The Tai Lopez Show

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The Worlds Best Diet Dec 09, 2014

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Almost everyone thinks they’re an expert when it comes to food and diet.
In fact, we all know people that have crossed the line, and it’s almost become a religious conversation.
In today’s Book-Of-The-Day, “Diet Cults” by Matt Fitzgerald, we delve deep to try to find the truth.
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What is the diet that we should all be following?
I talked about this a few days ago on my new live Book-of-the-Day TV show that airs every day at 11:30am PST on TaiLopez.com.
When I was at Joel Salatin’s, it was fascinating. Thousands of people would come in from all around the world, each of them with their own opinion on diet - whether they were Vegan, Paleo, Low-Carb or Atkins.
And most of them came there extremely confident in their beliefs.
The interesting thing about a farm is that you’re so close to the earth that you actually get insight on biological processes that the average city person never gets.
If you ask most people in the city how many grams of protein, sugar, or carbohydrates they should be getting every day, they have no idea.
But a farmer knows exactly how much protein a one- week-old chicken should have, and how much they should be eating at six and eight weeks as well.
It becomes a science. And of course, you’re experimenting on the best testing ground possible (the livestock you’re raising, because there’s no placebo effect).
There is no one diet that works for everyone:
Adaptability is the hallmark of man as eater. For us, many diets are good while none is perfect.
We know this to be true. It would be an impossible environment for humans to live in without adaptability. The problem with something like the Paleo diet is that in Paleolithic times, not all people lived in the same part of the planet. Some people lived in rainforests, some lived in savannahs. Even though there is truth that there is a genetic predisposition that some foods are probably more nutrient dense than others, it’s not an absolute black and white fact.
"Scientists are discovering that the extreme responsiveness of gut flora to changes in diet are a major contributor to humans’ dietary adaptability."
You must search for disconfirming evidence:
“My friend Richard did a lot of reading on the science of veganism and came away believing that veganism was the correct way to eat. But this happened only after he had already given up animal foods. And, of course, he cherry-picked his sources, ignoring experts like Walter Willett at the Harvard School of Public Health and going straight to gurus like Caldwell Esselstyn, a man who could never get a job at the Harvard School of Public Health.”
You see, you have to disprove your own theory.
Because whether you’re Vegan, Paleo, Atkins or Macrobiotic, there’s evidence to the contrary of what you believe if you’re willing to open up your eyes and not see this as such a black and white conversation.
Agnostic healthy eating is the plan Fitzgerald recommends.
"I claim only that you will find agnostic healthy eating to be the easiest way to eat for maximum health if you’re turned off by diets that claim to be the One True Way."
Fitzgerald says that what we need to do is have an agnostic approach, meaning whatever works is what we should gravitate towards, instead of trying to be a part of a certain group and getting our identity from that group.
So it's up to you to “ask, seek, and knock” for that diet that's adaptable to not only the environment in which you live (which is different if you live in the North Pole compared to if you live in Africa), but once you do this search, set up a series of experiments and do it at the same time with top experts and doctors.
Stay Strong,
Tai
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How To Get Your End Goal Dec 07, 2014

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If you're not careful, the 25 cognitive biases of your brain will destroy your life. As Friedrich Nietzsche says in today's Book-Of-The-Day "Man Alone With Himself" "Many people are obstinate about the path once it's taken, few people about the destination."
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He means we are stubborn about the wrong thing. Earlier today on my new TV show [Every day at 11:30am PST on TaiLopez.com] I talked about how stubbornness can be a powerful tool. But the devil's in the details. It depends on how you define stubbornness. If you are stubborn about the methods you’re using you will usually lose your way - it will be fatal. You should only be stubborn about one thing: Getting the end goal you wanted. Everything else should be flexible - up for discussion. I had someone in my family decide he was going to become a Fruitarian. He ate bananas all day. But he didn't set it up as an experiment. The Fruitarian diet experiment became his god. He became the servant of his brain and the cognitive biases called "commitment consistency & mis-weighting bias" that many great scientists and psychologists like Cialdini have written on. He shouldn't have cared about which diet plan he adopted - only about which diet plan worked. If you read the book "Diet Cults" you will see how millions of people blindly follow their diet cult: Vegan, Paleo, Macrobiotic, Atkins, Vegetarian, etc. But who cares about the diet?? You should only care about looking in the mirror and being lean and healthy. That's all the matters. If eating cardboard accomplished that, then eat cardboard. People love to elevate the experiment into the goal. The experiment is never the goal. My Fruitarian relative forgot to look in the mirror to see his muscle mass and health deteriorating before his eyes. He forgot to listen to the doctor that said that every Fruitarian he had ever met and treated in his clinic had always had serious health problems. You should never love the path. Love the results. You see this bias in business too. You see business owners with a goal to make net profit. But they try to use their intuition and immediately decide upon the product and strategy to get them the net profit. They guess. And stick to their first guess - even when it's losing money. Brandon Routh, who played Superman in the big Warner Brothers movie, was at my house yesterday. He told me about a friend who moved to Hollywood to get in the entertainment business. He had no acting potential. But he wanted to act. He was stubborn about his imaginary acting skills. He could have been a great writer or producer. But he was so intent on the one path/experiment of acting that he ended up with nothing. Just a nasty Pareto inefficiency. A lose-lose situation. No acting. And no writing or producing. That's most people's life. One nothing after another. You might have noticed this tendency in your love life. You dated someone with the goal of living happily ever after - finding your soul mate. But then you realized, "Hey, this person I'm dating, I don't think there is anything long term here." But you stay committed to the relationship anyway (and kick yourself for it later). Don't be that person. The one trapped in the cycle. Life's too short for deadly mistakes. The simplest way to overcome the biases is to always ask yourself 2 questions: 1. "What's my end goal?" 2. "Is this current experiment getting me efficiently towards that end goal?" If the answer is "No", ditch the experiment (NOT the goal). Just iterate and modify the experiment slightly. At first this will seem like it's too slow of a strategy. It's not. Like Munger says: "Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Step by step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. But you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day. At the end of the day – if you live long enough – most people get what they deserve." Stay Strong Tai Join me on tomorrow's free online business seminar: http://bit.ly/1wXQm3C
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Where Do Good Ideas Come From? Dec 06, 2014

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In today's Book-Of-The-Day we look at "Where Good Ideas Come From" by Steven Johnson. If you want to buy this book and get the 'Smart Reading Course', the ‘67 Steps Video Series', and Tai’s personal book notes check it out here http://bit.ly/1yx4Is6
Also check out Tai’s new TV show every day at 11:30 am PST on TaiLopez.com If you want to sign up for the next LIVE online seminar you can do that here: http://bit.ly/1wvWD6S There may be no better skill to possess in the world than the ability to come up with good ideas. Think about it. The reward for good ideas is massive. Mark Zuckerberg definitely knows the value of a great idea. For him it’s roughly $33.3 billion dollars. Now, you might not need a billion dollars. But according to Daniel Kahneman and his research, you definitely need at least $75,000 a year. Good ideas have the potential to change your bank account. Good ideas also have the potential to change your health. Tai’s dad caught scarlet fever when he was a baby, and doctors said he wouldn’t live past age 12. He was a pretty sickly kid. His life changed the day he picked up a magazine about weight lifting. The article said "Forget everything you've heard, lift weights." And he went from a sickly kid who should have died to Mr. Puerto Rico, Mr. Canada, and one of the first bodybuilders in the world. You see at the root of every revolution is one idea. In "Where Good Ideas Come From" one fascinating story was about the scientist that came up with a law that governs the rate of growth of animals, cities and ideas - it's called Kleiber’s law. Kleiber's law is about something called "positive power scaling" But why should that research matter to you? Simple. "A city that is ten times larger than its neighbor isn't ten times more innovative; it's seventeen times more innovative. A metropolis fifty times bigger than a town is 130 times more innovative than the town." The pace of innovation and good ideas that are going to come out of your brain are directly related to the size of the pool of information that you’re drawing from. The more books you read (an eclectic mix), the more masterminds you study, the more mentors and advisors you surround yourself with, the more exponential growth you'll experience. If your only source of good ideas is one book in the last year, you’re like someone living in a small town. Your “pool” to draw inspiration from is tiny. BUT if you’ve read 50 books instead, according to Kleiber’s Law you wouldn't just get 50 times smarter, you would get 130 times smarter. The more knowledge you absorb, the more great ideas you will come up with. Stay smart.
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5 Lessons You Should Learn From Mother Nature Dec 02, 2014

Show notes

Today's book-of-the-day is "Folks, This Ain't Normal - A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World" by Joel Salatin, if you want to order this book from me click here: http://bit.ly/12BAhE0
When I was still a teenager my mentor Joel Salatin used to tell me, "Tai, nature always laughs last."
For you to live the good life you're going to have to understand nature and biology.
I don't care if you live in a high-rise in Manhattan or one of the hundred million dollar condos I saw in London last month. The laws of nature still apply as much to you today as they did 10,000 years ago.
If you don't know who Joel is (besides the fact that he was my first mentor), he's a famous international speaker, who’s done two Ted talks, and has written 10 books.
But most importantly, he's known for pioneering grass-fed beef and pastured eggs. His Virginia Polyface Farms has had everyone (from celebrities, presidents, even prime ministers) coming to learn from his wisdom.
I was actually just visiting Joel and his family for Thanksgiving last week and I recorded some special videos for you.
Enable your images to see me interview Joel Salatin
The point of his book, “Folks,This Ain’t Normal” is simple. You and I in the modern world are so far removed from biological reality that 80% of the problems we face have nothing to do with flaws in us, per se, but more to do with flaws in the system.
It's like the Harvard professor Daniel Lieberman talks about in “The Story of the Human Body.” The quickest way to change your physical health (weight, waistline, etc.) is not to rely on willpower, but to change the system and environment in which you find yourself.
So what is Joel saying is wrong with our system?
Why Unconventional Works
1. We grow our food with pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, antibiotics, and growth hormones:
"Our animals don't do drugs. Instead, we move them almost daily in a tightly choreographed ballet from pasture spot to pasture spot."
Joel figured out that you don't have to be locked into the conventional ways to grow food by using chemicals. For example, if you mimic natural systems with your beef cows by moving them around in rotated pastures not only do you get healthier cows but the fertility of the soil increases. That's a true Pareto efficiency.
2. We’ve become detached from our food and the land that grows our food:
"A farmer friend of mine told me recently about a busload of middle school children who came to his farm for a tour. The first two boys off the bus asked, 'Where is the salsa tree?' They thought they could go pick salsa, like apples and peaches. Oh my. What do they put on SAT tests to measure this? Does anybody care? How little can a person know about food and still make educated decisions about it? Is this knowledge going to change before they enter the voting booth? Now that's a scary thought."
The average child hardly even realizes eggs don't come from the grocery store. Or that Velveeta cheese doesn't come from a can.
The only true path to food security is to know where your food comes from - have a relationship with the farmer who grows your food.
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Why You Shouldn't Be A Jack Of All Trades Nov 30, 2014

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Today's book of the day is "Bounce". If you don't already own “Bounce”, this book is an absolute must have. I worked out a deal with the publisher so you can buy the book brand new directly from me. http://bit.ly/12q7Bgk
What most people forget is that life is not about the situation in which you find yourself.
It's about the level of "deep domain expertise" that you possess.
This is what the best scientific research shows.
In the modern world, you are surrounded by generalists.
Jack of all trades.
Being a generalist won't get you far.
Stop being a generalist.
It's like Steve Martin says to people who want to break into show business: "Be so good they can't ignore you."
Only when you have deep domain expertise will you be so good that even the haters will be forced to stop and pay attention.
If you remain a jack of all trades you'll stay ignored.
In "Bounce", today's book-of-the-day, Matthew Syed talks about the myth of inborn talent.
I ran across this book several years ago and it's made its way to my top 150 books that I read over and over again at least once a year.
For Thanksgiving, I visited the Amish and Joel Salatin's farm in Virginia and I read "Bounce" again on the airplane and recorded a video for you out in the snow by the chickens and pigs.
This book will scare you.
This book will inspire you.
It all depends how you perceive it's conclusions.
Here are some of the book's main points:
1. It takes reps and sets: “It is the quality and quantity of practice, not genes, that is driving progress."
Arnold Schwarzenegger talks about the same thing in his autobiography, “Total Recall”. It's all about reps and sets when it comes to weights. There are a few shortcuts but you still need sheer volume of practice to get good at anything.
And it's not just the body and weight lifting this applies to.
Ignore all the newfangled books that are being published about how you can bypass sheer volume of practice.
It's not really about shortcuts, tricks, and the genetics you were born with.
It's about practice.
2. Your passion quotient: “Every endeavor pursued with passion produces a successful outcome regardless of the result."
This was the motto of one of the expert coaches that the author interviewed.
At different times in your life, you probably grappled with big decisions: which major you should pursue in college, which diet plan you should follow, which career you should pursue, which person you should date...
And you might've been paralyzed because you were concerned about making the right or wrong decision.
But forget that obsolete, black-and-white type thinking.
This book lays out a completely new way to think about those type of decisions.
What if the more important thing is rewiring the neural pathways of your brain?
The key factor is not whether one thing is right or wrong (it's mathematically impossible to know if one decision was better than the other unless you could live in two alternate, parallel universes and then look back at both decisions outcome).
The key, instead, is that when you do something, do it with intense passion, even if it turns out to be the "wrong" thing in the long run.
At least you will have been training your brain to do something with massive focus, energy, and passion.
You can always pivot and do something else later.
Whatever you do don't do things half-hearted because then you're training your brain to be a generalist.
As Samuel Johnson said, "The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken."
Live in a world where people struggle to really grab hold of anything and take ownership of it.
Warren Buffett was asked for his best career device and he said to do something with passion because: "The truth is, so few people really jump on their jobs, you really will stand out more than you think. You will get noticed if you really go for it.”
A. Know yourself.
B. Select your industry and life's focus and don't deviate for a decade or more.
C. Develop deep domain expertise.
D. Reap the harvest and cash in and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Now, there are quite a few other fascinating points you need to know from this book, so I recorded a quick video for you to watch.
If you don't already own “Bounce”, this book is an absolute must have. I worked out a deal with the publisher so you can buy the book brand new directly from me.
Plus if you buy it from me, you get it for the same price as you would anywhere else (or cheaper) and I'm throwing in a whole bunch of free bonuses. So you're getting like $100 worth of value for just the price of the book. To order your brand new copy of "Bounce" now and get your free bonuses: http://bit.ly/12q7BgkLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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6 Lessons From A Navy SEAL On Being Tough Nov 18, 2014

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In today's books of the day I'm sharing 6 insights with you that I took from some of the toughest people in the world, the Navy Seals. I thought this book was so good that I went out and bought some that you can buy from me here http://bit.ly/1zJU6mJLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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How To Make 1 Million Dollars If You Are Completely Broke Nov 18, 2014

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I'm here in Palm Springs doing some work with my team and thought I would make a quick book of the day. I got asked if someone had a gun to my head and I was completely broke how I would make 1 million dollars? Here's my answer, "I would go out to a big market and I would take an idea that is working really well and bring it to a small market."Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The 3 Most Important Rules of Investing Nov 07, 2014

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Today's book of the day is A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers From Warren Buffett by Peter Bevelin. This is one of the best books on investing I have ever read.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Do You Need A High IQ To Be Rich? Oct 17, 2014

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Have you ever asked yourself these questions:
How smart am I and does it even matter?
Do I need a high I.Q. to be rich?
Today's Book of the Day is, “Successful Intelligence: How Practical and Creative Intelligence Determine Success in Life” by Robert Sternberg.
Sternberg hypothesizes that I.Q is not a fixed measurement, the way it has been misunderstood for years, and he gives us a lot of insight into how IQ is changeable.
Can you answer these questions as a comment below?
1. What is a self defeating attitude that you have had towards your I.Q. or intelligence?
2. What is a negative expectation that others have put on you that you want to defy?Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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How To Set Yourself Apart From The Crowd Oct 08, 2014

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For today's book of the day, I chose "Man Alone with Himself" by Friedrich Nietzsche. He says that everybody aspires to be set apart from the crowd. What do you have to do to become great, to not be just another blip on the radar? In the book, Nietzsche says, "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." Too many people create strong convictions and stick with them without ever challenging the idea. You must challenge your convictions if you want to grow.
Here are three action points to take:
1. What resonated most with you form this video?
2. What is an action point that you can take from this video?
3. What is a conviction that you need to challenge?Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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