Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Welcome to the Apex Human Podcast. I'm your host, Tramell Jackson. And here at Apex, we'll be exploring various different topics surrounding strengths and weaknesses, recovery, performance, health and wellness, social structures, neuroscience, philosophy, a lot of stuff. Okay.
[00:00:18] And we'll also be covering things from like, heartbreak and grief to the battles that we face that shape us into who we ultimately become.
[00:00:27] And if I'm being honest, this is not the shared space for things like fake motivation or surface level perfection. We're honestly all just here to share real and unsung thoughts and have conversations surrounding our internal journey as human beings. Okay, so before we dive into today's episode, I'm just going to go ahead and introduce myself a little bit more once again. My name is Tramell Jackson. I was born in Atlanta, Georgia.
[00:00:50] I'm currently 25 years old, and I have been married now for a little bit over a year.
[00:00:56] And my field of work is I am a soldier for the United States Army. Okay, so without further ado, I'm just going to start today's episode by saying, I think a lot of people today are physically alive but mentally disconnected from themselves. And honestly, it makes perfect sense because we've never had more comfort, entertainment, or convenience as a society. And yet people feel more anxious, purposeless, and lost than ever.
[00:01:24] And I find it interesting because I too have found myself in a pocket of society or a pocket of the culture, whereas I felt very similarly. You know, it's honestly one of the reasons that I joined the military and that, you know, many people join the military in and of itself is because we lack direction for a certain period or season in our life, we're lacking direction. And I know me personally, I lacked an opportunity. I. I could not afford myself an opportunity. At least it felt that way in the time period to genuinely discover more about myself, to push myself, to chase discipline, to. To struggle mentally and emotionally and then recover from it. Right? Or to, you know, go through things like heartbreak and try to become stronger physically and mentally overall. It just became a self realization that improvement is not linear.
[00:02:14] It's not. Okay. But I say all that to say that part of the reason we have these comforts and entertainment systems and, and convenience options in place are because they're just distractions, right? They're distractions from the feeling of not being connected not only to ourselves, but to our community.
[00:02:37] There's something special when you look around in today's society and you walk around on the streets and you look at the, the, the natural cues, whereas people avoid, you know, eye contact with one another, we avoid talking to one another. We, we, we don't slow down. We live in a very fast paced society that tells you you can have whatever you want so long as you got the right number that's attached to it, the price, you know, the social status, right. The notoriety, which is why we all are pursuing that instead of our purpose. We're pursuing those things, numbers, we're pursuing notoriety, we're pursuing all these other things over our own happiness because we've, interestingly enough, we've, we've moved the goalpost, we've changed it to where we're not even pursuing happiness anymore. We're pursuing satisfaction with society. We're pursuing a end goal here where we feel accepted, right? This is what a lot of us are doing. But when you don't understand that you're pursuing these things and you're just in the middle, you're in the thick of it, right? Then it makes you anxious, it makes you feel purposeless, and it makes you feel, you know, more lost than ever, right? And so what do you do? You seek comfort, you seek entertainment and you seek convenience. You're looking for opportunities to take some of the weight off of yourself for even just a sparkling moment of your life, to look up and possibly see anything other than the weight that you carry, right? The reality that you stare at. But overall I think it is because we, you know, excuse me, we don't suffer voluntarily enough.
[00:04:18] We don't, we don't suffer voluntarily enough.
[00:04:23] And even when you say the word suffer, I'm pretty sure a lot of you are going to listen to this. You're going to hear this and think what is. Okay, so what are we getting at here with suff. Suffering? Voluntarily suffering doesn't mean it necessarily has to be damaging to you. But we don't want to get out of our comfort space for very long. We don't want to sacrifice comfort for too long. We all have the statutes of limitations that we place on how long we're going to suffer. How long are we going to deal with these things, those things, that thing, that person, that discussion, that area, that group of people. We all have the limitations that we place on ourselves and our reactionary like ability in these settings, right?
[00:05:03] So let's just talk a little bit more about dopamine overload. For those of you that don't know, dopamine is the chemical in the brain that has more responsibility over things of things like satisfaction. Okay?
[00:05:16] So considering such, when you overload the brain with that, when you overload the brain with dopamine, you put yourself in a position to where nothing is as intense as it actually is. You are living in an altered version of reality where it takes more. Right? Okay, so let's, let's just break it down, right?
[00:05:41] If you are a millionaire, you're a millionaire, you've been a millionaire your whole life, right?
[00:05:51] And then let's say you, you lose like a $50,000 bet that you made with someone, you're not really going to flinch. You're not going to flinch. Most people aren't going to flinch if they're millionaires, right? Because they've naturally been desensitized to their relationship with money. They've been desensitized from it. So $50,000 doesn't feel like a lot to someone in that particular tax bracket. Whereas someone else who has been nickel and diming it their entire lives and has never had a fair opportunity to get anywhere near that amount of money in their entire lives, should they ever encounter a $50,000 opportunity if they would lose that opportunity. More oftentimes than not, you'll see in scenarios as such, that individual has a much more adverse reaction to losing something like that. It's because of the value that is placed on the journey from and to. Right?
[00:06:51] There's more character put into being less desensitized to the journey. Okay?
[00:07:01] So the journey from the hand to the pocket is less sensitive for people who have that opportunity, who have those, those, those incentives, they have that sufficiency about themselves, themselves, right.
[00:07:12] Whereas individuals who, like I mentioned earlier, they don't necessarily have as much resources, that looks like a life changing amount of money. And it also feels like it'll, you know, it'll make or make or break them.
[00:07:31] So when you think about dopamine, it's the exact same way when you are continuously overloading the brain with dopamine and you're not metacognitive enough of what that even feels like.
[00:07:43] And you're just frying, you're just frying your dopamine like receptors in the brain, right?
[00:07:50] To other people. They'll be able to do things like go out about and in nature and you know, naturally feel the glee from the sun on their skin and naturally feel alive from, you know, the scent that's on the air. Right. They have a natural ability to be more sensitive to the environment around them because of the lack of that overload. Right. Or the, the non existence of the overload specifically. But when you are in a dopamine overload, you have essentially hijacked your brain to be less sensitive to the things that it naturally would be that would make you feel satisfied and happy in a specific environment, capable of motivated.
[00:08:32] That one hormone in the brain has more to do with those feelings than we often give it credit in today's society. And maybe it's just out of not knowing what that is in and of itself. That's cool, right?
[00:08:45] However, leading into the next, you know, pocket of why we have dopamine overload or how does dopamine overload affect us? It pushes us into comfort culture, right?
[00:09:00] I like to think of comfort culture as literally what I mentioned earlier, the way in which societally we just, you know, because of how disconnected we are from ourselves, but yet we're still alive in our day to day. We pursue things like entertainment and convenience and we feel anxious and purposeless and lost when we focus more so in on ourselves less intentionally because of the way that we have subconsciously programmed ourselves to only pursue satisfaction through convenience, comfort or entertainment.
[00:09:30] Excuse me, I know that's like a huge word salad, but realistically, that is the comfort culture in and of itself.
[00:09:39] We live in a culture of people who are just more so complicit with trying to get by.
[00:09:46] We have lost a huge amount of ambition, we have lost a huge amount of character societally and because of which more people in today's society are naturally just more interested in getting by being left alone, being allowed to isolate ourselves. Right. And just get out of the way.
[00:10:09] So that's where you start to pay a little bit better attention to things like the lack of direction and isolation and where they come from, right? Possibly out of a fear of failure, or maybe it's because we, we lack brotherhood and community, or maybe we just have weak habits and we're numbing ourselves with distractions either way. Listen, I'm not a guru, okay? I'm not a guru, but like I mentioned in the introduction, we're here to have authentic conversation and share unsung thoughts about subjects that are less talked about than we even, you know, want to say.
[00:10:45] So these weak habits, the lack of brotherhood and community, those are all ways in which you can personally make a difference in not even just anyone else's life, so to speak, just to start, but even yourself, right? You can pursue community, you can pursue brotherhood, and you can meet people who will help you with weaker habits. I personally believe that once you have built enough constructive habits in your life, that eventually they will outweigh your destructive habits. So even if you have one or two or three of the most destructive habits, you are still better off if you have more constructive habits than those than the man that does have. That doesn't have any constructive habits. Most of his habits are destructive.
[00:11:30] So what are the differences between a constructive and a destructive habit, by the way?
[00:11:35] I like to think of it as really simply, right?
[00:11:37] A constructive habit is one in which you do not have to recover from.
[00:11:42] It's one in which it compounds relatively over time, making you better and stronger, right? And a destructive habit is the opposite of that. A destructive habit is one. Whereas if you only depended and only you only actualized that one specific habit, you would eventually destroy yourself.
[00:12:03] If it were all that you did in your free time, would it destroy you or would it transform you? Those are the differences between a constructive and a destructive habit. And I personally just. I'm a fair man in balance, right? I do always, you know, live my life or try to live my life with the belief system of the duality of man. We all should have that balance because something's going to kill you anyway, right? There are people out there have never smoked a cigarette a day in their life and they get lung cancer. And there are people out there that have smoked cigarettes, crack everything else up under the sun, and they've never gotten a single diagnosis even close to it. Their lungs might not be the healthiest, right? Or a brain or whatever, but I mean, realistically, they live to be 80 or 90 years old still, too.
[00:12:46] So say all that to say, should you destroy your body? Probably not. It's probably not the best idea. But.
[00:12:53] But smoke the cigarette, okay? Have the drink, go out, talk, Put your phone down and talk. Look at each other in the eyes.
[00:13:03] Try to. Try to challenge each other's perspectives in your community. Meet people, get out of your body, get out of your head and get a little bit more outrageous, Just a little bit more outrageous. Not a lot. It doesn't take a lot.
[00:13:16] It really does not take a lot.
[00:13:18] And those are just small ways in which you can involve yourself with community and build stronger habits, right? Stronger habits just about your character, okay? But get out of the media and into the reality. Get into the world that we're in now. Because realistically, when you are overly involved with the devices that we have in our hands, these phones and these video game systems and these freaking monitoring platforms that we use to watch different TV shows and movies and things like that, when you become overly involved with those things, you numb yourself. You numb yourself to a point of isolation and distraction whereby you have fallen, you know, victim to comfort culture and dopamine overload. So you see how this is all kind of like, this is all tying into. Into each other if you really pay it some attention, right?
[00:14:10] But enough of that, let's go. I'm just gonna get into why I'm not a guru, but I do know what I'm talking about, okay? It's because, for one, I'm. I'm a dork. I'll be honest. I'm just a dork, okay? When it comes down to things like neuroscience, history, philosophy, excuse me, all those things, right?
[00:14:28] And I have personally experienced various, various results concerning the different ways in which I've tested most of these theories and most of these belief systems that I'm expressing to you currently.
[00:14:40] So, you know, I started my running journey just about what?
[00:14:45] Just about what? Two. Two. A little bit over two and a half years, almost three years now.
[00:14:50] I started my journey in running. And I remember before the fact I probably couldn't run a half a mile without feeling like my lungs were about to explode in my chest, right?
[00:15:00] And I used to, you know, I used to try to go to the gym.
[00:15:05] We lived like right next door to A Planet Fitness a few years ago.
[00:15:11] And I remember just kind of like embarking on that part of my life and my journey and how impossible it all felt. But I was always so intentional about showing up the next day still. And to be honest with you, too, you probably hear people say it all the time, fake it till you make it. That was a real deal thing for me because I noticed that if I at least had the confidence of someone who could do things the way that I wanted to do them, then it made me all the difference on how I show up and what keeps me motivated, what keeps me going, right? So, yeah, to be honest with you, I faked it until I made it. And now that I've made it, I don't have to fake it, but it definitely was one of the most keen survival apparatus for getting myself started and just. Just owning the impact that at my arrival, okay, so I did all those things and I built a routine and I started to realize the way in which I was spiritually transforming myself right through running. It started out just about how many miles can I add on per week? I remember by the time I graduated, what was it, Basic training, You know, I'd run my first four miles that I had actually tracked. I'd run for 40 minutes straight and hadn't lost my breath or felt like I was going to pass out. And that was such A transformative scene for me because I didn't even notice it until I had stopped the run and I looked down and it was 40 minutes straight, and I was four miles in, and I felt like I could have kept going, right? And then it became a matter of, okay, next week I'm gonna do five, and then I show up. I'm a little nervous. I had to go do five, and I got to do it.
[00:16:45] Okay? Then the next week it became 6, and then 7, and then 8, and then 9, and then 10, and it went all the way up until I got above 10. I remember I peaked at 10 for a very long time, which, honestly, if you know anything about running, that's more so like nutrition based. After so much conditioning that you've done, it becomes more about nutrition for running. But either way, the habit in and of itself taught me one very specific principle and tool for showing up and getting the job done right? And that is fake it till you make it.
[00:17:23] Fake it till you make it. People, we're all gonna be terrible at doing something the very first few times that we do it, right? We all are. I mean, that's just. That's just the nature of the beast. I don't think hardly anyone, unless you're naturally talented, just walks into the room and owns it. From the. From the start, you got to know how to do it. You have to learn. You have to. In order to be great at something. I believe. I can't remember which philosopher this was that I read this quote from. But in order to be great at something, right, you must first accept the ability to be absolutely terrible at it. That's the.
[00:17:57] That's the Tramiel way of saying it, at least the way that I read it. But I'm gonna eventually figure out who that quote is from and repost it on my social media, so look forward to that. Anywho.
[00:18:09] Yeah. So bringing all of this full circle, I mean it to me, the Apex human podcast, in and of itself, it just. It doesn't mean perfection, okay? It just means pursuing your highest potential despite your flaws. I am a highly imperfect person, okay? I really am. But I wear my imperfections in a way that doesn't disengage me, my audience, or my peers or community.
[00:18:39] And that is how I show up authentically and with the necessary character to continue to grow and continue to build upon my habits, continue to fortify myself in brotherhood and in community with the individuals that I know that I need to be surrounded around. Okay?
[00:18:57] And overall, you know, I mean, I want the level of authenticity from which I'm speaking currently, to become a, a essential part of this brand and this identity in this podcast.
[00:19:13] So before I close, I just wanted to end with a.
[00:19:19] A thought or a challenge. Right. If you're somebody that doesn't run, try running tomorrow morning or tomorrow evening.
[00:19:28] Whatever works for you, try to run. I'm not sure when the last time you did it, when was the last time that you didn't do it. Right?
[00:19:35] But if you're somebody that doesn't run, try to run tomorrow. Okay? Or for those of you that do run and you want a different challenge, let's, I mean, delete some distractions for a day. I, I challenge you to just delete the Instagram app, delete the TikTok, delete the, the Facebook app for an entire day.
[00:19:53] Or for those of you that have no issue with social media, maybe just sit alone with your thoughts and meditate for about an hour to two hours. Just tomorrow to sit alone and do nothing, Just sit there, maybe even stare in a mirror.
[00:20:08] For those of you that are more on the scribe side of things, sit down and write your goals down. Maybe you got away from journaling and planning. Sit down and write down these goals. And I want you to also consider marginalizing these goals by the things that are easily attainable in the current version of yourself that you exist, and then the long term things that you seek to, you know, access from the more evolved version of yourself as well. Right.
[00:20:38] But overall, the goal is to do one hard thing tomorrow or the day after intentionally and continue to show up to that table.
[00:20:50] Once again, guys, this has been Tramell Jackson. This is the first episode of the Apex Human podcast and I thank everybody for listening to it.
[00:20:59] I'm sorry if this is a bit informal or sloppy or if I got, you know, I started rambling a little bit more and too many filler words. I don't know. All I'm doing is showing up to the table authentically, like I said that I was. And I hope you guys enjoyed it. There will be many more discussions and things like this in the future. I plan to have various different guests and appearances as well in the future. I just, you know, this is just the first episode, so work with me and I'll work with you. Love you guys and thanks. I'm out.
