Speaker 1: Today we have Brad Stolberg on the podcast. Brad is
Speaker 1: an internationally known expert on human performance, well being in
Speaker 1: sustainable success. He's co author of the best selling Peak
Speaker 1: Performance and The Passion Paradox. His work has appeared in
Speaker 1: The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Wired, Forbes,
Speaker 1: and more, and he's a contributing editor to Outside Magazine.
Speaker 1: In his coaching practice, Brad works with executives and entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: on their performance and well being, and he regularly speaks
Speaker 1: to large organizations on these topics as well. His latest
Speaker 1: book is called The Practice of Groundedness, A Transformative Path
Speaker 1: to Success that feeds, not crushes your soul. Brad, It's
Speaker 1: so great to have you back on the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: It is always great to be back and to be
Speaker 1: talking with you, Scott. Thank you for having me. Likewise's
Speaker 1: credible what you've built up and what you've done, And
Speaker 1: I kind of the niche that you carved off yourself
Speaker 1: where you combine science as well as personal experience and
Speaker 1: as well as in this new book you talk about
Speaker 1: the wisdom of the ages. So you try to you
Speaker 1: kind of try to integrate it all here, don't you Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm very fortunate to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: I think what's unique about being in the seat of
Speaker 1: a writer or a coach is that I don't have
Speaker 1: the pressures of an academic to a stay really narrow
Speaker 1: in search of something novel and be to publish in
Speaker 1: academic journals. So it gives me perhaps a little bit
Speaker 1: more space to read widely, pull from disparate domains in
Speaker 1: a kind of different approach to try to get into
Speaker 1: truth with the capital T. Oh, so, what is truth
Speaker 1: with the capital T? Yeah, I'm glad that you asked.
Speaker 1: So truth with the capital T. There are very few
Speaker 1: things that we know are unequivocally true. Sewage is really
Speaker 1: good for public health, True climate change is happening. I'm
Speaker 1: going to say truth with a capital T. Vaccines are effective,
Speaker 1: a very important one right now, Truth with the capital T.
Speaker 1: When it comes to well being performance some of the
Speaker 1: quote unquote softer sciences, it's often a game of probability.
Speaker 1: So it's what is the likelihood that this is true
Speaker 1: or in what context is this true? And what I
Speaker 1: try to do in my work by looking for patterns
Speaker 1: in different areas of academic inquiry. Is you mentioned over
Speaker 1: different timescales and history, and then also what's actually happening
Speaker 1: in the real world, what is practice show? If I
Speaker 1: can find certain themes that are pointing in the same direction,
Speaker 1: I can be confident with my coaching clients and with
Speaker 1: my readers that it's probably close to the truth with
Speaker 1: a capital T. Another way that I like to think
Speaker 1: about this is imagine a stool with three legs, and
Speaker 1: one leg is empirical research, the other leg is theory.
Speaker 1: Does this make sense? And then the third leg is
Speaker 1: history and practice? And if all three of those legs
Speaker 1: are sturdy, you can sit on the stool and it's
Speaker 1: probably going to hold your hypothesis. If only two of
Speaker 1: those three legs are sturdy, you can probably sit on
Speaker 1: the stool, but you might want to proceed with caution.
Speaker 1: One or zero lags in your hypothesis might not be correct.
Speaker 1: You might want to start looking elsewhere do you find
Speaker 1: in your field? In the fitness to mean, is there
Speaker 1: a lot of war case tea going around these days? Oh,
Speaker 1: my gosh, one hundred percent in physical fitness and fitness
Speaker 1: for life, I'd save it. The latter has almost caught
Speaker 1: up to the former. So certainly in physical fitness. There's
Speaker 1: all kinds of lowercase tea truth. But also in some
Speaker 1: of the topics that I write about around productivity and
Speaker 1: optimization and the things that you study subjective well being,
Speaker 1: I think that there is all kinds of lowercase t truth,
Speaker 1: often fueled by consumerism, right, Like you need sexy products
Speaker 1: to sell, you need bright and shiny objects to chase,
Speaker 1: and if those things were to work, it would almost
Speaker 1: ruin the business model because then you wouldn't come back
Speaker 1: searching for more. Yeah, So I mean not everyone in
Speaker 1: that spaces intro. Their goal is not the truth for
Speaker 1: a lot of people. Now, but now, when did you
Speaker 1: become a coach? You have a coaching practice? Did you
Speaker 1: train it all, did you like go to did you
Speaker 1: study coaching principles? Or are you relying on what you've
Speaker 1: learned personally over the years. So I would say that
Speaker 1: it's both formal and informal. So I'll give you kind
Speaker 1: of my more formal path to coaching, and then I'll
Speaker 1: explain informal. So way back when, right out of undergraduate school,
Speaker 1: I went to work at McKinsey and Company, a big
Speaker 1: box consulting firm, and I was never the person working
Speaker 1: on the financial model. I was always the person doing
Speaker 1: the client management. They said that I had good client hands,
Speaker 1: so ultimately the other folks would figure out what to
Speaker 1: do and I would coach the clients on how to
Speaker 1: implement it. Following graduate school, where I studied public health,
Speaker 1: I went to work for a large healthcare system and
Speaker 1: I was running a program where they've identified high potential
Speaker 1: young physicians and they would have me coach them on leadership,
Speaker 1: so physicians they studied medicine, particularly just out of residency.
Speaker 1: So then I started coaching physicians at that job, and
Speaker 1: as I started writing more and more publicly, I had
Speaker 1: requests for coaching, and I distinctly remember the first time
Speaker 1: one of these external requests came in. I said, I
Speaker 1: who am I to be a coach? I don't have
Speaker 1: whatever coaching accreditation there is. And at the time I
Speaker 1: was living in northern California, where executive entrepreneurial coaching is
Speaker 1: a big thing. So I reached out to a long
Speaker 1: time executive coach, a guy named Ed Baptista, who I
Speaker 1: really admired, and we met for coffee and he basically said,
Speaker 1: you know, there are no real credentials like you've written
Speaker 1: a book on peak performance. People are reading it. Go
Speaker 1: give it a shot and just be honest with your
Speaker 1: first clients that, hey, you're new to this. So it
Speaker 1: started out as like a little hobby almost I was
Speaker 1: charging next to nothing. I just wanted to see if
Speaker 1: I was providing any value to these people. And over
Speaker 1: the last what six years now, there's been quite a
Speaker 1: feedback loop of referrals and now I've built a small
Speaker 1: little coaching practice. So that's the long answer. The short
Speaker 1: answer is, you know, I don't. There are various accreditations
Speaker 1: in coaching. I'm not really sure what any of them mean.
Speaker 1: So for me, it's simply, hey, these are the books
Speaker 1: I coach to the principles that I write about. I
Speaker 1: help with implementation. I'm not a therapist that I don't
Speaker 1: pretend to be. And you've been seeing results in your
Speaker 1: clients and helping them with their growth. What's some of
Speaker 1: the most remarkable things you've seen from point A to
Speaker 1: point B. It's a great question, and I probably don't
Speaker 1: spend enough time reflecting on this. I think that one
Speaker 1: of the biggest things is being able to develop a
Speaker 1: solid foundation of identity that is a little bit more
Speaker 1: unwavering in the face of professional and personal ups and downs.
Speaker 1: So getting people who are willing to pay for executive
Speaker 1: coaching so they take their work seriously, getting them to
Speaker 1: still take their work seriously, but not have so much
Speaker 1: of their mood, so much of their identity attached to work,
Speaker 1: which paradoxically ends up freeing these people and they perform better.
Speaker 1: I'd say that that is certainly one bucket, and then
Speaker 1: the other bucket. Are these dramatic what I would call
Speaker 1: truly dramatic transformative life changes that happen from the most
Speaker 1: con create detail oriented behaviors, stuff like taking your phone
Speaker 1: and laptop and storing it in the glove compartment of
Speaker 1: car in your garage so you're not tempted to check
Speaker 1: it after eight pm, switching to walking meetings. I mean,
Speaker 1: all these things that are so concrete and it doesn't
Speaker 1: take a rocket scientist to do them. But when you
Speaker 1: actually follow through on these behaviors, and ideally a few
Speaker 1: at the same time or a few over a few months,
Speaker 1: you get dramatic changes in your ability to be present
Speaker 1: and to care about the things that matter to you.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful and true, capital t true for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's like, how do we go from the big, lofty,
Speaker 1: esoteric down to down to actual behavior? Something that I
Speaker 1: know that you're familiar with. One of my favorite episodes
Speaker 1: of your show is when you had Stephen Hayes on
Speaker 1: who's the one of the founders of acceptance and commitment therapy,
Speaker 1: which you'll do a better job summing it up than me,
Speaker 1: But in shore it asked to see clearly, see clearly
Speaker 1: and accept what's happening. Know what your core values are,
Speaker 1: and commit to acting on them and work when I
Speaker 1: do with my clients is well off an outline, Well, hey,
Speaker 1: what are your core values? And then how do you
Speaker 1: define them? Because anyone can say love, health, integrity, respect,
Speaker 1: these are just mission statements on a corporate wall. What
Speaker 1: do those things actually mean to you? And then the
Speaker 1: next level, where the rubber meets the road, is what
Speaker 1: are the daily or weekly practices that will help you
Speaker 1: exude this value so you can take someone from a
Speaker 1: value of love very noble. One of my core values
Speaker 1: but kind of ambiguous to defining love is being present
Speaker 1: and engaged in the people and things I care about,
Speaker 1: to the practice that supports love. Being I turn off
Speaker 1: my phone at seven PM and I take it out
Speaker 1: of the room. So that's self love. Yeah, well, self
Speaker 1: love and it allows you to love other people because
Speaker 1: you're present for them where Yeah, so I think in
Speaker 1: a nutshell you know again, And it's a long witted
Speaker 1: answer to your question. It's helping people achieve these big
Speaker 1: things by very concrete steps that they can take in
Speaker 1: their own lives that they have some control over. I
Speaker 1: love your definition of love as this kind of this presence. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's beautiful, it's beautiful. It's very much on my own
Speaker 1: human humanistic way of thinking about love is, you know,
Speaker 1: being itself, not something that you do like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're only worthy of love or only showing love
Speaker 1: when you donate to a you know, big nonprofit, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it can be with just the choices you make
Speaker 1: and the being with another person. Anyway, love love all that.
Speaker 1: I would love to dive into your new book, Are
Speaker 1: You Down Down? I would love to dive into my
Speaker 1: new book as well, the play in the Sandbox. I'm
Speaker 1: a little bit intimidated, Scott, because you you think about
Speaker 1: these topics all the time as well. So you're a
Speaker 1: beautiful conversation partner, but also slightly intimidating one, so let's
Speaker 1: do it. Absolutely no need to be intimidated. So your
Speaker 1: new book called the Practice of Groundedness, a transformative path
Speaker 1: to success that feeds, not crosses, your soul. In this book,
Speaker 1: you talk about achievement, and this is kind of a
Speaker 1: common theme across a lot of your books, the cost
Speaker 1: of achievement being the goal. Why did you write this
Speaker 1: book because that's a theme that's come up over the
Speaker 1: years and a lot of your work. You know, how
Speaker 1: did you then link this idea to this idea of groundedness.
Speaker 1: So my first book, Peak Performance, was a book about
Speaker 1: the principles and practices that help you sustain your best
Speaker 1: when everything is clicking, when you're at like the top
Speaker 1: of the metaphorical mountain. My second book, The Passion Paradox,
Speaker 1: talks all about the difference between harmonious and obsessive passion
Speaker 1: or colloquially motivation. So how do you develop motivation, how
Speaker 1: do you harness motivation, and how do you stay motivated
Speaker 1: about joyous pursuits or things that bring you meaning and
Speaker 1: not get caught up just chasing status or relevance. So
Speaker 1: if the first book is what to do on the
Speaker 1: top of the Mountain. The second book is How You
Speaker 1: Climb the Mountain. What I realized was I hadn't spent
Speaker 1: enough time in my writing and in my own life
Speaker 1: in investigating and exploring the principles that make the foundation.
Speaker 1: So when the sun is shining and the weather is good,
Speaker 1: peak performance in the passion paradox are great, they'll get
Speaker 1: you there. But if there's rough weather and you don't
Speaker 1: have a strong foundation, the whole thing's liable to collapse.
Speaker 1: And this was brought about based on my own experience
Speaker 1: of suffering stark onset, very serious, debilitating obsessive compulsive disorder,
Speaker 1: which completely toppled over whatever mountain I was climbing. And
Speaker 1: it just so happens that the timing of the book
Speaker 1: coincide with more of a societal storm, which has been
Speaker 1: the COVID nineteen pandemic. Well, can we double click on
Speaker 1: the O c D a little bit? Yeah, I am.
Speaker 1: I am more than happy to go there because you
Speaker 1: found that a lot of your exercise, a lot of
Speaker 1: even weightlifting. Well, you know, I love your article. What
Speaker 1: you got me into weightlifting, bro, You got well to
Speaker 1: a certain degree, you got me back into it. I
Speaker 1: used to heavily be into it when I was in
Speaker 1: my mid twenties when I was trying to pick up chicks,
Speaker 1: and then I sort of just the reason into late weightlifting.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, bro, No, now now I'm I'm
Speaker 1: into it for a different reason, you know. So I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm now like more mature weightlifter, you know, but really
Speaker 1: inspired me, you know, talking about the health benefits of
Speaker 1: it and sort of the you know, how can heal
Speaker 1: anxiety and and even help with OCD because I suffer
Speaker 1: from a certain form of OCD as well, maybe mild
Speaker 1: or than than than the clinical form, but still nevertheless,
Speaker 1: you know, I get stuck in my ruts and it
Speaker 1: is helpful to me. I would love to hear some
Speaker 1: of your own personal experience about how weightlifting and other
Speaker 1: kind of fitness practices have helped you with your own
Speaker 1: mental health, for sure. So the first thing that I'll
Speaker 1: say is that there is kind of garden variety ruts
Speaker 1: in stagnation and mental health, and these are having a
Speaker 1: rough stretch of days, being excessively nervous about something, having
Speaker 1: some intrusive thoughts, repeatedly being really sad, not wanting to
Speaker 1: get out of bed that last for a period of
Speaker 1: time and they pass. And then there is what I
Speaker 1: would say is true pathology or really serious, more clinical
Speaker 1: mental illness, and that is when you find yourself terrified
Speaker 1: to leave your house because of anxiety, thinking the same
Speaker 1: intrusive thought thousands of times a day, having thoughts of
Speaker 1: self harm, being able to get out of bed for
Speaker 1: over a week. Exercise helps both. Exercise alone can potentially
Speaker 1: prevent or reverse number one. Exercise alone can very rarely
Speaker 1: prevent or reverse number two. So I think it's really
Speaker 1: important to be clear that exercise is a tool and
Speaker 1: the toolkit along with meditation, medication, therapy, these other modalities,
Speaker 1: particularly for more severe cases of individuals experiencing mental illness.
Speaker 1: Now it's still a really powerful tool for number one,
Speaker 1: for kind of helping, you know, not having you get
Speaker 1: on the path towards really being in a rut that
Speaker 1: you can't get out of. Exercise is pure gold. So
Speaker 1: my own experience with exercise is it is just such
Speaker 1: a foundational habit of my day. I like to say
Speaker 1: that when I exercise, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm going
Speaker 1: to have a good day and feel good, but it
Speaker 1: always gives me the chance to and there's all sorts
Speaker 1: of research that which is or at least hypothesizes why
Speaker 1: this might be the case. So there's very clear biological
Speaker 1: hormono excuse me, hormonal effects of exercise, so certain neurotransmitters
Speaker 1: are being released. There are theories about the muscles exuding
Speaker 1: chemicals that can cross the brut blood brain barrier that
Speaker 1: affects mood. So there's all these things that are happening
Speaker 1: in our bodies. Then there's also the psychological benefits of
Speaker 1: starting at point A, working towards something and getting to
Speaker 1: point B based on nothing but your own work. What's
Speaker 1: that mastery? Yes, And then there are the social benefits,
Speaker 1: which is if you can find a good community, a
Speaker 1: supportive community to work on movement in, even if this
Speaker 1: is just taking a walk. I shouldn't say even walking
Speaker 1: is so effective, then you get this community benefit. You're
Speaker 1: seeing other people, you're out in the world. So it's
Speaker 1: like this perfect trifecta biology, psychology, and social or community
Speaker 1: that that makes exercise. And I actually I over the
Speaker 1: years of change that I like to call it just
Speaker 1: physical practice or movement, because I think too often exercise
Speaker 1: is immediately thought of as sweating on an elliptical or
Speaker 1: bench pressing, squatting, doing CrossFit. And while it can be
Speaker 1: those things, those things worn't great. It can also be
Speaker 1: a brisk walk, gardening, dancing, playing a team sports. Just
Speaker 1: something that gets your body moving is so powerful. Why
Speaker 1: are we so stationary right now in this interview? Well,
Speaker 1: I can tell you I already I already trained pretty
Speaker 1: hard this morning. What's your excuse? Okay, that's fair enough. Bro.
Speaker 1: I I put bro at the end of very sentence
Speaker 1: whenever we talk about fitness. But I'm gonna go for
Speaker 1: a run after this, Bro anyway, awesome. I love, I love,
Speaker 1: I love that you're bringing awareness to this. I think
Speaker 1: that within the sort of bro community sometimes there there's
Speaker 1: sort of this stigma against being vulnerable, and I think
Speaker 1: that's really problematic. Right. There are a lot of people,
Speaker 1: a lot of men and women who are suffering mentally,
Speaker 1: but there's this attitude of like just be gritty, you know,
Speaker 1: like come on, come on, come on, and some of
Speaker 1: them might not feel, you know, fully free to express
Speaker 1: what they're going through. So kudos to you for helping
Speaker 1: to normalize that. Yeah, I very much appreciate it, and
Speaker 1: I think that it is increasingly being becoming more normalized
Speaker 1: in the In the book, I tell the stories of
Speaker 1: Kevin Love and DeMar de Rosen to NBA basketball stars
Speaker 1: who were very public about their struggles with anxiety and depression,
Speaker 1: in how both of them were concerned that it was
Speaker 1: going to result in blowback, even that they might lose
Speaker 1: their contracts, and instead all they got was support from
Speaker 1: other players as well as fans. More recently, Naomi Osaka,
Speaker 1: the women's tennis player, withdrawing from wimbled in citing mental health.
Speaker 1: So I like to think of what I did as
Speaker 1: just such a small, little little drip in the ocean
Speaker 1: of people with much bigger profiles that are courageously coming
Speaker 1: out with these things. So it doesn't take being so
Speaker 1: courageous to do so for future people. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1: So what is groundedness? How do you even define that term? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So the I'm gonna start with the problem. So the
Speaker 1: problem is what I call heroic individualism, and it's this
Speaker 1: notion that in order to be quote unquote successful, you
Speaker 1: have to constantly engage in a game of one opsmanship
Speaker 1: with yourself or others, where measurable achievement is the main
Speaker 1: arbiter of success, title, status, money, car house, on and
Speaker 1: on and on. And individualism is a part of this
Speaker 1: because as a result of this, we've booked more isolated.
Speaker 1: Because if you want to optimize your life, bro, you's
Speaker 1: got to put a lot of time into doing that,
Speaker 1: and the first thing that gets crowded out is time
Speaker 1: for community, social engagement, and relationships. So years ago, in
Speaker 1: ancient Eastern wisdom traditions, there's this notion of the hungry ghost,
Speaker 1: and the hungry ghost has a very very long neck
Speaker 1: and diaphragm in this enormous bloated belly, and the hungry
Speaker 1: ghost just keeps on stuffing him or herself full and
Speaker 1: it never gets full. It just keeps eating and eating,
Speaker 1: and the food goes right down this long neck and
Speaker 1: into the belly, and it's just bloated and it feels sick.
Speaker 1: And the parable of the hungry ghost says that that's
Speaker 1: how we can be. If we crave these outward things,
Speaker 1: we can just keep eating and eating, but they never
Speaker 1: fill us up, they never satiate us. And to me,
Speaker 1: heroic individualism sets us all up to be hungry ghost.
Speaker 1: We're looking for love in all the wrong places. It's
Speaker 1: as simple as that. Groundedness is a model of success
Speaker 1: and a model of striving that allows you to try
Speaker 1: to maximize your potential and do so in a way
Speaker 1: where you have firm internal fulfillment. You can stand strong
Speaker 1: amidst rough weather. You are playing really hard, you're still
Speaker 1: playing to win, but there's a joyousness with it because
Speaker 1: you're already fulfilled. Another way to think about it is
Speaker 1: heroic individualism is performing from a place of anxiety or tightness.
Speaker 1: Groundedness is performing from a place of love or openness.
Speaker 1: And it's really scary to do that because our egos say,
Speaker 1: be anxious, be tight, achieve get status, refresh Amazon a
Speaker 1: million times to see the ranking of your book. How
Speaker 1: many Twitter followers do you have? But when we actually
Speaker 1: let go of that stuff and we're just free to
Speaker 1: express ourselves from what I would call a place of
Speaker 1: love or like I said, freedom, openness, not only do
Speaker 1: we feel so much better, but the research shows that
Speaker 1: we perform better too. Well. This, okay, this is really
Speaker 1: you're hitting the nail on the head here because a
Speaker 1: lot of people can really relate to this idea of
Speaker 1: never feeling enough. But then you know what is there
Speaker 1: is there a middle path, because I'm just gonna speak
Speaker 1: on personal experience. I only I feel like I operate
Speaker 1: between two extremes. So it's like a never enough And
Speaker 1: then sometimes when I'm like I'm enough, I'm fine, I'm good,
Speaker 1: then I get bored and so and I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't like that state either, like that this is boring,
Speaker 1: you know. So is there like something where like it's
Speaker 1: not like I'll never be enough, but it's like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not enough right now, you know, like there's more
Speaker 1: I can be doing, you know, like the legit truth
Speaker 1: is there's more to my potential. That's the truth, you know.
Speaker 1: But I think, yeah, I think go ahead. I was like,
Speaker 1: do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, oh for sure.
Speaker 1: I think this is like such a trap of the
Speaker 1: Western mind. Western thinking is so dualistic, like I'm either
Speaker 1: enough or I can get better. I'm either good or bad.
Speaker 1: And in Eastern thinking and in some of the Eastern
Speaker 1: wisdom traditions that I reference in the book, nondual thinking
Speaker 1: is such a part of their culture, which means that
Speaker 1: you can hold two competing ideas at the same time
Speaker 1: and they can both be true at once. So in
Speaker 1: this case, you can feel whole and feel like you
Speaker 1: are enough. I still want to achieve more and get better,
Speaker 1: and what I argue in the book is that the
Speaker 1: best path to getting better is from a place of
Speaker 1: being enough. I particularly spend a lot of time talking
Speaker 1: to elite athletes and entrepreneurs, and without fail, what you
Speaker 1: find is they go through this phase of heroic individualism, chasing, chasing, chasing,
Speaker 1: trying to perform from a place of compulsion anxiety. They
Speaker 1: just need to do it. Eventually exhausting themselves, hitting rock bottom,
Speaker 1: seeking therapy, getting in communities, switching coaches, whatever, it is,
Speaker 1: starting to feel more enough, and it's like shackles are removed,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly they start performing much better. There's an Olympian,
Speaker 1: Slane Flanagan, who is a four time Olympian. I've had
Speaker 1: the great honor to become quite close with her counsel
Speaker 1: her through the course of her career, and she hit
Speaker 1: this point in her career where she just realized that, hey, like,
Speaker 1: I don't need to be anything more than I am
Speaker 1: right now, and I still want to get better. And
Speaker 1: she hit that point. For the next two years, she
Speaker 1: completely dominated the sport and won the New York City Marathon.
Speaker 1: And again I think people can intuit this, So I
Speaker 1: write about this in the book. I talk about this
Speaker 1: all the time and coaching. So if you think about
Speaker 1: you pick an endeavor in your life, listener Scott might
Speaker 1: be writing a book, might be starting a business, might
Speaker 1: be doing research, might be falling in love with another person,
Speaker 1: might be parenting. And when you are in a mode
Speaker 1: and we've all been there, myself included, I've been there before.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I'll be there again. When you are in
Speaker 1: a mode of feeling like you have to have it.
Speaker 1: I have to have the best seller, I have to
Speaker 1: publish the research, I have to get the promotion. Most
Speaker 1: people immediately they do exactly what I'm doing on the screen.
Speaker 1: For the people that are watching, their shoulders kind of
Speaker 1: cave in and they get really tight. Now, if you
Speaker 1: think about just being enough, being where you are, you're healthy,
Speaker 1: you're here, shoulders drop, you're more loose. Ninety nine percent
Speaker 1: of people perform better from that place of being more loose.
Speaker 1: And that's what this is all about. It's not about
Speaker 1: being completely content sitting on the couch smoking weed or
Speaker 1: not just sitting on the couch without smoking weed. It
Speaker 1: is about feeling enough, feeling grounded, which then can support
Speaker 1: your striving. But you can strive in a more wholesome way,
Speaker 1: something that I discovered in research in the book. Buddhism
Speaker 1: is often associated with contentment, but one of the noble
Speaker 1: eightfold factors of enlightenment is what the Buddha referred to
Speaker 1: as right effort, which is literally like how to strive correctly.
Speaker 1: So it's not that we shouldn't strive, but that our
Speaker 1: striving should come from a place of stability, and that
Speaker 1: allows us then to really pursue meaningful things out of love. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a quote here that I love. These notes made
Speaker 1: me realize that we do everything we can to optimize
Speaker 1: our entire existence so we can finally feel like we're enough.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm gonna go there, because the word optimized
Speaker 1: is very big in the biohacking community. Do you think
Speaker 1: that psychologically there might be a deep sea thing for
Speaker 1: a lot of people in that community who are obsessed
Speaker 1: with hacking and optimization, for them to kind of constantly
Speaker 1: try to feel like they're enough? Oh, for sure, I do.
Speaker 1: That Is that a controversial question? I don't, I mean,
Speaker 1: to me, it's not no. I think that yes is
Speaker 1: the short answer. I think that there is some kind
Speaker 1: of deep seated insecurity or fear of death or fear
Speaker 1: I mean, right, in security and fear two sides of
Speaker 1: the same chord. Fear of fear of death, fear of
Speaker 1: not being perceived. Is a high achiever a high performer.
Speaker 1: It's just wild. I mean, some people like become so
Speaker 1: obsessed with sleep that the way that they track and
Speaker 1: measure sleep sleep becomes work. So you are literally working
Speaker 1: when you're sleeping. I have this theory that part of
Speaker 1: the reason that so many people in that kind of
Speaker 1: optimization hustle culture are so tired all the time is
Speaker 1: because all of their life has become work. Right. If
Speaker 1: you're tracking your sleep and you're stressing about your sleep score,
Speaker 1: then that's work. If you can't eat dinner without taking
Speaker 1: a picture and seeing how many retweets or likes or
Speaker 1: whatever on Instagram, you're going to get suddenly eating dinners work,
Speaker 1: And the more of it that encroaches on your life,
Speaker 1: the more anxious and uptight you're going to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right. So what would like an alternative to
Speaker 1: biohacking be? That's like a groundedness sort of movement. So,
Speaker 1: in your ideal world, would this book kind of start
Speaker 1: a new movement where people kind of start coming from
Speaker 1: a different kind of starting space, a different sort of
Speaker 1: motivation or way of being. Oh, my gosh, Yes, that
Speaker 1: would be like a dream come true. It'd be cool, right,
Speaker 1: a new movement. Yeah, yeah, I would love that. I
Speaker 1: would love nothing more than that. And you know, the
Speaker 1: word practice is in the title of the book because
Speaker 1: this isn't a switch, right that you can flip. It's
Speaker 1: an ongoing practice, particularly because, as we discussed earlier, we're
Speaker 1: in a culture that promotes the opposite. I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna dog on consumerism for a minute again. But if
Speaker 1: you pay attention to commercials for the most like banal
Speaker 1: stuff like dishwasher detergent or notebooks or pet food, the
Speaker 1: people in the commercials are always ten out of ten, beautiful, smiling,
Speaker 1: ear to ear in perfect families. In the notion the
Speaker 1: underlying notions, Oh, if you use this dishwasher detergent, then
Speaker 1: your life will be perfect. If then, and it's that
Speaker 1: kind of if then thinking that can become such a
Speaker 1: trap if it permeates your entire life. As you pointed out,
Speaker 1: there's a fine line between not pursuing things that can
Speaker 1: actually make you happy or healthier, better and in becoming
Speaker 1: obsessed with it. But in the book, I argue, and
Speaker 1: what the data certainly supports is we've kind of like
Speaker 1: way overshot the target and we've forgotten to be where
Speaker 1: we are, and as a result, we're not present as often,
Speaker 1: We're not as patient as you alluded to earlier. We're
Speaker 1: not vulnerable, even though it's our vulnerability that connects us
Speaker 1: to each other. We don't spend enough time building community
Speaker 1: because it's not quote unquote efficient, and on and on none.
Speaker 1: You just said data in my ears pricked up the data.
Speaker 1: So there's a science of groundedness. What you know, What
Speaker 1: can you tell me about some of the some of
Speaker 1: the research findings you're most excited about that have come
Speaker 1: out recently. Yeah, I can, so there, you know, I
Speaker 1: would love for you to empirically study this particular framework
Speaker 1: of groundedness with the principles I have not done firsthand
Speaker 1: in peer controlled research. What I am alluding to is
Speaker 1: studies that show that loneliness and social isolation are at
Speaker 1: the highest they've been in the last four decades and
Speaker 1: this was pre COVID, and unfortunately that has undoubtedly gotten worse.
Speaker 1: The former Surgeon General now current Surgeon in General again,
Speaker 1: Vivek Murphy, wrote a beautiful book on this, talking about
Speaker 1: how one of his biggest fears is that COVID is
Speaker 1: going to ingrain like this pattern of already being isolated
Speaker 1: and more lonely. We know about the opioid academic epidemic.
Speaker 1: What's not spoken about is often is death and disease
Speaker 1: resultant from alcohol? Is it three years ago? Is it
Speaker 1: all time highs? More people are suffering from anxiety and depression.
Speaker 1: Gallop shows that over sixty percent of people feel burnt
Speaker 1: out somewhat or often. So if you were to consider
Speaker 1: heroic individualism is a syndrome of optimization or hustle culture,
Speaker 1: then the outcome of the syndrome are these very concrete
Speaker 1: disorders that can be researched. Well, I'm realizing, even after
Speaker 1: this call with you today, just how much on the
Speaker 1: same page I am with you. I guess I was
Speaker 1: always implicit in our friendship, but it's I want to
Speaker 1: join your movement, like maybe you'll do some of the
Speaker 1: empirical research on it. So i'd love to figure out actually,
Speaker 1: and I know you have at least I'm making the
Speaker 1: assumption that you have a lot of research psychologists that
Speaker 1: that tune into this podcast. So, as I mentioned at
Speaker 1: the outset, I have the luxury of not having to
Speaker 1: get into the weeds and do the data analysis. I
Speaker 1: also just don't have the brain that's capable of doing that,
Speaker 1: so I applied able to but looking across the board
Speaker 1: at different areas of research, ancient wisdom traditions in practice, right,
Speaker 1: I've come up with six principles, which which is the
Speaker 1: through line of the book. Each principle is a chapter,
Speaker 1: and those are acceptance over delusional thinking, presence over constant distraction,
Speaker 1: patience over speed, vulnerability over invincibility, deep community over optimization
Speaker 1: or efficiency, and then physical movement over sedentary lifestyles. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure that this list is not completely exhaustive, but
Speaker 1: I would love if there was a way to empirically
Speaker 1: take these practices or take these traits or principles ways
Speaker 1: of being and kind of see like, hey, if you
Speaker 1: put these together, then can we have a measurable effect
Speaker 1: where people feel more at home in their bodies, more
Speaker 1: at home in their communities, more content and ultimately more well.
Speaker 1: And I argue in the book then again, looking across
Speaker 1: history in different areas of inquiry and daily practice, that
Speaker 1: the answers are resounding, Yes, it'd be fascinating to test
Speaker 1: it empirically, well, it definitely would. You could. You could
Speaker 1: create a training program and do a randomized control trial.
Speaker 1: Sounds fun, doesn't it sounds fun? Yeah? I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: looking through your list of six things here. There's definitely
Speaker 1: measures that are either created or could easily be created
Speaker 1: or with a little bit of effort. I want to
Speaker 1: talk about this one except where you are to get
Speaker 1: where you want to be, want to go. A lot
Speaker 1: of people do have this misconception of acceptance as just
Speaker 1: being like the Fats law, that's the way it is.
Speaker 1: You know, like, but you know like you're saying acceptance.
Speaker 1: You know that you're saying sounds more in the lines
Speaker 1: of like of the humunistic psychologists like Carl Rogers said,
Speaker 1: once you accept yourself then you can change YEA. Or
Speaker 1: is the meditation teacher John Cabot's in so eloquently says
Speaker 1: acceptance is not passive resignation. So the way that I
Speaker 1: use acceptance is seeing clearly the situation that you are
Speaker 1: in and that enables you to do something productive about
Speaker 1: it instead of being delusional, buying stuff, tweeting, numbing whatever
Speaker 1: situation you're in with substances. Those all provide a great
Speaker 1: little short term boost, but long term they stop you
Speaker 1: from actually working on the thing that you're working on.
Speaker 1: So yeah, acceptance is both seeing clearly what's happening so
Speaker 1: then you can take the right steps to address it,
Speaker 1: and it's not fighting against what's happening, because again, if
Speaker 1: you're resisting what's happening, you're probably more caught up in
Speaker 1: that resistance energy than in being able to be wise
Speaker 1: and analyze what's going on. What's the difference between groundedness
Speaker 1: and Ryan Holiday's notion of stillness? Is there is there
Speaker 1: a relationship? Are they related? So? I really am a
Speaker 1: big fan of Ryan's work, and I would say that
Speaker 1: they're absolutely related. They're absolutely complementary. I think that, and
Speaker 1: I'd be curious to hear what Ryan would say. My
Speaker 1: hunches heat agree is that stillness is really focused on
Speaker 1: the present. Part of groundedness, I'm being present or equanimity,
Speaker 1: like really just kind of you know, being where you
Speaker 1: are and being fully there and movement is a big
Speaker 1: part of Ryan's book. I'm really happy to see that
Speaker 1: where I was where where Where there's maybe a little
Speaker 1: bit of a difference is that I think groundedness is
Speaker 1: a little bit more broad so if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: and stillness is the key. Ryan didn't really treat the
Speaker 1: role of community and not necessarily vulnerability either in vulnera
Speaker 1: vulnera ability in community I think go hand in hand, right,
Speaker 1: because I'm sure you know the way that we forge deep,
Speaker 1: loving bonds of trust, be it with particular individuals or
Speaker 1: entire groups of people, is by being vulnerable. So the
Speaker 1: more vulnerable you are, the deeper your relationships will become,
Speaker 1: the more you'll connect with other people, and that's how
Speaker 1: you build deep communities. And I think that what some
Speaker 1: of the work on presence, well, it's all very important.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that can miss is the role of other people.
Speaker 1: And again looking back to the ancient wisdom, you know,
Speaker 1: meditation and mindfulness is a wonderful tool, but in Buddhism
Speaker 1: it's only one of the three sacred jewels, right. The
Speaker 1: other jewel is what they call buddhen nature, which is
Speaker 1: the love inside of all of us, the loving awareness,
Speaker 1: and then the third jewel is sanga, which is community.
Speaker 1: So I think, I think again not to completely rag
Speaker 1: on like consumer capitalism, but I would argue that our
Speaker 1: pursuit of optimization and efficiency at all costs is cherry
Speaker 1: picked these practices from ancient wisdom that fit in while
Speaker 1: neglecting the others, because anyone can meditate for ten minutes
Speaker 1: day on their own and then be calm and perform better.
Speaker 1: But what about the thousands of pages recorded from the
Speaker 1: Buddha's speeches and talks and dharma talks about building community.
Speaker 1: Why don't we focus as much there? You know, Well,
Speaker 1: there's an interesting paradox there, because a lot of people
Speaker 1: interpret a lot of that in the West as we
Speaker 1: need to empty our mind. Contents don't matter, just the
Speaker 1: focus matters. And what you're kind of saying is, you
Speaker 1: know what, the content of that focus does kind of matter,
Speaker 1: you know, Like it's not just you don't get a
Speaker 1: free blank check to just you know, completely empty your mind.
Speaker 1: Nothing matters. You know, It's like no, some things do matter,
Speaker 1: you know. So I'm just saying that, I'm saying the
Speaker 1: bestardization of the ideas in the way it's been you know,
Speaker 1: kind of interpreted over here. Yes. No, that's really good.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you focus on community. You have a
Speaker 1: whole section of your book, it's part two, from Principles
Speaker 1: to Action. Can you tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: what you mean by focus on the process let the
Speaker 1: outcomes take care of themselves. I can. So if you
Speaker 1: think about outcomes, they might be I'm a calmer person,
Speaker 1: I feel better about my relationship with my partner or
Speaker 1: my brother. I am more quote unquote productive at work.
Speaker 1: I have an easier time falling asleep. These are just
Speaker 1: a few examples. If you become really attached to attaining
Speaker 1: those outcomes, often there's an anxiety associated with that, because
Speaker 1: you feel like you have to get there, and if
Speaker 1: you don't, you're somehow a failure, and you can end
Speaker 1: up spending more time and energy worrying about the outcomes
Speaker 1: than actually taking the actions you need to take to
Speaker 1: get there. So what a process mindset says is, hey,
Speaker 1: for each of these principles of groundedness, for acceptance, for patience,
Speaker 1: for presence, for vulnerability, for community, for movement, what are
Speaker 1: the concrete things that I can do? I don't even
Speaker 1: have to do them well, that I can show up
Speaker 1: and I can do every day, every week, every month,
Speaker 1: And if I just focus on doing those things, then
Speaker 1: the outcomes will be a byproduct of that. They'll take
Speaker 1: care of themselves. Now, it's not to say completely ignore outcomes.
Speaker 1: If you're doing the same practices every day and a
Speaker 1: year later nothing's changed, maybe you should switch up some
Speaker 1: of your practices. So it's just the outcomes aren't so
Speaker 1: central to one's thinking. They become more like informational checkpoints
Speaker 1: that help tell you if you're on the right track
Speaker 1: or if you need to adjust. We've experienced this in weightlifting.
Speaker 1: If your current one rap max is I don't know,
Speaker 1: big round number two hundred, and you want to get
Speaker 1: it to two fifty, well, if you get too attached
Speaker 1: to that goal, you end up getting reckless and injured
Speaker 1: because you're chasing it, you're doing more than you should,
Speaker 1: or you're taking bigger risks. Whereas if you can say,
Speaker 1: all right, that's a big goal, I'm going to give
Speaker 1: myself six months to get there, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: get there by taking these small, consistent stats every day,
Speaker 1: then the outcome suddenly takes care of itself. There's a
Speaker 1: beautiful quote in the book from Tanahasse Coats about this,
Speaker 1: and you know, Tanahassee Coats had been writing for a
Speaker 1: good twenty years before he had any notoriety. And what
Speaker 1: he says is that people think it's like this mystical
Speaker 1: thing that happens. And he says, no, no, no, that's
Speaker 1: not it's not the case at all. It's twenty years
Speaker 1: of like putting in the work, grinding, catching a couple
Speaker 1: lucky breaks, and then he says, so beautifully, suddenly you
Speaker 1: become something that you never could have imagined. I love.
Speaker 1: That's very inspiration. That's very inspirational. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: people that work their whole lives and that magic never
Speaker 1: comes for them. So I guess the point is, don't
Speaker 1: hang your hat on it that you know, don't worry.
Speaker 1: You're not like a failure in life. You don't need
Speaker 1: to regret your whole life if on your deathbed that
Speaker 1: magic never came, right, like you never became famous, especially
Speaker 1: because so much of that magic's bullshit, like people, let's
Speaker 1: be advertising and all, let's talk bingo, let's talk about
Speaker 1: the domain that we know best. And this is not
Speaker 1: like you know, bitching authors. This is real. So getting
Speaker 1: on a New York Times bestseller list it's like one
Speaker 1: of the first things that writers think about. It turns
Speaker 1: out that people by their way onto those lists. It
Speaker 1: turns out that those lists aren't entirely based on sales.
Speaker 1: They're based on what certain editors at certain institutions think
Speaker 1: of your book. And suddenly it becomes as kind of
Speaker 1: a morphous subjective thing. And you could spend your whole
Speaker 1: life chasing that and anxious about it and sad that
Speaker 1: you're not on the list, or worried about making the list.
Speaker 1: I guess the same thing as being anxious and miss
Speaker 1: out on all the joy that writing brings to you
Speaker 1: and the connections that you get because of it. You know,
Speaker 1: results are this is like just physical properties of the earth.
Speaker 1: Results are concepts, and there at the very most little
Speaker 1: points in time, where's the process to chase after those results?
Speaker 1: That is what makes up your entire life. What is
Speaker 1: getting on the New York Times bestseller list. It's a
Speaker 1: concept and you'll get really high off it for maybe
Speaker 1: a day, minute writing or a minute right whatever it
Speaker 1: is writing the book, developing the relationships, doing the reading,
Speaker 1: the research, all the things that got you there. That's
Speaker 1: what your life is made out of. So why do
Speaker 1: we spend so much time focusing on these conceptual points
Speaker 1: of time when in fact, what it really is is
Speaker 1: the process of getting there. Something that I talk about
Speaker 1: often with coaching clients is we should absolutely set big goals,
Speaker 1: but the point of a goal should be like a
Speaker 1: destination of a journey that you want to take. So
Speaker 1: you should only try to get to the top of
Speaker 1: the mountain if you think you're going to enjoy climbing
Speaker 1: up the mountain. It keeps all roads keep coming back
Speaker 1: to enoughness, doesn't it. That's the that's the central theme here, brother.
Speaker 1: You know, Scott, it's funny. I was the working title
Speaker 1: of the book was, I mean, man, we're on the
Speaker 1: same page. Was good enough? I mean, I'm taking my head.
Speaker 1: There needs to be a book called good enough. I
Speaker 1: was just thinking my my publisher said that, you know,
Speaker 1: it might not sell as well because like it's not
Speaker 1: as inspirational, and right, I do want this book to sell.
Speaker 1: I want people to read it. But yeah, a huge
Speaker 1: argument in the book is good enough and then bringing
Speaker 1: in that nondual thinking because I'm a pusher you're a pusher,
Speaker 1: like you're a person that you can be good enough
Speaker 1: and you can still strive, and the texture of that
Speaker 1: striving changes, so it's more meaningful, more relational, more loving,
Speaker 1: versus a compulsion to need to succeed. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: another theme, you know, your the OCD compote the idea
Speaker 1: of compulsion, the idea of your own journey, like letting
Speaker 1: go of that control. I mean, some of all this
Speaker 1: stuff is you know, you see the patterns in one's
Speaker 1: life leaving up to the leading up to these ideas,
Speaker 1: but you don't see it. You know along the way.
Speaker 1: You didn't necessarily know ten years ago that you would
Speaker 1: write a book on groundedness. And that's why I personally
Speaker 1: am so deliberate about when I speak to groups with
Speaker 1: coaching clients in my book sharing those stories, because you know,
Speaker 1: there is no overnight breakthrough. I didn't like have a
Speaker 1: dream and wake up enlightened. Like I suffered really, really
Speaker 1: really badly for a long period of time. I will
Speaker 1: probably forget and suffer again, and then hopefully I'll remember
Speaker 1: a little bit quicker. And that's just how it goes. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll just end this interview today with the quote
Speaker 1: that I think ties up a lot of this. You say,
Speaker 1: the key to being happy isn't to always want and
Speaker 1: strive for more. Instead, happiness is found in the present moment,
Speaker 1: in creating a meaningful life and being fully engaged in it.
Speaker 1: Right here and right now. Really a game changing book,
Speaker 1: and I just wish you all the best with you know,
Speaker 1: the tour and with the movement. Thank you. I love you, brother,
Speaker 1: and in the fullest definition of that word. I love
Speaker 1: the work that you do. I love your energy, your smile,
Speaker 1: So you just keep being you. Scott All, thanks bred
Speaker 1: them in a lot. That made my day off. I'm
Speaker 1: off to work out now. Thanks for listening to this
Speaker 1: episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react
Speaker 1: in some way to something you heard, I encourage you
Speaker 1: to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also, if you'd prefer
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