Ryan Foland: Wow. Pandemic of the mind. Talk to me more about that.
Tom Bilyeu: It’s the number one cause of death for young men in places like Australia. I mean, it’s just really crazy to me that we have this amazing technological advancement. The world is getting better and better. I don’t know if you’ve ever read the book The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley, but he talks about how basically progress is a one-way street and it’s gotten better and better for the last 80,000 generations, and so to think that suddenly it’s going to turn around and go negative doesn’t make a lot of sense. In spite of that, we’ve got this just massive pandemic of depression and anxiety, which to me comes down to a deterioration of mythology and understanding really how to incorporate mythology and ritual into your life.
Ryan Foland: What you’re saying is that maybe the recipe for better mental health and the recipe for ultimate success and happiness is out there.
Tom Bilyeu: 100%, and it really comes down to execution. The brain is just like the body. If you train the body you know it will respond, and people have just a real intuitive understanding of that. If I go into the gym every day, I eat right and I lift this weight, and then I push myself to lift a little more and every day I push myself, that I can completely transform my physique, I can transform what I’m capable of doing, I can actually lift heavier weights. No one denies that. No one is going to say, “Oh no, that will never work,” right? Everybody gets it. When you talk about the mind, because it’s invisible, because you can’t see the restructuring of the brain, that people discredit it. I mean, it was only recently that people finally realized that the brain has this thing called neuroplasticity, and that at every age up until death your brain will change in accordance with the stimulus. If you’re a nine-year-old and you force yourself to learn the tango, your brain will actually restructure.
Ryan Foland: Wow.
Tom Bilyeu: Understanding the neuroanatomy of the brain is job number one if you’re trying to accomplish something in your life.