Everyone Knows You're Gone

The most sophisticated vanishing trick in modern life: disappearing from your own life while technically being in it. 

Adults average 4+ hours of daily phone use. The average person checks their phone 96 times a day. Presence is the rarest gift you can give another person in 2026 — and most of us are handing it to an algorithm instead. 

In this episode, we cover....

In this Episode...
- Freedom of Speech: The Disappearing Act
- Full Story: Everyone in the Room Knows You're Gone
- From the Newsfeed:What the Schools Already Know
- Faith & Hope: The Better Thing
- Father Time: The Summer Bet
- Funny Factory: The Dinner Table Disappearing Act
- Fitness Minute: The Walk Without the Podcast


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🌐 Website: https://jasonhewlett.com/

The Jason Hewlett Show — Where we use lots of F Words: Faith, Family, Fatherhood, Freedom, Fitness, Funny & Farce, as well as the Fulfillment of your Promises.

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#TheJasonHewlettShow #TheDisappearingAct #PresenceMatters #KeepThePromise #Pillar3 #JasonHewlett #PhantomPresence #AttentionEconomy #FamilyFirst #BeHere

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, last week you came home, and the question this week is whether you're going to stay. Welcome to the show. Yeah, welcome to the Jason Hewlett Show. Lots of F words around here. Faith, family, freedom, fitness, you'd name it. We're gonna go for it. Coming up on today's episode, we're unpacking Phantom Presence. Have you heard of that? Phantom Presence, the most sophisticated vanishing trick in modern life. Then we'll be talking about freedom in the freedom of speech section, the disappearing act. In the full story, you don't leave a marriage or a family all at once. You leave scroll by scroll. It's a slow motion disappearance that happens while you're still sitting on the couch. And from the newsfeed, schools are banning phones to get kids back. Your dinner table is the next classroom. In Faith and Hope, why the Ultimate Leadership Act in the Gospels was simply sitting still and paying attention, which is kind of the opposite of everything else that we were taught. And Father Time section will be talking about my summer bet. Three hard commitments I'm making before the kids are home all day in a few weeks. That's schools starting to wrap up here. I don't know if you fill in it with your kids. Mine are staying home a little more. Funny Factory, we're gonna talk about the dinner table disappearing act and we're exposing the fake nod. And then in the fitness minute, we always talk about Cardio Miracle, the sponsor of our show. We're grateful for them. Cardio Miracle, the world's number one nitric oxide product and vitamin D3 delivery. We're gonna talk about why your brain desperately needs you to take a walk without a podcast in your ears. Presence is the rarest luxury you can give another person. This is episode 14. It starts right now. We return, not with a framework, but with a verdict. Three words, nine letters, the hardest sentence in the English language for a leader to say. I was wrong. Is any of this actually real? Or is it just something you say? Today we find out. There it is, freedom of speech. We're gonna talk about the disappearing act. There's a vanishing trick, but it's more sophisticated actually than anything Houdini ever pulled off. And you don't disappear from the room, you stay right there, and you nod, you make eye contact, your body is present, your face is pointing the right direction, and your mind is completely utterly somewhere else. Have you noticed this? I know I've done this. This is phantom presence. It's the most common form of betrayal happening in American homes right now. And this is not primarily about the phone only. I mean, the phone is the tool, right? The real issue is older. The inability to fully in one place at one time be in that space. The phone industrialized the landscape, and the escape was already there. So the attention economy built a business model around your inability to stay. Your attention is the product. Every notification, every scroll is engineered to interrupt your presence. They're very good at their jobs. And I've spoken a lot about this on many stages around the world for the last decade because I noticed it in myself having this challenge. This is not just a thing for kids, this is adults. Here's what the data says adults average more than four hours of daily phone use. You might be thinking, four hours of daily phone use. I do that before noon. Well, the average person checks their phone 96 times a day. So that's every once every 10 minutes. I think it's even probably crazier than that, as of these uh figures. But the Surgeon General has warned about the social media and attention crisis. Attention spans have measurably shortened since 2000. And none of this is your fault. It's it's not. So don't sit there and feel bad about you. But it is absolutely your problem. So the man who is technically there but completely absent is performing presence, not giving it. And your kids have known since they were four. They feel the difference between a parent who's in the room and a parent who is actually with them. They're storing that in their minds. And they will remember uh what they'll remember is not the vacation. They'll remember the moments when you were there fully with them, looking at them like they're the most important thing in the world and in that room. But oftentimes they're not the most important thing in the room. Presence is the rarest luxury you can give another person in 2026. Don't know if you're having a problem with this, but I know that I have, and I need to make a new commitment, new promise to myself. As I'm uh looking at you and thinking about all the different people listening and watching today, I appreciate so much that you'd give me the presence of this moment and this time together. And equally to understand that I I realize that this is an honor to get to have your ear, your eyes, your thoughts, and and listening to what we have to say here. So presence is the great luxury, and uh that's what you can give to somebody else. Think about the last time someone gave you their full attention, undivided attention. It was just just you. It was remarkable, right? Because it's rare, and you have the power to give that to the people in your house every day. And most days you're giving it to an algorithm instead. And the leader who is fully present is the most magnetic person uh in any room. I mean, I've seen leaders that are not even that great of like quote-unquote paper type leaders where you'd say, Oh, they have all the credentials, the statistics, all the things that make a great leader. But they may not be the most polished, but they are the most present. And we've all been in a meeting with somebody who makes you feel like they're the only you're the only person in the building. And in a meeting with someone who's technically in the chair and completely gone. It's it's like one builds loyalty, the other builds resentment. And this happens in our home as well. So this is the choice, the daily countercultural choice to be actually here. And I welcome you here to this show. Yes, every week we talk about something of the promise, as in how are you fully present, and or how can you commit to something greater? Oftentimes it even means to get rid of things in our lives. And uh, we'll talk more about that as this show goes on. But when when did someone last give you their full and distracted attention? How did it feel? I know how it feels for me. I was on the phone with somebody recently, and I could tell that they weren't really listening. And then I realized I also was, I think I was scrolling while I was on a call. What am I doing that for? It's because am I bored? Is it just that good of a distraction? What's your phone replacing your life that you haven't named? Is your family getting your presence or your performance? And what would your kids honestly say if you asked them, Am I here when I'm home? I remember my wife told me this one time. She said, Honey, when you're home, you're not really here. And that was a hard thing to hear because she was right. I was on my phone. And so making these choices are a big deal. They can change your relationship with your children, change your relationship with your family, and change relationships at work. And so, what's your commitment to being fully present? That's how we start this show today. The attention economy has built this problem for us, but the solution's already happening in an unexpected place, and uh, and it's working. So, we're gonna go into the full story next. I see my man Rand Randall McNeely. We call him Randy, Captain Kindman is here. He says the leader who's present has the most magnetic influence. Yeah, love that. Thank you, man. And you know, it's pretty interesting when you're at dinner, you're at the game, you're on the couch right next to them, you're technically in the room, and everyone around you, the people who matter most, they know you're not there. They've stopped trying to get you back, they've adjusted. Oh, and adjusted is the most dangerous word in a relationship in this instance, because it means they've accepted your absence as normal. You didn't disappear all at once, you left scrolly. You left slowly. That's Freudian, scrolly. You left slowly, check by check, scroll by scroll, until the room learned to function without your full attention. What a bummer. Scrolly, he's leaving me, scrolly. The scrolly family members. He's not scrolly, he's not scrolly, he's he's scrolling all day. Presence, my friend, it's not a location. Uh, you can be home and completely unreachable. And the most sophisticated vanishing act of the modern era doesn't require you to go anywhere. It requires a phone. That's it. You can just stand there and go somewhere else, easy. And the people in your room have adjusted, and that's a shame. And the question is whether it's too late to come back. So I don't think it's too late. I don't think any of us have to freak out that we're we're, you know, we've done it all wrong, but I guess I have a few questions. When's the last time the people in your home had your full under uninterrupted attention? With me, I know I have to actively, proactively think about this in order to make it happen. There are certain rules and sort of standards I have to put in place, barriers upon my own schedule, my time, my my focus and attention in order to make sure that my family knows that they have my uninterrupted full attention. It's getting less and less these days for everybody. And if your family had to describe scrolly, you like that word, Randy. Thank you. I know that's funny, right? I don't even know how you spelled that, scrolly. So if your family had to describe you at dinner, would they say you were there? Oh man, I think I'm guilty. What was your phone? What is your phone taking away from the room that you didn't notice giving it? And uh are the people around you still trying to get your attention or have they stopped? What if presence, not performance, is the leadership act your family needs most right now? Uh let me just tell you a quick story about my family, and I do share this on stage, so if you've heard me before, then you know you get to hear it again. But I tell the story of when my children were little, and I have a photo here for those that are watching. Here's my beautiful little family, and we have four kids in five years. They were young, they were fun. Romney's the one on uh to the right of me, and uh he's moving to Guatemala in the next few months to go serve a mission for our church for two years. And Romney and I, we didn't get very uh along very well for a little bit, and when he was three years old, the older kids were easy. They were they were just you know, we didn't have any challenges. Romney and I had some uh butting of head situations, and the reason I talk about this is because my wife helped me to understand that it was uh important for me to be more fully present, especially with Romney, because I was present with the little with uh Redford and Ella. They were the older kids, and they were just you know, we were just having fun all the time. Romney and I butted heads a little bit, and so my wife said, you know, you should probably take him on a daddy-son date. And we did. We went to McDonald's for some health breakfast, yeah. And then we pulled in, and and and I remember as uh actually as we were driving, I could see a big smile on his face, and he was just like, Dad, in his car seat, he was three years old, he's so excited. I said, Hey buddy, why are you so happy? And he goes, I like it when you're knife, daddy, not mean daddy. And I said, When am I mean daddy? And he goes, just not right now. So I tell this story that we went into McDonald's. I watched him go up the slide and you know, back and forth on the slide, up the stairs, down the slide, up the stairs, down. Finally, I got bored while I was standing there watching him, and I pulled out my phone. And this was exactly the thing my wife had told me about was that when I'm home, I'm not really there. And when I was with the kids, I wasn't fully present. I'm grateful that she helped me to realize that because otherwise uh I would have lost their childhood. That's what this is about. You could lose the time. This you only get one chance at this thing. So I'm really grateful that this happened because it really stung hard to realize that I'm a I'm a distracted dad, and it was mostly just some apps on my phone that were taking me away. Facebook and other, you know, like just just social media apps that I was just enjoying life through that. As I deleted it, which was a hard thing to do because uh it was an easy place to go, things started to change for me. And instead of setting a goal to become a better dad, I'd made the promise to be the kind of dad any kid would want to have. And that's been a leading charge in my life now, a promise. It's hard to have the apps off your phone when you need to post every day. So what do I have to do? I have to reload them every day. It's a total pain. That's a promise. That's the only way I can do it. And maybe you have more control than me, and good for you. I mean, I'm that's impressive. I wish I knew how you did it. If I have those on my phone, I'm on them. So I have to keep them off my phone. What are some changes that need to be made in your life in order to be fully present with your family, the people you love the most? Because as quickly as the phone can uh you know connect you to the world, it can just as easily disconnect you from your family. So stay connected to your family, disconnect from the phone as much as you can, be fully present. Should we jump into the news feed? I think we should. Let's go into the news feed what the schools already know. Here we go. As we go into the news feed, I have some comments here. It looks like Randy's saying, hey, we only get one chance. Yeah, we only get one chance with the kids. I'll tell you. If we don't learn, before we know it, they will be gone. Yeah, they will. Thank you, Randy, for the comment. That's awesome. And uh I apologize for the times and the that I missed these comments as we're going just because I'm reading through some of these scripts and then looking at the question when I can. It looks like Kevin's here. Kevin Martin, how you doing, brother? Thank you for being here, kids. He says, just want time capitalized, he wrote. Time with absent parents. Yeah, they don't care what you're doing, it's just quality time. Remember, Mark 1045. Oh, I like that. Thank you for sharing that. Let's see, what is Mark? What is Mark 1045? Let's jump there. Thanks for sharing. Oh, you know what? This is the uh that's too far. Here we are in the New Testament. Mark 1045. What does it say? Let's see what Kevin wants us to read here. And whosoever of you will be the chiefest shall be servant of all. I love that. Thank you very much. Very good. All right, thanks for sharing. It's nice to get a scripture thrown at me. I love it. So, my friends, what let's talk about what the schools already know. And this is in the news. The school phone ban movement is accelerating, and states and school districts across the United States are banning phones from classrooms. The attention crisis arrived first in the classroom. Kids who couldn't even finish a paragraph, couldn't sit in silence for two minutes, couldn't make eye contact with the person next to them. I don't know if you've noticed that this is happening with the children. It's so bad that in fact I can't even do assemblies anymore. I used to do assemblies for decades, and then I realized, oh, I can't hold their attention, even doing these funny faces and all the stuff that I can do. I couldn't hold them anymore. It's the distraction generation, right? And and so what did they do in the schools? They took the phones away, and the results are not subtle. What happened when the phones left the room? Well, guess test scores went up, anxiety went down, lunch tables got loud with actual conversation. Kids remembered how to talk to each other without a screen between them. One teacher described it, it's like we got them back. Well, yeah, of course. The school figured out, but the house hasn't yet. The ban isn't about the phone, it's about reclaiming the ability to be in a room. Remove the obstacle and attention returns, and the capacity for presence wasn't gone, it was just blocked. So think about your life. Maybe you're not a kid in school watching this today because you're at school. So if you're a parent, if you're a leader, what are the ways that we can implement what the schools have done that has worked? I know when my kids came home and they had us sign this petition that said, we want those phones banned from the school. My kids were so upset that we signed it. We were like, I think it's a great idea, even though we won't be able to get a hold of you. Well, the ban went like this you can't have it during class, and yet you can still function in the real world with it. What they found is that hallways were louder, kids were having more fun, becoming better friends, happier times, right? And so, what would happen if you ran a phone ban at your dinner table? That's a very simple one. I mean, I'm not just talking face down, I'm talking like no phones at all. That's a hard one for some of us. And the school bet that attention could be reclaimed in one, and the dinner table is your classroom. I know that as a father of four children, and then our family, I'll tell you, dinner time is sacred time. This is the best classroom in the world, is to have them all gathered together at dinner on our couch when we sit after dinner and we talk. We have what's called a family home evening. Family home evening is something that's sacred to us as well. And you get to run the experiment. So the school ran the experiment and got the kids back. So I like that story. And then Randy says this. Thank you, Randy, for weighing in. The ban isn't about the phone, it's about reclaiming the ability to be in the room. You like that statement? He loves that statement, he says. Yeah, I like that too. I like the idea of saying, okay, yeah, we're gonna reclaim the room. And Kevin says, as faculty at Tier One Research University, I see the damage of digital addiction daily and the inability to focus for five minutes in both graduate and undergraduate courses. Isn't that interesting? Even at that level, it's that hard. Thank you for sharing. You know, the the point is that it's not just the children, it's the adults, it's all of us. And this is becoming an epidemic, and we're in the middle of it. So run your the experiment in your home in your life. There's a story about someone who ran this exact experiment 2,000 years ago and got something better than test scores. This is really interesting. Parallel here. I think you enjoy this contrast. Faith and hope, right after this. Guess where we're going? With Faith and Hope today, we're gonna be talking about the better thing. If you have your Bible, I'd love for you to turn to Luke chapter 10. No, we lo we read Luke for the nativity and all the Christ's birth and Christmas time and all that, but let's go to Luke 10. Verse uh we're going for 38 to 42. It says, Now it came to pass as they went that he entered into a certain village, he mean Jesus. He entered into a village, a certain village, and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. You probably heard this story. And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word. But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she help me. And Jesus answered and said, You know this story unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her. Whoa! Wait a minute. Okay. You've heard this story. Jesus comes to the village, two sisters, Martha's working, getting everything prepared, hosting, serving, doing everything right. That's necessary. And Mary sits down and what she listens at Jesus's feet. And she listens. So I I'm curious who you would be. I absolutely would be Martha. I mean, when we have friends over, I'm doing dishes. Like I have to be reminded of this story all the time because I always feel the need to be busy and to be hosting. And then Mary teaches us this incredible lesson through Jesus' observance here. Martha, to her enormous credit, eventually loses it. As we read, she said, Lord, don't you see my sister's left me to do all the work? Tell her to help me. And he said, Well, and she's not wrong, right? Everything she's doing really does matter. The work is real and the busyness is faithful. And Jesus said to her, What? Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things, but few things are needed, indeed, only one. Mary's chosen what is better. Oh, and it will not be taken away from her. Few things are needed, indeed, only one. Jesus is not dismissing the work of Martha at all. He's just saying, there's a hierarchy. And right now, with this person in front of you, me, there's only one thing that is the better thing. So that's why I like to say to people when they go, Well, what promise should I make or keep? And I say, Well, don't make everything a promise, because there's certain weight and gravity to each one. So choose your promises, choose your goals, but choose them wisely. Mary Mary chose the thing that she chose. Martha missed it. And not because Martha's bad, because Martha was busy. This is the most counter-cultural leadership act, maybe in all of the Gospels, because it wasn't a miracle, it wasn't a sermon. A woman who sat down faced the most important presence in the room and gave it her full attention. And in a world that rewards Martha, productivity, execution, and doing Mary's choice was radical to just sit and listen. And he sees it, he names it. He doesn't shame her, he says, There is a better thing. So it's available right now with this person in front of you. So the application isn't complex. The person in front of you, your spouse, your kid who wants to show you something, they're the better thing. Not the inbox, not the feed. We have to remind ourselves of this all the time. I know I do. Full presence is the better thing. And unlike the dishes, it'll n it will not keep. So think about it for yourself. I know that I was driving yesterday from Las Vegas. I drove 400 plus miles back from Salt Lake or from Vegas to Salt Lake. And I was thinking about how distracted driving happens so easily. You know, a little text pops up and it's sitting on the vent of your your car, and you look over real quick, and then you look back, and you're going, you know, 70 miles an hour. You look over for a split second, and that distraction can kill somebody or lots of people. Uh gratefully nothing bad happened to us yesterday. I tried to be pretty attentive to the road, but what is the better thing, the more important thing? Is it the serving uh to no end? Or is it sitting down and listening when the master teacher arrives? And so in your life and this day, as you choose to allow for silence, for calm, for peace, for allowing the spirit to fill your life. Perhaps it's by putting away the distraction of the social media or the news or the sports, or anything that just takes you away. Stocks, I mean good things that you could be looking at. And how about listening for the spirit? For the word of the Lord coming into your mind. These are good things. Mary chose what is better. I want to be more like Mary, but I'm so much like Martha, I gotta just slow down. And and this summer, we're gonna jump into this because the summer's on its way. I mean, yeah, it's it's springtime, but summer's coming, it's right around the corner. You're gonna have a long string of opportunities to make that same choice of being busy or being fully present. We're gonna talk father time right after this. Well, let me be honest about something. When I think about summer and about the kids being home all day for months, well my first honest reaction is uh okay, here we go. Like it's not mild panic, it's it's mild panic in its own way, but it's not because I don't love them. It's because the unstructured I need you right now reality of a full summer is a presence test. And I've not always passed it. You know, I've had a hard time when the kids are are are there fully with me and they're not going to school and having that structure, and and having structure in the home during the summer is a really tough thing. So here's the thing about summer nobody says out loud it's the longest invitation to presents you will receive all year. Yeah, you can't manufacture it on a Tuesday in October. The slow afternoon when your kid decides to talk to you now, today, at this moment, it just arrives. And when it does, you're either there or you're not. And so when I think about my kids, they come into my office. This is my office where I record. There's a there's glass windows on the doors, and having them come in here, I can honestly, you know, just say, Hey, I'm on a call or whatever. But what I found is when I turn to them completely and face them and say, Hi, what are we doing? And we start to talk. You have a hug, a laugh. It's usually just a short snippet of time, and it's it's more I think about finding out if I'm willing to be present in that moment. And oftentimes that changes our relationship for the better. It's good stuff. It looks like I've got some cool comments on here too. I've got Randy saying, Love this, Jason. Two choices. Mary chose the better one. Often in life, we're faced with the same question of two choices or more, which is the best. Yeah, and that's that's exactly right, Randy. It's interesting, right? We have that choice every day. Be here now, Kevin Martin says. Kevin, I appreciate you being here. I haven't seen you on here, so thank you. Be here now is a reminder to choose well and focus better. It reveals a truth about your values on a people or task spectrum. Multitasking was proven to be a false premise by DeMarco 50 years ago. Right. The ability to focus is a superpower in a busy world. Exactly. I love that. The the ability to focus is a superpower. Yes, it is. Thank you very much, Kevin. That's awesome. Let's talk about three specific commitments named accountable. First, phone in a drawer during dinner. Have you tried that? Not face down on the table. In the drawer, dinner's 20 minutes. The world will survive. Second, no earbuds on walks with the kids. If you've been on a walk with your kid, you know. I mean, the walk with the earbuds in while my kids are next to me is not a walk with my kids, it's a walk near my kids. So those earbuds come out. And third, one no agenda afternoon a week where I follow their lead. So if they say, uh whatever they say, no, not my edited version. It's like, hey dad, we want to go do this. It's like, okay, your agenda, we're gonna do it. Strengthens the relationship in such a great way. It's so wonderful. There's nothing better than being a dad, nothing better than being at this time of fatherhood where we get to have this precious time with our children. Mine are leaving the nest. It's crazy, it's happening. And yet, I knew it would. I've heard about it my whole, you know, being a father. Everyone's like, oh, enjoy the time. And it's like, yeah, the days are slow, the weeks are slower, but the months start to fly and the years just tick by. So three commitments specific, seasonally bound. The summer bet is the presence is what they carry forward, not the camp I paid for, the afternoon when dad was actually there. So, phone in the drawer, no earbuds, their lead, that's the plan. Of course, getting there requires surviving dinner first. And dinner, well, I have some thoughts about that. Well, let's jump into the funny factory after this. Okay, let's talk about it. The anatomy of the dinner table disappearing act. Act one. Phone face. Have you seen the phone face? Kind of half glazed, slightly tilted. The eyes doing something. Eyes at a dinner table should never do. Reading. Are you listening? They look up. Uh yeah. Yeah. They have no idea what you said. Buying time. Act two, the fake nod. Uh-huh. Yeah, absolutely. Total confidence, zero comprehension. Fooled no one at this table ever. The child who's received the fake nod for years can now do it back to you. You created this, Dad. You taught a class right at the dinner table. Just by acting like, yeah, mm-hmm, yeah, I heard you. Mm-hmm. And you're reading ESPN. Okay. Act three, the wait what? Recovery. The fake nod fails because they don't like that. So you deploy what uh say say that again. I want to make sure I heard you right. That buys you three seconds to construct an answer from context clues and ambient dinner noise, which should be on a resume. And then act four, the just checking quickly that becomes eight minutes. I know this one happens to me all the time. I just need to check one thing, and I grab my phone. And one thing becomes a notification that a text and Instagram are real eight minutes cold food family with well, that continues without you, and which honestly might be an improvement. Act five is the mirroring. You take your phone out, your kid takes their phone out in response. And so then two people are holding phones surrounded by food, technically having dinner. You both go back to the phones. Act six through seven is the end state, a table of people staring at separate rectangles, united only by the Wi-Fi password. I once wrote a parody where it was like, uh, someday we'll find it. My Wi-Fi connection we're sharing with neighbors and friends. This is called quality time. Thanks to the internet and the Wi-Fi. Are you even listening? You repeat the last three words you hear, full eye contact, nodding, functioning entirely on linguistic debris. It is somehow enough. We all do it. Alright. So here's what I want you to know. I was thinking today for some music, it would be interesting to try this. When Elton John recorded this song, and it was written by Bernie Toppin, who is the lyricist. He was writing a actually Bernie was really frustrated with Superstardom. You see, Elton had taken off, his music was going crazy, and it was Bernie's words that the whole world knew. And Bernie sort of said, I kind of want to go back to the farm because now we're going all over the world and doing all these neat things, but I'd rather just kind of be home. And so this song that I'm going to try to play, it's a very hard song for me to play. I I'll do my best, but I added some effects to it. Meaning when Elton would sing this and the way they recorded it, I've added extra reverb, so it's going to be over the top. But I want you to feel like what it feels like in a stadium or recording studio where they add in those extra features. And it's just because they wanted it to be more of a dream-like state. In fact, I just went and saw the Wizard of Oz at the Sphere in Las Vegas. Let me tell you, if you have any chance to go there, I rarely would say to people go to something in Las Vegas because there's so few of things that I would suggest there. But let me tell you, the sphere crushed it. It was so amazing. I loved it. Took some loved ones with me, and it was a great experience. The reason I share that is because it's about the Yellow Brick Road. The song is Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. And um as as as we go into this, I hope you enjoy it. I hope that it sounds right, looks right, etc. If not, this will be a bust. That's okay. We just keep trying around here. Let's see how it goes. Here we go.

unknown 35:11

Checking.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

Yeah. All right, hopefully that came through. Little bit of extra echo for the fans of the stadium. All right, good times. My friends, enjoy the yellow brick road, yeah. But always go back home. Always return to the farm. Always return to the dinner table. We talked dinner table, the mirroring, the eight minutes, all of it traceable to one thing. A brain that never learned how to just be somewhere. The fix isn't complicated. We're gonna wrap up with the fitness minute right after this. The fitness minute is brought to you by Cardio Miracle. If you don't know what this is, I talk about it every single week. It's changed my life, it'll change yours as well. We'll talk about that in just a moment, but let's talk about the most underrated fitness habit most people are ignoring. The walk without the podcast. I mean, hey, I know you don't have time, perhaps, uh, in your life to sit and watch this. And I appreciate that we have this as a podcast that launches after it's been recorded. And for those on the live stream that have been connected with me today, this is amazing. I love having people here. And equally, I know if you're listening on the replay, then you know, welcome. And I do want you to listen. But equally, I want you to try this. Because if you go outside, you move your body, you bring nothing, no podcast, no playlist, no uh no music, no optimization app, just you and your legs and whatever the world sounds like today. Now, here's what your brain does when you stop filling the silence. There's a network of brain regions called the default mode network, and it activates during undirected thought. If you've ever walked, you know this is the case. I mean, this is essentially what happens when you're in the shower. So it's like it activates during undirected thought. When you are not consuming input, when your mind is allowed to simply run. Research shows this network drives creativity, emotional processing, and the kind of problem solving that doesn't happen when you're trying. So your best ideas come from here. You know this. Like I say, if you're showering, you know this is the case. Unless you put music on or a talk, then you're not allowing your brain to do this thing. And it's such a special thing. The thing you've been trying to figure out for three days arrives on a normal Tuesday morning while you're watching a cloud as you walk. The problem is you've been blocking it. Now, we talk faith on this podcast and broadcast because part of faith is having the spirit. And if you want to have the spirit, oftentimes we need to take the earbuds out. Even if you're listening to wonderful works, great books, podcasts, or the good word, it's okay to take it out and just let the spirit talk to you. Let your brain do what it's meant to do without anything blocking it. Every podcast, every playlist on the walk is an interruption of a process your brain desperately wants to run. You think you're optimizing the time. This is what's so interesting about this idea. You think you're optimizing the time, you're actually preventing your most important cognitive function from doing its job. Whoa. I I know that I'm guilty of this too, and that's why I'm talking about it. I I did this the other day as we were preparing for this show, and I decided to go for my five-mile walk. I walk around an entire lake with a 45-pound weight vest on. I look like a DEA agent. Everyone's scared of me. It's a terrifying looking costume. I have a black hat, black glasses, a huge vest. I look like I'm gonna go blow something up. I mean, it's it's a crazy look. I don't know how to get around it. Maybe I need to spray paint it pink. But the thing is, I know when I took my earbuds out that day, I said, I'm gonna try this, but I'm gonna tell them on the podcast. Tell you. And as I'm walking, I'm like, this is really hard. I am so conditioned to be ignored uh to ignore what I'm doing by listening to something else. Now I'm all in. Now I can hear the birds. Now I'm noticing a family playing in the sand over here, and I'm hearing a lady scream at her husband in the porch as I'm walking by. I mean, it was a totally different experience. Most of the time I do the walks, I'm talking on the phone, I'm getting work done. This day I decided not to, and it was fascinating. I got so many cool insights from my brain. And one of the best ways that we can do that is with this great product, Cardiomeric. Now, you may think that because it says cardio, that it's only for your heart. Well, that's just part of what it does for you. Cardiomiracle actually helps your brain in so many ways. It's got lion's mane in it, as well as glutathione and acetanth and other new uh other nutrition and ingredients that's going to completely change the game for your brain health. And the reason I talk about it is because it is something that has uh absolutely helped me so much. The amino acids that go into your body, the L-citrulline and the and L-arginine, when they combine and they create nitric oxide, it dilates your blood vessels, allows for greater blood flow, it gets rid of the inflammation in your brain so that you can have greater cognitive function. And imagine drinking some cardiomerical as you walk out the door without your airpods in, and you start to have the revelation and the intelligence that you're made to have and receive while you walk and move your body. Boredom is not the enemy, boredom is the feature. And the brain that gets bored is the brain that creates, connects, and clears. So try it once before dismissing it. One walk, no input. Notice the discomfort in the first 10 minutes because, you know, the urge to fill the silence. I mean, you're gonna want to stop this silence. And then notice what comes in the next 10 minutes. I was listening to a podcast by my friend Keith, who does this, who is my producer. He had a guy on his show, I don't know when it was, the other day. This person, his name was Josh, he actually was in a like a capsule, like a like one of those big crates. And he decided to run in a crate on like a wooden treadmill, like an old-time treadmill that's not automatic, that you have to run so it moves. You you've probably heard of like in America, they're called the assault machines. They're awful, they're horrible because they're so they they make you push so hard. He was in absolute darkness, this guy. He had no music, he had no metrics, he didn't know how long he'd gone, and his goal was to do 24 hours straight. I can't comprehend this. And yet that's what mankind is capable of when we do when we do and say we're going to do something fascinating. He did it. He was bouncing around inside this crate, trying to keep his balance, and every time he'd fall off, he'd get back on, keep going. He didn't know how much further he had, he didn't know how far he'd gone. I couldn't believe it. This is very cool podcast. It's called Mornings in the Lab with Keith and John, and this is just such a killer show. I hope you'll check it out. Maybe we could link it up on this. But I'm just telling you, the walk without the podcast isn't less productive. It's more. It's just a different kind of production, the kind that doesn't show up in a feed. So as I talk about cardiomerical, and as I always wrap up with this, cardiomerical is the world's best nitric oxide supplement and vitamin D3 supplement. And it goes, it goes into your brain, into the microcapillaries, helps clear it out. So if you know somebody with PTSD issues, extra stress in their life, somebody that's going through something perhaps that's uh, you know, people, people, I mean, I met with a a fellow today, his wife is experiencing some dementia uh situation, which is just so sad. You know, try this out. It very well could help because it goes in and it flushes out the inflammation, it attacks it, and then it floods blood and oxygen to the right places in your brain and in your heart and in your body. Blood flow is where it's at. If you're not working on your blood flow and making sure that you're keeping that healthy, then all of this is for naught. And so I hope that as you go outside and you get some sun, as the summer's just around the corner, spring is warming up. Well, I hope that you realize that the brain is not your brain is not broken, it's not addicted beyond recovery, it's just waiting. And every time you get quiet, let it run. Add some cardiomerical to it, you will have greater clarity, happiness, and health. It's a wonderful thing. Gives you something worth having. And so I hope that you'll check out Cardiom Miracle. This is the this is the logo. If you want to scan this QR code or just go to Cardiomiracle.com, grab some for yourself. 60-day money back guarantee. Nothing to lose. Try it out. It very well could save one of the people that you love the very most. I hope that you'll check that out. And so, as we uh as I begin to wrap up, my friends, we're gonna we're gonna bring it home. So uh before I before I do, it looks like Randy says, I gotta run pick of my daughter. Fantastic show. Thanks, Randy, for being here. You're amazing. My my one for sure consistent guest, the man that keeps the promised, Captain Kind man. What a guy. Love you, brother. My friends, we're gonna wrap up here. Let's bring it home. And uh we're we're gonna we're just gonna say that last week you came home. Tonight's question was whether you'd stay in Phantom Presence. We talked about it. Being in the room while being completely gone is the most sophisticated vanishing trick in modern life. The attention economy industrialized the escape, and it's not your fault, but it's entirely your problem. So the school's figured it out. Phone's out of the classroom, anxiety down. Your classroom's the dinner table, you know that. So, how about 20 minutes? Try it out tonight. Think about Mary. She chose what is better. Martha, still working. I know I'm just like her. The person in front of you is the better thing, not the inbox, not the feed. And the phone in the drawer at dinner, no earbuds on the walk, one no agenda afternoon where the kids lead. Yeah, the disappearing act ends the moment you decide to stay. One dinner, one walk, one afternoon. The rarest gift in 2026 is the person who's actually there. Be that person. I'm Jason Hewlett. Hey, this is the Jason Hewlett Show. I'll see you next Thursday. Until then, keep the promise. God bless.