The Rich Roll Podcast - Decoding Transformation: Contrary Action Is The Engine of Evolution

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

One of the first questions I was asked when I found myself in a treatment center for alcoholism was: do you want to change? Most sane individuals in my circumstances would respond of course I do. But only a mentally deranged addict like myself would need to pause before answering to consider the options. Luckily, I was blessed with pain so severe it eclipsed the very real fear I held about changing every facet of who I was as a person to get and stay sober. While in many ways pain makes the process of change easier, the truth is you don’t have to hit rock bottom to make a transformation. Change is always within your grasp if you can summon the willingness to ask for it—and most importantly, receive it. Today I venture out of my comfort zone once again to explore some thoughts on transformation in monologue format—sharing intimate details from my own personal story of addiction and lessons learned within the walls of rehab—in a podcast experiment I hope provides value.  Transformation demands a price—accountability, courage, vulnerability, and the willpower to take contrary actions to those you’ve taken historically. But the outcome?  A life beyond your wildest imagination. Show notes + MORE Watch on Youtube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Peak Design: PeakDesign.com/RICHROLL Caldera Lab: http://calderalab.com/richroll Athletic Greens: http://drinkAG1.com/richroll Plant Power Meal Planner: https://meals.richroll.com Peace + Plants, Rich

Hey everybody, welcome to another monologue episode of the podcast, my third and what appears to now be an ongoing series in response to your enthusiasm for the previous two. It's coming up in a moment, right after these words from the partners that make this show possible. 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. 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. 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. Okay, let's set the scene. It's 1998 and I find myself coming to. I'm nauseous, wildly hungover, confused, trying to ascertain the nature of my strange whereabouts,

scrambling to fill in memory gaps, my skin clammy, stuck to plastic sheets in a bed that I don't quite recognize. My surroundings are entirely unfamiliar, but none of this is abnormal. Like most alcoholics, I had grown accustomed to waking up in strange places, wallowing in that very specific dark and private shame.

And then in this moment, it hits me, this dawning realization that the countless bad decisions, the errant behavior, the disconnection from self and my absolute inability and at times downright refusal to change. Despite so many attempts to stop, I simply could not figure out how to stop drinking, a condition of both body and spirit

that had really left me broken, alienated from my friends, it left my family fractured. I was in this state in which I was unemployable, really incapable of being honest, utterly hopeless, entirely alone, desperate in this condition of not understanding how to live and wanting to die.

And all of it, all of those emotions, all of those decisions and behaviors and actions had all conspired, I was realizing in this moment to deliver me to this foreign place we casually call rehab, but let's be honest, it's more aptly described as a mental institution. And despite degrees from Stanford and Cornell Law School and this idea that I harbored

that I was some kind of intelligent person, the truth was pretty inescapable. My best decisions had now led me to a certain form of insanity. I ended up spending a hundred days from spring to fall in that institution, which was a treatment center nestled in the bucolic hills of rural Oregon. And it was an experience that quite frankly saved my life and taught me this really

powerful new set of tools for living. It gave me hope. It lifted me out of this permanent midnight to coin a phrase from the great writer, Jerry Stahl, and provided me with a foundation upon which I could rebuild this very broken life of mine. And it ended up birthing an entirely new one. The very beginnings of the extraordinary life I enjoy today started on that first day. And here I am, this husband who's been with my partner for 23 years.

I'm a father, I'm a stepfather, athlete, author, podcaster, and an entrepreneur who now shoulders responsibility for the lives of the people I employ. How did this happen? More importantly, reflecting back on that, it was an experience that set in motion this journey that I'd been on towards greater self-actualization that made all of the things I just mentioned possible to begin with, a journey that, of course, I continue to pursue to this day with extreme imperfection, I might add.

And I bring this story up simply to illustrate that change is possible. I don't consider myself gifted or particularly special. In 1998, I can tell you that I was convinced that I could not change. Not that change would be hard, but that change was impossible for me. And yet here I am.

But my story is not unique. I've seen it repeated a thousand times over. And because of what I do for a living, I'm on the receiving end of countless emails, letters and messages from people all over the world, regular people sharing openly and with courageous vulnerability, their stories of personal change.

Amazing tales of transformation, far more extraordinary than my own. All of which leads me to one conclusion. No matter how lost, how confused, how alone, or how desperate you may be or feel, there is always hope. There is always help if you seek it. help if you seek it. What I'm saying is change is possible. Transformation is within your grasp, always. And for so many reasons, I've come to believe that it's your birthright to grow. We were born to evolve. It's something that's imprinted on our DNA. It is our mandate, but there is a caveat and it's a powerful one at that. And it's captured in this something that's imprinted on our DNA. It is our mandate, but there is a caveat and it's a powerful one at that.

And it's captured in this saying that's often repeated within 12-step communities and it goes like this, change isn't for those who need it, it's for those who want it. Translation, it's all about willingness. Now, one of the first questions I was asked when I found myself in this treatment center

after sufficiently drying out was, and this was asked to me by a counselor, Rich, do you wanna change? Now, most people provided they are even slightly sane would respond, of course, of course I do. Look at my life, it's a disaster. Help me change, please. But only a mentally deranged addict like myself

would need to take a pause before answering to consider the options. Hmm, on the one side, we got a lonely, painful, craven life enslaved to substances that's inevitably gonna lead to incarceration, harming myself, harming others, and probably death. Or on the other hand, here's this life that you can have, joyous, happy, and free. Huh? I don't know, man. free. Huh. I don't know, man. I gotta think about that. Luckily, I ended up opting for door number two, but many don't. Those people die earlier than they should. I've been to a lot of funerals, but for some reason, I was blessed with that willingness, a willingness born out of a desire to survive, I suppose, but also pain, this pain that was so severe,

it eclipsed the very real fear that I held about change, any kind of change, about letting go, about surrendering, about asking for help and being open to actually receiving help. I think that pain saved me, but the point I want to make is that you don't have to be in pain to change. You don't have to hit rock bottom in order to make alterations to your life. Pain makes it easier, of course, but the truth is that change is always within your grasp if you can summon the willingness to ask for it.

And again, and most importantly, receive it when given. So back to the story, me and that counselor, Rich, do you want to change? Yes. Yes, I do. Great. He says, then you only have to change one thing. What's that? I say, he says, everything. Everything? Yes. Everything. And all I could think in that moment was, And all I could think in that moment was, everything? What does that even mean?

After the break, I'll explain. Welcome back. Okay, so how do you change one thing when that one thing is everything? Well, after 25 years of attempting to answer this very overwhelming and sort of Zen Cohen-like proposition, I have learned a few things. I've got a few thoughts, which are challenged to articulate without coming across as super reductionist, but with the understanding that this may sound pithy, I'm gonna try. And I'm gonna begin with the idea that you have to do it one breath at a time.

You have to do it one thing at a time, one hour at a time, one day at a time. And you have to bring to that experience a certain presence and intentionality, a focus placed squarely on just trying to make a better choice every time a decision is presented to you, beginning with the smallest, most mundane, low-risk decisions that greet you every day and then building from there. Most days are one step forward, one step back. Some are no steps forward, two steps back.

But every once in a while, you get one step forward and no steps back, a brick laid on the foundation and tomorrow, another opportunity. and no steps back, a brick laid on the foundation. And tomorrow, another opportunity. This process often means taking something called contrary action. What does that mean, contrary action? Well, it means asking yourself,

what have I historically done? What do I typically do or want to do or feel impulse to do in this type of dynamic or situation? And then what is the typical outcome of that historic behavior? Now, if you're living, thinking, and behaving out of integrity,

in other words, out of alignment with your values, with what we can call for purposes of this talk, your higher aspirational self, with what you know deep down to be right and correct for you, then I suspect that outcome is generally not great. An outcome that moves you away from the result you seek, away from the person you aspire to be, an outcome that also often produces drama,

conflict, angst, and sometimes even downright chaos. Now ask yourself, what would insert person of integrity you admire do in this situation? Or perhaps better yet, what would the best version of yourself, the grounded, calm, mindful, sane person, the person you wish yourself to be, the person you would be proud to be do in this situation? Contrary action means doing that instead. That is the essence of contrary action.

Now the rub. The funny thing about contrary action is that it will generally feel like the exact wrong thing to do, hence the word contrary. Because your typical reactive suboptimal response is a neural pathway that has been deeply fortified and reinforced from a lifetime of reflexive repetition, by definition, the contrary action will instinctively strike you

as completely wrong, contravening every impulse, sometimes every fiber in your being about how you should behave in that moment. But this moment is your moment of truth. A moment, maybe even a millisecond in which you either do what you've always done or you summon the adequate presence of mind, the awareness to actually do something different, no matter how uncomfortable or counterintuitive it may feel. And sometimes precisely because of how uncomfortable

or counterintuitive it does feel until it doesn't, until slowly bit by bit invisible to your senses, perhaps even to others, this new neural pathway begins to take root. And from that, over time, the emergence of a new habit until one day that new habit is wrote, a healthier, more aspirational, new default response to a certain dynamic or externality that may, in the micro, seem absolutely inconsequential. Yet, in the macro, when repeated over the course of years or decades with extreme consistency and patience, these contrary actions build upon each other. They create a momentum, a compound interest guaranteed and FDIC ensured to alter the trajectory of your life in positive ways you cannot possibly imagine or predict. This process also means, again, and no way around it, asking for help.

asking for help. Despite any overwhelming belief in your ability to manage and solve these issues on your own or your resistance to bothering others with your baggage, you need to invite others in. You need to bring them in so they can help identify your reflexive recurring thought and behavior loops that are invisible to you and help you construct healthier responses. This requires being open, requires being honest and vulnerable with a few people that you trust by outsourcing your decisions to them before making them. And then, and this is the part that really gets often overlooked

in the conversation about mentorship or therapy. Not only do you need to hear and consider the consensus feedback, but you actually have to take the action recommended. You can't just hear it and then do what you want, even when, especially when you may disagree until the contrary action itself becomes reflexive. And then of course, no longer contrary, but instead integral. A very helpful tool when grappling with and learning how to practice

this notion of contrary action is to develop the habit of pausing when agitated, to avoid reacting to situations the way you always have, and instead indulging a moment to first reflect. In other words, maybe don't immediately respond to the upsetting email until tomorrow. Walk away from the computer. You know that's what you're supposed to do. Sleep on it. Talk it through with that trusted friend. It also means, another trope, how you do anything is how you do everything. How you make coffee, how you interact with the grocery clerk, how you take feedback from your boss, how you respond when someone cuts you off in traffic or what you choose to notice or pay attention to while walking down the street.

It means slowing down, calming down. And this is why consistent meditation and mindfulness practices are essential non-negotiables. are essential non-negotiables. Now, whatever modality you decide to engage with through this process, whether it's therapy or 12-step mentorship or even just friendship, that's less important than the honesty with yourself and others that you bring to it.

I cannot overemphasize this enough because that honesty is the portal to the clarity required to trek a new trajectory because you can't set a course forward without first establishing an accurate map of the landscape. Second to this, and because who you are is how you behave and show up in the world, each step forward, every contrary action,

these things build a new identity narrative that is being crafted in each moment in real time. A healthier identity that becomes slowly more and more aligned with your previously dormant, self-actualized potential. An identity that with patience and also with toil, let's be clear, will inevitably lead to things

you may not currently believe possible. Like forgiveness of self and others and making peace with your past. So that past, as painful as it may currently feel to confront, no longer haunts you, no longer holds power over how you show up in the present, and most importantly, no longer dictates your future. Of course, there's much more I could

say about the mechanics of change, far too much for the purposes and confines of a brief monologue. So let me steer away from the three-dimensional for the time being and bring this to a conclusion with a bit of homespun spiritual mysticism. To underscore a point made earlier, I believe that I am here, you are here, we are here to evolve, to grow as both individuals, but also as a collective.

And I'm convinced of this. Transformation is our birthright. But again, expansion isn't something we do in isolation. Growth is a team sport. It's a muddy road that we journey together at high noon in the heat of summer because the skins we desire to shed, the pains we harbor and the patterns that keep us stuck, those things thrive in the dark caves of isolation, but they perish in the bright sunlight of community. So when we summon the courage to illuminate or place a spotlight on our flaws and our fears

and our pain in the company of others, we suddenly realize we're no longer alone, that although the facts of our respective lives may differ wildly, there's great unity and commonality and shared humanity in how we experience life and within that comfort and perhaps most of all, hope. Now, maybe you're bristling at the suggestion

at the wooness of all of this, but let's get honest with ourselves. Deep down, repressed, compartmentalized, and perhaps shrouded in a protective coating of fear crafted out of this false sense of self-preservation or an illusory sense that your pain is unique to you and you alone. I think we all know this to be true.

Beyond the ego, beyond the pull of the material world, nests this beating, this pulsing signal, nudging you in the direction of growth. It's like a yearning, a feeling you've always had deep in your soul, this knowing, this strand of code embedded into your core processor that's tugging you towards greater self-actualization, gnawing at you for deeper alignment between your thoughts and your actions. It's not something that's rooted in logic. It's not rooted in rationality. And I'm not sure science can account for what you simply know to be true,

which is that you seek to be better. And you know you can be better. You may not understand it and it may not yet have shape or clarity, but this is a reminder that this feeling that you have is real and it's powerful. It's like this meridian that defines us as human beings, that unites us as a collective, that represents the future self in gestation. And it's something that's freely available to all who seek it anytime, all the time.

All I'm saying is honor and respect this truth, appreciate its realness. And if you're listening to this and you find yourself adrift in search of a purpose, make this that purpose and take that first step, that first contrary action. And I'll tell you what, I'll meet you along that muddy road.

And when you ask me, so just how long is this road? I'll say to you, don't worry about it, man. Just take the next step. I hope you found this helpful and I'll see you back here again soon. Thank you.