Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 1: This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is going to be a longer one part of
Speaker 1: the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
Speaker 1: take their days from great to awesome and any advice
Speaker 1: they have for the rest of us. So today I
Speaker 1: am excited to welcome Brad Stilberg to Before Breakfast. Brad
Speaker 1: is the author of the brand new book The Way
Speaker 1: of Excellence. So Brad, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Laura, It's great to be here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, thanks so much for joining us. Why don't
Speaker 1: you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2: So I wear a couple of hats.
Speaker 3: One hat is an author, where I'm really interested in
Speaker 3: exploring the things that make humans flourish. I write books,
Speaker 3: I research, and I report for those books. The second
Speaker 3: hat I wear as a performance coach, so I work
Speaker 3: with athletes, executives, entrepreneurs and creatives on their own performance,
Speaker 3: applying so many of the things that I write about.
Speaker 3: And then the third hat that I wear as a professor,
Speaker 3: where I'm adjunct faculty at the University of Michigan and
Speaker 3: much like my writing and coaching. I work with students
Speaker 3: there on their professional development, leadership and mental performance.
Speaker 1: Excellent. Well, your book is about excellence, which is a
Speaker 1: bit of a lofty topic, and I know that your
Speaker 1: clients are people like the these athletes and things like
Speaker 1: that is excellent something that the rest of us should
Speaker 1: be thinking about as well. I mean, there's same things
Speaker 1: that athletes do. Are they applicable to the rest of us.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: I think that one of the biggest misconceptions about excellence
Speaker 3: is that it's only for the select few with impeccable
Speaker 3: genetics that are competing in the World Championships or the Olympics,
Speaker 3: and that just couldn't be further from the truth. Excellence
Speaker 3: really comes down to caring deeply about projects that align
Speaker 3: with your values and goals and giving them your all,
Speaker 3: and all of us can do that, and it helps
Speaker 3: all of us to feel more live, to get the
Speaker 3: best out of ourselves, and to have awesome days.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, well. I understand that some parts of the genesis
Speaker 1: of this book had to do with Robert Persig and
Speaker 1: Zen and the art of mozorviicals and maintenances of course
Speaker 1: his most famous book. But maybe you can talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the connection between Persig's work and yours.
Speaker 3: So Zen The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila are
Speaker 3: person's two big books. They're two of my favorite books.
Speaker 3: They've really help informs my philosophy of life. And at
Speaker 3: the center of Persig's work is this term called quality,
Speaker 3: and Perseig defines quality is the relationship between an actor
Speaker 3: and their act. So it's not what you are experiencing,
Speaker 3: is the person dancing, It's not what the dance floor
Speaker 3: is experiencing with your feet tapping on it. It's the
Speaker 3: relationship between you and what you're doing. And what Persig
Speaker 3: argued is that so much of the fulfillment and satisfaction
Speaker 3: in good stuff in life comes out of that relationship
Speaker 3: between awesome the things that we care about. Persik said,
Speaker 3: and this is back in nineteen seventy four, is that
Speaker 3: more and more of modern life alienates us from that
Speaker 3: direct experience of the things that we care about. And
Speaker 3: again he wrote this before social media in some ways,
Speaker 3: before the modern internet, so imagine what he'd be thinking
Speaker 3: if he was alive now, And that we should do
Speaker 3: everything that we can to remove those distractions so that
Speaker 3: we can experience that kind of intimacy with the things
Speaker 3: that are important to us. And again, a big part
Speaker 3: of having an excellent life in such a chaotic and
Speaker 3: crazy world is being able to set aside time in
Speaker 3: space to get really close and focused and undistracted on
Speaker 3: the projects that we find worthwhile.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, figuring out what is worthwhile is sometimes a
Speaker 1: little bit complicated. And you have a great phrase in
Speaker 1: your book. I believe it is quit, fit, and grit,
Speaker 1: which is memorable for sure. So why don't you talk
Speaker 1: about what that means.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So grit is this phenomenal term as coined by
Speaker 3: Angela Duckworth, and it became all the rage and self
Speaker 3: help and personal development really over the last decade, and
Speaker 3: grit is really important. Grit says that you have to
Speaker 3: have stick to itiveness. You've got to be tough, you
Speaker 3: can't let stepbacks throw you off course, you got to
Speaker 3: stick to what you're doing. Commit And that's true, but
Speaker 3: that can also get in the way because what if
Speaker 3: you're doing the wrong thing, What if what you actually
Speaker 3: should do is quit and try to find something new.
Speaker 3: So the way that I like to think about this
Speaker 3: is it's really helpful to sample a whole bunch of
Speaker 3: different pursuits. This can be professional if you're young, this
Speaker 3: can be hobbies. If you're older and you're already locked
Speaker 3: in your career.
Speaker 2: And you want to quit early and often.
Speaker 3: If you don't enjoy something, if it doesn't align with
Speaker 3: your values or the person that you think you want
Speaker 3: to become, then there's no need to stick it out
Speaker 3: in that thing. However, once you found something where there
Speaker 3: is a good fit, that is when grit becomes super important.
Speaker 3: So to make this really practical in my own life,
Speaker 3: I was never very good at math or science, and
Speaker 3: I constantly quit things that involve math and science. I
Speaker 3: quit ap math in high school. In college, I thought
Speaker 3: I was going to be an economics major until I
Speaker 3: took econ four oh one, which had all kinds of
Speaker 3: math that I couldn't do.
Speaker 2: So I quit math.
Speaker 3: And the flip side is that in writing, I was
Speaker 3: extremely gritty. I was on a school newspaper. I got
Speaker 3: rejected more times than I can count, Yet I kept
Speaker 3: on writing because I liked it. I had fit. So
Speaker 3: I was really gritty with my writing because there was
Speaker 3: good fit. But I quit math in science very early
Speaker 3: and very often. And imagine if I would have forced
Speaker 3: myself to say, you know, my parents had this more
Speaker 3: analytic career, so therefore I need to have a career
Speaker 3: that is more analytic. I might be miserable right now.
Speaker 3: So I think that too often we over index when
Speaker 3: we say the great performance is all about grit and
Speaker 3: being really tough and stick toitiveness. And that's very true,
Speaker 3: but it's only true once you found something for which
Speaker 3: you have a good fit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this is the time of year, you know,
Speaker 1: this is airing in January. A lot of people have
Speaker 1: set resolutions and goals for the new year. Are there
Speaker 1: ways we should think about setting these goals that might
Speaker 1: make them more workable or more in keeping with the
Speaker 1: pursuit of excellent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so important to set big, challenging, inspirational, motivating goals,
Speaker 3: but then to largely forget about the big, challenging inspirational
Speaker 3: goal and to focus on the process, to focus on
Speaker 3: the steps that are going to help you achieve that goal.
Speaker 3: This is at the crux of a process mindset, and
Speaker 3: a process mindset is crucial for excellence. It essentially says,
Speaker 3: set your big goal, then break that big goal down
Speaker 3: into the component parts, into the small steps, and then
Speaker 3: largely forget about the big goal and just focus on
Speaker 3: nailing the steps. Little by little becomes a lot. One
Speaker 3: of my favorite interviews I did for the book was
Speaker 3: with Kelly Humphries. She is one of the winningest Olympians ever.
Speaker 3: She's won three gold medals, one bronze, and five world championships.
Speaker 3: And she's about to compete in February in this upcoming
Speaker 3: Winter Olympics. And she's a bob sled athlete. You can
Speaker 3: do the math. She's been at the top of the
Speaker 3: world for the last twenty years. And I asked Kelly.
Speaker 3: I said, Kelly, talk to me about what goes into
Speaker 3: setting a goal for the Olympics. And she says, well,
Speaker 3: my goal is simple. I want to be the best
Speaker 3: in the world. I want to win a gold medal.
Speaker 2: Four years after that. I take a four year.
Speaker 3: Olympic cycle and I break it down into two by
Speaker 3: two years, and then each of those two years has
Speaker 3: a particular focus. The first two years are building a base,
Speaker 3: the second two years are sharpening the saw. Then I
Speaker 3: take each of those two years and I break them
Speaker 3: down into individual years, and each of those years has
Speaker 3: a focus. Each year gets broken down into quarters, each
Speaker 3: quarter to months, each months to week, and then each
Speaker 3: week gets broken down into days, and then what I
Speaker 3: do is I show up and I focus on the
Speaker 3: workout I need to execute today. So she has this
Speaker 3: big goal, arguably the biggest, to be the best in
Speaker 3: the world at what she does, but day to day,
Speaker 3: she's digging exactly where her feet are. She's focused on
Speaker 3: the process, and all of us can apply that mindset
Speaker 3: to our big goals.
Speaker 1: So just focus on the process instead of the summit fever,
Speaker 1: we might get at the top.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's right.
Speaker 3: I mean, think about it. I love the EU summit
Speaker 3: fever and a climber. If you're a climber and you're
Speaker 3: so fixated on getting to the peak that you're constantly
Speaker 3: looking up and staring at the top of the mountain,
Speaker 3: you're gonna literally like trip and fall over your own feet.
Speaker 3: You're gonna make mistakes on the side of the mountain.
Speaker 3: So you can't have a climb without a top. You
Speaker 3: have to know where you're going, but to successfully get there,
Speaker 3: you've got to focus on climbing exactly where you are.
Speaker 3: So it's this paradox of yes, set the big goal,
Speaker 3: care deeply about it, but then also kind of forget
Speaker 3: about it, or at least don't obsess over it, so
Speaker 3: that you can focus on the small steps that are
Speaker 3: going to help you get there.
Speaker 1: Absolutely Well, we're going to take a quick ad break
Speaker 1: and then I'll be back with more from Brad Stolberg.
Speaker 1: So I am back talking with Brad Stolberg, who is
Speaker 1: the author of the brand new book The Way of Excellence.
Speaker 1: We've been talking about breaking down big goals into small
Speaker 1: daily steps toward those big goals. Now when we get
Speaker 1: to sort of rubber meeting the road and day to
Speaker 1: day life, as you know, schedules get crazy, things come up.
Speaker 1: People have various obstacles on any given day. Is there
Speaker 1: I think you had a phrase in there about raising
Speaker 1: the floor, I mean figuring out, you know, what is
Speaker 1: the least amount you can do on certain days. Even
Speaker 1: if we are eventually aiming towards these big goals, what
Speaker 1: does that mean to do that?
Speaker 3: So many people focus on needing to have great days.
Speaker 3: What I have found in my research with performers of
Speaker 3: all different levels, from beginner to world class, is that
Speaker 3: what actually leads to lasting progress isn't having more great days,
Speaker 3: it's making your bad days a little bit better. And
Speaker 3: what I mean by that is you might have a
Speaker 3: day where everything kind of goes to crap. Right, the
Speaker 3: dog is vomiting on the floor, your toddler sick, it's
Speaker 3: like everything's a mess. You can spiral and catastrophize and
Speaker 3: get absolutely nothing done that day, or you can say,
Speaker 3: all right, today's going to be very different than what
Speaker 3: i'd hope for. What would it look like to get
Speaker 3: five or ten percent out of myself instead of the
Speaker 3: one hundred percent i'd hope for, Or maybe you don't
Speaker 3: even get five or ten percent of yourself, But instead
Speaker 3: of catastrophizing and spiraling where a bad day becomes a
Speaker 3: bad week, you say, all right, today's a zero. I'm
Speaker 3: going to take a zero to day, but tomorrow I'm
Speaker 3: going to get back on the bandwagon. And really good
Speaker 3: progress requires not just those great days, not just to
Speaker 3: having a high ceiling, but also raising the floor. Because
Speaker 3: the truth is, and I bet every listener knows this,
Speaker 3: by definition, great days are rare, Like we don't have
Speaker 3: our best days very often. There's a reason that our
Speaker 3: best days, it's much more frequent that we're having an
Speaker 3: average day or and not so great day. But if
Speaker 3: we can just nudge what we can get out of
Speaker 3: ourselves on those not so great in average days up
Speaker 3: over time, that makes an enormous difference. So when you're
Speaker 3: having a bad day, instead of freaking out about it,
Speaker 3: try to disrupt that negative rumination and spiral and say,
Speaker 3: all right, for whatever reason, it's not going to happen
Speaker 3: like I thought today, But how could I make this
Speaker 3: bad day a little bit better? What could I get
Speaker 3: out of myself? How could I adjust and still work
Speaker 3: toward my goal even if it's not in the way
Speaker 3: I hope for.
Speaker 1: I think you refer to this as the next play mentality.
Speaker 3: Yeah, athletes are great. Athletes are phenomenal with this, which
Speaker 3: just says, like next play mentality, the play that just
Speaker 3: happened is in the past. There's nothing that you can
Speaker 3: do about it. You can learn from it if possible,
Speaker 3: but then you've got to focus on the next. And obviously,
Speaker 3: an next play mentality isn't just important in tennis or
Speaker 3: golf or soccer basketball. It's important in life. And so
Speaker 3: often we get caught up in thinking about what just
Speaker 3: happened instead of saying, all right, what happened happens? Take
Speaker 3: what I can and then I'm going to focus on
Speaker 3: the next play.
Speaker 1: So I understand that you have a lot of rituals
Speaker 1: and routines in your life, things that you do repeatedly.
Speaker 1: We are all about routines on this show, a show
Speaker 1: called Before Breakfast. In particular, morning routines are something that
Speaker 1: a lot of people are interested in. Do you have
Speaker 1: a particular morning routine that is part of your life
Speaker 1: right now?
Speaker 3: I do have a particular morning routine that is part
Speaker 3: of my life, and it revolves around coffee, which is
Speaker 3: an ergogenic performance enhancer. I believe in free pub for
Speaker 3: coffee on the show today. But my morning routine is
Speaker 3: actually quite simple. I get out of bed, I say
Speaker 3: hi to my kids, who are generally up around the
Speaker 3: same time as me, or generally they're actually waking me up.
Speaker 3: I have young kids, so they're my alarm clock. And
Speaker 3: then I make a pot of coffee and make coffee
Speaker 3: for myself and my wife, and I drink that coffee,
Speaker 3: and then, to the extent possible, again depending on what's
Speaker 3: happening with the kids, I try to sit down and
Speaker 3: do my most important, high demanding cognitive work first thing
Speaker 3: in the day. But it's really like the ritual of
Speaker 3: getting out of bed and making that pot of coffee
Speaker 3: that helps me shift from a barely waking state to
Speaker 3: a wakeful state. And of course the caffeine helps, but
Speaker 3: I know that it's actually the ritual as much as
Speaker 3: the caffeine, because even before any coffee hits my digestive track,
Speaker 3: the coffee signifies like, all right, it started the day,
Speaker 3: It's go time. Something that I do when I'm working
Speaker 3: on a book is I'll also light incense. And again,
Speaker 3: there's just something about connecting, like the the the actual
Speaker 3: physical process of getting the incent burning and then the
Speaker 3: smell of it to writing where my brain kind of
Speaker 3: locks in and says all right, like it's time to write.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious, I mean, because you said with the
Speaker 1: young kids, and this is often something that makes people's
Speaker 1: morning routines slightly more complicated, right, dealing with little people.
Speaker 1: Is it more that you're aiming to start at a
Speaker 1: particular time when they're off doing their stuff for the day,
Speaker 1: or is it that they're part of it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm curious, like, you know, you sit down at a
Speaker 1: certain time when they are at school, or how does
Speaker 1: that work?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great question, because it gets it gets messy, right,
Speaker 3: So it depends on the morning. But generally speaking, let's
Speaker 3: say that I'm up at six thirty, the kids are
Speaker 3: up at six thirty, and my wife is up at
Speaker 3: six thirty. We both have jobs. We co parent, and
Speaker 3: by coparent, we're not divorced. We're together, but we both
Speaker 3: raise the kids. It's not like a situation where she's
Speaker 3: doing all the labor and I'm not. At least I
Speaker 3: certainly try not to do that. So six thirty to
Speaker 3: seven thirty is kind of like, all right, who's slept
Speaker 3: better last night, who's got important work to do? Whoever
Speaker 3: doesn't is on point for the kids, and then the
Speaker 3: other person can go do forty five minutes of work,
Speaker 3: and then it's time to get the kids ready, get
Speaker 3: them off to school. They're off to school by seven thirty.
Speaker 3: And then at that point I am just trying to
Speaker 3: lock in from seven thirty to nine thirty on my
Speaker 3: most important work for the day, before meetings start and
Speaker 3: before all these other things come into play.
Speaker 1: Now, do you try to push meetings too later in
Speaker 1: the day? Is that how you would schedule an ideal day?
Speaker 3: I do, and that's very much aligned with my chronotype,
Speaker 3: which is just the fancy word that scientists use for
Speaker 3: how the rhythms of our days go. And that's a
Speaker 3: very individual thing. So I'm very much a morning person.
Speaker 3: I'm not a night owl. I'm a morning lark. So
Speaker 3: I know that my ability to focus deeply is generally
Speaker 3: speaking best before noon, and then I know that from
Speaker 3: noon to five I struggle if I'm alone, but if
Speaker 3: I'm with other people, if I'm in meetings, if I'm
Speaker 3: having conversations, that kind of energy can help light me
Speaker 3: back up. So it doesn't always work like this, but
Speaker 3: to the extent possible, I try to put my meetings
Speaker 3: in my more extroverted social work in the afternoon and
Speaker 3: schedule my more deep focus, cognitive alone work in the morning.
Speaker 1: Now, you had mentioned that you have a couple of
Speaker 1: weekly routines, like things that you aim to do once
Speaker 1: a week, which is sort of a different unit of
Speaker 1: time than a lot of people think about with routines.
Speaker 1: But yeah, what are some of those things?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm glad you asked, so I'll share the framework
Speaker 3: real quick because I think it can be really helpful,
Speaker 3: which is three daily routines, three weekly routines and three
Speaker 3: monthly routines. So my daily routines are forty five to
Speaker 3: sixty minutes of exercise and I try to do this
Speaker 3: every day. And this doesn't always mean going to the
Speaker 3: gym and killing myself. Sometimes it means walking the dog,
Speaker 3: but moving my body for forty five to sixty minutes
Speaker 3: a day at least one and a half hours of
Speaker 3: deep focus work where I'm not running from meeting to meeting,
Speaker 3: and I'm focused on a project that matters to me.
Speaker 3: For me, usually that's writing, and then going to bed
Speaker 3: when I'm tired. So I've learned not to fight sleep again.
Speaker 3: We have young kids. They go to bed at eight. Often,
Speaker 3: my wife and I are in bed at nine thirty.
Speaker 3: We're not very exciting because without going to bed at
Speaker 3: nine thirty, we wouldn't get much sleep. Some of my
Speaker 3: weekly routines my three weekly routines. The first is some
Speaker 3: kind of extended time in nature. This can just be
Speaker 3: an hour and a half walk with the dog. So
Speaker 3: instead of the quick walk around our neighborhood, we go
Speaker 3: out in a trail that like really helps me clear
Speaker 3: my mind, reconnect to myself. A digital sabbath, which is
Speaker 3: a time period where I put my phone in my computer,
Speaker 3: completely away in When I'm doing this at my best,
Speaker 3: it's a whole day. When I'm not at my best,
Speaker 3: it's a half a day. But it's literally like in
Speaker 3: the Attict, you know, nowhere near me, not in the
Speaker 3: other room, not turned off, but a place where I'm
Speaker 3: not even thinking about it, to get away from the
Speaker 3: digital device. And then some kind of social interaction with
Speaker 3: friends once a week so I can be really busy.
Speaker 3: I'm very work driven, and sometimes friendship gets crowded out.
Speaker 3: So if I'm really cognizant of hey, I've got to
Speaker 3: make sure I'm hanging out with people at least once
Speaker 3: a week. And then I also have these three monthly
Speaker 3: things that I do, which is try to spend a
Speaker 3: day in nature, often with the family. Try to do
Speaker 3: something with my community, so go to a neighborhood barbecue,
Speaker 3: go do a cleanup on one of the local trails nearby,
Speaker 3: something like that to connect with my community. And then
Speaker 3: I also try to have some time period for contemplation
Speaker 3: and reflection. So maybe it's meditation, maybe it's listening to
Speaker 3: my favorite music album, so on and so forth. I
Speaker 3: find especially with young kids in the cast of life.
Speaker 3: Sometimes having like very elaborate routines helps people at certain
Speaker 3: phases of life. For me right now, the more I
Speaker 3: can simplify, the better. So I know that if I'm
Speaker 3: doing my three daily and my three weekly and my
Speaker 3: three monthly things, my physical, cognitive, emotional, and social health
Speaker 3: will be in a good enough spot.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. All right, We're going to take one more quick
Speaker 1: ad break and then I'll be back with more from
Speaker 1: Brad Stolberg. So I am back talking with Brad Stolberg,
Speaker 1: who is the author of the book The Way of Excellence.
Speaker 1: So I have a follow up question about the digital
Speaker 1: sabbath because I know a lot of people say, well,
Speaker 1: I really would like to be off a lot of
Speaker 1: my devices and my connectivity. However, there are other people,
Speaker 1: like even within my family or friends, that I would
Speaker 1: need to be connected to. On a weekend day, for instance,
Speaker 1: my teenager is going to be out and about and
Speaker 1: want to connect to pick up, you know, get a
Speaker 1: ride home, or like my parents will need to reach me.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious to how one should thread that needle
Speaker 1: of having some of the upsides the connectivity without getting
Speaker 1: into all the downsides that can happen.
Speaker 3: So I can share how I did it in what
Speaker 3: worked for my family, and that is I got a
Speaker 3: phone called a Jitterbug, which is marketed towards senior citizens.
Speaker 3: It has no Internet. In order to text, you have
Speaker 3: to like do the old texting, or in order to
Speaker 3: get to like the letter C, you have to hit
Speaker 3: one three times to go through A B and C.
Speaker 3: So functionally, you're never going to text on this thing.
Speaker 3: It is just a phone. The other thing is is
Speaker 3: if I fall, there's a special button that will automatically
Speaker 3: call nine one one for me, because again it's marketing
Speaker 3: senior citizens.
Speaker 2: But I have a Jitterbug.
Speaker 3: It has its own phone number, and that's what I
Speaker 3: use to stay in touch with my family. That's so
Speaker 3: my wife can reach me when we're running the kids
Speaker 3: in various places. And that's also sometimes on these digital savags,
Speaker 3: I want to call my brother who lives in another state,
Speaker 3: or my closest friend who lives across the country, and
Speaker 3: that's still really meaningful. Like that's the kind of technology
Speaker 3: that I want to take advantage of. But what having
Speaker 3: the Jitterbug phone does is it keeps me off of Twitter.
Speaker 3: It keeps me off of Instagram, It keeps me off
Speaker 3: of email, It keeps me from on and on and on.
Speaker 3: Got it?
Speaker 1: So I loved a phrase that you used in your
Speaker 1: book when you are trying something new that you haven't
Speaker 1: done or that will might be a little bit outside
Speaker 1: your comfort zones, Brave New World? How does this mantra
Speaker 1: work for you?
Speaker 3: One of my favorite parts of the book, Brave New World.
Speaker 3: What the genesis of this is? The sport that I
Speaker 3: engage in is powerlifting, and when you walk up to
Speaker 3: a barbell that has more weight on it than you've
Speaker 3: ever lifted before, there can be like a real sense
Speaker 3: of fear and not so much fear is am I
Speaker 3: going to make the lift or not? Because no one
Speaker 3: really cares, not a pro athlete, but genuine fear about
Speaker 3: this is going to feel so hard, Like what's this
Speaker 3: going to feel? Like? I'm kind of scared in When
Speaker 3: you walk up to a bar in a state of fear,
Speaker 3: you tend not to perform very well. But if you
Speaker 3: can shift from fear to curiosity, your performance can be incredible.
Speaker 3: So instead of walking up to that bar saying I
Speaker 3: don't know if I'm going to do this or yikes,
Speaker 3: I don't know what this is going to feel like.
Speaker 3: I walk up to the bar and I say, Brave
Speaker 3: New World. I have no idea what's going to happen,
Speaker 3: but let's find out. And that shift from uh oh,
Speaker 3: this is scary to this is a whole new horizon. Heck,
Speaker 3: if I'm you know, if I told myself I'm gonna
Speaker 3: for sure make the lift, I know because I'd be
Speaker 3: lying to myself. I don't know if I'm going to
Speaker 3: make the lift. But what I can say is like,
Speaker 3: I'm taking on a challenge. Brave New world. Let's find out.
Speaker 3: It started in the weight room. But I can tell
Speaker 3: you that the first words I said to my wife
Speaker 3: when we had our second kid, I looked at her
Speaker 3: and I said, Brave New World. When I take on
Speaker 3: a big writing assignment for an outlet I've never written
Speaker 3: for and I feel overwhelmed, I tell myself like, brave
Speaker 3: New World. So it's this really powerful mantra because again
Speaker 3: it shifts us out of fear to curiosity. There's some
Speaker 3: fascinating neuroscience that I go into in the book that
Speaker 3: essentially shows that the circuitry in our brains that lights
Speaker 3: up when we are really scared or rageful. Angry is
Speaker 3: completely at odds with the circuitry that lights up when
Speaker 3: we're curious, So anyone knows this. It's impossible to be
Speaker 3: genuinely curious and terrified at the same time time. So
Speaker 3: I think curiosity is one of the best antidotes to fear.
Speaker 1: So I ask all my guests a question of what
Speaker 1: is something you have done recently to take a day
Speaker 1: from great to awesome?
Speaker 3: I have set aside thirty minutes to have an afternoon coffee,
Speaker 3: not the morning coffee, and read and do deep, undistracted
Speaker 3: reading nonfiction fiction. I think that I'm a writer, so
Speaker 3: this is my job. And yet sometimes the time to
Speaker 3: sit down and cozy up with a book gets crowded
Speaker 3: out because life is so busy and there's so many
Speaker 3: of these short form mechanisms of communication. That I've really
Speaker 3: made it a priority to reclaim reading in the days
Speaker 3: that I set aside that time for myself to read,
Speaker 3: I never regret it.
Speaker 1: What time does that tend to happen for you?
Speaker 3: So again, I'm fortunate I control my own schedule that
Speaker 3: tends to happen towards the end of the day, So
Speaker 3: like four thirty to five back to I know you
Speaker 3: love rituals and routines. It also kind of acts as
Speaker 3: a nice transition out of the workday and into family time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that would be a great way to end
Speaker 1: the day and to say, well this my brain is
Speaker 1: moving into a different space and I can I can
Speaker 1: transition into a different role at this point, Particularly for
Speaker 1: people who might work from home, that's a way to
Speaker 1: create a bit of a fake commute, right.
Speaker 3: Oh, one hundred percent. And I'm glad you mentioned that.
Speaker 3: I think that that is that is so important and
Speaker 3: that's a whole other conversation and topic, but the importance
Speaker 3: of like, if you do work from home, there's so
Speaker 3: many benefits, but one of the costs is that we
Speaker 3: used to have all these boundaries built in between work
Speaker 3: and life, and if you work from home, you have
Speaker 3: to create those boundaries a little bit artificially.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, we try the best we can around here, for sure.
Speaker 1: So Bradus, what is something you are looking forward to
Speaker 1: right now?
Speaker 3: I love I'm coaching my son's basketball team and we're
Speaker 3: having this conversation on a Friday, and we play on Saturdays,
Speaker 3: and I just nothing brings me more joy than coaching
Speaker 3: rex Sports seven to eight year olds playing basketball.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 3: It just lights me up more than anything.
Speaker 1: Because they're really learning. I mean, they're at this point
Speaker 1: there's still.
Speaker 3: They're learning and they're innocents. They're still young enough where
Speaker 3: yes there's some crazy parents, but most of the parents
Speaker 3: are very kind. There's none of the politics that you
Speaker 3: get in sport that gets that happens when you're at
Speaker 3: the high school or college level. They're just a bunch
Speaker 3: of kids having so much fun together in the Yes,
Speaker 3: they want to win, but like they have so much
Speaker 3: fun and then they move on after the game so
Speaker 3: quick it's like it never happened. And it's just such
Speaker 3: an innocent way to engage with sport, and I think
Speaker 3: it's the best.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well they've got a next game mentality for sure.
Speaker 1: So Brad, where can people find you?
Speaker 3: The best place to find me on the internet is
Speaker 3: my podcast, which is Excellence. Actually the book is called
Speaker 3: The Way of Excellence, and then the social media platform
Speaker 3: that I'm most active on is Instagram and my username
Speaker 3: is just my name at Brad Stolberg.
Speaker 1: Absolutely all right, Well, Brad, thank you so much much
Speaker 1: for joining us. Thank you to everyone for listening. If
Speaker 1: you have feedback about this or any other episode, you
Speaker 1: can always reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot
Speaker 1: com and in the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
Speaker 1: or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
Speaker 1: vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
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