The Dr. John Delony Show - Off the Record With Michael Easter

Episode Date: July 25, 2026

📖 Read The Comfort Crisis. 📖 Read Scarcity Brain. 📱 Follow Michael Easter on Instagram. 🎙️ Two Percent With Michael Easter   🔥 Microhabits for a Better Marriage. Download the Together app.   On today’s episode, John sits down with author Michael Easter to talk about loneliness, connection and why discomfort should be the goal.   Next Steps: ❤️ Get away with your spouse today! 📞 Ask John a question! Call 844-693-3291 or send us a message. 📚 Building a Non-Anxious Life 📝 Anxiety Test 📚 Own Your Past, Change Your Future ❓ Questions for Humans Conversation Cards 💭 John's Free Guided Meditation 🤘🏼 The Dr. John Delony Show Merch   Connect With Our Sponsors: Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp. Go to Capstone Wellness to learn more. Get up to 20% off with code DELONY at Cozy Earth.   Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe.  Visit Hallow for a 90-day free trial. Visit Helix Sleep for special offers!  Go to Joi + Blokes and get 50% off labs and 20% off products. Working knives for working people—go to Montana Knife Company to see what’s available now! Explore Poncho Outdoors!  Get 25% off your order at Thorne.   Visit Zander Insurance or call 1-800-356-4282 for your free instant quote today.   Explore More From Ramsey Network: 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💰 George Kamel 📈 EntreLeadership   Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most of us are going to do the thing that's just the easiest. The stories we tell each other are never, yeah, I sat in this really comfortable chair and watched this show. It's always the sort of things that had hardship attached to them. Discomfort is actually life. That's actually the good stuff. The discomfort and the hardship is often to signal that this really actually matters. What life in the rear of your mirror do I want to say that lived? And not the most insulated comfort, but the most adventure filled, the most fun.

Yo, welcome to all of you. to off the record with John here on the Dr. John Deloney show. Dude, I'm so psyched for you all to hear this conversation today. I'm talking with one of the greatest people on the planet.

Listen, in this weird little ecosystem I live in, right, where there's experts and scientists and YouTubers and podcasters, behind closed doors, it's a small, tight-knit group of people like you're usually one or two people away from just about everybody right somebody's got a number to somebody who's got a number to somebody and whether it's rumor whether it's fact people's reputations get around this guest today this person i'm having on is one of only a handful of people that i've never heard one person say something negative about because he's simply extraordinary he's a great human he's a great husband oh i can't believe i'm saying this he's a dog dad But he is a great pet owner, right?

And he is a brilliant thinker and distiller of information. He wrote a masterpiece that you've heard me talk about a million times on the show called The Comfort Crisis. I'm talking about the great Michael Easter. He is the founder of the 2% group, right? And he has a substack. It's one of a few subsstacks that I pay money for that comes out a couple times a week. It's a newsletter that comes out where he takes really,

complex science and really complex nutrition, really complex workout information, really complex mental health stuff and distills it down so even a guy like you and me can understand it. He's a delightful person. On this episode, we talk about comfort in relationships, discomfort in relationships. We talk a lot about marriage. We talk about loneliness. We talk about how our whole culture has been set up for us to all be comfortable. And unfortunately, that's killing us all. And most importantly, he tells us what we can do about it. So, relax, buckle up, share this episode with everybody. It's a keeper. This is my conversation with a great human being, one of my great friends, the wonderful Michael Easter. So a long time no C, dude.

Long time. A long time, no C. Too long. I feel like we had our, uh, most of this interview over breakfast. So I guess we can just talk about our favorite movies. Well, I do want to highlight from breakfast, the biscuit. I live on the West Coast. That is not biscuit country. It's not. And so I came here and the waiter said, you could add a biscuit. And you really said, you know, you're here in the South.

You're here. We like to add type 2 diabetes to every meal. It's like a thing we do. Yeah. I could feel my blood sugar just, ooh, it was going north. Your CGM was just beeping. It was so worth it. It was so worth it, though.

It was so worth it. One in the South, get diabetes. And then you'll go back to Vegas and sweat it off. Yeah, it would be fantastic. It would be good. All right. So I was thinking about this. So I have a core life philosophy, which is have a guy.

Okay. Right. And obviously, that's not gendered. I've got many women that I reach out to also, but have a person for any number of things. And so I've got one of my oldest friends in the world works in HVAC. And I've had two air conditioners go out the last decade in different houses. I've never even occurred to me to Google something. I just call him.

I'm like, hey, which one should I get? And he says, where do you live? And he says, buy this one. And that's the one I get. And so I was thinking of all the things where you're the guy. And I was thinking of all the times I've texted and or called you or we've had a meal. And I'm like, hey, before we get going. And I rattle off.

And so you've become my. guy for mental health questions for supplement questions for workout questions and now even for marriage questions and so for everyone watching this is my the guy on your your influence over my life has expanded so if I make it to 70 or 80 I think you'll get it I got some mileage on this body from when I was younger but if I do I'll write you an email or I might just telepathically whatever by that point. Yeah, we'll have chips. Yeah, yeah.

But thanks for the work that you do. Like, we'll talk about this at the end, but you have the best substack that exists. Your podcast is awesome. Your writing is awesome. So thanks to the influence on my life. Well, I feel the same way about you, man. Mental health questions.

Well, I'll tell you this. Universally, no matter who I talk to out in our little weird world that we live in, 100%. And that's rare. Because, you know what I mean? Like, everyone has a thing with, somebody, right? Oh, that guy's a lot or that guy's annoying or that guy didn't tell the truth. 100% people are like, oh, my cliche's the best. So thanks for being a good human. That's awesome.

I feel the same way about you. And I feel like we connect. I mean, for God's sakes, look at us. You did roll in here in a grateful dead shirt. I had to. I would never wear this publicly beyond a dead show. But I'm like, you know what? You're always in your rock band shirts. I need to bring some hippie element. I need to sprinkle some hippie dust in here. I've tried. I've tried. I've tried. What I like about your work in particular is you're very intellectual. But we also connect at a, there I say, bro level. Yeah, yeah.

I could go hunting with you. I could drag you to a dead show. You could drag me to a punk show. We'd have an awesome time. But then in the meantime, we'd be like, yes, but Carl Young once said. Right. There's only a few people you can do that with. It's awesome.

Fantastic, man. All right. So I got a whole list of stuff I want to talk about. about. And you tell me, let's go a different direction. And I'll ask you this. You've recently submitted a manuscript for a book that will come out next year. How much of that do you want to talk about or not? Yeah, we can talk about it. You sure? Yeah. Yeah. My publisher will slot my hand later. What do I kid? It won't hurt now. There you go. That's right. That's a problem for future, Michael. Yeah. Very good. Okay. So I want to, you recently, let's start here. I've been talking about

if I were to take all the mental health issues we have as a culture, and you and I talked this morning over breakfast, like you can map the rise of the stock market in the U.S. and almost directly on top of it map the rise of mental health diagnostics right on top of it. Yes. And so in this weird way, we've solved for every problem that has plugged humanity forever. And if we just look at data,

it seems that we're going more insane. The more we solve for these problems, the crazier we're going as a culture. We're more anxious, more, more, more. And I think we could pull that apart and say diagnostics have expanded. And that's nerd speak for like more and more people have more access to clinicians that then give more labels that go into data sets. All that's fine.

Yeah. And just, you know, what we would consider trauma, say 50 years ago meant you had to be physically assaulted to get trauma. Right. Now you could have seen a physical. assault, or say 20 years ago you could have seen a physical assault, and then today you could, someone could have called you something rude that offended you, and that could be considered trauma.

Right. So it's like this sort of, it's a widening and also the just changing definition. Changing definitions, yeah. There's a great George Carlin bit where he talks about World War I, they came back, it was called Shell Shocked. And then after World War II, I forgot the one he had after that, but. But now it is post-traumatic stress disorder. And we get further and further away from what the thing actually is and it expands.

We talk about that. For me, if I distilled it all the way down, the one neon sign that's been flashing for me as I've read all the nerd stuff has been, we are super, super lonely as a culture. And I have found myself accidentally, I don't say blaming, but pointing fingers at people saying, y'all need to go i need to we got to go make friends like we have kind of like we used to have to work the farms we don't do that anymore so now we have to go to the gym we got to move our bodies similarly we used to be surrounded by family friends and neighbors and that was our little tribe we don't have that so now you got to go make friends you recently published a man it's so good

i'll be citing you at the next big talk i give expanding the issues with loneliness in a way that I had missed, it's way worse than I thought it was in panning all the way back at how our culture has shifted. And so talk to me about that article that you wrote and just the way you laid it out was, it was overwhelming how much it has shifted, right? It's not a matter of us just not having friends anymore or having a quote unquote tribe. It's way bigger than that. Yeah, I believe I titled the article 1,000 ways to get disconnected. Yeah. And it really just looks how society has changed in such a way that you no longer have to interact with people as much. So I had a bunch of examples, but to take one, people now wear ear pods everywhere they go.

Well, you're not going to talk to people when you have earbuds in your ears. We were talking about how the other day on the show, how when you went to order fast food, you did so through a screen and the food just sort of appears. You no longer even had to have that minute-long conversation with the show. checkout clerk, which sometimes that's just, hey, I'll have the number two. And he goes, okay, that'll be $5. But sometimes it goes, hey, how's your day going? Oh, yeah? And then he tells you a funny story. You tell him a funny story. And those tiny interactions are really important. And this goes, I mean, this goes all the way down. Like if you just start to pick apart how life

has shifted over the last hundred years, we have four more interactions. I would argue one with the people that are closest to us for a variety of reasons. But also just people in our community that we would have used to talk to for maybe say two or three minutes and that might seem like a throwaway. Oh, yeah, no, big, go. Who cares? No, those are actually really important when you look at the data. Yeah. Like those tiny interactions. I mean, think you check out of the grocery store, self-checkout now. Yeah. Right? You don't even talk to the clerk. What else did I have? There was, um, people go to bars less, which I'm not advocating, hey, people go out and drink your face off. I'm not saying that at all. But bars used to be really important community gathering places.

where people would find common ground. They would go back and forth on political issues, but it was in kind of a safe space. And now how do people talk about politics? On Facebook, screaming at each other, right? Because you don't have, you don't see the humanity in the other person as you have that little conversation. Or you might see a button on a teller that said,

I voted a certain way. And they would smile at you and say, how's your day going? There was a humanization to, right? or somebody might stand in front of you with a shirt of a band that you thought was evil, but they're a real nice person, right, or whatever. But all that has been, I was thinking even of, Daniel Tosh has a hilarious bit about this, but like, when I was a kid, you'd pull up and park at the airport,

and you'd walk all the way through, and you'd wait, I'd wait for my mom with my dad for my mom to get off the plane. And you just all stood around and waited, but you're standing around with a whole bunch of other people. And it was not a good, quote unquote, optimization of our time. And we missed potential clients or whatever. Nonsense, we've piled into that. But there was a whole bunch of people standing around. And I got to watch all these different hugs and cheering and signs, all that stuff. And now you pull up to the, if you don't Uber, right?

Now if somebody asks me to like, hey, can you get me right to the airport? My first thought is like, well, just Uber like an adult, right? But somebody hops in the car and y'all are off. And there's no human, right? And then I get this message that says, these humans are trying to kill you. They hate you. They want you dead.

And then I've got an ancient nervous system that's just like you wrote about like the ATM machines. Like everything has been optimized to become frictionless, right? Yeah, a lot of transactions that used to occur in person like you'd have to go to the bank. Right. And then you talk to the teller. And now that's just all digital. and you can apply that to so many different parts of our lives. And when I looked at the data,

I think it said that people interact with random others about 70% less than they used to. And so this is a cutting out of about, I believe it was 20 hours a month of time that we would just be interacting with random people. Like, that's a lot of time. And it turns out that time was actually really important, not just beyond the, hey, you and I had a fun conversation.

and it lifted my spirits and you told me a funny story and we connected. But also to go back to, you see the humanity and all these other people that live around you. Work from home has rose. Super convenient that I don't have to commute. At the same time, when you're in an office, you're having to talk to people. Like you have all these little side conversations, right? It's not just, oh, you have the meeting and then you're done. There's the meeting after the meeting, which is like, hey, let's nittle on.

this idea a little more. Oh, by the way, how are your kids doing? Did they get into that school you wanted? Oh, they did fantastic. Yeah. Right. Or they didn't. Oh, I'll share that with you too. Yeah, and you can empathize. And there's even, there's even minor, and they're this big, they're teeny tiny. I'm going to get a cup of coffee at the coffee machine. And right when I get there, somebody gets, comes, she gets there right in front of me. And so I have to wait. And that's just a normal social interaction, I'm going to wait. But when I live in my headphones and then I work from home, and then my food gets delivered, and my toilet paper gets delivered, then I go to the restaurant and what, you have to ask twice for napkins. And it's like a major crisis. This place is awful,

right? Because I've lost that ability to just interact like a person. Yeah. Here's where here's where this started to land with me, I think, is when I was, so for this book that I just submitted, the through line is this 850 mile hike I did through southern Utah. Super hard hike. There's no trail, so you're navigating, but you got to resupply, right? So you got to get to a town at least like every week to resupply. So I'm with my friend, Matt Sherman, wonderful, amazing human being. we'd pop out on these highways like 40 miles from a town just go

well how are we going to get to the town well I guess we got to stick our thumbs out and pray to God that someone will pull over and the first times you're doing that you're going who's going to pull over no one's going to pull over people don't do that

and if they do they're probably going to murder us right but we'd get in these cars with these people and we'd be in there for you know half an hour 45 minutes And you don't smell great. We don't smell great. We didn't shave.

Yeah. We didn't cut our hair. We would have the most amazing conversations with people. And you would just connect at this extremely human level because we enter the car going, is this a serial killer? Right. And as we're getting in the car, they're thinking to themselves, are these two serial killers? Right. Are those bodies in their backpack?

Yeah. But we would find that and we got in cars with people who were from all day. different walks of life. I'm talking deadheads like me out in the desert doing heck knows what to ranchers super right wings. They've got their, you know, their rifles in their cars to just sort of like vagabonds to tourists from other countries. And we would connect on this really human level that I was like, this just doesn't happen anymore. Because there has been sort of this grand siloing off of ourselves through various means that we did all this stuff to make like, easier, right? Self-checkout is easier. I don't have to think of what to say to the clerk.

They don't have to pay a clerk. I can mobile order my coffee. I don't have to wait in line. That seems convenient. And it is convenient in the short term, but we lose something in the long term that I think is really important. And so I think my takeaway from those experiences, and there was one that was particularly awesome. this was at the height of the U.S. China trade stuff. And that morning, like this breaking news had dropped that was, you know, China's restricting this element, whatever, you know, news is saying, we're on the brink of war. This couple pulls over.

And like, where are you from? Like, oh, we're from Beijing. And we're like, oh, guess what we didn't talk about. Right. That. Yeah. Guess what we did. Talked about, oh, you have kids.

Where are you guys going? Talked about being outdoors, our interests. And it was like, you go, we hear all this stuff in the news. But when you sit down with people, whether that's from the other political aisle, whether that's from a quote unquote, you know, hostile country, you find we're all just humans on this big spinning rock just trying to figure it out. Yeah. We just want to have some friends. We don't want to be alone and we want to be loved. That's what it all comes down to.

And it's easy to miss that if you just kind of go through the most. and do the easy thing that allows you to avoid others. I was speaking at an event a few years ago that Malcolm Gladwell was speaking at, and he said something I'd never considered. And he said, I just want to recommend before you debate something, quickly pull out a piece of paper, and you'll write down all the things you agree on. Just start there.

And he's like, I promise you, that list will be a thousand things. Healthy kids, air conditioner that works, like no skin cancer. Like the list will be long. Yeah. And then let's talk about the things we disagree with. It'll be six or four or two, right? And if you start there and, man, that's a powerful story. I fall victim to they, like, they hate us.

And it's like, well, Dan doesn't. And I know Dan. Dan just, our kids go to school together, right? And so I can't figure out a way through that other than, and you've coined this, which I just love. the 2%, like I see that everywhere now. Talk about 2%, and I'll try to thread them together, and you tell me if I'm right or wrong.

So the 2% comes from a statistic that found only 2% of people take the stairs when there's also an escalator available. Now 100% of those people know that taking the stairs is going to be better for them long term. But 98% of people choose to do the easier, more effortless thing that could actually harm them in the long run. Now, to me, this isn't a thing where you go, oh, those 98% of people are idiots. No, it's more like it suggests that we're wired to do the easy, effortless thing that is good in the short term, but we don't think of the long-term consequences.

And so it's not really about the stairs. It's sort of a metaphor for all these decisions we make every single day. It's like every day in life we have to make choices where you've got to get to that metaphorical second floor. And you can either take those stairs, which are going to be a little bit harder now. but it's going to move the ball farther downfield for you in the way that you want your ultimate big goals in life, or you can kind of do this easy, effortless thing that's not going to help, right? The metaphorical escalator. And so I think when you widen that lens, you really can see it everywhere.

Everywhere. Everywhere. Even as something as simple as I think I highlighted in that article, like if you need to ask a question of a friend, most people just text, right? I mean, we text. I do it all the time. I'm just going to text. The phone call is a little more of a pain. But what happens after you ask the question? How are you doing? What's new? The conversation spins in an interesting way and you connect as humans. You each get, I mean, it's like a minor therapy session.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. And that's important. Yes, a little harder in the short term, but the long term gains are there. I think it's not even important. I think now it's, when you look at the data on loneliness, right, with everything from Alzheimer's to heart disease to cancer to, I mean, everything. I've come to believe it's a matter of life and death and maybe not in this immediate moment, but over the long haul. So two months ago, I had this big, and again, it's, I've got big existential drama. Michael will tell you I'm a lot. We all do.

We all do. About like AI and who's going to know what and all that. And so I just said this month I'm going to not, I'm a disconnect to my phone from my car. I took off every tracking thing I have and I went and got cashed out of the bank. I'm going to. Oh, and I turned off Amazon Prime. I'm just going to navigate it this way. A couple of things happened.

one was I found myself more and more calm throughout the day and I found myself not quote unquote needing as much stuff as I thought I did just stuff right and it was a big pain like it was a pain when I could just click something and know it would show up tomorrow to be like one of kids get in a car we got to go over to this thing and get one picture frame for a thing right and it was inconvenient. But if I pan all the way back out, going to the bank, and you should have seen the teller was a real young guy. There's only like two people in the bank now. And I was just telling him,

this month I'm doing this. And he was like, man, I like, I like coming into the bank. We ended up talking with 30 minutes, a young kid. He's like, what am I going to do with? Like, I'm thinking about doing it. It ended up just being like,

now I'm the old man and he's the young kid, right? Awesome. But it was a great interaction, and I walked out with a smile on my face. And it cost me a quote, quote hour of my day right like it wasn't it didn't optimize my day and that's forced me to ask deeper questions about what do I think is optimization what do I think about um how like I have tried to automate everything in my life it just has walked me through what it's cost me and I keep

coming back to the 2% most of us are going to do the thing myself included that's just the easiest and I don't think that's the right thing and the gap there means I'm going to be uncomfortable a lot more than I thought I was going to be, right? And that discomfort is actually life. That's actually the good stuff. Yeah, that's the good stuff. And I would also argue that once you go through that initial, oh, this is a huge pain, you start to understand the payoffs. Yes. And then you go, no, I actually, now that I'm done with this month-long experiment, I think I'm going to pop into the bank more. Yes. I think I'm going to get behind the wheel and go some place to get this item that I could just get.

Because you start to realize, oh, there's these intangibles behind that, right? So the time savings is very easy to measure. That's clear. I save 30 minutes doing that. We can put a number on it. What's much harder to measure is all these other things that happen. How do you measure how much happier you felt after that? Or how much more peaceful are always?

How much more peaceful? These little things you learn. all these other things. Now, because this is easy to measure, I think we can go, oh, that is clearly the optimal choice. And because these things are not easy to measure, they're a little more, you know, complex, can't put a number on them. We often devalue those. But life is not measurable. Like living a good life is not measurable.

It's usually the things that are these thorny, big existential questions, those are what are worth living for, really. But that's a, that is a bold rejection of the bill of sale we've been. Yeah. We've been given, right? Totally. If you can't measure it, it doesn't matter, which is the mantra of the last 20 years in our world. If anything worth anything is measurable, that's business talk, that is personal talk, that is, and I'm finding more and more.

Yeah, the short term, there's a lot of data on when you hand cash over to a teller, you actually spend less. And it's easier when you're putting down a piece of plastic to just be like, yeah, yeah. You supersized? Yeah, go ahead. because it's not real. It's not a real transaction. When I'm hitting you cash, it's like,

yeah, I'm good. That costs something. It costs something. Cost something real. But I'm, I got to say, man,

like, I recently saw some literature on what bodies opposite genders find attractive, right? And it ended up, I walked away being like,

oh, women are trying to create a picture that they think other women think is attractive and men are trying to create a picture that they think other men think is attractive. Yeah. But the big neon sign for me was here is this picture of this ripped dude that I would, I'll write you a check if I could get a body like that. And I ran it by my wife and she's like 1,000%. And it was the first time I believed her.

I did the same thing. Oh, did you? Yeah. Because she said, that body, comes at a cost. I know that if you had that body, I would have to live with a guy who was always bickering with the waiter about what he cooked the food in. And we couldn't have ice cream. And we couldn't and we couldn't and we'd miss a date because you've got to get your workout in. I don't want that life. Yeah. Totally. And it goes opposite way too. Like when she was like,

what about this? I'm like, objectively, it's a beautiful person. I know what that life would entail for me. And I don't want to be married to that person. It becomes a marker of personality. Yeah, yeah. And it was like, oh, I've missed the whole boat. I don't need to optimize, optimize. I want to be healthy. And I think looking at these things once a year, once every two couple, is important because it gives me a direction. But man, I'm watching folks, and I would say, I don't know a way to say it, but in health and wellness spaces, reducing, I notice you don't, like, reducing the number of trackers and the number of, because it's played itself, out. Like I know. I kind of know

is. I kind of know is. I kind of know ish these things. And unless I'm trying to hit a and trying to do a cut for an event or something, I want to have a pretty good life. And that means sometimes looking at my wife being like, you want ice cream for dinner? Not all the time. Or sometimes that's, yeah.

Let's just go for a long, long hike and let's just go hang out, right? Well, like if we want to pull back and get all heady and theoretical, as you and I sometimes do, there's this idea. vehicle value capture. Okay. And it's by this philosopher from the University of Utah's names, The Nguyen, so it's T-H-I-N-G-U-Y-E-N, his parents are Vietnamese.

He's going to be on my podcast next week. And we often start a process. We'll take weight loss as an example. So why does a person generally want to lose weight? They want to look better. They want to feel better. They want to look a little better. They want to feel healthier, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

How do we measure weight loss? Pounds. One number, that's right? One number, right? So oftentimes people will get to a certain number on the scale and they go, oh, I want that lower. So they go, we've got to keep getting that number lower. But as that number gets lower, you start to do things that don't actually help this overall larger goal you were after. Feeling better, being happier, actually being healthier, being more energized.

And so the number is like this crisp target. But it's really just a stand-in for all these bigger goals we want in life. And so sometimes those two things track, but oftentimes we can get so focused on the number that we lose sight of the overall goal. Another example, grades, right? So why were grades even created in the first place? It's to make the lives of administrators easier. Right. And when I was a professor, I'm sure you experienced this yourself, our goal is to get students prepared for the future.

Okay, so what do you need to do that? They need to learn all these things. They need to learn the function as a human being. They need to sort of learn the material in a way that they can apply it to their life and leave the university and be an effective human being in the world. But when we start to put in grades, what are the students care about? How do I get that grade? How do I get that grade? They lose sight of this overall goal.

we get so obsessed with the GPA or the specific grade that it captures that value. Because all of a sudden this is this thing, this is the target. This is now the target. That's what they ultimately care about. Not am I ready to go out in the world and like be a good human being who has a fulfilling career and can make an income and do all these other things? And you see that really any big sort of institutional measurement, that tends to happen. salaries another one, right?

Well, and for for professors, and I've seen this data, we got judged on one thing, besides research and whatever, we got judged on class e-vows. Right. And so then there became that implicit, I'll give you guys Aries, y'all give me good evals, we'll high-five. And together, whether it's explicitly, I've had professors just say, hey, I'll take care of you, take care of me. But more implicitly, you get further and further away from the goal. which is, dude, I had a very real lived experience after PhD one for me when there was a student who was suicidal, like really struggling, and a guy came in and sat and talked with him.

And I remember walking away thinking this, and this is embarrassing to say out loud, oh, he knew what to say. I need to learn that, right? And that's what sent me to, like, my next degree was like, I need to learn this skill set because now I'm in the real world and there's real consequences to me. knowing or not knowing that forget the grades and by the way grades took care of themselves when

i was that invested in the material learning this stuff grades are an afterthought right they're just a marker on the way to a race i'm running right to how can i help somebody but it changed the whole dynamic my son's 16 and he's like chemistry blah and i actually get that like no one has ever pulled me over and put a gun to my head and say hey you know what's a mole right and also there's bigger things here that like anyway but you get these almost you get what you measure and that means you better be really careful what you're measuring because it could take you on a weird trip away from where you wanted to go yeah i think the takeaway for people to pull back from the philosophy and just be like how do you actually use this is those measurements can be useful but you need to ask

what are we trying to what's the larger goal i'm trying to accomplish you know with with a salary. People just want, oh, I just need to make more money, make more money, make more money. Why do you want to make more money? Well, because I think it'll make me be happier. I'll have less stress in my life. Okay, well, what do you need to do to get that higher salary? I need to work a ton and get super stressed at work and be miserable. It's like, well, it sounds like maybe that's backfiring. Maybe you would be better just sort of settling. And so asking those questions, like, what's my ultimate goal here becomes really important? And it is this, it takes a minute, right? It's not as easy because if I just say, if you just go,

150K a year is better than 130K. That's much easier to just intuitively, oh, better. And these thornyer questions are harder to grapple with. It goes back to that 2% concept. But if you can kind of make that analysis, that becomes much more rewarding for you in the long term and useful. I think we've done ourselves culturally a disservice by answering the question, hey, what are you worth with a number?

Totally. And because that gives me an objective finish line. I am worth this much dollars versus I think the answer to the question, what are you worth is who do you love and who loves you? And that's a much more squishy thing to measure, right? Switching gears to marriage, but really along the same line, when my wife and I were sitting across the table saying, are we done, right? We're being adults here. Are we going to call this thing? And it was a hard, hard conversation.

What was that? This was years ago. But it was like we'd reach the end of the marriage as we knew it. And the question was, are we going to build a new one or is this it, right? One of the things, and that was nuclear conversation number one, right? And then obviously there's a bunch of the aftershot conversations. Like, in my, I think it was my wife. I'll give her credit.

One of us asked, but I'm pretty sure it was her. She usually asked the wiser questions. It was out of exasperation. But she asked a very similar question, what do you want this house to feel like when you walk in? And I remember for the first time in my whole life vomiting. up like I want you to be happy I'm here I want my daughter to come running at me and give me a hug and I want my son to be making fart noises over there because he lives in a house where that's hilarious right and as I just threw up like here's what I want this place to feel like that was the first time she was like okay we can get there and it's going to take a lot of work to get there because you can't bring your last meeting home and if you skip working out for three days you're tough to be around right and and And for her, like, I've got to change this. And like, seeing you walk in and be happy that you're here

has to be more important than a perfect kitchen, right? But it's that one thing. What do we want this thing to actually look like? And let's reverse engineer that, not let's get a couple of quasi-arbitory metrics and try to say that's our goal, right? When I was, I also just hit send on a thing. It's got sent back to me with lots of edits. That's a good thing.

such as the part of writing books. It's a good thing. I called you, and as I was asking people, like, why did you just get married? You had by far the most romantic love story about why you chose to get married. Would you be willing to share it? When we actually decided to get married or what I said about it? I'm being really sarcastic. Yeah, it was.

It was by far the best. I didn't put it in the manuscript. The sun was setting across a remote beach in the Bahamas. That's right. No, no, no. Setting is Las Vegas, Nevada. Clearly, you know, the most lovely city on earth. It's where romance happens.

It's where romance happens very quickly. And oftentimes at a cost. Very short. Yeah. So we're in the parking lot of Barnes & Noble. We had just moved to Las Vegas. Me and my now wife, Leah, then girlfriend. We moved to Las Vegas.

Leah had just gotten out of law school. I had just started a job at the university as a professor. Her health insurance ends while mine is kicking in. She's stressing about health insurance and how she doesn't have it. You know, we're sitting in the car, literally just about ready to go in, but we got to finish our conversation. She's stressed out.

And I was like, well, you know, what could we do about it? And she goes, well, we could get a civil union. Right. And I go, why don't we just get married? She goes, hold on a minute. She pulls out her cell phone. says here the marriage is only five bucks more than a civil union and i think it has more tax benefits michael so yes thus the romance yes and then came the uh to bring it back into ramsay

financial world that goes well what are we going to do for the wedding and she's like uh man my parents are going to have a hundred people at this wedding and where are we going to have it because my family's in Utah, hers is in, like, New Jersey area. So I go, why don't we just go get married? We'll go get a marriage license. We show up to get it. We think that's the thing. They're like, no, you actually have to have a witness and a thing.

Now, in Las Vegas, because it's a place where people get married on a wind, there are literally homeless people who hang out outside of the courthouse and will be your witness for 20 bucks. Now, that was just too much. You're a romantic. No, no. You know, the guy. with track marks in his arm.

Did you need a witness? Yeah, yeah. No, we're good. We're good. So we got married at a casino by a three-times divorced efficient, whose name was Earl. And it was awesome. Yeah. But what was interesting is that, and I think this is the reason you called me because you were like, why would you get married?

You guys were fine. And I will say something internally changed. And I think the thing I told you that it's like, now you're doing the crossword in ink. The decisions now matter. And now I have to factor this other person and this larger thing into all these decisions I make. I can't be as selfish anymore. Now that is a giant pain in my butt. Yeah.

I would love to just live on Michael Island and everything will be perfect. It's a big two percent staircase to walk up every day. It's a big staircase. case. But it's the most rewarding relationship I have. And it became more rewarding once we started writing it in ink, despite the struggles. Yeah. And if you pull back, people value things that are harder to get and maintain. There's very good reasons for that. I think it goes back to raising kids, keeping the tribe alive.

You know, raising kids, I don't have kids, but everyone I've talked to who does, they say, that is a giant pain in my butt. Oh my God, these kids are so much work. But if you ask people, what's the most important thing in your life? Where have you gotten the most meaning? It goes back to kids. But that's just kind of like this big metaphor for all these other decisions we make in life. And so kind of as you said it, the discomfort and the hardship is often a signal that this really actually matters.

You get something for free, for no work at all. Yeah, it seems great. But really, it's not as rewarding. Good example, lottery winners. Someone cut you, the government cut you a check for 200 million because you won the powerball. Seems awesome for about a week. And then you find they'd get totally miserable because there was no struggle in that. Had they had to earn that $200 million, things would probably be very different for them.

So how do we, I think she's a writer, her name is Freya, India. and she was writing about this idea of commitment. And I was raised in an ethos where if I didn't have another line in the water for work, right? The picture I grew up with is I'm fishing. And if I get married and I got kids, I would be insane to have a job, one line in the water that my boss could take away from me at any moment. That would be dumb. I should have other lines in the water at all times. I should be always, quote unquote, networking. There's a network event. I should always have a plan B and C and D. And then that leaks over into relationships. Like, man, if you go all in on this

one, all in, both feet in the boat, everybody's in this thing. Man, you can get really burned bad on this, right? And what she writes is, we've been told the only commitment that you can make is a commitment to yourself. And I called you a second time, I think, maybe it was a longer version of that first conversation, but I think the only thing that matters, and tell me if I'm crazy here, if I look back all the data,

we were made or we've been, we've evolved to this thing where the only way I'm going to achieve this thing called pieces, if I put myself in a position where I'm as healthy as possible, that I can give my entire self away. And in a marriage, if that person does the same thing, we'll ride or die forever, right? One writer says everyone in a marriage should, the best marriage is that each person should be secretly thinking they got the better into the deal, right? How do you back all the way out of a culture that it says the only person you can count on is

you? And the best way to do that is to simplify your life, I mean, to ease your life as much as possible, to be as comfortable as possible. When really the opposite is true, the more challenging commitments I anchor into, or as a psychology mentor mine once said, what if you lived your life as though you could never move? Like, what things would you do differently there? It feels so counterintuitive, countercultural to say, because there's reason, one of the reasons we're still married for several times is it was going to be too much of a pain to unwinded. right we put we got had a government thing we have a joint checking account all of our all of our

wills are it would be such a pain to unwind it and i don't want to see my kids only three days a week i'll see tomorrow and we'll start over again right and culture would tell us oh that means this is over instead of no it's hard today but show up again tomorrow right how do you push back on a culture that it's just said the whole reason for living is we're talking about this morning, like the hedonic treadmill, get on it and then find to suck as much pleasure out of this thing as possible, extract as much pleasure as possible, so that you can live this little bubblegum life. Well, I like your boat metaphor when it comes to marriage. Who are you getting in the boat with? That's an important decision. Yeah. Right? If you think

you're a pretty good sailor or rower, sailing. You still want a crew member who's like, I can row too. Yeah. I'm a good sailor too. Who are you going to go through the storm with, right? You want to make sure you're making the good call on someone that you'll have good teamwork with in navigating those storms because they will come. And so for me, it's, I think being willing to, one, you've got to work on yourself too.

But also finding someone who has that quality in them as well. And I do think that to sort of pull back to your larger question, yes, society does say do the next easiest, most comfortable thing. Despite all the podcasts where people say do hard things, it's like, and I'm one of those people, you still look at what people do day to day in the way society set up. It's things are designed to be as easy as possible. But I think it's finding in yourself and others the quality. to be willing to work through things when it gets hard and keep on pushing. The boat takes water.

Are you like, oh, we're going to die and drown? We got to shoot up the flare. No, you want someone who goes, all right, we got to start bailing right now. We got to start bailing right now. And it's willing to do that work. I mean, I think if I think of my own marriage, it's like, well, why did I marry Leah?

A lot of it is a sense of humor. There's like three people on Earth who can make me laugh. She's one of them. like laugh out loud. And we had, so we actually met at work. We were at a big media company kind of like this, never really saw each other talk for a year. And then this was at a, is that a big magazine?

And so the internet was sort of eating magazines. And there was this crazy round of layoffs. And this is sort of a contextual joke. But the company was owned by this family that was really hippies. And in this new HQ, which they poured a ton of money in, they created an energy vortex kiva in the middle. It was the stupidest thing. I totally messed up the design of the building.

You had to walk around it, but the whole idea is like, energy circulates in the kiva, and it'll make us all more creative, you know? So, Kelly's always doing. She brings her crystals in here. Yeah. Stuff like that.

And we're in the mail room after this. I'd never really talk to her. Our coworkers are scurrying around the office in a panic, and she just looks at me and goes, not even the Kiva can save the energy in this place right now and I just lost it was one of the funniest things just like dry deadpan sense of humor

and I was like I immediately like this person and then I was like oh you want to hang out later you know like fingers crossed sure and then we just hit it off and so I think it's like finding similar personality traits and we both don't take ourselves too seriously humor is how we deal with the world

for better or worse. But it was kind of aligning on that. And I found that like we've definitely gone through some hard things in our lives. But we know we can count on each other. We'll be there for each other. Whether it's with a joke, a hug. For me, it's usually me trying to hug her and just be and her kind of sort of, get off of me.

Yeah. And saying a joke, you know? But it's like it's just finding that sort of strange alignment, like leaning into your personality quirks, I think, and using those as a superpower when things get hard. I don't know if that answers the question. What would she say about you? She would say that I probably have the same quality in that I just try and find humor in things.

I mean, big picture to me is that there is never a better time to be born right than right now. Ever in human history. Ever in human history. Right. And if you want me to rattle off some stats, I can and I might as well. Your kids are literally more than 100 times less likely to die before reaching the age of five than they were even a couple hundred years ago. Like the infant mortality rate was more than 30% on average.

People, the average age used to be 35 because everyone was dying off at before age 5 and most people didn't even hit 35 because you'd get murdered. You'd fall off a cliff. You would get a nick and it would get infected. Not to mention you're walking around looking for food all day. You're starving. You can rarely find enough food. You're exposed to the elements on and on and on. Like, it has never been a better time to be alive.

So for me personally, that's where humor comes in because it's like, could always be worse. It could always be worse. So we have a bill that sucks and it's going to be stressful to not cover. It's like, this is a ridiculous problem in the grand scheme of time and space. a thousand years the problem was well we pissed off that tribe in that other canyon

and now they're coming to chop our heads off that's a real right you know what I mean so I think we align on the humor thing I think she would say about me I probably this can be a good thing and a bad thing

but I'm able to remain like yeah it'll be fine Yeah. Even when things do get bad. Whereas she's like, she sees a problem about 10 steps away and starts to solve for it, which can be good in the event of a real problem. It offsets my own like, man, it'll be fine. But also if it's not a big problem, she can get sort of like neurotic.

Yeah. She's a lawyer. So we compliment each other's faults, is what I'm trying to say. You know, we meet like, we're able to. compliment each other on our good things, but we're able to sort of offset each other's personality traits that sometimes backfire, I think. And so it's just like that weird. How do you keep from taking those personality traits that are different personally? I struggle for years. My wife would do a thing. And often what I found is spouses do a thing

that they would want done in a situation. Like we get there's some conflict. I want to watch this. You want to watch that. You never want to. And it immediately goes, two never and always right you never want to watch what i want to watch you always and let's say she steps away because in that moment she would want me to step away right well for me that sets off every alarm i got like you're not lovable and you're always going to get abandoned and then i'm like no right right and how have you learned to not take stuff like that personally the things that might be innate responses in her that are different than how you would like your automated system would respond to it.

Maybe you're just more mature than me. You mentioned how your wife likes the kitchen perfect. My lady is the same. She likes our house to look like a museum. And if we're up to her, my profession would be cleaning the house. Correct. I'm opposite. Yes.

I'm a clean person in the sense that like things aren't dirty, but like I'm a writer. There's stuff everywhere. There's like studies and whatever. And so that raised some conflict because all the crap out stresses her out. Where for me it's just like this is just part of the tornado that ultimately ends up helping us add money to the bank account. Like this is my process. And ultimately I had to ask myself, and I learned this from another person who was wise, said, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? how hard is it for you to organize the studies at the end of the day and put them in a cupboard, Michael?

All right. Good question. The answer is really not that hard. And so now when things come up, I'm just like, just put the freaking cup away that you left out for a day. Like, just put it away. Now, I don't always remember that. But I try and keep that in the back of my mind. How hard is that?

Like, ultimately I want her to be happy. That's my goal. Yeah. And if the path to getting there is just stacking some books orderly at the end of the day, like, that's a pretty low cost to entry, you know? And on the other side, my wife has been like, he's not leaving books out, me, because he's trying to make a point because he hates me. Like, I could just shut this door and go on about my life because he's a pretty good guy, right? And so it works, yeah, it works both ways.

She's definitely, she's definitely given some grace, right? If I had given entirely, the house would look like a museum. It looks much closer to a museum than it did. But I'm actually, you know, that's one of those things where like, you know, if you were to pick one or the other, I would say her path is probably right. So let's like give me some grace, but I'm going to lean that way. I'm not always perfect. She's probably listening to this being like, dude, you still leave so much stuff. There's a there's a, my big light bulb was there was some Gottman's research and obviously they're the big marriage researchers, but essentially it distilled down beyond beneath religion, sex, money, all these things that we proxy wars that we fight over and write thousands of books have been written on. It was really good marriages are, are y'all, are you all great friends? And I have a buddy named John. He goes, I go by hyper John. He goes by fat John, right? So I've known him for 30 years. But there was always a joke like, that guy leaves stuff out.

everywhere. And when we're at his house, we're at my house, wherever we happen to be, it's just stuff's up. And not one time in 30 years have I driven home from hanging out with a guy that has stood between me and literally getting my teeth knocked out of my head, right? A guy who has shown up for me in wild ways, right? Have I ever driven home and thought, what is he trying to say about our friendship? Not one time ever, because that's just him. Right. And yet I'll drive up to my house, walk in the door, and there'll be a laundry basket with towels in it. And my first thought is, really? It's about my wife.

You couldn't, like, what are you trying to sit? Instead of my default setting be, what must have her day been like? I'm going to fold these real quick, and I'm going to go see if anything else in the dryer. That takes me a net three and a half minutes. Totally. Three and a half minutes. Totally. And it reduces my strokes.

It reduces my blood pressure, right? But it's like, oh, she's my friend. And so what else needs to be put up around here, right? And it's just that I would do that at any of my friend's house, right? Yeah. But for some reason, for 15 of the 25 years, I'd walk in the door and be like, what about instead of, oh, that's my friend. She must have a crazy day.

Yeah, I had a friend, to your point about being sensitive, I'm the same way. And I had a friend I was talking to, and I was kind of laying some stuff. You know, I was airing my grievances. I was laying out my case like it was in court. Well, I was right. Here's the evidence. I'm calling a witness. Here's the case.

Clearly, I'm in the right. And he just looks at me and goes, did it ever occur to you that you might be too sensitive? But you're not allowed to ask that on Instagram, right? No, it did not occur to me, but you may have some good counter evidence in this hearing. Yeah. And I try and think about that, too.

Like I just, you know, if she says something that maybe hurts my feelings, I go, you know, there's a lot of different ways to interpret that. And I don't know why she's saying. I can, I know that she loves me. I know we're best friends. So I'm going to guess probably my interpretation that was completely negative is probably wrong in at least some ways. I think Becky Kennedy told me it was called the, she said it so beautifully. Yes, she does. Most generous interpretation.

Maybe that's it. Like, you just, someone just said a thing. I get to choose what story I make up about what they just said. And I can make up one where they're coming after me and I'm going to come back. Or I can make up one that was like, I said that kind of dumb, but I know what they meant. Right. The stories, I get to make up that story. Yeah, the story you tell yourself about your life events determines everything.

That's, I mean, you hear all these things online and fitness spaces about like mental toughness and this and that and that. It's like, no, it's really just what story you're going to. to tell yourself about an event and that 100% shapes your outcomes. And there's so many different, of course, there are very extreme events where it's going to be hard to get a good story. There's not, yeah, when your house burns down, there's not a good story. Yeah. It is and is. But I would say in the trenches of daily life, the narrative you place behind an event and where it's going to lead. So there's these two different types of stories. I'm going to forget their exact name because I wrote about this

six months ago and things just sort of fly into the ether afterwards. There's called one is contamination stories and one I forget the exact wording but we'll say strengthening stories. Okay so same event happens. Condamination story is this

thing happened it is going to mess me up all these bad outcomes are going to happen and I'm never going to be good again. Strengthening stories are this bad thing happened but what did I learn from it. How am I going to grow from it? Could there be a way in which this actually makes me a stronger, better person? Same exact thing happens. Someone who tells themselves the contamination

story is going to have a worse life course, worse health outcomes, worse mental health. Because your body starts solving for that story. Yes. Yes, exactly. Whereas with the strengthening story, you have better outcomes. And you actually become better off from those events because you learn from them. People don't learn from when times are easy. People learn from when things are hard. This is why you and I have talked at length about Joseph Campbell and his work. Yeah, yeah. But that's what the hero's journey is. Right. But that's post-traumatic growth.

Yeah. And post-traumatic stress disorder, like, just a small percentage. Most people have a really awful thing. And given the right tribe, you become stronger, right? Or maybe not even stronger, but you become a different version of yourself. Yeah. Great example. I love, there was a study on cancer survivors.

Most of them retrospectively said that cancer was one of the best things that ever happened to that. Because why, why would that be? Because it reset how they saw their life. They go, oh, it sort of put like a firm, like it made me realize that, yeah, this ride is going to end. And that changed how I rode the ride. You know, they start to go, oh, okay, I'm going to drop all.

all this stuff that's not really going to matter in the end. I'm going to spend more time with friends, with family. I'm going to do things I really like. And so that's like, cancer's extreme. And the vast majority of people find they grow from it. And I read that study and I'm like, well, let's see if this is BS. So I called it my mom. She's been cancer free for 10 years.

So I read this study. What do you think about this? And she goes, oh, yeah. She's like, I feel like it shaped my decisions, lowered my stress because I see things different. I'm like, it's not as bad as cancer. This thing that happened in my life. She spent more time with me.

She said it even made her nicer. My mom has the tendency to like, don't piss her off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She made me much nicer around people. So I do think that's sort of like a metaphor for sometimes these things can actually turn out to be good things. So I just got a picture in my mind that I've never had before. So if we all view our life as though we're on a roller coaster and there comes a day when it runs out of track. It will.

It's 100% guaranteed. This roller coaster runs out of track. And it might run out of track over a cliff. It might run out of track up against a brick wall, but it runs out of track. I can spend all of my time on that roller coaster gripping this thing as hard as I can. Or I can throw my hands up and enjoy that ride. Yeah, totally. That's a wild, like that to me just changed.

That's a good frame for me. And here's another thing. How fun is a roller coaster that's perfectly flat with no turns and no quarks crews and no upside downs and no bubble, all this crazy stuff. Yeah. It's the worst. No, you need the crazy stuff to make that ride thrilling. Yeah. I would also argue that today it's never been easier to avoid the thrilling stuff.

Yeah. BS pops up in your life. You can avoid it. You got a problem with a relationship. You can ice them out. you can just, you don't like your boss, I quit. I'm going to go find another job. Or your spouse, I'm just going to swipe right, man.

Yeah. I'm like, I don't want to deal with this conflict. I'm out. Totally. Yeah. And so those sorts of things are what make life interesting. It's funny you say that because I was riding on a kitty roller coaster with my daughter when she was really young. And it was, but it wasn't high.

And I said, here comes the big one. And it went, mm. And she said, Dad, that wasn't. You know what I mean? Yeah. But I tried to manufacture some. It was a really small little hill, but I tried to, here it comes.

She's like, that's not that big a deal, right? Man. Okay. You wrote about this a long time ago, maybe it been a couple years ago. And it has stuck with me. And in fact, it reoriented how I think about mental health, because I've been trying to wrestle with it for years. As I was a grad student and then out in the real world,

we've told ourselves a story about mental health, which is if you get all the thoughts in the right order, you will somehow be mentally well. We need to keep talking about it and talking about it and talking about it. And if you talk about it enough, you'll order this thing in the right way, and your body will go, ah, we're well. You told a story, and I'd love for you to tell it here,

about the magazine where you were one of the associate editors, and it was clearly not going to make it. And you had a run, and I don't even know what story I'm telling, but you were talking to, maybe it was the editor-in-chief, somebody and you said, what are we going to do? That follow-up line that he gave you has shifted everything for me. And I would love to hear that. Everything for me, too. There's a reason 10 years later I'm writing about it. Yeah. So context out of big magazine. Internet is like killing print. Not to mention in this magazine, we'd had a bunch of layoffs. We didn't have an editor in chief. We'd lost

like half our staff. We got to get a magazine out in the next week. Like, magazines are a lot of work. Yeah. And we got to figure out like new stories to do with half the staff, all this. I mean, the walls are crumbling, right? And leading up to that, I had had all these ideas for stories. But I needed to get them just perfect. They needed to be absolutely perfect before I sent them in. Everything had to be dialed, perfect.

And Tom's stressing out about all this, everything. And I walk out in the hall and the guy's name is Bill Stump. What a great name. Bill Stump, yeah. Raised by a pastor, I believe, awesome guy. I said, Bill, what are we going to do? And he just looked at me and he goes, do something. That was it.

Those two words have changed my life, Michael. Do something. Yeah. It's like, oh, okay. So I go back into my office and I'm like, do something. We need story ideas. You've been sitting here in your head trying to get everything perfect. for some imaginary jury

that you think is going to read a line and be like, this guy's so dumb, it's fire him. I send in imperfect ideas. One of them hit. I wrote the story as my first big feature in the magazine. That literally launched my career. Do something.

So I think the lesson is when things come up in your life, whether it be a mental health problem or relationship problem or work problem, whatever it is, if you're anything like me, you're probably pretty good at sitting around and over-analyzing every possible angle.

The reality is, unless you're a really good fortune teller, you have no idea where those are going to lead. So take the evidence you have, pick the best path, do something. Because the more shots you take at the basket, the more likely something's going to go in. And I do think we,

societally, like the rise of mental health conversations and therapy, good thing overall at the same time, we can sit around and just talk and talk and talk. This and that we've got to unpeel every layer of, you know, when I was a child, this thing happened and this thing happened. It's like, just do something. Yeah. Right?

Like you can't change that. I'm not saying that's bad, but I'm saying all talk, no action, that's probably bad. I think that leads, I think it pours gasoline on a fire. Totally. The more you talk about a mental health problem, the more. symptoms set in. That's been shown in the data all the time. In fact, it's odd because we are told to sit down and like really analyze our thoughts deeply. But in general, for most people, most of the time, with the problems of general living, just brushing it off and being like, man. Yeah. Or go do a thing,

right? Yeah. And what's so strange about the way when you wrote about that, it locked in, I looked back over the course of my professional life and whether I'm sitting in a house helping police officers move bodies, right? Or I am sitting with a parent whose child is dead in that next room right there. Or I'm sitting with a kid who just got beat up as when I was working at universities because they were the wrong color in the wrong place or they loved the wrong way. Whatever the thing was, no matter what we were going through, it always distilled down to a question, which was, what are you going to do now? Yeah. Right. And here's some options for you, here's some resources for you. Here's how I'll walk with you. But what are you going to do now?

And I can't believe that I hadn't crystallized that in my own life on not the big things, right? If my house blows over, I know what I'm going to do next. If it, I've been in a, on a campus where there's an active shooter. Like, I know what to do in those things. But at the granular level, when me and my wife are just being pissy, what are you going to do now? Are you going to turn on the TV or are you going to go find one thing to do for her? Yeah. Right? Like do a thing when me and my 10 year old daughter get I still try to take on a 10 year old, which is so stupid. Like it, I remember calling a buddy a few years ago and I was like, hey, I was arguing with my 14 year old about and he's goes, I'm going to stop here right there. Why are you arguing with a 14 year old? And this guy like is the CEO of a landscape company. No mental. And he's like, why are you arguing with a 14 year old? And I was like, all I needed. That's it. But it's like when I find myself in those moments, what's a thing I can do to lean towards that?

that relationship that I'm with forever, right? What's a thing, my boss doesn't appreciate, what's one value ad I could give to my company right now? Totally. What's one thing in my financial situation? What's one more hour I could work somewhere to get some more money in my house? Or what's one thing I could not buy this month, right? But it's like, it's weird that I have a podcast and I write and I, whatever,

and I'm telling people, maybe listen to a few less podcast and go start doing some of that stuff. Or I'm surrounded by religious people who go from, from Bible study to church service to personal journaling time, go feed a homeless person, right? Go find some addicts that are struggling and sit with them and just bring water, man. You know what I mean? Like start going to do something. And I find for me that's the most exposing thing is not what are you thinking about and what are you talking about.

Like I've gotten to a point where I honestly don't care a lot. People say, I just want to know what are you doing? Like, what are you out doing in the world? When it comes to health stuff, mental health stuff, and scarcity brain is one of my favorite things you've written, talking about just kind of peeling back to layers of addiction. I think the first thing I asked you yesterday was, I may or may not have a nicotine pouch problem,

but I've got hyper-addictive personality. What are some things that the exhausted, mom with three kids listening to the show or the dad who's working two jobs like what are some things we can do that are low level that you've seen across all your books all your research that like here are some value adds to your day when you're time strapped when you're whatever like here's some things you can go do that's going to make a positive impact on your life that's a broad question it's a broad question there's a lot it's it's case by case but if i looked at most people most of the time what helps movement helps call it exercise

if you want to, and if you're busy with kids, get them involved. Yeah. You know, you can sit on the couch and watch Netflix. That's fun. It's a distraction. But you could also, like, go for a walk with your kids. Yeah. Take them to the park.

Run around. You're going to get movement. You're going to spend time outside. That's really good for mental health. You're going to connect at a more human level because you were talking to each other rather both, rather than both watching the screen. You might see another parent and all you'll do is this. Just the eyebrow raise.

And you realize, oh, we're all in this. Right, right? Little thing. together. Okay. Work with other people, help other people. That's like consistently linked if you can. If you don't have time for that, I get it.

There's different seasons for life. You might have to wait until your kids are, say, eight or ten. You know, after writing the comfort crisis, for example, I had a lot of parents reach out to me. And I said, okay, should I take my kid on this, you know, two-week crazy backpacking trip or should I move? I even had one friend who was like, should I move into like the worst part of town? Would that make more resilient?

It's like, no, don't. Don't do that. Like, the reason you work is so you can have a good life. But you could take them to volunteer at a homeless shelter. Like, your kids are going to be exposed to other ways of living and maybe realize they have, they have it pretty good in the grand scheme of time and space. And by helping people, that's going to help everyone's mental health. Like, when you're helping other people, yes, outwardly you're helping that, but you're also

helping yourself significantly. That, yeah, I mean, I think, like, for me, a lot of it is just like, What did humans do for most of the time? We worked outdoors, we moved our bodies, we were with other people, we ate food that wasn't filled with 50 million ingredients. Right. Like that stuff still really works at a fundamental level. And I think we overcomplicate things. I remember this is probably 10 or 12 years ago.

And this is when the word biohacking was first getting thrown around, right? with some of the OGs. And I remember a colleague of mine, he since passed away, but he came, we were talking over dinner one night, and I was like, what did you learn at the conference? And he's, and I'll never forget this. He said, oh, that all goes away. And I was like, what do you mean?

And he goes, because if you just already look, all the biohacking stuff is going to say, move your body, hang out with good people. We're a pair-bonded species, so Mary, one person do really well and have lots of good sex and raise good healthy kids. He's like,

it's just going to end up there. Yeah. Right? And so all this stuff will be cool and great and whatever, but a lot of it will be theater. Just do those basic things.

And for me, one of the big do-somethings is, and this may not be fair, but I've kind of distilled my life into I'm doing an action for me or I'm doing action against me. And there are some moments when they, right? Like this morning,

I skipped my big, long workout, right? I'm at the end of school season with my kids. I'm at the end of a long project. I'm tired. Yeah, and you had to eat biscuits with me. I did have to have biscuits. But I traded, I did, I slept in an extra 45 minutes, and that meant I got a 15-minute walk. I threw on a rucksack, thanks to you. And I took off, and I told my son, I'm going to get you to school, but I'm going to go do this real quick. And, but it was something, right? And it was a little bit of a thing. And it wasn't my big grandiose plans and whatever, and I made this trade for this trade. And tomorrow I might trade 45 minutes of sleep for a longer time. But it's not even going to be the same thing all the

time, but it's, what am I trying to solve for today? I'm trying to solve for a piece in my house. I'm trying to solve for a relationship with my kid. I'm trying to solve for being on time. And I need to do human stuff, man. And my goodness, what a different way to live. Yeah, and I would say, try to be creative with the 2% idea we talked about. I finished comfort crisis and handed it to my, he was 12 at the time, and I said, everything stops, you read that. And he read it in like two or three days. And he's like, he's good, dad.

But even him at five in the morning, when we're walking into somebody's ranch that they're letting us hunt on, and I'll be like, I'll just drive stuff. And he goes, no, dad, comfort crisis, we're going to walk. Awesome. I'm like, dude, okay. He's keeping you honest. We'll start. And I'm climbing up a tree and I can barely breathe.

But it's that those stories he'll tell at my funeral about the time dad and I hiked through at 5 a.m. Not we drove up with the heater on until the last possible. You know what I mean? It's what life in the rear of mirror do I want to say that lived and not the most insulated comfort, but the most adventure feel, the most fun, the most best relationships. It's awesome. Yeah, no one. The stories we tell each other are never, yeah, I sat in this really comfortable chair and watched this show.

It's always the. the sort of things that had hardship attached to them. Yeah. Right? Like, go out and live a life where you get a lot of stories. You can tell a party. There you go. Yeah.

And the eulogy versus a resume thing has stuck with me. Like, I want stories with my kids. Did I keep my suit perfectly clean? Or do I want my daughter wiping away tears at my funeral saying? One time dad was in his suit and he, I bumped him and he went flying into the mud puddle. And then he dragged me down. Like, that's the story they'll tell, right? Totally.

When I think about, like, my, when I'm reporting books and I travel all over for these, if everything goes right, the book is not going to be as good. When I had to go to Iraq, that trip went off the rails. Yeah. But the whole time in the back of my head, I'm thinking, this is a pain. This is mildly dangerous. But guess what? It was not mildly dangerous.

It was pretty dangerous. Yeah, okay. But it's going to be awesome in the book. So one of the takeaways for me was no problem, no story. If you don't have a problem, probably not going to get a story out of it. Now, for me, that's really important as a writer, but I would argue for us as humans

that communicate with each other and want to live an interesting life, that's also a pretty good rule. Yeah. And to pan back, everybody's scared about their work, everybody's scared about AI, everybody's scared about the economy,

everybody's scared about war. You've been a good model for me in, you know what I want to do? I want to go be a journalist, right? And I'm going to be a journalist and write at a major magazine. Oh, here comes the internet, right? So I'm going to pivot and become

a professor. Oh, higher ed's turning into a cesspool. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to and you have been a great job. I've been a great example for me from afar of saying every one of us is going to go through those things. And so we could, I can't, you could. You could still be trying to be one of those bitter, burned out journalist who smokes four packs a day and trying to find a smaller and smaller magazine to write it because I'm a magazine writer. or you can still be the union. We both have friends who are just hating their life as college professors right now.

Or I'm going to do something, right? That's exactly what you did. Yeah, same thing, right? Yeah. But it's like, okay, I'm seeing this thing play out in front of me. I can sit here and be bitter about it, or I can grieve it and be sad. I would be awesome to still be writing for magazines.

I still love getting magazines, right? It'd be awesome. The idea of being a college professor is still the greatest job on the planet, interact with college students. It's amazing. and what I have in my head doesn't exist anymore. And so I can choose that reality and then go do something. It's awesome.

Dude, thanks for being my friend, man. Likewise, dude. This is fun as always.