Episode 102 – Kasper Van Der Meulen on Human Performance, Writing, Teaching and much more

welcome to the human experience podcast the only podcast designed to fuse your left and right brain hemispheres and feed it the most entertaining and mentally engaging topics on the planet as we approach our ascent please make sure your frontal temporal and occipital lobes are in their full upright position as you take your seat of consciousness relax your senses and allow us to take you on a journey we are the intimate strangers thank you for listening they

hired me some nineteen year old kid off the street doesn’t even want to be a teacher they don’t take it seriously I’m not gonna take it seriously so I literally started just experimenting and then I meet this guy who I used to hang out with who was basically a drug addict and a criminal and now he’s the super wealthy successful internet marketing guy if you believe you are or you can do or be something you you can’t do it right it’s that simple but the one thing

that remains unshakable is whenever I have a moment of clarity I realize what I’m really here to do I realize where I came from who I really am and what the most important thing is for me and that is to share these stories and put them out there so that people can be helped by

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what’s up guys you are listening to the human experience and Wow just another home run episode here for you guys our guest Casper or Vander Molen he is actually a friend of mine that I spent some time with in LA and learning from him I really wanted to bring him on the show you guys are gonna love this conversation there’s a lot of practical usable tools we even get into a reading exercise that Casper walks me through which you can apply and use in

your everyday life usually we cut out the episode for members only we’re not doing that with this episode because it’s that good so enjoy this one thank you so much for listening the human experience is in session my guest for today’s mr. Casper or Vander Molen Casper my good sir welcome to hxp Thank You mana I feel very welcome and I’m very happy that you’ll have me did I say your last name right because I’ve known you for at least a year but I

don’t know how to say your last name is it Newland you did that’s as good as any American has ever said it I appreciate that Casper I’m really glad to have you here man I loved mine lift and I love your story why don’t you take us through that tell us a little bit about yourself and who you are today and then and then we’ll go back to what made you into who you are today yeah oh that’s a great way to phrase the question because the way that my life is

now it’s a lot of fun and there’s a lot of adventure and there’s decent amounts of success and a lot of people see it and then they’re like that’s amazing and I want that and most people if they don’t look beyond that they don’t get the see with the back story is so right now it’s a lot of fun I started let’s say two and a half years ago when I had this wild idea of writing a book in 30 days based on the challenges I’d been through and I was in

a hunt or the most disempowering and limiting booty ifs that I had about myself and about my life and about what I could do and I realized that I’d always learned and being taught that I couldn’t focus I couldn’t concentrate you know I was the kid in the back in the classroom could focus and I could never be good at books like I was I wouldn’t read books let alone ever write one so those were two really big limiting beliefs I had about

my life so I was like you know what let’s see how hard I can crush those so I decided to write a book about focus basically and mindset and lifestyle within 30 days so that I had to really challenge everything that I knew about it but also apply everything and I was writing about in that moment and I did that and the book came out about two years ago in Dutch and ever since then it’s been an amazing adventure in the meantime you know we had a baby my wife

quit her job we’ve built this lifestyle where we’re traveling around the world we’re teaching people these principles of lifestyle enhancement of health and happiness through practice and right now it’s it’s very exciting there’s amazing things coming one of them that I’ve been really looking forward to is this podcast I know how big your reach is and how well you reach people and how much your listeners love this show so it’s an

honor to be here thanks man I really truly appreciate that your story is amazing and I I want to talk about your childhood our childhood it’s such a defining thing for us and it really kind of characterizes who we become you know like who what we become so you know what was something in your childhood that affected you deeply I think that’s a great great question because everybody has an origin story that has formed them the way they are

and for some people it’s for example losing a loved one for some people it is coming through basically any kind of hardship or being in negative social surroundings or you know addiction depression whatever it may be and those are a deep depth in life but then if you work through them they can become your biggest strength that’s why I love this topic in particular so one of the bigger challenges I had it was kind of a combination of everything I just

mentioned but it all started with not being able to connect in my direct social surroundings and I was you know the weird quirky fat kid in the back of the classroom I couldn’t really get along with the subject matter in school with the people around me I was being bullied and then I had my own little world inside my own head that I was really into and certain creative modes that I couldn’t express theirs I didn’t feel a freedom of expression in that

time so this was between I was about between 7 and 10 I had a hard time with people judging me and people bullying me but the most difficult part was the way that I bullied myself basically based on other people’s opinions and this whole concept of I feel that I am this way and I feel that I’m supposed to express myself this way but in no way is it being accepted or applauded my direct surroundings and it was it was tough times

my mother remembers me telling her when I was a kid that I didn’t want to go on with life and I can’t I can’t remember being suicidal but I can remember this feeling of how am I supposed to deal with this life this is a very difficult thing this thing called life and what’s interesting is that a lot of people who are supposed to be role models like teachers for example they pretend to have life figured out and they play this game of look I know how life is and as

long as you listen to me and you know do what I do then you’ll also maybe finally be good enough to know how life works and I very quickly caught on to the fact that that’s the scan right it’s it’s one of the biggest lies told in modern society is that you know people tell you follow along these lines just do what I do I’ve got my stuff figured out and then maybe one day you’ll be good enough be part of the whole thing and to really play the game

and as soon as I started to realize that that basic authority that life is built on it it all started to crumble so that’s definitely one of these origins stories actually this is really interesting about stories by the way what I love about the modern world is that storytelling has become the best commodity in the world so the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are tuning in to podcasts like these are millions of people I should say is

because people are standing up and telling their stories and I think that stories are like the fundamental technology of humankind to really evolve and connect and to understand each other it’s like the currency of you know transaction energetic transaction but I want to go back to something that you said that really impacted me and something you said about you know the real opponent was yourself paraphrasing your words a little bit but the

perception that you had of yourself was determined based on this outside view of what other people said to you but the real hurdle was just you right absolutely yeah and I and there have been a few periods in my life where I was really in deep depressions and has struggled with addiction and feeling burnt out and all of that and the biggest problem is that we sometimes don’t see how everything in our life is our own responsibility and the way in

which we think in each moment and act in each moments determines our results in life right so some things aren’t your fault there’s kids being put through horrible things and there’s people who just get caught by disease or by hardship it’s not your fault but there’s a big difference between fault and responsibility and I feel that being able to see the fact that everything in your life is your own responsibility even if it’s not your fault that gives a

lot of freedom so for me one of the biggest things that I had to take responsibility for was the fact that I was judging myself based on what other people told me so other people’s truths only become your truth if you accept them and if you live them this is the big pitfall of the human mind in a way one of the big pitfalls is that we overestimate other people’s valuation of who we are and we underestimate our ability to change that

valuation and to change the way we look at ourselves it’s a beautiful way to paraphrase it because my own opponent was me it was my you know destructive thoughts my destructive behavior my obsessive behavior around you know substances and around anything that I could use to get me out of present reality so the first thing that people do when they when they’re their own worst critic is that they try to shape and change and escape from reality

instead of facing how powerful and how amazing they really are I still have these moments of doubt and these moments of worry and I can tell you like writing a book and having my way of thinking out there imprint on thousands of bookshelves in the world where people can just see whatever I think about life that is really magnified the the fear of you know people judging me which is basically judging myself you know but the one thing that remains unshakable is

whenever I have a moment of clarity I realize what I’m really here to do I realize where I came from who I really am and what the most important thing is for me and that is to share these stories and put them out there so that people can be helped by your mission right it’s it’s really ingrained in your DNA it’s something that you know you live for and this was a big transition for you so you became a teacher and there was a point within the educational

system where you were sort of disillusioned by the system you did a sort of 180 and you wanted to teach and that was your main draw you and you were teaching middle school yeah so great nine through eleven I think you know different school systems but that’s about the that age range okay so high school ish and I said yeah so how long did you do that I did that for about nine years which is really interesting it’s the only job I’ve ever had I’ve never had even like

the smallest little side job anywhere I literally walked into his school reluctant to be a teacher actually I didn’t want to be a teacher and you know nine years later I left with this new career path in mind or at least with this new book in hand to try to give what I’ve learned in nine years in the education system as a science teacher working with kids to give that to a bigger audience I see some parallels starting to form you know with what

you’re teaching and and I think it’s a good moment to bring up mine lift you know we so you call this mental fitness for the modern world and I I love this challenge that you gave yourself to write a book in 30 days I mean who does that right so going back to just your life as a teacher what happened was there a moment that you remember where you just you had enough you wanted to make that turn into writing was there a single event that did this well it was one of

those where it’s a culmination of all these different events and there was one moment where it really popped out but the I’ll give it a little bit of backstory before the moment because like I said I was 19 years old I walked into a school and because I had such a hard time in school I couldn’t go straight to study University because I wanted to be a scientist and in one of the study biology at the University but I was you know I didn’t have a very successful

school career myself in high school so I had to do like an internship in the field of biology and the only thing available was basically a teaching internship but I didn’t want to be a teacher because in my mind those were the bad guys I always felt like the teachers were the ultimate bullies because there were the ones allowing the bullying and they weren’t the ones not allowing me to learn in my own way so I had a lot of resentment for it and I

walked into the school this guy who was supposed to be like my mentor in that period he greeted me and I basically said to him like you know I’ll do some copying I’ll get some coffee I’ll do some chores but don’t let me do any teaching that’s not for me right and then he was like I think you might be a teacher actually and before I could actually say no he just opened the door and he was standing right next to a classroom he shut me in he says go and teach what’s

this guy doing right and he gives me this physics worksheet which at the time was actually my worst subject I’ve worked as a science teacher but my main thing was biology physics was not my strongest side right and I don’t know what happened but I walked in and I started talking and these kids started laughing and kind of went for the flow and and an hour later he walked back in and the kids were smiling I was having fun I felt amazing and like charged and

in flow and he looked at me and he was like see I told you you were a teacher and I was like man what happened there and interestingly then they even offered me a job I was 19 I didn’t even finished my education but they needed a science teacher they saw something in me and they hired me and I was like you know if they’re not gonna take this seriously because I was like if they hired me some 19-year old kid off the street doesn’t

even want to be a teacher they don’t take it seriously I’m not gonna take it seriously so I literally started just experimenting and I started trying stuff they just walked into the classroom and I was like let’s see how far we can take this and how much fun I can have before they kick me out right so I walk into a classroom and go hey guys so what do you want to learn today and they go why are you asking us and I just went well

because I’m interested so what do you want to learn and how shall we learn it and that was the main way of teaching that I use and it was an amazing ride and interestingly if you don’t take yourself seriously but you do take the work seriously then suddenly you can think innovatively which was I didn’t even try to innovate but it was like they started giving me all these opportunities to do like innovation projects and teach other teachers the

way that I was successfully teaching these kids right and if there were classes with kids that were all messed up and all over the place they would send me in and I would kind of like set them straight at least that was what they thought I was doing like I would go in and be drill sergeant but I was really just going in and being nice to them and asking questions so I was kind of on intuition doing things that work but it didn’t really know what I was

doing and then at one point so this is the the answer to the question at one point there was a conference in London it was called learning without frontiers and they were going to bring together like a thousand minds in education innovation to discuss different topics and one of the guys there was Sir Ken Robinson who has the best watched TED talk ever which is called do schools kill creativity and two things happen at the same time so I went to London for

the conference and instead of me being this weird guy just going off the cuff having success in the school system but not really knowing what I did and also I had this frustration with the system because why do these kids enjoy it so much when they’re in my class but then in the next class they have a really hard time right so why this is system work in a way that where they’re not empowered so I went there with that mindset and actually I was on my own in

London I opened up Facebook and this guy added me who was a good friend 14 15 years ago when I was doing drugs and hang out in the street as a kid basically and he invites me over to his hotel and it’s like the fanciest hotel in the city and I’m like what’s this guy been doing right and it turns out he’s been massively successful his name is marked by the way he wrote a book about the whole story it’s a fun thing that we’re now both authors and he was like

yeah man you can just you can just do this you know and I was like what are you talking about he’s like you can go in a business you can be successful you can make money and have the lifestyle you want you could do that that was like what I’d never even considered it so two things came together my frustration for the education system but also being at this conference for all these great minds were that we’re saying the things that I’ve been thinking and feeling the

whole time and I was like maybe I’m not crazy maybe I really get this but I’m just one of the few people and now I’m finally meeting my peers so that was an interesting perspective and then I meet this guy who I used to hang out with who was basically a drug addict and a criminal and now he’s the super wealthy successful internet marketing guy and so in that weekend those two things came together and I was like you know what I

should stop pretending like I’m not taking this seriously I should step my game up and really create a very clear vision and a mission to build something bigger than me just messing around in the classroom so that was a really pivotal moment yeah that is such a profound story love love that it’s almost you know reminds me of Joseph Campbell’s hero journey it’s almost as if you were at that moment sort of presented this break through but then also this

challenge to you know how are you gonna accomplish this how are you gonna create this new life for yourself and how are you gonna do all these different things and one of the things that you did was you wrote mine lifts I really want to get into that I mean each chapter has something different in it is there something about mine lift that you find yourself talking about or is there anything that you think you know people would want to hear about something that

you have noticed in other people if that makes sense well that yeah that’s that’s a really cool question that’s probably the most original question that I’ve gotten in 18 podcast interviews in the last two years so that’s also welcome to expound yeah my great job so one thing that I find very interesting is that people are they are in a way passionate about changing their life and they want to change their results and they always

want to have the most practical insight so what can I do now and they always ask me like what’s your best protocol and then go well I eat some of that or maybe I do this meditation thing or that breathing thing okay okay so how long and how often and what time of day and and I want to say something like I don’t know it’s your mind in your life you have to figure it out but that doesn’t work right and I’m a teacher so I want to give them something making you eight

so I make like little protocols that people can instantly use and and what I found interesting is that I really tried my best to explain this system and I always say the system’s behind the symptoms so the mechanisms that produce the results and I found that people are much more interested in learning the quick fix techniques people who read my book because my book is like fifty things that you can implement right away that are simply you don’t need to

understand how they work and just do them but then when I speak and I start to explain science I noticed that people at first I kind of like hold on now here’s all this kind of like graphs and and yeah you know physiological systems and scientific studies and they assume that it too difficult for them and that’s what I find really interesting so they even though if they’ve already felt the results of the practice for example I tell people you know go take cold

showers every day or go do this meditation technique every day they’ve already felt the results and still they’re kind of reluctant to get into this scientific mindset and then my background is in teaching basically 11 to 15 year olds that don’t want to learn science right so my toolkit is based on that and if I approach it in that way and make it fun and interesting then certainly they really open up to it and what I’ve learned from that is that not

just kids in school have a hard time learning because they feel disempowered but those kids have now grown up and they still as soon as somebody starts speaking abstract or scientific terms they get into that disempowered mindset of learning something that they find difficult right and but then when I break it down they go that’s amazing I do more of that because we have these mental and physical states that we find ourselves in and my work is really about

the question how do you influence those and there’s two ways to look at it you have these very practical things that you can implement right away that I give people a lot but if you also understand the underlying mechanisms of how and why they work then you can start to view life in a completely different way and looking back on it I see that people have a very high interest for learning it but they don’t know it yet most people that I meet they go like oh

that’s very interesting does it work yes okay you’re fine right so the few that I’m trying to teach people is your human being is a set of very complicated interrelated biological physiological chemical systems and these systems they produce an output and these outputs are what we call the results in our life now these results a lot of times deal the people as though they are happening to them right especially if you don’t feel

like you’re in full responsibility of your lives like oh now I’m angry I’m sad all my health is bad or now this happens right they feel like they’re at affect to those things now as soon as I start to teach people and I try to teach people to look at these physiological systems and ask okay so there’s a system and there’s an output that we call a result what is the input where did it come from how did it shapes how does it influence these specific systems that I

have what is my personal physiology what is my mental toolkit how do these things do states that I’m in every day and I feel that that’s the answer to your question that I’m giving now might also become my next book I’ve been really thinking about this thing so I’m hope I’m making a clear statement because this question is so original that I don’t have any pre friend answers wouldn’t want to take you out of your pre framed answers man I

love that perspective and I also find it to be very true very accurate it’s as if when you’re at a seminar or when you’re at a conference or when you’re at somewhere where learning is induced and you’re seeing these people speak or when people are coming to see you speak they’re in a state where they’re ready to sort of absorb what you have to say but then when they go home it’s a little bit more difficult to apply it you have

to really want it right you really have to want it for yourself and in that moment when you’re giving a person this technique if they believe that they can’t do that technique or if they have this preset belief that they will fail at that technique that’s exactly what will happen absolutely and this has been measured physiologically with athletes and your belief and what’s in your mind before you attempt an action is what determines the outcome so if you think

you can do something probability you will be more likely to do that thing then if you do absolutely and that’s what I love about understanding I love love love about understanding the human physiology and psychology because here’s the thing I basically I work in the human potential field right and so do you but to really understand the full magnitude of human potential you have to also really understand and embrace the fundamental flaws of human psychology

one of them is beliefs belief systems right and you see it in the placebo effect and you see it in the example you just gave and it’s been studied in so many different ways that the way that you focus your mind the way that you focus your intentions really determines the quality of your life this is such an interesting thing because it works both ways exactly like you just said it’s such a perfect example where if you believe you are or

you can do or be something you can’t do it right it’s that simple but it’s just a simple the other way around and we all have in our lives built up this mental and emotional database almost like a set of bookmarks that tell us how we feel and what we believe about the things that we encounter in our lives right so what’s interesting about that and this is why I said also understanding the fundamental flaws we pick up those systems in relation to our direct

environment and in relation to direct situations in our life most of them which is why I love how you started the podcast about asking about childhood because most of these systems are picked up in childhood yes so you find a child finds itself in a situation that is unbearable that is difficult where the world doesn’t make any sense then it tries to find a solution you know for example children who are in a bad breakup between their parents or

children who have a situation of abuse or who have a parent that needs a large amount of care let’s say you know a parent gets sick a parent leaves or something bad happens they lose their own health or whatever and then the mind needs to figure out how do I survive this and what’s important to understand is that in terms of priority our psyche is built first to survive and it doesn’t ask how can I live in this situation but how do I survive this situation which

make perfect sense because let’s say you’re you know in an actual survival situation you’re attacked by a bear you’re not asking yourself how can I thrive in this in this bear attack you’re asking how can I survive the bear look so something horrible happens and then it goes how do I survive this you figure something out and for example what a lot of people do that I work with they sacrifice themselves they start taking care of the parent too much or

they start know sacrificing their own well-being for the sake of having a harmony in in you know they’re there comforting the mother if the father is aggressive or whatever the martyr the martyr complex yeah exactly right and this is just one exam but there’s a lot of them and then what’s interesting is that even though that system works in that specific situation in that environment in that time if it doesn’t have a reason to

change it’ll stay there right so if you believe I need to sacrifice myself in order to have the world work you will keep believing that until you actively disprove it so people walk into these seminars with these belief systems that are old and outdated and a lot of times no longer serving them and that forms behavioral patterns so guess what happens if you feel you need to make the world work by sacrificing yourself these people they seek out relationships that

require their sacrifice these people they seek out jobs that require their sacrifice and they end up getting in this loop and you know finding themselves in the same place of burnout every time or a depression or whatever every time right so what’s really interesting is that these belief systems they’re wiring literally hardwiring neural patterns in the brain and there are so many ways to work with this but the first step is awareness and the

first step is to understand how the experience of life which we know one of my favorite and ways to call life is the human experience right is this thing that we’re all in that we’re all kind of like trying to figure out and go through I think the first step in improving a subjective experience of life as a human is by creating the awareness to really look honestly deep inside and go okay so let’s really honestly take a look at

these belief systems that we have and really really really question if they’re still serving us because my belief system years ago before I started this was I can focus I can get my mind ride I can’t write a book if I would have kept believing that I wouldn’t be here right now and if it would have been about me right if it’s about yourself it’s more difficult to change something but I made it bigger than myself and I still do because I I have days that I wake up and

I feel this depressed mode I have these dark thoughts but then I go hold on right two three years ago I challenged these beliefs about myself now my book has become a best-seller thousands of people are vetted and on a weekly basis I get multiple emails of people saying hey listen I was suffering in my life I had a hard time now I used your work and I live a better life for it so that’s another thing that’s really important to me is having the

perspective of this thing is bigger than me and I can sit on the couch and be depressed and addicted and overweight and in migraines and like I used to be or I can realize that I need to discard those limiting beliefs about myself step up show the world who I am and give something good to others yeah yeah yeah it’s so empowering and you’re not doing it in the sense of oh hey let me fish for you and you know hand you your dinner it’s more of a you know here’s

the fishing pole here’s how you find the water like go go do it you’re very much handing people their own responsibility and I think that’s so much different then you mentioned it earlier the the sort of snake oil that gets sold and I don’t want to drop any names in this podcast but they exist then it’s pretty disgusting the way that happens but getting back to just mind lifts and some of the key elements of this for you when you were writing the book through this

30 day period was there a point where this Eureka moment where you were like yes okay that has to go in the book and what were you doing when you were in those Eureka moments how are you getting to those states let’s talk about really accessing that that state that’s a great question because the main goal of the 30 days was to really figure out whether I could bring myself into that state so it’s very much about state management and the whole idea of this

state that you want to achieve does it happen to you or do you do it and my statement is you do it so how do you do it first of all you need to understand what strengths and the pitfalls of your own brain are so for example for me I have a really hard time keeping time and I have a really hard time focusing on one thing for a longer period of time right so what I learned about myself is that I can access these flows States and really

get into it but as soon as I have them I try to grasp them and hold on to him and but I can’t and then I kind of lose the flow because your mind is like a muscle right and if you focus on something and your muscle can’t injure that focus the mental muscle it has to let go at some point so what I learned for example is that I take my work and I kind of chop it up into little 20 minutes sprints of really focused and intense work and then

take a little five-minute break then I can access that flow state much easier but it’s also very important to do the right things in those five minutes and to put myself in the right space so there’s a few things that happened I cleaned out my attic right and I made this space to write this desk which was my focus temple I was like this is the the most important thing and what I had in mind is I’m gonna do all of the things that I wasn’t allowed to do when

I was a kid in the classroom I’ve kind of reversed engineered the hyperactive hyper creative curious learner that I was in school but couldn’t be and now go I just let that little kid run free and what does he need well he needs a bit of structure so I’m not gonna sit here at my desk and work for eight hours wouldn’t make any sense that’s not what I want to do so I set up the whole space I put like a pull-up bar in the office I

had this giant whiteboard I had a desk for sitting I had a standing desk and a bicycle desk and I had all these different places to work because I had learned from working in education with kids my type of brain that a lot of kids that we call a DD or ADHD they can focus just fine if you have them switch spaces and places and postures every 15 minutes right so an ADHD kid is either gonna wiggle around and be annoying after 15 minutes or you allow him to stand up and

wiggle around and then he can focus perfectly so that’s something I’ve learned so I’d set up this space that was the first thing and the only distractions that were there were positive distractions so instead of saying I can’t have any distractions I figured you know life is about balance it’s yin and yang right so if I want to be able to focus I have to embrace the distraction but at least I’ll give myself distractions that are useful so

for example I would have my musical instruments and I play six or seven musical instruments so I’d have my piano I have my bass guitar flute I’d have a drum like in corners of the room so if I would lose focus and get distracted I’d get distracted by playing a bit of piano well instead of checking my facebook or instead of whatever kind of distraction is there like doing notifications or answer an email which only deplete your

brain if you go and sit down at a piano for five minutes and you use your finger you have fine motor skills your brain connects to the musical notes it starts to pattern eyes it starts to sync up the different brain hemispheres you’re actually recharging your brain by getting distracted so all of these little things I noticed so I would do it a twenty minute block so I almost had like a mental training schedule I had intervals and rests and you know

all that stuff so I would do a 20 minute block of hyper focused work at my sitting desk the timer would drink I would do for example pull-ups for five minutes get my blood flowing then I would do the next block 20 minutes at my standing desk right and I would have my music on and kind of like dance around and move a little bit and then when the timer would go I would have my planned distraction of playing piano then another focus

block at my bicycle desk and then another little distracted break time or I would do some juggling your again a coordinating coordinating your hemispheres and having your motor skill alright because I understood the workings of my brain and especially and this goes for everybody but especially for active creative brains which we like to call ADHD which is kind of I have my opinions about it but anyway the motor cortex activates and the the neocortex

right so then moving brain activates the thinking brain so from that understanding I realized the brain needs fresh and interesting and a little bit challenging input in order to keep thinking and to keep thinking clearly so if I would align all of those factors I would be able to access these flow states of creative writing work and actually pretty accurately determine when I would have a Eureka moment this is one of a problem that geniuses have

right now I do coaching for example like famous singers and artists and people that are actually geniuses if you have too many Eureka moments that can actually be kind of like a burnout moment if you don’t want to have a thousand of them so I was able to pace myself able to really determine how to work on this thing and whenever I wouldn’t use those systems I would just be bashed by stress and anxiety like if I would just sit down behind my desk and

just type for two hours I would get stuck and like completely get into stress mode and and self-doubt not of it let’s talk about that a little bit more so anxiety I mean we all deal with this and I’ve been doing the show for a long time now man and we’ve talked to a lot of different types of people we’ve covered stress and anxiety and like you said earlier you know it’s it’s the human experience and I’m a human being and and I’m here experiencing and I have

my moments you know I go into stress and go into worry when you see people going into these states what is your technique to interrupt those moments or is this where your cold showers come in or yeah yeah I like Tony Robbins and NLP people I use that as an excuse to swear I have to say profusely chokes I throw out a lot of bad words now I just pretty good it’s that that definitely works so there’s two things one of them is interrupting it in the moment which is

what you asked about and the other one is training the specific stress response which is what the cold shower for example is about so those are two different things that are both equally important so in the moment the most practical most thing I can do is posture and breath so if your mind is out of control and it’s racing all over the place people don’t realize that they are creating physiological circumstances under which this stress can thrive so stress is a

series of very clear very well-known physiological circumstances and responses you know there’s some chemistry involved you’ve got your cortisol and your adrenaline you’ve got your amygdala as the fear center that is gathering the input determining how to respond to it and if there’s this mental bookmark that it’s scary or stressful whatever it responds with stress and also the more burnt-out you are the more tired you are the more likely you are to

have stress but also the more relatively ‘silly acidic your blood is the more likely you were to have stress and anxiety now what’s interesting is if you are stressed and anxious or panicking you find yourself hyperventilating so people who are in a stressful mode their body produces cortisol it raises the blood sugar it raises the heart rate with an increased heart rate we need more oxygen you start breathe faster so this also means that breathing

faster and it’s not just faster it’s also through your mouth and into your chest so fast breathing into your mouth and to your chest those sustained this stressful and anxiety mode because they are a result of it but this also works the other way around and this is so incredibly simple and so incredibly profound if you understand that you find yourself in a state and then a state of mind and body and then there is a state of breathing that comes along with it we

all know that like you’re tired and you’re young right you’re relieved you take a sigh of relief you’re panicked you’re hyperventilating guess what works the other way around just as effectively so if you hyperventilate guaranteed your body will produce stress and cortisol and adrenaline this is actually one of the things to wim HOF method is built on to actively produce this stress in order to cope with it better and you’ve had whim

off on the show alright so so a lot of people know about this right now but that’s one of the things that this is built on so if somebody is in a stressful state if I can get them to come to look me in the and I can tell them breathe like I’m breathing right now and I just show them a very calm nose breathing breathing through your nose for four seconds hold it for four seconds very calmly breathe out you know hold it out for four

seconds those kinds of little techniques if you don’t give the body more oxygen and if you stop breathing out extra co2 it will stop producing stress because it doesn’t have the energy to produce stress so that’s one thing well let’s do it right now let’s have everyone listening and why don’t you guide us through that Kaspar and if you don’t mind and just absolutely why don’t you show us this breathing technique and I’ll do the

breathing and you can sort of direct me into you know how to move out of an anxiety state and we can show that people absolutely so there’s I think 23 different techniques to go from anxiety to calm I think the most effective and most well-known is called box breathing this is actually used a lot by the Navy SEALs to switch between a heavy sprint and then being able to down regulate calm down the heart rate for them to be able to actually aim their rifle so this

is a very practical thing now if anybody’s listening and you’re in a car or you’re in any place where it’s not safe to kind of feel busy don’t do this right so it’s important to kind of sit down and even if you’re in an anxious state and I do this with people I tell them to sit down you know calm down or even lay down if people get you know dizzy easily or if people easily snap into hyperventilation they want to make sure they’re safe so just as a quick

precaution for people I listen to podcast bribing all the time and I don’t want anybody getting dizzy behind this massive disclaimer don’t do this if you’re driving and make sure that you’re at home on your couch in your living room and the safety of your own home while you do this take it away exactly so here’s box breathing it’s called box breathing because it has equal parts so first sit down and sit back into your chair lean back relax let your shoulders

hand back because stress really goes into the shoulders also right and just watch how changing your posture can already calm down your mind and maybe even your body the next is just a little invitation you might be able to do this some people can do it right away but just kind of ask the internal question in your body of what’s my heart rate doing and without saying what it’s doing or giving it a name just gently observe where your heart is

maybe you feel it around your chest or in your wrist or in your neck anywhere else just see if you can locate it anywhere and see if it’s maybe it’s rhythmical maybe it’s fast maybe it’s slow doesn’t really matter where it is try not to judge it then the next is how are you breathing so what’s this state of your breath right now your breathing your your mouth or through your nose all right and this is something people can check for themselves also at home

are you breathing fast relatively or slow and if you don’t know what faster slow is are you breathing at a pace that is more like you are just waking up in bed so very calm and relaxed or is it more as though you’ve just run up a few steps so is it better to be fast so now wherever you are what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna try to down regulate the nervous system so get out of the active mode and this is a very simple technique

where you breathe in for four counts you hold it in for four counts you breathe out for four counts you hold it out for four counts this is one of the easiest ways to start with breath work and down regulate yourself so we’re gonna start with it with a deep sigh of relief yeah one more time you you breathe in for a four count breathe out for a four count and then breathe back in for a four count I’ll walk you through it in old

out hole and what we’re gonna do is start with a deep sigh of relief so that we start on an out breath so breathe all the way in let it go and now breathe in two three four hold it in breathe out two three four and hold it up two three four breathe in two three or hold it in two three four breathe out hold it up to three threes in two three four hold it in two three four breathe out two hold it out to be alright deep sigh of relief

let it go Wow that’s really impressive man I uh I feel like this sort of weight is off my shoulders I feel lighter I feel renewed refreshed and it’s so simple it’s just such a simple little exercise I feel much more calming is that the whole exercise that’s the whole thing man I’m just did three rounds and normally I do four rounds which equates to one minute basically just about one minute and this is what I do every night before I go to

sleep just to make sure that the last little inches of stress and anxiety are out of my nervous system so there’s so much going on there just controlling the breath if you more control over your physiology then doing the breath holds sends the signal internally of there might not be enough oxygen to sustain activity so you’re calming down and as you calmly and control the breathe out and hold it out you’re actually stimulating the vagus nerve and the

vagus nerve is the most important actor in the parasympathetic nervous system which is the nervous system we call rest and digest so the opposite of fight and flight so as you are stimulating that nerve it is actually sending signals to the organs to get out of anxiety mode and even if you practice very intently and focused to get out of inflammation mode it lowers the heart rate it actually decreases activity in the right prefrontal lobe which is the place where

we can show anxiety or stress or depression in the brain they come together in this very simple practice and you only need like a minute of it if it doesn’t in a situation you do it for a minute it doesn’t change anything that’s the surest sign you need to get out of the situation instead of change your breathing right so on yeah this is one of my favorite little quick tools to get people’s beautiful I love it man and I’m sure many many people will benefit from

that little exercise that we just did I want to talk about your relation to success I dislike the word success and there are so many different interpretations of success there is you know society’s interpretation of success and there is this sort of idea that when you see someone what people usually see is that person has you know sort of blown up to a point where everybody knows who they are and suddenly they’re successful but in the backstory there’s

an everyday grind that you put in and work and it’s hard work I want to know what your perception and your idea of success is beautiful beautiful question so my personal definition of success is a continuous practice of finding balance between the important factors of life being mental physical emotional spiritual and financial and also relationship is one of the one of the things so financial is one of them right and I think that this is an important

thing where a lot of people if you ask about success they start throwing out definitions about money and I meet a lot of people who are financially successful but they are spiritually or emotionally clogged up or out of balance right for me and that’s why I called a continuous practice because what’s in there is in the definition it is built the idea that this is an effort a constant effort and a conscious effort that you do every day

and also the word practice implies skill and skill implies development and putting in the effort practice so for me success is about the balance between those things I am NOT interested in financial success is I if I have to sacrifice my relationships with family or my physical health or my mental or emotional health and also I’m not willing to put my physical success in front of financial success or emotional success I was a pretty good basketball

player when I was a kid I’ve trained a lot right and I was the fat kid in school so I and I couldn’t get along and I didn’t have any friends and the one kid that I liked went to basketball so I was like shit I better go there and show up and be good at and these other kids they could get away with three hours of practice in the week and they would all beat me on the court so I was like man the only thing I can do is put in more

effort and practice and work harder I worked hard and hard and hard and within like a year or something nobody on the court could even touch me right because I put in so much more work brain because I didn’t have any talent now another thing that happened there as I had my growth spurt I was just a kid and I was so obsessed about this physical work about being the best basketball player on the court that it completely messed up all the other parts I didn’t

have any time for anything else right they didn’t reflect well on my friendships and all these other factors so on different parts of my life I’ve been out of balance and I know a lot of people are out of balance and they say I’m successful and then go at what right so I think it’s important to have a personal statement of success and then to really take that success very seriously because I feel that nobody is helped by me being unsuccessful and

everybody is helped by everybody being successful this is one of the fundamental beliefs that I have about the work that I’m doing in the way that I’m approaching the world is I want everybody to win because my definition of my success doesn’t mean that anybody else has to fail so I can win but it doesn’t mean somebody else has to lose so yeah that’s my two cents on it I love that that brings true for me so much I have a very similar perspective on you

know just the way we’ve identified with consumerism and competition and this need to win what we’ve learned is you know there is a winner and there’s a loser I really connect with the way that you describe your relationship to your own personal health and you know money you know I talked to a lot of different entrepreneurs people who are building their own businesses and these people are working 12 14 16 hour days like just slaving away for this dream that they’re

really passionate about and what you will notice is that slowly over time they degrade because they’re not nourishing their body they’re not giving their body this attention that it needs and the crash oh yeah because not all of those areas and grow the whole time so obviously the foundation of my definition of success is growth it is about continuous forward motion relentless forward motion I think that’s the title of a book about ultrarunning

but it’s it’s kind of like one of these mantras that I have for a landless forward motion just keep doing the next step sometimes I find I have a little growth spurt on the financial level and I go awesome that’s amazing and it’s really easy to become obsessive about it and go this is awesome I should keep doing this and this and this and then you notice that these other parts are falling back and I think that’s where the exact entrepreneurs you just

described they get tunnel vision on this one area and then the other ones start lacking and you know that’s one of the pitfalls but it’s also fine you know I found myself staring into this tunnel of one of these things going like another physical stuff is all over the place right and getting stronger and getting healthier and getting fitter and then noticing like oh man I could have done this and my business it could have gone

for that opportunity and actually recently I went for a whole ton of opportunities when I was doing this tour through the US you know I live in Europe and I’m flying all over the place like 12 flights in six weeks 14 seminars like all this high-profile work working with these amazing people and then I got home and it’s the first time in years that I’ve gained weight lost muscle mass and to less strong and then I go up did it again it was awesome you know my

business grew my bank account grew but now it’s time to really be honest and say the body the mind spirit they need something extra right now right so I think it’s good to kind of juggle them and and sometimes one of them goes up and the other one goes down as long as in this continuous board motion as long as there’s balance overall I think that’s the most important thing its equilibrium its balance and really understanding yourself you know know

thyself understanding your own limitation understanding your own body just listening to your body because your body will tell you your intuition will tell you and it will speak and most of the time it speaks in whispers I I just want to interject really quickly and say that there’s there’s a quote in my book that is what you just said and the quote is the body whispers before it’s screamed yes and if you can listen to the whispers

you’ll save yourself a lot of screens and that’s what you’re doing in this book you’re really giving people these sort of ways to you know hear those whispers and before they become screams you know you’ve also created methodologies to deal with those screams because we all eventually end up screaming you know like that’s that’s a part of the human condition as part of life I wanted to ask you about one more thing and then we’ll put a bow on this

and wrap it up but I want to know how important is it for our lives to do absolutely nothing how important is it to not be working on the next project not be flying around to different speaking engagements literally not be doing anything so you know it’s always come down and this is one of those things where I bumped my head against the same wall again and they go up I should listen to my own advice because it’s all yin and yang right so if you

want to have and this is interesting because I just said relentless forward motion but there is no motion without standing still so you know there is no action without rest and I think silence and emptiness even are very very important teachers where I think that entrepreneur is people who build lifestyles and build businesses and good products out the ones that are successful the ones that are doing the best jobs are making art in a sense

they’re making something beautiful something unique right you know and we’ve met in person you know when we’re at the kitchen table we don’t sound like this but as soon as your podcast might go on you become a poet your tone becomes phoretic in your language and you get into this flow and you your wording becomes like eloquent and this is something that I find is really important to understand for people who want to build something put something

out into the world is that you are making something that people are going to see or use or consume and it’s a form of art art is something that has to connect like spring from something deep inside and you have to create circumstances for it to be able to spring and to be able to grow and to be able to flourish and the creation of these circumstances comes from allowing that source of truth and that source of inspiration and flow

to really sometimes have a moment of silence at a moment of rest in a moment of really not having to do the next thing not having to go anywhere and my grandfather he was a genius man I love them so much and I grew up in all of his stories and every time I would stay at his house and it was kind of like a sleepy town and with all people and I would go to him and I would say I’m bored and then he said congratulations okay because he said this is the soil of

good thought right boredom is the soil of good thought and I believe that that’s important sometimes you have to kind of sit around and be in this silence because that’s where you hear the whispers that’s where the good idea catches him that’s where this stroke of genius of inside issue and you realize that that’s something you needed to do the whole time and I have one last anecdote that I that I’ll share so this is in meditation and mindfulness and Zen

which are all practices that I’ve put a lot of time in it’s very much about finding the silence finding the stillness but even finding like deprivation and suffering and then within that finding beauty so that’s kind of like what I was just talking about it create the silence this space where the beauty the art to kind of spring into flourish about I think a year and a half ago I was running an ultra marathon which is kind of crazy

right it’s more than a marathon this was 51 cake-like 10% more than a marathon in Switzerland in the mountains there was 9,000 feet of elevation in total right crazy stuff I ended up continuously running in the mountains for nine hours and it was equal parts glorious as miserable as ultra endurance athletes no I came to a point where I was I couldn’t move my left leg I had been running for about seven hours I tripped twice I’d hurt my ankle I was just completely

broken I had never been so exhausted I couldn’t hold in my food right I couldn’t my stomach was upset I couldn’t do another static cough and I was staring out into the distance and there was just emptiness I felt like I I didn’t have even the tiniest amount of energy left in my body I couldn’t appreciate anything that was just pain emptiness exhaustion right and interestingly my mind went completely quiet my mind always has something to

say and in that moment it was like you know what I give up I don’t have anything to do with this figure it out and it was just intense silence and I was just staring out into the distance not even noticing whatever was going on it was that silent this guy came up next to me a Scotsman and he looked at me and then he looked at where I was looking where I was staring and then he said something like oh man you’re right sometimes you have to stop and enjoy the

view he thought that I was mindfully stopping look at the beautiful view because it was like the most beautiful mountain view ever and I didn’t I was imprisoned and then just because he thought I was doing it he reminded me that’s the goal that’s what thing is about my taking time to stand still and enjoy the scenery and I just snapped out of it and being in a place of that intense like emptiness and silence and then the first and most profound thought

to come up was enjoy this moment it was the loudest confirmation of that idea that I ever had so you know and and then I just found this new well of energy because I came from the silence I faced all this difficulty and now you know it’s luxury and difficulty I mean there’s people who are of actual poverty and actual like I’m a white man born in a western country and fucking like wait I have to I have to pay money to go to a mountain

and feel suffering right so it’s like this is all I want people to understand this is all luxury you know my life I’ve been through some hardships but statistically my life is the easiest life in his come on but the point is that that moment of silence where there was nothing mystery just a minute and then the first thing that came in to my experience so vividly was that moment of enjoy it make art make something beautiful the rest of the trill which

was like probably like 25% was still left it just became a dance and I started laughing and I started making jokes with people around me I started taking the whole thing seriously so that’s just a little anecdote of a profound moment in my life where I realized that every now and then we have to seek out the stillness the emptiness the not anxiously obsessively seeking for the next thrill and to really grasp what is in front of you and then watch

the inspiration happen you can issue a mic drop after that little story just drop the mic Kaspar that this has been beautiful man we touched on so many different things and I feel like we just scratched the surface there’s so much in this book that is genuinely helpful and I highly recommend it the book is called mine lift mental fitness for the modern mind my guest is Kasper Van der Mullen Kasper I know that you travel around a lot are

you doing anything where people can kind of sign up and come see you oh yeah yeah so I’m doing a tour on the East Coast and Colorado so I’m kind of like all over the place but that’s October and November I’ll be teaching a bunch of workshops around New York Boston area let me think Atlanta Colorado and a quick trip to LA and so that’s that’s this fall then in the winter in January and February I’ve got a bunch of retreats in Poland in

probably Iceland and I’m looking for one more location where I’m doing a full week retreat with grass work and cold exposure and all the biohacking stuff so that’s that’s definitely something worth traveling for in my experience and then in May and June Oh I’ll be around in the west coast which is Southern California has become one of my favorite places to be so I’ll be pouring around San Diego Los Angeles around there so I’m around a

lot to check out my website and if anybody has learned anything from this taking away anything or it has a question you can find my contact info on my website I will answer your questions and I will answer every just little note that you sent me but it might take some time because I know how big your listener bases but I always just want to know let people know like a I appreciate hearing back from listeners is that’ll make the this you know beautiful medium

of podcasting a bit more interactive yeah I’m sure I’m sure that you’ll you’ll get some questions and you know I highly recommend for people to order the book and Casper what is your website mind lift commas so that’s easy mind lift calm and you know I highly recommend people either download the e-book or just order a copy Casper are you doing anything where if people go to mind lifts that you like sort of autograph the copy or anything like that

for the American version it’s difficult because I don’t get involved in any of the process difficult this is by the way there is an audiobook and I myself enjoyed listening to audiobooks more than reading and then you can listen to my smoother voice for six hours but that’s definitely a pain but I would love for people to come follow me on Instagram you can find my Instagram thing on there on the website too that’s where I’m most active and I love getting

you know little notes or pictures from people who are lose your ghost again it’s at Casper’s focus ka SPER fo see us got it it’s my favorite favorite outlet cool yeah come check me out we will definitely have people get to the website the book and and your Instagram Casper thank you so much for being here man I’m bowing humbly crushed it thank you so much Thank You Man you’ve got one hell of a beautiful podcast go in here so it’s my

honor to be here thank you so much man guys you have been listening to the human experience we are going to get out of here it bub huge thanks to my guest Casper Vander Molen make sure that you pick up a copy of the book mine lifts mental fitness for the modern mind and we will catch you guys next week thank you so much for listening hey guys you’ve been listening to the human experience and you just heard our episode with Casper van der vielen

really great episode and you heard the full episode but we do have a member section now and now with all the messages that we get on Twitter and all the inspiration that we’re giving all these people we love that we love the feedback and thank you for that but if you enjoy what you’re hearing and you want us to continue doing this show has to be sustainable so if you want access to the members content we’re going to create a giveaway for that and we’re

finishing the member site right now but get to the human XP sign up right now and help support what we’re doing thank you guys so much for listening I hope you enjoyed this episode it was a really really fun episode to do with Casper you you