Why Finding Your Why Is The Key To Health And Longevity

Mark Hyman, MD

Dr. Mark Hyman is leading a health revolution—one focused on using food as medicine to support longevity, energy, mental clarity, happiness, and so much more. Mark Hyman, MD is a practicing family physician and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in the field of Functional Medicine. He is the founder and director of The UltraWellness Center, Founder and Senior Advisor for the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, a fifteen-time New York Times best-selling author, and Board President for Clinical Affairs for The Institute for Functional Medicine. He is the founder and chairman of the Food Fix Campaign, dedicated to transforming our food and agriculture system through policy.

He is a co-founder and the Chief Medical Officer of Function Health. He is the host of one of the leading health podcasts, The Dr. Hyman Show with 150+ million downloads. Dr. Hyman is a regular medical contributor to several television shows and networks, including CBS This Morning, Today, Good Morning America, The View, Fox, and CNN.

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Full Transcript

Automatically generated. Please forgive any typos or errors in the following transcript. It was generated by a third party and has not been subsequently reviewed by our team.

Introduction:
Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Farmacy.

Simon Sinek:
Being generous, being socially oriented is actually what helps keep your body healthy. The opposite is cortisol.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Welcome to The Doctor's Farmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, and that's farmacy with an F, a place for conversations that matter. And if you've ever wondered about the purpose of your life, how to find meaning, what's your why, this is the podcast let's listen to because it's with a good friend of mine, an extraordinary thinker, leader, and guy who's helping us reframe our relationship to ourselves and the world and each other, Simon Sinek, who is a guy who's all about sparking ideas that give us passion and get us to be living our authentic life, he envisions a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are, and at the end of the day, are fulfilled by the work they do. How good does that sound? As an unshakeable optimist, he believes in our ability to build this world together, which I'm an optimist too. I call myself a pathological optimist. And the good news is optimists live longer even if they're wrong.

Simon Sinek:
Oh good. So there's another reason to be an optimist. This part of my longevity plan, which is just to see the world as a bright place.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
It really does work because your thoughts are translated into your biology. And so the work of Simon is so important. You might have seen his TEDTalk on the concept of why, which has been seen over 60 million times. He did a video on millennials, which has reached 80 million viewers in the first week and has gone on to be seen hundreds of millions of times. He's has great bestselling books. Start with the Why, The New York Times Bestseller's Leaders Eat Last: The Infinite Game, as well as his podcast, which I've been on called A bit of Optimism. He works with an incredible array of people, including the Armed Forces, agencies, the US government, his works with the Rand Corporation, which is an incredible think tank. And he co-founded in 2021, The Curve in the middle of COVID, a group of forward thinking chiefs and sheriffs committed to reforming modern policing from the inside out, and we know the challenge with that.
And they want to build a professional dedicated to protecting the vulnerable from harm while advancing a vision of a world in which all people feel justice that's submitted with dignity, equity, and fairness. So, Simon is out there doing the good work, fighting the good fight, trying to make the world a better place. And I'm so happy to have you, Simon, on The Doctor's Farmacy.

Simon Sinek:
So good to see you. So good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. So Simon, I'm sort of struck by this whole concept of why, and I recently finished my book on longevity, Young Forever, and then I got very familiar with this concept of ikigai. What's your purpose? This Japanese framework. And you talk about finding your why and what's underneath the reason for living for you. And I also discovered that in the longevity science, that if you have meaning and purpose, if you have a why, that you live seven years longer. And my travels to the blue zones like [inaudible 00:03:05], they had tremendous meaning and purpose and belonging and connection. So this has been your life's work. You help people find out their why and fulfillment, inspiration in the work they do and the things that they do. So why is why so important?

Simon Sinek:
You sort of said it, right?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, I said it [inaudible 00:03:22]

Simon Sinek:
It gives the things we do meaning, right? It's like if we don't have a sense of purpose, then you're doing the thing you're doing just for the sake of doing it, right? I'm making money just for the sake of money. I'm turning this wrench just for the sake of turning this wrench. And when we do things that contribute to something else, contribute to something bigger, it gives our lives and our work meaning. And when we have a sense of meaning, when we have a sense of purpose, it does many, many things to us. It builds our self-confidence, it makes us better decision makers, it makes us better in relationships. And at the end of the day, it makes us enjoy our lives and find fulfillment in our work. And I think so often... And I think there's a lot of people don't think about it this way, they don't think about what's the purpose of all of this. What's the reason I'm doing all of this? We usually default to, "I got to pay my bills."
That's a function because I was told to do it, because everybody has to work, or because I want to make this company the biggest or the best. To what end? To what value? And so to truly understand purpose, I think, like I said, it sort of just has positive effects all over the place.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. Often, people are trying to find their why. I mean, think you're lucky, I'm lucky. Maybe we're not lucky. Maybe we figured out how to do this, but somehow something captured us in a moment of our lives where we went, oh aha, this is my life's work, this is what brings me meaning, this is what I want to focus on, this is my contribution. But a lot of people are floating around trying to find their why and not knowing where to start or how to do it. So how do you teach people who aren't inspired or aren't fulfilled in their work or in their lives to create a sense of meaning and purpose and why?

Simon Sinek:
Just to go back to something you said a moment ago, which is you said, we are lucky, right? We're lucky [inaudible 00:05:19]. And this is the problem, which is we treat purpose or fulfillment like a lottery. Like you go out for dinner with a bunch of friends and somebody says, "I love my work," or "I have a sense of purpose." And everybody goes, "Oh my God, you're so lucky," like you won something, right?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, exactly.

Simon Sinek:
And I believe having clarity of purpose is a right. It's not a privilege. It's a right that we all have the opportunity to know what why is, to live with purpose. And though some of us find it through extreme pain or hardship, where you come through it and you're like, I don't want to ever go through that again, but nor do I want anybody else to go through that again either. People who survived, who tried to take their own lives, they didn't. They devote their lives to helping others with depression, for example. That gives them purpose, but it was the hardship that ignited it. But all that purpose means is that you have a clear value in the world and the love that people have for you, the reason they love you is because they want this thing in their life. There's many ways to find your why.
I wrote a book called Find Your Why that you can... We have a course on our website, but I'll tell you how to do it. I'll tell you a really simple way that gets you really in the ballpark. Go to a friend you love, the kind of friend who you know that they would be there for you no matter, you could call them at three o'clock in the morning, you're confident they would take the call, or that you would take their call at three in the morning. Do not do this exercise with a sibling. Do not do this with a spouse. Do not do this with a parent, right? Those relationships are too close. Do it with a best friend, very close friend.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. Yeah.

Simon Sinek:
And ask them this simple question, why are we friends? And they're going to look at you like you're insane because the part of the brain that controls feelings like love and loyalty, our limbic brain doesn't control language. That's our neocortex, which is why it's hard to put our feelings into words. It's why we speak in metaphors and analogies all the time. So, they won't know. They'll say, "Ah, I don't know why you asking me this." And again, it's not that they don't know, it's they don't have the capacity for the language. So you actually change the question. This is the important thing about this exercise. You actually stop asking the question why and you ask the question so you can engage the rational brain. "Come on," you say, "what specifically is it about me that I know that you would be there for me no matter what?"
And they'll struggle, and they'll [inaudible 00:08:01] and they'll start to describe you. They'll say, "I don't know. You've always been there for me, you're funny, you're smart." And you have to play devil's advocate. You say, "Good, that's the definition of a friend. You have that with lots of people. What specifically is it about me that I'd know you'd be there for me no matter what?" And you're going to go through multiple rounds of this. You're going to continue to play devil's advocate. Don't help them. Don't let anybody else help them. You have to let them go through the horrible stress. And eventually they'll give up, and eventually they'll give up and they'll stop describing you and they'll start describing themselves. My friend said to me, "Simon, I don't know. All I know is I can sit in a room with you. I don't even have to talk to you and I feel inspired," and I got goosebumps.
In fact, I'm getting them right now, because what they did is they articulated the specific value that I have in their life. That specific value is my why. It's the thing that I give to the world. And when I talk to multiple friends, they gave me sometimes similar, if not the exact same answer, because the thing that I give to the world is the thing they want in their life. And that's your why.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
That's quite amazing. So start with finding a friend, not a spouse or a family member. And that's a great exercise. And I think most of us don't actually get the chance to see ourselves through each other's eyes or to have these kinds of deep conversations. And we kind of skip over them, but actually that's where all the juicy stuff is, when you get way below the surface of a relationship, so that's powerful. You also talk about this idea of why being a biological phenomena. What do you mean by that?

Simon Sinek:
So, I mean, you'll appreciate, this is brain science 101, right?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. As a doctor, I'm really interested in the biology of why, right?

Simon Sinek:
Right. So, I mean, it's like the most non-controversial science, which is the way the brain evolved. It's the reptilian brain, it's the mammalian brain, it's the homo sapien brain, right? There's limbic and there's neocortex. Limbic brain is responsible, as we said, for all of our feelings, it's responsible for decision making, but it has no capacity for language. Our neocortex are very new homo sapien brain is all the language centers, but it's also responsible for rational and analytical thought. And so we like to think that we are rational animals, but we're not. We're very emotionally driven. And so when we attempt to describe ourselves and describe our value, we're very neo cortical. We're very rational. This is the value that I offer. "I'm smart. I went to Harvard, I blah, blah, blah. Look at all my degrees. This is why you have to trust me." Right?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Simon Sinek:
It's very rational. It's an equation. But that's not actually how we're wired. And so what the Y does is it taps into that limbic brain. It taps into that sort of emotional center that not only makes me feel like this is who I am, but it also is what creates those feelings with our friends. And then the rational stuff is what we use to describe and to prove it. And so I overlay this map of the very basics of biology, of human decision making and just started to overlay it on corporate cultures. And it turns out it works the exact same way over a group of people as it does for an individual, in other words, a company. And so you find that organizations with a sense of cause, with a sense of why, with a sense of purpose. Those leaders think, act, and communicate by talking about the why, which inspires people to want to work for them and work harder to want to buy from them and go out of their way to choose you over another product. And then we rationalize that behavior by looking at all of the rational stuff.
Look, it's a better product, higher quality to all this stuff, but it's actually a very, very emotional decision.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
I think I thought of Patagonia, which was quite a company-

Simon Sinek:
Great example.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
[inaudible 00:12:08] just created great products and use recycled plastics and really shared a lot of values that I share, but you felt you were buying into something that was making the world a better place-

Simon Sinek:
Exactly.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
... where they gave a percentage of their profits to the environment. Now, he's given away all his billions of dollars to help the environment, which is really remarkable. And I think those kinds of purpose-driven companies do really well. And those who are just seeking profit can make it for a while, but they always will be undermined by the people, realizing that there's a disconnect between their values and what these companies are doing. And I think as individuals, the biology of why is so important. And I think I'm trying to think about the biological mechanisms as a doctor of what happens when you feel connected to your purpose.
And I think it's transmuted through your hormones and your neurotransmitters and your immune system, and even your microbiome. All these things are listening to your thoughts and your thoughts create your biology car. Carolyn [inaudible 00:13:11] talks about how your biography creates your biology. And it's a very powerful framework for understanding that we have to master our minds. We talked about eating better and exercising and sleep, even stress reduction and so forth, but we barely talk about how do we become masters of our own minds, which usually take us on these horrible rides for most of our life. And it's why we have such challenging relationships, why we have challenge on our life and finding work that's a satisfying and purpose, so really understanding that you really have to focus and work on mastering your mind. And I think finding your why is a key part of that.
I found my why by getting really sick. I was a doctor, and I had very similar values, but I got very sick from mercury poisoning when I was 36 and ended up with severe chronic fatigue syndrome and a whole host of symptoms. And through having to heal myself and discover this new model of medicine, I was able to get inspired to realize that there was this hidden gem in science that taught us how to take care of our bodies differently in a way that could solve so much suffering. And I ended my suffering, and I wanted to do that for everybody else. So this has been my life purpose and my why. I'm curious about what your story was that led to the discovery of your why.

Simon Sinek:
Also pain.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Pain and suffering, it's a great doorway to why.

Simon Sinek:
I mean, suffering is a great doorway. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was living what many considered to be the American dream. I started my own small business. I had a little marketing consultancy. We had amazing clients. We did great work. I was making an okay living. And after four years of doing that, I fell out of love and I didn't want to get out bed and go to work anymore. And I was deeply embarrassed by that because superficially everything looked good, and I didn't want to be like, "Yeah, but I don't want to go to work today." And so I kept that feeling to myself and all of my energy went into pretending that I was happier, more successful, and more in control than I really felt. And when you do that, it eats you alive. It starts to actually get worse. And so what ended up happening was depression, paranoia.
I was convinced I was going to go bankrupt. I was convinced I was going to get evicted. And I shared it with nobody, so then you add loneliness and became antisocial, and it all sort of becomes this vicious cycle. And it wasn't until a very close friend of mine interrupted that and she said, "Something's wrong. I'm worried about you. Something's different." And in that safe space, I came clean and told her everything I was going through, and it took this huge weight off my shoulders. And so all of the energy that was going into lying, hiding, and faking every day, I redirected into finding a solution. And the solution that I found was this magical pattern that we all know what we do, the products we sell, the services we offer. Some of us know how we do those things, the the things that we think distinguish us from everybody else, but very few of us can clearly articulate why we do what we do.
And I knew what we did and I knew how we did it, but I couldn't tell you why I was doing it, and I realized that was the missing piece. And when I found my why, it not only restored my passion to levels I'd never experienced before, but more importantly, I would help my friends find their why, because that's what we do for the people we love, right? You read a great book, you tell your friends to read this book. You see a good movie, you tell your friends to see this movie. Why? Because you just want them to share the same joy that you had. Same thing, same mentality. I wanted my friends to do this. And they were so inspired by it. And they were making crazy life decisions, taking much bigger risks with more confidence. They invited me to their homes to share it with their friends.
And I literally would stand in someone's living room and talk about this thing called the why and help people find their why for about a hundred bucks on the side, and it was an organic thing. And the more people invited me to talk about it, the more I just kept saying yes. And I didn't even know public speaking was a thing. I thought you had to climb Mount Everest or row across the Pacific Ocean to get invited to give a speech. I didn't know that that was a thing. I didn't even know that was a job.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
A job, right?

Simon Sinek:
But when they started offering to pay me to come and speak, I realized I didn't have to do the marketing thing anymore. I wanted to do this. I'd found something that I would do for free, but the fact that they could pay me and I could pay my bills by doing, it was an easy choice.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Simon Sinek:
And the most important thing was that it was an act of service. It was for others. And it wasn't a pursuit to build a business, it wasn't a pursuit to do anything, but to see those around me get the same feeling of joy that I had. Because I believe, as I said before, that fulfillment in our work and joy in our lives is a right, not a privilege, that we're all-

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, I mean, it's hard for people who are in jobs they don't like, who haven't found their purpose, who are working for money just to survive to kind of figure that out and get out of that. I think if you follow the passion of your life and you can figure out how to do what you do that you would do anyway without being paid, that's the holy grail, right?

Simon Sinek:
Yes and no is the answer to that question, which I think when we do that, when we have that question, if I could just find the thing that I would do for free, the thing that's passion, I think what ended up, we start looking for the job superficially, which is a college student trying to decide what I want to do when I graduate, right? Which is... It's very superficial, and that's the problem, which is you can actually find joy in any job. And I remember when I first started this work, a friend of mine said to me, "Yeah, but your work, it's fine for people in fancy jobs, but a plumber or a janitor is never going to get what you want." And they're completely missing the point, which is it's not the work. It's how you view the value of the work and service to others, goes back to the conversation we had about how to find your why, which is what value do I feel in your life?
I can show you many janitors in schools who love their jobs because they realize what they're doing is creating a space for the kids, that they're there for the kids, or a postal worker who knows that they're bringing little bits of joy to people every day. And what gives a job purpose is not the actual function of the job, it's not that the work. It's who we're doing the work for. To re-articulate your work as an act of service. That's where the joy comes from. That's where the purpose is.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
That's really true, and you can do that in whatever you're doing. Plumber gets to give someone a hot shower, is that right?

Simon Sinek:
Or it could be customer service, which is I'm a plumber because my dad was a plumber, my grandfather was a plumber, I'm a plumber, right? I'm a plumber by default, but I know that when people call me, something's usually gone wrong or I'm fixing something or they're excited about a new home. And I come in and all I want to do is bring joy into the people's lives who I meet, has nothing to do with the plumbing. It has to do with the interaction I have when I come into someone's home because a plumber has to come into your home, right?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
It's true.

Simon Sinek:
And so it doesn't matter if it's even the purpose of the work, it's just how I view my interaction and my service to people.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, it's more of the quality of the experience that you have within whatever you're doing. It doesn't matter what [inaudible 00:21:23].

Simon Sinek:
Correct. And that's what gives us purpose.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, it's sort the zen saying, which is, before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. The only difference is how you do it and what your inner experiences around it, right?

Simon Sinek:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
That's the profound difference and the awakening. I remember I travel a lot and used to dress in fancy clothes to go to Cleveland Clinic and have to wear nice shoes, so I would get my shoes shine at the airport. I basically had this older Rastafarian guy shining my shoes, and he was so much fun and he brought so much joy to me, and he just was so happy and so lit up. And I mean his job was shining shoes on the airport, which it's not the best job for most people's imagination.
But he gave me so much joy that I literally gave him a hundred dollars tip because I was like, this is priceless. And he was just so happy, and we had the most celebratory time together. And it doesn't have to be some grand sort act of no anything. It's like Mother Teresa said, "There are no great acts of love. There are only small acts done with great love." And I think that's a really important framework. And I love your framework of the mindset of how do we show up and bring joy to those around us, and how do we do that in ourselves, but how do we also spread that? And I think in your website, simonsinek.com, it starts with a sort of the optimism company, which I love, and you talked about how there's an entire section in the bookshop called self-help, but there's a no section called help others.
And you're helping to build the help others industry starting with optimism, which is such a beautiful framework to think about. How do we start to increase the quality of all of our relationships, all of our interactions, and the power of community. And I've done a lot of work around the power of community as medicine. Yes, food is medicine, but so is community, and so is love. And so how do we bring the quality of those relationships up a level? How do we get out of our own self-absorbed framework and understand that through service and altruism, that we actually can build not only a better world, but a happier world for ourselves. And what you might not know this data, but altruism service activates the same pathways in the brain, the dopamine receptors that are impacted by heroin or cocaine or other addictive substances. And so in a way, we're hardwired for service to create pleasure.
And I personally had this experience when I went to Haiti after the earthquake. It was the most devastating scene you could ever imagine, 300,000 dead, 300,000 severely wounded. the 82nd airborne came in and were like, "We've never seen anything like this, Iraq, Iran, whatever, war, nothing." And it was really horrible. And I worked 20 hours a day, barely had anything to eat or drink, and I was serving others and not thinking about myself at all, trying to just get medicines and bring people in ORP surgery centers, and I was just like nonstop in service mode. And I hate to say this, but it was one of the most joyful, happy times of my life. It sounds weird. How could I be happy in disaster zone? But it's like when I'm seeing a patient or when I'm not in my head about something, I'm just in this act of service. It's just such a different way of experiencing life.

Simon Sinek:
You hear this with those who've been who served in combat, which is nobody "likes" combat, it's like your life's at risk, but you talk to combat veterans, and they have a warm feeling about their combat experiences. And it's not the combat or being in a war zone, it's the community. It's the intense love and serving your fellow soldier, marine, airman, sailor. It's serving the comrades around you and the love you have for each other. You may not like each other, but you love each other. It's like sibling relationships. And you would sacrifice your life for them because you know that they would sacrifice their life for you. And you do courageous things because that they would do the same for you. And it's the community that gives them that intense warmth and that intense feeling. And you know this. One of the things that produces oxytocin in our bodies, which is the chemical that makes us feel love and all the unicorns and rainbows, all the mushy, mushy stuff, one of the things that produces oxytocin is shared hardship, that when you go through difficult things with someone...
Like families that suffer tragedy come out closer when they get through it. Communities that suffer a hurricane, they don't care about their politics anymore. They're helping each other, and they come out as friends. And I think we, in the United States especially, we've on rugged individualism where [inaudible 00:26:19] imagery and all of our incentive structures in our companies are almost completely individual performances. Your performance, you get promotion, you get bonus. We don't incentivize the behavior of helping each other at all, and so you get the behavior, your reward. And so it's no wonder why we're all sort of these selfish career driven animals in the United States.
And then you look at how we attempt to find solace for the discomfort that creates, which is we've made selfish pursuit out of things like yoga and meditation, right? I was having this meeting. I attended this meeting. There was a whole group of us sitting around a table, and I was sitting next to a woman who apparently she's a big tiny yoga instructor. And under the table, I could see she was on her phone. And it's not like she was staying in touch with her family because she has somebody sicken in hospital. I looked over, she was on social media. I could see. And at one point at the table, the conversation turned to being present and the importance of being present. And her head popped up from her looking down on her phone and she said, "That's why I love yoga because it helps me be present." And I thought to myself, you're an idiot, right?
What she had done is she had made yoga a selfish pursuit. And if you think about something like meditation, the practice of meditation is you sit by yourself and you learn to focus on one thing, whether it's a mantra or a breath, it doesn't matter. You learn to focus on one thing and put all the other thoughts out of your head. And if you have a thought, you label it a thought, you move it aside and say, I'll deal with that later so you can stay focused. And what you end up with is this intense, calm and beautiful and beauty and presence. And we know all the medical benefits of mindfulness and meditation. We know the medical benefits of meditation to the self, right? But then there's another reason we do meditation, which is its practice to serve another. So when we have a friend who's telling us about a hard day that they're having or a struggle they're having in a relationship, that we are capable of focusing on what they're telling us and only what they're telling us.
Or even if they're having a good day and they want to report out to us, that we are entirely focused on what they're saying and nothing else. A crash behind us, we don't turn around because we're so focused on what they're saying. And if we have a thought, we label it a thought and we put it out of our minds. And we are not present until someone else says we are. When they say to us, "Thank you for listening," when they say to us, "I feel heard." And now what we're doing is building community. Yes, yes, absolutely meditation for ourself has application and value, but it also has to be applied to those we care about and those we love. That is the purpose.
And this is where Maslov, Maslov's hierarchy of needs... Maslov got it wrong. Maslov made a horrible mistake, right? Because he said the most basic need for human beings as food and shelter. The third thing he said was community relationships. And I mean, I for one have never heard of anyone dying by suicide because they were hungry, but I've heard of people dying by suicide because they were lonely, which means food can't be the most important thing. But also, you can get to the tip of this metaphorical pyramid of called self-actualization, which how pompous is that? I'm sitting at the top of the pyramid self-actualized, looking down at all of you unactualized people, right?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Simon Sinek:
And where he made the mistake is he only thought about us as individuals. And the reality is there's a paradox of being human, which is every moment at every day, we were both individuals and members of groups, and this causes stress, right? Do I put myself first? Do I put the group first? And it's a paradox. It's both, and we have to deal with that. And so Maslov was only thinking of as individuals. I think if we think of ourselves as groups, number one is relationship, and the top is shared act actualization. How do we get the group to feel actualized? And you talk about this in the blue zones, which is it's not just about me, it's about us.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. And it's true.

Simon Sinek:
And unfortunately, we miss that skills. We don't have those skills of how to create shared actualization.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
No, and it's sort of ancient. I mean, you think of Buddhist teaching, it sort of reminds... I studied Buddhism and they have the three pillars of awakening, which is the dharma, or the Buddha, which is the inspiration for the possibility of waking up, the dharma, which is the teachings of how to, and the sangha, which is the community you need to actually do that, right? And E.O. Wilson wrote this extraordinary book called The Social Conquest of the Earth, about how throughout all of biology, from ants to humans, we have to collaborate, work together to survive. I mean, if he stuck a human in the forest by himself or herself or in the desert, I mean, they're not going to survive very long, but we need each other. And it's built into our entire evolutionary history. And yet we created a society of such individualism, particularly in America, where we've kind of divorced ourselves from even understanding the need to build community and neighborhood.
I mean, I remember growing up in suburbs in Toronto, and I don't even remember my neighbors. I don't. And these are people that live few feet away from me and aren't part of our community. So I think we are really in a moment of crisis where we have to start to rebuild the sense of community and connection and belonging.

Simon Sinek:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And I think that is the medicine we're missing. And I think the divisiveness, separation, disconnection, hostility in the world now is really disheartening, and I think it's driven by focusing on our differences rather than our similarities. We're far more similar than we are separate. And I'm traveling so many countries all over the world, and humans are humans. When you get down to it, they care about their families, they care about just simplest things that matter. And the bodhisattva concept is essentially this idea in Buddhism that you reach the gates of enlightenment, but then you turn back to help relieve the suffering of all of their beings. And I think it's a beautiful framework for-

Simon Sinek:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yes, we need to take care of ourselves and self-care is important, but at what point do you start to turn back toward the world, and how do you take care of yourself so you can actually be more present and show up for everything and everyone in your life? And I think that's just such a foreign concept to most people.

Simon Sinek:
And we make it a hierarchy, right? We make it a hierarchy, which is you hear people say things like, "Well, you have to put on your own oxygen mask before you can help the person next to you. That's why you have to put yourself first." I'm like, yeah, but that's a crashing plane. That's a plane that has no air in it. That's why you have to do that, otherwise you'll pass out. That's not normal life. And I think it's a flawed analogy, because what if you spend your whole life putting your oxygen mask on? You'll never have time for anybody else. And the point is it's not one or it's one and, and it's imperfect. Being a human being is messy. And sometimes I do accidentally over-index on helping others to the point of self-harm, and sometimes I do actually sometimes over-index on being a little bit selfish at the point of hurting the team or hurting the family.
We make mistakes and it's the constant attempt to find that equilibrium, finding balance, which by the way, you'll never find, but that is the life's pursuit. You never want it to swing one way or the other too far. It's that balance of... But the problem is we in our American society have completely whacked it over to selfish, and we forgot the selfless. And it goes back to the biology. This is what I love about the intersection of my work and your work, which is functional medicine is if you just treat the body the way it was intended, it kind of just does it. It fixes itself automatically. And my work is the same. And there's a biological component and an anthropological component, which is we're made to look after each other, which is why we get oxytocin when we perform an act of generosity.
And it feels good when somebody does something nice for us, and it feels good when we do something for someone else. And witnessing or hearing a story of generosity releases oxytocin. And the more oxytocin we have in our bodies, the more generous we become because it's the human body's desperate attempt to get us to look after each other, and oxytocin boosts our immune systems and makes us live longer. So being generous, being socially oriented is actually what helps keep your body healthy. The opposite... And again you know the biology way better than I do. The opposite is cortisol, which is this unhealthy stress. Testosterone and excessive testosterone turns off our immune systems where it's an oxytocin inhibitor. So when you have these incredibly unhealthy cultures, like a bank, like an investment bank, where there's all this machismo and banker bros, combined with a flawed incentive structure that promotes individualism and lots of stress that you could get fired on any day, this toxic mix of cortisol and testosterone literally shuts off empathy.
That's why I love it when people say of these guys, "How can you sleep at night?" I'm like, "They sleep fine. They have no empathy." But-

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, let's talk about empathy.

Simon Sinek:
... they're lonelier and won't live as long because that's a toxic mix inside our bodies.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. I mean, there are ordinary people who live a long time, which I don't understand, but I think those are outliers. Simon, you talk a lot about empathy and the importance of empathy, and why it's necessary for success in both life and business. You talked about curiosity and how empathy is really... It has to include curiosity as part of its-

Simon Sinek:
Can I interrupt really quick?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
... sort of way of navigating. Yeah.

Simon Sinek:
I just thought of a great story of a really grumpy guy who was doing great, and we did a little exercise and we discovered why things were good even though he was grumpy.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. Oh okay.

Simon Sinek:
It occurred to me as you're talking about it.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Go ahead.

Simon Sinek:
It was just... Sorry, I want to get back to the empathy, but this-

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Go ahead. This is great.

Simon Sinek:
I think this might shed some light as to the grumpy people that live a long time. So I was doing a thing with Disney with the Imagineers, and I was talking to them about purpose and why and I was going to do a demonstration on how to help somebody find their why, and I was going to do it in the room. And so I picked a random guy, who he had lots of gray hairs, I knew he was seasoned. I picked a random guy to do the exercise in front of the room. What I didn't know is the guy that I chose, his nickname in the company is Ice Chips because he's a cold bastard.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Oh geez.

Simon Sinek:
And I don't think he knew his own nickname, by the way. I was told this afterwards, like, "Simon, you don't know who you picked. You picked a guy that people struggle to work for." Right? Because he's so hard on people.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Oh boy.

Simon Sinek:
And I started going through this exercise of asking him these questions about the times that Disney he was at in love, that his work felt like it had meaning, right? And he told this incredible story of how after he oversees the building of a ride, that he will always go for the opening days to see the people join the ride. And one day was the opening day of a new ride and he saw a father pushing his kid who's in a wheelchair, right? And I know Disney is so well equipped for people in wheelchairs, and he was just watching them get on. And he said, "Everywhere in the world, everywhere you go in the world, people will see a guy and a kid in a wheelchair, everywhere in the world." He says, "Only at Disneyland do we just see a father and their kid going to Disney." It chokes me up.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. Yeah.

Simon Sinek:
They don't see the wheelchair, they just see the relationship.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, the joy.

Simon Sinek:
And he was cracking up. He was choking up. We were all crying in the room. The whole room was crying. And in that instant, we realized why he was so hard on people, because those to him were the stakes. It mattered to him that much, that they're that perfect all the time. And so what he failed to do is communicate the purpose, and that's why people saw him as hard. In that instant, everybody who worked for him was proud to work for him. And in that instant, everybody wanted to work for him and be pushed that hard.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
So his excellence in his drive for excellence-

Simon Sinek:
Had purpose.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
... was driven by his love.

Simon Sinek:
It had purpose.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
... was driven by love.

Simon Sinek:
Exactly.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. It was really a little bit hidden, but it was clearly driven by love. That's so beautiful. And I think a lot of us, I think, struggle with empathy. I think particularly in this culture today, we're so focused on ourselves, and social media has just amplified that. Just all of us are struggling to make sense of the world in a very complicated environment of stresses that are just hard to sort through, war and climate change and natural disasters and increasing political divisiveness and just stuff that's just so uncomfortable to live in. And yet the solution is very available to us as we begin to sit and connect and understand and have empathy with other people. And I think... I remember the show... I forget the name [inaudible 00:40:23] this incredible mentalist. And essentially, he took a guy who was really a devout racist and he slowly acculturated him to...
I think it was in Texas or something too. He hated Hispanic people and Mexicans and just fully on racist. And over time, he got him to have a relationship and to connect with and to listen to it. Eventually, this guy literally took a bullet for a Mexican guy and it was all set up and it was fake. He didn't actually take a bullet, but he literally didn't know he wasn't going to take an actual bullet. And so when I hear these stories, I think, wow, all of us have that capacity, no matter how hard we are or disconnected we are, how much we believe the other is the enemy, that we all have the capacity to reach out in a way to build connection, relationship, and understanding.
And so in your work, you teach people how to do that. You teach people to access empathy. You teach people the importance of curiosity and how being curious about someone or curious about their lives or curious about who they are, about asking questions, is such a powerful trick. I mean, if you go to a dinner party and all you do is talk about yourself, you think maybe you're interesting or whatever, it's like whatever, people might learn some things. But if you ask questions, if you inquire about what people care about and you ask not superficial questions, like "How's your day, or where do you live, or what do you do for work?" but really deep questions, people actually love it, and it just builds this deeper sense of connection and relationship. And I think that's actually how our relationships started.
I was going through a moment in my life. I just kind of said what was in my heart and we talked, had these really honest conversations, and it got very real, very fast. And all of a sudden you build this deep intimacy and connection with somebody, and it's all what we're looking for, but most people don't have the tools or understanding of how to do that. So how do you teach people how to do that? How do you... Share some of the tools, techniques for how we strengthen that in ourselves?

Simon Sinek:
Yeah. Well, those are called human skills, and we don't teach human skills. And I despise the term soft skills. I wish we would stop using the term soft skills, right? There's nothing soft about them and hard and softer opposites, and I would hate to think that we're teaching people opposite things, right? Hard skills are the skills we need to teach you to do your job, and human skills are the skills we need to teach you to be a better human. And I want you to have both. I want you to be an expert in the work you do, and I want you to be an expert in being a human. I'm going to help you. And we don't teach human skills in colleges and high schools, and we definitely can do a lot better job of teaching human skills in our companies. Examples of human skills are things like how to have a difficult conversation, how to listen, active listening, how to have empathy, how to give and receive feedback, how to have an effective confrontation, right?
Sometimes we got to get into the tension, but we don't know how to do it so it usually blows up in our face, or how to have a difficult conversation. After the murder of George Floyd, I saw it all over the place. I saw a lot of leaders who after George Floyd was murdered, did nothing. They didn't have a conversation with their teams at all because they were so afraid of saying the wrong thing, accidentally triggering somebody or inflaming the situation that they opted for nothing. We can teach people how to have difficult conversations. And one of those human skills that we can do a better job of teaching and learning is how to replace judgment with curiosity.
And you gave the example of that experiment. I am a huge devotee of the work of Deeyah Khan. Deeyah is a... She's a filmmaker, documentary filmmaker, Muslim woman living in the UK. And she made some public comments about diverse societies and gained the attention of the white supremacist movement. And they started trolling her to the point where the police advised her to stay away from open windows.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Wow.

Simon Sinek:
And the way she responded was to move to America and get to know white supremacists. And what she offered them was a safe space to feel heard. Now, this sounds abhorrent to most people, like, "They should be the ones listening to us," except they won't.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. Yeah.

Simon Sinek:
Right? They're never going to do it. So, what she does, she gave them a safe space to feel heard. She didn't agree with them. She didn't affirm them. She gave them a safe space to empty their bucket, as Deeyah calls it, right? And what started to happen is they started to feel trust to her. They started to view her as a friend, and they could no longer reconcile their racist views with the fact that they viewed this Muslim woman as a friend. And one by one, they started dropping out of the white supremacist movement.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Simon Sinek:
And that's what you're talking about, which is-

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Simon Sinek:
And leadership very much is the willingness to go first, right? Even though the other person should go first, doesn't matter. The leader is the one who leads the way, literally. And most of us lack the skills to even know how to do that. The other person will say something so triggering to us will start fighting with them or trying to talk them down. And to watch Deeyah. You can see her documentary. It's called White Right: Meeting the Enemy. Her capacity for extreme listening is astonishing. And if we can... We don't have to have conversations with white supremacists. We just have to have conversations with our bosses and our friends and our colleagues.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Simon Sinek:
Because after the elections we have this, what do I say to my uncle who we have political disagreements with at Thanksgiving? And so most families up for not having the conversation. Why not opt for learning how to listen and try to understand where those points of view come from, whether they're on the right or the left, rather than just ignoring it and brushing it aside. Human skills are what we need more of.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
It's just beautifully said. And I think there is example after example where people can bridge those gaps-

Simon Sinek:
Of course.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
... and build those relationships. And you don't have to agree about everything to have a connection with somebody.

Simon Sinek:
Absolutely.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
You don't have to have the same beliefs or attitudes. Rick Warren, who was the pastor of the Saddleback Church where I worked with him on building a faith-based wellness program, he is an evangelical Christian and has Republican friends and democrat friends. And on either side, they kind of berate him. "Why you talking to them?" or "Why you doing this?" He says, "Listen, I'm not right wing or left wing. I'm for the whole bird, otherwise you fly in circles."

Simon Sinek:
So good.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
[inaudible 00:47:12] idea. I think that your stories reminded me of a very similar story of this white supremacist who was a young man who was one of the leaders in the movement, who was the spokesperson, was on television all the time and justifying all his leaders and had grown up in that environment. And he went to a college where there really wasn't a lot of similar kind of views that he had, but he was just going to school. And he was kind of a pariah and no one really wanted to have anything to do with him. This one Jewish kid invited him for Shabbat dinner, and then he wanted to come over and he is like, "Okay," because he didn't have any friends.

Simon Sinek:
Right.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And this guy, this Jewish kid started building a relationship with him and started to say, "Tell me what you think. Tell me your views. Tell me why you think this. Tell me your reasons and the data behind it, and let me be curious about that." And so he started to learn. And then he said, "Well, here's a perspective, and here's other data and here's other information." And so over a year, they built this friendship and relationship, and eventually this guy, this about his white supremacy and became an advocate for a very different point of view. And it was like, whoa, that just such a striking story because we're so much about being right and being righteous. And I had a business coach once said to me, "You can be right or you can be in relationship." I thought-

Simon Sinek:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
... that was a really beautiful framework because all we wanted do is be heard and listen to, and often that just diffuses everything.

Simon Sinek:
Deeyah talks about this mean. She would say when she was younger she would be a part of the anti rally. If there was a bunch of white supremacists, she would be a part of the anti rally. And she said, "I spat on them and I high-fived my friends, and we felt great and self righteous, and we went home pumping our fists." And she says, "You know how much impact I made? Zero, zero impact. All I did was feel good about myself that I spa on a white supremacist, but I didn't actually do anything." And I think that it's extremely difficult to be a good listener, not just to somebody whose views we find morally repugnant, but it's extremely difficult to listen to a spouse or loved one who's telling you that you did something that hurt them. It's extremely difficult to have a conversation on with a colleague or coworker or a boss who we're being told we did something wrong or we have to tell somebody they did something wrong. Listening is extremely difficult, and most of us are crap at it.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
We're not taught how to do it.

Simon Sinek:
We're not taught how to do it. And it's not some innate thing like breathing. It's a skill. And nobody expects you to know how to ride a bicycle unless you learn how to do it, and then practice. Well, we should learn how to listen and practice. We need to teach these skills.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
It's interesting. I was going to tell a quick story where I actually use this, and it was so powerful. I've used it a lot in my relationships where I just sit and listen like, "Hey, let me get you. Let me hear what you... Let me unload. And I'll just get it." And I don't respond. I don't share my perspective. I listen and then I feedback what's happening. And it's amazing how transformational it is. I've been married a bunch of times. In my last relationship I had, really an amazing woman, beautiful woman who's just really just kindly person, but she went to my 60th, my birth friend's 60th birthday party with me. And I had just come out of heart surgery. I was a little bit kind of out of it. I was sort of on some pain medication, and she said, "Look, I want you to take care of me here because I don't know anybody. So make sure you introduce me to people. Make sure you, you're kind of attending to me."
And I'm like, "Okay. Okay." So I basically, long story short, I had a friend who was under a federal indictment for an immigration issue that was just a big sort of witch hunt in a sense. He was an immigration lawyer. And no one knew about it, except him and his girlfriend. His girlfriend rushed me and just unloaded on me. And my wife was standing there, and I just was... I kind of was in shock because she shouldn't have been talking about it anyway. And I didn't introduce her and she'd never met her, and it was just... My wife got very upset, and she stormed out and didn't want to be there and was just like, here's my friend's 60th birthday. And I could have been indignant and said, "What are you doing? Why are you acting like this? Just come on."
And instead, I just found her in the parking lot, and I said, "Okay, let me get where you're at. What happened? What's going on?" And she just sort of unloaded. And then I just literally fed back to, "So I get you felt I wasn't present for you. I get I wasn't taking care of you. I get that you're feeling this and that and the other thing." And within five minutes, she was sitting in my lap with me making out. So it can happen like that if you learn the skill, but it's something I had to learn. It wasn't automatic. It wasn't taught, and essentially it means putting aside your own inner narrative when someone else is talking and just listening to them without your own agenda or story or overlay or justification or rationalization or judgment or anything. And it's a super hard thing to do.

Simon Sinek:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And you will feel like emotions. You will feel activated. You might feel a triggered, you might feel your blood boiling. You might feel a whole argument come up in your head about why they're wrong.

Simon Sinek:
Sure.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
But it's not about right or wrong, it's about actually getting somebody. And then they can do the same thing for you, and you end up not even having to agree on what the outcome is, but just that act of listening itself is healing. And you don't have to believe the same thing at the end of it. It's really quite amazing.

Simon Sinek:
Listening is perhaps one of the greatest acts of service we can give to someone because any of us want are to feel seen, to feel heard, and to feel understood. And that's basically it. And creating space for someone to feel seen, heard, and understood without any response or needing to fix something is one of the most tremendous acts of service we can give to someone. There's a really funny video on YouTube. I don't know if you've ever seen it. It's called It's Not about the Nail. It's only like a minute and a half long. If you just go on YouTube and put, It's Not About the Nail. It's the one with bazillions of views. Watch that one. And it really captures how crap we are at listening and how all we want to do is fix things where all somebody else wants is just a safe space to let out whatever that is inside them. And as you said, once she felt seen, heard, and understood, she was fine.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Simon Sinek:
There's nothing to fix.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
How do you teach people that? You do this all the time with people, so what is the practical ways to get individuals and groups of people to start to practice this? Because it seems to be the key to one building relationship, to being connected, to feeling part of community, to healing all the isolation and this division and separateness we have in our society. It's such a simple, in a way tool, but we just don't know how to do it.

Simon Sinek:
Sure. Well, there's multiple ways. I mean, you can actually run exercises. You give people scripts and say, "You're going to be the one who has to talk to this person. You're going to be the one who has to confront them and they're going to start giving you excuses, and you have to go into listening mode." And we always do those things with three people. It's like a good sales training. You have one person who plays the salesperson, one who plays the customer, but the person who actually learns is the observer because they can watch it play out. So you always have to have three, so there's an observer and everybody plays every role. So you could do exercises, but really it's about learning to replace judgment with curiosity. And I always say that there's three things when somebody starts talking to you. Instead of reacting, being right, being wrong, it's not nothing to do those with those things, it's trying to understand where they're coming from, trying to understand what they mean, so reflexive listening.
What I'm hearing is.. Is that right? And you put it in your own words, and they'll say yes or no. They'll correct you. So the pursuit to try and understand meaning, but also, just as I said before, replace judgment with curiosity. And there's three words, three phrases, which is, "Go on. What else? Tell me more."

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Go on. What else? Tell me more.

Simon Sinek:
Go on. What else? Tell me more. If somebody's saying to you, "Look, I'm really... Can I..." and starting those conversations. And sometimes you have to switch. Sometimes you start the conversation, but then you have to become the listener. "Hey, can I have a difficult conversation with you?" Right? So you set somebody up, "I need to have an uncomfortable conversation."

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, yeah.

Simon Sinek:
Right? "I'm not sure I'm going to get this right, so I need you to fumble through with me, but what you said to me yesterday, the way you talked to that woman and you ignored me really hurt my feelings." And you start getting old defensive or whatever, or let's turn it around, you say to her, "Hey, can I have an uncomfortable station? When you ran out of the room that night, you really embarrassed me and humiliated me in front of my friends at their birthday party."

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, yeah.

Simon Sinek:
But now you actually have to become the listener because she has to now unload, right?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Totally. Right, right. Yeah.

Simon Sinek:
And now you have to hold that incubator for her. Go on. What else? Tell me more. Go on. What else? Tell me more. Is that all? What else? Tell me more. I want... Tell me what else. And they'll start at the superficial level, and you get deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, and eventually they'll say, "I just wanted to feel next to you." And then you could say, "My love, that's what I want too."

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Exactly. Exactly. I think that, "What else? Tell me more. Is at all? Is there anything else?" I think that's important because it just gets down to a different layer.

Simon Sinek:
And I've done it with politics as well, where I had a conversation with a friend where we have very divided politics and we didn't know that when we became friends and it came up in one of our conversations, and both of us were like, "Ooh, okay.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Oh.

Simon Sinek:
And I remember she was saying something, and I definitely thought, and I may have said, "How can you be so stupid??

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Oh.

Simon Sinek:
And she said to me, "You just called your friend stupid."

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Oh wow.

Simon Sinek:
And I realized, what did I just do? And I had to learn to not try and be right and prove her wrong in whatever that debate was. I had to learn to hold space and understand where she was coming from. And so we both learned that skill with each other because we care about each other and we didn't want the friendship to collapse. And what I learned was is when we have one of those times where one of us is triggered by what the other person said, immediately, the other person will say, "I want to know more about that. Tell me more." And what happens if you allow that person with, "Go on. What else? Tell me more. What else? Tell me more," eventually you get to a point where you can actually find a detail that you can absolutely agree on. And you say, "That's a hundred percent correct. I completely agree with that. Yes, the science bears that out, or I just agree, yes."
And as soon as you find common ground, you can build back up again, and you actually find out you're both way more open-minded to each other than where you started. But you have to have the patience to go to the point where you can find anything where you can agree.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Simon Sinek:
And sometimes it's really hard, and you said it as well, and like Deeyah Khan learned it, you have feelings, but you can't let those feelings control the conversation. We need to control the conversation.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Well, Simon, this is such a powerful message right now because our world is so divided, so disconnected.

Simon Sinek:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
The conflicts between neighbors and friends, it's so sad to me because we all share way more in common than we have differences, and starting with our own humanity. And I think it is just beautiful. And I think people need to really check out your work. You have online classes that are at simonsinek.com classes. You have an on demand library, you have the optimism library. People can listen your podcast, can listen to your TEDTalks and learn more about you at simonsinek.com. You are a real friend and a inspiration. And I think if one or two people figure out their why or learn how to listen better or connect to their own ability to be curious, empathetic, and realize that building community and connection is more important than being right, this is going to be a better world. So thank you, Simon.

Simon Sinek:
Amen.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Thank you, Simon. Thank you, Simon. And for those who love this podcast, share with everybody on social media. Leave a comment. We'd love to hear from you, how have you figured out how to listen or be connected or find your why and purpose. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll see you next time on the Doctor's Farmacy.

Speaker 4:
Hi everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search there find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.