Insights Inspired By Dr. Art DeVany; How To Go For It In Life and Set Yourself Free! (Breather Episode with Brad)

Dr. Art DeVany, ancestral health forefather and author of The New Evolution Diet, delivers some of the most profound life advice I’ve ever heard during a 2017 podcast interview on the Align podcast with Aaron Alexander. At 81, DeVany is retired from his professor career and is pretty minimal on the interview/podcast/lecture scene, so please listen to the whole podcast and reflect carefully on the following commentary that came at the end of the show (Aviso: I did a bit of cleansing and paraphrasing from the audio transcript):  

Of course, you have to work at whatever you’re doing, you have to have high standards for your work. But you also have to realize that there’s a lot of stuff that you make too big of a fuss over. And when you stop that - it doesn’t mean you don’t care - but when you stop beating yourself or beating someone else up over it when you stop ruminating about it, you’re free.  

And you gotta set yourself free - set yourself free from your old mistakes and things that happened to you. And even set yourself free from people, thoughts, foods, and habits that bring you down. That’s when you’re free! Then you can start anew. You can renew every day. Granted, you can’t forget the past. Then you wouldn’t have any memories. Appreciating your history as strength and wisdom gained and getting a move on is necessary for good health.  

Brad Note: Realize that beyond his health interests, DeVany was an economics professor specializing in the complex aspects of how to predict how Hollywood movies make money. In that context, he often emphasizes the importance of random, explosive, life-changing events that apply not just to the economic realm, but in all areas of life. This will help you process a vital comment about “…it’s not the drip, drip, drip.” Can you reference explosive random events that altered your life path more so than plugging away day after day on a linear way? Pay attention to opportunities of all kinds and don’t be afraid to go for it!   

Here is one of his choice quotes, from his professional realm as an economics professor:  

“In any organization, half the work is done by the square root of the total number of workers. E.g., 100 workers, half the work is done by 10 workers.”  

Here are DeVany's recommendations to deal with depression: “Starve and exercise. The starvation part of it is to eat up some of these dysfunctional synapses. My saying is, for every damaged molecule, there’s a damaged thought. Those are injured neurons inside the brain, and you just need to get rid of the dysfunctional molecules that are causing those neurons to malfunction. Then, heal the brain with neurotrophic factors. Be outside. New thoughts, new patterns of behavior. When my first wife was declining from a host of other things, I’d take her walking as much as I could. I would tell her bad jokes. Change her surroundings. The typical things people have to do. Being outside is enormously effective. There are stimuli you can’t even relate to, but you perceive them. Your unconscious brain is what’s going to heal you first.”  

Here is a great show he did on the Tim Ferriss podcast.  

I’m taking the starve and exercise thing to heart with an intuitive approach to keto. Some days I will wait till I’m hungry to finally eat at between 12 and 2 pm. I’ll do 10-15 min workouts, walking by deadlift bar. He has said ‘don’t jog it’s too dangerous’ and that one I have really begun reflecting upon. In November through January, I was playing too much speedgolf. I had classic burnout symptoms and can’t keep below 130! Now I play cart speedgolf for wind sprints. At over 50, it’s easy to become unhealthy with endurance training. Be sure that you are performing aerobically and that your metabolism has minimal stress. Pursue a shorter, more intense competition to avoid chronic overstimulation of stress hormones.