(upbeat rock music) A positive mindset changes you, which changes your ability to deal with the shitty situation that you're in. I'm gonna put myself through this much pain and suffering for a few seconds of joy, and so worth it, man. It's behavior first, thoughts, feelings and perceptions follow. Mental strength is much more powerful than physical strength. It's in that zone that we have our greatest levels of growth and yes, discomfort. But discomfort is, again, the price of admission to a meaningful life. Our minds are so powerful, so even just like changing the storyline makes it a whole different game. Just try to find a way to get 1% better each day. Interrupting the patterns of thought that are holding you back. It is the only way you are gonna change. Mindset is the single most important thing that anyone can take out of this conversation. Hey, everybody, welcome to the podcast. Today we're gonna go deep on mindset, and we're gonna do it through the lens of experience and wisdom by dint of some of the most successful, impressive and mentally tough people on the planet. By way of background, for the last nine years, I have put everything into this podcast and through conversation, we have compiled this really powerful arsenal of potent life-altering ideas, perspectives and tools on how to cultivate, embrace and apply a new and more personally meaningful approach to life. And so for the fourth time, today we present you with this very special Masterclass episode that anthologizes the best wisdom shared over the years regarding habit change science, how to overcome obstacles and foster a mindset that will, ultimately, improve every aspect of your life. Because in the words of my friend, Mel Robbins, mindset changes you. So this is a powerful and dare I say, potentially life-changing collection of wisdom, and I can't wait for you to hear it. Starting with an extraordinary athlete, a true master of mindset, Leia Goldstein. Leia Goldstein is, undeniably, one of the toughest people I've ever met. At just 17, she donned the Bantamweight later joining the Israeli Defense Force and becoming a Krav Maga specialist and an undercover special forces intelligence officer. She then embarked on a professional cycling career, but after being told she might not ever walk again, following a devastating crash, Leia leaned into her superpower, her mindset, to aid her recovery and launch a brand new chapter in her extraordinary life. In 2021, at age 52 and entirely plant-based I might add, Leia became the very first woman in the 39-year history of RAAM, the 3000-mile Race Across America, to beat everyone, including all the men, and outright win the Solo division. Here's a glimpse into the power of mindset when you've been told your physical prowess is over, that healing will be lifelong and that achievements will be something of your past and not your future. When I reached the peak, at that point where opportunities were handed to me, I had the mother of all crashes in Cascade. You start descending and on those bikes, you can go very fast, almost up to, what is it, a 100 kilometers an hour or 80 miles an hour. And as we're descending, other riders are starting to come up and I'm seeing like 85, 86, and then there's a rider kind of coming on my left-hand side and you know, there's a center line rule, and she kinda leans into me at 80 kilometers an hour. I land on my face. It was a nightmare. I mean, I shouldn't be sitting here today. Right. So I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, VeloNews dubbed this crash the most epic crash of all time? At that time, correct, yes. And you were told that you might not walk properly again? Correct. Both my ischium was shattered. My hips were broken. My arms... I mean, fingers and toes busted, right? I was... It's like taking a pretzel, and basically stepping on it, right? I can't even explain it to you. The worst pain I'd ever been through. Everything hurt, all the time. Breathing, blinking, people opening and closing the door, the wind from that, right? It was a tough go.
Wow. How long were you in the hospital? Well, they couldn't move me out of the United States for, I think, four weeks. And then, they transferred me, 'cause I had to be airlifted from the crash to St. Charles, in Bend, Oregon. And then, my sister came to pick me up, 'cause I couldn't... It was gonna take a big process to drive me back to Canada. It was also getting expensive, 'cause medical is expensive here, right? (laughs) Sure. Yeah. Okay, so months in the hospital? Yes
But you have the gift of these doctors telling you you're not gonna walk again, let alone get on a bike and ever race again, right? So what do you do with that information? You know what I said to them in my head? I won't say it on air.
Right. (laughs) Gosh, no! I mean, how do you begin the rehab process? Well, listen, the only thing I could do, was contract my abs. That was the only physical thing I could do, right? But I basically made a promise to myself and I said, "I don't care how long, or it takes or the kinda pain I'm gonna go through. I'm gonna get back on the bike, I'm gonna race again and I'm gonna come back even stronger than I did before all this happened, right? And I think, you know... It happens to a lot of people, when you're faced with these overwhelming situations, you don't know what to do, so you kinda buckle, right? So I knew I had a lot of work cut out for me, but I think everything is upstairs. It's what you believe in and what you make your body believe that you can do, right? Because honestly, if I believed everything that I was told, even growing up, then I wouldn't... Again, I wouldn't be sitting here today. Right? But you know, we all have our breaking points too. But your ability to kind of compartmentalize all of that, and just focus on, "Okay, I can do this" How much of your military training comes into play, in terms of having the mental rigor to just block out the fear and focus on the task at hand? I think the military has a lot to do with it, because it was part of their job, even during my military training, to crack us mentally as best as they can, right? 'Cause mental strength is much more powerful than physical strength.
Mm-hmm. We all know that. But for me, at that point going back to the hospital, I mean, how can they say something like that? I haven't even started my rehab. You know what I mean? Just to make that kind of prediction that fast, right? And I think that's the thing, is that we're so quick to take the easy way out, right? Without being more optimistic of the things that we possibly can do, and the possibilities of just going after the things that you believe in, right? 'Cause sometimes, you're not gonna get support from other people, You're gonna have to believe in yourself, right? And that's the thing, is we're so influenced by other sources. But for me, I never was, never has been and never will be. What I wanna do and what I'm determined, to do, I'll make it happen. I'll find a way to make it happen. Right. So make it happen you did. How long was the rehabilitation before you could get back on a bike? I was back on my bike, race-ready, in less than a season. So like-
Eight months. Eight months... Wow. But every day, I was better than the day before and just staying positive. And honestly, it sorta got... Being in that positive mode, I could feel things starting to bind. 'Cause when I went to get re x-rayed at the General Hospital in Vancouver a couple of months later, they were floored at how fast I was recovering. Mm. And you attribute that to just being in motion and- I think motion and mentally, you know what I mean? And just determined that I am gonna get out of this. Yeah. So from the wheelchair then, how do you... I mean, are you walking with a limp? Oh yeah, no, it goes from wheelchair to a one crutch. You know what I mean, popping away. And then, I mean, even... It was even a wheelchair to wheeling to my trainer, which was on a bike, whatever. And it took me like 40 minutes just to get from the wheelchair, just to sit and be comfortable on the bike, because... It was the flashbacks.
(air whooshing) Despite the age-old adage, you can't teach an old dog new tricks, what if I told you that you actually do have the power to change your brain and reprogram your perception, irrespective of age? Meet neuroplasticity overlord, Dr. Andrew Huberman. A neuroscientist and tenured professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford University School of Medicine, Andrew specializes in the brain's inherent ability to modify itself based on experience, and the many ways we can advantageously leverage this process. Here's a quick lesson on how to shift your perspective, and sharpen your mindset through behavior. It's incredible, 'cause if you think about sensation, perception, feeling, thought and behavior, actually the way to control our nervous system and feel the way we wanna feel is to run that backwards. Behavior, thoughts. So if you change your behavior, then, generally, your thoughts, your feelings and your perceptions change. And everyone tries to come at it from the other end, but he's figured out, through whatever process led him there and incredible life circumstances, how to run it in this direction of behavior first. Yeah.
And I really think that if neuroscience has anything to offer, it's some understanding of what the underlying chemicals and neural circuits are, but the sooner that the human animal, the human species, can start to understand that our feelings and our thoughts and our memories and... All that is very complicated, but that when behaviors are very concrete and they are the control panel for the rest of it... I don't wanna relegate feelings. Feelings are extremely important. I don't wanna relegate perception. They're extremely important. But when it comes to wanting to shift the way that you function to get better or to perform better or to show up better or to move away from things like addictive behaviors, it's absolutely foolish for any of us, me included, to think that we can do that by changing our thoughts first. It's behavior first, thoughts, feelings and perceptions follow. Mood follows action?
Mood follows action- This has been my mantra forever, and I swear by it. And David's example illustrates that, that act first... He's developed so much neuroplasticity that it's reflexive for him to just move towards the hard thing or the challenge or the discomfort, right? And now, the science establishes that this is indeed the case. And yet, our programming, our default hardwiring, is to put us in this place where we wanna ruminate on all this stuff, and wait until we feel like doing something before we do it or check our motivations for it. But anytime I'm in a funk, or I wanna change my state, I have to move forward. I have to do something with my physical body in order to shake things up and rearrange whatever's going on mentally, so... And it works every time. It works every time because the brain circuits, meaning sets of connections and chemicals, they're there from birth, they're there your whole life, and they were designed for that. So in 2018, a graduate student in my lab published a paper in Nature, showing that in the face of a physical threat, there are three options. You can, obviously, freeze, you can retreat or you can move forward. And the moving forward response actually triggers activation of a connection in the brain, to the dopamine circuitry of the brain, and makes it more likely that you're gonna be able to move forward in the future. Now, what was interesting to us, was that not only is forward action rewarded at a neurochemical level, which then sets you up for more forward action, but the highest level of agitation and stress was associated with moving forward. We always think, "Well, if I just calm myself enough, I'll be able to move forward."
Right. But it's the exact opposite.
(Rich laughing) And so people who are paralyzed in fear, or that have a hard time initiating, sometimes the key is to raise the level of stress and agitation. This is why deadlines are so effective. This is why fear is so effective. This is why that deer gets up out of its nice little den and starts to move, because it feels a certain level of agitation. If that agitation isn't high enough, we will not move forward. And so, especially in the US, we have a culture in which these ideas around stress are that it's terrible for us, when in fact, stress is designed to move us forward towards these action steps that are rewarded, which then move us forward and so on. So what is the process of, of combating that monkey mind that is running whatever narrative that's keeping you stuck. Like it's easy to say, "Just move, you gotta take the action." But a lot of people still, despite understanding that, intellectualizing that, are unable to basically act as if. Some people are just hypo-aroused. They're just not motivated enough. And those people would benefit greatly from cultivating practices like super-oxygenated breathing. So this is something along the lines of tummo-type breathing, so rapid. And we look at this in the lab... We're actually running a human study on this now. So 25 or 30 deep breaths through the nose and out through the mouth, then exhaling the breath and holding, learning to how to self-generate adrenaline. That's what you're doing when you're that- Some version of the Wim Hof technique or- That's what that is. Brian Mackenzie talks about it- Some people are so agitated, the monkey mind, you've got too many things going on, and they're thinking, "Okay..." They're trying to sit down and write. I suffer from this. And I'm feeling like, "Wait, I've also got this person I need to connect with, and I'm kinda being drawn off course, by not being able to put the blinders on. For people that have that issue, I think learning how to calm the nervous system is very powerful. And a physiological sigh is two inhales, followed by an extended exhale. So it's like...
(Andrew sniffing) (Andrew exhaling ) It's not just a deep breath. It's two inhales followed by an exhale, okay? And then, what that does, and this has been shown several times now in humans and other species, as well, is it dilates the sacs of the lungs and that second inhale, dilates them a little bit more. And it pulls a little bit of carbon dioxide out of the bloodstream, so that when we exhale, we offload the maximum amount of carbon dioxide, and it perfectly adjusts the ratio of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the bloodstream and lungs. And sometimes, it only takes one of these double inhale exhales. Sometimes somebody needs to do two or three. But that's the fastest way to bring the autonomic nervous system down. A lot of people need such a tool, because I think we talk a lot about meditation and tools for calm, and I can go to Esalen for a weekend and get a massage, I'm gonna feel very good. But then, when I'm thrown back in real life, I need something that's gonna work in real-time. What I call a real-time tool. Everybody should have a kit of tools, that they can use to bring themselves down and ramp themselves up. And then, what people don't realize is that mental focus follows visual focus. Now, in blind people, it's slightly different. It follows auditory focus. But in most people, your visual focus, as you bring that into really sharp relief, that image of your book, and you stare at it, you're gonna feel some agitation, and your mind's gonna be jumping all over the place. But if you wait just a couple minutes, the rest of the world will disappear. I think this is sort of the flow state people are looking for. But remember, the gate of entry is one of you have to wade through some sewage before you can swim in clear water, right? That's the way I always think about it. But the visual focus is what brings the rest of the brain into cognitive focus. And people in the martial arts understand this. You've probably experienced this running, when you're feeling exhausted and you can just concentrate on one milestone, and get there. You can almost bring that into... What you're doing is you're linking that to the dopamine circuitry. You're saying that thing is the milestone. Not winning the race, not some other thing outside this immediate environment. That thing. And when you're able to start capturing these peripheral circuits, meaning the body, the diaphragm, the visual system, then you start getting past this whole idea of mindsets, and it really becomes about the body setting the mind. And this is where, I think, when you say, "Action leads the rest-"
Mm-hmm. Right? What you're saying is grounded in real neurobiological data. Next up, we're gonna hear from the humble master of grit and boundary-busting physical prowess, Courtney Dauwalter. Arguably the world's best ultrarunner, Courtney's recipe for success isn't about cutting edge training plans, coaches or carefully-honed nutrition. In fact, she actually abides by none of these. For her, it's instead found in seeking out and celebrating what she calls a pain cave, that deep place of physical discomfort that most go to great lengths to avoid. In this clip, Courtney shares a few of her mindset techniques and tactics that have propelled her superhuman feats of endurance, and exactly what it means to carve a path through your own pain cave. Tell me a little bit more about what that is, when you reach that point or that limit, or that place where you feel like you can't put one foot in front of the other. What is the lesson that you find for yourself in that? So I call it the pain cave, that place. And I guess, probably four or five years ago, I viewed the pain cave as this place that you should try to put off as long as possible in a race, like make your pain cave be as far away from you as you can. And if you arrive to it, then you just sit in it, and you try and survive the pain cave. But in the past couple years... I mean, it's just a mindset, right? It's like all in our heads, this thing. And in the past couple years, it's been the place I want to get to. So changing it to a place where I get to celebrate that I made it there, and then, that's where the work actually happens. So making the pain cave bigger is how I view it, instead of pushing the pain cave away. And I think, I mean, our minds are so powerful, so even just like changing the storyline makes it a whole different game. Right. So what is the story that you... What is the script that you flip when you're in that headspace and it's getting really hard. Yeah, it's like, "Perfect, this is what we wanted. Now, we get to actually do the hard work of making the cave bigger." And so it's like picturing a chisel, and just making tunnels in my pain cave in my brain. (laughs)
Right. You actually visualize that? Yeah.
Yeah? I'm super visual, so...
Yeah. Yeah. I like that. It makes it very visceral and real, if you can... It's not just a mantra and mantras are great. I'm sure you have mantras. But actually creating that three-dimensional image in your mind. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just telling myself a different story about that place, where it hurts so bad, where before it was like surviving it, and now it's like, "This is so cool we made it here, and now, we work." Yeah. It's funny, I've been doing this podcast thing for a couple years at this point, and I've had a lot of people on who have done hard things and I have psychologists and psychiatrists and mindset experts, and everybody kinda comes to the table and they're like, "This is how you do it." And it's like, "Step one, two, three. And like, "When your mind does this..." And you're just like, "Well, I just..." (Courtney laughing) It's very refreshing, because what it does is it dispels this myth that it has to be complicated, or that there is a right or a wrong way. You're just embracing life in all its colors, and have figured out this thing that works for you. But it's welcoming to people , because you're saying like, "Look, I'm doing this. You can do this too." There's a..., What's the right word? Welcoming, to repeat myself, I think is what it is. Like you're creating space for other people to see greater possibility in themselves because of that relatability. Well, thank you.
Yeah. That's very kind.
Yeah. No, I think it's powerful. It's really powerful. In the equation of mind versus body, how do you think about that? How much of it is physical prowess versus mental grit? It's both, for sure, and I think in an ultra, it trades back and forth between the two. So maybe for a while, your physical has to pull more of the weight because it can, and then, if that's giving out, maybe the mental takes over for a while. So I think they tag each other out back and forth where you need 'em for sure. Like physically, it's hard to run this far, but mentally you can move your feet much farther than you think.
Right. Yeah, ultimately, I think, the differentiator is in the mental game because everybody, especially at the elite level, is training really hard. And there's only so much training that you can do before you get injured or you overtrain, right? So when you tow the line at the starting line, you can be assured that everybody who's a threat to your dominance has put in the work that you've put in, right? So the person who's gonna win, it's gonna come down to who's gonna crack mentally, when the tough gets going. Yeah. Yeah, and who can problem-solve efficiently, or not let problems that come up ruffle their feathers too much. I think that's huge in ultras. Yeah, just being able to maintain that positive disposition, rather than, "Oh no, this is terrible" think, "Awesome, this is what it's about-" Yeah, exactly.
(Courtney and Rich laughing) How do you keep a smile on your face and tell jokes, and do all that stuff when you're so freaking exhausted. (Courtney laughing) Jokes help everything.
Yeah. Yeah. (laughs) That's part of the strategy. Yeah.
Sneaky. Yeah. (laughs) (air whooshing) (upbeat percussive tribal music) (air whooshing) Mastering mindset begins with expanding your sense of personal possibility. That is the hidden key that unlocks reservoirs of potential and ultimately, sets you on the path to becoming the best version of who you are. I can think of no better exemplar of this truth than the mighty one himself, David Goggins. Often referred to as the toughest athlete on the planet, David is the only member of the US Armed Forces to have completed SEAL training, including three Hell Weeks, in addition to the US Army Ranger School and Air Force Tactical Air Controller Training. His remarkable feats of strength include finishing near the top at dozens of the world's most grueling endurance races, including the HURT100, the Leadville 100, the Moab 240, Western States and many more, but perhaps David's greatest accomplishment is that throughout his life, he has faced and overcome a succession of just seemingly insurmountable obstacles to become the man he is today. Obstacles like asthma, sickle cell anemia, psychological and physical abuse, obesity and even a congenital heart defect that often left him competing and winning on a mere fraction of his actual physical capabilities. All of which is, of course, chronicled in his fascinating memoir, "Can't Hurt Me". Here is David Goggins. (air whooshing) So think about this. I put everything on David Goggins to be a Navy SEAL. It's like going to the crap table with your last $1,000, and you say," You know what? I'm gonna put everything on this fucking on black. And hopefully I win. If not, I'm broke." I put my whole life... A guy that was scared of the fucking water, a guy that could fucking... Taught himself how to read and write. On being one of hardest motherfuckers on the planet. Think about that shit! A guy that came from nothing. I put my whole life. "Oh, I'm gonna go out here and put everything on David fucking Goggins to be a Navy SEAL. Not to go be a boy scout or some shit. A Navy SEAL." And I look at that. And I did all this shit just to get the opportunity to succeed. That's what people don't fucking understand, man. People see the end result. I remember that guy saying, "My God, man, I can't believe what the fuck I've just done. I put everything... Ruined relationships. Ruin this, ruin that, put everything on the fact that I have to become someone in this world, or I'm no good for anybody. And where does that come from? Where did that compulsion, that drive? It comes from a disgusting place of not being fulfilled in your life, of afraid of dying having never accomplished anything. That's a fear that some people run away from, that people don't wanna face. When you have a real fear of dying, and being just another person. That I live to pay the bills. I make $1,000 a month. This is my life. I pray for cockroaches, man. If that makes you feel good, that's great. It didn't make me feel good. I wanted to the first time in my life, after 26 years, it was 24, 25, wherever I was, I wanted to feel good about myself. And that was the ticket for it. Yeah, I mean, you have this huge reservoir, this capacity to leverage pain and circumstance to drive change within yourself. To be able to not be a victim, but to look at pain as your friend, as a catalyst for growth. And I think there's a lot of people out there... Look, if you're in a enough pain, that's gonna move the needle for you. There's a lot of people out there that are in just enough pain where they're willing to just settle for what they have, because they're not in enough pain to change. And the fear of change outweighs the pain of their daily existence. You know, the one gift I have with all that being said, what you just said there, is I have the ability to see the end before the beginning even begins. And what that means is I know that to get to the very end, I can see it right now. So before I went to BUD/S, and I was losing all this fucking weight and shit, I saw myself walking across the fucking stage at 191 fucking pounds. That's what I had to get to, to get into the door. I saw myself... Six months, a year later, whatever it's gonna take me to do it. I saw myself walking across that stage, getting that certificate of graduation from BUD/S. And I was able to be there at 300 pounds. And that feeling... I was nowhere near that fucking feeling. I was able to put myself there a million times every fucking day. and that feeling of like, "Oh my God!" That is gonna feel fucking amazing. That's what made me suffer. That's what allowed the pain to be real. And I said, "This is worth it." "I wanna feel, for this fucking next 18 months..." 'Cause it took me 18 fucking months to finally just get through BUD/S, 18 months. It's six months, took me 18. That's what woke me up every fucking morning, was I'm gonna put myself through this much fucking pain and suffering for a few seconds. That's all it is. A few seconds of joy, and it's so fucking worth it, man. That's what people don't get. So I'm able to put myself at the finish line, even though I have no finish line, but at the finish line of an event, before I even start the motherfucker, to say, "How are you gonna feel at the end of this?" Well, visualization is one of the challenges. And part of that is not just visualizing success, or living in the reality of achieving what you're setting out to achieve, but also visualizing how you're gonna navigate all the obstacles that are gonna get thrown in your path. Right, visualizing is my biggest tool of life. That's why I've been able to put myself in cold water, put myself in 100-mile race, millions of times before I've done it. And I've able to go through the race, and see how I'm gonna feel at mile 50, almost to the exact feeling. Right, so when it comes up, it's no surprise.
It's no surprise. I've already done this a million times. And that's the one thing I practice and practice and practice and practice overnight. But also, the most important thing is I practiced that feeling of accomplishment that I'm gonna have when it's all said and done with. The crazy thing about the ASVAB story, is that, in addition to having to pass this test and get that 50, you also had to lose 100 pounds in like 30 days or some crazy-short period of time? It was less than three months. Right, okay, three months. (clears throat) But you compartmentalize these two tasks and say, "Look, the first thing I gotta do is I gotta pass this test, because the weight doesn't matter if I don't get that 50." And you shelved or put off losing the weight to focus on the academic end of it, until you completed that hurdle, and then, you looked at the weight stuff? I'm like that now, just-
You still got it done? Yeah.
It's like being focused on one thing at a time. I have to be very present in everything I do. Like right now, I'm with Rich Roll. I'm not thinking about shit, but Rich Roll, and what the fucks coming outta your mouth right now. That's what gives me a huge advantage in life. Especially today, in this day and age, with so much shit going so fast, and everybody wants to keep everything going, everything up and everything. I wanna be the greatest multitasker of all time. Not me. If I put my 100% into what's in front of me, I will destroy it. If I'm out here, just multitasking and shit, I'm gonna half-assed in everything I do. So it is the most important thing in the world to me is being focused at the task at hand. And it's getting harder and harder to do that, because there are so many distractions and it's so easy to distract yourself. We don't ever have to be bored again with these things in our pockets. No, but the one thing I'm most scared of in the world is losing touch with the best thing in the world is your mind, your mindset, how you can picture yourself, how you can focus, how you can drive, how you can put yourself in so many situations, and get out of it. Because those headphones we listen to, those phones that we google to find information, there's so many situations in my life, where that's just not gonna help me. It's not gonna help me. And you're able to just turn that out off? So fast, 'cause I know what has helped me. None of that stuff's ever helped me. None of that stuff's ever helped me. What has helped me has been me, alone, getting my shit together and being accountable for who I'm not and who I want to be. It's the only thing that's helped me. (air whooshing) On deck is the multi-talented hyphenate and queen of grounded, science-backed personal transformation, my friend, Mel Robbins. Mel is a former lawyer turned CNN Legal Analyst, turned mega bestselling author and talk show host. She's a powerhouse, and one of the most widely booked public speakers in the world. She recently graced the show with a powerful primer on moving through the world with greater confidence. Here's a slice of that magic. (air whooshing) Like here's the thing about mindset. A mindset will not change the shitty situation you're in. A positive mindset changes you, which changes your ability to deal with the shitty situation that you're in. The only way to shift out of any of these kinds of scenarios is to take an action first, right? As hard as that is. And the emotions, the perceptions, all of that follows action, not the other way around. 100% true. So how I discovered this in my life is during this horrible period in life. So 2008, every morning I would wake up, and I would immediately start spinning the negative thoughts: "We're fucked. I hate my husband. How did we end up here? I can't believe I did that stupid-ass show. I've made so many mistakes. I should just flush my life, you know, the last 40 years, down the toilet. I'm so embarrassed. I'm the world's worst mother." I'd stare at the ceiling. I was like a human pot roast marinating in fear. And then, of course, the anxiety would wave up my body and pin me down to that bed, and I'd hit the snooze button. And I would hit the snooze button four or five times a morning. By the time I woke up, the kids would miss a bus. So we got three kids under the age of 10. Chris was long gone, 'cause he's a very smart man, and he did not wanna be in the house when I was awake. And he was trying to fix the situation that they were in. And I would literally scream at the kids, get him in the car and from there, the day was just horrible. And then, every night I would do the same thing. I'd say, "That's it. Tomorrow morning, it's gotta be the new me." Everybody that struggles with addiction does this exact same thing. "Tomorrow, I'm not drinking, that's it. I'm done with this." And then the next morning, it's the same pattern of negative crap that you're doing to yourself. And this is exact what you talk about all the time. It's not the what you need to do, it's how,. How do you make yourself do the things that feel hard or scary or don't seem like they're gonna work, 'cause you're resigned and you're stuck in your patterns. That was me. I knew I needed to get outta bed. I knew I needed to stop drinking. I knew I needed to look for a job. I knew this wasn't Chris's fault, and I needed to stop screaming at him all the time, but I wasn't doing any of those things. I didn't know how. And so this was the moment I created the Five Second Rule. And again, this is another I beam or T beam or whatever the hell beam it's called. I'm sitting in front of the television and I am watching TV. The kids are in bed and I'm drinking bourbon. And I'm probably on my fourth Manhattan, and I'm having my nightly pep talk and I'm going, "That's it. Tomorrow morning, it's the new me. I gotta wake up. I gotta do this, I gotta do the other thing. And all of a sudden, Rich, honest to goodness, I see a rocket ship launch at the end of a commercial. And I go, "That's it. "Tomorrow morning, I'm launching myself out bed like a rocket." And that was the beginning of the Five Second Rule. What's so interesting about that, are these... You talk about hitting your bottom, and this is a bottom for sure. But in that kind of reckoning, where the pain of your current circumstance exceeds the fear of doing something different, no matter how small that difference is. There's like a crack in the universe, like a little opening, right? Where you have just the slightest bit of willingness that you didn't have the day before. And even the tiniest action, whether it's picking up the phone to make a call, or counting back down from five, when you look back now, it's like I did a couple little things that changed my life forever. This incident obviously changed your life forever, and it's kind of amazing in a beautiful, mystical way, how that occurs. Well, let me tell you my intention for this conversation. That you, listening to us, have this podcast be that crack that lets some light in, and becomes a sliding door that you might just see, "Oh, wow. Maybe if that phone call I'm avoiding, or counting backwards, five, four, three, two, one, or high-fiving myself in the mirror, even though I don't think I deserve it, and I think it's stupid and I'm a failure, and why is this gonna help?" That you try it!
Yeah. Because I think that any... You can trace back again, back to our dots analogy. Any change in trajectory was just a moment. And for me, that moment was when the alarm went off, I just counted backwards, like NASA launches a rocket five, four, three, two, one. And I stood up, and you know what my first reaction to it was? This is fucking stupid.
Correct. Yeah. (laughs)
Resignation. Yeah. It was immediately like, "Okay, so you can get outta bed." "So fucking what, you're $800,000 in debt, Mel, how is this gonna help?" And thankfully, I thought, "Well, what the hell do I have to lose? Why not just for one day, any time Mel, you know what you should do, but you don't feel like it, or any time your emotions start to hijack you, or any time you feel afraid or anxious or whatever, why don't you just count backwards and see what happens?" And that's what I did.
Yeah. And I haven't looked back. But so here's the other thing that that taught me. It's what gave me that sort of high-five attitude, this mantra. Because as I was schlepping through airports, and I'm thinking I'm the world's biggest failure, I kept saying this to myself on repeat. "There is no way, Mel, if you've worked this hard, that you will not be rewarded. You have to believe that this moment is preparing you for something amazing that hasn't happened yet. Keep going. You have to believe that this moment is preparing you for something amazing that hasn't happened yet. Keep going." And so I repeated that, over and over and over and over and over again. As I wanted to throw on the towel, as I would start to bash myself, as I would start to feel sorry for myself, I'd be like, "Nope, there's just no way I'm gonna believe that something amazing isn't gonna happen. I've worked too hard. Something amazing that hasn't happened is coming." And when you get yourself into that mindset, it creates a sense of resilience and momentum and resolve, that you need in order to keep going, when the shit hits the fan or when you feel disappointed or when life is beating you down. And that was the other gift of that moment, is developing a little tool to flip my mindset when I wanted to start to feel sorry for myself. And part of the genius of this is that when you start counting backwards, you've already committed to taking action. So the counting itself moves you from a bias towards thinking, toward a bias toward action. And the more you repeat it, the more you break the pattern of thinking, and you program in a pattern of taking small actions, it creates agile moves and agile mindset. So that's one thing. The second thing that's crazy cool about this is that the reason why it's so fucking hard to change is because you talk about changing with the prefrontal cortex. You're conscious when you sit in your therapist's chair, or you're listening to me and Rich, and you're using this sort of strategic part of your brain. The second that you're in a situation where you're procrastinating, or you're thinking negative thoughts, it's your subconscious that's in charge of you. And so in order to change, you have to interrupt subconscious patterns. You see the Five Second Rule isn't just some dumb counting backwards thing. It is a form of metacognition that interrupts the patterns stored in your subconscious brain. Counting backwards requires you to focus, which flips on your prefrontal cortex. It gives you a moment of control over what you think and do next . That's the genius of it. And the reason why I'm so fucking passionate about this is not only because kids can use it and senior citizens can use it. You don't have to have any kinda education or speak any kind of language. It works for anybody that uses it is because I am now standing with millions of people that have tried it. And we have pediatricians around the world that are using it to help kids interrupt thoughts that trigger anxiety, veterans organizations that are using five, four, three, two, one to help reprogram responses to triggers. We had an entire wing of a Pennsylvania psychiatric inpatient nursing unit show up at the talk show to tell me that of all of the tools that they give people that have an inpatient commit, the single most positive and effective tool is the Five Second Rule. Mm. Because it is simple, you remember it and it immediately interrupts the negative and suicidal ideations that torture people. And speaking of suicide, we know of 111 people who have stopped themselves from taking their lives, by five, four, three, two, one, asking for help. So I am here to tell you, I don't give a fuck how stupid you think this is. I want you to try it. I want you to share it with people, because interrupting the patterns of thought and behavior that are holding you back, and pushing yourself to take action or to think something different, it is the only way you are gonna change. And this is a tool that's gonna help you bridge that gap. Boom! (laughs)
I know. We just found the clip. I bet we could pull that clip. (air whooshing) Why is it so hard to overcome negative patterns? Well, James Clear, New York Times bestselling author of "Atomic Habits", says the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. One of the most popular episodes to date in the history of this podcast, James graced the show back on Episode 401, and taught us new ways to perceive behavior change, starting with the 1% better rule. Here's a glimpse into that exchange. (air whooshing) If you could leave us with a couple things that people can take away, to perhaps tweak how they look at and think about the habits that they're trying to change in their own lives, and some simple steps to get them started in making better decisions. Sure, so I'll give you one mindset shift and one practical application. So the mindset shift, and this kind of lies beneath the entire conversation we had today, is to just try to find a way to get 1% better each day. It doesn't need to be something radical. It doesn't need to be something huge. But habits are easy to overlook, both good and bad, on any given day, because they don't seem like very much. The difference between studying Spanish for an hour tonight, and not studying at all, seems like nothing, 'cause it's like, "Well, I still didn't learn the language." And the difference between eating a salad, versus eating a burger and fries, seems like nothing, 'cause your body looks the same in the mirror, and those scales look the same at the end of the night. It's only once your habits have compounded, over two or five or 10 years, that the full impact of those 1% choices, 1% better or 1% worse, becomes fully apparent. And if you can understand that concept and internalize it, then you can start to see the importance in your daily actions and in your daily habits, and why those are so critical. So that's the first thing, is just try to find a way to get 1% better. And the second thing, just a practical application, I would encourage you to try to apply the Two-Minute Rule. Think about whatever habit it is that you're trying to build, and scale it down to just the first two minutes of the behavior. What is the thing that you can do that can initiate it? Don't think about it as the overall habit. Think about it like a gateway habit, or an entrance ramp to a highway. How can you automate the beginning of the behavior. And this is maybe an important distinction about habits. A lot of the time we talk about habits, we use the phrase habit for things that aren't actually habits. Like we'll say something like, "I wanna build a habit of writing every day." Technically, and we defined this at the very beginning of this episode, a habit is a behavior that can be performed more or less automatically. It's on autopilot. Writing is about the most effortful, concentrated thing that you can do, right? Like you're gonna be thinking carefully. You're not gonna be on autopilot. So the habit part of that would be, I sit in a chair at a desk with a pad of paper in front of me or a laptop? The habit is the first two minutes, right? How can you all automate the ritual of getting started? And then, let the consequence and the effortful concentrating work follow naturally. Same way with the example I gave about my reader. The habit was showing up at the gym, you know? Or for running, a lot of people have heard stuff like this before. Like, "Hey, take small steps." But even when you know you should start small, it's still really easy to start too big. People are like, "All right, I wanna build a habit of running, so I guess, I know I should start small, so I'll only run for 15 minutes." But even that's like way bigger than what I'm talking about. Scale it down just the first two minutes, automate the ritual of getting started, putting on your running shoes, stepping out the door and locking the door. And if you can automate that, and make that a habit. and you do it day in and day out, and you're the type of person who always gets their running shoes on and steps out the door, there are gonna be a lot of days where you go forward- Yeah, that's great advice. That's great advice. There's some sections that I find really interesting. Like I have a section on genes and habits, and like choosing-
Oh yeah. I have written down to talk about like genetic factors. Yeah. I mean, we can talk about-
Let's do it. All right. In many cases, we often don't like to talk about genes in biology, because it seems like a fixed characteristic, right? It is saying that like, "Oh, your genetics, it seemed..." Nobody likes to think like, "Oh, it's outta my control. Why bother?" But the truth is the usefulness or the applicability of your genes is highly dependent on context. So being seven feet tall is an incredible advantage if you're trying to play basketball, and it's an incredible disadvantage if you're trying to be a gymnast. And just as that is very obvious with physical traits, it's becoming increasingly true, as we develop more understanding of the link between genes and psychological traits, or what we would call your personality. And so for certain personalities, certain habits or certain environments might be predisposed to being really successful, enjoyable or not. I think there's a lot to improve in this area. I think there's a lot for us still to learn, and so in many ways, we might just be in the infancy of understanding this. But one of the best measures, or most robust measures, of personality is the Big Five, and this kind of like mapping personality traits onto five different spectrums. The most common one that people know is introversion and extraversion, but there are other ones as well, agreeableness, conscientiousness and so on. And each of these five traits has been linked to some kind of genetic underpinning, some type of DNA. And so one of my favorite studies on this, researchers took babies that were in the nursery, and they played a harsh noise on one side of the nursery. And some of the babies turned toward the noise, and some of them turned away. And as they tracked those children, as they grew up throughout life, they found the ones that turned toward the noise were more likely to grow up to be extroverts, and the ones that turned away were more likely to grow up to be introverts. Yeah, the extroverts are in the mosh pit, and the introverts are at home watching Netflix. So again, I think there's still a lot to learn, but there's definitely something going on here. People, for example, who have higher levels of agreeableness, tend to have higher natural levels of oxytocin as well. And so you can imagine how someone who is high in agreeableness might be more likely, or it might be easier for them, to build a habit of writing thank you notes, or of organizing social events, where people who can be warm and hang out and kind and considerate and so on. They're that kind of personality, and so they may be predisposed to that kinda habit. Where it gets interesting is if you can understand yourself at a more, I guess I'll even call it genetic level, then maybe you can start to design habits that fit you better or design an environment that fits you better. So one of the examples I gave in the book, and again, I'm still toying with some of these ideas, is for people who are low in conscientiousness, which is one of those five traits, that means that they're less likely to be orderly, or less likely to be organized. So if someone is like that, if they're predisposed to be that kinda person, it might really help them to have an environment designed where things are already orderly or primed or set up, because they're gonna be less likely to be the type of person that would just remember to do it, or to make a to-do list to do it and so on. And so maybe if you knew, "Oh, I'm low in conscientiousness", you should shift more of your energy and attention to environment design. Yeah, yeah. That's super interesting. I mean, in the book you talk about Michael Phelps, who has a physique that's perfectly suited to him swimming very fast. And then you have this- Hicham El Guerrouj?
Yeah, the long distance runner, who... They have the same inseam, but the proportionality of their bodies are completely different, and he's well suited in long distance running. They could not swap places. And the point being that from afar, the casual observer will say, "Well, of course he's good at swimming. Look at his body. I can't do that." But the greater point that you're trying to make is if we can develop self-awareness around what suits us best in our predispositions, and gravitate towards those environments and those opportunities, then we're putting ourselves in a position where the expression of our genetic makeup can advance us and fuel us and put us in the position that is best for us. In the meantime, you kind of leave people with this question, which is what are you well suited to suffer for, right? Something like that. I'm paraphrasing. I think it was a way of prompting that self-inquiry. A lot of people try to figure out like... Yes, so in that chapter, I offer a set of questions that you can go through to try to figure it out for yourself. What are you most appropriately matched for? What environment would suit you? And one of the key questions, I think, is where's an area where you can handle the pain of the work better than the people around you. The area where you are more well-equipped to suffer, is the work that you were made to do, which is an interesting way to think about it, right? Like most people think about, "Oh, well, where is it just easy? Where do I succeed?" But every area requires hard work and effort to achieve some level of success. So the question is not, "Where is it easy?" The question is, "Where can I handle the pain?" Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's a different lens through which to look at it, but I think that's right, you know? For some people for whatever reason, people who grow up and become great writers, they...
(James scoffing) Writing is suffering, but they can handle it for some reason. Navy SEALS, like it's not easy to be one, but the guys who can make it, somehow they can handle the suffering of it. Yeah, they're well-suited and prepared and willing to undergo that for some reason. And I think I used that line, or something similar to that at the end of that chapter, which is at the peak of any field, what you're going to find are people who are both well-suited and well-trained. It's not just one or the other. They have the environment matching, and they have the hard work and the effort and the perseverance.
Right. "Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement." I love it. That's one of my favorite lines in the book. It's a great line. I think it encapsulates the core idea, right? That if you're willing to build those small behaviors and layer 1% improvements on top of each other, they will compound and multiply, the same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply, as you repeat them over time. And that can be true for you or against you. And that's why it's crucial to understand how habits work, so that you can make sure that they're multiplying in your favor, rather than to your detriment.
(air whooshing) It is time for me to introduce you to the priestess of self-acceptance, of body positivity and fun, ultrarunner Mirna Valerio. Easily one of the most inspirational athletes I've ever met, Mirna is a true ambassador of sport, on a mission to empower humans of all shapes, sizes, colors and genders, to proudly embrace their bodies, expand their horizon and own their personal truth. In this clip, she demands that we broaden our minds, and crush preconceived ideas of what our bodies are capable of. (air whooshing) When that cardiologist told me that I was gonna die if I didn't change my lifestyle, I really did make a decision to change things. I prioritized my day. I stopped bringing work home, which is really difficult to do when you work in a boarding school. I would get up super early, and hop on the treadmill for an hour and then do Pilates, and then do awful (laughs) Biggest Loser videos. Uh-huh.
Really, really awful. But I did them anyway, because I needed to change drastically. And so, I mean, and I did. I would work out for five hours a day. Wow!
Yeah, I was really committed to changing my life in a very drastic way, so that's what I did. Right. Little did you know.
Who knew- This was set in motion,
(Mirna laughing) this entire new life that you live now, right? Who knew? What was the big... Was there a breakthrough moment, where you really just embraced this idea that I am a runner, and this is the path that I'm gonna blaze for myself? I don't think there was one moment. I think I just slowly grew into a running persona. And I never really had any qualms about whether or not I was a runner. I ran, therefore I was a runner, but as far as the really deep running persona, and identifying deeply as a runner, I think that just came about organically. And then, it's always a surprise to me that people who run don't think they're runners. Because if you run, you use your body for running, (laughs) it's something you do regularly- Then you are what you do?
Then you're a runner. Right?
Right. We all measure ourselves up against some idealized version of what that means or is, and the truth is, 99.99% of people that are out running (laughs) are not winning marathons and things like that. This is the greatest participation sport. You know, as I said, I'm just a person who likes to run, and I like to exercise. But on the other hand, I know that there are lots of people for whom like this thing that I'm doing seems to be inaccessible to them, because they have this idea that a runner looks this way. A runner runs this quickly. A person who hikes is a certain body type, a certain race, probably male. And so when they see me, it blows their minds that I'm out there doing those same things, unapologetically and without regard for what people think I should be doing and where people think I should be doing it. The unapologetic part is a big part of it too. Like you always have this huge smile, and you're the life of the party on the trail. And I think- I don't know about the life of the party. (laughs) Well, there's this sense like, "Oh, well, I'm here, but I really shouldn't be here." Like the sheepishness that perhaps somebody else who's trying to make this work would feel in that experience. Well, I definitely... When I started trail running, I didn't know what I was doing. (laughs) Nobody does. Right. I still don't know what I'm doing. But I would just kind of like hang in the back and listen to the race directors and then, go off on an adventure, because I always see it as an adventure. And again, not knowing what I was doing, not knowing what I was in for. But as I became used to that and more comfortable with that, the unknown aspect of trail running, and anything that you do in the outdoors, I definitely became more comfortable just being in those spaces. And that's how I operate in any uncomfortable situation. I'll hang in the back and observe, learn things. And then, as I become more comfortable, I... What's the word I'm looking for? (laughs) Acclimate?
Well, I acclimate, but I extend myself more and more when I'm in those situations. Yeah, and are you still doing the... You've got these running retreats, the Slow As Fuck running retreats Did you actually do these, or-
I did. You did? (laughs)
I absolutely did. That's like the best name ever. They sold out over and over again- 'Cause it's like, all the fear that people have, like, "I can't do running retreat." It immediately tears down a wall. Right. "Oh, well I think I can do that." "I'm slow as fuck." (laughs)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. What are those about? Where do you do those
Okay, so... (laughs) So yes, they are called Slow As Fuck Trail Running Adventures. (Mirna laughing) And I created them specifically to serve a community that is made up of runners. Some of them are plus-size runners, some of them are not, but everybody's slow. (laughs) And by slow, I mean, we don't run 10 minute miles- What if you're fast and you wanna go? I tell people, I said, "This is not for you." "This is not the experience for you." "Because we're going to be on the trails. We will run, we will walk, we will take selfies. We will have a picnic. It'll be a whole-day thing. This is not competitive. You should not consider this as training, because we're just gonna... We're gonna play it by ear. Yeah, play it by ear. And yes, pick daisies, smell them. We're going to climb mountains. We're gonna do some sort of reflection work, and we're have a good time. So yeah- How many people? The very first one I did was 22 people, which was a lot of people. (laughs) And do you just do it in your backyard trails, or you go somewhere? I rent a house somewhere and that's near a lot of trails, and I contract a lot of people in to do yoga, meditation, to... I had Roz Mays, who's a pole dancer, come in and do some sensual movement without a pole, and with the goal being that people get more comfortable in their own bodies and in the space that they inhabit, and they transfer that out onto the trails, and hopefully, in the rest of their lives. And so that was fun. (Mirna laughing)
(air whooshing) No mindset deep dive would be complete without a word from my next guest, the irrepressible James Lawrence. AKA The Iron Cowboy, James is a multiple world record-crushing endurance athlete, who's mind boggling feats include completing 50 Ironman distance triathlons, in 50 days, in 50 states, and most recently, completing in absolutely astonishing 101 Iron Distance Triathlons in 101 consecutive days. In this clip, he explains how he fosters his extraordinary mental conviction. (air whooshing) Your gift, really, is that you're able to suffer, but you have figured out a way to express that through these challenges that get incrementally more and more difficult over the years, that allow you to be in the place that you're in now. I didn't say that very articulately, but you know what I'm saying? This starts on a Ferris wheel for 10 days. And it's not like you're out winning triathlons right away or anything like that. Like you have a very different path into this kind of thing. I think that is the most beautiful or profound lesson that needs to be heard today. Nobody's the expert at the beginning of their journey. Nobody is. And you have to meet yourself where you're at today, and that be the expectation. The hardest thing to do is to start on any journey, because that's where the highest amount of struggle is. That's where our experience and our momentum and our success is at its lowest. And a lot of people see the headline, the 100, and think, "Oh, he's too just born to do this kinda thing." And I love saying it now that you can't go from zero to 100 and miss all of the moments in between. And everybody has a beginning, middle and end to their journey. A lot of people just get caught up in needing to understand how it's gonna unfold, and they get paralyzed and never actually move forward. And too, that was beautifully said, but they're too... And social media, this is the bad part about social media is they're comparing themselves against what other people are doing or showing that they're doing, and they say, "I can't do that. I'm a good enough." And that's what stops them from starting. And that's tragic to me, because thankfully social media wasn't big when we started and I didn't have a basis of comparison and people were like, "Oh, who are your mentors?" And who's this and that, and who do you look up to? And I was like, I would not compare myself with what the current standard of excellence was, and I would go out, and try to do what I believe was possible. And here's the perfect example. At the time when I said I was gonna do the 50, the baseline was kind of like the EPIC5, right? And had I looked at that and said, "Oh, the EPIC5 is the standard of excellence." At the time, which it was, I would've said, "Okay, I'm gonna double that standard to do 10." So why did I go all the way to 50? Because for me personally, I wasn't comparing myself about what others were doing and accomplishing. I went out and I set the standard or the bar to what I thought I could do. And that's where people get into problems and struggles is they are now comparing themselves to what they see the top guys doing, and they just get overwhelmed and they don't start. And so there's two sides to that coin, right? Don't get sidelined by what you see people are doing, and then, don't look what other people doing and do what you believe is possible in yourself. And I couldn't have done what I did mentally, without learning and struggling and developing and sharpening that thing. The big question topic, are you born with it? Or can you develop it? And my answer, just based on my personal experiences, it's nurture. You have to develop it. You have to work on it. Now, we're all born with a different baseline. Jace would be a great example. He obviously has a different starting baseline for mental toughness than some other people do. Now, if he-
And you're the kid who was on the Ferris wheel for 10 days to win a prize. Right, exactly. So your baseline is probably a little bit different. Like, how old were you for that? 20, 22.
22, 20- 21,22, but I took that knowledge from that experience, and then I've really showed up in my life and sharpened it. Jace has an incredible opportunity to be something very special in that mindset space. And I come across... You can pick out, okay, baseline higher, baselines higher, baselines higher, and develop that talent. But everybody can develop it. 'Cause I'm a great example of this is a mental journey. I'm not the most physically gifted. Now, the other big question is like, how much is physical and how much is mental for what we do. or the journey that we're on? And my answer has changed over the years. And you hear a lot of people have different opinions. It's like 70% mental and... It's 100% physical and it's 100% mental. You cannot do what I did, if I'm very strong mentally, and I'm a 300-pound man. Mentally, you cannot drag your body through that experience. And if you're extremely physical, but have a weak mind, I've seen so many athletes that are way more talented than I am fail because they don't have the mental component of it. And so you straight up have to be 100% on both of them in order to accomplish something like that, or the journey or push your boundaries or your limits, right? It's a combination. You cannot rely solely on one or the other, and allow that to be, to get you through. You have so strong at both of them or it just doesn't work. Yeah. It's really a habit or a muscle, this idea of reflexively putting yourself into positions where you're going to be tested mentally, emotionally, physically, in all of these ways. And we're in a culture right now, where it's kinda easy to opt out of that type of situation. So you have to almost have a little bit of extra gumption to seek it out and put yourself in that situation. Sunny always says, and she is not lying when she says it. She says, if I have two paths in front of me, I'm going to intentionally pick the harder one, because I want it to hurt. I wanna struggle. I wanna learn. I wanna grow. And that's the exact opposite of what most people are doing today. They see two things and go, "That's easy route. I'm gonna take that way." And you're diluted into thinking that the happy life is the easy life, but the happy life, the fulfilled life, the purpose-driven life, is the life that invites those difficult situations into your experience. Well, when you're depressed and have anxiety, I'm like, "I'm sure you do." Because you're just taking that easy mountain bike path that's just soft dirt, and all you do is... There's no challenge. There's no reason to develop any character, but they're choosing that, right? So it's like, "Well, I'm sure you feel depressed. Like you're accomplishing nothing hard." So that's definitely what our culture and our society encourages. Yeah.
Is the easy path. One of the biggest things you learn by taking the harder path is problem solving. And that's what our team and Sunny's become experts at, is problem-solving. That's all we do. We've become master problem solvers. And we've learned how to problem-solve in the face of adversity. And when you take that path of least resistance, there's very limited opportunities, or necessity, to problem-solve. And so you don't learn that skillset. And life is about managing adversity, and learning how to problem-solve at a high level. (air whooshing) The way we navigate our inner world, our everyday thoughts, our emotions and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, is the single most important determinant of our life's success. In other words, emotional agility, or the ability to confront difficult emotions, gain critical self-insight from our feelings, and ultimately, use this newfound awareness to adaptively align our actions with our values, is how we make changes to bring out the best of ourselves, moving forward. This is the life's work of award-winning psychologist on faculty at Harvard Medical School, Susan David, Ph.D. Because the tough emotions are the price we pay for a meaningful life, here's some evidence-based wisdom on what it takes to hone that emotional agility. (air whooshing) So my work really traverses emotions. So both the physical sensations and the physiological sensations, and also the feelings. So when we then construct something that says, "I am sad because of something", the feeling, the thought that we might have, self-doubts, and the stories. So my work traverses this whole idea that our inner world, our thoughts, our emotions and our stories, often drive every aspect of how we love, how we live, how we parent and how we lead. And yet, so much of the writing that exists on success, is effectively writing that's either about set goals and achieve them, or about the landscape of what success looks like, but there's very little that focuses. I think, in an evidence-based way, not to say that there isn't any, but in an evidence-based and research-based way, about what it takes internally, in the way we deal with our thoughts, our emotions and our stories. Right. And I think that begins with really understanding that as these emotions well up inside of us, as they do, that they are part and parcel of what it means to be human. They're entirely natural. And the starting point is really to discern the fact that you have a choice when they arise as to how you behave. That you don't need to necessarily self-identify with them, to the extent that they become that predictor of behavior, that leads you astray. Is that fair to say?
Absolutely. Yeah, so the first point that you make, which is that they're naturally occurring experiences in us as human beings is one of the first things that I explore in both my TEDtalk and the book, which is that as a society, what has started happen, is that these naturally-occurring experiences that really are incredibly important signals to ourselves, in terms of how we are doing, what's working for us in our lives, what's missing in our lives, what started to happen is that emotions either feel dirty, that they're seen as being disruptive, feminine, irrational, illogical, or what happens is we receive this narrative from society that says to us that there are good emotions and bad emotions. The good emotions are the joy and the happiness, and you should chase happiness, and the bad emotions are anger, grief, sadness. And so one of the most critical aspects, I think, of my work is starting to really challenge this idea that they're good or bad emotions. And to really put out that our emotions have evolved in us as a human species to help us to respond and survive. And when we start getting into the space where we either block or suppress or push aside emotions, we actually stop ourselves from being our most effective, successful beings. Yeah, this idea that there's a duality is a socially-projected notion, that perpetuates that vicious cycle of unhealth, I guess, because if you feel sad and then, you know, well, that's a bad emotion, then you're going to then feel shame or guilt for having that. And you're just digging that hole even deeper and deeper. Yeah, that's exactly... So it's this fascinating thing where we have in psychology, we sometimes talk about Type One and Type Two, and Type One is where you start saying, "I feel sad." And Type Two is when you start having an emotion or judgment about the emotion. So you say, "I'm sad that I'm sad. I shouldn't be sad. I push it aside." And in some of my work, I, for example, did a survey of 70,000 people. And I found on that a third of us, which is a remarkable number, a third of us treat our normal emotions, emotions like sadness or anger, or even grief, as being bad and so we push them aside. Or if we don't do it to ourselves, we often do to people we love. Our children. We jump to a solution. And I think a critical aspect of wellbeing is moving beyond the struggle with our emotions, into the other space, which is, "This is how I'm feeling. What do I need to do about this context that I'm in." Right, to detach from the self-judgment that usually is accompanying that? Yeah, the radical acceptance of all of our emotions. Our grief, our sadness, our anger is a hallmark and a cornerstone of resilience and a cornerstone of effective relationships. That's not to say that because we feel angry, we have a right to be angry and we should act on our anger, or because we feel wronged, we have been wronged, but rather, what's at the core of my work, is this idea that our emotions contain signposts to things that we care about. They're these flashing lights. You know, if I feel guilty as a parent, it doesn't mean that I should be guilty, but it does mean that there's a value often that sits beneath that emotion, that I value presence and connectedness with my children, and that I'm not feeling enough of it. I'm not experiencing enough of it. So instead of judging the emotion, if we can rather be open-hearted and accepting and compassionate of it, we can start moving into the space where we are able to discern values that are underneath it. Right, I like the idea that the emotion really sheds light on the extent to which you're invested in that value. So that guilt reaction really just reaffirms to you that that impulse to be a good parent is valuable to you, right?
Yes. And that's an affirming way to perceive what you would ordinarily feel lousy about. So again, in the book, what do is I talk about this four movements. I talk about showing up, which is noticing your thoughts and your emotions in compassionate ways, stepping out, which is creating this space, walking your why, which is this how do we make values align choices, and then, moving on. This is this tiny tweaks, as well as this teeter totter principle. So the idea behind this is that often when in life, whether it's in relationships or at work, we develop strong levels of overcompetence. So the idea here is that you can do your job with your eyes closed, or you know what to expect. And this doesn't mean you aren't busy. You might be very busy doing something in a rote way. And when we overcompetent, it's a very strong risk factor for just feelings of disengagement and ultimately, a sense of disempowerment. So overcompetence is very difficult for us, but by the same token, human beings like comfort. And we really struggle with the opposite, which is overchallenge. Overchallenge in a job is where you keep feeling like you're being thrown in the deep end. You never know what's going on. The goals keep on changing. It's again, a very strong risk factor for disengagement. And so the sweet spot of growth in our lives is where we neither overcompetent nor overchallenged. So what we are doing is we are working at the edge of our ability. So keeping on again, pushing the boundary, not just for the sake of it, again, in a values-aligned way. You can take that same idea and you can apply it in relationships. Where you in a relationship, where you go out with your spouse, you go to a movie, you know what the person's opinion is of the movie. You know what they're gonna order at dinner. You know what you're gonna talk about at dinner. You overcompetent in that relationship, and it's a risk factor for that relationship. You also don't wanna be overchallenged, where you walking on eggshells. So what do we do when are trying to work at the edge of our ability? Usually what we are tryna do is we are tryna either expand breadth or depth. Breadth might be we trying new things. We moving into environments that are maybe new. We may be, instead of going out with the same group of friends with our spouse every week or the same movie, we're trying different things. So that's breadth. Depth is where you start going deeper, where you start developing greater levels of expertise, or with your spouse, you start having conversations that you might not have had for the past 20 years. You know, when you actually ask the person what their dreams were or what their fears were, or... So depth and breadth are usually ways that we start expanding the edge, and moving at the edge of our ability. And it's in that zone that we have our greatest levels of growth. And yes, discomfort, but discomfort is, again, the price of admission to a meaningful life. Right, and I think in the book, you use the example of the gymnast walking on the beam, right. And as that person loses their balance, it's their core strength, AKA their emotional agility, that allows them to then stabilize themselves once again. Yeah, and it's sort of like... A couple weeks ago, I had the climber, Alexander Honnold, in here, who's just brilliant at what he does and it's so extraordinary what he's able to do. And I think it really is a testament in many ways to this principle, because he doesn't just up and climb El Cap without ropes, you know, out of the blue. He's been doing this as whole life, and, you know, it's just, "Okay, one wall, a little bit more challenging than the last one." In the same way, Laird Hamilton can surf this gigantic wave. It doesn't happen overnight. He doesn't go from a six-foot wave to a 20-foot wave. He goes from a six-foot wave to a six and a half-foot wave, taking these incremental little steps to push that envelope of comfort or discomfort, just the tiniest amount until there's an acclimation, and then, you're ready for the next challenge- Yeah, and it's a dishonor to our human imperfections to sell the narrative that it's simply something that happens in one fell swoop that, you know, just happens that way- Right, and that the narrative, that's what we read it as. We read it, and we love that hero story. And we believe that that's how it occurred, because we want these people to be bigger than life. Yeah.
But they're all human, just like we are, you know?
(air whooshing) The penultimate guest in our deep dive is entrepreneur, author, innovator and philanthropist, Peter Diamandis. Recently named by Fortune as one of the world's 50 greatest leaders, Peter is the Founder and Executive Chairman of the X Prize Foundation, which leads the world in designing and operating large-scale incentive competitions. On the show to discuss longevity, and to promote his new book, "Life Force", co-written with Tony Robbins, by the way, Peter ended our interview, the full version of which we have yet to share. So consider this a tease, with an unexpected monologue on mindset that was so helpful and insightful, we felt compelled to include it here. So here is Peter Diamandis. (air whooshing) Mindset is the single most important thing that anyone can take out of this conversation today, in addition to health. I got religion on mindset over the course of the last decade and I've made it the focus. So I mentor thousands of entrepreneurs through Abundance Digital, and I run a CEO executive program year-round, called Abundance360, which is part of Singularity University. And I've focused the entire program on mindset. And there are four mindsets that I focus on: An abundance mindset, an exponential mindset, a moonshot mindset and a longevity mindset. There's gratitude mindsets, and curiosity mindsets. We'll come back to the primaries. If I were to ask you, what made Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mahatma Gandhi, whoever it might be, successful? Was it the money they had? Was it the relationships they had? Was it the tech they had? Or was it their mindset? I would posit that mindset is the most important out of those things. If you took away everything from them, but they maintained their mindset, they would regain some portion of it. And so if that's true, if mindset is that important, then where are we proactively developing and honing our mindsets? 'Cause most of us, including me until this last decade, have been getting our mindsets from our parents, our schools, God forbid the stuff we watch on TV. And instead of proactively honing it. And so let me, if you don't mind, let me hit on those four mindsets. Absolutely. So abundance mindset is something I got out of Singularity University, and it got me to write my first book, "Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think." And it was the realization that, "Oh my God, we are moving from scarcity, which is..." We're genetically dialed into scarcity. We have, in our brains, in our genome, we have a scarcity mindset because it was where we evolved. But technology is a force that turns whatever used to be scarce into abundance, over and over and over again. Case in point, we used to go and kill whales to get whale oil, to light our nights, right? Then we ravaged mountainsides for coal. Then we drilled kilometers in the ocean floor. And now, foldable tanks, we talked about fusion. There's a squanderable abundance of energy coming. So tech moved it from scarcity to abundance. We have more capital year on year on year, than any time, ever. So we're gonna hit a hundred trillion dollars in our global economy this year. We've hit the most number of unicorns ever. The amount of venture capital invested in 2017, beat 2016 and 2018 beat 2017, on and on and on, even through the pandemic. This 2021, we doubled the amount of venture capital done in 2020, which doubled 2019. Okay, let's go on this past year. What would you think of as more scarce than a perfect diamond of four carat, five carat, a 10 carat diamond, right? Pandora, the largest jeweler on the planet this past year, said, "We're gonna stop selling conflict diamonds, or mine diamonds that have social issues. We're only gonna produce manufactured diamonds." And so all of a sudden, diamonds went from being scarce, to perfect diamonds, eight, ten, 20 carat diamonds becoming abundant. It's the cost of electricity, methane and water. And a friend of mine at a company called The Diamond Foundry manufacturers whatever gem you want. Do you want flaws, imperfections? You can do that. And so this is an abundance mindset, which I'll cap that went off in the following way. If you got a pie and all of a sudden, twice as many people show up for dinner, in a scarcity mindset, you're like, "Ah, damn. I gotta slice the slice thinner and thinner and thinner." In an abundance mindset, "No, it's bullshit. We're gonna bake more pies, right?" That's an abundance mindset. Every year it's giving us more and more opportunities, which has been fundamentally the case. Your competition, forget about them. There's more opportunities. Let's go and go in that direction. An exponential mindset is just the notion that we're linear thinkers. You know, take 30 linear steps, you're 30 meters away. But our tech world is growing exponentially, 30 doublings. One, Two, Four, Eight, 16, 32. At 30 doublings, you're a billion meters away. You've gone around the planet 26 times. And so in an exponential mindset, it's important to be able to see where the technologies are going, and how they're converging. And so at A360, I work people through the abundance mindset, give the examples of increasing abundance across almost every single area, exponential mindsets and what the implications are. A moonshot mindset is the notion that most of the world would love 10%. Would really love a 10% improvement in revenues, 10% more customers. And that's a great stretch goal. In a moonshot mindset, you're saying, "No, no, no. I don't want 10%. I want to go 10 times bigger, a 1,000% bigger." And when you do that, you've gotta let go of all your preconceived notions. Astro Teller, who's the Captain of Moonshot, at Alphabet, a brilliant guy, a friend who I care about greatly, gives an example that says, "If you're a car company, and your car is doing 50 miles per gallon, and you wanna get to 55, you can do that. You can lightweight the car, get there with aerodynamics. But if you wanna go from 50 to 500, you've gotta start with a clean sheet of paper, and reinvent the car. And so the ability to take these moonshots are here because of these exponential technologies. And when I'm teaching the CEOs that I coach, it's like, you wanna keep 95% of your company doing 10%. They're generating the engine, right? That keeps you alive. And you don't want them taking moonshots, but you wanna find that small team, that moonshot team and take them away from the main company. And you wanna say to them, "Listen, I don't want you taking 10%. If I see you doing 10% activities, you're fired. I want you trying crazy ideas that have the potential to reinvent our business, right? The day before something is really a breakthrough, it's a crazy idea. And most companies aren't trying crazy ideas. And then, they're stuck in incrementalism. Yeah, the idea of creating a skunk works. Yes, it's a skunk works.
Is intriguing to me... 'Cause every company, when it reaches a certain scale, falls prey to its own bureaucracy and soon becomes a dinosaur, short of having that level of innovation within, absolutely- Which is why there's very few 100-year-old companies. Yeah.
Yeah. The final mindset that I'm enamored with, and it's what gave birth to this book, "Life Force", to bring it back, is the longevity mindset. And, you know, you can will yourself to death, and you can will yourself to live longer, if you have something to live for. And if you believe you have the ability to live out of pain and have the cognition, the aesthetics and mobility. And so a longevity mindset, for me, is helping people see where this field is going. One of the things I did, Rich, was I built, over the last year, an AI engine that searches the global news, journals, tweets, magazines, newspapers, and it finds longevity and health tech breakthroughs, and it scans it for any dystopian, and it rates it on a quality article. And I get a digest every day, it uses GPT-3, it uses the OpenAI's AI engine, to give me a summary paragraph about 15 different breakthroughs per day. And so it's my longevity mindset. I'm seeing what's going on in all of these different fields. And I've zero question about reaching longevity escape velocity, and you can try it, as can everyone else. It's free. It's longevityinsider.org. And at the end of the day, I get this news that gives me tremendous hope. And because of that, I'm willing to change my diet, sleep longer, do intermit fasting. Right, it's almost... We're the last generation who are like butting right up against the edge of whether make it across the transom or not, right?
Yeah. All right, well, here we are. It's the final clip. I cannot think of a better way to close this deep dive out, other than with some mindset insights from the poet of endurance himself, Mr. Tommy Rivers Puzey. In the summer of 2020, Tommy, who's a highly-credentialed elite marathoner, an ultramarathoner, who is beloved for his soulful approach to athletics, life and family, fell gravely ill with an extremely rare and advanced form of lung cancer that very nearly killed him, and most likely, would've killed anyone else, But Rivs refused pity. Instead he doubled down on gratitude. He chose to learn from his suffering, to expand his capacity to love of, and more than anything, see the pain he endured as a teacher. Here's a slice of one of the most memorable conversations in the history of this podcast. (air whooshing) It's difficult to find the right words to express that kind of gratitude, and not just to the team that accepted me and was willing to work with me, but also with just the outpouring of support and love from, gosh, it was so many people. Oh, I mean, I don't know what your awareness is because you were where you were, but the outpouring of love and the support online and the community that kind of congealed around supporting you was unbelievable, man. It was really a beautiful thing. And I'm sure you know that, but if you don't know that you need to know that. People love you, man. And that's a reflection of the way that you've lived your life, and to the extent that your experience has created a referendum on how you wanna live and how you wanna be and improvements you can make. You need to understand that you have lived your life in such a way that people are going to the ends of the earth to try to find ways to support you and your family. Yeah, it's...
(Tommy sniffling) Man, people are good. All we hear is the negative. All we see is the scandals. The times that people mess up, and just this obsession we have with finding fault and that it fosters this mindset, as though humans are just these fallible, wretched, cynical creatures. And that's one aspect of humanity, but our ability to do good, to impact the lives of people around us, to help make things better for other people around us, it's just infinite, that capacity, that ability. I think about humanity. We talk about humanity all the time. Well, we did growing up, at least in my home. My mom was an artist. My dad, his graduate degrees were in humanities and religion. And- That's fascinating. I didn't know that, but I'm like, "Of course." (Rich and Tommy laughing) But growing up, we studied the masters of the humanities, they were the artists, they were the writers. And that word became synonymous with masters of the arts. They were great writers or painters or sculptors. And we think about Michelangelo, Bernini, or we think about... These individuals that have this ability to capture human emotion, human experience. And that's why we call it the humanities. Not because... It's not synonymous with artists, it's that they have the ability to capture the essence of humanity, not just have the ability to paint or just to be a sculptor, but to actually capture a feeling, this universal human experience. And I think about this massive spectrum of humanity. And on one end is the weak, miserable, wretched aspects of humanity. But then on the other side of that spectrum, is our potential for good. And we are are masters at picking up the broken pieces and recreating and repairing, and we're masters of redemption. I mean, we really are, and we're also masters at deflecting. The fact that we have that capacity, we put it on something else or someone else always. We look at these incredible achievements that humans have accomplished, and our first reaction is, "Oh, it must be extraterrestrials. It must be something else."
Right. We couldn't have possibly achieved this. Exactly. Because, if we recognize our capacity as human beings, then we also... Well, if we recognize the achievements of a previous civilization or somebody else, and if we don't attribute it to divine intervention or some unseen force that actually accomplished it, then it condemns us as human beings. Then we have to acknowledge the fact that, well, we maybe aren't reaching our potential as human beings. And so we're so quick to give something else the credit, which is great. I mean, obviously it's important to have humility and to- Right. But to face that is to reckon with our innate power. And if we're living our life frivolously, we don't wanna look at that. Exactly, yeah. But when we realize, our life is ours to choose essentially. I mean, if there's something that we want to work to accomplish, there's work involved. There's personal responsibility that we have to take, and we have to actually do that. But it is within our capacity. It is within our ability. And gosh, to be able to see that potential that we have as human beings, and to realize that that redemptive capacity that exists within each of us is a human characteristic. To realize that not just the flawed, broken aspects of our humanity, but our potential. (air whooshing) Thanks for taking this ride with me today. I think the question I really wanna leave you with is what is your potential? And can you ever really know it without the proper mindset? And I think it goes without saying that mindset has played a pivotal role in my life, from my days as an elite-level, competitive swimmer, to piecing my life back together after a bout with alcoholism that nearly took my life, then overhauling my entire lifestyle at 40, and reinventing my life several times over, over the years from lawyer to ultra endurance athlete, to author, podcaster, public speaker. All of the mindset principles, tactics and tools shared in this Masterclass, were and continue to be, absolutely essential to my growth and success, and of course, to the growth and success of the many guests featured today. And as sobering a thought as that is for me, I share it in hopes that you would see my story, all of these stories, not as unattainable, nor as outliers, but rather as fuel to inspire your own possibility for positive personal transformation. In a Masterclass like this, questions should arise. Has your mindset been your ally or has it been your nemesis? What dreams have you been putting off? What small actions can you take today to get one step closer to your goals? I hope you not only enjoyed today's deep dive into mindset, but found it helpful, found it inspiring, as well as activating. So let's get out there. Let's begin applying these mindset tools to challenge the outer edges of our capabilities, to celebrate our collective progress and of course, support each other's growth along the way. And with that, I look forward to meeting you along the path. Peace. (upbeat funk music)
