The One You Feed - Akshay Nanavati- Fear and Depression

Episode Date: August 8, 2017

This week we talk to Akshay Nanavati After overcoming drug addiction, alcoholism, PTSD from fighting the war in Iraq and recovering from the brink of suicide, Akshay Nanavati has since explored the most hostile environments on the planet and built a business helping people live limitless lifestyles. Combining his life experience with years of research in science and spirituality, he wrote a book called “Fearvana: The Revolutionary Science of How to Turn Fear Into Health, Wealth and Happiness.” Of the book, The Dalai Lama said “Fearvana inspires us to look beyond our own agonizing experiences and find the positive side of our lives.”   In This Interview, Akshay Nanavati and I Discuss... The Wolf Parable His book, Fearvana: The revolutionary science of how to turn fear into health, wealth, and happiness How he got the Dali Lama to write the forward for his book That we don't control what first shows up in our brain How if you feel fear and stress is not your fault The second dart/arrow parable Acting your way into right thinking literally restructures the pathways in your brain The ability to develop a positive relationship to suffering Committing yourself to the worthy struggle Reducing life to the simplest next step Dealing with fear - it's ok to be scared Bringing the rational mind into fearful situations The challenge response Fear is a gift if you believe it to be The growth mindset vs The fixed mindset If you want to be great you have to believe that you are How ego can be both helpful and unhelpful The worthy struggle Keeping things automated in your day so that you can save self-discipline or willpower for the times you need it     Please Support The Show with a DonationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you learn how to smile through suffering, you'll be able to handle all of it, and ultimately, you'll create a more happy and meaningful life. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do.

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor,

what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Akshay Nanavati.

This is Akshay's second interview on The One You Feed. is Akshay Nanavati. This is Akshay's second interview on The One You Feed. He's an explorer, volunteer firefighter, former U.S. Marine, and master's graduate in journalism. He's been mountaineering all over the world, glacier diving in Nepal, skydiving, ice diving, cave diving, scuba diving, a whole lot of diving, and he's spent one month dragging a 190-pound sled 350 miles across the second largest ice cap in the world. His new book is called Fearvana, the revolutionary science of how to turn fear into health, wealth, and happiness. If you're getting value out of this show, please go to 1ufeed.net slash support and make a donation. oneyoufeed.net slash support and make a donation. This will ensure that all 185 episodes that are in the archive will remain free and that the show is here for other people who need it. Some other ways that you can support us is if you're interested in the book that we're

discussing on today's episode, go to oneyoufeed.net and find the episode that we're talking about. There will be links to all of the author's books. And if you buy them through there, it's the same price to you, but we get a small amount. Also, you can go to one you feed.net slash book. And I have a reading list there. One you feed.net slash shop, and you can buy t shirts, mugs and other things. And finally, one you feed.net slash Facebook, which is where our Facebook group is, and you can interact with other listeners of the show and get support in feeding your good wolf. Thanks again for listening. And here's interview number two with Akshay Nanavati. Hi, Akshay. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Eric. Pleasure to be here. Excited to have you on for a second time. You got a new book coming out we talked about it a little bit that you were working on it on our first show but it is coming out soon it's called fearvana the revolutionary science of how to turn fear into health wealth and happiness and we will get into that and uh all things related to it in a, but let's start like we normally do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and

fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Love that parable from ever since I've been following your podcast. And I think what it means to me, you know, a little bit about, you know, I think, you know, my story. I've had a few moments where the bad wolf has kind of come out on top. I've, you know, I've had faced drug addiction, faced alcoholism. I was on the brink of suicide where I thought about taking my own life. And I think what I've realized more and

more is you're always going to fight those battles that I think that both wolves are always going to be there, right? They're always going to have demons to fight. It's not like now I'm suddenly in a great place. It's just new battles. It's new wolves. But the more you focus on those right things, the more you take action, the more you stay in an empowered place, that good wolf you can feed it. And it's a beautiful thing. And that's what ultimately led to the book and led to where I'm at now and led to me sobering up. So it's just about finding strategies on what that fuel is for the good wolf. And there are certain techniques that I think are universal and there are certain things that are individual, like I'm sure I'll be happy to share as we kind it sound like this is an ongoing battle and it's kind of close, like between the wolves. And so you've got to kind of weigh in to swing it one direction or the other. The other thing that you talked about,

and we'll go into more detail, I like what you said there, and you reference it several times in the book, that there are these general principles around living a better life that tend to apply to us all, but that our specific path is going to look very different. Yeah, you know, so I studied a lot with the neuroscience, the psychology, spirituality. But for example, like I'll give you individualized pathways that work for me that may be too intense. In fact, probably are too intense for a lot of people.

I've heard that from a few people. So for example, one of the things I do is almost every night before going to bed, I watch a few scenes or depending on the night, but from war movies. So I'll watch a scene from Hacksaw Ridge or a scene from Black Hawk Down. And these scenes often tear me up. I mean, being a war veteran, having that experience, I'll often cry myself very often through these scenes. I also watch a YouTube memorial video of a friend I lost in Iraq. And this sounds like a very intense ritual, right? As you can imagine, it is very intense. I even have a poster up on my wall of my friend that I lost in Iraq, and it says, this should have been you. Earn this life.

And these are hard things to stay present to constantly, but they are drivers for me. They help me stay sober. They help me stay committed to the grind of my work. They help me remember what it's all about. It's about the men and women next to you of serving of a higher purpose. So these are intense rituals, but they work for me. They leverage the neuroscience as well, the neuroscience of how memories work, of how our brain works to keep me focused. So we all have different things to weigh to leverage the neuroscience, but that's one way for me that's very individual that works. And you kind of figure that out through the process of experimentation and doing. Because no matter how many books you read, no matter what you study, the greatest lessons are always in the doing. Yeah, there's no doubt about that. It's not about, I think most of

us know a lot of this stuff already. We might hear another study, we might hear it said a different way that impacts us, but it's really about the action. Absolutely. So the book is, you've got a lot of great reviews on it, a lot of interesting people are promoting it, but the foreword is written by the Dalai Lama, which kind of just blows me away. It was obviously just a huge honor, very, just a blessing to receive a foreword from His Holiness. And I mean, the way it happened was quite incredible. It was, I mean, through, you know, it was through some healthy persistence, but I started off reaching out to the cold email on his website, just the email list there. That didn't kind of get me anywhere. So I did a ton of research. I found one point of contact in his office and one thing passed the other, other, and three people later, I found this one

gentleman. I shot a personal video for his holiness. And that's been like the most powerful thing you can do because in these days of online communication, we're often typing and it's easier to send an email, right? Just words. You can think it out. But when you're in video, people can see who you are. They can see your passion, your enthusiasm. It's the next best thing to connecting in person, which is obviously not as always easy to do. So I shot a video. I wrote a letter to him. I explained, you know, my own struggles that have led me to fear of Anna, what we're looking to do with the book, the impact we're looking to make. I mentioned how we're giving away all the proceeds to charity. And after about three to four months with this communication with this particular monk in the office there, he said, I still remember,

he said, you know, considering who you are and your genuine desire to serve, he said, I'll press your case. And those were his exact words. I'll press your case. And two weeks after he said that, I got this beautiful letter in the house from His Holiness with the signature and a seal. And it was just the most humbling thing to have that, you know, it's just a tremendous blessing for the book. I feel like it's already a success, of course. Yeah, yeah, that's incredible. Chris has been recording videos for the Dalai Lama also. But I think that's probably why we've been banned in half of the world at this point from our show. Yeah, my book definitely won't sell in China, that's for sure. All good.

So one of the things that you talk about a lot in the book is you say, anytime you might be feeling confused, lost, or scared, it is not your fault. What do you mean by that? So neuroscience and spirituality has shown that we don't actually control what first shows up in our brain. That the neuroscience is actually measured that they can measure the brain sort of reactions. Like let's say I'm picking up this glass of coffee or this glass of water. My brain has registered the action before I actually do it. So most of us live from the subconscious space, right? Unless we're truly practicing heightened sense of awareness, then we can regain this free will. So in spirituality, it's a really interesting concept

that I learned that was transformational for me in my own battles with PTSD as well. Buddha says that we are all stabbed by two darts. So for example, let's say I stub my toe against a door. The first dart is the pain in the toe. The second dart is when I say things like this door is stupid or why do bad things only happen to me? You know, why does God hate me? Whatever it may be. And the same thing applies to our emotions. So we might feel fear, anxiety, stress, depression, whatever. But the real problem, that's the first dart that's out of our control anymore.

The second dart is when we say things like, you know, when we judge the fear. When we say, this fear makes me weak. Or this anxiety means I'm never going to succeed. Or this depression means I'll never be to succeed, or this depression means I'll never be happy. It's all these following things. For example, just in my own context, PTSD. I used to jump when there's loud noises after I rack. Now, they use that as its criteria to say, okay, that means I have post-traumatic stress disorder. But that's a very normal response to war where my brain learned that loud noises equals death. So the symptoms of post-traumatic stress are not indicative of a disorder. And when you let go of the judgment of you that you have over your emotions, you can

then choose what you want to do with them and leverage them to drive you forward. And that's the essentially like the most important thing you can do is, you know, in terms of that emotional intelligence is creating that space between your emotions and your conscious response to them. You call it the second dart. I call it the second arrow. And it's probably outside of the wolf parable, one of my favorite parables of all. We talk about it on the show all the time. I've done a mini episode on it. Sometimes I refer to it as feeling bad about feeling bad. Love it. Yeah, it's perfect. Yeah. And you talk about that an awful lot in the book. And I think the key thing there is, you're right, we can't control what shows up in a lot of different ways. It's kind of what do we do from there? What kind of

thoughts do we try and have? What kind of actions do we try and take? And even for me, I found that a lot of times I can't even control what second, third and fourth as far as maybe my thought or my emotion. Sometimes what I can control is behavior. And that's kind of the back to that other phrase we use a lot, which is sometimes you have to act your way into right thinking. You can't think your way into right action. It's a very similar concept there. Absolutely. I love that. And that's how you ultimately change your brain patterns, because wherever you are now, whatever triggers you've created, you know, the brain's always associating these patterns. So for example, if you come home at the end of the work and let's

say you pick up a beer, your brain started creating almost like a physical wiring, like a highway, you can think of it that says, okay, coming home, you know, stress equals beer. And you, in order to change those wirings, in order to create new highways, you have to do something differently. So you separate yourself from the impact of those emotions and then do something differently. And you literally rewire, literally change the physical structure of your brain. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations.

We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow. I always tell people that when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar. You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves and who we know ourselves to be and who we can be. So a little bit of past, present and future, all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity.

It can be something that you love. All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like...

Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a floor? We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you, and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth.

Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello,

Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app,

on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, before you hit the fast forward button, a couple quick things. One, I will do the drawing for the Matthew Quick books this week, and I will reach out to the folks who won directly. Sorry, I haven't gotten to that yet, but I will Quick books this week, and I will reach out to the folks who won directly. Sorry, I haven't gotten to that yet, but I will do it this week. Secondly, if you want to support the show, oneufeed.net slash support. We always appreciate it. Thank you to those of you who have already supported the show. One other thing we could use your help with, we have been nominated for the Podcasters Academy to win an award, which I know, I don't

barely believe that's a thing myself. But we have, and someone's doing an article on the people who've been nominated, and they're curious about what our best episodes are. And they've asked us to have our listeners rate their favorite episode. So if you guys could help us by voting on your favorite episode, in order to do that, you go to beta.podchaser.com, and you're going to have to enter a beta code. That beta code is Patreon, capital P-A-T-R-E-O-N, beta.podchaser.com, and use the code Patreon, capital P-A-T-R-E-O-N. And if you'll go in there and vote on your favorite couple podcasts, that would be great. Let's limit it to the last 40 or so, so that it's not spread all over the map. I would appreciate that a great deal if you have a chance to do that. And finally, if you are an Instagram user, we are out there now. It is 1-U you underscore feed on Instagram.

Thanks so much, as always, for listening, for your support. And now back to the rest of the episode. You have a quote in here from the author of Flow. It's a test to see if you can say his name. There you go. I learned how to pronounce that correctly. I have a couple different people on the show recently. I always see if anybody can pronounce his name. I learned how to pronounce that correctly. I have a couple different people in the show recently. I always see if anybody can pronounce his name. I refuse to ever try. Anyway,

he has a quote that I really liked, and you used it in the book, and it's very on point for the rest of the book. And it says, of all the virtues we can learn, no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge. And you go on to say, teaching myself this trait brought me back from the brink of death. If there's one big takeaway from the book, it's that. It's literally the most important skill, as he says, based on his research on happiness. And I like to put it in my own words in the book, is to develop a positive relationship to suffering. Because suffering is so much of a harsher word

than like difficult or stressed or hard, you know, or adverse and suffering is like the harshest, at least in my opinion, it sounds harshest. So if you can suffer well, everything else seems a little easy. So I like to say, develop a positive relationship to suffering. And that's what brought me back, you know, because like we said, the demons don't go away. It's not that I'm in a, you know, things are going well right now in my life, but it's a grind, it's struggle. You go through stress, you go through low moments, and you really have to be able to embrace that. Because when you can turn adversity into an enjoyable challenge, or when you can develop that positive relationship to suffering, not only will you be able to overcome the inevitable obstacles that stand between

any goal you have, like where you are now and the end result of getting that goal, it'll also help you when life punches you in the face, you know, because there's those two kinds of struggles, some that are handed to you and the others you sort of seek out in the pursuit of a meaningful challenge. And none are easy. But if you learn how to smile through suffering, you'll be able to handle all of it. And ultimately, you'll create a more happy and meaningful life. I mean, writing this book was incredibly hard. It was brutal. It was exhausting, you know. So you have to learn to develop that positive relationship to suffering, right? Yeah, it reminds me of the David, I think it's David Foster Wallace quote where he says, there's nothing that the person who's impervious to boredom can't complete or can't achieve. You

know, if you have the capacity to be bored and just keep going, you can accomplish anything. And it's a similar concept. Talk to me about the relationship between our evolutionary wiring for survival and our current life in the world today and how that influences how we live today and how we work with that. So our brain is very much designed for that archaic lifestyle where, you know, there was constant threats, living, you know, so it's the primary focus of the brain is to keep us alive. So anytime we enter something new, the brain's asking itself, is this thing going to kill me or not? So we live in a sort of like what one scientist calls a caveman-like brain. And these brains are not adapted to the complexities of modern life, which is why you see things like the paradox of choice. With these extra choices, we don't know how to make

a decision. We're also seeing increase in depression, increase in suicide rates, increase in all these things because people are psychologically struggling more than they ever have before because the world is getting more complex. And that's why we feel scared of everything. I mean, our brain doesn't handle it. So it's constantly confused. It registers little things like fear. So for example, I worked with one client who was sitting on his computer to write, terrified him. So he would inevitably retreat and go to watch TV. So we have to learn to work with this caveman like brain. And the way to do that is to find what I call that worthy struggle. Because when you commit yourself with focus, so in, for example, in Iraq,

life was all about living in, you know and the greatest worry was living and dying. So life was very simple out there. In many ways, it was easier than the complexities of this world because all you had to worry about was dying. So all I've learned to do now is replicate the structures of life and war and reduce life to the simplest next step. And that's what the archaic brain is used to. It was that immediate return environment where problems get solved instantly. So if I'm hungry, I suck, kill this thing, and it's solved. Here we have this delayed return where we don't

know what's coming next. If I could work my butt off in high school and still don't know if I'm getting into a good college, right? So reducing life to these immediate next steps and creating that simplicity of purpose will channel your brain into the kind of focus you need to ultimately achieve your goals. Yeah, a guest we had on Noah Levine said that our brains are great for keeping us alive, but not necessarily that great for making us happy. Yeah, exactly. That's why awareness is so foundational. I mean, with self-awareness, then you can channel that awareness into purposeful and meaningful action.

So let's talk about fear. The book is called Fearvana. Fear is a big theme of the book, dealing with fear. How do I turn fear into health, wealth, and happiness as the subtitle of the book? Yeah. So the first step is one, acknowledging that fear is not the enemy. Fear is not this evil thing. It's a very natural human response to the unknown. So if you're quitting a business, quitting a job to start a business, it's okay to be scared, right? Like I worked with this one client who said, you know, I just need to wait for the fear to go away so I can quit my job. I said, that's your problem. You're waiting for the fear to go away because he made the fear mean it's something bad. So once you say, okay, I'm okay with this fear and accept it and label it and be just be okay with it, then you can step

out of the fear and understand it. So what am I afraid of? You know, write this down, step outside of the emotional brain and bring the rational brain into the picture. Write down what am I afraid of? What are the worst case scenarios? How can I prepare for each worst case scenario? You know, and you're getting basically your fear can propel you to prepare if you're ready for it. That's what I learned in Iraq. I mean, one of my jobs in Iraq was to walk out in front of vehicle convoys and search for improvised explosive devices before they could blow up our vehicles. So it was a dangerous job. So you had to learn. But the fear allows you to say, okay, how can I be better prepared for this? And it's the same thing in life, any pursuit, any goals. Once you isolate yourself from the fear, then you can understand it. Then you want to have fuel. So

the fuel is often remembering what are the rewards waiting for you on the other side of your fears, and what are the consequences if you don't engage those fears? So for example, in writing the book, it was a terrifying process, right? So the reward was professionally and personally, it'd be huge to have a best-selling book. And then beyond that, more importantly, I think is the impact it can make and the lives it can change with the book, you know, could spread so much further than you. And also remembering the consequences. So what I had like literally imagined myself dying without ever having written Fear of Anna. And that's a terrifying thought. This message that I believe is my message to the world, never having shared it.

And so that kind of drove me to actually engage in the action. Another really powerful technique is to visualize the pain involved in the process of achieving your goals. So instead of sort of visualizing the end result, which is often being preached in this law of attraction thing, it's like, oh, visualize yourself all happy with the million dollars and the good home. Don't do that. Instead, visualize the pain and the struggle of getting there. And studies have shown that's a far more effective way because it'll be better. It'll better prepare you to handle the obstacle, which is why Michael Phelps used to visualize himself swimming. So when his goggles got flooded, he kept swimming and he still won Olympic gold and broke the world record. So those are some kind of valuable techniques to help you face your fears and embrace them as you move towards your

goals. Well, this was a timely topic for me. I had to have a conversation today, uh, business-wise that I was very, uh, unhappy to have, well, not unhappy. I was afraid to have it. And, uh, so it was useful for me just to think about this book as that was happening and really realize like, okay, this is fear. It's a normal reaction. Kind of do the things you said. I think the other thing that you talk about and I've heard in a couple other places recently is this idea of, they call it the challenge response, which is seeing fear, seeing what's happening in your body, not as this terrible thing, but recognizing that literally what your body is doing is preparing you for a challenge. Yeah. Fear makes you stronger that way. I mean, the first story in the book is about a friend of mine who ran into a burning Humvee to save a fellow Marine. Now that's a terrifying thing to do, but the, but fear actually helped him do it because if he didn't have fear, if he paused to rationalize it, the rational brain is slower. It involves energy, cognitive energy. When fear takes over, it channels your focus to the purposeful action. So the fear allowed him to leap off his turret,

running to a burning Humvee before he was sort of consciously aware he was even doing so, you know, and because he had trained in fear, he was accustomed to it. It was obviously being a Marine, trained a lot before going to Iraq. So he got practice in fear, comfortable with that fear response. And fear actually releases oxytocin, got practice in fear, comfortable with that fear response. And fear actually releases oxytocin, which is the love, quote-unquote, love hormone. So it's kind of this cycle that, you know, oxytocin can – yeah, when fear creates oxytocin, which is why you'll see people who suffer together, people who in military and combat come so close. I mean, they become brothers, right? And I know from experience, of course, that allowed him to run into the vehicle, which, and again, adrenaline, serotonin, all these things allowed him to focus his energy into purposeful action instead of being confused and thinking about what to do.

So fear is a gift if you truly believe it to be, and it will become so. Yeah, the neuroscience of fear, of what all gets released in your brain in fear was like, it basically, I think it was like every neurochemical I've ever heard of. Yeah, it was the best ones. It's quite a long list. Yeah, so one of my favorites was this chemical called anandamide. Anand is the Sanskrit word for bliss. So it's literally fear leads to bliss, which is a fear of anna is, right? So it releases this chemical called bliss, which is why we seek novelty. I mean, human beings don't want to be static and yet we have this negative relationship to fear, which is so silly because we seek novelty. We seek doing new things, which is why we travel to new places. It doesn't have to be going to war or climbing a mountain or whatever extremes, right? It can be in any way, but we're all looking for novelty to some degree, and that's why fear is actually a positive thing. We want that thing. It leads to our growth, our happiness, everything.

everything. There was a quote in the book, I can't find it right now, from a woman who was talking about how depression is often our inability to see novelty. That gets kind of shut down. Either we're not seeing it or we're not seeking it. Exactly, yeah. Because then if life becomes static, obviously we're going to be depressed, which is why novelty is so essential, which is why fear is essential. And when you shift that relationship, there's so many studies that have shown that even when a person has, when two groups of people have the equally high amounts of cortisol, which is the stress hormone, one group will respond differently to things like a math test or anything like that based on their belief about stress. So if they don't think of stress being a negative thing, they'll actually respond differently versus if somebody says

stress is the enemy, then they'll respond differently. So simple, your beliefs on these emotions will shape your biology and your physiology. And there's a great book that I use as a ton of research for my own called The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal. Yeah. And that is the basic theme of that book, right? Is that if you see stress as being deadly, it will be. And if you see stress as being useful, it will be. Obviously, there are limits on everything. But in general, the idea says, how are you interpreting what's happening, which is really underlying all this stuff. At the end of the day, it sounds like we could summarize this show up a lot of times, I think, with basically, the world is not as it is,

the world is as you are. And how do you work with that in a more useful and skillful way? Yeah, absolutely. And that's why it's so important to create that space between your automatic response to the world and what you choose to do with it. You know, like Viktor Frankl, the psychologist who survived Auschwitz in the Holocaust, says, between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our power to choose our response, and within our response lies our growth and our freedom. And that's one of the most powerful quotes ever. I mean, that book, Man's Search for Meaning, was amazing because that quote, like you said, summarizes everything of what it takes if you can create that space and master how you choose what you choose to

do in that space. Indeed. Speaking of changing fear into excitement or reframing how we see fear, you've got a story in there about Bruce Springsteen who, you know, throwing up before a lot of his shows. And, you know, he basically didn't think of it as being afraid. He thought of it as being excited. Yeah. So words have a lot of power too. If that

helps, you know, you can say an excitement and other studies have shown where they've taken a group of public speakers and they had, all of them were afraid and you know, that's the number one fear most people have. And they had, uh, they had one group say things like, I'm calm, I'm calm, trying to eliminate the fear and calm down. They had another group saying, I'm excited. And the group that said, I'm excited, perform better to third party objective viewers. So same thing like Bruce Springsteen. And there's another story in the book I use of Bill Russell, who used to throw up before every basketball game. And then the one game he didn't throw up and he was really calm, he performed awfully. And then he finally came back and when he started throwing up again and got nervous again, he performed excellently. And you

will see athletes talk about this all the time. I interviewed some football players for this. I've heard, like I just heard Gianluigi Buffon, the awesome soccer goalkeeper, one of the best goalkeepers in the world, still talks about how he's afraid before a big game. It's natural to be afraid, but athletes are masters, and that's why I think we worship them in society as these sort of gods of humanity, because they're truly masters in sort of embracing this practice of Vyarvana. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who

help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations. We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow. I always tell people that when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar. You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves and who we know ourselves to be and who we can be. It's a little bit of past, present and future all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity. It could be something that you love.

All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You talk about how those athletes and top performers believe in themselves with a great degree of intensity and that they believe in the nature of human potential to a great degree. Talk a little bit about that. The foundational belief is this growth mindset. So those are the two mindsets that Dr. Carol Dweck, one of the leading researchers in human motivation, talks about is the growth mindset is one that believes anything can be changed through effort and any challenges and opportunity to grow. The fixed mindset is that talent is ingrained. And a lot of society believes in this fixed mindset. So you'll hear things that people say,

like, you know, Tiger Woods was born for golf or Federer is a natural at tennis. And all these things are awful because it sort of sets this assumption, this belief that these things are fixed, that they were natural as opposed to they worked their butts off to create it, right? To cultivate it through effort. So that's a foundational belief. And then athletes, like peak performers, they believe in not only that the growth mindset, that anything can be challenged, like changed and grown through effort, but they believe in themselves to an insane amount of high degree. I mean, one of my next books already in my mind is that I'm thinking about is writing, it's called The Gift of Ego. Like we talk about ego as this bad thing too, but

ego is needed. I mean, great, like Muhammad Ali says, you know, I'm going to show you how great I am. He knew he was great. The greats know they're great because if you want to be great, you have to believe it. You have to know it. It doesn't mean you have to be arrogant, but you have to know you're amazing at what you do, you know, and you have to really hold on to that core. So there are moments when you need ego. There's other times, again, it's all about exercising awareness where ego can be, you know, a bad thing. And I have, I've had that moment. I'll give you a small example. I had helped somebody in my family the other day with something and they didn't praise me. And for a second, I was like, you know,

I want to get recognized. And then I immediately said, okay, this is when ego is not helping me. I don't need that. I helped them. They got the help. This is not a time where ego is helping me. But by stepping outside of that ego and saying, exercising awareness about it, I said, ego is not helpful here. But in other cases, I was like, I know I'm amazing at this. I'm great at speaker. So I'm going to go out there and speak, right? Like, so ego can be used effectively when channeled with awareness. And it's needed, I think, if you want to be great. Yeah, every job needs a different tool. If we keep using the same tool for every job, we end up in trouble. And I agree. I think there's that idea, our greatest strength

can be our greatest weakness. And it's all a matter of how are we using it? Absolutely. And when are we using it? And similarly, our greatest weakness can be our greatest strength. I mean, I realized I have a very addictive personality, right? So struggle first with drug addiction, then struggle with alcohol. And I realized that, okay, look, I'm not good at moderation. Why am I bothering trying? So I channeled my addictive personality into my business, into running ultra marathons, you know. And that just worked for me. So this weakness became an ally. Same thing with my guilt.

I mean, it was a guilt that – it was a struggle that drove me to alcohol. Now my guilt is my greatest ally. It helps me stay sober. Exactly. Yep, I relate with that also. I definitely have that tendency in my nature to be very – I don't know if I'd use the word addictive, but very focused and excitable. Yeah. That's the positive spin I'll put on it.

Exactly. Exactly. No, I've heard your journey and it's truly incredible. So totally relate. Speaking about taking action, you were talking about writing the book or not writing the book. And there was another quote in the book from an author, Jim Rohn, that I really liked. He says, we must all suffer from one of two pains, the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces, while regret weighs tons.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I love that quote too, because like we said, you know, that worthy struggle will be hard. And I, the way I like to put it is if you don't find a worthy struggle, if you don't seek out that worthy struggle, struggle will find you anyway, right? Like that's why depression is a lack of novelty. If you just sit around doing nothing, you will find that existential struggle. It's essential to embrace that worthy struggle and, and discipline isn't easy. It is hard. But when you, when you imagine yourself on the deathbed, and I don't think it's about living your life, like live every day like it's your last. Because if you did, why would you do hard work, right?

Because if today was literally my last day, I would not be sitting here working. So I don't think it's about that. It's not about living every day like it's your last, that sort of cliche. It's really about picturing yourself dying. I sometimes do this. I mean, Buddhist practice talks about meditating on death. I mean, even Steve Jobs said that remembering I'll be dead soon is the most powerful tool I've used to make the big decisions in life. So imagine that and remembering the consequences and then looking back and saying, you know, if I'm looking back on my life, would

it be worth this little bit of effort right now? And, you know, it might change your perspective. In fact, it often will. Yeah, definitely. There's been times in my life where, particularly around things that I'm afraid to do, the pain of being a chicken finally outweighed whatever pain I thought might come from doing it. I eventually just was like, okay, this isn't, you know, enough is enough. I think today I'm better at recognizing that and not being driven to that limit. But that does turn out to be absolutely true for me, that that pain of not doing something or of regret is far worse than the short-term discomfort sometimes of doing things that are difficult. Yeah, absolutely. Couldn't agree with you more. Remind me of that as I work on this book.

Sure, sure. I'll keep you. I'll keep texting you and reminding you. Stay present to the grind. Talk to me about some of the ways that you structure your own life to remain productive. So, you know, we're talking about embracing this positive relationship to suffering. So obviously it's hard, right? Like using willpower, using cognitive energy, struggling in something is hard. So what you want to do is balance the engagement of will, engagement of willpower for when you need it, and the rest of time, keep things automated. So this is where you balance habits with willpower. So for example, what I do is I have a very structured morning routine. So I'm just actually

pulling up my phone, and I have a morning ritual on an app. I don't have to think about it. It just says prayer, meditate, play wake-up music, 25 push-ups, brush teeth, review goals, and plan for the day. So when I wake up, let's say I wake up one day I'm a little tired, I don't have to think, okay, what's the next step? I just follow stiff systems. Thinking is removed. Then I have already planned, a detailed plan for the day. It's five particular things to do. So what I do is I break my day up in shifts. One hour on, 10-minute break. One hour on, 10-minute break. And after two shifts, I usually take a little bit of a longer break, maybe get some food. And I try to do five to six shifts maybe, and sometimes more, depending on the workday. And then I have a night ritual. But one part of the day I like to have

where I'm exercising my willpower. This usually comes either in the form of exercise or maybe writing. Writing was brutal, as you know. So that's the part where I'm saying, okay, I'm consciously engaging my will. Because they've shown studies where willpower is sort of a finite resource. It gets exhausted by the end of the day. But what you can measure in labs is willpower is limitless when tested in the battlefields. So you'll see people do amazing things like running from the North Pole to the South Pole or Reinhold Messner climbing Everest solo without oxygen. And he openly says in that, like at this moment, he was pure will because he's just dying and just doing it. So when channeled with focus, willpower is this limitless thing. So you want to balance your will into one specific thing and everything else make automated

so you don't waste incognitive energy. That makes such a difference knowing what you're going to do. You reference one of the studies in the book that people who make a plan for when and how they're going to do something or something like three times more likely to do it. And it's the same thing with what you're describing. When I have to figure out what I'm going to do, I always struggle with. And that's part of my life has been so much travel over the last couple years that it's made it very difficult for me to have like every day, same routine, same sort of thing. And so that has made me have to expend a lot more effort to do the basic things that I

want to do versus where, to your point, when I have everything very much laid out, I find the same thing on the weekends. It's like, if I've got time on the weekends and I figure out what I'm going to do in advance and I plan it, I have a great weekend. If on the other hand, I don't, and I spend half that time sitting around thinking, what should I do? And you know, all the choices, I end up miserable. Yeah, yeah, even like exactly like planned playtime, planned procrastination time, sometimes I'll just say, okay, at this time, I just want to just do nothing and scroll on the internet, right? So plan that procrastination time. Yeah, yeah, structured procrastination. Yeah, I don't think it's about making every single minute of

everyday lockdown. But I do think it is having a general guide. There's that old saying, structure liberates, and I have found that to be so true for me. I've resisted it big parts of my life so much. I've thought of myself as this free spirit that just wants to do what I want to do, and I found that's the fastest way to misery for me. Yeah, totally relate. And I agree, it shouldn't be all this uber structure. Sometimes you want flow, right? So and just be in it, see where it goes. And sometimes life will just hand that to you as things happen. So embrace it and go on the ride. Well, Akshay, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. It's our second conversation. You and I have talked outside of this. Congratulations on the book. I look forward to seeing it. What is the actual release date? Official release is early October, but right now we're in the pre-launch phase. So during the pre-launch phase, we're giving away the book for free on the website, fearvana.com. Just ask you to pay for shipping.

So the whole pre-launch phase, we're giving away the book for free. Excellent. I'll also have links to your website and to the book in the show notes. So thanks so much for coming on, Akshay. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me, Eric. It was a pleasure. Take care. Bye. You too. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support.