The Daily Stoic - Dr. Samantha Boardman on Turning Stress in Strength

Episode Date: February 11, 2023

Ryan speaks with Dr. Samantha Boardman about her book Everyday Vitality: Turning Stress into Strength, how you can improve your life by changing small daily habits, why feeling stressed is not necessarily a bad thing, how to deal with catastrophizing, and more.Samantha Boardman is a Positive Psychologist based in New York. She received a B.S. from B.A. from Harvard University, an M.D. from Cornell University Medical College, and completed a 4-year residency program in Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College. Her work focuses on the promotion of wellbeing and the creation of health using Positive Psychiatry. You can learn more about Susan, her book, her blog, and her practice at positiveprescription.com. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes. Something to help you live up to those four Stoke virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down,

be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I actually have a new producer on the podcast. Her name is Rachel. You know, sometimes people think this stuff is just me and it's not. It takes a village.

There's a team behind it. And Rachel started working on some of the product management for the stuff we do over in the daily store, working with vendors, et cetera, and ended up helping me schedule some guests. And is now taken on a much more active role in producing the show. What does this have to do with what you're about to listen to? Well, I'll tell you, today's guest is one of the first ones that Rachel suggested not someone that reached out or someone I wanted to have on, but someone that Rachel was a fan of and had read and was telling me all about.

The name sounded vaguely familiar and I realized I was familiar with the work of today's guest. And it happened that Dawson, who is one of the editors or some of YouTube channel, he was also a fan and so when two people on my team are really into something, that's obviously something I am going to give a look, and I'm glad I did, because I quite enjoyed the book of today's guest. Dr. Samantha Bordman has a BA from Harvard and MD from Cornell, and then she has a master's in applied positive psychology

from the University of Pennsylvania to say she is trained would be an understatement. But she's interested in this idea of vitality. What does it mean to have a life filled with vitality? Right? And as we talk about in today's episode, that's maybe not the word that people would use, maybe naturally to describe what they want out of life, but it is, in fact, what we want. We want to live filled with vitality. Also, we want to be vital. And her new book, Every Day Vitality, Turning Stress into Strength, the subtitle, really, to me echoes what I was trying to talk about in the obstacles away. And of course, the message of stoicism, which is how do you take the things you

don't control, turn them into things that benefit you, or at least find a way to survive them if you can't get fully there. And we talk a lot about stoicism in this episode. We talk about Victor Frankel. We talk about her work and her new book Everyday Vitality Turning Stress into Strength. You can follow Dr. Samantha Bordman on Instagram at Dr. Samantha Bordman. I follow her. You can follow her on Twitter at Sam B.M.D. and you can go to her website at www.positiveprescription.com. I really enjoyed this interview. I think you're gonna enjoy listening to it and I think Rachel made a great suggestion

and I hope it will be the first of many if they can all go this well. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars and in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. So let's start with the idea of vitality, because vitality is an interesting word. I think when people think about like what they want their life to be, you know, you're like describe your

ideal life in a word. I think they might say like successful or they might say fun or happy. I feel like weirdly, vitality would be pretty far down that list, like if we're thinking about the ranking, like we're doing this like family feud style, but it's actually a really good word to describe what a good life is. Well, I guess, you know, it was a word that I really didn't hear much in my training to become a psychiatrist. It was not a word I really heard out in the world other than when Richard Simmons was talking about like a vitality and it was sort of associated with elderly

people, but it was such an important word because it also implied in every dayness to it. Like, there was something about your daily existence to feel vital and it contained both, you know, your emotional like the psychological experience that you have each day, but also that physical experience. And there was a wonderful quote from Andrew Solomon that he had once said that the opposite of depression isn't happiness, it's vitality. And that sense of sort of how are you living your life in that everyday way. And to me, it was sort of something that had been short-changed in our psychological health, certainly, that we hadn't focused on it enough, and I really wanted to bring it back into the conversation.

And the more I spoke about it with patients, and I had gone back to school and studied applied positive psychology. And that's where it sort of bubbled up here and there, but much more in the physical sense. And I really wanted to bring it more into the psychological domain as well. Yeah, well, I'm thinking about both definitions, right? It's like sort of important or essential, but then it's also like energy and vivaciousness. It has this sort of dual meaning, and maybe that's why people don't immediately come to think about describing their goals or their life as wanting to be vital. Yeah, no, it's not, it's not seen as something like an essential sort of, yeah, need or I

must say nobody that would come to my office being like, I just want to feel vitality. Yeah. But I think that was all the more reason I wanted to shine this light on it. And there was a moment where we were going to call my book and maybe it would have been better for marketing purposes every day strong. That might have probably had more appeal to people. And I mean, the cover, you know, it doesn't look like it's about weightlifting or anything. But what, you know, I really wanted to kind of shine that spotlight on it and see if it did sort of get some pickup.

And I'm not sure that I have fully succeeded in any way, but I do think I've brought it into the conversation, or I hope I have, and I hope that it's something that people are thinking about a little bit more deliberately, and that other side of it that it really does, I do think apply to our everyday life, that idea of feeling vital on a daily basis. What does that mean to you? And what are those steps that you are taking to energize yourself psychologically and physically

and that vitality is a verb? You know that it's something that you are not, you don't have, or you know, and have it, like it's something that you're kind of working at every day. Well, but actually though, so the second definition, this idea of like, liveliness and energy and excitement and energy, that I think, that makes sense.

Like that's what people want. Nobody wants, nobody's like my ideal life every day. I wanna be boring, I want nothing to be happening. You know, I want nothing going on. So I like that, but then, and then I'm making up that the second part about sort of essential, like your vital organs or whatever. That's also what we need to thrive as human beings

is that we need to have purpose and meaning. We need to be for some sort of good, like our presence should mean something. So it actually does strike me as like kind of a perfect word to describe what you should want to get out of life. It's just interesting to me that that's like maybe not what we think. Yeah, no, I love the way you frame that

and you're thinking about it. And increasingly, I had begun to see patients who were walking in the door. There's always that moment between like you're kind of recommended to see somebody, but what actually makes you pick up the phone? And then what makes you physically walk in the door, keep that appointment, or these days hop on Zoom.

And people used to come at these major inflection points in their lives, like there was something major going on. And some sort of clean cut, or some switch, some transformation, some major inflection point. And I started seeing people more and more, just who were having a really hard time dealing with everyday stuff.

And really in that space of lacking vitality, that kind of just keeping their head above water, getting by, but just like playing that kind of just keeping their head above water, getting by, but just like playing that game of everyday, that walk-amul of just not like maybe just getting it done, but just by the skin of their teeth, and feeling so devitalized, and that kind of stress-tired bored headspace of getting by. Do you mean that in the sense of what Victor Frank will call the existential vacuum? Things didn't have meaning, they didn't have purpose, or do you mean it more in the

sort of fragile, not very resilient, able to handle the ups and downs of life? Both. I mean, I think in that kind of that vacuum, that sort of existential void ultimately there of not feeling that they were living their life with their values, but then also just that drained, exhausted, physically sort of devitalized and not bringing that energy, I think, to their relationships, to their everyday life, to their connections, or even their values. Right. Yeah, that's interesting. And I just, to go back to what we're talking about sort of how you define life

I was thinking about you know Aristotle's concept of you D'Amenia or you D'Amenia Which sometimes translate is happiness, but I guess the the fuller translation is something like human flourishing That's I what that's a synonym to me for vitality, right? Yes flourishing as a human being in all the senses of that word. Yeah, no, absolutely. And Martin Salligman really has taken that word flourishing and, you know, I think really brought it to all of us

and recognizing that the possibility and the potential in each and every one of us to flourish. But not in that, I mean, I think sometimes in our sort of short-sighted ways, we have that more hedonic approach to having those moments of like, what's going to be that quick fix for me? And I talk a lot about the long cut.

We're so many moments that it's just so much easier to engage in those efforts, sparing, demand shielding activities that we do that just you end up feeling like a guilty couch potato. Like all of those, and it's actually so devitalizing. And talking to people even after like a long weekend, they just wanna watch TV and put their feet up and eat something that's not healthy

and that whole experience ultimately is so draining. And they end up feeling worse afterwards, like on a Monday and how do we kind of get over that hump and there's so much messaging today about like, you've always got to be yourself and trust your feelings and so, I mean, maybe this is where you and I align. And how do you be?

I ask people, be on you. Like, what is the opposite? You feel like doing right now, or who is somebody you really admire? Like, what would they do in this moment? And I think that that can get us closer to that version of ourselves we would like to be. Well, it's like the famous Kastanza strategy.

Like, do the opposite of whatever you think you should do, because you doing what you think you should do has not worked out very well for you most of the time. You doing you like don't order that to to sandwich. Like what happens if you order like do the opposite. But it really it is those moments of sort of separating one's self from one's impulse, you know, or like that feeling.

And sometimes I think as a psychiatrist I'm supposed to be, you you know so fixated on people's feelings or their emotions or and there's such messaging today to kind of trust your gut and to follow your feelings somewhere and you know taking that healthy step back and breathing for a moment and gaining some distance between what you feel like doing and what's actually going to help you feel strong and better and to make a better choice. Yeah, it strikes me that at the core of Eastern philosophy,

then Western philosophy like socialism, and then even sort of modern psychology and psychiatry is the idea that you not only have the ability to, but you must question your own thoughts and your own impulses and that you have the power to sort of interrupt certain patterns or redirect certain impulses or get to the bottom of emotions that you have. So some of this advice of like, just trust yourself. Do what feels right is like the worst thing that

you could do as a human being. No, absolutely. And I just think so much of like, you know, our training to its psychiatrist, truth, we get really good at focusing on what's wrong with people and kind of helping them kind of feel less bad. And that's that whole focus on pathogenesis. That's the understanding Treatment of disease and we're so much less focused on saluto genesis which is the creation of health and I think we see it very much in this either or way But you're you're either sick or you're not sick. You have an illness You don't and actually helping people find Wellness within illness finding strength within everyday

stress. Like, having that both end, that sharing of that experience, letting even having what we call like emo diversity, like having, you know, those mix of emotions, we ask people, how are you feeling today? And they'll say, good or bad, like we have to have this binary, like it's one or the other. It's been a good day or it's been a terrible one, rather than kind of looking at those multiple experiences, emotions, and they can even, you know, mingle that laughter through tears, those tears through laughter, like all of those experiences that are actually incredibly

enriching and having that diverse range of emotions, it is part of, I think, a full day, a full life, a full experience. What's like, we were talking about Franco earlier, the idea of finding meaning in your suffering, finding that, hey, I don't control that X, Y, or Z has happened, or that I have been dealt, like I was just talking to someone the other day on the podcast who has this, had this debilitating sort of speech impediment. And, you know, this is, that is the hand that he was dealt, right? His life is defined by the potential quality or lack thereof of his life is determined

by his ability to respond to that. Like what is he going to do with that? Like his life is vital or un-vital in so far as he's able to make something of the fact that this is how he speaks, this is how his brain was wired. Right, and I think that sort of, that gets us to that space of sort of realistic optimism. You know, I think a lot of positive psychology deservedly gets, you know, that people look, they don't look favorably upon it because it's seen as toxic positivity or just, you know, smiley faces and rainbows and everything's just happy and you have to be happy all the time and that even any experience that's negative that we

jump at pathologizing, there's something wrong with you, you're grieving, how can I medicate you? But that looking at what people have, how that somebody can work within the limitations of what they've been given and seeing that is I was divided into two domains is uncertainty and powerlessness. What are you certain about and what do you have power over? And that's beyond that, we can't, we have to sort of surrender those pieces, but there's certain things that we pretty much know, and there are certain things that we can't, we have to sort of surrender those pieces, but there are certain things that we pretty much know, and there are certain things that we can control, and to kind of focus one's energy on that,

and almost take that surgical, you know, that scalpel, and try to separate those domains out, and I think that that's where we come to that place of action, rather because when we're so overwhelmed by that sort of negative space, it's really hard to feel that we have any agency. But when we sort of drill down and are able to kind of narrow and funnel what we can control and what we have power over, it changes the playing field and we're able to do something.

And I mean, I sometimes I feel like psychiatry and psychology, it's this notion that happiness is all in your head. It's all up to you as the individual and we really just interiorize this and not noticing how it's in the actions we take, it's in those connections we make and it's how we participate. And I've had patients who have these, you know, breakthroughs or insights, but it doesn't necessarily get them anywhere. If they're still doing the same thing, and there's an old psychologist who calls this insight imperialism. Like the idea that just because you've had that light bulb moment, you know, gee, you should have had a V8, but unless you're actually transforming something,

you're doing something differently, it's not going to change you. It's not going to give you what you're looking for. Yeah, your definition of optimism there is interesting to me. I've always found that when I read scholars on Marcus Aurelius, they're like, this guy was kind of dour and depressive and resigned, that it was dark. And I think about it and I go, well, look at his life.

He buries multiple children. He lives through a plague that kills millions of people. He loses his father at an early age. He loses his mother. He lives in the Roman Empire, a time of immense corruption and evil and cruelty and brutality. It's sort of one thing after another. I'm sort of of the mind that the fact that he got up every day, first and foremost, second that he would pond her philosophy, that he tried to be a good person, that he kept going,

he showed up for work every day, that this was, these were statements of immense optimism and fortitude and strength, like this would have killed a lesser human being. So I think sometimes we think about, like we judge, like is this person walking around with a huge smile on their face? If so, they're an optimist. That might be crazy, you know, like actually

what's optimism or resilience or sort of real bravery is just the walking around part. Like just being a human in a fucked up world and not giving up and quitting is an immense act of courage. Absolutely and I love the way you're describing that because it's really embodied optimism. It is getting out of bed, it is showing up. It's actually what you're doing. It's not sort of thinking happy thoughts or dreaming that he was going to sort of have this wonderful cushy life tomorrow.

I mean, he was super realistic and just putting that one foot in front of the other that is embodied optimism. Yeah, well, it's funny to say embodied optimism because he says at one point, the stokes say, like, don't talk about your philosophy, embody it. So talking, hey, everything's great. That's well and good. But really what matters is, what are you saying with your actions?

Are you saying, I have a will to live. I see a light at the end of the tunnel. I believe this has meaning. The little decisions we make, like getting up and doing the dishes instead of letting them pile up in the sink, the decision to put on, like take a shower and put on fresh clothes and go outside. These are statements that actually say,

I think a lot more than we think they do. They say like, things matter, that like I care, you know, like, I'll be here tomorrow. Like we're actually making little statements about, you know, our values and about the future by nature of these seemingly mundane actions we take in the present moment. Well, I love that. I mean, it's truly, and that's how we're kind of closing that intention action gap when we're doing of closing that intention action gap. When we're doing that, and I think that sometimes we don't even acknowledge those little things,

like we don't give ourselves even credit for showing up and doing the dishes or following through or returning that call, and we never at the end of the day think of, oh, here's my already done list, you know, of great things I did. And, you know, wow, but actually when we do take a moment to think, that just like our daily lives, there's a lot that we put out and put into them and acknowledge it and recognize it. I, there's a wonderful poet who wrote a book about basically delight hunting. It was called the Book of Delight. And I read it during the pandemic, and it's by Roske, and he deliberately decides to the light hunt every day and to write

a small essay on something that delighted him. And how he talks about how he builds his delight muscle over time, and how he really learns learns and it's sometimes the most mundane interaction. Somebody asked him to hold a plant on a flight is there sort of trying to put their suitcase in the overhead band. Just these little moments of connection that we do fail to recognize or not see. And I think of Ellen Langer's work where she talks a lot

about the essence of mindfulness is actually just noticing new things and how we kind of wear these blinders where we're just shutting down all the time. She talked about when couples who've been married for 30 years, they come into her office and just say, oh, I'm so sick of her. I'm so sick of the other person. Here she goes again. And how we start just predicting how somebody else is going to behave. We know the end of the movie, and this is the way they're going to be.

And she said, nobody's ever come to my office and said, I'm so sick of my dog, or I'm so sick of my child, or I'm so sick of my plant, even, because we're kind of expecting them to change. We're primed to watch them do something different, or to be a little bit different in the world. Whereas with our partners, we just sort of fail to see that and we're just completely blind to it. So her advice always was look for something slightly different about them. Find one or two things that you notice about them. It's not the same, but it's different.

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step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondering app. But the idea of delight is really interesting to me because, again, yeah, the point about sort of putting the values into practice, when you go through the world like a poet or an artist who notices what's special or interesting or delightful about something, you see a lot more than someone who sort of takes things for granted. And some of the most beautiful passages in Marx releases, meditation are him noticing the way bread cracks open or he talks about one of

my favorite ones. He talks about the way that a stock of grain bends over hung by its own weight, right? The weight of the stock of grain as it grows tall, it starts to bend over. And you go, yeah, there's certainly moments of darkness in the writing. And certainly he experienced, you know, warfare and plague and all these things. Yet if he's still noticing, you know, the way that, you know, bread looks in the oven, there's something to that, right? Like I like when I go out to my car in the morning and it's like, oh, a cat's been here. You know, you look at like the little cat footprints

like in the dust in your car. I always try to look for those little things that are special or cute or, you know, just sort of highlight the absurdity or daintyness of life. To me, that's something that can always balance out whatever dark shit is happening at the same time. But you have to be looking for it and that that's the thing. I think you have to override yourself and your inclination to look down, to certainly

look at our phones and be primed to see it. And when you are delight hunting, you're much more likely to see it. And then you wanna share it with somebody. And it is as a little moment, I try to take like a different walk to work every day or just to see something that's slightly different. And you're right, that sort of internal smile you get, or just just something funny or amusing

that you wouldn't have seen otherwise. But it's only when you're looking for it, or when you're feeling fully present. Somebody said to me the other day that, you know, be wherever your feet are. And I love that idea. It just sort of says it all, but kind of that sense of noticing what's around you, soaking it in, kind of absorbing that. And, you know, with wide eyes looking around you. I think so often we walk into, we're sort of walking our blinders on

or at least it's as though we're always walking into a dark room. And with a flashlight in our hand, we're just sort of looking into the corners to look for where the cockroaches are going to be. And we don't lift it up and we're not seeing, maybe there's a painting on the wall, maybe there's a window,

maybe there's another doorway to something beautiful. And there's a window, maybe there's another doorway to something beautiful. And it's kind of, how do we remember? And it doesn't come naturally to most of us. It's not something that is just that obvious sort of experience that we're seeking. And I think it's why I always talk about deliberately, deliberate vitality and deliberate resilience.

Well, yeah, you said talking about that book that it's the idea of building the delight muscle, the muscle that notices the thing instead of glossing over it or taking up a granite or, or even like cynically dismissing it, like how it could be better or what's wrong with it, right? Like, it actually, it takes a certain amount of presence, as you said, but it also takes a certain amount of sort of conscious discipline to not do the opposite. Yeah, no, I completely agree. And it's something that, honestly, for me,

it's like Groundhog Day. Like, if I don't deliberately try to do it, I mean, I think my natural inclination is more inward and internally driven and more fearful. I think I'm probably more in defense mode than discover mode than more often than I would like to be. But I've also learned that I can override that as well. Well, Groundhog Day is an interesting thing to bring up because it's also, we live our lives as if it's Groundhog Day doing the same thing over and over and over again.

And it's only when you step back and like as you said, take a different walk to work or put on a different kind of pair of glasses or whatever that you can see the environment which has kind of receded into the background or the people in your life which you have come to see as predictable or whatever, that you're able to see them sort of fully and new in the moment that you're in as something special and unique that you're not taking for granted. I mean, it's why the pandemic I think was so interesting too, is we were forced to completely sort of have new routines, develop new habits, spend time with, you know, that smaller group of people. And there's a lot of research around this, how it's only in experience as a forced experimentation to people really change their behavior in the long term.

And it's this, these, when we have these external kind of guardrails put around us, but that doesn't mean that we can't. We just have to be more disciplined about it. And I think we often focus so much in my business on motivation, self-control. And that's great, but it comes in a go sometimes. So how do you feel, like, what can you do to make the decisions that you want to make easier for yourself?

How do you make the you know how does it keep in line like sort of with your values and to be more deliberate about them and close that Intention action gap and there's a lot of research around there about mental contrasting. It's not just Thinking that gee, I'd really like that but you know, so identifying the obstacle in the way that is stopping you from doing that and then developing a very specific and concrete plan, like, oh, I'd like to look at my phone list because then I feel more present.

I'd have better conversations with my partner and my kids. Okay, so what's stopping you from doing that? Well, it's in my hand, you know, when I pick them up from school or when I'm at dinner. Okay, so I'm going to turn it off or leave it, you know, in another place. So you're really having those very specific plans because otherwise, like positive thinking gets us nowhere. We end up actually feeling worse in the long term, disappointed, frustrated, and upset and kind of devitalized in the process. Yeah, it's, I think a lot of people woke up during the pandemic and

realized for the first time that they hate where they live or they hate their job or in some less humorous spouses, they humorous scenarios, they really don't like their spouse or just things that had receded into the background or because they were so busy or preoccupied or distracted that they never really thought about it. And then they were like, oh, this isn't working for me. Yeah. No.

And I mean, I think there were so many surprises that emerged from that. We thought that being an explosion of divorces, people actually having this new appreciation for their partner. And also, for the first time realizing like, oh, that's what they do, you know, and having this sense of, you know, having no clue prior to that. And that people did get closer though. I did just read this study about how, if in our everyday lives, having a diverse, like, a range of interactions with people, like, of course, it's wonderful to spend time with our loved ones. Parents these days spend less time with their friends, they spend more time on their children.

And how having that range of experiences, you know, so if you're, it's a Saturday and maybe you're spending like most of the day with your partner, it's probably if you spent 10 hours together, spend like that, that 11th hour is not going to have that added benefit. And if you would, you know, maybe spend a little bit more time like making a, you know, an appointment to see a friend, go for a walk in the park with them, do something that engages your brain because in those moments you get to wear a different hat, you get to be a different person, you embody a different role with them and how important that is otherwise we sort of get stuck on autopilot when we're with our nearest and dearest sometimes and sometimes switching hats and then coming back

to each other is very important for our connection. And the idea that you need to spend all your time together, they need to be your one and only, I think is actually a bit of a myth. Yeah, well speaking of changing gears, when I wrote the obstacles the way, which is the subtitle similar to yours, yours is turning strength, stress into strength,

I said, you know, the art of turning trials into triumph, the question I probably got the most often was like, what's the biggest obstacle you faced in your life? Or like, what's the worst thing that ever happened to you? Which I've never really had a good answer for. And then when I was reading your book, I was struck by what I think is one of the best lines. You said, you know, any idiot can handle a crisis. It's the day-to-day life that wears you down. It's check-off. It's not me. Oh, no, no,

sorry, but I, but, but I think we do tend to think of adversity or difficulty as this like thing that hits you once, as opposed to being kind to ourselves and understanding that life itself is fucking exhausting and difficult and full of stresses and struggles and that sort of, it's okay for that to wear on you as a person. Well, no, absolutely. And I think sometimes we're messaging people to, you know, that you shouldn't have any stress in your life. And like, what you're stressed out,

it means you're committed, that you care, that you're invested, that that's important too and to have that sort of desirable difficulty, that kind of, those chosen challenges Paul Bloom speaks about, but what really struck me about this resilience research, and resilience was not a word, by the way, I heard in my medical training at all, and it was, you know, suddenly it's a word we hear all the time,

and you know, resilience gets thrown around, as, you know, your hair product's going to make you, or hair more resilient, but it's, it's actually, there's a lot of research about it now. And what surprised me so much was that people in general tend to have big R resilience, that in general, people do recover from major setbacks in their lives. That it's not something that you're special. If you have this, this is not something that you're just the lucky few who are born with.

It's something it's the default, actually. And that you don't always need, you know, whenever there's a crisis, people want, you know, psychologists to rush there or maybe you need to talk to somebody. And, you know, a lot of the evidence shows that people are gonna do just fine over time. And, but what really struck me was that what people have less resilience to, they

have what I call like little R resilience, is they lack that in every day stuff, like that barrage, those irritations, those annoyances, that just, you know, the daily grind that just drains us and leaves us exhausted and dividedized. And what makes people feel better? It's a lot of those actions, connections, doing stuff that is commensurate with their values. And if you look at these, the lists of what makes people feel strong and gives them a boost,

it's engaging in their hobbies, spending time outdoors, doing things with others, doing something for somebody else. Way down on that list is talking to a therapist about my problems. And so that's where I just was so interested in these ways that how do we build little art resilience? We know. And these days, I love that book. It was great, called Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. And it was a wonderful book, but I think that's our response right now to anybody having a hard time. It's like, maybe you should talk to someone. And it was a wonderful book, but I think that's our response right now to anybody having a hard time.

It's like, maybe you should talk to somebody. And what else could they be doing to also help them feel strong? Like maybe they're not getting enough sleep. Or they're looking at their phone, or they've been moving more, could they be connecting more. And I think there's a lot of other reservoirs of little or resilience that we just need to remind ourselves to tap into.

Yeah, I think people don't, people know those things work, you know, what time you wake up, what time you go to bed, how much screen time are you doing, how much you drinking, to be the kind of person that, like, under cells or makes light of the struggle that someone has. So we don't want to go, oh, you're super depressed. It's because you're not sleeping enough, right? So we kind of outsource, like, solving the problem to this sort of one-size-fits-all thing of therapy. Like, go talk to someone. That will solve it.

But the reality is it's a both. You need both. You need to do these basic things, and then probably also, if that's not doing it, escalate, you know, escalated up the chain of command. Well, I think we've become so uncomfortable with people's negative emotions, with grief, with sadness, with anger, with frustration. And, you know, to sweep that under the

rug or like, don't talk about it, there's like not space that we hold for that. And, you know, that there's a lot to be learned, you know, from those experiences and when we are feeling that certain way, and I guess the key is to try to be as specific as one can about what one's feeling and experience why, but I always think of it as data points, you know, because when we're learning from our negative emotions, when we're leaning into them, that's how we actually realize, like that's when we stopped doing those same patterns over and over again, but we were talking about, we stopped repeating that the same habits that are getting us into that place, it's sort of taking that step back and

recognizing that. So I might be a positive psychiatrist, but I'm a big believer in learning from those negative emotions, and sort of leaning into them and learning from them. Yeah, I Obviously, there's something like a pandemic happening and there's a loss of someone you love. There's being born in this country or that country There's you know, you're born in this race or that race. There's all these big things that can fall on you But then there's there's just the shit that happens in life. I was talking to my wife about this, like in the span of like two days or the same day, like I realized that like an idiot, I had forgotten to renew my passport and I was supposed

to leave the country like on Saturday. And so now I have to drive to Houston for an 8 AM appointment. So I'm gonna have to get up at like four in the morning. I'm gonna spend all day at a government office, hoping that some bureaucrat will bless me with these magical papers so I can leave. If not, I'm gonna have to cancel this thing,

which is gonna cost me a bunch of money. People are gonna be really mad at me and I'll feel really stupid about it. And then at the same time, it's like my youngest was supposed to enroll in school, but then we didn't get the email for enrolling unless it's like, if it didn't happen, you know, enrolling and open at nine, and if you weren't enrolled by 906, like all the spots, you know, and you're just like, but we were dealing with it. And I was like, we didn't get like, short with each other one time about it, neither

of us spiraled about it. We just like, did what we were supposed to do and then we went on with our life, right? Like, that's what we're working on. Like, that's the, that's it, right? Like, can you just like, not be wrecked by the fact that a bunch of stuff is going sideways at the same time. It could be huge stuff. You could be living in Ukraine right now, which would obviously be crazy on a fundamentally different level.

Or it could just be the fact that you were booked to fly across the country on December 26th and you had a multi-leg flight on Southwest. And it could be big or small. And how do you handle it? That's what you're working on getting better at. Well, and that's where, like, I think those gusts of wind are always coming at us.

Like, you know, I think of it as kind of that tumbleweed experience. Like, we just feel tossed around by those gusts of wind and that we have no control. And it really does feel so out of control, but that essence of little our resilience is trying to kind of keep that internal compass, that core, those values front and center, and not being is derailed by it. I always think of it and I do this all the time, like when it's raining out and I'm walking outside with an umbrella,

and I keep walking around, but then like probably like an hour later, whatever that is, I realize wait the rain stopped. You know, and that you have that weird moment of wait, you're still behaving as if, like you're still in that place of the storm. And that, you know, that, so you got probably, you know, the the analogy being like you're adrenaline's up, like you are in defense mode, you're sort of ready to swing at anything that comes your way. And I think so often we are walking around with that umbrella up and not looking around and be like, wait, the sun's already come out. Now we go.

Or I don't even know when. It's sort of embarrassing how long you've been doing this and probably, you know, people have to be out of the sidewalk to avoid you. But how do we be more deliberate? And I think it's, again, every single day, it's not that you have it or you don't. It is groundhog day. And I think that little or resilience is something that we have to work on. And it's often in those moments where we're kind of transcending ourselves.

Like we are doing the opposite of what we feel like doing or you know, probably having that being irritated with one's partner for not, you know, signing your kid up earlier for school or whatever that thing is or realize being furious with yourself or not remembering your passport was going to expire. I mean, you can spend time in that place or you can kind of choose also and be deliberate about how you're going to go about your day and not let it hover over you the way that it easily can. One of the things you talk about in the book, which is what I think I would have been primed to do, you know, not just earlier in my life, but like had I circumstances

been slightly differently, I woke up slightly on the different side of the bed. I would have spiraled or catastrophized. Like, because I did this, this is going to happen and then this is going to happen and then this is going to happen and then the stress of that would have sort of overwhelmed me or made me lash out in some way. So talk to me about catastrophizing.

I mean, catastrophizing, I think, that comes also really naturally to most of us. I'd probably a queen catastrophizer in ways. But when you're envisioning that worst case scenario, it's all doom and gloom. Nothing's ever going to get better. And really the main problem of that is it like really, it deprives us of opportunities, of doing things, of taking action, of realizing our potential. And if we have an experience with somebody or something, like you go on an interview for a job, and there's something ambiguous in that interaction, then you immediately interpret that

in the worst possible way. That person hated me. I probably did a horrible job. I thought I was an idiot. And then you don't follow up. You don't necessarily send an email thanking them because you're already convinced it's over. You're not getting that job. And so it's the consequences of catastrophizing that can be catastrophic in a way. And so how do you override that? And Martin Seligman also he's come up with this exercise, he calls put it in perspective.

And where he's allows you to think of, okay, what is the absolute worst thing that could happen here? Like, they hated me, I'm not getting that job or whatever. Then consider what's the absolute best case scenario. They love me, they're going to double the salary, this is amazing, I'm going to have the best job there. And then what's the most realistic outcome here? And so when you can sort of recognize and hold together those two extremes of the worst case, the best case, and then the most realistic outcome, you know, it kind of puts you back to that place of realistic

optimism we were talking about of being, of putting things in perspective, having some clarity, and that can take us off the ledge a little bit of that place where we're just so quick to spiral downwards. And I think when we're also deliberate in our everyday ways about more uplifts in our day, like there's so many hassles, how can we be deliberate about having more uplifts, like moments of joy or delight or recognizing something that makes us laugh or that makes us feel strong

or we're doing something for somebody else? It helps balance. It creates a balance between all these hassles and the uplifts can kind of weigh the scale in the other direction and makes us sort of more open to new experiences, to exposing ourselves to maybe seeing that ambiguous situation in a more positive light. So I think that's another way to protect us

from that slippery slope of catastrophizing. I'm glad you brought up that tension because there is a tension, right? Like the Stoics talk about how you want to anticipate stuff. Seneca says, you know, the unexpected blow lands heaviest. He says the only inexcusable thing for a leader to say is I did not think that would happen. And then he also says, you know, we suffer more than we need to. He says we suffer more in imagination than in reality.

He says we suffer before our time. Basically he's saying like, you got to think about everything that could happen. So you're prepared. And then he's, but also don't be anxious and don't catastrophize. Yeah. It reminds me of an Alex Hanold who climbed El Capitan, you know, and that he would think about and imagine in his mind every possible scenario, every gust of wind, every mosquito that could come out and bite him, but then he also would do it and practice it over and over and

over again. And so I think that idea of somebody who's thinking about it, imagining different case scenarios, but also taking action, participating, like doing that thing that isn't leaving him paralyzed with fear. I mean, fear is healthy. Like this is something we need in our lives. This is what actually can keep us safe, but not when it's taking us to that extreme. So how do we sort of uncouple fear from that paralysis that can kick in? And I think by kind of engaging in those exercises and overriding it is a way to let fear have its place, but not subsuma.

Yeah, and I think if you're thinking about what could happen constructively and then taking, you know, reasonable, structively and then taking, you know, reasonable, you know, sane actions in response to that outcome so that you're not caught off guard or wrecked by it, you know, you're just sort of normal preparedness or contingencies. That's not the same as being paralyzed because you're dreading, you know, what may or may not happen. Not only is that thing very unlikely to happen,

but you're just like, all you're doing is amoting out into the world as if that's making the thing that you dread more or less likely. It's really just torturing yourself. Yes, no. And it's again, the idea of, you know, people don't, events aren't necessarily traumatic. They're potentially traumatic. It's how we interpret them, how we

experience them. And I, you know, I often meet patients who have, like, they're in this base of, like, the as soon as kind of life, like, they're in that, like, as soon as all my ducks are in order, then I will do this. Or as soon as that happens, and kind of waiting, sitting there, waiting for something to happen. And it's really driven off in by fear of taking that step or doing that thing. And it just seems so overwhelming. And it's very much fear driven.

And being able to just take that for, put one foot in front of the other and say, like, what am I really waiting for? Like, let's just break this down with that one thing I can do to get me closer to that place that I'd like to be. Yeah, it's like if I'm getting up and I'm working on making a little bit of progress or a little bit of preparation, awesome. If I'm just waking up defined by my dread or worry, I'm probably

not doing it right. Yeah, but I mean, but allowing that space, I think, for that dread and worry, like I think it's, it's, it's, it's information, like it's there to help us and even to guide us. And maybe we're the last one sometimes to know it's our friends who can help us be like, wait a minute, maybe you should talk to somebody or maybe you're not, like you are spinning your wheels. And I think sometimes we need to be careful too with people we spend time with, who we engage in that, not necessarily productive connection, which is a rumination. When we're just spinning our wheels and we're having that same conversation over and over again. Like, and you know you're co-ruminating with somebody.

And you're like, didn't we talk about this last week? And I thought we covered that. And it's not helpful to co-ruminate with our kids or our friends. And it actually just kind of doesn't help them reconstruct what the issue is. They're just repeating it. They're actually just reliving it over and over again. And so there's interesting, you know,

research around this when you ask people to just self-distance. You know, when you kind of create that distance between yourself and how you're feeling and asking them like, what would your future self think about this? And what would you tell a friend in this situation, trying to how would a fly on the wall,

how would they describe this at this point to you? But because asking them to kind of remove themselves from it, rather than immerse themselves in their feelings, which when they're ruminating, it's literally like a ruminant, like a cow chewing their cud. Here we go again. And it can feel kind of cozy a little bit to ruminate with somebody. It can kind of feel good or bonding initially, but then you realize like you're just repeating that same conversation over and over again,

and it's not necessarily helpful to them or to you to be in that space, help them reconstruct, help them self-distance and find a path through it. Well, I also think to go back to what we're talking about, some of these basic practices, it's like if you get out and go for a run, if you're a member of a group, you know, if you have these sort of positive, sort of vital institutions in your life, they can be, at the very least, just one hour of the day when it's not possible for you to do that thing, to be ruled by the dread or the anxiety, because you're busy, right?

You're trying not to drown in the pool as you're swimming laps, so you're not thinking about, I'm waiting for this report to come back and, you know, it could be really, really bad news and then if it's bad news, and it means this, and it means this, it's like you're busy in a productive, healthy way. You're also getting better and you know there's all these benefits but one of the benefits is you have some you know moment of stillness or presence in your life where you can't fall prey to those bad habits or that that thing that's that's worrying you. Yeah, I don't think of it as distraction.

These are genuine, these are experiences that are kind of lifting you out of yourself. A study just came out about why is it? We all know that one of the best antidotes for stress and anxiety is doing something for someone else, but why? It suggests that it's really because it does take you out of yourself.

You are focused on doing something that aligns with your values that also is beneficial to somebody else. Even when you revisit, then you come back to whatever that thing that is bugging you or torturing you or upsetting you. You have a slightly different perspective. And that that's really, I think, the key there. Because, you know, to that quote,

nothing is important is we're thinking about it while we're thinking about it. And you know, that just, it just, you know, it just becomes so big that snowballing effect of that thing that you're thinking about while you're thinking about it is so important. And how do you kind of get that perspective and revisit it? And that's, you know, it's, we all know

that people get their best ideas in the shower or walking in a park like that that's when you're a little bit separated from it where you suddenly have this clarity this clear-eyed way To see something maybe you didn't see before to see an angle to see an edge in or see a way to solve that problem and Again, it goes back to that idea of action like you're able to feel Empowered you've got agency there to have action I always think I go back to self-determination theory, this idea that, you know, around well-being that you need a sense of relatedness, you need a sense of competence, and then you also need that sense of autonomy.

And when I think that's that agency and autonomy piece, like that sense, whether you have some degree of control over it, reclaiming that is often when you take yourself out of it and then revisit it. Yeah, I was saying this at a talk I did yesterday, I was speaking to this recovery group and I was saying, you know, like as a writer, you have way more bad days than good days, right? Over the course of a book, eventually you get enough good days that a finished product comes out of this side, but you have more bad days than good days. But as far as running goes, I only have good days. Like I always succeed at leaving my house to go for a run

and coming back. Like so far, I've always come back. Like, and the metric for what success is there is so much more in my control. It's so much more binary. It's like, did I do it or not? If I did it, I feel good about myself. If I didn't, I don't.

I'm impressed with your, but you always do get to leave the house though. That's impressive. But you know what I mean? It's like you wanna have things in your life that we're winning at them or feeling good about them is in your control, things that give you vitality that are not like, like look, I'm sure if everyone loved you

and you were celebrated on every platform and media outlet every second, if you were getting nothing but good news, if your bank account was only going the right direction, if your children were always behaving the way that you wanted them to behave, you would feel vital and like you were thriving and that you had the greatest life in the world. But that's not life, right? Like nobody gets that many green lights. So you have to find things that are sort of vitality on demand, I feel like.

I love that idea. And that sort of, I think, where hobbies come into, we're just things that we do for the just the joy or the sake of doing them, that we're not moving the goalposts on, that we're not always trying to, you know, improve or enter that space of mastery or excellence. That they don't become our side hustle. They genuinely, we do it because we love doing it. And that's the purest form of love in a way. And I think that we don't really allow for that in their lives. I was interviewing somebody and she's recently out of college.

And I asked her, she had knee hobbies. And she looked at me like I was crazy. Like I was asking her if she was a stamp collector. I felt like a really old library and back to the Dewey Decimal system. But the idea that there was something in her life that she was doing that was just fun. Like she was either working on social media

or like hanging out with her friends. And there's something to be said for like positive mediocrity of just doing things that you just do with a friend that are just fun, that are even easy to do if it is going for that run. Or, you know, maybe somebody, it can be even as simple as it's enjoyable. It might be like folding your laundry or just, you know, baking something or doing something in a garden, like just simple activities that are personal interests that are hobbies or something that you just do

for the joy of it that you're not getting better at. I took up writing during the pandemic and I hadn't gotten on a horse in years and I'm really not good at it. And I, but I love it. And it's something that I try to do once a week and it's really, really enjoyable and fun. And if anything's going on in my head beforehand afterwards, you know, I've just been in like a flow space,

you can't think about anything else while you're doing it. And like, trust me, I'm not going to be Olympics anytime soon, but it's just that the joy of doing something that is meaningful to me than that lifts me out of myself, that is something that, you know, the joy is in the doing. It's not necessarily an accomplishment. And certainly writing a book with the hardest thing I have ever done, I've written academic papers, I've written chapters and textbooks, and, you know, nobody reads those. But this was really forward. You know, they say like, one in three people read an academic paper and that includes your mother. So this was like a way for me to reach many more people and it was so hard for me to get

it done and on top of life and everything else. And Angela Duckworth, who written, grit, sent me as I was just in a hole and I said, I just can't do this. And I imagined for Angela when she wrote, grit, it must have been just a breezy, easy, breezy experience for her. And she just, you know, one night decided to scribble it out. And it was done in two weeks. And she sent me her original proposal

and said, you have no idea. I cried every day for nine months. And here was my proposal. And it sucked. And, you know, actually, and I opened up and it kind of indicted it did suck. And like it was so generous of her to share that experience with me.

And I think sometimes we admire people and we sort of endow them with these superhuman abilities and that everything comes so easily to them. And I am so grateful. I have her email on my wall from that. And to sort of pull back the curtain on how hard she had worked in her like on this. And I'm a big believer in doing hard things

and the joy that one gets from that desirable difficulty. And everybody, I think benefits even kids do from having some hard thing that they do, that they're committed to. But it's also important to kind of balance that with stuff that's just fun, with play, with joy, with something that is just you're doing for the sake of doing it, not to master it or win an award for it. No, I think you may have been at the talk that I gave yesterday because I was telling this

story about Winston Churchill after the First World War, he discovers painting. He gets a children's paint set, and he falls in love with painting. And he would later write this book called Painting as a Pastime. And he says, the first thing that a public person has to have, he says, is a hobby. He says one or two, and it needs to be real.

Like it has to be a thing that gets you like active and doing something. And for him, it was painting. And I think about his paintings. I believe Angelina Jolie just sold his most valuable painting. It was like $11 or $12 million. It's not a good painting.

It's a painting that is valuable because of what it allowed him to do. Right? Like, the art itself is secondary to the fact that it was relaxing and stabilizing and therapeutic and meaningful to a person under immense stress and a person who suffered from depression, a person who saw the worst thing that human beings can do to each other, you know, he got something out of that hobby. And if you don't have one of those, ask yourself, where is that energy going? And it's probably going towards catastrophizing or turning it on yourself in some sort of negative way.

Is running your version of that? Running is definitely, I try to run, swim or bike almost every day, and then I live on a farm outside Austin, Texas. So there's always like manual physical things that we have to do and animals to take care of. So it's like it's the opposite of what like what I do is sit in a chair all day. So I want things that are the opposite of that. Right. And having even those kind of a range of interactions, even with animals.

I would imagine if it's with chickens or something that you're getting the eggs from. But that's sort of the idea again, that the joy is in the doing, it's not in the achieving necessarily. And how do we kind of bring that back? And it's people say, well, I have no time. There's no way, how could you expect me to have a hobby? And it was at Harvard Business School

where they did a study looking at even employees who engaged just 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and maybe it's like trying to learn a new language, or doing something outside of that principle domain of where they spend all of their energy. And how that, again, it was revitalizing. And I think so many of the ways we use our time is so revitalizing and ends up making us feel

worse and thinking of Kelly Lambert's research where she we're not rats but she studies rats and and she would give some of the rats in her lab they were given a fruit loop and that's like their favorite thing apparently is to get this awesome fruit loop and they're they're just handed this fruit loop basically like on a silver platter, and they get it, and they're very, very happy. And then the other group of rats, she would hide the fruit loop under the bedding,

and they had to go foraging and dig it up, and it was a process, an engagement of their bodies to go and retrieve this delightful treat for them. That was their delight hunting. And then she challenges these rats again and they're either put in a sort of swimming, like they have to swim through something they don't really like to swim, but they can or put in a maze. And the rats who had to fight more and had to forage for their fruit loop, they were far

more resilient. They tried much harder, they would work much, and they're much more persistent and going after their treat again. It was now buried, though on the other side of the maze, and she called the first group of rats, her trust fund rats. Like, they were the rats who just couldn't, you know, they didn't know what to do. They'd always just gotten that like yummy treat and didn't know how to handle it, but those who'd actually embodied, you know, and exerted energy in some way and been challenged in the past, were able to then in a new context to rise to that challenge. And, you know, it kind of reminded me, though, of how these stories we tell, like the story we tell really matters, you know, it's,

what happens in life, It's not what happened. It's what you remember. And the stories we tell about things, I think the stories we tell about COVID, the pandemic, are we telling one only of trauma that people are damaged, especially young children that they are broken, that they are fragile, that they need to be spared

all challenges, that we need to sort of walk on eggshells around them, or they also telling a story of, what did they learn here? What did they, what would they advise somebody else in this situation? What could they, where could they add value? Is there something they could take away from this? And that dovetails with the research over children

who know their family history, like the arc of life, like where their grandparents met, where their parents met, where their great grandparents hailed from, and they understand the challenges, and they also understand the triumphs along the way, and that recognizing that they aren't the centerpiece of this story, that they aren't the whole book, that they are part of the story of life was difficult, then it was great, then it sucked again, and seeing that arc, that those kids who understand

that things can be hard, things can be good, and there's ups and downs, what they call the oscillating narrative, that those kids end up feeling more resilient when they're faced again with the challenge. They're not like the trust fund rats. Well, I thought about that during the pandemic, you know, um, when you talk to people who live through the depression or World War two, they're never like, oh, it was the worst thing that ever happened to me.

I never recovered, you know, the whole rest of my life was downhill from there. I mean, obviously there is such a thing as the survivorship bias, but like it was a transformative event. It was a formative event for them, and they're who they are today because of what they went through. And not only are you able to do that yourself, we should remember that like, we're descendants, the thing about the story you tell yourself, we're descendants from an unbroken line of people who have endured immense tragedy and difficulty and things that, you know, are 10,000 times worse than what we're going through today. So, of course, we have the skills and the strength and the fortitude to get through whatever this is. It might not be easy, but it is possible.

Yeah. No, and I worry sometimes about that trauma narrative, of brokenness and fragility, that if we're not also looking at, and not in a toxic sort of positivity way of just, what are the silver linings? Again, holding both. I think being able to see that both and not the either or. And asking kids to even sort of, how do you tell this story?

Like how will you tell this story to your grandchildren about that really weird moment? And helping them reformulate that. What advice would they give to somebody else going through that situation? 50 years from now, God forbid. And turning them into givers of their experience rather than just receivers of help.

Yeah, and that's like the one thing that you control is the story that you're gonna take from it. Like you control, you didn't control that it happened, but you do control what it means to you and, you know, what you're going to do next. Now, a whole heartedly agree. Well, this conversation was amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time and I loved the book and thanks so much for coming on. Thank you so much for taking the time and I loved the book and thanks so much for coming on. Thank you so much for the pleasure. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes,

that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode. Hey, Prime Members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts.