The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - 4 Moments On The Diary Of A CEO That Changed My Life

Episode Date: September 5, 2022

This week, we’re going to do something a little different, offering up four pearls of wisdom from our guests on how to find more connection in your life. Connection with other people, but also a better connection with yourself, what you really want, and what’s really good for you. These four incredible snippets from Mo Gawdat, Africa Brooke, Bear Grylls and Mel Robbins together offer inspiration on how to break through the mental barriers holding you back to feel more present in the moment and be clearer with yourself and others about your needs and desires. When a guest steps into the kitchen and sits themselves down, they’re not just appearing on a podcast, they’re joining the Diary of a CEO community. Every single conversation adds new dimensions of truth, honesty, wisdom and integrity. By bringing these four passages together, it shines new light on the individual value of them all, but it also helps us understand the journey we’re all on together in more perspective. Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United States and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. Since starting the Diary of a CEO, one of the most popular questions I get asked is what are your favourite episodes and what are your favourite guests? Now I don't think about it in terms of that. I think about moments and insights. So in this episode we're going to do something a little bit different. I'm going to show you four moments from the Diary of a CEO that genuinely changed my life and changed how I think about one of my core beliefs that I then actioned that made my life better. The other thing that you mention in your book, that little voice in your head, is this concept of neuroplasticity. It says it on the back of the book, it says, retrain your brain for maximum

happiness. This concept that we can retrain our brain physiologically seems like nonsense. You know, I can't change my arm. So when someone, you know, asserts that you can actually change your brain. You can change your arm. I can change my arm? Of course. What, a tattoo? No, you work out. That's true. When you work out, you're building muscles in your arms. And that same exact process is exactly what happens inside our brains. And it's called neuroplasticity. The only difference is that you don't see it.

You don't see it visibly. You can see your muscles growing because that's the function that they need. You know, they need to grow to perform. But in your brain, what actually happens again, like computers, it's almost as if you loaded a new piece of software and need a new piece of operating system on your brain, literally for every one of us listening, everyone listening to us right now, at the end of this conversation, their brain will be wired differently than when it started. Every single instance of anything that you do literally rewires the hardware itself,

the neurons that fire together, wire together. Okay. So imagine the old days of the switchboard. Okay. And, you know, Steve wants to call his mom. So you, you know, crank your phone and the operator says, you know, hi, how can I help you? And you say, can you please connect me to that number? And she would literally take a wire and patch you and your mom's phones together. Okay. After a while, the operator constantly, every time you call, you want to, you ask for your mom.

So the operator goes like, why am I even wasting my time on this? Let me just patch that wire to his mom all the time. So that's exactly what happens in our brains. If you perform a certain function, your brain starts to build networks that make that function easier to perform in the future. If you do it one time, it becomes a little easier. If you do it 20 times, it becomes permanent. And there are tons of studies. If you take a simple task like tapping your finger on the table, and you're requested to do that,

say 20 times every hour, after a few days, you'll find that you're so much better at tapping your finger on the table and you can do it much faster and you can do it consistently and you can do it in the background. Gamers know that for certain.

The problem with neuroplasticity is if you tell your brain to wire for tapping your finger, it will. If you tell it to wire for solving complex mathematical equations, it may take a little longer, but it will. If you tell it to wire for hating people, it will become very good at hating. If you tell it to wire for fearing the end of the world because of what the media is telling you, it's going to become very good at fearing the world. I know some of those people. No, absolutely. And you don't want them in your life. The challenge of our modern world is that we think that this brain is supposed to be there to make us successful. Yeah. Okay. First of all, it's not the primary function of the brain. The primary function of the brain is to make you safe okay and then the secondary function that we push

human as humans to that brain to do is to invent iphones and create podcasts and have amazing things right that's a secondary function but believe it or not before that secondary function your your brain is supposed to make you happy because happy is the ultimate form for you to perform in life. If you're not happy, you're not as effective as you could be at achieving survival. Think about it. If you're grumpy all the time at work, people don't like you. You're not focused. No one wants to help you. You're wasting most of your time, your brain cycles, you know, thinking about the negative. And so you're not innovative or creative and so on and so forth. It degrades your performance. Happy is a better place for you to be at work because it will make your customers want to do

business with you. It will make your colleagues want to, you know, to help you out. It will make your boss welcome you in their team and so on and so forth. We are social animals by definition. And we want to have that in our life. And the easiest way to connect and to open up and to discover the world is to be in a happy place. That's a primary function of your brain. It's hard for some people, you know, because we can all think of someone in our lives who has certain wiring, very stubborn wiring, that almost seems impossible to unwire. And I think we all have that ourselves as well, certain wiring in our brains where something happens and our reaction to that thing might be, you know, to catastrophize. It's the end of the world. That's like a certain, it feels like it's a certain set of wiring where trigger,

and then the brain goes through the circuitry and it goes catastrophe panic yeah and and the answer to that i found was to actually guide that person or yourself if that's yourself to the opposite of your wiring so if my if my wiring is to look at everything and see what's wrong with it i should deliberately force my brain to look for what's right with it. So, you know, when I was coming here, it was very busy in the morning. And so I came late, if you remember. And my brain's immediate reaction is, oh, what's going to happen? I'm going to be late for Steve, right? That's the immediate reaction of a brain because something is wrong. So it looks for what's wrong. I could also say, and what is good about that?

What is good about being a little late? You know, he's been recording for the last few days. So it may give him a little bit of extra time. Do you want to know the truth? I was so happy you were late because I was late. So I was doing upstairs reading that. I was reading the book and I was thinking, I just hope he's like 15 minutes late. And then I'm looking at my phone.

I'm like, I really, he's not coming at perfect. So I carried on going and carried on going and carried on going. And I just finished as you arrived. Yeah. So it's perfect timing. You see, that is the truth. That's the truth that your brain tries to deny you from seeing. And interestingly, you can train your brain.

So basically what you can do is for every thought, for every negative thought that your brain gives you, task it with the task of giving you a positive one. Or two positive ones. Nine, I say. Nine. Yeah, because in reality, if you look at life around you, more than 90% of life is okay. For your brain to contribute more than that as negative is not fair, right? So if literally, if your brain says, hey, by the way, this studio is a little warm, what else is about the studio? My friend Steve is there. The lighting is perfect. The crew is amazing. You know, the coffee is not that bad. You guys got me honey. I can go on for hours, right? And the idea is by training your brain to look for that, what are you actually

doing? You're firing the neurons together. Gratitude. And exactly, your book basically says it is the answer. The answer is when you find gratitude, that gratitude journal that you kept for years every day, what was it telling you? It was training your brain to look for what's right. That your brain every night that you did it was like, okay, it seems he's going to be asking to call his mom a lot more often. It seems he's going to be asking for good things a lot more often. I might as well observe them. I might as well find them. And so, yes, you said some people are impossible to rewire. They're impossible to rewire if they've been practicing a certain wiring for 21 years. It's not going to take 21 seconds to

rewire anyone, including me and you. It will take 21 days, let's say, for your brain to recognize, I need different wiring. And it will take maybe 21 months for your brain to say, and I don't need the old wiring anymore. Okay. And the game here is, can you actually keep doing that? Can you keep tapping your finger in a way that trains your brain that this is the wiring that you need? Like, can I keep going to the gym and working on my guns? Yeah.

Believe it or not, the research will tell you that a big part of being athletic is wiring of your brain, not your muscles. For your brain to be able to say, I will go even if I feel a little tired, I will go even if I feel a little busy, I will go and I will do the right exercises, even if the last push is a little painful. A lot of people will hear that and go, but what's the evidence for this? What's the evidence for neuroplasticity? Is there science? Oh, there is a ton of science behind neuroplasticity. Anything from between neuroplasticity and neurogenesis is when, you know, neuroplasticity is to rewire the connections between the neurons.

And neurogenesis is to actually create new neurons when, if you're hit with a ball, for example, and part of your brain is damaged, how we can recreate that, right? If you have a stroke and how you recreate that. And ample evidence, one of the very famous stories is Matthew Ricard, when we spoke about him in the beginning. Matthew's brain looks different than the average human brain. His insula is much bigger in relative comparison his prefrontal cortex is is bigger and and it what it fires more often it's simply because of the constant neuroplasticity of i need you to meditate i need you to stay quiet i need you i mean some of the of of of matthew's journeys would last four years in isolation. He would meditate for four years. Be in isolation in hermitage for four years, right?

And so at that level, your brain starts to do very different things. And by the way, that's not unusual. Many farmers around the world live in isolation for a very long time. Believe it or not, you and I, when we spend a long time on airplanes, I chose a long time ago to not watch a lot of stuff on, you know, I maybe watch one movie, but not the entire trip. The other bits of silence, that's actually a form of meditation.

I, you know, my absolute wonderful friend, Jamie Nelson, the photographer, if you know him, he photographs indigenous tribes. And the way he does it is he would go and spend a few months outside their premises, you know, their village, if you want, in silence, you know, camping out there. He doesn't speak their language. He's just sitting there waiting for them to accept him. And then he would start to, you know, communicate to them in sign language because he doesn't speak their language. And he's one of the wisest people I know. And I said, how did you become this wise? He never studied any of those things.

And the reality is, is because he's in constant reflection and meditation. He's sitting out there and he's spending hours and days in reflection and meditation, right? Because you're sitting alone. All of those things are our habits and all of us have the chance to do it. So you could be on the tube for a commute of 40 minutes a day, and you could be in that commute cursing life. And that's a very good 40 minute

exercise to work and another 40 minute going back. Or you could be spending the 40 minutes in gratitude. You could be first, you know, spending the 40 minutes listening to music. Could be doing whatever. What you will do for 40 minutes a day will rewire your brain. It really is like a paradigm shifting thought that our brains are in this constant growth and evolution. But when we look at, as you said, my muscles are, my muscles are changing state size, growing more fibers to achieve their objective in a different way. And of course, my brain is as well. And when you think about that, it's really liberating because you realize that you're not stuck with who you are. Absolutely not. So let's choose what, which parts of it are we going to grow? I think that's the whole point. And we grow it with our actions and our thoughts.

Repetitive actions, thoughts, and memories. Believe it or not, one of the interesting things is if you take a memory in the past and you think about it over and over and over, it's as if it's happening over and over and you're growing the neurons that are needed, you're growing the connections between the neurons that are needed to trigger that memory. Think happy memories. If you sit next to your partner and focus on one thing that they do and go like, they say, do this, they do this, they do this, they do this, and forget that they do a hundred other things that you love and appreciate, your neuroplasticity is making you completely obsessed about that one thing. And you can only see that one thing. And eventually, you know, some of my

friends after a breakup, I go like, so what happened then? They'll say one thing. It's like, just, they obsess about it over and over because your brain is growing to say, he needs to think about this, right? I'm going to make it easier to think about this. I'm going to make it faster, more accessible. One of the things I've heard you talk about a lot is your your journey and your evolving relationship with sex and sexuality and how that changed from when you were very young through the period when you were drinking a lot um till today can you talk to me about that evolution and what you've learned about those topics that might benefit me. Yes, absolutely. So I'm going to sort of keep referring to my sobriety

in that period of my life because it was so transformative and it revealed so much to me, so much that I could have never imagined at the time. So something that also happened when I got sober, I think this was about a year into my sobriety. I realized just how much sexual shame I was holding, so much of it. And I initially sort of wanted to fix it, wanted to do something about it. What are some surface level things that I can do? What can I read? What can I sort of dive into? How can I deal with it from where I am now as a 25 year old? But I quickly realized that I actually had to trace it back to see where it even

comes from. And I realized just like so many things, it did come from my childhood. Being raised in a Christian home, I learned, again, not directly, more so indirectly, that being a sexual being was not something that was of God. It was not something that was supposed to be a part of who I am. Pleasure was never discussed. Sex was never discussed. Even intimacy in general. I never saw my parents hold hands. I never saw my parents hold hands I never saw my parents hold hands I never saw them kiss I never saw them hug I never saw any sort of affection but I knew that they loved each other I knew that they cared about each other but affection and intimacy I just never saw that not for a moment when I sort of wanted to really understand where a lot of the sexual shame was stemming from, or just more so even outside of sex, intimacy, intimacy, feeling very

disconnected to other people when it came to intimacy, but also from myself. I realized that I could only be expressive as a sexual being if I was drunk or if I was high, if I was in that place where, of course, my inhibitions are low, but I had no insecurities. I didn't have to feel like I'm doing something wrong. I didn't have to feel like my pleasure was wrong. But then when I got sober, all of those things came to the surface. And then I had to look that in the eye. So that also became something that I started sharing over time as well as sort of sharing my journey with sobriety I then started sharing the things that were revealed as a byproduct of me getting sober and sexual shame was a huge one was a big part of that

my relationship with sex has evolved a lot yeah over over time I think it was early in my early years influenced by porn yes for many people so me too that's the way I went into the game I just went in trying to be those those male porn stars right and I think over time and I think there's this this wider issue in our society specifically I've got to be honest with men yes um what they think that what they think sex is in terms of this kind of very aggressive often dominating transactional um encounter yeah and then there's again i'm just i'm just talking freely i don't give a fuck what i please do but i'm seeing a lot in in my in my close friends they're all in relate they're often in relationships, not all of them,

where they're having problems with their sexual relationship with their partner. They're basically saying things to me. And I'd say, this is crazy. I'd say 75 to 80% of my male friends are saying, my partner doesn't want to have sex. She doesn't like having sex. Yeah. And I was there at 1.2.

My partner said that to me at 1.2 yeah and I took it on face value I thought they don't like sex what I came to learn is that wasn't true but that what what I'd learned to be sex and what I was bringing as sex this kind of aggressive you know whatever was not yes the language that they spoke right And I feel like I'm surrounded by men that need to start seeing sex as a language because then you can ask yourself, well, actually she's speaking Spanish and I'm speaking English.

That's why. It's not she doesn't like English. She just doesn't, she speaks a different language. You know what I mean? Yes, yes. That's a lot. I'm just dumping that on you

to see how it resonates. No, no, no, no. No, that resonates so much. And I'm really glad that you said this because I think you're speaking something that resonates so and I'm really glad that you said this because I think you're speaking something that is on so many people's minds or something that they've just never really put language to and a big part of my awakening if you will and really addressing that sexual shame is because I also learned sex from porn at 10 years old, 10 years old. So by the time that I had sex for the first time when I was

14, it was very much like a porn performance to put it very simply. And I speak to so many people, men and women about this very specific thing. A lot of us learn that we should perform, that sex should be driven by orgasm and ejaculation and this sort of production, if you will, which is not actually accurate for most people when it comes to what really actually feels pleasurable, especially for women. So I started to realize when I got sober that every time that I was having sex, for example, I faked every single orgasm. It was all a before. I didn't know much about my body because I'd learned from porn. And because the men that I was with had also learned from porn, we were just in a performance

and no one's actually talking about it. Right. So in times when I was in relationships and I made myself think, I don't want to have sex. I don't want to have sex anymore. It actually was not that I didn't want to have this type of pornified sex that's what i actually meant so what you just said is really important and i realized that's when i found tantric sex actually yeah that's when i found tantric sex around 2018 because i realized that i had always felt like sex was being done to me yes that I was not a part of it and that is how most women feel I felt like I needed to apologize really yeah because that's what that's what I came to learn yeah was that the the reason why the person I was with had turned around to me

and said I don't like having sex is and when we got talking about it, after I acted like, I mean, let me be clear. The first time she said that, I did not understand. My little chimp Neanderthal monkey brain went, like I was emasculated by it. It made me feel, is this something that I was, I didn't do right. Ego steps in, right? Of course.

Ended up breaking up with this person, got back with this person a year later. When I was maybe a bit more mature, I apologized. And I said, I want to have a conversation. And I also said to her that I'm going to be here regardless of whether we have sex or not. Yes. And then she had a safe enough space

to start talking to me about it. And what I discovered is she'd been with, she'd had three previous boyfriends over the course of seven years. Her view of sex was this person comes and takes from you, treats you like this object. And she was with him for five years, treats you like an object, takes what they want from you. And then he was actually going and cheating on her as well. So not only was he

taking, he was then like hurting her. And that cycle just repeated. Her relationship with what sex is, was really, really toxic. She didn't like that. she didn't want that anymore yes and that's what she and me probably referred to as this word sex so it was kind of like learning a new language of sex and what it actually is that yes she went from the place of like i don't have sex anymore to absolutely loving to have sex yeah i didn't think it was possible i thought if they don't like sex dump them yeah you know i'm gonna And go find someone that will let me take. Yes. And you know what? You've articulated that so beautifully in terms of sex being a language. And it's going to look different for every single person because something that I realized is that

I could tell when I was with a man sexually, I could tell if they were sort of, if it was like a script almost, like a play by play, like this is exactly the method. We do this, we do that, switch into this, switch into that. It wasn't sort of flowing and very intuitive as to what's actually needed in that moment, which reminded me of porn. And I would also realize actually, and this is something that I've spoken about so much because I ended up starting a sexual wellness company called Cherry Revolution over time. And I realized that even some of the positions I would get in were very much like porn because certain positions in porn are like that because the camera is there, not because it's comfortable, because that's the shot for the viewer

to be able to see it so when i started to see that i'm starting to replicate this in my most intimate private moments but we're both doing it i made myself believe that i didn't enjoy sex so then drinking and drugs and everything that came with it i felt like those were the moments that I could be fully expressive without needing to perform, which is very interesting because you would think it would be the opposite, that I would then perform more. But I felt as if I could actually speak my mind. If I didn't enjoy something, can we try this? Can I do this instead? Or I just want to give, or I just want to receive. Can we be slower? And then when I was sober, I felt like I couldn't say those things. Because if I say it to you as my partner, I might be emasculating you. I might be embarrassing you. You might think something

is wrong. So I would just perform and you're performing as well. And then it just causes a huge disconnect. So tantric sex was the first thing that I came across that made me realize and really articulated that sex is actually not a specific destination. Did you know that you can actually enjoy sex without ejaculation, that you can have a full body orgasm, that you can be very slow, that foreplay can be the main thing that you do, that you can experience orgasm without penetration. Just so many different ways of articulating that experience of sex and it's just that an experience and that changed so much for me it's such a um sort of a narrative violation for so many people who've spent their whole life watching porn and then recreating it this idea that you can have an orgasm from touch that you can use energy to

to cause someone yeah orgasmic pleasure and yeah um yeah i just that's it's a really important topic that i think people need to talk about a lot more and i think just just saying to someone that's listening to this that might be in a relationship where they're not they're in a sexless relationship yes just proposing the idea that what if you both just speak there's just say there was 10 languages what if you're just speaking the wrong language right you know what I mean and what approach would you then take you'd probably try and learn the language yes yes and also communicate to them what language you speak and see and see how you can be bilingual I guess yeah you know what it it reminds me of um are you familiar with love languages and that whole thing?

Yes. I realized that a lot of people expect someone to give in the way that they like to receive, you know? So no one really says, okay, how do you like to receive love? How do you like to give love? And the moment that I started asking those questions even though I believe me I fucking cringed in the beginning I'm like really am I gonna but you get used to it yeah and if they run off good yeah it's Stephen it's been a game changer to just ask the person that I'm dating or my current partner to be like how do you like to

be loved how do you like to receive love and how do you like to receive love? And how do you like to give it? Because just those simple questions can change so much. And then you can use the same with sex. What do you like? And what do you not like? What have you changed your mind about? What do you like to do now and again, or maybe not so much sometimes? How much time do you need? How does your arousal actually work work and I know that some people might not know how to answer these questions for themselves so it's actually very good to start asking yourself those questions before speaking about it with someone else because I think we get into relationships and make so many assumptions based on our individual experiences and our worldview and we expect the person we're with to reflect the exact same thing back to us

but we don't we don't ask questions i watched a lot of interviews of you before you you arrived here today and i think in pretty much all of them you said i'm a normal guy i'm a regular guy and i get that i get that i understand what you're saying however well it's not false modesty i don't want i'm not gonna let people builds builds me into something i'm not you know and i think as i get older i know the frailties more and more and i'm not ashamed of them do you know i mean it's it's okay many mistakes many many struggles it's okay otherwise things become all too you know that how it's hard to relate to you know but you you got through sas selection just i got through all these hit just you know and people turn turn to you and said things and as they turn back and quit right that that for me is a filtering process of something

yeah whatever that something is resilient all it is is it's something we can control. It's not a filtering of talent. It's not filtering of you're brilliant, you're through, you're not through. It's a genius of selection for the special forces. It's all about heart and spirit. And we can all have that. That's not a God-given talent. That's a muscle that builds with walking through the door of failure

time and time again and keep getting back up. So I like that it's why I say I am an ordinary person that's why I also say just to so many things because you know yes I've passed that or yes you reach the top of this mantle yes you do but it's always just and that's okay you know and it's also often by standing on the shoulders of many giants who've helped me, you know, many, many times. You know, if I think of SS selection, you know, that time there were so many times where somebody just kind of believed me in a critical time. You know, it might be something where two corporals running something, go, do we want that guy? Do we want, you know, a bit of luck falls on his side. Somebody backs you, you know, or you know you you I don't know just the more I look

back on so many so-called achievements the more I see the hand of good people in critical moments but as you know you have to win the hearts of those people in the first place but also the role of just that dogged determination to keep going and that's not a thing of being brilliant. It's just trying to keep going, often sliding another step back, but keep moving forward. And you say that to, you know, I've got three boys now, three teenagers. And I think if you said to them, what one thing does your dad say to you day after day before you go to school? It's always just, you know, don't give up. Don't, never give up. Be kind, you know, be determined, but never give up. And they roll their eyes.

But you know what? One day they'll know that it's a key thing of life. You know, you don't have to be the best to do your best. Did that resilience muscle, as you call it, grow over time? Of course, it's like everything. It's like the little seas to the mighty oaks. You know we how do we build it just inch by inch and uh and that's a great thing because it's not something only some people can have you know it's universal for us all we can all become people think it's a god-given gift to someone be resilient resilience is that

muscle and you build it by failing and trying to stay positive and and trying to get back your feet and going again you know I look back and I remember being uh really excited about being picked for the fourth 11 football team as a linesman it wasn't even in the team you know and it was like my job was to bring on the oranges at half time you know but it was like and I remember my dad was the only dad on the side of the pitch cheering me on. I thought, it's so embarrassing. I'm not even in the team.

And dad said, you know, he's come to kind of, but actually those little steps of like, I'm going to do this, I'm going to bring on those oranges, you're never going to forget it. It's going to be great. And it's incremental, tiny little things. But having to fight for things you know so how often do we see at school though the the school hero actually in life doesn't always do that brilliantly and why is that it's because they've got you know schools rewarded that

but they've never tested this you know where little johnny who doesn't have that doesn't get the awards is a linesman brings on the oranges yeah whatever it is struggles doesn't even get noticed never wins anything but never gives up and keeps doing his best and still doesn't really get noticed but doesn't matter but when he leaves school this might not be the biggest thing but this is like ninja like you know that that resilience muscle inside is strong. And as you know, and as I know, in life, that's the one that is going to carry you further. And the unseen people at school often do better in life.

It's like, don't peak too early. Don't peak at 14. I certainly didn't. I sat here with you, Bank, and I've been thinking about this idea of resilience and what it really means and as we sit here today my current hypothesis is basically resilience is the story it's kind of this contract you have with yourself this self-story about who you are and in those moments when no one is looking I was talking to you bank about me being on the

running machine and knowing I've got two minutes to go because I said before I started I'd run until 45 minutes but my legs are hurting and they're cramping and I could give up and walk away and no one's going to know because no one's here. But what I, I alter my own self story in a way. And I send a message to myself that I am the type of person that gives up when it's tough. So is it really, do you relate to that? And is this kind of like, you're crafting this story about who you are to yourself with every small decision you make doing the linesman job you said i'm going to do it the best i possibly can and although it's not what i wanted i'm gonna i'm gonna give it everything i can and not give up yeah yeah does that relate and also i think the thing of giving up is that you know what is it

that thing of temporary pleasure long term yeah that's not you know and and for me i just i developed this thing where whenever people were quitting or complaining i like those moments for me it was like okay there's all the all the chat and the bravado there's always that beginning i was full of that but bring it down put the squeeze on you know we're like grapes squeeze this you see what's inside bring the squeeze bring the squeeze now we see characters see what people are like and for me it just became whenever i saw people quitting or complaining especially complaining you see it so much as in the military you see it on big expeditions you see it even when we're filming tv shows with people you know when it gets hard you know and you're hungry and you're scared and

you're up against it and you're dehydrated. You know, those are the moments. And for me, it just became a trigger. When everyone's complaining and giving up, it's a time to give more. You know, just, you don't have to give more in the early times. Just wait until it's... And that's how you separate yourselves in business and in life and in relationship. You know, in the big moments, you know, look at a relationship. When you're under that real tone and everyone's throwing it, throwing it you know are you gonna really throw that nasty comment or

gonna hold it and just try and be gracious and kind in those big moments you know and and i like that it wasn't you know it wasn't complicated to think about under pressure it was just like when everything's going wrong that's the time to give more rather than give up and I held on to that in many difficult moments you know across many different arenas and um and it's helped me you know I remember this guy said to me once said and you can do anything for another 10 seconds I like that you know when it's you're in that moment you keep going another 10 seconds that makes you different though you got to admit because most people don't want another 10 seconds that makes you different though you've got to admit because most people don't want another 10 seconds yeah well it hurt it hurts i'm not saying it's not going to hurt it's going to hurt

but that fire inside said it's in us in us all you know it's just you've got to dig sometimes but it's it's a great truth to know that it's there when you dig you know it's there and uh and i think as you say once you get used to this you start to practice it the muscle gets stronger and then you almost seek out tough times you know this is a chance to to shine you know and as you say that's how you separate yourselves in life you know you're going to reach these points but but in those big amount what are you going to go this way how are you going to act in those big moments and it's always what separates you know reaching those summits from not reaching those summits when you look back on the person you are now and the tremendous wisdom that you've just demonstrated just speaking to me just then

do you recognize the mel that was couldn't get out of bed was feeling depressed couldn't find you know described herself as herself as you did, as being lazy. Do you recognize that person? And what's at the very essence in the engine room that drove that change? Was it passion? Was it finding your calling?

Because I know you weren't this person. You couldn't have been this person. Well, dude, it's also been 31 years I mean come on I've basically been changing for as long as you've been alive for crying out loud and also human beings are designed to grow

but not everybody seems to because they don't understand being stuck yeah interesting see being stuck is one of the most universal feelings of the most universal feelings of the human experience. And nobody understands what it is.

What is it? Oh, it's amazing when you hear this. It's like, pew. So remember how we've talked about how the human beings have this crazy amount of natural intelligence wired into us. And inside your body, we've talked about one of the signals, anxiety.

Anxiety is a signal that means pay attention. That's why you go into fight or flight, you're in an alert mode, okay? That's all it is. It's a signal, an alarm system. And your body has a sophisticated system of signals and alarms. And they're all tied to fundamental needs. Anxiety is tied to your fundamental need for safety. That's why it's a signal. Let's talk about your most important fundamental needs. Let's go right back to psychology 101,

Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You need food or else you die. So when you need food, what is the signal that your body sends you? Hunger. When you need water, what is the signal? Dust. When you need food, what is the signal that your body sends you? Hunger. When you need water, what is the signal? When you need air. Yeah, you're catching your breath.

When you need rest, what do you feel? I'm tired. When you need connection, what do you feel? Lonely. Human beings are designed to grow. When you stop growing, what do you feel? Stuck. Yeah. I was going to say stagnant, but I guess stuck is,

yeah. Or stagnant. Yeah. Or still. Trapped, I guess, is, yeah. Yeah. Feeling stuck is a signal that you've stopped growing. That's it. And when most people feel stuck, since they don't understand that it's tied to a fundamental need for growth. We believe it's an existential crisis and we blow up our lives. For most human beings, what actually will get you feeling like you're not stuck is having something in the future that you're looking forward to. Or taking a class where you're learning something or changing a routine so that you try a new class at the gym. Learning anything gets you back in touch with a fundamental need. It makes you start to feel like things are moving. And from that place of feeling a little bit more empowered,

you'll be able to make better decisions about what big things need to change in your life. And you would also describe that as a moment where your life has like an absence of purpose. I think about various examples, Olympians that come back from the Olympics and they have an 80% chance of depression after they've, and then I think about people who have lost purpose in their lives for whatever

reason, been fired from their jobs or whatever, or people that are in jobs that are, you know, absent of purpose completely, that feeling of being stuck. And, and then you said, we talked also about the importance of goals and ambitions going forward when humans don't have that forward ambition or that thing to look forward to in the future and their current situation lacks purpose, they become very psychologically disorientated, would be the way I'd describe it. Mm-hmm.

I have a different take on purpose. I think everybody's purpose is exactly the same. What is that? I think your purpose is to share your true self, to be fully seen. And for the Olympian, when you are training and you're in that arena, that is an experience of being seen.

And for most people that are lacking purpose, they feel profoundly invisible. And being seen fundamentally comes back to whether or not you even see yourself. And when you start to feel empowered and you start to see yourself and meet you where you are, what happens is every day that you're able to stand with yourself, to accept where you are, to give yourself the compassion, to give yourself the support and the love and the

respect and the worthiness that you deserve, you're gonna go out into the world and share more of yourself. That Olympic athlete is sharing more of themselves. And so I think our purpose in life is to come back home to ourselves, to reconnect with ourselves and to empower ourselves to go back out into the world and share our stories and share our experiences and share our full selves with the rest of the world. And look, if I can save anybody the heartache and the headaches that caused myself, that's a life well lived. You know, if I can laugh at myself

along the way, if I can punch a wall and drink a gin martini and then share with you like, okay, this, and then get out because how I got out of that, because I could have been in that cycle. The old Mel would have been there for a month. Everybody's out to get me. I never get recognized. Why even bother? It doesn't matter. And it allows me to share in real time that I feel all the shit, but I don't like to stay there. And this is not toxic positivity. It is important when you're disappointed to allow yourself to feel disappointed. It is important when you lose something to give yourself the grace to grieve for as long as you need to. It is important to have a good cry, to have a good scream, to draw. It's important to feel the highs and the lows. You're meant to feel it all. but you can shorten the length of time you stay down. And what always helps me is I just kept saying

what I've said a couple of times during this. I say to myself, I refuse to believe that if I'm a good person and that if I'm working hard, I refuse to believe that this doesn't work out. I refuse to believe that I'm not gonna be okay. Like I know that this moment's gonna pass and I know that I will look back on this moment five years from now

and I'll see exactly what I was meant to learn. And redirecting your focus to what actually matters and the fact that you believe in your heart, that you got the mindset, you got the work ethic, you got the ability to figure this shit out and to keep going. And that eventually if you do, what's meant for you is gonna find you.

You will be rewarded for all this in the way that you're meant to be rewarded, that's amazing, it's an amazing feeling because you can pick yourself up no matter what happens. I spent so long being dysregulated, having a nervous system that was constantly on edge, like what it felt like to be me, any moment in my life,

whether I was sitting in a classroom or I was sitting at that law firm bait stamping, or I'm sitting as a young mom with postpartum depression, or I'm sitting in yet another job I don't like, is it felt like being in a car at a stoplight that had a green signal and the emergency brake was on and the gas was floored and I was going nowhere. Like just the engine revved and the sense that I needed to go, but not being able to go. and when I finally started to get control of my own thinking, when I finally started to understand anxiety

and how to quiet it in my mind and then how to quiet it in my body, when I finally got serious about understanding trauma and healing it in my nervous system first through EMDR, through therapy, through guided MDMA sessions, I finally had the experience of being in my body and being safe and being okay. And I hadn't had that in a really long time. And I'm so aware of when I'm not in my body now. I'm so aware of when my nervous system starts to go on edge that my tolerance for staying there is zero because I live for far

too long feeling on edge, anxious, dysregulated, self-loathing. That when I dip into that space and everybody, you dip into that space once a day, if not, like I used to live there. And so when I start to dip into that dysregulated, anxious, on edge, intense space, it's like, get this out of my body. We got to get back into my new default, which is grounded, centered, in control of what I'm thinking, what I'm gonna do next. And it's a fluid situation, but you just gave me the insight

as to why it's so quick for me now, because I've made a commitment to myself that after spending 30 years that way, 40 almost, that I don't wanna live another year that way, 40 almost, that I don't want to live another year that way, another week that way, another full day that way. Now, do I have things that happen in my life that are tough, that put me into a mode where I'm anxious and on edge? And of course, do I disassociate when I get really awful? Of course.

But I now have the tools to bring myself back into my body, to give myself the encouragement, the assurance, the support that I need so that I can face whatever's happening and know that I'm not only gonna be okay, I'm actually gonna be awesome eventually. Thank you.