Transcript
[0:00] Music.
Introduction: Building Mental and Emotional Resilience
[0:09] Back to It's an Inside Job podcast. I'm your host, Jason Liem.
Now this podcast is dedicated to helping you to help yourself and others to become more mentally and emotionally resilient, so you can be better at bouncing back from life's inevitable setbacks.
Now on It's an Inside Job, we decode the science and stories of resilience, into practical advice, skills, and strategies that you can use to impact your life and those around you.
Now with that said, let's slip into the stream.
[0:37] Music.
The Importance of Mindfulness in Today's World
[0:46] Well, welcome back to It's an Inside Job and thank you for joining me for a new week.
You know, we are all living in an era marked by the relentless pace of life and the ever evolving challenges we face.
[1:00] You know, the importance of mindfulness has never been more evident.
[1:04] It is the ability for us to remain grounded, centered and fully aware of the present moment.
[1:09] It has become not just a desirable trait, but literally, and figuratively, a critical skill in our daily lives.
It's a key that unlocks a more meaningful and effective way of navigating today's complex world. Mindfulness is more than just a buzzword, it's a way of life, it's a profound understanding, of oneself, and a powerful tool for personal growth and leadership.
In today's conversation with my guest, we are going to explore the transformative principles of presence, mind management, and biohacking using the latest science of epigenetics.
My guest today is Rainer Kroft, a distinguished individual whose expertise spans technology, innovation, and the fascinating world of human potential.
Rainer has spent two decades in the heart of technological innovation in Silicon Valley, working with renowned high-tech companies such as IBM Research and Yahoo.
Over the past six years, he has brought his insights back to Berlin, Germany, where he's, He's been on a mission to explore novel approaches to leadership and new work methodologies aimed at creating purposeful and impactful organizations.
So in today's conversation, we are going to dive into a broad latitude and high altitude of conversation that explores the high performing mind, which includes three tracks, cultivating awareness, upgrading the mind, and upgrading the body.
So without further ado, let's slip into the stream and meet Rainer Kras.
[2:35] Music.
[2:43] Yeah, thanks Jason for having me on the show today. I was wondering if we kick off this conversation by you telling us a little about who you are and what you do.
Sure. Yeah, my name is Rainer and I spent the last yeah, three decades at least in the tech industry and most of the time California, Silicon Valley.
[3:13] I worked for many larger tech companies, moved back to Berlin, Germany, here in 2016.
[3:24] And here worked also within the space of tech for Zalando, which is a major, large fashion platform here, company in, in Europe. And few years ago, so back from the, from the more tech and also have a scientific background, moving more and more into optimizing mind and body.
First, my own interest to just become more resilient. I think the immediate topic of resilience was something that it was not something I decided from today to tomorrow, it's important, but it was a necessity. Because I within the fast pace in the Silicon Valley, about 1015 years ago, roughly I, got into the typical trap of getting exhausted mental exhaustion, but also my body wasn't in good shape.
And so as a scientist and engineer, I figured, well, there has to be something to get more, become more resilient. How do I do this?
And that got me onto this journey where I got deeper and deeper into neuroscience.
[4:49] Mindfulness, but also in epigenetics, biohacking.
[4:56] And a few years ago then founded my own company, The Mindful Leader, where I incorporate these learnings, for really optimizing mind and body, usually with the purpose there is on the application level, there's people working also as leaders, they wanna become more resilient, more effective, boost leadership qualities, but also I work with many entrepreneurs, founders, who just need that extra bit of energy.
And many of them are really, they like to proactively really upgrade mind and body.
And so that's what I'm doing nowadays. So it's an interesting journey.
I'm still a scientist, engineer, but now the software is the mind and the body that I'm trying to improve.
[5:57] And so I think that part is still the same, I would say. Well, there's a lot of there I'd like to explore with you today, because I kind of geek out on epigenetics and food is medicine and neuroscience.
So I think we have a lot in common to talk about today. You founded The Mindful Leader, your company, in 2018.
Perhaps you could define from your perspective, operationally, what is a mindful leader?
Defining the Mindful Leader
[6:24] Yeah, so a mindful leader...
[6:28] That is something I started thinking about right at the beginning.
What the heck is the mindful leader?
That was the first question I actually asked myself. And I noticed that what's behind it is really that a mindful leader has an increased level of awareness, of present awareness.
And awareness is really the driver of pretty much everything.
It's basically growing, cultivating more consciousness, becoming more aware.
And mindfulness at the end of the day is more like the tool to enable that, to facilitate that.
So it's a methodology there.
And I figured then the term mindful leader, because myself as well being a leader in tech for such a long time, focusing on improving leadership starts with cultivating more awareness, and then with more awareness, you can redirect this awareness to the mind and to the body.
And then you can actually do more upgrades, but it starts with awareness.
[7:40] So one of the things you talk about in your writings on your website and such, and in what you do is self-awareness, and you speak about the transformative principles of presence.
Perhaps we could dive a little into those principles of presence of how you define it and how that shows up in sort of nuts and bolts day to day for people.
[8:01] Yeah, so awareness is, of course, when you first think about it, it feels a little bit, fluffy. It's hard to get your head around it. What is aware? How aware are you? And so that were all these questions that kept me going at the beginning. As a scientist, I like something more concrete. And yeah, I figured at the end of the day, that awareness is basically the part of who you really are. You are aware, you are awareness, right? And with this awareness, you can experience life. So the question then remains, how aware are you really over the course of the day from a practical standpoint? Are you most of the time fully aware of what you're doing?
Or are you basically in your mind thinking all the time? And yeah, basically rehashing the past, thinking about the future, and so on.
And in that case, you're not really aware anymore, you're just on this thought activity that goes on.
[9:12] And it was clear then that we are more or less aware over the course of the day.
But again, I wanted to have more something more precise.
And this is when I defined what I call the level of present awareness, LPA.
And LPA is defined as the percentage of the day where you're fully present, really connected to the present moment.
So the example is 16 hours you're awake, eight hours you sleep, 16 hours is roughly 1000 minutes.
[9:47] So if you are there for 10 minutes per day from these 1,000 minutes, so that is 1%.
Your LPA would then be considered 1%.
And when I was working with.
[10:04] Many leaders in the tech space initially in my role as a coach trainer mentor.
And we started looking at awareness and i was teaching teaching them.
People i work with how to calculate lpa how to set up a baseline and.
Realization was it's really kinda low it's on average maybe 2% 3%.
That is what a typical LPA is, so I would say 90, 95%.
Of course, it's hard to get your head around it based on real data, but anecdotally, I would say the majority of people today, they are still on this low level of LPA, and there's nothing bad with it.
It's just that the majority of the time of the day, you spend in a more, in a state of doping, being fully connected, not being fully present. And then you have here and there your little moments where you're fully present. But it's more the smaller part of the day. And so the idea was, if that is the case, then if you establish a baseline, let's say you are at 2%, then great, now you have a start, then you can train the mind, you can raise your level of awareness using and different mindfulness techniques.
[11:31] And then you can bump it up. Now all of a sudden we have something measurable.
We can get, and that's why usually I try to do in my training, I have this, a few years ago then I developed this training, the high performance mind, which evolved over the years and helps people to really raise their LPA systematically over three to four months.
So getting them from, let's say, 2% to maybe more than 10% is a game-changer.
So, but getting them to 15 to 20% or 10x increase, this is what we're usually shooting for, and that is a significant impact on the daily life, basically.
And so, just to challenge you, you are a scientist, you're a very pragmatic, practical man, experience-wise and education-wise. You know, everything about the human body, the human mind has an evolutionary reason. And so the default, as you call it, the LPI, LPA, sorry, the level of present awareness, our default mechanism, as you're saying, is about 2%, 2 to 3%. What do you think the reason is for this, from a sort of an evolutionary perspective, why we've been sort of set at a default on average at that level?
Evolutionary Perspective on Low Level of Present Awareness
[12:55] Yeah, that's a good, that's actually a really good question.
The Default Mechanism: Why Are We Not Naturally Present?
[13:00] Which I haven't really thought about. Why is this the default?
But now, since you're asking, it's a very interesting question. I mean, if, I'm, I don't think that evolutionary, this has been way different in the past 10,000 years or so.
So I think to me, this is just a standard way when people, basically, they, they grow up.
And the initially my observation, one, two years, and their little babies, they're usually fully present.
Because at that point, they are just there, you can see that, right, they look at you, you can see they're fully there.
[13:47] There is no really distraction coming up. But then, by the time we usually about two years old, the ego starts to creep in. And.
[13:56] This you can observe this with little kids when they all of the sudden say, Oh, this is my toy. Right. So when they grab to the toy, and this is mine, right. So now they have a sense of, identity, which is new. And then I think life just happens. So if you think about the brain as a big neural network, it learns it adapts. But there is no part in that in also in our educational system. It puts so much emphasis on more awareness or teaching them how to train the mind. So if you train the mind, you can shift that. But the natural state, I would say, it is just what it is, you don't learn to separate yourself from the mind you are, and awareness is entangled with the thought activity. That is the default, not at the beginning. So as I said, maybe with two or three years to spend when this really happens. And then you basically live your life, and you may spend the rest of your life in that entangled state. Or at some point, you become aware that what's going on, and you get glimpses of awareness initially and that helps you to basically figure out what's going on and.
[15:21] Turn to different methods to at the end of the day. I mean, if you see, in the past, I would say 20 years or so, or 15 years, more and more people got cut into the space of mindfulness, which is exactly cultivating awareness. Initially, this was more like a thing happening on the.
[15:41] In smaller numbers. But nowadays, mindfulness is a multi billion dollar business, right? There's so many, so many businesses that came out of all of the sudden, so that you can see, oops, there is so these are things how you can see that awareness is rising.
[15:59] Of course, not that fast, in general, but less than 20 years ago, this was more like, yeah, a rare thing, right? It's more like a niche thing.
You could see it here and there. But nowadays, it's more, it's more common.
So there is a consciousness shift happening, people becoming more aware, but it looks like it's like a linear increase.
It's not like this exponential whoosh. It looks like it's happening slowly but steadily, but still it's not clear why this is the default mechanism.
I think, yeah, I think it has to be that way because once the thought activity kicks in, I think what's missing is there is no effective way, maybe from nature, to give you this owner manual, right?
So to, when you are that young, that you can remain that level, you can keep this level of awareness. You're not basically drifting away in your thought activity.
There is this owner manual is missing.
And then it just depends on your surroundings over and then how things are shaping up at some point that awareness becomes a topic for you or not.
[17:15] And I think it's very important because you're saying that, you know, the mind can race the past, you know, it goes through its memory bank, trying to understand, trying to use that memories to sort of predict the future of what's going on. And sometimes we get lost in the room, the loop of rumination and overthinking. Or sometimes we're future projecting our minds and we get lost in all the stressful things that all the worst case scenarios that can play out.
And I think a lot of what you said is quite salient, that mindfulness can help us stay present to increase that factor in which we are in the here and now.
[17:54] I also find that, you know, I used to work with trauma and I find that a lot of people who do really get wrapped up in rumination or anxiety type of scenario, playing out scenarios, is that mindfulness has to be very careful, that you need a mindfulness practitioner, who's very skilled at that can take you through it.
Because there is sort of the slippery slope to some level of individuals and personalities where mindfulness can actually explode the level of rumination and overthinking and completely send them into an anxiety state.
So I think having professionals like you who run courses and workshops and through practice that we can learn to use mindfulness as a very concrete tool.
Otherwise, I sometimes see, again, this is not for everyone, there are a certain part of the population that can slip into the abyss, because they get too far into that sort of thought loop.
So for mindfulness, to increase our awareness in sort of in the here and now, I also find that sometimes when I'm put into certain intense sports, such as playing squash or bouldering, that you don't have a lot of time to think about anything else.
You are in the here and now. Would you consider this a form of mindfulness or being present?
Sports as Meditation: The Power of Being Present
[19:13] Yeah, absolutely. All kind of activities that you do over the course of the day can be done with present and especially sports force you sometimes into being present. So if you're doing bouldering, climbing, whatever, and you're on some on some mountain or whatever, And it's important that you actually be present, because if you think too much at that point, you may fall.
So presence is then becomes very important and the mind is then usually fully present because the mind knows if I'm not paying attention here fully, I may be in danger.
And so my guess is that many people like these sports because it's their meditation.
It's their way of becoming present.
That's why they enjoy them. They just do it, right?
Because they now know that when they do these sports, they're fully connected to the present moment, they're in flow state, they feel good, they don't have to think, they just go.
And they enjoy that, right? So that's why our people basically meditate.
[20:31] In without knowing that they're actually doing that.
Right, and meditate is even not the best word because it always feels that you're sitting there, eyes closed and doing the thing. At the end of the day, it's just being present.
And that's what these different sport activities, yoga, that's what they're all about, is being there, right?
So that begs the question then, how can we personally sort of upgrade our level of awareness when it comes to the mind and the body in a systematic way?
[21:08] Yeah, that was exactly the question when I asked myself 10 years ago, how can that be done? And at that point, I didn't know yet. So I was exploring experimenting, I went to all kinds of workshops, retreats, I got deep into the mindfulness into neurosciences. And then later also figuring out how to better take care of the body. And of course, I needed to know how the body really works. So I So I got deep into functional medicine, to get a good understanding.
And then as a computer scientist, now I can see all those puzzle pieces emerging.
And that's when I figured, okay, there is a way to do that.
[21:53] Let's figure this out. And so this is where this high performance mind training originated from.
Because people ask me exactly that thing. How can I get my LPA up in three months?
I want to basically become more aware. I want to become more resilient.
I want my mind to basically not waste all this energy for all this useless thoughts.
I don't want to basically held back by all these limiting thoughts, false beliefs, negativity, worry, self-doubt, all this garbage of what I call the monkey mind.
And so I figured it has to start with cultivating more awareness.
This is like the underlying theme that you cultivate more awareness, so this goes on.
And three, four months is something tangible, it's not too long.
And so you can think about it that in track one, you're just focusing increasing awareness.
Using all kind of different mindfulness technique, it doesn't really matter.
But things that are easy to do, that can be done, integrated in your busy life, Meditation, formal meditation will also introduce later in the training, not at the beginning, it wouldn't work.
If some people, they have trouble even sitting still for two minutes, they can't meditate.
[23:14] So we try simple things with mindfulness exercises, breathing exercises, and so on, but it's all under the umbrella. I refer to this as measurable mindfulness.
So it's a data-driven way, or the dimension of data added to mindfulness.
There's mind KPIs, key performance indicators, so you can check all the good stuff.
You build a KPI cockpit for the mind.
[23:41] And you continue raising awareness. And then in track two, once awareness is rising at a certain point, you start working with the mind.
So this is the software upgrade. Well, I was talking about upgrading the software of the mind with more awareness.
It's possible.
So, but it comes a little bit later in the plan. So usually after three or four weeks, once LPA is a little bit higher already, right? Then you go into the mind.
Because now you learn how to channel this or how to manage this increased awareness.
So this is what you were talking before. There is increased awareness.
It can go in both directions.
So you need to learn how to actually apply it in a helpful context and how to upgrade the mind.
And this is what's happening. Just, sorry, Rainer, just to understand.
So this software upgrade of the mind as you've articulated, Does this mean being more present to the narrative or the story or the meaning we are giving to a situation to other people or to ourselves in relation to the world?
Training the Mind: Observing Thoughts and Patterns
[24:53] Being present for sure, so you have to be present first of all to really, I think it's more the separation between what's happening, the separation between awareness and the mind as an entity, so that you can start observe the mind, become aware of the mind, become aware of those thoughts, of those patterns and all that stuff that's happening there.
But realizing that this is not you. So you create some distance to the mind, awareness here, and using that awareness to start really observing without judgment what's happening there.
And that requires training. So this is all part of the training as part of the raising awareness and becoming really aware.
And then once you become aware, you need to become even more aware.
What is all going on in this mind, in the software, right?
What are all those patterns that are stored there, right? Become aware of them.
[25:53] Sometimes you can't become aware of all of them, or many of them, because the mind tries to hide it to you.
So it's many of the stuff, subconscious patterns, you can't have direct access to it.
But there's all kinds of tricks that you learn, right? You can ask others to give you feedback and tell you about some of these things that you're doing as an example, right?
And then, ah, interesting, I'm doing that stuff. Yes, that's correct, but why am I doing it, right?
So this is how you can, it's like, it's fun, it's problem solving, right?
How can you really debug the mind? How can you get to like a list of all those patterns and thoughts that are buried there?
How can you dig them out and bring them to the light of awareness?
Once you become aware of them, that is the first step because now you have power.
You can either just become aware and say, ah, interesting, and realizing.
[26:53] It doesn't have to be like this, let's change it. And then you can use neuroscience techniques, so many out there, to change that, right? This is the whole reprogramming topic I was talking about.
And again, here, there are things that are like low-hanging fruits, easy things that you can start at the beginning, and later you can move to harder things, like, let's say, reactive patterns.
They happen in real time, right? So that is, let's say you're in a meeting, you become all of a sudden defensive, what's going on, right?
It happens, it just happens, you're in there.
[27:31] But of course, then usually the thing is, how can I change it?
Because people, they become aware of it, but they don't wanna behave like this.
But it is more tricky. So that's why I'm saying there is a lot of work to do on changing the, upgrading the mind software.
Upgrading the Mind Software and Taking Care of the Body
[27:48] But you do little by little, step by step, in over three, four months, a lot can be done.
It's never completed.
So that's why after the four months of the training, I think you have the tools now and you have sufficient level of awareness to continue the journey and upgrading the mind.
And usually in parallel, this is the last thing I want to say to this here is you also need to focus on the body.
Once you become more aware and you can listen into the body, all of a sudden you sense these aches, the pain.
[28:24] Pretty much most people neglect the body. Even, I wouldn't use the word misuse, but they could just simply take better care of themselves, but they're just not body aware, they don't even feel it.
And usually then stress puts a lot of strain on the body. And so the body needs to be supported as well, especially if you want the mind to really function optimally.
So you need a lot of resources in form of, let's say, minerals, vitamins, fatty acids, amino acids, and so on, so that the brain, the hardware.
Cultivating Awareness, Upgrading the Mind, and Upgrading the Body
[29:04] Has all the processing power to run the software even better, right?
Improving mental capabilities, becoming faster, thinking, increasing mental agility, that stuff.
So that is also important and can be done in parallel. And so now you can see there are three tracks.
There is cultivating awareness, this is the first track.
There's upgrading the mind, second track, and upgrading the body, third track.
And they have synergistic effects. That means if the body gets better, all of the sudden, it's easier for you to work on the mind, you have more energy, you can get more stuff done, then you fix some issues of the mind that causes you less stress, you get more in a calm state of mind, most of the time you're wasting less energy, you feel better, right?
And as awareness is increasing, you can then pinpoint what would make sense now in terms of next steps.
How should I continue the upgrade process? It pretty much literally, awareness points you to the best options for you.
[30:11] And this is how it works, right? And then at the end, if these three things come together, this is what I refer to the high-performance mind, which is a lifestyle at the end.
It is a lifestyle with increased awareness and a continuous processing on getting the mind in better shape, getting the body in better shape, right?
And it's an art is because you have to figure out yourself, how do I want to do this?
What's the next thing here? Do I want to do this, that, right?
So it's a lifestyle, but you lay a foundation and you can get some really good results in these first three, four months.
So that's why it's amazing to look at these stories when I work with some of these leaders, who went through it, it's literally, it changes the quality of life, everything you interact with and what you're going to do, the quality of life.
[31:08] Music.
The Power of Mindfulness and Awareness
[31:16] In part one of our conversation with Reiner Kraft, he emphasized the paramount importance of mindfulness in enhancing leadership and personal growth.
He discussed the central role of awareness in driving our actions and experiences, highlighting that mindfulness is the key tool for fostering awareness.
Reiner introduced the concept of Level of Present Awareness, or LPA, which quantifies the percentage of the day that we are fully connected to the present moment.
He pointed out that a typical LPA baseline is just 2%, leaving us on autopilot for the remaining 98% of the day.
[31:54] To address this, Reinhard explained the systematic approach to increasing awareness.
He encouraged us to disentangle ourselves from the constant stream of thought activity that often dominates our minds, leading to rumination of the past or worry about the future.
Reinhard outlined three tracks for upgrading our awareness. The first track involves integrating mindfulness techniques into our daily lives to increase our LPA.
The second track focuses on upgrading the software of our minds, enabling us to apply newfound awareness effectively and non-judgmentally, especially in dealing with unhelpful thought patterns.
Finally, the third track involves upgrading our physical bodies, further emphasizing the holistic nature of personal growth and enhanced leadership.
So it's this third track about upgrading our bodies that we will explore in the second part, where we talk about epigenetics, we talk about nutrition and sleep, of micronutrients, and the whole gamut to improve our states.
So now let's slip back into the stream with my second part of the conversation.
[33:02] Music.
Exploring the Importance of the Gut Microbiome
[33:10] Coming back to what you said about the third part of your triad there, about the body upgrades, the gut microbiome or the gut-brain axis has been a very important link in the last decade or so, and we're learning more literally every week.
There's new scientific papers coming out about that.
I'd like to dive into that. I see you have an interest in nutrition, food as medicine, epigenetics.
What is your take on the gut microbiome and how important is that when it comes to both our physiological and our psychological well-being?
Yeah, no, that's absolutely, good point, absolutely important as part of the overall strategy.
So what I did there was also over the years, I figured, well, what are all those different aspects?
And I call them health competencies.
So competencies means exactly like the gut microbiome is one of those health competencies, but there are 16 other.
So, and I published them on my other website, epigeneticpraxis.de, and we can share that link.
It's in German, but of course, there is automatic translation available.
Health competencies are areas that it is helpful to spend more time in learning.
Validating Biomarkers for Gut and Microbiome Health
[34:39] Figuring out what is it, how is my gut or my microbiome actually doing?
How do I know, right? What are the tests there to validate biomarkers?
How do I know this is actually in good shape?
There's interventions associated with each health competency.
And there is, yeah, there is then also clear ways of measuring progress.
Is the gut or the microbiome now in a better shape or not?
Let's validate. So everything is science-based.
Same for the mind. Everything is driven by KPIs and science.
And so everything can be measured. So this is what, this is the beauty of this.
You know if it works or if it doesn't work.
You know, usually you know it relatively quickly.
And then you can make changes, right? You can see, well, maybe that change in diet is not helping me that well.
If I now look at my microbiome, it feels like my, yeah, it feels like it's going back to where it was.
Let's make changes, right? Or let's, but many cases you can, There's so many new technologies out there, DNA testing, it's becoming more and more sophisticated.
[36:00] On helping you, for instance, what is a good diet for you.
Now you don't have to guess anymore, you do a DNA test and then it gets you all the recommendation, this is the perfect diet for you to optimally support your genes.
So, with that knowledge, now you can make informed decisions.
Should I go more into a ketogenic diet? Should I go more on a Mediterranean diet?
What should I eat? So, let's look at the data in terms of your DNA, and then let's look at lab work for all those different aspects.
And as I said, this is one piece in the microbiome, gut is one piece in the puzzle, a very important one.
But then again, there is 15 others. And it's not ending.
The more I spend time on it, I usually find or discover new areas or ways to bring things together or restructure it. So it's more like a framework, these health competencies, so.
[36:59] That you don't lose track of how to move forward. Otherwise, you get completely distracted. Like I know people they got into all of a sudden, they think the gut is so important. And then they they start working for months on improving gut health.
Yeah, that's a good thing.
But now they forget about all the other stuff that's important, and then the body deteriorates on these other ends, right?
All of the sudden, oxidative stress goes up, inflammation goes up, all these things, because now they just focus on one thing, which they want to optimize.
So in an ideal world, you have to look at all these different health competencies all at once.
[37:40] And of course, then you get overwhelmed. So that's usually I recommend pick two or three that are most stressing, start working on them, but keep an eye on the big picture.
[37:52] Don't get too focused on one thing, but look at the bigger picture, because if you use a traffic pattern, like green, yellow, red for these health competencies, that's usually what I do, it's usually good if most of them are obviously in a green state, maybe some in a yellow state, but unfortunately the reality is most of them or many of them are in a red state, right?
When people start and they have not taken proper care of their body.
And so then figuring out what are now the two or three most important ones to focus on.
[38:32] If you have 10 rats, what do you do? Right?
And so this can, you can easily get overwhelmed with this, but important to keep an eye out on all the different aspects.
So of these 16 different biomarkers, or these 16 different focus areas, what are some other, just to pick out a couple, what are some two or three other ones that you think my audiences would think are very valuable to learn about and hear about from you?
Valuable Health Competencies: Mitochondrial Health, Optimal Nutrition, Inflammation and Oxidative Stress
[39:02] Yeah, absolutely. So let's pick one, for instance, mitochondrial health. So the mitochondria you mentioned earlier, little organelles in our cell, and they produce energy, but they do also a lot of other things that are critical for the body. So the thing here is, how can How can you ensure that these little mitochondria are really in good shape, that they're thriving?
How can you maximize the quantity of those mitochondrions as well as the quality?
That is one of these, another health competency. So mitochondrial health is so fundamental.
[39:50] And you can see that, of course, gut is a relationship to that as well.
But yeah, you can see this, you can see both areas are important.
Let's pick another one. Let's say we pick nutrition, right, optimal nutrition.
This whole area, what should you eat?
It's complicated, right? Another area is, let's say, inflammation and oxidative stress.
How can you keep silent inflammation and oxidative stress low?
So, again, very important, it's all interconnected, fasting is another health competency.
How can you do proper fasting?
There's so many approaches out there, right?
[40:38] And yeah, it won't stop. So these are a few to mention here.
There's also others in terms of balancing acidity as an example, right?
So that is another big problem, right? And again, this goes back into, are you eating enough amino acids, do you have sufficient level of amino acids?
They are responsible for the buffering and keeping acidity levels in good shape, as an example.
And so you can see, these were about five or so, there's more.
Yes. But the areas itself, they're well-defined, so that's why you can clearly separate them.
Sleep, for instance, is another one, optimal sleep.
Fundamental, fundamental sleep, yeah, yeah. Absolutely, it's one of the most fundamental, that's why it's listed, I think, on number two or three.
But there is a clear area for each of them so that people can really distinguish there.
Importance of Sleep and Balancing Acidity for Overall Health
[41:54] And so if we just shift there, because we've been talking about sort of the biology and the physiology and the psychology, and then there is the interesting new science, or relatively new science, about 15-20 years old, of epigenetics, where we can turn on and off genes. Could you speak to what epigenetics is for my audience and how that plays into your high-performance mindset?
[42:21] Yeah. So people are mostly familiar with their genetics, the DNA, the blueprint of what they're built off. So they know, oh, yeah, there's some DNA. And somehow, this is the way my body knows how to construct itself. So that part is usually clear. But then there is the problem when people think then that's it. So I can't change that blueprint is what it And the interesting thing, that's why again, I like this analogy, when I first got into epigenetics, I realized, oh wow, there is these environmental factors around us, the way we grow up, the way we eat, the way we interact with our environment.
[43:07] That actually have a huge impact in how these genes get expressed, so to speak.
And so it became relatively clear that epigenetics, you can consider it as a software for your genes.
So it's another software layer that, and of course, if it's a software layer, you can hack it.
You can hack the mind, you can hack, of course, the genes.
And by simply making changes to the environment inside you and around you.
So you make environmental changes, it's very, yeah, diligent in terms of, or also very specific on I want to make this particular change now and then this changes how through epigenetics how your genes are being expressed.
[43:58] And that is when I first realized what kind of power this is.
This is huge, right, because now I can make the good choices for myself, but of course I need to know also what kind of genes do I have, what kind of issues are there.
Some of them are overexpressed, underexpressed, too fast, too slow.
So there's a lot of knowledge there that you have to know and that's why usually I recommend on all those things working with an expert in this field because it's just too much.
[44:30] I mean, then it becomes a full-time job, like myself, being now a professional-minded bio-hacker.
But of course, I enjoy it, and I continue to learn more stuff on this, but for someone who just says, oh yeah, this is interesting, let's see, let's start with some simple steps here.
But I think one step is if someone really wants to optimize the body based on the epigenetics, You have to work with an expert there.
Otherwise it's not, yeah, it's not going to work. But then if you do that, then you learn, okay, here's all these different areas.
Here, this is a little bit too fast. Some of these genes, all those, no, they shouldn't be working at all. They should be kept down.
And so you can build a strategy here where you can say, okay, here's now my strategy, optimization plan.
And then you make these changes through changes in your lifestyle.
I usually work a lot with micronutrients.
They're so effective because they pretty much, so thinking about it as molecules, that you provide these molecules to your body.
And it's all about biochemistry.
Introduction to Biochemistry and the Body's Self-Regulating System
[45:49] It's basically all rooted in the science of biochemistry. You just need to know how that stuff works.
So that's why I also got more and more into biochemistry.
You can see now there's so many different things you can go in, but the reason this is important is that the body is this basically self-regulating, highly complex, overarching system comprising thousands of subsystems in there, but it's all based on simple biochemistry, right?
There's electrons, protons, there's all these different elements.
It's all deterministic when they come together and they do something, right?
It happens automatically without you have to do anything.
So you need to know.
How can you make them changes by, for instance, adding a few supplements here to making an impact on certain genes, so that maybe the gene can be expressed a little bit slower, others can be expressed a little bit faster, and there's experimentation, because you don't know how much is needed sometimes.
But then there is, on the other hand, this is the cool thing, you have all these biomarkers associated. We can do some blood work for instance, where then you can see this is my baseline, this biomarker or set of biomarkers is my baseline. Now I'm doing these interventions.
[47:17] And you're doing them based on a good guess because you now know that the genes are likely to behave in that way. Then when you see the validation through the blood work, then you can can see, oh yeah, this is exactly like this.
Then you do the interventions, you give it a try, then you measure again, and then you can see, oh yeah, now it works very well. Maybe it was a little bit too much, maybe it was not enough.
But then you make informed decisions, and this is how you get your body in better shape, step by step, by optimizing these health competencies one by one.
And how much you do is up to you, right? There's nothing you have to do.
This is all optional stuff, but if you wanna get the most out of your body, then at least it's a trade-off, right? How much do you wanna invest in terms of time and resources?
Did you feel good enough?
Or you wanna do a little more or a little less? Doesn't matter, right?
But this is up to you. For you, Reinhardt, you know, looking at you personally and how you teach and you've become an expert in these multiple fields.
For you, just to challenge you, What are the sort of the top three biohacks you use to optimize your psychology and physiology?
[48:33] Well, I would say there is, it's not a top two, three overall, or your favorites, maybe if I may, it's, it's, it's basically.
[48:42] When I use this framework of a high performance mind, I have awareness, mind and body. And then pretty much, you have to look in each of these aspects, what works well for you, right?
What gives you results.
And I would say for awareness part, that is the easiest one.
Once you cultivate enough sufficient LPA levels so that it's high enough, at some point it becomes like an autopilot being aware, because you become easily then aware.
If you're not aware, and then you get back into the present moment.
And so, but the tools I used there was neurofeedback, neurofeedback, neuromeditation is part of this.
So I use technology a lot to raise awareness and I still do it.
It's meditation, mindfulness exercises and that stuff. So it's never ending, but they're very powerful, pleasing techniques and so on.
So those are good, effective biohacks for awareness for the mind, it's basically an ongoing process.
Again, neurofeedback is here very helpful.
And then I think the most biohacks are, at the end of the day, related to the body.
[50:07] And there, I mean, it's so hard to tell. I mean, I'm taking about, I'll give you an example, between 80 and 100 supplements per day. So that alone is a biohack, right?
But it is like based on iteration of years, right? And based on my unique set of genes and what I need.
[50:31] It's evolving constantly. But I would say, if you just say to this, oh yeah, there's a stack of supplements that are optimally supporting my genes.
So then I would say this is a major biohack.
And then depending on, it really depends on what focus areas you have, right?
And there is so many biohacks that you can take advantage of.
Exploring Biohacks for Sleep, Heart Rate Variability, and Resilience
[50:57] Sleep optimization, this is usually, this is a really strong one.
I use OuraRing here. I currently don't have it, I'm charging it.
But OuraRing gives you so much data and you can use it to optimize sleep, for instance, or heart rate variability. So those two give you a lot of bang for the buck.
If you optimize sleep and heart rate variability.
This is for resilience, right? HIV represents resilience, how resilient you are.
Heart rate variability, yeah.
Yeah, and that's why there's so many things out there. I mean, it starts with exercise, sports, optimizing nutrition, there is light therapy.
I like to train my mitochondria using IHHT training, hypoxia, hypoxia.
So a lot of different things. hyperbaric chamber is a hack I currently try out.
Biohacks for Optimal Performance
[51:55] There's always something new, but many of those hacks like light therapy as an example.
[52:03] Go out in the morning into the sun, it's free, it's easy.
Spend 20 minutes in the sun in the morning after you wake up, combine it with exercise, do brisk walk up the hill, here we go.
So those biohacks, they're easy, they're free, they deliver results.
And then of course, as I said, supplements, a good stack of supplements that is evolving, will give you this edge. Otherwise, you can't do it without it.
So there's no way and there's this myth people think, oh yeah, I eat well, I eat organic food, I don't need any supplements. No, that's not how it's working.
Right? It's not so if you really want to get into a state that is optimized and peak performance or in general, you want to maybe have some chronic diseases that you want to get out of you need supplements, right? Of course, the right ones, you need to know what you're doing there. But there's no way without it. So that's why I want to want to basically break this myth. I always hear that people say, Oh, I don't need any of that stuff. You actually need it.
Of course, if you take them and if you want them, it's a whole different story.
Nobody forces anything, you can do whatever you want. But if you want to get out of chronic conditions, health conditions, or if you want to maximize performance, then this is a big, big biohack.
[53:29] I have one last question, which is very respectful of your time.
You have a philosophy of work less, achieve more.
I was wondering if you could elaborate on what you mean by that.
[53:40] Yeah, I mean the whole thing started when I myself worked too much back in these old days, pretty much working around the clock and then sometimes you see that the results are diminishing, right?
So you work harder, you do more, but let's say in the evening or even very late, is it, really productive? And then you realize, no, I could have done the same thing the next morning in a fraction of the time.
[54:08] And so, this is the first insight, the second one is that, what do I really need to focus on or what is really important to get done?
Of course, you can work, always find something new to work on, there is, when there is time, you always find the next thing to do.
But usually, if I look at it in the morning, I decide here, what are the two, three things I want to get done today that are important, I get them done.
And then that's it, work is completed.
So that means I could, I could be done by two o'clock in the afternoon, I could be done by four or five, who knows. But.
[54:46] Once I'm done, I'm done. So then I'm not taking on new work, but then I focus on other things. And then you use that as a time to actually recharge the body, body needs the body needs this balance. So I call it a focused balance. So that work is not life is not all about work. There's all this, there's friends, family, there's the aspect of fun, there's all this good stuff. And you have to figure out how to bring this all together and give it priority. So and then you can actually work is, of course, also important, you want to accomplish certain things, how much time you actually need per day, it may vary, it's completely individual thing. But It could be the case. I mean, the old days, the Tim Ferriss book, right, four hour work week is a good motivator for this. Maybe that is a little bit too extreme.
How to Work Smarter, Not Harder
[55:44] For some and others say, yeah, I mean, I could four hour per week is a little bit, I can do more, right. But let's say if you do a four hour work day, that is a start. It's still 20 hours of work that you do. But then, and then you use the other time for other things. And with a high performance mind, I think this is the interesting thing works in your favor, the more energy you have, the more resilient you are, the more mental capabilities are built up, and the more awareness there is, you can get stuff done.
[56:17] Much faster. So something like in the old days, presentation took me an hour, I don't know, you can get it done in I don't know, 20 minutes, as an example, or half hour. So now you save a lot of time, because you work more effective, you can get stuff done faster in a fraction of the time you used to take it before. And now, you gain time back. And that's why even in four hours, I can probably produce as much than I produced in the old days was 10 hours. Literally, right. And of course, there's all kinds of time based creeping in. But there is the awareness that helps you to become aware, oh, this is no time waster. I shouldn't be doing that. This one alone was awareness, if you actually become aware of what you're doing and this is really needed. You can easily carve out extra time, right? And then you end up with working less. But yeah.
[57:17] Work smart, not hard. This is another way to phrase it.
[57:21] Definitely, definitely. As we come close to the top of the hour, and the end of our conversation, unfortunately. Is, there any last tips or recommendations or suggestions you would like to leave with my listeners?
[57:35] Well, I mean, I hope the people listening to that episode, I got a few items out in terms of that awareness so important. And measuring awareness, actually, this option of measuring baselining it and in general, using a data driven approach, which works very well for the business world, apply to your personal world. And I think this is a way people, listeners can get started, but pick a few of these things, start measuring away.
[58:08] Because then you actually see what's going on. And when you do the LPA assessments on my blog, there's a lot of information out there, the mindfulleader.net, right, where you can see how there's exercises and articles on how to measure LPA.
I encourage people who get interested to look at some of these resources, give it a try.
And when awareness kicks in and you realize that your LPA is maybe 3% or two, what do you do, right?
And that could be motivation enough for people who are a little bit ambitious and say, well, I can probably do better than 2%. Can't I get to maybe 5%?
And then actually make a plan, how can you get to that?
And that gives you the fuel, because once awareness is rising, that opens up the door later for other things with in terms of body and mind.
You become aware of some of these limiting thoughts.
You become aware of some of these aches in the body.
[59:12] And then you start, yeah, working on them step by step. So I think getting people started is probably the most important thing.
So people listening to this get excited. Oh yeah, let's do something, take action.
Otherwise it's just some entertainment.
Listening here or watching the watching the show, interesting stuff. But if there's no action based on this, is a waste of time, I think.
I think that's well said, you know, you take care of the machine, the machine will take care of you the machine being the body and the brain in this sense. Reinhard, thank you very much for your time, I will be sure to leave all of your information, the websites and the links that you've provided in the show notes. It's been a blast.
Yeah, absolutely. It was great and definitely if you want to do a deep dive at some point.
[1:00:03] Music.
Upgrading the Body: A Holistic Approach to Personal Growth
[1:00:17] In the second part of the conversation, we delved into the fascinating realm of upgrading the body, an essential component of his holistic approach to personal growth and leadership.
Reiner shared insights on various aspects of this journey, including the gut microbiome, mitochondrial health, oxidation and inflammation, the fundamental importance of sleep, and the practice of fasting.
These topics, when collectively addressed, form a powerful foundation for enhancing one's well-being and achieving optimal performance.
At the heart of Reiner's approach lies the transformative principles of presence, mind management and biohacking, all underpinned by the latest scientific understanding of epigenetics.
These principles offer a path for individuals to unlock their full potential, not only as leaders but as well-rounded, thriving individuals in a complex landscape of our modern world.
[1:01:09] So I want to personally extend my heartfelt thanks to you, Reiner, for your time and for your generosity, sharing your deep wealth of knowledge.
Folks, I highly encourage you to reach out to Reiner if any of what we've talked about today kind of lit your curiosity.
So I will be sure to include all the links and his information, contact information in the show notes.
Well, as we come close to crossing the finish line of today's episode, if I could kindly ask you, if you could share, recommend and rate this podcast, you're doing me a huge favor.
And when you like some of my posts on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever, please also share because that helps me spread the word of resilience, equanimity, and well-being.
And if for those, if this podcast is not enough to scratch your itch, you can always head over to my website at mytalk.io, where you will find other publications, other articles that I've written for magazines that dives even deeper into the subject.
Well, folks, that brings us to a tail end of another episode.
I appreciate you showing up and allowing me to be part of your week.
Until we continue this conversation, the next time, keep well, keep strong, and we'll speak.
