Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Brad Stulberg on Becoming a “Master of Change”

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

Change is inevitable, but how we approach and adapt to it can make all the difference.  In his new book, Master of Change, Brad Stulberg explores the essence of change and how our mindset towards it can be our biggest asset or detriment. In case you’re not familiar with Brad, he’s a researcher, writer, and coach on well-being and what it takes to succeed. As an author, he’s been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Outside Magazine, Forbes, and more. He helps executives, entrepreneurs, and athletes work on their mental game, improve their overall well-being, and achieve excellence.  He’s also the coauthor of Peak Performance, a book I did a Book Club episode on in 2017. In our discussion, Brad and I chat about . . . - The driving force that led him to write his latest book and the revelations that came with it. - The concept of “rugged flexibility” and how our thoughts shape our approach to challenges and aspirations. - How our expectations influence our perception and experience of change (and how altering this perspective can help you excel) - Wisdom and practical tips on how to turn friction and resistance into momentum. - 5 questions that can steer us towards acceptance and proactive action in the face of change. This episode is full of deep insights, actionable advice, and a fresh perspective on a topic so inherent to our lives. So, if you've ever felt overwhelmed by change or are looking for a better way to harness its power, this conversation with Brad Stulberg is one you won't want to miss. Timestamps: (0:00) - Please leave a review of the show wherever you listen to podcasts and make sure to subscribe! (2:40) - What inspired Brad's "Master of Change"? (6:01) - Deciphering the concept of "rugged thoughts." (8:11) - Applying "rugged flexibility" to personal goals. (26:26) - Legion VIP One-on-One Coaching: https://muscleforlife.show/vip (28:07) - How do expectations influence our perception of change? (30:36) - Practical applications of these concepts in everyday life. (37:47) - Overcoming friction when aiming for positive change. (39:57) - Brad's five pivotal questions for change. (46:17) - How to engage further with Brad Stulberg's insights. Mentioned on the Show: Legion VIP One-on-One Coaching: https://muscleforlife.show/vip Brad’s book Master of Change: https://www.amazon.com/Master-Change-Everything-Changing-Including/dp/006325316X/?tag=mflweb-20 Brad’s website: www.bradstulberg.com Brad’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/BStulberg

Hello, friend. I'm Mike Matthews, and this is Muscle for Life. Thank you for joining me today for a new episode. And before I tell you about the episode, a quick comment on episode frequency. If you are a regular here at the podcast, you probably noticed that I didn't post my normal three episodes per week last week, and I'm not posting three episodes this week. What's going on? I'm simply switching to a frequency of one episode per week to free up some time to work on some other projects. And so I will be posting one episode per week, at least for a little while, alternating between interviews and monologues, the same type of stuff. I've been producing just one episode per week instead of three per week. All right, so what is today's episode? Well, it is an interview I did with Brad Stolberg,

who just released a new book, Master of Change, which explores the essence of change and how our mindset toward it can be our biggest asset or detriment in any area of our life that we want to improve in. And in this interview, Brad is going to talk about a concept he calls rugged flexibility and why he thinks it is very important to cultivate this characteristic and why it can help us overcome challenges and achieve aspirations. Brad is going to talk about how our expectations of change can influence our perception of change, our experience of change, and our outcomes, and how simply changing our expectations can cause a number of downstream effects that produce better outcomes. Brad is

going to offer some very practical advice on how we can turn friction and resistance in our life into momentum and more. And in case you are not familiar with Brad, he is a researcher, writer, and coach on well-being and performance and success. His work has been featured all over the place, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Outside Magazine, Forbes, and more. And Brad also helps executives, entrepreneurs, and athletes work on their mental game, improve their overall well-being, and achieve excellence. And lastly, Brad is the co-author of a book that I really enjoyed and did a book club

episode on back in 2017 called Peak Performance. And so if you like this interview, you will probably like Brad's newest book, Master of Change, as well as Peak Performance. Hey, Brad, it's good to see you again. Great to see you. Good to be back on the show. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for taking the time to come and talk about your newest book, which is Master of Change. When I have somebody on the show who has written a book and especially who has written stuff that I like is new and adding something to the overall kind of meta conversation, you know? So I'm curious what inspired you to

write this book and what you felt was kind of like, okay, here's an idea that I think that I can express in a unique way that adds to that conversation. For sure. There are a lot of books out there about change, and many of them are good, many of them are well-intentioned, and many of them are based on this very faulty underlying premise for what change is and how living systems respond to it. I realized that, and I saw an opportunity to try to introduce what can feel like a pretty radical new way of thinking about change and what change means for us as individuals, our communities, societies. I think this really came to a head for me quite early on in the

pandemic, reading various publications, it doesn't matter, left, right, straight down the middle. They're all running stories with some version of a headline, when are things going to get back to normal? And I didn't know why it was the case at the time, but those just viscerally really rubbed me the wrong way. And I started researching the origins of this back to normal thinking as it relates to change. And all roads lead back to a scientific concept called homeostasis, which many of your listeners have probably heard of. It basically describes change as a cycle of order or stability, disorder, and then back to order. It says that living systems, they don't like change, they don't like chaos or disorder, and they do everything they can to avoid

it, to resist it, and then to get back to where they were. Hence, when are things going to get back to normal? And homeostasis has been the prevailing model of change for over the last 150 years. So really, since the advent of modern science, we've thought about change through a homeostatic lens. But more recently, in the scientific community, researchers have decided that homeostasis is actually not really a very accurate way to think about change. When we explore what it takes for living systems to thrive, they don't get back to where they were following disruption. If anything, they don't even want to get back to where they were. They use periods of disorder to get to stability somewhere new. So instead of going back to order, they go to reorder. So this whole conventional wisdom and mindset around change of order, disorder, order

proves to be not really accurate. And it's much more helpful to think about change as a cycle of order, disorder, reorder. So yes, it is true that living creatures, humans, of course, as well, we are living creatures, we do like stability and we crave stability and we thrive with stability. But the way that we achieve stability is by continuously making progress and reordering ourselves. So there's no going back. Took me about a month to really wrap my head

around the implications of the differences in these models and out of that was born this book. And out of that was born this concept in the book of rugged flexibility. I think that's a good segue to I wanted to hear your thoughts on what you mean by that and how does it apply to this process of producing change? That's right. Well, the words rugged, ruggedness and flexibility, when most people hear them, they tend to think of these two concepts as being diametrically opposed. So to be rugged is to be really strong, robust, tough, perhaps even a little rigid. And then to be flexible is the

opposite. It's to bend easily without breaking, to go with the flow. And when it comes to change, we tend to segue ourselves into these two extreme it comes to change, we tend to, you know, segue ourselves into these two extreme camps where it's either we need to be really rugged or we need to be really flexible. And it turns out the way to most skillfully navigate these cycles of change is to be both rugged and flexible. Instead of viewing these concepts as diametrically opposed opposites or either ors, it's really helpful to view it as both and. So we want to be really rugged. We want to be strong. We want to know what we stand for. We want to know the hills that we're going to die on, but we also want to be able to adapt and evolve and to be really flexible in how we apply

our core values and beliefs. And you see this at all levels, whether it's an individual thriving over time, organization or a company thriving over time. And you even see it at the most majestic level of all, which is evolution. When you look at species that have had a really good run, that are gritty and anti-fragile and enduring, they tend to have a mix of central features or like really rugged characteristics that if those change, the species would no longer be recognizable. So those don't really change. But then everything else about that species can change and evolve. And even how the central features are applied changes over time. And I like to think of us humans as the same way. It's good to have guiding

principles, core values, core beliefs, whatever you want to call them, that are pretty rugged and pretty robust, pretty unlikely to change. But then how we apply those core values and beliefs, that is constantly something that we should be working to update as the environment around us and within us changes. And how might we apply that concept to, and I'll let you share whatever examples, I'm sure you have plenty of examples of this in the book, but how might we apply that concept to goals that we want to achieve? So you have people listening who are trying to achieve health goals and fitness goals, and many people are also trying to achieve relationship goals, career goals, and so forth.

Well, I think that the first place to start is asking yourself, what are the rugged values behind why you want to achieve that goal? Is it health? Is it meaning? Is it joy? Is it fun? Is it reputation? Is it creativity? Identifying with those values more than the goal itself. Because the goal itself, as you know better than anyone, it is going to need to change and adapt and evolve as your life and your pursuit of it changes, adapts, and evolves. So having a specific number on a scale or a specific number of kilograms or pounds on the barbell, that can be really motivating. But the challenge is if you get injured or if life gets in the way or if you just happen to have a bad day or you're

carrying a lot of water weight on your weigh-in day, whatever the heck it is, and you don't hit that number, that makes you really fragile and it makes that goal fragile. You become more likely to quit or to judge yourself. Whereas if you can identify a level deeper, which is, hey, I really value mastery and that's why I want to deadlift 400 pounds or I really value my health or my family and that's why I want to lose weight, then that value is much less fragile to the ebbs and flows of life. And it sets you up for much more sustainable success. Because then the number on the scale or the number of pounds on the barbell, that just becomes like a data point along this greater path that is going to have all kinds of ups and downs because any meaningful

change, any meaningful path includes all kinds of ups and downs. I think that that is a much more useful lens rather than the kind of cliche of, well, just learn to enjoy the process or love the process. That just never resonated with me. I get the concept, but I always found that a little bit shallow because sometimes the process of using your example, if the goal is just, hey, I want to deadlift a certain amount of weight because it'll look cool or because I just want to say that I've done it or I want to get attention on social media. Let's say that there really hasn't been that much thought put into it.

That's all that is there. The process of getting to a big deadlift is not very enjoyable. As somebody who has deadlifted a moderate amount of weight, I've gotten relatively strong. Sometimes it's enjoyable, but it's just as, I would say, unenjoyable as it is enjoyable. So to tell people to just enjoy it, just what are you doing? Just enjoy the process. I feel like that's kind of telling somebody who, let's say, they're in a funk, they're in a bit of a depression, they're not doing well, and you tell them, hey, come on, just cheer up. It'll be okay. It just doesn't, it doesn't do anything.

Yeah. And I think it gets back to like, what's the underlying value or what's the underlying thing you want to explore in to you in your life. And if that underlying value is like looking cool on social media, I think that's makes you pretty fragile. And like, that's really worth like evaluating. And I shouldn't say that judgmentally, I should say that like, you know, having been there, because I think in this modern day and age, we've all been there. And I think it's just a chance to kind of pull up and pause and be like, wait a minute, if I'm doing this for a reason, like looking good on social media, I think this is going to set me up for poor physical and mental health. So I should probably reevaluate the goal. Whereas if you're doing it because you're really curious about mastery, or you're curious about

how you perform under pressure, or you just want to do something that's really hard because otherwise the rest of your life is knowledge or white-collar work, so you don't really do anything physical, you're going to be a lot more anti-fragile, a lot more rugged and flexible on the path to a big deadlift than if you're just doing it for this like very superficial thing that is an arbitrary target that you will either hit or miss and it doesn't really matter. I feel like even competition is a little bit more meaningful than just trying to acquire status. status, for example, I'm sure you've experienced a lot of that in your work, in your training yourself personally, and then just the people you've worked with who are very motivated by just competing. I think competing is a great motivator. I completely agree. And I think that the thing with competing is anybody that really does it at a high level. Yes, you want to beat someone

and you want to be the best in your class or in your region or in that competition. But what tends to happen is a whole lot of camaraderie with the people that you're competing against because everyone's got skin in the game and y'all are like trying to do the hard thing. And I find it fascinating that the word compete comes from the Latin root co, which means with, and petri, I'm going to mispronounce this, but petriere, which means to raise up. So compete literally means like to raise up with or to raise up together. And I think like that's the beauty of competing is that you raise up together. So yeah, like a big, a big deadlift or a certain kind of body for a post on social media just feels inherently fragile

and very rigid. Whereas trying to compete, trying to do it for health because you want to be around for your family or your friends, or you want to be functional for a long time. Again, like this is just a much more rugged and flexible and enduring way to go about any kind of behavior change. And I bring up the deadlift thing. We could do a whole conversation about this is someone that has been training really hard over the last two years. And it's starting to explore, like, when is it going to be a time for me to shift in my training and do it less for mastery and more for enjoyment? And my training is going to look very different when that happens. So I wrestle with this all the time in my own fitness pursuits. I've made that shift myself recently. So for a two and a half year period, it was more about performance, I suppose. So that required, I was in the gym, let's see, probably about seven hours of strength training per week, which is not an excessive amount, but it's a bit. and 60 to 90 minutes per training session. Pretty intense training and what felt like

training at about my maximum recoverable capacity. That's what it... Dude, I'm so excited to hear where you go. So this is where I'm at right now, like to a T. I train five days a week. My bigger sessions are 90 minutes. My smaller ones are an hour. And I feel like any more would be getting too close to a line that I don't want to get close to and my ability to recover. Yep. I was noticing that here and there. My sleep would be off a bit if I was not deloading as frequently as I should. My joints were doing well, but they're achy. I could feel that there just wasn't that much more that I could try to squeeze out of my body. And I enjoyed that. So I did it for two and a half years, pushing hard. And before that, I was still training five days a week and I was training

fairly intensely, but not as intensely. Not saying, okay, I want to commit to PRs and let's see if I can just gain that maybe two pounds of muscle per year that is genetically available to me. Although with an asterisk, I suppose if I wanted to focus heavily on probably I could, let's say my legs, if I wanted bodybuilder legs, I probably could gain a little bit more there, but that's not really the look that I wanted. So anyway, so I'm doing that and I'm pushing and pushing and it's enjoyable because it's maybe a little competition with myself and seeing, can I beat previous PRs at a lower body weight, blah, blah, blah, which I did. And after two and a half years, though, I'm still doing it.

So now I'm kind of just going through the motions because that's what felt at that point, it was just kind of a habit of this is my programming and this is what I'm doing. But my why had kind of withered away at that point. And so to the point of enjoyment, withered away at that point. And so to the point of enjoyment, I just looked at, am I enjoying my training on the whole? Not really. I'm just going and doing it. I'm not particularly looking forward to these workouts. And I do like training. So there is, once I'm into it, there's some enjoyment. But a lot of times I'm just kind of going there and putting my head down and getting through it one set at a time and getting out. And then I just had to wonder why, why not do something else? And especially when my potential

for improvement in any dimension at this point is, it's almost negligible and it requires a tremendous amount of work. Not that I'm opposed to working hard, but it requires a tremendous amount of work, not that I'm opposed to working hard, but it requires a tremendous amount of, well, a lot of time relative to other obligations, a lot of effort, and a lot of energy. And for what? So I switched my training routine. So now I'm at three days per week, and I'm at about 60 minutes a workout. And I'm doing exercises that I enjoy. I'm doing different types of training techniques that I enjoy that maybe are not, they wouldn't be optimal if I were trying to do what I was doing previously, but I'm not. So that has reinvigorated my interest in strength training a little bit because it's more in alignment with my current goals, which are to enjoy my workouts, to not spend seven or eight hours a week in the gym. I want to spend

half of that time in the gym. That also allows me to do a little bit more cardio and hop on the bike back here, which is good for health, which doesn't take as much time. So at first it felt like I was committing like a transgression or something. It felt like I really, it's Tuesday, I'm just going to do a cardio workout instead of getting in there. Or should I just go and deadlift today like I should be doing? You know what I mean? And even certain exercises. So my hips started to bother me a little bit on the deadlifts. And the past, I wouldn't push it beyond the point of acute pain. But if it's uncomfortable, I'm like, you know, whatever. I'm just going to keep going.

Now I'm trap bar deadlifting instead until my hip feels better. So just making adjustments that I think are the smart, it's the smart moves, but not necessarily the emotionally satisfying moves. Initially, there is that period of discomfort. I guess there's a theme here, which is it comes back to change and change is uncomfortable.

Well, change and rugged flexibility and rugged flexibility, because I also think that like you are to a core, whether you know it or not, and you're a pros pro, so I'm not surprised, but your relationship with fitness over time is very rugged and flexible. So let's look at you. Let's make this book and some of the concepts really practical. So let's look at Mike Matthews and fitness over time. And you are going to change a lot. You're going to age.

You're gonna have different family commitments. You're gonna have different business commitments. And your psychological state's gonna change. Your hormones are gonna change. All this stuff is gonna happen over the course of your life, right? The ruggedness is that you love health and fitness and training. I mean, in your little monologue, which I loved, you said like four times, like, I like to train. Like, that's rugged. That's not going away. I think you're going to be 80 and you're going to

like to train. But where you're really flexible is how you apply that underlying value and realizing that, hey, how I was training for the last three years work then. And it was a good thing, but now maybe it's not. Maybe I need to shift that. And I think that if you were to have gotten too rigid and said, no, I can't, I need to stick to this program. I need to keep being performance oriented. You probably have already burnt out by now, or at least be on the path to burning out. I think it's like, I know you intended, at least I don't think you did, but I think it's a profound example of rugged flexibility. And as a result, you become more robust and anti-fragile to change. So a hundred percent. And then the second thing you were saying is, yeah, like you went through a period of order,

disorder, reorder. That's what I'm hearing, right? So the order, the stability was your training for two and a half years for performance driven goals, which is a very specific kind of mindset and approach. And even just feeling like you wake up and like you got a good workout in, there's a confidence that comes with it. There's something beautiful about measurable progress, especially if you're, you know, doing what you do or so much of your work is more creative and it's not nearly as objective as like either, you know, put weight on the bar more than last week or not. Like it's so addictive. So like you were in that flow

and that was your order and stability. Then things changed and it didn't feel good. And so you had the maturity to step away from it, but you went through a period of disorder where you felt like, I think the word you use is like a transgression, like it felt really icky. And disorder doesn't feel good. And now what I'm hearing is like,

you're getting to reorder, which is a new stability, which is this new kind of training and this doesn't feel good. And now what I'm hearing is like, you're getting to reorder, which is a new stability, which is this new kind of training and this new relationship with it. And I can promise you that your current routine won't be the same five years from now, but I'm equally as confident that you'll still be training in some way. So I think this is it for the things that are important to our life. If we want to be stable through change and we want to have good sustainable habits, we've got to be really rugged on what we actually care about, but then be willing to go through these cycles of order, disorder, reorder, and be flexible about how we apply it. And I think that we have to be willing to try things as well. And there is a point,

and I'm speaking personally here, and this is one example, but I could give many others, there is a point when we have to stop thinking and planning and ruminating and start doing things and start trying things. I do think it makes sense to generate plausible hypotheses to test out in the world, but then there is a point when we have to test them and we have to see how it actually goes and how do we respond to it. I mean, one other, I don't want to take much of our time just talking about myself, but one other example, I think you as a writer will be able to relate to this. So my original interest in writing, if I go all the way back before I had any fitness books and before I was Mike Matthews, the fitness guy, my original interest in writing was fiction,

actually. And I've always enjoyed storytelling. I like the kind of the art and the science of it as well. I like the process of crafting well-told stories. And I appreciate it when other people do it well. And I did some of it in the past and then got away from it because I got into the fitness racket. And then that did well. And it was kind of just from strength to strength. And here I am. And so recently, I was thinking that I would like to get I would like to try that out

again, and see if that if that spark is still there. And how I went about it, though, is is thinking about, okay, that what's the goal here, the goal is not to make money. It's not to get status as writing in another genre or anything other than to find if it's something that I really enjoy. That's the goal, is just seeing if that enjoyment is still there. me right now. I have it a little bit lower on my list of priorities, but it has helped me again, having that, what is that? What is that rugged core, so to speak, helped me navigate, all right, what's my plan now to see if I like this enough to want to pursue it seriously. I've had to try and fail at a few different things just to see, okay, well, what about like, let's talk even about genres, right? So you want to write stuff that you want to read. That's a kind of a non-negotiable. If it's not just a commercial activity, if it's something that you really enjoy, you better like to read it. So finding what are those genres for me and which of them do I feel like I could

possibly even write well in? And then there is going back over the, even the theory of it and how can I practice this and get, start getting a, just a feel for it again. Okay. Anyway, so it's, it's, I think that cut and try approach is important to, to find the, this is more on the flexibility on on the flexibility side of things, to find, all right, how do I express this core value or how do I experience this in a way that is going to be sustainable, in a way that is going to be worth the effort?

Yeah, that's right. And I think another thing that you're doing there is potentially diversifying your sense of self or your sense of identity. This is another key theme and concept in the book is this notion of if we want to be really resilient in the face of change, we have to have multiple dimensions to how we think about ourselves. to how we think about ourselves. Because if we only think about ourselves in one way, well, when that one domain of life changes and goes into disorder, it's gonna feel like the ground underneath us has been swept up from under us

and we're just gonna feel completely chaotic. Whereas if we can have multiple areas of our identity and multiple parts of our life that we derive meaning from, then when change happens in one of those areas, we can lean in the others. So the metaphor I like to use is it's really helpful to think about your identity like a house and you want to have at least a couple of rooms in that house. So maybe you have like the dad room

or the partner or spouse room. You have the athlete room. You have the entrepreneur or executive business person room. And then you have like the creative room and you don't have to spend equal time in all those rooms. It's okay to want to spend a lot of time in one room. Maybe it's the room you're most passionate about. Maybe it's a season of life where you got to go all in on this thing, but you never want to completely shut those other doors because by diversifying your sense of self, you become more resilient to change. So there's all kinds of metaphors keeping up with the house. If there's like a massive leak or flooding in that one room, if you don't have any other rooms to go

into, you're kind of screwed. Whereas if you have other areas of your identity that you can seek refuge in, well, the chaos shakes itself out in that one domain, then you feel a lot more stable and strong throughout the change. And this isn't groundbreaking theory. We diversify our investments. It's like the number one rule of investing is diversify your portfolio. Yet we're told that we need to go all in and be obsessed with the one thing that we do. And that makes no sense. Like the reason we diversify our portfolio is so when things change in the market, we don't get on a roller coaster ride with the market. We have some stability. And it's so important to do the same thing with how we derive meaning and our sense of identity and self. Do you want to transform your body,

but you just can't seem to break out of the rut? Have you read books and articles, watched videos, listened to podcasts, but still just aren't sure exactly how to put all the pieces together for you? Or maybe you know what to do, but you're still struggling to stay motivated and on track and do the things that you know you should do. Well, if you are nodding your head, I understand getting into great shape is pretty straightforward when you know what to do, but it's not easy. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes grit. And that's why I created my VIP one-on-one coaching service. We take people by the hand and we give them everything they need to build their best body ever. We give them a custom diet

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Well said. Can you talk to us about expectations and how expectations shape our experience of change and how we can set them in a way that makes us more resilient, more anti-fragile? So expectations, the brain is a prediction machine. more resilient, more anti-fragile? So expectations, the brain is a prediction machine. What we experience is consciousness, is reality filtered by our expectations for what's gonna happen.

And when our expectations are out of alignment with reality, it can feel really uncomfortable. And if you think about what change means, one way to define change is expectations are not meeting reality. So what you thought was going to happen is no longer happening. There's been a change. And the longer it takes us to update our expectations for the new reality, the worse we feel and the worse we're

equipped to handle what's in front of us. And if we have this expectation that things aren't going to change or that things shouldn't change or that change is bad, we should resist change, we should get back to where we were, then when change happens, we're gonna feel really crappy and we're not gonna be in a position to do anything productive about it. Whereas if we shift our expectations and align them more with reality

and realize that change is the nature of life, every single ancient wisdom tradition points to impermanence. The first rule of physics is heat dissipates, entropy. It's a fancy scientific way of saying things change. So science, wisdom, it doesn't matter. Change is real. We ought to embrace it. At the very least, we ought to expect it. So then when it happens, we can meet it with skillful action. And I think this is probably, if rugged flexibility is the first key mindset shift in the book, I think the second most important one is the old way of thinking about change, homeostasis, very clearly says that change is something that happens to you.

Allostasis, the new way, the more accurate way of thinking about change, says change is something that you're in conversation with, that you participate in. And that is such a game changer. Because change happening to you, the expectation is things are going to be normal and then change is going to happen and it's going to be bad. Being in conversation with change, the expectation is, of course, change is going to happen.

I'm a living creature in a living world. And when it does happen, I can be in conversation with it. I remain, I retain, excuse me, I retain some agency. And it's not to say that we can control everything because we can't, but it is to say that as much as change shapes us, we also can shape change. But we've got to expect it

because otherwise when it happens, we're going to be so discombobulated, we won't be able to do anything about it. And practically speaking, how might that look in life with the many, let's say, difficult or complicating or maybe even unwelcome changes that can occur. Because if the only changes that were occurring were the ones that we wanted, well, then everything would be great. People wouldn't even find this conversation interesting

if they wouldn't even understand what you're talking about. But everyone understands because a lot of times the changes aren't great. So there's this term coined by Viktor Frankl, who is 20th century psychologist, philosopher, Holocaust survivor. He's very well known for his book, Man's Search for Meaning, but he's less known for an essay that he wrote after that book that was called The Case for Tragic Optimism. And I just love this term, tragic optimism. What Frankl says is that life is inherently full of tragedy. And it's full of tragedy for three reasons. The first is because

we're made of flesh and bone and flesh and bone deteriorates. So we are going to experience physical pain and the loss of capabilities. And that is a tragedy. There's no reason to sugarcoat it. That sucks. The second tragedy is that we humans have the ability to make plans and all of our plans never work out the way we thought. So we're gonna feel disappointment and frustration. And that sucks. And then the third tragedy is that everything that we love and hold on to dearly is going to change.

And that's a very nice way of putting it because everything that we love is going to die, including us. And what Frank we love is going to die, including us. And what Frankl said is that anyone saying, just be positive, kind of like you were saying earlier, practice gratitude all the time. He's like, y'all are insane. Being a human is hard.

Life is hard. These tragedies are inevitable and they're inherent. And yet, we must do the hard work of maintaining optimism, not in spite of those tragedies, but with those tragedies. So the whole work is to accept and to not push away, not repress, not bury our head in the sands of those tragedies, but to realize, and maybe even because of those things, say, hey, this is our shot. This is it. So we might as well be optimistic. We might as well trudge forward the best that we can. And I think tragic optimism is the most needed quality for our current moment

because what's happening right now, and you see it all the time, especially on the internet, is there's these two camps with any big negative change. So like take climate change as an example. One camp is completely Pollyanna. I'm just going to bury my head in the sand, pretend it's not happening, be super positive about everything. Doesn't affect me, doesn't affect me yet, so what do I care? I think it's all overdone. The other camp is completely nihilistic and despairing. The system is so broken, we're all doomed, there's no point to even try because we're all doomed. And even though these seem like extreme opposites, I actually think that they have a lot in common. The main thing being that they're cop-outs. They're super lazy because they absolve you of needing to do anything about it. So if things are great, why do anything? If things are so

terrible that nothing you do will help, why do anything? But we know from across history, across human history, that progress is possible. And the people that make progress, be it in themselves or in the broader structures in their lives, are the people that can exist in the middle of delusional optimism and despair. And to realize that, yeah, like things are hard. Things might even be broken, but that doesn't mean that we can't work to improve them. And in order to have any chance at fixing a broken world, we can't become broken people. And I think I've been talking in the frame of societal change, but the same thing is true as us in individuals. Like how often do people say,

I don't need to improve. Everything's great. Like I'm great. There's certain people like that. They tend to be really insufferable, but I think more common is the opposite. It's like the despair, but the despair, especially in health, like I'm never going to get healthy. I'm never going to be able to quit smoking. You know, I'm morbidly obese and like nothing's going to work for me. And I get that like despair is really enticing, but it is really just like the least productive emotion because there's no reason to take action if you're in despair. So the more that we can practice tragic optimism

and realize that life is hard and hard things are going to happen and we can trudge forward by taking hopeful, wise, optimistic actions, the better off we'll be. And again, I think especially in today's world where there's these extreme camps of everything's great and everything sucks,

there's a huge chasm in between and that's where we need the most action to take place. A perspective that I've always liked that is right in line with this is looking at how we can take things that happen to us that are difficult, unwanted, complicating, and how we can use them in a positive way or a constructive way. Even if it's just learning a lesson, or if it is looking at

maybe how our actions contributed to this seemingly random thing, but maybe it wasn't as random as we want to believe. And for whatever that's worth, I've found that it has helped me avoid despair and lean more toward optimism, even if it's only because it gives the semblance of control. And even if that's all it is, I'm okay with that. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think for 98% of unforeseen changes, the approach that you're describing is the right one and it makes the most sense, which is view it as a challenge

or look for the silver lining, even if the silver lining is just a lesson learned. Go into it with a growth mindset that, hey, I'm gonna grow from this, this might be hard. 98%, maybe even 99% of changes. I do think that there's like 2% where that actually becomes really counterproductive. And these are for the hard to imagine capital T traumas. So the death of a loved one, the loss of a child, a horrific car accident that leaves you paralyzed. Here, I think trying to immediately

find growth or gratitude or learnings, it's like telling a depressed person to come up with all the things they're grateful for when they're in the acute of suicidal ideation. It's a terrible fucking idea. So there are certain times when the most skillful thing to do is release from any notion to improve or get better and just to be kind to yourself and get through. And what the research shows is that for these capital T traumas, the people that are able to experience post-traumatic growth to get to the other side with some meaning, the way that they do it is by releasing for the need from any meaning when they're in the thick of the struggle. So it's this huge paradox. When you're in the struggle,

your only job is to get through whatever it takes. But then six months later, a year later, sometimes a decade later, once you're on the other side, looking back, we tend to make meaning out of those capital T struggles, those capital T traumas. Not all the time. I need to be careful. There are some things that are just senselessly painful. Rape falls into that category. But again, for everything but the most extreme edge cases, we do tend to make meaning and grow through even the most negative challenging changes. But oftentimes that growth doesn't happen until we get to the other side of them. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That's every rule has exceptions, right? For somebody who's looking to make a positive change and something that is going to be difficult for them,

something that maybe they've tried before, or there's just a lot of friction there. And instinctively, they feel like they need to fight against or as a part of them fighting against that change. What advice would you have in the way of first steps to make the process more palatable and effective? So start small because the number one mistake that people make is too much too soon. They get really excited and motivated about this big change and then they flame out. I mean, we see this all the time in data of New Year's resolutions and the ones that fail tend to be the big grandiose ones.

And the ones that work out tends to be the small ones that allow you to stay consistent. Now, knowing that change is a cycle of order, disorder, reorder, and updating your expectations to realize that the first couple of steps are often the hardest because you're entering into a period of disorder and instability. And living systems don't like that. So when we're trying to make a change, the body often does immediately try to get back to where it was. And we kind of have to push through that initial period of disorder before we get to reorder.

So I think a lot of it just comes down to expectations. You know, someone that is starting a new workout program, the worst thing to tell them is, oh, you know, believe everything that you hear about how great exercise is gonna make you feel and expect that immediately. Much better thing to tell them is, oh, you know, believe everything that you hear about how great exercise is going to make you feel and expect that immediately. Much better thing to tell them is believe everything that you hear and give it three months before you start expecting that. And I think it would save a lot of flame outs. And this is true for any kind of productive change we're trying to make. I think we need to really expect that the disorder period is going to feel

like disorder. There is going to be some resistance. It's going to be hard, but we just need to accept that, expect it, keep trudging through. And then once we get towards reorder, we'll start to reap the benefits of those changes. And this is true for any habit change. There's some research that shows that on average, a new habit takes between 18 and 219 days. Some people are going to say that's such a wide range, it's meaningless. And the point of me sharing it is that there's so much differentiation depending on the person, what they're trying to start, what they're trying to stop. And I think that we need to expect that, yeah, sometimes it happens fast, but sometimes it takes the better part of a year. And also in your book, you share five questions for embracing change that I wanted to ask about,

because I think it's related to what you were just explaining. Yeah, I do. And that comes at the end of the book. And so much of what I try to do as a writer is give people language and words and questions for experiences that they have. And they kind of like have a sense of what's going on. And by a sense, I mean like a visceral sense, they feel it. Maybe they kind of even already know it, but they don't yet have words for it. And I'm a firm believer that once we have words for something, it makes it more concrete. It makes it more tangible. We can wrestle with it. We have a better chance of practicing it. So these five questions that come at the end of the book, they're really not meant to be the prescriptive, hey, do this and expect that. It's more like now you have these concepts,

wrestle with them. So what areas of one's life do you feel like you could benefit from rugged flexibility in? Where are you maybe a little too rugged and not flexible enough? Where are you maybe too flexible and not rugged enough? What parts of your identity do you over-index on, where if a change happened in that domain of your life, it would leave you really fragile? I think this is a really important one for three groups of people that I know are your core audience. So I'm just going to name them, right? Athletes. If you over-identify and really only identify with fitness as your pursuit, when change comes, be it aging and performance declines,

acute injury or chronic injury, it is going to be much harder to work through that change and get to the other side than if you have other areas of your identity that you can lean into. That can be hard too for athletes. I mean, you know this better than I do, probably considering all the athletes you've worked with, high-level athletes. They necessarily, yeah, they necessarily have to spend so much time being an athlete. They don't even have that much time to do anything else. It's a challenge. And I think here though, it's important. Again, you don't have to spend equal time across equal things. You just have to have other components of your identity that give you meaning. And I think that can be hard to find if you're not having the time for sure.

But we've seen this in elite athletes. In the book, I tell the story of Niels van der Poel, the speed skater, world record holder, world champion, double Olympic medalist in 2022, whose performance basically skyrocketed once he realized that he was underperforming because his only identity was as a speed skater and he was terrified of losing. So of course he lost. When you enter the ring terrified of losing, good things tend not to happen. In the lead up to the 2022 games. He intentionally decided to take a normal weekend, like a normal person and go out for beers and pizza and go bowling and go hiking and read books. And he realized that he was so much more than just a speed skater. And then he got to the games. And even though he took two complete days off a week, he had the best performance

in the history of speed skating. And he attributes that not to anything special about his training, but to the fact that he was no longer scared because there was more to him than just himself as a speed skater. So I do think even at the elite level, it's beneficial to diversify your identity. The two other groups I promised I'd get to, people that are really career focused. Well, what happens when you retire? I mean, we see post-ret really career focused. Well, what happens when you retire? I mean, we see post-retirement depression all the time because again, if your whole identity was your career and then when that career ends, what's going to happen? And then the third bucket is parents.

And when kids leave the house, marriages fall apart. Really rough things tend to happen if your whole identity was as a parent of kids that live in your home. So I think, you know, what I try to practice is let's say that you're all three of those things, then really be all three of those things. Have a big room in your house for parenting, have a big room in your house for your fitness and your athletic pursuits, and have a big room in your house for your career. And odds are all three of those things won't negatively change at the same time. And you'll have one to lean on

when the other one is withering. Yep. Yeah. I mean, that's it. And it's not to say that you ever have to fully leave a room, but when one room is flooding, i.e. in my language, enters disorder, well, hang out in the other rooms during the disorder phase a little bit more. And then when the flood's patched up, you can go back into that room. I mean, the best way to get through an injury, and to use the sporting example, I mean, this is the most graceful way that an elite athlete, whether it's a professional or someone that really cares about training, navigates injury. So they get injured and it sucks.

And it's part of the tragedy of being an athlete. Lifelong athlete, even with the best training, you're going to probably at some point succumb to some sort of injury. And ideally, you don't completely freak out because there are other components of your life that give you meaning, but you still go in that room and do your chores, i.e. your rehab, but you're not spending nine hours a day on message boards catastrophizing about your injury. You're doing your rehab and then you're going and you're focusing on reading or woodworking or devoting extra time to your marriage or trying to get the promotion at work that you've been putting off because you're trying to run a three-hour marathon.

And then eight weeks, eight months, maybe a year if it's a torn ACL later, if you've done your chores, you go back in that room and you spend a lot more time there. And you just avoid so much suffering and so many false starts and so much trying to overshoot the target and rush rehab. So I think that this is one of those Goldilocks things where it's not just mental health that improves, but I genuinely believe even at elite levels, performance improves when you diversify your identity because you just shed that enormous weight that comes when you are so fragile to change because there's only this one thing that makes you who you are. Yeah, I can see how that could build up major psychological and emotional barriers to performance. It's part of the reason that I still train for performance right now is because I'm in a stage of my writing career where my writing

performance is like I have high expectations for myself and my publisher does too. And it's a fair amount of pressure that I don't really control. I mean, you know, book publishing, sometimes a book hits, sometimes it doesn't based on factors completely outside of your control. But then for me to be able to go in the gym and have this other thing that I can chase a performance goal that is totally separate from my writing, it just feels so healthy. And if both of those go to shit, you know, I tweak my back in the same day, a big story flops. Well, then I get to double down on being a dad and a husband. And I'm just so grateful that I have these various sources of identity. And I encourage people in the book to think about change and think about becoming robust to change by diversifying your sense of self. I sound like a broken record, but it's really important.

Well, with that, I know we're coming up on time. So I don't want to keep you any longer, but great discussion as always. I really enjoyed it. So the book is Master of Change. And is there anything else that you want people to know, where they can find you on social media? Any other neat things that you have coming that you want people to know about? Yeah, thanks. Really, the main thing is, if you found the conversation interesting, you want to learn more about change, definitely check out the book. It's available wherever you get books, hardback, audible, ebook. And then on social media, I'm most active on Instagram where my handle is my name, bradstahlberg.com. And then that is also my website.

And you can learn more there, www.bradstahlberg.com. Awesome. Well, thanks again, Brad. And I look forward to the next discussion. Thank you, Mike. then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback.

So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.