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Welcome back, everybody, to The Solved Podcast, the most over-researched and evidence-based life advice podcast in the world. I'm Mark Manson, number one New York Times bestselling author. This is my co-host, producer, and intrepid lead researcher, Drew Burney.

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And for those of you who are new to the show, the point of Solved is to go so deep, be so exhaustive on one single topic that by the end of the episode, you feel like you have everything you need to solve this issue in your life. Now, today's topic, Drew, is resilience. And I have to say, you and the research team went fucking hard on this one. We did.

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Pretty much did, yes. I think so. Every episode, we include a PDF guide, which is a full summary of the episode, including all the research and citations. This PDF guide has 164 citations. And from what I understand, you guys cut like 100 of them. More than that, actually. Closer to like 250. But yeah.

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What is this monster I have created? And as always, we cover a lot of material in this podcast. So if you at any point feel like you're being overwhelmed or you want to follow along or you want everything written out for you or you don't trust Drew and I and you want to check our work, you can go to solvepodcast.com slash resilience and download a free PDF guide. It's over 100 pages long.

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has like 160 whatever, you're just looking at me with death in your eyes right now. So it's hundreds of citations. There we go. All of our studies and work is cited there. So you can go check that out for free. And finally...

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If you love the show, please leave us a review. Leave us a rating. I think last month we got up to number 12 on Spotify. Probably so, yeah. Worldwide, which is huge. Applause line, Andrew. I'm very proud of that. Let's see if we can do better this month. So if you're enjoying the show, please, wherever you're listening to podcasts, leave us a rating, leave us a review, and be sure to follow us there. And finally, some exciting housekeeping news. Solved is going to twice a month.

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Yes, folks, it is true. Drew Bernie doesn't actually sleep, or at least he's not going to anymore because we're going to be doing two of these every single month. Basically, the way we're still going to do it is the first of every month is going to be kind of the large flagship episode. And then on the 15th of every month, we're going to do kind of either a smaller topic or a subtopic of the primary episode. So this month, in two weeks, we're doing an episode on stoicism.

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Most people associate stoicism with resilience. It is one of the most famous philosophical frameworks often used to build resilience. So we will be doing multiple hours on stoicism, and we will be joined by my good friend Ryan Holiday for that one.

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So be sure to subscribe to the podcast. Make sure you're following on every platform so that you will be notified as soon as that episode drops. Like I said, that will be on October 15th. Now with that, Drew, do you have anything you want to say before we get started? How resilient are you feeling in this moment? Well, okay. If you are listening to this, chances are like maybe you're going through something right now. Right. Maybe a little bit. Okay. And so just to let's give you a little reassurance right out of the gate. Okay. Okay.

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Resilience, like you don't have to be emotionless or stoic about this. Okay. We're not going to tell you to do that. It's normal to feel like a little bit wrecked. Yes. And you can still be resilient through that. Okay. So if you're going through something right now. I usually feel wrecked. Yeah, exactly. But you can still work through that, right? Yeah.

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And probably most importantly, too, it's trainable. Yes. Right? It's not something that you have or you don't. Okay? So we're going to try to convince you of those things as we go through this. But I just want to put that out there right away to let people know. This is the biggest thing about this topic, resilience. Not only is it trainable, I think I would argue that there's like a moral duty to train it. Yes. Within ourselves. 100%. Within children and young people. Society even too. Yes. It actually kind of blows my mind that...

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a lot of the stuff that's going to be in this episode is not more widely known or discussed or like taught in a school, much less, you know, listen to on podcasts. So here we are. We got a lot to get into. Cue the intro and we'll get started. All right, Drew, I want to start this off. I want to go back to 1914.

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where a man named Ernest Shackleton posted what has now become a world-famous classified ad in the newspaper. And it read as follows. Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. 5,000 men applied.

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for that posting. I don't know about you, like we're hiring right now. I cannot get 500 people to apply to anything, much less 5,000. Yeah, maybe you need to write an ad.

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Maybe the next job posting is going to be hazardous journeys, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness. And we'll see who turns up for it. But, of course, Ernest Shackleton was talking about one of his famous expeditions to the South Pole. So at the time, nobody had actually been to the South Pole. And there was a bit of a race among various explorers to be the first one to get there. Ernest Shackleton, unfortunately, very famously, came within 20 miles.

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of reaching the South Pole before being forced to turn back in one of his previous expeditions. But this expedition, which I don't know if it was named at the time Endurance or it was later called Endurance, but it has gone on to become world famous in one of the great stories of resilience in world history.

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So Shackleton recruited 28 men. They set sail in January of 1915, and they reached the shores of Antarctica. And pretty much immediately, the ship got caught in ice flows of icebergs floating in one of the bays. And so the men had to get off the ship and basically wait and hope that the icebergs would recede and the ship would be freed. And then they would be able to potentially leave again.

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They waited for 10 months. For 10 months, they sat as they watched their ship slowly get crushed by an iceberg, not knowing if they were ever going to be able to go home again. And finally, after 10 months, the ship was crushed. So stranded on Antarctica with basically no supplies, no way to get home, these men had to figure out what they were going to do to survive. So the ship sinks in November 1915.

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Which is the beginning of summer down there. And so there's a small hope that maybe another expedition is going to come. And if the new expedition comes, they can catch sail and go home on that ship. So they wait five months. No expedition comes.

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After the five months are up, the summer ends, and they look around and they realize, okay, we have to try to go for help. They create makeshift small boats out of the remains of their primary ship. They sail for 800 miles through some of the most treacherous waters on Earth.

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full of icebergs and killer whales and sharks and storms. They survive hurricanes. They eventually arrive to an island where Shackleton takes five of his other men and they sail in a small 20-foot lifeboat for another 800 miles to where they finally reach a small deserted island on the south of South America

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They climb an uncharted mountain because nobody's been to this island before. And it's from the top of that mountain that they're finally able to signal help from somebody. They get help. They get a ship. They go all the way back. They pick up all their men. After almost two-year ordeal of being stranded in Antarctica, every single man survives. Didn't lose a single one. Nobody died. That's incredible. Nobody died. Nobody killed each other. Nobody killed themselves.

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Everybody got home safe and sound. And as we go through this episode, we're going to use this as kind of a case study to unpack a lot of the concepts that we're going to talk about. And kind of the importance that I guess Shackleton intuitively understood from doing so many dangerous expeditions throughout his life and certain rules or practices that he enforced on his men to make sure that everybody survived.

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Now, the key insight, I think, to take away at the start of this episode is that resilience is really—it's not what most people think it is. It's not about not feeling the pain. It's not about, as you said, being impervious to challenges or setbacks. It's feeling the pain and just being good at dealing with it.

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So if you look at the journal entries of a lot of Shackledon's men, they were absolutely despondent. In fact, Shackledon himself wrote many, many times that he thought they weren't going to make it. He thought they were going to die in Antarctica. So the point here is that

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Resilience isn't about people who suppress their feelings. It's not about people who ignore their feelings. It's not people who are delusional and don't have feelings. Resilience is about people who feel their feelings very deeply, but they are able to act despite them in their best interest.

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They are not hijacked by their feelings. They are not consumed by their negative feelings. They are not, they don't let their thoughts and feelings dictate their actions to them. They dictate their actions to their thoughts and feelings. And it turns out that this is an incredibly powerful and valuable skill in life. And it also turns out that any of us can develop it and practice it and get better at it.

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So this episode is going to be structured a little bit differently than some of our previous episodes. As longtime listeners know that most of our episodes, usually the front half is all about theory and definitions and the science. And then the back half is all about implementation and practices and exercises, things you can do to actually improve this area of your life. This episode is a little bit different because I think resilience is so action based. Like there's not it's kind of difficult to talk about it in a way without speaking about resilience.

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what behaviors or actions you should be doing. So the way we're going to break this episode down is that we're going to have three sections. We're going to have a biology section where we talk about the biology of resilience and how that manifests through our physical actions and behaviors. And we're going to talk about the mental practices and mindsets that you can adopt to become more resilient, both physically and mentally. And then finally, we're going to talk about social resilience and the importance of

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social networks, community, the people you hang out with, but also the resilience of the community and culture itself, which is an interesting twist. And then finally at the end, we will do our usual 80-20 segment, and we will talk about some of the hidden costs of being a highly resilient person. And this one's fun, Drew, because I did something a little bit unconventional for this episode. Usually when we prep for these episodes, we are just like –

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buried nose deep in books and research papers and going super, super hard on all of the psychological literature, I decided to actually...

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Do an experiential test. Well, I'm excited to hear more about this. We haven't really talked about it. You and I haven't talked about this yet. We have not talked about it at all. I'm excited to really hear about this. We have not talked about it. And I think you're right. Probably one of the legitimate criticism is that we over-intellectualize stuff sometimes. So now we're putting the rubber to the pavement here. I like this. So for listeners, I signed up for an endurance race with basically no training.

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And I completed it. And I will share much more about this later. It was intense. We'll just say that. Yeah. But we actually made a YouTube video about it as well. It's on the channel for those of you who are watching on YouTube. But it was actually a lot of fun. And it was cool to actually put a lot of this stuff in the practice myself. Because it is one thing to like, as you said, we...

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you and I are both at home intellectualizing things. And it was really cool to take some of the stuff that I've been reading about the week before and be like,

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okay, I got to train for this fucking thing. How can I adopt this mindset or this practice to make sure that I don't die out there when the rubber hits the rim? I'm excited to see what worked for you and what didn't too. All this theory and putting it into practice, that's going to be an interesting thing to see too. So, yeah. Yeah, we'll have some interesting discussions around that. Cool. All right. So let's start out with...

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The definition of resilience. And resilience is actually, I think it's a more interesting word than most people suspect. Generally speaking, when we do episodes on topics like the root meaning of the word is thousands of years old. It comes from Latin or Greek or something. And it basically kind of means what you would expect it to mean. Resilience is a little bit different. In a lot of ways, it's a bit of a misnomer. So resilience made its way to English through French only in the 17th century. Yeah.

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It comes from the verb, the Latin verb, resiliri, which means literally to leap backwards, which you wouldn't assume that that means resilience. So what happened is that for centuries, resilience was actually used as a term in engineering. And it was used to describe something that a substance or a substrate that if you bent it, it would return to its original form. So if you're...

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talking about steel rods or, you know, some sort of, like, fabric that, like, takes its—reverts to its natural form when you put pressure on it. Engineers would use the term resilience to indicate that this is a substance or some form of matter that would, like—

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hold its form through a lot of external stress. An example is like bridges too. They would build bridges so they could sway in the wind. Yes. You know, like their golden great bridge, like 27 feet or something like that. It can sway one way or the other. Yeah. That was described as resilient. Yeah. So...

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It didn't actually make its way into the psychological literature until the 1960s when a psychologist by the name of Norman Garmezi was studying kids who honestly had every reason to be a total mess. We're talking about like parents with deep mental illness, orphans, children.

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growing up in crack houses, like you name it, like name the worst circumstances that these kids were growing up in it. And interestingly, what Garmese noticed is that there was a small percentage of these children who seemed totally fine, despite how fucked up their circumstances were around them.

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They still went to school. They still got good grades. They still seemed like mentally functional. And they weren't completely collapsing from the external pressure around them. For example, he studied one boy who was 10 years old. His mom was in and out of psychiatric hospitals.

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Never knew his father. He was living well below the poverty line. And he was totally holding it together. He was crushing school, taking care of himself, like literally packing his own lunches before he went to school every day. At 10 years old. At 10 years old. Yeah. Parents are not around.

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Making good grades, teachers like him, not misbehaving. And when Garmese interviewed him, the boy talked about how, you know, sure, he was sad, but he didn't see any reason for that to prevent him from doing what should have been done. So Garmese was blown away by this phenomenon.

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He couldn't really believe it. You weren't really, these kids weren't really supposed to exist. And at the time, there wasn't really anything in the literature to describe what this phenomenon was. And so he went looking for a word. And the word that he landed on was resilience, which was bouncing back or something that holds its form.

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Now, what's interesting is that, as we'll discover as we kind of go through this episode, is that resilience is a bit of a misnomer. It's not actually accurately describing what happens because you're not actually bouncing back. When you suffer some sort of stress or external event or trauma—

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You're not getting back to baseline. You're actually people who we typically call resilient. What they're actually doing is that they are adapting to their external circumstances in a way that is highly functional. So they are finding a way to either leverage that event or leverage the emotions or adapt to the new thought patterns or the new circumstances in a way that is...

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ultimately beneficial to themselves. And so I think probably a more accurate term that you could use, I mean, we could even probably call this podcast episode, is the more recent term from Nassim Nicholas Tlaib, which is anti-fragility, which is basically things that gain from stress or disorder. Because what we tend to see is that in most cases, not all cases, but in most cases, when resilient people go through stressful events or go through a challenge, not only do they...

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bounce back to their baseline, but they actually improve. They get stronger. They get more adaptive to future challenges. They change in some way. It's not, you don't bounce back to what you were. Exactly. There is a transformation that happens consistently. And this is super, super important. And it's something that Garmese...

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You could argue missed at the time, but he called it resilience. And so we're left with the word resilience. For whatever it's worth, the American Psychological Association does define resilience as this more transformative form of dealing with setbacks. Like they have kind of updated their definition beyond what Garmese called it.

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It's a bit of a mouthful, this definition, but it's pulled from the APA website. They define it as resilience is the capacity to adapt well in the face of adversity, trauma, or significant stress, involving a dynamic process of successful adaptation rather than just bouncing back. It is not a fixed trait, but a developable ability to maintain or regain mental or emotional well-being by using the flexibility of one's thoughts, emotions, and behaviors to adjust to life's challenges.

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It's like fucking poetry. No, but there is that element of the, not just bouncing back, right? They acknowledge that right there in the destination. And so it's a specific technical term in psychology. It's something that I think, you know, if you look at the early days in the psych literature, they kind of assumed that it was an ability to like maintain normality. But I think it's in the decades since research has shown that actually what's happening is people are,

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What we classify as resilient people are just people who are highly adaptive and flexible in dealing with setbacks, challenges, struggles. But I still think most people would think or they want resilience to be, oh, I want to just get back to where I was, right? Why is that? Why do we –

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let's just get back to normal. Well, because that's, that's safe, right? Okay. You know, that's, that's, that's known and it's changing is unknown. And so it's, it's, there's its own form of scariness that comes with it. I also think what happens to is, is, you know, if you look at somebody who is highly resilient, right? Like, like,

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We'll talk a lot later about how resilience kind of operates a little bit like a muscle. Like it's like a muscle you strengthen within yourself. So if you imagine somebody with like an extremely strong resilience muscle, somebody who's extremely adaptive to challenges and setback, from the outside, it looks like they are not...

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Just changing. Not phase, right? Like if you think about somebody like David Goggins, who I'm excited because like we finally have an episode where we get to talk about David Goggins. So I'm super excited. If you think about somebody like David Goggins, like running 100 miles, he makes it look effortless, right? He's such like an absurdly resilient person. Like it appears effortless from the exterior. But that's only because his resilience muscle is so absurdly large that like the struggle within him is imperceptible to the rest of us.

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So I think some of it is a perceptual bias. If somebody is not externally suffering or changing dramatically, like we just assume that they, you can see why Garmese thought it. It's like, oh, he's just bouncing back to whatever normality was. Right. But really, they're subtly changing. Okay. Yeah.

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The last thing I want to say before we jump into the biology section is that resilience is actually far more common than people realize. And this is something that I actually consistently run into with readers and journalists and people that I talk to. Especially in this day and age where trauma is such a buzzword, people assume that anybody who goes through a traumatic event is completely irrevocably fucked up from it.

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and is going to have to go through years, if not decades of therapy and is going to be struggling for the rest of their life. It turns out the research shows that this is not the case. It actually shows that

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The majority of situations, people do bounce back from extremely difficult events or traumatic events. There was one researcher named George Bonanno who ran a meta-analysis on this, and he came back estimating that as much as 75% to 85% of people eventually recover from extremely difficult or adverse events in their lives. The concept of being traumatized

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it's actually a minority case for most people. I want to put a pin in this because when we come back to the psychological section, this is going to matter a lot. And I definitely want to dig into this a little bit, this perception that trauma is debilitating because it...

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It actually matters quite a bit in terms of outcomes. Does that surprise you, though, too? Like the research findings that it's so common. Was that surprising to you? Because I think there is kind of there is a cultural, at least some strain running through, especially today's culture, like, oh, people are just weak. We don't have people are they crumble and trauma. This and anxiety is rampant.

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Is that surprising to you? It's not surprising to me. Yeah. I think, I mean, maybe it was surprising that it was that high, but I don't know. When I think about, okay, so if I think about all the traumatic events I've gone through in my life, I think about all the traumatic events that people I love and care about have gone through in their lives.

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Like you quickly add up a list of a dozen, two dozen traumas, right? Right there. And then I think about all those people and we're all still pretty functional and doing okay, right? So if I think about the people in my own life and the things that they've gone through and the deaths and tragedies and misfortunes that have happened to the people that I care about and I see how they've –

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handled it. Like, I'm like, yeah, okay, yeah. 85% kind of checks out intuitively. I think if you spend all of your life on TikTok, those percentages probably get reversed, but that's probably just because that's what the algorithm serves. Right. There's a bias in it. Yeah. But like I said, we're going to come back to this. The perception of this is actually critically important, and we'll talk about that in the psychological section.

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To kick off kind of the biological stuff, we're gonna go through some of development, some genetics, and then some of the actual biology, what's going on in your brain, your body, all that kind of stuff.

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But to kick this off, so the Swedish actually have a kind of folk wisdom around children, the different kinds of children that you interact with. Okay. They have what they call dandelion children. And I'm going to try this. Maskrabarn. I'm sorry to our Swedish listeners. That's probably not. I tried on Google Translate and I'm not going to get the pronunciation right. But what they call dandelion children, right? Okay. Dandelions, as you know, like they'll grow anywhere. Cracks of cement. Terrible soil. Dry conditions. Okay.

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Any of that. They'll grow anywhere. They seem to thrive anywhere. Anybody owns a home, there's dandelions all over your lawn. Okay, great. They survive, they adapt, they push through terrible conditions. Okay, so they have these dandelion children who they characterize like that. Very similar, right? You throw anything at them, they seem to be just fine. Then they have what they call orchid children too. So any gardeners out there have ever tried to grow orchids, right? I don't know how many of those. I don't know, Mark, if you've ever tried to grow orchids. You know me and orchids. Yes. Can't get enough of them.

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The Swedish word to keep butchering this is orchid de barn. That's got to be so off. I appreciate you trying. That's got to be so off. I'm so sorry to everyone. I'm sure our listeners appreciate you trying. Orchids, though, they're fragile. They need perfect conditions. They need good quality soil. They need the right amount. Not too much water, not too little water. They need the right nutrients. They need the right amount of sunlight. All of that, right? They need the perfect condition. But...

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When they do have those perfect conditions, you get a very beautiful, beautiful plant out of this. And they seem to thrive and they'll be fine in the long term, right? So the Swedes have had this folk wisdom around kids and people in general for a very long time.

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So they've always treated it as, okay, you need to treat these two types of children differently. Like dandelions, you can throw whatever at them. Or kids, they need a little different attention, okay? With just folk wisdom, whatever. Well, the research that you've already brought up by George Bonanno and also later by Thomas Boyce and Bruce Ellis confirmed a lot of what you've already brought up as well. About 70% to 80% of kids show some degree of being a dandelion. There's a continuum kind of. Sure.

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They're resilient in most situations. You throw anything at them, they'll adapt. They'll work through it. They'll figure it out. That other 20% to 30% though seem to be the orchids. I like that you wore your flower shirt to match our orchid dandelion. I got some color. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. One of the critiques I get is I wear too much black. So here we are. And talking about orchids. Talking about orchids. The thing though, this...

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The research, along with this like Swedish folk wisdom and the research that came to kind of confirm it, was that it kind of changed the way we thought about resilience. It wasn't so much that these orchid children were like they're weak and they're, oh, you know, they get sick really easily or they crumble under stress or you give them a tiniest little bit of adversity and they just collapse on themselves, right? It was more that resilience is really more about fit.

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Okay, it's fit for your environment. If you are one of these orchid kids, you can actually do very, very well, given the right circumstances, given the right support, given the right environment, then you can thrive and you can even find some form of resilience. So it wasn't just about like, oh, these kids are weak. Dr. Thomas Boyce's research and Bruce Ellis, they came up with this idea of the biological sensitivity to context. Okay, there's some genetic factors, some just biological underpinnings that we have that make us either...

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More sensitive to all environments or just more resilient to any environments, okay, the dandelions and the orchids. What they've kind of come to conclude, though, is that these, like, ultra-sensitive kids and people aren't, they're not weak, but they're just ultra-sensitive. They're malleable to their surrounding environments. And so they just need a different set of environmental factors that will help them thrive.

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This was interesting. So in preparation for this, we've already brought David Goggins, right? I read his newest book. It's never finished. Yeah. Right. I also read Ross Edgley, his book called The Art of Resilience. Now, Ross Edgley was a guy who he swam around Great Britain. It took him like 150 some days to do this. Yeah.

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He never stepped foot on land. He had a boat that followed him around and he would rest on the boat, but he never stepped foot on land for like over 150 some days. When you read their stories, you know, you might know David Goggins, the story that came from abusive household, alcoholic father, a black kid growing up in rural Indiana with a Klan, a Ku Klux Klan chapter, like 10 miles away, severe racism. Ross Edgley grew up in Great Britain, had a very good relationship with his father, was very educated, went into sports science, gets really into the like nitty gritty of sports science.

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These two men are incredibly resilient, but I would argue that Goggins is more the Dandelion and Ross Edgley is more of an orchid. He needed like the right set of circumstances. Now, if you look at Ross Edgley, he's a huge jack dude, like huge, huge. So you wouldn't say he's probably, oh, this is an orchid or anything like that. But when you listen to him talk, I've heard him on podcasts and stuff like that. He's got a smile on his face. You know, he's just smiling while he's talking the whole time. And he's very much, and he's even said, I'm not like David Goggins. Yeah.

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That's not my style of resilience. I bring this up, though, because if you are one of those people who thinks you're not resilient, it probably is just like an environmental fit thing. OK. And finding that environment for you is going to be key in developing more resilient habits and a more resilient mindset as well.

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This also presents, though, an evolutionary puzzle, right? So you think about this. Why would Mother Nature create these orchids? Why would Mother Nature create orchids, both the literal orchids and orchid children and people? How would being more sensitive and more apparently from the outside weak, quote unquote, how is that evolutionary adaptive in an evolutionary way anyway?

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It really comes down to these orchids, they're not evolutionary errors as it turns out. You've actually kind of written about this before, but the key really is malleability in these. What looks like resilience,

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Bruce Ellis and Thomas Boyce said about these resilient kids, they might just look resilient because they're not that malleable. You throw everything at them and they're fine. They can work through it. They can whatever. These more, the orchid kids are more malleable. They're more sensitive to their environments. Yeah. Right? I mean, I could see it being as like a evolutionary high risk, high reward. Exactly. That's exactly what it is. The dandelions are, they're going to be fine no matter what happens. Right.

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but we should probably have some part of the gene pool that thrives in good conditions, but also is a little bit more fragile and in harsh conditions. Right. And that's exactly what kind of their theory that they've formulated over the years is, that this is kind of Mother Nature's way of taking a high-risk, high-reward bet on the species. Okay? And there's plenty of examples to go around for this. I mean, talking about evolution, Darwin himself was probably...

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It was considered an orchid. What a pussy. Yeah, just a huge wuss, right? Actually, at the time, like he went to medical school and he couldn't hack it because he would go into these operating rooms. This was before anesthesia. And he just couldn't stand the pain that people had to go through to sustain an operation. I've read some of Darwin's journals. He was a little emo. He was. He absolutely was. He was a little emo, yeah. He absolutely was. He couldn't stand. I think he watched two surgeries and he was like, I'm out.

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Yeah. And then his father was just like, you're you're a failure. You're weak. Yeah. He just wanted to go look at Beatles. You know, he was he was one of those nerd kids. Yeah. Huge dork. Right. But given the right circumstances, like he had this like he was he was a very empathetic person, a very he was very attuned to emotions and social interaction. Yeah.

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And I think that's probably exactly what led him to kind of make these connections between animals and humans. Right. Was that sensitivity and that. Yeah. A perceptiveness that he had. Yeah. I think that's a good point to raise here. It's funny because the whole time I was reading about this. Yeah. The Daniel and an orchid thing. Like I couldn't stop thinking about my wife and I. Yeah. And my wife is very much an orchid. Like she is very sensitive to the environment she's in. She.

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The house has to be like perfectly clean all the time. If anything is out of order, she gets like very upset. If the weather is slightly bad, she gets upset. Like, and I'm very much a dandelion. Like I, I spent multiple years of my life essentially living on a couch. I built my first business.

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on a laptop, laying in bed. I didn't really care where I was. I was living in third world countries. I was eating terrible food every day. I didn't care. I tend to be very happy whatever environment I'm in, or it's very easy for me to be happy in whatever environment I'm in. It's easy for me to shut things out and just focus on whatever I need to focus on. Where she is always,

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perturbed by like disturbances that are going on. The flip side of that is that she has some incredible talents

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that I simply don't have. She has an eye for detail that I don't have. She has an understanding of design and what makes a good living room or why a window was installed incorrectly. She can just look at it and know within two seconds and I'm completely clueless. And so it is,

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Again, to kind of come back to that, it's almost like unfair to say that they're less resilient. Right. It's just, as you were saying, it's a different type of resilience. Like I think she gets annoyed with more stuff than me, but like she also puts up with way more shit. Like as a result, she puts up with way more stress and shit than I ever put up with. So in a way, in some ways, I feel like she's more resilient than I am.

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And I mean, it's not just not just your wife and not just Charles Darwin. Yes. There's like so many examples of this throughout history, too. And some of them that I came up with were like William James, the father of psychology. Yeah. Right. He made a pact with himself that he was going to kill himself in a year if he didn't kind of get his shit together, basically. And he did. And then he founded modern psychology. What we think of as psychology. He also had an experience of he was in medical school. And the first time he saw a cadaver, he was like, he's like, I can't do this. Yeah.

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Yeah. And, but he was a brilliant, brilliant person. He just needed, again, that right environment for him too. Henry David Thoreau. I guess he was, legend is he was actually kind of emo too. He was pretty emo. Don't get me started on Thoreau. Even his best friend, his best friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson was like, yeah, he's- He's like, dude, get it together, man. Emily Dickinson too. She was like a shy, reclusive kind of neurotic person who really, I mean, she died in-

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in obscurity yeah but was later and found out oh she was a brilliant you know she stayed home she wrote poetry and that was her environment that she needed for that so yeah isaac newton i feel like a lot of brilliant artists are like kind of associated with orchid type personalities um and i feel like their art is is a an adaptive reaction to how sensitive they are to all the stimulus right it's their it's part of their way of coping with everything

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And that's kind of the point I want to make. That's why I'm spending so much time on this is because I think, you know, the kind of person who's going to be listening or watching this is, is probably going to think that I'm not resilient. And it's like, well, what is resilience? First of all, and maybe you just don't have the right tools and the right environment to consider yourself resilient or to engage more resilient acts. And so I, the, the, the point though, is that,

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Again, nature has preserved this orchid style because it is a high-risk, high-reward phenotype in the population. And it's a matter of finding the right fit for you. It's a matter of finding the right tools, the right environment. And then that allows you to be...

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More resilient in your own way. So again, go back to that Goggins versus Edgeley. There's different kinds of resilience. There's different ways to approach it. We'll talk a whole bunch about Goggins, I'm sure, at some point. But there isn't just this one like stay hard. That's not necessarily – that's one form of resilience. It is one form. It might work for you. Yes, I can see why it works for Goggins. But…

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That's not the only way to do it. I got an example coming up that I think is definitely an ORCID example of extreme physical resilience that I'll talk about later. Awesome. Awesome. All right. I'm excited for this. There's been several studies, too, around this from the genetic side, too. So early genetic, behavioral genetic stuff.

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It pointed to these like, oh, there's these kind of like high risk genes, right, that you saw all the time. So one of them was like the serotonin transporter gene. Serotonin, it's in your brain. It's all over your body, actually. It's in your brain. It regulates mood. It's implicated in depression, anxiety.

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These sorts of things, right? So the early antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds targeted this system and still do. So people still get a lot of benefit from them. But early on, what it was thought was like, oh, if you have this one type of this gene, that you're more susceptible to depression, that you're more susceptible to mental illness in some way, right? Again, though, what they later came back and found was it's this environmental fit thing.

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If you have these genes that are quote unquote kind of like high susceptibility or high risk genes, no, it's actually in the right environment, you're fine. The same thing with like the dopamine receptor genes. This one, when it came out, it was kind of hailed as the, oh, it's the ADHD gene, right?

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Again, that's just not how it worked. Like if you have this gene, you have ADHD. But as you know, as a person with ADHD in the right environment, it doesn't matter if you have this gene or not. It's actually it could even be a benefit in some way. How would you define a good environment? Right. OK, so that was part of the like what what Boyce Thomas Boyce found was that you had. Yeah.

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Even if you had, let's say, socioeconomic stress or something like that, you at least had the social support around you. It could be a family member. It could be a teacher. It could be friends of some sort. There was usually some sort of social support that you could lean on, which we're going to see that's going to be a recurring theme as well. That was actually the biggest one. That's one of the biggest factors that they have that they show. Also, just things like access to good nutrition, access to good clean water.

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Those sorts of things are obviously going to help quite a bit. Probably safety as well. Safety if you're living in an... Yeah. And if you aren't really, though, the social support behind all of that was really one of the key factors that they found. Schools, families, social networks, those sorts of things. Gotcha. Yeah.

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Now, let's get into a little bit more of the biology and the physiology of this. Okay. So from your brain to your gut, even to your heart, resilience is not just mental. It's actually deeply biological. Okay. So what if I told you that there was a resilience engine? Okay. Right in the middle of your brain. Choo-choo. Yes. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

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It's right in the middle of your brain. And just like an engine in a car, you can fuel it, you can tune it up. You also have to maintain it as well. And if you do so, you can get that thing kind of like blasting on all cylinders, right? There is such an engine, okay? And it's actually the anterior cingulate cortex, specifically the anterior medial cingulate cortex is really where a lot of the action seems to be. Okay, thanks for clarifying that. No problem, Mark.

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I don't want to get too long. I was so confused which angular cortex it was.

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A lot of times when we do this, I'm like, so what? You know, like the neurobiology, I'm like, so what? This part of the brain does it. I'm like, so what? But this is actually kind of cool. And I think this is actually, there's a little bit of so whatness to it, but it's actually just kind of interesting as well. All right. This region, the anterior cingulate cortex, specifically the anterior medial cingulate cortex, seems to be very, very involved in what we're calling resilience now. It's basically energy allocation, deciding on whether you should push through or pull back. Yeah.

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It's kind of a hub for whether or not you stay in the fight, right? Okay. And it can be trained. There's differences between people who are more resilient and more not, as we'll see. And it's actually pretty interesting. The core functions of this, the anterior medial cingulate cortex predicts outcomes, okay? So this is going to be a painful or rewarding outcome.

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It calculates cost versus value, so effort versus return. Nice. We need that in resilience as well. It monitors the body. So where it's positioned and all the connections it has, it's connected to sensory. It's connected to motor. It's connected to your prefrontal cortex, so decision-making. It's connected to memory. It's connected to your brainstem for energy allocation. It's just this huge hub for integrating all of this different information, right?

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Adjust your expectations as well. So allocates energy based on what you think is going to happen, right? Preps the body for action. So it helps regulate your blood pressure, your heart rate, arousal states, all of that. And then it really is, like I said, it's that top-down regulator integrating all of this information and then kind of throwing out a, okay, keep going or, okay, quit.

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So that's resilience, right? It seems to really be the hub for that. What happens in the anterior medial cingulate cortex in more resilient people, what appears to happen anyway, is that these people are downplaying the cost of the effort that they need to get through whatever difficult situation they're going through. And also at the same time, they're overvaluing the reward at the end of that. Oh, my God. This is the story of my life.

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It's the it absolutely is. And when you look at it, I feel like this is every entrepreneur who's 100 percent. Right. So and there's a genetic basis to it. We talked a little bit about genetics already. There is a little bit of a genetic basis to it. But what they found, and this is the fascinating part, is that people who engage in things, especially difficult things, things you don't want to do particularly.

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There's both a structural and a functional difference in this part of your brain. It's fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. So there's more gray matter. So there's just more cells there, basically. And there's more functional connectivity with different parts of the brain. Actually, it's kind of interesting, too. There's more functional connectivity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. You're welcome.

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Which is, it's a part of your brain. It's like executive functioning, basically. Yes. Okay. So in more resilient people, there's a stronger connection between these two brain regions. Okay. In less resilient people, there's a stronger connection to your motor cortex, which they kind of think is like, okay, just quit. Yeah, fire flight. Just stop. We're just shutting it down right here.

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So just it's a fascinating little area of the brain that it's been implicated in all sorts of things. I just there was just a study that came out that this region is very important, what they call super agers. So people when they're older, there's a specific definition. It's really around memory. So.

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If you're 80 years old and you have the memory of a 50-year-old, they call you a super-ager. Okay. It's very specific. But this part of their brain is – it's thicker and there's more connectivity there. They could – it's completely independent of a lot of different factors like lifestyle factors, although those do influence this part of your brain. Yeah.

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You know, whether you exercise a lot, whether what you eat, whether you drink or not, all of these kind of things. There's one thing and I'm going to come. I'm just going to throw this out there now and we'll keep coming back to it. OK. Do you want to guess what one thing predicts us? How well this part of your brain functions at 80 years old? So I don't know. But I feel like I've I've done enough research and I'm going to cheat a little bit because I'm just getting knowing everything I know about human nature. I'm going to say socialize. Yes. Yeah.

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Yeah, source connections. It does. Yes. If there is a resilience muscle, would this be it? I think so. I think the evidence is starting to point more and more towards this. There's even some people who are hypothesizing that this is like the part of the brain that's like –

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This is this gives you the will to live the will to not just to persevere, but like this is where the will to live comes from even to. So like right down to the very bare bones of resilience. Are you going to live or die? This is like very, very instrumental part of the brain. Wow. There's a lot of things that the anterior cingulate cortex does. The cingulate cortex in general is a it's a big part of your the middle part of your brain. Yeah. There's a lot of things that it does. But this part in particular really seems to be involved in that.

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Crazy. So there are, and there are things you can do. Okay. So it's, it is a muscle. Like we said, it's a muscle you can work out. There are things you can do to train your resilience brain muscle. Um,

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One of those is, yes, it is the social connection, like I said. Aerobic exercise, though, too. It does. We bring this up in every episode. I know we do. We're going to talk about nutrition. We're going to talk about exercise. We're going to talk about sleep, all these things. This one, though, I just thought was crazy because people who do exercise more, they have bigger anterior cingulate cortices, specifically anterior medial cingulate cortexes, higher density of gray matter, more functional connectivity. Yeah.

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You could, I guess, and they've shown too, it can grow over time. Even in this, there's some evidence to suggest that as well. So it's not just like people who have this brain area are more likely to exercise. That probably is true, but it's a two-way street here as well. I think what that is, is going back to you're engaging in something that's unpleasant more and more. And that works as part of the brain out. And it works out your resilience muscle, basically. And, you know, I've always thought like...

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There's these things you can do to change your brain or whatever.

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So what kind of, but at the same time too, this is really interesting because there's like the, the biological reflects the psychological in this case and vice versa. Yeah. So that's pretty amazing. It is. So aerobic exercise specifically more so. What I've found is aerobic, but I'm sure anaerobic. I actually wouldn't be surprised if it was more aerobic and, and I, this is just my pet hair brain theory, but.

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As somebody who's done a lot of anaerobic exercise and a lot of aerobic exercise, the challenge or the experience is quite different. If you imagine, say, going for a max deadlift or a max squat or something—

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It is a singular moment. It is like a very adrenaline-fueled moment. And you do need a lot of courage and stamina and resilience in that moment. But it's over. In like five seconds, it's over. Right. Whereas, let's say you're trying to PR in a half marathon. Dude, you are suffering for like...

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45 minutes. It's 45 minutes of nonstop, can I stop now? I want to stop. This fucking sucks. Can I stop now? And you have to keep battling your brain over a very long period of time. And so it actually wouldn't surprise me if...

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There again, like it's that's I think that's a big takeaway to just for resilience in general. It's like doing the hard thing kind of 80 percent of the time is better than doing the impossible thing once at 100 percent. Right. And so I get into that later. Yeah. Yeah.

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That's acute stress versus chronic stress is another way to look at that. And coincidentally, the best way to sustain acute stress is to train yourself on chronic stress in many ways. Yeah, absolutely. And just like with marathon training too, the way you get faster is you run slower for longer periods. For a longer period of time. Right, right. So again, there's a reflection there, but yeah.

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So, okay, exercise is one of those. Challenging your mind, too. You know, old people, oh, you should be doing crossword puzzles and stuff like that. Sudokus. Well, I mean, just engaging in kind of the higher level cognitive tasks, you know, reading, writing, strategy games, that kind of thing. It can. Because, again, it's that small kind of exercising and working out that resilience muscle in your brain. Yeah. Same type of thing.

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So if there is a resilience muscle in your brain, this is it. And it is trainable. Sweet. We found it. We did find it. That's kind of the brain side of it. There are more brain regions involved, but that I thought was pretty cool that there is an actual muscle in the brain that we can work out. It's super awesome.

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Moving more to like the body kind of stuff, though, there's this whole orchestra of biology that influences your resilience and your aptitude for resilience. One of those is like your HPA axis, your hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis.

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This is basically the backbone of the stress system in your brain, especially with hormones. Stressful event happens. Your brain registers it. It sends out a little signal to the rest of your body, and then your body is flooded with stress hormones. The normal way this works in our evolutionary past that was supposed to work ideally was you have an acute stressor, you deal with it, and then you're over it and you come back down. And what they find is in resilient people, that's kind of what happens. Okay.

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they have a very adaptive stress response. So again, it's not just this like you don't feel things. It's that, yeah, you actually feel things, you respond to them and you respond to them flexibly. And then you're able to come back down to what they call baseline in this situation, right? So your stress hormones spike, your pupils dilate, your attention is very, very focused, your heart rate rises, you deal with whatever's in front of you. Then when it's over, you come back down, okay?

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Most people are like this. Again, it's like that 50, 60, 70 percent of people navigate this pretty well and they have these profiles. But there are other people who you can be either too reactive where you have this very high stress response and then you don't come back down or you get the opposite end of this too where it's very blunted and you don't.

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you don't have a very like adaptive stress response to it at all. So again, that's not a mark of a healthy stress response is not having a stress response. This is what we're going to see over and over again, both psychologically and physiologically. It's flexibility in your response to any adverse environments or situations in your environment that's going on. Okay. Cool.

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With the HPA axis, this is also a system you can train as well, though. Meditation actually helps a lot with your, specifically with recovery. So that's why people see meditation as like a stress relief. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So it's more about recovery and coming back down to baseline with that. Therapies like CBT, which we'll get into later a little bit. Again, exercise, nutrition, and sleep. God, Drew. I know, I know, I know.

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This was one thing I just don't – I'll get into this a minute. We'll say this for a while. Let me get into the next thing too because that's heart rate variability. Yeah. Very related as well. Okay? Heart rate variability, it's the measure of how much variation, how much time there is between your heartbeat, between each of your heartbeats. And –

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What they find is that more resilient people, both psychologically, biologically, they have a higher variability in their heart rates, which seems a little counterintuitive. I've always wondered why this is. Okay. So I actually don't know. Again, it's the flexibility. Okay. It's a flexibility. It's your ability to adapt. It's not your ability to stay strong through this. Interesting. It's the flexibility. Can you respond to your environment appropriately, quickly, and then get back to normal quickly as well? Huh.

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That's the thread through all of this that I've found anyway. Your HPA axis, even in the brain too. Physical flexibility, cognitive flexibility, emotional flexibility. Social flexibility. Social flexibility. It's going to show up over and over and over again. It represents that high variable heart rate. It represents an efficient toggling kind of between stressful responses and just a normal resting response as well.

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It's a healthy system that can navigate between those two quickly and efficiently without doing too much damage otherwise, okay? This is also trainable as well. Breathing exercises, resonance breathing, aerobic exercise again, meditation again. Yoga is a really good one too. I've noticed this. I've been doing yoga for a while now too, and I've really noticed with my heart rate has been, I get more heart rate variability during, both during yoga, but then after as well, for like a few hours after, I'll even see that as well when I do monitor it.

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It's so interesting to hear this because, you know, so I've worn bio trackers or, you know, I've got a garment on now. I've used Apple watches. I've used a bunch of stuff. My wife wears an Oura ring. You know, they always show you HRV, and that seems to be – that's kind of like the primary metric that they focus on, most of these bio tracking devices.

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But it's always framed in terms of, I guess, exercise recovery, right? So you do a big workout. The next day, your HRV is low and your little thing tells you, like, oh, you should rest today or today's a recovery day. I always saw it in those terms. But it is interesting because over the years, I have noticed a bunch of these other things. If I don't sleep well, my HRV is crap. If I...

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eat a bunch of garbage one night, my HRV is crap. If I am, let's say I have a huge fight with a family member or something terrible happens and I'm like really upset about it, my HRV is crap.

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I never understood why, though. Like, I never saw the through line between all these things. Think about somebody who doesn't exercise, doesn't get out, doesn't move their body, doesn't really take care of themselves. Their heart rate is pretty much the same all the time, right? They're sedentary. Yeah, that's true. They're not moving around. Oh, that's true. They're not able to – they're not working out – just like you're not working out a muscle. You're not working out your heart muscle either. Interesting.

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So heart rate variability is very much, it's a reflection of how adaptive you are from a physiological standpoint too. And reflects in your psychology as well, as we'll get into. The more you know. So that's the more you know right there.

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So there's actually one nerve in your body that acts like a reset button for your entire nervous system. Okay. It's called the vagus nerve. You might have heard of it. Yeah. And learning to activate it can mean the difference between like panic and calm. Okay. So the vagus nerve is part of the parasympathetic nervous system. Okay. This is the rest and digest part of your nervous system. This calms you down, keeps you in homeostasis, keeps you calm. It's kind of a super highway between the mind-body connection.

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And there's certain things we can do to kind of manipulate it and to use it to our advantage and calm us down when we are facing stressful events. So as someone who lives on the west side of L.A., there are a lot of spirit crystal people that talk about their vagus nerves. I'm on the edge of my seat right now. Like, is this a thing? I know.

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I know. I wanted to bring this up with you, actually. Is this a thing? I wanted to bring this up with you because I've always kind of thought that this is baloney. Yeah. Not baloney, but just like it's like –

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oh, you're going to make me do some breathing exercises so my vagal tone gets higher or whatever. Like, yes, that does sound crazy. But the more I looked into this, the more I'm like, oh, okay, this actually does make a lot of sense. And I've always kind of been like, oh, don't give me breathing exercises. Don't give me cold plunges. Don't give me all this stuff to improve my vagal tone or whatever it is. This is more of the – but like on the acute regulation side that we're talking about.

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Not more the long-term chronic stuff. You know, we talked about in the emotions episode when you're hijacked. Right. Like panic attack. Panic attack or just like super emotional about something. Just flying off the handle. Yes. This actually, like, there's some science behind this. Gotcha. Okay. It's bastardized by West LA, I would agree. Like all the West LA crowd. As many good legit things are. Yes. So, okay. So it's not the sort of thing where you just like...

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decide to cozy into your meditation corner on a Thursday night and be like, I'm going to stimulate my vagus nerve tonight. Like it's more of a crisis management type thing. That's how I would use that. That's what I think is the most adaptive way to do this. Okay. Yeah, I would say so. Okay, so what they call a high vagal tone, which is just like a fancy way of saying high vagal functioning. By the way, sorry to interrupt you. I have so many things in my section that I'm like,

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I can't believe this is fucking true. Like there's so much woo shit on this episode that I'm like, I have shat on this idea for so many years and it turns out it's actually useful. God damn it. I wanted to bring this up. Yeah. So there's a, this is going to be a running theme today. Yeah.

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High vagal tone, again, is just a way to characterize the quality of your vagus nerve and how well it's functioning. If you are able to train it, you get better stress recovery. There's lower inflammation throughout your body. So like lower incidences of like arthritis and things like that.

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And just better emotion regulation, which is really kind of what we're going for here with the resilience part. And again, this is more on the acute side. You can train this by slow exhale breathing. So one way I've done it before anyway is like I'll inhale for – I think I do a count of three and exhale for a count of six. Okay. Okay.

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That signals to your, your body, your body, your vagus nerve, really that you're safe. Cause if you can spend more time exhaling, it's like, okay, instead of having to take in more air, you're signaling your body. I'm safe. I'm good. I calm down. This is sometimes, sometimes called box breathing. Box breathing. And there's so many different, it's so funny. Cause it's one of these things. Tons of variations.

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Yeah, the one that I learned was four, seven, eight. So it's breathe in for four, hold for seven, exhale for eight. I've heard of four, four, four. I've heard of eight, eight, eight. I think Huberman has this like double inhale thing that he talks about. Yeah.

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It's all the same shit. Yeah. It's basically the same stuff. Like the exact seconds I don't think matter a ton. I mean, there might be like marginal benefits for holding your breath for five seconds instead of four or breathing out for eight instead of seven or whatever. But like ultimately, the principle seems to be spend more time exhaling than inhaling. Yes. And it will forcibly calm you down. And by the way, if you've ever been around somebody who is having a panic attack, you

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This shit is magic. It actually solves it within a minute or two. Yeah, it does. It's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. It really is. Also, too, you mentioned Huberman there. He has this non-sleep deep rest protocol that I think is very much... It also aims to calm down the vagus nerve quite a bit. I use this because I don't get very good sleep. And even...

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I was on a plane the other day and I hadn't had good sleep the other night. And I just, I, I popped that on. He's got, it's on Spotify. Go check it out. I popped that on and it's like, it's vagal nerve, uh, like calming. It's, it's, it's medicine for that for sure. Nice. So Drew Bernie looking for a woman with a large interior medial singular cortex and a well-trained Vegas nerve. That's right. Ladies reach out. He is single and ready to mingle.

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there's so the slow exhale breathing there's that humming and singing you can do some humming and singing will actually like if you're it stimulates the vagus nerve cold exposure there is some benefit from that as well gargling as well you can do some like that's surprising the singing I'm not surprised music

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Just in general, yeah. A lot of people use that for mood regulation, just in general. But yeah. I get that. The gargling's a little strange. Okay. That's enough on the vagus nerve. We won't get going on that too much. There's lots of stuff out there about that. Okay. Next one, though. The bacteria in your stomach can shape your mood. It can shape your energy and even your resilience as well, too. Okay.

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Again, this is one of those things that you've seen it forever, right? Over the last decade has kind of been in the zeitgeist for sure. It sounds like you're full of shit, Drew. Yeah.

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That's what they come for is those germs. That's why you're here, folks. There are something like 100 trillion bacteria in your stomach. 100 trillion. Something like 100 trillion, yeah. Okay. And your gut also produces a lot of neurotransmitters as well. So we talked about serotonin on it, right? It's the highest concentration of serotonin. 90% of the serotonin produced in your body is produced in your stomach. Okay. Okay, and it's a neurotransmitter. Like, it functions all throughout your body, but also in your brain as well.

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So it regulates immunity. There's a direct signal to the brain from your brain to gut. They talk about the brain-gut connection. It's absolutely there. Emotional stability, stress resilience, all of this is actually – there's tons of studies showing that, yeah, your gut biome matters. I can say from personal experience, too, that when I quit drinking, I didn't realize this for a while, but I was like, oh, I don't have the stomach issues I used to have. My mood's better. Interesting.

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I used to think I was mildly lactose intolerant. I eat dairy all the time now and I'm fine. Fascinating. And one of the things I do is I eat a lot of yogurt and fermented foods like yogurt, kefir, kimchi, those kind of things are very good for your microbiome. Yeah. So things like eat –

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They recommend – I don't know. I don't think I do this, but 30-plus different plant foods per week. I don't think I probably get that. I couldn't even name 30 plant foods. I do get like – but like I get like berries and salads and broccoli. Fruit counts. Nuts count. OK. Yeah. I could probably.

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Like I said, daily fermented foods. I eat yogurt almost every single day. But you can do kefir, you can do sauerkraut, you can do kimchi, those sorts of things. Prebiotics like raw garlic, onions, green bananas, asparagus. Resistant starches, which are like potatoes, green bananas again, legumes.

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I can't believe we're actually I can't either. But this is it's actually what is happening to us, Drew. It's it's I it is a little bit crazy. I've seen some of this stuff work. It is very new. Like this is this is kind of the frontier of, I guess, mental health. Yeah. Right now is is microbiome stuff, gut health.

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But yeah, I mean, there's some like very fascinating early research and interesting case studies. And I've talked to a couple of people who have, like you just said with alcohol, like I've talked to a couple of people who have like removed or added certain foods to their diet. And it's really anxiety issues, sleep issues, inflammation issues, like tons of stuff. So there's something here. There is. I don't think we're like we're not the expert nutritionists in the world. But it is interesting that this is –

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10 years ago, this was like quack science. Right. And like a lot of quack science, it's turning out to be legit. Or, you know, they would take... I think there is actually some science behind this too. But if you take like the either fecal matter or... Fecal transplants. Fecal transplants, that kind of stuff. I know somebody who got a fecal transplant. Really? It was life-changing for them. I mean, yeah. If you have a lot of gut issues...

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That could be part of it. No judgments, right? No. But it is wild. It's very wild. The thing, though, too, that I've noticed lately I've kind of like fallen a little bit off the wagon here and there with my diet. And the times where I kind of just go wild on something, I feel like shit afterwards. No surprise. I know that's like obvious to a lot of people. But –

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When you, when you, if you do clean up your diet and then you go back at any point, you'll notice this a lot more. So if you have a terrible diet now, you probably just don't notice. You're like, I just feel like shit all the time, whatever. This is an interesting, this, I actually want to like double click on this because this isn't, this is actually an interesting corollary to this whole discussion around resilience.

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And it's something that, like, as I have gotten healthier. So I've implemented a lot of this stuff in my life. I've quit drinking. My sleep has gotten way better. I exercise way more than I used to. My diet is much better. What I notice is that the...

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the tighter I get on these lifestyle habits, the more sensitive I am to fucking any of them up. Yes. Right. So five years ago, I could go out drinking all night, sleep four hours, get up, work a full day, eat, smash a cheeseburger and, you know, go to the gym. And, and to me that felt, that was like a normal day. Uh,

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there's a perceptual shift that happens. Like the, the more, I guess the more volatility there is to your mood and physical state, um, the less sensitive you are to that volatility. And then the more, the, the, the more you minimize that volatility and just like are always at a very high baseline, uh, it,

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Yeah, the more sensitive you become to it. Like these days, if I fucking eat a piece of cake, I feel like I have a hangover the next day. Yeah. And I'm just like, well, where did this come from? Is it though, is it that you're more sensitive or you've just adapted? Yeah.

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Because if you're just like, oh, this is just how I feel all the time and I feel like shit and whatever. Yeah. And then you get to like, I'm feeling good all the time. And then any little perturbation to that is just that. So I actually don't know. I actually was not planning to bring this up. But when you were talking about it, it just occurred to me. And it's interesting, too. This is coming up in an episode about resilience because sometimes my wife and I joke around. I'm like, yeah.

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How fucking weak we are. You know, we went to a wedding a few weeks ago and we went to bed at like 12.15 and we're like, oh my god, I'm so tired. Okay. And we were thinking like, you know, five years ago, I mean, she and I met at 3 a.m. in a club, right? So it is – I do think to what you were saying –

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All of these things, right, like garbage food, alcohol, drugs, partying. Lack of exercise. Lack of exercise. Like there's a numbing quality to them. Like the thing that makes them appealing is that they kind of numb how bad you feel. And so I think maybe a more accurate way of looking at it is that you're going from being a highly numbed person to a –

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not numb person. And so when you, when you're not numb to everything around you, you actually are quite sensitive to the quality of the food that you eat or how long you slept last night or, or whatever. And I guess maybe this is an important point to make, which is that this comes back to the original point at the top of the show. Resilience is not numbness. It's not, not feeling it's not,

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It's not just like blindly powering through, you know, being hung over on three hours of sleep and still powering through. I had a friend who is crazy motherfucker. Shout out to Leo. If you're listening, I had a friend who had a business trip in Shanghai and flew back the night before a marathon and ran the marathon. My God.

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completely jet lagged and hungover. Yeah. And I was like, what the fuck were you thinking? He was like, I don't know. It was the worst day of my life. And I just think, you know, he was like, I was, I was drunk as shit. And, you know, I drank the entire flight home with my, like, we just closed a huge deal in China. And so we were just like drinking on the flight and I landed and I was like, wide awake. And I was like, fuck it. I'm going to run the marathon. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's like, that's not what there is. Like,

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a person like that, that seems resilient, but that's not sustainable. No, no. So I, that's not what we're going for. Right. And numb, and I guess the difference is that numbing yourself is not sustainable. So it can't, it's not the solution. Right.

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I think, I really think what the big takeaway from the kind of physiological, biological side and these trainable things. So, you know, we talked about the diet. We talked about, there's also exercise and sleep. We'll go into this too. And we don't need to get into that, but just know that, you know. Obviously. Goes without saying. So.

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Give you an example, recent example from my life. This at the beginning of the summer, for whatever reason in my life, shit just started. Like things were going great and then shit just started. Like personal stuff. There's work stuff. There's everything just kind of like piling on. It felt like now for the last couple of years, I've been very good about exercise. I've been very good about diet. I'm still working on my sleep, but you know, it's whatever. Yeah.

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I really did though, like when all this stuff started happening, I felt like I had like a reserve that I could pull from. Yes. Okay. I felt like I had energy to address all of this shit that was coming up in my life. Yeah. I have been across three different time zones consistently for the last several months. That throws my sleep off. But I've had a very good baseline of nutrition and of exercise as well.

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One of the things I was helping out with, I was helping my parents out with, was some stuff around their house. And it was very, very hot when we were trying to do this stuff. And I was outside and I was sweating my ass off, but I was fine. And that's because I've been training in heat and exercise for heat for long periods at a time. I had this reserve. I had this pool that I could draw from. I'll tell you that right now, my tank's about empty. I'm like, I'm...

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Because I haven't been training as much. I haven't been doing the yoga. My diet's been kind of all over the place. My sleep's been all over the place. I'm starting to feel, I'm like, okay, I need to get back to that if I'm going to kind of fill my tank back up. It's a point I want to make about resilience is that once you have it, you don't just keep it too, right? Yeah. And I think another point you're kind of making as well is that.

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there are trade-offs. Just because you're resilient in one area doesn't mean you're resilient in another area as well. However, if you have these biological, kind of physiological, physical health habits underneath all of that, that can definitely spread to other areas of your life. Yeah. Okay. That's the big takeaway I want to, you know, we got in the weeds a little bit here, but that's- Yeah, we're way off on a tangent, but I think there are a lot of great points here. First of all, the reserve. Mm-hmm.

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100% correct. I did either a brilliant or a stupid thing this year in that I started a second company. I say as Drew shakes his head solemnly. I mean, this is the last time I worked this much was probably 2018, 2019, when I was writing two books at the same time. Back then, my habits sucked. And I wrecked myself mentally, emotionally, and physically. This year, it's been extremely difficult.

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But because I have that foundation of like good lifestyle habits, stability, consistency, it is hard, but I do feel like I'm managing it. Like it's not – I don't feel myself kind of spinning out of control or losing track. But yeah, it's – I think – so I think that's a super, super important point. And then the other point –

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is also massively important. You can actually over-index on resilience in one area of your life. Like, you can go too hardcore and neglect the ability to be resilient in other domains. You know, Goggins is as much of a badass as he is. I think he's been divorced. So it's like, that's not a lot of resilience there. Right, right. And relationships, right.

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It just because you're crushing ultra marathons or triathlons or whatever doesn't mean that you're you're being emotionally resilient at home or being resilient as a parent or being resilient at work, being willing to have your idea shot down or fuck up a project or whatever. There's like a domain specific aspect of this as well, I guess. Yeah, this is the important takeaway. No, absolutely. What other biology do we have?

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I mean, I mentioned the exercise piece. I didn't really get into the weeds on that, but they say 150 plus minutes of moderate to aerobic exercise per week. Easy. Yeah, right? Fucking easy. That's two and a half hours. Yeah. Yeah. Two to three strength training. I did that this morning, bro. Yeah, right.

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I did not do that this morning. What that exercise does, though, it's like it's a controllable, predictable, time-limited stress event. Yeah. Right? And so, again, it's like a practice. You're going back to that practice where you're doing something that's maybe unpleasant a little bit, but you do it because, you know, it's good for you. And you build that resilience muscle. It goes back to the brain aspect of it as well.

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Sleep. We're going with sleep. Consistency over duration with your sleep. I think that's one thing I want to highlight that we haven't necessarily highlighted before is, you know, going to bed at the same time, waking up at the same time.

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But I think the other thing too, another Huberman thing is like the light exposure stuff. Yeah. This can actually help a lot to reset your circadian rhythm and get you into a better energy space. Get you – like I don't mean energy like crystal energy. I mean like your physical energy. The universe is speaking to me, Drew. But I've noticed this too. Even as little – like start with like five or ten minutes in the morning and get some light throughout the day as well and then turn the lights down at night.

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These types of things, again, they kind of – what they're doing is they're giving you a reserve to pull from. So when you need to face these difficult situations, you can. Those are kind of the big ones anyway from the biological side that we can hit. Why is it, Mark, that you think like the vagus nerve, right?

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Or, you know, like having some sort of reset for your stress. I felt the same way going into this. I'm like, oh, God, we got to talk about breathing exercises. We got to talk about, you know, cold exposure, hot exposure, whatever. What is it about these that just kind of turn us off? And they're like, are they too simple? Are they too? I think you and I both have a bias. Yeah. Like we intellectualize stuff. Yeah. We're both.

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philosophical. We enjoy the complexity of, of, of the science behind things. And, and sometimes stuff is simple. Sometimes it is like, I think also I just have a very intense skepticism of this industry and this market. So anytime I see something being promoted as a very simple and be like curing or fixing like massive problems, my immediate assumption is that it's bullshit until

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evidence stacks up otherwise. And I would say, too, for, you know, for everything, for every vagus nerve, there's, like, two or three things that are actually bullshit, right? Sure. Sure. And we just, they get lost to the annals of history. Like, people don't remember them anymore. You know, like, remember when you were supposed to put butter in your coffee? That was what was going to, like, give you energy in the morning? Or, like, there's a bunch of stuff like that. And it's also, I mean—

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We have to be careful because we, you and I have seen this go the other way too, where there's something that is discovered and is, is evidence-based. And then you get another 10 or 20 years out and more studies come in. And it turns out that a lot of the early research was, uh,

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poorly done or not analyzed correctly or p-hacked or not good sample sizes. And it turns out that if you go to Indonesia or Japan and run the same study, stimulating the vagus nerve doesn't do anything. You know, so it's,

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we have to reserve some judgment, but you and I are gonna eat a lot of humble pie in this episode. Like we're gonna keep coming back to this. There's some stuff in the psych section that really does help. And it's a lot of it is stuff that I've kind of trashed throughout my career. So.

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I definitely had to I'd be like, OK, I need to how am I going to how am I going to thread this needle here? So I guess I guess we'll carry on this conversation as the episode goes on. But my sense is that, like, I like to intellectualize and I tend to be very skeptical, especially of simple things. But that doesn't mean I'm always right.

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Well, I think, I mean, the big takeaway from this section, again, is just that the biology really does lay the foundation for psychological resilience. And so getting these things right, that's why we're spending so much time on it. It's important. It is important. And it is also a reflection. As we get into the psychological section, we're going to see that a lot of this stuff is, it's almost like a training ground thing.

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Like it's a mental training ground for a lot of the body, tame the mind. Exactly. Because if you can have control over your own body, then you can have that. That is a form of control over your own mind. So it's a great place to start. Absolutely. Yeah. So psychologically speaking, how do we take our biggest struggles and turn them into greater strength? And the solution to this is the Goldilocks zone of pain.

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So very much like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, this porridge is too cold. This porridge is too hot. This porridge is just right. Sometimes in life, you have too little pain. It's like, you know, a rock in your shoe or, you know, you stubbed your toe on a table or something. You got to take out the trash again. It's an annoying pain. It's a nuisance. It's obnoxious. It's not really developing character. You're not getting stronger. You're not overcoming any sort of meaningful challenge. Not motivating you to do anything really. Totally. Just annoying.

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That's too little pain. On the flip side, there's too much pain where something is completely overwhelming, traumatizing, just completely wrecks you mentally, physically, emotionally.

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And what we find is that when you go too far to the other end of the spectrum, when there's way too much pain, people break down. They have a very intense stress response. It can become a chronic stress response. It can result in things like PTSD or various mental ailments.

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different conditions and whatnot. So it's that Goldilocks zone of pain, not too little, not too much, just right. Just enough challenge to feel meaningful and feel doable, which will keep us growing and overcoming and developing more resilience in our day-to-day lives. Now, if you think about this, I think it's the easiest way to illustrate this is like,

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It's the same thing with our physical body, right? Like imagine if you go to the gym and you pick up like a one pound weight and you start doing bicep curls with it, like it's not gonna do anything. You could sit there all day and you're not really gonna do anything.

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Whereas if you go try to pick up 200 pounds and bicep curl it, you're either going to break your arm or you're just not going to move. So the trick to build your physical resilience, your build more muscle and strength and durability is to find the amount of weight, the amount of stress that is both meaningfully challenging but also doable and then do that repeatedly over and over and over. That's how you get stronger. And of course, the same is true with our minds.

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And in the literature, this is known as stress inoculation training. It's something that you can be very regimented about. It's something that you can make very repeatable. Or if you're like us, you can just do hard shit. Just make a habit out of doing hard shit. And you will eventually develop a certain amount of mental resilience.

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And I think the most important takeaway of stress inoculation training is that, ultimately, you don't become a strong person by feeling good all the time. You become a strong person by getting good at feeling bad, at knowing how to adapt to pain, knowing how to use pain and struggle to benefit yourself. Throughout this section, I've kind of broken this down into five mindsets. You know, when I was doing research for this,

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I really, there's a lot of overlap and there are a lot of different schools of thought that kind of talk about similar things. And, you know, they're technically different, but they kind of get at the same thing. So I lumped everything into five mindsets that can help us narrow and focus on this Goldilocks zone of pain and consistently surmount and overcome these challenges.

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The first thing I want to talk about is something that I actually didn't think about for years, which is, you know, in that I've been talking about the Goldilocks zone of pain for a long time now. But I never asked myself, what is the difference between a small amount of pain and like a meaningful amount of pain? Like, where is that dividing line? Mm-hmm.

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And similarly, on the other side, what is the difference between something that is a struggle that's overwhelming and debilitating and a struggle that is just really, really, really fucking hard? And what's fascinating is that it turns out a lot of this comes down to your perception of it. And this is where we get into some of the woo-woo shit.

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that I have always ripped my entire career as being ridiculous and touchy-feely, but it turns out there's something to it. So, excuse me while I eat my humble pie for a second. It turns out that it's been repeated over and over and over again through the psychological literature that typically the more you believe you're capable of doing something, the more likely you are to do it. Yeah.

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sound right does it fucking it's the fucking manifestation thing i know okay when i was prepping for this episode so this kept me up at night true uh i i thought very hard about this because i'm like i'm like fucking manifest it can't be true it can't be true it is true but here's so here's where i think the difference is okay

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All the woo-woo fluffy manifestation stuff, the way it's generally sold or talked about in the self-help market, it's always talked about as something that getting something that you want, right? So it's like, you know, if I'm like a couch potato and can't get out of bed in the morning, if I just...

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think about having six-pack abs and being able to run a marathon, I'll manifest it into my life, right? It's like it's often used as a way to convince people that they're going to get something without having to put any effort in. I think one day we should do an episode on, like, manifestation. Right, yeah. Yeah.

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We've toyed with the idea, yeah. Yeah, the cognitive biases around it and like why it quote unquote works and why it also kind of doesn't work. Without getting into all that, I think the difference here is that this is like, this is when you're already in a struggle, right? So this is where it actually does work is when you've already signed up for the marathon.

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When you're already in the gym on rep 11 and you're trying to get to 12. Okay. When you decide, I'm going to get there, it turns out it drastically helps you get there. So you're saying the timing is very important here. I'm saying the context is important. Okay. So where I would say...

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The manifestation thing doesn't work is when you are experiencing no struggle, when you're comfortable and you just want to be more comfortable. You just want to have a thing that you don't have. You're just like, I want to find my soulmate, so I'm going to manifest them. And meanwhile, you're like, you know, I don't know, scrolling on TikTok and whatever. You're not doing anything. Gotcha. Okay.

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Where it does work is when you're already doing the thing. Okay. Right? So it's like when you are going on dates and you're like, I'm going to find the one. Or when you are working late hours on a weekend and you're like, I am going to get a raise. That's where it does work is when you are already putting in the effort. And the reason it works, basically your resilience increases in proportion to your...

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how much you perceive your ability to accomplish the thing. Because if you don't perceive yourself as being able to accomplish it, then you're going to be too far outside the Goldilocks zone. It's going to be too much and you're going to give up. You're going to become demotivated. Whereas if it falls in your Goldilocks zone, then it's going to be engaging, invigorating, and you're going to be motivated to keep going. So it's interesting though, I guess –

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To return to my initial point, the thing that's super interesting about it is that the borders of the Goldilocks zone are very much perceptual. On this side, it is, am I capable of handling this challenge? Yes or no? If it's yes, it's in your Goldilocks zone. If it's no, then you're going to freak out and panic and feel overwhelmed and give up. And on this side, it's actually super interesting.

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The question is, is this meaningful or not? Oh. Right? Okay. So if I'm annoyed that I have to take out the trash every day, part of what annoys me is that it doesn't feel meaningful. It's like I have to do this bullshit. Like fucking...

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fucking mom, make me do chores, all this stuff. Whereas if you find meaning in it, if you decide that like, actually I want to really take care of my home and I want to be responsible and I want to like live in a clean area because that represents how I feel about myself. If you add meaning to it, if you imbue it with meaning, and we're going to come back to this later as well, it pushes it into the Goldilocks. And suddenly it's like,

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taking out something as simple as taking out the trash every day, it is a form of building your character. You know, you are, you actually, it becomes easier over time. You become more resilient to the nuisance. Like, think about it. It's like things that annoy you, they never stop annoying you. You never like, there's never a day where you're like, I suddenly like taking out the trash. Right. What happens is, is you actually, you find meaning in it, and then it stops being annoying. Your relationship to it changes. Exactly. Right, okay. Exactly. Okay.

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The borders of the Goldilocks zone are very much are like largely determined by our perception of the challenge in front of us, which is actually great because we have a lot of control over how we see things. We get to decide how we see things. And I'm going to go through a number of examples of some pretty extreme ways people have chosen to see things and the results that happened. Uh,

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Afterwards, I mean, ultimately, this is mindset number one, is anything is possible. Even if we know, you know, if we put on our science hats, we know like, okay, there are certain things that are physically not possible. Mindset number one is it's probably if we're optimizing for resilience here, it's worth believing anything is possible.

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See, I don't think this is necessarily all that woo-woo. I came to this with kind of the same trepidation, I think, as well. But like I said, I read David Goggins' book for this, a new book for this, Ross Edgley. They talk a lot about mindset. Yes. They talk a lot about this. But you're right. They're in the middle of doing something very hard. Yes. And I didn't make that connection. That, I think, is really the key here. Yeah. So I've got a great case study in this.

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Have you ever heard of Janos Kouros? Janos Kouros? No, I don't believe so. He's a Greek guy. So I actually became aware of him actually prepping for this episode. Widely considered the GOAT of ultra-endurance events. Okay. So he grew up in Greece. He started running marathons, I think, in the early 80s. And he was good, not great. But what he started to notice was that

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He would do a marathon and he'd feel fine afterwards. Like all the other people he ran with were like, just like wiped, gassed. Oh my God. Get me, get me into bed. I need to recover. And he was like, I could actually, I could kind of do that again.

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So after doing some of these marathons and realizing this, he decided that he would sign up for some ultra marathons. Just see how it went. So the first one he signed up for was called the Spartathlon, which starts in Athens and ends in Sparta. It's 153 miles. He'd never run an ultra marathon before. He didn't even train specifically for this ultra marathon. He ran it in 21 hours and 53 minutes.

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setting not only setting a world record but beating the previous world record by like multiple hours wow in fact the record still stands today 40 years later yeah yeah like he crushed it so fucking hard in fact it turns out that most of his world records that he set in ultra endurance running still haven't been broken wow even though he's been retired for 20 25 years okay

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A few of his other world records. He ran 100 miles in 11 hours and 46 minutes. Oh my God. 24 hours straight, he did 188 miles. 48 hours straight, he did 294 miles. Good God. Six days straight,

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He did 635 miles. Six days. Six days. And then he did 1,000 miles in just over 10 days. He's the only person who have done that. I have never heard of this guy. I don't get crazy. What's wild is that many of these records, like I said, still stand. Yeah. Nobody's broken them. In some cases, nobody else has even attempted them. Understandably, yeah. Yeah. Like, this guy is...

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So hardcore. Wow. So hardcore. And interestingly, Kouros was very famous for saying that his secret had nothing to do with training. It had nothing to do with his body. It's funny. Scientists even tried to study him because they suspected that he had different muscle recovery from other people or something like that. There's always those things always come up with this. Of course. Yeah, yeah.

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He insisted emphatically that it was mental transcendence. And we're going to get into some of his mindsets that he adopts and believes very strongly in. He claimed that when he was on one of these runs that he would enter a kind of poetic altered state. He said, quote, when other people get tired, they stop. I don't. I take over my body with my mind. I tell it that it is not tired and it listens to me.

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This is Ross actually talks about this in his book, The Art of Resilience. He talks about the psychobiological model of resilience. Yeah. And do you hear this from military guys all the time too? Yes. When you think you're tired, you've only spent 40% of your time or whatever, right? So it's actually – so Kuros was actually on one of his runs. It's been a while since I read about it. I think it was in the – there was a book called Born to Run. I think they talked about him.

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Because, I mean, his runs literally last multiple days. And he would, like, he would start hallucinating. He would, like, forget where he was. All sorts of stuff would start happening. And I think on one of the runs, like, some scientists were in the follow car, like, with them and, like, measuring his biometrics and stuff. And basically what they found was when his biometrics hit where everybody else gave up, he, like, wasn't even halfway done yet. Wow. And he would just keep going.

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He claims this was all based on his mindset. This was all based on his approach. I believe, I believe, I don't know if- I mean, obviously training goes into all of this. I don't know if this is a direct quote, but I saw somewhere when I was reading about him that he said that he believed it was 90% mindset. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That might've been Goggins who said that. It was one of those two. Yeah, yeah. He said it was 90% mindset. So yeah. Yeah.

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I think the thing to take away from Kuros, and I mean, there's a ton of examples. We'll get into a lot of them. But so talking about that Goldilocks zone of pain, if one of the borders is almost purely based on perception, one of the things that we find over and over again is that our perception of what is possible, especially with ourselves, is often wildly off base. Right.

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Like we are generally capable of doing and accomplishing and enduring a lot more than we give ourselves credit to. In fact, David Goggins actually talks about this in one of his books. He calls the mind a drama queen. And he said that your mind is not optimized for growth. It's optimized for comfort and safety. Right. Yeah. And I think that's a really important point that like the there are defense mechanisms that happen naturally inside you that.

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will come up in the form of thoughts and stories and assumptions that they're not necessarily true. They're probably not even accurate, but they're designed to keep you safe. And so there's a trip wire that's going off well before you're actually in danger of your mind telling you to stop. We can talk about whether it's good or not to ignore those trip wires, but I think it's useful to know that those things are there. And so one of the things...

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that I think it's really important to do, one of the, I guess, the most practical takeaways for people listening to this, is that I think it's important to commit yourself to doing difficult things that feel slightly outside of your Goldilocks zone. So things that feel just outside the realm of possibility, like that's the sweet spot, and then commit yourself to it. Like basically give yourself a, put yourself in a situation where you can't back out. Right.

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And you'll be surprised what happens. This is that stress inoculation training you're talking about, right? Yes. So you're being very intentional about it, but it's very calibrated at the same time. And again, to bring it home back to like a gym metaphor, you know, you go into the gym, you're like, okay, I bench pressed 165 last week. Let's do 170 this week, right? You go just slightly outside of where you feel your limit is.

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And then it turns out you can do it. And then sure enough, your body adapts and you push into it. So it's similar with mental stress or mental challenge. Like you want to find things that feel at the edge, like they're either on the challenging side of the Goldilocks zone or they feel even slightly outside of the Goldilocks zone. And then commit yourself to them and then...

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I mean, the commitment thing I don't think is part of SIT. That's my thing. That's what I've found is like if you don't make the commitment or put stakes on it, like you're going to back out. Right. Right. You're going to find a reason not to do it. So as you know, as we talked about earlier, as part of my research for this, I decided to do just this. So I signed up for a Tough Mudder. For those listening who don't know what it is, a Tough Mudder is an endurance race.

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It's a combination of it's about 10 miles of running through rough terrain. So hills, rocks, trees, mud, water. And then it's about 25 military style obstacles. So climbing walls, crawling through barbed wire, going over, you know, balance exercises, grip strength, you know, doing like rings and monkey bars, American Ninja type stuff. Yeah.

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And then there's also like some pretty unpleasant aspects integrated into the obstacles. So I ran it with my my camera woman, Jess, who's here in the studio with us. And we got electrocuted. We got tear gassed. We had to swim through ice water. We like were waist deep in mud multiple times. Yeah.

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And it's funny because this was a race that I was always aware of. I never had any, I never had any desire to do it. Yeah. And as I was prepping for this episode, I was like, man, it would be really cool to like basically run like these, these mindsets and everything I'm about to go through in this section. It'd be fun to like run myself through this. Right. So what is something I can commit to that feels outside of my Goldilocks zone? Like,

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I actually don't think I'm prepared for it, but I probably can handle it. And so I signed up for it. And on top of that, I committed. I committed. I got Jess signed up for it. I got the team committed to it. We shot it. We ended up doing a video on it. So there was no backing out. Okay. I think I had 12 days to train for it. So what made it slightly outside of your go-to-doc zone or –

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Just within it or just slightly out of it? So I am in good shape. Yeah. You have a baseline, right? I'm fit. I have a baseline of fitness. I did run a half marathon maybe four months, four or five months ago. So I felt like I'm like, okay, the fitness side of it,

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I think I can get back enough of my cardio in a couple weeks to struggle bust my way through it. The side of it that I wasn't so sure about was the obstacle side. I didn't really know what to expect. I did get on YouTube and I looked at a lot of obstacles and I'd say about half of them, I was like,

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that looks fine. I can handle that. But then there's about half of it that I'm like, that could be rough. So probably just outside your zone there. Exactly. I'm going to come back to, this is actually a mindset number five, but I'll tease it a little bit here. I've done enough hard shit in my life to know...

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I can do hard shit. Right. Your mind is already telling you at that point, like, I don't know if you should. Yes. It's like, yeah, you're playing tricks on me a little bit. I've built, and I've built, at this point in my life, I've built enough evidence over time. Okay. That, like, there have been enough things in my life that I initially thought I couldn't do it, and then I did it, and I was like, oh, okay.

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I'm actually capable of a lot more than I thought. But we're going to come back to that because that is a very important piece, actually. So when I signed up for it, I did start training, went up into the Santa Monica Mountains here outside of L.A., started running hills and through dirt and stuff and doing cold plunges and a bunch of grip exercises. And it's funny because this takes me in a mindset number two is that stories are just that. They're stories.

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that tripwire that tries to stop you halfway from doing the thing. Like I said, a lot of stories and narratives will start emerging in your head. You'll find all sorts of reasons why you're probably not ready for this, or this could be dangerous, or maybe you're putting an employee in danger, or maybe you're just going to look like an idiot on the internet and everybody's going to laugh at you. All this stuff starts bubbling up to the surface, and it's important to recognize that

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these things, they're not necessarily true. They're just stories. And this comes from CBT. Like we've talked about CBT a couple of times on the show. Cognitive behavioral therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy. It is the most predominant form of therapy in the world today, or at least in the Western world.

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Originated with Aaron Beck in the 1950s. And the central insight of CBT is that there's kind of this chain that happens inside of all of us, which is that our behaviors create emotions and then the emotions create thoughts and then the thoughts create behaviors. And so there's this like loop that goes around.

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And you have to find a way to intervene into one of those three links in the chain to change the entire loop. Like you can't just only change your thoughts or only change your emotions. All three have to change, but you need to find an entry point.

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Beck believed that thoughts were ultimately the easiest entry point. It's very hard to change how somebody feels about something, and it's definitely hard to change somebody's behavior about something, especially if they don't believe they should change their behavior. But if you can get somebody to see something differently or reframe something in a certain way or give them a new perspective—

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you can create a chain reaction. It leads to different behavior, which leads to different emotion, which now you've got an upward spiral going. And so this idea of like not necessarily believing your stories is like it's central to any form of resilience. And I think if you listen to it

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anybody who deals with a decent amount of hardship, you hear them talk about this, right? Like there's so many interviews with athletes who talk about, you know, I wanted to stop. My mind told me we weren't gonna make it or it told me to quit. I wanted to quit, but I didn't listen to it. Like you hear these things come up over and over and over again.

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I think there's a certain skill that has to be developed of like being able to recognize your own stories and essentially just being willing to ignore them. You know, the same way you would like ignore, you know, if your parents told you not to do something when you were a teenager. Like it's just sometimes there's things in your brain that you're just like, yeah, what do you know? Right. Fuck off. Right. But that takes practice and it takes effort. And our default practice.

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position is to buy into those narratives and to follow them blindly and to just assume that whatever narrative pops into your brain is capital T true. And that's the way things are. And there's nothing you can do about it. This is an area where mindfulness plays a role as well. I think a lot of you need to get a certain amount of separation from the narratives, like being able to observe your own thoughts to a certain extent to like know what's a narrative and what's not.

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It's interesting, you know, as I went through the experiment of the Tough Mudder, I like, I really tried to pay attention to what kind of narratives popped up into my brain. I would say beyond the first few days of training, and especially once I was there, like once I was there, there were no narratives. Really? None. It was just, this is what we're doing. I have the task in front of me and that's it. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Like I imagined myself 20 years ago. Yeah. That would not have been the case.

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Okay. Uh, I mean, part of this too was just like, I wasn't allowing those narratives to even show up in the first place. I think early on in the training, they were showing up and I was just like, this is not helping. Yeah. Fuck off. It was so clear. Yeah. That that wasn't helping. Yeah. Okay.

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And again, it comes back to mindset number one, right? It's you just decide you're doing it. I'm fucking doing it no matter what. I can have broken legs and crawl across the finish line. I'm doing it. And once you decide that, there's not really a whole lot of room for those narratives to start showing up.

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I want to highlight there, though, too, go back to what you kind of opened this up with. So this is cognitive reappraisal is kind of what this is called in CBT, right? And lots of other modalities in psychology. Because I tend to dismiss this kind of out of hand, too, as well. But I think that is a really important point that you made when you brought it up. And I just want to highlight it again. It's that when you're in it, when you're going through it and you have a task in front of you, you have a challenge in front of you, that's when it comes in. Yes, absolutely.

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It's not when you're sitting on the couch and saying, oh, I should do this. I just need to talk myself into it. No. Yeah, right. No. It's when you have the challenge in front of you that you need to reframe it. Yes. That's the important part. That's the important. That's the leverage point, actually. Yes. Yeah. Okay. And it's funny because I never thought about that before. It's very simple. And it kind of gets me on board. That's what I'm saying. You know, it's like before I was just like, yeah, I'm going to talk to myself. It's really cool.

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It's actually really ironic too, because a lot of this stuff that I'm going to go through is stuff that, again, it's like a lot of the stuff that I see on Instagram or TikTok, and I just roll my eyes. I'm like, come on, guys. Seriously? If you take that same advice and give it to a Navy SEAL, it's actually incredibly- Packaging matters. It is vital and absolutely necessary. Or if you give it to an F1 driver or a firefighter who's about to run into a burning building, like-

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It's actually excellent advice for them in that moment where it's terrible advice is when it's just a, you know, for when you're scrolling, a mopey person scrolling TikTok all day and not doing anything. Okay. Okay. It's very, it is interesting. I find that incredibly useful. Yeah. Yeah. That's a useful distinction there. Yeah. The next mindset.

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is a classic stoic mindset, which is focus on what you can control and ignore everything else. There's a little bit of a tie in here with acceptance and commitment therapy, which is essentially accepting the things that you cannot control. It's interesting. So I grew up with a guy who went on to be in the special forces and he served in Iraq, did multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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He told me a lot of crazy fucking stories over the years. And so the second thing I did in preparation for this episode is I reached out to him. And I was like, hey, can I just like, I just want to, I remember some crazy shit you told me. Can I just ask you a couple questions about it? And he was like, yeah, of course. So I talked to him. And there were two stories that like really stood out to me that he told me. One was when he was in training, he was doing an exercise where they were jumping out of a plane into the ocean.

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And then they had to swim from the ocean to shore. And I forget how far it was, but it was far. It was like a mile or two to shore. So you parachute out of a plane, you land in the ocean, and then you swim on the shore. And you were supposed to do this, like, covertly in the dead of night or whatever. So he was doing this exercise in...

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He was parachuting down from the plane. And what you're actually supposed to do is, I believe, you're supposed to undo your parachute like a few feet off the water. Because you don't want to land in the water with your parachute on because then you can get all wrapped up. Okay, yeah. It becomes a disaster. And so you're supposed to actually like cut loose like right before you hit the water or right as you hit the water.

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But he said that as he was coming down, there was like a massive gale of wind and it like basically pulled him sideways and just slammed him straight into the water. Parachute never had to release or anything. Okay, yeah. So he's in the ocean, he's flailing around and he's like all wrapped up in his parachute now and he's underwater. And he doesn't know how far underwater he is. And I remember he told me, he was like, yeah, in that moment,

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I thought, yeah, I could die here. But he was like, all I can do is just get my parachute off. So I guess I'll do that. Clarifying event? Yeah. Yeah. He calmly, like, went to his harness, got everything off, started kind of trying to pull himself out of it, and eventually pulled himself out of it, and he came up to the surface of the water and everything. So when I went back and I talked to him, I was like, dude, weren't you fucking freaking out?

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And it was interesting because he said he was like part of him. There was like a there was like a very a level very deep in him that was that was like, oh, shit, this could be it. He was, I guess, from the training, he was just so focused on, like, just do the thing in front of you that you can control. Just get the harness loose. Just get the parachute off. Worry about everything else later. And he's like, yeah, then you just you just do that. But he also pointed out, he's like, when you're in training and when you're in theater, like there are so many moments that.

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like that, where you're like, yeah, I could die. Like, it's, but you just focus on the next thing. So the second thing he told me about when he was in Iraq, he was on one of those, have you ever seen American Sniper? Yeah. So you know those task force that go door to door? They were like the guys who like literally kicked in the doors. Right. So he was on one of those task force. And he said, he's like, every house, you're thinking to yourself, this could be the one. Right? But in that moment,

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It's like, well, what is there to do? What else is there to do? What else is there? Well, you follow, they've got protocols, you train through them a bajillion times to the point that they're automatic. And it's just, it gave me an appreciation of the logic in military training of like breaking down everything into such granular processes. Not just to make sure that everything is standardized and like it goes the same way every single time. But I think it's like...

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just for the mental sanity of the soldiers themselves, because it's like, they need something. They always need something in front of them to focus on next. Cause if they don't have that thing right in front of them to focus on next, then they're probably thinking about, Oh my God, what if this is the one? Oh my God. What if this guy gets shot? Oh my God. What if this happens? You know, what's my wife going to think? What are my parents going to think? Like, you know,

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They need to always have the next thing in front of them. Yeah. So I thought that was super interesting as well. Isn't that how our civilian lives kind of go, though? It's usually not that there's just this like really one thing that we have to focus on. I get the point that you're making that like it's imperative that you focus and do the thing that you can control in this situation and those high stakes situations like that. But like, you know, if you've lost a job, you know.

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it's not necessarily clear that one thing you can control in that situation. Then you do start thinking about what's my family going to think? What's my girlfriend, boyfriend going to think? What are people going to think? Well, it's funny you bring that up because there's another – there was a book that was really popular –

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about 10 years ago that at the time I thought was stupid as fuck that now I have a deep appreciation for. It was called Make Your Bed. And it was written. Oh, yeah. It was written by an admiral and former Navy SEAL, which was that he was like, if nothing in your life is going right, make your bed. Make your damn bed. Yeah. And now, like, I remember you shitting on. I remember piling on with you, I think, too. I mean, at the time I was like, really, man? Like, make your bed. Come on.

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But I think I get it now, right? Because you do need something in your life that you feel like you can control. And you do need something immediately in front of you that you can focus on. And you do need that small win that you can build upon. Like there's a lot of subtle value in that, if anything, to just keep your mind off of –

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the eight million bullshit things that are going on in the world. So it's, no, it's funny you bring this up because like I kind of mentioned a little bit that the last few months of Hermia, there's a little bit of a shit storm, not nothing I can't handle, I get it. But it was like, I had issues like water damage at my house, but like my mom's had some health issues. I've been, you know, work's been crazy. You've been flying home, flying here. Yes, gone a lot, gone a lot.

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And there was one time I got home. My house is a disaster. It's torn apart. It's a construction. You know, so it's a more mundane example. This isn't life and death type of stuff. But I was like, you know what? I haven't made my bed in like a month. Like I just I hadn't been doing it. And I took the time. I made it the nicest I've ever made it in a very, very long time.

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And it was weird, but I felt a little bit better. I was like, okay, I can attack the day now. So yeah, I shit on it at one point too. So I get it. But it's kind of funny you brought that up. And again, that's a mundane example, but it is just an example of this is what you can control right now. If you need some sense of control in your life, then do it. There is something to it. It's interesting. So when I was doing the Tough Mudder,

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I felt pretty good for most of it. There were a few moments that were really hard. There was actually only one moment that I was like, I don't know if I can do this, which was the tear gas. That fucking sucked. But everything else, I was like, OK, this is hard. This hurts. But I'm OK. I'll get through it. I would say it was really just the last mile or two that got very hard. And so one of the things that I did, because like I said, we were filming it.

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one of the things I did as I went through is just like every couple of miles, I kind of pulled out the GoPro and I just did like a status update of kind of where my mind was at. And it was interesting kind of going back and looking at some of the footage because early on,

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My mindset was very, it was very preparatory. So like if you look at my, my, in the first few miles, I'm like talking about, you know, okay, so the terrain is much more uneven and difficult than I was expecting. So our pace has been slow and, but the early obstacles have been easy. So I'm like trying to save my energy for the harder ones later. It was like all very like rational and planning and organized and everything. And as it went on, it,

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you know, in the middle of it, it became more emotional. It was just like, hey, we're making good time. And we just did this obstacle. It was fucking hard, but we did it, you know, onto the next. It was just like very like rah, rah, let's go. It's funny. The last one I did, I got to the end and I remember I pulled out the camera and I just kind of sat, I was running and I just kind of sat there for a few seconds because I didn't know what to say. And then I realized I'm like,

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I don't have anything to say because I'm literally not thinking about anything. Like all I'm thinking about is just put the next foot in front of the other. Like just fucking put one foot in front of the other. Now the next foot, now the next foot, now the next foot. And that was really, that's probably pretty much how the last 20 minutes went. It was just, and every single moment, every obstacle, it was like, okay, hand goes here. Okay, now hand goes here. Okay, foot goes here.

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That's as far as my mind went. And obviously some of that is due to exhaustion, but again, I think there's,

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that narrowing of focus, I think some of it too is that if I let myself think too much about the situation, I probably, all those narratives would have started coming up. All those things, you know, maybe you should stop and walk. Maybe you should take a break. Maybe you shouldn't be doing this. You know, maybe that obstacle is actually dangerous. You shouldn't go up it, you know? And it was interesting living.

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living all these things that we're talking about and researching. It was very, very illuminating. So yeah, maybe I would even change this mindset number three. I originally wrote down control what, you know, focus on what you can control. It almost seems like the takeaway here is actually that narrowing of focus. Just like the immediate task at hand and just try to block out everything else. I do want to return to one point. And I want to return to it because it came up with,

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with my buddy i've seen goggins talk about this quite a bit obviously my life has never been in danger yeah with a lot of the stuff the difficult stuff that i've done uh or at least to my knowledge it hasn't been in danger um but it's funny because i've said this to myself before like there's kind of there's a there's a point you reach where you just decide like i'm either going to do this thing or i'm going to die and i'm okay like

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kind of like reaching that level where it's like, I will either accomplish this thing or I will fucking die trying. I think there's, if you can actually say that and buy into it with conviction, there's an immense amount of power behind that. And it's actually a very dark place to,

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And I wrote down, I put in my notes here, there's a darkness of extremely resilient people. Yes. I did not research this. This is just an observation. But it's something I've noticed. It's something I've noticed with people I know as well as like, I guess, kind of celebrity, famous, very famous, resilient people. But like.

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If you look at extremely resilient people, there's a darkness to them. And there is a, oh, yeah, I'll fucking die to accomplish this. I don't fucking care. I will go to the darkest place. I will be miserable. I find that very interesting. I think what it is is that they just understand their own mortality on a level that a lot of us just don't think about most of the time. I think that's where it is. I seriously think they're like, well...

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I'm going to die at some point. Yeah. Right. Might as well be doing this. It could be now. I think they have a very visceral understanding of just the precariousness of life too. That takes them to that dark place. Yeah. And allows them to be like, well, this is the end. This is the end anyway. There's at some point, that's what it is. Yeah. And so I may as well accept that. Talk about the acceptance piece. I may as well accept that. And I may as well.

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do what I can in the meantime. I think, yeah, I totally agree with you. There's just this darkness. You talk about Goggins, man. He, like, there's a darkness to that, man. It gets very dark, yes. And he knows that, he knows that, you know? And yeah, I think that's a big part of what it is. Yeah. It is, it feels Memento Mori-ish. Again, it's interesting that it's another, it's another one of those pieces of advice that like,

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when it changes context, it kind of, the tinge on it changes a little bit, right? So like, I've often written about Momentum Warrior, like just remembering your own mortality or the fact that you're going to die one day. Like, it can be very inspiring and motivating. So if you are in that place where you're sitting on the couch and you need to do something with your life, like, thinking about your own death is very, it can be motivating. It takes on a very different,

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power when you're doing something extremely difficult and or dangerous, right? If you're running a 200 mile ultra marathon or, uh, you know, training to be in special forces, um, or, uh, you know, whatever it is training to become a, a firefighter, like it's that momentum morning in that moment, it actually forces you to actively decide,

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okay, I could die doing this. So to continue doing it, I have to be okay with that. Yeah. I have to be okay with this death. Yeah. And it was interesting because my friend told me, I kind of asked him, I was like, do you feel like, you know, coming back to the resilience muscle? I told him, I said, do you feel like you like built a,

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a resilience muscle in the military that like has stayed with you. And he just started laughing. He's like, bro, like, he's like, since Iraq, life's fucking easy. Yeah. He's like none, none of these, like all my whole career, like kids, everything. He's like, none of this is hard. None of it.

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Military personnel, vets who've come back from combat zones, especially, they say life in the military, especially in a combat zone, it's very difficult, but it's very simple. When you come back, it's very easy, but it's very complex. Yeah, yeah. And I think most of us live in that world, obviously, right? And so, yeah.

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And that's interesting because it's the complexity itself. It can introduce a different type of stress. All the stories come in there, right? Yes. All the stories come in the complexity. Who am I? What am I supposed to do? Am I doing the right thing? My parents, my friends, the wider society I have to worry about. Yeah. That's where the stories and the complexity come in. Yeah. I guess it comes back to that, you know, the military, the narrow focus and everything. Yeah.

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All right, moving on. This is mindset four is about to clash very starkly with mindset three. But I do think they can go together. So mindset four is make it fun.

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Find a way to make it enjoyable. Okay. So yeah, we just went from, yeah, think about your death and darkness and let's make it fun. But you know what's funny is the people with the sickest sense of humor. Yes. Yeah. Military guys, police officers, doctors and nurses, right? It's the people who are exposed to the most heinous shit. Going back to Shackleton and the doomed voyage to Antarctica. Yeah.

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It's interesting, when Shackleton came back with all of his men, obviously it was like a huge story at the time. And tons of people talked to him and interviewed him. Books were written about him. And when they asked him how they survived, the number one reason that Shackleton gave was he said he called it enforced cheerfulness. So when they were stuck on the ice,

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He made it mandatory that all of his men carry on and live and do all the fun things that they used to do when they were at home. So they had game nights. They played soccer together. One of the guys had a banjo. And so they would sit around and sing songs. They would tell stories. And it wasn't optional. Like they had to do it. It was part of he implemented it as part of the culture.

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This is yet another piece. As you know, I've shat all over the think positive thing. I think this is totally another piece that when you're sitting at home and your life's a mess and you're not doing anything, think positive is probably not the best piece of advice. You probably need to, you need a slap in the face a little bit. Whereas if you are going through one of the hardest things that you've ever gone through in your life and you might die,

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Yeah, thinking positive is probably a good thing. Yeah, right. Like finding something to be cheery about is probably a very healthy response. It's bringing back to your Goldilocks zone, right? It's your Goldilocks zone. If you're so far the other way, like, hey, maybe we need to balance this out just a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That is a good way of thinking of it. Okay. If all the struggles in your life are meaningless and inconsequential, like if you're too far on the other side of the Goldilocks zone, then yeah, thinking positive is just going to keep you over there.

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Whereas if you're on the traumatic side of the Goldilocks zone, then thinking positive and finding ways to have fun or cheer yourself up might be the only thing that keeps you from being traumatized. So here's the fun thing. Going back to Giannis Kouros, the goat of ultra running. He was a very weird guy. Very interesting guy. I mean, obviously, he was a weird guy. He fucking ran 1,000 miles at a time. But yeah.

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Very interesting guy. So he claimed the way he was able to endure such long distances is that he would compose music and poetry as he ran. Interesting. Okay. So this was also his creative time too, huh? Really? Okay. Yeah. Isn't that weird? That's a little weird. Yeah. That's super weird. He claimed that it wasn't

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that basically his runs were not a physical experience. He called them the, to him, they were a spiritual experience. And part of that spiritual experience was the creativity that emerged as part of the endurance. I don't totally get it, but I find it fascinating that the guy who seems to have more endurance than anybody who's any known human in human history spent most of it writing songs and poetry to himself. Mm-hmm.

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Like that's, that's wild. Like from a psychological point of view, that's so fascinating. Yeah. So fascinating. So not only does it make it fun for him though too, but it's imbuing a lot of meaning in it as well. Exactly. Like it's, it's multiple layers to that. So he keeps them in the Goldilocks zone from both sides.

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Right. Because we were actually, it's funny because we were actually talking about this with Jess at lunch today. Like we were talking about, you were saying that you were thinking about getting into, you know, more endurance sports and running. Oh, don't call me out. Now I got to do it. Oh, yeah. Committing. You got to commit to the thing outside of your Goldilocks zone, Drew. No, but we were talking about it. And I told you, I was like, yeah, one of the, actually one of the.

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Biggest struggles for me when I was training for the marathon last year, like the biggest struggle for me was boredom. Just getting bored, yeah. Like you're just spending hours on your feet, like literally running in circles around the neighborhood. Okay, yeah. Just being like, what the fuck am I doing? There's so many other things I can be doing right now. Right, right. So I actually, I do think the meaning piece, you know, if you think about it, like this guy is literally running for days on end.

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So if he can find ways to create things that feel very meaningful and special and apparently spiritual to him. I think that's how Goggins approaches it, too. If you listen to him, it's like, when I'm going through this, he builds himself kind of as a student of his own mind. Right. And when he's going in there and those long runs he's on or endurance events that he's doing, whatever it is.

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He's saying that I'm trying to figure out some part of my mind that I don't know. I'm trying to pick it apart. I'm trying to see where the flaw is or, or what's something new that I can get into. And so for him, it's obviously a very spiritual thing. He doesn't put it in those terms necessarily, but I think that's what, what's going on.

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He has a lot of interesting metaphors for his process. You know, he talks about the pain cave. Yeah. Carrying the boats. Yeah. You know. Taking souls. Taking souls. Yeah. You know, it is, we're going to get to, this ties into mindset number five, but a big piece of this too is, you know, making a game out of it. You can gamify it. You can find friends to do it with. For lack of a better term, you know, anytime you can add good vibes to it.

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to your suffering, you're probably going to be able to endure more suffering. So it's not shocking, but it is one of those things that there's a bit of an art to it and it's a little bit difficult. But I think a really important component of it, we alluded to it briefly a few minutes ago, is humor. And...

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It turns out there's like tons of research on humor and dealing with hardship, dealing with challenge, and that it's actually a very healing force for a lot of people. It's cool that like laughter is not just about fun jokes. It actually, in your brain, it mirrors the actual process of resilience and that it builds tension, releases that tension, and then recovers from it.

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If you think about what a joke is, it's you like find some sort of tension or two concepts that don't quite sit right together. And then you find a way to resolve that tension. And then there's like this release and recovery of laughter that happens as a result. And I think it's just like a very beautiful parallel of what healing and strengthening oneself actually is. And I don't know much about the evolutionary origins of humor. But.

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It wouldn't surprise me if there's something there. Right. Right. If there is some sort of healing power and laughter. And I mean, sure enough, like, there is a lot of evidence, like, humor increases endorphins, which are natural painkillers. Your cortisol drops. Your HRV improves. Your blood vessels dilate. So it really does, when you are laughing—

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it puts your body into a recovery state. It also increases social bonds, which we haven't gotten to the social portion of the episode yet, but as we'll discover, social bonds are fucking massive for building resilience in your life. And nothing really, I mean, what builds social bonds more than laughing together? Also too, what is humor if it's not a cognitive reappraisal in a way too? It's a reframing, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it's, there's a great quote. I don't,

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know if anybody said it it's just like an old axiom but it says like every joke is made half and just like there's a half truth to every joke and i think that's true uh especially with like coping humor when my in subtle art i wrote about my friend josh who drowned uh when i was 19 and i talked about how that summer uh i was like deeply depressed to this day the worst depression i've ever been in and it was funny because i was living with my brother that summer and

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And my poor brother, like, I don't know, can you imagine you're 20, I think he was 21 or 22 at the time. Can you imagine you're 20, 21, you're rooming with your brother for a summer, and one weekend your brother, like one of your brother's best friends, like fucking dies. And now you have to live with him. And tiptoe around him. And try to support and figure out. So I spent most of that summer just sitting on the couch playing video games. Yeah. And,

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And strangely, one of the things that I found very comforting or enjoyable or satisfying. So my friend's name was Josh. Every video game I played that summer, you know, video games let you rename the main character. Or a lot of them let you rename the character. I renamed every character I could Josh. Yeah. And then every time the character would die in the game, I would fucking like verbally abuse him. I'd be like...

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Fucking Josh, fucking dying again. God damn it, Josh. Why can't you stay alive? And I just remember my brother sitting there in like horror. I'm uncomfortably laughing right now. I'm laughing to try to release some attention here now. It's sick. So I think I know what he went through a little bit. It was very sick. That's sick, yeah.

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But I get it. Like that gallows humor you're talking about. Yeah. It was, there was something like healing about it. There was something cathartic about it. Cause it was like all the anger and sadness and frustration that I, I didn't have anywhere to put it. And so like by naming the video game characters, Josh, it allowed me to put it onto the video game. Like I could yell at the video game and like get it out. It was also funny though. Right. Right. Sick fucked up way. Yeah. Anyway.

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Apologies to my brother. No, no, no. I mean, you're right. There aren't like the half truths that you were talking about. That's why we gravitate towards comedians so much too, right? Because they're often saying the things we don't want to say out loud, but they do it in a way that's like it's a half truth. And it's –

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Kind of therapeutic. And it's super therapeutic. Why do people pay hundreds of dollars these days to go see a comedian? Because it's the stuff that everybody's uncomfortable about. And then, like, the comedian gives us a way of feeling comfortable. Right. You know? Right. It's interesting. I forget where I learned about this, but court jesters. So, like, the...

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The original role of the court jester was that the court jester was the only one who could actually criticize the king. Right. Like rightfully. And so things that the king needed to hear but nobody else was willing to risk their neck. Right. Saying literally the court jester would say. Right. And he would make it funny and then the king would hear it but also kind of understand like okay yeah. All right.

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I should change that. Yeah, yeah. And that's the modern utility of a comedian. Stand-up comedian. Absolutely, absolutely. So yeah, humor is cathartic. It's therapeutic. It is socially bonding. And even when it's dark and fucked up, it's...

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I would actually argue like the darker, more fucked up the humor is, probably the more important, the more work it's doing for the person. Like, again, I don't know if you've known any cops, but like cops have... Oh, it's... Yeah. Cops and doctors have like the darkest, sickest sense of humor. I've seen EMT friends too who... Yeah. Same thing. Yeah. I'm sure. Yeah. I'm sure. That's not an accident. Right. That is not an accident. All right. So, so far we have mindset number one is anything is possible. Mindset number two is...

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Everything's just a story and you don't have to believe it. Mindset number three is we change to narrow your focus and only focus on what you can immediately control in front of you. Mindset number four is find a way to make it fun. This brings us to mindset number five. So I mentioned earlier that I think one of the reasons why the Tough Mudder race wasn't

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as big of a deal or as hard for me is just that at this point in my life, I'm 41. I've done a lot of hard shit. I've like pushed myself through a lot of pain in various circumstances. At a certain point when you do hard things consistently, you start to develop an identity of someone who is capable of doing hard things. And so in this way, you get like a self-reinforcing loop of the mindsets that –

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If you survive difficult things long enough, you build an identity of somebody who is capable of overcoming and surviving difficult things, which then feeds back into mindset number one, which is believing that anything is possible. The more you've stacked evidence of your success over the years, the more you identify as somebody who confronts challenges instead of running away from them, the more you see yourself as someone who is capable of surviving.

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the more likely you are to overcome and survive in the future. The identity piece also doesn't have to be limited to just seeing yourself as someone who does hard shit. You can adopt identities that help you in other ways. If I ever meet Goggins, this would be one of the things that I'd wanna talk to him about, is whether his perception of himself or his ability to do his training or his races or whatever has been affected by becoming a celebrity,

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Because I do think there's probably something very valuable of him having such a public image as just a hard ass. Like, it probably— Holds him accountable. It holds him accountable. It gives him less exits. I mean, Goggins does not strike me as somebody who's, like— Looking for an accident. Looking for excuses or reasons to not do something. Right. But, you know, I'm sure he has those thoughts like everybody does. I'm sure he has days that he, like, struggles to get up or struggles to push himself.

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And I wonder if just kind of knowing that he's David Goggins, if that reinforces that identity for himself and has made it easier for him to face those challenges or not. I mean, yeah, he does address this a little bit in his newest book, Never Finished. I think he addresses it anyway. Well, one thing I've heard him say a lot before, you know, he talks about...

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This is where I think some people probably kind of get lost with him sometimes, too, is that he talks about there's Goggins, you know, stay hard, you know. And then there's David Goggins, which was, you know, the overweight loser guy he used to be. And then he turned into Goggins. And he says he switches back and forth between those. And he knows when he's being when he when he finds himself being David Goggins, he needs Goggins to come out and kick that guy's ass. Right. Like that kind of thing.

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Right. But I also think he did mention the book. He was like, you know, he did go through. It was actually kind of a little bit the opposite for him where he went through this phase where he had the money and he had all the comforts and all of that. And he started getting a little bit soft. But then I think what you're talking about kicked in and he's like, no, I got to go back out. Like I'm never finished. That's the name of his book. Yeah. Right. So I think there was probably some.

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some to that. And I mean, I consider myself to be somebody who's a little bit sensitive to the external pressures like that too. And if you leverage them in a healthy way, I think that's okay. I'm curious because last episode you talked about, we talked about how you kind of got thrust into this podcasting thing unexpectedly. And like most people, like when you're suddenly put online in front of

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Yeah. Thousands or millions of people like it's nerve wracking. It's fresh. Like there's a lot of emotions that go on. I'm curious if you have seen any change like a has your identity shifted? Like do you see yourself as a podcaster now?

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And then B, if so, has that changed the stress or difficulty that you experienced early on? So I think in some ways, I think right out of the get-go, I mean, I was kind of on my way off of social media anyway before we started this. And then this kind of came along. I'm like, I'm out. Like where a lot of people would be like, I need to get my social media. And I'm like.

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I would rather just focus on the job and do that and not try to self-promote too much around this. So that's kind of helped keep that tamped down a little bit. There are definitely things like, you know, I would say definitely my exercise workout schedule. I will do it. There's days where like, I don't know. A couple weeks going to be in front of the camera again. There's definitely that. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if my...

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I don't know if I've really taken on a strong identity as a podcaster necessarily. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I've... I don't know. It doesn't feel like it. The identity thing is...

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As you know, like I'm so fascinated with identity stuff and we actually have an identity episode coming up. Yes. And that was a month. Yeah. That's going to get weird. Yeah. It's going to get super weird, but I'm excited about it. It's interesting for a couple of reasons. One is like an identity is just, it's such an arbitrary thing. It's like literally just a self-definition. You just decide like, I am this. Yeah. And that simple statement.

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assuming you actually believe it, it has so many knock-on effects and ripple effects and so much power. But it's funny too because it's interesting what identities we take on and which ones we don't. Sometimes I found myself in situations where I haven't taken on an identity anymore.

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just because it hasn't occurred to me. Yeah. You know, like it's, it, I, there've been other times where I've tried on an identity and I'd be like, Ooh, this does not feel right. And I've like, let it go and tried to get away from it. So, and then there are other times too, where I've kind of like willfully forced myself into an identity that I wanted. And, and that's been hugely helpful. Um,

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So, well, how much, so how much of it, how much as being, and you've been in the public eye now for 15 years, more than 15 years at this point. And then this industry where it is constant improvement and you got to this and that. You've been very open about like, hey, I fail at this kind of stuff all the time. So I'm sure that took some of the edge off. But what have you experienced around that? It's funny because I don't feel, it doesn't bother me.

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That's kind of how I feel too. I'm just like, it's, you know, somebody doesn't like what I do. I'm not so identified with it that I take that so personally. I don't know. I don't, it's interesting because there are a lot of people in this industry that are like, it drives them crazy. Oh yeah. They feel tons of pressure and they feel like they need to live up to all sorts of expectations and they get nervous when they're in public because they think, you know, or fans. Who's watching. Yeah, or fans come up to them. They kind of, they get super weirded out and stuff. I'm like, I don't know. I've just never really given a shit

365
02:17:22.827 --> 02:17:43.347
I don't have that separation between Goggins, like Goggins and David Goggins or whatever. I don't have like a Manson and Mark Manson. Like it's just, I feel like I'm the same guy everywhere. Sure. For me, the big one was identifying as an author. This is going to sound really funny, but, you know, when Subtle Art blew up. Yeah.

366
02:17:44.680 --> 02:18:01.117
I guess there's kind of this default thing, at least for me, it was very default, which is like, well, this is the thing I've been most successful at. So I guess this is what I am. Yeah. Right. So I wrote a book and that book has been more like 10 times more successful than anything else I've ever tried. So I guess I'm an author. Mm-hmm.

367
02:18:01.117 --> 02:18:18.683
that identity never sat right with me. And, and I could kind of sense it at the time, but I think I was just riding this roller coaster of, of success through the late 2010s that I never really stopped and processed it or thought about it very much. But,

368
02:18:19.358 --> 02:18:48.839
Looking back, there were a ton of hints and moments where I would meet other authors and they would, you know, so Ryan Holiday is coming on in the next episode. And Ryan is one of these authors. That dude is born to write books. That's all he does is write. My God. He's fucking built to write books. That's what he does. And he has had a daily writing practice for probably at least 15 years now, maybe 20. He never misses a day.

369
02:18:49.193 --> 02:19:16.413
You know, his output is just absolutely prolific. And so I would meet authors like him, and I'm like, I'm not like that. You're not that, yeah. Like, I can go six months without writing a word. I don't really care. And so it took me a long time to realize that, like, I'm not necessarily an author. Like, that's not the identity that is best suited to who I am. And I guess maybe this...

370
02:19:16.413 --> 02:19:44.932
maybe I'm reaching here, but we talked early in the episode about genetic fit for the environment. If you are an orchid who grows up in the wrong environment, if you're mismatched with your environment, your results end up worse. You lack a lot of resilience. There might be something similar there with identity as well. If you've got a mismatched identity, if you've adopted an identity that is not suited for you at all and is not who you actually want to be and not what your actual strengths are, then...

371
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you're actually probably going to struggle quite a bit and you're going to be much less resilient than getting your identity straight. But if you do find the right identity...

372
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It can be, A, it can make like all of your problems and struggles that much easier. And then B, if your identity includes somebody who is good at dealing with problems and struggles, then it's just like fucking. It's a meta identity there, yeah. It's like nitro. Right. Last example from our guy, Yanis Kouros. So the cool thing about him, so apparently he's like a hero in Greece. Like he's a,

373
02:20:21.972 --> 02:20:25.786
He's like a Michael Jordan type figure over there.

374
02:20:26.984 --> 02:20:55.503
I didn't realize this, but so the guy who ran the first marathon, he was the famous messenger from the ancient world, the best long distance runner in ancient Greek history. His name was Pheidippides. People started calling Kuros the modern Pheidippides. And they were like, there was a proud ownership that the best long distance runner in the world was Greek. Because this was like, this was part of their...

375
02:20:55.503 --> 02:21:14.302
their lore as a nation and their national identity. And yeah. And Kuros just adopted this wholesale. He starred in a movie as Fidipides. He like wore, wore the name as a badge of honor. And to the point where, so here's the most interesting thing.

376
02:21:14.302 --> 02:21:42.213
I thought this was super cool. So Pheidippides, he's most famous for apparently running from Marathon to Athens to deliver the news that the Greeks defeated the Persians. Supposedly he died after that run. I discovered that actually his death was entered as dramatic effect by playwrights later on, that he actually didn't die when he did that. And in fact, his greatest feat of running was apparently he ran from Athens to Sparta and back. Right.

377
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which is the Spartathlon doubled, which is 306 miles. And apparently nobody had ever run that, I guess since Pheidippides purportedly. And so Kuros decided to be the only other person other than Pheidippides to run Athens, Sparta, Sparta, Athens in one go. So in 2005, he recreated Pheidippides' greatest feat, running from Athens to Sparta and then back again, 306 miles without stopping. He was the first to ever do it. Dude.

378
02:22:14.258 --> 02:22:32.382
And that talk about adopting an identity as somebody who does hard shit. It's wild. We went through these five mindsets, right? We use as examples of Koros, Koros is it? Yeah, Janos Koros. Janos Koros. We've talked about David Goggins. We talked about Mark doing a Tough Mudder. Mark and Jess doing the Tough Mudder.

379
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I opened up and I said, look, if you're listening to this episode, it's probably you're going through some shit right now. There's a good chance anyway. Or, you know, you will at some point if you're not. Maybe you just lost your job. Yeah. Maybe you just broke up with your boyfriend or girlfriend, got divorced. Yeah. Maybe you just lost somebody very important to you in your life.

380
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How can we apply these mindsets, do you think, to those types of situations? Because I think there are a lot of these lessons we can glean from endurance athletes, from military. I'm glad you brought this up. 99.9% of us are not going to be in those situations. I'm glad you brought this up. Okay. Okay. Let's start with like a deep loss. Yeah. Breakup, lost a loved one. Yeah. Even lost a job or a career or something.

381
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Mindset number one, anything is possible. When you lose something really meaningful in your life, most people's default assumption is, I'm never gonna get that back. That love I used to feel, or that opportunity that I used to have, or that passion,

382
02:23:29.977 --> 02:23:54.007
support that I felt in my life, I'm never getting it back. Anything is possible. It's, it's anything you can, you can go out and create anything in your life. The exact accuracy of that statement is less important than the fact that you believe it, because if you believe it, it's going to be far more likely to happen. Mindset number two, the stories are just stories. So let's say you lose a

383
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you get divorced or whatever. There's gonna be a lot of narratives swirling around in your head about what you should have done or why is this, why did this happen to you or you didn't deserve this or it's not fair. These are just stories. It's the cognitive, the work of the cognitive reappraisal of deciding that like,

384
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You don't have to buy into all the shit that your mind is saying to you. Mindset number three, focus on the task at hand. Narrow your focus to the few things that matter. Take it one step at a time. Just do the thing in front of you. Make your fucking bed. Make your bed. Take a shower today. Seriously, I know that sounds. Yeah, I mean, but if you're in a really dark place, making your bed and taking a shower, like that's a successful day. That's like, that's a good day.

385
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So take it one step at a time, narrow your focus to the immediate task at hand and just stack those small wins slowly over time. Mindset number four, find a way to make fun. It could be humor. It could be a friend. Maybe I should we should start a movement to replace positive thinking with Shackleton's term, which is enforced cheerfulness.

386
02:25:03.363 --> 02:25:20.660
Like there's an acknowledgement there, right? Yes, that it's enforced, right? Because it's like the positive thinking thing bugs me because I feel like it encourages people to be delusional. Right. Whereas when it's enforced cheerfulness, it's kind of like everybody understands like we're not actually happy right now. Right.

387
02:25:20.660 --> 02:25:49.229
We're stuck in fucking Antarctica. We're cosplaying happiness right now. Yes. Yeah. But we're going to play the banjo and play soccer. Yeah. And we're going to enjoy it. We're going to make ourselves enjoy it. And I do think there is some value in that. And I think that's a much better term than positive thinking. Right. Again, the acknowledgement that like, we get it. This isn't actually fun and this isn't actually a happy time. But guess what? But we're going to make ourselves pretend that it is. Yeah. Until it is. Okay.

388
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And finally, mindset number five, which is you are a person who does hard shit. It is part of your identity. You decide that this is the type of person you are. You are a person who does very hard shit consistently, emotionally hard shit, physically hard shit, mentally hard shit. That's just who you are. Wear it as a badge and then go prove it to yourself.

389
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Also, as a reminder, if you want to follow along with all this material that Drew and I are discussing, get a better understanding of it, review it in your own time. We have free PDF guides available at SolvePodcast.com slash resilience.

390
02:26:30.590 --> 02:26:48.815
All right, Mark. So we've done the biology and physiology of resilience. We've done the psychology of resilience and the mindsets, right? Yeah. There's a third very big aspect, and we've alluded to it several times already, and that's the social and cultural side to resilience, right? Okay.

391
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I want to take you back to 1950s rural Pennsylvania. Let's go. Let's go there. Let's go. My favorite. Let's do it. There was this little town called Rosetto, Pennsylvania. Okay. And in the 50s, doctors noticed something kind of strange.

392
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That people in this community, it was an Italian immigrant community. People in this community had half the rate of heart disease as the rest of the country did as a national average. Half back then. Okay. So they're like, oh, okay, we're going to go in there. We're going to find that they have this amazing diet maybe or they exercise a certain way or –

393
02:27:22.430 --> 02:27:38.174
Something like that. Right. Yeah. They didn't find any of that. These were Italian immigrants. OK. A lot of pasta, a lot of wine, a lot of pasta, a lot of fried meatballs and lard. Right. A lot of wine. They smoked like no other. They weren't doing yoga in 1950s rural Pennsylvania. I can guarantee that.

394
02:27:38.174 --> 02:28:04.145
Sound baths, energy healing. None of that. Red light therapy, nothing like that. No cold plunges. I'm shocked. Shocker, right? But they had half the heart disease. They lived longer. They had lower rates, lower incidence of mental health disorders. Just about any health measure you could measure, they did better than the national average, even though their lifestyles really weren't any different and probably even worse than some other areas, right? Right.

395
02:28:04.145 --> 02:28:30.014
So, I mean, we've already kind of spoiled it here, but what they found- Maybe they socialized? Their social structures were very robust. They had very tight-knit communities there and extended communities as well that they could tap into. Grandparents, this was a big one they found. This one I thought was very interesting. Grandparents, they weren't kind of shuffled off into the corner or even off into homes or anything like that.

396
02:28:30.014 --> 02:28:58.533
They're very much integral as a part of the family structure. They helped with childcare. People would go to them. There was a reverence for their elders, all of this kind of stuff, right? You also, you lived in extended families too. And there was more communal living as well. It might be, you might be living with cousins or even people you're not even related to. But you really leaned on the community for a lot of your social life and just to get by in everyday life, okay? Once they realized this, once these researchers and the doctors realized this,

397
02:28:59.647 --> 02:29:22.833
They knew from past experience that when immigrants come in within a generation or two, people tend to assimilate to the culture around them, right? This is just how things happen. And they predicted, they said, okay, if that happens with this community, which it almost certainly will, you're going to see all these health benefits gone within a generation or two. And that's exactly what they found. Okay. So the children of these immigrants...

398
02:29:23.204 --> 02:29:43.842
Assimilated into kind of more American culture, independent living, go off to the suburbs, don't socialize quite as much. You don't live in these extended families. And sure enough, heart disease went up. Mental health disorders went up. Crime went up. All of these different lifestyle factors that you can think of, all of these got worse over time.

399
02:29:44.298 --> 02:30:04.379
Um, this is a really stark example of how resilience isn't really, it's not an individual sport. It's, it's a, it's a team sport. It really is a team effort, a collective effort of your social circle, the greater community around you and largely the culture as well, what you grew up in.

400
02:30:04.717 --> 02:30:28.983
So they call this the Rosetto effect. Actually, it's got a name called the Rosetto effect. And really, again, it does show that the just what a huge factor this is. We've spent a ton of time on the biology, how to make yourself resilient, psychology, the mindset that you need. When really, I mean, we're a social, hyper social species. We cannot survive without other people.

401
02:30:29.928 --> 02:30:59.122
Therefore, it stands to reason we're not resilient without other people as well, without leaning on our social circles. Well, in the call back to our emotions episode, one of the things that kept coming up in that episode over and over and over again is that emotional regulation does not happen in a vacuum. Right. You regulate your emotions with the help of other people. Right. Like you co-regulate each other's emotions. And that's why relationships and social support and family support is like so consequential, not just to mental health, but physical health as well. Right.

402
02:30:59.122 --> 02:31:27.438
Right. I mean, some of the effects too. So everybody's aware of the loneliness epidemic right now going on. And I think more than anything, when you think about, you know, earlier I mentioned, oh, there's this idea out in the culture right now that we're soft and we're not resilient. I think, honestly, that's a big part of it. That's one of the driving forces behind it is that we're not resilient because we're not connected in the ways that we used to be. I believe it. Okay.

403
02:31:27.438 --> 02:31:43.756
Loneliness, in fact, has deleterious health effects as well. They say that chronic loneliness, if you feel loneliness on a regular basis over long periods of time, it's the same as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. I used to be a pack-a-day smoker, and I can't imagine that.

404
02:31:43.756 --> 02:32:00.665
Yeah. It's funny because I hear, I've heard the stats so many times now and I believe it. I take it at face value. It makes sense to me knowing everything I understand, like knowing everything I know about psychological and health outcomes and whatever. It just blows my mind that

405
02:32:00.665 --> 02:32:26.230
Like the amount of anti-smoking campaign that there's been over the past 30 years, like the amount of education and advertisements and like social policy and all this stuff to like get people to stop smoking or get them away from cigarettes or get smokers away from non-smokers. There seems to be absolutely no urgency or imperative around loneliness around this. Like it doesn't seem like anybody's...

406
02:32:26.230 --> 02:32:48.134
really doing anything about it or talking about it or even like pretending to I don't know, try to create policy around it. So I don't know, that just shocks me. Like knowing how the negative outcomes are comparable to smoking cigarettes yet the social outcry and the stigmatization and the policy making and everything is just non-existent. Well,

407
02:32:48.134 --> 02:33:08.840
I mean, I think it is really it's seen as an individual problem still. It's not seen as a collective problem yet. Yeah. And that might be changing to some degree. Yeah. Hopefully it is. But I think it's seen as a, oh, you're lonely. That's on you. I'm sorry. Like that sucks for you. Yeah. Nobody likes you. Nobody likes you. But then that's your problem. Right. I think there's a lot of that.

408
02:33:08.840 --> 02:33:26.710
I think that's one of the barriers to a social connection right now is just that it's one, you don't really talk about it. I mean, we talk about it in the abstract, right? We're sitting here talking about the abstract. Right. We're not talking about specific individuals. When it comes down to you, if it's you that's lonely, well, that's kind of hard. That's one of those things you're not going to share with a whole lot of people either. Yeah. You know?

409
02:33:26.710 --> 02:33:52.057
But it's tricky because it is a, I mean, it is quite literally a social problem. Like there's a- I know, it is, it is. I know, it's a paradox. Yeah, there's a game theory aspect to it where it's like, okay, I can put all of my effort into going out more often and inviting people to stuff more often. But it's like if all the people that I encounter don't change their attitudes, then my effort's not going to matter. So, yeah, it's just, it's a very frustrating process.

410
02:33:52.057 --> 02:34:21.503
Strange time. Yes. No, very much so. Good thing we're doing an episode on friendship next month. That's coming up. Tune in for that one. There are though, I mean, when you do have a good, strong social group, or at least some connections in your life, you don't have to have a ton of friends. Okay, we'll get into that. You don't have to have a huge social circle. You need a quality social circle, but there's physical health benefits to that. We've mentioned in the Rosetto case, buffers against heart disease, dementia too. I mentioned this a little bit earlier, the super agers. Super agers. Okay. Yeah.

411
02:34:21.503 --> 02:34:38.227
And the single biggest predictor of that was how vibrant of a social life they had. Not necessarily how many social connections they had, but the quality of those social connections that they had. Did they have a social group that they could lean on or family members even too? Even just one or two people.

412
02:34:38.345 --> 02:34:52.435
You can get the effects out of that. Co-regulation. Co-regulation. I feel like the word co-regulation is like my word of the year so far. Yeah, I just... Since coming across that idea when we were researching for the emotions episode, I just...

413
02:34:52.807 --> 02:35:15.638
I don't know. That just like threaded so many needles for me and pulled so many different concepts around psychology together in a way that makes sense, right? Like it's the super agers, right? It's not about the quantity of social interactions. It's the quality of it. It's because they are getting co-regulated by the people around them. A hundred percent. They are able – their nervous system is more imbalanced. You're mental.

414
02:35:15.638 --> 02:35:41.558
Mirror neurons are firing. Their hormones are probably, hormone profile is probably healthier. They're probably getting better sleep at night. They're less stressed day to day. Like it is- Less anxious. Yeah. It is. There's almost like, there's like a social nutrition that exists. We're built for it. Yeah. Literally. That nobody thinks about. Right. Right. At least we don't in the modern culture. There is just such this like emphasis on-

415
02:35:41.558 --> 02:36:11.360
You know, the lone wolf or doing it alone or bootstrapping yourself, whatever. All of that is overblown. A good example. You know, we've talked about breakups a little bit. We've mentioned those. A friend of mine recently just broke up with her girlfriend and she's just, she's beside herself about it. They've been together for a while and it's really hitting her hard. Yes, hitting her really hard. So she came over this last weekend and I said, you know, we'll start a fire in my backyard. We'll, you know, hash it out.

416
02:36:11.748 --> 02:36:38.512
It's cool. And she even mentioned during this, she's like, thanks for having me over all of this. She's like, I'm using you as an external source of regulation right now. She even said it that way. She's a nerd like me, so she thinks about this kind of stuff. That kind of dawned on me. I was like, oh, this is great. I get to use this for the podcast now. But at the same time, too, she was absolutely right. What do you do when you break up with somebody? What do you do when you lose a job? What do you do when you lose someone closer? You go looking for other people to help you.

417
02:36:39.068 --> 02:37:06.440
regulate your emotion. I almost actually find it funny that she felt compelled to explicitly say that. Because I don't know, maybe I'm being idealistic, but I feel like 50 or 80 years ago, that's already understood. That's just like tacitly understood by both people. Like you just got out of a relationship. Here, let's have a beer. Let's talk about it. Like you don't even, it's not even a thing. Right. Right. Whereas now it's kind of like, oh, well, this is the thing I'm going through. And you know, like we've just kind of like...

418
02:37:06.440 --> 02:37:36.292
therapy eyes, everything. We absolutely have. Yeah. You know, the other thing though, to, you know, I've mentioned David Goggins, a lot, Ross Edgley, those guys who endurance athletes. And I always kind of thought of Goggins is like that lone wolf type. Like he kind of is this lone wolf out there, whatever. In his newest book though, he's got a whole chapter on his crews that he uses and he emphasizes, you know, surrounding yourself with the right people, that, that kind of thing he talks about a lot in this. And it's like having, having the right crew,

419
02:37:36.292 --> 02:38:02.262
He doesn't recruit like crazy athletes to be his pacers or crazy athletes even being his crew, whether it's helping him out with the nutrition or hydration or just logistics of the whole thing. It's just people who kind of understand him, I think, at least in some aspect of his crazy mind. They understand some part of him better and he feels like they do and he knows that he can kind of lean on them. Right.

420
02:38:02.262 --> 02:38:30.005
at some point. So even somebody like Goggins, the man who's out to be the baddest motherfucker ever in his own words, that's his own words, he still acknowledges that he hasn't done it alone. And then he goes back in his life too. He talks about his mom. Seriously, get the audio book for this, okay? Because he does like these little mini podcasts between each of the chapters. They'll read the chapter and then he does a little mini podcast with the author. He brings his mom on at one point. So you hear about these characters in his life

421
02:38:30.005 --> 02:38:50.086
that have really shaped him as well. And I think he would still, even though he's a savage and he's the baddest motherfucker alive, right? I think he still will tell you he didn't do it alone. And there's all this sorts of science. I'm not even going to get into it all because it's just, it should be obvious to us, even if it's not. Isn't it interesting that

422
02:38:51.250 --> 02:39:11.669
We tend to celebrate, and maybe this is just a Western culture thing or an American culture thing, but we celebrate self-made people so much. Like, there's kind of this mythology around some of our heroes in our culture that they came from nothing and they overcame all the obstacles and they're just kind of these, like...

423
02:39:11.669 --> 02:39:27.481
you know, superhuman type characters. We don't celebrate community made success. It's another one of those things that feels too woo-woo, touchy-feely. Yeah, I don't know. Doesn't it? And I don't even know what that would look like, right? Like imagine if...

424
02:39:28.375 --> 02:39:53.553
Instead of Michael Phelps being on the podium at the Olympics, it was his coach and his family on the podium. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. That would just feel weird. Yeah. I don't know. I guess so. I mean, it's something we just take for granted, I think, too, when we have it. I know I definitely do. Like, I've been very fortunate. And even if I didn't, you know, I had – there was certain hardships or whatever I went through. I always – there was always somebody I could turn to. And that 100% has made me who I am today. Yeah. Yeah.

425
02:39:54.363 --> 02:40:19.186
There's no way around the outsized effect that this has on how you can deal with all the shit that life throws at you. There's no way around it. So, yeah, I think you're right there. We idealize this self-made person. The lone wolf, too. I never quite got that one. I'm like, you're not impressing anybody by being this lone wolf, whatever.

426
02:40:19.996 --> 02:40:35.099
I don't know. That's not sustainable. Yeah. Definitely not sustainable. Yeah. I find the Rosetto thing a little bit interesting because it was a small, poor community. You're seeing this quite a bit with the blue zones that were popularized maybe about 20 years ago.

427
02:40:35.099 --> 02:41:03.095
without getting into all of the potential data issues with the blue zones, which there are many. One of the things that's unique about the blue zones is that they are all small, rural communities, relatively poor communities in wealthy countries. That's kind of the magic combo. But what they're finding is that the blue zones are disappearing as well. As the economic development shows up, you're not seeing that sort of longevity or super aging anymore now.

428
02:41:04.293 --> 02:41:20.965
This kind of raises an interesting question, I think, in that those intense social networks and social support systems probably emerge out of necessity from hardship. Yes. Right? Like it's a poor community. Yeah.

429
02:41:20.965 --> 02:41:44.860
You have to rely on everybody. You have to live with a bunch of people. You have to have your grandparents help raise you because there's no other option. There's no money. And so as soon as there's money, people kind of go their own ways and maybe they enjoy life a little bit more, have a little bit more freedom, but then they lose those social systems that we seem so like evolved for. Yeah.

430
02:41:44.860 --> 02:42:07.270
Think about this. You've talked about this before, but think about this when you lose that social aspect. It's not that you're – yes, you're losing that co-regulation. You're losing – you can rely on these people, yes. What you're also losing, too, is you're – that practice of navigating difficult social relationships, that stress inoculation training.

431
02:42:07.270 --> 02:42:24.922
You're losing that too. You're losing interacting with other people and having to have difficult conversations, having to deal with people that you don't necessarily like. You've missed it in your family. You're losing that when you're not engaging socially. You're losing that resilience muscle in a social aspect way too. Because as we talked about in the...

432
02:42:25.310 --> 02:42:47.078
The happiness episode, money doesn't buy happiness, it buys away friction. It's like as soon as wealth enters into the community, you can go get your own house. You don't have to live with grandma and grandpa. You can send your kid to their own private school. You don't need to rely on your neighbors to help homeschool your kid. You can buy your own car. You don't need to carpool with people anymore.

433
02:42:47.078 --> 02:43:12.442
So by removing the friction, like you said, you remove those kind of that enforced co-regulation that has to happen frequently. Yeah, it's so fascinating. This reminds me, you know, with the old podcast we had David Brooks on and he and I ended up talking about this quite a bit. And I think really one of the kind of the revolutionary ideas he had in his last book was just that like a certain amount of social friction is optimal.

434
02:43:12.560 --> 02:43:40.538
It's the point. Yeah. Yes. That like you should be forced to be around people who are a little bit difficult to be with sometimes. Like that is a very, not only is that a very human experience, but it is by dealing with that friction, A, you develop the emotional skills and toolkits to become more emotionally resilient. But B, you also strengthen those relationships and those bonds and relationships.

435
02:43:41.078 --> 02:44:04.197
Yeah, and have a better social network. Yeah, yeah. I mean, with the trend in remote work and everything like that, now you're not necessarily in the same place as your coworkers. You don't even have to be in the same room if you don't want to. You know, for the longest time, our small little team, we have just a few people. We were very independent. Go off and do your own thing, then come back and do that. Now that we have more people on the team, I've definitely noticed I have to be a lot more independent.

436
02:44:04.518 --> 02:44:27.940
I have to regulate emotionally a lot more now too with people. And I have to deal with different personalities. I have to adjust. Some of us are orchids. Some of us are dandelions. I have to navigate that now. And it's made me better at doing that. It's made me better with my own emotions around dealing with people and situations where things come up where you're like, okay, there's something wrong here. That's helped me quite a bit too. Yeah.

437
02:44:27.940 --> 02:44:43.499
You know, otherwise, though, I'm very much introverted, but I like my ideal. We talked about environment fit. My ideal environment is usually by myself. And, you know, I'll go home after this and I'll crash and I'll just be exhausted and whatever. That's also part of resilience training, though, as well.

438
02:44:43.499 --> 02:45:05.723
But at the same time, too, yeah, you do need to expose yourself to some degree of social friction. It's not just the co-regulation. It's not just having friends and being happy. It's actually the conflict that I think makes us a little bit more resilient, too, at the same time. It's so counterintuitive, but I think it's so important. Absolutely is, yeah. Yeah. Another example we found, too, the...

439
02:45:06.280 --> 02:45:34.411
You know, after or during World War II, Hitler was sending planes and bombs into London. And at first, all the experts there were like, oh, this is just going to tear apart the social fabric here. There's there's we're screwed. Kind of the opposite ended up happening. And there's this I think it goes a little bit to your point of where communities kind of develop through that. There has there's some underlying agitation. Yeah. Or external hardship pushes people together, pushes people together. Yeah. Pressure. It pushes them together.

440
02:45:34.411 --> 02:46:00.736
And that's exactly what happened in London during World War II. Every bomb that didn't hit you was just like, hey, Hitler missed me, right? And then you would go and you would – out of the rubble, they would find new things to build or make with each other or come together and clean it up or whatever it was. And that's kind of where the British stiff upper lip kind of diatribe came from or the old trope about this British stiff upper lip.

441
02:46:00.736 --> 02:46:21.188
I mean, suicide rates dropped. That's insane to me. Right? Like you're under war. Like this could be your last day on earth. Yes. And suicide rates drop. Psychiatric hospital admissions plummeted during this. And then like a lot of like psychosomatic, like back pain, leg pain, whatever. A lot of the headaches, migraines, stuff like that. Incidences went way down.

442
02:46:21.188 --> 02:46:45.016
I talked about some of this research in my second book, Everything is Fucked, and it is so paradoxical. But the conclusion I came to there, and this actually relates back to kind of the psychological section, is that hardship creates clarity. It makes it extremely obvious what matters, what you should focus on, what you care about, and what the people around you should care about. And there's...

443
02:46:45.016 --> 02:47:02.009
There's a real comfort and well-being that comes with that clarity, even if the world's burning around you. The fact that you don't have to sit and question all the time, is this worth doing? Should I stop? Should I try this other thing instead? Are they going to make fun of me? Like, as soon as all those thoughts are removed...

444
02:47:02.431 --> 02:47:25.060
There's almost this liberation that happens in some of life's toughest moments, which is very paradoxical. There does kind of have to already be a community underneath of that. They can push communities closer together. I don't think it necessarily creates communities necessarily, but it can definitely strengthen the ties between communities. Example like this is from Hurricane Katrina.

445
02:47:25.060 --> 02:47:52.668
The Vietnamese community in in New Orleans really came together. They were the ones who actually bounced back much quicker than a lot of other communities in that area. And it's because they already had kind of that. Yeah. Those social ties. Now they had a history together. A lot of them were refugees from the Vietnam War. They had all these social networks kind of already set up these social ties. Again, it's not an individual sport. It's a team sport. Yeah. Resilience is for sure. Yeah.

446
02:47:52.668 --> 02:48:21.288
How does it look to build kind of a resilient social circle? If there is a list of things we can give to people, let's try. I'm not sure. We might find some nuance and messiness in this. Yeah. I think a little bit. We've mentioned a few of these things already, though. One of them, and I think the top one is to prioritize depth. Yes. Over breadth. You've kind of mentioned this. You have all these loose connections around and wish you had more depth. And I think that's really the key to resilience there is having those one to two to maybe three people. Yeah.

447
02:48:21.288 --> 02:48:49.267
where you could go to them for anything. I'm not saying that's easy. Again, that takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of repetition with this person. It takes a lot of intimate knowledge with them, shared experiences, which is another thing on here that we could get into. But depth over breadth is always, it's gonna win every time in social connection, especially when it comes to resilience and being able to lean on these people, these relationships. Yeah. I think unconditional acceptance. Yes. Yeah. Compassion. Yeah. Is, is a...

448
02:48:49.267 --> 02:49:04.336
is an absolute necessity. The other thing that comes to mind too, and this ties into mindset number one, which is finding people who believe you're capable more than you think you're capable. Ah, yes. When I think about some of the most impactful people in my life, they've often been people who...

449
02:49:04.336 --> 02:49:28.298
actually believed in me more than I believed in myself. That's actually a protective factor. I don't think we mentioned this at all. That's actually a protective factor for a lot of kids who grew up in adverse environments is having at least one adult in their life who did believe in them or who did show them some way that they can do something different in their lives and then be something more than what they thought they could be. That's a protective factor.

450
02:49:28.298 --> 02:49:52.227
There's definitely been that in my life. I think back on the teachers or the coaches or mentors that I had growing up, and they were instrumental, essential to my own development. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Investing in shared rituals is another one. Okay? Getting culty. No, no, no. A little culty. No, no, no. So I am part of- I mean, I'm down. I'm ready for my cult, guys. You are. I'm ready.

451
02:49:52.784 --> 02:50:22.552
Show me where to burn the candles and drink the goat blood. I'm in. The goat blood. I mean more like, for instance, I am a part of what we call the dinner club. A dinner club, I guess. It's a group chat we're on. And even though we actually haven't gotten together in the last few months because we've all been crazy busy and just gone and people get married and all this kind of stuff. We try to get together and have a monthly dinner just with a small group of people.

452
02:50:22.552 --> 02:50:37.081
We rotate who hosted or we go out to a dinner or something like that. And it's just dinner with friends. That's all it is. But that group has now also become like when something bad happens, somebody has somebody in their family die. This has happened before too. We like –

453
02:50:37.317 --> 02:50:57.753
Everybody kind of come together. We rally together around us. Okay. And it's because we have that repeated exposure with each other and it's, you know, fairly low stakes and it's just dinner and whatever. But, you know, it's, it actually means a lot to me. The initiation rites, I'm sure are brutal. The hazing is just. No, it's unbearable. Got to eat a hot pepper or something. No, it's not like that.

454
02:50:58.664 --> 02:51:23.335
do you could do a dinner that's a create like a creative act though too you're creating a dinner for other people around you and that's gonna just attract more people one thing i've been um toying with too is like oh you we should all invite one person that the rest of the group doesn't know or doesn't know very well those sorts of things introduce more people into that that i think is a cool way to do it it could be mountain biking or hiking or you could do whatever around some activity um

455
02:51:23.842 --> 02:51:41.341
And commit to it. You know, it's not just one of those things you just kind of, oh, we'll do it every now and then. But it's like we have a – it's called the dinner club. Yeah. I feel like structure is important for stuff like that. I guess this kind of comes into like the looser bonds. You know, if you can implement some sort of structure or like you said ritual –

456
02:51:41.341 --> 02:51:56.579
And then if you can adhere to it for a certain amount of time, you kind of develop – there's like this psychological reluctance like, whoa, we've been doing this for two years. Like let's not fuck it up now. I remember I had a book club in New York when I lived there that was like honestly –

457
02:51:56.579 --> 02:52:24.659
one of the social highlights of my life was the group of guys it was just four of us really close friends we all read super nerdy books and we actually reached a point where it was like we've gone two and a half years and never missed never failed to finish a book never failed to have a meeting about it like no man left behind everybody's finished every book and it kind of reached a point where it was like guys don't fuck this up man like we're getting

458
02:52:25.469 --> 02:52:42.462
Don't be the one who ruins it. They're stakes. Exactly. They're stakes. They're stakes. You got to create stakes somehow. Right. Right. Now, those kind of stakes are built over time. Yes. It's not just immediately built in, but yeah. Well, what do you – so I've kind of already ragged on like, you know, joining –

459
02:52:42.884 --> 02:53:03.809
let's say yoga, CrossFit, whatever it is. But I do think there is something to like more purpose driven groups. Okay. And you and I have also talked about where we seem to be way more, way too indexed globally and not enough locally. Yeah. So I really do think there's going to be, I think we're about to see this. We are seeing this in some pockets, even to where volunteering is,

460
02:53:04.315 --> 02:53:34.302
That used to be – my grandparents, I look back, they volunteered all the time. It was insane. It was like food banks or just the – they were both – my grandpa was in the VFW. My grandma was in the – what was that? Rotary Club or whatever it was, right? They did all of those sorts of things and it was all very community focused. They never got paid for any of it. They would show up. There was a very social aspect to it, but they would also help others as well. And it was community-based too. But that purpose that you're sharing with somebody, especially you go volunteer at the food bank or something like that.

461
02:53:34.302 --> 02:54:01.252
But you're going to find some people you probably – if you're that kind of person who's going to go do that, you're going to find people who are very much in line with you. And then not only that, but they probably have this – a looser network as well that you'll be able to tap into eventually. Again, that's going to take some time, but – Yeah. The thing that I'm thinking about – and it's interesting because I did not expect this through line to emerge before we started recording. Yeah.

462
02:54:01.420 --> 02:54:14.465
You know, in the psychological section, I talked about the importance of making a commitment to something hard. I feel like with the social stuff, especially these days, like there needs to be some degree of commitment, right? So like I think about the food bank thing,

463
02:54:15.545 --> 02:54:41.397
it's like there've been a bunch of things in my life that I've tried some of it, volunteering, some of it, social stuff, some of it, you know, like a yoga class or whatever. And I'll go do it once or twice. And I'm like, Oh, okay, that's cool. I think that's what most people do. Yeah. And I think there's the thing that is missing is the stakes and the stakes are created through some form of commitment, uh, not just volunteering for a food bank, but finding some higher reason or higher purpose to, uh,

464
02:54:42.494 --> 02:55:01.816
Promise yourself or promise your community or promise somebody else at the food bank that you're going to volunteer there once a week for an entire year. It's like you create expectations for yourself. You create stakes for yourself. And then once you're locked in to that friction, you start doing the hard thing. And then that actually is what builds growth.

465
02:55:02.204 --> 02:55:23.062
the relationships and the meaning and purpose and whatever. Right. Right. I, again, I just want to kind of reiterate though. It seems better if you are going to try this route, it seems better to do something like that other than not just like yoga or, or, yeah, you know, all of those things. I, you know, something, something you're giving instead of getting. Yes, very much so.

466
02:55:23.062 --> 02:55:43.379
You know, we spent a lot of time on the biology, the physiology, the health aspects, all of that. I think you should treat this much the same. Like social connection, treating it as part of your health. Now that we know all of these things, you know, it used to be that this is just what people did. They just – social connection was just – that was the fabric of culture and society.

467
02:55:43.379 --> 02:56:02.549
Now that we know what it is, though, I think we just have to be a little bit more conscious of it. Yeah, we have to be we have to treat it. OK, I'm doing this for my health, but also, you know, it makes it helps other people as well. I saw, I think yesterday, an amazing tweet. It's actually one of the best tweets I've seen in a long time.

468
02:56:02.903 --> 02:56:32.165
There's a guy, he posted, I'm probably going to butcher this, but he said that, he said societies have amnesia. So a society will have a problem. They find a solution. The solution becomes a tradition that, and then the tradition works for so many generations that they forget what the problem was that they were solving. And so they get rid of the tradition and then the problem reemerges. Yeah. And I feel like, uh, this is definitely one of those. Yeah.

469
02:56:36.232 --> 02:56:42.104
All right, Drew, it's that time of the episode. It's time to talk about what is the 80-20. We just spent...

470
02:56:42.745 --> 02:57:06.556
Three, four hours talking through resilience, talking through all the biology of resilience, the psychology of mental and emotional resilience, and the sociology, I guess. The social side, yeah. The sociability of being more resilient. We just fire hose the audience with information. So this is the point of the show where we break down information.

471
02:57:06.556 --> 02:57:24.882
Gun to your head, you can only take one or two or three things with you and implement them into your life. What would they be to get the highest leverage results? So why don't we start with the biology side? Yeah. What would you take? I think the most important thing from the biophysical perspective.

472
02:57:24.882 --> 02:57:54.548
side of resilience is really getting a good exercise routine or at least getting more physical activity in your life. It does so many things. There's a reason that we talk a lot about like endurance athletes and all of that, right? And resilience. And yes, it's a certain type of resilience, but it's like a lot of practice around resilience as well. You're doing things that are hard, first of all, right? You're doing things you might not want to do sometimes too. And it has to be consistent as well to build that resilience muscle as well. Yeah.

473
02:57:54.548 --> 02:58:23.557
We also talked a lot – I spent a lot of time nerding out about the neurobiology and the anterior medial cingulate cortex mouthful there. Studies have shown that physical exercise, regular exercise, changes not only the function of that part of your brain but also the structure of it as well. And it's very, very instrumental in other areas of resilience in your life. So it's like a foundation, like I said when we were talking about that. Yeah.

474
02:58:23.759 --> 02:58:52.227
Physical exercise, getting the kind of your physical health in order anyway, it's a foundation for the rest of resilience, whether it's psychological, social, all of that. It gives you that pool, that reserve that you can draw on. And I really think that physical exercise is really the entry point to that. Sleep's important. Yes. Nutrition's important. Yes. Gut health, all of that we talked about. But I think if you're only going to focus on one thing to start out with, like get your ass off the couch.

475
02:58:52.598 --> 02:59:15.532
What do you think of that? So I don't disagree. I struggled with this. I struggled between sleep and exercise. Sleep is a very, very, very close second. And I see... And I had to choose one. You said gun to your head. I know. It's... So here's why I struggle with this. Okay. Sleep, it feels like it's more of the... It's necessary but not sufficient, right? So if you...

476
02:59:15.532 --> 02:59:44.253
If you're not getting good sleep, then probably nothing else is going to matter. Okay. Okay. But if you are getting good sleep, that's not enough. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's a baseline. Yeah. So like it's a little bit of a different situation, whereas I totally agree with you on the exercise point on the physical activity point. Not only are you building that that physical resilience, you know, altering your own brain, developing your body, developing your nervous system.

477
02:59:44.607 --> 02:59:58.613
But you are getting those psychological reps as well. Like you are training yourself to be a person who does hard things. And you are teaching yourself to stay with the suckage for long periods of time. And I just think that that is –

478
02:59:59.558 --> 03:00:23.993
That is so psychologically useful. So I think I agree with you. Yeah. But maybe you convinced me. Because when I walked in here today, I was thinking, I'm like, man, if you're not getting good sleep, then you're like. I would agree, too. If I had to choose, though, like I said, I'd pick the physical activity. One of them, physical activity has shown to get you better sleep as well. That is true. So if you're struggling with sleep, go ahead and start with the exercise and maybe you'll get better sleep, too. You convinced me, Drew. I did.

479
03:00:23.993 --> 03:00:41.999
You convinced me. Usually I would say like sleep is a foundation for like it's it is the foundation for so much of your mental health just in general. So for sure. Yes, it's very, very important. When we're talking specifically about resilience, though. Yeah. I think the the high impact activity is just more physical activity. Yeah. Yeah.

480
03:00:41.999 --> 03:01:05.405
Okay. On the psychological side, I went back and forth between – we talked about five different mindsets. And we also talked about kind of some sub practices or mindsets related to each of those five. I went – trying to pick just one. I went back and forth between two of them multiple times this morning. And I can't escape –

481
03:01:06.130 --> 03:01:23.123
I ultimately think the 80-20 really comes down to that first mindset, is believing that you are capable of doing things. Ah. In the psychological literature, it's known as self-efficacy. It's basically a belief in your own capability or your own adaptability. And it just like…

482
03:01:24.406 --> 03:01:41.348
The results are just so stark. And I do think all the other mindsets are super important. I do think the cognitive reappraisals are super important. I think the enforced cheerfulness is super important. But it's funny because I feel like if you don't actually believe that you're capable of doing the thing you want to do,

483
03:01:42.428 --> 03:02:02.071
then none of that other stuff is really going to matter. Like, or you're not even going to have an opportunity to really use it. Right. Cause you're just, you're going to feel unmotivated from the start. So I don't know. That's kind of where I landed. That feels just so foundational to me that if that's not there, like nothing else really works. Um,

484
03:02:02.071 --> 03:02:19.435
But I don't know. I might be able to be talked into the cognitive reappraisal piece. Well, okay. So I think because if you're not somebody who does have a lot of self-efficacy, I think you first need the cognitive flexibility first. You need the cognitive reappraisal to be able to get there. Yeah.

485
03:02:19.435 --> 03:02:44.613
That's one way to look at it anyway. Yeah. The flexibility though, I think just in general is kind of the defining feature of resilience. It's not toughness. It's not stoic, you know, just taking whatever comes at you like with a, you know, you got a bulletproof vest or whatever. It's the flexibility to change and adapt. Right. And cognitively that's, you know, we saw the physiology too, heart rate variability. Yeah.

486
03:02:44.613 --> 03:03:12.490
Um, for example, HPA axis, your stress response, flexibility, all of that. I think the same is true for psychology as well. So yes, I agree. Like self-efficacy, you, you, you won't try to do something if you don't believe you can do it. Absolutely. It feels like a chicken and the egg thing. It is a super chicken and the egg thing. And that's what I was trying to think of is like, how do you get there if you're not already? So it's, you need some cognitive flexibility. You need cognitive flexibility to have the belief that you can do something difficult

487
03:03:14.026 --> 03:03:34.951
But you also need the belief that you can do something difficult to exercise the cognitive flexibility to manage the setbacks and challenges that come with it. We didn't bring this up, but like Jocko Willink has that, you know, that good. Yes. Good. Like something bad happens. Good. Yeah. Good. You know, wife leaves you good. Yeah. Yeah. You know.

488
03:03:34.951 --> 03:03:52.417
With him, he was a Navy SEAL, you know, like, oh, the mission got delayed. Good. I have another day to prepare for it. That's a cognitive flexibility. It's a great little tool. Yeah. It's a cool little tool you can do. You can use, you know, oh, I got injured. Well, good. I can catch up on my rest or whatever.

489
03:03:52.585 --> 03:04:09.292
All of that, that kind of stuff is counterargument. Okay. Okay. If you don't believe you're capable of doing the mission in the first place, it is a chicken and the egg thing. How can you reappraise it as being something good? Maybe you have to practice both at the same time. Yeah. Maybe they come together. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah.

490
03:04:09.292 --> 03:04:39.262
I 100% agree that like you have to develop some self-efficacy around this. But I just don't know. Like, I think that's part of the process of becoming resilient is developing that self-efficacy. And so developing a cognitive reappraisal, cognitive flexibility around challenge in your life, seeing it as something different. Because if you are just the type of person who goes, oh, my life sucks. Every time something bad happens. Oh, my life sucks. This sucks. Or I can, you know, I got the raw end of the deal every time this and that.

491
03:04:40.139 --> 03:05:04.709
The thing you have to do very first is catch yourself right there. It's a very CBT thing, right? Catch yourself right there and say, okay, hold on. This presents a – it's a challenge, not like a handicap that I have around this. So I see what you're saying. It is very much a chicken and the egg thing. I do think you're – I was just – as you were talking, I was thinking about CBT as well because the self-efficacy piece for me –

492
03:05:04.709 --> 03:05:28.216
I think the way you get that outside of cognitive reappraisal is stacking evidence, right? It's like the way you believe you can do something is you stack evidence that you can do things similar to it. And I do think this is kind of where that triangle in CBT comes in of like this kind of cycle of thought to behavior to emotion to thought to behavior to emotion. So like if you can –

493
03:05:28.857 --> 03:05:54.355
You can find something small that you can, that feels, that you do feel like you're capable of handling. And you start there and then you handle it. That builds a little bit of evidence for yourself. Okay. Like, okay, I'm the type of person that can handle something like this. And then you try something a little bit harder and then you get that evidence and you just start stacking evidence. Okay. And the cognitive reappraisal gets easier with each rung. Okay. Okay.

494
03:05:54.355 --> 03:06:16.833
I kind of like that. And you're practicing it as you go. Okay. Okay. So if you start small, I think you're absolutely right. Like just the other day, you know, like I was on a plane the other day and there was a mom and her sister and then two kids that she had and they screamed for the last 45 minutes. Right. Right. This was a small. So this is a mundane example. And usually what I do is put the headphones on and be like, oh, my God. But I was just like, I'm just going to take this.

495
03:06:16.833 --> 03:06:37.454
yeah I'm gonna see it you're gonna raw you're gonna raw dog the screaming kids I took my headphones out and I just closed my eyes and I was like I'm not gonna get upset or anything I felt bad for the mom at the end of it too she was crying herself I'm just saying but like something is even as mundane as that that's something that's something Goggins would do you'd be like oh there's a crying baby on the plane I'm gonna listen to her let me let me yeah

496
03:06:38.872 --> 03:06:57.502
Give me that pain. I feed off that pain. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. The social piece. Okay. So I feel like we didn't land on like super tangible advice for people on the social piece. Well, I don't – like –

497
03:06:57.502 --> 03:07:14.208
It is it's it's hard to give tangible advice around that. I think I honestly as we were going through that section I kept thinking to myself this is just a relationship like to give advice on this. We would have to do a relationship episode. Right. Or we'd have to do a friendship episode.

498
03:07:14.208 --> 03:07:31.420
Which is coming up. Which is coming up. So it is hard to give very tangible advice on like how to make friends or make better friends or make sure you have good friendships. Like those are all very deep, complex subjects. Yeah. My advice is take the next one to three years and –

499
03:07:31.420 --> 03:07:51.012
And like focus on one to three good relationships. Yeah. Good friendships in your life. The quality over quantity, we mentioned that. Quality over quantity, I guess if there's an 80-20 around it is that. I would say so. I would say like one really good friend is probably worth a lot more than like half a dozen –

500
03:07:51.012 --> 03:08:06.065
Ten acquaintances. Ten acquaintances, yeah. A million acquaintances, honestly, at that point. Yeah. So, like, if you don't have that in your life, yeah. I do feel like that is...

501
03:08:06.352 --> 03:08:28.694
That should probably be – potentially be priority number one. Yeah, yeah. It's just getting out and meeting people, getting close to people. And also, I would add to that getting away from toxic people. You know, if you – you can have good people in your life, but if you have somebody in your life who is just berating you, completely unsupportive –

502
03:08:29.791 --> 03:08:57.533
This is the interesting that we didn't really talk about this, but like talking about those five mindsets, if you're surrounded by people who don't have those five mindsets, who if you if you're spending most of your time with somebody who has no self-efficacy, can't cognitively reappraise situations, can't enforce cheerfulness on themselves, can't narrow their focus to what's most important in front of them. It's going to be extremely hard for you to do those things as well. Yeah. So I would.

503
03:08:57.820 --> 03:09:18.374
Almost equal weighting, I would put, finding one person who has these mindsets as well as getting away from people who don't have those mindsets. Right, right. Yeah, and I mean, I think too is reaching out to people and like offering help, offering to help make them more resilient. Yeah. I think is actually a really good way.

504
03:09:18.374 --> 03:09:40.379
It's a counterintuitive way to foster it. To foster it in your own life and also build relationships, resilient relationships at the same time. So, yeah, I would agree with that. It's a lot more complex one. Again, like we mentioned this, it just takes a lot of time. It takes, I think people underestimate. They're like, well, I don't have any friends and I go to these events or whatever it is. And it's like, you're not going to make a friend in a weekend.

505
03:09:40.379 --> 03:10:07.750
Yeah. You know, we're going to get much deeper into that. Yeah. We'll get into that in next month's episode. But yeah, just as a little teaser. Right. It's it's almost impossible to make a friend in a day. Like, yeah, it just doesn't really happen. And you can't you you cannot be the most resilient version of yourself without other people. I just want to put that like that. This is something you just have to think about. And you just it's. Yeah.

506
03:10:08.510 --> 03:10:17.065
It's part of life. Okay. So our 80, 20 exercise with sleep as a close runner up. Um,

507
03:10:18.230 --> 03:10:47.272
For mindsets, it sounds like stacking evidence is kind of like where we landed. I think so. I think you're right. Start small and work out kind of that self-efficacy muscle, I guess, and go the small ways, work up the ladder. Yeah. Yeah. And then on the third one is find either one really good friend or get away from somebody who is super toxic. Right. Right. Let's talk about trade-offs of resilience. What are – you know, we –

508
03:10:47.272 --> 03:11:03.843
One of the things that we do here and that I talk about a lot in my work is it's easy to think about all the benefits of something. We rarely think about the costs of something or the downsides of something. So this is where we discuss what are the potential downsides of becoming an extremely resilient person.

509
03:11:03.843 --> 03:11:27.721
One I thought of is now like once you get to a point where you are resilient, people see you as like a competent, resilient person. Now you're the competent, resilient person that people come to a lot. And so, you know, you get to putting out a lot of fires or you're seen as like this rock or whatever. Right. There is more responsibility put on you when you when you get this part of your life.

510
03:11:27.721 --> 03:11:45.423
Kind of figured out. Right. We kind of talked about this in the procrastination episode as well. Right. Like when you get good at doing things, people just give you more things to do. Yeah. Same thing with resilience. I think you got to, you know, there's a, there's an image that develops of you in other people's minds and kind of feel like you have to live up to that a lot.

511
03:11:45.423 --> 03:12:04.728
Yeah, it's also a bit ironic. Like you see this dynamic in a lot of families. Like there'll be one person who's like very strong and reliable and and then a bunch of people in the family who are not strong or reliable. And so the strong, reliable person keeps taking on all of the burdens of the people in the family.

512
03:12:04.728 --> 03:12:19.105
Which then makes them stronger and stronger and stronger because, as we talk about, resilience is like a muscle. You get better at it. Things get easier. You become more adaptable. And meanwhile, all the people in the family are not developing that muscle. And so you –

513
03:12:19.713 --> 03:12:36.520
You can see situations where being the strong, resilient one, you enable a lot of situations. I think this probably happens in a lot of relationships as well. If you're always the rock who's there supporting or if you're always the breadwinner who's like –

514
03:12:36.520 --> 03:13:02.677
paying the bills and covering for your deadbeat partner. Like it's, it's a reinforcing dynamic in a very subtle way. Yeah. And then in a kind of an ironic way as well, you end up maybe long-term being less resilient because you're taking care of everybody else's problems and not your own. You know what I mean? There's kind of, like you said, the enabling part. Yeah. You end up kind of ignoring your own, your own shit, I guess. And yeah. Into that.

515
03:13:02.677 --> 03:13:17.965
One that I will definitely speak to that's on our list is hyper-independence. Yeah, yeah. And death of intimacy. Like, this definitely... I've definitely felt this a little bit in my own life. I enjoy challenges. I actually...

516
03:13:18.168 --> 03:13:39.953
really, really enjoy challenging myself, pushing myself, doing difficult things. It is, it has become a very core part of my identity. The downside of that is that a lot of people aren't really up to come along, right? It's, it's, or you often end up kind of doing these things by yourself. So, and it, and it's not necessarily, it's not like I'm going out and running, you know,

517
03:13:39.953 --> 03:14:01.520
600 miles like janice coros or whatever right in some cases you know it's like starting a second business well now i'm like working 60 70 hours a week which means i'm not seeing friends i'm not seeing my wife as much i'm not talking to my parents as much um it could be something like so my wife and i we had a friend years ago who uh her marriage

518
03:14:01.520 --> 03:14:19.340
Kind of fell apart. I mean, I'm sure there were many reasons for this. It wasn't just the Iron Man's fault. But basically, her husband started training for an Iron Man. Yeah. And for anybody who's trained for an Iron Man, like, you are literally – You were sitting on a bike, like, six hours a day every day. Yeah. So this guy was waking up at –

519
03:14:19.340 --> 03:14:37.683
3.30 in the morning to go bike for two or three hours, running a marathon every weekend, just all this crazy stuff. Basically, he was never home. Never home, never around, never helping with the kids, never helping with the house. And after six or 12 months, like,

520
03:14:37.683 --> 03:15:04.548
basically the marriage fell apart. She's like, where the fuck are you, dude? And he's out like running, biking 100 miles. So if you do become a person who enjoys challenges and enjoys pushing yourself and testing yourself, you do need to be careful because it is kind of easy to get way out on the frontier by yourself. Right, right. And forget that everybody else is left behind.

521
03:15:06.269 --> 03:15:25.405
One of those – another risk of that too is like losing empathy, I think. Yes. This is definitely one thing – you see if you get to a point where you're like, I can handle this part and this is this tough thing, whatever. Then you start looking around like, why is everyone else so – such a wuss about this, right? Yeah. Like people in your family too even might –

522
03:15:25.473 --> 03:15:48.760
Yeah. Again, there's orchids, there's dandelions. Right. And so some people don't have like if you've turned yourself into a dandelion in one area of your life. Another thing, too, maybe we should have highlighted throughout the episode is that just because you're resilient in one domain doesn't mean you're resilient in all the others. Right. But so like having a little empathy along the way for other people who might not be as resilient of you in one particular way. Yeah.

523
03:15:49.317 --> 03:16:06.344
This kind of all kind of ties back into the community thing, too, like still being resilient, but still like having a space for the community, your community within that space is super important. And, you know, like you're talking about, though, with the like the hyper independence.

524
03:16:06.547 --> 03:16:25.430
When I've, you know, you mentioned this, I'm thinking about like kind of getting into more endurance stuff and I'm, the trade-offs are already like boiling in my mind here. I'm like, this is going to be a lot of time I'm going to have to take out. There's a few relationships that are probably going to like, I'm not going to be able to spend as much time on with all of that.

525
03:16:25.430 --> 03:16:41.714
And then I got to also remember that not all of those people are training for whatever endurance thing I'm going to be doing. And that's not their life. And it's not it's not my world. And they're just living in it. So the empathy part, I think, is really important, too. And the thing you don't think about, too, with stuff like that.

526
03:16:41.714 --> 03:16:56.767
And this is true, not just, this was, so this is why I was trained for a marathon last year and I actually stopped. Right. And part of it, most of it was for this reason. Yeah. I was just never home. Yeah. Always tired. Yeah.

527
03:16:56.767 --> 03:17:13.827
never had free time to do anything else, see anybody else. But part of that's true as well, like with working too much or traveling too much or pushing yourself too much. Like I'm definitely feeling that this year to a certain extent where, you know, I'll come home some days from, you know,

528
03:17:13.827 --> 03:17:34.921
I'll work through a weekend and then I get to Tuesday or Wednesday and I'm just like, my brain is fried. I don't have any energy to talk to anybody, to do anything, to hang out with my wife. I just want to be a vegetable on the couch the entire night. So yeah, the recovery side of that is an issue as well.

529
03:17:34.921 --> 03:17:57.280
Well, that's actually one of them I had here. Like the physical wear and tear, but I would put mental wear and tear on that too. Mental wear and tear, yeah. Once you figure out that you can do hard things, you're like, I'm going to push this a little bit more. You're, what you just mentioned is that I've seen you do that over and over and over again. I've got on my list, you can be careful of becoming addicted to it. Yeah, yeah. Because I do think once you start

530
03:17:58.310 --> 03:18:15.691
Once you do build that self-efficacy of like, I am a person who can do hard things and you build up all that evidence of consistently accomplishing hard things, there's a rush that comes with it. Yeah. There's a real high that you get when you do something very difficult. Right. And.

531
03:18:16.282 --> 03:18:39.080
And you can get hooked on it. Yeah, there's a masochism that can be a little bit... Talk about Goggins. He's a definite masochist. Dude, like how many surgeries? Like he has no cartilage in his knees. I saw there's a video of Ronnie Coleman, who's the eight-time Mr. Olympia. I think probably the largest Mr. Olympia ever. I mean, just...

532
03:18:39.080 --> 03:18:53.491
an absolute freak of a bodybuilder. One of the greatest bodybuilders ever. And the dude can barely walk now. He's had hip replacements, knee replacements. He has to walk with crutches. I think he's like...

533
03:18:54.014 --> 03:19:24.001
I think he's in his 50s now, but I mean, he's probably as hobbled as your average 80-year-old. And the fucked up thing is the dude is still going to the gym. And he's like still trying to lift heavy shit. And it just, so at a certain point, it can become an addiction. And you have to be careful. You have to know when to pull yourself back and when to chill out. No, for sure. When to let the inner bitch take over, as God gets to say. I would argue the inner bitch should take over occasionally. Right, right.

534
03:19:24.001 --> 03:19:47.862
Um, I, you know, you, we kind of mentioned this, I guess already too, but the loss you're, this is all related, I guess, but the loss of community, uh, that you might have around this. Um, I guess you kind of, you kind of already touched on this, but like, there are some of those codependent relationships that you might have where you, if you start like, no, I'm going to take this over. Well, somebody else was, that was their thing. They latched on and they, they kind of.

535
03:19:47.862 --> 03:20:03.472
They got off a little bit on on taking care of you in that situation. Oh, don't worry about you. You sit over here. I'll take care of this. You have this codependent thing going on. Yeah. And you decide now I'm going to I'm going to do this for myself now. And I'm going to be the one who takes care of it and be the resilient one here. That.

536
03:20:03.472 --> 03:20:20.549
Might not sit well with him. That was part of – that was – they got a little bit of whatever out of it, an ego boost or they didn't have to take care of their own problems because they're taking care of yours. That codependence, it might be a little bit of a destabilizing factor in your relationships. It could. I would argue it –

537
03:20:20.549 --> 03:20:39.061
It's probably a good thing. That's probably a good thing. You're right. But when you're going through it, I'm just saying like you might. Yes. There might be some fireworks in some of your relationships. At some point, we will definitely do an episode on codependent or toxic relationships. And we will talk about the roller coaster. Yeah. The the.

538
03:20:39.263 --> 03:21:04.087
the high upsides and downside, low downsides of exiting one of those relationships. Yeah. But yeah, it can be very destabilizing. It can be very like emotionally tumultuous to, to become self-reliant in a lot of ways. Like if you've, if you have built your entire kind of emotional support network is kind of based off of you being the weak one who always needs help, you,

539
03:21:04.340 --> 03:21:12.153
as soon as you stop being that weak one, it is going to destabilize a lot of people, a lot of the relationships that you have and how people around you see you.

540
03:21:12.490 --> 03:21:38.967
I would argue that the people who genuinely care about you and are there for the right reasons will be happy and supportive and proud of you. Not to mention probably fucking relieved. And then the people who get upset by it are probably the people that weren't there for the right reasons. Right. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Anything else? Or should we close it out with some personal thoughts? Yeah.

541
03:21:38.967 --> 03:22:06.170
I think we should. Yeah, I think I'm ready. We can close it out. What would you say you learned in the process of making this episode? Anything you would apply to your own life? Yeah. I mean, I really do think that the environmental fit stuff, the orchid and dandelion stuff, I guess I kind of knew a little bit about that. But having the empathy for some people in certain situations where –

542
03:22:06.912 --> 03:22:36.764
I have been one of those people who was like, you're like toughen up. Yeah, yeah. Just toughen the fuck up. That's what resilience is, is just harden the fuck up and get over it. And, you know, that is not helpful. It's not helpful for anyone. I think that if we can build systems, we build workplaces, we build schools, we build a society that's more just accepting and flexible itself. It's a more resilient society itself for those kinds of people.

543
03:22:36.764 --> 03:23:02.887
Um, and instead of just saying there's only one way to be resilient. Yeah. I think that for me anyway, that was very much like, oh, uh, like I just mentioned just a minute ago too, is that just because you're resilient in one area doesn't mean you aren't another. And I think that's where those orchids kind of come in too, is like, they might actually be really well suited to like one specific thing and we should let them be. Yeah. Um, so I don't know. I think I have a lot more empathy for that sort of thing and it's not anymore, you know,

544
03:23:02.887 --> 03:23:13.568
I would say for me, it was the two mindsets, the, you know, believe that anything's possible and then the enforced cheerfulness. I think it was kind of the revelation that.

545
03:23:14.902 --> 03:23:38.729
That is actually very, very good advice in the right context. You know, as we talked about, I spent most of my career kind of trashing that advice of like, hey, man, if shit sucks, like admit it sucks. You don't have to be happy all the time. You know, don't be delusional. Don't tell yourself that you're going to be the fucking queen of England just because you tell yourself you look in the mirror and you tell yourself you're the queen of England. Like it's.

546
03:23:39.708 --> 03:24:05.375
So much of my career has been built around bringing realism into self-help. And self-help has violated a lot of these basic realistic principles in so many ways that I think I probably wrote off the power of those two mindsets more than I should have. And what I realize now is that, yeah, I'm not.

547
03:24:05.476 --> 03:24:22.790
If you're not struggling with anything, if you're just kind of like being lazy and comfortable and like wishing you had whatever, like a horse and carriage to come pick you up every morning. Like, yeah, that's terrible advice. So believe you're capable of anything. But like if you're actually going through shit.

548
03:24:22.790 --> 03:24:38.922
If you're actually doing something extremely hard, if you're actually suffering both the self-efficacy piece, like just believing that you're a person who's capable of handling this and the enforced cheerfulness. I love the word enforced. Enforced cheerfulness of like –

549
03:24:38.922 --> 03:25:08.690
you know, it sucks. You know, it sucks. There's an acknowledgement there. Yeah. Yes. You know, it sucks. You know, you're miserable. You know, you might not make it, but fuck it. Let's make a joke about it anyway. Like I, I really love that. Yeah. And so, yeah, those are the two, I guess those are kind of the two shifts in perspective that I took, took from doing this. There's the context is everything. I think you're right. And I think the difference is the passivity versus the active nature of it. Like if you're just passively trying to, you know, manifest these things into your life, not happening. Yeah.

550
03:25:08.690 --> 03:25:28.568
But if you're actively going through some shit, that's when it actually works. Yes. All right. Well, we're resilient now. We are. I'm glad we got that figured out. On to the next one. And we will be back in two weeks with an episode on stoicism. It's going to be a...

551
03:25:28.923 --> 03:25:45.781
a little bit of an experimental format. It'll be the first time that we've, we've had a guest on solved. We're not interviewing Ryan. Basically. Uh, we're basically inviting Ryan holiday to sit in and do this format with us. Uh, and Ryan has been literally studying stoicism his entire life. I think he's written, uh,

552
03:25:46.102 --> 03:26:05.137
nine books or 11 books on stoicism at this point. He is, he knows everything there is to know about the stoics. So I'm very excited to sit down and, and talk with him and, and hear all of the amazing stories and wisdom that he has. And then we will be back in November with an episode about friendship.

553
03:26:05.575 --> 03:26:25.927
Thank you for sticking with us, for being so resilient to listen to us for four hours and change. It takes a lot of resilience to get this far into a solved episode. Again, if you love the podcast, please like and subscribe. Follow us on any platform. Leave a review. It's the best thing you can do for us.

554
03:26:25.927 --> 03:26:35.697
And feel free to reach out. We are at SolvesPodcast.com. Shoot us an email. Let us know what you'd like to see. And we will be back in a couple weeks.