618: Return to Real: How To Live Authentically In The Digital World with Ryan Levesque
Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod
Hal Elrod
4.8 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 31 December 2025
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As the digital world of AI accelerates faster than ever, it's tempting to automate, optimize, and outsource nearly every part of our lives. But what if the path we're on is, ironically, pulling us further away from a meaningful life and genuine happiness?
In this episode, I had the pleasure of sitting down with my good friend Ryan Levesque to explore a powerful, yet contrarian concept he calls Return to Real—and why it may be the thing we need most when AI is making us feel more disconnected than ever before.
Ryan is a renowned entrepreneur, author, and creator of the ASK Method, who has built and scaled several successful companies. His perspective weaves together business strategies, neuroscience, ecology, and spirituality to challenge how we've come to define success and what leads to true happiness and fulfillment.
In our conversation, Ryan breaks down three (3) transformative shifts for living well in the age of AI. He explains why the best things in life don't scale, why optimizing for oxytocin is more important than chasing dopamine, and why reconnecting with nature restores clarity, creativity, and purpose.
If you've been feeling overwhelmed or disconnected in the digital world that's changing faster than ever, this episode is an invitation to return to what's real.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- What "Return to Real" Really Means
- Three Forces That Are Colliding & Reshaping Humanity
- What History Tells Us About the Future with AI
- Ryan's Journey to Living Intentionally On a Farm
- Three Shifts That Challenge Mainstream Advice
- The Best Things in Life Don't Scale
- Optimize Your Life for Oxytocin, Not Dopamine
- How Efficiency Squeezes Oxytocin Out of Your Life
- A Very Simple Way To Increase Oxytocin Levels
- Prioritizing Time In Nature, Not Manmade Things
- The Benefit of Touching Earth Before Touching A Screen
- How To Connect With Ryan and Get His Book
Get The Full Show Notes
To get full access to today's show notes, including audio, transcript, and links to all the resources mentioned, visit MiracleMorning.com/618
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast, the show that empowers you to wake up to your full potential and achieve your biggest goals and dreams. |
| 0:09.6 | I am your host, Hal Elrod, and I invite you to join us each week as we share actionable strategies to take your life to the next level, |
| 0:16.6 | as well as interview world-class experts and entrepreneurs who have achieved extraordinary goals |
| 0:21.9 | themselves, and we ask them to give you a peek behind the curtain and teach you exactly what |
| 0:26.4 | you need to do to do the same. Ready? Here we go. Today's conversation with Ryan Leveck goes straight at a paradox we are all living inside. |
| 0:41.5 | As AI gets smarter, faster, more omnipresent, we're tempted to outsource everything human, |
| 0:48.4 | from our driving to our thinking, you name it. |
| 0:51.5 | Ryan thinks that's exactly the wrong direction. |
| 0:55.3 | His call is simple and it cuts against the grain of modern tech culture. Return to what's real. He shares three |
| 1:02.4 | contrarian ideas that deserve to be thoughtfully considered by every single one of us. First, |
| 1:07.4 | the best things in life don't scale. Trying to optimize hugs or sunsets or |
| 1:12.4 | time with people that we love is a category error. Those experiences are valuable precisely because |
| 1:18.7 | they can't be automated or multiplied. Second, he argues for oxytocin over dopamine. Dopamine gives |
| 1:26.7 | you the quick hit, but it feeds compulsive scrolling and synthetic highs, whereas oxytocin over dopamine. Dopamine gives you the quick hit, but it feeds compulsive, |
| 1:29.6 | scrolling, and synthetic highs, whereas oxytocin is connection, it's trust, it's bonding, |
| 1:35.6 | its presence. One makes you chase more, the other makes you grateful for what's already here. |
| 1:42.8 | And third, spend less time with man-made things and spend more |
| 1:46.4 | time with God-made things. Screens, dashboards, and algorithms might be useful, but they'll never |
| 1:53.2 | compete with silence, with mountains, with nature, with moments of stillness where you remember |
| 2:00.3 | who you truly are. |
| 2:02.2 | This isn't an anti-AI or anti-progress message. |
| 2:05.4 | It's a conversation that reminds all of us that the more technology accelerates, |
... |
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