The Dr. John Delony Show - The Dark Side of Happiness With Michael Easter

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

On today’s show, John talks with author and speaker Michael Easter about the surprising dark side of happiness, comfort and escapism. Lyrics of the Day: ""Truckin'" - The Grateful Dead Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show.  Support Our Sponsors: BetterHelp DreamCloud Hallow Thorne Add products to your cart create an account at checkout Receive 25% off ALL orders Resources: Building a Non-Anxious Life Anxiety Test Own Your Past, Change Your Future Questions for Humans Conversation Cards John’s Free Guided Meditation Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download at: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately. Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. We've been using substances for millions of years as survival tools. What's different is that today we've scaled up the psychoactive component and made it just abundant anywhere. It's very easy to get and the part that makes you feel something is very strong. What's up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney show. A show about your mental health, your marriage, your emotional health, getting outside and changing your life. It's a show about changing your family tree. I'm John, and I've been doing this for two decades,

sitting with hurting people when the wheels have fallen off. And my promise is, I may not know the exact answer, but I will sit with you, and we will figure out what to do next. If you want to be on the show, go to johndeloney.com slash ask, A-S-K. Fill out the form, and we will see if we can get you on. We get calls and notes from all over the planet. And so we'd love to have you as a part of the show. And today's a really incredible day. So a number of you wrote in and said, hey, we love having the occasional interview. Please, if you have somebody who's great that you think we should know, please bring it on. Bring them on.

And listen, gosh, it's probably a year ago now. I got a hold of Dr. Atiyah. Peter Atiyah strongly recommended reading a book. And so whenever he's one of the few people and he says, read this book, I read that book. And I read the book. It's called The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter. I finished the book. I immediately walked into my 12-year-old son's room, and I handed him the book. I did black out a few words just because, I don't know, I'm an old-fashioned guy. I handed it to my 12-year-old,

and I said, everything stops in your life until you read this book, and then we're going to go to breakfast and talk about it. And he rolled his eyes and he started reading it and he didn't put it down. And so you have a guy here with two PhDs who read this book and was profoundly changed and moved. And I handed it to my 12 year old and it captured him like a Harry Potter novel. And it has opened up some incredible conversations that a year later, it's become part of the fabric of our life. The author of The Comfort Crisis, like I said, is by Michael Easter, who's an incredible guy and an incredible writer, spent time writing for Men's Health for many years, has spent years in the publishing industry,

wrote The Comfort Crisis, and has a brand new book out called Scarcity Brain. This is a book that I was so excited to get. So in the publishing world, actually, they'll send us media copies. They send us free copies of the book to read and to see if we'll have somebody on our show. When I saw that it was in pre-sale, I actually bought it with my own money. I went and got it. I wanted to get it as soon as I possibly could. And Michael's been a friend now for a while. And man, having him on the show is just incredible.

We talk about addiction, talk about how addiction works and not just addiction to drugs, but addiction to work, addiction to what other people think about us, addiction to certain kinds of food, addiction. We also talk about what to do with all of this comfort. Something that sounds so strange,

something that we all want and desire, yet it's killing us. We talk about the question of God. We talk about so much. It's one of my favorite conversations I've ever had. So buckle up, turn up the volume a little bit on your headphones. If you're listening to us that way, check out my conversation with the great and extraordinary Mr. Michael Easter. Hey, man, thanks for being with us. That's awesome. So you've written, and I've told you this personally, I think I reached out to you, which I almost never do. This is in the top five most important books I've read in the last decade.

And I told you I finished The Comfort Crisis, and I immediately walked into my son, who was 12 at the time. I was like, you have to read this book. And then I did something I almost never do. I bought Atiyah's book, and I bought, out of my own money, I bought your book. And what most insider baseball, when somebody's going to press tour, they often will send out a bunch of copies. And I don't want to wait. I was like, no, no, I have to have this book at my house. And it's another just masterpiece, dude. It's so good. And I trust you enough. I sent you an early copy of mine and you said, I think these things overlap a lot. And this morning I just sat there as I was going over notes for this. And I thought, oh my gosh, you just wrote a better version of the book I was trying to put together. That's not true. It is. So I'm excited to dig into this. I want to start

with a new picture of addiction. I've struggled with it. You've been really open about your adventures with addiction. And I want to frame up addiction 101 was moral failure forever. If you have an addiction, if you can't stop drinking, if you can't stop looking at pornography, if you can't stop something, it's because you're weak and you suck and you're a bad person, right? And then there was this shift, and I've heard it a couple different ways, but the one that makes the most sense is the only path towards compassion in our country, both with theological, with faith communities, and with the medical community, is to label something a disease.

If I stamp it with disease, then the church is like, oh, you're not a bad person. You can come to a recovery group at our building. Or if it's not a moral failure, if it's a disease, then health insurance will cover it. Right. If it's not a moral failure, if it's a disease, then health insurance will cover it. And so we've lived under this disease model and quietly over the last probably 20 years working with college students, which is a huge – that's where the epicenter of some of this starts. It's been this very disempowering – students come in slumped over, right? Not like I have a huge test and I'm going to go get it. Or you talk to students right before the bar exam and they're scared to death,

but they're also like, I'm going to get this thing. Students coming in saying, I got a disease. I've got a thing. And it's just going to be my life. And it's a giving up. And then there's been a different conversation, maybe the last 10 or 15 years. And it's funny because I used to always

tell college students parents um hey your kid's drinking because it works it works it works great until it doesn't right until it kills you like cocaine's incredible it works until it kills you right and I had never seen it laid out and then there's some authors that have said you know addiction's just connection. And that's not, that doesn't go far enough. So paint us a new picture. Cause I, I feel like both the psychiatrists that I'm talking to behind closed doors, the psychologist and, and medical researchers that I'm talking to, and then folks like you and I who have experienced this and who meet with other people regularly, and you traveled the world for this book, paint us a new picture of what addiction might actually be. So, yeah, you have to start with, I think you have to go back in history, and you have to look at how have humans traditionally

used substances. And in Scarcity Brain, I argue, we've been using substances for millions of years as survival tools. So if you think about alcohol, alcohol's role as humans were evolving is that it would give off a scent from rotting fruit. You needed food. You couldn't find it, right? So you smell this, and you're like,

oh, that's food that's going to keep me alive. So you go eat the food, right? And so apples fall from a tree, and they just sit on the ground. Exactly. They begin to ferment. You smell that. It's like, bam, we just found a lot of food. Great. Things like cocaine. So for example, cocaine is made from coca leaves. Now coca leaves are still used as basically like coffee in a lot of countries in South America because it

increases your focus a little bit, right? Now the actual cocaine component is very, very minimal. So we've always used these things to survive. So with the example of the coca leaf, hones your focus on a long hunt. It keeps you going when you're in these long searches for food in the past when food was scarce, et cetera. And you can basically apply that logic to most substances. But I think what's different is that today we've sort of scaled up the psychoactive component and made it just abundant anywhere, right? So it's very easy to get, it's cheap, and the part that, yeah, makes you feel something is very strong. So we still use these as tools though, right? You mentioned me. I'll take me as an example.

I don't drink anymore. But the reason I started drinking is because it enhanced my life. Made your life better for a season. Made my life better. Full stop. And we don't talk about that enough. Exactly. How did it make it better?

Oh, a lot of reasons. I mean, so I've had to unpack why I drank in the first place. If I was at a social event, it was a social lubricant. Um, but also I've always been a person who is drawn to sort of extreme experiences, right? Like still today I go on these long back country hunts or I'll go to these countries that where there's a lot, a lot happening, you know? Um, and alcohol can, alcohol gave me that this sort of, it sort of lessen the reins. And it was like, anything could happen.

If you have a bunch of drinks, you don't know what's going to happen. You're going to be up for anything. And that improved my life. Now, at a certain point, that stops working, right? You keep trying to chase that good thing that you get from it over and over and over. And eventually, it starts paying back. Now, the problem is that you've learned this behavior that you are absolutely convinced and have all this past evidence improves your life. And if you are an addict, using your substance

of choice or behavior of choice, it still enhances your life in the short term. It does. So even when I was at my worst with drinking, if I took a drink, my life would get better, at least in the short term. The problem is that it begins to create long-term problems. The evidence melts on the other side, like this isn't helping. Right. Right. And it's hard to split that apart. Yeah. You can't see that in the moment because you've learned this thing that always worked and then it stops working and you're like, well, why isn't this working anymore? Maybe I just need to try it again. And let's do more. Yeah. Let's do more. Maybe I just didn't do enough.

Right. And so that's a hard cycle to get out of. I think it's more, I really think of addiction as more a, in a way in the addict's mind, it's kind of a solution to problems. But I think really what underlies it is it's a symptom of something else you're trying to take care of. So for me, it was just that like, I kind of had a boring life at the height of my drinking, right? Like I didn't have a fulfilling job. I wasn't able to get out and do these other things that would have given me this like stimulation that I needed to thrive as a human being. And I could find that through alcohol, even though it was, you know, leading to problems in the long term.

But it could be, it could be any behavior for other different people, you know? You, you and I had dinner last night and we were talking about our jobs. I think that's an important thing to put a pin in. Your job at the time was like a great job and probably one you were pretty excited to get, right? I mean, you were a writer for a prestigious publication. I am 100% confident I read your articles back at my house because I subscribed to several of the magazines you were a part of creating. And so how much of that boring job is, is a gap between if I get this job, then I'm going to be good. And I get this job. And then

all of a sudden it's like, Oh, I do this for the rest of my life. We used to joke with actors, with my acting students, like, Hey, if you go to Broadway and you get cats, congratulations, you're a cat for the next 30 years of your life. Twice a day, you'll never have a weekend again. Like you, you got there and it's like, Oh gosh, you know what I mean? But how much of that boredom there's reality. It's just punch and punch and punch. But there had to be a gnawing sense of, oh, I thought when I got here that then I'd be okay with Michael. Well, I think that that's a story of a lot of different things in life, right? So when I was reporting the comfort crisis, for example, I traveled to Bhutan

and I go meet with this guy who's a Kempo in the Buddhist faith. So this is like pretty high up. And he had lived in America for a while. He was the, he was a boyfriend of the translator for the Dalai Lama. So he'd lived in Atlanta. He'd kind of seen how Americans live and now he's back in Bhutan and he lives in this shack that's like on a cliff. There's not electricity. It's like a bucket system for water. And he looks at me and he goes, you know, a lot of times people in the West, they live life like it's a checklist. And once you check the box, oh, that's what's going to make me happy. But then you check the box and you go, well, what's that other box there? What's the

next one I can check? And then it's that search, right? And so it kind of is this constant dissatisfaction can happen. But I think that in my case, yeah, you know, I thought that this like, oh, I got this job that everyone's heard of this place that I work at. I'm doing all this writing. But the reality was, is that it wasn't as exciting as you might think. It never is. Yeah. You know, I had, I couldn't write things that I actually wanted to write about. A lot of times I had editors who would chop it up. I couldn't get out in the world and meet, like I got into journalism to go places, to be on the ground, to meet people, to learn information. And I couldn't do a lot of that. And yeah, it just wasn't as exciting as you might think on paper. And so in order to find that excitement, well,

Friday and Saturday, let's go out to the bars. Let's drink a bunch. Let's see what's going to happen, right? It very much was a roll of the dice. Totally. It's like, you don't know what's going to happen. You might close down this bar, you know, singing friends in low places with some people you've never met and like, wow, that's crazy. Or it might be like, you know, oh, we're going to go into this totally new area of town. And like, we're going to this place and there's just all these different things, or it could even be writing, right. I could sit down and crank out these words that I otherwise might not have had I been sober. And so it was very much an exploration of the edges in a way that ultimately led to long-term problems. So addiction would, we wouldn't even

call it addiction. Substance use wouldn't be a problem if like, yeah, I had a bunch of drinks, and then I went and volunteered, and then I donated some money to charity, and then all these good things, right? The problem is, is that it leads to behaviors that aren't good for society often. So I think the scary thing about framing addiction as first a behavior that works. So if I'm talking to a mom and a dad and has a 12 year old, it's already showing signs of addiction. It's easy to want to blame a 12 yearyear-old that's already showing signs of addiction. It's easy to want to blame a 12-year-old, want to blame the substance and not ask the harder question, which is what is happening in that kid's world that their body is finding avenues to escape from? Like whether that's getting bullied at school, whether that's you all keep fighting, whether that's dad, you're not at home, that kid feels that tension.

And if I look at, I'll just use the United States, if we look at the escalating addiction rates across the board on Netflix, hours worked, pornography, drugs, whatever you want to say, I think the easy solution is it's a disease. The easy solution is, well, you're bad and you're bad and you're bad. The harder question is, what kind of culture have we created that everybody has everything and they're so desperate to escape from it? That to me is a scarier question culturally. Right. It takes harder work. It's not as black and white, right? So humans, we don't like uncertainty. We don't like complexity. It's much easier if you can just say, yep, bad person, wrong decision. Oh, absolutely. 100% a sick person. It's a disease. I think kind of what we're getting at here is usually there's some underlying reason a person would use a substance or do a behavior in the first place. And it's probably going to be different for everyone, but uncovering that

is difficult work. It's not really fun. So I think that part of getting sober is having to ask those hard questions. Why am I using this in the first place? So I think addiction basically needs three things to happen. You need to have a person who is in pain or has problems. You need a lack of being able to solve those problems in a better way or deal with that pain in a more productive way. Not a lot of outlets. And then you need a substance that quickly solves that problem that's abundant, more or less.

And you see that. That's like the story of most drug epidemics, right? So in the book, I travel to Iraq. There wasn't much addiction there for a long time. A lot of that was because Saddam ruled with an iron fist. Then what happens is you have the U.S. military invasion. So it destabilizes the country. You have a lot of people who have lived through the trauma of a war for a long time. And then in 2017, the

country Syria falls and they basically become a narco state. So their main export right now is this drug called Captagon, which is this new sort of, it's analogous to methamphetamine. Methi. Yeah. Yeah. It's Methi. And it starts floating over the borders. So you have this population of people who have all these traumas from war. So you have this population of people who've have all these traumas from war. There's not a lot of great outlets for that in Iraq. It's not like there's, you know, psychiatry offices on every corner that would help them find another way out of that. And then you have this substance flood in that immediately get you out of your

problems, at least in the short term, it allows you to sort of escape from that. And so because of that, you see addiction really spike. Same thing with, you know, why did the opioid epidemic really boom in a lot of the places that used to be steel manufacturers? It's like, well, all the jobs leave. Took away people's purpose. Yeah. Jobless, you're hopeless. And then all of a sudden we get this flood of opioids and that can solve a lot of problems that were brought on by not having a sort of bright horizon to look out onto, right? It's like a very dark horizon to be like, well, I've lost my job. There's no more jobs coming in. I don't have any other skill than this one that I've spent my whole life learning. And that's terrible. Like, how am I going to spend my time?

And then this thing comes in that makes you feel better in the short term. And I like to extrapolate like a completely burned to the ground Iraq and then trying to figure out what's next. And then a burned to the ground Appalachia, right? Here's these manufacturing jobs and they're just gone overnight.

We ship them overseas. I like to take those because they're outside the bell curve and then shift it to that more common quiet life of desperation. You may not be doing opiates, but Netflix has taken, you don't even have to change channels anymore. It just starts the next show for you. And your husband's always going to be a little bit grumpy. Your wife's always going to be a little bit distant. Your kids are always going to want to hang out with their friends more than you. They're always going to have their faces buried in a screen. And so you may not be snorting Adderall off your counter, but you can disappear in your own life.

And it's these, I'm just going to, you know what? I'm not good at being a parent. I'm not good. My wife clearly doesn't like me. I'm going to spend more time at work because I know I'm good there, right? And in the short term, I make a little bit more money, I get a little more accolades. And in the long term, I create a home that my kids don't want to come back to after college, right? So it costs me everything because I become addicted to this or whatever. I become addicted to just checking out, right? And I think it's easy to point fingers at alcohol. It's easy to point fingers at new drugs. It's easy to point fingers at opiates. It's harder to point fingers in the mirror and say like, what am I using in my day-to-day life? For me,

it was food. Like, what am I using in my life to not be present with discomfort? Right. And that's a gnarly place to find yourself. I like what you mentioned, that three-pronged approach to addiction, because to me, the answer's in the middle. Everybody's going to experience pain, all of us. And there's always going to be outlets. It's that middle one, which is, how can I go get tools? How can I go fill my toolkit up beyond just rage or some substance? What can I fill the tools, right? How can I go fill my toolkit up beyond just rage or some substance? What can I fill the bag up with? And you do that so great here, kind of unpacking that.

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It's amazing. Three free months of the app when you go to halo.com slash Deloney. Go right now and change your life i think i've always told folks i think happiness is like fireworks and cocaine like they're shiny and they're cool and they are terrible masters and their terrible destination like they're it's a it's a dumb place to try to attain right to try to get to if you will and it's baked into the d of our country, this pursuit of

happiness. It's wired into who we say we are. And I don't think it's good. Talk to me about happiness. Well, yeah. And I kind of had always felt like you. Now, at the same time, I'm a science journalist, ultimately. And in reading a lot of their research on happiness, like we get this list of things we gotta do to be happy, right? The big one now is you must be social to be happy. I'm like, I'm not saying that being social is bad, but I am saying like, how do we measure that?

Like, I know plenty of people that prefer to be alone and they just have one or two really good friends that are seemingly some of the most satisfied people with their lives I've ever met. Or it's like, you must do X, you must do Y, you must do Z all to be happy. And when you start to sort of peel back the layers and also use some common sense, you can see that like, it's the keto diet. It's the raw vegan. It's like, well, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn't exactly jive. You science journalist with your data. Right, right.

Data sucks. Happiness is complex. It's confusing. And to sort of understand it, well, I'll tell you this. So there's all this list of stuff we need to do to be happy, right? And then I come across some research on these Benedictine monks who live in New Mexico, and there's a bunch of them throughout the world. And research shows that they're significantly happier than the average person. Now, when you look at what they do across the day, their life would kick your butt.

Like, they're doing all these things that don't make sense for them to be happy. They wake up at three in the morning and go pray in the chapel. And they do that seven other times across the day. They do hard physical labor for four hours. They spend a significant portion of the day not talking at all. They have to be in silence. So they're not super social. They don't have, long story short, they have a pretty hard, austere lifestyle. That they've created for themselves. That they've created for themselves. That they've created for themselves. And yet they're happy.

And so why is that? And I think a lot of it goes back to they're not trying to be happy, right? They're trying to devote themselves to this higher idea. So for them, it's God. They're trying to do the next right thing that is not about themselves. They're getting out of themselves in every moment. And I think that by following that, by doing what you inherently know is the next right thing that's going to help other people, help the world, I think people wind up happy. Yes, that is harder, right? Because we often think that, and I'm guilty of this,

if I just buy that one car, that's going to to make me happy. Like my problem is that I don't have the right car, right? I don't have the right purchase. My next happiness is going to be this awesome new meal I'm going out for. Like we have all these things, right, that we think are going to make us happy. But I think really when you kind of peel back the layers on not only the research, but also, I mean, a lot of just this ancient wisdom that's been circulating through humans for as long as we've been around. It really is like, get out of yourself, find something bigger than yourself and try and do the next right thing and help others. And people wind up happy that way. Tell me if this – maybe I'm stretching here. So I wrestle – I've wrestled with body dysmorphia my whole life, like even looking at objective measures. And I was having a meal with Sal DiStefano, one of the mind pump guys up in San Jose.

And he's been a personal trainer for years. And he said something that was one of those before and after moments for me. And he said, John, you can't hate your body into better shape. If you go to the gym every day because you think you're disgusting and you beat yourself up for an hour to be less disgusting,

you'll always run out of gas. You'll never get to that place. If you wake up every day and love yourself enough to say, dude, I am so invested in feeling better. Like I'm worth at least an hour. That's how much value I have. Then you'll do that indefinitely because you're on a path now.

You're not just sprinting to this arbitrary finish line. It almost sounds like if the finish line is happy you'll never catch it but if these guys are waking up every day and saying my path to peace my path to whatever path to god is i'm not trying to be less unhappy yeah i think that works i'm just trying to do the next. Yeah, I think that works. I'm just trying to do the next right thing because I'm worth doing the next right thing. And of course, 95% of that monastery I've hung out with monks, like they all want to still be asleep.

What'd they get up at three? It's not like they can't wait to wake up at three. They'd much rather sleep till seven, but they wake up at three because it's the next right thing. And there's a thing about covenant. There's something about that idea. Like I said, I was going to do it. And I think the person we lie to the most often in our worlds is ourselves.

And so there's something about keeping a covenant to God or to whatever, but something about telling the truth to yourself that ultimately, I don't know, it feels like I keep, my hands keep doing this, keep opening up and it feels like freedom. And maybe that's what happiness looks like. But, um, and also there's, there's, there's challenge in how they live. It's not like they're doing easy things all day either. And I think that humans get a lot of reward from doing, from overcoming challenges. Yeah.

And there's probably good reasons for that. They go back to our past. Whereas if, let's say you're looking for food and you can't find it. It's like thousands of years ago, food is scarce. And you're going to one place, you can't find it. You're going to the next, you can't find it. You can't find it. You can't find it. Oh my God, we're going to die. And then you find it. Oh my gosh, our lives are saved. It's the most rewarding food ever. And it's every week, it's the most rewarding thing.

Yes. And it could be the exact same food as you'd had a week ago, but it was easy to find. But you really value that food that was harder to find. And so I think that still today that gets translated into the things that we have to work harder for to accomplish, where we often have to go through short-term discomfort, but we get this thing at the end that gives us a long-term benefit. We value that more. So we've both been in academia. It's like when students get an A in my media class, they're like kind of happy. But when they get an A in chemistry or geometry or that really hard STEM class, going, oh my gosh, this is amazing. The grades are worth the same point value.

But why do we value the chemistry, A, over the Michael Easter's journalism 107 class, A, because the chemistry is a lot harder. So should we be weary of happiness? Should I be nervous about it? Should I just like, because now I have a weird relationship with it now. Now I'm super cautious about it.

And I almost think I'm hitting the pendulum the other side, right? So, you know, when the accolade came last week about the book, like, John, your book did well. I was like, that's cool. And like I did one little fist pump. And the person with me was like, nope, Deloney, you're going to celebrate this for a second. I want two fist pumps. Yeah, exactly. How do you, what kind of relationship should we have with happiness? Yeah, that's a good question.

I mean, I think it's, honestly, it's a lot of internal searching. I think that, you know, my book, it doesn't give you a perfect roadmap on how to live your life because I think that everyone is different. And, you know, as much as we lean on data, especially people like you and I, when you look at study data, there's always outliers. And there's always, it's a range of outcomes and we just kind of lump them into one. And so what if you're a person who's not perfectly in the average group? You could be out here or out here. And so I think living life is, it's a journey. It's an exploration, right? You have

to figure out what works for you, when, why, how, and that's not often easy or formulaic. Dude, we just want a recipe though, man. We just want to- But by going through that, you learn something, you get such deeper rewards. And also you have to realize that we're kind of, I'm going back to something we just talked about. You mentioned body dysmorphia. A lot of what we obsess on or think about or decide that we want, it's so culturally conditioned. Oh yeah. Right. So 200 years ago, you would have, your idea of body dysmorphia would have been a totally different look. Exactly.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. And so what's up with that? Right. Right? It's not real. Right.

It's very conditioned. Yeah, yeah. Humans are great because we can think in stories and abstract ideas. That's how we're able to cooperate and abstract ideas. That's how we, you know, we're able to cooperate and take over the globe. But on an individual level, we can buy into our own BS. Yes. I love mine. I love mine because mine's always right, Michael. Mine's always accurate. And I'm guilty of that too, you know? And we're constantly moving the goalposts as well. So that's something I write about in the comfort crisis with this idea that, you know, today's comfort becomes

tomorrow's discomfort. And as the world kind of advances over time, I think we can end up adopting some behaviors that aren't necessarily great for us. And that means we have to be okay with, well, in a world where you and I can pull our cell phones up right now and punch a button and food will just show up here. We're not evolved for that. No. And that we can just walk 15 yards that way and turn a knob and water comes out.

We're not evolved for that. And so help us with this um i think this scarcity brain was such a natural move from comfort crisis but it seems like there's been a shift in in the human existence really quick that we have to make peace with. And that is these things on our left used to take a ton of energy to go get and they don't. And so now our new adventure is not finding these things in the moment. The new adventure is injecting fractals into our life, injecting discomfort into our life on a regular basis. So how do we create this, I guess, peace with discomfort and how do we begin to rationally inject discomfort into our lives? Something that surprised me as I was writing The Comfort Crisis is we have injected so much

comfort into our life, we often don't even see all the ways it's in there. So I think people intuitively know like, yeah, I move a lot less than I probably would have in the past. Yeah, food's a lot easier to come by. But think of something like boredom. Our relationship with boredom has changed. People are rarely bored anymore. We spend more than 12 to 13 hours engaged with digital media. Think about the last time.

Gosh, that's insane. All that stuff is new in the last 100 years. It didn't exist. Think about how a human being spends their time. You went from 16 hours probably outside, working, interacting with others, all these things. And then now we do 12 hours, 12 to 13 hours on average, stuff that's coming through a screen.

So that's from computers, TVs, smartphones. And that changes everything about it. It changes everything about us. Even something like silence. So humans came up in worlds that were very silent. And any time you heard a loud noise, it was probably bad. Yeah, someone's trying to eat you. Someone's trying to eat you.

There's a storm coming through. There's a truck coming over the hill to kill your, yeah. And we've since increased the world's loudness by fourfold. And now people say they feel uncomfortable in silence. But what tends to happen is that after people go through the discomfort of silence, they tend to calm down because loud noises, we still associate that kind of in the back of our brain. A little Nicholas running, yeah, yeah, yeah. And release of stress hormones. And everything from our relationship with death to food to everything has changed. And to your point about how it's not, we're just trying to do the next right thing, I call these good problems to have, right? I would rather have the option of having my food delivered than literally every single day having to go out and find it on foot in the cold.

Or in the desert where you live. Yeah. In the desert where I live. Yeah, I wouldn't survive out there. Very long, give me like 10 minutes. But making the choice to do hard things, I think we know it keeps us healthy. We know it tends to lead us into happiness over the longterm. And so for me, it's, um, you have to think about, uh, all the ways that you can sort of look into what discomfort might be able to bring you. Because I think even something like boredom, like all these things, we evolved to feel these discomforts because they kept us alive in the past, but they can still enhance our life

in the present. So we know exercise is the best thing you can do for your health. We know that probably how much we love junk food is probably not good for us. And maybe going through some hunger sometimes is going to have long-term upsides. Going through boredom is associated with less stress, more creativity, even just more time outside. Like we like to be indoors because it's climate controlled. Everything is certain. You don't have to worry about anything. You go outside and now all of a sudden, well, it's kind of cold or it's kind of hot or there could be an animal in the woods, right? But time in nature is one of the best things you can do for mental health. Associated with all these kinds of great things. Even there's some pretty compelling research about walking on a treadmill or on a sidewalk versus walking on grass or rocks or paths.

In just that there's so many sensory buttons, if you will, on your feet and in your legs and in little bitty muscles that are constantly balancing you. And we just stripped all that out and flattened everything out and said, walk on the sidewalk. And there's probably less broken feet and less broken ankles. And what have we taken out, right? And it's just simply – it's hard to convince somebody, myself included, that your day has to be intentionally uncomfortable for you to be well and whole. That seems so countercultural. Right. Counter everything, right?

Right. Where do we start? Well, I mean, I think that another observation I've made is that some people will be really great at one thing. It could be, you know, I go to the gym every day for an hour. But what are the other discomforts that you're avoiding? It could be a food thing. It could be a boredom thing. They just can't sit with their thoughts.

I know guys will go run ultramarathons, drop of a hat. But then you go, hey, why don't you sit in silence with your thoughts for five minutes? And they're like, no, can't do that. Nope, nope, nope. And so I think you need to figure out what is sort of limiting you and what is the thing that you are most afraid of. Head into it. Yeah, head right into it. Whether it's the gym, whether it is I'm going to try and get a hold of my eating

and I realize that I'm probably going to be hungry at some point. But I also think that it's never as bad as we think it's going to be hungry at some point. But I also think that it's never as bad as we think it's going to be. Never, never. Never. No. So I think that humans sort of evolved to be underconfident and overcompetent. Say that again. Underconfident and overcompetent. So let's say we had to go, um, you know, that makes sense. Yeah. Cause if I'm over confident, I get killed. Right. So think like we got to, okay, we got to move our camp, you know, we got to cross this big river. If you're the person who goes, yeah, I can cross that river. No problem. You're dead,

but you're not that confident. You're like, you get swept away. Like, those people don't die. Those are the hold my beer people, right? If you are the person who's going, we shouldn't cross that river. I don't want to cross that river. I don't think I can do that. But you get in a position where you're forced to do it and you can accomplish it

because you've undersold yourself. That would give you a survival advantage every single time. So I think that we still have that DNA. And I think that that can limit us. People are capable of way more than they realize, way more. And you see that tend to come out when we put ourselves in positions to prove that to ourself. We need the evidence of the doing.

And so I think even just taking that first step, you get in there and you're like, yeah, I wanted to quit, but I got through it. And what else can I do? And what else can I do? And what else can I do? But it really does take that first step. I mean, and people, no one's going to drag you to the gym. No one's going to cut off your subscription to Uber Eats. No one's going to shut down your cell phone because you can't stop watching TikTok. Like it's not, it's just not going to happen. In fact, the opposite. You talk about a great discretionary brain. For me, I remember going on a rabbit hole

about 10 years ago with the tech folks when the neuroscience folks started partnering up. And I remember thinking, oh, I can't win that. Like, my only move is disengagement. I have to take the apps off my phone. I have to consider not carrying my phone everywhere. I've got, I can't play the game. Like, when I go to Vegas, I have to take the apps off my phone. I have to consider not carrying my phone everywhere. I can't play the game. Like when I go to Vegas, I have this much money, and it goes in one pocket.

And when it's gone, it's gone because I can't control myself the other way. My wife can because I think she's a serial killer. But, like, I can't, and so it is what it is, right? But it's almost as though I can't have that food in my house. I'll eat is, right? But it's almost as though I can't have that food in my house. I'll eat it, right? It's almost I have to play disengagement for a season until I can slowly begin to be more intentional. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

October is the season for wearing costumes. And if you haven't started planning your costume, seriously, get on it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go as Brad Pitt because we have the same upper body, but whatever. Look, it's costume season. And if we're being honest, a lot of us hide our true selves behind masks and costumes more often than we want to. We do this at work. We do this in social settings. We do this around our own families. We even do this with ourselves. I have been there multiple times in my life, and it's the worst. If you feel like you're stuck hiding your true self behind costumes and masks,

I want you to consider talking with a therapist. Therapy is a place where you can learn to accept all the parts of yourself, where you can be honest with yourself, and where you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest, authentic life. Costumes and masks should be for Halloween parties, not for our emotions and our true selves. If you're considering therapy, I want you to call my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy. You can talk with your therapist anywhere so it's convenient for just about any schedule. You just get online and you

fill out a short survey and you'll be matched with a licensed therapist and you can switch therapist at any time for no additional cost. Take off the costumes and take off the masks with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dotcom slash Deloney. the rhetoric, the human bodies, the humans are the weakest animal. We're lame. We have no horns. We have no fur. We have no muscles. We're just weak wimps. And you pointed out, not true. There's one thing that we do better than everything else, every other animal. And I was like, what? And right when you said it, I was like, yep, that makes perfect sense. But that was new for me. Yeah. Carrying weight across distance. We're the only animal that can carry loads across distance. And people will often say, well, what about donkeys? It's like, well, yes, but the human has to strap

the load onto the donkey. So it's, you know, they can't do it by themselves. And this totally shaped us. So the way that humans would hunt in the past is we would slowly but surely run down an animal and we'd bump it and bump it and bump it because other animals are not good at cooling themselves. We are. So we sweat, all these different things. So eventually this animal, after we chased it for 10 miles, it would become exhausted from the heat, would fall over, and then we would spare it. And then we would have food, right? But we've got to take it back to camp.

So then what do you do? You've got to carry that weight all the way back to camp. And this shaped us full stop. So you can look at all these different adaptations we have. The reason we are built the way we are is to carry things long distances. And still today- And to run long distances to get it, right? To run long distances to get it. So in the book I talk about, it's like, look, people know running is good for you. Like jogging's a thing. There are running stores all over. But how many people for a workout carry weight for a significant distance?

The answer is not many. The sort of tribe that still does is the military. So rucking is the foundation of training for basically all soldiers, especially special forces. Rucking is throwing some weight in the backpack and basically going for a walk. Now, the reason that this is so good for people is, uh, well, there's a handful. First of all, you're also working your strength as you are doing cardio. So you're getting a two for one and this seems to preferentially burn fat. So there's some really interesting studies on, uh, back country hunters. And they basically find that these guys will go out, and they don't

have a ton of food, and they'll be out for a week, but they're rucking around with heavy backpacks on their back. And they come back, and they've lost 10 pounds or so, but their muscle has stayed the same. Wow. If they were running without the weight, it would have probably been about equal. Right. Yeah. It's also a lot less injurious than running. So everyone's probably run and afterwards, you know, your knee hurts or your whatever, you stopped running because X, Y, Z. Rucking's injury rate is way lower. It's about the same as walking, which is if you can walk, you can rock. The next question I always get is how much weight should I use? And I always tell people start slow or start low,

you know, start with 10, 15 pounds. If you're a bigger person, maybe 20, see how that feels, add weight from there. Um, don't go over a third of your body weight though. That seems to, you get diminishing returns. The injury rate starts to go up a little bit. It's just not really worth it. What's it for? Yeah. Yeah. That, um, I can think of no other move in my life over the last three years, um, that's made a significant contribution to my overall health and fitness and it gets me outside and it, it gets me that same burn, I guess, when you're lifting weights, but also it gets the, it was just awesome. And there's something I've, I don't know if you experienced this. I take that weight off and I can't describe it other than I feel like a million bucks.

I just feel so good. And it's a strange, I don't know if it's just psychosomatic. I don't know what it is, but I just feel right when I throw that backpack off. And I'm tired, but it's just right. Yeah. And the other reason I love it too is you can do it with people or other people. Yeah. So if you're running, one person is going to have, like, if I want to go for a run with

my mom, who's 73, like, first of all, she's not going to want to run. But if she does, I'm going to basically be in a fast walk and I'm not getting a great workout. If I want to rock with my mom, I could throw in 45 pounds. She could have a five pound plate and we'd go at the same speed and we'd get a pretty equal effect and we can have a conversation. We can connect, we can do all these things that humans are basically born to do, which is go out into nature together, do something physical, have a conversation while you do it. I mean, it's just, you're ticking so many boxes that are good for people. That's been transformative, quite honestly.

Michael Easter, the marriage counselor for my marriage. And it started about two years ago with, hey, let's just go for a walk. We live out in the country. Let's just go for a walk. And I got antsy. And it was about an hour or two hour walk. I got antsy. So then the next time I just threw my backpack on with my wife.

And we have fought. We have wept together over the last two years we have solved big issues in our marriage we have planned vacations and trips and what we're gonna do about schools we've had some really intimate time and i get to have 35 or 45 pounds in my backpack while we're walking and so i'm getting a good exercise and it's double and triple and quadruple dipping. And when you're a dad and you got two kids and you have a full-time job and she's those hours become sparse and man, it's been such a gift to our marriage that we can go at the same pace yet have two different things metabolically going on in our bodies

at the same time. It's been incredible. Last thing I want to cover. And I couldn't believe it when I read it in Scarcity Brain. You, like me, don't land on a, here's the step-by-step path for spirituality. But I felt like we both landed in the same place that

you have to take a knee to something bigger than you is happening. And if you find yourself at the center of the universe, that you have to take a knee to something bigger than you is happening. And if you find yourself at the center of the universe, that's almost the bedrock for addiction. That's almost the bedrock for misery, which is everything revolves around me. Walk me through how you landed from, because you, I mean, you started in Baghdad and you end up in New Mexico and I end up in a doctor's office and end up at a Mexican food restaurant with a monk, like, and we both ended up in almost the same place. Walk me through how you got from there to there. And then how do you think about this idea of submission or

sitting in the presence of something bigger than you? Yeah, that's a great question. I'll tell you this. The night before I got sober, one of my best friends goes, do you believe in God? And I said, dude, if someone needs a set of rules, a hocus pocus rules to live a good life and be a decent human, that person is full of it. So I say that, and then I go out to the bars and behave like a complete idiot. So you can see how far my head was up my butt in that situation. I wake up, and for whatever reason, I tried to quit drinking tons and tons of times, many times. And for whatever reason, that morning I could just see downfield where like if you keep drinking, that'll solve your problems in the short term over time, but you're going to die early, full stop. Or you can take the second path, which is

to get sober. And it's going to be the hardest thing you ever do. But on the other side of that, I felt like there was something there. So I like to say, it's almost like God heard my lines the night before and went, yeah, watch this sucker. Hold my beer. Yeah. And, uh, after I got sober, uh, I do, I do think there was something higher at play. I just, I just feel that way. Um, and that changed my thinking and getting out of myself, a key for me to stay sober is to do things to get out of myself. And my experience is in from reporting the comfort crisis to reporting scarcity brain and traveling have very much been trying to unpeel that onion, which is very complicated, right? These are questions that everyone has been grappling with for a very long time. All the time, yeah. And I think I've basically just landed on the fact that I personally,

my idea of spirituality, I believe there's absolutely something higher than myself. Bigger than myself, there's some higher order to all this. At the same time, I don't have to understand it. I can be okay with being like, you know what? I don't know exactly what it is. And I'm also extremely respectful of anyone who, all religions. If you feel like you know what works, great. I'm not going to argue with anyone

like that. I just have a lot more empathy and respect for people and trying to do the next right thing, like the sort of monk said, has enhanced my life. Full stop. More importantly, the lives of those around me. So when I get sober, it's not just that like, oh, great, Michael's, you know, not going to die at 45 or whatever it is. It's that now all of a sudden my girlfriend has a better life. In turn, her family has a better life. In turn, the people they work with have a better life. In turn, her family has a better life. In turn, the people they work with have a better life. Like there are big downstream effects from that sort of decision.

And I've also noticed that when I start to fall back to not doing the next right thing, that sort of reverses course. And that's a good reminder that, you know, it is this sort of constant battle. And if I can say anything about what I've learned along the way is that it's a battle everyone's fighting. And you can see once people start to really focus on themselves, not only do they start to become more likely to be miserable, but so do the people in their orbit. And do you want that?

No. And I also don't think there, I find that there is zero correlation between wealth and living a good life, like full stop. I've been to countries where people have, like I go to Bhutan, right? There's not a stoplight in a single country, in the country, in the whole country. There's not a Starbucks, there's not a stoplight in a single country, in the country, in the whole country. There's not a Starbucks. There's not a McDonald's. People aren't walking around on iPhones. They're the happiest people I've ever encountered. There's joy everywhere. The nicest, the joy. They're present.

And it's one of the least developed countries on earth by GDP. you know, the battle for us today is realizing that we are surrounded in such abundance and opportunity and wealth and just, I mean, it's an amazing time to be alive. It really is. But I think that comes with perils too, where we can start to, you know, focus more on getting the next thing and not as much on sharing and trying to help others. And it was a long rambling way of answering your question. No, I love it. I appreciate that. That's awesome. I think that bringing your eyes out of your own belly button changes everything. Hey, man.

This was fun. I appreciate you being a good friend. And you've been a big help to me behind closed doors, and so I'm grateful to you. And everybody, if you don't have this book in your hands by the end of this interview, you're doing something wrong with your life

and I don't say that lightly. Please go pick this up and if you have to choose between this one and you haven't bought mine yet, buy this one first. Get this book, Scarcity Brain

from the great Michael Easter. Thank you so much, my brother. I'm grateful for you. I'm going to disagree with that. You did an amazing job on your book. I appreciate it. Very helpful. I've had to disagree with that. You did an amazing job on your book. I appreciate it. Very helpful.

I've had family members who literally sent me a picture of it because I had the little blurb. You blurbed this. I read this book and it's helped me. Well, I appreciate that. Like full stop. So nice work, man. Thank you, man.

Hey, what's up? Deloney here. Listen, you and me and everybody else on the planet has felt anxious or burned out or chronically stressed at some point. In my new book, Building a Non-Anxious Life, you'll learn the six daily choices that you can make to get rid of your anxious feelings and be able to better respond to whatever life throws at you so you can build a more peaceful, non-anxious life. Get your copy today

at johndeloney.com. All right. Thanks for being with us with my conversation with the great Michael Easter. Now, I think we talk about it in the episode. I don't remember, but he is a diehard deadhead, grateful dead fan to the very end. In fact, he booked a ticket and went and saw them in San Francisco for their final show. He is all in. And so the song of the day is my favorite Grateful Dead song,

mainly because I forgot to ask him what his favorite one was. But the song's called Truckin'. And I first heard this song when Tesla covered it as a part of their five-man acoustical jam album, which is one of the greatest records ever, ever, ever in the history of humankind. But The Great Truckin' by The Grateful Dead, and it goes like this. Truckin', got my chips cashed in. Keep truckin'

like the doodah man. Together, more or less in line, just keep on truckin'. Arrows of neon and flashing marquees out on Main Street, Chicago, New York, Detroit, and it's all on the same street. Your typical city involved in a typical daydream. Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings. Trucking like the doodah man. That's what we call Joe sometimes when he's not around. Once told me you've got to play your hand. Sometimes your cars ain't worth a dime if you don't lay them down. Man. Shout out to the great Michael Easter. Go pick up Scarcity Brain.

Go pick up The Comfort Crisis. Two of the most important books you will read in the next decade. I love you guys. Stay in school. Don't do drugs. Bye.