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May 10, 2024
Tossing thoughts in the trash. The one leg balance effect. Playing piano and vocabulary. The perils of late night eating
For a mood boost, go somewhere that's at least 15 miles away from home. Research from University College London found that people who regularly traveled 15 miles outside of their local area felt healthier than those who stayed close to home. And that was especially true for people over age 50! Why? Because people who travel outside their comfort zone tend to visit more places and meet more people! And those are key factors that improve mental and physical health.
Eating at night leads to weight gain... even if you're not eating any more than you normally do! So why is that? According to the Autonomous University of Chile, it's because our bodies burn more energy during the day... so as the sun sets, our metabolism naturally slows down, helping us prepare for sleep. That means we're not processing food as efficiently. And in a study of 5,000 people, those who ate after 8 p.m. had waists that were two inches bigger—even though they ate the same calories and had the same activity levels as those who eat earlier in the day.
The next time you're obsessively worrying about something, write it down on a piece of paper, rip it up, and toss it in the trash. According to a study in the journal Psychological Science, doing that can reduce your anxiety in 15 minutes. That's because our brain handles thoughts as if they were objects. And by taking the thought out of your brain and putting it on paper, you release it. Then, by destroying it and throwing it away, it enables your brain to do the same—so you can move on.
Do you get overwhelmed when you wake up and realize you've got a super-busy day ahead of you? Instead of freaking out about your to-do list, try this: While you're brushing your teeth, stand on one leg... And think about what you need to tackle. Studies show that balancing on one leg increases blood flow to the area of the brain that controls planning... And you'll find yourself better able to focus on one item at a time, and map out your day's schedule.
Sales of electric vehicles have slowed. So what can get more people to buy them? Manufacturers think NOISE is the answer! Companies are making them sound more like traditional cars. Typically, fake engine noise is played through a vehicle's speakers. Manufacturers like BMW, Ford, and Porsche all do it. And if an electric car feels too easy to drive, Toyota is building a simulated stick shift that will let drivers pretend to “change gears,” and the system may even pretend to stall if the driver incorrectly shifts.
Sales of “dumb phones” are increasing! Those are phones without apps. The company that manufactures Nokia phones saw its sales of flip phones double last year.
How can playing the piano make you a better person? By enhancing your listening skills and emotional intelligence! According to research from Yale University, people who play the piano are generally good listeners. And studies show that musicians are more perceptive when it comes to interpreting and acknowledging other people’s emotions. That skill also makes a person more compassionate about others. And the part of your brain that governs your ability to listen also makes it easier for you to understand and retain what people say, remember new vocabulary words, and even learn a foreign language.
Visit https://Tesh.com for more information and resources.
(00:04) Mood Boost and Evening Eating Impact
(08:51) Letting Go Through Psychological Science
(11:43) Brain Activation and Electric Vehicle Balance
(22:19) The Power of Playing Piano
Transcript
00:04 - Speaker 1
John Tesh with Gib Gerard. Welcome to the podcast. We've got great stuff for you. Because you're going to listen here for I don't know how long this is going to be. It's like 15 minutes or something like that.
00:13
We usually talk, however long we talk, yeah exactly, but we've got good stuff to talk about and we're here basically to move you forward in your life. You know we just bathe in this stuff all the time, all this intel. So the idea here is, if you're just joining us for the first time, is that I'll spit out a bunch of facts and then Gib will refute them.
00:30 - Speaker 2
No, no, no. But look, we give out a lot of advice. That is like only eat berries and the occasional almond if you want to live the healthiest life. And I will say that's just not something that people are going to do. It's not something I'm going to do.
00:44 - Speaker 1
But we do test this stuff on ourselves. This reminds me it was a great Steve Martin routine. We're going to get to it. I promise. I hate when people talk about nothing in the podcast for the first 10 minutes. Anyway, I saw Steve Martin on stage at the Exit Inn in Nashville in 1974.
01:02
He was just starting and he did his whole thing about the arrow through the head and the banjo and everything he goes. I'm really a transcendental kind of guy. I went to see the Swami Naktamandi. He gave me a piece of advice that I still carry with me today. He said, steve, as you go through life, always and he stops and he goes, never, never. It was great. Anyway, let's talk about mood boost, because we can all use that.
01:30 - Speaker 2
Always.
01:31 - Speaker 1
I wake up in the morning, I read the news there goes, my mood boost.
01:33 - Speaker 2
Yeah, you got to stop doing that first thing in the morning. I know I should. There are good news websites, by the way, that only tell you the stuff that makes you feel good.
01:40 - Speaker 1
Okay, that seems odd, but anyway. So I've never seen this tip before. But here's the mood boost you go somewhere that's at least 15 miles away from home. So research from University College London found that people who regularly traveled 15 miles outside of their local area they felt healthier than those who stayed close to home. It was especially true for people over the age of 50, because we usually only go 50 feet away from our home, yep. People who travel outside their comfort zone tend to visit more places and meet more people. Those are key factors that improve your mental and physical health. I just did this. I was going to see your kids play in a soccer tournament, yep and we went 60 miles away to a place called Temecula.
02:20 - Speaker 2
Temecula.
02:21 - Speaker 1
And we're still in the Greater Los Angeles area, right, and everybody was different. They spoke. They spoke differently, different restaurants, they seemed happy. Yeah, it was unbelievable.
02:31 - Speaker 2
Well, keep in mind, you know 15 miles. If you live in An environment With a lot of traffic, 15 miles can take A really long time. I'm only. I only live 14 miles From you, yeah.
02:41 - Speaker 1
You feel?
02:42 - Speaker 2
like it's really far when you guys come to soccer games and stuff because sometimes it's two hours right.
02:46
But it's only 14 miles and that's not even as the crow's fly. Crow flies, that's as you and that's that's driving. So 15 miles is pretty far, but it also it also underscores the point that most of us don't really go very far on a given day. We do everything within, probably within 10 miles of our house, 10 miles of our work, and unless you're a, unless you're a trucker and when you're and you're driving for a living, you're most likely living in a very small area. You're going to the, because why wouldn't you? You're going to the same restaurants inside of a small radius. You're going to the same. You're going to the same dry, cleaner.
03:20
All your errands are in that space. When you expand, put yourself outside of your comfort zone. Just a little bit, add a little bit of novelty. Your brain turns on. It's like being a baby. Think about how exciting, how excited a baby is to just see new colors. It's the same thing your brain's like what?
03:36 - Speaker 1
that's true a buffalo wild wings haven't seen one of those in weeks that's true when I lived in new york, new york city, and those of you in new york will will know this. Lived in New York City, and those of you in New York will know this. I lived in Manhattan, right, and it was amazing because if you went one city block right Right, this sounds ridiculous Yep Everything could look completely different. Yep, the people were different. There was a different dry cleaners that's how jam-packed a population that area was and so if you walked 10 blocks, that's a mile, yep, and it was a different I mean different borough.
04:04 - Speaker 2
Well, there's a joke on Seinfeld where Kramer's dating somebody who lives downtown. They live in Uptown, on the Upper West Side, on the show, and he's dating a girl that lives downtown and he calls it a long-distance relationship. It's still in Manhattan. Listen, the point is the denser the area you live in, the less far you have to go in order to get this effect.
04:23 - Speaker 1
My friend Lenny's going to know I'm going to say something and people aren't going to like this. But when I was younger and we would go out clubbing right Went to Studio 54 and a couple of bars and places like that and my friend Lenny, he'd be talking to a nice young lady and then he'd come back and talk to me and I would say what do you think? Did you guys get along?
04:46 - Speaker 2
and it was a different kind of uh, jargon than that, but you know what I mean. And it was five, it was the 70s, yeah exactly.
04:51 - Speaker 1
It was the 70s, uh, and he would say he. This is the first time I heard this. It was uh, gu, he goes uh, no, it's great, but gu, I'm like gu. You mean g whiz, no, gu. So what's that geographically undesirable? So it was like he didn't want to date anybody that was in a different borough because it was a longer subway ride.
05:09 - Speaker 2
The point being. I forgot what we were talking about it's 15 miles.
05:12 - Speaker 1
It's better for you, so at least 15 miles away. You had that look on your face like move on.
05:16 - Speaker 2
John no, this is a great story, but I would say here's the point Lenny's life would have been a lot happier if he had been willing to go and date the women that were geographically undesirable. Because he would have gone outside of his comfort zone and had novel experiences.
05:30 - Speaker 1
Matter of fact, his memory is not so good, so that's probably what happened.
05:33 - Speaker 2
Think about how good his brain would be if he had just done that.
05:37 - Speaker 1
I have a problem and that is that I try to eat two meals a day. So I work out and then maybe at 11, I'll have something right, and then at 5 o'clock Connie and I will eat dinner, usually very early, but right about 8 o'clock.
05:53 - Speaker 2
I get so hungry, so hungry.
05:56 - Speaker 1
And the more I see this type of intel, I'm realizing I need to do something. I need to find a healthy snack, or just maybe eat some more or something, because it turns out that we know for a fact now. The University of Chile has found that eating at night will definitely lead to weight gain, because our bodies burn more energy during the day. So, they say, as the sun sets, our metabolism will slow down, helping us prepare for sleep, which means we're not processing food efficiently. And a big study they did of 5,000 people those who ate after 8 pm they had wastes that were two inches bigger, even though they ate the same calories and had the same activity levels. Was just eating in the evening?
06:32 - Speaker 2
too late. It's because you're not burning those calories, so they get metabolized into fat no matter what. So if you're eating within a couple hours of going to sleep, your body is just not going to be able to use that energy. And when you have energy in your system, it has to go somewhere, and that will go into fat, and most of us that means for me anyway I won't speak for everybody, but for me that means going right to my waistline. So my waistline will expand, because that's where I gain fat first and lose fat last. And uh, that it all comes from from adding calories into my system that have no place to go. The key if you want to keep the same amount of food that you're eating, is to eat like a king in the morning.
07:12 - Speaker 1
Popper at night, and popper at night.
07:13 - Speaker 2
So you want to slowly but surely titrate down the amount of food because your body just does not have the caloric needs as you go later in the day it also messes with your sleep. I mean, I did this last night.
07:29 - Speaker 1
I was up late and I had made myself a little midnight snack and I have felt absolutely terrible all day because I ate late, late at night last night, yeah, we've. Especially if it's salty, you got to be careful with that for it, because that salt will keep you awake. We just had that story on the radio show, uh, and also there. There are some things you can eat late at night. You don't want to eat fats because it takes too much to process them, so one of the big foods for the people are eating now as a snack is, uh, blueberries and cottage cheese yeah, well, I mean, I've been sending you pictures of my, my new dessert, I know it's frozen blueberries in in greek yogurt, uh, and so that that combination it's.
08:00 - Speaker 2
I do it because otherwise I'd eat ice cream, right, and I will say I'm not. I'm not an idiot. I know it's not. I'd eat ice cream and I will say I'm not an idiot. I know it's not as good as ice cream, I miss the ice cream, but it does scratch an itch. It is a good snack. And the blueberries, I mean.
08:12 - Speaker 1
How many stories have we done in the last month Wild blueberries, yes.
08:16 - Speaker 2
I get wild boreal blueberries, which are blueberries that are grown at above a certain latitude, so they actually have a little bit more density of their phytonutrients. Um it's, you know, frozen blueberries are not that expensive. They're more expensive than you know.
08:33 - Speaker 1
The boreal wild blueberries are more expensive than harvested blueberries, but if you get them frozen it's cheaper overall and I love them so many more polyphenols in those wild blueberries for sure okay, let's talk about, uh, obsession, because so if you're ruminating, if you're worried, if you just can't stop thinking about stuff, I think psychologists call it monkey brain. It's even in the Bible, romans 12, to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Even the Apostle Paul knew back then that we had too many things entering our mind at once, even back then. So there's a from the journal Psychological Science. There is a tactic now, they say the researchers do next time you're obsessively worrying about something, write it down on a piece of paper. Yes, rip that up and toss it into the trash. According to the researchers again, it's psychological science doing this will reduce your anxiety in just 15 minutes, and it'll stay reduced for a while. Our brain handles thoughts as if they were objects no-transcript.
09:32 - Speaker 2
That's exactly it. You release it. Look the tearing it up and throwing it away. That's a little bit of extra psychological boost that you get from it. I'll tell you right now you get 90% of the benefit from just offloading it, just writing it down, especially before you go to bed.
09:47
Yeah, if it's something you need to remember, well, guess what, your brain's not going to stress about it anymore because now it's written down. If it's something that's just bothering you, that you want to get rid of writing it down and then having the ceremony of tearing it up and throwing away, even burning it I've burned stuff before in my backyard fireplace.
10:01 - Speaker 1
I love that. I love that. That's great, whatever.
10:04 - Speaker 2
It creates in you. Look, we are simple. No matter how much we build, no matter how much we do, we are still very, very simple creatures. We're stimulus response. So there is something about that. Your brain just needs about literally letting that thing go, tearing it up and throwing it away. It creates the exact, a physical map of the psychological process you need to do and it will do it for you. It really will.
10:29 - Speaker 1
Hey, listen, is it true you're making fires regularly? I'm holding on to a letter. It was a Dear John letter that came from Janie when I graduated from high school and she broke up with me and started dating my best friend. You've heard this story before.
10:42 - Speaker 2
I've heard this story so many times, anyway, I have the letter.
10:45 - Speaker 1
I still have the letter. Burn it, get rid of it. Yeah, but I want you to burn it because I don't want to do it. I will happily do it.
10:51 - Speaker 2
I just want to point out look, I absolutely understand how formative those years were for you, yes, yes. But since then you've won what? Half a dozen Emmys. You've been married for how many years?
11:04 - Speaker 1
30? 32?.
11:06 - Speaker 2
Yeah.
11:06 - Speaker 1
Not for nothing. I married the prom queen You've surpassed whatever that junior high relationship could have been, yes, but now we're into psychology. This is the whole thing. It's like why didn't that other girl want me, yeah. Why didn't she trade me in Okay? Six Emmys Stop it how many hit songs, but it's all because of that letter I'm just trying to get back.
11:27 - Speaker 2
This is like in the movie the Social Network, where Mark Zuckerberg, after he builds Facebook, all he does is is look at that ex-girlfriend's profile. Exactly that's what happens, it's sick, move on. That means do nothing for me, can't get her back.
11:42 - Speaker 1
Okay. So let's say that rumination builds up while you're sleeping. You've offloaded it, You've thrown it into the fire or you've torn it up, and you know you wake up. You have a super busy day ahead of you Every day. There's a solution for this, too, so instead of freaking out about your to-do list, this is what you should do. Again, this is from neuroscientists. While you're brushing your teeth, you stand on one leg. You think about what you need to tackle. Studies show that listen to this that balancing on one leg increases blood flow to the area of the brain that controls planning.
12:22 - Speaker 2
You'll find yourself better able to focus on one item at a time, say the researchers, and map out your day schedule if you're standing on on on one leg, I so look, this is I when we we talked about this on the radio and my my my point on the radio, when we didn't have a lot of time to unpack this, was just, it can't hurt to try it. Yeah, you might as well give it a shot. Why wouldn't you? Unless your balance is terrible, in which case you should probably work on your balance anyway. So this is a win there. Why are you looking at me? Because I know you've been working on your balance. You can handle this.
12:40 - Speaker 1
I cannot. I'm getting better. If I stand on one leg while I'm brushing my teeth, I'm in the bathtub, okay.
12:46 - Speaker 2
We don't even have a bathtub in that room. Five rooms over. I'll hop my way to my wife's bathroom and jump in that bathtub. But this underscores something that is a theme when we talk about neurological benefits and neuroplasticity and neurological mapping, and that is for most of us. For most of our tasks, we underutilize our brain. We go into autopilot, we type up our letters, we type up our notes for our classes, and what that does is it only uses a small portion of our brain. We drive up our notes for our classes, and what that does is it only uses a small portion of our brain. We drive the same route to work every day. We brush our teeth with the same hand, we stand on the same you know, we wear the same shoes, stand on the same surfaces, and what that does is it gets us into habits that are low energy. So our brain does not need to process a lot of new information. And what we are constantly talking about.
13:37
If you want to eat less, if you want to think better, if you want to stave off Alzheimer's and you want to memorize more stuff, you have to engage more of your brain, and this is just another way of doing that. So if you have big problems, you got to wake your brain up. You got to wake your brain up and by engaging the balance center of your brain, by engaging the motor cortex that you need in order to stay balanced, all of that stuff is going to make your brain turn on and you're going to have a much easier way of getting into what's called a flow state, which is where decision-making is a lot easier. That's what this is doing. There are so many things you can do for this Knitting, handwork, gardening, all of that adds to it but this is a quick and easy way. Try standing on one leg. Can't hurt to try it.
14:27 - Speaker 1
But again, most of this just comes down to that we just don't use our brains anymore. Listen, I know this sounds like a bit, but this morning I went and worked out with Michael at the gym and he goes. We're doing the workout today without your shoes on.
14:38
And I have a bad right ankle. It's been turned and broken so many times. It's very unstable and he goes you're not going to get your balance back if we don't take your shoes off, Yep. And so I was really nervous and so we did, like balance movements and not, like you know, deadlifting 200 pounds, that kind of stuff. But we did all the workouts in stocking feet. It was a whole different thing. A whole different thing I mean because I could even see all of the muscles and tendons and everything firing off because I was barefoot.
15:08 - Speaker 2
I mean, look, I balance pretty well and whenever I go surfing or paddleboarding, one of the first things that hurts when I'm done are the bottoms of my feet because I'm gripping. I can't help it.
15:17 - Speaker 1
I grip with my feet.
15:19 - Speaker 2
And it's something that I don't normally engage with, and so it is a great way to improve your balance and to engage more of your brain.
15:31 - Speaker 1
In fact, we talk about that. Walking on uneven surfaces with bare feet. How good that is for stimulating your brain. Yeah, there's also a process called grounding, which has been proven to be great for your brain. Where grounding, which has been proven to be great for your brain where you just take your shoes off, take your socks off too, and you walk on earth, grass or dirt they even make.
15:42 - Speaker 2
I think I've talked about this before they make a thing. You can plug into the ground in your socket, like your three-pronged socket there's two that have power and one that's aground and you can put it in your bed so you get the same grounding effect while you're sleeping.
15:58 - Speaker 1
I think that sounds a little hooey to me, so the fire department, which also has an ambulance it's only like 200 yards from here. So I'd be electrocuted and my wife would be on fire. You plug it into the ground.
16:08 - Speaker 2
I'm just grounding you honey, Not into the active part of the plug, into that little round thing at the bottom.
16:13 - Speaker 1
But what if I miss? My vision's not so good at night. All of a sudden, my wife is.
16:18 - Speaker 2
I would say, my point is people have made, they've.
16:21 - Speaker 1
This is a stupid idea, I agree I don't have one, but they've productified. They've monetized the idea of grounding. Folks, don't plug anything into anywhere, because we're not insured for this.
16:32 - Speaker 2
We don't make the product. Whoever makes it, you talk to them.
16:36 - Speaker 1
And I'll miss a step and be like my wife's, like why are you trying to put your toe into?
16:39 - Speaker 2
the wall socket I'm grounding.
16:42 - Speaker 1
Hey, speaking of electricity, oh, that's a good turn there. Very smooth Sales of electric vehicles. You may have seen this on the news. Sales of electric vehicles have slowed down a bit. The bloom is off the rose a bit. I still like the. I used to drive a muscle car and now I still have an internal combustion car. We both have hybrids. So the folks that sell these things, it's like what can get more people to buy them? They figured it out. Manufacturers are convinced it's noise. So companies are making they're putting sound into their electric cars, making them sound more like traditional cars. So fake engine noise is played through the vehicle speakers. You're not fooling me with that.
17:23 - Speaker 2
Yes, they are. I guarantee they're going to fool you.
17:25 - Speaker 1
Manufacturers like BMW, Ford and Porsche. They all do it already, and an electric car feels too easy to drive. Toyota is building a simulated stick shift that will let drivers pretend to change gears and, by the way, the system even pretends to stall. If you incorrectly shift, you shift into first instead of third that seems excessive.
17:42 - Speaker 2
Look, look you. Your last car was a dream, a dream car of yours very throaty and it it made noise. I mean you when it, when you turned it on, you heard it bullet mustang and then, and then it was, it was a stick shift.
17:55
you were, when you were, when you got like, do you want the automatic or the stick? You were like absolutely want the stick shift. It's a feeling of control. You feel more connected to the car. I'll give you that when you're driving a manual you are way more connected to the car than you otherwise would be.
18:07 - Speaker 1
You can't check your phone.
18:08 - Speaker 2
You're shifting Right, exactly. So I think they're great. I think they're great, I, I, I. This driving experience is exactly what you go for. This is, this is the way to get you, because, look, you know, if you look at the cost of ownership of vehicles, electric car is the cost of ownership way less than internal combustion engines. All right, Because you don't have a. You don't have thousands of tiny explosions that are putting wear and tear on your car every single minute. Right, you don't have that. You have a brushless electric motor which has almost an infinite lifespan. It's got 100 years before you need to replace some of those parts, which is not true of an internal combustion engine. So they're way cheaper to operate, but they're not something that you would ever get. These are the kinds of things that would get you interested, I think.
18:55 - Speaker 1
Yeah, no. Well, no I think yeah, no, well, no, I mean, I could probably end this conversation with two words which would keep me up at night. Those words are range anxiety.
19:05 - Speaker 2
Sure, I mean, that's the next problem they have to solve.
19:08 - Speaker 1
I'm not driving to Palm Springs on that thing. Do I have to go to a turbocharger? What do you do at the turbocharger? Do you check your email? Recharger.
19:14 - Speaker 2
Check your email. How long does it take? It's so horrible.
19:17 - Speaker 1
When I was a kid, I got a car. I was 8 years old in 1960 and my dad got me one of these cars. I got in the car and I pushed the button and it went. If this sounds like that, they're not going to save their businesses, it's got to be better than.
19:36 - Speaker 2
That was the real sound. The car made, though no it was a plastic car.
19:40 - Speaker 1
Oh, it was a toy car.
19:41 - Speaker 2
It was a toy, yeah, I thought, when you turned 16, your dad got you a car.
19:44 - Speaker 1
That made that noise. My dad didn't get me anything. My dad was trying to get me a high ball of scotch. My mom wouldn't let him give it to me. It's a lot for a six-year-old, I know All right. So anyway, let us know what you think. Actually, don't let us know what you think.
20:03 - Speaker 2
I think there's a market of people who would be excited to drive a car if it felt a little stronger as an electric car.
20:06 - Speaker 1
It's so bad. Okay, anyway, the one thing that is coming back by the way these days and I think you would go for this, I'm not sure if I would last but the sales. Just like you know, last year 50 million phonograph records were sold.
20:21 - Speaker 2
Oh yeah, that's amazing.
20:23 - Speaker 1
More than any other format Now, sales of dumb phones are going through the roof, phones without apps, of course, the company that manufactures Nokia phones, my first cell phone. They saw sales of flip phones double. Yep, double last year. Flip phones.
20:39 - Speaker 2
So my kid's school has had us sign something called wait till eighth and that means that you wait until your kid's in eighth grade to get them a phone.
20:48
But there are certain things. Look, I have a phone, I have a watch that is connected to my phone. I have headphones. I am no Luddite, I live a phone. I have a watch that is connected to my phone. I have headphones. I am no Luddite, I live with technology.
21:00
But I definitely feel trapped by the technology sometimes and there are things about my kids where I go. Hey, I would love to be able to communicate with them, to give them that little bit of extra freedom that comes with having a way to contact them when they're out and about, without all of the drama that we have talked about on the show for years that come with social media, with the apps, with the being able to surf the internet from your phone from anywhere, with the notifications and all of the anxiety that comes with that, with the bullying. So I love this idea of the dumb phone. In fact, if I didn't have email and the work that we do come through my phone as much as it does, I would have the dumb phone Because it's a great way to stay connected without being.
21:46
I don't know about you, but I feel trapped by technology when you can't get away from it.
21:51 - Speaker 1
At this point I catch myself picking up the phone more than I should. But listen, if you give your 12-year-old daughter, who's in sixth grade, if you give her a dumb phone, you're going to come home a week later and she'll have a satellite dish on her head, I know, and she would have figured out a way to pick up texting on that thing.
22:06 - Speaker 2
Yeah, she'll figure out a way that she can. She'll be able to contact the space station from the phone within 10 minutes.
22:13 - Speaker 1
I know, speaking of dumb stuff, that sounds incredible and that really works the piano. We now know that, given I both have a love for the piano, we both play it, one of us at a much different level than the other.
22:26 - Speaker 2
The only interesting thing about the piano real quickly is that?
22:27 - Speaker 1
I guess it's any instrument. You probably have the same feeling about singing and also about playing a string instrument, which you do, but it's, as I said, string instrument. You probably have the same feeling about singing and also about playing a string instrument, which you do, but it's, I said, string instrument. I didn't want to say ukulele.
22:40 - Speaker 2
It sounds so lame.
22:42 - Speaker 1
No it does not. Anyway, once you learn something, once you get in on the bottom, that's when you If you look at, it's like if you look at somebody playing tennis at the US Open, you're like I think I could probably do that. And then if you play one game, it's like you realize how far away you are from excellence. It's the same thing with an instrument.
22:59 - Speaker 2
Yeah, 100%.
23:00 - Speaker 1
It really is. So we now know that actually it's a powerful sentence. Playing a piano can actually make you a better person. It enhances your listening skills and even your emotional intelligence, so it's not just about pushing down the keys. This is research from Yale University. It turns out that people who play piano become good listeners, and studies show that musicians are more perceptive when it comes to interpreting and acknowledging other people's emotions. The skill also makes a person, as they say, more compassionate about others, and we just know that when you play piano with both hands left and right, it does amazing things to your hippocampus, because you're doing two different things at the same time.
23:37 - Speaker 2
You know this goes back to what I've been saying on this whole show, which is the more of your brain you engage, the better you're going to be, the better decision maker you're going to be. When we are in that knee-jerk reaction, when we are in the stimulus response part of our brain, which happens when we shut it down, we're just using the inner parts and that happens when we're distracted by our phones. It happens when we're worrying about all kinds of stuff and we're not really listening to what the people around us are saying. That shuts our brain down and we get into this circuit of our brains. That is just stimulus response. But if you can slow your brain down, if you can engage more of your brain, like you have to do with music, because you have to play to time, you have to play coordinated movements and in order to do all of that you have to, you just have to use your brain and in fact you can't even talk while you're playing piano.
24:23
it's one of the hardest things to do we always make fun of that right is to is to sing and play, or even singing and playing is actually easier than talking and play. Yeah, because you're singing along with the song versus talking. It's hard to do the things that are that are out of out of sync. Uh, when, when you get your brain into that mode that your brain is just it's firing on all cylinders, you'll be able to connect with people so much better obviously the only person I've ever seen alive who could do the thing where they're playing something you know more than just you know triads uh, playing complicated chords is.
24:55 - Speaker 1
I saw her do it on the Grammys as Alicia Keys. Oh yeah, she can actually play jazz music and talk at the same time, which I'm telling you. Try it, try to play. Mary has a Little Lamb on the piano and talk.
25:06 - Speaker 2
Going back to what you said at the start of this story, which was it looks easy to play tennis when you watch the US Open until you've tried to play a game and you see what they're able to do. Alicia Keys yeah, you like some of her songs. Yeah, you can tell that she's talented. But when you actually try to play piano and then you see what she's able to do with the piano, you go oh my gosh, you are on a different level. And John Legend too. John Legend has just that extra level of talent where, if you understand what he's doing and what Alicia Keys is doing, it's mind-blowing, it is.
25:40 - Speaker 1
Excuse me. One of the reasons I bring this up there's so many great pieces of intel on piano is that we made the decision to actually launch a program. It's not only a course, but it's also a community called the John Tesh Piano Method, and I know that when people come up to us, gib, at the end of concerts and they say, oh man, I wish I'd kept up piano, usually people you know 45 plus Is it too late to start. Right, because what happens is people are intimidated by the music theory and also do I have to learn how to read sheet music. So I put together this course as, as you know, called the John Tesh piano method, and it's basically I said why don't?
26:21
I just teach people how to play my songs right, and so I started with round ball rock, the basketball theme and some other stuff from PBS and showing people what what it looks like on stage and then saying, here, here's the right hand and here's the left hand. It was amazing how many beginners have showed up because I thought it would be so here's, I'll show you how to play round ball rock. I'll use both hands. Then I was getting emails and texts from people saying, hey, can you just show me how to put my hand on the piano. I'm like, wow, yes, okay. So I started over and did two different tracks right. One is paths, one is beginners and the other is intermediate players.
26:57 - Speaker 2
So, I mean, the reality is, there's plenty of piano players who are great piano players, who can go and either download your sheet music or or find a piano book that has your sheet music in it and just play it. Right, but teaching them, teaching piano using your songs, is great, and and look, they're to your point. There are people walk up to us and say, hey, I don't even know where to begin. I wish I could play an instrument. This is why we did this. The other thing that's really important to note and that you've added is that community element, because we have talked about on the show over and over and over again how important it is to have a sense of community when it comes to sticking with goals, and so you see this in the online language learning community, where they're building these communities for learning languages. Uh, the same is true for this, and so it's to help people stay connected to it. We built the community element, too, where you can talk to them.
27:45 - Speaker 1
They can talk to each other, yeah yeah, and so if you, uh, if you're interested I don't have a unique method you can find that at teshcom. Also, teshcom, you'll find a link to sign up for the weekly coaching calls that Gibb and I have. These are really amazing. We share all kinds of the latest strategies for living a more purposeful, organized life, and we even pray for each other. So check it out. That's at Teshcom, and for now, thanks for subscribing to the podcast. Thanks for being with us. We'll see you next time.
John Tesh with Gib Gerard. Welcome to the podcast. We've got great stuff for you. Because you're going to listen here for I don't know how long this is going to be. It's like 15 minutes or something like that.
00:13
We usually talk, however long we talk, yeah exactly, but we've got good stuff to talk about and we're here basically to move you forward in your life. You know we just bathe in this stuff all the time, all this intel. So the idea here is, if you're just joining us for the first time, is that I'll spit out a bunch of facts and then Gib will refute them.
00:30 - Speaker 2
No, no, no. But look, we give out a lot of advice. That is like only eat berries and the occasional almond if you want to live the healthiest life. And I will say that's just not something that people are going to do. It's not something I'm going to do.
00:44 - Speaker 1
But we do test this stuff on ourselves. This reminds me it was a great Steve Martin routine. We're going to get to it. I promise. I hate when people talk about nothing in the podcast for the first 10 minutes. Anyway, I saw Steve Martin on stage at the Exit Inn in Nashville in 1974.
01:02
He was just starting and he did his whole thing about the arrow through the head and the banjo and everything he goes. I'm really a transcendental kind of guy. I went to see the Swami Naktamandi. He gave me a piece of advice that I still carry with me today. He said, steve, as you go through life, always and he stops and he goes, never, never. It was great. Anyway, let's talk about mood boost, because we can all use that.
01:30 - Speaker 2
Always.
01:31 - Speaker 1
I wake up in the morning, I read the news there goes, my mood boost.
01:33 - Speaker 2
Yeah, you got to stop doing that first thing in the morning. I know I should. There are good news websites, by the way, that only tell you the stuff that makes you feel good.
01:40 - Speaker 1
Okay, that seems odd, but anyway. So I've never seen this tip before. But here's the mood boost you go somewhere that's at least 15 miles away from home. So research from University College London found that people who regularly traveled 15 miles outside of their local area they felt healthier than those who stayed close to home. It was especially true for people over the age of 50, because we usually only go 50 feet away from our home, yep. People who travel outside their comfort zone tend to visit more places and meet more people. Those are key factors that improve your mental and physical health. I just did this. I was going to see your kids play in a soccer tournament, yep and we went 60 miles away to a place called Temecula.
02:20 - Speaker 2
Temecula.
02:21 - Speaker 1
And we're still in the Greater Los Angeles area, right, and everybody was different. They spoke. They spoke differently, different restaurants, they seemed happy. Yeah, it was unbelievable.
02:31 - Speaker 2
Well, keep in mind, you know 15 miles. If you live in An environment With a lot of traffic, 15 miles can take A really long time. I'm only. I only live 14 miles From you, yeah.
02:41 - Speaker 1
You feel?
02:42 - Speaker 2
like it's really far when you guys come to soccer games and stuff because sometimes it's two hours right.
02:46
But it's only 14 miles and that's not even as the crow's fly. Crow flies, that's as you and that's that's driving. So 15 miles is pretty far, but it also it also underscores the point that most of us don't really go very far on a given day. We do everything within, probably within 10 miles of our house, 10 miles of our work, and unless you're a, unless you're a trucker and when you're and you're driving for a living, you're most likely living in a very small area. You're going to the, because why wouldn't you? You're going to the same restaurants inside of a small radius. You're going to the same. You're going to the same dry, cleaner.
03:20
All your errands are in that space. When you expand, put yourself outside of your comfort zone. Just a little bit, add a little bit of novelty. Your brain turns on. It's like being a baby. Think about how exciting, how excited a baby is to just see new colors. It's the same thing your brain's like what?
03:36 - Speaker 1
that's true a buffalo wild wings haven't seen one of those in weeks that's true when I lived in new york, new york city, and those of you in new york will will know this. Lived in New York City, and those of you in New York will know this. I lived in Manhattan, right, and it was amazing because if you went one city block right Right, this sounds ridiculous Yep Everything could look completely different. Yep, the people were different. There was a different dry cleaners that's how jam-packed a population that area was and so if you walked 10 blocks, that's a mile, yep, and it was a different I mean different borough.
04:04 - Speaker 2
Well, there's a joke on Seinfeld where Kramer's dating somebody who lives downtown. They live in Uptown, on the Upper West Side, on the show, and he's dating a girl that lives downtown and he calls it a long-distance relationship. It's still in Manhattan. Listen, the point is the denser the area you live in, the less far you have to go in order to get this effect.
04:23 - Speaker 1
My friend Lenny's going to know I'm going to say something and people aren't going to like this. But when I was younger and we would go out clubbing right Went to Studio 54 and a couple of bars and places like that and my friend Lenny, he'd be talking to a nice young lady and then he'd come back and talk to me and I would say what do you think? Did you guys get along?
04:46 - Speaker 2
and it was a different kind of uh, jargon than that, but you know what I mean. And it was five, it was the 70s, yeah exactly.
04:51 - Speaker 1
It was the 70s, uh, and he would say he. This is the first time I heard this. It was uh, gu, he goes uh, no, it's great, but gu, I'm like gu. You mean g whiz, no, gu. So what's that geographically undesirable? So it was like he didn't want to date anybody that was in a different borough because it was a longer subway ride.
05:09 - Speaker 2
The point being. I forgot what we were talking about it's 15 miles.
05:12 - Speaker 1
It's better for you, so at least 15 miles away. You had that look on your face like move on.
05:16 - Speaker 2
John no, this is a great story, but I would say here's the point Lenny's life would have been a lot happier if he had been willing to go and date the women that were geographically undesirable. Because he would have gone outside of his comfort zone and had novel experiences.
05:30 - Speaker 1
Matter of fact, his memory is not so good, so that's probably what happened.
05:33 - Speaker 2
Think about how good his brain would be if he had just done that.
05:37 - Speaker 1
I have a problem and that is that I try to eat two meals a day. So I work out and then maybe at 11, I'll have something right, and then at 5 o'clock Connie and I will eat dinner, usually very early, but right about 8 o'clock.
05:53 - Speaker 2
I get so hungry, so hungry.
05:56 - Speaker 1
And the more I see this type of intel, I'm realizing I need to do something. I need to find a healthy snack, or just maybe eat some more or something, because it turns out that we know for a fact now. The University of Chile has found that eating at night will definitely lead to weight gain, because our bodies burn more energy during the day. So, they say, as the sun sets, our metabolism will slow down, helping us prepare for sleep, which means we're not processing food efficiently. And a big study they did of 5,000 people those who ate after 8 pm they had wastes that were two inches bigger, even though they ate the same calories and had the same activity levels. Was just eating in the evening?
06:32 - Speaker 2
too late. It's because you're not burning those calories, so they get metabolized into fat no matter what. So if you're eating within a couple hours of going to sleep, your body is just not going to be able to use that energy. And when you have energy in your system, it has to go somewhere, and that will go into fat, and most of us that means for me anyway I won't speak for everybody, but for me that means going right to my waistline. So my waistline will expand, because that's where I gain fat first and lose fat last. And uh, that it all comes from from adding calories into my system that have no place to go. The key if you want to keep the same amount of food that you're eating, is to eat like a king in the morning.
07:12 - Speaker 1
Popper at night, and popper at night.
07:13 - Speaker 2
So you want to slowly but surely titrate down the amount of food because your body just does not have the caloric needs as you go later in the day it also messes with your sleep. I mean, I did this last night.
07:29 - Speaker 1
I was up late and I had made myself a little midnight snack and I have felt absolutely terrible all day because I ate late, late at night last night, yeah, we've. Especially if it's salty, you got to be careful with that for it, because that salt will keep you awake. We just had that story on the radio show, uh, and also there. There are some things you can eat late at night. You don't want to eat fats because it takes too much to process them, so one of the big foods for the people are eating now as a snack is, uh, blueberries and cottage cheese yeah, well, I mean, I've been sending you pictures of my, my new dessert, I know it's frozen blueberries in in greek yogurt, uh, and so that that combination it's.
08:00 - Speaker 2
I do it because otherwise I'd eat ice cream, right, and I will say I'm not. I'm not an idiot. I know it's not. I'd eat ice cream and I will say I'm not an idiot. I know it's not as good as ice cream, I miss the ice cream, but it does scratch an itch. It is a good snack. And the blueberries, I mean.
08:12 - Speaker 1
How many stories have we done in the last month Wild blueberries, yes.
08:16 - Speaker 2
I get wild boreal blueberries, which are blueberries that are grown at above a certain latitude, so they actually have a little bit more density of their phytonutrients. Um it's, you know, frozen blueberries are not that expensive. They're more expensive than you know.
08:33 - Speaker 1
The boreal wild blueberries are more expensive than harvested blueberries, but if you get them frozen it's cheaper overall and I love them so many more polyphenols in those wild blueberries for sure okay, let's talk about, uh, obsession, because so if you're ruminating, if you're worried, if you just can't stop thinking about stuff, I think psychologists call it monkey brain. It's even in the Bible, romans 12, to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Even the Apostle Paul knew back then that we had too many things entering our mind at once, even back then. So there's a from the journal Psychological Science. There is a tactic now, they say the researchers do next time you're obsessively worrying about something, write it down on a piece of paper. Yes, rip that up and toss it into the trash. According to the researchers again, it's psychological science doing this will reduce your anxiety in just 15 minutes, and it'll stay reduced for a while. Our brain handles thoughts as if they were objects no-transcript.
09:32 - Speaker 2
That's exactly it. You release it. Look the tearing it up and throwing it away. That's a little bit of extra psychological boost that you get from it. I'll tell you right now you get 90% of the benefit from just offloading it, just writing it down, especially before you go to bed.
09:47
Yeah, if it's something you need to remember, well, guess what, your brain's not going to stress about it anymore because now it's written down. If it's something that's just bothering you, that you want to get rid of writing it down and then having the ceremony of tearing it up and throwing away, even burning it I've burned stuff before in my backyard fireplace.
10:01 - Speaker 1
I love that. I love that. That's great, whatever.
10:04 - Speaker 2
It creates in you. Look, we are simple. No matter how much we build, no matter how much we do, we are still very, very simple creatures. We're stimulus response. So there is something about that. Your brain just needs about literally letting that thing go, tearing it up and throwing it away. It creates the exact, a physical map of the psychological process you need to do and it will do it for you. It really will.
10:29 - Speaker 1
Hey, listen, is it true you're making fires regularly? I'm holding on to a letter. It was a Dear John letter that came from Janie when I graduated from high school and she broke up with me and started dating my best friend. You've heard this story before.
10:42 - Speaker 2
I've heard this story so many times, anyway, I have the letter.
10:45 - Speaker 1
I still have the letter. Burn it, get rid of it. Yeah, but I want you to burn it because I don't want to do it. I will happily do it.
10:51 - Speaker 2
I just want to point out look, I absolutely understand how formative those years were for you, yes, yes. But since then you've won what? Half a dozen Emmys. You've been married for how many years?
11:04 - Speaker 1
30? 32?.
11:06 - Speaker 2
Yeah.
11:06 - Speaker 1
Not for nothing. I married the prom queen You've surpassed whatever that junior high relationship could have been, yes, but now we're into psychology. This is the whole thing. It's like why didn't that other girl want me, yeah. Why didn't she trade me in Okay? Six Emmys Stop it how many hit songs, but it's all because of that letter I'm just trying to get back.
11:27 - Speaker 2
This is like in the movie the Social Network, where Mark Zuckerberg, after he builds Facebook, all he does is is look at that ex-girlfriend's profile. Exactly that's what happens, it's sick, move on. That means do nothing for me, can't get her back.
11:42 - Speaker 1
Okay. So let's say that rumination builds up while you're sleeping. You've offloaded it, You've thrown it into the fire or you've torn it up, and you know you wake up. You have a super busy day ahead of you Every day. There's a solution for this, too, so instead of freaking out about your to-do list, this is what you should do. Again, this is from neuroscientists. While you're brushing your teeth, you stand on one leg. You think about what you need to tackle. Studies show that listen to this that balancing on one leg increases blood flow to the area of the brain that controls planning.
12:22 - Speaker 2
You'll find yourself better able to focus on one item at a time, say the researchers, and map out your day schedule if you're standing on on on one leg, I so look, this is I when we we talked about this on the radio and my my my point on the radio, when we didn't have a lot of time to unpack this, was just, it can't hurt to try it. Yeah, you might as well give it a shot. Why wouldn't you? Unless your balance is terrible, in which case you should probably work on your balance anyway. So this is a win there. Why are you looking at me? Because I know you've been working on your balance. You can handle this.
12:40 - Speaker 1
I cannot. I'm getting better. If I stand on one leg while I'm brushing my teeth, I'm in the bathtub, okay.
12:46 - Speaker 2
We don't even have a bathtub in that room. Five rooms over. I'll hop my way to my wife's bathroom and jump in that bathtub. But this underscores something that is a theme when we talk about neurological benefits and neuroplasticity and neurological mapping, and that is for most of us. For most of our tasks, we underutilize our brain. We go into autopilot, we type up our letters, we type up our notes for our classes, and what that does is it only uses a small portion of our brain. We drive up our notes for our classes, and what that does is it only uses a small portion of our brain. We drive the same route to work every day. We brush our teeth with the same hand, we stand on the same you know, we wear the same shoes, stand on the same surfaces, and what that does is it gets us into habits that are low energy. So our brain does not need to process a lot of new information. And what we are constantly talking about.
13:37
If you want to eat less, if you want to think better, if you want to stave off Alzheimer's and you want to memorize more stuff, you have to engage more of your brain, and this is just another way of doing that. So if you have big problems, you got to wake your brain up. You got to wake your brain up and by engaging the balance center of your brain, by engaging the motor cortex that you need in order to stay balanced, all of that stuff is going to make your brain turn on and you're going to have a much easier way of getting into what's called a flow state, which is where decision-making is a lot easier. That's what this is doing. There are so many things you can do for this Knitting, handwork, gardening, all of that adds to it but this is a quick and easy way. Try standing on one leg. Can't hurt to try it.
14:27 - Speaker 1
But again, most of this just comes down to that we just don't use our brains anymore. Listen, I know this sounds like a bit, but this morning I went and worked out with Michael at the gym and he goes. We're doing the workout today without your shoes on.
14:38
And I have a bad right ankle. It's been turned and broken so many times. It's very unstable and he goes you're not going to get your balance back if we don't take your shoes off, Yep. And so I was really nervous and so we did, like balance movements and not, like you know, deadlifting 200 pounds, that kind of stuff. But we did all the workouts in stocking feet. It was a whole different thing. A whole different thing I mean because I could even see all of the muscles and tendons and everything firing off because I was barefoot.
15:08 - Speaker 2
I mean, look, I balance pretty well and whenever I go surfing or paddleboarding, one of the first things that hurts when I'm done are the bottoms of my feet because I'm gripping. I can't help it.
15:17 - Speaker 1
I grip with my feet.
15:19 - Speaker 2
And it's something that I don't normally engage with, and so it is a great way to improve your balance and to engage more of your brain.
15:31 - Speaker 1
In fact, we talk about that. Walking on uneven surfaces with bare feet. How good that is for stimulating your brain. Yeah, there's also a process called grounding, which has been proven to be great for your brain. Where grounding, which has been proven to be great for your brain where you just take your shoes off, take your socks off too, and you walk on earth, grass or dirt they even make.
15:42 - Speaker 2
I think I've talked about this before they make a thing. You can plug into the ground in your socket, like your three-pronged socket there's two that have power and one that's aground and you can put it in your bed so you get the same grounding effect while you're sleeping.
15:58 - Speaker 1
I think that sounds a little hooey to me, so the fire department, which also has an ambulance it's only like 200 yards from here. So I'd be electrocuted and my wife would be on fire. You plug it into the ground.
16:08 - Speaker 2
I'm just grounding you honey, Not into the active part of the plug, into that little round thing at the bottom.
16:13 - Speaker 1
But what if I miss? My vision's not so good at night. All of a sudden, my wife is.
16:18 - Speaker 2
I would say, my point is people have made, they've.
16:21 - Speaker 1
This is a stupid idea, I agree I don't have one, but they've productified. They've monetized the idea of grounding. Folks, don't plug anything into anywhere, because we're not insured for this.
16:32 - Speaker 2
We don't make the product. Whoever makes it, you talk to them.
16:36 - Speaker 1
And I'll miss a step and be like my wife's, like why are you trying to put your toe into?
16:39 - Speaker 2
the wall socket I'm grounding.
16:42 - Speaker 1
Hey, speaking of electricity, oh, that's a good turn there. Very smooth Sales of electric vehicles. You may have seen this on the news. Sales of electric vehicles have slowed down a bit. The bloom is off the rose a bit. I still like the. I used to drive a muscle car and now I still have an internal combustion car. We both have hybrids. So the folks that sell these things, it's like what can get more people to buy them? They figured it out. Manufacturers are convinced it's noise. So companies are making they're putting sound into their electric cars, making them sound more like traditional cars. So fake engine noise is played through the vehicle speakers. You're not fooling me with that.
17:23 - Speaker 2
Yes, they are. I guarantee they're going to fool you.
17:25 - Speaker 1
Manufacturers like BMW, Ford and Porsche. They all do it already, and an electric car feels too easy to drive. Toyota is building a simulated stick shift that will let drivers pretend to change gears and, by the way, the system even pretends to stall. If you incorrectly shift, you shift into first instead of third that seems excessive.
17:42 - Speaker 2
Look, look you. Your last car was a dream, a dream car of yours very throaty and it it made noise. I mean you when it, when you turned it on, you heard it bullet mustang and then, and then it was, it was a stick shift.
17:55
you were, when you were, when you got like, do you want the automatic or the stick? You were like absolutely want the stick shift. It's a feeling of control. You feel more connected to the car. I'll give you that when you're driving a manual you are way more connected to the car than you otherwise would be.
18:07 - Speaker 1
You can't check your phone.
18:08 - Speaker 2
You're shifting Right, exactly. So I think they're great. I think they're great, I, I, I. This driving experience is exactly what you go for. This is, this is the way to get you, because, look, you know, if you look at the cost of ownership of vehicles, electric car is the cost of ownership way less than internal combustion engines. All right, Because you don't have a. You don't have thousands of tiny explosions that are putting wear and tear on your car every single minute. Right, you don't have that. You have a brushless electric motor which has almost an infinite lifespan. It's got 100 years before you need to replace some of those parts, which is not true of an internal combustion engine. So they're way cheaper to operate, but they're not something that you would ever get. These are the kinds of things that would get you interested, I think.
18:55 - Speaker 1
Yeah, no. Well, no I think yeah, no, well, no, I mean, I could probably end this conversation with two words which would keep me up at night. Those words are range anxiety.
19:05 - Speaker 2
Sure, I mean, that's the next problem they have to solve.
19:08 - Speaker 1
I'm not driving to Palm Springs on that thing. Do I have to go to a turbocharger? What do you do at the turbocharger? Do you check your email? Recharger.
19:14 - Speaker 2
Check your email. How long does it take? It's so horrible.
19:17 - Speaker 1
When I was a kid, I got a car. I was 8 years old in 1960 and my dad got me one of these cars. I got in the car and I pushed the button and it went. If this sounds like that, they're not going to save their businesses, it's got to be better than.
19:36 - Speaker 2
That was the real sound. The car made, though no it was a plastic car.
19:40 - Speaker 1
Oh, it was a toy car.
19:41 - Speaker 2
It was a toy, yeah, I thought, when you turned 16, your dad got you a car.
19:44 - Speaker 1
That made that noise. My dad didn't get me anything. My dad was trying to get me a high ball of scotch. My mom wouldn't let him give it to me. It's a lot for a six-year-old, I know All right. So anyway, let us know what you think. Actually, don't let us know what you think.
20:03 - Speaker 2
I think there's a market of people who would be excited to drive a car if it felt a little stronger as an electric car.
20:06 - Speaker 1
It's so bad. Okay, anyway, the one thing that is coming back by the way these days and I think you would go for this, I'm not sure if I would last but the sales. Just like you know, last year 50 million phonograph records were sold.
20:21 - Speaker 2
Oh yeah, that's amazing.
20:23 - Speaker 1
More than any other format Now, sales of dumb phones are going through the roof, phones without apps, of course, the company that manufactures Nokia phones, my first cell phone. They saw sales of flip phones double. Yep, double last year. Flip phones.
20:39 - Speaker 2
So my kid's school has had us sign something called wait till eighth and that means that you wait until your kid's in eighth grade to get them a phone.
20:48
But there are certain things. Look, I have a phone, I have a watch that is connected to my phone. I have headphones. I am no Luddite, I live a phone. I have a watch that is connected to my phone. I have headphones. I am no Luddite, I live with technology.
21:00
But I definitely feel trapped by the technology sometimes and there are things about my kids where I go. Hey, I would love to be able to communicate with them, to give them that little bit of extra freedom that comes with having a way to contact them when they're out and about, without all of the drama that we have talked about on the show for years that come with social media, with the apps, with the being able to surf the internet from your phone from anywhere, with the notifications and all of the anxiety that comes with that, with the bullying. So I love this idea of the dumb phone. In fact, if I didn't have email and the work that we do come through my phone as much as it does, I would have the dumb phone Because it's a great way to stay connected without being.
21:46
I don't know about you, but I feel trapped by technology when you can't get away from it.
21:51 - Speaker 1
At this point I catch myself picking up the phone more than I should. But listen, if you give your 12-year-old daughter, who's in sixth grade, if you give her a dumb phone, you're going to come home a week later and she'll have a satellite dish on her head, I know, and she would have figured out a way to pick up texting on that thing.
22:06 - Speaker 2
Yeah, she'll figure out a way that she can. She'll be able to contact the space station from the phone within 10 minutes.
22:13 - Speaker 1
I know, speaking of dumb stuff, that sounds incredible and that really works the piano. We now know that, given I both have a love for the piano, we both play it, one of us at a much different level than the other.
22:26 - Speaker 2
The only interesting thing about the piano real quickly is that?
22:27 - Speaker 1
I guess it's any instrument. You probably have the same feeling about singing and also about playing a string instrument, which you do, but it's, as I said, string instrument. You probably have the same feeling about singing and also about playing a string instrument, which you do, but it's, I said, string instrument. I didn't want to say ukulele.
22:40 - Speaker 2
It sounds so lame.
22:42 - Speaker 1
No it does not. Anyway, once you learn something, once you get in on the bottom, that's when you If you look at, it's like if you look at somebody playing tennis at the US Open, you're like I think I could probably do that. And then if you play one game, it's like you realize how far away you are from excellence. It's the same thing with an instrument.
22:59 - Speaker 2
Yeah, 100%.
23:00 - Speaker 1
It really is. So we now know that actually it's a powerful sentence. Playing a piano can actually make you a better person. It enhances your listening skills and even your emotional intelligence, so it's not just about pushing down the keys. This is research from Yale University. It turns out that people who play piano become good listeners, and studies show that musicians are more perceptive when it comes to interpreting and acknowledging other people's emotions. The skill also makes a person, as they say, more compassionate about others, and we just know that when you play piano with both hands left and right, it does amazing things to your hippocampus, because you're doing two different things at the same time.
23:37 - Speaker 2
You know this goes back to what I've been saying on this whole show, which is the more of your brain you engage, the better you're going to be, the better decision maker you're going to be. When we are in that knee-jerk reaction, when we are in the stimulus response part of our brain, which happens when we shut it down, we're just using the inner parts and that happens when we're distracted by our phones. It happens when we're worrying about all kinds of stuff and we're not really listening to what the people around us are saying. That shuts our brain down and we get into this circuit of our brains. That is just stimulus response. But if you can slow your brain down, if you can engage more of your brain, like you have to do with music, because you have to play to time, you have to play coordinated movements and in order to do all of that you have to, you just have to use your brain and in fact you can't even talk while you're playing piano.
24:23
it's one of the hardest things to do we always make fun of that right is to is to sing and play, or even singing and playing is actually easier than talking and play. Yeah, because you're singing along with the song versus talking. It's hard to do the things that are that are out of out of sync. Uh, when, when you get your brain into that mode that your brain is just it's firing on all cylinders, you'll be able to connect with people so much better obviously the only person I've ever seen alive who could do the thing where they're playing something you know more than just you know triads uh, playing complicated chords is.
24:55 - Speaker 1
I saw her do it on the Grammys as Alicia Keys. Oh yeah, she can actually play jazz music and talk at the same time, which I'm telling you. Try it, try to play. Mary has a Little Lamb on the piano and talk.
25:06 - Speaker 2
Going back to what you said at the start of this story, which was it looks easy to play tennis when you watch the US Open until you've tried to play a game and you see what they're able to do. Alicia Keys yeah, you like some of her songs. Yeah, you can tell that she's talented. But when you actually try to play piano and then you see what she's able to do with the piano, you go oh my gosh, you are on a different level. And John Legend too. John Legend has just that extra level of talent where, if you understand what he's doing and what Alicia Keys is doing, it's mind-blowing, it is.
25:40 - Speaker 1
Excuse me. One of the reasons I bring this up there's so many great pieces of intel on piano is that we made the decision to actually launch a program. It's not only a course, but it's also a community called the John Tesh Piano Method, and I know that when people come up to us, gib, at the end of concerts and they say, oh man, I wish I'd kept up piano, usually people you know 45 plus Is it too late to start. Right, because what happens is people are intimidated by the music theory and also do I have to learn how to read sheet music. So I put together this course as, as you know, called the John Tesh piano method, and it's basically I said why don't?
26:21
I just teach people how to play my songs right, and so I started with round ball rock, the basketball theme and some other stuff from PBS and showing people what what it looks like on stage and then saying, here, here's the right hand and here's the left hand. It was amazing how many beginners have showed up because I thought it would be so here's, I'll show you how to play round ball rock. I'll use both hands. Then I was getting emails and texts from people saying, hey, can you just show me how to put my hand on the piano. I'm like, wow, yes, okay. So I started over and did two different tracks right. One is paths, one is beginners and the other is intermediate players.
26:57 - Speaker 2
So, I mean, the reality is, there's plenty of piano players who are great piano players, who can go and either download your sheet music or or find a piano book that has your sheet music in it and just play it. Right, but teaching them, teaching piano using your songs, is great, and and look, they're to your point. There are people walk up to us and say, hey, I don't even know where to begin. I wish I could play an instrument. This is why we did this. The other thing that's really important to note and that you've added is that community element, because we have talked about on the show over and over and over again how important it is to have a sense of community when it comes to sticking with goals, and so you see this in the online language learning community, where they're building these communities for learning languages. Uh, the same is true for this, and so it's to help people stay connected to it. We built the community element, too, where you can talk to them.
27:45 - Speaker 1
They can talk to each other, yeah yeah, and so if you, uh, if you're interested I don't have a unique method you can find that at teshcom. Also, teshcom, you'll find a link to sign up for the weekly coaching calls that Gibb and I have. These are really amazing. We share all kinds of the latest strategies for living a more purposeful, organized life, and we even pray for each other. So check it out. That's at Teshcom, and for now, thanks for subscribing to the podcast. Thanks for being with us. We'll see you next time.