The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 421: Sebastian Junger - Defining Freedom, Building Tribes, & Leading A Team

Episode Date: May 30, 2021

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12  https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Sebastian Junger is the #1 New York Times Bestselling author of THE PERFECT STORM, FIRE, A DEATH IN BELMONT, WAR, TRIBE, and FREEDOM. As an award-winning journalist, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, and a special correspondent at ABC News, he has covered major international news stories around the world and has received both a National Magazine Award and a Peabody Award. Junger is also a documentary filmmaker whose debut film "Restrepo", a feature-length documentary (co-directed with Tim Hetherington), was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Notes: Human beings need three basic things in order to be content: they need to feel competent at what they do; they need to feel authentic in their lives, and they need to feel connected to others. Definition of Freedom: "We walked 400 miles, and most nights we were the only people who knew where we were. There are many definitions of freedom, but surely that's one of them." Running a company versus LEADING a company -- "You can run a company or lead a company. If you want to lead a company, you have to make sure that when things take a downturn, as the leader you'll be the first to experience the downside. Before jobs get cut, you'll take a pay cut, you will suffer with the people you lead." One great example of this is Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya. All employees are part owners of the company. He comes from a family of Nomadic Sheep farmers from the Turkish mountains. He learned a collective approach to life and work where he grew up. "When people are actively engaged in a cause their lives have more purpose... with a resulting improvement in mental health." How becoming a dad (at age 55) changed his life: "they are the point of life." Sebastian's dad was a refugee from two wars... War has had a significant impact on his life. As Sebastian grew up, he decided he wanted to be a journalist and cover wars. He went to the Civil war in Bosnia. Guts - "Most scary things are more frightening before you go. I have a formidable capacity for denial." People want to feel like they have agency. They're more scared when they feel that they don't have it. Front line vs backline soldiers - The backline soldiers are scared because they feel like they don't have as much agency as the front line (even though the front line is more dangerous). Uncertainty is scary. To help with fear, go in front of your mirror and make the "fear grimace" face... When Sebastian was competing in track events for the 1500m race, he would yawn in the faces of his opponents to intimidate them Freedom - We aren't subject to the whims of the largest male in a group anymore... You remain free by being mobile He organized his new book, Freedom, in three parts: Run -- Fight -- Think Sebastian went on a walking trip and called it, "The Last Patrol." - They walked on a railroad from Washington DC to Philadelphia and then Pittsburgh "Met America from inside-out" What did he think about at night when he went to sleep outside during "The Last Patrol?" "Always thought safety first." "The most meaningful experiences happen when I'm physically dirty and security wasn't guaranteed." How to help your children push their edges? "We traveled to Liberia with our daughter." "The core value children value is closeness. We sleep on a mattress on the floor with our daughters. They want to be close." Collaboration/Working together -- Football and the military. The football locker room is a beautiful place. It's democratic. People join from diverse backgrounds. And create a common goal. A theme of collaboration. A "we can't win games without each other." And when it comes together it's a magical feeling.  There must be a core commitment to the group. "Being ego-driven is an emotional burden." Commonalities of leaders who sustain excellence: Principle driven - In politics, democracy should be #1 Sacrifice own interest for the group Life/Career Advice -- FAIL. If you're only doing things you know you can do then you're never near your limits. In order to grow, you have to push those limits. And sometimes that means you'll fail. That's ok.

Being sort of ego-driven makes sense, but it's also a kind of emotional burden. And when you're a parent, the focus of your concern becomes your children and you lose this burden of being the most important thing in your life. Well, likewise, in a platoon in combat, one that's functioning well and is well-trained, the individuals in it are at least as concerned with the welfare of the group as they are with their own welfare, at least as concerned, if not, way more so. And that feels good. And when you experience that in a team, that loss of self, the whole team is coordinated like it's one or something. And everyone's playing like unconsciously beyond their individual abilities. And it's all clicking and coming together. That's a very powerful drug.

This episode is brought to you by a very special advertising partner for me. In fact, this is an endorsement of how great their product is. Because this year for Father's Day, I got my dad Storyworth. And what it is, each week Storyworth will send a question to your loved one or you can choose the question it is then sent through storyworth's platform you the person you then buy this gift for will respond to your question and can add in some cool pictures to help with the memories and at the end of 52 weeks story worth will compile all of your stories including the photos into a beautiful keepsake book that's shipped for free and this is a book that I

my family will treasure forever. It is a highlight of my week seeing the responses that my dad has given to these questions. In fact, I'm learning so much about him and his life that I didn't know before, which is amazing considering how much we talk. And so I would urge you to give your loved ones the gift of spending time together wherever you lived with Storyworth. Get started right away with no shipping required by going to storyworth.com slash leader. You'll get $10 off your first purchase. That's storyworth.com slash leader. Welcome to the learning leader show presented by Brixie and Meyer. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text learners to 44222 to become part of mindful,

Monday and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning, 9 o'clock Eastern to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how my book, Welcome to Management will help you become a more effective leader. Text learners to 4-4-222. Now on to tonight's feature leader to the great Sebastian Younger. Number one, New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Storm, which was made into a movie, War, Tribe, and most recently, Freedom. He's an award-winning journalist.

Has covered major international news stories around the world and received both a National Magazine Award and a Peabody Award. Also, a documentary filmmaker whose film Restrepo, a feature-length documentary, was nominated for an

Academy Award. This one is big time. A few of the things Sebastian and I discuss. Gus, he shares when he has felt the biggest sense of freedom in his life and how you can do the same. And then one critical piece of career advice that most people get wrong. I think it also applies to life outside of your career as well. And then the three basic things that human beings need to feel content and how to get

them. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a great one with Sebastian Younger. Sebastian, so good to have you here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome. Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. So I've been following you for a while. I started sending you, I think, whether it was to your contact form or to random people associated with you, I think I started sending you emails about five years ago. So whenever something's been a long time in the makings, it's extra special. so I appreciate you being here and it was cool when your team member reached out just a little bit ago to set this up. And I want to start at maybe an interesting point or maybe it's just more personal to me.

And you became a dad a little bit later in life than most do. I believe you were 55 years old when you became a dad for the first time. Is that correct? Yeah, that's right. I would love to hear. And you had a daughter. And I'm a dad of daughters as well. And I believe you have two daughters now.

But I would love to hear how your life. and your outlook on life changed when you became a dad for the first time? Oh, well, you know, very, very quickly, my life, I stopped being the point of my own life. Like, the point of my life is them. And I, you know, I don't think that that would necessarily have been true had I had children in my mid-20s. Maybe it shouldn't have been true. I mean, you know, there's the different parts of your life are for different things and the sort of the endeavor that many people go through when they're young

of figuring themselves out and pursuing the world in the way that's most meaningful to them personally. That's a very important phase. And when you squash that because you have obligations and commitments and that kind of thing, It's a noble thing to do, and for many people is the right thing to do. But squashing those personal enterprise, that kind of personal enterprise, can also manifest itself in other ways that are complicated. So all that to say, for me, as my particular personal makeup, I think I wouldn't have been a great dad in my 20s.

I think I would have had a conflict between myself and my children, you know, my own desires and my children, you know, my children. And now there's no conflict at all. I do there's nothing that I do on my own that even approaches and consequence and importance what I'm doing with my children and I just not I'm interested in all kinds of things but not if it's in competition with my role as a dad I like I love being that living in that kind of new way you've you've put yourself into some of the most dangerous places in the world you've could have been killed many times we'll talk about that more later do you if you were a dad earlier in your life in your mid-20s like some are.

Do you think you would have went to some of those scary places to and embed yourself with our military heroes? Would you have done that type of work, do you think? Yeah, and I know, just to be clear, I like I was, I was covering wars long before America was involved in a war. I was in Afghanistan in the mid-90s, you know, during their civil war and it was all over West Africa, you know, conflicts that the US had nothing to do with.

But I was really covering war and sort of capital W. And eventually, eventually I was with American forces. That came rather late in my career. But that said, no, I mean, I think I probably would have done those things. And I think there would have been a conflict between my duties as a father and my aspirations as a journalist. I don't think they would have been able to, they wouldn't have coexisted very easily. So that's exactly what I'm talking about. They would have been a conflict.

It probably would have been resolved imperfectly on both sides. And now there's no conflict whatsoever. I have absolutely no desire to risk my life or even be away for any length of time. Forget it. Like, I'm just not interested. What was it? Do you think, was it something in your upbringing? Because I know your dad is also a remarkable story.

I love you to talk a little bit about him for a second. But what do you think it was it in your upbringing to say, you know, I want to, I want to go to dangerous places and tell the stories of the people who are fighting in these wars and putting yourself in a position to where you're right there next to them. you're embedded, you're essentially have just as much risk as these people fighting these wars. Not as you said, not just the ones that Americans are fighting in, but in all other places, civil wars, really dangerous places. What made you want to do that? Well, my, you know, my father was a refugee from two wars.

He lived in Spain when the, uh, during the fascist takeover under um, Franco. and they fled, they fled to France, and then they left again when the Nazis came in, and that's how we wound up in this country. So war is affected my family, and war, you know, I grew up in a comfortable American suburb, and, you know, in a lot of ways I matured kind of late because that environment allows for that. You don't have to grow up very fast in an affluent American suburb. could delay it if you want and I was you know I was sort of going through my 20s and I was you know whatever I was doing some interesting things but on some level I felt like I hadn't really tested

myself or proven myself and I didn't know how that would be possible within the society and I and I wanted to be a journalist and there was a civil war on Bosnia and it seemed like a very clear it's never as clear cut as it seems but it seemed like a sort of clear cut much like the Spanish civil war or clear cut right versus wrong and you know the Serb that you know the Bosnian Serbian Army tanks and artillery and everything else was had besieged Sarajevo which was a major population center and was just shelling it to pieces and killing men women children and the world wasn't doing anything and I was like that's where I want to be I felt like it was a very clear case of injustice and the idea that I could play a little role in illuminating that was like

not just appealing it was completely intoxicating and what what sent me to those places is a sense of adventure, a sense of wanting to prove myself, a sense of justice being denied to people that I could write about, a kind of professional ambition, you know, going to a war zones, a shortcut to advancement as a journalist, like, and as it should be, I think. Like, it was a whole lot of different things. I think it takes, though, immense guts that most people don't have. Where does, where do those guts come from? Well, I don't know about that. I mean, I mean, I was enormously scared before. I mean, now I look back, I mean, my experience in Sarajevo was like pretty safe and benign.

You know, that would change in later wars. But, you know, that kind of thing is, and it's most frightening before you do it. And then once you're in that situation, you know, it's the anxiety before the big game or whatever. Like once you're in the middle of it, it seems dangerous. but manageable. And so my greatest fear was before I flew into Sarajevo for the first time. I had been no idea what I was doing. And I don't want to describe myself as courageous. I really don't think I am. But I think I have a formidable capacity for denial at a certain level of fear. I just put it in a box and I put it away. And I, you know, I was doing, I made my money.

I mean, I wanted to be a journalist. I was sort of a freelance writer. Basically, I was a mess in my 20. But I made my money. I made pretty good money as a climber for tree companies. I was a high climber. And I worked with a chainsaw on a rope 50 feet, 100 feet in the air, taking trees down from the top down, you know, obviously potentially dangerous.

And I got hurt pretty badly doing it. And I was very scared of heights. And so I just, you know, but I'm on a rope with a chainsaw on 80 feet. in the air, what do you do with your fear of heights? I knew how to put that fear into a box and put it away. So I wouldn't say I'm courageous. I would say that I have an amazing capacity for denial. How would that?

So I think somebody hearing that with a kind of a regular job was not necessarily what you've ever had. I wonder the takeaway for them because I agree with you, especially with the background in athletics or getting ready to get on stage to give a big speech. the kind of the fear is almost this nervous anticipatory feeling of the event happening, whether it's the game or the speech or whatever it is and you, and you're kind of nervous. And then once you, like in football, I always wanted the ball first. Like we want the toss.

We want the ball. You know, like I wanted to go first. I don't want to wait because you just want to get it started. The speech is like, kill the opener so that we can, you know, we can be into it. And I think that that could be a good lesson for people on that, Sebastian. Maybe you could, you could pull, pull the threat. on that a little bit for how to help people with regular jobs, be able to put that fear in a box, so to speak, so that they could be better, whether it's leading their team at work or leading

their families either as well, the things that they're scared of. I'm curious what you think about that. Well, I think there's some benefit in, I mean, people are naturally averse, aversive of things that are that are scary and be it you know a lion in the serengeti or public speaking you know either way it doesn't have to be a physical danger but they're reversible because it feels bad and is dangerous in some way and and so you know I think with the things that aren't physically dangerous that are just anxiety producing the what are in physical danger as well what the what you want is to feel

that you have agency. And when you don't have agency, that's actually what's terrifying. If you're well trained and have agency, you can face very dangerous situations without a huge amount of psychic trauma because you believe in your agency. You believe in your skills. So they, you know, they, I'm going by memory here, but my last book, Tribe, I wrote about psychological trauma among front line soldiers compared to rear base soldiers in the Israeli army in the IDF. And what they found was that the rear base soldiers would get shelled randomly and were more scared. There were more psychiatric casualties in the rear bases proportionally from random shelling because those soldiers, A, couldn't control the shelling and B weren't very well trained.

Compared to the frontline special ops troops, they had much higher casualty rates, but they're superbly well trained and had a sense of agency in the more endangered environment. So I know it's a long digression, but basically do anything that gives you a feeling of agency. And often that means, you know, punch first. Literally or metaphorically, punch first. Like don't wait around to react. Claim the, you know, if you want to deal with your anxiety, claim the initiative and find your agency. There's also kind of physiological, interesting physiological thing that happens.

If you go in front of a mirror and there's something called the fear grimace, it's sort of like that eyes wide, mouth pulled back. I mean, we all know what it looks like. If you do that in the mirror, you'll actually feel a sort of flush of adrenaline go through your body. The expression trigger, you know, you will do that expression if you're scared unconsciously. But it goes both ways. if you make yourself through the expression and you can see yourself in the mirror, your body reacts.

It's like, oh, I'm seeing another human being that's scared. Something dangerous is going on and you get a bunch of adrenaline dumped in you, right? Well, there's another thing that happens with yawning. You cannot be scared and yawn at the same time. I mean, when you yawn, it means, among other things, that your system is not prepared for an attack. And I ran a lot. I was an athlete when I was young. I was a track and cross-country run.

And, you know, the scariest I'd ever been as a kid was like right before the big meet when we're lining up for the 1500 meter championship. I was a good runner. I ran like I ran a 412 mile when I was young, which is not world class, but it's pretty good, right? That is zooming, man. That's sprint in four laps. I tell you, man, I was way more scared before those races than I ever was going into combat. And what I would do.

Really? Yeah. And even, and I won most of the races I ran, no, partly because I was. the Olympics, but I was competing in Division III college athletics in America. But what I would do is I would make myself yawn on the starting line. Right before, right as we were lining up, waiting for the three commands, you know, like ready set go, you know, the gunshot for the signal. I would make myself yawn.

And it did two things. It calmed me down. It also freaked everybody else out because you know unconsciously like, wow, this guy's got to be pretty relaxed to be yawning. the starting line. And so then I found this wonderful example of that. You know, once I yawn while a cop was talking to me, he pulled me over for speeding and I yawn right as he was talking to me. And you know, cops count, I mean, I know a lot of cops. I love cops. You know, good cops are amazing people. You know, bad cops are, but whatever. I know a number of cops. I'm really fond

of them. And I know that they count. It's an unsafe job. And they count on a certain amount of intimidation to keep the situation from escalating and keep themselves safe, blah, blah, blah. So the last thing they want is some kid yawning in their face while they're, you know, like, and it really pissed him off, right, on this sort of primate level. Like I was being insulting to the alpha male. I wasn't being properly deferential, and I could see it really annoyed them. But at any rate, so this amazing anecdote on sort of larger scale when King Darius, the king of Persian, many, many centuries ago, and don't ask me how many, because I can't remember.

But anyway, a very long time ago, when Darius tried to defeat the Scythians in northern, I think they were in northern Iran, he, you know, he rode forth with the largest army ever assembled, right, to confront and defeat the Scythians, who were these nomadic pot-smoking, like long-haired crazy nomads and amazing warriors. You know, they might have been like the Comanche or something, right, the equivalent. And so the Scythian army, such as it was, sort of drew itself up before King Darius's, you know, the most powerful army ever assembled. And they, and right before the big climactic battle, the Scythians, they noticed that they were rabbit, in the underbrush all around them.

And waiting for the battle to start, the Scythian warriors started hunting rabbits because they wanted to make sure they had something to eat after the battle, right? And Darius, it's the equivalent of yawning in front of a cock, right? Darius was so freaked out that they were so calm. They were like, oh, we'll just hunt rabbits while we're waiting for the apocalyptic clash of armies.

He was so freaked out by their sort of lack a concern that he was like they must know something that I don't they clearly think they're going to win i'm out of here and he withdrew his are he withdrew his great army wow uh so side note your books so i've i've i've watched restrepo perfect storm right year you created you you you made the the award winning documentary restrepo blew my mind uh the perfect storm you wrote wrote that story which then turned into more people maybe known as a movie if they're honest with themselves i did initially um tribe just blew me away and now freedom your latest book and one of the things sebastian that i think i'm i'm blown away is your depth of research and knowledge

and you just kind of pulled a story out of nowhere that i've never really heard or remember And in a way, I have to ask, what is your process to do this intense research to have these really historical facts and stories, which stories are even better, as you know, these stories, it's at the tip of your tongue, ready to go, not knowing what I'm going to ask you. And it's like, boom, this is actually, this will work here. What's your process to kind of download all of that into your mind? Well, I mean, thank you. It's a flattering question.

I'm not sure it's entirely deserved it, but I'm fascinated by the world and I've been collecting odd bits of information my whole life. And then I do research on, you know, starting at those odd bits of information. And, you know, when I wrote freedom, so my book Freedom is, you know, basically about how humans maintain their autonomy in the face of a greater power. and have for millennia. And I really thought deeply about, I mean, forget about all the sort of awful political associations with the word freedom right now. The words horribly misused in politics. I'm not interested in that at all. I was really interested on a sort of animal level.

I mean, humans are social primates, right? We are next of kin in the mammalian world, are chimpanzees that have a top-down male hierarchy. that dominates everything, right? We don't have that. We're not subject to the whims of the largest male or the largest group of males, right? We have autonomy. How is that possible that a smaller group,

like the Scythians, that actually remain autonomous in the face of the greatest army ever assembled? The Montenegrins in the early 1600s, a wild mountain tribe, faced the office, Ottoman Empire as it marched into Montenegro and they were out number 12 to one and the Montenegrans destroyed them, right? And they did it over and over again.

If humans were capable of this incredible feat of defeating a greater power, there would be no freedom, there'd be no autonomy. And the world would be dominated by these sort of basically fascist megastates. But that's not what the world looks like. So how does that work? So I am answering your question. It's just taking me a while. So basically I was like, okay. One way to remain free is to be very mobile.

So the Apache, I knew in the American Southwest, there were the Pueblo tribes, they were very wealthy because they practiced agriculture, but that meant they were sort of like anchored to their town and to their fields. And then there were the Apache that were very mobile and materially poor. Now, who lasted longer as an autonomous people?

The Pueblo got rolled immediately by the Spaniards. They could not defeat them in open battle. The Apache never had an open battle. They were like, why would we do it? that. We can just run away and ambush people when the odds are advantageous and they run away again. And that mobility gave them their autonomy almost to within my grandmother's lifetime. I mean, they were finally fully rounded up in 1886, right? I mean, Western society had invented the machine gun, the four-stroke engine, the electric light, and the telephone, I think. I can't remember exactly.

But whatever, we were a fully modern society at that point. They were free Apache still running around, autonomous, right? So the book is divided into run, fight, think. You outrun your oppressor. If you can't do that, you're going to have to outfight them. And if you can't do that, you're going to have to outthink it. And so once you, so to answer your question, once I have an organizing principle, I know what directions to go in in terms of my research. And that organizing principle itself comes from a lot of why, you know, reading and thinking and research and what have you. But then once you have it, then you have a roadmap for where you're trying to go. And an organizing principle really is, you know, if you don't have that, everything is just random

information and it's very hard to retain. You need that sort of organizing principle to make sense of the world. And that to me is gold. I mean, that's like the tripartite structure of run, fight, think is like that's why freedom's a good book. You know, that's why it was an interesting book to me to write. You know, without that organizing principle, it's just a bunch of interesting anecdotes. Awesome book to read. You could do it in a day, too.

For people who are intimidated by longer books, you won't be by this one. And I think that's also another, from a writer's perspective of having writer envy of being able to put so much into so few words. Like, that's the essence of what anyone who writes is trying to do. And most of us fail, another good part. but I'm curious with a book called freedom and you analyze your your life and everything that's happened to you and the things you've chosen to do when would you say you've been the most free in your life well thank you the question because that brings up the other part of my book freedom that I hadn't mentioned so um i i decided to take a walking trip with

three other guys that I was very close to you. I don't say who we are. I just talk in the book. I refer to us collectively as we or individually as one of us. Like I don't identify us, because I don't want us to be the point of the book. But this group of four men, including me, and my dog, Daisy, we walked along the railroad lines, this sort of weird swath of no man's land that just cuts, crisscrosses America. We walked from Washington, D.C. to Philadelphia, and then we turned west and headed for Pittsburgh. And we were living rough.

I mean, we're carrying all our gear. We were sleeping under bridges and abandoned buildings or out in the woods. We got our water out of creeks. We cooked on fire. We had to hide from the police. At one point, the police were looking for us with a helicopter, which I felt a little bad about, but they never got us. It's illegal, of course, to walk along the railroad lines.

And but you meet America from the inside out. I mean, it goes right through the ghettos, right through the farms, the suburbs. It goes through everything, through the middle of everything. And it's just weird no man's land. And you can make your way through there and no one will ever know except the other sort of vacancy kind of people that are out there. We called it high-speed vacancy. We moved fast, you know, 10, 15, 20 miles a day.

once we did what I call 40 and 40, 40 miles and 40 hours. You know, we're not ultramarathoners running with aid stations. We're carrying full load, 60 pounds on our back. Moving that fast hurts. And that was, you know, arguably the freest I've ever been. I mean, as I say it in my book, over 400 miles, most nights we were the only people who knew where we were. There are many definitions of freedom, but surely that's one of them.

And it came at a great cost. I mean, physically it was hard out there. We got hot, we got colds. We had no tent, so we were exposed to the elements. We were hungry. We had to cook all our own food. The water sometimes made us sick. We dragged for the Yucca Gany River, and one guy was sick for a week.

I wasn't, but his stomach would ever reacted to it. But freedom, you know, like, you know, basically the safer and more comfortable you are, the less autonomous you are because that safety and comfort comes from the group, the system that you're part of. And when you're not part of that system, you have more autonomy, but it hurts more. Like it's less safe. And each person has their own sort of like sweet spot of that balance of autonomy versus safety and comfort. But for us, we were maximally uncomfortable and fairly unsafe. I mean, railroads are dangerous environments.

But we were completely autonomous for a little while and it felt awfully good. Why did you do that? I wanted to know what it felt like. I mean, really, there was no end goal involved. I didn't know I was going to write a book about it. I did make a documentary called The Last Patrol. One of the guys in the group shot video, and we've made a documentary for HBO called The Last Patrol.

But after that project finished, we just kept going. I mean, we just kept going out there because we loved it so much. You're on, it's like, I think, why some people like sail across the ocean, and you are completely on your own out there. Like it is really on you. And, you know, we got some, some guys started shooting at us in Pennsylvania. Like, you know, I mean, it was a weird environment. What can I say?

But it was the weirdness that I liked about it. And the sort of problem solving that we had to do to stay alive and safe. Take me back to some nights during the last patrol. And I'm curious, you know, we all have thoughts when we lay down to go to bed. And most of us lay in a really comfortable. bed. If we're lucky next to an incredible spouse, like I get to and you do now. But when you're on the last patrol and you're under the stars or you're under a bridge or wherever you may be, can you remember or take us inside? What are some of the things you would think about when you're

trying to go to sleep? Oh, well, it's always safety first. I got we safe here. You know, and, you know, there's whatever. We're in a pretty rural, rough area. There's guys. In that case, it's safety verse for us, we're not thinking, when most of us go to bed, we're not thinking if are we safe, we're laying in a very nice, cozy bed. So that's the, that's already like for you, it's obvious, but most people haven't done that, you know? Right. And, and, you know, what I would say is that the circumstances, I mean, but the family that I have, we live in a very safe situation. I mean, meaning that we live in modern American society. And, and it's the most fulfilling, amazing. thing I've ever experienced. But if you just set that aside for a moment, other than that, the most meaningful, sometimes the most fun, the most intense, the most memorable, the most productive

experiences of my life have been the ones in which I was physically the dirtiest. Like literally, my body was dirty because I hadn't bathed in a long time, you know, or where security was a a concern or the basic processes of survival dominated my activities during the day. And so what I would say is until you have children, until you have a family, up until that point, safety and comfort are overrated. And even with a family, I think their safety is never overrated. but comfort is convenience is overrated it is a um it's not it's not gratifying in a long-term way it we're wired to seek it because we're because humans evolved in very harsh circumstances so if something feels um safe and comfortable

and restful and convenient there we have evolutionary wiring that propels us towards that but we have as a society have solved all of those problems. So what a whole aspect of the human, the amazing human animal and human mind that is devoted to the struggle of survival and the problem solving that comes with that struggle, that whole aspect of the human creature is underutilized in modern society. And I think it leaves people feeling, I don't know, less less, less, significant less fulfilled less fulfilled um yeah what about what so think now as a dad um i think about this all the time uh you can you can give them everything they want and need uh

you've worked hard in order to do that but that may not be what's best for them in fact it's probably not right as you've said some of those meaningful experiences are when you were dirty when you weren't necessarily safe and as i think as a parent you know part of our job job is to help raise our children to, to, to, uh, I think leave a positive impact in the world and also to be great without us. Um, so how, how do you, like, will you take your daughters with you on a last patrol type endeavor? Will you do something different? Like, how do you view that for them in order to help them be in a position to push their edges to get outside of their, their zone of comfort and competency? Like, what will you do to help them as a dad?

I wouldn't take them onto the, uh, their, uh, railroad environment, it's just, it is too dangerous. And it would go, but you know, we, when I mean, I have a four year old in a year and a year and a half and before the birth of the second girl. You know, I've been in Liberia and West Africa during the Civil War, a very frightening time in my life. And now it's a peaceful country, but it's, you know, one of the poorest countries in the world. And so my wife and I and our daughter who is like two and a half at the We went to Liberia.

And it wasn't unsafe in any way whatsoever, but it's a rough, whatever. It's a rough country. It's a rough neighborhood. I never ever felt like our lives were in any way endangered. But it certainly didn't, whatever. It didn't feel convenient and luxurious and clean or whatever. But that's important. We're animals.

Humans are animals. We're social primates. And the core human value is closeness. right that's the thing that children want and that adults need that everyone needs and you know we we sleep with our children on the floor and on a on a on a large mat you know mattress like we have a sort of sleeping area and so we sleep girls and that's how you sleep currently in your in new york yeah yeah yeah really we never had a stroll i mean look humans for hundreds of thousands of tens of thousands of years obviously slept with their children like if you went backpacking in the

Marshall Wilderness area, you wouldn't have a separate tent for your children, right? Like you'd all be in a tent together, right? For sure. Well, then why do that differently in an apartment? Huh. The apartment is just a sophisticated tent, right? I mean, essentially, just because there's no physical risk, there are no grizzly bears in New York, doesn't mean that humans aren't wired, and particularly human children, are completely wired for

proximity to their parents because they're totally defenseless. And they don't know, the six-month-old doesn't know that it's. It's not in Bob Marshall Wilderness area, right? All it knows that its safety come from being in physical contact with its parents or some adults, right? And so, you know, that's the human design, the human evolution, and that's been true for tens of thousands, 100,000 years. You know, we don't use a stroller. Children are a pleasure to carry. You know, I carry 70 pounds, 400 miles.

Like I can put my four-year-old on my back or on my shoulders, have my one and a half year old on my chest. what is that? Maybe 60 pounds? Where can I go with 60 pounds? I can walk all day with 60 pounds. And you get the pleasure. I mean, for 100,000 years, adults have carried their children

until the children were big enough to walk. And you get wonderful closeness. You feel them, and they feel you. So at any rate, like that, what children want is closeness. And when you give them closeness, they have the security with which to explore and be daring and courageous

and adventurous and not need you. That's what physical closeness produces. And, you know, I was put in my own bedroom from day one, literally, and I was, you know, anxiety levels in this society are astronomically high. And, you know, may partly be because children are, you know, shut into dark rooms from day one. And, you know, the, you know, baby primates know that they're not safe in a dark, you know, alone. I mean, they just were wired to know that that's not a safe environment as a young primate. Why do you think we do that? I mean, you know, most people don't. I mean, most of the world doesn't do that. I mean, this is entirely, you know, English society derived from from English society. I mean, these are like, this is the English child raising tradition

starting about 200 years ago and all of the parts of the world that the British Empire sort of touched and colonized, that is how children are raised in those parts of the world that only started a couple hundred years ago. Otherwise, through most of the world, and certainly through most of human history, people keep their children very close because it's not, it's a dangerous world. And that closeness allows children to be enormously courageous and adventurous. They know, they know that they're loved and they're connected. So to answer your question, you know, give your children what they want. Yeah, absolutely, when it's in keeping with these sort of this core human evolutionary experiences. Our daughters also want, I mean, listen, the iPhone is unbearably appealing

to the child, right, and to the adult. I have a flip phone. I don't touch those damn things, right? But it's designed, I mean, it's clearly addictive, right? I mean, very, very clear the adult behavior around the smartphone is an addictive behavior, right? And the fact, the fact, the fact that a three-year-old can manipulate an iPhone with, you know, within 20 minutes knows how to work an iPhone and we'll sit there for hours oblivious to everything around him or her playing with this thing. That's clearly an addictive relationship to that device. So do we give our daughter an iPhone? No, of course we don't. Like I also not, you know, if she wants to try smoking, I'm not going to let her smoke. I mean, why would you give your child an addictive, you know, a pathway to addiction

at a very young age. Eventually, she's going to have her for a cigarette. You know what I mean? Like I did. Eventually, some day, she'll have a phone. But I'm certainly not going to give her one because she wants one. That will lead her away from a biological and evolutionary truth, which is that humans are social primates.

We'll lead her away from that in a sort of solipsistic digital universe that clearly isn't producing very good outcomes in our society. Wow. we probably need to have a separate conversation so I can get parenting advice from you Sebastian but in the meantime I want to ask you a question about tribe so most recent books freedom it's obviously we're going to we're going to be oscillating back and forth here for the rest of our time talking but there's a there's a section in tribe that I highlighted years ago and I read it said human beings need three

basic things in order to be content they need to feel competent at what they do they need to feel authentic in their lives and they need to feel connected to others these values are considered intrinsic to human happiness and far outweigh extrinsic values such as beauty, money, and status. And I really identified with this and thought about it a lot because at times, like a friend of my name Jason Gaynard said, you know, I was living my life to impress people that I didn't care about. And until, and once I stop that is when everything changed for me, I was like, that's a great point, right? Like looking for a certain car or whatever. The, the, the values. And when you talk about feeling competent in what they do, and authentic,

in their lives and connected to other people. I really felt that. Can you share more about, and that's an excerpt from a brief quote from Tribe, one of your previous books, what that's all about when it means to feel content? Okay, let me just say that those three attributes, I myself was citing another study.

Okay. Located, healthy sense of self-worth and meaningfulness and contentedness in those attributes, right? So I'm citing someone else. I did not come up with those, but I obviously agree with them, but they wouldn't have been in my book. So what you have to assume is that human behaviors are adaptive evolved over many thousands, tens of thousands of years to produce good outcomes in our primordial environment, which if people are acquisitive, if they sort of want to acquire things, that's an adaptive behavior in a dangerous,

this natural environment where you can starve the death, right? In a modern society where it's very easy to buy more things that you can possibly use, that adaptive acquisitiveness can become counterproductive. So what you have to understand is that when people try to impress others, that's an adaptive response. of course if you're living in a survival group of 30 or 40 individuals in our primordial past, where everyone is sort of relying on everyone else to be competent and authentic, right, and skilled at what they do, whether it be it hunting or weaving baskets or starting a fire or fighting or whatever it may be. Showing, impressing others with your competence is a crucial way of making sure that you are safely embedded in the survival

group because if you're not, you're dead. No one survives by themselves in nature. You die immediately, right? So showing your competence and impressing other people with what a significant person you are is adaptive in a small scale survival society. You take that adaptive behavior, and you have a young person or older person

who's trying to impress millions of people they'll never know who aren't depending on them and vice versa, it's an endless task. You'll never win. You know, it's like your email. It's like social media, no matter how fast you do your email, the matter how diligent you are in returning emails and texts and attending the social media, the more you do that,

the more there is to do. It actually creates more work. I mean, it's the opposite of freedom, just like quicksand is the opposite of freedom, in the sense that the thing you do to get clear of it actually embeds you deeper in the thing that's trapping you. Right. So likewise, trying to impress other people,

you'll never do it. And you, so you do these displays that will never quite do the trick in terms of making you feel, oh, I've arrived. Now people think I'm an impressive person. Some of the most insecure, anxious, miserable people there are, are people who, what was that list again, or wealthy, high status, and beautiful, right? I mean, those people never seem to end their quest

for affirmation. Whatever your politics, I think people on both sides of the political spectrum recognize a rather tragic figure in Donald Trump of someone who just, I think, and my heart, I didn't vote for him, but my heart kind of goes out to him in some ways, he feels, he seems like he was such an insecure person that there was sort of no end to the amount of approval and applause that he needed to get. What a heartbreaking thing.

You know, and I don't think he was a good thing for a country, but just as a human being. Like what happened in that person's childhood that produced such a cripplingly insecure person? Like, it's probably criminal what happened in his childhood. Yeah. I and I think that's why that book and tribe spoke to me also because I want to talk about this this relates a little bit to the working world and when I'm I'm kind of grateful for my parents really, my family for putting me in a position to be a part of a team. As mentioned, you were you were on sports teams. You're a great runner individual in its pursuit, but also you're with others. You're in a team. And I think a locker room. is an incredible learning experience for people. Certainly for me, because you get recruited to go to a college. You all come there. You're for the most part, everyone's on scholarship.

There are some walk-ons, but for the most part, you're all there. You're from wildly different backgrounds, different parts of the country and most in some cases out of the country, but different parts of the world, different parenting situations, different upbringing, different levels of status, right? All of that comes in. And yet you come into the. the locker room and the best teams, the ones who are most effective, understand the common goal and understand that we need each other and understand how to hold each other accountable and

understand how to work hard towards that common goal. And when it goes well, all of that is there's a synergistic effect amongst the team and it's beautiful. And I've also been on losing team, Sebastian, and it's and that doesn't work as well. And you being embedded within the military world and seeing people at war, both Americans as well as those outside of our country have got to witness that. And so when you think about the collaboration inside a locker room and the collaboration in a foxhole or the collaboration amongst our military heroes who fight for freedom, what's your thought process on the thought of needing one another, of being side by side with another person, with fighting for a common goal, whether it's an

athletics or in your case is more life and death when it comes to war. Well, I, you know, I think modern war and contemporary athletics basically reproduce our, um, are, our, our illusionary past and things that feel sort of meaningful and gratifying as frankly war can for young fighters. Uh, and sports certainly can be those things. Um, often things feel meaningful and gratifying because, they are, we're adaptive in our evolutionary past. And so, you know, typically it's not, the endeavor isn't with one other person, it's with a group. Humans did a lot of dangerous things when we, you know, in our, in our prehistory, in our history. Hunting big animals was a group

endeavor that required everyone to trust everyone else because all you have is a spear and you're going up against a mastodon or a tiger or whatever, a dangerous animal. animals. And, you know, and obviously war, war is that times a thousand, right? I mean, you know, if you're in a group that is coordinated and devoted to itself, you're just tactically more successful, more proficient than a group that's not where the individuals are not devoted to each other and are not, don't feel a sort of unification. You know, clearly Saddam Hussein's huge armies did not feel that sort of profound cohesiveness and devotion to each other that is required for effective combat. And they folded very, very quickly when fighting the Americans twice. And there are groups that have had way less armament than Saddam Hussein's armies. I mean, the Taliban fought us to a standstill over 20 years. We finally left on their terms, right?

They didn't have an Air Force. They didn't have artillery. They didn't have tanks. A lot of them didn't have boots. So that sort of core commitment to the group is can be tactically crucial for an underdog to win a fight. And I loat the Taliban, right? But as I said, if groups like that weren't able

to defeat an empire, freedom would not, autonomy would not be possible. And the Taliban, you know, we can have that conversation. It's a loathsome political and religious ideology. but there is something hopeful in the fact that a small group can defeat a larger group. And so sports play to all of that. And the loss of self, people like losing. I mean, look, being sort of ego-driven makes sense, but it's also a kind of emotional burden.

And when you're a parent, the focus of your concern becomes your children. And you lose this sort of awful sense of like this burden of being the most important thing in your life. Well, likewise, in a platoon in combat, in a healthy platoon, I mean, one that's functioning well and is well trained, the individuals in it are at least as concerned with the welfare of the group as they are with their own welfare, at least as concerned, if not, way more so. And that feels good. And when you experience that in a team, that loss of self, where all of a sudden you seem to be playing, you know, the whole team is coordinating. like it's one organism and everyone's playing like unconsciously like beyond their individual abilities and it's all clicking and coming together that's a very powerful drug it happens in combat it happens in sports it's clearly adaptive to have that it's in what mikhail chick sent mehai the great check psychological researcher called a state of flow right it's it's um you know it's clearly

adaptive and made humans very effective warriors and very very effective hunters. And we, you know, honestly, we as humans, we love it. I saw you give a talk at a church of all places, which you can share more about that background. And I watched the watch you talk and I believe you were sick too, which made even more impressive. But one of the things you talked about was the difference between running a company versus leading a company. And I thought, I think you said something like, I'm not really sure how to run a company, but I think I know how to lead one. What's the difference between running a company and leading one? So leaders, leaders are people who are willing to sacrifice the consequences of their decisions along with the people they leave.

So a war leader who says, take the hill is the first out of the trench. And if anyone's going to get shot, he's willing to risk getting shot along with them. Right? So the kings of Europe, until about 1,400, the kings of Europe, would often, when they went to war, would lead on horseback their own men into combat, sword in hand, right, into the fray

and would die. I mean, the last, The last European king to die in combat was, if I remember correctly, in the late 1300s. And after that, kings told men to go to war without them to fight, do their fighting and dying for them. And the kings did not risk themselves. At that point, they stopped being leaders. And they started being opportunists. So a corporate leader who receives a huge year-end bonus.

while people are being laid off or experiencing reductions in their salaries is not a leader. You have to, as a leader, as a president, as an American president, as a military commander, at least in the foxholes of Afghanistan, not the generals, of course, that's a different job. Or as a corporate leader, or to be a leader, you have to be very willing and eager to suffer consequences

along with the people that are trusted, trusting you. And when you don't, when you hide behind them financially and you give yourself a huge bonus while the company's taking a hit, when you tell people to run into machine gun fire, you're not willing to. Or as a president, if you are unwilling to acknowledge your mistakes and your deficits, you are not a leader, you're an opportunist. And, you know, Western society is wealthy and affluent, and we can survive opportunities. It's not going to lead to the collapse of society. We just don't need to use up the beautiful word leadership on those people.

I think one of the examples you use, and I want to expand on this one, is the Chobani founder Hamdi Yulukhaya. I'm probably pronouncing that wrong. He said in his company, all employees are part owners of the company, and that you share that he comes from a family of nomadic sheep farmers from the Turkish mountains. and he learned a collective approach to life and work where he grew up. And that is, that's, that's leadership. I'd love to hear more about that.

Yeah, you know, I, and I sat next to him at a dinner and, and all I know about him is from that conversation. And I didn't follow up. And so he's not in my book, read him. And I've just read that there have been some sort of complicated events with this company. But, but I will say is the idea that, I mean, he is reproduceded our, reproducing our evolutionary origins. You know, when you make your, you know, basically Chabani,

I mean, he started it with, you know, basically pennies in his pocket as an immigrant to this country and built it up into this huge empire. And, you know, really from scratch. And he, you know, when you make the people who are working in your company, part of the company where they suffer the downturns and the upturns collectively, as does the least. leadership, you're basically reproducing our evolutionary past. I mean, that it, and in our evolutionary past, the up turns and downturns go to our physical survival and the amount of food that we have, not the amount of money we have. But basically when you reproduce that in a capitalist society with people, instead of being wage labor,

having a personal investment in the outcome of the company, and you yourself foregoing excessive payments, if things are going poorly, then you're basically reproducing the dynamics of our evolutionary past and that that tends to work very very well resonates very deeply with people people do that naturally during a disaster earthquakes hurricane hurricanes tornadoes bombardments people revert to that kind of egalitarian thinking very very quickly during a disaster Sebastian you've spent time around a number of the world's most impactful and effective leaders and I'm curious from your perspective when you think about some of the comments behaviors and attitudes and mindsets of those leaders who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time,

what are some of those behaviors and themes you found? You know, I think excellent leaders believe in a principle. And, you know, for political leaders in this country, what I would hope is that that the highest principle would be democracy in the democratic process, you know, regardless of party or, or personal political ambition. I think both sides fail at that more often than they succeed. But I think that's a, that's a mark of real leadership. And I think a willingness to sacrifice one's own interests or life, as I said,

for the interests of the group is crucial to powerful leadership. Everything else isn't leadership, right? I mean, it's just part of the definition. of the word is that you are leading from the front, either literally or metaphorically, Michael Connolly, who was the head of the Irish, the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916. You know, he was the general of the rising, right? He used to the general Petraeus, basically, of the Irish rebels in Dublin. And it was all his aides could do to drag him out of gunfire because he kept exposing himself

to risk rather than telling someone else to do something risky when he had to scout out a location to put some sandbags on the street or whatever and he you know he just was like completely careless about gunfire he's got he was shot twice in one week right because he was putting himself at risk rather than putting other people at risk you know that's the kind of leaders that we deserve i've seen it in the u.s military i you know i've seen it in private enterprise um i wrote it about a guy at the end of tribe who um at his company a small company had suffered a downturn 20 employees who was in New York City some decades ago a downturn during the 1980s and he um you know he took a massive pay cut i think he took no salary at all for a year so that you wouldn't have to fire anybody and he never told anyone he was the the accountant for the company that spilled the beans and told everyone that their boss and the owner of the company had skipped a year's salary so that no one else would have to take a pay cut or get fired and then you put that alongside those those people on wall street during the 08 economic

collapse that were taking hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses while their companies collapsed and they bankrupted this country that's not leadership that i mean essentially that's fraud wow um even the the impressive part is the leader who does that and just doesn't tell anybody right they're not trying to get accolades or get stories written about them or even kind of humble or I don't know what you'd call that. They just do it. That's right thing to do. One more question, Sebastian.

There are, I'd have to imagine you just got bombarded from people in all ages, but specifically thinking of people who are a little bit earlier in the career. Maybe they recently graduated college and they want to, they want to put a dent in the world, right? Help people make a difference in a good way. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to somebody in that stage? It's really important to fail. If you fail, it means that you're trying to do things that you're not sure you can succeed at. And it's a sign that you're undoubtedly learning and

growing and probably benefiting from your experiences. If you never fail, it means you're not near the limits of your capabilities. And so you'll, you won't. I mean, you might, hopefully you will have a life that's successful on some level. But the fear of failure can be crippling to someone's development. And you must go for it. And the sign that you're sort of failing at things regularly means that you're pushing the envelope. At some point, if you keep failing at one thing, you know, ceramics just may not be the career choice for you. for you, you know, whatever. Like, I mean, you know, at some point you have to be a realist, but,

but this, you know, I feel like that we live in a culture of sort of like the, the, um, where there's this brutal imperative of success. And, you know, I think that the only, the only way to achieve that is to avoid anything where there's the tiniest risk of failure. That's a miserable way to live. Oh, it's so good. Uh, constantly pushing your edges. That's how they get wider, right? Um, thank you so much, Sebastian. The book is called freedom. I encourage people to read Tribe as well if you haven't read either one, but the most recent one is called Freedom. It's so good. You could do it in a day. It's this beautiful combination of like historical references that are so tight and well told. Plus the story of this last patrol. That again, I don't really know how you do it. It would take a whole other days worth for me to figure that out.

and I'm not even going to try. I'm just going to appreciate it and acknowledge it and say, thank you so much for doing it, man. And thank you for being here. I really enjoyed it. Thank you. I hope you all enjoyed my book. And it was a real pleasure talking to you.

Thanks so much, man. I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress. As the world's opening up, it'd be so good to meet you in person at some point. Yeah, be in touch. Awesome. Thanks so much, Sebastian. Take care. Wow.

What a life Sebastian younger is living. I could talk with him for hours. A few of the key takeaways from my notes. Human beings need three basic things in order to be content. They need to feel competent at what they do authentic in their lives, and they need to feel connected to others. Those three things lead you to being content. And I urge you to think about if what you are waking up to do each day

hit those three things. And if not, what can be done to make changes? And then running a company versus leading a company. What does leading a company mean? It means when things take a downturn, the leader feels it just like the employees do. It's taking a pay cut and, most importantly, not telling anyone about it in order to not have to lay people off.

Leaders go first. Leaders do the hard stuff first, and then his life and career advice fail. If you're only doing things you know you can do, then you're never near your limits. In order to grow, you have to push those limits. You have to push your edges. And sometimes that means you'll fail. That's okay. That's actually a signal that you're doing it right.

Once again, I want to say thank you to you, a loyal listener of the Learning Leader Show, for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode with Sebastian Younger. It will help you become a more effective and impactful leader. And because you continue to do that, and because you continue to write the review on Apple Podcast and rate the show, Hopefully five stars. You are continually giving me the opportunity to do what I love and to feel content on a daily basis.

And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talking soon. Can't wait.