ve done that. If you wanna go get your ass kicked by a bunch of Navy SEALs for the weekend, I got a place for, I’ve done all of these things. – What was the most profound? – It’s remarkable.

 – Did you have one most profound experience?

 – That is a fantastic question. Because I also get asked about the tipping point of when things change. And I think as much as we can identify a specific tipping point in the parking lot, it’s a series of things. I view all of this as a series of things. And I say situations and circumstances can either defeat us or define us. And that mediocrity happens by default and maximization happens by design.

 – So the one big thing, the biggest takeaway is that I had it backwards. I thought the happy, amazing life was to not plan. You just kind of fly by the seat of your pants and you do whatever you wanna do. – It’s like your 17-year-old self. – Yeah, that’s what entrepreneurship is and lack of responsibility. And I don’t have to be disciplined or do anything. The happy life is to just go out and do these things. And I had a couple of years ago, I was like, “Oh, I’m gonna do this.” And I was like, “Oh, I’m gonna do this.” And I had it completely backwards. The big moment, the big takeaway, I know exactly what interview it was or what experience it was. It’s a culmination of all of them. But it’s like, no, when you live a disciplined life, when you live by design, that’s when everything opens up for you. That’s when it gets great. That’s when I had the time to climb the mountain. 29-0, 29 was an incredible experience. – What was it? – We climbed the equivalent of Matt Everest.

 So you go 29,029 feet. You hike up, you go down.

 So I did that a couple of years ago. And now here’s how this grows, Gabrielle. And you’ve seen this with your practice and what you’re doing with your movement. The movements grow. I went to the first one by myself. I left with 300 new friends. – Oh, the forever strong? – Well, yeah. I mean, you’re seeing how all the movements went. And I mean, I went to forever strong and left with hundreds of friends there too. – You already had hundreds of friends there, but yes. – But I did the mountain by myself the first time. Left with friends. The following year, Kate comes back with me. Now she’s doing it. Now we’re bringing 20 people with us this year. – Wow. 20 people, you guys are all gonna climb the mountain? – We’re gonna climb another mountain, but we did the CO weekend. I did Modern Elder Academy. And you know, I did soul degree. I’ve tried a lot of these things because what I want guys to realize is that it’s possible. Put yourself out there, try different things. Not all of them work. You don’t land on all of them, but that’s how you learn to make better decisions. – You have a framework for thinking about midlife. And this is the six Fs. What are they?

 – Family, fitness, finance, food, fashion, and fun. – Okay. – And the six Fs are what I defined as for me, that’s what success looks like. That’s what a holistic life portfolio looks like. These things matter to me. But the six Fs also came from some rules that I developed. You know, you’re big on standards. Big on standards over goals. Could not agree with you more. – Yes. Out of these six Fs we have, and not in this order, family, food, fitness, fashion, fun, and finances. – And I do put them in order. And I put them in order for a reason. Family is always first. Because that’s my number one priority in life is my family. Fitness, which is really health, is number two. Because without your health, what do we have? We have nothing.

 Three is finance, because money matters.

 Okay, and I define wealth as wanting to have enough money to do what I want, when I want, with who I want for as long as I want. You get to decide, guys. – Fair. – In there. And food, which is really nutrition. – What we put on. – What we put on. – What we put on our bodies really matters.

 Fashion, which is style, which matters to me. But it’s really more about personal confidence. It’s about feeling like yourself. – And probably showing up put together, right? – Yeah, it matters to me how I perceive myself and how I’m perceived by others matters.

 And look around, and I think, and it needs to matter, it really does. And the last one is fun. And middle age is not usually associated with fun. And fun is extremely important. I mean, why do we wanna live a boring, unhappy life? Fun matters.

 – Out of all six of these, what do you find the midlife male struggles with the most? Because you and I have actually talked, obviously, outside of this podcast, and you will say, you know what?

 These guys work and have worked so hard that family life crumbles. And yeah, they are worth a lot of money or have a lot of money, but their fitness is terrible. Their nutrition is terrible. And the list goes on.

 – One, the first thing I know is my Fs don’t have to be anybody else’s Fs. What they struggle with the most is they don’t know what their Fs actually are. They don’t know what their definition of success is, what their portfolio of total life wellness really looks like. And we start with one question.

 – What’s the most important? – Knowing what’s important is what’s most important.

 What is that?

 For me, that became the six Fs. For years, it was salary and title.

 You know, it was the hustle and grind 24 seven. It was that level of achievement. That transitioned into the six Fs. That’s what’s most important to me, is balancing that, living that way in harmony. Then you talk about plans.

 Here’s the second thing these guys struggle with. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re never gonna get there. – What kind of plans do you think? Nutrition plans, fitness plans, health. I mean, I can’t tell you if you are a patient of mine and you’re over the age of 45, you should have had your colonoscopy. – Correct. So these are the things we work on. Again, I think it’s all connected. First of all, you have to start with your health. If you tell me that your family is your number one priority and you don’t take care of your health. – You’re not telling the truth. – You’re not telling the truth. – Not telling the truth. – Or your priorities are out of whack in there. So it starts with you. It starts with your health. It’s the reason 17 people or so connected us within like three days when you were moving down to Houston because there’s a certain lifestyle. There’s a certain like-mindedness that matters in there of how we live. You start by prioritizing your health. And to that effect, we’re not taking a guy who’s been sedentary for two years and putting him in seven days a week worth of high intensity interval training class. We’re gonna start with the physical. – Tell me, tell us a little bit about your game plan. Because again, people, you guys gotta check them out on Instagram, your, what, what’d you say, 170? – My fitness standard is defined by you. Like together, collectively, there’s a standard for every one of these Fs. – Okay, I wanna hear about– – My fitness standard is– – The fitness standard, yeah. – I wanna be 175 pounds, 10% body fat, look good naked, okay, not be injured and be able to do whatever I basically wanna do. – How do you get there? How does the guy listening, thinking, okay, well, that sounds great, but I don’t have 20 hours to train a week, 25 hours, and I don’t have a chef preparing my food. How does that fall? – And I don’t have any of that either. I think you reverse engineer back to, so there’s the standard, that’s the goal in a way. So now we’ve got a reverse engineer back to what is going to make that standard actually happen? What is gonna get me to that goal and help me maintain that? And the way I look at it is, now how do I have to train for that? So I train four to five days a week. I train for an hour and an hour and a half at a time. – What do you do? – You come to my house on Sundays, here’s sort of, I am a mixed modality guy. I am a generalist rather than a specialist. I don’t actually even schedule what my workouts are by day. I schedule the time domain. So here’s when I’m gonna work out and I decide that day what it is that I’m really going to do. So I lift weights. I have a trainer. I use ladder, which is an app. I train in my garage some days. I train at gyms other days. I take group exercise classes. I love yoga, Pilates, and boxing. You know, those will fill a day or two. I love having you guys come over on Sundays because it’s inspiring. You know, and we set a clock and we just go and do whatever you want. I wanna be in the pool. Now we’re hiking and walking and rucking a lot around there. So to me, it’s not even so much of what I do and being stringent on, I have to do three sets of this or five sets. It’s no, I have to be consistent and disciplined with moving. I focus a lot more on sustainability, longevity now, a lot more on mobility, and you cannot out train a bad diet. That’s right. So I have a standard for food. When you started this, when did you really get into this fitness program that you’re doing now? And by the way, again, there’s a lot of things out there for people and you did get injured. You were like, okay, well, I’m gonna try something else. I’m gonna go to jujitsu. And, you know, as a friend and as a physician, stepped in to really help with these injuries. I also think that talking to guys about how do they begin to scale it slowly? Because- Crawl, walk, run, like anything. Crawl, walk, run. You did jump in there. Yes. Now I’ve been at this a while. So it’s- I think that’s fair to tell people about. And where you start is not where you’re going to. To finish, whatever you are today, today is the day you start. You can swap a soda for water. You can take the stairs instead of the elevator. You can go for a 30 minute walk.

 You can join a- You can hire a trainer if you’re not super motivated and just- And by the way, neither am I. Like, discipline is more important than motivation. I’m not a super motivated guy.

 I need people to help me in all of these areas. So, hire the trainer before you buy a set of dumbbells that you’ll never actually lift in your own house. You know, things like that that are practical and relatable. But the key is you got to start stacking little wins. So you always have to be disciplined. Whether you know exactly what you’re doing or not, you’re really getting in there and moving. Did you, you know, you talk about crawl, walk, run. You are very fit right now.

 Did that change? Was that a 47 year old change? This is the best shape I’ve ever been in. Now, I was deaf. I was training in my 30s. I wasn’t smart about it. I wasn’t super healthy. Again, I was still drinking. There were periods of time I was smoking. When I hit 40, I got into CrossFit and I got pretty good, but I was getting hurt all the time. I looked great. I was burning the candle at both ends. That was not sustainable. – So you did the 40 year old, I’m gonna try CrossFit, which by the way, love CrossFit, but I think, you know, at 40, everyone’s like, okay, it’s time for CrossFit and then we get injured. – They called you a master at 40. I’m like, I like that. Okay, like that sounds good. – And I’m not saying anything bad about CrossFit. I love it. I’ve done it many, many times. Listen, I enjoy, I also have said this about CrossFit for years and a lot of, CrossFit isn’t inherently bad. There’s just a lot of bad CrossFit being practiced out there, like a lot of these things. And my workouts have continued to change as I’ve gotten older. And yes, we have to be more sensitive and careful about injury and yes, mobility and things like that matter more and I need more recovery time. I need more rest time. – Talk about that. You have to be more from the fitness aspect. You have a certain weight and body fat percentage you stay. You don’t necessarily plan the workouts because you’re moving all the body parts of full body workouts three to four days a week. – I don’t count calories either. I don’t count macros. Some people might want to do that. I don’t want more spreadsheets and more pressure and anxiety and stress in my life. I go by feel and I go by the mirror. – Which is kind of the opposite of what we talk about on this podcast and what we talk about on social media or people talk about on social media. And that was one reason quite frankly why I also wanted to have you on the show to talk about that. – But that’s why I use you also. I mean, let’s be honest, this is about seeking out the best and it’s not just to blow sunshine up your ass because we’re friends and are using here, but it’s the truth. Seek out the best individuals and professionals that can help you and then do what they tell you to do overall. So yes, do I get my blood work done? Yes, did I go on TRT at 49? Yes, have I been looking at that for years? You know, there are things that I do at 50 and 51 that I said I would never do in the 20th, 30th, and 40s and life changes. I reserve the right to change my mind as they say. – What did you think that you would never do? – I never thought I’d do TRT. I mean, I was a natural athlete for years. That was cheating. You know, that was not something I was gonna do. I would go up against guys that I knew were on it and everything and I didn’t need that and I’m not gonna do that. – Do you think a lot of guys still feel that way? – I think we’ve almost over indexed in the opposite direction a little bit now. I think there was always a really negative stigma about steroids and it was bodybuilding, it was cheating and it was all these things. And now there’s a TRT joint on every corner everywhere. And I think the pendulum has swung. So I see way too many young guys,

 over prescribed, all of that. But that’s, you know, listen, this is a very personal decision. I started getting my blood work done in my 40s and every year what I was seeing was I was seeing decreases.

 47, 48, ultimately careful decision, meeting new people, getting educated on it. I opted to go on it. – Did you feel poorly? Did you notice where you’re like, okay, you know, my sex drive isn’t as great, my body doesn’t look as great as I wanted to? – It was none of those. It was actually, look, I’m already bald. Let’s break down the stigma. I’m already bald. I had bad skin my whole life. What were the other stereotypes? I didn’t need to be any bigger or any more muscular.

 There was nothing I was trying to win or achieve. I was just, I had less energy. I didn’t have any erectile dysfunction. Didn’t I have any sexual issues? – 50% of men in 50 have some kind of erectile dysfunction. – Well, it’s the first questions you have to answer before you keep getting your prescriptions sent to you all the time. It’s all these erectile dysfunction questions and anxiety. – Or the atom questionnaire. – In there too. So I just went, no, no, that’s not my thing. If it was my thing, I would tell you. I would tell you mine was energy. It was purely about energy.

 I move at a pretty rapid pace. I want to have enough time to spend with my family, with my wife, to travel, to do the things I want to do, to earn the kind of money I want to earn, do the things I want to do. And I simply was not recovering the way that I used to. I simply wasn’t, I didn’t have the same kind of energy. It was, it was going, it was just getting harder to do the normal things that I was doing every day. We were just getting a little bit harder and a little bit harder. And it was like, what’s going on? And what can I possibly do about it? What can I do to course correct that? Maybe minimum effective dose? How can I get back to feeling like myself? And I think that’s kind of a sound strategy, if you will, back to standards. Like, what is the minimum that I need to do to perform at what I believe is my best? – And there’s a, there had been safety concerns in the past and really those are largely disproven, if not completely disproven. We know that testosterone replacement therapy for the right individual is safe, protective of bone and brain and all kinds of things. – You know better than anybody. And, but what I have learned and in my experiences, I do feel better.

 I carefully monitor, minimum effective dose is super, super important surrounding myself with people that I trust on this. And how does that work within, within the framework of the rest of, of, of my life? Because if you take anything and do nothing other than take something,

 like that’s not, that’s not it. That’s not it. It’s not a magic bullet. It’s not, it’s not a super thing like, oh, I don’t have to work out anymore. I don’t have to do this. Like there’s no point of stage in my life where I’m going to be fit enough. Where if I just stop, it’ll all just stay like that. Everything will be great. So you got to do the work, which is where the discipline comes in. You know, I do everything I naturally can possibly do

 to also keep my testosterone up, to keep my acuity up, to keep my anxiety down, to keep all of these things in harmony without also being an extremist. – What do you mean? What would be, what would someone consider extreme?

 – Well, we would just, look, I don’t listen to three and a half hours of Huberman. You just did his podcast. I don’t want to hear Atiyah tell me that I can’t mix my blueberries and bananas. Okay. Absolutely. But what I want, cut it down to me. Give me the cliff notes. Okay, doctor, you give me the cliff notes of what we’re talking about there. But I think there’s a lot of majoring in the minors. And we hear that a lot, a lot of majoring in the minors. – And that’s scary for a lot of guys, again, because it paralyzes a lot of guys. You don’t know where to start. You don’t think that’s achievable. You don’t think that’s possible. So how do we break it down to the simplest things we can do? Do you have an hour a day? – Yeah. – Four days a week. Okay, let’s find it. Show me your calendar. I’ll show you your priorities. We’d go through these rules. Now, what are we going to do with that hour four days a week? Are we going to walk? Are we going to lift? What are you going to put in your body? I don’t want to take 7,000 pills and spend $2 million a year like Brian Johnson. I can call some of this stuff out. Like, I don’t want to, I’m not interested in eating raw liver, or any of these things that I see. Those are extreme to me.

 What is real for a 50, call it even a 35 to 55 year old guy that just wants to be the best version of himself, defining what that looks like.

 How do you eat? 80% of the time I eat pretty clean. And you know what that is, chicken and fish and high protein and working on muscle and vegetables. And do I take five grams of creatine a day? Yes. Do I take a multivitamin? Yes. No, no, no, I take a few omega-3s. Yes, but beyond that, like, no. I don’t want to be a science experiment either. You want to keep things basic and in the middle. And by the way, you’ve been able to do it and be very fit and healthy and that is important. But here’s the thing, guys, and then not to cut you off of this, but like decide what’s best for you. That’s the whole point of mastering the middle. That’s the whole point of what we’re trying to do and I’m trying to do even with midlife now is show you what’s possible, what’s probable. Here’s a cross section of individuals from all different walks of life. What do we have in common? We’re all middle aged men. How does everybody do it? They all do it differently. Start to figure out what works for you. Find trusted resources that are there and utilize that. And again, build your personal operating system, your midlife action plan. And it doesn’t have to be complicated. If you asked me, better one or better two, would I rather have the cheeseburger, you know, or have, you know, a four pack instead of the six pack and the abs. Like I would trade some abs to have the cheeseburger. I got only get hit by a bus and not having had the cheeseburger in two years. There’s certain sacrifices I’m not willing to make. There’s a spectrum on all this. It’s interesting. It’s interesting hearing your perspective as a patient, as a midlife male, say, listen, it doesn’t have to be raw organs. It doesn’t have to be 20 pills where you’re structured and you’re doing X, Y, and Z. There’s a lot of fluidity with a set of standards that you have put into place. Is that fair to say? Yes, it is. If you want that again, you know, there is a range where I feel I am optimized for me. Optimized for the life that I want to have. This is how I want to dress. This is how I want to manage our money. These are how many clients I want to see. This is how much time I want to spend exercising and doing. That looks like success for me. There are guys, I look to guys that inspire me that are on a whole nother level out in front. I try not to look backwards. We’re not going that way. We’re looking forwards. We go in there, but there’s a whole spectrum of guys out there that I admire, that I respect, that inspire me, that are doing absolutely incredible things. I’m not going to deal.

 And I’m okay with that, but I can get, here’s how close I can get, or here’s how close I want to get. With what the time resources you’re willing to commit? Absolutely, because everything’s a trade. Everything is a trade-off. What about nutrition? What do you find is the biggest roadblock for the midlife man, midlife male in terms of nutrition? What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see? It’s lifestyle driven. They get into these habits and behaviors like you know, and that becomes the default and that becomes the standard. They’re eating out there. They’re networking, and networking involves eating out, and eating out. And it involves drinking, or it’ll be involved, maybe it’s golf for guys, and then they’re eating on the course, and they’re drinking at the turnaround, and they’re doing all these other things. It’s years again of habits and behaviors that have stacked up over time, and it’s hard to course correct. So you go one degree off course. It doesn’t seem like a lot. But you go one degree off course, and you stay one degree off course every day, every week, every year. You end up way off course. And you end up, if you’re going to California, you probably end up in Toledo. Exactly, and I think that’s what really happens to a lot of guys. They don’t see it coming. It’s gradual, and then all of a sudden, they’re 10, 15 years down the road. Right, and they’ve like, holy moly, how did you get to the 35, 36 inch waist? How did you get to over 200 pounds? And now, it seems like a big leap to try to get it back. What’s the first thing, sorry to interrupt, what’s the first thing that you tell these guys? Or what did you do? What was your first thing? Did you say, okay, I’m not drinking anymore? You know what, I’m done drinking. This is extra calories. I’m making bad choices.

 First thing I did was I started to ask myself a very simple question, better one or better two?

 What does that mean? Better one or better, do you know when you go to the eye doctor? Yeah, eye eye, yeah. The eye doctor in front of your eyes and they flip the lenses around and they go better one or better two over and over again. Well, I’ve had bad eyes my whole life, so I spent a lot of time with that machine. And again, I’m a simpleton, so I gotta break it down to something really simple. But what happens is when you flip those lenses around and you ask that question over and over again, they pull it back and they reveal clarity. Now you can read, you can see clearly. And it’s as simple as that. The first thing I did was I started asking myself that question about everything.

 And that’s something any male, female, anybody could do. Do I go through the drive-thru today, okay, and fill my pie hole full of unhealthy processed fast food? Okay, or do I– You did bring us cookies. Matthew ate a whole bun. Good, and I’m not anti that either. But who’s asking that question, okay? Do I go through the drive-thru today or do I get a healthier meal? Do I drink Coca-Cola today or do I swap that out for water? You can do this with everything. Do I roll out of bed in the morning and ignore Kate or do I give her a kiss in the morning and not take her for granted after all these years of marriage, you can do this over and over again. And saying, do I work out today or do I take the day off? Do I sleep in, do I get up? We know the answer. And eventually you don’t have to ask those questions all the time, right? Eventually you get to the point where you’re like, okay, this is what I do. Again, we typically know the answers to the test. It’s whether or not we’re willing to do it. And when I say, look, all I started doing was asking that question and then I started to make the better decision the majority of the time.

 And when you make the better decision the majority of the time, the majority of your life actually gets better.

 Not perfect, not 100% of the time. Cause there are days when I phone it in. There are days when I break the streak.

 And what do you do? You start over again. That’s it. – So you don’t do this self depreciation or just very critical of yourself. Is there, do you have strategies in place for when you go off track? – Rule number five, in the five, you know, in the five, in Greg’s five rules. – You do have five rules. I want to hear those five. So these are the five rules or virtues of the Optimal Life Mail. What is that? – Rule number one, knowing what’s important is what’s most important. We talked about that. For me, that became my six Fs. That’s what success looks like. You can create your own. Number two, if you don’t know where you’re going, you were never going to get there. We are building Midlife Mail into the premier lifestyle brand for middle aged men and the brands that want to reach them. We are going to help millions of men maximize middle age. That’s where we’re going. Number three, aggregate, curate, eliminate. Take all the noise out there and aggregate it, curate it down to what works for you, eliminate what doesn’t. That’s why you’re my doctor.

 Okay, number four, show me your calendar. I’ll show you your priorities. Don’t tell me, show me. If these things matter, schedule everything. What we schedule gets done.

 Number five, to your point, grace, gratitude and latitude. We are way too hard on ourselves. We beat ourselves up, especially as men. We take on all this responsibility, all this burden,

 and we’re hard on ourselves. You break the chain.

 Part of my life, fuck it. Start a new one the next day. You went seven days without drinking, okay? And then you drank. Let’s start over again. Because here’s what we’re doing. We’re making progress and progress is a process. And perfect is the enemy of good.

 – Do you think all this has helped you become a better father? – 100%.

 100%.

 I mean, we talk about legacy a lot. And I could hear a lot of talk about legacy.

 I wanna live my legacy.

 Like this is, the legacy is now. It’s what I’m doing today. It’s what I’m doing every day. It’s the fact that I can text a picture to my son in Scotland right now with your assistant, you know, who in high school with him and me here doing this. It’s about now I could take lunch off yesterday and go shopping with my other son. It’s about living and leading by example, being proud of yourself, looking in the mirror and being proud of who you are. There were years that I was not. And you can’t be a great husband and you cannot be a great father when you are not proud of yourself. – Yeah. – So absolutely.

 – And ultimately we’re making decisions to make people feel worthy and proud of themselves. – This stuff gets me emotional because it matters. – It does. There are a lot of again, unhappy men out there. You know, there are a lot of kids like me, okay, who need a father around, wanted a father around, or I think even sometimes worse, have their father in their life or even in their house, but not around. But not living and leading by example, by not being present, by not being healthy,

 by not being energized, again, by complaining all the time or drinking too much, you know, or settling, you know, all of these things, like, and it’s not to say that I have it all figured out at all, you know, or get everything right. I absolutely don’t, but it’s, are you doing the work? Are you trying? – And you’re willing to ask the question. – Yes, and you’re willing to acknowledge where you screw up and where you’re making mistakes and where those missteps are. And then how you course correct and how you try to get better. Cause like that’s, we’ve gotten so soft. – We have gotten soft. I mean, just in general as a society. And in that regard, it’s like, hey, like own it.

 Like own how you act, own what you do. Good, bad and indifferent.

 Share that, talk about it, put it out there. Like these Instagram highlight reels and like all this other, like, no, like life isn’t perfect. It’s not a highlight reel. Like show all the real stuff that is going on because we’re all dealing with that. – Yeah, we’re all trying to be the best for, I mean, I’m assuming everyone listening to this podcast or watching wants to be the best version of themselves. And it. – That’s, I think we attract and repel exactly what we deserve. And the reason you attract so many amazing people that want to be the best versions of themselves is because they see you living this way. They see you as a mom. They see you with Shane. They see the kids, they see what you’re doing. And that is hopeful and that is possible.

 But what you also do so well, which I think is important is that hope is not a strategy. – No, no. – Like here’s how you actually do it. Here’s what I do. I’ve seen your calendar. I know how hard it is to get on your calendar, on all of these things.

 There is no replacement for actually doing the work. – That’s absolutely true. – You just get to choose how much you want to do also. – Yeah. – You don’t have to hustle and grind 24 seven sleep when you’re dead. I don’t advocate for that either. – Which is an interesting perspective because in the age of the internet,

 there’s a lot of discussion about hustle and grind. It’s very divisive. So it’s the hustle and grind or it’s the warm bubble bath, de-stress, chill out. There is not a middle ground at all. – Go back to mastering the middle. I’m telling you again, the middle may be messy, but the middle is the sweet spot. And we all get to determine where that is for us. That’s a real personal, real individual decision. And you can look all around at all these things. That’s a cool thing. But at the end of the day, you really do get to decide for you. This is not about quitting your job and following your passion. This is not about having to be the CEO of the company. It’s not about having to have gazillions of dollars, not that hiring a personal concierge physician is out of reach. It’s about setting boundaries, having a plan,

 reverse engineering back to how you’re gonna execute on that plan, how you wanna live

 and making these things happen. Those are the guys that I work with. They’re all different ages, even in stages and positions of life. – I got some big news for you. I am so excited to announce a partnership with Quik Silver Scientific. Now, Quik Silver products, I have been using these for myself and in my clinical practice for years. So when I finally had the opportunity to partner with them, I couldn’t be more excited. Let me tell you about the three top products that I have been using for over six years and they are Thrivogen, Nanomojo, yeah, you heard it right, Nanomojo and Liposomal Glutathione. These products are amazing and here is why I love Thrivogen, which is a woman-based formula. It has a ton of adaptogenic herbs, meaning things that help the body’s resiliency. It has Ashwagandha, Rhodiola and many other herbs that help with resiliency, stress management and overall energy, which is one reason why I love it. And it’s in a formulation that allows for sublingual delivery, meaning you put it in your mouth, you hold it for 30 to 60 seconds and then you ingest it. It has been so helpful for me. And then the Nanomojo is a male-based formula. Nanomojo is absolutely incredible for guys that are really hard charging and it really helps with resiliency, stress management, all of the things that I’d mentioned earlier. These are two amazing products and then of course there’s Liposomal Glutathione for detoxification. If you have not tried any of these three products, you should go to Quicksilver Scientific, use the code Dr. Lion, that’s Quicksilver Scientific and use the code Dr. Lion for 15% off. One of the most important responsibilities you have as a human is to get your blood work done in a regular cadence. You cannot outwork, outthink or outmaneuver your own health. Health is the great equalizer to all dreams.

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 You have to be able to see if what you are doing is working and where you need to improve. Whether you want to improve your hormones, brain, heart health, inside tracker reveals the exact areas of your health that needs improvement through comprehensive blood testing, DNA analysis, sleep and fitness tracking data. And of course, currently your daily habits. I love you guys and deeply believe that you are responsible for your own health. So if no one is coming to save you, you have to save yourself and save 10% off the inside tracker subscription and any plan. Go to insidetracker.com slash Dr. Lion. That’s insidetracker.com slash Dr. Lion for 10% off inside tracker subscription and any plan. Do you think that there’s variations in the midlife crisis? Meaning there seems to be this conversation at 40 or 50, is that what people would say, okay, mid 40s, would that be midlife? Is it the midlife crisis? Is it 50? – So there’s four, there’s like four avatars that I see. One of them is the guys in their 40s that are right smack in the middle in the midlife crisis. And I almost don’t want to put so much of a number on that because the truth is I know some really old 30 somethings and some really young 60 somethings. I don’t think it’s as much of a number as it is a mindset.

 But the guys that hit that midlife crisis for whatever reason, they’re hitting it. Again, it could be, you know, could be work related. It could be, you know, relationship and partner related. It could be they’ve gotten to the top of the proverbial mountain and they look around and they’re lonely and they’re like, wait a minute, what did I, what I give away? All of these reasons. But there are those guys that are typically, you know, in their 40s in the midlife crisis. There are now guys in their 30s. It’s a really interesting demographic. The younger guys that have seen the hustle and grind,

 okay, they’ve also seen their dads, their grandparents, maybe their bosses, everything else. And they don’t want to be like that. They’re seeing around the bend. They really want to know where the puck is going. They want to avoid it altogether. That’s a really interesting demographic that can really move the needle. How do I not get into a midlife crisis at all? – How do you think someone listening to this is going to think, okay, I don’t know, I’ve hit a midlife crisis. Is it action oriented? Are they buying more stuff? Are they shopping? Are they cheating? What do you think, you know, again, you’ve studied this, which is interesting that you were so inspired to study this and also have spoken to so many middle aged men. – The yellow portion ain’t going to do it. It looks, some guys look, again, like or whatever. Yellow, red, whatever the color is, okay. But you know, the sports car is not going to do it. You know, the affair is not going to do it. The younger woman, if that’s okay, isn’t going to do it. The retail therapy, you know, isn’t going to do it overall. You could take all the stereotypes of trying to dress like you’re 20 again, you know. It’s not going to do it. It starts with you. It’s internal.

 And then I go back to, it starts with your health. It really does. It starts, the mirror doesn’t lie. – So you should be proud of being able to go to the pool or the beach and really know that you did the best that you could. – And I don’t just mean that from an aesthetic standpoint. I mean, be the best of what you are genetically predisposition to be. You know, the aesthetics are a bonus of healthy living. What I mean, when you really get raw and you get real and you get naked and you look in the mirror, it’s like, what’s behind your eyes? Are you being honest with yourself? Are you being truthful there? Are you really, again, doing your best? Whatever that is. It’s not about being jacked or ripped or any of those things. Again, like you can achieve that to whatever degree you are willing to go and you want to put in, but it’s more about that feeling about, hey, like, am I the man that I want to be? Define masculinity however you want, but am I happy with myself? Am I proud of myself? If you are like, you’re not going to be in crisis.

 – Do you think there’s one area where people really struggle?

 More so than others?

 I get that it’s completely individual, but again, after studying and looking, do you think that there’s an area? – I think the loneliness thing for men is real. I do think so.

 I get why the suicide percentage is high. You know, I wrote an article a while back

 on like, I’m the guy who kills himself. – Wow, I mean, that’s pretty intense. – But you don’t see it coming.

 The guys from the outside looking in, everything looks great.

 – Is it because maybe men don’t ask for help as much or maybe they don’t feel comfortable? – In my experience, that’s it.

 I don’t feel comfortable with it.

 I still work on dealing with my emotions, vulnerabilities, willingness, if you will, to expose weakness

 or what could be perceived as weakness, or maybe that’s a strength, or you keep hearing like, oh, the more vulnerable you get, the more you let out, this is not a weakness, it’s a strength and everything. Let me tell you something, that is hard to convince somebody who’s not used to doing that, that that’s the way that they got to go. And I’ve tried therapy, I’ve tried a lot of these things. And I have not had success with it, with unpacking a lot of these things. And I think there’s a lot of pent up, I think guys get a lot of pent up sadness, a lot of regret, a lot of how did I get here? I’ve done all the things I’m quote unquote supposed to do and for some reason, something still feels like it’s missing

 and I get it.

 And I don’t wanna dump it on my friends and again, I don’t wanna dump it on my coworkers or colleagues, or I certainly don’t wanna bring it home. So we internalize it all. And then you try to train your way out of it, or train your way through it. Let me do all- – Exercise, right? – Let me do all these things again, because I’m gonna keep working and keep working it out through it. It’s like, there’s a reason, like I try, there are other reasons I train the way I do, there’s other reasons I can’t, and it’s to cover up a lot of other shit. – You think that guys listening can relate to that?

 – I think so. – Yeah. – I mean, I hope so. I don’t think I’m special. I don’t think I’m alone. – I will say a lot of my private concierge patients are men and part of the reason I think there’s been a dynamic that’s been very successful with them, whether they’re seals or tier one operators, CEOs,

 people that really wanna push the needle is because of that actual conversation, because oftentimes I feel that they’re willing to speak to me, whether it’s because I’m a woman or maybe nurturing, and I think what you’re saying is very true. – I’m able to talk to you right now. My heart rate is absolutely normal. We can talk about anything here. For whatever, you put a microphone, we can talk about anything here.

 I’m able to do it on my own podcast. I’m actually able to do it on stage.

 I can’t do it at home. – That’s fascinating. And probably a lot of people can. – And I can’t do it with most of my best friends. – Hear about that, yeah. – It feels, it’s different. There’s something about, maybe again, it’s call it a persona, okay? Call it a character. Call it, you know, Greg’s not being Greg. He’s the midlife male when I’m doing these things or whatever, but when you peel it back and you’re home or you’re by yourself or you’re with your family or with your friends,

 that’s, I think, look, it’s really hard for me. I think it’s hard for a lot of guys. And I’ve been to now so many of these, not so many, but a lot of these experiences, the weekends in the woods now. – Lots of bugs.

 – Yeah, and again, you get the guys that go to these things. There’s something interesting about, again, anonymity also. You show up there, they don’t know you, you don’t know them.

 These guys get there and it’s like, they can’t wait to throw up all over it because they’ve been holding everything in for so, so long and they don’t tell anybody that’s close to them for so long. Did you leave some of these weekends and it’s like you’ve heard things from guys they’ve never shared with anybody else and there’s that kind of like, we can only really do this when it’s confidential. You know, we can only really do this when we’re in the woods in Vermont. We can only really do this after we’ve hiked 10 miles. It’s really interesting. – How do you think men can create a network of safety, security to open these conversations that they don’t have to go to the woods in Vermont or maybe they have to? – Yeah.

 I think it’s, again, a little bit different for everybody. I mean, and for men in that regard, there are some men that want to acclimate or acclimate it or able and be more comfortable, whether it’s a group environment. Maybe it is one-on-one therapy. Maybe it’s they like to read or they like to listen to shows like this and they like to feel like wherever they can get that connection, they can get that support. I think, again, it’s different for every guy. What I think is really important is that we show that it’s all possible. We show that anything you need,

 whatever you’re looking for, it exists. It gets out there right now. You just have to be willing to go out and find it and be willing to do it. And that can be, again, just taking that step, that test and retest, that trial and error, just, hey, it may not be the thing for you, the thing that you try, but try something else. Try something, again, progress is a process. Maybe you are the guy that wants to go to Cabo and sit in a circle and pass a talking stick around. Maybe you do better at the silent retreat. Maybe you do better listening

 to the Dr. Gabrielle Lyon show week in and week out and hearing this. It’s different, again, for everybody. I’m still trying to figure that out. One of the things that I enjoy most is trying different things, going, okay. – Different experiences. – Different experiences, being around different kinds of people, going, how did that make me feel?

 Again, one or two, better or worse, okay. Am I comfortable here? Did my anxiety go up? Did it go down? You know, does this fill my tank and I feel energized? Do I feel drained from this? Look, for years, you come over on Sundays right now, I’ll give you an example. We have a great group of people that comes over on Sundays right now. Garage door rolls up, everybody comes in, everybody’s awesome. Do you know how many years I spent inviting people to work out with me at my house and nobody showed up?

 Years, and I felt like a complete loser, complete outlier. I was inviting all the wrong people.

 – Wow. – I was inviting all the wrong people. I was in the wrong type of kind of community. And it’s like, you know how many people spent years trying to get me to golf with them too?

 It’s a similar thing. Like you’ve got to keep trying. One thing I say is, you know, chasing authenticity where authenticity doesn’t exist, it’s exhausting.

 When you’re trying to be something you’re not,

 it’s gonna suck the life out of you. When you go back to just being yourself,

 you’re gonna be energized. And again, you’re going to start attracting, repelling exactly what you deserve. And it is remarkable. It starts to become effortless in that regard. – Yes, that’s probably how you really know you’re on the right track. I mean, yes, you have to grind for a certain amount of time. I’m not really talking about that. I’m talking about living in alignment and being authentic. And you’d mentioned virtues or your five rules, you begin to do these things. And obviously life is work, that is true. But there are things that become effortless. Friendships, for example, our friendship, it’s effortless. Things that when you are in sync begin to show up. It’s not difficult. – You know it. You see somebody’s name pop up on your call or ID and you know it immediately. You either can’t wait to answer that call or you can’t wait to decline that call in all of these things. And make it fun. And we go back to something like that. Make the process as fun as it can possibly be. You work exceptionally hard. And I say now I’m working harder than I’ve ever worked. I didn’t anticipate it, but it’s very, very different.

 Like it’s energizing now because when you find what it is, again, that you really enjoy doing and you’re being of service and you’re helping other people and you’re making a difference, it’s both it’s selfish and it’s selfless at the same time. Like it really does feed everything. – For sure. – And it’s a different kind of tired. You know, I have a client, he said this and I sell it for my client because I thought it was so great. He’s like, I just want to wake up energized and go to bed tired. The good kind. Not the kind that I’ve been doing for the last 20 years. – That’s so simple. You want to wake up, be energized and go to bed tired. The good kind of tired. – Yeah.

 It’s a pretty good, look, it’s a good standard to set. – It is a good standard to set. – You can do that. – Do you find that stress management and avoiding burnout really become a thing?

 – Yes.

 I think we’re all wired differently.

 And my bandwidth is different from your bandwidth, from other people’s bandwidth. And like I do three personal and three professional things per day. That’s my bandwidth. – You’re very structured about it. – In that regard, that’s my bandwidth. – I’m going to try that. I’m going to see, I’m just going to see. I’ve never even thought about that. – Yours could be 17 and 17. – I just never thought about it. So I’m going to try it. – But that was trial and error. – I’m going to try it. – I tried scheduling more clients per day. – I’m not the one who’s listening or watching to try this. – We’re all going to do it. We’re going to at least, I’m hoping you guys will do it with me. – And you don’t need anything fancy for this. I actually use personal stationery for this. What I do is I have little index cards basically with my name at the top of it for accountability. And every day I take out one of the cards and I draw a line down the middle and I write personal and professional. – What would be a personal thing that you do for yourself? I want to hear just examples of both. So I can make my own. – Personal three mile walk. – Okay. – Three mile walk today with my dogs. – Okay. – Personal would be sauna and cold punch.

 Personal would be go out for lunch with Harper.

 Personal would be dinner, you know, stop my work day at five o’clock or whatever and go out to dinner, early dinner with Kate. Personal could be anyone, you know, FaceTime with Auden because he’s away. You know, and I make him do that with me. – Do you have a timeframe for how long the personal is gonna take? – I don’t. I just, and a lot of times my three personal things are the same, like they’re, a lot of times they’re the same. It’s the habit of writing them down that keeps me disciplined in order to do them. – I love this. And then what about professional? – Professional? – I’m practicing today. – Yep. So professional, we all have this too. A never ending list of things that we have to get done. – This is true. – It keeps growing, especially professionally. We think that everything is important and we can be very reactive to answering emails, getting involved in projects, getting invited to, whatever it might be, professional, the list of obligations are long, whatever role you are in. That’s not going away.

 Where we really have to get smart on this is again, we have to prioritize. So from that laundry list of things that is never going away, and I have three pads in my backpack right now,

 I picked the three most important things for that particular day.

 And that’s what I write down. So today I’m podcasting with you. Today I had a coaching client who was in town. I brought him with me to say, “Hi to you, he wanted to meet you.” Okay, you should be used to getting stuck. These are the kinds of things that you do to help one another. Then the third thing today is I have to write the newsletter for Sunday.

 And if I do those three things today, today is a successful day. Now you combine that as long as I get, and I get my workout in, I get my family time in that’s in there, I get a recovery in.

 You mean an additional recovery? No, I’m saying those are my six things in total. Today I will work out, today I will spend time with Harper, today I will be sawn in recovery. Today I will podcast with you, today I will see my coaching client, and today I will write my newsletter.

 Okay. Is there more to do? Is there more that I could do? Absolutely.

 But you talked about burnout. Yeah. Okay, you talked about– It seems like a lot of people get very burned out or they run very hot and then– I think we wanna go from zero to 100 over you’re gonna blow the engine. You go from 100 to zero, you’re gonna fry the bricks. Go back to the middle. You draw, I’ve seen you, we draw that line right in the middle again. For me, that’s three and three. When I try to do more–

 You know what happens– I burn out.

 I get tired, I get frustrated, my anxiety level goes up, my stress goes up, my performance goes down.

 You know, it is the return, the ROI, or what I call R-O-L, return on life, it goes down. I like that, the return on life. It goes down. I need time.

 So? What do you do when you–

 Because downtime was not in the personal or professional. But if I only do those things per day, there’s actually, there’s plenty of downtime. When I schedule that, if you put those things on the calendar, there is downtime. That’s really only six things. It’s probably gonna take me an hour, hour and a half to write the newsletter. It’s gonna take me an hour, hour and a half to be with my client today. This is gonna take us two hours. I could do this for seven, okay? Because there’s plenty of time available.

 Where I really had trouble and burnout was, boom, I got a seven to eight, then I got an eight to nine, then I got a nine to 10, then I got a 10 to 10, 15, then I got a 10, 15. This stuff sounds exhausting, right? Day in and day out. – Sounds exhausting, yes. – I have a 17-step morning routine. I gotta get up and I gotta meditate. – But you don’t really, guys, it doesn’t work. – Right, and I got a journal. And I got a journal. My point is, I don’t, no, that doesn’t work for me.

 That stuff sounds exhausting. That is burnout. I’ve tried more. This is the test and retest. I’ve tried less, guess what? I don’t make enough money, okay? I’m bored. I’m not stimulated enough in there. I’ve tried a lot more. Then I get tired. Then I get anxiety-ridden. Then I make mistakes. Then I’ll lose a client. Then I will all, so what did we find? We found in the middle, this is my middle.

 And that could be different for anybody. – If there was one piece of advice that you would give yourself, or your younger self, or your kids, what would it be?

 – This I got from our friend Gunnar Peterson. I don’t give advice. – I love that answer. It’s probably the best answer that I have heard. – Shout out to Jay. I don’t give advice. When he said it to me, I was like, “Oh, I love this guy.” Because that’s, I share experiences.

 And in my experience, what I would say is the most important thing is slow down.

 Take a beat.

 We got time. You got time.

 It is not too late, wherever you are.

 – That’s just a wonderful statement. And people should listen and hear. And you’ve just said so many incredible things. I would ask you how you envision the conversation of where the new midlife is.

 – I think the midlife is going also where you’re going. I love this notion of being forever strong. I think that’s mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, familial, financial.

 It’s every one of those areas.

 And what I hope to change, we’ve talked about possibility and probability is that when people hear midlife, they get excited. Instead of getting depressed, instead of thinking it’s synonymous with crisis or the beginning and the end, they get excited.

 That here’s opportunity to take all that we’ve learned and we continue to learn and apply it to make the next phase of our life the best phase. And if I can be even a tiny part of that, like that’s everything. That’s living the legacy. That to me is a life without regret.

 – I mean, I could talk to you probably for another two hours but everything you said is very powerful and it landed with me. And I know that if it landed with me, it really landed with the listener.

 Again, this is kind of a coming of age story. It’s like this idea of in your twenties, doing this thing. First of all, losing your father so young and then going through life and almost each decade finding something new and landing in a place at 47 where he didn’t live to see 48,

 where you’re really taking a pause and really changing things for guys. And again, we’re not talking about Navy SEAL training. We’re talking about a real life, midlife male

 who wants to have meaning and purpose and doesn’t wanna have regret for the second half quarter of their life. And I really applaud you for doing those things because we need you. – Thank you. Well, we need you.

 (both laughing) – Get your colonoscopy friends. – That’s what we need. We need you. We need more of this. And I think the more we put out there and the more you put out there, then the more people’s lives can be positively affected. And this is not again exclusive to men. I’ll just end up with this. And 40% of even the inquiries I get are from women

 and not even about themselves, but women who want the men in their lives to be better. They want them to be happier. They want them to be healthier. They are married to them or even they’re divorced with them and they have to co-parent with them for the rest of their lives or it’s their brother or it’s their father.

 Or if it’s one of their colleagues that they work with. So, you know, it’s everywhere. – It is, it’s very pervasive. And I really believe that you’re changing the conversation of what it means to be a midlife male. – Thank you. – Thank you so much. And people can find you at, is it the midlife male? – You could go to midlifemail.com. You could go to at Greg Scheinman on Instagram. You could subscribe to the newsletter and the podcast as well. I’m certainly not hard to find. You could download my free PDF, you know, “No BS Guide to Maximizing Midlife” by the book. You know, the list is, I’m really, really lucky and blessed that the list, you know, keeps growing in that regard of trying to make as much as I can available. – Thank you so much. – Thank you. – The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon podcast and YouTube are for general information purposes only and do not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional healthcare services, including the giving of medical advice. And no patient-doctor relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast YouTube or materials linked from a podcast or YouTube is at the user’s own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition. They may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professional for any such conditions. This is purely for entertainment and educational purposes only.