The One You Feed - How to Build Resilience with Steve Magness

Episode Date: September 9, 2022

Steve Magness is a world-renowned expert on performance, well-being, and sustainable success.He is coauthor of the best selling Peak Performance and The Passion Paradox. In his coaching practice, Steve works with executives, entrepreneurs, and athletes on their performance and mental skills. He also serves as a consultant on mental skills development for professional sports teams, including some of the top teams in professional sports.  In this episode, Eric and Steve discuss his book, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness.  But wait, there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you! Steve Magness and I Discuss How to Build Resilience and … His book, Do Hard Things:  Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness Asking ourselves if our inner voice is fair, rather than good or bad How we handle difficult things better when we feel secure and supported Defining toughness as navigating discomfort to make the best decision you can Understanding the importance of confidence in toughness Quiet internal confidence is about being realistic in our ability and the difficulty of the task at hand. How doubt is a necessary component of confidence A central component of internal confidence and motivation is seeing progress How consistency and taking small steps is what matters most Accurate appraisal of both the challenges we face and our internal feelings Understanding that feelings are the body’s communication system The importance of awareness and contextualization when dealing with feelings and emotions Dealing with the two types of inner dialogue – integrated and confrontational Learning to shift your self talk to 2nd or 3rd person voice How stress narrows our perspective and amplifies negative feelings Steve Magness Links: Steve’s Website Instagram Twitter Facebook By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you! If you enjoyed this conversation with Steve Magness, check out these other episodes: Strengthening Our Resilience with Linda Graham Lisa Feldman Barrett on EmotionsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What the research shows is that separating out what we feel is important to getting to that next step of doing something about it and taking action. 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, 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 No 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 really know really.com and register to win $500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed jason bobblehead the really know really podcast follow us on the iheart radio Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Steve Magnus, a world-renowned expert on performance, well-being, and sustainable success. He's the co-author of the best-selling Peak Performance and the Passion Paradox, and Steve coaches executives, entrepreneurs, and athletes on their performance and mental skills. He also serves as a consultant on mental

skills development for professional teams, including many of the top teams in professional sports. His most recent book is Do Hard Things, Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness. Hi, Steve. Welcome to the show. Hi, Eric. Thanks so much for having me. I am really excited to have you on. I appeared on your podcast in the past, and I just really felt a real connection. We had such a good conversation. And you have a new book called Do Hard Things, Why We Get Resilience Wrong, and The Surprising Science of Real Toughness, which is such a wonderful book. And I can't wait to get into it.

But let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandparent who's talking with her grandchild who said, 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 greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparent and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent 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. So as you probably know, Eric, I love this parable. And when I heard it from you, it was like a light bulb went off. My background

is in running and athletics, but for the longest time, I conceptualized that battle as this angel versus devil on my shoulder. And in sport or running it saying, you know, one voice saying, come on, you can do it, like accomplish your goal. And then another voice saying, slow down, you're not good enough, you know, find a hole to step in. Just quit. What's the point? And I know those are the thoughts, the fake injury, the fake injury. And I promise you, those are the thoughts that went through my head. And when you get them in private, like even the best of the best, you know, marathoners in the world will tell you the same thing. It's a concept that is familiar with me. And I always thought of,

well, how do you navigate this? And in many ways, that's the genesis of this book, Do Hard Things is like that parable of how do you navigate this? And I think outside of the athletic context where that parable really comes in is, well, what happens is we often spend most of our time beating that negative voice or sometimes unintentionally feeding it by resisting it and actively trying to avoid it, which often makes it come back like 10 times louder, 10 times stronger. So that parable, what does it mean to me? It's central to how I think about not only my athletic pursuits, but also my pursuits in life is what am I feeding? And am I continuing to do hopefully good work that feeds that good voice or angel on my shoulder or whatever analogy you want to use?

Yeah, there's so many good things you said in there. And I want to start at the beginning of the book, which we'll do in a second. But I'm going to jump ahead for a second, because you just mentioned a little bit about sort of these two voices. And there's a point in the book where you're discussing sort of the positive or negative voice. And you say that it's easy to come up with hard and fast rules on what we should or shouldn't say to ourselves. But just like with emotions, there aren't good or bad inner voices, just the ones we need or don't

need to hear at the moment. It's up to us to determine which voice we need and when. And then the other sentence right near there was, it's not whether our inner voice is an optimist or a pessimist, it's whether it's fair. Say more about that. Yeah, so I think so often we think of, again, even with those parables, even with this angel versus devil, we think of it as good and bad, and I tend to as well. But sometimes the good voice actually can be harsh. And in researching and writing this book, a couple things. Well, one, the research was kind of nebulous on, well, should you have positive self-talk or negative self-talk? And it essentially said you need the self-talk that works in the moment.

And sometimes that's going to be good. Sometimes that's going to be quote unquote negative. And the reason they think that is, is because sometimes you just find yourself maybe to use the running example, slowing down or like saying, I can't do it. And the thing that dislodges you from that moment is maybe that negative voice that says, hey, man, what are you doing? You're better than this, right? Or in another context, sometimes as a coach, I've had athletes ask me to essentially, hey, I don't want you to do this often, but every once in a while, if it looks like I'm kind of like giving in to that fatigue and not handling it well, it's okay to, you know, maybe even cuss me out briefly, because that almost snaps us out and

says, oh, I'm too narrow and stuck in this spiral. And sometimes that negative voice or realistic voice can kind of dislodge us and take us out of that moment. Yeah, there's so much these days about self-compassion, about sort of being on our own side is another phrase that I love. And I think there's a ton of wisdom in it. It's something I teach in my Spiritual Habits program. I think it's really important. And I think, like anything, if you go way too far in one extreme, and you only have it, you know, but I think that for me, it's not that self compassion is about letting ourselves off the hook, or not talking to ourselves sternly. A lot of it, I think

has to do with how we do it. And you make this point a lot. because when we think of toughness, we think of Bobby Knight, we think of drill sergeants, we see in Marines, you know, screaming in their faces. We've got this model of toughness that says that's how you become tough. And your entire book is really an attempt to upend that whole idea. It really is. And I think what we see is we're stuck in kind of the 1940s 1950s version of toughness which is kind of a rudimentary version that said hey whenever you face challenging obstacles in your life grit your teeth put your head down try and ignore or avoid you know any emotion or

negative thing that comes about and just bulldoze through whatever it is it's the as you said bobby knight the drill sergeant method and what happens or what we see is that is essentially like giving me a hammer and saying any problem you face like just use this hammer and you're gonna figure it out right well the hammer will work for when a nail is there. But unfortunately for life, like we're faced with a myriad of different, you know, difficult things we have to encounter. In real toughness to me is about developing this diverse array of tools so that we can match the tool with the problem instead of saying, hey, bulldoze through everything. And I think the other part of this that is really important is that the old model often overemphasizes this kind of disciplinary and demandingness and underemphasizes the part

that like really matters, which is people tend to handle difficult things when they feel secure and supported so that they can then, you know, utilize the tools they have to overcome that challenge. Yeah. When you think about that old model, the answer that a lot of people would say, if they were to combat your argument is, well, but it works for some people, you know, but I actually wouldn't say that they would say, but it works. You know, it's the same thing when I'm sure you have clients like this. I do too, who say like, but, but I actually wouldn't say that. They would say, but it works. You know, it's the same thing when, I'm sure you have clients like this. I do too, who say like, but this being a real asshole to myself has worked up till now. I'm like, well, it may have, but you make a point and I love it, which says that, you

know, this would be akin to declaring the best way to teach swimming is to throw every kid into the deep end of the pool. Sure, for some it would work, but for many, it would prove disastrous. You know, I think that's the point here is that that model of toughness, yeah, it does work for some, but it certainly doesn't work for everybody. There's also fascinating research you unearth about how that style, that command and control style, or that authoritative style actually makes people more fragile and more brittle. It absolutely does. And there's some fascinating work, as you said, especially in the coaching,

but more so in the parenting world, that shows that we tend to adopt that authoritarian disciplinarian style because we think, well, it makes people more resilient. It makes our kids more disciplined. But if you look at the research, it actually backfires. Kids who are raised with highly authoritarian parents actually have more behavior problems they have worse emotional

control and even in one fascinating study that looked at children who were parented in that way and then went into the military they do worse than surviving in the military the one place where you think oh the style will resonate right The reason for that is pretty simple. When we are parented or coached or led in that manner, it doesn't teach us the skills or the motivation to be able to handle difficult things. So for example, why do kids misbehave more? Because they aren't taught the skills how to maybe cope with the emotions they experience to deal with success and more so failure in a right way. Because their essentially only coping style is said, oh, I need to behave this way and forget everything else.

Because if I don't, I'm going to be yelled at or screamed at or punished by mom or dad or coach or whoever. to be yelled at or screamed at or punished by mom or dad or coach or whoever. And the other thing that does is it shifts our motivation style from intrinsic to extrinsic. So we're motivated to maybe be disciplined in that moment because we're afraid of our parent or coach punishing us. And decades of research shows that that extrinsic motivation might work when we have someone screaming over the top of us. But when we don't, which is most of life, it fades away. And you need that strong intrinsic motivation, which is often developed through support, care, and in the parenting research was called responsiveness. That's what leads you to develop and have that

flourishing internal motivation. Wonderful. Yeah, as you were saying that, it made me think about a specific incident in seventh grade where my grades fell off a cliff and I spent all my time trying to figure out how to doctor my report card. I didn't spend any time trying to get better grades. I didn't contemplate why I might want better grades. I didn't count. None of that. My energy went into trying to doctor the report card. So my mom and dad wouldn't punish me. And so that's like the classic example of how for me, authoritative always has driven me to just be like, okay, how do I get around that? Not how do I get better at this thing? Not how do I behave? How do I not get caught?

Right. Which is my sort of rebellious style. But it makes that point of it drove me away from any sort of intrinsic motivation for why I might want to do well. You know, I love that example, because I think we can all resonate with that. Because we all had moments of that where it's like, the extreme control often backfires, because all it does is push us to figure out not the right solution which is like how do i improve my grades but the easy quickest you know coping mechanism and you see the same thing often with actually there's some research on this but you see the same thing often when you see like overly controlling parents or coaches who set all these crazy rules, well, what it does is it makes the

kids or the athletes really smart and ingenious at getting around the rules, right? They figure out how to get out of the room or avoid the curfew instead of like the lesson, which is like, we have to prioritize stuff and be safe and secure and all that good stuff. So I will give everybody out there, if you're a seventh grader, report cards are probably digital these days. You have to be a hacker now. So nevermind, this advice won't help. Let me just tell you that your parents will not buy two quarters in a row that you dropped your report card in a puddle. And that's why it looks so scuffed up. Once, sure. Benefit of the doubt, twice, nope. There was another bit of research around this

that I found absolutely fascinating also, and it was looking at NBA athletes and whether they had been coached by an authoritative style coach. And the research was, if you've been coached by an authoritative style coach, you didn't perform as well. So, okay, but it went further than that.

Tell me about like kind of what was the really, at least for me, the jaw dropping part of that. So this is one of my favorite pieces of research that I came across for this book. As you said, these researchers, psychologists, you know, studied coaches and then NBA across numerous seasons, right? And what happened is they found, just as you said, the coaches with kind of this authoritarian, abusive kind of coaching style, what they called it, their players performed worse. And then also, they showed or those players had higher levels of aggressive fouls, like technical fouls in the NBA. So the kind of, you know, abusive authoritarian style rubbed off on them. But what was fascinating is it didn't just apply when that coach was coaching those players. It applied for the rest of those players' career. So even after they went to another team and left that coach behind for years, their performance decline, you know, was down a tick.

And their number of technical fouls or aggressive fouls went up. So to me, I saw this both as a coach, you know, as a parent, as a leader, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is kind of profound because the impact that we have can shift someone's trajectory for the long term. And this is among the best, you know, athletes on the planet. These are adults, right? So if it can happen with them, it obviously can happen with the rest of us. Yep. So we've sort of spent a few minutes here defining what toughness is not. Let's talk about what toughness is. How would you define real toughness? Yeah. So to me, I kind of frame it in a decision-making concept,

which is essentially any time we experience discomfort, which could be stress, anxiety, fatigue, whatever you want to call it, what often happens is we get pushed towards that kind of reactive, quick decision. Toughness to me is experiencing that discomfort, then creating the space to navigate that experience so that you can come out and make a wiser, thoughtful action instead of choosing the kind of quick hit, the easy path, the path that doesn't lead towards growth. And it really is in creating that space so that you can navigate and use the tool that matches with that situation. Yeah, your definition of toughness is similar

to what I refer to as emotional regulation, but I know I'm using emotional regulation in not the way that it's often used. But I often just define emotional regulation as working with our thoughts and emotions skillfully enough that we can act according to our values. And you're saying something very similar when you're saying that toughness is navigating discomfort to make the best decision you can. And I love that idea of being able to stay in there with really feeling whatever we're feeling and then say, okay,

but still, what do I want to do here, taking all the factors into control? Exactly. I love your definition of emotional regulation, because that's what it really is. Because if you think about it, whenever we're in a difficult situation, what often happens is we feel that discomfort, and then we get this barrage of emotions, thoughts, and this swirl. And often when we aren't able to kind of navigate that, what happens is we just go, oh my gosh, this is overwhelming. You know, my mind kind of spirals

and we just kind of, our brain goes into kind of protect and survive mode and we just hit the eject button, which is what's the easiest way to get out of this situation, which is often, you know, avoidance, like, you know, escaping, not dealing with the problem or the thing. And I think we're often told and taught that both in sport and life.

And instead, what I'm trying to do is just like you're trying to do and your mission is like, okay, doesn't it make more sense to kind of sit with that experience and figure out, okay, how do I turn this alarm down to an appropriate level? How do I show my brain that not every moment is life or death, but that I can figure out how to navigate and handle some of this emotional swirl and these thoughts that are spiraling and kind of work my way through it to get to something that a thoughtful action or something that reflects what I truly value and what is really important to me. Exactly. You say that negative thoughts of quitting are normal.

They don't mean you're weak. They represent your mind trying to protect you. And I think that's another really important piece because we have this sense of tough people don't struggle with this stuff, right? If you're a marathoner, you're just tougher than I am because you must not want to give up at mile 13 like I do, you know? So I think this normalization of like, of course, we have these thoughts of wanting to quit. It's our mind trying to protect us. When we get signals of discomfort and pain, those are signals and our brain is going to interpret them in a particular way. But that doesn't mean we're not tough. Exactly. And I think this is one of the most important concepts because let's think of it like this. If you think, oh, you know,

having these thoughts of quitting or doubts or insecurities or like getting to mile 13 and being like, you know, I don't know if I can make it. If you think that the best of the best don't have those, then that automatically makes you think, oh, I'm not good enough. Like I'm going through this thing that, you know, tough people don't. The reality is opposite. is opposite. And I can tell you, because in writing this book, I interviewed dozens of dozens of world-class endurance athletes in particular, because that's my background. I talked to some of the world's best marathoners, and I'd ask every single one of them. And I'd say, does the thought of quitting ever come into your mind? And every one of them, it was like they light up and then they tell a story often in like this crazy, you know, difficult or this this important race. Like some said,

oh, yeah, in the middle of the Olympic marathon, you know, at mile 14, I was looking over at the aid station or the port-a-potty and saying, oh, if I duck in there, like maybe I don't have to finish this thing. You runners have got all kinds of creative step in a hole, duck into the porta potty. You guys have really worked this out. Exactly. It's your mind. But that's kind of the thing is your mind goes, your mind goes to these crazy spots, you know? And instead of thinking like, oh, I just had that thought. That means like I'm weak and I'm not tough enough. Well, if you think that, that's going to just cause you to spiral even more so. If you understand that, you know what, this is just part of the process because I'm doing something, whether that's running a marathon or giving a big presentation or just doing something that is outside of my comfort zone, what happens is those thoughts are normal. It's just your kind of brain saying, you know what? This isn't normal. Normally you're sitting at a desk working and this is a little different. So we're going to

let you know that like this is a little uncomfortable and that's okay. Yeah. I've coached a number of people on creative pursuits, on writing, on entrepreneurship. And this is a lesson we have to definitely cover because to your point, everybody goes through it. I've not had a guest on this show. And I've had some, you know, fairly high profile people that haven't felt that exact thing, that haven't said like, I know I wrote three bestsellers, but when I was working on the fourth, I was certain I couldn't do it, right? Like all my magic is gone. I can't do it. And so we all face that. And to your point, if we don't think that's normal, then we think we're not good enough. And then what happens is that erodes our confidence and you talk about how important confidence is. So maybe that would be the place we could move to is kind of talk where we often get confidence wrong is we focus on the external. So we think that we need to act confident. We think that we need to walk around with this bravado and, you know, give us this vibe

that everything's in control, that we're able to do everything, that it's no problem. Well, the reality is the research with top performers across fields paints a different picture, which is essentially we need this kind of internal quiet confidence. And that quiet confidence often comes from A, being realistic with maybe a dose of like, yes, you need to be optimistic that you can handle the thing. But the way I kind of look at it is we need a realistic appraisal of both our abilities, what we're capable of, and the difficulty of the task at hand. So again, I'm going to use way too many running examples,

but it's if I'm going to sign up for a marathon, then I need to know that the marathon is going to be incredibly difficult. for a marathon, then I need to know that the marathon is going to be incredibly difficult. But at the same time, I have done enough training where I can get through it. And maybe it's just beyond my reaches, but that's okay. I can figure that out. What I don't want to do is sign up for the marathon and then be like, oh man, I got this. No problem. This is a piece of cake because what happens is when i get to that difficult moment

reality is going to smack me in the face and be like you prepared us and told us that this was going to be a piece of cake that you got it like now you're struggling like what's the deal yeah and you're going to feel that 10 times or 10x and what really cemented this for me is i was talking to some military operators who were in the special forces. And one said to me, essentially, he said, often people think it's the people who come in and, you know, have this extreme confidence, who are the ones who make it through special forces and all that. And he said, the reality is, you have to have a little bit of doubt because if you don't have a little bit of doubt then you're not gonna stay sharp so it really is that kind of goldilocks zone of confidence where it's kind of realistically optimistic where it's like i can handle the thing it might push me

but i've done the work and have the evidence that I can do the task. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No 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 spacewalk gives us the answer.

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Every day in just 15 minutes, we dive into one global business story that matters. You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine. A lot of this meme stock stuff is I think embarrassing to the SEC. Amanda Mull, who writes our Business Week buying power column. Very few companies who go viral are like totally prepared for what that means.

And Zoe Tillman, senior legal reporter. Courts are not supposed to decide reporter. Courts are not supposed to decide elections. Courts are not really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide. Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. You were talking about having that right balance between realistic appraisal and yet some optimism. And it made me think about being in the software startup world. I was in software startup companies for the first, I don't know, 20 years of my career. And in a software startup company, you are faking it till you make it to some degree.

You're always out selling stuff that you don't have yet. You're just out doing it. But what I learned after about the first one or into the second one was, if the gap between what you say you have and what you actually have is too big, you're doomed. Because you will convince someone to take a chance on you, and then you won't be able to jump that gap. You'll crash. So yes, you have to be faking it till you make it. You have to be out ahead a little bit of what your actual capabilities are. But if you get too far out, that is just as bad. So that was kind of what was coming to my mind as you were sharing that. That's a great example. And again, I'll use the athletic example is if I'm fit and going into a marathon race,

if, you know, previously I ran, I don't know, 235 for the marathon. This time, if I say I'm going to go run 215, that's too big of a gap. Yeah. I'm going to fail. If I say I'm going to try and run 230, well, I've never done that before. So I don't know if I can, right? But the gap is small enough where it's like, you know what, if I train hard enough, if everything goes well, this is possible. We're

projecting into the future, just like that software example, where it's like, if the gap is difficult, but manageable, then we're more likely to have confidence and succeed. And the other thing that I think really kind of drives this in is that one of the central components of having intrinsic motivation is seeing progress in what you're doing and seeing that there is a path forward. And this is where I think that it kind of aligns with confidence, where if that gap is too large, at some point, we're going to stop seeing progress for a long time.

And that's going to hurt our motivation. We're going to start thinking that there's no path forward. There's no way I can meet my promises. And that just kills the internal drive of everyone. So even setting that kind of gap initially, where it's something that's hard but manageable, can help us keep that internal motivation because it helps us see, even if the progress is minimal, that, hey, I'm still inching forward. Hey, it's still possible to hit this goal. And I think that's vital and central. Yeah. The other thing I was thinking

about as we're having this conversation and thinking about when you talk about confidence being something that comes from the inside that we can't fake, I'm curious how you might think about someone who is starting out with something like, I have a goal to be a great novelist, but I've never written a line in my life. You know, I've got to have enough confidence. I've got to have enough belief in myself to start and stay with it, right? But I can't just suddenly be like, well, I am a great novelist, you know, move over J.D. Salinger, here I am, right? That doesn't work either. So how do you think about sort of getting from that very beginning place where you don't have a lot of internal ability to this point to call on or draw upon. Yeah, so a lot of times what happens is we think that building confidence takes doing amazing things.

But the reality, consistency matters more than kind of the intensity or volume of the amazing things that we do. So instead, I like to think of it as how do you build that kind of confidence muscle is consistent small challenges or consistent small doses of things that, again, maybe push you a little bit out of your comfort zone. In that writing example, going from, hey, I've never written anything to I'm going to start a newsletter or back in, you know, my day, like start a blog or what have you, where it's like, get into the writing world and then start trying to write for other people. And you're really kind of building that muscle so that you can prepare and meet your goals over the long haul. thing that really comes to mind here is, although this got cut from the book, I love the research I did on this, which is on President Abraham Lincoln, obviously heroic guy. But if you looked at his kind of approach, he had this unbelievable hope for the future in his writing, where he said, we're going to win the Civil War, we're going to, you know, cure the country of this ill of slavery. But in the here

and now, in those moments, he was incredibly kind of almost a little bit pessimistic, but I'd call it realistic in the moments. Yeah, right. It'd be like, this is what we need to do on this step. Like for this battle, for this strategy, what have you, this is it. I'm not going to look, you know, two years down the line, five I'm not gonna look two years down the line, five years down the line, 15 years down the line. And I love that kind of model for building confidence as well. In the moment, be focused on the small step,

but keep a little bit of that idea or that hope in the future that can kind of fuel you through those small steps where it's like, you know, I believe I can be this novelist or that I can accomplish this goal. And the way that I do that is focus on nailing the small steps of the process to get there. Yeah, that whole section on confidence made me think a lot about something called the Stockdale paradox. Are familiar with that? Yes. Yeah. I'll share it real quick for listeners, because it's very similar to what you just said about Abraham Lincoln. And it's, you know, there was Admiral

James Stockdale, the highest ranking prisoner of war in Vietnam. And someone was asking him later, like, well, who made it through these really brutal, terrible circumstances? And, you know, is it the optimists? He'd say, no, the optimists, they died of a broken heart. They thought we'd be out by Halloween, by Thanksgiving, by Christmas, and they died of a broken heart. Pessimists, no, pessimists really didn't, they didn't fare too well either. So, okay, who did? And he said, the thing was, you had to accept the absolute brutal reality of your circumstances, but never lose faith in your ability to ultimately overcome them. And ever since I read that, I have loved it. And it has been so fundamental to the way I look at optimism and pessimism is to really say like,

neither is the tool for the job all the time. It's really accuracy. And the reason the Stockdale paradox kept coming to my mind in your book is that's another of the key themes of this book over and over and over again, which is accurate appraisal of what's really happening. And it shows up in a lot of different ways in the book, but that is a key piece that you talk about. I love that you brought that up. I never actually thought, even though I know what it is, I never thought of connecting the Stockdale paradox to it, but it's so important. And as kind of I outlined before is what we get is that accurate appraisal sets the stage. So it's almost like the way I think about it is how are we preparing our

brain for what's to come? And we can either prime it by preparing it for what we're going to face, or we can prime it maybe optimistically or pessimistically. And research, again, keeps telling us that when our brain gets surprised, you know, going either way on the extremes, what happens is we default towards protection or we default towards freaking out or we default towards survival. So to me, that's where that kind of middle ground is really important is if we can have the accurate appraisal, then we're better prepared for the challenge. And actually, there's some fascinating research that shows that it impacts our biology too. So going into any sort

of, you know, difficult moment, whether that's a game you're playing, a race you're running, a speech you're giving, if we appraise something as a challenge, we tend to have what's called a more positive stress response, which is adrenaline and testosterone that makes us feel, yeah, maybe a little bit nervous, but also excited, like we're going to take on the challenge. If we go in with that survival or protective mode, we are appraising it as a threat, which is often accompanied by more cortisol, which makes us ruminate and catastrophize and all that good stuff. Well, if you look at, well, what's one of the central determinants for whether we'd see things as a challenge or threat? It's that accurate appraisal, that appraisal between what's the task at hand, what are my capabilities, if there's

at least a decent amount of overlap, we're more likely to have that challenge response. Let's pivot a little bit because there's another area of accurate appraisal that is also right in the heart of this book, and it's the accurate appraisal of our internal states. We've been talking about accurate appraisal of the challenges we're going to face, but you talk very much about accurate appraisal of what's going on inside of us because it is our emotions or feelings, and we can talk about the difference between those perhaps, but that's the sort of thing, it's the internal cacophony that you describe

that is often pushing us towards giving up or away from our goals. So talk about the importance of accurate internal appraisal. To get this across for the listeners, I love to tell the story that came from my wife, actually, who is a elementary school teacher. And for years, she taught kindergarten and first grade. One day while I was writing the book, actually, she asked me, do you know how or why kids throw tantrums when they come into kindergarten or whatever, have you? I said, no, what's the deal? And she said, well, what happens is they experience something that causes this cacophony of emotions, right? And they don't know how to

deal with them, and they don't know how to sort through them, so their response is a tantrum. And if I, as the teacher, go over and say, hey, what's wrong, Jimmy or Susie? They say, oh, I'm sad. And what you learn over time is that most kids kind of say, I'm sad, and it applies to everything. It applies if, you know, they didn't get selected at kickball, if someone stole their pencil, or if someone tried to, you know, cheat on a test, whatever had them that caused them this disarray. They all call it sadness. And the reason is because they're kids. They haven't developed the ability to sort out the nuance that maybe us as adults, we'd split apart sadness and say, well, maybe that is loneliness or maybe frustration or jealousy or whatever have you to describe that emotion or feeling. And what the research shows is that

separating out what we feel is important to getting to that next step of doing something about it and taking action. If we can slice and dice apart that nuance, it aids our ability to navigate the thing. So it kind of comes back to, again, this accuracy of, in this case, reading our body's signals allows us to deal with, you know, uncomfortable or difficult things a lot more. And there's all sorts of research that shows that in athletes, athletes who have what they call better interoception, which is essentially reading your body's signals, they're able to perform better and make it through the difficult moments in their races or competitions. Even surprisingly, in investment makers and stock

brokers, the ones who have higher levels of interoception actually do better when the stock market is kind of going crazy and everyone feels stressed because they can separate out what's the stress that I'm feeling maybe because of the stock market versus maybe this is just the climate where everyone's kind of freaking out and I'm feeling anxious and uncertain and kind of slice and dice apart that so that they can get to the best action. Yeah, the section in the book where you talk about interoception is fascinating. It's something I've long been interested in. And you have some studies that are really interesting. And one of them is that people who self-harm had what you call greater interoceptive ambivalence and lower interoceptive appreciation.

Say a little bit more about what that means. So this was fascinating work. And what it showed is that essentially people self-harm partly because they're getting all this emotional response or this emotion, something triggers them to feel all this emotion. response or this emotion something triggers them to feel all this emotion and they can't separate it out meaning they don't have that kind of interoceptive like awareness to slice and dice apart it as we said so what happens is they end up self-harming as a way to essentially cope with that because they create a sensation where they know where it's coming from that kind of overwhelms the rest of the stuff that they're feeling, which turns down that ambiguous feeling

and turns up something where they know where that sensation and feeling is coming from. If you talk to therapists or psychologists, one of the keys to often dealing with people or helping people who have self-harm is essentially creating emotional vocabulary and an awareness around different feelings and sensations so that they can kind of navigate it instead of going from, oh, I feel this emotional overload, so I need to fix it by cutting or harming myself. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

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kind of all across the board. And what I think is fascinating about it, I don't remember the exact line, but the essence of it was, and maybe it was with the self-harm people, was they felt more, but they had way less ability to understand it. That's fascinating. It's a stronger emotion that they don't really understand. So maybe let's for a second break apart the definition that you use as far as toughness between feelings and emotions, because this is kind of important as we move from interoception

to understanding our emotional life. Exactly. So feelings to me, the way I kind of understand, and we could spend hours kind of dissecting it, but the way I like to look at it is feelings are the nudge. So they're your body's basic communication system that says, your body's basic communication system that says, hey, something is going on internally that I want you to be aware of. Yeah. Right? And emotions are their kind of more complex cousin that move from often from nudge to shove.

And the reason I say emotions are more complex is because they're partly dependent on context that we attribute and assign to them. Yes. There's some wonderful research, most of it done by Lisa Feldman Barrett, that shows essentially depending on the context that we add on or elaborate on it, that will change our kind of biological and, you know, behavioral response to things. So the way I like to kind of explain this, or one of the ways is, if you look at the word love, for example, in America, or if you come from the culture in the US, it has a particular

meaning, right? We often attribute it to like love of spouse or some sort of romantic love. If we look at different cultures, for instance, ancient Greece, instead of one love that covers everything from romantic to friendship or what have you, they have separate words about, I think it's five or six different definitions of a type of love, which allows them to have more nuance around the concept and more specificity. So they interpret and often experience or they would interpret and often experience love in a different way. And we know this from studying, you know, different cultures around the world, whether that's, you know, tribal cultures, modern tribal cultures and the words they use versus, you know, maybe Western cultures example for me is that I've been learning to try and work with sensations that come up of, I mean, the best description I have of them is

tired. But if I'm not careful, I will describe them as depressed, right? They're very similar. But the difference between those two contextualizations is actually pretty important. Tired, I can just go, well, all right, time, you know, like take a rest. Depressed is a bigger problem. Depressed ties to a long history. So sort of learning to take those interoceptive signals, the feelings that are coming from my body, but then giving a little bit more thought to that. And you actually say this very well. You said discern nuance involves two components, awareness of the feelings and sensations, and then interpretation and contextualization of them, which is very much a mindfulness thing, right? In some ways is bare attention, right? Which they talk about in mindfulness, like what's actually here? Can I get clear on what it is? And then there's that next step, which is all right, now, how do I

contextualize this? I love that word that you use for that, because I think it really, no pun intended, puts it in context for what we're actually doing. There's a wonderful tool that I discovered that therapists use to get at that second one because I think that first one of awareness is we're starting to get an increase of that through mindfulness and meditation and that movement has kind of taken us to awareness. But often we haven't moved to that second level

or second layer, which is that context. And there's a tool called the emotional wheel, and you can Google it and look it up. But essentially what it does is it starts at, you know, the very basic, maybe the word tired, as you said. And then from there, it gives you different descriptors that get a little bit more nuanced and complex, right? We go from tired to whatever, sleepy or fatigued or whatever vocabulary you want. You can keep going down multiple levels. And I love this, and therapists often use it for this exact skill. Because similar to earlier where I said the kindergartners say, I'm sad for everything. We like to think as

adults, well, I've learned how to, you know, the complexity behind it. But often we don't. And often it's because we're told, you know, to kind of keep that inner world quiet and not to explore it or to avoid these sensations that they're negative when the reality is investigating them and, you know, a safe space allows us to add context. And the other example that I give in the book, but that really, you know, not surprisingly resonates with me as an athlete, that all athletes have to face is, think about it when you first got started and you go out the door and you start running, it when you first got started and you go out the door and you start running, you start lifting weights, that first sensation of pain, often you interpreted it as like, oh, what's wrong? Like, am I going to get injured? Like, I should stop. This hurts a lot. In fact, I was on a podcast

not too long ago where someone told me the story of a friend's children who was walking up a hill for the first time. And he was like, dad, my legs feel like they're going to fall off. And the dad's like, what? And he's like, oh, you've never experienced the fatigue of walking up a very steep mountain. It's like, no, your legs aren't going to fall off. But what happens there is often if we haven't ever experienced it and sit with that, we don't know the difference between pain that might mean injury or pain that might mean I'm a little fatigued or pain that might signal maybe I'm running a little on fuel and I need to grab a banana or I'm a little dehydrated and I need to drink a water or drink

some water. And all of those, you know, different nuances send us down a different path and send us down a different signal. But if we don't kind of sit with them and experience them, then it all kind of gets jumbled together. And that's why I think, you know, that second part is really important is, you know, whether we're talking about physical, psychological, or whatever have you discomfort, is being intentional and adding context and nuance to things is a vital component we often miss. Yeah, early in my recovery from heroin and alcoholism, I was taught this acronym, HALT, Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. And the reason we're taught that is because I had no ability to

interpret anything except I want to drink. That was my entire response to nearly anything. So just having that checklist, oh, is it hunger? Oh, actually, oh, it is. Oh, am I angry? Oh, okay, well, I can do something different. Am I lonely? Am I tired? Just being able to go, is it any of those common things allowed me to interpret it in a more granular way than just needing a drink? with the wrong kind of signal. In the book, I tell another story where they call it misattribution of arousal. In the book, I tell this wonderful story where they put people on a very high, scary bridge, and people, you know, had physiological arousal, right? They were a little scared, what have you. Well, when they were on the bridge alone, they interpreted as scared. These were all males.

If they put an attractive female next to them on the bridge, they interpret it as I'm physiologically aroused because I'm attracted to this other person. So they would be more likely to, you know, ask this person out when they did the same experiment on a bridge that was like five feet off the ground. They didn't make that mistake. So I think, you know, in that same way, you know, although that's a fun story, often that happens in the negative, you know, side where we start, you know, misattributing any sort of feeling or discomfort as, oh, the way that I deal with and cope with this thing is to drink or do drugs or self-soothe

in some other manner. And just having something that kind of allows us to step back and see that kind of nuance and be like, no, where is this actually coming from is incredibly helpful. Let's talk about inner dialogue for a minute. You say that researchers define two main types of inner dialogue, integrated and confrontational. And the reason I want to pivot there is that assuming that we have gotten a little bit better at recognizing the signals inside, we've gotten a little bit better at some degree of emotional granularity. Now we still have the thoughts swirling and getting to decision and doing all that.

So let's move now to kind of inner dialogue. What we often have is that integrated dialogue, which is more what I would call that kind of productive dialogue that is telling you or thinking about things or tasks that you might need to do or things that you might need to remember. It's very straightforward. The confrontational dialogue is often where we have, going back to the very beginning of this conversation, is like that angel versus devil on your shoulder, where you have a decision that you need to make or you're getting pulled in one of two directions.

in one of two directions, the latest psychological theories almost show it as if it is two different selves competing. So you have the self that wants to eat candy for dinner or what have you versus the self that knows that they should, you know, order the salad. And we have this battle between the selves where it's that inner dialogue that is confrontational. So, you know, people hear that and they say, okay, so I'm essentially have two roles in myself battling it out. How do I deal with that? Well, often what it is,

is there's several different tricks of the trade that can help us kind of get the positive or the path that we want to go down. And most of the time it is to dislodge, as we talked about at the beginning, dislodge that kind of negative spiral so that you don't get caught in this kind of ruminating, catastrophizing battle that often occurs. And we can do that in a number of different ways. So for example, there's some wonderful research that shows that just changing how you talk to yourself, moving from first person to second or third person, so from I to you or Steve and Eric, that creates what we call

psychological distance, where your brain starts to interpret it in a different way. And the way I like to think about this is your brain is used to hearing, you know, well, I should do this or no, I should do that all the time. So it gets comfortable with that. But if it hears like, you've got to do this, Steve, or come on, Eric, in its head, it's almost like it steps back and says, hey, wait a minute, who's this voice? Like, who is this person talking? And what happens is that creates a little bit of that space, which we know when research shows brings down that kind of like emotional level as well, so that we can deal with it. The other tactic that I love here is it actually taking that voice from inside to an outer voice or outside?

And this sounds a little strange, but again, I'll give a sport example, is if you watch professional tennis players before a difficult shot, often you can see them mumbling to themselves. Now, why would they do this? Because when we move from that inside voice to that outside voice, it creates again that psychological distance. It dislodges your brain and it says, wait a minute, I'm now hearing this voice through my ears as well. Maybe I should pay attention to it. And because you've created that space, you can actually use that self-talk to, again,

focus yourself on things that are maybe important, like in the tennis example, where you're going to hit that shot versus the negative kind of inner battle that often occurs, which is telling you, you know, to focus on why you can't hit that shot or why you're being overcome with stress and can't deal with the thing that you're doing. So a lot of it is, you know, shifting and changing that inner voice. It allows us, it gives us the power to handle the difficult moments. Yeah, I've said this on the show a number of times recently that I just have really been rediscovering the power of saying to myself, similar to like you're saying, either Eric or

you can do this. Eric, you can do this. And then reminding myself of plenty of times I have done it. It doesn't work every time, but that very simple, like when I find myself starting to be like, you know, I'll just be like, hey, relax. Like you've done this a thousand times. You know, I'll start getting stressed about getting ready to go on a trip is the example I often use. And my brain will start to be like, well, I got too much to do. And I'm just like, you've done this a thousand times. Have you ever not gone away because you didn't? Like it always works out. And just that, I think it's the combination of reminding myself of capability to handle it, but also the distancing voice part of it. I think it's both those things that make that a helpful thing for me. I love that example because what

you've done there is you've created some distance and then you've also backed that up with evidence and perspective, right? Let's step back and be like, Eric, you've gone through these trips hundreds of times. Like, zoom out. Like, understand this isn't as big of a deal as you think, which stress often causes us to narrow. So, you know, this is what it is, is combining these tools. Because what happened there is often that psychological distance of changing the verbiage created that space

where you could have that conversation. We're often, maybe we're in that spiral. We can't insert that conversation because our brain is so locked in on that negative or catastrophizing. It's almost like we can't get a wise word in because it's like we're going down the rabbit hole and it's too late. So we need to be able to break ourselves out of it. So let's talk very practically here for a second. Maybe you could

help walk us through a common example and how we might approach it in a tougher manner. So let's just use something as simple as exercise, I think is always a good one because it's relatively easy to understand. And I'm on my Peloton bike back there and I'm in the middle of a, say a four minute interval. And at minute two, I start going, oh boy, like whatever it is, I don't quite know where it's coming from, but my brain just starts saying sort of like you, like, I can't finish this. This is awful. I hate this. Whatever the nonsense is. I just suddenly noticed, like, I don't like it. And I want to quit, right? How do we work with that? I'm not asking you to sum up your entire book in two sentences, although I kind of am. But, but just, you know, like, what are some practical takeaways people

could use who find themselves in this situation, or they get home from work, they're really tired and they're like, I really should go clean the kitchen, but God, I'm really so tired. Sure, that's no problem. So I'll give some strategies that I think really work. So one is, we just talked about is shift how you're talking to yourself in those moments, right? The other thing I think with that self-talk is it's really important is what I would say is try and have what I'd call a calm conversation versus this catastrophizing. Try and literally slow that inner voice, that dialogue down. Because if we can slow it down and act like you're talking to maybe a friend or a child, then what that does is that sends the signal that, hey, I don't need to be panicked. I don't need to freak out. Because when we kind of spiral often like that, our voice gets really quick. We're jumping around all the time. That catastrophizing goes and your brain kind of interprets that as like, oh, we're moving really quick. This must be a catastrophe, like sound the alarm. Yeah. The other thing that I think is really important in those moments is that stress narrows us.

So whether it's you're riding the Peloton or you're coming home and you're so tired, stress tends to focus us on the thing that is causing the stress. So all we can see ahead of us is, I'm so tired, which amplifies the feeling of fatigue, which starts giving us evidence of like, oh, of course I'm fatigued. I just got home from a, you know, a nine hour workday or what have you, and I didn't get much sleep. And it focuses on those things. Well, one of the best things that you can do is to shift your attention so if you find yourself going narrow shift it to very broad so instead of focusing on let's say you're riding your exercise bike and you're like my legs hurt a lot like i can't deal with this

well you've got to shift your focus of attention somewhere far away from your legs, right? Maybe you're thinking about what you'll do once you get done with this. Or maybe you're thinking about the reason that you chose to get on the peloton or enter this race in the first place, right? You're taking your attention and shifting it. And this works in a number of different ways. So this can be literally your attention. So if you're doing something difficult, again, our attention tends to narrow because we're in the stress. So our visual field tends to narrow because fight or flight narrows our focus. So literally adopting a broader perspective, so like softening our gaze or trying to pay attention to our periphery,

or in my case, as a glasses wearer, taking my glasses off so I can't see any details. There's actual research that shows that that will turn down our stress response just a little bit in that moment. Because again, it signals to the brain, oh, we're zooming out. This stressful thing must not be quite as big of a deal. And the last piece of advice I'd give that is another tool you can use is we talked about at the beginning where progress is really important to motivation. When we're in the thick of that challenge

or stressful event, often what happens is we see the big deal and it feels impossible. So we get home and we think, I can't clean the kitchen. That means I have to sweep the floors and like the counters and clean the oven and, you know, wash all the dishes. And it just, you're sitting there like, this will take hours and I don't have the time or energy. You break it down. Instead of going the big thing, you say, you know what? What's the first step? And we'll just get to this point. I am just going to

unload the dishwasher or, you know, sweep the floor and start there. It's no different than in the middle of, you know, that four minute interval. You don't think, oh, I've got, you know, two more minutes left. You say, you know what, Eric, just make it to the next 30 seconds and then we'll see what happens. And what happens is you just kind of break it down, break it down, break it down. And this is honestly one of my biggest tactics for surviving a marathon, for example, is if I thought about, you know, the 26.2 miles or even a half marathon, the 13 miles, I drive myself mad. So in those difficult moments, what do you do? You say, you know what, I get it, you're hurting, just make it to the next mile marker or the next turn, then we can have this conversation again. And what

inevitably happens is you start to see yourself making progress, you get a little closer to that finish line, you see that you can make it. And that internal motivation comes back online and says, you know what? I understand you're hurting a lot. You don't want to do this, but we're really close. That finish line, the completion of this task, it's manageable. So we might as well keep going. I love that. Well, Steve, we are at the end of our time. You and I are going to continue talking in the post-show conversation because I have a ton more notes for us.

One of the things I want to explore a little bit is the idea that experts really sort of tune into bodily sensations, like a professional runner is going to tune into those body sensations where someone who's non-professional like me might be trying to distract from them. I want to explore that a little bit more. I also want to look at the connection between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex and how important that is in emotional regulation. Listeners, if you'd like to get access to the post-show conversation, as well as ad-free episodes and the joy of supporting something you care about,

go to oneufeed.net slash join. Steve, thank you so much. I loved your book. I think it's such an important conversation. Because I think toughness is really important, but it's branded badly. And a lot of people who could benefit from it don't want to get near it. And a lot of people who are trying to employ it are going about it wrong. So I think it's really important work. So thank you. Thanks so much, Eric. I really enjoyed this. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits.

It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. 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

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