The New Science of Living Longer & How to Master the Fear of Being Judged - SYSK Choice

Summary

Podcast Summary: Something You Should Know — "The New Science of Living Longer & How to Master the Fear of Being Judged"
Host: Mike Carruthers
Guests: Colleen Murphy (Princeton University, author of How We Age: The Science of Longevity), Michael Gervais (High-performance psychologist, author of The First Rule of Mastery)
Date: December 20, 2025

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Overview

This episode explores two compelling and practical themes:

1. The latest scientific research on aging and longevity, featuring cutting-edge insights from Dr. Colleen Murphy on what actually works in prolonging healthy life.
2. Understanding and overcoming the fear of being judged, presented by Dr. Michael Gervais, who breaks down why we care so much about other people’s opinions and how to master this common obstacle.

The episode blends actionable wisdom with deep psychological and biological insights, demystifying the true drivers of a longer, healthier life and offering practical strategies to move beyond self-limiting social fears.

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Part 1: The Science of Longevity with Dr. Colleen Murphy

The Reality of Lifespan & Genetics

• Current Life Expectancy: Most Americans live into their 70s and early 80s, with higher averages in some countries like Japan. (05:55)
  • "We already know that people could be living longer if they were a little bit healthier." — Colleen Murphy [05:58]
• Genetic Lottery: Genetics play a major role in determining who's likely to reach extreme old age (centenarians often ignore usual longevity advice).
  • "Those people have won the genetic lottery. And a lot of them don't do any of the things that we would consider to be following a healthy lifestyle." — Colleen Murphy [07:18]
• Lifestyle vs. Genetics: There is a disconnect between genes and lifestyle, but research aims to help those who didn’t win the “genetic lottery” live healthier and longer. (07:30)

What Is Aging and Can It Be Slowed?

• Model Systems in the Lab:
  • Much aging research uses simple organisms like nematode worms to study genetic impact (08:28).
  • Landmark Finding: A single gene mutation (DAF-2 mutant) doubled worm lifespan and kept them “younger” in multiple ways — better cognitive functions, reproductive longevity, etc.
    • “[Cynthia Kenyon] found that a single mutation… resulted in the worm being much healthier, crawling around… acting like a young worm for much longer, and it lived twice as long.” — Colleen Murphy [09:18]
• What Is Aging Biologically?:
  • Aging means breakdowns at the cellular level — reduced cell division and renewal, accumulation of damage, diminished repair mechanisms (12:29).
    • “It's basically a lot of damage that normally our bodies do a lot of work to repair and replace, and now they can't do that as well.” — Colleen Murphy [13:09]

Should We Intervene in Aging? Ethical Perspectives

• Aging as Disease Driver: Most common diseases (cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease) are age-related. Tackling aging is essentially fighting disease, not just “altering the plan” (14:09).
  • “Most of the diseases that people have are actually age related diseases…aging is the reason that they get many of these things.” — Colleen Murphy [14:13]
• Quality of Life: The focus shouldn’t be immortality, but maintaining healthy function and compressing the period of frailty at life’s end (compression of morbidity).

How Close Are Treatments for Humans?

• Promising Animal Research:
  • Memory-preserving proteins from worms also worked in aged mice (comparable to 70–80-year-old humans), raising hope for eventual human benefit (19:22).
    • “We put [the protein] into old mice and got the exact same effect… there's a chance that if we use this then as a target to develop a drug that… could help older people maintain their memory.” — Colleen Murphy [19:32]
  • Feasible in less than several decades; likely to arrive first via drugs now used for diabetes or obesity, which also reduce cardiovascular risks and extend life (20:30–21:19).

Healthy Habits: Myths and Truths

• Dietary Restriction:
  • Proven in lab models, but carries psychological challenges for humans. “There is some evidence for it.” (25:03)
  • Future focus may be “diet mimetic” drugs that offer same benefits without caloric restriction.
• Exercise:
  • Universally beneficial across studies.
  • Striking Mouse Study: Plasma from a mouse that voluntarily exercised improved health and cognitive function in sedentary mice (25:03–26:34).
    • “Exercise seems to be across the board beneficial… That tells us there's something that happens at the physiological level.” — Colleen Murphy [25:16–26:36]
• Current “Longevity Fads”:
  • Dietary fads and intermittent fasting show limited human evidence, with exercise remaining most reliable.

Attitude and Compression of Morbidity

• Modern Mindset:
  • Many people “fight” becoming old — “60 is the new 40” — by maintaining activity and engagement (27:26).
• Compression of Morbidity:
  • The goal is longer healthy life, not prolonged frailty:
    • “We'd all like to live as long as possible but not stretch out that frail part of life—we'd like to compress that.” — Colleen Murphy [27:37]

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Part 2: Mastering the Fear of Being Judged with Dr. Michael Gervais

Why We Fear Judgment

• Evolutionary Roots:
  • Fear of others’ opinions is ancient, designed to protect us from tribal rejection and thus death. The brain is “optimized for survival” and still responds to potential rejection as a major threat (33:20).
    • “Our brain’s mechanism is designed for survival… So the brain still responds to the potential of rejection as if it is one of the most dangerous things that could happen.” — Michael Gervais [34:05]
• Modern Relevance:
  • Today, rejection is rarely life-threatening, yet the instinct persists, restricting our willingness to take risks.

The Confidence Myth

• Confidence is not innate; it’s a learned and trainable skill.
  • “Their confidence is a trainable skill… Most people don’t know how to train confidence.” — Michael Gervais [36:06]

Whose Opinions Matter?

• Strategic Selection:
  • Not every opinion counts; a select inner circle of trusted people (who are both invested in your growth and have proven themselves under stress) should comprise your “roundtable” (37:41).
    • “Those are the opinions of others that matter to me.” — Michael Gervais [39:18]
• Friends and Family Caveat:
  • “Sometimes the people that we think ought to be the opinions that matter are actually the ones that are keeping us stuck.” — Michael Gervais [37:49]

Practical Strategies to Overcome the Fear

• Three Best Practices for Self-Awareness: (40:12)
  • Mindfulness
  • Journaling
  • Conversations with people of wisdom
  • “That’s where we need to start, is increasing awareness of how we work from the inside out.” — Michael Gervais [40:12]
• Working With, Not Against, the Fear:
  • Don’t “push through” fear; become aware of triggers and choose responses deliberately (“contemplative responses,” not reflexive reactions).

Performance-Based vs. Purpose-Based Identity

• Definitions:
  • Performance-based identity: “I am what I do and how well I do it relative to you.” (48:27)
  • Purpose-based identity: “Focused on my reason for being here and how I contribute to it.”
• Spotlight Effect:
  • We overestimate how much others notice or care about our behavior or appearance. Most people are focused on themselves.
    • “We overpredict how many people pay attention to what we’re actually wearing and doing… by about 50%.” — Michael Gervais [46:04]

Putting Purpose into Practice

• Start small: identify a daily purpose, build up to longer-term meaning through mindful practice and self-reflection (48:27–52:36).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “[Cynthia Kenyon] found that a single mutation… resulted in the worm being much healthier, crawling around… acting like a young worm for much longer, and it lived twice as long.” — Colleen Murphy [09:18]
• “Exercise seems to be across the board beneficial. In fact, if you take an exercise mouse and you take blood plasma from that mouse and give it to a sedentary mouse, the sedentary mouse is much healthier and has better cognitive function.” — Colleen Murphy [25:16]
• “Our brain’s mechanism is designed for survival… So the brain still responds to the potential of rejection as if it is one of the most dangerous things that could happen.” — Michael Gervais [34:05]
• “Sometimes the people that we think ought to be the opinions that matter are actually the ones that are keeping us stuck.” — Michael Gervais [37:49]
• “I am what I do and how well I do it relative to you.” — Michael Gervais [48:27]
• “We overpredict how many people pay attention to what we’re actually wearing and doing… by about 50%.” — Michael Gervais [46:04]

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Key Takeaways

• Longevity is multifactorial: Genetics, lifestyle, and promising emerging science all play key roles.
• Exercise is the closest thing to a “miracle drug” for healthy aging; dietary restriction has merit but is hard to maintain.
• Fear of judgment is evolutionary, but you can train confidence and adopt a purpose-driven mindset.
• Don’t overvalue others’ opinions; choose whose feedback you allow to guide you.
• Building awareness—through mindfulness, journaling, and wise conversations—empowers you to live less limited by fear.

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [05:55] — How long can we live? Genes vs. lifestyle
• [09:18] — The DAF-2 mutant and worm aging breakthrough
• [12:29] — What aging really is, biologically
• [19:32] — Mouse studies: memory-preserving protein may have human application
• [25:03] — Exercise, dietary restriction, and real longevity advice
• [27:37] — Compression of morbidity: staying healthy, then dying quickly
• [33:20] — Why we fear rejection: the evolutionary lens
• [36:06] — Confidence is trainable
• [37:41] — The “roundtable” approach to feedback
• [40:12] — Three practices for overcoming fear of judgment
• [46:04] — The “spotlight effect”
• [48:27] — Performance-based vs. purpose-based identity and cultivating purpose

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Useful for listeners seeking both science-backed aging tips and psychological strategies to pursue goals—regardless of the opinions of others.

Transcript

[Michael Gervais]

Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body.

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[Colleen Murphy]

And breathe.

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[Colleen Murphy]

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[Mike Carruthers]

Today on something you should know. Some wonderful words of hope and inspiration from Mr. Rogers. Just in time for the holidays then, the latest in the fight against aging, including the power of exercise.

[Colleen Murphy]

Exercise seems to be across the board beneficial. In fact, if you take an exercise mouse and you take blood plasma from that mouse and give it to a sedentary mouse, the sedentary mouse is much healthier and has better cognitive function.

[Mike Carruthers]

Also the top five traits employers are looking for in new hires and the damage done by the fear of what other people will think.

[Michael Gervais]

Most of us really understand what it feels like to not go for it, to play it safe and in return, play it small so that you're not rejected. And so much so that I think it's one of the greatest constrictors of our potential.

[Mike Carruthers]

All this today on something you should know.

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[Mike Carruthers]

Something you should know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts and.

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Practical advice you can use in your life today. Something you should Know with Mike Carruthers.

[Mike Carruthers]

Hello. Welcome to SOMETHING YOU should know. This is the time of year when we speak of hope for the new year and helping others.

[Indeed Advertiser]

So let me share some great words.

[Mike Carruthers]

Of hope and caring from the beloved Mr. Rogers from the World According to Mr. Rogers.

[Indeed Advertiser]

He said it takes strength to face.

[Mike Carruthers]

Our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to. He also said, most of us, I believe, admire strength. It's something we tend to respect in others, desire for ourselves and wish for our children. The really important great things are never center stage of life's dramas. They're always in the wings. He said. When I was very young, most of my childhood heroes wore capes, flew through the air or picked up buildings with one arm. They were spectacular and got a lot of attention. But as I grew, my heroes changed so that now I can honestly say that anyone who does anything to help a child is a hero to me. We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say it's not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem. Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes. Those are the words of Mr. Rogers, and that is something you should know. Can you really significantly make it so that you live a lot longer than you would otherwise? In other words, is all this talk of diet and exercise and what seems like sacrifice really going to dramatically lengthen your life and keep you healthy?

[Indeed Advertiser]

And in short, is it all worth it? And if so, what should we be.

[Mike Carruthers]

Doing to get the most bang for our buck? Well, here to discuss and reveal the very latest research on aging is Colleen Murphy. She is a professor at Princeton University, director of Princeton's Glenn foundation for Research on Aging, and author of the book how we the Science of Longevity. Hi Colleen.

[Indeed Advertiser]

Welcome.

[Mike Carruthers]

Glad to have you on something you should know.

[Colleen Murphy]

Hi Mike.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

So right now people live well. I don't know how long on average do people live today?

[Colleen Murphy]

Well, so Americans live into their 70s and early 80s. Different countries have higher life expectancies like Japan. But we already know that people could be living longer if they were a little bit healthier. So I think it's a question of are we talking about the people who are already doing everything to live as long as they possibly can Versus, you know, median or mean life expectancy, where there are a lot of people in the country who, you know, for various reasons, for perhaps they are obese, maybe have some metabolic disorders, cardiovascular diseases. So we could raise the average lifespan as well. And I think those are two different questions. You know, maximizing lifespan versus getting everybody a little bit healthier.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

Yeah, but there is some sense, I think, whether right or wrong that people have is, you know, when your number's up, your number's up, that you could live a pretty healthy life and die sooner than somebody who doesn't. So it can't all be up to your lifestyle and it's gotta be other thing. And plus you could get hit by a bus. So, I mean, you know, you never know.

[Colleen Murphy]

You know, actually one of the reasons when I get asked what I do, I never say because I am very worried about getting hit by a bus the day after I say something like that, so. But your point is well taken. You know, there's lots of stuff that we can do to improve lifestyle, but absolutely, there's a huge genetic component to how long we're going to live. And of course, there are people who are centenarians. Right. Those people have won the genetic lottery. And a lot of them don't do any of the things that we would consider to be following a healthy lifestyle. So there is a disconnect there. And one of the points of doing work on longevity research, not to just use the things that we already know now, but actually to push that further and to ask, well, if you tweaked this genetic pathway or that one, could you, you know, maximize a little further, even despite having, you know, not, not won the genetic lottery, could we push that to a, a better limit?

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

So when we talk about aging, getting older, that aging is a natural result of getting older. Right, Right.

[Colleen Murphy]

Inevitable.

[Michael Gervais]

Right.

[Indeed Advertiser]

But I think when people often think about aging or talk about aging, they're.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

Talking about appearance rather than something else, which is not what you talk about necessarily. But can you really slow that down? I mean, people talk about slowing down the aging process. Is that a thing or is that just a way to kind of shorthand describe something?

[Colleen Murphy]

So in the lab, we use what's called a model system. That is we don't do experiments on humans. What we try to do is take a small, in our case, what we're using, this little worm, it's a millimeter long nematode. And the reason we use that is because we know a ton about it at the genetic and morphological level. And so we Use that to try to design experiments where we can understand better. Can we do exactly what you're saying, Slow down aging? And we definitely have pathways that we study where aging has been slowed.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

So when you say that you took this little worm and slowed down the aging process, what does that mean? Because time didn't slow down. So what makes you say that the aging process slowed down?

[Colleen Murphy]

All right, so I wish I could show you a movie, but this was observed back in 1993. Cynthia Kenyon at UCSF found that a single mutation, so just one nucleotide change in the entire worm's genome resulted in the worm being much healthier, crawling around, basically acting like a young worm for much longer, and it lived twice as long. That's the base on which a lot of our work is set, because we've been able to use that mutation. That worm was called a DAF2 mutant. We've been using that mutant and probing into all the ways that it's better. My lab found that those worms have better memory. They also slow down their oocyte aging so they can reproduce twice as long. This has been a great tool. In fact, that animal does have slower aging, because all the hallmarks of aging that we can measure, or at least I think most of them, everything that we've seen shows that they actually act like younger animals and live twice as long.

[Indeed Advertiser]

Well, that's pretty cool.

[Colleen Murphy]

It is cool. It's my favorite thing.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

How do you know it improves their memory?

[Indeed Advertiser]

Do you give them little memory tests?

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

And how do you get them to.

[Indeed Advertiser]

Hold the pencil to take the test?

[Colleen Murphy]

Yeah. So that was actually what I started my lab doing, was trying to figure out, can we actually test memory in a worm? So this is much like what you would do with a dog. So we asked, what does a worm like? And it turns out the only thing they like is food, and they eat bacteria. So we developed a very simple assay just like Pavlov's dog. You know, instead of ringing a bell and having steak and this dog salivating instead, now we take worms and we starve them for a little while. And then when we feed them again, we put on the lid of the plate. Because they live in little agar dishes, we put on the lid of the plate just drops of an odorant called butanone. So this chemical is volatile. That means it, like, you know, it can evaporate. And so the worm can smell, smell it. And we already knew that the worms could smell this odor, butanone, but they don't care about it. To them, it's kind of. It's neutral. And that was really key for our assay because what we wanted to do is ask them, okay, now when they smell this odor while they're eating, when they were hungry, will they make an association between that smell and food? So the next time, you know, we can let them sit with this, carry out this learning process. And then after an hour of doing that, we take the worms off the plate, and then we put them on a new plate with no food, but a little drop of butanone at one end and ethanol at the other end. And we ask them, okay, how much do they like the butanone? And so they will crawl to the butanone spa, whereas before they didn't care about it, now they all go to that butanone spot. So we know that they've learned that association. And so if we just put the worms back onto a plate with food so they can forget, then we do that same test over and over again, we can assay their memory.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

Fundamentally, what is. Well, scientifically, from your perspective, what is aging? Because I think most of us think of aging as. As time passes, things wear out, things get old, things don't work as well as they used to. That's aging. To me, that's aging.

[Colleen Murphy]

Well, I think we share that viewpoint because at a biological level, what's happening, I mean, this is why the aging field is so big. And there's so many great questions to ask, but there's kind of everything at once, Right? So you have cells that normally would be dividing. They divide nicely when we're young. When we get old, they do that less well. And finally they get tired of dividing and they don't divide anymore. So that's why some. Some of our tissues can't be renewed. Then we have other tissues. Like, you know, we have some cells in our body that don't turn over. We never get new ones. And inside those cells, it's really important for all the proteins and all the jobs that are going on inside that cell to keep continuing. But with time, you know, those stop working as well. So you have breakdown at all kinds of levels inside the cell. And then cells making up whole tissues and cells not replacing themselves anymore. So you're not wrong. It's basically a lot of damage that normally our bodies do a lot of work to repair and replace, and. And now they can't do that as well.

[Mike Carruthers]

Yeah, which is called living life and getting older. And that's kind of the big plan. And so not to get too philosophical here, but in some ways it almost.

[Indeed Advertiser]

Well, it doesn't, it's not that it's.

[Mike Carruthers]

Creepy, but you know, there's this plan that you, you're born, you live as you live, you get older, these processes that you're talking about, so slow down, things don't work as well and then you die. And it sounds almost artificial. Like, I don't know how to describe it, but like you're kind of messing with the big plan here. And should you be? Do you know what I mean?

[Colleen Murphy]

I do know what you mean. Okay, so I think there's a couple different ways to address that. For example, most of the diseases that people have are actually age related diseases. And so you probably wouldn't tell somebody. Well, I think it's wrong to cure cancer, even though that's one of the most prevalent. You know, for many cancers, aging is the biggest risk factor. Same for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. So I think it's, it's people just don't think of aging as the same way. They think of these age related diseases when in fact aging is the reason that they get many of these things. So I think there's that perspective. And then, you know, what do you say about all modern medicine? Right, so back, you know, a century ago, we didn't live this long. So at what point do you slow that. I think it only gets creepy when you really think about if you're only going to help a few people in the world that have a lot of money. I think that's when it gets creepy or when, yeah, I can understand it. But you know, I think for the most part, helping people live higher quality lives may or may not extend their lifespan, but it will help them be happier and healthier, better.

[Mike Carruthers]

We're talking about longevity and all the research going on right now to help extend life and to keep us healthy. And my guest is Colleen Murphy. She is author of the book how we the Science of Longevity.

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[Mike Carruthers]

So Colleen, how far away are we in doing some of these experiments and some of these treatments that might actually do something for humans?

[Colleen Murphy]

You know, that's a great question. I was really happy, you know, we developed that assay. I told you about that experiment. Experiment to test worm memory. So we Got a collaborator of ours at UCSF Salvieda, they did an experiment where they took the same protein that we had found to be really important for extending memory in these old worms and they put it into old mice and got the exact same effect. So these old mice had better memory. And to me, that was like a, it was like such a gratifying moment because it suggested that, okay, now we really have it, we know something where we can extend mouse memory. And because that is so well conserved with humans, there's a chance that if we use this then as a target to develop a drug that, that could be something that would help older people maintain their memory. And the mice that we were using were two years old, which it's estimated to be about like a 70 or 80 year old person. And so you can imagine there might be, you know, you might take a drug that would help if you're starting to notice that you're losing your memory, that would be a good thing. So I think that's where our work is headed. And that research is being done by a lot of different people in the field.

[Indeed Advertiser]

Are we decades away?

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

Centuries away?

[Indeed Advertiser]

Years away?

[Colleen Murphy]

Less than decades. You know, and I think that there's an important point to make as well, that it's kind of the reverse. You know, we've done all this work on aging and we know what slowing age related declines would be. But there's also something really important about, you know, these, these drugs that are being used to treat obesity and diabetes. Those are, turns out they're really great for treating cardiovascular disease. And my suspicion is that those are gonna be the first, some of the early lifespan drugs. Cause I imagine all the people who really were having trouble keeping their weight down and suffered from cardiovascular disease are gonna live longer than if they had never taken those.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

But because their lifespan drugs or because they lost weight and their health improved and now they're living longer.

[Colleen Murphy]

Well, okay, so it seems, here's the thing, the things that are considered lifespan drugs are all going to do something to affect some sort of system or disease in the body, right? And obesity, cardiovascular disease, metabolic diseases, those are all things that are really critical in determining lifespan. So it's all kind of the same thing. I think that's what I say. I think it's almost like a false dichotomy to say this is a lifespan drug and these over here are obesity drugs. I think they're all going to blend into one another at some point.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

Do you look at, I remember doing an interview not that long ago about how There are creatures roaming the planet that live a lot longer than we do. And one of the things they seem to have in common is that they live slower than we do. Turtles go very slow. And is that something research looks at or not?

[Colleen Murphy]

Yeah, no, people have looked at those. So in particular, I think examples like the Greenland shark that lives in these cold waters and lives about 500 years and clams and things. So there are some organisms that seem to have a long lifespan, perhaps tied to their slower metabolism. But there's also mammals, they don't have slower metabolism necessarily than we do. And so there's all different types of ways to live longer that people are looking at.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

But it does seem like we all have our own, you know, factory installed equipment. We are who we are. I mean you could try to extend.

[Indeed Advertiser]

The life of a fly that lives.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

A week or two, but I mean.

[Indeed Advertiser]

But how much longer? I mean a fly's a fly.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

You can only do so much. And we're human. You probably only do so much it would seem. Or is this an open ended someday we're hoping we'll all live to be a thousand years old.

[Colleen Murphy]

I really want to fight against the latter idea. We're not really trying to develop drugs to help people live to be a thousand. Right. The idea. And you're right. So worms, you know, they live two to three weeks and we have mutants that double lifespan. And there's. Even when you add some of the pathways together, it's kind of record breaking of living like six times as long. But as you move up the evolutionary scale, those same pathways have a smaller and smaller proportional effect. And so I think the goal here is to maintain function longer. And I don't think it is, it's neither, I don't think it's achievable. And it's also not desirable to aim to like you know, make someone live 500 years. The real point is to not suffer from age related diseases. And I think this disconnect because I know there are people out there who are saying things about living, you know, incredibly long. I think it's kind of a turnoff for most of us. Like you know, even centenarians, if you listen to them, some of them are happy and others like miss everybody who grew up with them. Right. They, they know that they're in a weird place living super long. So I think you don't want to be the one who lives super long. You want to make sure that you live long along with your friends and your family and that you live in a healthy way so you can enjoy being with them.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

Can you comment on. I'm not sure if this is your area, but the things that people hear about that they're supposed to do to live healthier and longer that really work or don't work, like intermittent fasting or.

[Indeed Advertiser]

Vegetarian diet, whatever it is, are there.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

Things that we that either are myths or that are in the culture that maybe aren't true or are true or can you straighten any of that out?

[Colleen Murphy]

You know, on the plus side, things like dietary restriction and there's all kinds of different styles of dietary restriction. They have been shown in model systems to both slow aging and reduce age related disease. Now I think in humans there's this extra component that hasn't been discussed enough which is like the psychological component of starving yourself. And I don't, I myself am not a big fan of dietary restriction even though I know like probably if I got certain forms of cancer, I'd probably start doing that. So all the things that you, you know, people are doing with intermittent fasting and caloric restriction, I mean, that's fine. They can do that. It's not really. And there is some evidence for it. I, I think in the end what's going to happen is we're going to find better ways to help people. Things like drugs that actually mimic the effects of dietary restriction. That'd be great. Now for exercise, it's almost hard to argue against exercise. Exercise seems to be across the board beneficial. I don't know if there are any studies saying that exercise is not worth doing. And in fact this, this friend of mine I already mentioned, Salvieda, who, his, his work, you know, they showed that if you take an exercise mouse, and so these are voluntary, these mice have voluntarily run on a running wheel. When you take blood plasma from that mouse and give it to a sedentary mouse, the sedentary mouse is much healthier and has better cognitive function. And so that tells us there's something that happens at the physiological level. And they showed it's from something that happens in the liver secretes a protein that is really beneficial. And so I think the one thing that people are like, they're you know, less excited about doing sometimes but is really truly beneficial is exercise.

[Indeed Advertiser]

Well, there is that attitude element.

[Mike Carruthers]

You know, you hear people talk about age is just a number and you're as young as you feel. But when you look back over the last several generations, people seem to fight becoming an old person in the sense that they don't assume the role so quickly. You know, 60s, the new 40 or whatever the numbers are, but that people hold on to their youth longer and don't just give in. And that seems to be a pretty effective strategy.

[Colleen Murphy]

Yeah. And I would say that's a healthy shift. For the most part. People are doing this by staying healthy longer.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Indeed Advertiser]

Well, I guess that's the goal, right, Is to stay healthy as long as.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

You can and then get sick and die quick.

[Colleen Murphy]

Exactly. Which is called a compression of morbidity and actually is a well known phenomenon that the field is actually aiming for because we'd all like to live as long as possible but not not stretch out that frail part of life we'd like to compress that.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, from listening to you talk, it seems the whole process of aging is perhaps more complicated than people think. And there's a lot of different fronts on which to fight the fight to turn back the clock. I've been talking to Colleen Murphy. She is a professor at Princeton University and author of the book How We Age the Science of Longevity. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Great, Colleen, thanks for being here.

[Colleen Murphy]

No problem, Mike. It was fun to talk to you.

[Indeed Advertiser]

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[Mike Carruthers]

You not done something not applied for that job or ask that person out on a date or not spoken up in a meeting? Not done? Who knows what something important to you that you didn't do because you were concerned what other people would think, especially if you failed? There probably isn't anyone who can't relate. And yet often you hear people say things like, well, I don't care what other people think, but clearly we do. And maybe we care a little too much about that. Here to discuss the problem and what you can do about it is Michael Gervais. He is a high performance psychologist. He's host of the podcast Finding Mastery and author of the book the First Rule of Stop Worrying about what People Think of you. Hi Michael, welcome to Something youg Should Know.

[Michael Gervais]

Thank you for having me.

[Mike Carruthers]

So what is this fear of what other people think? Why does it have such a strong hold on people and how strong a hold does it have?

[Michael Gervais]

I think that it is a hidden epidemic that we don't Talk about enough. But I think most of us really intimately understand what it feels like to not go for it, to play it safe and in return, play it small so that you're not rejected, so that you maybe have a better chance of being accepted by other people. And so much so that I think it's one of the greatest constrictors of our potential.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

Where does that worry, that fear of other people's thinking, where does it come from? Is it just part of being human or is it a learned thing?

[Michael Gervais]

Well, to our best abilities, when we think about how our brain works, it is optimized for survival. And when I talk about the brain, I'm talking about the 3.2 pounds of tissue that sits inside your skull, the mass that is chemical and electrical and has tissue and a relationship that gives us our sense of how to navigate the world. And I'm not talking about the mind yet. So the mind is the software that runs the hardware. Okay? But if our software is not optimized, if it's not upgraded to meet modern challenges or to work in a way that is aligned with purpose, the hardware is going to run the show, the hardware, meaning the brain. And go back, you know, a couple hundred thousand years ago, and if you and I were in the tribe and we were kind of knuckleheads and we, we would show up and we'd be sloppy with the way that we would handle our business, or we were constantly saying stupid things, or we're letting other people down on timeliness or performance standards, or if we went hunting or we had to go gather firewood or whatever we were doing, and it was substandard of an output, the elders of the tribe at some point would be like, mike, Mike, I'm so sorry, but you guys gotta go. So that rejection, that kicking out, being kicked out of the tribe was something that was a near death sentence. And that was a couple hundred thousand years ago. And now rejection is not a near death sentence. But we haven't changed that programming. So the brain still responds to the potential of rejection as if it is one of the most dangerous things could happen. And that is one of the more unexamined, 200,000 year ago programming that we're still experiencing in modern times. But we haven't really brought it to the surface. And the last couple of years of mine has been to really examine what is this process and how do we work with it and how can we find some relief and some optimization by better understanding this deep, deeply ingrained programming to fit in, to belong. Because at the deepest level belonging is safety, and at the cost of it is that we end up living life on their terms, not ours.

[Mike Carruthers]

And that's why you didn't ask that.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

Girl out in high school and always wonder what would have happened if you did.

[Michael Gervais]

How did you know? Did you. Did you know her, too? Yeah, same thing. Yes, yes, yes, yes, of course.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

But, you know, in high school, there was that guy, Mr. Confident Guy, who had no problem asking her out and got a date with her.

[Michael Gervais]

Yes, of course. Their confidence is a trainable skill. Now, that doesn't mean that everybody that is authentically confident trained it. They could have had great teachers, and those teachers could have been parents, you know, uncles, aunts, coaches, you know, fill in the blank. But it is a trainable skill, and most people don't know how to train confidence. And they just kind of look at other people that are confident and want to label them as being arrogant, maybe, and. Or think that they're just kind of lucky. But that's something for them. Not for me. But come to find out, confidence is a trainable skill as well.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

It does serve a purpose sometimes to be careful what you say or do, because other people's opinions do matter. I mean, sometimes they really do matter. And so what would you agree with that?

[Michael Gervais]

I would 1,000% agree. I think that some people's opinions hold great power. It would be quite callous to think that the opinions of others are just an opinion and don't actually influence the way and the direction of our future. Your supervisor, the coach that you're playing for, there's so many people in our lives that have incredible power from their opinion. So. Yes.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

So how do you determine when it's okay to not worry about other people's opinions and when you do, or is it usually fairly apparent?

[Michael Gervais]

No, I don't think it is apparent, unfortunately. I'm going to give you a piece of research that is not. People don't like to hear this. And when I say it, you might go, oh, gosh, that's terrible. Or you might say, yeah, I know, that's true to me too. But some of our closest people in our lives, they have an opinion about who we could become, about the choices that we make, the behaviors that we take. And. And they don't necessarily want the best for us. What they want is to feel comfortable. They want us to be in our station, in life. They want us to be exactly who we are now, not exponentially better. Not going from $100,000 a year to 100 million, because we might Leave them behind, we might create an environment where they don't feel as good about themselves because they're doing pretty good relative to you. And so sometimes the people that we think ought to be the opinions that matter are actually the ones that are keeping us stuck. So the deepest way to think about whose opinions matter is to have at least two criteria. And I think about it like a roundtable. And my round table is not very big. It's got eight chairs on it. And it's the people who care, who have invested in my well being, who have demonstrated that my growth arc, independent of their growth arc, matters to them. So it's those people who really care, who have put time under tension with me to get to know me, to get to understand my unique challenges in life, my pain points, my traumas, and my wonderfully, you know, ambitious vision of who I want to become and how I want to contribute to the world. They've spent the time to know that. And the second criteria is that they've been in the arena, they have tested themselves. They know what it's like to work from a place of pressure, where stress is real in their environment too. So they understand that intersection. And those are the opinions of others that matter to me.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

And so what is your take? What is your advice on when you're faced with something and the thing that's stopping you is, you know, what if I look like an idiot? What are these people going to think if I fail?

[Indeed Advertiser]

How do you push through that?

[Michael Gervais]

The first order of business is awareness. How your thoughts and emotions work together to influence your behaviors. How your thoughts and emotions and behaviors work together to influence your performance, the way you're expressing your ideas, emotions and behaviors. And so that's where we need to start, is increasing awareness of how we work from the inside out. So there's three best practices, those best practices that hold up in the laboratory of research as well as on the frontier of high stakes, high pressured environments. Mindfulness, journaling, and conversations with people of wisdom. Those three are the best practices that we know that those hold up the best when it comes to increasing awareness. From that once you are aware, then you've got some decisions to make. And the question that you're asking is, how do we push through it? I don't think we push through. We work with, so we become aware of the triggers, we become aware of our reflexive response and then we decide from that place. Once we're aware, it's like now we realize there's a fork in the road and which direction am I going to move forward with. And so that's the difference between reflective reactions versus contemplative responses. It's just that nanosecond of awareness that gives you a path in the direction that is closer, closer, aligned to the person that you want to be.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

So can you, can you give me an example either from your life or from your research or what, just like kind of how this works?

[Michael Gervais]

I'll give you. Actually, instead of me being analytical, I'll tell you exactly how it shows up for me. We're in the holiday season right now and there is such a thing for me and for others called pre party anxiety. So you're going to a place where you're going to see some people that you know and some people that you don't know. And you can feel that sense of anxiousness just walking into that environment. So there's also a parallel path that you could take where you're walking in and you're excited and you're, you're feeling generative and you're curious about catching up with people. So let's call it path A and path B. Path B is that that generative excitement and path A is that nervousness. Well, that begins in your closet. Where, when? And it begins well before that. But we'll just start at the closet. When you're going and picking out your clothes and you're making some decisions about what are you going to feel comfortable in path B as opposed to how will Susie or Xander or Johnny like the clothes that I'm wearing? You know, am I going to show up in my best. Because it's going to look a certain way and am I going to wear that watch because it's a, it's my best watch. Am I going to wear the watch that feels comfortable to me? So those are path A, Path B. And path A is really about a performance based identity, is that you have to look a certain way and you have to perform in a certain way relative to other people to be okay. And as long as I can outperform somebody else, then I'm okay. But if I'm underperformed or I'm not showing up in the right way and they are judging me or potentially rejecting me or they're accepting me, then I'm, I'm okay. Like I'm in the, I'm in the right slipstream, but it's contingent on them. And so I shape shift to be okay in front of them. Call that again. Path A back in my closet and I'm choosing clothes that Feel comfortable, that feel celebratory, that whatever, whatever, whatever. And I'm walking into the that party and I'm saying to myself, oh, I can't wait to catch up with. I can't wait to see how, you know, Roger's thinking about this new venture that he's doing or whatever. So that it's a whole different way of going. And that is purpose based identity. So the from to here is from a performance based identity. And Mike, most of us in the Western world have a performance based identity. And it makes perfect sense because we live in a outcome and performance obsessed world. So it makes perfect sense that from a young age we start to figure out who we are, is really how well we're able to do something. That is why public speaking is one of the great dangers and great fears in the Western world is because it's all about how you perform as opposed to an environment that is more purpose based. And a purpose is like it's something far greater than you. It's not a reflection of you. It's that you're contributing to something in a meaningful way. And all of the greats, all of the historical greats, and I'm not talking about the, the high performers in the NBA or NFL. I'm talking about the real change changers across the planet that have made a difference. And most of them are purpose based, that they are fundamentally committed to a purpose larger than them. Think about Mother Teresa, Mandela, Gandhi, Jesus, Buddha, Confucia, Dr. King. Keep going down the list and you'll say, I see the common thread there.

[Shopify/Notion/AG1 Advertiser]

So I think people have heard this thing about the spotlight effect that, that we worry about what other people think when oftentimes they're not thinking anything, they're not paying attention. They're more worried about what you think of them than they are about what they think of you.

[Indeed Advertiser]

Talk about that.

[Michael Gervais]

Cornell professor Thomas Gilovich and his colleagues, they devised a social experiment. And this was back in early 2000s. And it was to see whether people are really observing and judging us at every turn. And so what he did is he gathered 100 college students and he entered them and just kind of put them in a room. And then he had a handful of folks that he gave in a separate room, these really ugly T shirts. And it was a photo of the pop singer Barry Manilow that was on the front of it. And the students that were wearing that Barry Manilow shirt were like, oh God, like, you want me to walk in there with this? And yes. And then they just went through a Series of, you know, experimental questions saying how many people do you think in the room of your friends, you know, the room of a hundred people are going to notice? And then they ask the people in the room like how many of you actually noticed the, you know, what the shirt was that you know, the person that walked in the room was come to find out, you know, is that we over predict how many people pay attention to what we're actually wearing and doing and thinking by the order of about 50%. And so the takeaway, what he dubbed the spotlight effect is that we walk around thinking that they are looking at our hair, that they're looking at our clothing, that they're focusing on what we're doing and saying when in return they're actually focusing on their hair and their clothes and what they're about to say. And so we are walking around with our own spotlight because we are again go back to almost the first point is that our, our brain's mechanism is designed for survival, our survival, not the survival of our friends necessarily. So that's where the spotlight effect comes from, where these selfish self focused, a bit narcissistic and I say that in a non clinical way, but self absorbed approach, trying to figure out how to be okay in social settings. And so the fun takeaway is that most people are not paying attention to you. Grandma had this kind of right, is that they're focusing on themselves. So maybe just drop the whole drama here, know that you're okay.

[Mike Carruthers]

You've mentioned it a few times. So I'd like to really drill down and make sure people understand the distinction between a performance based identity and a purpose based identity.

[Michael Gervais]

A performance based identity, the definition is I am what I do and how well I do it relative to you. A purpose based identity is completely different. It is focused on what is my reason for being here and how well am I able to contribute to that. So how do you crosswalk the two again? It begins with awareness. And if you think about the things that scare you, the things that threaten you, the things that create anxiety, is it that your purpose is going to be compromised or is that you're going to look a certain way and that you're going to get kicked out of the tribe or you're going to get fired or thought less of. So if you are on that performance based side, which is what I just described, then it begins with kind of pushing your chair back from the table and taking a couple deep breaths, literally, but figuratively as well and just thinking like what am I doing with my Time here, and that's a very big question that is a rite of passage to modern day adulthood. What is my purpose? What am I doing here now? There is a science underneath of it. So for purpose to be true, purpose needs to have three factors. The first is that it has to matter to you. Nobody can give you purpose. It's something that is uniquely special to you. So that's purpose. The first part, the second part is that it's bigger than you. It's something that you can't solve on your own. It's something that extends beyond your capabilities alone. So it's big, it matters. And the third leg is that there's a future orientation, meaning that you can't solve it today. It's something that takes time, time under tension even. So those are the three. And if that feels too big, like, oh my God, like I've been thinking about that question my whole life and I'm not going to do that. Like, I just, I don't know where to start. You can start by thin slicing this practice and you would thin slice it by saying, well, what is my purpose today? And you wake up in the morning and you just say like, what is my purpose today? And then as you get better at that for, I don't know, a couple weeks, you then extend it out. What is my purpose for this month? What is my purpose for this next quarter, for the next six months, for the next year? And then you start to just practice it. And over time it does get a little bit more simple and a little bit more clear. And just like, so I come from the world of sport and you know, high performing sport. And what I just described is how we practice every skill. We start in a calm, controlled, simple environment and then we layer on top of it more speed or more accuracy or more pressure. And, and so we go from a calm, controlled environment to something that is open and wild and has high stakes or pressure. And we practice that, that laddering effect and we, we realize like, oh, it starts to break down. Let's say it's a scale of 1 to 7, 7 being the most stressful, the most consequential or pressure packed. And our ability to be proficient breaks down at step or condition three. So calm is one, a little bit more intense is two. And so three, we start to see some inconsistencies. Oh, okay, well now we break that down. What is happening? Like what do I need to specifically get better at so that I can be great at that skill? And it's the same here in purpose, which is start in a calm environment and then start to practice being connected to that purpose throughout your day. And you'll find the days that you're tired or the days that have a little extra stress, or the days that you didn't kind of find a way to be connected to your purpose, that there are some common culprits that hang out there. And that's where the conversation with people of wisdom and journaling and mindfulness can also pay dividends, to be more clear. So this is a practice.

[Mike Carruthers]

Mike well, this is such an important topic, especially this time of year, as we wrap up one year and look.

[Indeed Advertiser]

Into a new year, new goals, new.

[Mike Carruthers]

Opportunities, and I think your comments and this discussion help remove one of the roadblocks to people's success in achieving those.

[Indeed Advertiser]

Goals, which is worrying about what other people think.

[Mike Carruthers]

I've been talking with Michael Gervais. He is a high performance psychologist.

[Indeed Advertiser]

He is host of a podcast called.

[Mike Carruthers]

Finding Mastery and author of the book.

[Indeed Advertiser]

The First Rule of Mastery.

[Mike Carruthers]

Stop worrying about what people think of you. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you for sharing this. Michael.

[Michael Gervais]

Yeah, thank you.

[Mike Carruthers]

With a new year coming soon, maybe you're thinking about a new job or a career change. And if so, Forbes Magazine has a list of the top five personality traits employers hire most. At the top of the list is professionalism. Do your research, dress the part and act professional. High energy gets hired next. Don't overdo the energy. Just be sure you're enthusiastic and know your stuff. Confidence is a must your potential employer will notice, for example, how you enter a room, how you extend your hand.

[Indeed Advertiser]

And make eye contact.

[Mike Carruthers]

Self monitoring is a sought after trait. You'll need to show what you've accomplished and learned on both your resume and during a face to face interview. And intellectual curiosity is another big personality. Plus, show your passion for learning new things and be prepared for some interesting questions. And that is something you should know. A reminder, as you're doing things around the holidays and need some company, we have a whole big catalog of back episodes of this podcast that I know you would enjoy listening to. So please take a look at all the back episodes. I'm sure you'll find some you'll find really fascinating and give them a listen. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know.

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