The Rich Roll Podcast - Brad Stulberg: Ditch The Hedonic Treadmill For Sustainable Success

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

Ambition is laudable. But hustle culture extracts a cost. True, sustainable success demands groundedness. Here today to elaborate is Brad Stulberg—a writer and coach specializing in human performance and well-being. Returning for his third appearance (you can check out episodes #293 & #429). Brad is the author of three books: Peak Performance, The Passion Paradox, and his latest, the subject of today’s exchange, The Practice of Groundedness. His work has appeared in the NYT, WSJ, Sports Illustrated, Wired, Forbes, GQ, TIME, & Outside. He is the co-founder of The Growth Equation newsletter & podcast alongside elite track & field coach Steve Magness. This is a conversation about striving–not out of compulsion–but from a place of wholeness and love. It’s a state of mind and action Brad calls groundedness. In addition, we discuss in great detail the principles upon which to build sustainable success and a life grounded in meaning and fulfillment. Trigger Warning: We discuss a few intense mental health topics including suicidal ideation—in fairly graphic detail. So sensitive viewers please be advised. This conversation is overflowing with evidence-and-experience-based, practical, and actionable life counsel. You can also watch the magic transpire on YouTube. As always, the podcast streams free on Apple Podcasts & Spotify. Pick up Rich’s lates book VOICING CHANGE Vol. II HERE. For full show notes and to read more about Terry, go HERE. Enjoy the show! Peace + Plants, Rich

Everything in the culture tells us not to accept reality. You know, you don't feel good. There's a substance for that. You can go buy some stuff. You can tweet. You can post. But of course, if you can't accept where you are, then you're never going to get where you want to go.

I don't think that you can truly be strong unless you are vulnerable. Vulnerability should very rarely feel good in the moment, especially if it's with other people. That for me is the barometer. If you are doing vulnerability as a means to an end or you're scheming, then you're probably actually doing yourself more harm than good. For people like you and I, I think it's so important that when you pick a goal, the steps that you have to get there should involve building community. So like you bake it into your work, but try to make more and more things a team game or a game of relationships or where you're building a community as a part of this pursuit that you have

in life as a practice. And you got to show up and some days are better than others. And you just get on the path and you fall off the path and you get back on and you repeat that interval and if things go well, you learn and grow and hopefully have some fun along the way. The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. Let me open with a thought. And that thought is that ambition is laudable. But I think we can all agree that hustle culture extracts its pound of flesh in the form of exhaustion,

frayed relationships, even substance abuse, just being one of many undesirable side effects of an obsessive relationship with performance. Because true success requires sustainability, a healthier model rooted in groundedness, one that prioritizes presence, patience, and long-term values over short-term gain. Here to elaborate today is Brad Stolberg, a writer and coach specializing in human performance and well-being. Brad is the author of three books, Peak Performance, The Passion Paradox, and his latest, The Practice of Groundedness. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, Wired, The New Yorker, Forbes, GQ, Time, and Outside Magazine, which is how we

first met. Brad is a fellow at the University of Michigan's Graduate School of Public Health, and he is the co-founder of the Growth Equation newsletter and podcast alongside elite track and field coach, Steve Magnus. This is Brad's third appearance on the show. Check out episodes 293 and 429 if you happen to miss them. And it's coming right up, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time.

It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression,

anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find

the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment, an experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs.

They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you.

I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, Brad Stolberg. So this is a conversation about striving, but striving not out of compulsion, but from a place of wholeness, a place of love, what Brad calls groundedness. the place of love, what Brad calls groundedness.

It's about the perils of something called heroic individualism, the tension between self-discipline and self-compassion. It's also about the power of rooting yourself like a redwood, why in the long run, the tortoise always beats the hare and the principles upon which to build sustainable success and a life grounded in meaning and fulfillment. Quick note before we get into it,

a bit of a trigger warning. We do discuss a few intense mental health topics today, including suicidal ideation in fairly graphic detail. So sensitive viewers, please be advised. That said, amidst the chaos and confusion of the self-help world, I find Brad to be a principled and welcome voice of reason, as well as a like-minded soul. And this conversation is just overflowing with evidence and experience-based practical and

actionable life counsel. So without further ado, here we go. This is me and Brad Stolberg. do. Here we go. This is me and Brad Stolberg. Good to see you, my friend. It's been a couple years. This is podcast number three, but your first solo appearance on the show. I'm excited to unpack your latest book and all these wisdom tools that you're so good at sharing with people. And every time I think about you or I see you, I remember vividly the first time that we talked, it was for an article that I think you were writing for outside, you called me. And I remember exactly where I was. I was sitting in my truck in this parking lot

outside this other office that I had. And we ended up, I thought we were gonna talk for like 10 minutes and we ended up talking for like an hour. And I remember getting off that call and just thinking, this guy's like on my wavelength. Like we just immediately synced up on these ideas that have gone on to become the foundation of these books that you write.

And this shared sensibility that I think we have where we kind of have this bristled resistance to the flavor of the month self-help, you know, that we see kind of shared on social media, et cetera, a shared allergy to the life hack culture and relentless optimization and all that's kind of reductive binary conclusions and statements about the pursuit of excellence. So it's good to kind of further that discussion. And it's nice to be, you know, that that conversation, you know, ended up with a friendship and what we're about to do here today.

So welcome. It's great to be here. So the latest book is called "'The Practice of Groundedness." So why don't you talk a little bit about what inspired you to write this book? Because I think the kind of origin story of what you were enduring and going through

that prompted you to dive into this subject matter is super interesting. Yeah, so shortly after my first book came out that I coauthored with Steve Magnus, Peak Performance, I was doing some media for the book in New York City and went on a long run in Central Park. I don't know, 18, 20 miles, as long as I could go back then. And was super busy throughout the rest of the day. So had an interview here, a podcast there, and just lived on a cliff bar. And I was under the impression that I was meeting

a close friend, a guy named Adam Alter for dinner. And turns out it was just a bar. So I had two stiff drinks and some kettle chips and my blood sugar plummeted. And unbeknownst to me then, something that happens when your blood sugar plummets is you can become super jittery and anxious. And I had a massive panic attack. I had never experienced anything like it. I felt like I was gonna die. My heart was pounding out of my neck, just totally out of control.

And I got through the night. It was rough. At the time, my younger brother was finishing up medical school. So I'm on the phone with him for like two hours. And I think he knows immediately I'm having a panic attack. He's like, you're fine, you're fine. But when you're in the middle of that and you don't believe it.

And the next day I went to an urgent care clinic just to get myself checked out before getting on a flight to go home. And they took my blood sugar. It was fine then. And the doc there said, yeah, it sounds like your blood sugar got super low. You had a panic attack. And when most people have a panic attack, it's a one and done kind of thing. It's an awful experience.

They move on from it. For me, it really latched on to my psyche. And I just developed this omnipresent bad anxiety related to everything health. And I got in to see a therapist. I got in to see my doctor. They're running all these tests for heart rate, this liver, that adrenal gland, that ruling out all the health stuff. And everything's coming back fine, but I still don't feel fine. So for about three weeks, I lived in this place of just terrible health anxiety. And maybe a month into it, I started feeling a lot better.

And I had seen a therapist a few times. I was no longer looking for like an organic cause. It's just anxiety. I accepted it. And I was feeling good enough to go on a long car ride to meet some close friends for a running and camping trip. And about an hour and a half into this four hour car ride, I just got absolutely pummeled by the thought that you could just drive off the road and end it. And it came completely out of left field. Is that the first instance in your life of having any kind of suicidal ideation? Yes. Yeah. Scary. Terrifying. And not just the thought, but the accompaniment of that thought with just a head to toe wave of just dread and anxiety, you know, stomach coming up into your throat. And I couldn't stop thinking about it for the rest of the drive. I don't know how I made it there. It was just an utterly torturous drive.

And I got there and then throughout the entire weekend, I was just constantly bombarded by these thoughts of self-harm. So I'd wake up in the middle of the night to pee and my brain would be like, you could go down in the kitchen and stab yourself with a knife. And it was just freaking unrelenting. And I didn't let anyone there know what I was going through because these weren't like my closest friends. And this was also very bizarre to me. And I made it- You didn't call your wife or your therapist

or anything like that? Yeah, I mean, my wife kind of knew, but I also didn't wanna scare her. So I was really holding on to most of this myself. And it was the weekend. I didn't have my therapist's phone number because as far as she knew, I was just like a run-of-the-mill case of some simple to moderate health anxiety. Made it through the weekend and was just completely white-knuckling myself, getting ready for the drive home, just hoping that it wouldn't happen again,

which is the wrong thing to do, I learned later. And of course, the whole drive home, it's like 10 times as bad as the way there. By far the worst four hours of my life, just terrible. Got home, told my wife that something's going on, I'm sick, something is wrong with my brain, I need help. I learned that while it's very hard to get into a psychiatrist, if you just have anxiety,

if you have any kind of suicidal ideation, you can get seen the next day. So I was, I was seen the next day. And my doctor, Dr. Lucas Van Dyke, I'll never forget. I was just terrified and traumatized. And I'm telling him this story and that I thought I was actually going to do it and just how awful it felt. And I remember asking him, saying like, you know, if I need to go to be in an inpatient facility somewhere, like sign me up for that because I don't want to hurt myself. I just want to know I'm safe.

And he's sitting across from me like this. And he just kind of chuckles. I'm like, what's this guy laughing for? And he's like, you're not depressed. You're not suicidal. You just have OCD. That's such a strange counterintuitive diagnosis. And at that moment, my whole just affect, my shoulders dropped. It was like, I was free because I was scared. I thought that I really was going to act on those thoughts. And over the next year, I learned what OCD is and how it can manifest in different ways. And one of those manifestations is having intrusive thoughts about self-harm. So it was actually not like a bizarre case of OCD. It's a pretty common theme. What triggers that? What is the prompt for suddenly out of the blue being

obsessed with a recurring looping thought of self-harm? You know, there's no one answer to that question. Clearly the anxiety that I was experiencing after the panic attack was priming my brain, my nervous system to be on heightened alert. But why it went in that direction and why it happened at that moment, it's hard to say. There's some speculation in the research community that OCD intrusive thoughts tend to latch on to the things that people care most about. So people that are really worried about or care deeply about perfectionism, they tend to have OCD around germs and germ phobia because a germ is gross. It's not perfect. And I love life. I'm an optimistic, positive guy. My wife was pregnant with our first kid at the time.

It's like OCD found like the perfect dagger and it's just like, let's go stab this guy with it over and over and over again. Yeah, it's really strange. I'd never heard it characterized in the manner in which you've suffered. Like I've had periods in my life where I've been the guy who's like organizing his pencils

and having strange rituals that I've convinced myself are important and related to some goal that I'm seeking. And if I skip them, then I'm jeopardizing the whole thing. Like, I don't know what causes that. And it's pretty mild, but I have seen myself do that kind of thing. And I think that's what people's common kind of understanding of what OCD is.

But this seems, you know, obviously not only qualitatively different, but also more severe. Yeah, and I think what you're describing there is the visible compulsion. So you might have some thought, which is like, hey, if I don't organize my pencils, my book's gonna flop, or my wife's gonna leave me. And then you organize the pencils. Whereas the actual issue is not't organize my pencils, my book's going to flop, or my wife's going to leave me, and then you organize the pencils.

Whereas the actual issue is not the organizing the pencils, it's the thought, and then you try to make it go away. So the level of severity is often related to the thought and the anxiety it causes. So some people, they do have an organizational compulsion around what's called harm OCD. So they might have a thought that, hey, I'm going to kill myself or other harm. I'm going to push someone into traffic. And in order to make that thought go away, they go touch a doorknob 10 times. My compulsions weren't visible. They were all psychological. So my compulsion was trying to figure out what was going on and reassure myself

that I wouldn't do it. So I would spend hours Googling signs of suicide and signs of depression and the pathways of that, trying to convince myself that it wasn't gonna happen to me, which of course just makes the OCD worse. Right. Because OCD is like a what if machine. You're just deepening that groove.

Yeah, it's a what if machine. Well, what if that doesn't do? Or what if I'm different? Or what if I do go down this pathway? But yeah, Wyatt latched onto that. The best guess that I have, the best guess that my therapist had is just that I love life and OCD goes right after the things that you love the most. So you got some relief from the diagnosis, but obviously that's not the solution to the problem. How did you heal from this? Right. Because the what if machine,

like two days later, it's like, well, what if the psychiatrist is wrong? I mean, that was the thought that I had for a month. Like, oh, he's misdiagnosing me. The first thing I wanted to do is get a second opinion because I was just scared I was going to harm myself. And the psychiatrist is like, you know, you can if you want, but that's only going to set you back. Because the therapy for OCD is something that's called exposure and response prevention. So you expose yourself to the thing that causes the distress, and then you prevent the response that makes that distress go away. So walk me through what that looked like in your case. Sure. So for me, the exposures were reading deeply about people suffering from terrible depression, were reading deeply about people suffering from terrible depression,

watching videos of people jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, just gruesome stuff that would bring up these feelings of that could happen to me, I could do this to myself. And then not going to Google or try to call my therapist or convince myself that it wasn't going to be me. And if anything, when you have the thought that it could be you in therapy, you're just supposed to agree with that thought. You say, yeah, it might be, but I'm going to get back to what's in front of me right now.

That's pretty intense to watch that. I mean, that feels like aversion therapy to me. Well, it is in a way. For an alcoholic to go, all right, you need to go drink as much as possible and get sick so that you don't do it again. They've realized that that is ineffective. But it's not about getting sick. It's about desensitizing yourself to the fact that you can watch something like that and you can have those feelings without deeply knowing that you're going to do that. Disassociating it or depersonalizing it. Yes. And knowing that, to be, like I was so fortunate, the psychiatrist I saw, it just so happened that his whole research program was an OCD. I didn't know this.

Then the therapist. But then the inside you're like, yeah, but he's a hammer looking for a nail. Well, of course I had all those thoughts, but over the course of my treatment, I was very lucky because this kind of OCD is very commonly misdiagnosed as major depression. And then people are institutionalized for like suicidal ideation, which technically at the time I thought that's what this was, but this is called just like intrusive thinking and it's that theme. So I'm very fortunate that I got on this treatment pathway so quickly and ultimately, and I'll share that here. and I think it's important to say that, I don't know what the right word is, if it's a trigger warning or if you're suffering,

obviously you don't take my advice, Rich's advice, you go talk to a professional. But the ultimate thing that got me through this and this is going to sound crazy is it was shortly after Thanksgiving and I had a pretty rough holiday. I just wasn't feeling good. I was still having all these intrusive thoughts.

And the way that exposure and response prevention, this therapy works, is you start with things that aren't as intense and then you gradually work your way up to very intense things. And I had been watching those videos and listening to podcasts about people that have suffered with suicidal ideation and the like

and my therapist could tell I was pretty dejected and we've been doing this for about three months and I just said, Brooke, I don't feel like I'm getting that much better. She's like, well, if you want to get better, it's going to be really hard. And I'm like, that's fine. And she probably talked to my psychiatrist to do this.

And again, she also has a specialty in OCD. And she said, here's what I want you to do. For the next 10 days, when Caitlin, my partner, is not home, I want you to take a knife and hold it to your neck on the couch. Whoa. Whoa. Yeah. And I was just, it'd been four months. I had written this book. I'm an athlete. Like I freaking love life and all that was sucked out of me. So I was desperate at that point. I'm like, you know what? If I do it, I do it. And Brooke's like, and I'll take responsibility. If you do it,

it's on me. And something about her saying that said like, screw it, I'm going to do it. And then she's like, if you have an urge to push it, you might like follow that urge. See what happens. Yeah. Holy shit. Right. So I'm sitting there on the couch

and the first day, of course, I'm panicking and I have an urge and I'm like, fuck. And I really want to call Brooke, but I don't because she's like, you can't call me. And I just want to like, I want to deep down inside. I clearly want to get better. That's don't because she's like, you can't call me. And I just want to, deep down inside, I clearly want to get better. That's why I'm doing this.

And it's terrifying. So I push it a little bit more and then I stop. And then that night I completely freak out. I'm like, I had the urge. Like tomorrow I'm going to do it because I didn't do it today. I got lucky, something stopped me, but tomorrow I'm going to do it.

So it's this tension of not wanting to do the exercise again, but knowing that that's what's going to get me through and just having the ultimate trust in Brooke, my therapist. So day two, feel the urge, follow it a little bit more. Don't do it. Panic attack that night. Day three, kind of feel the urge, but don't really care. I kid you not, Rich, by day nine, I fell asleep on the couch from boredom because I had to sit there for an hour. And that was part of it. She's like, if you get bored, you just sit there. Oh, so the assignment was you had to do it for a full hour? For a full hour. And the first couple of days, like I said, the whole time's just panic. By the ninth day, I swear I fell asleep. I set the knife down and I

fell asleep because I was so bored. And that was the turning point for me. And where's your partner in all of this? So she knows, and she's met with me and the therapist, and she's been educated on what OCD is and how it manifests. And she knew that you were engaging in this practice? Yeah, I mean, she knew it's a part of the therapy. I mean, that had to be terrifying for her, knowing that you're in the other room.

Yes, and again, like if people listening, if you're like, this guy's nuts. This is crazy. You're right, Google around OCD and this is actually very, this is just standard. There's nothing crazy about this. This is standard protocol. I'll give you a couple of other examples

because OCD has these very bizarre pathways. So one pathway is people think that, as I mentioned, they're gonna harm other people. So they don't leave their house. Especially like you live in a big city, you're scared to go on the subway because you think you're going to push someone in front of it. So what do those people do?

They spend two hours a day on the platform of the subway going as close to people as they can. And then they gradually do it. So once the diagnosis is made and a professional is sure that that's the diagnosis, the therapies, while they seem extreme, are like textbook. And the sure that that's the diagnosis, the therapies while they seem extreme are like textbook. And the other thing that's very hopeful if people are listening and might be suffering from OCD

or know someone that is, is that through exposure and response prevention therapy, outcomes are phenomenal. Like 80% of people get better. On top of this, there's a very interesting, complicated, and I presume disorienting- I knew you were gonna go there. You know, as you're this guy who's published these books

and articles and all these big magazines, really on the subject of like how to live better, right? How to be, you know, your most actualized self, how to achieve your fitness goals and your lifestyle goals. If it was me, I would be experiencing profound shame and confusion while all of this is going on. I was. I'm supposed to be the guy

who's helping other people figure out these problems, not the person who's suffering, not just suffering, but like profoundly suffering. Yeah, I was for sure. And I wasn't writing during that time period. I was just focused on like getting through every day. And I remember a turning point on that theme was gradually as the OCD started to get a little bit better,

just a little, like I had a foothold. I was in Virginia with my brother and we were supposed to be having just a fun weekend together, as much fun as you can have when you're four months into this. And I got an email from this young fellow. He's I think like 25 or 26 in the email. And he's basically like, hey, I want to follow your path. You're this young person. You have it all together. You've written these books. How do you do it? And hey, I want to follow your path. You're this young person. You have it all together. You've written these books. How do you do it?

And meanwhile, I was that day scared to be in the kitchen of the place we were renting because there were knives in it. And the amount of cognitive dissonance and distress that that caused, even though I hadn't been putting out much work, just that people in the world saw me as that, and here I was completely falling apart. That in that moment was worse than the OCD itself. As you said, just holding that shame and just this feeling of like living these two lives.

Right, the duplicitous nature of all of it. And so that I presume is what catalyzed you to kind of come clean and write that article that you wrote that got shared widely. Yeah, and I wouldn't necessarily say come clean because to me, it wasn't about, like I wasn't gonna- You weren't hiding it, but just for yourself. Right, and I wasn't gonna keep writing, bingo.

It was less about coming clean. It was more about just continuing to be a writer because I remember telling Brooke, my therapist, that I'm done writing. I can't write about this stuff when I'm going through this. She's like, that's a cop-out. She's like, you got to play through the pain. And we decided that for me to continue as a writer, I wasn't going to do it with this huge cognitive dissonance. So yeah, I wrote the story. And then writing the story itself, this is one more insight, and I know we'll move on from this,

but just to give you a sense of the weird OCD brain, the part of writing that story that was terrifying wasn't like, oh, what are people going to think of me? There was maybe a little bit of that, but by then it's like, screw it, I don't care. I'm just happy to be doing a little bit better. But I was so scared that by writing a story about what I was going through, it would

be as if I was asserting myself over OCD. Like I have some control of this. I have enough control about this to write about it. And then it would come back with a vengeance. So that was my fear in writing the thing. And again, like back to this fault, like go through your anxiety. It's like, no, the thing that I have to do is write it, go through, and then yeah, I had no idea this was going to happen. But then the piece gets shared everywhere. I get literally thousands of emails from people saying, oh, me too, or my brother, or not OCD, but depression,

or bipolar, or you name it. And some of these emails were coming from people that I would have never guessed are suffering in any way. And that was really a pivot point on my journey as a writer from exploring topics that are, I'd say, peak topics. So when everything's clicking and things are going well, to thinking more about, well, what about when things aren't going well? Or how do you build a solid enough foundation to be able to weather these various storms? And also from writing about these peak experiences

from a rather clinical perspective to this lived experience version of what it means to grapple with these ideas. Yes. And I would suspect that writing that article, you know, is an act of self-love that left you feeling more integrated. And of course, with the response,

feeling more connected to other people, like it is part of the healing process for this. So although your OCD mind is telling you that this might catalyze a snapback, it actually was part of the process of becoming whole again. A hundred percent. Yeah. It's the best thing that I could have done.

And then, you know, people reach out to me that, oh, hey, well you coach me because I'm a partner at this firm, but I also have OCD or I'm an entrepreneur, but I suffer from depression. And sure enough, like most people have something, throw addiction in there. It's like 70% of the population. Yeah, yeah.

So with this epiphany and this pain body that you had, this kind of leads you down this rabbit hole of trying to understand not only what caused this, but the kind of more macro grant, grand idea of like, what, you know, the kind of more macro grant, you know, grand idea of like, what is leading people, you know, people with good intentions who are ambitious and goal oriented, like what is, what is kind of leading them away from the path that they seek? I mean, how do you think about, you know, what led you into the subject matter terrain of the book?

Yeah. So I had come out of that experience. Um, didn't start until, I don't know, a year after my diagnosis. So I was out of the woods of deep OCD. I'd say I was in those woods for about eight, nine months. And by month 10, I was seeing my therapist maybe once every three weeks, once every four weeks. So I was doing much better. I was back to functioning and perhaps even high functioning at that point in my life. And a lot of what I had been reading at the time wasn't necessarily about OCD, but this is pre-pandemic. Lots of people just feeling like I'm striving for this success

or I'm trying to be excellent and great, but I feel like crap. I feel anxious. I feel depressed. I can never feel content. You name it. And coming out of a year of therapy, well, these topics had been on my mind in the most extreme way. So that is ultimately what crystallized in this idea of, hey, what if I try to write a book that takes conventional ways of thinking about success and excellence and flips them on their head and tries to both redefine those types of things that we strive for and also the path to get them. That's going on in my brain on the one hand. On the other hand, I'm hearing from coaching clients, from readers of my work that they're all struggling with various discontents in their own life. And then the third thing is coming out of therapy, I got super into reading like Buddhism, Taoism, all

these Eastern religions and some Stoicism too on the West. And all these ancient teachers are basically saying the exact same thing that is now considered evidence-based therapy. And it was like those three things came together and said in my brain, oh, there might be a book here, or at the very least, this is something I'm deeply curious about,

so I want to explore it. Right, it's sort of choose your adventure, Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity, Stoicism. I throw AA in there as well, because a lot of these tools that you're talking about are really fundamental to recovery and the parlance of like how you get better. And it's interesting how those parallels

just kind of recur and show up across these various philosophies and ways of living. I think about it as a three-legged stool. And I stole this- I think we talked about that last time. Yeah, I stole this from my collaborator, Steve. The first leg is modern science and empirical studies. So what is happening in rigorous, mythologically sound experiments that is true?

The second leg is ancient wisdom and history. So what have people been talking about for millennia and what patterns and themes are there? And then the third leg is daily practice. So when I go out and coach people or when I put on my reporting hat and ask people, well, hey, what kind of tools do you use? What works and what doesn't? That's daily practice. And in this book, for anything to make it in there,

I had to be able to stand on all three of those legs because I'm interested in what I call truth with a capital T. So principles, concepts, skills that are going to work for most people in most circumstances. Right. Well, all of this tracks back to this idea that you have, that you characterize as heroic individualism, right? So explain what that is, because I think that kind of creates the foundation for everything that we're gonna explore.

Love it. So heroic individualism I define as a constant game of one-upmanship against both self and others, where measurable achievement is the main arbiter of success. Right, which basically means, you know, everybody. This is a societal problem. Yeah, we are all, like I'm reading about this

and I'm like, yeah, that's me 100%. It's everyone. That's me today. We swim in this water. Right. And I think the other part of the definition that's really important is that regardless of what you tell yourself, the finish line that is lasting fulfillment

is always 10 yards down the field. So if I just hit 100 million downloads, then I'll be content. You hit it, you're content for a day. If I just publish that book, if I just get promoted to the C-suite, if I just then thinking, always fails. It is literally the basis of the four noble truths in Buddhism. And it is now in modern behavioral science called the arrival fallacy, which is this notion that we think we're going to arrive

somewhere and that will make us happy. That will make us feel a certain way. And we just set ourselves up for suffering because we get there. Maybe we get a short blip of happiness and then we adapt back to where we were. On top of that, in addition to the goalposts always moving, it's almost like those Chinese finger traps. Like the more ambitious you are, the more type A you are,

the more suffering you create for yourself. Like the more heightened that level of angst and consternation is going to be for you. Yes, and particularly now, I wanna be really clear both in this conversation and then hopefully I was clear enough in the book that this is a societal thing. Like this is the water that we swim in.

Social media is a personality marketplace. Like is the water that we swim in. Social media is a personality marketplace. People trade shares of you and followers. The proliferation of metrics in every field, including these old, what used to be an art field, medicine, everything is now on a dashboard. We're constantly connecting ourselves in what we're trying to strive for to some kind of external arbiter of success.

And that's a tough kind of pool to be swimming in. Right, short of becoming a complete Luddite or living some sort of Thoreau-like experience, acknowledging that we live in the modern world and that there are benefits to many of these things, but what's broken is our relationship to them. A hundred percent. And that's it.

I mean, that's what groundedness is all about is it's how can you strive for excellence and success in a way that the good outweighs the bad and that you try to stop yourself from walking into some of those traps. Because I'll say this, right now, Rich, it's very fashionable to have like this anti-ambition argument. There's been a lot of articles and a lot of books circulating.

And I think it's gobbledygook. I don't buy it. I'm really glad that people have ambition. The person I always give the example is Katalin Karikó, who's the Hungarian woman that developed the mRNA technology. In profiles of her, she's like a workaholic for 20 years on this research. I'm really glad that she was ambitious. And I also find it kind of ironic that a lot of the people

that are writing the anti-ambition books are super ambitious about selling their anti-ambitious book. So it's like a little bit of like a research test, you know, like what you look at and what you see. So I don't, I think ambition and progress and striving is a good thing. I think setting a goal and chasing it, there's a lot of life to be had there.

As you said, it's about our relationship with that. Well, you know, a couple of reflections on that. I mean, yes, there is, you know, I think there's a huge Reddit thread board. Anti-work. Anti-work, right? Like there's a massive swath of the population who is into this idea, but what's driving that? What's driving that is a lack of purpose and fulfillment

that they're extracting from their work life, right? So that's a more endemic problem. If people felt purposeful and directed and passionate with all the paradox that's built into that, of course, perhaps that wouldn't be a thing. That's part of what's broken in our economy, I think, and that's a different conversation. But to the extent that you can get plugged

into something professional that gives you sustenance on some level. Doesn't the conversation turn in terms of like how you're thinking about this, turn to the tension between self-discipline on the one hand, yes, we want the woman who's working on the mRNA vaccine to work very hard on that for all of our benefit versus the self-compassion required to be grounded

and have a kind of broader sense of what's important to better prioritize our time, energy, focus, and attention. Yes, and I think that that's a gap that hopefully this work helps to try to close a little is in this genre of books, let's broadly call it personal development, personal growth, there tend to be two big categories.

I'm generalizing a little bit here, but I still think there's truth in the generalization. The first category is self-discipline. Wake up at 4 a.m., push, push, push, go crush yourself. Think like Gary Vee, just push. And the second category is- Gary Vee, Jocko Willink, David Goggins, like that. And there's a lot of people that need that. Oh, yeah. I'm being totally non-judgmental. I'm going to come back to that. So there's that. And then there's like, let's all hold hands and sing Kumbaya

and love each other and everything is self-love and let's take care of ourselves. And that's like the bookshelf in most bookstores in this area. And I think that true excellence requires not either or, but both and. So you need to take Goggins and Jocko and Gary Vee and Tara Brock and Sharon Salzberg

and you need to put them together. Because you talk to anybody that's highly fulfilled, that is living a good life, that is doing great things and that feels great about it. And they are badass MFers, but they're also so kind to themselves and they're able to hold this paradox.

And if listeners take away anything from this, it's like, it's not self-compassion or self-discipline, it's both and. And I actually argue that it's self-compassion that allows you to have such self-discipline because it's freaking hard. It's hard to wake up early. It's hard to push.

It's hard to fail. So if you don't have the self-compassion there, then you're never gonna last. Right, but if you're compassionate towards yourself and you're also very driven at the same time, when that alarm clock goes off at 4.30 or whenever Jocko Willink's alarm clock goes off, does the self-compassion say,

listen, you really need a good night's sleep if you wanna function at your best, or does the self-compassion say, listen, you really need a good night's sleep if you wanna function at your best. Or does the self-compassion say, I care about what I'm doing and I value who I am. So I'm gonna get out of bed and get out into the world and do my thing. How do you know the difference between those two things? Well, the concrete answer is I think it depends on the day.

Like if he's really tired and he needs to sleep, but I mean, that's wisdom. Which makes it hard to drill down into like actionable, like, you know, this is my book or my article or my listicle about how you do this. Yeah, I mean, yes. And I think the definition of wisdom is like you learn from experience.

So you test those things and you see how it makes you feel. I think that one way to think about this is related to one's core values. So this is a huge part about how I think about what it means to be excellent or to be successful. And core values are these qualities that we hold as very aspirational. So they are ourselves when we're at our best. Things like love, creativity, health, community, intellect. Those are just a few examples, right? And for each core value that you have,

it's really good to define it in super concrete terms. So you tell me a core value is love or authenticity or vulnerability. Well, what does that actually mean? And then what are practices day in and day out that you can show up to quote you, mood follows action, regardless of how you're feeling and just act on. And then that's how you live in alignment with your core values. So for Jocko, I don't know what his core values are, but presumably there's something in there if it's going to be around health on the one hand and around waking up early and crushing yourself on the other. And life is just a constant game of being very aware of those values,

perhaps the tension between them, choosing accordingly, seeing how you feel and updating as you go. Yeah, sure. The idea of being value-based is something James Clear talked about in Atomic Habits. It's addressed in detail in your book in sort of like, I don't know, two thirds, three quarters of the way in, you talk about this idea

of aligning your being with your actions because we can intellectualize like, oh, this is who I am and this is what's important to me. I understand that. But how do you then translate that into action? You have a couple of people that you use as examples, like coaching clients of yours, like Parker and Samantha that you talk about,

because I think that's the gap that most people relate to. Like, I think a lot of people, maybe they haven't written down their values on a piece of paper, but you know, it's up there. If pressed, they could probably tell you what they are. But the struggle is how do you translate that into something actionable so that when you're moving forward in the world

and behaving in a certain way, there's an alignment there. And when you are aligned, as you know, like you feel more integrated as a human being. When your actions are out of alignment with those values, you feel that cognitive dissonance and you don't feel quite yourself. I think writing it down actually is really helpful because you mentioned like that's the first step of doing, right? Because being is, oh, I kind of know my values. I have a sense of what they are. My coaching clients come to me and they say that. And then I ask them and we spend like

six hours talking about it because it's one thing to have a sense. It's another thing to make it concrete and real. And once you've gone through this process of making it real, well, then it gets a lot easier. So I'll give you an example from my own life of just like how concrete this gets, right? So one of my core values is love.

Okay, a lot of people probably say, yeah, love. Well, how on earth do you practice love? So I define it as being fully present for the people and things that I care about. Okay. So I have to define, well, who are the people I care about? What are the things I care about? Then I have that. How do I be fully present for them? about. Then I have that. How do I be fully present for them? Well, one way, for example, is at 6.15 p.m. every night, my phone and computer go out in the garage until my son is sleeping. Okay. So I went from this very high level, esoteric, aspirational thing, love, all the way down to even if I really want to get in that tweet or check my email or whatever it is, even if I really want to get in that tweet or check my email or whatever it is,

nope, my phone's got to be in the garage. To me, unless you get that concrete, it's very easy to fall into this trap of, yeah, I'm values-based, I know my values, but are you actually living them? I think that there's some truth to the saying, what gets measured gets managed. Why don't we try to harness that

for the things that we actually care most about? Right, yeah, I mean, that's great advice and good wisdom. I think where it gets tricky is when your values are in competition with each other, because that's generally what happens. Like perhaps another value of yours is to, you know, basically be this creator of great books that are helpful to other people?

And how do you reconcile that with being present for the people that you care about? If you wanna write the absolute best book to your maximum capabilities, that's gonna require time away from the people that you love, right? So when those two things are butting up against each other, I think that's where confusion ensues. And the only way through is just to pay super close attention as you go and then update.

Because at different times of your life, the answer in the moment to what do I do in this situation is going to be different. And I firmly believe that there's no such thing as a bad decision. The only wrong way to go about a decision is without being thoughtful, paying attention, and being aware. Because you can't know when you make that decision what the right thing is to do. But if you just do it on autopilot, that's when you get into trouble. Because if you're paying attention, then your mind-body system, the algorithm will update based on what you get out of it. But it's when we get on autopilot, when we get just swept up into the inertia of go, go, go, go,

whatever direction that it's pushing us in, that's when we can get ourselves into trouble. Sure, because we're acting impulsively and reactively without taking that moment to pause and reflect and calibrate our behavior against that value set or what is most important. And also in realizing that often it doesn't feel good in the moment to act in alignment with your values,

particularly around success and excellence, there's like a very addictive nature to those feelings of creating, of pushing, of being relevant. And you could argue to yourself, I know you've talked about this a lot on this podcast. You could argue to yourself, well, it's a wholesome endeavor I'm doing, but deep down inside, if you pay close attention,

like you can kind of discern, is there a compulsive nature to this pushing or am I doing this because I genuinely want to in the moment? It's both. Yes, it's always both. I got into a little thing with my wife this morning because she noticed that I'm not as grounded as I probably should be. And she's a pretty good mirror, you know, and she let

me know like, Hey, I don't think that you're really on your game right now because I've been working a little bit too hard and I'm, I'm juggling a bunch of stuff and she's right. You know, I'm, this is like, as long as I've been doing this, like I'm as guilty as anybody of falling prey to external reward systems and the habit trail of like, okay, what's next? I gotta keep this thing going and how is it doing and all of that.

And I lose sight of the values that are most important to me, which is, can I be present with my wife and my kids in the morning before I go off and do this thing with Brad today? Or am I obsessed with making sure I'm as prepared as possible and not present for the people that I care about? But that's it, so you're winning the game.

Like just having that trade-off and being aware of it and evaluating. But self-awareness, you know, in AA they say, self-awareness will avail you nothing. Like it's like, it's good that you understand that, but until you actually behave differently, you're still stuck in the negative cycle. Yes, and I think that you need the self-awareness

to be able to realize that, hey, these are two competing values and I'm feeling a real tension. And then that gives you the opportunity to kind of force yourself to maybe act in one way, even if in the moment moment the inertia is carrying you in the other way. Right.

The recurring kind of motif that anchors these principles around groundedness that recurs in the book is this idea of being a Redwood. So explain that, and then we can kind of get a little bit more granular into the kind of six aspects of what it means to pursue this. So I had the idea for the book, but I had no idea what I was gonna call it.

And I was out for a hike with a dear friend in Redwood Regional Park. This is back when I was living in Oakland, California. And it was a super gray windy day. And the overstory- It's always like that in Oakland. Right it was a super gray windy day. And the overstory- It's always like that in Oakland. Right, it's true. In the overstory of these trees,

they were just swaying back and forth. And I remember telling my friend Mario, you know, Mario Fraile. I remember telling Mario like, man, that's kind of like how I feel a lot of the time. He's like, me too. I'm like, yeah. And he had known about this book. He's a good friend. We brainstorm all the time. And I'm like, yeah, that's kind of what I'm getting to in the book. Heroic individualism and a lot of this. And I'm like, but look at the freaking core of those trees. It is just held firm to the ground.

It's really grounded. And that's when the light bulb went off. I'm like, huh, maybe I should call this grounded. Groundedness, get grounded, whatever. So then the writer intellectual brain in me is like, I want to learn more about redwoods. And the first thing I learned about redwoods to this day remains the most fascinating, which is that even the old growth redwoods that tower 200, 300 feet above the ground,

their root structures only run six to 12 feet deep, but they're intertwined. Bingo. They're laterally, they run for hundreds of feet and they're intertwined with all the other roots of other trees in the forest. So what holds a redwood up through really rough weather is not its trunk that you see. It's this deep stuff that's underground, but it's only as deep as it is lateral because it's held together by a community of other trees. And that then became the metaphor for groundedness is both this notion that when the weather is really rough, what kind of foundation do you have holding you to the ground? And these are often qualities that people don't see. So it's not the beautiful overstory

or even the big firm trunk, it's stuff that's invisible. And it's only as powerful as the trees that you're intertwined with, which of course is why community is arguably the most important of the six principles in the book. Right, standing in your strength, being unflappable, being neutral in the face of catastrophe

and conflict, et cetera. How do we achieve that, right? We achieve that through community. That's one of the pillars here, but let's break it down because I think it has a nice flow to it and how you think about this and write about this. All right, let's do it. Where do you wanna start?

Well, the first one is acceptance, which is like, that's also like a big recovery thing. You cannot, whatever you're going through, you cannot get better until you snap the denial and take an honest accounting of where you actually are, which is very scary. We have all these defense mechanisms and excuses that we tell ourselves

to allow ourselves to perpetuate whatever it is that we're doing. And we're very good at diluting ourselves as human beings. So acceptance, you can't really progress anywhere until you get real about the truth of your current situation, professionally, interpersonally, whatever it is. So talk to me about how you kind of arrived at this

and how you think about it. So I love how you teed that up. And the only thing that I would add to that context is back to heroic individualism being a cultural issue. Everything in the culture tells us not to accept reality. You know, you don't feel good. There's a substance for that. You can go buy some stuff. You can tweet, you can post. We're constantly kind of like living in this

world that allows us to distract ourselves from whatever the reality might be. But of course, if you can't accept where you are, then you're never going to get where you want to go, right? Because you'll be working on the thing that isn't actually the thing that you need to be working on because you're slightly deluded or you're refusing to see it clearly. Now, a lot of people hear acceptance and they think passive resignation or phoning it in or like, I'm not going to try. But that is not at all what acceptance means, at least not in the way that I conceptualize it. It is actually very empowering because it tells you here's exactly what's going on. Here's the situation I'm in.

And then that gives you the opportunity to take some sort of wise action to progress the situation or make it better. Right, and the more type A and driven you are, the more difficult it is for you to reckon with acceptance because you're the person who says, I do not accept this, I am working towards this, this is not okay, and I will not stop until this happens.

And you just plow forward with blinders on. And the idea of acceptance is akin to surrender. And that's absolutely the last thing that I'm going to even entertain. Yes, and I think that also what can be really helpful And that's absolutely the last thing that I'm going to even entertain. Yes. And I think that also what can be really helpful in less extreme context. So yeah, surrender in my case, right? Trusting Brooke with the knife and being like,

I don't know anything to get me out of here. I'm done, I'm lost. Hitting bottom as someone that is suffering with a substance abuse disorder. But also just surrendering to reality that, hey, I'm way too overworked, or I'm not living in alignment with my values, or this relationship isn't what I thought it would be, or I'm not giving enough into this relationship. It's really hard to get there. So a couple things that are super concrete and very helpful, and they all relate to this concept that's called

self-distancing. So we tend to fuse, I'm going to do this for the camera. So I'm not in front of the microphone here. We tend to fuse with our circumstances. And when you fuse with your circumstance, it's very hard to see it clearly. Meaning self-identify. Yes. Like instead of watching the action movie, we're in the action movie. And when things are going really well, you want to be in the action movie. That's flow. That's a peak experience. Like you don't want to be separate from your lived experience. But sometimes when things aren't going so great, or even if they are, it can be really helpful to create some space between your awareness of what's happening and what's happening itself. Right, you did a Twitter thread on this recently,

you know, a way of translating that is by saying, you know, rather than saying, I am depressed, saying I am somebody who is experiencing depression, right? Creating that little gap or that distance. So you disassociate or, you know, deconstruct the self-identification and then you're able to evaluate the situation that you're in and your behavior from a more objective perspective. Yes. And that is just one of many ways to self-distance. Another way that I think is super powerful is this notion

of pretending that a really close friend is in the same exact situation that you are and really visualizing it down to a T and then giving that friend advice. Right. And then you have to follow that advice. We're all much better at that than giving it to ourselves. Or imagine a wiser, older version of you looking back on current you.

What would wiser, older you tell you? So an extreme example of this, but I just freaking love this story is I was working with a woman who's a world-class runner, professional runner, multiple time Olympian. And she had a proximal high hamstring strain and she was trying to train through it. And she's like hobbling down the steps of her apartment to go do a mile repeat workout. So for the uninitiated, this is like a really hard workout. And I'm not coaching her on her running. I'm there to provide like mental skill support. And I remember saying, I'm going to call her Rachel for the sake of the story.

Rachel, imagine that your training partner was in this situation and you saw your training partner hobbling down the stairs, kind of grasping at her hamstring on the way out the door to do an interval workout. What would you tell her? And she's like, I tell her not to do the workout. Like she's just going to blow herself up. It's okay to go off the plan. I tell her it's better to miss a day or two now than it is to miss a month later two now than it is to miss a month later. Like, well then why on earth are you going to do this workout? Because you don't understand Brad. Well, no, I can make this work. Yes. And I think that when you give that advice

to someone, you very quickly see that like, you can't make it worse. Um, this isn't a coaching session, but in your situation with like feeling ungrounded and you being like, well, I have these competing values. It's really hard to know which one to prioritize. I think in that instance, if you could imagine yourself 30 years down the road, looking back on current you in that situation, it might give you some insight for at least for today, like, hey, here's the decision that I should make.

It's not bulletproof, but again, what it does is it takes this, I'm fused with the situation, I'm in an Olympic cycle, I need to train, it's on my plan this, I'm fused with the situation, I'm in an Olympic cycle, I need to train, it's on my plan. I'm so caught up in the storm and it puts you here so that you can watch the storm and then gives you a chance to make a more thoughtful decision.

On the subject of acceptance, the path towards acceptance is paved with pain, right? Pain is like the great catalyst for this awakened self-awareness. Often. The ability to develop acceptance around what's occurring. In your case, it was a much more severe case of OCD than I realized.

In my case, it was grappling with addiction and later in life with some health stuff. Short of experiencing some kind of extreme, you know, emotional experience or, you know, what we would call a bottom in recovery, you can grow into this level of acceptance around whatever it is you're doing. It's just harder, right? Like pain really makes it, as painful as it is,

it actually makes this whole process easier. Yes. It's like, it creates an opportunity or it helps that door whole process easier. It's like it creates an opportunity or it helps that door swing wide open. And I'm interested in the coaching that you do with people. Like they're probably not hitting a bottom. They're probably high performers who are just trying to hone their game a little bit more.

Maybe are experiencing some things that aren't working in their life, but they're not bottoming out on drugs and alcohol or having some suicidal ideation. So how do you coach somebody towards a greater level of acceptance who's not in that position? I mean, you just gave an example,

but what's another way that you would think about that? Well, another great example is just having a coach or in the case of someone that may not have access to that is other people that you can trust, right? Because if you can't see the world clearly, well, go ask someone that you trust and it's gotta be someone that is willing to tell you the real feedback, the real deal.

So it's just ways to get outside of yourself a little bit. And I do think that yes, deep pain can be a gateway to acceptance no one gets through life unscathed everyone experiences some pain and I'll tell you what, before I got sick with OCD I thought getting dumped by my college girlfriend was pain or having a book flop was pain

based on my reference point, that was real pain. So as a coach, when someone comes to you with what they're experiencing as pain, I have to be totally nonjudgmental because I might be thinking like, that's not real pain. But to that person, it is. So anytime that you meet a barrier, there's some suffering or there's some tension or sense of disconnect, I think is a pathway to explore, well, what's really going on here? What's the actual problem that we're trying to solve? Right. And reframing pain or whatever difficult experience you're enduring as an opportunity, like where is the learning experience in all of this to grow? Yeah. The only thing I'd say there is back to non-dual thinking, I wouldn't say as

an opportunity, but and an opportunity. Because pain sucks. And like, I'm not one to paint suffering as positive. Like suffering sucks. Like the less that you suffer, the better. And suffering exists and it's going to happen inevitably. So when it happens, yes, there's also an opportunity along with it. Right. Can you look at it as a teacher? Yeah. Both hands. Like this sucks and it's a teacher. And sometimes that has to happen on its own and it has to happen later. Because one of the worst things that you can do when you're in pain is put this another expectation on yourself. Like it has to be meaningful.

Yeah. That's a good point. And I did this. I'm a type A pusher. I remember, you know, I don't know, three, four months into my recovery being like, I don't feel like I'm growing from this and it has to be meaningful. And I don't think I'm ever gonna write about this

at the time. And again, I remember my therapist, Brooke, looking at me and being like, why the hell do you care? Like, this doesn't have to be meaningful. You have severe OCD. It just sucks. Can that be enough? And of course now, a couple of years later,

we're talking about it. I did write a book. It's super meaningful. It's probably, you know, shy of like falling in love and having a kid. It's by far, maybe even on the same level, most meaningful experience in my life. But when I was in it, utterly meaningless.

Right. And that's okay. The meaning isn't revealed immediately. It's only in time. Right. experience in my life, but when I was in it, utterly meaningless. And that's okay. The meaning isn't revealed immediately. It's only in time. The psychologist Daniel Gilbert talks about how we all have a psychological immune system and you can't fake it. So when you're really suffering, if you're like,

oh, I'm going to grow from this, your psychological immune system's like, bullshit. We just need to fight this and get rid of this pain. But then afterwards, like the real immune system, it gets stronger. Like an immune system doesn't get stronger as it's fighting the thing, it gets stronger after. So yeah, sometimes you can reframe pain as like a growth opportunity. And that might be the pain of a minor business failure or something in a friendship or a creative endeavor gone sour. but illness, death, loss, I often think that it's actually just okay

to meet it where it is and then let the meaning and growth happen on its own time. Which leads into the next pillar here, which is presence. Like, can you just be present with what is happening? Yes. In acceptance and present with it. I don't know if I can, it depends on the day. It's pretty tough, right? It's tough. And yet I'm gonna kind of get real and in the moment on this table. So I'm as present as I've been, I don't know, in the last week right right now what's not on this table?

What do you mean? There's no cell phone. There's no Twitter. If I need to write something down I've got a notebook and a pen. I think that we think of presence as this internal quality which it can be but it's also very external. So a huge part of presence

is putting yourself in situations where it's easy to be present. I often think that presence happens upstream of the moment that you want to be present. I know you recently had Johan Harian, it was a great episode, and he talked about telling someone not to itch, I think it was, if you pour itching sauce on them.

And the distractions in our life is the itching sauce. So back to core values, if one of your core values is presence or related to things that you care about, well, then you have to be pretty intentional about setting up the time and space and conditions to be present. Something else that I talk about all the time

with coaching clients that want to be more present is there's a reason that monks that achieve enlightenment, they're all in monasteries. Cultivating an environment that's conducive to being present. But what about the relationship between presence and groundedness, particularly in the context of like working

with very driven people? Presence feels like an indulgence. It feels like an obstacle in the context of like working with very driven people. Presence feels like an indulgence. It feels like an obstacle in the way of achieving whatever you need to get done on a particular day. So you have to sell the bill of goods as to why this is important. Time out. You said on a particular day, and that's the thing.

Deep presence and really really honing that is never going to get you the most work done on a particular day, ever. But it might over the course of a year or a decade or a career. And that's how you settle that score, right there. I'm super clear with my coaching clients. They come to me talking about efficiency and productivity and optimization. And I'm like, all these things are great. I want all these things too, but on what timescale? Because if I wanted to optimize over the next 24 hours, or even over the next week, let's say,

I would slam espresso and Red Bulls, I'd sleep four hours a night, and I would just bury myself. And that'd be super optimal, but not for a month, certainly not for a year. So I think that there's the zooming out and saying, hey, what timescale are we operating on? And there, the research is unequivocal. If you're talking about excellence or success over the long haul, being present for the work that actually matters is perhaps the most important variable that you can do to set yourself up for that success. Right. We don't intuitively think about these horizons in decade long chunks. We think about the next quarterly earnings or, you know, the next six months or perhaps the next year. But if you really want to build sustainability, which is what is at the core of what this is all

about, like how do you want to operate to the best of your ability for the longest period of time? You have to broaden that window, right? And I've had to learn this, like I just wanna grind and grind and grind. And I've been doing this podcast for almost 10 years. Became pretty clear like two years ago, like I'm not gonna make it. Like I have to figure out a different way of doing this

so that I can maintain my joy for it and my presence when I'm sitting with guests and my enthusiasm for consuming all of their wisdom and material and being able to deliver on the best experience, conversational experience that I can. I can't sustain it the way I was doing it. So now I take a month off every year, I've hired a team and like I've had to learn how to,

you know, overcome this perfectionism and control impulses. And those were not easy lessons for me. And I'm not great at them every day either, but it was like a necessity, I think, in order to do that, which gets into, we're sort of moving out of presence and more into the next thing, which is patience. And I think built into patience is this idea of looking at things on a longer timeframe.

Yeah, real quick, I jotted a note down. Did you, during that period, and we don't have to name guests, but did you ever find yourself resenting the fact that you had to come in and talk to someone? It never got that bad, but I was moving in that direction. And I really never wanted to feel that way. And I realized that if I didn't change some things

that I was quickly gonna be that person. And obviously that's at odds with the experience that I'm trying to cultivate and create. I asked that because that emotion is often in my coaching clients, a game changer for helping people realize that their work style is too frenetic and frantic and too, quote unquote, optimized on short timescales,

is people come to resent work that they once loved. And the only thing that's changed about the work is that when they started doing it, they were a team of one and they had a really low bar and they spent most of their day deep in the creative work. And now suddenly they started doing it, they were a team of one and they had a really low bar and they spent most of their day deep in the creative work. Now suddenly they're running meetings and they're leading teams and that deep focus present work has gone away

and they start to resent their job. The number one thing to help those people are to help them reclaim those moments of presence. I'll say one more thing on this before moving on to patience because I think it's a very important coaching insight. That is that unequivocally you will fail if you just say, I want to be more present. Even if you try to work top down, you'll likely fail.

To say, I need to be present all the time, it's never going to work, there's too many distractions. With clients, I always have folks work bottom up. That means just start with two hours a week. So schedule ahead of time, two one-hour blocks where you know what you're going to do during that period. So when it rolls around, you don't just pull up your email. And just start there.

And then after two weeks, try an hour and a half. And I had this one client who came to me because of feeling resentment and just like coming to hate a job that she loved. And at first I'm like, yeah, maybe it's the job actually. And she needs to move on. But it quickly became clear that she actually loved the work.

She just didn't love how she was running around frantically. And she said there's no way she could be present. She's high up. She runs this huge team. She's got kids, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we just started with an hour a day. And slowly but surely, she proved to herself that the world wasn't going to end if for an hour a day, she put everything away and worked. And a year into our coaching relationship, this is a true story. And I try to practice what I preach. So I have boundaries around when I coach.

It's like certain days, certain times. And I went to try to work with her executive assistant to get a coaching slot. And the person's like, no, like, sorry, like Kate can't meet with you then. Her afternoons are all blocked off. Her window and your window. So she went from impossible to be present at a company with over a thousand people to three and a half to four hours a day. But if I would have told her that at the beginning, she would have fired me. And I think the same is true with ourselves. Even if you don't have a coach individually, if you tell yourself, oh, I'm going to be present for four hours and you fail, it's like a diet. It's like anything. You're off the wagon. It's hard to get back on. So I think starting really small, and again, it's a common theme in this book and I think this is the coach in me

is that you take something that's really noble and aspirational, but for it to work, you've gotta get super concrete and start at a level that is like in the weeds. So I just wanted to add that in. Yeah, I think in furtherance of that idea is the notion of just being really granular. Yes, you're gonna cultivate an environment

that's conducive to you being present, but what does presence actually look like? In sobriety, it's talked about in the context of what is the next right action? Like if you're just fully present with yourself, meaning how do you overcome the overwhelm of all these different competing stressors that are in our mind?

Oh, I have to do that. I gotta do that. How am I gonna solve that problem? Okay, what's the next right action? What is the one thing I can do right now? I will just do that thing, not worry about anything else because truly all we can do is one thing at a time.

How can we show up 100% for that one thing and move to the next thing? Yup, and just pay close attention along the way because like the attention, that's the feedback mechanism. Because I think that our like deeper, wiser, removed selves know what's good for us. So I know that I feel so much better after a day spent writing and reading

than a day on social media. Right, but then you will then construct a million distractions to ultimately prevent you from doing that thing. And it's like, and then you beat yourself up. Why am I doing this? I know better. I actually wrote a book about how to not do this.

And here I am doing it. I'm a piece of shit. But that's where it's gotta get really concrete. So like, what does it look like? It looks like taking the apps off your phone. I mean, it's all of these very, these concrete practices. And remembering again, like behavioral activation that you don't have to feel like

you wanna do something to do it. You often just have to do the thing. All right, talk to me about the patience piece. Yeah, we were talking about this offline a little bit before we started recording. Cause I think it just occurred to me walking in and seeing you, you're like the perfect example of this in many ways.

I don't feel that way. Yeah? Yeah. All right, well. I'm pretty impatient on the moment to moment basis. But over the long haul. So the study that we were joking about that's in this chapter of the book

was performed by researchers at MIT and Northwestern. And they looked at successful entrepreneurs judged by company valuation and if companies IPO'd the IPO price. And what they found to everyone's surprise is that the peak age for a successful startup founder is 45, which flies in the face of like, you know, be young.

Super pumped, the dropout, we crashed, all of these narratives where these very young people are achieving crazy heights of success at a very young age. Yes. And the reason for that, researchers speculate, is that when you're 45, well, you failed a couple of times, you've got some wisdom behind you

and you can put that to bear at what you're doing. The way that I like to think about this is there's these two curves that I think apply to anything that you're doing, broadly speaking. One is what I call quickness, cleverness, raw talent, intelligence. I think a cognitive scientist would call this fluid intelligence.

You're quick, you're sharp on your feet. If you're an athlete, you're physically as fit as you're going to be. That curve declines as we age. There's this other curve, which is wisdom. Wisdom increases as we age. But there's this other curve, which is wisdom. And wisdom increases as we age. And I think every pursuit has a meeting point of these curves. And the slopes are different, right? And if you're running the 100 meter dash,

the wisdom curve is not as important as the raw talent curve. Whereas if you're doing an ultra marathon, the wisdom curve and the ability to problem solve and have pattern recognition is super important. And in intellectual pursuits, we often overvalue the quickness curve and undervalue the wisdom curve, which I think is why that study was so surprising. We assume that people peak 25 to 30, 35

when they're super fresh and quick on their feet, but we discount that wisdom curve. We got into that because we were talking about that, but that's one example where, again, you zoom out. Do you want to be efficient today or do you want to be efficient over the long haul? What does that mean? It's a real tension. In my own work, I'm constantly asking myself,

in the moment, I think even when we were talking about coming on to do the show, I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to write a book that's better than this. I can be really futile, but it's like, no, if I'm not an idiot, I will, because I'm gonna get wiser. Hopefully if I like live my life and experience the world. So the patience to hold back, knowing that yes, you're building up that curve and it goes totally against this cultural narrative of you have to be young.

Right, you've written about Darwin and we all think that he just, you know, went down to the Galapagos and just figured it all out. Right. You've written about Darwin and we all think that he just, you know, went down to the Galapagos and just figured it all out. Right, 25 years. In truth, that was, yeah, 25 years for him

to truly figure it out. And contrasted him, or not contrasted, well, I guess compared and contrasted him with another one of these overnight breakthroughs, Ta-Nehisi Coates.

I mean, I was surprised to learn that- He'd been writing for a long time. Dude, he'd been writing for 15 years. No one knew about him, like could hardly afford food and rent. And then suddenly he's this breakthrough. And he's got this beautiful quote where he's like, I'm not a breakthrough. Like I was pounding that stone for 15 years. Right. Which is the case, of course, with every overnight success that we see, there's a deeper story that tells the truth about the hard, well-trodden path to get to that place.

And I think the patience piece is complicated by external social factors. Like we're all in this rat race where we think if we take a day off, we're falling behind. And if we fall behind, we'll never be able to catch up. And then the whole game is over with. Like the insanity of that, you know, habit trail that we're all on.

When in truth, like, that's why I put that tweet out that I put out that, you know, everyone seemed to like that's pinned on my thing that life's short, but it's actually long. Steven Pressfield talked about this on the podcast. Like, it's kind of long, you know, you need to go out and have lots of different experiences. And like David Epstein talks about in range,

try many, many, many things, most of which you'll probably be shitty at, but ultimately you'll find that thing that lights you up. And then you'll realize by pursuing that, that all those other experiences find a way to contribute to, you know to deepening your enrichment and whatever thing is exciting you. And then suddenly you're the one person

who can do this very specific thing because of all these rich experiences that you've had while you were experiencing them, not knowing that they were contributing to you becoming this kind of unique actualized person. Yeah, there's a mindset tool that I just fricking love in the book about D.W. Winnicott, the psychoanalyst from the mid 20th century.

And I'm a huge fan of Winnicott's work in parenting. And his whole parenting philosophy is what he called the good enough mother. And I'm gonna update it for today's time. I'm gonna he called the good enough mother. I'm going to update it for today's time. I'm going to call it the good enough parent. Long before helicopter parenting was a thing, Winnicott observed that there's two extremes of parenting. There's the parents that meet a child's every need

all the time and hover, and then there's parents that check out and neglect the child. Both of those lead to bad outcomes. The ideal parent, Winnicott said, is the good enough parent. He defined the good enough parent as someone that creates a space for their kid to unfold. When their kid steps off that path or veers too far out of that space, they gently nudge them back into it. I remember reading that as I was working on this

book and thinking like, A, that's our new mantra for parenting in our household is like, let's just be good enough. And B, what if we adopted that mindset with our own selves and the projects in our lives? So what would it look like to think of ourselves not as constantly needing to intervene and make everything happen, but to provide a space for our pursuits to unfold on their own. So how can we be good enough to ourselves? How can we take that mindset and apply it to our own pursuits? How's that working?

I was going to say, for me, it's actually working pretty well. I think there's real power in giving something a language because then you can name it and make it real and wrestle with it. So when I catch myself getting into that need to make things happen mode, I just ask myself, am I hovering? Am I being a helicopter parent for my next book, for my podcast, for my newsletter, whatever it is,

and what would it look like to be good enough? And sometimes the answer is no, you need to push. You need to make things happen. But often that pause gives me a chance to actually step back and say, you know, this is going to work itself out, or I need to give this a little bit more time and space. For us as creatives, I think that this is really helpful. I think it's even more helpful for people that work in the traditional workplace because most people, at least in my experience coaching, they get into these executive roles because they were phenomenal at making things happen. That's how they get noticed. They get work done,

especially in big organizations. It's like, oh, you're the person that can actually get the work done. So then you get promoted, you get promoted. Now suddenly you have a team of a thousand people under you. Guess what? That sensibility of making everything happen is not going to work. You've got to learn to step back and let things happen. And the whole job becomes like the conductor of an orchestra or the good enough parent. You're just kind of defining the space and keeping everyone in it. And so many people hit this wall where they continue to try to make things happen when they need to step back and play that role. Well, also the skillset changes. They go from somebody who is a doer and making stuff happen

into this role as being a manager, which requires some emotional intelligence and some background in psychology to figure out how to motivate people and get them to do their best work and all of that. Like it's a completely different skill set. And it requires a lot of confidence and security because the worst managers are super insecure and they think they always need to be doing stuff. No different than probably a helicopter parent that is insecure that their kid's not going to turn out great if they don't do everything.

Or an individual working on a project. Generally, overdoing something is a sign of our own insecurity. It's the athlete that in their taper has to go out and run a really hard workout to prove to herself that she's still fit. That's born out of insecurity. I think that also part of being a good manager is having the security to know that, hey, there's no visible, observable, concrete thing

I necessarily need to do. I just need to, again, define that space and then hold it for my team to do their thing. And that's where just like, just the word, like be good enough has been so powerful with clients cause it serves as this little cue to step back and ask themselves like, what are we really trying to do here?

One of the challenges with patients, if you're somebody who is ambitious, you're inevitably going to be comparing your trajectory to other people, right? And here's Brad, who's telling you, slow it down a little bit, be present, be patient. Life is long. Don't worry about what those other people are doing.

It's easier to say that than to actually embody that and practice that. So how do you help people disconnect from that kind of external motivation or pressure of comparing yourself to others? Back to the core values. And so all of these things are entangled, right? So then you go look at your core values

and how you define them and how you practice them and just say like, well, what would living my core values be in this moment? Then you just do it. Behavioral activation. In that moment, you probably don't feel like you should slow down. You probably feel like you should speed up. But I think the core value is that becomes your internal dashboard.

Ideally, you're not spending as much time comparing yourself to everyone else. You're spending more time comparing yourself against your core values and measuring yourself that way and then letting that guide your actions and your behaviors. It's a tough shift. We moved from Northern California, big city, airport, tons of opportunities to talk about books and sell books

and build a coaching practice to a small mountain town in Western North Carolina. And it was tough. And that was 100% a values-based decision. But in the moment, that move was like, what am I doing? I'm not going to sell as many books. The inertia of the moment and speed did not make sense,

but from a values perspective, it made sense. And it didn't feel great making that decision, but now that we've done it, it actually feels really good. But there's a real trade-off. Would I be, quote-unquote, more successful externally if I still lived in the Bay Area? Maybe, probably at this young age. But would I be successfully against my internal dashboard? Probably not. Right, well, the counter argument would be that by living in a smaller town, there's less distractions.

So the actual work of writing the books and the frequency of these books coming out is gonna be enhanced. And ultimately that's the larger lever to your success. If you're in Oakland, maybe you can go on more podcasts, maybe you can talk about it a little bit more and be more engaged with media and promotion. But ultimately over the long run,

the thing that matters most is the quality of the work and creating an environment that's conducive to that is the key thing that aligns the values with the actual like by-product of your actions. 100%, and you said long run like two times in that sentence. Because again, it's patience, it's playing the long game, but I didn't get there like out of this esoteric value.

I got there because my wife and I said, what do we care about? We care about nature, we care about family, we care about love. What would it look like to practice those things in Oakland versus in a smaller town? And it was a very somewhat rational decision that now has this huge emotional benefit, which is I feel like I can play the long game. You'd think I'd get more writing done, but I walk out the door into trails with my German shepherd. If anything, I'm a professional walker now.

Do a lot of long walks. Without any audio, just solo? It depends. I go back and forth. Sometimes I'll listen to your podcast because I don't really commute. So it is my time if I'm gonna listen to a podcast. Sometimes I'll listen to like Vivaldi or classical music.

I listen to Dispatch who I was so shocked that you hadn't heard of. I'm an old man, Brad, come on, give me a break. Those guys are old. I listened to REM and Radiohead and like a couple other bands and that's like it. Yeah. I'm stuck in my ways. Yeah, Dispatch came a little bit later, but not much.

I bet those guys are like 49. You know, they're peaking right now. Their songs are so wise. You'll check them out. I'll check them out. But yeah out so yes, it all loops back all these things are integrated and in that case the patience and the core values go hand in hand but if you don't have that internal dashboard

then you're going to be sucked up into the rat race into measurement, into speed and it's not either or most people live in both these worlds every day, maybe even every hour. So the game is just trying to, again, realize when you're in the world that you don't wanna be in and then have some tools

to get you back on the path. One of those tools being the practice of vulnerability. We talked earlier about you, you're writing about your OCD and how important engaging in that vulnerability has been in your journey and in your process. But why is this like one of the core principles of groundedness?

Well, I don't think that you can truly be strong unless you are vulnerable. And Brene Brown writes beautifully about vulnerability, and in particular, the benefits of connecting with other people. So there's no point of me talking about that. Y'all could just go listen to read Brene Brown. Something that she doesn't speak about as frequently is the benefits of being vulnerable with yourself for your ability to trust yourself. And that is why vulnerability makes you stronger.

If you have parts of yourself that you don't explore, that you're scared to explore, that you kind of know are there, but you don't go there, those parts of yourself tend to creep up and uproot you to stick to the groundedness metaphor. There's this ancient Greek myth that I've just love about the God Pan. And Pan lived just outside of the village boundaries. And every once in a while, people would be out hunting or foraging and they'd get lost and they'd venture into the terrain of Pan. And then they'd see Pan. And he was so terrifying that as they ran away, and he was so terrifying that as they ran away, they would freeze out of fear and die.

Whereas in the myth, a few courageous villagers deliberately ventured out to go see Pan. And to the people that went to see him, Pan bestowed upon them wisdom, compassion, and strength. And I read that as just a beautiful metaphor for vulnerability. So we all have our pants. These are our cracks, the parts of us that make us fragile. If we try to avoid them, eventually we're going to stumble into them

and it's going to be ugly. There's a lot of projection that happens too, I think. Whereas if we can face them, sometimes with the help of other people, a therapist, a coach, more often than not, a friend, community members, family, it actually makes us stronger because it's very hard to trust all of yourself

unless you fully know all of yourself. Right, but short of some kind of crisis, it's easier to just live another day compartmentalizing all of those things and not look at those things rather than continue to peel back the layer and peel back the layer. And it's like, is this ever gonna end?

There's no end to the amount of stuff that's down there waiting to be excavated, Brad. It's exhausting. Yes, and it's back to both and. Did you take improv classes? No, why is that a thing? Yes, and is like the core of improv. Yeah, you do back to both and. Yes and. Did you take improv classes? No, why is that a thing? Yes and is like the core of improv. Yeah, you do yes and to everything.

Oh, I love it. Never say no when you get a prompt. And I've noticed you in this practice of yes and, which is good for conversation. Yeah, I never knew it was an improv thing. I always think of it, it's non-dual thinking because I'm a firm believer that like very few things are either or,

they tend to be both and, or like in this context versus that. How do you survive Twitter with that ideology? I schedule a lot of my tweets. I say that as a joke, like, you know, somebody who appreciates nuance and can see, you know, the complexities of everything. The Twitter thread. Because Twitter's like your main thing.

Yeah, the Twitter thread function is nice now. Like I do a lot more threads where I actually explain things. And Twitter is just, I mean, I'm being raw. I probably shouldn't say this. Like Twitter is just a gateway to have people hopefully discover my books because like that's where I really have the time

and space to explore this. But a lot of people live there. so that's where I meet them. But to your point about how to do all of this, non-dual. If you were to spend your whole day just peeling back that layer and exploring your own mortality and just all these things that are really hard, you'd be like one of these existentialists that ends up quite miserable. But totally denying those things also I don't think is a ticket to a rich and textured life

and you can't run away from them forever anyways. Eventually they catch up to you. So it's about knowing them without harping on them. And I think that most people, by trying not to know them, again, at some point, like you come head to head with them and that's when it becomes really hard to detach. Yeah, the war that I wage is understanding these principles and I practice vulnerability

and I understand how that makes you more able to connect with other people. Like, I think there's this notion like, oh, I'll make friends by, you know, presenting the best version of myself and those people will be impressed and they'll invite me into their friend group when of course it's the opposite.

It's only when you're honest and you can disarm people with your level of like candor and self-reflection. That's really the glue, I think. And I think I'm pretty good at that. But I think what I do is I fall into this pattern of tomorrow. Like I know that, like I gotta get through today. I know all this grounded in stuff,

but like I got 10 things I gotta get through. So I just can't like take that moment to do that other thing that I know is good for me. And that's just gonna have to wait for another day. And then that day becomes two days, becomes three days. Yeah, I mean, you say this on all your podcasts, man. Like you just have to do it. So it's back to like scheduling it, owning it, not waiting,

not needing to feel motivated to do it. There might never be a good time, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't put it on your calendar and do it. And in this case, I don't know what that might be. It might be structured contemplation. It might be a bi-weekly session with a therapist. It might be scheduling time with a close friend to just dive deep. I think that you sell yourself short. I think that you get a lot of that in your work because you get to have these conversations right now.

Like what are at least 70% of your podcast shows if not peeling back those layers? Well, yeah, they're self-serving in that regard. Right, so you built it into your life. So you do do it. Right, I do. and it is true. Like last night I had a therapy group meeting that I have here every Monday night with a bunch of dudes,

but that means that I'm up later and I don't get as much sleep. And then today, because I had that last night, I wasn't as prepared to talk to you today. So I made the decision to block out the morning to make sure I was optimally prepared to talk to you today. So I made the decision to block out the morning to make sure I was optimally prepared to talk to you, which meant that I didn't train today. So there's so many moving pieces.

And for me, it's about just being okay with the fact that like, I'm not gonna get every piece in the right place every single day. And that's okay. And not beat myself, like transcend that default setting that is telling me that I failed because I didn't do these three things that I would have preferred to have done

because I had these other competing values that took precedence on this particular day. So what you just said to me is a beautiful and very concrete example of the self-compassion and self-discipline. Because it takes a lot of self-discipline to do what you do. But if you didn't have that self-compassion too,

you'd burn out. Like imagine if you went into this and I'm sure there's still a part of you. If it's like, damn it, Rich, like you're off your schedule, you didn't train, whatever. I was like, oh, I should have just woken up earlier and made sure I got my training in.

And then I could have also done this. And, but then I have done that also, but then I'm rushing from one thing to the next. And yeah, I can check all those boxes, but I'm less present for all of those things. And I'm actually less fulfilled and happy because it's always about, you know, being on this ticking clock

and making sure that I get from point A to point B on time. Yeah, another thing that I just noticed, and again, I know we're not coaching here, is the word should is always a flag for me. I say that a lot. Yeah. I know you talk about that, so explain that. Yeah, don't should all over yourself.

I constantly do that. When you catch yourself shoulding, ask yourself, can you replace it with a wish or a want? And if the answer is no, then maybe you shouldn't do that thing. And if the answer is no, then maybe you shouldn't do that thing. And if the answer is yes, then even that softens the tone. So I wish I would have been able to exercise. It's not nearly as judgmental.

There's a parable in Buddhism about the second arrow. I love this too. I mean, I love all these parables because there's so much truth in them. And it goes like this. The first arrow is something that we can't control and it can be internal or external. I used to think it was just external, but OCD will teach you that you cannot really control your thoughts. So you could have an intrusive thought, your schedule could get away from you, whatever it is. And the first arrow hurts, it sucks. But the second arrow, the third arrow, the fourth arrow, all those additional arrows are your judgments about those things, your repression of those things, you're shooting on yourself. And those arrows often hurt worse than the first arrow.

Right. It's the compound interest of negativity. Yes. Right. Like you make the mistake and then you beat yourself up for making the mistake. So you've just made a second mistake. Yes. And you can't be perfect. Again, though, non-dual. Like it doesn't mean that you should say, well, to hell with it all, or let's all just hold hands and sing Kumbaya.

It means that let's hold hands and sing Kumbaya and accept that we're not perfect. And let's identify things that matter for us and try to get better and strive. A lot of mid-century George Leonard, before him, Alan Watts, these self-fashioned gurus and philosophers of the good life,

many of whom had a lot of good things to say, they often talked about the wisdom of insecurity. That's an Alan Watts term in particular. And just how accepting that you're not perfect and being okay with that is actually the key to getting better. Because if you constantly hold yourself to this bar of perfect, you're going to just get in your own way all the time. So that's another example of this non-dual thinking. You can be both good enough and get better. You can be both loving to yourself and really hard on yourself.

On the subject of vulnerability, I'm just putting myself in the shoes of, let's say an executive at a corporation and he is listening to this or she is listening to this and thinking, okay, I understand that, but I can't show vulnerability in the workplace. That's gonna be the death knell. My whole thing is to make sure

that everybody understands that I'm in charge, I've got everything under control and that's how we push this train forward. That's a really tricky situation. And I'm sure you hear that a lot. Yeah, it's a common one. And the coaching tool that I use there is ask yourself what you really want to say

and then say something as close to that as possible. There's a story here. One of my first coaching clients was a woman who in the book I called Donna, not her real name. She called herself the accidental executive. So she had no goal of being an executive. And sure enough, there she found herself in the number three position at a multinational organization

with over 50,000 employees. And she was the only woman on the 20th floor of headquarters and the only black person. So she called herself the double only, and she had so much imposter syndrome and it was a real challenge for her. And also probably thinking that she doesn't have the liberty of being able to make mistakes. Bingo, because of being the double lonely. So we talked about this. And she particularly froze up

when she was on the corporate roadshow. So overseas, giving talks about, hey, here's the vision, here's the strategy, here's how we're gonna do it. She got really panicked. She felt like she wasn't herself on stage. So for a while, we tried just having her pretend that she was performing, but that didn't work for her. She's like, but that's not me. I'm

a genuine person. I'm like, what do you really want to say? And she looked at me, she's like, what I really want to say is I have no idea how I got here. I'm utterly overwhelmed and this is crazy. Why don't you just say that? And to your point, she's like, I can't say that. These people like we're a publicly traded company. Like that'll be on the cover of the Wall Street Journal. Like, I don't know how I got here. But then I asked her, cause she,

this was after my essay on OCD. I'm like, well, you read what I wrote, right? That was all over the place. She's like, yeah. I'm like, well, how did that make you feel about me? She's like, it's actually like part of the reason I wanted to work with you. I'm like, well, I clearly don't have it all together. Why would you want to work with me? I'm a mess. She's like, no, you're a human. And I'm like, all right. So

you can't say that you have no idea what's going on, but maybe you can get close to that. So ultimately, she ended up going on stage and she started to open up these talks by saying that I feel like an accidental executive. Sometimes I walk onto a stage like this and I'm in awe of how I got here. And it's a really challenging job and I'm doing the best that I can. And that's why it's so important that I need all of your help and engage in the company and this, that, and the other. And then everybody fell in love with her. Everybody fell in love with her.

The reviews after the talks skyrocketed. And most important is she felt like herself. So that's all it took because she knew she was bullshitting. When she went up there all corporate, like these are the vision and values. And I don't know what I'm talking about. And I think that that's another truth is that so many of us are making it up as we go.

In a way we all are. Some of us are just making it up with a little bit more experience and expertise than others. So it's a long-winded answer to your question of, for the person that's in that setting, I think the heuristic is ask yourself what you really want to say and then say as close to that as you're comfortable with.

Yeah, it has to be gauged in accordance with the scenario because the unhealthy extreme of this is either the TMI. Or performative vulnerability, which is a huge thing. That's the other thing, the performative vulnerability, which we see a lot of, which is inauthentic vulnerability for the purpose of gaming the system. Correct, invulnerability, like that's the, I read a Brene Brown book and I know that more people

will like me if I'm vulnerable. Right. Or even worse, I'll get more followers on social media. Marketing strategy. I get asked that question sometimes and the way that I like to think about it in my own life is vulnerability should very rarely feel good in the moment, especially if it's with other people. Earlier when you asked about my OCDCD my brain is always going through this how deep should I go

should I talk about the knife thing I really don't like talking about that and that doesn't feel good that was not a fun part of this conversation for me to me that's the essence of vulnerability if I want to live that value it shouldn't feel good whereas if I'm all calculating, I'm like, oh, like that's going to make,

I don't know, people are going to, a lot of people probably tune out at that point. Like this guy's nuts. But I think that that's like, that for me is the barometer. If you are doing vulnerability as a means to an end, or like you're scheming, then you're probably actually doing yourself

more harm than good. At some point, if you're compelled to tell that story tons of times, because you're doing lots of media and podcasts, you'll probably end up in this place where I found myself, which is telling the same story again, and always trying to be as honest as possible

and perhaps find a different way into it or a different version of it or angle of it. But I found myself telling a story that's true and then wondering like, did that really happen? Because you end up disassociating with it because you've told it so many times. And then you're like, and it doesn't have that same, you don't feel like it's vulnerability

because it's so rote at that point. And then it feels rehearsed and almost flat. And I'm like, did that even happen? Or am I just remembering this? Like, what is the truth behind this? So then it becomes an exercise of like going deeper into it and trying to find a way to continue to stay emotionally connected with that thing

that was so formative and kind of, you know, catalyzing the journey that you've been on. And just painful. Yeah. And I think that's it. Like if it feels, and I don't, because most podcasts don't go as beautifully deep as yours. And I genuinely mean that. You look at the podcasts I've been on, they're shorter.

I tend not to be able to go deep because the last thing I want to do is feel compressed for time. So I'm fortunate that in a conversation like this, I feel like I have the time to. but ultimately like, it's just a memory of like a lot of pain. And I think healthy healing is, there's gotta be some distance between how painful that was. Cause otherwise it'd be hard to get through the day. Sure. So I also think that's probably a sign of like good recovery is intellectualizing it enough, but not so much that now it's just this thing

that you're talking about. Right. Let's talk about the community piece for a little bit, the roots that run laterally. I would imagine in your coaching practice, there's a bit of a hurdle here because the type A driven person is also likely to be the control freak, or I'm the only one who knows how to do it this way. Everybody just needs to listen to me and the world will be perfect and I can form it in my image. Sound like my four-year-old. Yeah, right.

I sound like me, you know. Yeah. Yeah, so where to start with community? I think the first thing is community is not efficient. It is not quote unquote optimal or productive in the short term because building community is slow. It takes time. And the best, deepest, most nourishing communities

are not those that are a means to an end. They're ends in and of themselves. I think that's really important. There's building community because knowing these people is going to help you launch your product or fund your business. Then there's just building community for the sake of building community. What the research unequivocally shows is that on our deathbeds, no one looks back

and says, it's the gold medal or it was the promotion or regional vice president. is that on our deathbeds, no one looks back and says, oh, it's the gold medal, or it was the promotion or regional vice president. Everybody looks back and they talk about the relationships they made along the way. I'm going to give the answer for people that are on this wavelength and then the answer for people that might be more like me and you, which are like, well, I need to be efficient,

I need to be productive. I need to push. So for those that don't, I think you're already in a good spot in terms of community. It's just make that a goal. Build community. Put yourself out there. Take the time to do that. Maybe we'll talk a little bit about how. For people like you and I, I think it's so important

that when you pick a goal, the steps that you have to get there should involve building community. So like you bake it into your work. Again, clearly you've done that with this podcast. But try to make more and more things a team game or a game of relationships or where you're building a community as a part of this pursuit that you have or this passion that you have. But ultimately, the best community that I have is my actual neighbors and my neighborhood. And I think some of this is probably the privilege of living in an actual neighborhood in this small town, but no one knows who I am.

It's very easy for me, like you. Oh, I'm this intellectual person and I need people like Rich that I can talk about these topics with. Brandy and Evan next door, they don't really care. They don't even know that I do this. So there is zero means to an end, but there's something that is just so viscerally grounding about being in a space and knowing your neighbors

and knowing the gossip and knowing the gossip and knowing that you all have each other's back if something were to happen and having the dogs play in the backyard. These small things that help us to feel like this world isn't so big and we're not so insignificant, which if you live in the internet

is how you feel all the time, because it's just infinity. Whereas if you have a physical community, then it becomes small, it becomes manageable. So a homework assignment that I have for a lot of coaching clients and they don't like it is like really try to get involved locally. Go to a city council meeting. I mean, maybe not politically as a first step, but you get my point. Like go to the farmer's market, like start having these routines. If you work from home and you're creative, like pick two cafes and work at them.

And I used to be like this when I was like way back pre-OCD in my like too productive mode. I remember distinctly like working on my first book. And when I first started writing for Outside, I was in my twenties, I was hungry. I thought I had to push. I wouldn't want to leave my apartment because the commute to the cafe would take 10 minutes and I might lose my train of thought. That's where I was at. I'm with you on that. And now it's like, no. You go to that cafe,

you learn the barista's name. Because again, efficiency today, bust out the piece. Long haul efficiency productivity is being happy, feeling grounded. And there's something really nice about walking into a coffee shop and nodding and everyone knows you. Right. So again, it's ultimately about understanding what's in your best interest long-term and being willing or having the kind of emotional fortitude to delay or- And short-term though. Or set aside the short-term gain. But it's also-

You know what I mean? Yeah, but it's also short-term because I think it's- Well, because you're happier throughout your day and your life is more rich. Bingo. And I think like we're such creatures of our surroundings. So another example on community that definitely, my guess will resonate for listeners

that spend a lot of time on the internet and other creatives out there. When I do not do a good job prioritizing community, that is when I am most apt to feel insecure about myself as an author and as a person on the internet. That is when I will check the sales rank of my book. That is when I will tweet more often to try to get more followers. I will do all of these things to try to feel relevant against infinity.

When I am engaging in my community, I find that the urge to do that, the thought to do that, the feeling like I need to, it's zero. It's not important. So you do feel better in the short term, I think, at least I do. And I know. I've gotten really good at paying attention. So now when I catch myself searching for that relevance on the internet, it simply means I look at my calendar, I look what I did the last two weeks. It's like, oh, I was supposed to train with Tony on Saturday, but I kind of flaked out on him because I knew I only had 45 minutes

because I wanted to write this thing before Theo goes to soccer. It's like, no, the thing can wait. Because now I'm sitting there on Twitter hoping that people like the thing because I'm not feeling relevant because I didn't make time for the community. Right. Talk to me about the movement piece.

Yeah, I mean, you talk to me, you know it better than anyone. I mean, you know, I don't, you know, it's like, listen, we're on the same page here. We're on the same page here. I can't be a happy, functional, productive human being unless I'm moving my body on the regular. Yeah, so this was a really interesting conversation

with my editor who I loved, which is movement at first felt disconnected from the other principles in these book, at least to a lot of people at my publisher, not to me. Because why? Because these other things are these like very age old psychological principles. And this is a perfect way into movement.

Because most people, you and I hear movement, and we think probably more psychology than physiology. Sure. But most people hear movement and they think exercise. They think, what does exercise have to do with vulnerability or patience or community? And the argument that I made to them and then that I make in the book is it actually has everything

to do with these other attributes. So Rene Descartes separated the mind and body and that was a huge mistake and our thinking is still very much in this bifurcated mind-body thinking. When in fact, the latest research shows that we are not a mind or body. We're not even a mind and body.

We're a mind-body system. And it would be intellectually dishonest for me to talk about all these other principles and tools and not include movement. Because before I do any of the other work with my coaching clients, I help them develop a movement practice if they don't have one.

And a movement practice doesn't need to be cycling or swimming or CrossFit. It can be gardening, it can be dancing, it can be yoga. And what I find for most people, and actually what I do the most of myself right now is just walking. Like the benefits of a daily brisk walk are just nuts. You're also pretty jacked up right now.

So the shirt might be tight. The first thing when you walked in, I was like, whoa, someone's been in the weight room since the last time I saw you. So in the spirit of full disclosure, right now my physical practice looks like four days a week, I strength train for an hour and I have a phenomenal coach that is just fun to work with.

And we get all kinds of cool skill development. And then every day I walk for between 45 minutes and two hours. And those are long walks with Ananda, my German shepherd. And because you went there and because I know a large portion of your audience are athletes, a big part of the strength training, somewhat related to the principles in this book, is it gives me something that is tangible and measurable, where there's concrete improvement that doesn't depend on what other people think. So if I put a book out into the world, I have no control whether or not people buy it. I try as hard as I can to practice what I preach and say, well, what are my core values?

What's my internal dashboard? Did the book live up to them? What do the people I respect most think of the book? But still, it's out there in the world. Sales numbers are a thing. They matter. Whereas in the weight room, I get this thing that I can work to make progress at that is solely in my control. The closest thing to it is like a pool. Because even in running and cycling, there's weather, conditions change, but 45 pounds is 45 pounds. 100 meters is 100 meters. So I think it's important for me,

it helps me stay grounded, to have this very real thing that the successes are 100% concrete and can be traced directly to myself and the failures are in my face. I can't be like, well, it was a bad news cycle or people don't get it. It's like, no, I didn't hit the weight. But it's something that I struggle with all the time. It's something I talk about with my therapist all the time is am I just addicted to

progress? Like, why do I still care how much I squat? Why do I need a goal to chase? Why can't I just be okay walking my dog for an hour and a half? That's a good question. I spend a lot of time tumbling that around in my mind. I mean, I think having a healthy relationship with those numbers is important, but irrespective of that, to be in the habit or the practice of challenging yourself to do hard things is important to developing resilience across the board,

emotional and physical resilience. And just the sheer humility that it gives you, like, especially when you get older and it's like, you can't do the stuff you used to be able to do. I think all of that is super healthy. And then of course the integrated, you know, mind body system requires it.

Like emotionally I'm better. I'm more present. I feel better. I'm happier. I just feel more grounded when I'm working out, right? And that's, but that's movement. That's not necessarily connected to a goal. But that movement can be in the weight room, right? Oh, for sure it is.

But what I'm saying is it's like the goal. Like I always talk about with this guy at the gym, Zach, I'm like, you know, at some point, I'm just gonna come in here to be healthy three days a week. I'm not there yet. Like right now I still have a goal. Right. And that goal is what, just like pushing these PRs? Yeah. I mean, it's arbitrary numbers, but I'd love to, it's like 5-4-3 in powerlifting world. So it's deadlift 500 pounds, squat 400 pounds, and bench press 300 pounds. But goals add structure and build accountability and drive like in a world in which your attention

and time and energy is limited, when you have a goal, it helps you prioritize how you focus that attention, time and energy. Yes. So there's nothing wrong with that unless your attachment to that goal or the outcome is unhealthy. Yeah. And this is something that I wrote about recently. So we'll dive in here really quick because I think it's

fascinating and maybe you can give me some advice. And I don't know if you saw, it was just in the newsletter. So it wasn't like, you know, widely shared on an outside magazine or anything like that. But I recently had a fitness test and for the first time in my life there was no part of my identity or self-worth that was attached to the result and I couldn't find any extra gear so my relationship with athletics I was bullied when I was in first to third grade

really badly, had to switch school level bullying then in seventh grade my parents wouldn't let me play football first to third grade really badly. Had to switch school level bowling. Then in seventh grade, my parents wouldn't let me play football. They were concerned about health. I got jumped on the side of the road by high schoolers. Beat the crap out of me. Became super anxious to be outside of my own neighborhood because I didn't feel safe.

They beat me to the ground. Then my parents were like, all right, I guess we'll let Brad play football for his confidence. I play football and I go in the weight room and suddenly my ability to feel safe and confident is totally related to my strength. And then in high school, girls start liking me.

It's not because of my brain, it's because like the size of my arms and I'm the captain of the football team and my entire identity is connected to football. So then I go to school at Michigan and I'm not good enough to play there. And I can't have anything to do with sport, excuse me, with the sport of football.

I don't even go to games anymore. It was too painful. So I'm just kind of like, and I can't, I don't lift for cosmetics. That was never me. Like it's meaningless. It has to have a goal. My identity was so connected to strength

geared towards football. So I kind of get into endurance sports and I'm doing it as like a hobby level. And then the girl that I dated throughout college dumps me kind of out of the blue. And at the time that was really painful. So what do I do? I totally numb it with triathlon.

I just train away all my pain, all my insecurity around that. Yeah, it's good for that. And now triathlon is my identity and I care deeply about triathlon. Your higher power. All of that stuff. And for the first time in my life,

getting back into strength training, which the long story made short is to get better at triathlon would have required training so much. And my son was coming along. I just had gotten through the OCD thing. It's like, I'm just going to go back to my roots and start strength training again. I joke with David Epstein, who wrote Range all the time. My fit is definitely with strength

training. It took me 10 years to try to run a marathon that's equivalent to what I can squat after two months. So my body just responds to this kind of training better. So I get back into strength training, but for the first time in my life, like I love my wife to death. We live in a place where we're happy. I've got this dog that I love. My son means everything to me. My professional identity is connected to that book right there. Maybe that's not so healthy, but certainly more than athletics. And I can't find that extra gear. I just don't care if I make the lift. That's what I'm exploring now. How do I find that extra gear? Or do I even need to find that extra gear anymore?

It used to be if I missed that squat, my entire identity is on the line. Of course, you figure out a way to make it. Now I'm just like, I already promised myself a breakfast burrito regardless if I make this or not. It doesn't it doesn't really matter. Well, age will purge that out of you. Yeah. You'll get to a point where that's just not part of the conversation. Whether or not you're going to make the thing. Right. And so one of the things that my wife always says to

me that's super helpful is because, you know because when I was training for Ultraman, it's very performance metrics oriented and you're carving out a huge amount of time and you gotta make every minute count and super focused on how this was gonna translate into a certain result that I care deeply about. It's not about that anymore for me. But then if it's not about that, what is it about?

And how are you finding meaning in it, right? And Julie will say, you gotta do it for the joy. Like that's the sustainable energy source, right? If you're chasing something else, then it's not gonna be something you're gonna be able to stick with over time. Yes, and to tie it back to what we talked about, for me with strength training,

because it happens inside, it's purely related to community. So my sustainability and strength training as I age will be directly related to my doing it with a group of other people that I have fun with and I enjoy their company. Because if I were to do it alone, like again, it doesn't really matter.

Right. Why is meditation not one of these core principles? It's a good question. I think that I would argue that meditation is baked into all of them. I actually, let me reframe. I would argue that mindfulness is baked into all of them, especially the presence principle,

but the act of meditation itself is not worthy of a principle in a book on groundedness. It's a practice that would be within the subheading of presence. Correct. And meditation, and I have a practice and it's been a wonderful thing, especially when I was going through OCD,

nothing is better exposure therapy than sitting with your eyes closed and being bombarded by these intrusive thoughts and feelings and then not being able to do anything. So I'm a huge believer in meditation. And meditation today has been completely ripped out of the ancient wisdom traditions where it originated and sold as like a balm for all that ails us.

When in fact, you look at any of the contemplative traditions that meditation was a part of, and the actual act of sitting with your eyes closed and having an anchor tends to be one of five to eight other principles. And in Buddhism, which is the tradition here in the West that is most closely associated with meditation, it's actually just one of eight parts of what the Buddha called the Noble Eightfold Path.

And meditation was taught in Buddhism after ethics. So right action came before right being. And I think that meditation itself, like your practice is only as strong as your life. So if you think that sitting with your eyes closed for 20 minutes a day is going to somehow help you find freedom or fulfillment or enlightenment, but then you get off the cushion

and your life is like completely ungrounded, it's not going to work. So I see it as a practice that supports all of these principles. Also in Buddhism, sangha, which is the word for community, was taught before meditation. My favorite parable, because I'm on a little Buddhist kick, in the whole book, I mentioned that my German shepherd's named Ananda, and here's why. So in the Pali Canon, which is one of the oldest living texts that we have of Buddhism, Ananda was the Buddha's loyal attendant. And throughout these scriptures and texts, he's painted as like this

overly eager, enthusiastic, curious, wanting to soak up all the knowledge from the Buddha person. And Ananda goes up to the Buddha one day, and there's tons of repetition in the Pali Canon, but I think it serves its purpose. So he says, Buddha, Buddha, blessed one, blessed one, I've just heard that good comradeship, good friendship, and good sangha is 50% of the spiritual path. Could this possibly be true?

And Buddha says, no, Ananda, no, you are mistaken. No, good comradeship, good sangha, Could this possibly be true? And Buddha says, no, Ananda, no, you are mistaken. No, good comradeship, good sangha, good friendship is not 50% of the spiritual path. And Ananda looks at the Buddha and says, what is it, blessed one? What could be true? And the Buddha looks at him and he says,

Ananda, good comradeship, good friendship, good Sangha is the whole of the spiritual path. There was nothing in there about meditation. So I think that it's a very powerful tool, but it's gotta be situated. Meditation being a tool that would be important for Sangha. Oh, it's important for everything. And again, when I met my best, I sit for 20 minutes a day.

It doesn't happen as much with a young kid, but it is a extremely powerful tool, but I think it needs to be situated in a broader framework. And what's great about meditation too, is we talked in acceptance about self-distancing, giving advice to a friend. Meditation is a great way to do that. Sure.

Because you start to see thoughts, feelings, situations in your life from the place of being an observer, not in them. And then it's the observing you from the place of being an observer, not in them. And then it's the observing you, the more you connect with that, your essence, your core, your spirit, whatever you wanna call it, the more that you can start to make decisions out of that place. Right, and the greater capacity you have

to respond from a place of neutrality to all of the stressors in your life? Neutrality or perhaps even compassion. That's what I get out of meditation. Meditators understand this. I didn't when I first heard it. And now I think it's one of the most beautiful quotes on meditation.

It's an anonymous source, but this woman at the end of her life was reflecting on her meditation practice. And she said that every itch not scratched was a lesson in compassion. I'm just chewing on that. Explain that. Well, how I interpret that is that when you're sitting,

whether it's a physical itch or a mental itch, something comes up and you wanna deal with it. And the practice is just to let it be there. Right, exactly. And learning to let it be there helps you become a more compassionate person to yourself, to others, because we all have all these itches

that we want to scratch all the time. And it's so hard to live a life where we're bombarded with these things that we want to fix. With loss, with disappointment, with all these things that we want to fix with loss, with disappointment, with all these things and learning to accept it. If that doesn't make you a more compassionate person than like what will. Right. Let's close this thing down with some practical takeaways for people. So perhaps somebody has been listening to this. They're

thinking, okay, I'm on board, Brad, I'm gonna get the book, but help me with a few simple things that I can begin to incorporate into my life to cultivate groundedness. So we've talked about these things from kind of a 10,000 foot view, but in the book you have like practices,

like here's how you kind of do things. So it's certainly in the book, but what are a few of your favorites or things that you think could be helpful to somebody who's trying to blaze this path? Yeah, blaze it slowly. Right, the patience thing. Yeah, no, but blaze it is good.

Slow briety. It's good to have motivation. As Elliot Kipchoge, the greatest runner and potentially the greatest athlete of all time talks about his progress. And he's literally like the fastest human on earth over long distances, says he makes progress slowly by slowly.

Right, and you talk about, you write about him rarely going beyond 80% in his workouts and this notion of like, you know, one less rep or like not going to max out. Yeah. As being a kind of habit of building sustainability into your daily routine. So, yes, I'd love that.

And just like the compounding consistency. And you've had other guests that talk about that topic and have whole books on that topic. So a couple of of really tactical things the first is the core values work I think can be really transformative so it doesn't have to be more than a half an hour or an hour

but try to come up with the three to five qualities that you really aspire towards that are you when you're at your best and then define them in concrete terms and then for each of those qualities talk about things that you will do or that you'll stop doing that allow you to practice them. Something else. The three things that you want to adopt and the three things you want to let go of. Yes. In service of that core value. So if your core value is vulnerability, well, what are you

doing that goes away from that? And what could you do that works toward that? If your core value is love, how do you, again, how do you define it? What do you do? How do you get from love to, I'm going to put my phone in the glove compartment of the car and leave it in the garage. Start trying to think non-dually. So when you catch yourself being like, I need to be self-disciplined, how can you be self-disciplined and self-compassionate. How can you sometimes go fast and realize when it's important to step back and be good enough and go a little bit more slowly? And then another thing that I think is really helpful

and has an immediate effect is try to catch yourself shitting on yourself and try to replace that self-talk with wish or want. And that's the whole intervention and just watch what happens. My coaching clients are like, wait, you mean that's going to change things? Just try it.

And some of the most perfectionist people that are hardest on themselves after a few months, they're like, wow, you're right. When I catch myself shitting, all I do is be like, I wish I could do that. I want to do that. And it just lessens that second arrow. That's the big one for me

because obviously that's my Achilles heel right now. When I read the book and just in the conversations that we've had, I feel like you read my mind and everything that I've been able to kind of achieve as a result of practicing the things that you talk about. I mean, I remember the first podcast we did, I met you in a hotel lobby

and it was you, me and Steve in a tiny hotel room. The second time you came to my house and we had a setup and we filmed it and now you're here. Well, that took place over a number of years, that progressive growth. And that growth is the result of making incremental progress on the daily, not having any kind of viral crazy spikes,

but just showing up for the thing day in, day out, trying to get a little bit better, iterating, and being patient. These things take time. And I've been doing this for 10 years at this point. And I feel like I've grown into or matured into a place where I can kind of own this space in a way that I couldn't have the first time that we did a podcast. And that's just

the way it works. So for people who are struggling or feel stuck or feel like they're falling behind their peers, try to have a broader view on your trajectory and exercise a little bit of that self-compassion and tend to yourself and try to figure out the one thing that you can do that day that's tiny that no one would care about, perform it anonymously, do it again the next day. And it's only over an extreme amount of time that you begin to see results or that those results are reflected back to you by other people who can see what you can't. I mean, I remember being in AA for years, thinking I wasn't getting better

and feeling like my life had stalled out and I had no trajectory, but I just kept going to meetings. I kept showing up. I kept just trying to get a commitment or do the thing. And I really felt static in my life. And I felt like all my peers were passing me by because I couldn't see the growth

or the foundation of growth that I was creating that would allow me to do things later in life. And I think the patience piece is like really powerful. And I think that's an opportunity for people to be gentle on themselves and exercise a little bit of, direct that grace inward. I love it. I couldn't have closed it any better.

It's a practice. The book's not called get grounded for a reason. I love it. I couldn't have closed it any better. It's a practice. The book's not called get grounded for a reason. Get grounded today. Like this is an ongoing practice and life is a practice and you gotta show up and some days are better than others and you just get on the path and you fall off the path and you get back on and you repeat that interval

and if things go well, you learn and grow and hopefully have some fun along the way. Right on brother. Well, the book is amazing. It's a gift to humanity. I know you're already hard at work on the next thing. So you'll have an opportunity to come back

and share about that as well. But I wish you well, everybody should check out this book, the practice of groundedness and all of Brad's other books, the passion paradox and peak performance, right? Available wherever you buy books. You can also check out Brad's email newsletter and podcast, the growth equation.

What is it? The growtheq.com is that the website? Right now. Yeah, there you go. And Brad is pretty active on Twitter. He likes to throw down these massive threads. I do. I can. So if you're into that, check him out there.

B Stolberg there, right? Yep, that's the scoop. And I just wanna thank you for this. I'm just really, for whatever reason this time, it's always a pleasure to be with you, but I was just feeling so grateful. I think some of it is we tried to do it earlier, but my kid wasn't vaccinated, pandemic stuff.

So just to be here and to be able to sit down with you is a joy. So thank you. The feeling is mutual, my friend. Mad respect, much love. And you're always welcome here. Peace. That's it for today.

Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch,

my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube,

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and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg and Grayson Wilder. Graphic and social media assets,

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Peace. Plants. Namaste. Thank you.