The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything Is Changing – Including You by Brad Stulberg

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything Is Changing – Including You by Brad Stulberg https://amzn.to/3P4tHyD A revelatory book on rethinking change and creating a rugged and flexible mindset amidst life's intensifying flux, from expert on sustainable excellence, coach, and bestselling author of The Practice of Groundedness. From social disruptions like economic recessions, pandemics, and new technologies to individual disruptions like getting married, career transitions, and becoming a parent, we undergo change and transformation—both good and bad—regularly. Change is not the exception, it’s the rule. Yet we endlessly fight it, often viewing it as a threat to our stability and sense of self. Master of Change flips this script on its head and offers a path for embracing and even growing from life’s constant instability. Brad Stulberg, sustainable excellence expert, coach, and bestselling author of The Practice of Groundedness,offers a new model that describes change as an ongoing cycle of order, disorder, and reorder—yes, we return to stability, but that stability is somewhere new. Drawing on modern science, ancient wisdom, and daily practice, Stulberg offers concrete principles for developing a mindset called rugged flexibility, along with habits and practices to implement it. Along the way, Stulberg reveals: How to be in conversation with change instead of it happening to you. The importance of expectations Why cultivating a rugged yet flexible sense of self is key to a strong identity. How to take productive action during a challenge. The paradox of both making meaning and moving forward. In the end, Stulbergreshapes our entire perception of change and shows us how to grow in its midst—ultimately helping us move forward better, stronger, and wiser than we were before. About the Author Brad Stulberg researches, writes, and coaches on mental health, well-being, and sustainable excellence. He is bestselling author of The Practice of Groundedness and Master of Change. He regularly contributes to the New York Times and his work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and the Atlantic, among other outlets. In his coaching practice, he works with executives, entrepreneurs, physicians, and athletes on their mental skills and overall well-being. He is on faculty at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health. His past books include Peak Performance and The Passion Paradox.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com, the chrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. What would we ever do without you? The audience in the world the most brilliant audience in the world because

if you're not brilliant i have to listen to three shows a weekday 10 to 15 shows we put out a a week uh geez that's about all we can do people what do you want more from me uh and after 14 years of 1500 episodes if you're not smart you need to go back and just listen everything from the beginning again and start over again but you'll be even smarter by the time you get there uh i promise and you'll have that wonderful the chris foss glow they like to call it i don't know who does that but someone does uh the chris foss glow it's the glow of intelligence brilliance you're like an alien being that comes from the sky and people walk around and go, who's that guy over there with that glow?

Oh, he listens to the Chris Foss show. Lord yourself around, damn it. Tell people to listen to the Chris Foss show, which is our setup for the plugs, as always. Go to goodreads.com for Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com for Chris Foss. YouTube.com for Chris Foss. And give us five-star reviews over there on

the old iTunes. You have to download the damn thing. It's kind of a pain in the ass, but we love you for it says chris foss and give us five star reviews over there on the old itunes you have to download the damn thing it's kind of a pain in the ass but we love you for it and uh the chris foss show is the family loves you doesn't judge you you always got to remember that uh we have an amazing gentleman on the show and as promised in the intro he's going to make you brain bleed so i want you to get some band-aids and just hold them up to your ear during the show and leave the other ear open so you can listen because you're going to learn so much that you're probably going to go, I don't know, solve nuclear fission or cold fusion or, you know, one of those things that hasn't been solved yet. Or maybe you'll just figure out how to do your chores today instead of procrastinating. He is the author of the newest book that comes out September 5th, 2023, Master of Change change how to excel when everything is changing including you

brad stolberg joins us on the show he's a multi-book author when we're talking about his amazing insights that are gonna make you more brilliant more sexy and have that chris voss glow about him i don't know if he wrote you know how to get the chris voss glow in the book but maybe he'll do an addendum in the future or not. There you go. Brad Stolberg, researches, writes, and coaches on mental health, well-being, and sustainable excellence. He's the best-selling author of The Practice of Groundedness and Master of Change. I think all words are new, right?

I flunked second grade uh he regularly contributes to the new york times and his work has been featured in the wall street journal and the atlantic among other outlets in his coaching practice he works with executives entrepreneurs physicians and athletes on their mental skills and overall well-being he is the uh on the faculty of the university of michigan School of Public Health, and his past books include Peak Performance and The Passion Paradox. Welcome to the show, Brad. How are you? Hey, Chris. It's great to be here. It's wonderful to have you. Congratulations on the new book. Welcome to the show.

Give us a.com so people can find you on the interweb, which is in the sky. The.com is just my name, www.bradstahlberg.com and i'm also on instagram at my name which is just brad stahlberg there you go so you've written uh four books so far is that correct that's right there you go what motivated you want to write this new book no it makes it personal professional societal let's see in the last five years uh my personal life i went through a whole lot of changes in a very compressed period of time moved across the country became a father became a father again uh had pretty major orthopedic surgery that took me out of a sport

that had been an outsized part of my identity pretty much severed my last bit of ties with the corporate world to really go full-time as a writer and a private practice coach and um that's just in my personal life and then broadly we all went through the pandemic what there was a pandemic significant change for uh for just about everyone unless you were really living in the basement for the last three years i might have been. When was this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Funny guy, Chris. So, you know, I remember distinctly like when the kernel of an idea for this book came to be. And I went through one of these early pandemic days when it didn't matter if the publication was left as the New York Times, if it was right, the Wall Street Journal, if it was down the middle,

The Economist, everyone and their sister was writing headlines when are we going to get back to normal and it occurred to me that that made no sense at all like one we're probably never going to get back to normal and number two would we want to get back to normal like after any significant change do you ever get back to normal and how much freaking suffering results from desperately trying to get back to normal after big changes? And that kind of set me off on a, you know, to use Chris Voss terms, a brain bleeding intellectual journey to try to understand the history of change and why we think about change as a negative and something to resist or something to be defensive about and to explore newer models for change that might allow us to more skillfully navigate it. There you go. So did that kind of give us a 30,000 hour review? What's in the book or do you want to delve into that some more? Let's delve into it a little bit more. I think there's two main concepts that run throughout the book that are super important. So the first is this notion that the way that so many people think about change

is rooted in an age old scientific theory called homeostasis. And homeostasis describes change as a cycle of order, disorder or chaos, and then back to order. And that is where so much of our trying to get back to where we were and resistance and defensiveness to change comes from however in the last couple of years the research community stepped back and said actually homeostasis isn't really how healthy living systems interact with change and they coined this term allostasis which is different that's right which is are these dinosaurs like all of us i'm sorry they's right which is are these dinosaurs like all i'm sorry they sound a lot like like like dinosaurs but it's crucial in a really different

way which is allostasis describes change is a cycle of order disorder reorder so we don't get back to where we were. Like, yes, we crave stability, right? Living organisms do not like to be in chaos and disorder and disarray. But when we experience these cycles of disorder, when we're thrown into chaos, whether it's a divorce, a marriage, having a kid, losing a loved one or something societally like a pandemic. Yes, we don't like that. It feels icky. And yes, we want to get back to stability,

but that stability, we're not getting back to it. We're arriving somewhere new. And this is a significantly better way to think about and cope with change. So that's the first central thesis in this book is out with homeostasis, in with allostasis. And how do you spell that? Is it A-L-L-O stasis? Okay. And what's fascinating is, you know, for the real nerds in the audience, etymology, which is the history of words and their meanings. So homo comes from the root, which means the same. And stasis is standing.

So homeostasis literally translates to stability by being the same. Whereas allo means variation so allostasis translates to stability by changing so what homeostasis says is that change is bad and we need to resist change and it throws us off of stability and what allostasis said is actually the only way to be stable in this life is to be stable through change and to get really good at navigating it and that's really the order of the universe really when it comes down to it right first law physics man entropy like things move towards chaos and disorder uh impermanence you know we've got a whole big consumer system that tries to distract us from the fact that unless the longevity guru is figured out soon like we're going to die.

Our time on this planet is impermanent. And these are, can be like pretty scary, hard, shitty truths to confront. But when we don't confront them, we tend to not have as much meaning and texture in our lives. There you go. So tell us a little bit about yourself, your journey. What, what, what, what got you here and why you've written some the books and thinking of some of the stuff that's gone down that road. You know, I'm obsessed with excellence, and I define excellence as feeling good and doing good in a way that supports your long-term goals. So not perfection? Not perfection. No, very different, right? Perfection tends to be a short-term thing that you can maybe sustain or maintain for a specific period of time,

but then generally results in some kind of burnout or anxiety or despondency. Because by definition, if you're trying to be great at everything, you're going to be great at nothing or you're going to be a hot mess. And sometimes you're going to be both those things at the same time. Whereas excellence is an old Greek virtue. And a part of any virtue is that it has to be sustainable. And that's where the not only doing good, but feeling good at the same time. And I think that excellence is really a lost art in society when so many people are okay, just phoning it in and going through the motions on the one hand. But on the other hand, a lot of people want to be perfect all the time, or they want to optimize or hack their way to success. And I think that that's equally as dumb. And true sustainable excellence is about working like a

craftsperson and caring about what you do and finding meaning in it and doing it a way that is going to last not just for a month or a year but for decades there you go uh and and so that combined i mean those two combine what you're talking about the allostasis do i have that pronounced correctly because i just learned a new word today uh and uh and us you know i've always i have always uh equated and i'm assuming there's a lot of other people that do, the word excellence to perfection. And I like your definition because perfection isn't attainable. And anybody who thinks it's attainable, I kind of move away from and go, yeah, you have fun with that, with the crazy. There's lots of sayings about perfection you if you strive for perfection

you can be better for it but you also have to have your minds uh thing that hey you know no one's no one's perfect um but i like this uh you know the order of the universe is changed inevitable uh when i was growing up i listened to rush and neil pierre and uh one of the lines that was famous from them is from Tom Sawyer. He knows nothing is impermanent, or he knows nothing is permanent, but change is. But change is permanent. And the order of the universe is constant change. It's constant survival. To me, it's just a big survival game.

It's like, dodge this, dodge that. But I love your concept of, of way of looking at this. You know, let me ask you this. When, when you mentioned earlier in the show about how we're always trying to get back to what we perceive as normal or how things used to be. And we see this in societal generations, like you mentioned COVID or like, you know, I grew up like you know i grew up in the i grew up in the 70s and 80s and there was a societal change that were happening there there was economic changes that were happening there and you know people were always you know even today people politically sometimes are trying to get back to some sort of 1950s nuclear family

two-car garage picket fence two- week vacations every year. You know, we're still trying to get some back to this sort of weird economic time that capsule that happened post-war when, you know, there's GI Bill and all this money floating around the people that saved during the war. Um, and so is that a reality? Is that, is that a complete delusion? Because maybe, you know, anytime I've ever gone gone back to anything it's never as good as it used to be um you know i go back to where i used to live and i'm like wow this this wasn't as good as i thought it was i don't remember it to be or romanticize it to be yeah i mean humans are like a unique species in the sense that we're forward looking and uh it's a gift and a curse right it

leads to a whole lot of anxiety because we know that we're going to die. But it also allows us to make plans and to be really attracted to progress. And I think that once you stop wanting and striving for progress, that's generally a sign to like explore why, why is that the case? Now, it's not to say that we should just go along with anything that happens i think that there's these two big misnomers uh when it comes to change chris on the one hand there is the resist go back to how things used to be fight against bury your head in the sand pretend it's not happening delude yourself engage, engage in magical thinking, just not confront change. And then the other extreme is the go with the flow, release from control, just let go,

whatever's happening is meant to be. And I think that both of those extremes are really just like not very thoughtful. And there's a huge chasm in between those two things where we can maintain our agency and have some responsibility to stand up for the things that we care about and to shape change. Well, at the same time, realizing what we can't control and kind of flexibly applying our core values and whatever those things may be. So, so much of the thinking on change falls into this trap of this or that. When often the way to navigate change in these cycles of allostasis is this and that. So there's a term I introduced in the book, I call it rugged flexibility. And normally you think of ruggedness and flexibility as being these complete opposites,

right? You're either rugged or you're flexible. Yeah, you're either tough or not. Right. And I think the way to navigate change is to be both rugged and flexible. So to know what you stand for, to know your values, to be really strong, durable, robust, but also never to become rigid and to be flexible in how you apply those things and to be willing to change your mind and see the world differently and adapt. And that's the name of the game. I mean, that's how any species survives over time. It's how any great business person shepherds a business throughout time, is you're constantly navigating and trying to thread this needle between staying the same

and what makes you who you are, but also changing as time passes and the environment around you shifts. There you go. I like how you're taking a lot of these things that we think about in terms that we think about and kind of helping us, you're not really redefining, you're just kind of actualizing them better or giving us a more empowered definition. Because, you know, like I said, when I think of rugged, I think of someone who's tough and hard and, you know, I have some sort of Marlboro cowboy in my brain for that, which is probably not good because he's going to die of cancer. And then flexibility, you know, and look, you're basically, you're shifting the paradigm force and getting us out of the box that a lot of people, I think, including myself,

sometimes get caught up in and not seeing out of the box. I mean, recently I had a business breakthrough because for a year I'd been struggling with an aspect of my business. And all I needed to do was turn one dial. And I couldn't find the dial. And it turns out it was right before me the whole damn time. Yeah, we get in our own way so often. It's not just you. It's everyone.

I mean, getting out of your own way is like 95% of excellence. And yeah, I mean, I think that, again, a lot of our traps come from this or that thinking. And reality is complex and messy and often a little bit of this and that. Hi, Voxers. Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com.

Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements. If you'd like to hire me, uh, training courses that we offer and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff, with over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as a CEO. And be sure to check out chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com. Now back to the show. And it makes so much difference. You talk in the book about how, let me get to this. Let's see how to be in a conversation with change instead of it happening to you. Tell us a little about

the paradigm of that line. Right. So if you think about change in the old model, it's something that comes and disrupts your sense of stability. Well, of course, you're going to frame it as this is happening to me, right? This is something that is being inflicted upon me. And then immediately you're going to get into a stance of defensiveness or resistance. And you're disempowered, right? You're totally disempowered. You're feeling victimized. You're pushing against it.

You're feeling like a victim, whatever it is. Whereas if you shift and you say, actually, like the only way to be stable is through change and change is just first law physics, the bottom of every single spiritual tradition. So whether you're religious or your religion is science, it don't matter. You dig deep enough. And these are all about navigating change. You accept that change is reality. Well, if change is reality, then of course you're in conversation with change. It's not something that happens to you. It's something that you participate in. So yes, you shape change and change shapes you like both those things can be true at once. Um, and it is empowering because, you know, we always have some agency and oftentimes on the far right, people overstate

the agency that we have. And on the far left, they understate it. And the truth is in the middle, like there's generally some agency and in certain circumstances, there's more or less, but like, yeah, we can't sacrifice that agency because that makes us who we are. That allows us to do great things. That's where we get our resilience and our fortitude. But on the other hand, if we over-index on that and we try to wall ourselves off from what's happening around us, we suffer. There you go. You know, I think basically, you know, we all need to accept that simple premise. Change is permanent. You know, I've struggled with, I struggle with COVID.

It cost me a fortune. And I'm sure it costs everyone a whole lot more. I should be honorable and say it costs some people their lives and their family members. So I should probably complain less. But the fact is it did cost me. And sometimes my brain gets in that schematic where it goes, if only we could get back to normal. You know, even now, you know, you look at the price of some things and kind of the world, the new world we're living in. And you're like, geez, man, I miss the days where cheap goods and, and, uh, you know, everyone kind of was flush with money there for a bit and, and,

uh, uh, and the craziness of it. And, and I think, and I think maybe if we went back to the way it was, uh, maybe it wasn't as good, you know, maybe that's what we always have to remember that change is a constant and it's kind of interesting like you talk about you know when you watch the news people are constantly oh my god everything's changing oh my god the world's burning you know and and people and and maybe i need to look at that more when i see that now and with my paradigm and my my glasses and go yeah that's just the way it works man welcome welcome to the universe. I mean, you study history, and I think part, listen, so COVID sucked, right, for all the reasons that you mentioned, and it sucked for everyone in different ways.

And I don't like to compare suffering. It just sucked, and everyone had it pretty shitty. Very few people. Except for billionaires. I was just going to say, very few people except for billionaires and grifters, and sometimes one and the same made out well as a result of COVID. But everyone else, it doesn't minimize what happened. But you look across history and it's like, who are we to think that we wouldn't have a pandemic?

Yeah. You know, pandemics are as old as time. Like World War I, you sent your kid off to fight in fucking trenches. Yeah. World War II, you had the Nazis. Like Vietnam. fucking trenches yeah world war ii you had the nazis like vietnam i mean we were the 9-11 really sucked but like so many people were removed from it and obviously the people that went to fight and sent their kids off to war were not removed from it but societally i feel like the majority of

people are just kind of going through their lives and there's this societal stability and then this pandemic happens but if you zoom out and you look over the last thousand years there's pandemics all the time i mean it sucks but like you you got to accept this because otherwise again like you you get on this defensive and you resist the inevitable and resisting the inevitable just makes no sense because whatever wall you're pushing against is going to push back against you harder there you go i just think of it as a universal dodgeball. I'm just always like, yeah,

that's what you were saying. I mean, it's, but some of that is being in conversation with change. And you know what? Sometimes the ball is going to hit you and it's going to knock you on your ass. And like,

that's okay too, because that's where you forge compassion for other people that are going through hard times. And that's where you, you find out who your real friends are. Um, and it's not to glamorize suffering and glamorize getting hit by the dodgeball. But, you know, life is long and eventually we're all going to get hit by various dodgeballs.

And we kind of have to accept that, too. There you go. You talk about how to take productive action during a challenge. And, you know, I remember we've been talking about COVID. I remember with my show, we'd been doing 10 years of interviews with CEOs and Silicon Valley conversations and what's Apple and Google doing today and shit. And it was fun for the first 10 years, but it was kind of burnt out. And I didn't really feel like it was contributing much to life.

And then COVID hit, and one of my brilliant Silicon Valley friends said, there's two things you do right now. And I was really in the depths of depression because I was losing hundreds of thousands of dollars just every show that would cancel all year long. And it was just like watching money burn. And my friend says, there's two things you do right now. You find a lifter or you be a lifter. And I'm not really good at getting other people lift me or you know i'm not

a follower i'm a leader and so i said what are my assets what do i have i got a great podcast and i got a voice and i got an audience that i built and uh i can lift people when i when i can get out of the depression it took me about four or five episodes of just breaking about breaking down on every show but we changed the format of the show we opened the scope up to where we took on all authors uh all all different conversations political uh brilliance like your book and intelligence uh even novelists and stuff and and i've been having so much more fun and what people have to realize is sometimes during these crises you know i went through losing my business in 2008. A lot of people did. These are the times where you can change that and move to the challenge of being a better person, building character, that which doesn't kill you,

makes you stronger. Talk to us a little bit about how to take more productive action during a challenge. That's right. So whenever we face these big challenges, we tend to have two pathways that we go down. The first is that we react and that tends to be emotional, hot, not very thoughtful rash. The second is we respond. When we respond, we turn on our prefrontal cortex, the evolved part of our brain. We take a pause. We evaluate what's happening. We really process. We accept what's happening. We see it clearly. We do exactly what you mentioned. We ask like, well, what can we do in this moment? What can we control and what can't we? And what are our unique skills and assets that we can use to move forward with as much grace and grit as possible? And then only then do we proceed. So where reacting is very quick and rash and we often regret it. I mean,

just think about anyone that's had a argument with their significant other, like reacting doesn't work out well, but if we can pause and we can be deliberate and we can be thoughtful, then we can bring our strengths and what we're equipped with to bear on the situation. Now, I do want to caveat this and say that for the day-to-day changes that we all go through. So you're late for a meeting because your dog decides to have diarrhea on the floor. Your kids have a major meltdown in the grocery store. You know, you get stuck in traffic. These instances, like we should really try to respond almost all the time.

Because like that's about being a mature adult, you know, and it's hard. Like as someone that has dogs that have diarrhea and kids that sometimes melt down, I'm not saying it's not easy, but it's, we should be able to not have our whole day get thrown off by shifting from this reactionary mode to a more responsive mode, right? So respond, not react. That's the mantra I like to use, just respond, not react. But for really big, hard changes, so someone that goes off to war, someone that loses a loved one, someone that slides into a clinical depression, we can't expect our brains just to flip the switch and bounce back. And what the research shows here is you're right, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, but only after an intervening period

of time where it feels like we're dying. So we have to give ourselves the grace when we're down in the depths, just to be kind with ourselves and just to show up and have showing up be enough. And then if we can get to the other side, that's when we look back and we experience meaning and growth. So it's this catch 22. And you can probably see what my MO is. I try to take nuance to things that people just label as extremes. So growth mindset, gratitude, grit, all these qualities are really good for 95% of stuff.

But when you go up to a depressed person and say, why don't you just name three things that you're grateful for? That depressed person is going to flick you the bird because their brain is not capable of doing that. And for that depressed person, what they need to do is they just need to know that they're loved and that they can be patient and that they can just focus on waking up and getting through the day, getting the help that they need. And then they get to the other side of that and they look back and they say, oh my God, I've grown so much. I used to be an asshole. I used to not understand what depression was. Now I'm kinder to myself. Now I'm kinder to other people, but it doesn't

happen immediately. So for the small, trivial changes, yeah, we should push ourselves. We should be hard on ourselves. We should really try to respond, not react. But for these enormous life changes, we need to be kind with ourselves and show ourselves some grace to get through it. And then once we get through it, we can look back on it and we've grown. I like that. So, so maybe under times where it's, it's really a stressful sort of change or maybe we feel a little attacked, you know, we're, we're not just like, Hey, I'm going to wake up today and go kick some ass. And, you know, I'm taking that kind of offensive approach,

but maybe when we're kind of on the ropes a little bit, taking, you know, what you mentioned and being kind to ourselves, maybe have some gratitude and, and try and, uh, one thing I, one thing I try and do is I try and go to gratitude and I sit down, just like I mentioned with the COVID and I go, okay, what are my assets? What do I have? What can I work with? What's, what's, what's, you know, I'm like a cook. I'm like, what's the recipe? What ingredients do we have before? So I don't have all the ingredients that I need. What ingredients do I have? I don't don't have all the ingredients that I need. What ingredients do I have? I don't know.

What do you think about that? I think it's great if it works for you, you know, but my, my, my hunch is like when you are in the depths or the worst part of your depression, that exercise might've seemed futile. Yeah. Cause there was vodka. So there you go. So there's a time and a place.

Um, but I think like if you're not forcing yourself to do that, or if it doesn't feel contrived, then I think that that's a great practice and that and that is how we get through 95 to 98 percent of the changes in our life is is through this responsive mode and a big part of responding not reacting is being being grateful or I call that like asking what resources you're equipped with to handle this there you go I love this concept because you're taking a lot of simple things that we think about and also i think you said it best uh better than i can that you take some of the extreme versions of words that we use and give them more nuance do i have that that's right another another example that that is very much related to change

um is this notion of like self-discipline versus self-compassion oh and i actually think it's not this versus that i think it's this and that so you think about like uh the jocko willink david goggins marine types just like complete badasses self-discipline wake up at 4 a.m deadlift the whole garage. And then you think about the, let's all hold hands and sing Kumbaya and love ourselves and love each other. And we tend to see these as polar opposites, but in real life, the most badass people I know are also able to hold hands and sing Kumbaya and they can do both those things because life is freaking hard and doing hard things is hard

and being a badass is hard. And if you are going to put yourself in situations where you're taking big risks and when you're stepping into the arena, you're putting yourself out there, there's a chance that you're going to fail. And if you don't know that you've got your own back when you fail, then why would you take that risk? So in the work that I do and all the research I've done in my coaching practice, I take a lot of people that have a lot of self-discipline and I help them learn to have their own back and self-compassion sounds woo-woo for too many people. So it can be as simple as like, how can you be your own best friend? Because if you don't have your own back, you're never going to take those risks. You know, if you know that every time you're going to fail, you're going

to beat yourself up and spiral into depression, then why would you ever take risks? So we've got to learn that, like, you know, the way that I put it is fear. Self-discipline requires fear. Self-compassion. Fear of self-discipline requires fear. Self-compassion. One more time. I love that.

Yeah. There you go. Because, you know, going to the arena is just freaking hard. And you've got to be able to be there for yourself when you get knocked down because part and parcel of stepping in the arena is eventually you're going to get your ass kicked. Definitely. I seem to like that because I get my ass kicked a lot. But no, I like that. Sometimes we're not our best friend.

We're our own worst enemy, as the saying goes. And so I think it's important to adopt some of the paradigms you're talking about, of being compassionate to ourselves and taking care of ourselves. I mean, a lot of people that, you know, you kind of get in the habit of beating yourself up. That's right. In this, like, very self-referential, judgmental thinking, you know, a good practice, too,, too, is when you're going through a really challenging time, just ask if a best friend or family member of yours was going through the same thing. What would you say to them?

That's wow. It's generally pretty different than what you'd say to yourself. You just say that to yourself yeah i love that because wow you know you're great at taking these these simple paradigms and like you mentioned nuances and flipping on their head and basically thinking out of the box and giving them a new context i love it uh this is awesome uh one final thought i wanted to ask you about on your book the paradox of both making meaning and moving forward yeah can you give us a tease out on what that's about for sure this this relates to uh what i was talking about earlier

with the how sometimes our responses take time and when we're really in the thick of major significant life changes especially when they are negative that this notion of growth tends to come once we get out of the dark woods and when we're in the dark woods telling ourselves oh i have to grow from this sometimes that works but sometimes it's like a firing a second arrow at yourself right the first arrow is the shitty thing that happened and then the second arrow is the fact that you're like i can't even do what the self-help books tell me to do yeah and sometimes it's just like no like you know i think that we're a lot to swear on the show it's like fuck it this sucks sometimes the the universe is harsh and cruel and pain has no meaning that's what depression is that's what losing a child is that's what a really messy divorce is. And in those moments,

you can just release from everything, but showing up and getting through. And you have to have faith that if you just show up and get through, eventually you're going to get to the other side and you're going to look back on it and you'll have learned something. There you go. You know, I know this is a kind of a simplification, maybe an oversimplification of what you just described, but like a perfect example for me that just popped right into my head is sometimes I don't feel like going to the gym every day. And, uh, you know, I recently went through a bout where I was just kind of feeling awful. I just don't want to go to the gym. And sometimes you just don't feel like going to the gym, but I usually feel so good when I leave and the massage chairs

help too. Uh, they have have their they've got those ones that roll back and you know on the ccc thing put you on your back with the oyster chairs I think they call them or something like that but uh and so what I do and I think Arnold Schwarzenegger said this maybe I got it from him but uh so I'll just drive myself down the gym and I'll be sitting there in the car going I really don't feel like going to the gym. And I'm like, just go. And, you know, sit in the hot tub, you know, sit in the sauna, you know, sit in the massage chair. And then I'll go, and I'll go, okay. And as soon as I get there, I start kind of starting to get my vibe, you know,

that feeling that I like when I'm lifting weights. And even if i don't feel like lifting i'll be like okay go go with something just go just go you know get some blood pumping and moving and if that's all you do good and i'll do that and like usually within about 20 minutes i'm into my routine and i'm like okay we're we're here let's do this you know and so it's kind of a bit of a i don't know fake it do you make it not really but uh fall is action mood fall is action oh there you go mood falls action i gotta i mean i know this inside out i uh i train at like a fairly high level and um man out of 365 days i

probably go to the gym 280 but i probably feel like going to the gym 18 of those 280 days, which means the other 262. I am in the same boat as you are. But I know that I don't need to feel good to get going. But I need to get going to give myself a chance at feeling good. It's this total like, we think we need to be super motivated to take action, but sometimes we actually just need to start acting, and then the motivation follows. I might tattoo that to myself. It's a good one. I've had the privilege of working with some pretty elite world-class athletes.

Everyone sees on Instagram or on Twitter, X, whatever they call it now, the feel- good inspirational clips. But even the best in the world, most of the time they're dragging their ass into the gym. So it's not about how you feel before. It's about are you willing to take those feelings along for the ride and just get going? Oh, yeah. And I come home from the gym. I mean, I beat myself up.

I push myself as hard as I can. But, you know, you feel good. You know, even the next day, even if I feel a little bit beat up, I'm standing taller. I'm feeling better. You know, I might still feel like I got hit by a bus, but I still feel good. I don't know how to explain how, you know. You probably don't. Yeah.

Well, Arnold would call it the pump. But the pump aside, in an Arnold accent, I mean, you're also just doing something real in the world. You know, like intellectuals, I don't know if you call yourself that, but you know, I mean, but you live in the world of ideas and knowledge and me too, right? I write books, you host a podcast and it's great. And I firmly believe that the work that I do, and I'm sure you feel the same way can really help people and change lives. And I'm sure you have evidence of it from listeners that call in that write you. And yet it's not as pure and simple as picking a barbell off the floor.

There is something that is so objective about the weight started on the ground and now I've locked out my hips or the weight started at my chest and now I've locked out my hips or the weight started at my chest and now I've locked out my elbows and that doing something real in the world that is so objective. And I can nerd out with you about like, you know, being a gym bro, but the same is true for woodworking, for working on a car, for gardening, just doing real things in the world, especially if you tend to use your head for your job, not your body. I think it's just like really therapeutic and good for the soul. And I think like part of what you feel the next day is that sense of accomplishment. Like I did something

real with my body. No listeners are going to judge whether it's good or bad. No Spotify or Apple podcast ratings are going to tell me how many people reviewed it. I either made the lift or I didn't. And I think that's really fulfilling. Definitely. And it's a nice pat on the back too, because it says, hey man, for the 53 years you spent sitting around eating Cheetos, naked on a beanbag, watching TV, you're at the gym. You're finally at the gym. You're doing it. You're saying what you said you did. You're you're at the gym you're finally at the gym you're doing it you're you're

you're saying what you said you did you're honoring your word to yourself and you're not bsing yourself like i'll go tomorrow and i'll eat this big bag of ladies potato chips you know that sort of thing um yeah i mean there's there's that the mood follows action right the um the feeling comes after the action yep yep so i just get in the car and i just drive myself there and there's a lot of things that i've done in business or life that i'm sure people can equate to and i i mentioned this yesterday on the show i i think of it as eating the elephant uh one bite at a time and so sometimes i look at something and i just go my god this is gonna be a huge freaking project and it's's like, start taking little bites, you know.

If you want to write a book, start writing one hour a day. Just write something. Just put something on paper, muck around with it. It doesn't have to be Hemingway. It doesn't have to be Shakespeare. Just put something down. It's probably going to be awful. Just accept that.

And to your point, you know, change is constant. Change is going to happen. Just adopt to it. But if you keep those wheels going and you keep building, you know change is constant change is going to happen just adopt to it but if you keep those wheels going and you keep building you know i i look at so many things i've built in my life and go god damn i'm glad i chose that day to start doing that and now here we are 10 years later so there you go uh anything more you want to tease out on the book brad before we go i think the only thing that i didn't mention mention is this notion that there's all this external change that's happening, but then there's also this internal change that's happening, which is we're aging.

No one escapes aging. We often have these cycles where, like you said, our podcast starts out as one thing and then evolves and becomes another thing. We have kids. That's a huge change. But then those kids move out of the house. That's another huge change. We start dating. We have kids, that's a huge change. But then those kids move out of the house. That's another huge change. We start dating, we get married, we get divorced. We're really healthy, and then we need a knee replacement. So there's changes that happen in the universe. There's pandemics, there's wars, there's geopolitical unrest. But then there's also

these changes that happen within ourselves. And I think taking this notion of allostasis, of being in conversation with change, and then this rugged flexibility, like don't just be rugged and don't just be flexible, be both. Know when you need to be rugged and know when you need to be flexible. They apply to the changes that happen within us too. So it's a pretty broad toolkit. There you go. So do we need to just maybe plan for change more? I mean, you can't go totally paranoid with it. You can't be like, I'm going to plan for everything that's going to happen because you have no way to anticipate what's going to happen, right? Yeah, you don't plan for it, but you expect it. And I think those are different things, right? Because planning for something means like, oh, well, it could happen this way.

It could happen that way. I don't know how things are going to shake out, but I know that they're going to shake out. And just having that expectation puts you in a position to practice rugged flexibility, to respond, not react, to not be so thrown off when things change. It's like you said, you know, when you watch the news and everyone's like, oh my God, all these things are changing. It's like, no shit. What'd you expect?

And that's a powerful mindset shift. What did you expect? I don't know. Maybe that should be the tattoo I put on my arm. What did you expect? I don't know. Maybe that should be the tattoo I put on my arm. What did you expect, dummy? But no. So this has been really brilliant, Brad. I love the paradigm shifts you put on everything.

I love the thinking out of the box, looking at things from a different angle, because that's a big thing for me. And, man, this is worth all the brain bleeding. I think one of my earphone cups is just full of blood at this point, but it's been worth it because this is going to, maybe I can put my lobotomy off a few more weeks. So there you go. I'm here to help.

There you go, Brad. So give us your.com. So if you're going to find you on the internet, please. It's bradstahlberg.com. The book is called master of change. You can get it from Amazon,

Barnes and Noble, your local bookstore. If you like listening to books, it's on Audible. So check it out. There you go. Thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it, man. It's been super insightful. Thanks for having me, Chris. There you go.

Thanks for tuning in. Order up the book where refined books are sold. It comes out September 5th, 2023. Master of Change. There should be a thing there that's like, Master of Change. There should be like a thing there. Master of Change. How to Excel When Everything is Changing, Including You by Brad Stolberg.

Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortune's Chris Foss, YouTube.com, Fortune's Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortune's Chris Foss, and all those crazy places on the internet.

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