Ep #37: Health and the Brain

Welcome to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast, the only podcast that teaches men the cognitive mastery and alpha-mindset that it takes to become an influential and irresistible man of confidence. Here’s your host, certified life coach and international man of mystery, Kevin Aillaud.

What’s up, my brothers. Welcome back to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. I am your host, Kevin Aillaud. And today, we’re going to continue talking about health.  Now, today is episode two, or part two on the health topic. Last week, I kind of introduced health. Health is a thought. We’re in a relationship. We’re in a relationship with our body.

And because we’re in a relationship with our body, health becomes a verb. It becomes measurable by action and it is neutral, but it is something that we want to optimize. So our status in a snapshot is neutral, but in comparability, when we compare it to yesterday, we want it to be better. We want it to do more.

And that’s kind of what we’re going to talk about today. We’re going to talk about the brain and how the brain, how our cognition, how the alpha state, essentially, this mastery of our cognition, it has to catch up to what’s happening in terms of health because, all around us, we’ve built up this amazing wall, these amazing walls of imagination and fantasy, and our brains haven’t caught up. The alpha state hasn’t woken up. So we’re still in this beta condition and our beta condition has convinced us that our imagination is real.

So today, we’re going to talk about health and the brain and why when it is left unsupervised in the beta condition, it will lead us down an unhealthy and destructive path, which, brothers, this is something that I find interesting. And it’s something you might find interesting when I explain it because life, when you leave life unchecked, it will do anything to survive.

The beta condition, with our own brain left unchecked in this habitat, in this environment, it does the opposite. Our brains used to keep us alive in that old environment, our ancestors, but this new environment, it is doing something very different.

Now, before I start, I want to mention to you guys that the best part about health in terms of it being one of the three fundamentals of the alpha state – and I will mention this again in the next episode – but it’s this; it is that your health is something that you have direct control over.

So check this out. With relationships, we’re dealing with other people. We’re dealing with other people and their models because our relationships with other people, their actions are our circumstances. So we create our relationships with other people with our cognition. But when we deal with other people, we’re dealing with their actions, which comes from their cognition. It comes from their models and their beta condition.

With wealth, we’re dealing with other things and how we bring them into our life. So with wealth, we’re talking about money. We’re talking about possessions. With health, we have our own body. You have your own body and you have it with you all the time. So you have complete control. And we have complete control of our body, unless you’re listening to this podcast from prison, where maybe you have less say over what happens to your body.

Alright, so let’s get right into it. Here it is, guys. We have evolved only to be motivated by survival. That is what life is. Life is about maintaining the survivability of the organism itself. So our brain is motivated to keep our body alive. That’s what it does. It is a survival-driven problem-solving machine.

Our goal, as humans, has been three things. Our brain has basically sought to seek pleasure, our brain wants to seek pleasure, it wants to avoid pain and it wants to expend minimal effort. And this type of motivation for our brain has worked for thousands of years. It has kept our species alive and well.

It’s been a wonderful, wonderful way to have the human species flourish. We are at the top of the food chain. And now it’s killing us. Quite literally, brother, now it’s killing us. Here’s what happened; we developed the technology, we developed the innovation and science to change our circumstances, to change the world around us, and we didn’t manage our mind around the explosive development in the structure of our world.

Like I said before, we told ourselves and we told each other enough stories to agree so that we could form communities and cultures. But we didn’t develop the cognition to know we were telling each other stories. We think that everything around us is a fact. We think that our civilization is true. It’s not. They’re stories that we told each other.

So now here we are, in this new world. We’re no longer forced to survive. We have abundance. We don’t have to survive anymore. We don’t have to scrape and hunt and gather. We still have this old brain, however, our old brain. We still have the dormant alpha state. We still have the beta condition that runs the sentences in the brain. So we have a species of humans, we have our species that live like animals. We’re living like animals in a world that is more alien to us than the jungles and savannas that we build our imagined civilization around.

Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain is what sends us into addiction. It’s what sends us into obesity and disease. Avoiding pain keeps us from moving forward, creating and contributing to our world. And, brother, you know that expending minimal effort has us doing very little to evolve.

We feel safe. We feel comfortable. And that’s the illusion. The truth is, we are in great danger. It is just the opposite because we are in this illusion of comfort and safety that we are in this place of addiction, obesity, and disease.

Now, the alpha state has a new way of programming the brain. This is our prefrontal cortex. This is our elevated alpha state. And when it comes to health, a very different way of motivating the brain to survive and problem-solve is necessary. We have to be willing to move towards discomfort so we can keep evolving, so we can move towards optimum health.

Here is the alpha state brain function; it’s basically the opposite of the old brain function. Instead of seeking pleasure, we want to seek growth. Instead of avoiding pain, we want to embrace discomfort. Instead of expending minimal energy, we want to expend massive effort wisely, in a focused specific way.

This way to achieve, this way to develop, this is how you reach optimum health in the 21^st century – the way I have learned this, not just by understanding it or observing this. I have learned this by applying it to my own life over and over again.

I have overcome my desire to seek comfort, that’s the thing. It’s the ease. You overcome your desire to seek comfort with minimal effort because it’s an outdated algorithm in my brain. I have to go against my brain’s tendency and direct it otherwise. That’s the alpha state, brother. Because the beta condition is the natural tendency.

The beta condition is that animal-driven fear-based scarcity brain. The alpha state is the prefrontal cortex. That is the privilege of being a human being. We can use our brain to manage our brain. We can use our alpha state to manage our beta condition.

So then, what is the point, right? If the privilege of being a human being is thinking about my thoughts, if that’s what I have, that’s my gift, having this prefrontal cortex, and I live in the 21^st century with all the bells and whistles and cool stuff, then why not just partake in all the cool stuff? Like all the clichés say, you know, everything in moderation including moderation, life is to be experienced, yada, yada, yada, I think you know what I mean.

The point is that that’s all beta condition thinking meant to drive you into repetitive patterns. Think about it this way; there are two ways to live. One, you can live by default, you can live by the conditioned patterns of society, kind of going with the flow, or you can live on purpose. Now, here’s the thing; when you live on purpose, when you live as an alpha, you set higher standards for yourself. And then you bring yourself up to those standards.

This generally starts with your health because, as I mentioned, it is the place that you have 24 hours of control around. You control your sleep. You control your hydration. You control your nutrition. You control your exercise. You have control over your body.

So you set these high standards. You get there through cognitive mastery. You learn to elevate your alpha. And your thinking has to change in order for your life to change. In order for you to change your state of health, you have to change your thinking because your health, your actions, are going to be a manifestation of your thoughts, and your thoughts have to change if you’re going to manifest different actions.

Now, check this out; when you live by default, when you live the other way, in your beta condition, you increasingly accept states of weakness and stagnation. And then, my brother, you deem it normal. That’s the big thing. Then it becomes normal. Then it’s totally normal to live a life of mediocrity.

Think about the standards you have for yourself. And I’m talking about life, right? I’m talking about health specifically in terms of this podcast, but think about life. Just take a moment. Think about your standards in terms of your health, in terms of your life.

Your life, your body, and your brain can call in a being state of growth, of health, of evolvement. It always wants to be evolving. If it isn’t, how will you know if you’re doing life right by yourself? You’re only here to do life right by you. Only you can determine the standards you have for your life. Are you living on somebody else’s standards on how you care for yourself? Are you settling for less than optimal performance in your physical life?

If you haven’t made conscious decisions about where you want to go and what you expect from yourself, the answer to these questions is yes, bro. like, if you haven’t decided, if you haven’t been conscious about this, then you’re probably in the beta condition. You’re probably living by someone else’s standards. You’re probably settling for less than optimal performance.

Health is a spectrum. It’s a line. It’s a line with a single subjective point in the middle. And that’s it. You know, this one point, this one subjective point in the middle is where we separate what we want from what we don’t. It’s the point of normal. It’s the point of average. We want to be above this point because being below this point means we’re injured. It means we’re injured. It means we’re sick. It means we’re on our way to it.

So this point varies from person to person in terms of specifics, in terms of how we measure this. For some people, it may be 10% body fat, for other people it may be 30% body fat. For some people, it may be a resting heart rate of 70BPM, for other people, it might be a resting heartbeat of 85. For some people it might be a resting heartbeat of 55.

So the point varies, but there are some common standards that most people have when it comes to thinking about their health and their life from the beta condition. So here are some common standards people have for their health and their life; lack of mental and physical illness. As a standard for my life, I just don’t want to be sick. I just don’t want to be physically sick or injured.

I mean, think about that, brother. These are unconscious. These are the unconscious beta conditions that most of us live with because we’re still in that animal beta condition mindset. We haven’t brought the alpha state up to our health consciousness, and so we’re living in the survival mode. We’re living in this fear-based scarcity mode.

So these common standards are, again, just not being sick, not being injured, just surviving. My standard is just to survive. My standard is just to be safe. I mean, I just want to be safe. I just don’t want to get hurt, just to be secure, in fact, just getting by is sometimes an unconscious standard for my health, for my life. As long as I’m getting by, I’m okay, I’m good to go, I’m fine, that’s all I need, that’s all my unconscious brain is telling me; just get by, just get by, just be safe, just be secure, just keep up.  How about keeping up with work or family life? How about being familiar? How about familiarity being a goal?

If familiarity was a common standard, then how would you ever change? How would you ever get better? Avoiding emotion, preventing discomfort, not rocking the boat, these are all common standards that people have for their health, for their life when they’re in their beta condition. This list of beta condition standards comes from fear. It comes from scarcity; a place that doesn’t exist anymore.

Guys, this is what’s important; the beta condition standards come from a world without our imagination. They come from the jungle. They come from the savanna. They come from the world that we have not created with our mind and it’s preventing us from having higher standards.

Our current level of innovation, our current level of technology, science, knowledge, these things won’t allow for us to have this beta condition thinking. It drives us into an unhealthy level of excess. Our alpha state, our conscious standards for health and for life are to achieve my humanity fully, to live an exceptional life, to remove fear of emotion; not to remove fear, but to remove the fear of feeling emotion, to not have any buffering. We’re going to talk about buffering in the next episode, but understand, to not have any of that buffering in my life, to live a life of truth, to only have pleasure that comes without negative consequence, again, that has to do with buffering, but I’m going to talk about it next week – to live in emotional maturity and responsibility, emotional ownership, a life of contribution, of constantly improving so that every day I’m still moving towards growth instead of towards decrepitude.

I want to embrace all of humanness. I want massive action. I want failure to be a confidence-builder. These are standards we can have when we’re conscious in our alpha state because that is when we don’t allow the circumstances to drive us into our animal thoughts about health, seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, and being as efficient or expending as minimal energy as possible.

Okay, guys, check this out; this is how the brain works. The best way to start creating the life you want and showing yourself that it is possible to do, that you are an alpha man, is to improve your health because you have control over your health.

There are three fundamentals in the alpha male life. They are relationships with people, wealth, and health, okay. Health you have control over 100%.  You’re with your body all the time. Practice this every day and you’re going to learn the skill set faster to apply to the other two pieces, to relationships and to your wealth.

What skill set am I talking about? I’m talking about cognitive mastery, bro, elevated alpha state, I’m talking about that thing that helps you, that basically teaches you how to create the life you truly wanted. When were you taught how to create the life you truly wanted?

At what point in school did you learn how to process emotion or manage your mind? How about dealing with your compulsions? How about dealing with addictions, dealing with shame or self-doubt, these things that are part of normal human beings, the human condition, the beta condition? When were you taught this skill set? You weren’t. You weren’t ever taught these things, never? Yeah, me neither, bro, me neither.

That’s the thing. That’s the point. This skill set, learning how to master your cognition, managing your mind, owning your emotions, this is more important and will do more for you than anything else you ever learned in school; physics, algebra, like, history, art. Mind management is the most important skill.

Now, I know many of you have learned it through these podcasts. You’ve listened to my podcasts, you’ve learned some mind management and you’ve probably read some self-knowledge books as well. But learning it isn’t enough. That’s why I’m doing these health pieces because it starts with health.

Health is a way for you to begin. You’ve got to know the universal truth. You’ve got to learn how to use the model. Health is a place where you can start, but knowing this information intellectually isn’t enough. You have to do it in order to gain insight. And again, personal health is the easiest place to start.

Now, next week, I’m going to explain to you the difference between health offense and health defense and processes for going about each and give you some more information on how we can work together if health is something you want to look at.

In fact, you can go to my website and sign up for a 45-minute consultation. We can get started working together right away. But let me leave you with this, brother. Let me leave you with this.

Your expectations for yourself come from the way you think about yourself. That’s the universal truth. That will always be true. Your results are a manifestation of your cognition. Your wealth, your money, your net worth, your possessions, and your relationships are a reflection of that. Your health is a constant. Your mind and your body are inseparable. Health is always going to be with you.

If you don’t bring yourself beyond your current level of thinking, you will never change your expectations in your life and you will keep getting more of the same results. And here’s what happens; as we age – we call this decrepitude – as we age, we move towards entropy. The body breaks down.

If you aren’t growing, you are moving backwards. So what? So what happens when you stop growing? When you stop growing, you deny your humanness. You deny your inclination to evolve. This is intolerable for your spirit. This is intolerable for your humanness. Your spirit is the fuel for your humanness. You cannot live like this. It’s for this reason you might end up buffering.

If you’re not evolving, if you’re not growing, you might end up buffering in order to maintain your stagnation, in order to maintain mediocrity, which works against our nature to evolve and it works against being our best version of ourselves. Buffering might show up as overeating. It might show up as overdrinking. It might show up as pornography. It might show up as television, Netflix, videogames. Buffering can then result in more emotions that you want to avoid. Buffering leads to anxiety, frustration, apathy, depression, shame, doubt, worry.

And then you think it’s all normal. Then you start to think this is what life is. It’s not, bro. It’s not. It’s just what happens when you let the beta condition run the show for a little while. It’s no worries. You can take the reins back. You are an alpha male. You can take the reins back. As a human being, you are designed to evolve. You are designed to always be better. That’s why we have our brains; we learn, we adapt.

We’re designed for this. We are either actualized by that inclination, we’re either actualized by constantly becoming better versions of ourselves, or we defeat ourselves by suppressing our inclination to evolve, by suppressing our desire to be better.

You don’t have to trust me on this because you can see it. This is happening in your life right now. So how do you fix it? How do we go about fixing it? There are two processes that come from using the model, and I’m going to teach those two processes to you guys next week when we talk about offense and defense, health offense, health defense.

And until then, my brother, here’s what you’re going to do; you’re going to do two things this week. Number one, you’re going to go to the website and sign up for the newsletter, Indomitable Self-Confidence Newsletter, and you are going to sign up for a 45-minute consultation with me to talk about what’s going on with your health.

And then, number two, this is what you’re going to do this week until I see you next week; you’re going to elevate your alpha. See you next week, brother.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. If you enjoy what you’ve heard and want even more, sign up for Unleash Your Alpha – your guide to shifting to the alpha mindset – at thealphamalecoach.com/unleash.