Experts and The God Gene

[00:00:01] Welcome to Business Finance and Soul. My name is Shaun Enders and I'm a curious entrepreneur.

[00:00:07] I love exploring business, personal finance and consciousness. I'll jump around topics,

[00:00:13] offer my opinions and occasionally interview interesting people. Looking forward to going on this journey. Let's be curious together.

[00:00:38] I want to talk today about experts and the God Gene. Let me break that down.

[00:00:58] Maybe some of you have heard about the God Gene. Maybe you haven't. We're going to explore that a bit.

[00:01:06] It's safe to say that if you go online there is an abundance of experts out there.

[00:01:16] I was having this conversation where I'm not sure if there's just more experts, more people winning at life right now.

[00:01:26] Or if there's just now a business model that supports experts and there's platforms out there to buy into advice.

[00:01:38] Either way I think it's great. I love coaching. I'm a huge fan of individuals that have created a life around helping others.

[00:01:50] This isn't a show to actually bring experts down. This is just a show to highlight the fact that engaging with experts doesn't mean that we outsource our critical thinking.

[00:02:06] Some of that can be from this thing, this science called the God Gene. Do we elevate people? Do we create deities because of our biology?

[00:02:30] This is the interesting part of what I want to cover. I want to talk about online experts, idolization and psychology behind that.

[00:02:43] I want to talk about our critical thinking and outsourcing that versus just following blindly.

[00:02:51] I think we've seen all of this as we've gone through the last few years, the pandemic, everything. Where do you fall within that?

[00:03:00] Do you just follow blindly to what an expert says or are you critically thinking and taking a step toward understanding and educating yourself in a specific area?

[00:03:16] Are you creating your own recipe for success in life? There's experts everywhere. What are we going to do if you go to Facebook?

[00:03:27] You might find experts in the health space. If you are on LinkedIn, you're going to find experts within the business community.

[00:03:39] I myself have engaged and will continue to engage in experts for coaching, mentoring and guidance both through fiscal growth and team growth.

[00:03:53] There is absolutely a place for this in our lives. Things have become amplified because of the platforms.

[00:04:05] I think there's always been people that are winning at life. Even 50, 60, 70 years ago, there's people who really have a great recipe for their life.

[00:04:14] It doesn't mean that it's the perfect recipe for your life, but it definitely means that they are in a space at this specific time that they are out there and they're winning.

[00:04:28] What does that mean? It means that if you like what they've got going on, it's great to start to learn from them.

[00:04:38] It's great to include the way that they live and their methodology into your life.

[00:04:45] But doesn't mean that you just take everything that they do and try to apply it. Not everything works for everyone.

[00:04:52] Not everybody's definition of success is the same. Some people don't want to have kids and so raising a successful family or having family time, that's not success for them.

[00:05:02] Other people don't need to make millions of dollars a year. That to them isn't success. You have to create your own recipe for success.

[00:05:15] But we don't want to blindly follow experts, even if they have the recipe. We don't want to actually just idolize or put people on a pedestal because they seem to have something that we don't.

[00:05:35] We don't know their lives fully. We know what is being told to us that it's worth pulling back the covers and looking a little bit deeper.

[00:05:44] But this idea of the God Gene really fascinated me. This is coming from a look at Dean Hamer's concept of the God Gene.

[00:05:57] That's his book that he wrote. He's an American geneticist and he looks at really the possibility of this God Gene as something that allows us or forces us to really have faith in something bigger.

[00:06:27] Like a higher level consciousness, a connection to spirituality.

[00:06:33] This is called the technical term VMAT2 or the secular monamine transporter 2. That's shortened to VMAT2.

[00:06:49] And so really the interesting part about that is it can be argued that maybe we are biologically, our hardware is actually biologically equipped with genetic code that creates a connection to consciousness and spirituality.

[00:07:10] And I wonder if that bleeds over into the way that we see experts in the world.

[00:07:18] I wonder if sometimes that plays a role in just the way we engage out in our day to day lives.

[00:07:28] And so yeah, for a lot of people there can be this idolization of quote unquote experts.

[00:07:36] And so as we navigate, we want to look at and remain curious at advice that's just flowing and maybe go a little bit deeper.

[00:07:50] Maybe engage our ability to think critically and really not outsource that critical thinking, no matter what the success of those experts seem to appear.

[00:08:03] And having a healthy dose of skepticism for your own personalized decisions.

[00:08:12] This is where I think we squeeze the juice out of the coaches, our engagement with coaches, our engagement with experts, experts in parenting and business and life and money.

[00:08:24] You know, let's engage and find out how we utilize those relationships for a recipe for our own success.

[00:08:35] And even science and medicine.

[00:08:38] I'm not saying that we're going to all of a sudden with a non medical background just jump in and understand medicine, certainly not.

[00:08:50] But we don't want to completely outsource or have our critical thinking hijacked to the point of where we can't even do research on our own.

[00:08:58] We can't come to our own conclusions.

[00:08:59] We've got to be told because this person is an expert.

[00:09:02] So I do feel like we're in that age of abundant information.

[00:09:08] And that's what I wanted to explore today.

[00:09:16] I want to encourage everyone to really look at where you're at in your life, find your own recipe for success and how you live.

[00:09:32] And use the advice of the experts as fuel and knowledge, but not as definitive guides.

[00:09:39] You know, find the tips on crafting kind of a success path for your uniqueness and your circumstances.

[00:09:47] And that's the point of this podcast.

[00:09:49] Not to give you advice and say, hey, this is the way you live.

[00:09:53] You know, do this and you'll be successful.

[00:09:56] How could I know that?

[00:09:58] How could anything that you hear apply?

[00:10:02] You know, it can't.

[00:10:04] But the point of this podcast, not just this episode, but all episodes is to create an opportunity for your curious mind to explore a little bit further for you to say, you know what, I hadn't heard about the God gene.

[00:10:18] Let me take a look at Dean Hamer's concept here.

[00:10:22] See if that resonates with me, whether you understand or not.

[00:10:24] I'm going to dig into that.

[00:10:26] You know, look at where in my life, you know, maybe my critical thinking was hijacked.

[00:10:31] Maybe it's because I was busy.

[00:10:36] Maybe it's because I want to believe that experts are there for me and can relate to every aspect of my life, which is just not true.

[00:10:46] We're multifaceted creatures.

[00:10:48] And at any given time, we're working on something that nobody can help you with everything.

[00:10:56] So today, that's what we're exploring.

[00:11:01] You know, there is an importance of personal agency in the use of expert advice.

[00:11:08] That's it.

[00:11:10] You know, the goal is to help inspire you to filter that advice through your own experiences, your insights and really construct a personalized approach to the way that you want to see success.

[00:11:22] I'm so excited for you to continue to build the life that you deserve to live.

[00:11:29] I would like to know that we are in an abundance of advice and information because of the platforms that we have and the industries that have grown, you know, because of the industry of coaching and self-help.

[00:11:48] And all of that is great.

[00:11:50] But, you know, it doesn't... people are flawed.

[00:11:54] You know, there was recent news from Andrew Huberman that, you know, his personal life is being displayed out there.

[00:12:06] And yeah, it turns out that guy's got his own issues in relationships.

[00:12:13] Yeah, I mean, he's human.

[00:12:16] He's a neuroscientist at Stanford that understands brains.

[00:12:20] That doesn't mean he understands everybody else's brain, right?

[00:12:24] In terms of reaction and communication and relationships.

[00:12:29] It doesn't mean he navigates the world perfectly.

[00:12:32] It just means that he's an expert in one area.

[00:12:35] So we don't blindly follow this person to the edge of, you know, reality.

[00:12:42] Same thing with Jay Shetty.

[00:12:44] There's questions about where, you know, his background.

[00:12:48] And again, he's got so much great information.

[00:12:53] He's authored fantastic books and, you know, I don't know what's real or what's not.

[00:12:59] But the point is that I've listened to these individuals and I've never needed to elevate them to a point of where they just, you know, felt like, again, deities to me.

[00:13:12] It's just that I grabbed information and then used it for my own personal recipe.

[00:13:17] So that's what I encourage in life is just to have a diverse and open mindset and understand that everybody's flawed, experts are flawed.

[00:13:26] And they're not there for you to celebrate every minute of their life.

[00:13:30] They don't have it right all the time.

[00:13:32] But they are there for you to gain the information and to recognize when you're getting caught up.

[00:13:39] And maybe it's not a flaw on why you're getting caught up.

[00:13:43] Maybe, maybe it is in your hardwired to actually celebrate people to the, to an extent that's a little excessive.

[00:13:52] Maybe that's there.

[00:13:53] I don't know.

[00:13:54] But until next time, please stay curious, keep consuming great information and building that life of your dream.

[00:14:02] And I hope you have a wonderful week.