Health coach and comedian, JP Sears, discusses how comedy can deliver different perspectives and help us get in touch with our emotions by teaching us to not be so rigid and attached to our own beliefs to the point that we can negatively impact our health and well being. JP also shares 3 affirmations that he lives by, plus his daily self-care rituals to center the mind, wake up the body, connect mind with body, and connect to feelings.
Episode Summary
On a recent Head First episode I talked with a health coach and satirist who built a following by poking fun at the wellness world: the gluten-free fads, the paleo dogma, the Instagram savasana shots. What pulled me in was that the joke runs on a real idea. You can take a health practice so seriously that the practice itself starts to hurt you. The punchline points at something measurable in the brain.
When does a healthy habit become an unhealthy one?
You can eat clean, exercise, meditate, and still end up worse off. My guest spent at least ten years, by his own account, locked into obsessive-compulsive health behavior. Spiritual practices, eating rules, exercise routines, all of it rigid. He coined a personal warning for it: the path you take to find yourself eventually becomes the path you lose yourself on. What works for a while works against you once you grip it too hard.
There is a name for the food version of this. Orthorexia describes an obsessive fixation on "correct" eating that crowds out flexibility, social connection, and quality of life (Bratman & Knight, 2000). The catch he named is sharp: when you are inside it, you cannot see it. He used to lecture audiences that orthorexia was a made-up shaming term, while he was living squarely in it.
The math he uses tracks with how I think about stress physiology. A clean food might raise your vitality by five units. The chronic psychological stress of policing every bite, scanning labels, and catastrophizing about a contaminated meal can cost you eleven. You net out negative. The food was fine. The relationship to the food was the problem.
What does rigid, dogmatic thinking do to the brain?
Cognitive rigidity runs on a recognizable pattern of circuit activity, and you can see correlates of it on a brain map.
Dogma narrows attention. When you hold a belief as certain, the brain stops sampling for disconfirming evidence. My guest described this directly: he could not tell whether his practices were working, because his dogma had already decided they worked, so he stopped checking. That is the threat-and-control mode of the nervous system doing its job. A rigid, controlling stance runs heavier on right-frontal threat-scanning circuitry and on the cortico-striatal loops that drive repetitive, rule-bound behavior. The same circuit involved in obsessive-compulsive patterns, the loop running through the orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, and striatum, biases the brain toward "I must follow the rule" over "let me see what the data show" (Menzies et al., 2008).
Certainty feels safe because it lowers the cost of monitoring. The price is that learning stalls. Flexibility depends on the prefrontal cortex staying online enough to update a prior when the evidence changes. This is well-established cognitive neuroscience: prefrontal regulation lets the brain hold a belief loosely and revise it (Miller & Cohen, 2001). When threat circuitry dominates, that updating slows down.
Why is curiosity better than judgment for your nervous system?
My guest framed his first mantra as "nothing is as it seems," which keeps him in a curious mind rather than a certain one. Curiosity orients toward growth. Certainty orients toward constriction and control. That maps cleanly onto what I teach in meditation.
When people start a mindfulness practice, they hit a wall of self-evaluation. I can't do this. My back hurts. My mind won't stop. That judgment is the threat-and-control system narrating the experience. The instruction I give is to replace the judgment with curiosity about the experience. Notice the pain. Notice the restlessness. Get interested in it instead of grading yourself. Curiosity recruits exploratory, approach-oriented processing instead of the defensive crouch. It is a lever you can pull in real time, and over weeks of practice the baseline can shift. The deeper mechanism is in the neuroscience of mindfulness training and in Mindfulness: Don't Just Do Something, Sit There.
The meditation teacher Shinzen Young puts it bluntly: your mind has led you astray whenever you reach a conclusion. The conclusion is the moment you stopped sampling. Curiosity keeps the sampling running.
Can disconnection hide inside a health obsession?
This is observation, not a controlled trial, so hold it as a hypothesis. My guest raised the possibility that an obsessive health regimen can function as a way to stay disconnected from people. If the rules are strict enough, you never have to share a meal, never have to compromise, never have to risk the vulnerability of connection. The avoidance gets dressed up as discipline.
I see versions of this in the brain maps and in what people describe. Rigid control is often a strategy the nervous system adopted to manage the threat of being hurt or rejected. The behavior looks like health. The function is protection. The system over-allocated toward control because, at some point, control kept it safe. The move is to give that system new data: small, tolerated doses of flexibility and connection that show the threat prediction was wrong. For more on how the brain runs threat prediction and how to train it down, see Biohacking Fight or Flight and Biohacking Anxiety.
What is a sane daily routine for the brain?
When I asked what actually keeps him regulated, the answer was a stack of practices that line up well with the circadian and autonomic science. None of it is exotic. The value is in the sequence.
Gratitude first. He opens the day naming what he is grateful for, sometimes journaled, sometimes spoken with a partner. The spoken version, done with another person, adds a social-bonding layer. Naming positive affect early biases the day's emotional set point. How you feel at 4 p.m. is partly a symptom of how you aimed yourself in the morning.
A cold shower. Cold exposure drives a sharp sympathetic activation followed by a parasympathetic rebound, plus a sustained rise in norepinephrine and dopamine that supports alertness and mood for hours (Šrámek et al., 2000). This is reasonably well-supported physiology, though dose and individual response vary.
A 30-minute walk, ideally outdoors. Morning light is the single strongest input to your circadian clock through the retinohypothalamic pathway to the suprachiasmatic nucleus (Berson et al., 2002). Light early sets sleep pressure for that night. Movement adds the rest. I lay out the minimum effective version in Biohacking Your Morning, and the sleep payoff in Biohacking Sleep.
Ten minutes of meditation. Short, daily, consistent. The goal is to center the mind, connect mind to body, and contact feeling rather than staying stuck in the head.
Clean eating without the dogma. He calls himself an 80-to-90 percenter, eating whole foods while listening to what the body is asking for rather than what a rule dictates. That flexibility is the point. It keeps the practice from sliding into orthorexia.
Staying challenged. Muscle grows under load. The same logic applies to the brain. Voluntary discomfort, taking on something that scares you, drives the adaptation. A system that is never challenged does not strengthen. This connects directly to how you build durable change, which I cover in the neuroscience of making habits stick.
Why does laughing at yourself signal a regulated brain?
My guest made a claim that holds up neurologically: the ability to laugh at yourself is a marker of security, and the inability to do it often signals threat. Spiritual and wellness communities can build a preciousness around their beliefs that makes questioning feel dangerous. The person who cannot tolerate the joke is usually the one whose self-worth is fused to the belief.
He offered a sharp version of this. One of the most ego-driven things a person can do is try to be ego-free, because nothing flatters the ego more than appearing so evolved that it no longer exists. The neural read is that rigid identity defense, the need to protect a fixed self-image, runs on the same threat-and-control circuitry as any other defended position. Playfulness and non-attachment let the prefrontal regulators stay online. Seriousness and attachment pull you back into control.
This is the same axis as curiosity versus judgment, just pointed at the self instead of at a meditation cushion.
Putting it together
Comedy can be a useful tool. When a joke lands on a belief you hold tightly, your reaction tells you exactly how attached you are. The flinch is data.
The practical move is small and repeatable. When you catch yourself certain, controlling, or grading your own performance, swap the judgment for curiosity and watch what the threat circuitry does. Keep the morning routine simple: light, movement, a short meditation, and food you choose flexibly rather than dogmatically. Stay challenged enough to keep adapting. Hold your best practices firmly enough to do them and loosely enough to change them when the evidence shifts.
If you want to see what your own threat-and-control balance looks like in measurable terms, a QEEG brain map is where I start with people. It turns the abstract question of "am I too rigid" into something you can actually look at and train.
References
- Bratman (2000). Effective coupling of cyclotron autoresonance maser and "gyrotron" modes on a phase-synchronized electron beam. doi:10.1103/physreve.62.4207
- Menzies (2008). Grey matter abnormalities in trichotillomania: morphometric magnetic resonance imaging study. doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.107.048314
- Miller (2001). Profiling lipids across Caucasian and Afro-American hair transverse cuts, using synchrotron infrared microspectrometry. doi:10.1046/j.0412-5463.2001.00118.x
- Berson (2002). Mutated alleles of the rod and cone Na-Ca+K-exchanger genes in patients with retinal diseases. PMID 12037007
Full Transcript
[Music] and welcome to another episode of head first with dr. hill thanks for listening and watching today's guest is JP Sears JP is a life coach and internet comedian you may have seen across the internet he's all over YouTube and other health and wellness podcasts he's known for his satirical pirating of veganism gluten-free fads other new-age health beliefs and basically lampooning all things spiritual which is wonderful although we'll dig in a little bit and see where the line is for him I think later on so JP welcome to the show you're actually our first Skype guest so we have to sort of do the making eye contact through the internet thing which is little tricky but that's fine yeah well doctor help thank you for having me on and it's a pleasure to be here pretending like I'm holding eye contact yeah that's great that's great so JP I've seen you on podcasts and YouTube and all kinds of things and of course what struck me and I'm sure many folks who are familiar with you is you have this incredible ability to lampoon satirize these things that we hold dear like being gluten free or paleo or vegan or doing yoga or filling our Instagram accounts up with pictures of us in you know savasana or something I guess shavasana be that exciting but this is not just a spoof for you is that right this is you you actually do have some health and wellness perspective you are a life coach you're not simply a comedian is that not accurate yeah that would be very true it's very important for me to come from a place with respect with regard to the color this subject matter that I do comedy on and uh because I don't think the world needs any more just condescending judgment and negative attitudes so you know I think we have too much of that as it is so which is probably me having a negative attitude about negative attitudes may I'll work on that so yeah I've been in the health world for a long time you know I've been gluten-free for 15 years I'm incredibly mindful of my eating practices incredibly mindful of my quote/unquote spiritual practices and self growth I do yoga I have an Instagram account and there's a part of me that gets my self esteem built for my Instagram account and other things so yes I would dare say it whether it's in a very direct way or a slightly less than very direct way everything I do my comedy on it's something that's near and dear to me in my life what kind of personal coaching do you do I mean I see wellness or emotional healing is that is that a phrase that you've yeah so the past 15 years has been primarily a mode what I would call emotional healing coaching and it's just this past January I finally kind of surrendered my practice gave it up just because there's been so many new opportunities that have been growing in the garden of life I feel very purposeful to devote my time and attention onto to fertilise that the the being able to work with people in the realm of their heart and their emotions and very vulnerable ways for the best 15 years has been very very fruitful for me has taught me so much it's helped me heal so much about my life while hopefully giving benefit to other people and then you know in the early days of that there was also nutritional coaching involved as well I've been an evolution then you haven't you didn't you didn't form fully as a spiritual nutritional wellness coach the moment you exited you know the wombs is that not how about it much like the the hundred foot tall oak tree then crack out of the Acorn in five seconds as definitely an evolution for me and I like to say life presented like a gluten-free breadcrumb trail to get me interested and what I'm supposed to be interested in you know in my late teens I got interested in like exercise which then got me really interested in the power of nutrition which then got me really interested in the power of stress reduction which then got me really interested in emotional healing work and and then that's got me which I'm still incredibly interested but now that's also got me interested in how I can use comedy as a way of delivering perspectives of consciousness and consideration I was describing you to one of the podcasts so the owners who actually hadn't heard of you before and I sort of described you at all I'm offended you know offended yeah it's not right yes Cushing's and I know I know I know who I am I described you as a spiritual version of Steven Wright with a sort of deadpan you know consummate deadpan I was I was googling you I think yesterday and the term pitch perfect deadpan or something was was used to describe you um how much of this sort of straightforward you know you have to little bit be aware of the joke space before you really get it how much of that can trip you up in that do people think you are actually legitimate you know talking about some of these fairly silly uh framings yeah it's hilarious to me that once in a while yes people think I am like seriously giving horrible advice it's like wow he's really being serious like this is how I can get more gluten intolerant or the truth so I think in the beginning about two and a half years ago when I started putting out comedy videos there was more of the people thinking like I'm giving serious advice because of course I do deliver it with a deadpan look and it's satire and I understand in the beginning there was more of it because people would just weren't used to this kind of thing when they were used to it coming from me because I didn't know who that I was into I don't think there was very much of it happening and the health wellness and spiritual space so it's kind of like unexpected territory to see satire therefore we assume it's not set higher it's just like the world's worst health coach digging a bike and then a yeah it's also fun to me it's amusing when it still happens yeah whether it's like an obscure comment I see on the video where someone in the comments section is trying to save everybody else in the comment section thing you guys really need to be aware this isn't good advice around there was a maybe a few weeks ago Ben Greenfield put a podcast out he and I were on it and it was the whole time I was in character uh-huh you know and and it was fun to do that for an hour and we're talking about how to give yourself more diarrhea through increased at intake and that's how you know you're in you know a ketogenic state and he would text me and a Giggy this is hilarious read the comment section people think we're being serious so to me there's some amusement and also I would there say there's comedic value to mystery there's comedic value to not straightforward revealing where I stand about a given topic because if I do then it's not satire it's a different breed of comedy and satire is like that's just my authentic fingerprint of comedy so I I love the mystery behind it and I love the the assumptions and emotional reactions be they a reaction of laughter or a reaction of taking offence that come out to videos now I enjoy that I think it's valuable and I think it's actually therapeutic for people to get in touch with whatever their relations are you know you as a foil against their actual experience a little bit what kind of I mean a lot of your perspective is again taking yourself seriously and if we look at sort of spiritual teachers and coaches and and health and wellness people there's embedded nets in that world this idea that as we get or advanced we actually have reduced ego attachment and we're able to be a little bit you know more have more equanimity be less flapped take things less personally what what to other spiritual coaches teachers gurus how do they view I mean of course the average person is like either not getting the joke and you know knee jerking that you're giving bad advice or they're you know playing along because they've heard from teachers who take themselves way too seriously and that resonates but what other you know gurus and teachers how do they seem to react to you have you come across some of that yeah you know I'm I'm very flattered with very humbled as well with people who have reached out to me and value what I'm doing you know Eckhart Tolle he'll oftentimes show my videos at his retreats Tony Robbins reached out and he invited me in to be his guest at one of his programs and he actually gave me a wonderful book endorsement because he considers himself a SAN and to me I mean that is just so humbling that the one that they'd see something I'm doing people who I admire admire what I'm doing I mean that is the definition of humbleness for me but also it's very inspiring seeing these people who are very powerful very iconic and they can laugh at themselves ro Dave Asprey you're sort of the sorbet to the Sirius message you know the palate cleanser absolutely and and I think to me the the evidence that we're looking at a false teacher if you will is someone who takes themselves too seriously you know Tony Robbins for instance he asks would I be willing our interested in making a video of the Tony Robbins experience at this event there's like yeah I would and it's like so inspiring that you can laugh at yourself so much that you'd invite me to make this video parroting your event and to me the whether it's a spiritual teacher or any other kind of teacher or an individual it's a mark of security within oneself when we can laugh at ourselves whether it's JP's portraying it I see what he's portraying I see that that's a reflection of some things that I am and I can laugh at myself and then there's certainly some teachers who don't like what I do and in my purpose isn't to discount them just because like well they don't like what I do so here's why they're uninvolved know is I want it my my son just might not work for them but also I think when when a teacher is maybe not coming from the most genuine authentic place and they need to pretend that there's something greater than a delusional human being just like everybody else then when I shine the light on how we're all delusional and I shine the light on how there's so much of our egotistical nature embedded in spirituality how then they might not like what they see and I in you mentioned something earlier about like our egos getting less and less attest I think one of the most egotistical things that happens is we try to be ego free I think there would be nothing more gratifying to the human ego than to come across as being so evolved that we have no ego I think that is just pure ego so I think when I portrayed something like that then people who are operating out of that model of getting a sense of self-worth through being so egotistical that they need to be egoist but they're blind to how they're losing themselves they won't like what they see because they're playing a trick on them it's a little too close to home to do resonant with how they actually are day to day for sure and probably a trick I'm playing on myself as I point to stuff out so that I can pretend that I'm above it all which I just a little thing right as you say your yoga so you are sort of lambasting your own you know lifestyle absolutely and dr. Hill and how long have you been glue tree I am gluten free about 80% of the time okay and how long have you been 80% gluten free about 10 years okay well I've been gluten free 15 years so I think we know where we stand right you know yeah I have the whole this perspective that you know people paleo our gluten-free high-fat these things are all really important but it's also important not to be ortho Rexach you know it's so rigid with your diet with your perspectives with monitoring your life that you lose track of why you're doing it and have the flexibility to live an actual life with other people you know it's weird how we can become so obsessed what what else I'll say this way we can become so obsessive and use health practices to justify it and it might all at some unconscious level be designed to keep us disconnected from people because we're afraid of connection because we're afraid of being hurt or rejected if we can stay disconnected from people then we'll never be hurt again maybe the plight of the wounded inner child that runs most of our lives and then in a you know a different level I think when we start to think a little bit more than just one dimensionally and believing everything we think we can realize why our health practices might make us very unhealthy and I think it's our attitude about our health practices a degree of obsessiveness compulsiveness that we apply to our health practices that could potentially make us unhealthy so if you mentioned your 80% gluten-free like wow that's amazing like it sounds like you have balance and I'm sure you're not celiac around so you probably need to be a hundred percent gluten-free but the fact that you can be 80 percent gluten free to me suggests like okay you've got elasticity here you you aren't just dogmatic where you're willing to injure your health in the name of improving your health where it's like our psychological stress about I've got to be you know only eat non-gmo organic gluten-free nightshade free foods that are locally farmed picked by a left-handed farmer who is a Buddhist right I can only eat those and if I don't I will be stressed so it's like okay those foods will increase my vitality by five units and my obsession about that it will decrease my Valley vitality by 11 units yeah so I think holistically we have to consider how our attitude about our health practices can positively or negative in fact you find yourself in this place years ago before you were this evolved in your own sort of giving out advice would you find yourself adhering to yoga too much and going now everyone must do yoga or everyone must avoid all sugar or did you have these let's say grasping perspectives no not me I've always been perfect I'm just here to help the little people point out how they're flawed of course I'm incredibly obsessive about health practices and in fact you mentioned the word orthorexia I think the first time I heard that word would have been back in maybe 2005 or 2006 and I was I remember specifically for some reason I was in Seattle teaching a weekend workshop and I started talking about orthorexia and I was essentially talking about how it is just the biggest sham and you know our society is so unhealthy that we've invented this word in order to you know categorize people who care about their health so I was so or Thor x''k that I couldn't see orthorexia I was in it I couldn't observe it but now looking at it it's like oh yeah you know orthorexia that's the other extreme one extreme is people who aren't mindful at all about their health in orthorexia as the other extreme where people are obsessive compulsive about their health which is either extremists probably terribly unhealthy so yeah I've lived by you know trial-by-fire for long years and I would dare say I was obsessive-compulsive about my health you know everything from spiritual practices eating practices exercise for at least 10 solid years from probably 22 Age for things that didn't work and that cannot rush towards grasping all the rules and doing everything right did you find yourself actually impairing your health impairing your wellness your capacity your flexibility you know if it's weird were there things that didn't work heck yeah did I see they weren't working nope you know I think the psychological condition of dogma makes us very blind it makes at least for me it made me very blind so I couldn't see what was working or what wasn't working because I was just dogmatically fixated on this is the right way to do it this will work so I don't have to pay attention to whether it works or not because my Dogma says this is the way so yeah in it you know I never fell off of any catastrophic catastrophic cliffs with my health but looking back I think some of what wasn't working for me the most you know consequential consequentially show showed up as being very psychologically rigid controlling you know rejecting other people because they weren't conscious enough you know I'm so accepting that I'll only accept people who are completely accepting absolutely is there a line for you when you're when you're being a satirist when you're giving this deadpan delivery about things that are somewhat triggering or inflammatory for people I mean I've seen you you know hold big swaths of raw meat up to vegans and I mean I know vegans who that would be like you know crucifying a baby you know the sort of tenth level vegans don't need anything to cast a shadow kind of you know perspective I imagine there there must be for you some line or maybe there's not I mean where is that for you is do you feel like it's all in is humor fair game you know pushing these buttons yeah to me it's not all fair game because I'm I'm not dogmatic enough like humor to believe it helps people no matter what I believe honestly humor is a powerful energy therefore it has the power to help and therefore has the power to hurt it can be very constructive or very destructive and I think part of it is what's my intention and it's like what really is my intention beyond the desire to get left so I have to really consider that and then I also need to consider not just what's my intention and how does this come across to me but how does this come across to other people then that's not at all to fall into a people-pleasing mentality of what will please other people in what will avoid discomfort not to me that's that's dysfunctional but I want to avoid what would actually hurt people and I realized like where the line is we all define that you know it so I had I you know in order to avoid people being hurt completely I would have to say nothing ever but you know like for instance my girlfriend is a vegan and there's times like I'll bounce things off her she also does work with plant medicine and ayahuasca and recently her night together did a video called if Trump drank ayahuasca so during that time because she's much more intimate in the ayahuasca realm than I was like it I want to be respectful like I want to you know I'm not afraid to like shine the light on hypocrisy but I also want to be respectful so there was a lot of questions I was bouncing off with her and having her input and there's there's been other times where there's been video ideas but I think this will make a great video it'll get a lot of laughs and I'm not going to do the video because it actually would cross the line and either as a video idea I had gluten-free pride where it you know it essentially is a big analogy to gay pride and you know it's like yeah I was born gluten intolerant I was born this way it's not a choice and and I would talk to gay friends of mine and bounce the idea off of them in about half said that's an amazing idea then the other half said yeah we think you're crossing the line if half the people think I'm crossing the line I'm definitely crossed just sort of weakening the legitimacy of the elbe LBGT a message and concern for my by mirroring it with a less serious yeah for sure and you know in ten years when the LGBT movement and culture is in a more secure place you know it's had more years to create cohesion then then it might be appropriate but right now it's like no this is you know it's in into two new of a state it's too fragile and and that's fine but you know if 10% of people would say that's crossing the line like I'll do it right I you know I think about ten percent or less is pretty normal and to me that's a pretty acceptable conduct of diametrically different views and are far out in that bell curve from you yeah for sure you know I'm well aware that human beings are just fascinating ly creative so we can create a perspective about anything in order to get offended if we meet if we get our emotional needs met by feeling emotions of passion that we create when we get offended about something because we don't know how to be passionate in a more direct way about things that are meaningful to us then we'll figure out how to get offended about anything so I don't want to avoid that because I realize when people are connoisseurs of offense they don't know how else to feel emotions of passion so anything I say they'll get offended if I don't say anything they'll get offended that I'm not saying anything so that's not the crowd that I want to you know define where is the line for major for interesting so I was heading over here to I work in a biofeedback Center and one of my EEG technicians asked me oh ask JP how does he feel about being dubbed the honey badger of the spiritual world and does he feel like he's actually meeting that responsibility that was the question from one of my technicians John I like that and I think I'm just looking at the back of my book yes I have a made-up book endorsement on the back of my book from Krishna of all paediatrician er just Krishna who says he is the honey badger of the spiritual Kingdom so I better be okay with that because I wrote it okay but to me that's a fun statement and if I was pretending there's a deeper meaning behind that which I think there is it would be it would be before eclis honeybadger is something that isn't intimidated it's something that's very ferocious it'll chew through what's there so to me there's a preciousness about the spiritual world that can intimidate the hell out of people from questioning it so the idea that the you know the soft talking and we're all precious and things are the way we think we are the fact that I'm not intimidated by that in fact I'm so unintimidated by it that I'm willing to see how the spiritual world is also the opposite of what it says it is that's something I I would say I take pride in and yeah and it feels good to me while also respecting it yeah I don't think honey badgers are going to be respectful animals but you can't intimidate a honey badger that's for sure you need different endorsement for the respect side maybe we'll pull in some other animals for those analogies like a dolphin procedure honey badger is like I'm not sure what that means beyond a really wrinkly brain what dr. Hill have you ever seen a honey badger hold its breath for seven minutes I have not what it means that's wonderful all right so let's let's be serious for a second I'm curious you know in this journey you've taken and you know all of us who are spiritual practices health practices who are you know not simply punching time clocks and eating McDonald's there's an about a process we often find our own path and find what works for us and not I mean I'm a big fan of the if somebody tells you something is true don't believe it unless you find it's true for yourself from a spiritual point of view at least I mean when I'm teaching neuroscience I'm usually pretty accurate in the facts not always but when I'm teaching somebody about how their mind works you know it's a lot more of a gray area no pun intended I'm wondering for you at this point in your 15 years of journey along this path one of the most impactful things that you do the biggest keeping or sanity keeping your health keeping your flexibility what is your daily routine or your weekly or your monthly yearly strategy to keep engaging in these healthy behaviors and keep yourself sane yeah I love the question I I feel like I'm probably going to say something that I need to learn so listen up JP you know starting kind of the macro and I would get a little micro in a second there's a couple mantras that are so important to me so helpful to me to keep close to my heart one I'm after mantras affirmations or quotes probably all the same thing but one is nothing is as it seems so that helps me lean more into a curious mindset rather than a certain mind but I think curiosity is oriented to growth and progression certainty is oriented to constriction control and a sense of safety another mindset of mind that's so important to me is to realize the path I take to find myself will eventually become the path I lose myself on Oh interesting and so it's kind of like what works for me for a while will work against me after a while I stay attached to it whether it's a year 10 years whether it's a philosophy or a nutrition practice and then the last of these macro affirmations in fact this one I have on my desk I've had it written on this note card for probably well over four years but it's just a question it says what wants to look through me not what do I want but what wants to live through me and that what that does for me that question what wants to live through me is it keeps me a little bit more humbled to kind of like listening to my intuition listening to the guidance of my heart and not so much what do I want in order to gratify myself but how can I be of service to whatever this life is that lives through me and at times doing so that that takes my Eagle off and there's just simply more grace ease quality of life contentment and success I get the more I follow the Sun trail of what wants to live through me rather than what do I want I being my delusional eagle of sense of who I am with us I getting a little more micro I think daily practices that really are important to me you know a morning routine where I start off with gratitude it's either in a gratitude journal or my girlfriend and I just share with each other what we're grateful for which I think didn't list with a person is next level even though journaling it is so powerful and then it's important for me to stimulate my body so I'll take a cold shower and then usually go out and take a 30 minute walk and in those self-care rituals I think they they help me and then I meditate for 10 minutes they help me Center my mind wake my body up connect my mind in my body connect me to my feelings not just being second my head but the gratitude that's a very feeling oriented deal and my experiences that sets me up well for the day where I'm coming from a wonderful place and I think when we come from a well aligned place our aim is always going to be better so it's like how my experience is how I am at 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon can be a symptom of how I aimed myself in the formative part of my day so those morning routines are so important then and then for me regular exercise very clean eating not obsessive compulsive but I'm you know kind of an 80 90 percenter like yourself we're eating good clean organic Whole Foods doing my best to pay attention to like what's my Adie calling for rather than just what my mind dogmatically believes i should be so doing my best to pay attention to those things and then lastly I'm going to shut up here because I feel like a ramble on for a while it's so important to me to stay challenged I think if we're not being challenged we don't grow we don't get stronger much like if we don't challenge a muscle it doesn't get stronger we like we know that physiologically so it's the challenge that's uncomfortable yet it's exactly the challenge that makes us grow so for me it's important to do things that scare me and intimidate me because that's what's challenging whether it's taking on a new professional and ever doing videos in a new way doing wise comedy letting go of my client practice while that scares me I'm so staying challenged physically and psychologically I think are incredibly important y'all so you remind me something one of my meditation teacher says I think this may have come from Shins & Young who says you know your mind has led you astray whenever you reach a conclusion I wish that wasn't true when I definitely believe that it sounds like you have some great perspective around staying flexible but not attaching to the capital I you know the knots Mon not my Sanskrit the lack of self how much do you think you'reyou're triggering people's ability to get these spiritual messages when you're doing stand-up when you're doing you know sort of satirical comedy you're something framing people's beliefs and helping poke at that a little bit and shake them up and you know help develop the perspective but do you think you're actually communicating some of the the more let's say traditional spiritual message is about flexibility kindness lack of harm is that coming through the comedy for for your viewers and listeners maybe uh you know I I would dare say a lot of that it's going to be in the eye of the beholder and in this redheaded beholder I would dare say the the most consistent thing I portray in my comedy which if we pretend like teaching by example is the most powerful teacher it's not what I say but it's the example I embody while I say whatever I say I would they're they're saying non-attachment is a big part of that you know I love to take a look at what's most important to me as I do with my videos and then I play with it and to me that's an act of non-attachment so if I can model that for people if they can see it if they can be inspired to adopt a level of non-attachment for themselves either even if it's 1% more than to me that that's a great win and and you know I the the the material if you will subject matter that I do comedy on it's important stuff you know I'm not talking about sex drugs and you know these shallow things that you can get a quick easy predictable laugh with my opinion I'm talking about important things and I think that which is most important to us is what's most important to be not attached to I think somewhere along the way most of us adopted some kind of erroneous misguided belief that said being unattached except two important things attached like hell to those now I think the the Buddha was around I mean I know we can just say whatever we want to say and pretend the Buddha would say that I just want to call him SID when you're being colloquial said shouldn't I exactly you know I I would imagine the Buddha would say something about being unattached to everything not just the things that are easy to be not attached to which are the things that are not important to us that even the things that are very important to us be not attached to those it doesn't mean they're less important to us it means we're less attached to them and I think the energy of playfulness is synonymous with the energy of non-attachment I think seriousness is synonymous with attachment controlling and fiction so if I can embody that and be an example of it then I would dare say that's really all I could ask it's very similar to the sort of judgment versus curiosity you mentioned earlier what a mighty meditation I always teach oh if you find yourself evaluating the process oh I can't meditate but my pain extracted try to replace your judgment with curiosity as a court piece I had never thought of it as curiosity as a growth lever but it sounds it sounds great to me and I will now steal that and use that when I'm teaching that's wonderful I really appreciate the perspective so curious you're working on all kinds of things you're a very busy guy you produce content you have a very active life what sort of things are you doing now you have a couple books I think you've produced or at least one that I know about can you summarize some of the if people want to dig into the J penis of this world how do they do that yeah and I want to highlight dr. hill you just said penis was to a penis did which is well played like how you slept then yeah I hit a couple of a couple months ago I had my my first book came out how to be ultra spiritual twelve and a half step so spiritual superiority and I put my heart and soul into that I was just absolutely wonderful that sounds narcissistic the process was wonderful is the book wonderful you're going to have to be bit curious non judge of that and then you know I'm making videos and something that has me really excited about my videos present-day as I'm changing how I'm doing them you know once upon a time I was when I started the comedy videos I was doing all my videos in character abandoned flour on that character once upon a time was freedom to me like wow this is a new expression and I began to find earlier this year was like two years after doing the character being the character is and it's now not freedom it constriction it's kind of like wow that character help me find myself and now I'm losing myself when I pin myself to just being the character so now the character essentially he's a tool and the tool about I pull them out when the time's right rather than obligating myself to be the character all the time on video so you know I've realized I the character is a part of me but Who I am is bigger than just the character so on video it's been very exciting for me to explore more of me sharing more perspectives and having comedy that comes from an angle other than just the character as well as doing comedy on what I would say our issues that are incredibly meaningful but they don't fall just into the spiritual genre to me that's so important it's just I need to honor my heart and souls direction rather than just stain another zone of the familiar so that's that's been big for me lately and then I've been doing a lot of live shows with stand-up comedy stand-up authenticity in conjunction with supporting my book and I'll have more of a full line comedy tour happening later this year not great so yeah that's a little bit of what's happening for me as I you know stumble around in life pretending I know it reminds me of an injury I saw with Stephen Colbert many years ago when he was still only in character all the time and he hadn't yet ever it wasn't Stephen Colbert he was just Colbert you know and one thing he mentioned was playing with the well who's going to show up to the interview when he was not doing his show was Colbert going to show up and do the show the other interview over suppose it's Steven Cobert you know which which character I imagine especially over the past a few years as you're getting more known it's like well do we have JP Sears the ultra spiritual dude or do we have JP Sears the guy that's propping up the ultra spiritual dude for a purpose imagine that the interviewers and people you're interacting with are never quite sure what they're getting are you are you do you know if you're in character or is it is it a is it easy to tell but you know the operating under the the label of let me just be mean I love that and you know that given that the character is a part of me there's times where out with you if it's an interview or a discussion there's times where I will oscillate into the character and then also laid out of them and be a different expression and and there's times where you know an interviewer would say like I'd like to interview the the character and and when it's agreed upon like cool look I'll do that if it feels good to me in the front agreement great but they're honestly like last week there were a few times where I showed up for an interview and just last second they said you know would you mind putting the headband on and I honestly it's taken me a long time to be able to honor myself enough to say that doesn't feel right to me I'd like to just be me rather than essentially being what you want me to be right now but you know if they want a certain something if we want just JP to be the character tell me that in the beginning and I'll either agree to it or not but you know in the yes for the last moment and then it's typically usually going to be a no unless it just feels right but yeah you know it's it has been not to sound cliche but it's been a very I'd say powerful heroes Jeremy what the the comedy has taken me on in word honestly where you know I've encountered parts of myself a lot of trials by fire and I I'm arriving at a much deeper sense of self than I had before the comedy and being able to essentially honor what my heart says at any given moment where it's kind of like yeah if you want me to be the character and that doesn't feel right to me then instead of betraying myself in the name of squeezing you I'll just honor you I'll honor me and that works really cool as it doesn't that's cool too but I'll at least have my integrity with myself so I'm hearing a lot of good perspective on this journey you come through let me ask you a question though where do you fall over where are you finding yourself at your growth edge where you know you try new things and it not working for you you know what's where is that point of pain yeah what isn't working for me is overworking I I've heard honestly the past about 15 years basically all of my career I've been one to stay manically active with work so that I can have this fleeting sense of productivity that gives me this sense that you know night I'm appeasing my father even though he's not watching me it's just you know my impression of my father trying to always meet his expectation so that is that's not working for me I in January I started some major shifts on that very uncomfortable but trying to find my balance between the extremes of inaction on one side and manic action on the other and having heart alignment action be the place of balance in between that's that's where I'm stumbling around you know I'm grateful that I'm stumbling because it means I'm not stuck in the concrete of manic action like I was the idea of being lazy and complacent with inaction that's I don't think something I need to worry too much about so it's it's at times incredibly uncomfortable when I'm looking at an hour of time that I'm not being cold and cold productive like wow this is uncomfortable because now I have to connect to me now I have to connect to emotions that I otherwise would have buried with the dirt of manic action where I'm doing things with the priorities nothing need to be done but I'm doing things that I justify need to be done so that's that that's a an important place I'm at not mastered there at all but I'm the blind man stumbling around trying to find its way in there the space of heart alignment action well some nice humility there thank you for sharing that vulnerability with us it sounds like you've moved beyond your your personal one-on-one coaching practice and I hear some that's a difficult transition but thank you for you know your your coaching all of us via YouTube and Twitter and everywhere else I'm curious when you're working with people be it on stage and you're trying to drop a little wisdom or in your one-on-one coaching practice other truisms or things that you try to get out to everyone other messages that you that you really want to make sure that they hear the Jaypee way of you know the perspective about how this should work in terms of sort of personal development or loving yourself other things you got to get in because it's important for your message yeah and I'm a firm believer that we really only teach what we need to learn the most so apparently I still haven't heard the message in Oscars I still always teach it but one of the reoccurring messages is you're not who you think you are I I love to ask people to take a look at who do you think you are who do you want to be and who are you really I asking you know getting the message of that question out you know I'm not one to define for anybody who they are but I'm one to challenge people into leaving the comfort zone of who they think they are even leaving the comfort zone of who they want to be in the name of embracing something greater which is who they really are that's that's been a reoccurring theme that's been very important to me to invite people to entertain and I'm guessing that's because I still need to entertain Who am I really and I probably always will and it's very easy for me to think I'm who other people think I am it's very easy for me to think I am who I think I am and it's very easy for me to think that I should be who I want to be and I think who I want to be is for the most part engineered out of my insecure insignificant feeling ego parts that create this delusional grandeur of fantasy and justify it as like triumphs and we can do anything we want but really I think it's a way I try to escape pain but I think surrendering into you know the place of not trying to create ourselves but realize who our selves actually are who we really are attending that's a great place of surrender that deserves to be drank from if he was that sort of a lower case ie go moving through you you know the the the genuine self if you will the less reactive attached self maybe yeah I think I could get on board with that nice thank you so much for coming on the show today where can folks find out more about your work we track you down where can we find your comedy tour what's how can we drink of the Jaypee yeah well right now I'm in my home office so my address if you want to peek inside my windows so you know online all my social media handles are awakened with JP yeah very active on Facebook YouTube and and my website awakened with JT com that's got upcoming events that I'll be doing seemingly there's more being added to that all the time so all things awaken with JP great place to find me I love to connect with people and of course if you find Mia credibly in offensive than awaken with JP is the best place for you to avoid great well we'll put some of those in the show notes and this show will come out in probably mid-july and so we'll share that with you when that happens but JP Aegon thanks so much it's been great to get some virtual FaceTime with you and I look forward may be seen at some point face to face if we're a conference together or if you're in Los Angeles please by peak brain get a brain map happy to compu some peek under the covers in a non spiritual way if you want to see what's good I brain and I would love that dr. L I'd love to take you up on that offer and I'm terrified at what we might find alright GP again thanks so much and folks if you want to do something with your brains take control and take care of those brains if you need to soften your grip on how spiritual are check out some a JP's content because it's hard to take yourself seriously when you listen to JP so again thanks so much and folks take care of those brains [Music]