574. Optimizing Your Health in 2026: Discerning Truth from Hype with Dr. Donese Worden

Dr. Donese Worden says some of the most stressed people she knows are biohackers. She's back on the show for the first time since 2021. Dr. Worden is an integrative physician, researcher, and educator specializing in mitochondrial health and metabolic oncology, and she's co-founder and COO of the MORE Alliance, which advances research into metabolic approaches to cancer. Her take on the health trends everyone is chasing: more isn't always better, and the latest trend isn't necessarily right for you. In this episode, we get into: ✅ Why she says peptides are "too early," and what the FDA actually did and didn't do ✅ Why she asks supplement makers for lot numbers, not just a certificate of analysis ✅ What she says a recent study found about short bursts of exercise versus 10,000 steps ✅ Why your wearable may not read your sleep as well as you think, especially after 50 ✅ Her seven-pillar self-check-in, and the pillar she calls the most important ✅ Why timing and dosage matter for everything, including fasting, exercise, and food If you want to live longer and feel better without turning your health into a full-time optimization project, this conversation will help you cut through the noise. Listen now!  

The average entrepreneur wastes at least four hours a week on things they shouldn't be doing. Kathi Burns says that adds up to about $78,000 a year. My guest, Kathi Burns, calls it the "friction tax," the cost you pay silently every day when things don't flow smoothly through your business. Kathi is an operational architect and a board-certified professional organizer with 22 years in the industry. She has been featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, on Good Morning America, and in Martha Stewart Living. She is also the author of How to Master Your Muck and Organizing with Tetris. Before all of that, she was a U.S. Coast Guard-licensed captain delivering yachts. In this episode, we get into: ✅ What the friction tax is and how to spot what you're paying ✅ Why the bottleneck is so often the owner, not the team ✅ The one fill-in-the-blank question that shows what your company depends on you to do ✅ Kathi's FLOW framework: Filter, Logistics, Operate, Withdrawal ✅ Why you should build your structure before you add AI ✅ The four folders that keep your digital files findable If you've ever felt like your business runs you, this conversation will show you where to start letting go. Listen now!  

What if the thing standing between you and your next level isn't strategy, but what you're still carrying? My guest, Marie Diamond, is a globally recognized feng shui master, spiritual teacher, and featured expert in The Secret. After a near-death experience at 15, she says she was told her purpose was to enlighten more than 500 million people, a mission that's led her to work with everyone from politicians to Hollywood stars. One of her most well-known stories: Mindvalley founder Vishen Lakhiani had been losing $100,000 a month for seven months when Marie looked at his office floor plan. The very next month, he made back more than he'd lost in the previous seven. In this episode, we get into: ✅ What Marie actually sees when she reads someone's chakras and aura field ✅ The real difference between forgiveness and condoning someone's actions ✅ Marie's simple forgiveness-letter practice for releasing what you're still carrying ✅ Why she believes your environment can influence your life and business by 33% ✅ What she says exists beyond "enlightenment," and why integrating it into daily life matters more than reaching it If you've ever wondered whether something in your environment, or your own unresolved emotions, might be quietly shaping your results, this conversation will give you a lot to think about. The show notes, including the transcript and checklist to this episode, are at getyourselfoptimized.com/572.

What if the difference between a hit song and a forgotten one has almost nothing to do with talent? My guest, Benjamin Groff, has spent his career finding out. He's a music publisher who's signed artists like Ryan Tedder, Tiësto, Kelly Clarkson, and Kid Cudi, built Kobalt's first U.S. office from the ground up, and now runs his own boutique publishing company, Brill Building — which just landed its first Billboard Hot 100 #1 with Beyoncé's "Break My Soul." Back in 2016, Benjamin and I had a conversation on a bus tour of NASA about whether AI would ever replace musicians. He was certain it wouldn't. By the time we got off that bus, he wasn't so sure. Nearly a decade later, he's now a private investor in the AI music platform Suno — and still finding tomorrow's biggest stars in the noise. In this Get Yourself Optimized episode, Benjamin breaks down: ✅ How he still finds emerging artists before anyone else notices them ✅ Why data and virality metrics can't replace real taste and curation ✅ What 100+ years of "the new technology will ruin everything" panics — player pianos, drum machines, Napster, now AI — actually teach us ✅ Why 85% of success comes down to identity and mindset, not raw skill ✅ The Tony Robbins framework for why only "outstanding" work gets rewarded anymore If you've ever wondered whether AI is coming for your creative career, this conversation will change how you think about it. The show notes, including the transcript and checklist to this episode, are at getyourselfoptimized.com/571.  

There are around five people who dislike uncertainty for every one person who actually likes it. My guest this episode, Scott Stirrett, wants to help you become the one. Scott is the author of The Uncertainty Advantage, founder of Venture for Canada (which he grew from a $300K budget in 2016 to $14 million by 2022), and a former Goldman Sachs analyst. He's also refreshingly candid about his own struggle with OCD — and how learning to tolerate uncertainty didn't just help him manage that, it reshaped how he approaches risk, career, and resilience entirely. In this episode, we get into: ➡️ Why "the only way out is through" is Scott's core message for tolerating uncertainty ➡️ How to catch a "ritual" before it quietly takes over your life ➡️ Why self-compassion — not toughness — is what actually builds resilience ➡️ Scott's simple weekly practice for building your "risk-taking muscles" ➡️ Why he believes solopreneurship, taste, and face-to-face relationships will define the AI era ➡️ The AI risk that actually keeps him up at night — and it's probably not the one you'd guess If you've ever felt like uncertainty is something to survive rather than use, this conversation will shift that. 🎧 Listen now The show notes, including the transcript and checklist to this episode, are at getyourselfoptimized.com/570.

What if the second most important organ system in your body isn't your heart, lungs, or liver — but your skeleton? That's the case my guest, Peter Simonson, makes in this episode. Peter trained as a mechanical engineer at Georgia Tech, then spent years designing spinal implants for Medtronic before discovering — almost by accident — a dormant bone technology company called Juvent after its founder passed away. He and his brother revived it, and what he's since learned about bone as a metabolic, hormone-producing organ (not just a structural frame) reshapes how you think about aging, mobility, and even things like blood pressure and balance. In this Get Yourself Optimized episode, Peter breaks down: ➡️ Why your skeleton functions more like an endocrine organ than scaffolding ➡️ How osteoporosis can show up in children, not just the elderly ➡️ Why more "powerful" vibration platforms can actually be dangerous ➡️ The JAMA-published, placebo-controlled study that found a 10% bone density increase from safe microimpact therapy ➡️ Peter's own daily biohacks — from seasonal fasting to reframing walking as "a luxury," not a chore If you've ever taken your mobility for granted, this conversation will change that.  

In the age of AI, what is the one thing you still cannot outsource? According to Eric Ries, author of the mega-bestseller The Lean Startup and the new book Incorruptible, it is the hard work of learning itself. Eric has spent 15 years helping founders build companies, and the deepest lesson he has taken from it applies to anyone trying to grow: the real bottleneck is still how fast your own mind can learn. You can let tools build and summarize for you, but no one can lift the heavy weights of understanding on your behalf. In this Get Yourself Optimized episode, Eric shares: ✅ Why learning, not technology, is still the real bottleneck in the AI era ✅ How to escape the trap of reading summaries of summaries and go deep on what actually matters ✅ Why booking real time to think is a tool almost everyone underuses ✅ How to refine your vision without losing your commitment to it, and why morale is a resource worth guarding ✅ The surprising power of equanimity when life seems to go wrong Whether you are building a company or building yourself, Eric's approach to learning, focus, and staying the course is worth your time. Tune in!  

Cameron Herold sold everything he owned and has visited 54 countries in 39 months. The biggest lesson he brought back? None of it really matters. We're all just walking each other home. Cameron is the operator who scaled 1-800-GOT-JUNK to $100 million, founded the COO Alliance, and wrote the book on Vivid Vision. In this episode, he sits down with me to talk about what actually moves the needle in business and in life. In this Get Yourself Optimized episode, Cameron breaks down: ✅ Vivid Vision: how a four- or five-page description of your future gets your whole team, and your whole life, aligned ✅ The flywheel: how obsessing over one or two things built a company people called a cult ✅ R&D, or rip-off and duplicate, and why you never have to be the smartest person in the room ✅ Why the only people who should fear AI are those not using it, and how to get your team playing with it weekly ✅ The stop-doing list, and why killing off half-finished projects can free up more energy than finishing them He also gets personal about refocusing on his marriage, raising two grounded sons, and becoming the chief energizing officer in every role of his life. Tune in! The show notes, including the transcript and checklist to this episode, are at getyourselfoptimized.com/567

What if the hardest thing in the world isn't earning money or finding success, but trusting the process when you have every reason not to? My guest, Adrien Fournier, went from being a corporate business lawyer in Geneva to spending the last fifteen years doing energy work, and he offers his healing sessions for free. We met through Yanik Silver's Maverick mastermind, and in this conversation Adrien walks through a worldview where everything, from your body to your bank account to the stock market, is a form of energy that reflects who you are. In this Get Yourself Optimized episode, Adrien breaks down: ✅ Why you are made of more than a physical body, and how you're already equipped to perceive it ✅ Why darkness and contrast are what give light and love their meaning ✅ The reason he refuses to do energy work for money, and why that keeps it clean ✅ How to treat money as neutral energy and become a steward rather than an owner ✅ The Viking concept of destiny and causality, and why your effort is at most 49 percent of the equation If you've ever felt like you're doing everything right and life still isn't cooperating, Adrien's take on faith, surrender, and getting back on the horse is worth your time. Tune in! The show notes, including the transcript and checklist to this episode, are at getyourselfoptimized.com/566    

Your biggest business problem probably is not a business problem at all. That is the reframe my guest, Dr. Patty Ann Tublin, has built an entire career around. Dr. Patty Ann is a clinical psychologist who does high-level executive and business coaching for entrepreneurs, founders, and C-suite leaders. Her core belief is that all success is predicated upon the ability to create, nurture, and sustain healthy relationships. As she puts it, business problems are rarely business problems. They are relationship problems that show up as business problems. She shared the story of a Silicon Valley app company that should have been crushing it during COVID and was not. The processes were fine. The real issue was that the head engineer and the head salesperson despised each other, and that mistrust trickled down through the entire organization. In this Get Yourself Optimized episode, Dr. Patty Ann breaks down: ✅ Why nothing changes until the unspoken is spoken ✅ How your internal reality quietly overrides your external results ✅ Why AI does not create incompetence or weak leadership, but it will reveal it ✅ How to rebuild trust after it has been broken, in business and at home ✅ Why taking responsibility for your role in any conflict (even just 1 percent) changes everything This is not about working harder. It is about getting honest about the human side of success. What unspoken truth in your business or your relationships is waiting to be said out loud? The show notes, including the transcript and checklist to this episode, are at getyourselfoptimized.com/565