The Rich Roll Podcast - The Paradox of Passion With Brad Stulberg & Steve Magness

Episode Date: March 19, 2019

Follow your passion. For many it's a mantra. For others, an over-hyped trope. I plead guilty to advocating this pursuit — a subject worthy of frequent exploration on the podcast. But is a life propelled by passion always the best course of action? The answer, it turns out, is complicated. Passion can be a gift. But only if you know how to properly channel it. The same drive that fuels breakthroughs — whether they're athletic, scientific, entrepreneurial, or artistic — can be every bit as destructive as it is productive. Unchecked by balance (that other culturally touted virtue), passion can manifest as a curse, leading to endless seeking, suffering, and burnout. Simply put, passion is a paradox. To demystify this important subject, my friends Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness return to the podcast (their 1st appearance was RRP 293 back in June 2017) to explore how to develop, harness and express the right kind of passion to unlock potential and actualize a meaningful, purpose-driven life. Long time listeners might recall Steve as a former elite track & field athlete who clocked an extraordinary 4:01 mile in high school. Today, Steve is one of the most accomplished, respected and in demand track & field and cross country coaches in the world. In addition to serving up duties at the University of Houston, he is the personal coach to some of the most accomplished professional and Olympic runners on the planet. In addition, he consults with start-up technology companies on innovation and growth, holds a Master’s degree in Exercise Science from George Mason University, and serves as an adjunct professor at St. Mary’s University in the United Kingdom. Brad is a former McKinsey & Co. health care consultant turned writer specializing in the health and science of human performance. Lauded for his ability to merge the latest science with compelling personal stories and practical insights, his work has been published in The New York Times, Outside Magazine, New York Magazine, Forbes, NPR, The Los Angeles Times & Runner’s World. Together, Steve and Brad are the co-authors of Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success*, a science-based primer on the principles that drive and sustain high performance in sport, business and life. This week marks the publication of their latest collaboration, aptly titled The Passion Paradox: A Guide to Going All In, Finding Success, and Discovering the Benefits of an Unbalanced Life*. A fascinating look int0 the science behind passion and it’s double-edge-sword nature, it's a must read for anyone searching for that spark or how to best harness its magical powers to unlock inner potential. Today's conversation is a wide-ranging exploration into the very nature of passion. Chock-a-block with scientific takeaways & experiential insights, we examine the pros and cons of this intoxicating impulse. Enjoy! Rich

There's this notion that if you're passionate about something, you should drop what you're doing and pursue your heart's desire. And what the research shows is actually the complete opposite, that the best way to cultivate a passion is to do so very incrementally and gradually over time. And the reason that this works is because you can take more risks when you have the safe thing supporting you, which is a very different narrative.

I mean, I didn't hear that narrative growing up. I heard either take the safe path, or if you take the safe thing supporting you, which is a very different narrative. I mean, I didn't hear that narrative growing up. I heard either take the safe path, or if you take the safe path, you're going to be bored all your life, follow your passion, you know, don't worry about it, have no regrets. And those two things don't have to be

in opposition to each other. And I think one other nuanced thing that Brad pointed out there is a lot of times we hear, find your passion. And that implies that there is something out there that you're going to be passionate about. But I think what we found and what we're trying to get out

is it's not like a soulmate where there's one passion out there that you can find. So what we really suggest is look at different things you're interested in and try them out. And if they have that fuel to become a passion, like you'll become aware of it and you'll cultivate it. That's Brad Stolberg and Steve Magnus.

And this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Follow your passion. Follow your passion. Follow your passion. Just do it. Find your bliss. Go for it. It can be such a trite thing to say.

And if you're into self-help, which you probably are if you're listening to this podcast, it's almost like this trope on the internet. And I'll freely admit that following your passion is a subject that comes up pretty frequently on this podcast, something that I have often advocated people to pursue. But let's pause for a minute and consider whether or not this is always the right thing to do for everybody in every scenario. And it turns out that the answer is actually complicated. Passion, indeed, it can be a gift. Following it can be amazing. And it certainly goes hand in hand with high performance. But

I think if we're being really honest with ourselves, we have to acknowledge that there is also a downside to following your passion. If you don't know how to properly channel that passion, it can be a curse. It can lead to angst, depression. It can lead to suffering and in frequent cases to burnout. So I think it's fair to call it a paradox. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host on this podcast. And today, my friends Brad Stolberg and Steve Magnus return to the podcast. Their first appearance was RRP293 back in June of 2017 to explore this paradox, the pros and the cons of pursuing your passion and how to develop the right kind of passion and what exactly comprises

a life of meaning, of purpose, of fulfillment, and ultimately happiness. Long-time listeners might recall that Steve is a former elite track and field athlete. He's a 401 miler, turned elite track and cross country coach to some of the most accomplished pro and Olympic runners on the planet. Brad, on the other hand, is a former McKinsey consultant turned writer. He specializes in health and human performance and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, Outside Magazine, New York Magazine, Forbes, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, and Runner's World. And together they co-authored Peak Performance, which is this amazing science based primer on the principles that drive and sustain high performance and sport business in

life. And their latest collaboration, which just hit bookstores everywhere today and is the focus of today's conversation, is entitled, as you might have guessed, The Passion Paradox. And it's this fascinating look into the science behind passion and its double-edged sword nature. It's a definite must read for anyone searching for that spark or how to best harness it. 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,

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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 and 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 Steve. All right. Look, the common advice is to find and follow your passion. You hear it all the time, especially on self-help oriented content, books, podcasts. I'm guilty of it because I believe in passion. Personally, I think we need more of it. There are so many people locked in unfulfilling careers who just, I feel, need permission to fold more passion into their lives. A life fueled with more passion can lead to a better life.

But Brad and Steve make some very good points because passion isn't that simple. Because passion and balance, another virtue that's touted by our culture, are essentially incompatible. And so what happens is that the drive that fuels these amazing breakthroughs, whether they're athletic, scientific, entrepreneurial, or artistic, can be every bit as destructive as it is productive. And so the point of this conversation and the subject of their new book is to demystify this, to demystify passion, to

explore and show how you can find and cultivate your passion, but do it in a sustainable way, to sustainably harness its power through cultivating greater self-awareness and in so doing avoid its dangers. Quick final note, if you're looking to dial in your nutrition and need some expert guidance right now, we've got a special limited time offer on our Plant Power Meal Planner. $20 off an annual membership when you sign up at meals.richroll.com and use the code POWER20, POWER20 at checkout. You'll get thousands of customized plant-based recipes, unlimited grocery lists, grocery delivery in many metropolitan areas, and access to professional nutrition coaches seven days a week.

And you get all of that for basically $1.50 a week, a cup of coffee, people. It's an amazing product. We're super proud of it. And we're super excited about this special offer. So check it out. Meals.richroll.com, code POWER20 for $20 off through April 13th. Okay. I love these guys. I'm so glad to have them back on the podcast. So let's do this thing. This is me, Steve Magnus, and Brad Stolberg. Great to have you back on the show. Welcome to the studio. I fondly recall last time doing this,

cramped in a tiny hotel room down in Marina Del Rey near the airport. So I appreciate you coming up here to do it again. Thanks for having us. It's a lot nicer. Yeah, it's a little bit more comfortable, hopefully. And super excited about your book. Congratulations. Thank you.

It's a great read. I found it to be super enlightening and instructive and helpful and look forward to deconstructing it with you guys here today. Let's do it. Yeah, man. So first of all, it feels like you just wrote a book five minutes ago and now you have another book coming out. So what is that about? Before we even get into what the book is, it's crazy how you're aging. This is not good.

ideas. The longer answer is the first book that we wrote, Peak Performance, had a pretty long runway from when we submitted the manuscript to when it was published. And we had planned to spend this time together to refine the manuscript. And it turned out that that manuscript didn't need as much refining as we thought. So we had weeks on our hands in person. Steve lives in Houston. I'm in Northern California. And we just started writing another book. So this book was more or less done before Peak Performance came out. Oh, wow. That's crazy. That's amazing.

So your process in terms of writing, I mean, how much time do you actually spend in person? Because you have lives on separate coasts, basically. Yeah, not a lot actually not a lot so we probably for this book probably only spent maybe three long weekends together or something like that right three or three long weekends in a week though when we really came up with the idea and and that's where it like our process that's where the kind of magic happens is like the idea generation phase that's where we need to magic happens is like the idea generation phase. That's where we need to be together, where we're just throwing ideas back and forth and like

kind of coming up with the outline of like, hey, what does this look like? Once it comes to the writing process, like we just have this refined, you know, process where, you know, Brad takes a little bit, I take a little bit, we share it back and forth. Right. It's just super in sync. So do you have another book that you've basically completed that will be coming out nine months from now? Our agent might kill us at this point. Right, right.

No, I'm going to plead the fifth. Right. And we should say, because there's a lot of new listeners since the last time you guys were on, Steve, elite track and field running coach, lives in Houston. should say because there's a lot of new listeners since the last time you guys were on steve elite track and field running coach lives in houston brad lives in oakland uh writer journalist with a background uh in consulting and a whole story that we went into in detail the last time you guys were here but it is a yin and a yang thing. Like Steve brings this kind of firsthand athlete, coach, science perspective.

And Brad brings kind of the journalistic approach to these ideas that you're exploring. And it seems like a nice synergistic way to kind of broach these topics. Yeah, it's worked out well. I mean, it's worked out well if, first and foremost, we judge by the fact that this has been super fun. We get paid to do stuff that we love, and we like working together. So we're fortunate. All right, so passion, the passion paradox, right? I think this is very much of the moment.

We're in a culture where we talk a lot about chasing our passion, finding our bliss, living our bliss, living our most authentic selves, our best selves. And there's a lot of terminology that gets thrown in there from motivation to inspiration to obsession. And passion, of course, is sort of a catchphrase for all of that. But I'm not sure we really understand our terminology. So maybe the best place to begin this is to define all of our terms. What does passion mean, essentially, is what I'm asking. How do you think about passion? It depends. So that was more or less the starting point for this book, was asking that question. What does it mean to be passionate? And the word passion itself comes from the Latin root passio. And the definition of passio is to suffer. So passion, first and foremost, meant suffering.

The word was created in a religious connotation with the crucification of Jesus, and it was the suffering of Christ on the cross was passio. The passion of the Christ. Exactly. And then over time, the word slowly morphed to this broader sense of desire, but it was still tied up in suffering for about the first 1400 years of its usage. Only more recently was passion something that one would want to strive for or that would be linked to a good life. It's a weird twist. What caused that change in the way that we perceive

that word? Do we know? Yeah, I'm not sure exactly exactly we know we actually talked to a couple experts who are experts at etymology and word uh linguistics and it seemed like actually around like shakespeare it starts to begin this change because he used it in the context of like love which was the first kind of what i'd call positive somewhat usage of it but even there it had this like negative connotation towards it and it wasn't until like the turn of the 20th century where you start seeing it in in the modern usage of it yeah like hey you need to find your passion or passion is something that is good that is something that we should search for. And it really wasn't until, you know, probably 1960s, 1970s, where we see this whole kind of cultural change of like,

find your passion. Yeah, it's so interesting. But I think there's something to that Shakespearean perspective, because it seems to make sense that that kind of pain element can be built into this idea of what it means to feel strongly, right? Because pain and suffering are really not a very distant cousin to these strong emotions around love and how we think about passion today, right? They're just a shred. They're just a little tweak to one side. Yeah, they're exactly that. They're close cousins, maybe even brother and sister, two sides of the same coin. That was really interesting too in the research of the book, learning not just about how the word is used and how we perceive people following their passion or people suffering, but also the neurology of someone that is very passionate versus somebody that is an addict or suffering from mental illness or some dysfunction. What's happening in the brain is very similar,

if not the same. Well, I'm, I have personal interest in that. So let's explore that. Like, what is the difference? Because again, those are two things that are very close to each other. And I've asked myself this question, like, am I just passionate about doing this or do I have an unhealthy sort of obsessive relationship with this pursuit? And I'm telling myself that I'm passionate about it. And sometimes it's not clear. it and sometimes it's not clear yeah i mean and and that's where actually the origins of this whole thing started or the whole our exploration of it as we'd seen in ourselves some of these like obsessive tendencies i mean we were writing a book before our first book came out yeah right we have these obsessive tendencies and we were sitting there just talking about like hey is this a good thing or is this a bad thing or is this something we should pull back on or push forward on? And that's kind of where we had this debate of like, hey, wait a minute, is passion good, bad? What is it? How does obsession tie into it? And those were at the root of what we were exploring. And if you look at, you know, some of the biology of it right we looked at the biology of addiction and of desire

and hormonally and then neurologically so both on a hormone level and on a brain level like they're very very closely related it's it's almost impossible to sit there and be like oh no this person's like their brain shows they're they're actually in love versus addicted, right? The only thing that I would add to that, and maybe this gets back to your original question, is I would say that passion isn't good or bad. It just is. And it can very much be both of those things. It can be both of those things for the same person over the course of their life. Sometimes it can be both of those things on the same day. Both of those things being what?

Being good or bad, a blessing or a curse. Yeah, I mean, we can place a value judgment on it. I mean, it just is, right? So whether it's bad or good, maybe we don't know in the immediate moment and we only know in retrospect years later. But I think a good litmus test is the impact that it's having on other areas of your life. Like if it's setting in motion, a domino effect of damage and, you know, like,

like scorched earth relationships and, you know, failing to live up to other responsibilities, then we could probably qualify it as obsessive or addictive and thus negative, as opposed to a sustainable passion, you know, flame that's burning in a healthy way, which is kind of what, you know, you discuss in the later chapters of the book. Totally, and I think that you just nailed the distinction. Right, so the definition or a working definition of addiction, at least one that I use,

is the relentless pursuit of something despite negative consequences. You could say that passion is the relentless pursuit of something with positive consequences, or at least with neutral consequences. Yeah. Pursuing it despite the lack of public acknowledgement. You would do it anyway, whether you're making money at it or whether you're being sort of uh lauded for it if you're passionate enough about it it should propel you nonetheless exactly 100 and if you look at like some of the research that's been done around this they actually like distinguish it between what they call harmonious passion and obsessive passion and how you distinguish that is exactly that right is it something that you're doing because you enjoy the activity that you

would do regardless or is it something that's being driven by some like external pursuit or some sort of fear that you wouldn't you wouldn't actually do that activity if it was just up to you right so all you have to do for the sort of most extreme example of the negative in what you just described, just look to any villain in a Marvel movie. They're basically, you know, the ultimate manifestation of obsessive passion gone awry, right? And perhaps that started with a laudable idea but it became perverted and just the continuous doubling down on it until it becomes you know this dark yeah and i think force of nature it's it's when you say it that extreme it's a little bit more black and white what fascinates

us is that i think that a lot of people start out with harmonious passion. They love the thing itself, but then they start to see some good results. And our human species evolved to want to see good results. Social standing, rewards, like that's a big part of evolution. So it's this slippery slope to starting off doing an activity because you love it, but then without perhaps even noticing doing the activity, not because you love the thing, but you love the external validation and the recognition that the thing brings you. And that can become dangerous.

Now, the flip side is also true that very few people just do the thing because they love the thing. Like we're not robots. It feels good to be recognized. But at what point are you chasing the recognition more than the activity itself? And that's where lots of people, both in regular life as well as world-class performers, really struggle. Well, also with success, success begets obligation, right? Because then what you're doing becomes institutionalized.

So all you have to do is look at, you know, whether it's Tiger Woods or Michael Phelps, like any super successful athlete, it starts with passion as a kid in a healthy way, doing this thing that you love. And then the success turns this into essentially an industry in which there's a lot of people relying upon the perpetuation of that success. the love for the thing itself begins to wane and it becomes about money and career and legacy. And then, you know, then the crisis happens that either breaks that person or helps to rebuild them and allows them to come back stronger. Totally. Right. I mean, that's kind of like, you see this being that archetype getting played out and played out and played out. And, you know, in my personal experience with this podcast, like this began as like a tiny little thing

and now it's like a thing, right? It's not like the biggest thing in the world, but like. It's a thing. There's people that help me and they're here and you guys are here. And we're stoked to be here. There's lights, we're filming this. Like, this is not how it started.

And you don't think we feel the same way on the other side of the mic, right? Like, we're two young guys that wrote a book because we like writing. And suddenly people are buying our book. And you want to have us and talk to you. And what does that mean? And what does it mean? And people think we know what we're doing.

Right. And now you have an agent. And your agent says, well, what's the next book? And then the nature of the thing itself inevitably changes, right? And what does that say about passion or what passion means or the quality of passion that is underlying everything that you're doing and why you're doing it? Yeah, exactly. And I think the other thing that is really important or interesting is it's also your

relationship to that activity, like your identity being tied to it as you have success. Like we found, you know, talking to a bunch of different people, it's that moment where you go from, oh, I really enjoy this. I'm really passionate. Then it almost transforms to like, this is who I am. You know, I'm Steve the runner because I was good at running. Right. Or, you know, your rich role, the podcast guy, because this has blown up.

And it's people know you by that. But then you yourself started identifying yourself only in this regard. Yeah. And I think what we found is that that kind of spirals this passion thing towards a negative, almost obsessive connotation, because then it becomes like,

oh, if, you know, Brad and I are known as writers and we write this poor book, now it's just not like, oh, we failed at writing. We're not good at writing. It's no, Brad and I failed, right? Right. So it's like that time. You are failures. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Well, once you become associated with a certain thing and you're successful in that regard, then your identity becomes calcified around it. And then you feel this pressure to live up to it. So if this book is super successful, maybe you have the ability to say, well, I'm never going to write another book again. I don't feel like it or whatever. But then you would inevitably find yourself butting up against that sense of dissonance of um uh dissonance with this identity that you

work so hard to create right it's a weird thing i think so i i'd like to think that if it got to that point and the reason that it's like nope never writing another book is because didn't want to write i'd like to think i'd have the guts we'd have the guts to do it. I think that we still like to write, but that other stuff is still there. So in the book, there's this section on harmonious and obsessive passion and how the two can take different forms at different times of someone's life. And personally, I just shoot for 51% of my passion to be harmonious. And as long as the majority is coming from I like the act itself, then I'm fine getting excited by other things. Because when I was researching this book and writing it with Steve, I got into this phase where I started like just getting stuck in my head and like judging myself.

Am I just doing this because I want to sell books? Am I just doing this because I want people to take me seriously? Or do I actually like writing? And Steve's been real helpful at this. Just the two can coexist. So long as the fuel for the activity is the predominant one, you should be in a pretty healthy relationship with the thing. Yeah, that's, uh, so how do you gauge that 51%? Like, how do you know that you're, So how do you gauge that 51%? Like, how do you know that you're, you know what I mean? Like for me, you have to be really honest with yourself,

but then sometimes I don't even trust my own barometer. Like I may say, well, I'm doing this because I love it. But then like, what part of my psyche am I shrouding and not really being completely open with. Yeah. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, 100%. And I think that's why, you know, Brad mentioned the conversations we have, but we talk about this all the time.

And I think that's part of the outlet is talking to somebody from the outside who knows you really well, but can see those, like, changes in your behaviors and changes of, like, your attitude towards doing things. Right. who knows you really well, but can see those changes in your behaviors and changes of your attitude towards doing things. And that's where it's been really helpful in not only our writing relationship, but our friendship of calling each other out. It's important, right?

Well, I think the central, sort of the central question that you're asking in this book, and I would imagine was a motivating factor in bringing expression to these ideas, is we're in this cultural moment right now, as I kind of alluded to at the beginning, where we're encouraged to, there's a kind of war of ideas where on the one hand, it's like, encouraged to, there's a kind of war of ideas where on the one hand, it's like, follow your passion. You only live once, life is short, you're a millennial, go travel the world, who cares? And then the responsible voice on the other shoulder saying, passion is overrated. We're in a culture of hot takes, right? So what's the hot take? Well, the hot take now is to say, passion is bullshit, right? Don't listen to your passion. Maybe you shouldn't follow your passion. You should follow through on the thing that you're good at or the thing that could perhaps provide

you with, you know, a solid career path for the next 20 or 30 years. And reconciling these two ideas, kind of bashing up against each other, seems to be the tension or the friction that's kind of birthed the ideas that come through on the book. Yeah, 100%. And that's the title, right? The Passion Paradox. People want black or white. They don't like it depends. It depends is not such a great answer. But with passion, like I think Steve thinks the answer really is it depends. And that's why we wrote the book is to figure out, well, it depends on what, like, what is a good passion? What is a bad passion? Um, it can absolutely be reckless to pursue something that you have no business pursuing financially for your relationships, but it can

also be reckless to stay in the same old rut that you've been in. In the book, we try to tease out, well, how do you work with these questions in a way that feels right for you and that also is setting you up to have a healthy relationship with the thing? Yeah. In other words, this subtitle for this book could be like, how to follow your passion in a very respectful, responsible way that your parents would approve of. I mean, maybe. I don't, I don't, I don't know about that, but I'm kidding, you know, but it is like responsible being, being a responsible, passionate person. Yeah. You know what I mean? And stuff comes out. So, so, so one, one clear example of, I guess maybe is like responsible,

passionate person. So there's this notion that if you're passionate about something, you should drop what you're doing and pursue your heart's desire. There have been books written about this. You should follow your must. And what the research shows is actually the complete opposite, that the best way to cultivate a passion is to do so very incrementally and gradually over time. So if one's passion was becoming a professional podcaster, the answer is not to quit your job and start podcasting. It's to start podcasting as a hobby. I can assure you that that is a bad idea.

And you gradually work up to a spot where then maybe you gain the confidence based on evidence that you can go all in. And the reason that this works is because you can take more risks when you have the safe thing supporting you, which is a very different narrative. I mean, I didn't hear that narrative growing up.

I heard either take the safe path, or if you take the safe path, you're going to be bored all your life. Follow your passion. Don't worry about it. Have no regrets. And those two things don't have to be in opposition to each other.

Yeah, it doesn't have to be a binary to each other. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't have to be a binary thing. Go ahead. Sorry. Yeah. And I think one other thing, one other nuanced thing that Brad pointed out there is a lot of times we hear find your passion. And that implies that there is something out there that you're going to be passionate about. But I think what we found and what we're trying to get out is it's not about finding it. It's about cultivating it, right? It's not that, hey, the moment I start writing, like I'm going to be deeply in love with writing. You know, if you asked me 10 years ago if I was going to write a book, like I've been like, nope, no way.

Like I hate writing, don't want to do it in school, anything like that. But now I love it, enjoy it. And part of that was like a process of like writing blogs and articles and like coming to enjoy that and what the research clearly shows is it's not like a soulmate where there's one passion out there that you can find is that you can cultivate this in different things that you're interested in so what we really suggest is almost become like serial dabblers and look at different things you're interested in and try them out. And if they have that fuel to become a passion,

you'll become aware of it and you'll cultivate it. I like that. I think that's really important too because it's one thing to say, to have this discussion, should you follow your passion or not, passion being something that didn't even exist in the lexicon a couple of hundred years ago, right? But I think the more common thing is that people don't even know what their passion is. It's like, oh, how convenient you have a passion. You're trying to figure out whether you should pursue it. Like, I don't even

know. Like, I've just been doing my job and what, you know, like I'm. Like, I don't even know, like, I've just been doing my, I'm at my job and what, you know, like I I'm so disconnected that I don't even know what I would do if I could do it. And that I think goes to the heart of, of what ails so many people. And so the idea that like relieving the pressure valve, like don't feel bad if you don't have a passion. Right. Actually, most people don't. No. Like try stuff that you think is cool and like, don't feel bad if you don't have a passion. Actually, most people don't. No, and Steve, yeah. Try stuff that you think is cool and like don't judge yourself over that.

And I gotta give credit to Steve. Steve is so good about this. Passion is such a charged word that like you said, you feel bad. I don't have a passion, but just follow your- Because you have this idea that people are just jumping out of bed in the morning, like lit up and just can't wait to get to work or whatever.

But it's more about interest. Like the seed for passion is interest and everyone interests. And it's about following your interests. And I can almost assure you that if you have an interest and your first thought is, how can I monetize this? You probably will not monetize it. But if your first thought is, I really love doing this thing, I'm going to spend more time doing it. And I'm going to invest in my own growth doing this thing, whether it's writing, running, owning a business, in a relationship, you name it, then over time, it will become very clear if that's something that makes sense for you to monetize and give more of your time to. Yeah. I mean, what I always say is think about the things that you enjoyed most as a young person that kind of fell by the wayside as you

got older. And some of those are silly, but some of those are very primal and may still be relevant. And it's not about monetization or quitting your job or monopolizing your time. But if you can recapture one of those interests and breathe a little life into it as an adult and just fan that flame and do it simply because you enjoy doing it,

that's the win in and of itself. And should that lead you on a path that tweaks your trajectory going forward professionally, then that's gravy, but it's not necessarily about that. Yeah, you nailed it. It's a two-phase process. So there's that, which is doing it, not thinking about that. Yeah, you nailed it. It's a two-phase process. So there's that, which is doing it, not thinking about success. And you're most likely, like I said, to have success. Success, monetization, that should all be a byproduct. That shouldn't be the end goal.

So that's the first part of the book is outlining, well, how do you do that? What's the process for cultivating your passion? How do you know when to pull back? How do you know when to push forward? cultivating your passion? How do you know when to pull back? How do you know when to push forward? Then the second part is, oh, wow, like I've got some success. Then it's everyone just says, well, follow your passion. Well, then it's that slippery slope to craving and need more success and need more followers and more money and more recognition. So then once you have the success, well, then how do you nurture and nourish your passion so it stays harmonious so like the way that society looks at this is ass backwards right it's find your passion doesn't work like that and then it's like oh when you have passion just like follow it with reckless abandon you're crushing

like nope that's a slippery slope to to craving and suffering and anxiety and depression and burnout and all sorts of bad things right and that's something you experienced in your personal life, right? Yeah. You know, it's, it's, I don't know how much of it would necessarily be related to the passion itself. Um, but I, I'll step back for a second. So I'm in recovery for obsessive compulsive disorder, um, which is a really misunderstood thing. I always thought growing up obsessive compulsive disorder was like someone that needed to be super clean or super organized. You're just washing your hands. Right. And Steve, who spent time at my family's house and with me can tell you like I'm neither super clean nor super organized. But obsessive compulsive disorder is actually characterized by any kind of

recurring intrusive thought that is accompanied by a devastating feeling. And these thoughts can hit you 10,000 times a day, just nonstop. And then the compulsion is anything to make that thought go away. So in the hand washing example, someone might constantly be thinking that they're dirty, they're going to get sick. And how do you make that go away? You wash your hands and then the thought comes back and you wash your hands again. That's only one type of OCD. The type that I suffered from and occasionally still do is related to self-harm. So I have these awful thoughts that I should harm myself. And it's one thing to have a crazy thought, but they're accompanied by urges and feelings to really do it. And my compulsion was then reassuring myself. So in my mind, trying to problem solve, like, oh, I would never do that. I have no reason to be feeling this way. I should be happy. But the circuits and the brain just go totally haywire and you get caught in this vicious cycle. And that hit me about two months after Peak Performance came out. I don't think that it had any relation to the fact that the book was successful. I do think that I'm a very dopamine

driven person. I'm very excitable. Good conversation. Excites me. Doing well excites me. Writing excites me. I exist in excitement. And excitement is fueled by this neurochemical dopamine. And a lot of research on OCD shows that OCD is just like the dopamine circuits going totally haywire. So my psychiatrist can't say, like I can't say, no one will really know. Maybe I was predisposed and this would have happened regardless. But a story that I tell myself is that when that book came out,

there was so much dopamine going on because I was just excited. I was having conversations like this. Things were great that eventually the brain just short-circuited it, and it was like from that to just the worst experience of my life. Yeah, you described it as it's called Pure O? Yeah, Pure O. What does that mean?

So Pure O is a way that clinicians and patients, people that suffer, can categorize it from other OCD. So the pure O stands for pure obsessional. So I didn't have any visible compulsions. I see. It wasn't like I was walking my hands. My compulsion was, again, trying to problem solve or reassure myself. And there's nothing like a book release to set in, a cascade of dopamine activating activities, like refreshing your

Amazon ranking and all that kind of craziness that goes along with it. So it's not a surprise that that was sort of. Yeah. The one thing I will say in case, in case there are listeners that are either confused or maybe suffering themselves is that I always thought that OCD or anxiety was just like what I used to experience as anxiety at like a hundred degrees. It's a totally different animal. Like there was no slippery slope from like excitement of the book. I can't stop thinking to OCD. It was like, I mean, it's terrifying. It felt like my brain was just completely taken over. There was a week when I thought maybe I developed schizophrenia. I mean, it was literally losing your mind and having just enough insight to know that you lost your mind.

Fucking terrifying. So thankful that I have health insurance and that I was able to get help and I have a supportive family. And now I'm here having this conversation about it like it's this crazy thing. But when I was in it, I didn't know what was going to happen. It was really scary. Yeah, the irony of being the guy who co-wrote the peak performance book,

about like how you mentally approach performing at your best to then have this, succumb to this kind of episode. But then I don't know how much time passed after the acute phase of it, but you decide to share this and you write about this for Outside. Yeah. That happened about August. That came out in March, I think. So about eight months after the onset.

Eight months after. Uh-huh. And what precipitated that was actually a singular event. I was in Virginia with my brother on what was supposed to be a fun vacation to run the Virginia, like the Charlottesville half marathon or not Charlottesville, excuse me, the Richmond half marathon. And I was just having a miserable time with OCD that weekend. And I was supposed to be there with my brother having a good time. And like all I could think about was driving the car off the road and it just

fucking sucks. And I remember being at a coffee shop and pulling up my email and I had like four emails from 20 to 30 year old guys that are in the spirit of you're only 31. You wrote this kick-ass book. You've got it all figured out, how do you do it? And I'm sitting there with that stuff going on in my mind and it just broke me. And the cognitive dissonance and the distress that that caused was almost as bad as the OCD itself. And at that moment, I'm like, I just can't live like this.

So I either need to stop writing because I'm a total imposter, I'm a fraud, or I need to come out and own this. And the things that I write about are pretty personal always. So there was no if, ands, or but. And for a while, I'm like, maybe I just won't write. Maybe this isn't for me. And again, thank goodness a supportive therapist is like, no, that's the worst thing you could do. That's giving into the OCD, like fucking own it. So, yeah, I decided to write about it.

You know, not it had the byproduct of helping a lot of people. But if I'm being totally honest, did I want to help other people? Sure. But when I wrote that, it was really more for myself to just eliminate that total feeling of being a fraud. Yeah, the dissonance and the catharsis with that. But it had to be hard to hit publish on that. But I would imagine that's got to be, of everything you've written, I mean, that seemed to really connect with people in a profound and also a viral way. Yeah, and that's like the unintended byproduct thing.

That story blew up and people were offering me book deals about that issue. And I'm like, whoa, like, let's all pause. I'm no person to be an in, that you're in, this like self-help genre that just act like they have all their stuff together. Few people probably do, if anyone. I mean, that's why we connected, right? You've been so authentic. And I'll say this because it's really true. One of my core values is authenticity. And I was deciding whether or not to write the story. I know I've shared this with you in an email.

And I said, what would Rich do? Rich would probably do it. And that's kind of what you did in your own way. And then I did it and nothing really changed. Like I shared it, didn't make the OCD go away. Steve, super helpful there as a friend. Steve's been through some hard things in his life. He warned me that when the story gets published, you're going to feel like you've like conquered it. You declared victory. Like, don't get trapped by that. Like, it doesn't make the underlying thing go away. And I felt good for a day.

And then the next day, like, you suck. Like, you shouldn't have written this. Like, life's awful. But there is gotta be something. But I was warned, which was good. So like, I kind of knew it was coming. And I'm like, okay, like this thing doesn't just go away. And it took like a year of going to therapy once a week for the thing to go away.

But there is something about owning it and then sharing it publicly that is a pressure release, right? I don't have to deal with those emails anymore. Yeah. Now it's like you seem to have all your stuff together, and yet it also seems like you completely fall apart somewhat often. Like, yep, now you're talking to the right guy. It's better. completely fall apart somewhat often. Like, yep, now you're talking to the right guy. It's better. Well, yeah, that whole projection of like, how can I be like you? You're living this idealized life is, you know, it's weird when you're on the receiving end of that. I can't

stand the word self-help. I struggle with the word authenticity because it's been so co-opted, et cetera. But these are all important ideas, right? Like I don't consider myself a self-help person really. Like I'm just trying to have interesting conversations with people. I'm as flawed and as human as anybody. And as frightening as it may be, sharing our frailties and our flaws, I think,

is what connects us more deeply with our fellow humans in this shared experiment that we're having. Yeah. I think it's incredibly important just to get the message out there that no one has it figured out. We're all kind of muddling through this thing. I got news for you. Yeah. No one does. It doesn't matter how much of an expert. You know, I've worked with some world-class athletes who are just, you know, going into a meet are just jittery and anxious messes, right?

Because they don't have it figured out either. Yeah, where everyone's looking at them like, oh, they're the ones that they have the answer. Exactly. And you, you have a very, I mean, we talked about this last time, but it's in the new book. And I think it is relevant to what we're talking about today. Exactly. 401, and then this becomes the quote-unquote identity that follows you around for a very long period of time to the point where you just want to get as far away from it as possible. So talk a little bit about how that evolution has brought you to this place.

Yeah. I mean, it's kind of the heart of this book, right? It's that fact that I loved running, absolutely loved it. I mean, I would do it even if I didn't race, anything like that. But then you get success, right? And then you get known for this. And then, you know, at 18, I'm running on, you know, a professional meet on NBC Live and like cameras on me and all this stuff. And then your identity becomes wrapped around it, right? Where for a while I struggled and still struggle on, you know,

am I Steve the failed runner? Because I never went under four, never met my expectations. But you're the only one who attaches that word to that. Right, exactly. Everyone else is like, that dude ran 401 or that's the guy who ran 401. Yeah, exactly. But in your head at that moment,

like you blow it up into this big thing of people must see me this way. And for a long time like i'd show up for you know a weekend 5k local race and i would hate it if someone recognized me out there because i'd be like well i'm just gonna go run you know 15 16 minutes or something not up to like my par of right what i thought was good enough and i would despise being out there and doing things. And like for years, I didn't race because of that. For years, I kind of regretted or didn't have a good relationship with running, which is something that, again,

I grew up loving and was a passion and all that stuff. So how did you get to the other side of it? You know, I think it's a couple of things. This first, you know, where I really realized it is after I held the Texas State record for high school on the mile. And someone broke that a couple of years ago. I remember like being there watching it and then being like, one cares like doesn't matter like it's just like me in my head of like hey this matters like you're a state record holder

right blah blah blah no one cares the headline in the paper the next day wasn't like steve magnus no longer holds exactly but in your head you blow it up to this big thing. So I think that's that was like the end catharsis of it. But it was really, you know, changing my relationship and getting back to like why I did this activity in the first place. And really on a from a coaching standpoint that played a large role because I was working with, you know, college kids who are 18 to 22 who are enjoying this sport. Not many of them are going to go pro or go to the Olympics or whatever have you. And it's really saying, what am I trying to help these kids with? What should their relationship with this sport that they enjoy doing be? And doing that with other people really brought it home of like, okay, I'm trying to cultivate this in them.

What do I want to cultivate in myself? And at a more meta level, it's almost like there's this surface level dimension where we're all playing this game where you win, you lose, you have success, you have recognition. And that stuff feels good when you're in that game. But underneath it, there's like this more like ultimate dimension, which is really about like love, right? And do you love the thing that you're doing? Are you connected to other people?

Are you helping them? And it can be hard to exist in both those games at once. So there's nothing wrong with playing the surface level game. And like we talked about getting excited when you do well, but if you get completely stuck in that surface level game, that's when you can start to feel hollow and empty and the passion goes away. Yeah. It's, uh, it's not a healthy game to play. It's not sustainable, uh, and it's not going to make you happy. And I know that as somebody who's played that game, you know, it's very, it's, it's, it's very alluring to get caught up in a lot of that kind of statistical data around how well you're doing with everything that's available on the internet now, when you

put content out into the world. And I'm constantly having to like remind myself or bring myself back to the why behind what I'm doing. And I'm as flawed as the next person and driven by ego and all that kind of stuff. And I'll get like, why is it, you know what I mean? And I'm like, I have to, it's a practice, right? Just like meditation is a practice. Okay. Why am I doing this? What's important about this? It is about connection. It is about love. I started this because I love having these conversations. I want to create a deeper connection with human beings and everything else around that is just ephemera. Yes. And that we say that in the book over and over that passion is a practice. I think that's another one of these flaws, right? So just find your passion, bullshit,

just follow your passion, bullshit, and follow your passion, bullshit. And be passionate. Or like passion is like lightning striking and then you're passionate. Like no way, it is an ongoing practice. Cultivating, nourishing, and then coming back to what matters. Yeah, and it also involves doing a bunch of stuff you don't want to do.

Just because it's your passion doesn't mean you're stoked about every single aspect of what's entailed in pursuing it. Yeah, 100%. I think it goes back to we have these false ideas of what it looks like. And I think it's almost like the same thing you mentioned there with this comparison, right? We think this is reality over here, but it's not, right? We think passion means that I'm going to enjoy this every

single time that I do this, but a lot of passion is in that grind. And a lot of making something go from like interest to passion is actually in the grind of doing it. Yeah. I mean, that's something that everybody from Gary Vee to David Goggins talks about, that everybody from Gary Vee to David Goggins talks about. Like Goggins talks about having to be, you have to be obsessed, and you have to get in the muck and callous the mind and all that kind of stuff. And it's unbelievably inspirational

as much as he hates that word and would not use it, it is. But it's also not necessarily a recipe for most people because most people are not going to wake up at 1.30 in the morning to go to the gym and do the things that David does. He can set this example that helps us push through our own personal boundaries in maybe an incremental way. But how do we find a sustainable propelling fuel in passion that will allow us to flourish over the long run versus you know the unhealthy you know grind until you die and and i think one of the things that is almost another nuanced part of this is it's it's not necessarily bad to almost like go all in for

a little bit right right yeah but it's like having the awareness to know like, all right, like to get this done, like I'm going to have to go this obsessive, go all in. But then I've got to come out of it unless I want to be down this path of like, I'm going to be obsessive and I'm going to burn out. Just go all the way until burning out. Yeah. And that goes to self-awareness, which is a big point of your book. I mean, you talk about the illusion of balance. We've talked about this before. Brad, you've written about this extensively. This is a big point of your book. I mean, you talk about the illusion of balance. We've talked about this before. Brad, you've written about this extensively. This is a subject matter that's super important to me too,

this illusion of balance, people saying you should eat a balanced diet and live a balanced life. I don't adhere to that. I think that, like you said, it's okay to go all in, but you have to have the self-awareness to then pull yourself back out. Like I talked about this with Michael Gervais, and he said, instead of thinking about balance, just think about presence.

Like, can you be present in what you're doing? And I think you guys have sort of gotten at the same idea, but you're using self-awareness. Yeah, I think so. What we mean by self-awareness is the ability to see the inertia of what you're doing and not to let that inertia drive you, but to make sure that you're driving the ship. And again, it's nuanced and it can be hard to tease out which of those two things it is. And that inertia, part of that is from the external results that we talked about. But part of that is also just because you really like the thing. And it's this constant practice of looking back and saying, well, what am I giving up as a result to go all in? What am I sacrificing? And is it worth it?

And just asking those questions is helpful. But what we found and what's in the book is there are some there are some concrete ways to do this that have been verified by science that then we've personally experienced. So one of my favorite is to disconnect and spend time in nature, experience awe. And I know in my own life there is nothing like a day hike or a backpacking trip that helps me figure out like, okay, like what, what matters to me? Like when I come back from that, what am I excited about? And I can tell you, it's not checking my Amazon sales rank. It's like spending quality time with people that I love and writing like two activities that are completely unrelated to any external measures. Um, another way to do this that we discuss in the

book is to reflect on mortality. So a really, I don't want to use the word good, but a powerful practice that we recommend is once a year, read a memoir of someone that's in the dying process. And coming out of a book like that, for a lot of people, it gets really clear how you ought to be spending your time. And whether you want to call that, it a lot of people, it gets really clear how you ought to be spending your time. And whether you want to call that, it's almost like self-awareness is the skill that lets you be present for the things that matter. The thing is, if you're obsessed, you're not going to allow yourself to go on that day-long hike because you're too obsessed. 100%. That's the rub, right?

And that's why we frame this is it's like these skill sets that you need to develop because like you know i've been there before like i've been totally 100 obsessed all in forget about everything else right um and anybody can go there but like what we're trying to get across is, hey, like if you can develop these skill sets of self-awareness, of creating a perspective, of giving yourself these other things to do, then you're going to be in a better position

once that inertia keeps rolling and you start to go down that path, you can take a, you know, divert and take a different path. I think what happens is somebody is super passionate about the business that they're starting or their athletic pursuits. And they may have heard stories about how people can become too obsessed and too passionate, but they think it doesn't apply to them, that they're going to be different, right? And so whether it's the woman at Theranos, you know, or, you know, what happened at- Enron. Enron, exactly. Yeah, it's the other example that you use in Enron. Enron, exactly.

The other example that you use in the book, we see passion unleashed in an out of control way, in the same way that like, it's very similar to what Ryan talks about in Ego of the Enemy. Ego is the enemy where when these things are unchecked, things that we think are positive forces that are propelling us to succeed ultimately become our Achilles heel that destroy us. Yeah.

And I think that's the important point to make is no one starts out thinking like, I'm going to be obsessive and this is going to be bad. Right. Everyone starts out on like, I enjoy this. This is passionate about it. But some people will say, I'm like, I enjoy this. This is passion about it. But some people will say, I'm going to outwork everybody. Yeah, that's true. And that's how I'm going to make it. That is true.

And I, but it comes out of a place of I'm going to outwork people because this is going to be good for me. Right. No one thinks that I'm going to do this to burn out. Right. And I think that, I think that's why it's incredibly important to, A, cultivate these skills, but also have people around you to give you that check, to put you almost back in place when you're headed down these directions. Yeah. And sometimes you do need to outwork everybody.

Yeah, and sometimes you do need to outwork everybody. Like, again, this book, it's a deep dive into nuance. Like, trying really hard works until it gets in your way. And then the practice is, well, how do I identify when it's getting in your way? Well, that goes back to the self-awareness piece, right? Yeah. So that seems to be almost the most important aspect of all of this. Because if you lack self-awareness or you're just disconnected from yourself, then you're not going to be able to really navigate the treacherous waters of

figuring this stuff out. I mean, if you don't have self-awareness, you probably are going to have difficulty figuring out what you're passionate about to begin with. The most important thing you can do is invest in that personal journey to be integrated enough so that you can trust your instincts and have a kind of reliable constitution for making these judgment calls. Totally. But self-awareness is a part of this passion of practice. The word self-awareness, I know myself better than anyone knows me. It's not true. No, it's not. There's only some really neat research

that 95% of people are not self-aware, is judged by a complete stranger, can better assess their personality against validated scales than they could. I'm not surprised, but that's so amazing. Only about 5% of people can do better. And what's really interesting is that the 95% of people are the ones that think that they're the most self-aware.

So it's like this delusional effect that lots of us have. I don't know the exact criteria. It's in the book. There are validated psychological measures of i think it's personality like various personality traits and let's say that you were to go do some interaction and a stranger were to watch you and then the stranger rates how you would fit into these quadrants and then you rate it the stranger does better with a trained psychologist eye on you um and that's that's what we've come to coin, like the

inertia. You don't see clearly when you're in the midst of all this inertia. So community is huge and people that you trust, because it's one thing to ask someone and not really listen. It's another thing to ask someone, have them tell you, wait a minute, go this way and trust them enough to do it. And then there are things that you can do as a part of this practice of passion to develop the ability to see yourself more clearly. That's fascinating. One of the simplest and very tactical things that we recommend in the book is pretend that you're giving advice to a friend. And it sounds like. In giving advice to yourself.

And then give advice to yourself. And this comes up for me all the time in a very particular way. And that is around my own exercise habits. So I tend to never want to miss workouts. And, uh, that will often mean training when I have an injury and I probably shouldn't. And I will, without fail, there's two guys. I go to the gym with Scott and Justin. I'll be walking in the gym and I'll be like, if Scott's biceps tendon was hurting him and he asked me if he should bench press, what would I say? And the answer is always, dude, take a week off. Like, you're fine.

And I have to ask myself that question like six times on the way to the gym. And then maybe I won't bench press. But if I don't ask that question, I'm going to the bench press. And that's just a very concrete example. But I think that that little twist, if you really imagine someone that could be in a similar situation than yourself or as yourself and then ask that question, that can be helpful. Yeah, it's almost more complicated than simple self-awareness because you can have the self-awareness to know that it's not a good idea for you to bench press, but then you're going to do

it anyway. You're still going to do it. So there's self-awareness and then there's the action taken upon that self-awareness. Yeah, exactly. We're almost working against like our inbuilt cognitive biases, right? I mean, we're unbelievably like rudimentary creatures in so many ways. Like when you look at the judicial system and how unreliable witness testimony is, like all these things that we think we're good at, we're absolutely horrible at. Exactly. And we have an inbuilt bias to tell a story

that is good for us, right? Of course. No one wants to sit around and be like, oh, I'm a liar, cheat, et cetera, et cetera. Or like, oh, I'm not strong enough to do this, right? We have an incentive to tell ourselves a good story in our head. So it's almost like we need these checks and balances

to make sure that we get out of our own way. And to react to a good story. Like, oh, find your passion. Just wait for lightning to strike, and then you'll be happy. Okay, that sounds good. I'm going to wait for lightning to strike. And when you follow it, pursue it. My mom, she sent me this book well before we were

writing this. And I love my mom to death. And she's a very, what's the word I'm looking for? Just very emotive in a nurturing way. And she had this book of like passion quotes. And of course, I pulled it out when I started on this project. And it's like, pursue your passion with reckless abandon. Like act as if you couldn't fail. The world is watching. And I's like, pursue your passion with reckless abandon. Like act as if you couldn't fail. The world is watching. And I'm like, oh my gosh. But like- You're gonna have a panic attack just reading that, right?

But this is the kind of stuff that's out there. That's what's out there. Because it sounds really nice. And then people end up trapped. Yeah. That's so funny, man. I think it's really hard. And I think we've moved away from that kind of community integration that for thousands and thousands of years, this is how humans lived.

And now we're so fractured, right? how humans lived and now we're so fractured, right? We're lucky if we have one or two good friends who knows us well enough to call us on our bullshit because they see us consistently enough. But I think with that progressive isolation, that level of self-awareness becomes even more, more deeply jeopardized and becomes more difficult to like really see whether you're operating in an

objective way. And it's even worse in today's modern society, right? Because we're going to project an image on Instagram or Twitter. Right, exactly. Or wherever it is, right? So we're almost in the habit in business of projecting how we want to be. So not only do we have to deal with our own delusions, but now we're creating them. So there's an expectation. Yeah, exactly. And then, yeah, just like the writing, like how do I live up to this image

that I've crafted for myself? Yeah, it's tough. It's not good, right? No, it doesn't feel good. Yeah. And that's, again, that's part of the practice of passion is to be vulnerable and to build community and to have people that you trust.

And that all leads to harmonious passion versus the obsessive passion is this, I've got it all together. I'm bulletproof. I can't fail. And then what happens, as Steve said, there's this identity fusion. And then when you do fail, well, it's not just the thing failed, it's you failed. And then suddenly lying becomes more, um, of a temptation acting unethical.

There's, uh, there's some research that we profile in the book that athletes who use steroids are so much more likely to. So I'll step back there. There's this model developed by a psychologist named Robert Valorant. And it's a survey that lets you answer questions and it will tell you you're obsessive or harmonious and where in the spectrum you fall because it's not black or white. obsessive or harmonious and where in the spectrum you fall because it's not black or white. There's a direct correlation with people that fall in the obsessive side and steroids and sport and unethical behavior in business. And it makes total sense because again, if the thing that you're passionate about is the result and your identity is tied to that result, you're going to and the result doesn't happen. You're going to do anything to get the result because as Steve so

often says, it's no longer an attack on your business. It's an attack on you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when we're talking about it, it sounds so clear, but it's when you're in it and you're doing the thing, it's this really slippery slope. And sometimes without self-awareness, it can happen and you don't know what's happening, that you're going from harmonious to obsessive. Well, you see this on the day today too, right? How many times have you gotten in an argument with a friend or your spouse or your boyfriend or girlfriend, and you go into that defensive mode where it's like, oh, they're attacking me. And it's not about the argument anymore.

It's about you winning this so that, or in your sense of self can- That's like every, you know, political argument or kind of the diet wars that you see. Like Brad, we've talked about this too. It's become like so tribal and polarized. Like I just don't even wanna be part of that whatsoever. Don't talk about religion. Right, because it's, you know,

people so self-identify with their tribe that any kind of cogent, objective discussion is impossible because it is so personalized. So an attack against this idea or argument or perspective becomes an attack on who you are as a human being. And that, of course, is going to make you defensive. Exactly. And that pushes us more into our own tribe. Right, yeah, exactly. Because then you're just-

Yeah, and then on social media, you signal to that tribe to make sure that they know that you're a member in good standing of that. So like those arguments are about making sure that you're affirming your membership in that group much more so than they are about changing the minds of somebody who's outside of that group.

Totally. One practice, coming back to the example in particular of passion, because again, this stuff can make sense intellectually, but then it's hard to actually act on. One practice that we recommend in the book that we heard from just about everyone that we interviewed that has had a long career and stayed harmoniously passionate is this notion of very swiftly returning to the work itself. So if you have a huge success as a writer, celebrate the success because there's something to say about celebration and joy. That's important. But then don't take too long before you get back to writing. And the same thing after a failure, like it's okay to be sad and to grieve a defeat, but then get back to the thing itself. Because in the case of a victory, getting back to the thing is humbling. And in the case of a defeat, getting back to the thing is like, well, I like this thing. You know, I'm doing it because of the activity, not because of the results.

And it literally it prevents your brain from grooving in those neural pathways that are associated with validation, bestseller, Olympic medal. It's nope, running like back to the activity. This is what I like. And in the case of defeat, same thing. You're short circuiting the brain's process to really hardwire all these negative emotions or I'm a failure.

And then that just builds more pressure for the next time. It's again, nope, back to the act. Right, so you're reinforcing process as being the end game as opposed to the results of that process being the determining factor in how you feel about what you do. Yeah, because the results are, they're so transient. If you think, like we spend our life in the process.

The amount of time that you look at the New York Times thing and see your book as a bestseller is one second. Yeah. But then you can spend years thinking about it or being bummed out that you missed it. And like your friend Mike Gervais said, not really present for your life. And there's something about getting back to the thing that doesn't let that delusional, not even delusional, but that being elsewhere, worrying about success or failure, take root

in your brain. Yeah. And let's just be honest. That's very hard. Because listen, if you're going to open up the New York Times and you're going to see that your book is listed on that special list that they make in that newspaper once in a while, that is intoxicating, right? And that's something that's going to get you excited. And also, it's going to lie to you.

It's going to tell you that this is what's going to change your life. This is what's going to make you feel okay. This is why it's all worth it, et cetera. All of that, which is an illusion, of course, that you don't realize until you experience it and understand you don't feel any different about your life. And what is that sound as you describe that where we started, eerily like? It's like addiction, right? Like that's the passio, that's the suffering. So you said, is passion good or bad? And I'm like, it depends. Well, that kind of passion might feel good, just like your next hit feels good. But ultimately,

that leads to suffering because it's constantly craving. And once it goes away, you're miserable. Whereas the. But if you love writing, then you're like, this is awesome. This just means I get to do this more. Yes. But then get back to the work. Don't sit there talking about how you're a New York Times bestselling author. Be proud of yourself. Don't minimize the success, but then ass in the chair, start writing. If you're an Olympic medalist, you got to get paid. Go do the media spots. Butt on the track, I guess in this case it's feet on the track, start running.

Same thing in business. Really successful executives are the executives that do the work, not the executives that talk about the work, not the executives that go on TV about the work. They're the ones that do the work, not the executives that talk about the work, not the executives that, you know, go, go on TV about the work. They're the ones that do the work. And all the science that you guys reviewed right in this book, what was, what were some of the more surprising findings that you came across as it relates to passion? I got one. It was, so think that, so there's the, there's,

um, a neuropsychiatrist named Mark Lewis and, uh, his work around what happens when you're in the throes of an obsessive passion, uh, shows that it's very similar to individuals suffering from eating disorders.

Whoa. Because when someone's suffering from an eating disorder, when they look in the mirror, they don't necessarily see someone that is too thin and sick. They see someone that is too big. And it's the same brain activity when someone is in the throes of an obsessive passion. So their company may be failing.

They may be ruining their marriage. They may be lying to the feds, but they don't see any of that. They just see like we're on this mission, got to succeed, just like the person with an eating disorder has got to lose more weight. And that's that linkage. Again, that's passion, right? In the case of not the person with the eating disorder, you can say an eating disorder is passion about losing weight. Yeah. To the oomph degree. You can say an eating disorder is passion about losing weight. Yeah. To the oomph degree.

You can be very passionate about destroying your life. Yeah. You can be very passionate about being a victim. All those things are true. So when the idea came together, we started, these are interesting concepts to explore, but then the science really drilled it home that like passion, suffering, it's one coin. And it's often about where you direct it. Another example that's similar is if you think about the act of training for the

Olympics to swim, you were a swimmer, six to eight hours a day in the pool, maybe, I don't know, maybe there's some land work. So you are staring at a line in water to the exclusion of everything in your life for six to eight hours a day. And when you're not in the pool, you're probably thinking about your workout. That sounds a lot like OCD. Like the obsession is Olympics and training

and the compulsion is you swim. But it's pointed in a positive direction. And I think Olympic athletes are awesome and super inspirational, but what we want to do is we want to point out like this stuff just isn't so simple. Right, it's insanity. It is insanity.

Right. So we're very, you know, in the way that we're selective about which animals we love and which animals we eat, we're selective about which obsessions we socially approve of and which we decide are

addictions that we need to malign. And it's the gift and the curse. I'll say one last thing about, because the OCD part in particular, the closest thing, and it's still a world away, but the closest thing I can describe to my brain when it's in the storm of OCD is my brain when I'm writing. Because it's just like I'm locked into the book. Like it feels somewhat similar. I could be at the dinner table, but I'm thinking about the book. I could be at the gym, but I'm thinking about the book. It's just, I'm obsessed with it. And that is a great gift. And I really like writing, but it's that same brain chemistry that if it's pointed in another direction, you know, can go awry. So there's this notion of there's, there's,

at least I think like there's two ways to go about it. There's realizing that your temperament is as such and pointing that in positive directions. And at the same time, there's working on self awareness and skills to be able to turn that off when you want to, and to be able to choose to. Yeah. And I think, you know, that's the kind of greater thing that we noticed in this book is it's it's all this stuff is on a spectrum, right? It's not good or bad. If you look at Olympic athletes, like when they're done with the Olympics and on their break, let's say they exhibit the exact same symptoms as an addict getting taken off drugs, right? Depression, anxiety, all those things happen. And the same thing, you know, talking with Brad a little bit is actually

growing up, like I had OCD. I just didn't know I had it. So I had all these compulsions. So I'd have to touch doorknobs or else I i thought i was gonna like something bad was gonna happen turn my alarm on and off seven times before i went to bed or else i thought i'd wake up dead stuff like that and those were all in retrospect looking back oriented around running performance like not originally but ritualistically all ritualistic. Right. But as I grew up or as I grew into running, I just directed all of those rituals and obsessions towards running. So running, the training for running itself became obsessive compulsive. It was like, I have to go out for this run or else I'm going to have these horrible anxiety, et cetera, that's overwhelming. So I'm going to go out for this run. So I think when we look at that, and if I look at other athletes that

I've helped out, like, if you look at them, a lot of them are on that spectrum of having some sort of obsession and compulsion to have to do it. I mean, you almost have to have some degree if you're going to go out and run, I don't know, 120 miles a week, right? Yeah. I mean, I've manifested certain aspects of that. I mean, I relate to that a lot. Like, I would have to be the first person to arrive for a morning workout. Like, little, you know, just things that are meaningless, but to me, it was like, oh, I wasn't the first one here. And then I had a certain way I had to wash my bathing suit. Like after I was done, that had to be done in a certain way. It was completely OCD and insane. Right. But you trick yourself into thinking that these are related to ultimately your performance later on.

Exactly. It's that like inner mind game where you're like, no, I have to do this because this, this is going to help me perform or this is good. This is why I'm good at this. And if I have to do this because this is going to help me perform. This is why I'm good at this. And if I don't do this ritual, if I don't follow this, then I'm not going to be good at it. And if somebody, sorry, go ahead. But I was just going to say, in that sense, it's almost like accepted, right? Because it's like, oh, this is for good. He's driven.

He's driven. And we tie it up into like, oh, that person's just really passionate about running. He's just super driven and super intrinsically driven. Like I don't have, if you were asked to coach or if you were asked to ask my coach at that time, like I don't have to worry about him. He's going to do his workout. He's going to get everything done. And it's all in this positive light.

But if we frame those same behaviors in a different context, we'd be like, oh, that's negative. That person needs this help. And this person needs to go do this. So as somebody who lived through that and who now coaches, how do you counsel your athletes when you start to see indicia of this kind of OCD behavior? Yeah, that's a good question. You know, one of the things that I try and do is starting with that awareness and understanding of what they're doing. And if this behavior is like almost if they're in control of it or not, because I think the biggest thing I saw with myself is that over time, it's almost like these OCD behaviors took control. Right.

Where if you didn't do them, then like extreme anxiety, et cetera, et cetera. And that's the definite, real quick, that's the definite, like clinical OCD, the definition is like you totally lose control and it's just nonstop, 24 seven. So I think it's important to say like these, to me, these are still on spectrums

because I've always been super ritualistic. But then like for 16 hours a day, like when I was in the thick of it, if I was sitting here, I'd look at that glass and be like, oh, I could just like jab that into my neck. And then massive anxiety. So I just want to be clear because I've become really cautious about like using those terms. But I do think that it's still the same spectrum because it's the same thing. It's just that this is in a way where maybe it's two hours a day and then pathologically it's just non-stop okay sorry steve i just want to know i mean it's and i think it's all on this extremes right it's like growing up like even outside of the running context like i had a different ocd classified

behaviors right but i wasn't going to sit there and wash like i didn't have it so bad that i was going to wash dishes for two hours right or wash my hands yeah like walk around in a circle for 10 hours exactly and that's i think that's where it's really important to see this spectrum and i think that's what's really important about human nature is i don't know about other you know uh mental health issues but i imagine they're all on these different spectrums and then just in the athletic world you know people who maybe are mildly on this spectrum have channeled it into this thing right so we've accepted it as like yeah we reinforce it right we celebrate it yeah actually exactly and a lot of sports they do and a lot

of coaches actually do they'll reinforce this like oh that worked last time like keep doing this ritualistic behavior and then it spirals and can spiral out of control but if you can control it and the outcome is positive then i think it's a good thing like david goggins you just had on your show he is a super disciplined creature of routine. At least it sounds like it. And he seems to be loving it and enjoying life and inspiring people. So maybe that's not a problem. And again, it's like this, well, it's the gift and the curse. It depends on where it's pointed. Maybe it even depends on at what point in your life you're at, right? If you're doing certain behaviors when you've got two little kids at home, maybe that is harmful. Whereas if you don't have two little kids, it's great.

So it's these kind of nuanced things. Right. And Steve, as a coach, though, when you do see athletes starting to demonstrate this kind of stuff, what is the path to getting them to snap out of it or developing some greater self-awareness around what's actually going on? I think it depends on actually how severe the issue is. If it's just little things here and there, you make them aware of it. around what's actually going on. I think it depends on actually how severe the issue is, right? If it's just little things here and there, like you make them aware of it,

and you say like, hey, if it's not a big deal, let's try this race over here in this safe environment without doing this. Yeah, without tying your shoes six times in a row or whatever. And that's exposure therapy. Like when I went through therapy, that's basically it. Like you expose yourself to the thing that you're scared of without reassuring yourself. In a low risk environment.

Not at the big meet. No, not right off the bat. Low risk. And I think that's the thing is you're trying to get, you know, I call it like you're going to feel this almost like anxiety from it because it's like your ritual. But what I want them to get used to is just to sit with it. Right. But what I want them to get used to is just to sit with it. Right.

And if you can have the ability to like just sit with that and understand and see it like come and go when nothing happens and you raced fine and all that good stuff, then you can get out of that. But, you know, on the same side, like I've had athletes who have exhibited behaviors that further along in the spectrum there. And I think that's where it's almost where you need bring professionals in, right? Because if it starts infiltrating other aspects of their life or starts infiltrating or interfering with, you know, making it where running and racing is no longer something that is enjoyed, but instead something that like, okay, I have to go through this and do this and do this and do this just to get on the starting line. And then I don't really enjoy doing this, but it's the only thing I've done in my identities

wrapped around it. So I'm going to continue doing that. Yeah. It's an example of, of passion turning malignant. Like it's, it almost becomes this cancerous growth as opposed to this beautiful sustaining force. Exactly, 100%. And one of the things we talk about when we talk about passion is how to find it, how to find your passion, then how to chase it, how to chase your passion, how to live your passion. But what we don't talk about is when it's time to let go of your passion and move on with your life, right? And that might be my favorite chapter in your book

by just bringing this up and using examples of other people like who have come to this place of deciding like, hey, I know that my identity was wrapped up in this, but it's time to do something different. So can you guys talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I'm gonna let Steve take this first because I think Steve directly experienced it with himself running. Yeah, sure. I mean, I think it's almost like you have to come to peace with it, right? You have to come to terms and peace with whatever you're doing and having like the awareness that this isn't just, this isn't the only thing I am.

This isn't the only person I am. It goes back to the identity piece, right? And you have to come to terms with that before moving on to the next thing. And I think it's really hard, you know, on an athletic level, especially, because if you look at athletes, when are they done?

In their 20s, maybe if they're lucky, their 30s, right? And they've spent their entire lives like building towards this thing and wrapping yourself around this one thing. And then you get to the point where most people are building their careers and you have to like end yours. And then all of a sudden you're like the 22 year old out of college figuring out, okay, what's next? What's the meaning gonna like,

where am I going to get with the snap of a fingers? It's over overnight. And so many athletes find themselves thinking for the very first time about what might come next because their training their whole life around the pursuit of excellence in their sport is so all-consuming there almost isn't any room for entertaining what's going to come after yeah and it's in sport in itself like is very good at giving you like this end goal and this purpose and this definitive thing to shoot for well life is kind of nebulous to a degree right we have to make those decisions ourselves when we're in sport like those decisions are kind of made for us yeah so it's kind of like a military in the

military. Exactly. Yeah. So I think it takes a lot of work. And I think in the sporting front, like you need more work on on preparing people to make that transition. And, you know, they have the skill set needed, but no one tells you how to find something or how to direct your purpose and drive to something new and different. Yeah. I mean, it's a huge problem. should have something set up to help athletes transition out of their sports to make it a more graceful entryway into the workforce. I've seen, I experienced this myself. Like I wasn't even that good.

And I had like, you know, a major existential crisis. It's like a mourning. It's like a funeral when you finally say, I'm gonna put this away and I'm going to do something else. And you know, what makes it worse is you know that you have this ability to dedicate yourself to work incredibly hard to, you know, to endure suffering, like all of these characteristics that you think would translate into the workforce and be valued. But if you're disconnected from what it is that you might be interested in or good at

because you'd never really thought about it, then it's hard to figure out, you know, how to, you know, find the round hole for the round peg. Yeah. And you end up like, and there's a lot of people that struggle with drugs and alcohol and all these kinds of problems because they don't know what to do.

And there's nobody there. Everyone just has been, they've been on the cover of magazines for like a decade. And then suddenly they're a civilian and they're like, okay, go be an accountant. I don't know. You know, we talked about cultivating your passion via dabbling in interest.

Well, in college, if you're an athlete, you know this as well. You don't get time to dabble in interest. Well, in college, if you're an athlete, you know this as well. You don't get time to dabble in any other interest, right? It's go to class and go to practice and compete and all that stuff. Athletes at the college level, they don't get to do the internships or these other things a lot of times. The year abroad. Exactly. To find things that like, hey, this might be worthwhile pursuing. So I think like, you know, we could talk about the pros all day, but I think that the college level from transitioning from a, you know, 21, 22 year old kid, then to the workplace is it's almost heartbreaking, right? to, you know, the administration, the college athletics, athletic directors say, hey, go represent us, like go get on the magazines, go get on the TV, go get this publicity.

And then, you know, most of you aren't going to make it professional, but you're going to have to figure out something. And then you're going to be like, oh, yeah, I have this degree in something that I took just so that I could stay eligible and have this degree. But like, I don't really know or know what I can do. Yeah. And what also happens is that at least speaking personally, there's almost a sense of shame because you know what it's like to feel so plugged into something and passionate and driven and directed. And then suddenly that gets taken away.

You can't do that anymore. Suddenly that gets taken away. You can't do that anymore. But the bar is set so high in terms of what's going to get you excited about getting out of bed in the morning. And the chances that you're going to find a job that's going to give you that are pretty low, right? Compare the adrenaline, the dopamine of all that, of racing a Pac-12 championship or NCAA championship versus going and saying, hey, I'm the lowest level accountant at this company. Right. There is no, you don't get that hit. I mean, play it out in a sport where you know you can't really pursue a living, but perhaps you're the best in the world at it.

You get an Olympic, yeah, you get an Olympic gold medal in fencing. You're the best fencer in the whole world. But then, I mean, I guess you could go like be in the movies, like teach people how to sword fight in movie. I don't know. But you're not gonna be able to be a professional fencer and support yourself.

So you're gonna have to join the workforce. Like, how are you gonna do that and do it gracefully and do it in a way where you feel good about the new path that you're gonna be blazing for yourself? I mean, that is a very tall order. And if you're doing that alone, which you probably are, because there's nobody there saying, "'Hey, we know this is gonna be really rough.

Like let me help you.'" It's a disaster waiting to happen. So I think that the, the, there, there is no easy answer. As Steve said, it's really hard. I think something that hopefully this book and this conversation, um, leads to more conversation is just around transition out of sport, particularly at collegiate levels and how awful it is. And like the human suffering that results from this, sport, particularly at collegiate levels and how awful it is and like the human suffering that results from this, uh, particularly, and I'm going to go off topic a little, but like these kids aren't paid either. So like, it's really pretty much a heist, right? Unless you're

the half a percent that makes it as a pro. So that just pisses me off. But anyways, I think that there needs to be more help along the way in cultivating some other interest and also helping people to see that what you do develop as a collegiate athlete is the ability to go all in on something. And that as a function can be applied in different areas. So coming out of school, you might not have the skills to go work in finance or consulting or writing, but you certainly have the work ethic. And I'd almost argue that the discipline and the work ethic can be harder to cultivate than the skill. So imagine if there were these transition out of sport programs where you had someone to work with you to identify certain areas at which

you could put, use that drive and, and that would be successful. And there are pilot programs that work with athletes to do just that. And it's really geared around entrepreneurship because it's the same kind of attitude that like you're representing yourself and like you're going all in, but those programs are pilots. And I think that they need to be the norm or at least something like that. And rather than be like, you are a runner now go get a job. It's's you are a driven person that knows how to channel that drive. You can apply that to anything. Let's find something that you like. Yeah, I think it's important to, I think what you said is really important.

The piece about recognizing the, how do I want to say this? The self-control, like the idea that an athlete is self-directed, but that dictates that in the workforce, they need to feel a sense of ownership and direction over the path that they're taking. Like the athlete knows, I know what to do for myself to get this performance out of myself, and I'm responsible for putting in the work and then I'm responsible for the result, uh, is very different from being the lowest rung on a team where you're, you're, you're completely disempowered, you know, which is the, the exact opposite of what that athlete journey is all about. I'm not saying that very. No, you're saying it well. There's, there's a

really, um, there's a neat company. Um,'s called Valor perform where then they're helping businesses and coaching on performance. Um, so this company is like a year and a half old, so it'll be really interesting to follow, but a huge part of the mission is to only recruit former athletes, um, and then design an organization that is not a big bureaucracy, but that lets people have autonomy and control and push. And it's an experiment. I don't know how it will turn out. But I think that ideas like that are really good and useful because I'm around elite athletes all the time, not as often as Steve.

But, like, you don't have to be a coach to know, like, these people are really driven. And if you point them at something, they'll be great and they can enjoy it because they love doing the work. The problem just is that like you abandon them on this island and you don't point them at anything. And then what ends up happening is they get a job in a big bureaucracy. And to both of your point, like that can't compare. Right. I would also encourage any athlete who's listening to this collegiate athlete or otherwise to take a tip from what you guys said earlier, which is this is not like finding your passion isn't like the love of your life kind of thing.

Like you can have multiple passions and just because you're all in on your sport and it doesn't even have to be sports. It could be whatever it is. Just because you're all in on one thing doesn't mean that you've crowded out all the space to be interested in something else. So try to cultivate a side hustle passion at the same time so that you are planting those seeds for what your future life might become. So a great example of that is there's an Olympic swimmer named Tyler Clary, who's like now getting into stock car racing,

like race car driving, which is something he was kind of doing. I'm sure he, I don't know enough about it, but I'm sure he's been doing it for a very long time. Probably loved doing it as a kid. And, but he's, he's developed some skill and some relationships and some acumen in that world when he was still competing and racing and swimming. And now he's stepping out and he's ready for this new chapter, right? It's almost like you're paving the way for that along the way. So try to bear that in mind while you're still pursuing that, you know, ultimate like super passion. And I think that gets at the almost misnomer that like in order to be great at something,

you have to be 100% all in, which I don't think holds true, right? It's while you're doing that swimming, let's say, okay, be all in that practice. But then you have all this other time of the day, which you can utilize some portion of it to pursue other things that are interesting that won't take away from swimming. And I think it's almost like this ego thing where we think like, oh, if I'm going to be the best writer in the world, then I only need to write. And it has to be like this. And this is all I need to focus on. I know. If that was true, though, then the best athletes would all be like people that live in the woods where there's no people around them. And the best writers would be people who have no relationships with it.

You know what I mean? It doesn't work that way. Right. And to Steve's point with the swimming example, thinking about swimming is not the same thing as swimming. Yeah. Like when you're in class, when you're hanging out with like thinking about swimming. No. That like, if anything, you're just going to get in your head. When you're, you know, 21, 22, yeah, you can live in a dorm room and swim like six hours a day and whatever free time you have, you can play video games and you could do that for a while, but you can't be a professional

swimmer at age 30 and still be doing that. Exactly. You know what I mean? And this is something I talked with Kerry Walsh Jennings about, like, how do you, Olympics after Olympics, after Olympics, after Olympics, okay, now you're married and now you have kids. It's easy to look at that and say, well, that's distracting me from being the greatest volleyball player of all time. distracting me from being the greatest volleyball player of all time, but to mature into a place where you recognize and value the fact that that's actually making you a better athlete, because it's making you a more grounded, well-rounded person is a maturation process that is counterintuitive, but absolutely true. You, you, you just said that so better than I

would have said it. And I was thinking the exact same thing, which is like over time as you age too, I think that there's a, you gain some wisdom and you say a maturation process. That's exactly what it is. I know for, so also call time out when we're giving advice to these collegiate kids, it's really hard. call time out when we're giving advice to these collegiate kids it's really hard i often catch myself thinking about the book the book release writing when i'm not writing the book so it's an again it's a practice so it's not like oh you now just like turn off the switch doesn't work like

that you have to constantly be practicing coming back um the maturation process i now have a kid he's 10 months old nothing has been better for my ability to be present than theo because like he's just there it's awesome it wasn't like that the first three months but now that he's doing stuff and he's he's like a little dude um but it it's hard to put into words and it sounds so cliche but i've noticed that it's not that the other stuff seems less important. It almost feels more important, but also much easier to turn off and step away from, if that makes sense. And maybe it's just another passion, right? And like parenting and having that relationship. But I do think that as you add more to your life, it actually is all additive. It doesn't necessarily take away from the thing you're doing.

Yeah. And you have to get more clear on what it is you're doing and how you're doing it because you don't have as much luxury when it comes to time. Oh, well, yeah. And like, by no means is the advice to these college kids, like, go have a child. But no, it's like, it's like a a live-in it's like a little live-in zen master right it's like you're writing and he cracks the whip and it's like okay um i mean i've been on the phone with steve i don't know many times and it's like oh theo just pooped in the bath like gotta go yeah this ingenious idea will have to wait um all right you guys, well, we gotta wrap this up, but I wanna do that by exploring

your personal definition of passion for yourself, right? So Steve, if I'm to say like, well, explain to me, can you articulate to me your relationship with passion and what that looks like? Yeah. So I see it, I think it's important to understand that it's not black and white. Okay. So I see it as for the majority of time, I want to have a healthy, harmonious relationship with passion. But I also want the ability or the ability to go deep

and to go all in on things. But where I see my relationship right now is I have the awareness to understand when I'm doing that and to pull back out of that when I need to. I like that. But what is it that you're passionate about? Can you put a pin on that? Can I put a pin? So I guess now, like this might be a little cliche and maybe not super clear, but I like pursuing interesting ideas. So whether it's in coaching and looking at how to help athletes get faster, whether it's in writing

and, you know, getting these ideas on passion or in peak performance out there, it's exploring interesting ideas that are intriguing enough to me to say, hey, I want to understand this at like a deep level so that hopefully I can convey that information to others to help them understand these things, you know, maybe even better than I do. I like that answer. I thought you were going to say, I mean, the obvious answer is I'm passionate about running. I'm passionate about writing. I'm passionate about helping young athletes achieve their potential. But you really brought in the aperture on it.

Yeah, you know, I think that's maybe that maturation you talked about. You know, if you asked me three, four years ago, I would have given you that answer. But as I've like branched out and have all these different interests in different places, I think that's the common theme tying them together, whether it's on like a personal one-to-one basis of working with an athlete or whether it's on a basis of one book to thousands of people. It's all kind of similar of getting these ideas and trying to help people change and develop and grow.

That's a tough act to follow. The question is passion, what does that mean to me? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, you guys wrote this book about passion. So how do you, how do you think and apply passion in your own life? Like, how do you define that? And is it, I guess, you know, a question on top of that is, is it important to define it for yourself and be clear about what you're passionate about and what that means. So I think the way that I, well, I think the question's in twofold, right? It's how does one define passion and then how important is it to constantly be clear? A working definition, I just jotted this down, that I have is it's really caring about something, knowing that

that thing might eventually break your heart because you have to move on from it or the tides change and being okay with it and doing it anyways. However, let me just interrupt you there. Yes. In the athletic context, but if you're. No, I'd say in any context. I mean, if you're a guitar player or something that you could do your whole life. Yeah, but parent, okay, so I'm thinking parenting. Like, eventually my kid's going to move out, hopefully. Right.

Like, that might be heartbreaking. And even guitar. I'd imagine there's a point, like, where the skills start to fade with age. Maybe not. Okay. And maybe that's a good example. But you're going to have letdowns. Like, the more that you care about something, the higher the highs and the lower the lows and still pursuing that those

things anyways, and doing it though with the self-awareness to, as Steve said, no one to choose when like I need to pivot here. And then also having community underneath you because the community helps keep you grounded during those highs and helps support you during those lows yeah and i think that the community and the bonds that come out of a passion is almost as powerful as the passion itself because it's in those relationships like that's

what gives the life meaning it's part of the reason we write books together um it's a lot of fun and it's like beautiful relationships formed and for the person who's out there who is struggling to identify their passion and we talked about this a little bit earlier but like what what are some steps that you can recommend for that person to begin the journey or the process of trying to connect with something meaningful that could blossom into how we think about passion. Yeah. Well, I would just keep it really simple, is go dabble in things. So put yourself inside your comfort zone, outside your comfort zone.

Look at different things that you might think, like, hey, this is kind of interesting, as you pointed out earlier, like go to your childhood, like what were the things that like, you would do when there was nothing else to do when you're just like, okay, I'm gonna go do this for a couple hours, right? Finding different things that were interesting or are interesting to you. Those are all potential passions, right? There is no one like this is the one. All of those things are potentially passions. And the only way you understand if they can like

have that fan flame to turn into like that burning passion that we all know and think about is if you try them and try them a lot and see if it cultivates into that. If it has staying power, right? I think we all have a lot of self-judgment around these things. Like, well, that's silly or stupid.

I shouldn't do that. But I think, so I think it's important to remove that veil of judgment over yourself. Like, hey, maybe you should, maybe it would be cool for you to be a puppeteer. Like, I don't, you know, whatever it is, like if that's your thing, man, like the short. Right, totally.

And I'm so glad that you do the puppeteer example. I think of my uncle Bob, he's a financial advisor, a stockbroker for 60 years, you know, black suit, red tie. And now he makes beaded jewelry. And like, that's his thing. Fine, like you don, black suit, red tie, and now he makes beaded jewelry. And like, that's his thing. Fine. Like you don't need, you don't need to, you don't need to like decide that you're going to be in a rock band, like make beaded jewelry. Um, again, you know, don't be reckless, be financially responsible, but, um, yeah, like there's no, there's no definition of success that you should shoot for. And if anything, if you are shooting for some definition of success,

as we've discussed, like you're probably setting yourself up for pain and suffering. Right. So conversely, the next question is, if you are somebody who's blazing a path of passion, what are the warning signs to alert you that perhaps your passion has become a little bit unhealthy? that perhaps your passion has become a little bit unhealthy? When the pursuit of results starts to become the dominating factor. And not when it's a factor, because again, unless you've done extensive spiritual training and dissolved your ego, it's always going to be a factor.

But when it starts becoming the dominating factor, when it's hard to get back to doing the work, or when the work itself no longer feels good, when the work feels like a chore because you're chasing the thing. I think that that's one prime example. And then another prime example is when you notice the temptation to cut corners or to cheat, that is a sign that like you no longer have self-control. And if you're listening and you're there, don't judge yourself. That's great. You have self-awareness.

You're there, like course correct. You know, read the book, get a therapist, talk to a friend. Because recognizing that is actually great because you've recognized it. It's when you don't recognize it that you get into trouble. Right.

Do you have anything to add to that, Steve? Those were great. I don't think I can top those. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the writing of the book, was there anything that you came across in the research or the interviews of all the people that you spoke with that was at odds with your thesis going in? I don't even know. Do we have a thesis going that's the thing our thing you had to be like this like weird thing and maybe it's good maybe it's bad maybe it's both and presumably there's a way to live with it well yeah and i think i think one of the things that was interesting about this book is going back to the beginning like the way this came about was brad and i

sitting in a coffee shop right saying hey this, hey, this first book is done. Like, we don't have anything to do on this for a month. And like, we're here together for a week. Like, what are we gonna do? So we just started these conversations and talking about it. So it's not like we went in with any grand thesis or grand idea. It started as, hey, this is interesting. Yeah, and then even the writing on the page. grand thesis or grand idea. It started as, hey, this is interesting. Yeah.

And then even the writing on the page. So like in our relationship, like I'd say Steve is primary scientist. I'm primary writing. And then we switch. So Steve's like off doing science. And this is before Peak Performance went out. And I'm going to the same coffee shop every single day and like writing stories as if I'm writing this book.

And then I'm like, Steve, I've written a bunch. And Steve's like, dude, I have this enormous outline of science. And then we got together and like we traded and suddenly like there's a book. But we didn't really, you're right. We did not set out to write a book on passion. Yeah. We just were doing what felt like we had this time and space. We were doing what felt natural.

And then it became a book and i i think the other part is we were doing it's very meta yeah because it's like you followed this thread of passion to write this book about passion and you did it in the right way because your intention was and it's helped us and and and again back to like the no one has their shit figured out it has helped me i know it's not like I no longer care about success. I care a lot about success. It's helped me be aware when I'm caring too much about that. And it's given me, the writing of the book

is giving me some practices to rein that in. Right. Yeah. And also call each other on it. Right. Now that we know this stuff, it's like, hey, you're manifesting symptoms of this. Yeah. Yeah. Or just we're the opposite like i mean this might be the the ocd tendency in me is i get so in my head i'm calling

steve i'm like dude am i tweeting too much like is my passion obsessive like am i getting too excited about doing this ritual podcast steve's like dude chill the fuck out like you're fine like there's some of that too right so like, we're not saying don't enjoy things. Enjoy things, celebrate them, but just 51% harmonious and enjoy the success too because it's fleeting, but it's fun when you have it. Right. And it's amorphous trying to kind of figure out how to think about these ideas that all bump into each other. Like the idea of balance, like what is balance?

Is balance overrated? I mean, that's a conversation, you know, we had years ago, right? And these are like, how does that relate to passion? And what is the value of passion? And what trumps the other, right? And the thing is, it's all this murky soup, right? And it is a spectrum and that's not a gratifying answer in

in you know a culture in which we want the very clear-cut life hack and you know the simple thing that we can like hang our hat on yeah we're you know our publisher and agent probably aren't happy with us for not having that single simple hook that's like one idea no one's ever thought of before but like that's what we're trying to deal with reality right and all these conversations that we've had that brad and i have had like they're just things we're wrestling with and that's why this is such an interesting thing is passion is this big blob of amorphous stuff that mixes together and there's no correct like hack to figure it out it's just what we realized in this is that there's a lot of different ways to do it but just kind of be aware of what

you're getting into uh-huh you know if you want to go all in great do it but like be aware that you're doing it right this is what's this is this is the this is what's entailed in this journey yeah and if you stay in it too long, then this and this might happen. But if you have the self-awareness to understand like, hey, this is good. This is how you excel. You have to go all in on something

that you're passionate about. That's how greatness is created across every discipline. But you need to know when to pull out as well and recalibrate. Yeah. Fair enough. And I wanna know, Steve, in the researching of this book

and the writing of this book, how has this impacted your coaching downstream? Like I asked you specifically about one thing earlier, but like in general, has this informed like your coaching philosophy or how you interact with your athletes? A hundred percent it has. I mean, it's made me, you know, actually I was reading a book by Percy Serity, who was a great coach in the 1960s. And his book was all in there.

He talked all about how intrinsic motivation mattered. But more than anything, he said, I'm training and coaching you to be a better person. And if you're a better person, then you will run faster. And I think with this passion thing, it's very similar. As I'm trying to now my perspective has changed. It's like the performance will take care of itself right is if we do these workouts and do all this stuff like we're gonna get better on them but the greater good on this is how do we make you have a better relationship

with like this activity that you're putting so much effort into. So I see my almost goal now is like, how do I cultivate this like ability for them to have a healthy or a good relationship with running? And with themselves. Exactly. Parents, if you're listening, send your kids to Steve. I was going to say. That's where my kid would go.

Well, also like coaches need to yeah you should you should be coaching coaches about how to be better coaches for for you know people's lives as opposed to performance like the workout is easy that's the easiest part right it's all the messy psychology of like dealing with young people in their formative years exactly it's funny as a coach you get trained in the workouts in the physiology but you get no or little training in psychology but that's what matters the most and you know the funny thing is if you look at coaches like we probably have at the high school and college level, you see your coach more often than you see anybody else. So the ability to impact a kid is much greater for me than some math or science professor or anybody else.

And that responsibility, that's pretty big. Yeah. And same when you look at, Brad brought up parents, but parents have a huge impact on all this stuff. I've seen so many kids come to the collegiate level who have an unhealthy relationship with the sport because you know mom and dad like they're a kid it can't be their fault at that age yeah mom and dad put this pressure and these expectations and you know this is how this works and you better do this. And it just creates this unhealthy relationship,

which then I have to unravel. Yeah. How do you unravel that? That's the mystery. That might be a hour long conversation, another podcast there. Yeah, but it's so important, you know, and I think it is true.

There's no barrier to entry essentially to anybody saying they're a coach. I mean, obviously, there's certifications and all that kind of stuff. But the fact that the psychological aspect of it, which is the gravamen of what you're doing, is something that is not trained at all is insane. Oh, it's crazy. I mean, it's completely backwards and it's something that should be. And slightly more removed than Steve looking in,

there's also this perverse incentive, especially in college, where what is good for the kid over 20 years might not be good for the kid's performance over four years. So it's like chasing quarterly profits instead of long-term growth. Right. And it's real easy for a college coach. We talked about this in our first book to burn the crap out of a kid. Kid runs great in college. And then the kid's first pro meet, there's nothing left in his or her legs and they're done. Or it's, you know,

not even a pro meet. It's like you burn them for four years and then they have a horrible relationship with the sport and never want to do it again. Never want to do it, yeah. And then you have this resentment and this whole other psychology that is there. We got a lot of problems we got to solve. Read the book though and practice your passion. That's right.

It is a positive, it's a positive book, but I think, yeah, it addresses something that there's a lot of delusion around and says, hey, like it's not so simple. And yet, as Steve said, there are these practices that can help you navigate the path. Yeah. It's very helpful. It's very instructive. It's easy to read and it's laced with all of these real life examples to illustrate the points that you're making. And I found it to be very impactful. You guys did a great job with this book.

So I'm super excited that it's finally gonna get out there. You also have amazing blurbs from really cool people. Like didn't Daniel Pink give you a blurb? And who else? Shalane Flanagan did. We're proud of that because she embodies this stuff. Yeah, of course, man.

The perseverance and the passion over the long haul. You know what I mean? Awesome. So are you guys going to be doing any live events coming up if people want to come out and see you speak or get a book signed or anything like that? Yeah, we've got a whole bunch of stuff in Northern California. So the Thursday of launch week, which is Thursday, the 21st,

we're doing a big event at a cafe called fire brand, where we'll be talking about the book and signing books. And then Friday and Saturday we'll be at the Oakland marathon. Awesome. Uh, cool, man. Well, congrats. And, uh, come back when you write another book in another nine months. Yeah. I was going to say, you know, we're working on a Ted. If you're listening,

Ted's our agent where he thinks like a book should happen every five years. We're like nonsense. Like we're going to die. So he's moved us from every nine months to every two to three years, three years. Yeah. So, well,

it depends on what kind of book. Yeah. No, but there's a lot of research that goes into these books too. So I'd imagine that was pretty time consuming. Yeah, you know. We go all in for a little bit before we come back out. So we get it done.

All right. All right. Well, The Passion Paradox, A Guide to Going All In, Finding Success, and Discovering the Benefits of an Unbalanced Life. That's my favorite part, the benefits of an unbalanced life. Because I agree with that wholeheartedly and you guys did a good job. Thank you so much.

Everybody go out and check out the book. It's an easy read. It's short too. How many pages is it? Just like, yeah, it's like 160, something like that. So you guys can quickly read it. All right, man, well, much love to you guys and best of luck with everything coming up.

If people wanna connect with you online at bstilberg. And Steve, you are Steve Magnus? Correct. Keep it simple. On Twitter and Instagram and all the like. Yep. All right, man.

Peace. Thank you, Rich. Plants. Good stuff. Great guys. Solid information. Super cool podcast. Hope you guys enjoyed that. Do yourself a favor, pick up their new book, The Passion Paradox. Check out the show notes on the episode page to dig deeper into their work and their lives. And you can hit them up directly on Twitter at B Stolberg for Brad S T U L B E R G and at Steve Magnus M A G N E S S on Twitter.

Steve is also on Instagram. Brad is not, you can find Steve at Steve Magnus there as well. Let them know what you thought of this conversation and the new book. Once again, we got a deal on our plant power meal planner through April 13th, $20 off when you use the code POWER20 at checkout. POWER20. Go to meals.richroll.com to learn more. If you would like to support our work here on the podcast, there are a couple ways to do just that.

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back here in a couple days with a very special midweek conversation with Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter and Square. Super excited about this one. So until then, remember, there is both good passion and there is bad passion. And what direction your passion takes you is largely up to you. See you soon. Peace. Thank you.