What if the key to flourishing in an AI-powered future isn’t in your tech stack but in your nervous system, your relationships, and the music you forgot you needed? In this episode of Life Connected, Fiona sits down with Grammy-nominated producer, filmmaker, best-selling author, and founder of Amplified, Frank Fitzpatrick a rare blend of creative visionary and deeply grounded human being. Over the past four decades, Frank has worked with icons from Stevie Wonder to the Dalai Lama, scored more than 100 films, and reached over a billion people with his work. But this conversation goes beyond accolades. It’s a wide-ranging, honest, and deeply human exploration of what it means to live with purpose, stay connected, and grow whole in a world that often pulls us apart.
Episode Notes
Together, Frank and Fiona explore:
– How music, neuroscience, and ancient wisdom converge to unlock human potential
– Why we confuse identity with performance and what it costs us
– The difference between peak performance and living a fully human life
– What Frank learned from burnout, breakdowns, and building himself back up
– The critical role of energy, movement, and emotional rhythm in daily life
– Why community is more powerful than we realize and more essential than ever
– The surprising truth about purpose (hint: it’s not what you do it’s who you are while doing it)
– How to reframe technology as a tool for humanity, not a substitute for it
– The overlooked magic of music — not as entertainment, but as medicine, memory, and emotional architecture
This episode is about thriving. Not by doing more, but by remembering who you are, how you connect, and what it means to be fully alive.
To learn more about Frank go to:
🔗 Frank’s work and writing: www.frankfitzpatrick.com
📖 Amplified: Unleash Your Potential Through the Power of Music
🎵 Explore Amplified and upcoming work on the future of music, AI, and human flourishing
For more from Fiona: www.fionamurden.com
For Fiona's substack go to: https://substack.com/@fionamurden
Frank Fitzpatrick is a Grammy-nominated music producer, best-selling author, filmmaker, and founder of Amplified and EarthTones. He is a global leader in using music and neuroscience to transform well-being, performance, and human connection across industries. Frank’s mission is simple but profound: help humanity flourish and co-create a ripple effect for good.
Fiona
Today's guest is Frank Fitzpatrick, Grammy nominated multi platinum music producer, filmmaker, Best Selling Author and founder, and I would actually add in there, incredibly nice guy as well. Frank's mission is to help humanity flourish and CO create a massive ripple effect for good, and he's walked that mission across decades, producing music over 100 feature films, reaching audiences of more than a billion people worldwide, and working with everyone from Stevie Wonder and the Dalai Lama to global health initiatives and major Hollywood Studios. He's also the founder of amplify, a platform that uses music and neuroscience to support wellbeing and human potential in an age of increasing disconnection. Frank, it's such a pleasure to have you here on life connected. Welcome.
Frank Fitzpatrick
It's great to be here. Thank you very much, Fiona, and I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Fiona
There's so much to talk about. One thing that really stood out for me when I listened to you was was your background, and I think you know, it's we could tell the story over the whole course of this podcast, but there are huge number of things that I'd love to delve into. But can you give people a taste of where you came from and how that has influenced your part?
Frank Fitzpatrick
Yeah, well, I often say, and it's true that I wouldn't, you know I'm from Detroit, and not a lot of people know about what Detroit was like in the 60s and 70s, but I grew up in Detroit in the 60s and 70s, and in the early 70s, or when I was about 1112, years old, Detroit went into pretty heavy turmoil that it's, we're talking 50 years ago. So it's and you know, that city basically went into collapse. It used to be the Silicon Valley of America, and the, you know, the poster child of the Industrial Revolution, the birthplace of Motown Records. And you know, just the only one of the few places in the world where the middle class was on top. And you could, you know, own a home and a car and a boat and a cottage and have a very fulfilling life, just, you know, being a person working hard, you know, and raising a family, and that kind of all collapsed. And I was a highly sensitive, creative kid, and, you know, schools shut down, or in a public school system, or, you know, the local stores were boarded up and, and, you know, I found my, you know, it was chaos. It was Viet time in the Vietnam War. So, you know, kind of what was going on in the country. And so I found myself, literally, you know, I'm laying in the dark and living room floor with the only pair of family headphones on, and about to lose my mind. And and then I hear Marvin Gaye come on with his new song. What's going on? And if I don't know if you know that song, but if you don't, it's worth hearing. It's Marvin Gaye step into the social impact arena and, and it was the first time I heard somebody speak to me in that time that made sense. And I realized how powerful a tool music was, and I had people who are not much older than me, around my age, who are choosing heroin as a course of action. And so I literally say that I wouldn't be standing here today if I hadn't made that choice at that time. And I, you know, it's an early age that I set myself on a course of what my mission was, and why I was in the world, or what I was going to committed to do, and that was really to help people find, you know, find calm in the midst of chaos, which I had somehow managed to do, and to thrive in the face of challenge. And at that time, because music was the modality that that I had in my grasp. And first, you know, did that for me. You know, my goal is to bring that to the world in a way that people could use it for to flourish, for their well being, for more joy, for more resilience and and that be. That was the beginning of the course it's still going. You know, the we say one purpose, you know, which I just. Described in many missions. I keep going out on different missions, and with the health, I keep adding more and more stacks to the to the tool bag, or more to, you know, then remedies to the doctor bag, or whatever you want to call it. So that's there's other stories along the way, but I'll pause, pause for a minute and leave it for you there.
Fiona
I think it's fascinating, and I think it means so much for people to hear that and to understand that things are not given on a plate, and people do have to strive and to struggle and to there's a lot behind the amazing introduction as well. You know, it's not just a case of some people, particularly living in LA, I've found they have been very lucky and blessed in that their parents have been in, for example, the film industry or the music industry, and it almost gets handed down to them. But that certainly wasn't the case. And what you're describing about those many different missions is one of the things that fascinates me is the way in which you're taking interdisciplinary areas and not just from one perspective. So let's take, for example, something like neuroscience, you delve into it very deeply. You seek to understand it. You work with world leading experts, and then you make it pragmatic. And I think that the whole spectrum, which we're missing full stop in a lot of things that we do. And actually my my previous guest who's a professor at University of California. He also does that within her field, which I think is just so desperately needed and not done enough. But on top of that, you do it across all these different fields. So neuroscience is one thing, music is another thing, longevity is another thing we've got, AI and technology well being you, but you know, the core thing that you're driving for is to bring this to people, right? And you also have many different vehicles by which that can come to people. So whether that's the platform or whether that's music or whether that's film. Can you talk a little bit more about that and how all of these things in real life actually are often very disjointed and you're seeking to pull them together
Frank Fitzpatrick
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I get asked this all the time, because people have a hard time connecting the dots of the multi hyphenate pillars I dance between to me, they're all the same because they're all basically helping using tools to help people tap into their self knowing and the potential that's within that self, knowing and and to recognizing that and then bring it forth in a way that they can express it in the world, so that, you know, as chaos continues to increase, and that we will see more and more of that, you know, that they can find calm and coherence and even in the midst of that and so whatever. And then, you know, and that they can embrace challenges because challenges are the stepping stones of which we grow. I don't avoid challenge. I'm sure there's a part of I do, but I pursue challenges because, you know, and I pursue ones that'll kick my butt because, you know, I just came from running 100 and something coaches and then 100 degree weather in Texas, outside of Austin, through a Spartan Race. You know, it's like, I don't need to go do this, but I know that helping those people through gets them to doing something they realize they'd never realized they could ever accomplish, and then that impacts the ripple effect on the rest of their life, you know, and so, so it's, it's these different areas, you know, at first it was more, you know, I needed these areas for myself. There's nothing that I pursued. Yes, I pursued it all towards my purpose and my mission and why my soul's in my body. I'm pretty clear with that, but it was, but I also had the it's because I use them for myself. You know, I'm an HSP. I'm highly sensitive. I push really hard. I work in very competitive environments and and try to break down paradigms that people don't want to have broken down. So there's a lot, you know, facing up against a lot of resistance. And so for me, it's, it's, I needed these tools. I mean, I, you know, learned I learned yoga because I had scoliosis and I wanted to straighten my spine without surgery. So I learned yoga. And then when I learned yoga, I learned about, you know, ancient wisdom and meditation and pranayama and breath practices and Vedic, you know, Ayurveda. I just go deep into each path because. I, I whatever I can do to have myself get through these situations, you know, whether it's Hollywood and working three nights, five nights without sleep, and doing six months of work and six weeks, you know, and with not a very receptive environment or healthy, you know, all of these things, or whether it's running around the world and, you know, doing stuff for the nonprofit or for, you know, working with governments, or whatever the case may be, it's, you know, I have to be able to embody this soul with a body that can survive, you know, and and that can thrive, you know, as best as I can. So all of the work, you know, whether it became an emotional intelligence to because I had a nervous breakdown, you know, yoga, because I had a, you know, scoliosis, and I didn't want to be in pain every day, or have, you know, surgery, or whether it became, you know, all of these, a lot of these things, and then eventually peak performance, because even with all the wellness practices, and I, you know, I still burned out because I was doing so much. So then I had to learn how the next person, you know, how the person that's at the top does it, and functional medicine, because I had to rebuild my adrenal system, you know, so, but to me, it all comes back to how, how can I, you know, take this, who I am, my identity, at a deepest level, and fully embody it, and then do the work that I'm that it's, you know, it's embodied why I'm here to help people have these goals, and what are the tool sets that are available on the planet to make that happen? So, you know, music became, as I said, my first one, because it was the one that pulled, you know, was life or death for me, but it was, but then, you know, I had to all each, each time I scaled up or tried to scale, I had to learn all of these other pieces, you know. And each time I got knocked down, I had to, I learned even more so, so film became, I say, you know, I tell people I'm an impact guy, and I chose, you know, impact entertainment, whether it be music, conscious music, working with conscious artists, planning those or, you know, film, or, you know, that was my way to what I say, you know, spoon feed consciousness, you know, at scale, right? So you get to go to lots of people to hire, you know, and then, and then working with leaders, you know, I know that I can, you know, you know, if I impact, you know, the performance and self awareness and fulfillment of 100 leaders that I'm going to create a ripple effect to, again, another million or millions of people. So leadership, leaders are another pathway, and, you know, guiding, you know, doing that, and then, and then health is, you know, I mean, if we, as you saw, I did a, I think it was the entrepreneur survival kit or something. Was the talk that you came here. So, you know, I entered, it was about energy, right? So, you know, you learn that if you don't have the energy, and we're not really taught around, how to optimize this human system. We're taught about all these things that we can add to it, but we're not really taught about how to really use what's there. And we know that if we don't have energy, time doesn't really matter. You know, energy is much more important than time has much more value. If you have good energy, time is gets condensed and expanded, so you can get so much more done, and let's so much more fulfilled, and you can show up, whether it be your work, whether it be your relationships, whether it be, you know, just physically, you know, getting through the day or running A Spartan Race, whatever, whatever thrills you anyways, but that's to me. It's all one, and I don't really separate them. I just separate them as different tools in the tool bag to achieve, help people tap into that their potential. It's you know, whether it be, you know, I'm a yogi of 35 years too. So it's, you know, the spiritual side is very important to me. I don't try to sell it or push it on to anybody. It's, but it's, it's, again, it's, they're just it to me, it's, it's all connected. You know, there is so it's, and anybody I speak to, it's disconnected. Many people I speak to, it's disconnected until they learn how to integrate it, you know. And the integration and the stacking of the understandings and the modalities is, is ultimately what's really on the ground, really effective, you know.
Fiona
And obviously I agree with the connection, you know, my framework life connected. But even in that, it's very difficult sometimes to explain, because I say that it has three parts, connection to self, connection to others, and connection to the world. But they're not static, they're dynamic, and they're interconnected, and they're interconnected with other interconnections. And it becomes very difficult. Will sometimes try and explain that in a way that enables you to convey the importance and gravitas of it without overwhelming people with the amount of information you're giving them, which I think is where music and film are incredible because they're mediums with which you can do that, because you're only thinking one lyric at one time. For example, there's one storyline threaded through a documentary or through a film. And so what I think you personally have are an example of someone who's exceptional. And before we spoke on the recording, you said, you know, people can feel overwhelmed by that peak performing space, or that peak performance, and even leaders, and I've seen that myself working with leaders, if you say peak performance, they think that it means you have to do everything perfectly, and you have to have 100% energy, if we're talking in energy terms all the time, and that's not naive. It's because we haven't been taught. And you, you were saying how one of the things that you're you're interested in, passionate about, is, what can we learn from those peak performers. So rather than saying there's an expectation that everyone performs at a peak level, it's saying, what are the learnings that we can bring to an everyday situation? Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Frank Fitzpatrick
Yeah, absolutely. And peak performance is a little bit of a odd word, because we never are at our peak. It's a process. So we're so I just, you know, that's like having to be perfect at a you know, as a musician, perfect as a speaker. There is no, I mean, we're always on our way to, you know, to act through. We're always working in excellence on our way to being better. There is no perfect. There is no perfect human being, and I won't be the first so I'm not striving to be but I'm striving to be the best that I can be with the with what I have and what I've been given and to and to help other people be the best of what they can be in a way that it gets them to the desires and the fulfillment that they that they want, you know. So everybody has a different constitution, a different system, a different reason they're going there. But you know, if we, you know, break it down into, you know, kind of three simple pillars, you know. And like the way that I like to do and they do with hero, you know, heroic, the process the company I work with, and just came from in Austin, with the races, is the, you know, and everybody would like to have more purposeful engagement with their work. Some people have that down. Some people don't you know, but typically people you know, so they would the more you can increase that better. Most people would like to have you talk a lot about connections. So they would like to feel more connected seen in their relationships, whether that's their intimate partner or their children or their community, their work cohorts. So when we look at love and connection, you know, you know, everybody's there is a space that ever that we can all increase, you know. And there is more within us to do that. And energy being the third pillar health, you know, is, is essential to do any of it. So, you know, that's so we get a lot of these, you know, a lot of the peak performance models come out of sports and, you know, because that's where we hear about them. And I like to look at it as human potential. And everybody's potential is can be exercised, and so they they can increase where, what get closer to what they want to have in their life in the short time that they're here on the planet. You know? So everybody has untapped potential, no matter how far up we are to scale. I mean, I have lots of untapped potential, and I'm Hope I keep tapping into it and discovering it, and anybody who helps me do that, I'm grateful for. It's and and so all of us do, no matter what level of leadership we're at, and all of us feel more fulfilled when we're in when we're working inside of that. And then so studying, looking, studying, working in, you know, people say, you know, you're well, you're in longevity, while you're in longevity, and like, well, you know, I'm in health. Longevity keeps me 10 years ahead of medicine in terms of knowing, like, understanding the physio biology and what we can do. I'm not trying to help people live to forever. I don't want to live forever, but I want, you know, to help people and myself live is vitally you. And energetically and alive while I'm alive like it's healthy. So that's, you know, if we have a healthier 20 years, instead of a last 20 years or 30 years with less capability, it's harder to get the potential but back as much, right? So, so I so those fields I learned from. I learned I dove in very because I was already pretty advanced in my studies of health and wellness and and pretty type A and doing a lot of things. But it's then I burned out, you know. And when I burned out, you know, I go, Okay, there's more for me to learn here. You know, I had to, so I had to learn functional medicine to rebuild my adrenal system. And so I get out of bed after that took about a year, and it's like, and I I had to, you know, I wanted to know how it is that people tap into that potential in a way that they can thrive and take on challenges across their work, across their family, across their you know, their health and and and keep going at such a level. And there are people who you know, manage to do that you know, and manage to keep some dynamic. There's never a real balance, balance between and there's other people who don't at all like, you know, they grab onto one area. So I, you know, so I looked at all the human potential and studied all the human potential programs, or, you know, you can call them peak performance. But that's not really what I was going for. It was just, you know, how do I as an individual, show up as fully as possible. How can I show up more fully and for for the duration of the time I'm here on the on this planet? So, so what I learned from those things, you know, help people who've never exercised. Help people you know, who I mean. They help everybody. It gives me tools, more tools in my tool bag, to help people who just want to, basically, you know, close the gap between where they are at a certain point in their life and where they aspire to be, you know, and it just gives a lot more resource. And it's, I explained it a little bit like technology looking at NASA, like, like, what do we, you know, why do we spend all this money to fly a rocket to the moon? Well, that it's mainly the best benefits are what we learn to apply to other areas of society and technology and different applications, not so much getting to the moon. So, so that's the way I kind of try to explain the longevity field and the peak performance field. It's just, I go there to learn, you know, I go there to, you know, you know, to fuel myself so I can show up more fully. But, and then, then I go to learn ways to help people do the same. You know,
Fiona
It's something I'm massively passionate about, which is actually why I wrote a book in the first place. Because I was like, Well, why am I just working with these people at the top of their fields? I want everyone to have this knowledge. But again, you've gone much, much broader and much deeper than than I have. But one thing that I'm thinking you mentioned at the beginning of what you were just saying is that people want to have more sense of engagement, meaning, purpose to their work. And that's something that I've found to be absolutely critical. It's can be the difference between people feeling a sense of energy or not. So for example, when you look at healthcare professionals, when they've lost that reason, that connection to the reason of why they're there because of bureaucracy and all those other things, they lose the will to do it, and they are more likely to burn up. But with healthcare, there's a very clear intention for most people that go into it. They want to help people live healthier. But I do find, and I've just been curious about about your experience with this, that a lot of people don't know what matters to them, and they don't know what that sense of purpose and meaning is, or how to find it. And I know part of our job is providing the tools for that. But have you seen that? That people will say, but I don't actually know what I want to do, I don't know what matters to me, or I don't know what my purpose is. Yes,
Frank Fitzpatrick
I so there's the two answers that would come out of that, you know. One is, you know, you see people who teach about, you know, you know, I was at Singularity University with Peter Diamandis and, you know, curds while they teach. And everything's built around having this massive, transformational purpose, right? How you're going to impact a billion people? But it's, but then you're, if you really observe people in the world, there's people who don't see. To have these lofty goals, but they seem to have a presence and an energy and an ability to connect and to feel connected and but so they're living purposely, you know? So purpose has kind of a we always think of purpose, or we don't always, but we're teaching purpose, especially in business, is like an end goal, like our purpose is to get to the moon, but it that's kind of like, you know, purpose is, contributes to, on an ongoing basis, to a sense of intention, presence. How can I be if you just went through your life and you didn't have, like, I'm going to be the doctor who cures diabetes. You think it, but you're, you're like, I'm going to be my purpose is to be present and intentional in every connection that I have and that, and you just committed to that. Then that, and then you would look, start to look at, okay, how can I be better at that? What are the tools that going to improve that process? What are the tools that, you know, I do fine when I'm tired, you know, not tired, but then I slip into shadow and I'm tired, and I say things I don't want to say. I break the you know, we're human, you know, so we forget. It's the human condition. But how do we bounce back quicker? How do we connections? All about reparation. Connection, showing up, showing up, vulnerable. There's no perfection. You especially, especially tested in connection. This is the, you know, if you think you're perfect, right? So it's, I think that, you know, I just want to make this point to reinforce people of purposeful living and you know, and also purpose might be to raise your daughter to be a good human being, you know. So I think that there's like this emphasis now, especially in a lot of the leadership training, and, you know, in the technology field, and kind of, what's come out of it's like, oh, you Well, if you don't know. And then there's other people get so obsessed with they think they know, and they're so obsessed with that that they don't even know who they are in the process, right? So we always, you know, like, one of the ways to think about it, I can't remember who actually wrote this, but it was, you know, it's not what you want to become. It's like, Who do you want to be in your becoming and just be that? You know connected to that so, and then in terms of purpose. I mean, we do, whether you're looking at Grand purpose or, you know, it's like, or, you know, mindfulness around being living purposefully, you know, intentionally. We do know from, you know, this is things we do know from the longevity science, and we do know from the full, you know, positive psychology we do, we are pretty clear on the stacks of things to do that have you be fulfilled and live a longer, healthier life. And purpose is one of them, you know. And like I said, purpose could be to take care of the garden so you can feed the children.
Fiona
I've got a big smile on that one, because I actually say that in my first book, I say, you know, purpose doesn't have to be being with the Urban organization, or can be to have a beautiful garden. And so I love the way you describe all that, and it really brings it to life. And hopefully people can, you know that resonates, I'm sure it will. And I think a classic one, which I know you'll have heard, is Victor Frankel, who was a psychiatrist, who was in in outfits, and he said he noticed it was the people with more sense of purpose who survived. And that sense of purpose can be often to see a loved one, which in that circumstance is quite profound. But I think we can forget that. And I obviously I like the fact that you talked about connection there, because we know how powerful connection is. Connection for other people, meaningful connection is to living a longer life and to living a more fulfilled life. But we forget, because I think the way our world works means that we it can get lost in the cracks of busyness and productivity and all those other things and so actually, on that point, given where the world is heading, and you said earlier that there's a sense of more, there will be more and more chaos. And of course there will, because we've got so much more data and information, if nothing else is coming at us. Right? You yourself again, another area. Work in is AI or looking at the impact of technology on these things, and I would love to hear a little bit more about amplified and also what your thinking is about how we can remain human centered as we move into a world that is relying more and more on technology in terms of making decisions, creativity, productivity, all of those different things,
Frank Fitzpatrick
right? Well, I think so, if we back up into purpose a little bit, a lot of the reasons people lose their connection in work or some other role as a parent, or whatever, they lose their kind of sense of what motivated them as a purpose in the beginning pulled them into it is because they did it from an external and extrinsic motivator, right? And they didn't do it. It wasn't really so they didn't actually know who they were be who they were in that process, right? So when something went wrong with the extrinsic part, they lost a sense of their own identity, right? And so I think that this is, you know, in terms of helping people, you know, one of the key things, and you do this in your work and really well, and it's like the first level of connection is like to like whatever you want, to frame it in whatever you know metaphors, or whatever they might be. But today, it's like, you know, who's you know, who's in this body? What's this? Who's the soul or the genius or the seed that's you know, because Dharma in Sanskrit means, is our purpose in the world, but the root of dharma is DRI, D, H, R, I and Dre, you know, one of the oldest languages, means, what remains when we remove everything. Who we are is what remains when we remove everything. When we're not a father, when we're not the, you know, the head of a company when we're not the, you know, the best performing that you know, athlete or musician when we're not and you know best selling what? So you know when, when we're not serving people, because in the medical system, because there's medical systems broken, then it's like, it's, it's, it's not the tragedy in the in the human tragedy. And the human side of it is not the loss of what's breaking down extrinsically. It's the loss of what's breaking down intrinsically our self identity. You know, I don't want to be a dystopian view, but I mean, one of the things that we're going to see. You know, in areas like the creative field, especially, we're going to see hundreds of millions of people lose their identity. It's not that they lose their job. I mean, that's tragic. And if they can't make a living at what they're used to doing, they have to learn to do something else to make a living. But that happens in the world, and many people have done that across hundreds and 1000s of years, but the but it's they'll lose if their if their identity is attached to, like, I'm a musician, no, you're an amazing soul full of potential inside of this Body, who just happens to play music or create music or work in a music business, take that and apply it to health or apply it to technology. You're not, you know, you're an engineer? Well, no, you're you're actually somebody who's doing engineering, but who's doing the engineering. So I think that that's the deeper question that that is really important for us to tune into now and to get deep into because if, as AI, takes over roles, as long as we're not personally identified with who we are as a role, you know the Midwestern productivity syndrome that I grew up in. It's like, you know, you're as good as how much you produce and you're and how high are you up you are on the production change, you know, determines, you know, how valuable you are. So if we can or how much we get paid for, it determines, you know, you're worth, you know. So we can uncouple those, which is really hard to do, because it's, you know, we didn't do the coupling, but that is a coupling that we can undo where we get to that's what, basically, you know, if you look at spiritual growth and evolution, it's uncoupling the extrinsic and the intrinsic, and in a way that you can be whole find calm In the midst of chaos as things collapse around you, you still know that at your essence, who you are hasn't changed and will be okay. You know you just have to adapt to these extrinsic environments. Shifts, right? So I don't know that that doesn't really answer your question. Question directly, but I think, you know, and bridging also to what we talked about, you know, into the actual protocols, the practices like building your energy, building your capacity. I mean, you're only going to be able to do that if you've taken the time and attention to build up your energetic capacity. Because, I mean, as you know, and we're learning more in psychology, you know, 90% of psychology is physiology. And so if you can't get your if your physiology is you're not working and and having it so that it's responsive and you can use it to its fullest potential, or at least half of its potential, then you're, you're, you're going to be owned by the world. You know, the data information, you lose your sense of agency. You you so. And I'll say I'm really long answers, I apologize but, but the the AI is a great tool, until you give your agency away to it, until you give your identity away to it, until you let it define you when it's trying to do it all the time. It's the role you know. So, so I think that you know, really tapping into that physiology, that intersection of mind, body, spirit. So we can actually be aware and mindful of our what's going on in our minds and what's trying to get into our minds and what's taking our minds away, and not get and not be afraid to embrace challenge, because it's going to be challenging and and they're going to take advantage of our lazy desire for convenience and comfort. So if, if there's something that does everything for you, we know very well that you'll be very unhappy at some point because and that if, if something goes awry, you'll be in a tragic state, because you won't have the capacity that agency to figure it out. So it's not about whether you create a make a can keep up with the creative commodity space. The process of being creative is what makes you human, and adapting to change is what creativity is for, you know? So I, you know, I think we have a great opportunity, but we're going to have, you know, we're going to need a lot of people like you who understand, help people with their connection, to make sure that they don't lose the essence of who they are, and live purposely from there, right? And have the energy to do so.
Fiona
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Fiona
Again. I love the way you put all of that. I would wholeheartedly agree, passionately agree. And the thing I think we're missing, and I bet you'll agree with me on this, is we're not taught how to do this. People have to be curious themselves, explore, find. I mean, you, you know yourself, you're you're very driven to you've got a very active curiosity that I believe drivesright and fuels yourenergy in many ways, and you're very aware of that as well, and optimize your use of that. I personally am obsessively interested in my subject matter and beyond. But not everyone is, and what I think there worries me is, how do we, how do we get this message to people in a way that it doesn't just sound like a whole lot of hard work, because, you know, trying to reconnect with myself every day sounds like a lot of work, and trying to understand what the pushes and pulls up also might sound like a lot of work. Then there's two elements to that. How do we get the messages to people so they understand the importance of it, and how do we help them understand that actually, rather than work, it's, it's, it's growth, it's, it's something that fuels us rather than actually makes us feel like, well, words
Frank Fitzpatrick
are words. Words are very powerful. So, you know, we couple work with kind of a evil necessity, right? So, you know, there's an advantage, I guess, in certain fields of you know, where we where we talk more about human potential and be performanceless, whether it's musical performance or or sports, you know, but the. The work is play. We go to play, we learn to play. We learn to play the best we can play. And it's it takes a lot of work to learn to play. Well, I like that. Yeah. So if you just, if you want to play and you want to have more fun, it's a lot more fun to go out on the tennis court when you know how to hold the racket and hit a ball over the net and keep it between the lines at least a few times than it is to just go flail around, right? And life's, you know, very much the same. You know, when you you know it's, it's just getting over that psychological hurdle of you know, it's just like with energy, for example, people go, I'm tired, I don't feel like moving. Well, your body's not designed that way. When you're tired and you stop moving, then, you know, unless, of course, you know, I don't want to make exceptions, because sometimes we just need rest. But it's then you're telling your whole physiological, biological structure to turn off. You know that it's not needed, because it's used to being for millions of years, needed all the time. You know you walk 1012, miles a day. You have to lift this, you have to carry that. You have to dance. You know, to have fun, you have to, you know, play rhythms. You do. You know you do all this thing. You know you run, you sit, you do and and so you know the mitochondria in our cells go, get activated by movement and they you know the motor skills and the energy skills are connected to many parts of our brain, but the primary one is also connected to emotions. So if you want to shift your emotions, one of the quickest ways to do it is through movement. So it's like this whole idea we have, you know, don't, you know, don't wait till you have the energy to move. Move, because you want to have energy, right? So it's, you know, it's, it's, so we've kind of been taught a little bit in reverse, and we've kind of coupled this, you know, so, so it's, and it doesn't have to be hard. Hard's An attitude, you know? I mean, our hard can be fun, you know. And, you know, there's, it's, it's, I think anybody who's had some life experience and they remember the most. They think back on some of the most rewarding times, or definitely, probably their most influential teachers. That's the ones that push them a little bit, you know, push them into a level of growth, and they remember like they didn't want to do it, but somebody saw within them. What they didn't see in themselves is that they had the capacity to do it. And, you know, we, we, we don't see it in ourselves on our own. It's important to have someone to help you. I mean, the best performers in the world have multiple coaches. You know, they don't just go out and do it, you know, because they have the same doubts too, and they have the same fears too, and they have the same they don't want to, you know, they don't want to go practice for four hours, eight hours, you know, they want to sit at home.
Fiona
It's a great example of another false message that we've been given. Is the hero's journey, as it were, there's just one person, and that one person has reached their peak performance, but there's always a team of people around that. One person or so I'm conscious of your time, and I'm there's lots. I mean, there's so much, so much that we could explore. And I love talking to you, but I'm thinking, if, if. Now, this is a big question. So, you know, take, take your time to think about it, if you need to. But if you could pass one message on to the next generation, what would it be?
Frank Fitzpatrick
It would be the best technology in the world is the is the system you're already living inside of. And if you can do all you can to tap into the potential of that system and to learn about it and to learn about what makes it work and what's driving it, then you will be able to do anything you want in an ever changing world. So I think that's and I just, and I personally see that more and more it's, you know, I when I looked at the goals of exponential technologies, or I look at the goals of, you know, a lot of these different fields, it's like, you know, we can give people all these technologies, these, you know, drugs, these medicines, all these things, but all we're trying to, the key is all to try to get them back to, like, the potential that's already within them, you know, and and part of, you know, I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist, but you know, part of it is that they don't want you to know that, because then you won't buy all these things. Right, but the but the truth is that, and even when we look at the longevity field, all we've been doing is, you know, we study Blue Zones, where people did all these things naturally, not they didn't have to take supplements and use technology, because they all the things that we're trying to recreate, what they what they what? They just didn't in a natural environment. They did naturally. They had good relationships. They had a sense of purpose in their life. They had, you know, they lived in a healthy environment. They ate well, they actually moved a lot. They sang and danced together. You know, they bonded. You know, it's, it's, they took care of one another. So it's, it's, these are the things that you know, when you reach the end of your life, if you want to look back and have a fulfilled life, these are, these have been proven for, you know, you know, hundreds of 1000s of years. So it's, it's so, I think that's, you know, I'm elaborating on the one message. And I know we're, I've been talking a lot, so the times gone away. But if you also wanted to touch upon music a moment, because that's one of the pieces that I try to help people have a different relationship, because we've coupled a pretty misaligned relationship for tapping into our human potential with it. What's possible, you know, part of the grand mission. The grand purpose is, you know, to change. You know, I feel very much a calling. I don't want to say an obligation, but, yeah, calling to to transform the the way humanity relates and understands music. So I've been on that mission to a number of ways. It's, I do it, you know, part of my original purpose, but also in terms of, you know, for the next generations, and with music, because it's one of the most amazing tool sets that we don't teach. And, you know, I say to somebody, you know, you could call me, you know, the music doctor. You could come to me with any situation in your life, or anything you're trying to grow, grow in your life, and whether it's your relationship with your child or your partner, or whether it's your you know, performance in sports, or whether it's you know, your capacity to focus when there's a lot of distraction, whatever you know, or just to have more joy and bonding, to be more physically fit, any of these things You know, we can do we can up res that upgrade that area of your life by at least 10% easily, if we integrate music in a functional and purposeful way. And this is what we don't teach, because we teach, for the last you know, we've developed this coupling of music as a as to in two ways, and I won't go too far down this pathway, but as a commodity and as a performance medium. And so to be to have a sense of identity and self worth within your relationship to music, you've most people feel like they either have to be the top performer, right? Whether it's a rock star or first chair violin, you know, or that, or they have to be, you know, successful in the commodity business, sell lots of records, you know, so, but that's just two very small legs of what music can do. Music can transform our health. It can help us survive the most challenging of situations. It can help us flourishing in the most beautiful situations. It forms the structure of the brain. It forms the structure of our neurobiological systems. It's part of what's encoded that storytelling and music and movement have all led to the encoding of how we respond to everything, which is why, and I could go into this in evolutionary biology, but we won't do that today. And so, you know, it's really, I think, as we move through this era where, you know, creatives, especially like I talked about before, are going to lose their sense of identity, but they have developed such skills in a, in a, in a form of intelligence. And it is a form of intelligence. It's one of the, you know, Howard's nine intelligences or seven intelligences depend how you talk, who's counting it any given time and and Beethoven says it's a form of intelligence that understands us, that we're yet to understand, and that's very much true. So music loves us unconditionally. We can love music unconditionally. We don't have to perform for music. It's not waiting for us to perform for it. It's not looking for us. You don't have to play an instrument. Your body is an instrument. Music is playing you. So you just have to receive, and then if you want to use it in an area to understand how to receive and apply it and and I think that I'm hoping that, you know, we can shift that for the next generations and and get the early. Only enough that they can understand how that haven't grow up with a different relationship, so they can learn, is it five years old? You know that, like, if they're want to have better friendships, how do they use music for that? If they they're feeling kind of lonely, how did they use music for that? If they're in pain, how do they use music for that? I mean, all of these, you know, if they want to communicate better. If they want to be more motivated. All of these want to be more focused, all of these things we can teach kids at like five, six years old, and we can all learn how to do so now, you know,
Fiona
It's fascinating, and I think so critical. It's critical to our our sense of self. And I, when you were talking, I was thinking when, like many people, I was painfully in emotional turmoil as a teenager. But when I don't, I was okay, right?
Frank Fitzpatrick
Yeah, no, I invite people to, I mean, I, you know, my last book was called amplified, unleash your potential to the power of music. I invite people to check that out, not because I'm trying to sell books. I didn't do it to sell books. I just because it kind of pulls together 40 years of what I've learned, and it's really for people across the board. So it's not, it's not, it's not necessarily for musicians only. You know, it's for everybody, because everybody's, like I said, Everybody's and whether you're struggling with ways to communicate with your teenagers, or whether you're struggling with you know, your your you know, primary relationship, or your parents, or you're dealing with, you know, even more extreme things like Alzheimer and dementia, you know, these others, mindfulness. There's, you know, struggling with meditation practices and trying to find, you know, there's, there's pathways, there's functional pathways in there. So I just, I invite people to kind of use that as a primer. You know, it's, it's, that's why I did it when, you know, when COVID came on and I couldn't speak on stages all over the world anymore, I figured I gotta get a figure out, a practical way to get the information out to people. So that was,
Fiona
There's so much work that we haven't talked about, like creating for the UN the Vatican of all places. I mean, what could be bigger than that? And I just think people can thoroughly enjoy listening.
Frank Fitzpatrick
Thank you for having me, and for all those that are still listening, you know. Thank you for, you know, tuning in. I hope this was of service to you, and feel free to reach out via my website and check out the material. I'd love to get feedback and and I, you know, I think I'll just share one last thing, one of the, you know, I'm in a lot of different communities because of I'm in science and neuroscience and health, longevity, music and film, you know, I mean so and in the last year since I left Apple and have been back out in the world more as an entrepreneur, again, it's, it's, you know, I realized one of the most valuable things that we have and that we also need to tap into, Is and show up with is our communities, you know, so it's we're entering a time when it's important for us to show up as our best, to become our best, that we can individually and then to really start to recognize the power of community and the collective, because we have a lot more power in the world than people realize. And and I feel, you know, if it was the 70s, we would be acting very differently, or it was the 60s, we would be acting very differently as a collective. And so I'm hoping, and we use these tools to do that. So I'm hoping that we can recognize that and recognize that in each other, and help to raise not just ourselves but everybody else up together, because together, we're quite powerful and quite beautiful.