SOLO | Make Money by Feeling Better: Protect Your Mind, Guard Your Inputs, and Build Real Community

0:00So good, so good, so good. Spring styles are at Nordstrom Rack stores now, and they're up to 60% off. Stock up and save on Ragnbonne made well. Vince, All Saints, and more of your favorites. I did a lot no rack as a deedus. Why do we rack for the hottest still? There's so many good brands. Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. You're listening to the Travis Makes Money Podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com. For a free 30-day trial of the best all-in-one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to GoHighLevel.com slash traps. What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the show, this episode. It's just me, you and the Mike, and we are talking a little bit about how to feel better. I've noticed this trend recently, have the last five to 10 years, really since I've been diving deep into the personal development space,

1:00where people, like us, who are some of the most blessed people, to have ever existed on this planet, meaning that we're not constantly worried about where our next meal is coming from. We're not drinking dirty water. We're not being conquered by other emperors trying to expand to their kingdoms, and we're not fighting battles with swords, even though we're just a farmer or something like that. The life that we have been given, the time that we're alive is the best time in history to be alive. Yet, we are in the middle of the mental health crisis. So, what gives? What's the deal? How is it possible that we have dropped into this beautiful moment in time?

2:00Yet, a huge portion of us are still walking around, feeling like we're trying to escape the saber-toothed tiger who's threatening our camp or something like that. It just, it seems like a wild time. So, these are just a few things that I wrote down. I don't have much to say about these other than this is just my anecdotal experience for things that I do to make myself feel better when I notice that there's just this negative trend of my mood over time, which is also a good reason to track these things as much as you can to even like take an account, write out numbers for like how you felt that day so you can look at it over a four or five month, six month period, and then have some sort of like an idea, like a plot on a graph of like, oh, my mood seems to be overall trending downward over the last six months. That's a problem. Maybe I should do something to address that. So, here's a few things that I've done over the years to just feel better. First off, and this one gets me in trouble sometimes.

3:02And look, I don't know what to say about that. If you disagree with me, you disagree with me, but this has been wildly helpful for me in my life. And that is stop overconsuming or talking about things that are negative and outside of your control. And the biggest culprit behind this is politics. We can't get away from politics. It's everywhere. You open up your phone. Even for somebody like me who tries not to engage in it that much, I still get fed all of these things in my social media feed about politics. And there's always, you know, you try to get away from it and then some comedian you follow has a politician on or something like that. And it's just like, oh, man, why can't we just not talk about this stuff all the damn time? And I first heard this from Tim Ferris. I believe it was in his book The Four Hour Workweek where he was talking basically about productivity hacks, focus hacks. And this is one of the things that he said. And from that point forward a few years ago, I decided to really just try to move this stuff out of my milieu, my daily life.

4:07And once you imagine that, imagine that it actually worked, because what happens is media and the news have trended in a direction of attention. They are also a part of the attention economy, just like all of us who are podcasting or creating stuff are. The difference is that they used to be a trusted source of objective events that were occurring around the world. So people would tune into their television sets all at the same time, have their trusted anchor and download all the information, the news of the day. And then 24, seven news started rolling around and then people started doing commentary. And then a lot of the stuff is just opinions about events that are happening. And then you have not just the host's opinion, but then they bring on six guests at the same time. And they're all arguing with each other, fighting over each other. It's basically, to me, what it's become is the intellectuals soap opera.

5:08It's the person who would perceive themselves or categorize themselves as being someone who's intelligent, somebody who reads a lot, maybe has a degree or got a master's or something like that. And they look at it as their responsibility to be aware of all of these events that are happening around the world. Yet it has become like their version of reality television, where they're watching this, again, this negative energy, this combative energy in front of their eyes basically all day every day. They just have the news on and they're watching all these people argue and fight over all of these things and give their opinion. This person gives their opinion. And to me, it is only something that will prevent you from accomplishing any of the things that you set your mind to. Because it pulls you into these rabbit holes of negativity spiral. And it's really difficult to get out of those things. And I think that you won't notice it day one. You won't notice it day two. But again, over a five, six, seven, eight month period where you've just over consumed too much politics,

6:12you're just going to find yourself feeling crappier. Why? Because it's a massive input. Your inputs become your outputs. So if you're constantly receiving this input of negativity, then you have no choice but to output some of that negativity. And you're just going to feel like an overall dampening of your mood. And then you're going to catastrophize everything that the people on the news are catastrophizing, thinking that the world is burning. And then we're on a cruise. My wife and I went on a on a workaholics cruise. So for those of you who watch the show workaholics, I'm divine and Anders and Blake and Kyle Neuchek all this guy. So we went on this cruise and we're in this like this podcast, a live podcast with Chad Kroger and JT Par, who I think are just hilarious. They do all these like city council. They actually like go into the city council and put up these proposals and it's like dead. They're fully and completely in character the whole time and it blows my mind how they do it, because they're, anyway, they're hilarious. Anyway, so we're in this room. They're doing this live podcast. At the end, they opened it up to Q&A.

7:12And there are more than one questions that were regarding like the political climate of, you know, what we're all dealing with right now. And there's this one girl who mentioned something about, ask them something about if they wanted kids or something and then they asked her if she wanted kids and she was like, I just don't feel comfortable bringing a child into the world the way that it is right now. And in my mind, like it was such a jarring thing for me to hear because of what I mentioned at the very beginning of this episode, which is that there's never been a better time to do this. Like at what point in history would have been better for you to go back to, travel back to and bring a kid into that version of the world. It is this adopted belief of pessimism that is destroying people's lives and futures and to think that that would be something that would prevent somebody from the joy of raising a child because they're bought into some political ideology that's told them that this version of the world is way worse than the version of the world that we knew

8:1320 years ago, 40 years ago, 80 years ago is a ridiculous premise, but we're bought into it because we just soak in all of this terrible negative energy that just can't help but permeate to your core and then come out and manifest itself in these types of life altering belief systems and it was wild to see it happen in person and they handled it really well when they were on stage, I forget exactly what they said but it was sort of along the lines of what I'm saying, which is like, there's always gonna be obstacles to raising kids, there's always gonna be problems that arise and if you feel that there's a problem with the world then maybe having a kid and raising your kid with the beliefs that you have might be a potential solution to the problems that you believe are making life objectively terrible at the moment in your mind. I guess I should say subjectively terrible. So stop over-consuming the news guys. There's just a stat that I read recently,

9:15I might butcher it, but you can look it up and Google fact check me on this if it sounds a little bit too high but it was something close to 80% of news headlines are written with some form of a negativity bias because they know the data, they know what gets attention, they know what's gonna get you to click that link, they know what's gonna get you to watch through the commercial break, they know what's gonna get you to share with your friends, the friends that agree with you or the friends that disagree with you, they know what's gonna get you to hit those buttons and continue engagement so they can increase viewership, sell more sponsors and keep their stakeholders happy. Like this is their playbook yet there are so many. This episode of the show is brought to you by Mars Men. So look guys, I don't know if everybody listening knows this but a couple of years ago I was diagnosed with cancer and around that time I also noticed that my testosterone levels were dropping like crazy and I know that some of it was due to the fact that my body was sort of in disarray but then I also learned through this experience

10:16that most men start losing testosterone levels around the age of 30 and then it starts just getting worse and worse after that, about 1% every year after that. So what I learned during this is that basically your body makes testosterone but a lot of it gets locked up and can't be used. So there's this protein called SHBG that basically handcuffs your testosterone. So even if your body's making testosterone SHBG locks it up so you can't access it. It's like having money in the bank but your debit card doesn't work. So Mars Men is designed to help free locked testosterone so your body can actually use it. No synthetics, no needles, just real ingredients that help optimize energy, focus and strength. And since I started taking stuff like this, I noticed increased physical performance especially recovery in the gym which as I am getting older I'm starting to realize this is a real thing, I have to stretch a lot more, I have to take breaks more, I have to have rest days and things like that and Mars Men has helped me to be able to recover a little bit faster

11:17plus more consistent natural energy. It's different than having a cup of coffee or an energy drink or something. It's a steadier sense of drive throughout the entire day. It supports healthy tea levels, energy and stamina with eight natural clinically-dosed ingredients made in the USA and third party tested. Plus it's got a 30-day money back guarantee so there is absolutely no risk to you. In worst case, you don't absolutely love it and you get your money back. But over 91% of users report higher energy levels. Thousands and thousands of guys are feeling incredible results from this. So just check out the reviews on the website to see for yourself. For limited time, our listeners get 50% off, that's 50% off for life plus free shipping and three free gifts at mengo2mars.com. That's mengo2mars.com for 50% off and three free gifts when you check out. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Just please support our show and tell them that we sent you. That's mengo2mars.com. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate.

12:17Instead, use Indeed sponsor jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate see. According to Indeed data, sponsor jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsor job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Any of us, and included in this bucket because I find myself going down some of these rabbit holes. In fact, it was a conversation that I have with a friend of mine who is even less engaged in politics because he's constantly working and just didn't have time for it. And there was a couple of things that I brought up that he was completely oblivious and unaware of. And I was like, I kind of miss being oblivious to these types of things because there's just no use. It's wildly outside of my control. There's nothing that I can do about it. All it does is just stir this hatred and anger inside of me for some other group that I have not personally met or connected with or had conversations with. And I just find it to be an objective waste of time

13:18for the most part, especially if you're not already in a position where you can do something about it. Like there's some people that I see that are following this arc of like they built value through a business or they were a creator or something. And then they have this massive exit where they became really huge and then they started getting into politics. And it's like, I don't like it when I see it because I preferred their other content before they became political. But I can at least understand where they're coming from where it's like, okay, well you're worth a half a billion dollars now. You actually have the ability to make an impact on this and maybe there are some things that you can control about some of the outcomes that you don't like that are happening in the world around you. But for the majority of us normal people who are just focused on paying the bills, living a good life, providing for our family, having a good time with our friends, it just like interjecting these things into our daily lives is objectively making our lives worse. And you see, I mean, the last election cycle, the last couple of election cycles, we've seen lifelong friendships destroyed over the fact that somebody dared to post something online

14:21about their political beliefs. And then all these other people are making them feel bad for those things or they're further confirming those things. And it's like, look, neither one of those is great. And again, the majority of this is outside of your control. And if you're not a political, if that's not what you're doing for a living, if you're not running for office, or if you're not trying to affect policy change, if you're not a lobbyist, if you're not actively involved in that world, I just don't see a ton of reason to be fully educated on everything. Because that's the problem, right? Is that you can't be fully educated on everything. First of all, because we're not in the rooms behind closed doors where all the decisions are actually being made. So we don't even have all the information. We think that we have more information than we do, but we really don't. And then also, there's nothing that you can do about it, even if you had the information at hand. And so yeah, I just find that the majority of the time that you're spending doing those things, it's just gonna be more of a negative effect over your life than a positive effect. And I'm not suggesting that you fully and completely bury your head in the sand and just not know anything about what's going on in the world. But my sort of view on it is like,

15:22if it's a big enough thing, I'll hear about it. Like if it's enough of something that's worthy of being known, then somebody's gonna tell me about it at some point. But like I said, I hate, I fight back against the concept that everybody should just have a fully flushed out of opinion about everything. It's just like, we don't have all the information. There's people who dedicate their entire lives to like this one policy that you're talking about from this armchair expert position. You know how we can solve the water crisis? Or just by doing this, I don't know why we don't just do this. If they elected me, we'd take care of it in three months. It's like, really? You think that you, like the version of you that you are right now, if you were in office, you'd be able to just solve this problem that people have spent decades dedicating their entire lives to research and trying to solve themselves. It's wildly nuanced. It's almost impossible to solve from our perspective. And so, and you, the time that is spent

16:24worrying about all these other things. If that time was spent doing other things that actually affected your day to day life, then you would find the overall quality of your life to be better by just focusing on other things that actually have the ability to create change in your life. So limit your news sources. You know, mute commercials if you have to. Stop listening to all these political podcasts in your free time and your spare time. And listen to stuff that's gonna be more encouraging. Choose the inputs that are going to encourage you or that are going to enrich your soul or your psyche. Choose the things that are going to allow you to live a better version of life, not a worse version of life. Because if you get sucked into these negativity bias headlines, then you're just going to start adopting this worldview that everything's negative, that the world is burning and that we live in a terrible time and everything's horrible. And if you believe that about the world, that it's really difficult to see the opportunity that exists through all of the bullshit.

17:25Whereas if you adopt the other perspective, you're gonna start noticing that opportunity's open up to you because that's the belief that you're adopting. The fact is that nobody on this planet sees reality as it is. We all see reality through our skewed perspective. That is the version of reality that you see. So the cool thing about that is if that is the case, then you get to choose which version of reality you accept as truth in your life. And so I look at it as if I can choose a version of reality that is useful to me and not harmful to others, then I'm going to choose that versus something that is harmful to me, even if it's not harmful to others. And I think a lot of people are just diluting themselves into believing that everything's burning and the world is on fire and there's no opportunity and the economy sucks and I can't get a job and I can't do this and I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't. And it's like, man, well, it's really difficult to try to create any sort of abundance in your life if that's the initial belief that you're holding true. And so yeah, stop overconsuming negative things in general.

18:30I think politics is the first example that comes to mind because it's so prevalent and it permeates every area of our society and it's something that you sort of get criticized for not caring about or you get lumped into a bucket of privileged people who just can afford to not care about those things or something. I don't know, I just find it to be extremely useful to remove myself from all that stuff as much as I possibly can and focus on the positives, focus on the great stuff that I have, the awesome opportunities that the world affords to me now, the beautiful time that we live in and all the amazing things that we're blessed with, especially as Americans and especially in the year 2026. So stop overconsuming negative things. Next, schedule time with friends and family. The number one common denominator between all the blue zones on this planet, the blue zone, and if you haven't heard of blue zones, blue zones are the parts of the planet where there's the highest concentration of centenarians

19:31people who live to be past 100. And what they found through studying these different, these five different regions on the planet is that none of them follow the same diet. None of them follow sort of these traditional bio-acking things like some of these communities are active smokers, they drink alcohol, they're not doing cold plunges and breath work and meditation and all this other stuff that we've told ourselves is the thing that's gonna make us live past 100. The number one common denominator between all of them is a very strong sense of belonging and community. Bar none, that is the number one thing that unites all of these blue zones. So get more actively involved and plugged in to the community that you have. If you don't have one, then you gotta do the hard work of finding one and building that community. Like getting around friends and just laughing and enjoying each other's company and talking about things that have been official for you

20:32and having stimulating conversations with people that you care about, those types of things are going to allow you to live a much better version of life. Schedule a game night, schedule a dinner party, schedule of go see some comedy. Go watch something that makes you laugh, makes you smile instead of something that makes you upset. Go to a concert, get around some good music, get around some good, not to use this term too much, but get around some good vibes and it will raise your overall energy significantly. So schedule time for community style events, things that will get you more plugged in to feeling a sense of belonging with people that you love but also with the community at large. Like that's the beautiful thing about comedy or concerts or things like that, is you get into room with a bunch of people who don't know but you're all sort of on this same wavelength of energy. You're all sort of on this higher, whatever vibration if you wanna call it that and the more you do those things, the more enriched you're going to feel on the inside.

21:32The better you're going to feel on a day to day basis. Lastly, if there's a hack to feeling better, this is the hack and it's gratitude. Practice gratitude, it's just like anything else. The more you practice it, the better you get it doing it and it sounds silly. Growing up to me, it was always just like Thanksgiving time, write down all the things that you're grateful for. Let's go around the table before we eat our turkey and say something that we're grateful for and before it was just like I'm making a list. And so when I say practice gratitude, it's not just like, oh, here's some things I'm grateful for and then let's move on to the day. It's write down those things, take two, three, four minutes and just really feel how grateful you are for the presence of those things in your life. And it can be something massive, like a family member beating cancer or something like that, like this awesome feeling of victory that you have as a group, as a unit over this terrible disease thing. But it could also just be something simple, like the smell of coffee in the morning

22:33or a hug from your spouse or watching your kids go down a water slide for the first time. Anything like this, from this wide range of things that we, of teeny tiny things, to huge things, to things we take for granted, like our eyesight or the ability to walk or the ability to hear, to taste, touch, smell, to experience the world, to be able to hike in nature and see this view that just is incredible and it stimulates your mind, try as much as you can to practice this gratitude on a daily basis, because it's impossible to be anxious and grateful at the same time. It's impossible to be stressed and grateful at the same time. It's possible to be depressed and grateful at the same time. You can't experience both of those emotions at the same time. So the more you practice this gratitude thing, the more likely you are to end up in that state more throughout the day. And so have this like practice of gratitude, but then secondarily, the,

23:34some of it's been really helpful for me, is whenever I notice that I'm in a really good state, a state that I would, that I would mark as a state that I would like to be in more, like whatever that is, peace, gratitude, joy, happiness, fulfillment, meaning, any of those types of, you know, I try to stay away from saying like positive emotions or negative emotions or whatever, but anything that I would view is something that enriches the quality of my life or the way that I feel about the quality of my life. Anytime I'm feeling that on accident, I try to use that as a trigger to feel that emotion as much as I possibly can. So instead of, you know, seeing my kid do something really cool or say something to me that is just really sweet or something like that, and then I just go, oh, that was cool. And then I just move on and get back into my phone or get back into working or something. I try my best and I don't, and I'm don't do it every time and I'm not, and I'm constantly working on this because it's something that needs to be worked on. But it's been helpful for me to not just have this like practice of gratitude, you know, in the morning

24:35when you write in a journal or something like that, but also to have this, this, this, this, this reinforcement of the good feeling that I have in any particular moment. So now when I see something or I'm experiencing this feeling, I try to just close my eyes and allow myself to feel it to the fullest possible extent. Because every time you do that, you're basically, you're basically expanding the neural pathways in your brain to allow your default state to be pushed more into the positive direction, rather, rather to be pushed more into the negative direction. That's where a lot of these things come from, anxiety, fear, stress, some of these things that we label as negative things. A lot of it comes from the fact that that's sort of what our brains are hardwired to do. We are more motivated by fear than we are anything else. That's just, you know, evolutionarily true. So the more that you can fight back against that, the more that you can practice just allowing yourself to be in that state, the more habitual it becomes, that the easier it is for your neurons to fire into that direction, rather to fire into another direction.

25:38It's like forging a path in a field. You know, the first time somebody walks through it, they got a machete through all this brush and stuff, but then when the, you know, five... ...is unpredictable. But you can flare less with epglyce. A once-monthly treatment for moderate to superior epglyce. After an initial four-month or longer dosing phase, about four and ten people taking epglyce, achieved itch-relate and glare or almost glare skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more glare at one year with monthly dosing. Epglyce, LibriKizumap, LBKZ. A 250-milligram per 2-milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. Epglyce can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to epglyce. A allergic reaction can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with epglyce. Before starting epglyce, tell your doctor

26:38if you have a parasitic infection. Ask a doctor about epglyce and visit epglyce.lily.com or call 1-800-LilyRX or 1-800-545-5979. Score more with the college branded Venmo debit card and earn up to 5% cash back with Venmo stash. Got paid back? With the Venmo debit card, you can instantly access your balance and spend on what you want, like game day snacks, gear, tickets, and more. The more you do, the more cash back you can earn. Plus, there's no monthly fear minimum balance. Sign up now at Venmo.com slash college card. The Venmo master card is issued by the bank court bank NA select schools available. Venmo stash terms and exclusions apply at Venmo.me slash stash terms. Max $100 cash back per month. 100th person walks through that area. It's basically a path because all the brush has been worn down and there's a clear way to travel. And it's much easier to get to the destination. It's the same thing that's happening in your brain is at least how I understand it. I'm no neuroscientist, but I've read a good amount about it. And that's basically how I have interpreted it. It is basically you have these neural pathways and the more that you allow your brain to go to these areas

27:41and then feel it to the fullest extent, the more that you're chopping away at the brush. So that next time it's a little bit easier to go in that direction than it is for you to go to the other direction of anxiety or fear or stress or any of these other things that we would look at. So there's just a few things. Like I said, these are not steeped in research. Although some of them are definitely the gratitude thing, the neural pathway thing. A lot of these things are very much steeped in research. I'm just saying that these are the things that I've done in my life. When I catch myself being in a negative mood more often than a positive mood, these are some of the things that I try to implement into my life to make sure that I can have control over the mood that I have versus allowing my mood to just adjust with the ebbs and flows of life, whether I got enough sleep the night before or this event happened that I perceived as negative. And then I'm going to immediately go back into this negative state. Like if I'm feeling this, I like to just monitor my inputs and my over-consuming negative things. My over-consuming negative marketing messages

28:41and my over-consuming political discussions and my over-consuming arguments and religious ideologies and warring and contention, or am I over-consuming or not over-consuming, but am I consuming good things, positive things, things that make me feel better. So monitor your inputs, stop consuming politics. That's the first thing. And then schedule time with friends and family get more connected to the community that you have, like local community, family, friends, but then also a community at large and then also a gratitude practice. Those are the things that I do to help myself feel better. So hopefully that is helpful for you if you're listening right now as well. And that's it for this episode of the show. As always, you can reach out to me on Instagram, at Travischappel, or just shoot me an email, Travisatrafchappel.com. I love to talk about any of these things with any of you. And if you have any questions, shoot them over so we can address them on a future episode. Thanks for tuning into this one. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace. Hi, this is Alex Cantrowitz. I'm the host of Big Technology podcast, a longtime reporter and an on-air contributor to CNBC. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing

29:43the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it. Asking where this is all going, they come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, and meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology podcast wherever you get your podcasts.