The One You Feed - Mastering Change When Everything is Changing with Brad Stulberg

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

For Brad Stulberg, the idea of rugged flexibility became a central theme in his understanding of change and resilience. In this episode, Brad and Eric explore what mastering change when everything is changing looks like. They also discuss practical strategies to navigate life’s challenge with rugged flexibility to live a more meaningful life.In this episode, you will be able to: Discover the power of embracing change and adaptability for personal growth and success Uncover the secrets to navigating change and finding deeper meaning in life’s transitions Learn how to strike a perfect balance between determination and adaptability to thrive in any situation Unlock the key to shifting your perception of time during challenging moments and emerging stronger Explore the importance of rugged flexibility and its impact on resilience and mental strength To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Even the most average human existence undergoes major inevitable life changes, and there's just no way around it. We're always in conversation with change. 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. 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 no really.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. Work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and Atlantic, among others. Today, Brad and Eric discuss his new book, Master of Change, How to Excel When Everything is Changing, Including You. Hi, Brad. Welcome back. Hey, Eric. It's a pleasure. I'm excited to have you on again.

As I've said to you before, I feel like our philosophy and our approach and the things that we talk about and teach are so aligned that I love connecting with you. We're going to be discussing your new book, which is called Master of Change, How to Excel When Everything is Changing, Including You. But before we do that, we'll start like we always do with a parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with her grandchild and they say, 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 grandchild stops, think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say,

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. I love that parable because it gets to the non-dual nature of just about everything that is complex and nuanced, including ourselves. And we like to think that we're good or bad, but in fact, there are parts of us that are good and parts of us that are bad. To me, that parable means that our actions in the world shape our character. Character is just a habit. It is what you show up and do. And I think that the good wolf or the bad wolf are being, influences are doing, yes, but are doing also influences are being. And I think what this parable means, at least how I

interpret it, is that the more that we can show up and we can act in alignment with our good nature, our better angels, then that's feeding the good wolf. And that's really what trying to be a mature adult is all about. I love that. So character to you is not like who you are at a thinking level or a values level. It's who you are via action. That's right. And I think that who you are via action shapes your thinking and your values every bit as much as your thinking and your values shape your actions. So I see being and doing, again, I see them as non-dual.

They're part of a cycle, right? One leads to the other and vice versa. And in this case, to me, the feeding the wolf is the doing actually impacting the being. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure we talked about this last time and it's something I've enjoyed about your work from the beginning is I think that that perspective that these things are two way streets, right? Our actions can actually change how we think and feel. You know, I probably shared the quotes that's been most important to me in life or the phrase, and it was, I learned it early in AA and it was, sometimes you can't think your way into right action, you have to act your way into right thinking. And I think the key word there is

sometimes because sometimes you can think your way into right action and you do, but sometimes that's not going to work and you need to be able to go both directions. Love it. I could not agree more. So you and I agree on nearly everything, it seems, but there is one thing that we do not. And it is that you love Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as one of your favorite books. And I want to love it. I mean, I'm a Zen student. I want to love that book. People I know love that book, but I have tried multiple times and I get partway in and I just am like, I'm not really enjoying this. I just don't know what it

is. What am I missing? There's gotta be some daylight between us somewhere. And, um, unfortunately for Robert Persig, the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I guess, I guess it's there. Uh, that book was really formative for me. I read it first as an undergraduate student, and I'd say it was the moment that I chose something that was more intellectual versus just partying or smoking a bomb with my friends. I distinctly remember them starting to say, you're against having fun because I wanted to go and read this book alone. But then I reread that book in graduate school, and I reread it before I became a father. I reread it after I became a father. I reread it recently as research for an upcoming project. And every time I reread it, there's a part of me that's a little bit worried, that thinks,

huh, was this just like a young kind of, this is a cult-like book, and I did a spiritual bypass with it, and I'm going to come back to it and realize I was immature. But every time I read it, I like it more. Yeah, well, I'm certain that at some juncture in my life, I will try again. There are certain books that are like that, that I'm like, well, I'm going to try. However, I did love your book, so we can agree on that. I want to jump into that book now. And I love this idea of, you know, how to excel when everything is changing, including you.

And that is always, right? I mean, the Buddhist notion of impermanence means that things are always changing. However, there are times that things change a lot. And I think those are the sort of things when we talk about change being difficult, that tends to be what we're talking about. These big shifts, I've heard them referred to as life quakes by someone. I may have been a guest on the show, Bruce Feiler. I'm not sure if he used that term. But you say that these disorder events are really common. Research shows that on average, people experience 36 disorder events in

the course of their adulthood, or about one every 18 months. And we're talking about getting a job, losing a job, getting into a significant relationship, ending one, moving. I mean, those are some of the key ones that come to mind. What are some others that fall into these sort of disorder events? Having kids, having kids leave the house after you raise them, starting school, graduating from school. Distancing from a best friend. Meeting a new best friend. Getting a challenging health diagnosis or an injury.

Recovering from that challenging health diagnosis or injury. Falling in love and then losing love. Even the most average human existence undergoes major inevitable life changes, and there's just no way around it. We're always in conversation with change. And then there's the more gradual change. So not the major disruptor, but aging, or having a body that used to be able to do certain things that it no longer can, or identifying with a certain aesthetic and having that shift over time. So we have these major changes that feel like significant disruptions, and then we have the ongoing process of change that is much slower, but equally as significant. You end up in the same place, right? Which is sort of, you may have been able to track it over a period of time, but you're like, yeah, this is, this is different. I want to ask about the friend thing a little bit, because that's interesting. I would not have thought getting a new best friend or losing

the best friend, or maybe losing a best friend. It speaks to the centrality of friendship in our lives and how influential friendships are in our lives. That's right. And I think that it is a real problem right now. I'm not the first person to say this. The loneliness epidemic and crisis, especially perhaps amongst men, is friendship has really been on the decline. And I think that part of the reason that folks might not think that meeting a new best friend

or distancing from a best friend is a major life change is just because the centrality of friendship has shifted. It's not as central to many people's lives anymore. Yet I believe that it's so, so important. It takes pressure off of an intimate partnership. If your partner doesn't need to be a switchblade and be able to do everything, you can find that in really close friends. It is a spiritual relationship, someone that you can just share everything with that you know is going to be there for you, or maybe it's not as complicated or complex as a

partner. And I do think that welcoming someone like that in your life and then distancing from someone like that, those represent really big changes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my best friend, Chris is listening and editing and, you know, as part of the reason I started the show and certainly any big change in that relationship would be a huge thing to me. I think that's interesting that, like you said, if that doesn't seem like it would be, it's probably because friendship may not be as central in your life. But I mean, it's one of, to me, the great gifts in life. I just am extraordinarily fortunate and blessed in the friendships that I have. And I'm so grateful. So you go on to say, you know, we're always somewhere in this cycle of

order, disorder, reorder, right? We go from things being as they are changing and then how they emerge from there. And you say the way to stay stable through the process of change is by changing, or at least to some extent. So we're meeting change with change? That's right. In the scientific community, the old and conventional model for change is one called homeostasis. And it describes change as a cycle of order, disorder, order. It inherently says that change is bad. We should resist it. We should avoid it. And if we have no choice but to enter into it, we should try to get back to where we were as fast as possible. This has been the prevailing model since the late 1500s,

since the beginning of empirical science. Only more recently have researchers stepped back and said, actually, when you look at individuals that thrive over the long haul, that excel for long periods of time, that's not a good fit model. Homeostasis doesn't accurately describe how they navigate life. And they coined this term allostasis, which as you alluded to, describes change as a cycle of order, disorder, reorder. And the etymology of these two words tells the whole story. Homeostasis comes from the Latin root homo, which means same, and stasis, which means standing. So it argues that we achieve stability by staying the same. Allostasis comes from the Latin root allo, which means change or variable, and then standing, which means stasis. So it

argues that we achieve stability through change. And it has this beautiful double meaning, which is one, it's possible to be stable through change. And number two, the way that we're stable through change is through change, is by changing at least to some extent. And this gets to the subtitle of the book. How can we think about having a term in the sense of reality, you know, like that reality is non-dual, as in there's only one thing. But you're using it in the more philosophical sense, which says that life isn't all one thing or the other. It's actually these different things. So change and stability are both there. They're both true. Exactly. So change and stability are both there. They're both true.

Exactly. Other examples, not self-discipline or self-compassion, but the importance of self-discipline and self-compassion. Not stress or rest, but stress and rest. Not tragedy or optimism, but tragedy and optimism. And in the book, the key construct is what I've come to call rugged flexibility, which is another example of non-dual thinking, which is individuals and organizations that are really good at weathering change, that are good at navigating that order, disorder, reorder cycle. They're not rugged or flexible. They're rugged and flexible. And they have determination and grit and toughness

and they're durable and they're soft and supple and highly adaptable. And by marrying these two qualities, that is what allows them to thrive and be anti-fragile amidst change. I love that term because it is a really great description of what we are trying to be, right? Which is both strong and supple. You know, the words you use, we're both fans of the Tao Te Ching. Those words are in there a lot. You also talk about an important way of dealing with change is to think of life as being on a path versus on a road. Say more about that. This is a central metaphor in the book. And a road is very linear. The whole goal on a road is to get from here to there. It's very smooth and it plows through its environment. It doesn't care what's around it. It paves right over it. And when you're on a road, the goal is to stay

on the road. And if you were to get thrown off the road or make a wrong turn, you would immediately navigate to get right back on that road to get where you're going. A road, again, it is an opposition to its environment, whereas a path works with its environment. And on a path, the goal is to go in a general direction, but you're finding the way you go as you walk, and you have to pay really close attention to your environment, and you have to work in concert with your environment, and there's no such thing as getting knocked off a path. You get knocked off a path, you can still head in that general direction, you just pick up another outlet, or you bushwhack, and the mindset that you have when you go on a path

is one of openness, curiosity, caring attention. The mindset that you have on a road is often being rushed or being checked out or just staring at a map to get where you're going, not paying much attention to your surroundings. And I think a big risk is treating life like a road and really just setting these goals in trying to get from here to there as fast as possible. When in fact, viewing life like a path is so much more realistic because we don't know what obstacles are going to come in our way. We don't know when the weather is going to change. We don't know when we're going to get seemingly thrown off.

And if we can go in with that mindset, it just sets us up to have the expectation that, yeah, things are going to change and things are going to shift and that's okay. As I was reflecting on that metaphor, it made me think of spiritual path, right? That's the way we refer to it, a spiritual path or, you know, Jack Kornfield's book, A Path With Heart, right? And yet, a lot of us, if we're not careful, we treat it not as a spiritual path, but as a spiritual road, right? You know, it's why the metaphor path is so good for a spiritual path, because that's really what it has to be for it to be lasting and effective. But our culture tends to make

everything a road. And so we're on the spiritual road. And I've been disabused of that notion countless times. I mean, like I'm guilty of it countless times of like trying to want to get there directly, you know, and I've been disabused of that as a workable way to pursue a spiritual life over and over and over again, or as any way to approach life at all. And I think that we all are. And I think that that is a sign of maturity is just realizing that it makes me think of the spiritual bypass, which I'm sure is a term that you've heard of, which is like you have a teaching or you go do one meditation retreat and suddenly you're enlightened. And well, the term bypass comes from civil engineering. You know, a bypass

is a bridge that takes you over water or that runs through the middle of a mountain, which is fine for transporting in a car, but it's very hard to actually bypass through life in a way that is lasting and sustainable. Better is learning how to navigate that weather and growing from it, so on and so forth. Yeah, it makes me think of a verse in the Tao, and I don't remember exactly what verse, but I've actually been working on my own interpretation of the Tao using lots of different translations. And it's something along the lines of

the Tao is broad and straight, but people always want shortcuts through the mountains. Ooh, I love that. Yeah, we are on the same page. Yeah. So in the book, you come up with 10 tools for developing this rugged flexibility. You also have five questions. And I thought that might be a way for us to sort of orient. I don't think we're going to get through

all 10 tools and all five questions, but I thought we could hit a couple of them. And one of them that I wanted to talk about was frequently update your expectations to match reality. If you are running a marathon and you expect mile 20 to feel really easy, and then you get to mile 20, you are going to freak out. You might even call for paramedics. Your heart's going to be racing. Your legs are going to be hurting. If you thought that mile 20 would feel easy, you would really have a rough psychological and physiological spot when you got to mile 20. You'd think something is very wrong. If you go into a marathon expecting mile 20 to be really hard, well, then when you get

there, you'll be able to meet the moment. And on a good day, you might even be pleasantly surprised. And this is true for all hard things. Our expectations really shape how we experience the world. Psychologists use this very shorthand equation, which is our mood at any given moment is a function of our reality minus our expectations. So when our expectations are way better than our reality, we tend not to feel very good and we tend not to be able to take wise, skillful action. Now, this is so pertinent to change because in many ways, change is simply our expectations going awry. What we thought was

going to happen didn't happen or doesn't happen. And in those moments, it is so important that we update our expectations to match reality. Another example of this, during the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, absolutely horrible. And then we kind of got used to living with it. And it still was, again, I don't want to minimize it all, horrible. And I'm so fortunate. My family experienced, my immediate family experienced no death, no hospitalization. So relative, I had it easy, but still really rough. And then about a year and a half in, in the summer of 2021, cases started to decline precipitously. And I distinctly remember those dashboards, cases per 100,000. It started to look like one or two per 100,000. And we started to go into restaurants and we started to go hang out in other people's homes. And this went on in June, July, August. And we thought that the pandemic

was over. It was as if we had gotten to the other side of this really hard thing. And then what happened in October and November, the Delta wave and the Delta variant. And it was such a gut punch. And I was already reporting on this book when that happened. And I remember asking people, did they feel worse then? Or did they feel worse a month or two into the pandemic? And just about everyone felt worse with the Delta variant, even though objectively, the reality was much better. We had vaccines, we had medications, we understood more how this thing was transmitted, yet we still felt worse. Why? Because our expectation was that we had gotten to the other side of this thing.

And individuals that were quickly able to say, hey, I don't have to like what's happening, but this is reality. I can see it clearly for what it is, and I need to update my expectations. They felt better, and they were able to meet the moment with more compassion, more strength. Does meditating feel like a chore, another to-do list item to check off, or perhaps it's even fallen off the list entirely? If you sense that meditating regularly would benefit you, but you struggle to find a sustainable place for it in your schedule, I can help. There are reasons people struggle with creating and maintaining a meditation practice, and it isn't because meditation isn't right for them. In my free guide, The Top 5 Reasons You

Can't Seem to Stick with a Meditation Practice and and how to build one that lasts, I teach you why it can be a struggle to build a meditation practice that lasts and the small fixes that can have a big impact when it comes to getting you where you want to be with meditating regularly. Go to OneYouFeed.net and sign up for this free guide right on our homepage. 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?

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app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You say in my own experience, the worst way to be happy is by trying to be happy all the time, or worse yet, assuming and expecting that you ought to be. And that I totally relate with when I expect that I should be happy all the time, like, oh, I've read all these books, I've talked read all these books i've talked to all these people i've done all these silent meditations i've done all this stuff now i should be happy that raises the expectation right that's right when i am better able just to go well no not always and when i'm like yeah you know what i kind of have a melancholy tendency in my overall being. And I just let that be. It's so much better than fighting it and saying, oh, you know, I should be some other way.

And, you know, yeah, expectations are in AA. I heard a phrase once expectations are premeditated resentments. Oh, I like that. I, too, have perhaps more of a melancholy disposition. I've experienced significant clinical depression. And something that I have realized this early in my own life, and then certainly through my research and reporting more recently, is that happiness is probably the wrong goal. And even if it's the right goal for many people, it's not attainable, is a constant consistent state. And a better goal is meaning

in texture. Because if happiness is the goal, and you have a melancholy disposition, not only are you feeling down, but now you're judging yourself for feeling down, or you're freaking out that you're feeling down. Why can't I be happy? I'm supposed to be happy. But if the goal is texture, well, you don't have to like those down moments. You don't have to like impermanence. But when it comes, you don't judge yourself. You accept it and you expect it. And think about what makes truly great art beautiful. It's not smooth and shiny and perfect edges. It's texture. And I've really tried to adopt that as a goal.

Now, this isn't to say that I actively seek out suffering and I celebrate bad things, but it's, I have an expectation that those things are going to happen in a part of my life is navigating those things are going to happen in a part of my life is navigating those things when they do happen. And therefore, because of that expectation, I experienced those things in a little bit more of a stable stance than I otherwise would. Yeah. And I think that's important to, well, a first, I love texture as an idea. I've heard people talk about, you know, seek meaning, seek fulfillment, but I love the addition of texture to that. That's great. The second thing I was going to say is I think what you just said there is really important, that it allows me to do it with a little bit more of a stable stance. And I think that is really critical because often when we hear this stuff, and I know I can be this way, I think that that means that by applying these principles, it's going to hurt less. And that's not actually often how it works. But there is something and I've been through some really difficult times over the last six months,

there is something about even hurting a lot. And yet there being a more stable sense underneath that like this is to be expected this is natural this is normal it sucks and things will move things will change all of that i described it as the big container is one of knowing that things are okay and the small container is like drowning in sadness but the bigger container is knowing that things are okay. And the small container is like drowning in sadness, but the bigger container is knowing that things are generally okay. And I think that's what we're referring to here as a stable stance is that at least to me, it means that broader sense of everything's not awry. It just doesn't feel good. That's right. This also segues to another concept that I think is important, which is having multiple rooms in your identity house.

And if you think about a house and it only has one room in it, and that one room floods or catches fire, you're really kind of screwed. You got nowhere to go. You're going to have to move out of the house. It's going to be really disorienting. If you have a house that has multiple rooms in it, in a room catches fire, floods, well, then you can go seek refuge and stability in those other rooms while you work out the flood, while you let the fire extinguish itself. And identity is the same way. We want to have multiple rooms in our identity house

because then when a big change comes in one of those rooms, we can go seek stability and go seek refuge in those other rooms. So what are examples? You could have the professional room. You could have the partner room. You could have the parent room. You could have the athlete room.

You could have the spirituality room. You could have the recovery room. You could have the partner room. You could have the parent room. You could have the athlete room. You could have the spirituality room. You could have the recovery room. You could have the musician room. It doesn't matter what the rooms are. It's just so important to have more than one room. Because what happens when you only have one room, if you just identify with being an Olympian, well, then when you get injured, you lose that stable stance. If you just identify with being someone's partner, if there's a rupture in the relationship or a divorce or God forbid a death, again, it's so freaking hard. I'm not minimizing this, but if that's your only room, you lose stability. Whereas if you have a friendship room or a community room to support you, you can seek refuge there. The last example that I'll give is for parents. It's so easy, and I'm a parent of young kids, to just make that your identity,

to make that the only room. And then of course, people experience all kinds of suffering when their kids move out of the house because they have no other rooms. So I think in addition to expectancy, diversifying your sense of identity, having multiple rooms in your identity house, these two things together are what creates that stability. And I love how you said identity and how important flexibility is in identity and how difficult it is when we get locked into a particular identity. I often talk about this a lot around the idea of somebody being alcoholic, right? The diagnosis of that and knowing that condition is really, really helpful until that becomes the entire thing. You know, it's what ultimately sort of pushed me away from 12 step programs. I still go sometimes was this sense that that identity as an alcoholic was fixed. You were always that and it defined something about

you. And I just was like, that does not accord with my sense of reality. Like I'm not the same person who walked in here the first time 23 years ago at all. And now can I still not drink alcohol successfully? Yes, that seems to be a truism. But in so many other ways, I am a radically different person. And so to continue to orient around this thing, you know, being my primary identity and it being somewhat limited and not flexible became problematic for me. And I think we can all look at lots of areas in life, but if we become too identified with one aspect of identity, it is problematic in a lot of ways, not only in times of big changes you're describing, but just day-to-day life and the ability to update your sense of who you are. Dr. Rick Hansen once said to me something

like, our sense of who we are is often like six months out of date. And I was like, six months? I mean, that's A, a great insight, but B, I think it can be years out of date sometimes if we're not careful. That's right. And when we get stuck into fixed ideas about our identity, we just become fragile. Because one, if those are positive ideas, well, eventually they change and they get taken away. If those are negative ideas, well, then we don't have the confidence that we can go meet the world. We kind of can fall almost into a victim mindset. And what you said, I think is so important, which is the label of alcoholic was helpful until it got in the way. Yes. And that's another example of non-dual thinking. And I think this is so true of all identity labels. They can be really, really useful as tools and means of understanding and getting

effective help in treatment. And then at some point in recovery, I've never been an alcoholic, but I had really bad obsessive compulsive disorder. At some point in my recovery, shedding the label OCD was actually the most important thing to do. So at first, for years, OCD was nothing but helpful. And then it started to get in the way. And having the flexibility to say, hey, you know, underneath that is maybe a slightly obsessive temperament, and that might not change. But OCD, this disorder, that is not who I am. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, it's something we talk about on the show a lot, which is exactly that, you know, identity just being something you hold somewhat loosely,

and you adopt when it's useful, and you let it go when it's not. And knowing that can, you know, knowing when to do which can be difficult. But I think this is the case with almost all diagnoses, particularly of a mental health sort, is that they are often very early on, very empowering. And over time, they can become very disempowering if we're not careful. You talk about self in a variety of ways. And I thought maybe we could just spend some time here. It's a topic that I think about a lot. And you talk about these different aspects of self, and I'm going to talk about them, but you say that a fluid sense of self is non-dual.

It's not differentiated or integrated, but it's differentiated and integrated. It's not independent or interdependent. It's not separate or connected. It's not conventional or ultimate, right? It's both of those things. So let's pick a couple of those descriptions and talk a little bit about them. Talk about independent and interdependent as aspects of ourselves. So an independent self is influencing, autonomous, controls its environment, problem solves, has a will to power, impacts the world around it. It's a very Western notion of self. It's separate from everything else.

An interdependent self is rooted in community and belonging. It's very much affected by its environment. It works in tandem with things around it, and it relinquishes from control and problem solving. That's a very Eastern sense of self. Really good anthropology research shows that the vast majority of people that grew up in the West predominantly have an independent self, and the vast majority of people who grew up in the East have an interdependent sense of self. But this is not genetic. We know this because someone born in Asia that moves to America grows up with an independent sense of self and vice versa. So these can be learned. And I think that the best method

of identity for navigating certain changes is to realize that they're both true at the same time. We can wear both of those selves when it behooves us to. So when I am at a red light at an intersection and the light turns green, I'm really glad to have an independent sense of self that can be autonomous and put my foot on the gas and go. to have an independent sense of self that can be autonomous and put my foot on the gas and go. But when I'm on my deathbed, I hope that I can channel that interdependent sense of self that is connected to everything and everyone around me

that I've ever touched and just try to rest in that as best as I can. Same me, different lenses. And this is at the heart of so many ancient wisdom traditions, particularly Buddhism, just the non-dual nature of self. There's this passage in the Pali Canon, which is one of the older Buddhist texts, and I'll

paraphrase, but essentially, Awander asked the Buddha if there's such a thing as a self, and the Buddha remained silent. And then he says, well, is there no such thing as the self? And the Buddha remained silent again. And scholars interpret this as the Buddha saying there is a self and there's also not a self. And if that sounds woo-woo and spiritual, let's just talk physics here. I clearly am here having a conversation with you. So I definitely exist as a self.

But my cells turn over every couple of years. I'm nothing without my parents. I'm completely impacted by what I ate earlier in the day. It is true that I'm connected to everything. And both of these things are true at the same time. Yeah, absolutely. And that sort of speaks to conventional and ultimate a little bit too, right?

That's a similar idea. I talk about this from time to time. It's a Buddhist idea, particularly in Zen, we talk a lot about the absolute and the relative, right? Which is a similar thing, but talk about it from a self perspective. That's right. So Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Buddhist teacher, master, sadly passed away recently. He talked about the conventional and ultimate selves. And essentially, the conventional self is the self that shows up to work, that sets its alarm clock, so on and so forth.

And the ultimate self is the self that is connected to everything. Thich Nhat Hanh uses this beautiful metaphor of the conventional self is a wave and the ultimate self is the ocean. And sometimes we identify with the wave and sometimes we identify with the ocean. And in periods of change, it can be really helpful to do both. Because for most changes, there are things that we can control where we want to be the wave and identify as the wave trying to make its way wherever it's going. But there are other times when we just need to accept and we need to identify with the

ocean and we need to kind of let go and surrender. And it's not either or, it's both and. Right. And as you were saying that, I was thinking very much about that. Like, I may have to surrender to the big change that may not be what I want, right? I have to surrender to that. But within the context of how I choose to respond to that, there are all sorts of little things that I'm going to want to do or control or take action on that are going to make the response to that thing better. So I'm doing both at the same time, right?

I'm acquiescing and saying this is the direction life's going. I guess I'm going this direction, right? But as I'm going that direction, I have all sorts of little decisions I can make that can make that trip a little bit easier. Exactly. And it reminds me, this isn't in the book, but as you're saying that, another way to think about this is the accepting self versus the problem-solving self. And if you're problem-solving a lot and you're not getting much out of it, maybe ask yourself, hey, would it make sense to practice acceptance a little bit more of what's happening? And if you have a tendency to just throw your hands up and

accept whatever's happening, well, then maybe look the other way and say, hey, what would it look like to problem solve a bit more? Because for every situation we're faced with in life, there's some degree of acceptance and some degree of problem solving. And we never know exactly where we're going to be on that spectrum, but it's never either or it's always both. Yeah. Yeah. And that is a question I have been very, even more than usual thinking a lot about, which is that accepting versus changing circumstances in life, right? Like when it's very clear that I can change it, or it's very clear that I can't change it, it's relatively easy. I don't change it, it's relatively easy. I don't want to minimize the emotional turmoil of accepting something that you really don't like.

But if you just know you can't change it, at some juncture, you go, well, I guess the only path is to go with this, right? It's all that muddy middle ground that is so hard. And I love that this idea of I'm actually going to bring both those skills into this very situation at different times in different ways, because that's better than trying to rest it into one of those two categories, right? Like the serenity prayer says, either I've got the courage to change it or I accept it, right? And what you're saying, and I love is that in most things of life that have complexity, we're not going to land on acceptance or change. And I mean by like us changing, like we're not going to either fully accept it or we're not going to fully control it.

We're going to find a mixture of those two. But I love what you said there, which is knowing our tendency. If I have a tendency towards over control and I do, right? There are certain situations in my life. This is one of my really good qualities is that when there's a problem presented, I will move into problem solving mode and I will become very creative and I will become very dexterous and I will respond well, but that's not the way to approach everything. And so I bring that to everything. So for me, sometimes it's really helpful to be like, all right, knowing that's my tendency, if I'm not sure which way to go,

I know which way to at least think about going because I know I'm almost always over on this side. Yeah, and that's the work. It's just being sure to look the other way. And that is the power of non-dual thinking, that you always can pause and ask yourself, hey, what would it look like to consider myself a little bit more independently now, or a little bit more interdependently now? Maybe I'm really identifying with my conventional

self, and as a result, I'm feeling a lot of neuroticism. Or maybe I'm over-identifying with my ultimate self, and as a a result I'm feeling kind of helpless. And it's just always about having those two bookends and working your way between the two over and over again. 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. 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. My sense is most of us in a Western culture are over-identified with the conventional self, right? Just we don't have much experience of

interconnection and unity and absolutism, right? Like I can say that I have to go seeking that, like it's not a matter of correcting. It's like that's, you know, if I'm not careful, I'm in conventional all the time and I have to actually, you know, make myself go seek the other side a little bit. I want to talk about another of the steps. And I love this one too. And I'm so glad to see it, which is don't force meaning and growth, let them come on their own time. And I'll just apply this back to me recently, as I was going through a difficult time, I knew that meaning and growth would come. Because I've had that experience countless times. I mean,

every time I go through something really difficult, I'm like, I know this is going to turn out like I'm going to grow from this. But in the moment I was feeling like, but I don't know what it's going to be. How am I going to grow? How am I going to change? I don't see the lesson here. I don't, right. Which was not an allowing way to be. And I would have loved this reminder then that meaning and growth occur on their own time, not ours. Say a little bit more about it. When we go through major changes, positive and negative, doesn't really matter which, we often come with a lot of baggage for what we expect to happen. So the example of a positive change is you have kids or you get married and you just expect that there's going to be all this immediate meaning and growth. And then a week later, you're kind of like, uh-oh, like I kind of feel the same as I did two weeks ago. The negative is you experience a rupture in an important relationship or a health diagnosis

or a depression or anxiety or substance use disorder. And you get into recovery in week one or week two, you say, you know, skills come from suffering. I got to find the meaning and growth in this. And this is what spirituality is all about. So how am I going to grow from this terrible thing that just happened to me? And in both cases, what ends up happening is you actually get in the way of that meaning and growth occurring because it has to come on its own time. So when you are in the thick of a big life event, your job is just to show up with openness and curiosity and just to keep showing up and with kindness for yourself, understanding that you don't get to reorder without going through disorder. And when you're in disorder, that's enough. Just working through that, adapting, being rugged and flexible is enough. You don't have to

know how the story ends. You don't have to immediately find growth and meaning that you can go podcast about and tell your friends about. Nuh-uh. Just showing up and getting through is enough. However, once you are on the other side of disorder, looking back on these experiences, we do almost always find meaning and growth, but it cannot be contrived or forced. It has to occur on its own time. And we have to be patient. One of my favorite studies in the history of studies, and I've looked at thousands of studies for my work, is conducted by the neuroscientist David Eagleman.

And he's very interested in how we perceive time. And he wanted to explore this very common phenomenon about when we're in the middle of disorder, when we're going through a big change, especially if it's a negative one, a challenge, time slows down. Minutes feel like days. Days time slows down. Minutes feel like days, days feel like years. It just feel like you are just stuck in the mud. You're in molasses. So for this experiment, he took participants to an amusement park in Texas where they have a ride called the SCAD. And it stands for suspended catch air device. And it is essentially just a mattress

that falls 200 feet to the ground, Bungie jumping without the bungee. This ride can only be allowed in Texas because no other state regulator would ever permit it, right? Just insanity. And he has participants go on the ride and he asks them how long did it take them to fall? And then he lets them regroup and gather themselves. And an hour later, he has them watch other people on the ride from the stability of the ground. And then he says, how long did it take those people to fall? And what he found is that when they're on the ground, they can very accurately predict how long the fall takes. But when they are in midair, when they are the ones falling, they say it takes about 40% longer than it actually does.

Yeah. And it's this beautiful metaphor that when the ground is swept out from underneath us, when we feel like we're in free fall, when our world is upside down, our perception of time slows. And there's nothing we can do to speed it up. But just knowing that nothing is more important than just knowing that if you are going through a hard time, just reminding yourself that my brain is making this feel like it is going to be forever. But if and when I get to the other side of this, when I look back on it, it will not feel that bad. I can't speak to substance abuse. I can't speak to depression. One day in depression can feel like it is going to be the rest of your life

forever. That's what makes depression so hard. But if you get to the other side of that day, just two weeks later, you look back on that day and it feels like any other day of your life. Right. But when you're in it, you are in it. Yeah. And just remembering and reminding yourself that it feels like this now, but it won't in the future. That is such an important source of strength and consolation during challenging times. Yeah. I think everything you said there is so accurate and so important. You know, going back to this, you know, meaning and growth, to me, the most helpful stance is to just at least hold the kernel of hope that meaning and growth will come, right? It's helpful in the midst of a dark time to just even see that there's a little bit of hope there. But as you said, then sort of let go. I love that idea that like when

you're in disorder, you have to be in disorder, right? You're not in reorder, you're in the disorder phase. And when you're in it, you just kind of have to be in it and respond as wisely as is possible. Victor Frankl has this term tragic optimism. And it essentially says that we can both accept the inevitability of tragedy in our human existence and still try to hold on to optimism nonetheless. And I think that comes into play here too, because when we're in the disorder, it's not about being a Pollyanna or toxic positivity. No, this sucks.

This is tragedy. This is hard. But if just 1% of ourself can hold out and have hope that you know i think i'm going to get to the other side of this and even if it feels impossible right now when i do i'll look back on this and i'll probably have grown or learned a thing or two like that's it that's the work there's a quote from bruce springsteen in the book of course it's bruce springsteen who and i'm paraphrasing says that the work of a mature adult is meeting the world on its terms, not yours, and staying hopeful anyways. Yeah, that's kind of it.

So if you're listening to this and you are in the thick of a struggle or for future struggles, sometimes you can just let things suck. And listen, you're listening to this podcast because you're like me and Eric, you're probably into personal growth and development. And it's a strength to search for meaning. And often we do find meaning and we grow very quickly from challenges. But sometimes that's not available in the moment. And in those periods, the wisest, kindest, most spiritually mature thing you can do is just drop that weight altogether and do whatever it takes to get through. Yeah. We hit on the idea of behavioral activation kind of early on when

we talked about thinking your way into right action versus acting your way into right thinking. But let's talk about it using behavioral activation in the context of what we're talking about here. So one thing that often happens to people during periods of change is they freeze up. Sometimes it's because what they're going through feels so overwhelming, so they just don't even know what, if anything, they could do. Other times it's because the path forward is unknown. It's ambiguous.

It's uncertain what they ought to do. So they freeze. And behavioral activation essentially says that you don't have to know the answer to get started. Sometimes you have to get started to find out the answer. Or you don't have to feel motivated and inspired to get going. Sometimes you have to get going to feel motivated and inspired. And behavioral activation is of particular importance during change because the changes

that happen within our brain. during change because the changes that happen within our brain. So neuroscientists call this the difference between the rage pathway and the seeking pathway. So the rage pathway is the amygdala. It's fear. It's threat. It's very reactive. And often when we're faced with change, that's what gets activated. That's how we evolved. The seeking pathway is activated when we are taking some sort of action that feels productive. In the work of Jak Ponskip, a neuroscientist shows that the rage pathway and the seeking pathway, it's a zero-sum game. If you activate the seeking pathway, you turn the rage pathway off. And the best way to activate the seeking pathway is by taking some sort of action toward a goal. So even if the

action itself turns out to be futile or hardly bends the needle, simply by doing it, you get that rage pathway turned off and you put yourself in a better state to be able to respond, not react. Yeah. As I was reading that section of the book, I also thought a really important point was that the rage pathway at a certain point, if it's activated for too long turns into the sadness pathway I mean I've often heard depression as anger turned in words right so it's a it's a similar correlate say a little bit more about this sadness pathway sounds like the road going to Chris's house but anyway the sadness pathway is essentially activated under neuroimaging when you are feeling depressed, despairing, despondent.

And it often happens, as you said, after the rage pathway is exhausted. So anger turns into depression. Unchecked panic and anxiety often turns into depression. They're very close cousins. And in all of these cases, I think what's happening is that rage pathway, eventually it just flames out and you feel sad. And there's all kinds of fancy neuroscience that backs this up. But I think everyone's had the experience of snapping on someone that you care about, whether it's a partner, a child, a good friend, a colleague. And when you're in the

process of snapping and you're really angry, it kind of feels good. It's like scratching an itch. You just go, go, go. But then once your brain kind of exhausts that, you tend to feel really sad and really bad. And if you were to put someone under an fMRI machine while they were doing that, what you'd probably see is the rage pathway on and then boom, their sadness pathway. And again, the way to short circuit all this is just by saying, hey, what are my values and how can I just take one small action, one right action to use recovery speak in the direction of my values. And that just completely changes your brain and gives you a chance to, you know, get on a better path. Yeah. And so when we say pathway in the neuroscience sense, are we talking about brain networks? What are we talking about when we say

a pathway in this case? What do we mean? Yeah, we're talking about brain networks. Exactly. And this is outside of my area of expertise. I'm not a neuroscientist. I cite them often, but it is essentially a circuitry of neurons that are lighting up at the same time in a predictable fashion. Got it. You talk about real and fake fatigue. Tell us about that because I was very intrigued by that idea. Real fatigue is when your mind-body system is genuinely exhausted. You are biologically, psychologically tired. You've just been sick. You've been through a really stressful time in work or in a relationship. You just launched a book. You just finished a marathon race at work,

whatever it is. And of course, you feel exhausted. You feel tired. And the right thing to do is to rest. Fake fatigue is when your body continues to feel that way, even though you're recovered and even though you're rested. And more rest just creates inertia of continuing to feel that way, even though you're recovered and even though you're rested, and more rest just creates inertia of continuing to feel exhausted. And the way out of fake fatigue is the polar opposite, which is behavioral activation, just to get going, just to get started. Another way to think about this is there is fatigue that responds to rest, and then there's fatigue that responds to action.

And in the book I use real and fake fatigue, I wish I would have used fatigue that responds to rest. And then there's fatigue that responds to action. And in the book I use real and fake fatigue. I wish I would have used fatigue that responds to rest versus fatigue that responds to action because fake fatigue isn't really fair because when you feel tired, you feel tired. It's real. Yeah, exactly. You're not making it up. It's real. It's a real feeling. What it responds to is different. Yeah, exactly. So that's ultimately what it's about. And I think just reminding yourself when you're feeling really down, when you're feeling really tired and saying, Hey, you know, what strategy am I trying? Am I trying rest? And if you start to feel better, great, that's the right strategy. But if you continue to feel lethargic, or maybe you feel worse,

then it might be helpful to say, Hey, I wonder if this is actually the variety of fatigue that responds to action. I don't do as much of it as I used to, but I used to do a lot of coaching work and a lot of behavioral coaching work. And a lot of the people that I was working with were people who they would often have something that was really blocking an easy path to action, meaning it might be this extreme sense of fatigue that you're describing. It might be chronic pain. It might be, you know, depression, right? And it was always an art to figure out exactly what you're saying. When is the answer to say, you know what, I like I got to rest today, I'm going to give myself a break, I'm just going to take it down a notch and be here. And when is that just feeding the thing? And the action, as you said, is to push through that and get into motion.

And again, like I said, it was an art and I found it frustrating from the outside because I couldn't say, right, you know, but I love that you're sort of saying like, start with the rest. And you say in the book that one of the reasons to do that is the cost of pushing through, the book that one of the reasons to do that is the cost of pushing through, quote unquote, real fatigue is bad, right? You push too much, you head into burnout, you sort of start to fry the system, right? So if you're in doubt, start by resting because it's safer. And then if that's not working, respond with action. And think internally with us, if we pay attention over time, we can start to feel this, right? I've gotten much better at doing it with depression, right? Where I'm sort of like, okay, today is a day that, yeah, I'm just really down. I'm just going to, I'm just going to let

myself be there, right? Versus the action is to get moving. Now, in my case, what I have found, and it's why I love the phrase depression hates a moving target, is that nine times out of 10, for me, it's about getting into some kind of motion, not necessarily pushing hard on something, but movement. And I will calibrate the movement based on what I feel like I'm, you know, sort of capable of. I know that movement is the right direction for me. But I will often be like, you know what, some days like I'm going to be up here in movement and other days I'm going to be way down here in movement. But I know movement is the thing, but not always. That's a lot of empirical testing for myself to sort of figure out.

Yeah. I don't have much to add because you just described that so eloquently. Perhaps the one addition is just another example relating to what might be called depressive fatigue or fatigue that responds to action. And there, I think the trap is that when you have the flu or you have COVID, it can feel a lot like depression. Yes. Oh, yeah. And then the default could be like, oh crap, I'm getting depressed again. Like I better go exercise. When in fact, like, no,

you actually just have the flu and anyone that's experienced depression knows that when you get the flu or you even get a bad cold, it's really scary because it feels so similar to falling into a depression, but there you actually want to rest. And I think it's just about cultivating that self-knowledge and that self-awareness and just pausing to ask the question, hey, what do I think is going on? What am I going to try first? Am I going to try rest or action? And let me just be aware that if things don't move in the right direction, I should probably go the other way. Yeah, that's so well said. And I think some of it also is, you can read the situation. So for example, if I'm really tired at night, you know, as it gets to the later hours,

sometimes my mood will just drop, you know, and I would have called that being depressed. Now I've learned better to say, oh, I'm just really tired. It's been a long day. I've got a lot of good stuff done. I'm just kind of out of gas. And as I'm doing that, my mood is sort of falling in that situation. Right. Hopping on the Peloton bike is not the right response. It's 11 at night. Right. So situationally, I kind of know like, OK, well, what's most likely to be going on at 11 at night? It's probably that I just actually need to rest. Yeah, so well said. So let's come kind of all the way back to where we started and talk a little bit about rugged flexibility in the context of change. Maybe give us some last words around those ideas that we can sort of take with us as we get near the end here. Well, we talked a lot about non-dual thinking and rugged flexibility to me is the ultimate example of non-dual thinking for not only navigating acute change, but really just is the ultimate example of non-dual thinking for not only navigating acute change, but really just sustaining whatever your version of excellence is over the long

time. And again, to be rugged is to be determined, durable, to know your values, to know your sources of stability, but not to hold on to them too tightly and not to get rigid around them, not to calcify around them so that when you change and when the world changes, which is going to happen, you can meet the moment with softness, with suppleness, and just taking that mindset as you chart your path towards whatever goal you're chasing, or even if it's just life as a whole, and always reminding yourself, am I being rugged

and am I being flexible? Not either or, but both and. It's such an important mindset to excelling over the long haul and navigating the inevitable changing weather patterns in life. Thanks, Brad. I think that is a beautiful place for us to wrap up. You and I are going to go into the post-show conversation where I would like to talk about the five questions we can ask ourselves to see are we developing along the lines of rugged flexibility. But thank you so much.

It's been a great conversation. Listeners, if you'd like access to the post-show conversation with Brad, a special episode I do called A Teaching Song and a Poem, and you want to support an organization that shares your values, go to whenyoufeed.net slash join. Thanks so much, Brad.

Thank you, Eric. 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. 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 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 reallynoreally.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.