High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 327: The Passion Paradox with Brad Stulberg, Bestselling Author, Researcher and Coach

Episode Date: April 10, 2020

Brad Stulberg (@Bstulberg) researches, writes, coaches, and speaks on health, human performance, and well-being. His books are Peak Performance and The Passion Paradox. They have sold more than 200,000 copies and been translated into more than 15 languages.   His essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, Wired, New York Magazine, Forbes, Sports Illustrated, and other national and international outlets. He also writes the popular Do It Better column for Outside Magazine. In his coaching practice, he works with executives, entrepreneurs, physicians, and athletes. He is also co-creator of The Growth Equation, an online platform dedicated to the understanding and practice of performance and well-being. In this podcast, Cindra and Brad talk: How passion can be a gift and a curse Ways to follow your passion His equation “Stress + rest = growth” What is a mastery mindset How thinking about failure can improve performance Why 60% of breakthrough ideas come not when you are working on it!

Hey, my name is Cindra Campoff and I'm a small-town Minnesota gal, Minnesota nice as we like to say it, who followed her big dreams. I spent the last four years working as a mental coach for the Minnesota Vikings, working one-on-one with the players. I wrote a best-selling book about the mindset of the world's best and I'm a keynote speaker and national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. And I am obsessed with showing you exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best so you can accomplish all your goals and dreams. So I'm over here following my big dreams and I'm here to inspire you and practically show you how to do the same. And you know, when I'm not working, you'll find me playing Ms. Pac-Man.

Yes, the 1980s game Ms. Pac-Man. So take your notepad out, buckle up, and let's go. This is the high performance mindset. The best possible thing you can do is stop trying to find your passion and instead just follow the things that interest you. Yeah. Because if you have this like really high standard and this high bar that I need to find something that I'm super passionate about and that I love right away and that makes me tick and makes me feel alive, well, the minute something goes wrong, you're going to tell yourself, okay, I guess that's not my passion. I'm going to look for the next one.

Whereas if you can lower the bar to just following your interests and being curious, then passion can develop over time. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Dr. Sindra Kampoff. And welcome to episode 327 with Brad Stolberg. I am more grateful than ever that you are here listening to this podcast. I'm grateful for you. So thank you for tuning in. And if you know that mindset is essential to your success, then you are in the right place. You know, on April 17th, I was supposed to deliver a TED Talk. It was going to be one of the best days of my life, something I have been working for my whole career to do. And it was canceled or postponed. We're not sure which one. I'm hopeful just postponed. But I felt really sad that day. And I realized I needed to turn my energy to

something new and direct my energy to something that I could deliver for you, a new project. And I've always wanted to do a summit. And I've had several pinch me moments over the last few days. Nearly 20 experts are on the summit talking about how you can use your mindset to deal with whatever you're dealing with right now, to deal with change, adversity, and uncertainty. And with all that we're facing in the world today, it is essential that we train our minds to stay gritty, present, and purposeful. And these experts are some of the best in my field.

Best-selling authors, mental performance coaches for pro teams, influencers. And you will receive an interview with each of the speakers and myself, which includes tangible tools and actionable advice that you can use right now to make you, your team, your business, the people you care about, and your community stronger. And the summit is completely free. You can sign up today to receive the details via email. And you can go to highperformancemindsetsummit.com.

It's highperformancemindsetsummit.com. And I guarantee by the end of the summit, you will have an unbreakable toolbox and mindset to handle anything that comes your way. Head over to highperformancemindsetsummit.com to sign up. In the next several podcasts, I have reached out to my favorite authors. Every February, I head to somewhere warm with my husband, sometimes my friends, and I specifically choose, carefully choose, the books that I bring. And this February, I read The Passion Paradox by Brad Stolberg. Completely loved it.

I was on the beach with a highlighter, uh-huh, yes. And several of my clients have used the book to help them understand their passion. So I am pumped to provide you this interview with Brad. Brad Stolberg researches, writes, coaches, and speaks on health, human performance, and well-being. His best-selling books include Peak Performance and The Passion Paradox. They've sold more than 200,000 copies and have been translated into more than 15 languages. His essays and articles have appeared in the New York Times, Wired, New York Magazine, Forbes, Sports Illustrated, and other national international outlets.

He also writes the popular Do A Better column for Outside Magazine. In his coaching practice, he works with executives, entrepreneurs, physicians, and athletes. He is also the co-creator of The Growth Equation, an online platform dedicated to the understanding and the practice of performance and well-being. In this podcast, Brad and I talk about how passion can be a gift and a curse, ways to follow your passion so it becomes more of a gift. His equation, stress plus rest equals growth.

What is the mastery mindset and how you can grow your mastery mindset? How thinking about failure can improve performance. That's interesting. And why 60% of our breakthrough ideas come when we are not working at it. If you enjoyed today's episode, wherever you're listening, please subscribe, scroll down wherever you're listening

and give us a five-star rating and review i am working to attract the best guests for you and that would help us get higher and higher on itunes and brad and i would love to hear what you think about this interview what stood out to you what was the best thing that he described and he talked about you can reach brad at b stolberg on twitter and myself at mentally underscore strong and if you're on twitter brad is an amazing follow so again that's b stolberg on twitter and i am at mentally underscore strong stay safe stay mentally strong everyone thanks for joining me today. And here is Brad. So Brad, I am so excited to interview you today and talk with you about your two books, Peak Performance and The Passion Paradox. So I have them both here

and you can see my little tags on them. This one I read on the beach, which is my favorite place to read, but I couldn't put it down. So I absolutely love your work. So it's an honor to have you on today. Cool. Thank you so much, Sandra. I'm really glad to be here. So I want to start and ask you a little bit about your passion and what you do now. So my passion, I would say, is thinking about structuring and communicating interesting ideas. Cool. And then as a writer, I'm really fortunate that that allows me to do all of those things and hopefully get paid to do those things. Yeah. And then I also have a son that I absolutely love. So family is a big part of my life as well. And then I think the third big bucket would just be physical activity and

really trying to use my body all the time. So give us a little sense, you know, tell us a little bit of how you got to where you are right now. You have two books at least, right? Two books. Yep. Two books. Yep. Just to give people kind of an insight, they've sold over 200,000, translated into 15 languages. Wow. Yeah, it's wild. Well beyond my expectations.

It's crazy because when that first book came out just about three years ago now, I was just so excited to have had the opportunity to write and publish a book, let alone have a book that was going to sell a lot of copies and then to continue to be able to write and publish a book, let alone have a book that was going to sell a lot of copies and then to continue to be able to write. So I'm just as stoked as anyone. That's awesome. Yeah. Way back in high school, I really wanted to be a writer and I applied to some really good

journalism schools and I didn't get in. So like any other 16, 17 year old kid, I just kind of assumed that, okay, I guess I'm not going to be a writer. So I ended up going to University of Michigan and studying economics and psychology. Nice. Yeah. So like people ask me, when did I know I wanted to be a writer? And I tell them like, well, I kind of knew when I was young, but then I had totally forgot about that. And out of school, I took a job at a large consulting firm and I was doing management, organizational consulting, leadership development. But throughout that job, I was always the person in the client relationship around the project team that was doing the communication.

So it might not have been formal writing, but it was making the PowerPoint slides. Or if there were white papers and memos, it was drafting those. So I was always telling some sort of story. So again, by that point, I had no, not my wildest dreams. I thought I'm not going to be a writer. I'm a consultant. I might be a coach. I might help develop leaders, but little did I know that it was actually really good training to do nonfiction writing. Um, so how I actually got into writing, it's a very long story. We can talk about it for hours, but to make it really short is I went back to Michigan for graduate school where I studied public health. And at that time,

I got really into triathlon. And this was like 10 years ago when everybody had to have a blog. So I had a WordPress blog about my pursuits in triathlon. And nobody read this blog. The readership was one. Not even my wife read the blog. I guess at the time she was my girlfriend. I read the blog and that was it. But that blog kept me writing regularly. Nice. And a couple of lucky breaks. Some people did start reading the blog and that just led to more and more opportunities. And over the last really 10 years, I've gradually shifted down other parts of my life and then shifted up writing to the point where now I'm fortunate enough to do it full time along with some coaching that I do.

So I'm looking forward to diving into both of your books. I want to ask a question at the beginning because I think it shows that you're human. And we might think, wow, Brad's, you know, written two of these bestselling books, so successful. But I want to hear, Brad, like, what does failure mean to you? And tell us about a time that you failed. So what does failure mean to me and a time that I failed? Yes. Hmm. I don't really like to use the word failure. Yeah.

Because I just kind of view everything as like one long path or like one long journey. So I've had all kinds of like things not go great or not go well. But like when you asked me to think of a time I failed, like that word is not really a part of my vocabulary. It really is failure, right? Yeah. So like there have been times when I didn't perform as well as I wanted or things didn't go my way, but I don't consider that failure. I've had a really bad bout with obsessive compulsive disorder that had me on antidepressants and seeing a therapist. But that's not failure. That's just something that happened.

I'm a human like anyone else. I've had book projects rejected, but I get upset for a day or two. But yeah, it's funny. I'm so human and I'm so messed up in so many ways. But if you were to ask me, when have I failed? I'd be like, never, because that's just not a word that's in my vocabulary. Yeah. I think that's a really important point for people to hear, literally hear that, that it's just part of your journey. And that's what's made you who you are today. And those times where maybe we didn't get that book published or the publisher didn't accept our proposal, like maybe that's there to teach us something or to keep on going or to pivot in a different direction. So you would have written these two books. Yeah. I mean, it's a big theme in, in all my work and particularly in the passion paradox is that like, there is no destination. If you think that there's a destination,

like your destination is your grave. Um, like otherwise, like you just keep going. There's always a next thing. So like to think that something is a failure and to become distraught about it, like that's not true. And the same thing goes for success. It's really good to celebrate success, but like you still wake up the next morning and put on your shoes. So I really do try to practice what I preach and view all of this as a journey. And then it's all just information. When something goes poorly, well, that's information, something to learn from and adjust as you go. When something goes great, enjoy it. And that's information to learn from so you can try to replicate and take things away

and build on them. So this was either in your book, Passion Paradox, or I did some prep. So I was watching some of the videos that you did on stage. And I think you were talking about like a 24-hour rule, right? Like when something goes great. Yeah, that's it for sure. That's, yeah, it's in Passion Paradox. So it's a 24-hour rule. I've since amended it and I think it's yeah, it's Impression Paradox. So it's the 24 hour rule.

I've since amended it and I think it's more like the 48 hour rule. But the hour is arbitrary. The person on the reading end needs to make the hours their own. But the basic gist is that after a really wonderful success or a really terrible failure, or at least what you view as a failure at that moment, give yourself 24, 48, even 72 hours to feel all the feelings. So if you fail, let yourself grieve, let yourself be sad, let yourself be miserable. If you succeed, let yourself feel like you're on top of the world and untouchable. But after that 24, 48, 72 hour period, force yourself to get back to doing the actual work itself because it's such a visceral reminder that it's the work that makes you excited. It's not people telling you how great

you are. It's not the compulsion to try to have some conventional success and falling short. Like you actually like the work. So the example could be really wanting to make the New York Times bestseller list with your book, not making it. That's a real thing. Be upset. Be upset for a day. Then start writing again. Training really hard to PR in a marathon or to make a team sport, to make the final cut. You don't make the cut, let yourself feel bad, then get back to work.

Flip side is also true. I've gotten to know some of the top athletic performers in the world. And Shalane Flanagan is a great example. She's someone that when she would have these incredible moments, she'd be super stoked for two or three days, and then she'd get back to goal setting and training for her next event. So I think it rubs both ways. You can't obsess about, again, I guess it's failure. What acutely is failure, you can't obsess about. again, like fail. I guess it's failure. Like what acutely is failure, you can't obsess about, but you also can't get too comfortable and obsess about success

because that's just like literally training your mind-body system to crave those external results or to get really upset when they don't happen, where the external results, like results are just a concept. The actual like living of your life is doing the thing that you love. The actual living of your life is doing the thing that you love. Yeah. I mean, think about it. How long does it last to win a medal? How long does the excitement last? Maybe a few days. Not even how long. To get really esoteric, it's literally like someone's putting this thing over your neck and then it's over.

Right. But like the joy is the relationships that you made, the training, the learning about yourself. And it's not to say like you should never celebrate success. You totally should celebrate success. And like something that type A driven pushers struggle with is taking time to celebrate success. But like the ultimate success isn't the medal.

It's that you got the most out the medal. It's that you got the most out of yourself. It's that you probably had great relationships along the way. It's that you learned how to overcome adversity. That's the stuff that is all in the process. The outcome is literally just a speck in time. Yeah. So I liked your work on the process. And I think that was maybe in both of your books. But let's dive into the passion paradox in particular. And I think that was maybe in both of your books, but let's dive into the passion paradox in particular. And I want to give people just a little overview of the book and just the overview of like what you write about. So you talk about how passion can be a gift and a curse, harmonious versus obsessive passion. So let's kind of get clear on those first and then kind of dive into how do we really work to have more harmonious passion. So the basic delineation between harmonious and obsessive passion is harmonious passion is when you are passionate about an activity because you love doing the thing itself. You are passionate about running a business because you love the act of being creative and working with other people and building something. So like you love the process. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Obsessive passion is when you are passionate

about an activity because you like the external results that you get from it. So you are the entrepreneur that loves running a business because you like being on the cover of magazines, or you like all your friends to know that you're this successful entrepreneur, or you like the fancy dinners that might come with it. The former harmonious passion is associated with long-term sustainable performance and overall life satisfaction. The latter, obsessive passion, is associated with anxiety, depression, burnout, and cheating. And that's because if so much of your identity and your passion gets tied up into some kind of result that you can't control, you're just going to be on an emotional whirlwind as you have these

good results and then also bad results. So when you think about someone like Lance Armstrong, right? He's such a good example of obsessive passion. Yeah, yeah. And no one starts that way. Like Lance started harmoniously, for sure. He loves cycling. And what happens is like you start something because you love it and then you get good at it.

And then suddenly because you're good, you start to get all this attention and all these results. And then you can literally become addicted to them. Yes. And then when they're not there, you start either feeling anxious or depressed. Or in the case of Lance Armstrong, unethical behavior, you cheat. Another great example outside of the sports world is Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, the biotech company that was like totally built on fraud and lies. She was

someone that was on the cover of all these magazines for being like so passionate. Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, these people have been quoted over and over again as saying like the number one piece of advice they have is to follow your passion. And it's not that following your passion is bad. This is like the whole premise of the book. It's just that you can't just like, it's such a strong emotion to really care about something and to wanna like succeed at it. You can't let that emotion run wild. You have to be really intentional and manage it.

So I know one thing that you talked about in the book was like, you know, a lot of people might say like, find your passion, follow it. That seems so generic and that's really hard to conceptualize sometimes. Like, what does that actually mean? And when I think about my passion and I have to say, like, I don't think I'm, I don't think that I'm driven by results, but I can get a little too into my work, right? Because I'm so passionate about it.

I love it so much. So what advice would you give to people who like are working to find their passion and follow it? So on the find, on the fine end, the research shows overwhelmingly, and this was a surprise, like I had no, I had a hunch about the obsessive harmonious passion and process outcome going into writing. But this finding your passion, I had no idea how that works. And it turns out that the best possible thing you can do is stop trying to find your passion and instead just follow the things that interest you. Yeah. Because if you have this like really high standard and this high bar that I need to find something that I'm super passionate about and that I love right away and that makes me tick and makes me feel alive. Well, the minute something goes wrong,

you're going to tell yourself, okay, I guess that's not my passion. I'm going to look for the next one. Whereas if you can lower the bar to just following your interests and being curious, then passion can develop over time. It was fascinating. The research on passion completely mirrors the relationship, excuse me, The research on passion completely mirrors the relationship, excuse me, the research on romantic passion and relationships. Okay. So people that think that there's a soulmate for them tend to be single more so than people that think that there is no soulmate, but that you develop a relationship over time. And after 30 years, then somebody's your soulmate because you've developed it with them.

So it's this like, really like switch in mindset from trying to immediately find this, this thing in the case of passion, this activity in the case of romance, this person that hits all your buckets and makes you tick to, oh, like this is an interesting pursuit. I want to learn more about it. And maybe over time it will really become something that I love. So curiosity, that's what I mean. Yeah, curiosity over passion. That's the summary for sure. Curiosity over passion. So you just said something earlier about like passion is something we need to manage or

practice. Maybe that means the same thing for you. Maybe it's different. I think it's the same. Tell us what you mean by like passion needs to be managed or practiced. So it's exactly that dichotomy between harmonious and obsessive passion. And then like the 24 hour rule is like a great example. So once you have that thing that you're super passionate about, that's great. Like you, you, so the path goes like this, right? You're curious,

you follow your interest, you start doing something you really like you, so the path goes like this, right? You're curious, you follow your interest, you start doing something you really like at, since you really like it, you're going to start doing it more. And then you'll probably start seeing some good results. And at that point, it's totally a normal human response to enjoy those good results and to want to achieve more of them. That's when you have to become self-aware and realize that, hey, if the majority of my drive is coming from those external results, I need to start shifting things to get back to doing the work itself and to remind myself that what I actually love is the work itself. Example from my own life. It is so easy to spend a day.

I've gotten better at this, so I no longer spend a day. But I used to, and maybe still it's like a half day, just sucked into like Twitter. So just refreshing, seeing how many people retweeted me, how many people commented on my stories, how many people liked it. It's just like the dopamine external result slot machine. And I never feel good after those wastes of an hour or two hours. No one ever gets sucked into social media and then feels great two hours later. So it's just about gradually over time realizing that, hey, when you have that urge to get sucked into social media

and just like look at all your notifications, use that urge as a wake-up call to say, huh, what I really like is writing or reading. So I'm actually going to do the work itself instead of spend time gloating in the results, feeling really good about it if it's going well or really bad about it if it's not. And no one is completely harmonious. We're all on the spectrum. So the goal is just not to let the external, the obsessive be the main driver. Excellent. Good clarification. So like the notifications,

I know how many people retweet or like is like the outcome, right? Yeah, that's an outcome. Exactly. And one of the things I really actually love about your work is I really like following on Twitter. And I always really like the things that you tweet. And my guess is that you're probably more focused on the process, like that you love to share or that you want to share these ideas. Totally. And I work the ideas out on Twitter and I get feedback. But like, again, like I wouldn't call this a failure, but like you asked me what makes me human, like just like anyone else, like I can get sucked into like looking at how many people liked and retweeted me. We all can. And I think over time, success isn't totally eliminating

that because like we're humans. Success is just becoming more aware of when you're doing that. And then using that as a cue to get back to the work itself. The analogy I've been using lately that I really like is social media, refreshing, retweets, likes, even something like going through email nonstop with people validating your work. That's all like peanut M&Ms. Okay. The actual work itself is like brown rice. So writing an essay, training your butt off for sport, doing the hard work of researching something if you're starting a business, let's say, that's like brown rice. So any given time you've got M&Ms and brown rice in front of you,

you're going to eat the M&Ms. They taste better. But if you eat M&Ms for an entire hour or an entire day or an entire week, you're going to feel like crap. Whereas if you eat brown rice, you're going to feel really good and nourished. So much of this is just learning to identify what are the M&Ms and what's the brown rice? And then know that brown rice never feels as good in the moment, but at the end of the day, you're going to feel a lot better. I love that analogy. Don't eat too many M&Ms. Yeah, that's it. Like in a nutshell, and it's okay to have some M&Ms, but just know like if you surround yourself with M&Ms, it's going to be really hard not to eat them. So that gets into

like the practices of like taking social media off your phone if you want to be really aggressive or having set times for when you engage in that stuff. Or if you're in a really metric driven field, like only looking at those metrics once a week or once a day, depending on the field, instead of constantly being distracted by them. So one of the things that you talk about in the book Passion Paradox, I thought was really interesting. And I wanted to ask you more about this is you said on the section in fear that thinking about failure can actually improve performance. Can you share that idea with us? And I think it depends. I think first thinking about failure, if you view failure now as like this catastrophic

event that ruins you, but just something that happens on the path, then everything that I'm going to say applies. Okay, great. So the first is kind of having that mindset shift. Yeah. Um, okay. So people want to succeed and you want things to go well. And it can be really scary to imagine that they won't.

But if you imagine that they won't, what actually can happen is you can uncover all these things that might have prevented them from going wrong in the first place. So it actually really empowers you. So wouldn't you rather know all the things that might contribute to your failure so you can do something about them instead of just putting your head in the sand, showing up blind, and then having that stuff bombard you and falling apart. So the Stoics called this negative visualization and they would imagine that

like everything went wrong and then that would help them understand, well, what can they do about it in advance before the things actually go wrong? Do you think, um, like I'm thinking about some of my work with, um, football players and some work in the NFL and then college sports. And, um, and, uh, one of the things that I talk with them about is like, maybe not visualizing things going wrong too close to competition. Totally. It's like farther out. You don't want that stuff to get in your head. Yeah. It's like a part of the practice. It's not like what you want to be doing in the locker room. But something that I thought about like with basketball players is if you've got an athlete

that is struggling with like their free throw shooting, one approach is to like get that athlete locked into like a really solid routine where they can calm themselves and feel really good. Another approach is to say, screw the routine. We're going to have you practice in the most hostile situations. I'm going to make you think about the girlfriend or the boyfriend that you just broke up with before every single free throw. I'm going to show you a picture of that person. I'm going to have you visualize that you constantly miss the shot to win the national championship and then go practice. Because once you can shoot free throws well with that going on, then you don't need to

be calm, cool, and collected because you're basically prepared for whatever is going to come at you. So I mean, it depends on the person. And I think that this is where things get really individual in a performance standpoint. Some people are really good at taking those deep breaths, settling into a routine, calming themselves. Other people, when they try to do it, they're not great. And then it just makes them more nervous because then they're like,

oh crap, I tried to calm down and I'm not calm. So like this is even worse. So I think it really, yeah, exactly. So I think it depends on the athlete. Okay. And then the last question I have about the Passion Paradox book, and we'll spend some time talking about peak performance is in within that book, you talk about this idea of like mastering mindset, right? That helps you stay passionate. And you suggest that moving forward.

So tell us what mastery mindset means to you. So the way I like to say, I've got all these nice little Zen parables is that the, the goal is the path and the path is the goal. Um, so again, it's really about like focusing on the process. Um, so then what are the actual things that can help you stay focused on the process? Um, it is being patient and taking the long view and constantly reminding yourself that like, even though it might feel like you're in the bottom of the seventh inning, you might actually be in the top of the third. Um, so really be patient, take a long view, be present. So don't be thinking about what could happen down the road or what happened in the past.

Really try to refocus yourself in the now. Um, a mantra that I love to use myself and that I use with a lot of the high performers I coach. It's so simple. It's just, this is what's happening right now. So if you find your mind getting caught up in something in the past or worrying about the future, it's just, this is what's happening right now. This is what's happening right now. And the more that we can bring that approach to our life, the better we'll perform, the better that we'll feel. Um, go ahead. Right here, right now. Right. That's what I would say to myself. So pretty similar. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's no like magic mantra. The thing is like, just to have something to kind of snap you back into what's happening. Um, the importance of community in support.

Okay. Super important. Um, cultivating drive from within, um, which we talked a lot about. So that's like, all these things are very much interrelated. So that's the harmonious over the obsessive passion. And then in terms of mastery, I think the last thing is, and we didn't pay as much attention to this in the book as I wish we would have, is self-compassion and just being kind to yourself and realizing that the more that you care about something, the more vulnerable you're going to be. Uh, because to care is to be vulnerable. Um, it's really easy to go through life like, I don't really care. Well, whatever happens happens. Um, because you protect yourself from those, those lows. Um, so know that like, if you want to experience the highs, you're going to experience the lows and like, it's all okay. Yeah. I think particularly right now it's so

important to be compassionate with yourself because we're dealing with just so many different changes, uh, to athletics, but even to our lives and what we can and can't do. So, um, appreciate that piece, Brad. Yeah. There's this, there's this Buddhist parable that I love about the second arrow. And it basically goes like this. So the first arrow hits you and it's something that you can't necessarily control. The second arrow is judging yourself about it. So like, you know, you miss the free throw or your season's canceled. That's the first arrow.

That really hurts. The second arrow is I shouldn't have missed the free throw or you know if only I would have done this then like I could you know if I didn't redshirt I could actually had my final season that's all the second arrow that's the stuff that tends to hurt worse yeah for sure um so let's dive into uh peak performance for a few minutes again this is the first book check it out the I love it. I do the same thing when I read books. I'll show you. So we're kindred spirits. I do it at the top. It looks like you have them coming out sideways. Yeah, I have them everywhere. But that means that I really

liked the book. So I'm honored. I really wanted to ask you about was this idea of like your equation stress plus rest equals growth. And you were talking about how this equation holds true regardless of what you're trying to grow. Yeah. And I think that is really important. I think particularly right now during this time frame is to give yourself some rest. I do a lot of executive coaching. And what I'm seeing is like, people sort of like diving into their work so much that they are really hard time balancing everything. And now, particularly when we're at home, it's really hard to kind of turn it off.

Yeah. And thinking is like the rest part, right? I'm seeing Yeah, I'm seeing that too, a lot in the executives and entrepreneurs that I work with. And I think it's twofold. I think one is that it is hard when you're working from home because the boundaries that you might have otherwise had aren't there. And then the second thing is like what's happening in the world is pretty scary and sad. And a lot of things are infuriating. And it's really easy to make your world small by just focusing on your work. And it's almost like you can just focus on that and make your world so, so, so, so, so small that you don't have to worry about all this stuff going around.

But the downside of that is, A, it can change on a dime. You can get sick. A loved one can get sick. So it's kind of like a false sense of security. And B, even if it doesn't change, eventually you're going to burn yourself out of your work. So I do think it's still super important to set some boundaries and to be able to unplug and turn things off. And even if you're the most like outcome driven performance mindset person, and you say like, screw Brad, I care about winning, you know, like I want that external

success. Well, rest is an important part of your job, whatever it is that you do. Athletes, they don't grow during training. They grow when they're sleeping. Um, and the same thing is true for our brains. So there's all kinds of research that shows that good sleep is, um, basically as impactful on performance as like showing up to work drunk. Um, I think it's like five consecutive nights of five or less hours of sleep. And you would basically have the same level of, um, like lack of focus is if you were like DUI'd. Um, so we think that sleep is like this nice to have or something that we do instead of work, but sleep is like an integral part of the work. And if you can start thinking of rest and sleep in particular as an important part of your

job, then hopefully you'll prioritize it more. You'll take it more seriously. And there was something I maybe read either in the book or again, watching some videos, like you said, 60% of breakthroughs come when you are not trying to work at it. And I was like, Ooh, that's so good. Cause I think about me and I love being creative, but it's usually the times where I'm like driving in the car or going for a run. And then all of a sudden I like how this boom, great idea. Yeah. Those are two of the most three common ones. So it's driving in the car, exercising or showering. Yeah. And again, if you think about it, it's, it's stress. Like you're doing the work, you're focusing on it. And then the rest is switching what part of your brain's working. So you're driving in the car, you're running, you're showering generally in those

types of situations, you're zoning out and then growth is like boom you have the aha moment so this equation applies in an acute scale like a breakthrough idea but it also applies over the course of a career um like you know you want to gradually take on bigger projects more responsibilities more stress follow those periods with rest and that's how you grow the capacity to take on more and more and more. Whereas if you stress too much too soon, you get burnt out. And if all you're doing is resting, then you get complacent or you stagnate. Most people that are probably tuning into this, my guess, just like based on the fact that they follow you and they work with you,

they're probably pretty driven pushers. My guess is that you find your job much more to hold people back than to push them forward. Yes. And that's the rest part of the equation. A lot of high performers are really good at the stress. It's just that they don't have the rest. And it takes confidence to rest. Because I think a lot of reason that people burn out and they stress too much is they're a little bit insecure. They think like, oh, everybody else is working.

I need to do more work. Otherwise, I'm going to get left behind. And sometimes that's the case. But generally, the people that have that thought are already working hard enough, if not too hard, and they need to bump up the rest. I think it's changing. In sport, this is becoming, I mean, I'm sure you know from your work in the NFL, like elite level sports getting pretty freaking serious about rest and making it a big part of the process. I think in more executive entrepreneurial worlds, it's about 10 years behind still. Yeah, it is behind. So within, we were talking about a little bit of self-doubt, or you just mentioned that. And it made me think of something else that I read in your book when

you were talking about flow. And you said, actually, a little doubt and uncertainty is actually a good thing. It signals that a growth opportunity has emerged. And I was like, oh, wow, that's super interesting. Tell us about your perspective on that. So I think that it gets back to stress plus rest equals growth, right? So like, what is stress? So if you're an athlete, it's really simple. Like you go from bench pressing 225 pounds to 235 pounds. And then if you make it great, if you don't, then you go back down. And it's so objective. Out in the real world, if you're running a business, if you're managing a team, if you're in a relationship with someone, well, it's not as simple as just incrementally going up by a certain amount of weight. So I like to think of it as just that. It's a just manageable challenge.

So anything that's like a 10 out of 10 on the challenge scale where you're waking up at night anxious, that's probably too much stress. That's like the equivalent of like trying to bench press way more than you should and injuring yourself. Anything where you're just going through the motions, that's fine, but you're not actually going to get stronger. So the sweet spot is the stuff that makes you just a little bit uncomfortable, where you think you can do it, but you're not positive. Or maybe it's the kind of thing where you might fall short like two out of 10 times. So it's just ever so slightly outside of your comfort zone. And then you gradually

inch forward by taking on those challenges. And that's how you eventually get to like these heroic things. I think in self-help there's this, um, there's this notion that like go bigger, go home. But I actually think it's like go incrementally more over time. And that's how you end up with something big. So it makes me think of like the challenge versus the challenge equation, right? Like, it can't be too difficult for you to get in flow. I think about the example I would give is like, if I was going to play Michael Jordan in basketball, like there's no way that neither of us would get in the flow. Right, you're not stressful enough for him and he's too stressful for you. Exactly, way too stressful. Well, Brad, it's been pretty cool. We've been going Facebook

live right now during this interview. And I have three comments that people have already said. One person said that they went and got your book right now on Audible. They had the performance book. Paradox. Isn't that cool? Tanyaanya says i'm such a fan of you both ah that's cool all right we'll take it so that's pretty cool how like we get feedback and some of the things when you were talking about twitter and like how you use twitter i saw all these hearts so uh people must have liked what you were saying about that yeah i mean I mean, it's so funny because I think that's a thing that everybody can relate to in a big way is this push and pull between the peanut M&Ms and the brown rice.

And such a message that is important to leave people with is, again, back to being kind to yourself and not judging yourself. We're all going to have those moments where we get sucked into craving external validation. It's fine. When it happens, just notice it, be aware of it, and then shift back. Don't sit there and be like, I'm a terrible person. All I care about is winning the deal, getting promoted, getting a million retweets, whatever it is. That's the second arrow. So just notice it. That's my practice. I'm like, huh, I've spent 20 minutes doing nothing but looking at my Twitter notifications. I don't really want to be doing this. I'm like, huh, I've spent 20 minutes doing nothing but looking at my Twitter notifications.

I don't really want to be doing this. I'm going to go back to something else. That's it. That is the most important takeaway, especially during this time when people are at home and probably spending a lot more time on their computer, on social media. So that's totally throw these things away.

It's just to be really aware of when 10 M&Ms turns to 100 M&Ms. Yeah, super good. So you got to follow Brad on Twitter. So tell us- It's ironic how we always like end with this. I really love following you. So tell us where we can get the book, where we can follow you,

and what you're working on next. That's what I want to end with. Great. So I am on Twitter and I'm trying not to look at my notifications as much, but just to work out ideas with all of you and hopefully share things that are helpful. So that is at B Stahlberg, just like my name. You can learn more about me at my website, which is www.bradstahlberg.com. And then, um, what am I working? Oh, you can get my books basically anywhere that they have books. Um, so local bookstores are great. Amazon target, um, you name it. And then, um, my next project

is just in the beginning stages. Um, but I'm really interested in how different people define success and how that links to their outcomes. So that's the high level gist of it. That's going to be super good. I can't wait to hear what you find. So Brad, you gave us so much valuable information, so many things to think about. I'm so grateful you're on the podcast today.

And I know everybody who's watching live is so grateful that you help them connect with their passion or learn more about stress plus rest equals growth or a few things we've talked about. So thank you so much for being on. Thank you for having me. And thanks everybody who gave us a half an hour of your time. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset.

I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe. And you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindhra. That's D-R-I-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.