We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - RWH051: Master of Change w/ Brad Stulberg

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. Hi folks, it's great to be back with you here on the richer, wiser, happier podcast. As you and I both know, we've been going through a period of extreme change and uncertainty in the world. Wherever you look, it seems like everything's getting shaken up, politically, economically, socially, technologically. Just look at the tumultuous, polarized, and highly charged political situation here in the United States. or look at the geopolitical crises in the Middle East and Ukraine. At the same time, we're experiencing the destabilizing forces of increasingly extreme weather events and technological advances are transforming the way we live and work at a speed that almost takes your breath away.

Starting point is 00:00:46 Given the rise of artificial intelligence, it seems certain that the pace of change that we're already experiencing is only going to accelerate. Faced with this maelstrom of change and uncertainty, how can you and I maintain our emotional equilibrium and our mental clarity so that it's possible to think and act wisely? How can we be calm and balanced so that we can not only make smart decisions in markets and in life, but can also provide a measure of stability and reassurance and sanity to the people who depend on us? In chapter three of my book, richer, wiser, happier. I focus in some depth on this fundamental problem that everything changes and that the future is unknowable, and yet we still need to make decisions that we'll hopefully

Starting point is 00:01:33 position as well for the future. As you may recall, the main character in that chapter is Howard Marks, who oversees more than $200 billion at Oak Tree Capital. Howard told me, it's clear that the world is changing all the time, unpredictably, at incredible speed. Nothing is the same anymore, he said, and for people whose approach to life is based on sameness, that must be very upsetting. As Howard explained to me, it's crucially important to recognize that change is inevitable and that we can't expect to control our environment. Instead, he says, we have to accommodate to our environment, we have to expect and go with change. This subject of how to handle change and instability and disorder is the central theme of today's

Starting point is 00:02:21 episode of the podcast. Our guest is Brad Stulberg, the author of an excellent book titled Master of of Change. The subtitle of his book is How to Excel When Everything is Changing, including you. Before that, Brad wrote a bestseller titled The Practice of Groundedness, which explores the importance of maintaining our mental and physical well-being under any circumstances so we can achieve healthy and sustainable success. Brad is also a renowned coach to elite performers, including CEOs, entrepreneurs, and world-class athletes. So he has a lot of practical battle-tested wisdom about how to operate successfully at the very highest levels.

Starting point is 00:03:01 As you'll hear in this conversation, Brad is extremely thoughtful about the kind of resilient, all-weather mindset we need in order to adapt and thrive under any conditions. He talks in detail about the most effective habits and routines that can help us to thrive no matter what, and he makes a compelling case for maintaining a realistic yet hopeful attitude, even in the most challenging circumstances, a mindset that the great psychologist and philosopher Victor Frankel described as tragic optimism. I hope you find our conversation as helpful and grounding and

Starting point is 00:03:36 empowering as I did. Thanks so much for joining us. You're listening to The Richer, Wiser, Happier Podcast, where your host, William Green, interviews the world's greatest investors and explores how to win in markets and life. Hi, folks. I'm absolutely delighted to be here today with our guest, Brad Stolberg. Brad is a leading expert on how to thrive amid change and disorder and disruption. He's the author of two best-selling books. First, the practice of groundedness, which I have here, which the subtitle is A Transformative Path to Success that Feeds Not Crushes Your Soul. And second, a more recent book, which is also excellent, which is called Master of Change.

Starting point is 00:04:31 And the subtitle is How to Excel when everything is changing, including you. So in many ways, this is a practical guide on how to excel in a world of disruption. And we're seeing this on every side. So also Brad is a coach. He works with high performers, including top executives, entrepreneurs, physicians, athletes, and the like. And it's a lovely to have you here, Brad. I'm really delighted to see you today.

Starting point is 00:04:55 It's an honor to be here, William. We're going to talk a lot about how to thrive amid change and disorder and uncertainty. And I wanted to start by asking you about your own experience of change in the last decade, basically. I know that you've had a number of experiences that led you to see that change in disorder, as you write, not the exceptions. They're the rules. What happened in the last few years before this book came out that in a way prepared you

Starting point is 00:05:23 for this insight that really all of us are going to have to learn to adapt to change, because it's not a glitch in the system, it's here to stay. Yeah. So a multitude of factors, I think, converged that led me to this question of change in general, or at least this topic of change to explore. In my personal life, I left a very secure job where I was on staff as a performance coach at one of the largest healthcare systems in the world to develop my own private practice in coaching and spend more time writing.

Starting point is 00:05:55 that coincided with a move across the country from the San Francisco Bay Area to Asheville, North Carolina. So from a major population center to a much smaller mountain town, I became a father for the first time, and then again for the second time. I had a book become an international bestseller, and I also had some writing projects that I was very hopeful for completely fail. And then I experienced an injury that took me out of endurance sports, particularly, running in triathlon that had been a very large part of my identity and how I saw myself, a condition in my calf really led to a very early premature retirement from all competitive endurance sports. And then, of course, there were the societal changes, some of which are

Starting point is 00:06:43 rather unique to being an American. There's the geopolitical shift, the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Then there's the Corona-19 virus and pandemic. So I was living through all of the of these personal changes, then these societal changes. And I shared my experience with colleagues, friends, neighbors, other folks in the community. And the first thing I got was a whole lot of empathy. It wasn't just me. So many people feel like the pace of change has really accelerated, both in personal and professional in societally.

Starting point is 00:07:17 I'm sure we'll get into it. I have some hypotheses as for why people feel that way. But ultimately, I am someone that doesn't really like change. I thrive when things are stable. And one of the first things that I learned in my research is that it's not just me. All living organisms thrive when we have stability. The second thing that I learned in my research is that the average adult goes through more than 35 major life changes.

Starting point is 00:07:39 So there's a paradox there that we tend to feel our best when there's stability, yet none of us really have very much lasting stability in our life at all. And I felt very much stuck between extremes of trying to deny and resist change and cling to stability, which just seemed to lead to restlessness and angst versus completely throwing one's hands up and saying, I'm just going to go with the flow and completely surrender, which isn't really in my nature and is not in the nature of so many people. And that really led me into this exploration of why we conceive of change the way that we do, how we got here, and might there be better tools and better frameworks and mental models for thinking about navigating change?

Starting point is 00:08:14 Early in 2021, you started grappling with this question when you were listening to people talking about COVID and saying, well, let's hope that at some point we can get back to normal. And you started thinking about the implications of that change, and it led you to think about different models for navigating change, one of which was homeostasis and one of which was a term that you tapped into a term that you think is a better model for understanding change, which is Alostasis. Can you talk us through that because it's an important intellectual framework for understanding that we actually have to think about change differently? Yeah, that's right. And before I do that, I forgot another just huge significant change that I underwent in the last

Starting point is 00:09:01 decade. And that is throughout my childhood and early adulthood and even into middle adulthood, I had always very sound mental health. And around the age of 30, I suffered a very severe clinical depression that really came out of nowhere and made me quite sick for the better part of a year. So that was another huge disruption that I could have never imagined. And that's within that same chapter preceding this book of all this change. So it really was the good, the bad, the ugly, but everything just felt like it was constantly in flux and constantly shifting.

Starting point is 00:09:34 So I wanted to throw that in because I think that's important. So homeostasis versus allostasis. Homeostasis, my sense is that many, if not all, listeners of the podcast will have heard of this term. And it traces itself all the way back to the early 1600s. So long before we had any sort of quote-unquote science and really just to the beginnings of empiricism, meaning people in the community would observe something and then they'd observe it again and then they'd develop a theory around it, right? This is what's just starting to happen at this time period.

Starting point is 00:10:06 And homeostasis is a term that described as what people saw when those in the late 1600s got ill. So most people would have a body temperature of around 98.6. And then you get sick and you spike a fever. So your body temperature raises as an immune system marshals a response. And this is long before we had antibiotics or antivirals. So you got sick, you had a fever. And what would happen back then is some people would die. and their body temperature never returned to normal.

Starting point is 00:10:39 And other people, over time, their body temperature would return to normal. They'd fight off the infection and they'd be healthy. So homeostasis describes change as a pattern of order or stability, then disorder or instability, in this case of fever. And then it says that a healthy system gets back to order as quickly as it can. So it's order, disorder, back to order. And what started out truly to describe a fever, over the last 500 years, talk about scope creep, it became the prevailing mental model and framework

Starting point is 00:11:09 for all change. So not just for human biology, but for human psychology, not just on the individual level, but on the organizational level. And now you can spend time in the internet and say, how do I change my financial habits? How do I change my health habits? How do I lose weight? And the first page of all those SEO hits is going to be something about fighting against homeostasis or fighting against the natural urge to stay the same.

Starting point is 00:11:33 go back to order. So that had been the prevailing model of how people think about change. And baked into that model is that change is inherently bad, right? Because we want to move from disorder back to where we were. And the goal then is to resist change to avoid it, or when we're faced with change, to immediately get back to stability. Now, about 20 years ago, a cohort of cutting-edge interdisciplinary scientist, largely based out of the University of Pennsylvania, they had a little bit of an epiphany, which is a

Starting point is 00:12:03 essentially homeostasis, well, it describes what happens when you have a fever. It's actually not a very good fit model for thinking about most other changes that we undergo. And they did this big analysis of both at the individual level, but then also at the organizational level and even at the species level, how those that endure in weather challenges, what's their path? What's the model that they follow? And what they found is they found this allostatic response. They coined this term allistasis, which essentially says that when faced with change, a healthy living system moves from order to disorder to reorder. So it's true that we crave stability, but that stability is always somewhere new. We don't go back to where we were. And I think the

Starting point is 00:12:49 etymology of these words really elegantly sums up the story. So homeostasis comes from the Latin root homo, which means same, and then stasis, which means standing. So it argues that we achieve stability by staying the same, right? That's the goal. Stay the same, achieve stability. Allostasis comes from the Latin root allo, which means change or variable, and then stasis, which again means standing. So allostasis says that we achieve stability through change.

Starting point is 00:13:19 And it has this elegant double meaning, which is that, one, it's possible to be stable through change. And two, the way to be stable through change is through change, is by changing at least to some extent. And those two different models really become these mindsets that totally transform how you approach uncertainty, change, and instability, right? Because in one model, it's inherently a threat, and the goal is to get back to where you were. And in the other model, it is just the first rule of thermodynamics, that things move towards chaos and entropy, and that we're always existing in systems that are changing. And the goal isn't to be stable by resisting change. That's a

Starting point is 00:13:58 fool's errand, the goal is to be stable through the process of change, through those cycles of order, disorder, reorder. I think curiously, and you tap into this in your book, this is something that spiritual traditions understood in a way that maybe science often didn't. So, so right, you mentioned Richard Raw, the Christian theologian who talked about going from order to disorder to disorder to reorder. I mean, I have a chapter in my book, Richard Wiseer Happier, titled, Everything changes. It begins with a famous quote from Shunruz Suzuki, the author of Zen Mind, Beginners Mind, who said that everything changes is the basic truth for each existence. No one can deny this truth

Starting point is 00:14:38 and all the teaching of Buddhism is condensed within it. And one of the things that he then went on to say later in that book, which is a terrific book, is he said, if we cannot accept this teaching that everything changes, we cannot be in composure. And I was very struck when I was working on my book that this whole theme of change runs massively through investing. So you have someone like Howard Marks saying, well, okay, so if everything is in constant flux, including the economy and markets and industries and companies and our own lives, then actually somehow I have to accommodate myself to the reality that things are changing. I can't just be in denial. And so that's actually really helped him to become a multi-billionaire. And likewise, Bill Miller, who is the greatest

Starting point is 00:15:19 mutual fund manager of his generation, said to me at one point, 20 something years ago, the world changes. This is the biggest problem in markets. And so I think what's curious is that this whole theme of change, which seems kind of abstract, has actually run through spirituality for thousands of years and has also run through investing and business, because it's just the incredibly shaky quicksand on which our lives and businesses and investments are constructed. And so my sense is just we have to accommodate ourselves to this reality, whether we're trying to construct as Howard Marks would say, an anti-fragile life or an anti-fragile portfolio. Sorry for that long soliloquy, but does that raise any thoughts from you, Brad?

Starting point is 00:16:04 Oh, it does. So the first is I unsurprisingly tend to agree with you. I think that in between disorder and reorder, there are often many opportunities. So if you're an investor, that could be an opportunity to beat the market. that could be an opportunity to be a little bit ahead of what's already priced in on the coming reorder. If you're an athlete that is undergoing an injury, that could be an opportunity to reshape your game or to make adjustments to come back a different player. If you are in a relationship, whether it's a business partnership or romantic partnership, a period of disorder, can be a time

Starting point is 00:16:42 for growth in the relationship if you can come back together, having learned from the challenge. And in our personal lives, when we're in the midst of disorder, even though it can feel, extremely uncomfortable and at times even mortifying and painful, the research shows that when we get to the other side of these challenges, we tend to derive some meaning and some growth from them. So I think that it's just whether we like it or not, everything changes, as you said. Impermanence is just a basic rule of every ancient wisdom tradition, and it is the first rule of physics. So whether you look at it from a scientific angle or a spiritual angle, you come to the same

Starting point is 00:17:17 place and impermanence works both ways. Sometimes it's a cause of real challenge and distress, and sometimes it's a cause of wonderful things. It's just the air that we breathe. The other thing that I would say that I think is really interesting. And this is a theme that is in my first book, The Practice of Groundedness. So I come from a family of investors. I don't know if you know that about me. I kind of broke the mold and went off and became an author and a coach. So my grandfather My father was an investor. My father's an investor. My cousin took over the practice and has been trying to get me to, I guess he stopped about

Starting point is 00:17:53 10 years ago trying to get me to work with him. So I grew up around finance and the concept of regression to the mean has always stuck with me in how in an allostatic system you are going through these cycles of order, disorder, reorder. And sometimes the entire curve shifts in ways that are very hard to predict. They're impossible to predict. But generally, there's some signal amidst all the very things. variance as a system progresses and moves towards change. And I think that's important to keep in mind.

Starting point is 00:18:21 So at the same time that everything's always changing, there's some kind of base stability, and then there's these generational events that perhaps shift the entire curve. And I think navigating life well and navigating markets well probably depends on holding these competing ideas at the same time. Yeah. And I think that's one thing you're very good at in your books and that we'll come to later is you have this ability to hold contradictory. or conflicting ideas in some sort of dynamic tension. So it's often yes and rather than either or. So we'll get to that later.

Starting point is 00:18:53 But I guess this is one of the great themes of that chapter, Everything Changes where I was writing about Howard Marx, is that in some ways you're in real trouble because the future is unknowable and everything is changing. And yet we have to make decisions about the future, both investors and parents and where we're living or what job to take or anything like that. And on the other hand, as Howard would point out,

Starting point is 00:19:13 you can look at the cycles of the past and you can see that there are certain things that repeat, like patterns of human greed or over-excitement and irrational exuberance. And so there are things that repeat and there are things that are totally new. And this is one of the things that makes investing so unbelievably difficult and complex, because it's hard to tell, like, is this really a new paradigm or is it just the same old thing? So anyway, I wanted to ask you really in some depth about the various tools that we can use to navigate change, because you're so practical about analyzing how we can do this and giving us practical methods for doing this. But first, I wanted really to get you to define the idea,

Starting point is 00:19:54 the concept that's really at the heart of Master of Change, which is this term rugged flexibility. Can you define what you mean about it and explain why we need to be both rugged and flexible, why we need these two opposing capabilities so that we can navigate this very uncertain? changing world in a deft and robust way? So to be rugged is to be determined, durable, very robust. Nassim Talib would say anti-fragile. And to be flexible is to be soft and supple and to bend easily without breaking. And on its face, these are two opposite terms, right?

Starting point is 00:20:35 But in my reporting and research for this book, what I found is that those individuals that are able to, withstand change and grow from change, they're not rugged or flexible, they're rugged and flexible. So they would score very high on both of these traits. And then you zoom out and you look at the empirical change for which is by far of the greatest magnitude. And that's how you and I got here today, William, it's evolution, the survival of the fittest and selection of species. Essentially, what happens on a scale of the planet is you have cycles of order where there's stability and then disorder. So there's climate change. There's a meteor. Something happens to an apex predator, and the whole ecosystem shifts into disorder. And then there's reorder, right? It comes out different.

Starting point is 00:21:20 And you look at species that have survived over time for the longest durations. And what evolutionary biologists find is that those species are rugged and flexible. Those are my terms. And evolutionary biologists would say they're highly complex. But what this means is that there are parts of the species that are so central and core to what? what they are, that if those parts changed, the species would no longer be recognizable. It would be a new species. But outside of those central features and those core parts,

Starting point is 00:21:50 what I call the basis of ruggedness, if you're not extremely flexible on everything else, then you're also gonna get selected out. So if you have no ruggedness and it's all flexibility, then there's really no center of gravity. There's no you, there's no strength. But if you're so rugged across the board that you can't be adaptable

Starting point is 00:22:08 and you can't be flexible on anything else, then when there's a big change or when something shift, you're going to get selected out. Or at an individual level, you're going to suffer from anxiety and neuroticism. So I'm not interested in studying evolution at the planetary scale, but I think that our personal evolution and our organizational evolution or the evolution of a family, it follows that same framework, right, of this order, disorder, disorder, stability, instability, new stability. And the way to work through those cycles is to know what's core and what makes you who you really are as a person or if it's is an investor, your principles, your philosophy, your philosophy of

Starting point is 00:22:43 the market, and not to budge on those things, right? Those are your sources of ruggedness. Those are the hills to die on. And then to be willing to be flexible and to adapt and to change on everything else. So really getting really clear on what are your core values, what are your guiding principles, and then what is merely habit that you can be willing to change on? And this holds true at the level of how you would navigate change in a certain domain of life. So as an athlete that gets injured, is somebody whose kids are moving out of the house, as someone that's approaching retirement. But it also holds true as you think about your life as a whole and just how you age and how you grow over time, this notion of rugged flexibility. And it really solved my personal problem of needing

Starting point is 00:23:24 a new way to think about change. As I mentioned at the start of the book and as I mentioned in the start of this conversation, I personally struggle with change, but I'm also a realist. I pride myself on seeing things sometimes too clearly. And I saw that everything changes. But I didn't like the idea of not having a center of gravity. And rugged flexibility for me as a construct that solves that, because it gives you permission to be rugged and to define yourself by something and to have a ground that you stand on, while at the same time asking yourself to practice massive flexibility around those core features. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right. I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You've got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord, and every conversation you have is with people who are actually shaping the future. That's what the Oslo Freedom Forum is. From June 1st through the 3rd, 2026, the Oslo Freedom Forum is entering its 18th year, bringing together activists, technologists, journalists, investors, and builders from all over the world.

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Starting point is 00:28:07 Back to the show. I want to talk in some depth with you about various practical tools and practices and strategies to develop rugged flexibility in our daily life, because this is going to help our listeners a great deal, as investors, as family people, as people constructing a career in our approach to our health, everything really. And so I want to go through in some detail, various tools that you've written about not only in this latest book, but also actually in your previous book and on your podcast, you've talked about it. And I'll include a lot of these sources and resources in the show notes. You mentioned core values a minute ago. Obviously, that's really an important aspect of this,

Starting point is 00:28:49 is figuring out what you really stand for in the beginning. So that's going to guide you. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of core values as a kind of North Star to guide you through these challenges and changes and disruptions? And also then give us a sense of what actually is a smart process for establishing or clarifying what our values might be. Poor values are your guiding principles or the qualities to which you aspire. So these are the things that are most important to you. A few examples are health, creativity, compassion, strength, kindness, wisdom, intellect, rigor, integrity, spirituality, family, reason,

Starting point is 00:29:37 so on and so forth. And a whole lot of psychology research shows is that when you have about anywhere from two to five core values, and when you're acutely aware of what those are and also how to practice them, you tend to feel less stress when you are under threat or when there's challenges or changes. And you also tend to navigate change better because you have essentially a compass, you have your core values to help guide you. So that's the value of knowing your core values.

Starting point is 00:30:07 is that when you're faced with change and when it feels like everything around you is in flux and shifting and the ground that you're standing on is swept out from under you, if you know your core values, you can ask yourself, what would the creative thing to do be here? What would someone who values integrity do? What would someone who values wisdom do in this situation? And then those core values become a rudder to help guide you through the unknown. In terms of a process for deducing one's core values, this lies at the heart of something called acceptance and commitment therapy. which was really developed in first to help individuals through depression, but since then there's been hundreds, even thousands of studies showing that it's a good model for human flourishing and

Starting point is 00:30:46 well-being beyond the absence of illness. And within acceptance and commitment therapy, the basis is very simple, which is see clearly and accept what's happening and then commit to acting in alignment with your core values. Now, simple doesn't mean easy, and the practice of this is quite challenging. So the first step is to determine one's core values. In the book, I list a hundred example core values just to get folks started with brainstorming. But the method that I find works best is to group like terms. So go through a list and maybe you have 20 terms. Again, you want to get down to three to five, even two to five. And then you take those 20 terms and you start to put them in groups based on similarities. And what most people find is you've got somewhere between two to six

Starting point is 00:31:26 groups that are pointing at a somewhat condensed theme. And then you want to find the right word that represents that theme. And then you want to define it in real concrete terms. because core values, they shouldn't just be something that is on a poster at your office or if it's on a little sticky note on your mirror, they should have some teeth. You should be able to practice them. And that way, they become a basis for stability in your day-to-day life all the time. And particularly when things are changing, you can look back to your core values to help guide you into the unknown. I think a story of this that really brings this to life is that of the tennis star Roger Federer,

Starting point is 00:32:00 who's known obviously for his greatness in tennis, really for his greatness in sports. but also for his longevity. So Fedder played well into his late 30s, even early 40s, in a sport where prior to him, most people would peak and retire before they hit 32. And Roger Fedder, he came before LeBron James, before Tom Brady, before Serena Williams. He was really the first power sport athlete to redefine aging and longevity and sport. What a lot of people don't know about Roger Fedder is that between the ages of 33 and 36, he didn't win a single tournament, not a single tournament. So you look back at articles written

Starting point is 00:32:37 about Federer during that time period. And everyone in the tennis community, all the critics, they said that the change that comes for every tennis player aging finally caught up to Roger. And it was time to retire. And just the fact that he made it to 33 being world class, right? Like 33, you're a dinosaur in that sport. So what did Federer do? For the first year and a half of his slump, he essentially followed a homeostasis model to change. He tried to get back to where he was. So he just kept beating his head against the wall and said, I'm the greatest player of all time. I still want to keep playing tennis.

Starting point is 00:33:10 I think I can. What happened? He repeatedly got injured and underperformed. And then about a year and a half into this journey of underperformance and injury, he had this epiphany that essentially said he's not the same player he was. He has aged. And Federer steps back and does something that is so hard for an athlete to do. And he separates what his core values are, which for him in this context,

Starting point is 00:33:32 competition, mastery, and a love of the game of tennis from what's habit. And for him, what habit was, was a Wilson racket, playing at the baseline, a two-handed backhand, training seven days a week. So Federer says, I want to hold on to my core values. Those are my sources of ruggedness. I want to keep playing tennis.

Starting point is 00:33:51 I want to keep competing, and I want to keep moving down the path of mastery. But in order to do that, he realized he has to be flexible on everything else. So he completely reinvents his game. He learns a one-handed backhand to take speed off the ball. He starts playing at the net more, which has the effect of shortening points. So he doesn't have to run back and forth on the baseline against the younger kids. He completely overhauls his training schedule to allow more time for rest and recovery. And then he even changes his racket, right?

Starting point is 00:34:16 So he had used the same racket since he's 15, made him the greatest tennis player ever at the time. And he adopts a new racket that has brand new technology that all the younger kids are using. And the result of this is at age 37, he has the best. winning percentage of his career. He wins two major championships. He reclaims a top three ranking in the world. And then he continues to play well until he hits 40. So to me, that's this beautiful example of knowing your core values, your sources of ruggedness, the hills you're going to die on, using them to help determine your next moves during change, but then being very flexible on everything else. And when I was writing the book, I looked at tape of Federer playing when he was

Starting point is 00:34:54 26 and then again when he was 38. And on the one hand, he's the same Roger Fedder. And on the other hand, he's completely different. And I think that that's what rugged flexibility is all about. Over time, you are the same William as you were 20 years ago, but you're also very different. And that gets to kind of the intellectual question at the heart of the book in those wisdom traditions is, what does it mean to have a sense of self when our various senses of selves are always changing? And I think it can make a rational Western brain explode, but the answer is both and.

Starting point is 00:35:22 I'm both the same and I'm different. And Federer is someone that used those core values, that source of ruggedness, to navigate the unknown and to ultimately lead himself to a reorder that worked in service of his core values. And one of the practices or tricks that you talk about in the conclusion of the Master of Change is actually developing a fluid sense of self. It's clearly related to what you were just talking about with Federer. Can you expand a little bit on that? And I know that it had a lot also to do with what happened to you when you had an injury and had to stop playing a sport that had obviously been a huge part of your identity. Can you give us a sense of why having a fluid sense of self,

Starting point is 00:36:04 A, what it is, and B, why it would actually be helpful in enabling us to adapt to change? A fluid sense of self essentially asks you to view your identity not as something that is completely static, but not as something that is completely amorphous either. Rather, to create an identity around your values and define those values at a fairly broad level and then be willing to shift within that structure. So that's very conceptual. For example, I for a long time had defined myself as a runner. That was a central part of my identity.

Starting point is 00:36:41 Then I had this injury and I could no longer run. And I had orthopedic surgery. I mean, I went to Wyoming for this special treatment. After the normal treatment failed, I gave it my all and it didn't work. What I've learned is that my value isn't actually running. What I liked about running was having objective goals that I could chase in community. And I also liked using my body and challenging myself. But that's not running.

Starting point is 00:37:05 That's mastery. That's community and that's being an athlete. And if I could define my identity is someone that values mastery and athleticism in community, then losing running is not a loss of identity. It's a shift in how I express that part of my identity. but it doesn't feel like a loss of who I am. So when I see people and I hear people identify very closely with a specific activity, I urge them to think about, is it really the activity that is core to who you are?

Starting point is 00:37:33 Or is it something that is maybe a layer or too deeper? This very much relates to a framework in the book that was first developed by the humanist philosopher, Eric Fromm, having versus being. And having is when you define yourself by what you have. So I have this skill set, I have this income, I have this house, I have this child, I have this relationship. And what Fram points out is that, well, everything that you have is going to change. And at some point, it will probably be taken away.

Starting point is 00:38:00 So if you define yourself by what you have, it's a very precarious way to construct an identity. Whereas if you define yourself by who you are, or what he called your being orientation, what I call your core values, no one can take those away from you. And a common question that I get listeners might have is, well, what if your core values change? And that's totally normal. But even then, it's your old core values that lead you to your new ones. And your sense of self and your sense of identity, it becomes more fluid. It almost becomes like this evolving process over time versus this static thing that you're

Starting point is 00:38:31 always trying to protect or hold on to. Another framework in the book that so many professionals in particular have found really helpful around identity is this notion of diversifying your sense of self. So in investing, my limited understanding is that it's a pretty foundational. rule is that barring very interesting circumstances, you generally want to diversify your portfolio to at least some degree. And the reason for that is if all your assets are in one class and something unforeseen happens to that asset class, you're SOL. You're in for it. You're in big trouble. Yet with our identities, so often we throw our entire sense of self into one asset class.

Starting point is 00:39:08 And that can be the investor, the parent, the athlete, the leader of a company. And if there's a change in that area of our life, especially if it's a negative one, it can feel like an attack on our entire sense of self. And if that's the only way that we define ourselves, then we're in for trouble, right? So much like we diversify our investment holdings, I argue in the book, it's actually good to diversify your sense of identity a little bit, to have multiple sources of meaning in one's life so that if you take a hit in one area of your identity, you can lean on the others for string. Yeah, this is such an important idea. And I mean, To give you a couple of very listeners, a couple of very real world examples, in the epilogue

Starting point is 00:39:50 of my book, I write about this great investor, Jason Kopp, who had been this unbelievably successful hedge fund guy. He'd started out working for Steve Cohen and had just like ridiculously good results and then ended up running his own hedge fund, had the fastest ever startup of any hedge fund. And then things started to go badly. And I remember interviewing him at the time and he said to me, I didn't really know what to do when this started to go wrong because I'd never failed at anything. And his whole identity suddenly was in turmoil. And what's kind of amazing about Jason, who I've interviewed on the podcast,

Starting point is 00:40:25 is he managed to reorient his whole life and reinvent himself in a kind of spectacular way. But I've seen that kind of disintegration, also actually in my own life. I was editing the European, in Middle Eastern and African editions of Time magazine and then got laid off in the middle of the financial crisis. And suddenly you're like, wait a second, I've been working 70, 80 hours a week at this thing I'm really good at. And now it's gone. And instead of getting to interview presidents and prime ministers, you're like, well, actually, so what am I now? And so having actually to be like, well, I'm a father and a husband and a writer and all of these, it's really hard, that kind of dissolution of the ground on which you stand. So I think this idea of actually finding

Starting point is 00:41:07 A, having, as you put it, a fluid sense of self, but B, diversifying where you're going to get your meaning from is really important. A metaphor of it I like to use is to think of identity like a house. So if you have a house and it only has one room in it, and that one room catches fire or floods, you're screwed. It's going to be very discombobulating. You're going to have to move out of the house altogether. Whereas if you have a house and it has multiple rooms in it, in one room catches fire or floods, you can go into the other rooms to seek refuge while you figure out the fire or flood. And if we think about our identities the same way, we can have multiple rooms in our identity house.

Starting point is 00:41:46 There can be the investor room, the spouse room, the parent room, the community member room, the athlete room, the book lover room, the travel room, infinite options. It's just so important that we have more than one room because at some point or another, all the rooms are going to experience turmoil. But odds are they're not all going to experience turmoil. at the same time. So then you get to seek refuge in these other places within your identity house. And a couple of things to be really explicit about. I don't argue for balance. I'm not saying what the room should be the same size. I'm not saying that you should spend the same amount of time

Starting point is 00:42:18 in every room. I actually think that it's very good to prioritize and to say these are the rooms that for this season of life I want to be all in on and spend a disproportionate share in those rooms. I just don't think that you should let any rooms that are core to who you are get moldy because you never know when you're going to need them. The second thing that I would say about this metaphor is that, and I alluded to this, when I've interviewed people that are towards the end of their careers or that have retired and that have done really well and also have been highly fulfilled and satisfied with not only their career but their life, and they've done it the right way. So they're not athletes that have doped, they haven't engaged in fraud, they've really

Starting point is 00:42:58 had good integrity on their path to success. What I find is that if you zoom in and, and any one juncture of their life, they look very unbalanced. But if you zoom out and look across their whole life, they look quite balanced. So they have different seasons for different emphasis in their life. And what they're good at is they just never let the important rooms get moldy. So maybe there's a season where you're going all in on your career. But that marriage room is still really important. You can't let it get moldy.

Starting point is 00:43:28 Doesn't mean that you have to emphasize it all the time, but you've got to figure out what's the minimum effective dose to maintain that room so that when the season of my life shifts, it's still there for me. I haven't let it go to crap. So I just can't emphasize enough how important is to define the rooms in your identity house, to be really clear about what ones you're emphasizing and why, and just to make sure that you never completely ignore any other important ones. I think there's such an important idea because I look at so many of the great investors who've ended up divorced or with kids who don't talk to them. And I don't know, I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who's in a very high-powered,

Starting point is 00:44:06 very intense job, and he's just let his health just fall apart because he doesn't want to neglect his kids. He doesn't want to neglect his spouse. And he's got unbelievable responsibility and deadlines at work. So he's just wrecked his body. So yeah, this idea really resonates for me pretty deeply. I wanted to move us to another really important tool or practice, or in this case, a mindset, which you describe as a crucial life skill, which is the mindset of tragic optimism. Can you talk about this idea that originally comes from Victor Frankel and this famous essay of his, the case for tragic optimism? Because I think it's very distinctive also to your way of viewing life and the universe. I'm so glad you asked. Frankl is most known for his book

Starting point is 00:44:51 Man Search for Meaning, which he wrote most of it he composed in his mind while he was in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. And then he survives the Holocaust. So many of his family members and friends are murdered by the Nazis. And he comes out and he publishes this work called Mansearch for Meeting. The first half of which is his memoir, I'd say, or close to memoir. And then the second half, he really develops what becomes existential psychotherapy. So it's this groundbreaking work. And any psychology major in university has read this book. But then he puts out this much lesser known essay later on called the case for tragic optimism. And in it, Frankel argues that to be a human is to live a very tragic life. And he says that there's no way around this. It's inevitable.

Starting point is 00:45:35 Even the greatest human life has tragedy. And he defines these three tragedies that everyone faces. The first is physical pain because we're made of flesh and bone. Nobody gets out of life without experiencing physical pain. The second is heartbreak and disappointment. And that is because we have these big prefrontal cortices in our brains that allow us to make all these wonderful plans. And sometimes the plans don't work out. We're frustrated. And then the third tragedy is that as far as we know, we're the only species that's keenly aware of our own mortality, so that we are going to die and everyone we love is going to die. And Frankl says there's no reason to bury our head in the sand or to deny these. We have to accept that these are the

Starting point is 00:46:17 tragedies inherent to being a human being. And yet and yet, the work of a mature adult is to understand these tragedies and to maintain optimism and hope, not in spite of those tragedies, but almost because of them. Because we know that life is going to be full of tragedy, we have a responsibility to ourselves to maintain optimism and hope and to find joy too. And it doesn't have to be this or that. It doesn't have to be happy or sad, tragedy or optimism. It can be tragic optimism. We can accept the suffering in ourselves and in the world. well, at the same time, maintaining hope for ourselves and hope for the world. And I just think that though Frankel first wrote about this in the 1970s, it could not be more

Starting point is 00:47:00 prescient and more timely now. I see it all the time. You log on to any part of the internet. And it's not long before you have these two extremes. One extreme I'm going to call the toxic positivity or the Pollyanna extreme, which is everything's great. Don't bother me. You know, I figured it out. I don't want to hear about your problems.

Starting point is 00:47:20 Life is good. Why are you possibly complaining? There's never been a better time to be a human. And the other extreme is what I'm going to call the nihilism or despair extreme, which says that everything is broken, society's unraveling, all these systems and structures are so backwards that what can me little individual do? And then you just fall into despair or nihilism. On its face, these are polar opposites.

Starting point is 00:47:43 But when you think about it, they actually have one thing in common, which is in a way they're kind of easy to adopt his mindsets because they absolve you of needing to do anything. So if everything is great always and you don't want to hear about any of the world's problems, well, then there's nothing to work on. There's nothing to make better. If everything is so terrible and so broken and so structurally broken that anything you do is pointless, well, then why would you act? So both toxic positivity and nihilism or despair, they absolve you of any responsibility to take action. And what Frankel would say, And what I argue is that it is our job, and they're very seductive of these extremes,

Starting point is 00:48:20 but it is our job not to fall into one of those extremes and to hold our ground in the middle and really embrace tragic optimism to realize that there is a lot that's broken about the world, and there is a lot that needs improvement, and there is a lot that feels so overwhelming. And if we can maintain hope, we do have some agency to make our lives better and to make the world better. And so often you see extremes, you know, pull yourself up by the bootstraps. It's all personal responsibility versus everything structural and all that matters is what zip code you're born into. In any reasonable person will tell you it's both of those things matter. Both accountability and personal responsibility and individual behavior is very important.

Starting point is 00:48:57 And what zip code you're born into is very important. And I just think that there's such a lack of nuance and extreme, especially on the internet, but really it's pervaded so much of the discourse in the Western world where it feels like you have to choose into these extremes when reality is messy. and somewhere in the middle. And I think tragic optimism is just such a wonderful concept for embracing that messiness and for being a realist without falling into despair. There's a beautiful line that you quote in The Master of Change that's from an interview that Bruce Springsteen did when he was 71 with the Atlantic, where he talked about the heart of wisdom amounting to learning, quote, to accept the world on its terms without giving up the belief that you can change the world.

Starting point is 00:49:40 That's a successful adulthood, the maturation of your thought process and very soul to the point where you understand the limits of life without giving up on its possibilities. It's a wonderful insight. And I remember actually years ago when I was living in London going to see Springsteen in a concert, Wembley Stadium. And he came on so many times. I mean, for so many encores, I think it must have lasted the best part of four hours. And the highlight for me was, I guess it was the wrecking ball tour. And there was this moment where you see this aging guy with this broken body and this raspy, voice, basically singing, give me your best shot. You just had this defiant sense of this guy

Starting point is 00:50:16 who accepted the fact that he was, that he had a lousy childhood, that his body was breaking down, that his voice was breaking down, that he was in pain. But there was something kind of triumphant and exultant about the fact that he just kept coming back amid the pain. So I think he kind of embodies that spirit, actually, of tragic optimism. Oh, 100%. Another way to think about it in simple terms is, like, you can't fix a broken world if you become a a broken person. And to resign yourself to a broken world, in my opinion, is just one, it's not very helpful, and two, it doesn't make for a great existence. And if you let that spiral, it can very quickly become depression. So I think that tragic optimism is, again, it's a way

Starting point is 00:50:55 to live in between these extremes and to accept reality without spiraling. Another thing on Bruce Springsteen that's really interesting is, so there's a new singer-songwriter and really kind of has become a pop star. His name is Zach Brian. I think he's only 25 and a half, maybe 26 years old. And I think his music's very catchy, but it's not great. Like, I don't know. And maybe I'm dating myself. He's just kind of like he hasn't lived that much, whatever. But he's selling out arenas, millions of downloads on Spotify. And it'd be very easy to see someone like Bruce Springsteen be a curmudgeon and kind of say, I don't know about this guy. But Bruce Springsteen just did a collaboration with him. It age, held Springsteen now, 73, 74 maybe.

Starting point is 00:51:38 And I think like that also embodies this kind of tragic optimism where you could sit there and complain about how the music industry, how everything's gone to streaming and how you have to look a certain way and be good on TikTok to be popular. Right. Zach Brian got started by posting all these one minute videos of him playing. And it'd be so easy to fall into just like being grumpy and shunning that. But instead, Springsteen goes and does a collab with him. And I think like that's really cool. And I'm much younger than 74. And I look to that. And I hope that when I'm 74, I have that. kind of open heart and open mind that Bruce Springsteen has. Bill Walton recently passed away. What an example of someone that lived with tragic optimism. So these examples are out there and they tend to be people that we all admire, yet it's very hard to go through life with that sort of attitude. Another practice that you talk about that's very important that I want to break down a little bit is you talk about why it's so helpful to lean on routines and rituals to provide stability during times of disorder. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of routines

Starting point is 00:52:39 when we're dealing with chaos? Because I write in my book, there's a chapter on habits of high performance. And one of the things that's very distinctive about the most successful investors is they're obsessed with their habits, their routines. There's a point in the book where I quote a friend of mine, Ken Schubenstein, who was a very successful investor, who then became a neurologist. And he talks about how basically the four habits he keeps coming back to it in times of chaos, basically exercise, sleep, good nutrition, and meditation, because those are the four that we know are great for cognitive health and cognitive function. You've thought very deeply about this whole area of routines and rituals. Talk us through this, how we should think about

Starting point is 00:53:21 routines, what are the best routines that we should start to adopt, and also your philosophy of being quite dismissive of the movement towards optimization, which we're seeing with everyone from Huberman to Peter Attier, and you're going to be too polite to name name, so I'm naming them for you. All right. This is a loaded question and a good question. So, first off, I love your friends for categories. The only one that I would consider adding, and my guess is he or she would agree with me

Starting point is 00:53:49 is the importance of community in making, gathering with people that matter to you, whether that's your family, colleagues, friends, a cornerstone of your routines. All right. So square one, why are routines important? A little bit of neuroscience. our brains are predictive. They are always trying to predict what's going to happen next. And for very good reason, there's so much stimulus in the world.

Starting point is 00:54:11 Our brains couldn't think a step or two ahead. We would never make our way through the day. I mean, imagine if we're having this conversation and I'm predicting that you're going to listen and then respond. But if my brain couldn't do that, and my brain wasn't sure if you were going to hang up the call, if there was going to be an asteroid through the window, if you were going to save it the interviews going terrible. It would never work.

Starting point is 00:54:30 So even when we don't realize it, our brains are making predictions about what's going to happen next. And in times of change, in uncertainty and chaos, it becomes very hard to predict what's going to happen next. What a routine allows us to do is allows us to carve out this one or two or three areas of our life, however many components we have of our routine, where we can make a prediction, I'm going to go for a run in the morning. I'm going to make my afternoon coffee at two.

Starting point is 00:54:55 I'm going to sit down and pray or meditate or read or journal in the evening that has a very high likelihood of coming true. And that is so satisfying for our brain at a neurochemical level to make a prediction and to have it come true. It's a part of our life that we have some control over. So that is the number one important value of a routine. Now, what that means is what the routines are don't matter as much as the fact that we have them, right? For you, it might be listening to ACDC. For me, it might be meditating to the heart of the Buddha's teaching. It doesn't matter. As long as you have that thing and you do it at the same time and your brain starts to associate that thing with a sense of control and predictability in your life, then it's good. It works. There are a few caveats,

Starting point is 00:55:39 and I'm going to go very closely to what your friend that became the neurologist said. We do know, based on decades of science, that there are a few somewhat universal elements that can become routines that are helpful for just about everybody that tries or applies them. And first and foremost, exercise. Physical activity is the number one. one, modify a behavior for both physical health, mental health, and cognitive health. Number two would be community, some sort of social life, the social gathering that's ritualized. Again, that can be a family dinner, that can be going to church or synagogue, that can be getting together with friends to play poker once a month.

Starting point is 00:56:18 Doesn't matter what it is, but something that you can look forward to that happens on a regular interval that involves other people. Our species evolved in tribes. We're a very social species. That's what allowed us to survive predators like lions is that a bunch of humans are smarter than one lion or a tribe of lions, or a pack of lions, I should say. So it's very much in our hardwiring during times of challenge to gravitate towards community.

Starting point is 00:56:40 Sleep is really important. However, there's a lot of nonsense out there about sleep. So if you take these supplements, if you track your heart rate variability, there's some guy out there that's now tracking the strength of his erections during his sleep is a sign of his health. His name's Brian Johnson. I'm happy naming his name because I think he's out of like insane. But a lot of people like him and you can disagree.

Starting point is 00:57:01 However, the research shows that the more that we worry about sleep, the harder it is to sleep. So if you turn sleep into something to excel at, then what is supposed to be the most restful, restorative part of your day sleeping now becomes something to win at or a metric to chase, well, of course it's going to be harder to sleep. So I think that sleep is the byproduct of a regular physical activity. throughout your day, of making sure that you're not lonely, because we know that people who feel isolated and lonely, they don't sleep well. And then I would add nutrition is really important. But there, there's all these different diets, and it's really just about avoiding highly processed

Starting point is 00:57:38 foods. I want to loop back because I know you have a very heavy intellectual audience. People might say, like, what's Brad talking about, social isolation and sleep? Right? Because I didn't say, like, you need to take your magnesium to sleep better. I said, if you're feeling lonely, that could be driving poor sleep. And the reason for this is fascinating. Because again, we evolved in tribes. So early, early on in our species history, right when we're turning from these hairy primates that look closer to a gorilla or an ape to what we now view as a human, if you are alone, you can never fall asleep because you could be picked off by a mountain lion or by a predator,

Starting point is 00:58:11 right? Literally, if you lost the tribe and fell asleep on the savanna, you're dead. You wouldn't survive long enough to pass on your DNA. But if you were in a tribe and you had strength in numbers, well, then you could rest and you could sleep because you knew that you weren't alone and isolated. And that still carries forth to today. The number one reason that social isolation is so detrimental to our health is because it raises our blood pressure and causes poor sleep. Isn't that fascinating? But it makes total sense. Because if you're alone, you're anxious and you always are on guard. You're always on the lookout

Starting point is 00:58:41 so you don't sleep well. So for me, the big two are movement in community and then I would put nutrition. And yeah, I think a lot of the other stuff around routine is very highly individualized. And I think anyone that tells you that there's this one supplement or this one breathing exercise or this one way to do something to have a routine that helps performance, I'd almost bet my bottom dollar of it. They're selling that one thing. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination.

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Starting point is 01:02:24 All right. Back to the show. I wrote a length in my book about simplicity and the simplicity, really the sophistication that goes when you basically so, you understand a topic so deeply that you can simplify and distill it down to its essence. I actually, I had done a lot of work as a ghostwriter and editor on a book. about longevity and the like, which had been a number one best seller a few years ago. Not that I'm a paragon of good health or anything, but I've done a lot of reporting on this. And one of the

Starting point is 01:02:55 things that really deeply resonated for me that I quoted in a footnote of my book was something where Dean Ornish, the father of lifestyle medicine, was talking to me about what he'd figured out from 40 years of research into everything that worked to reverse heart disease and diabetes and all of these things. And he said, really, I can sum it up in eight words. And he said, eat well, move more, stress less, love more. And really, if you want, I love that. Yeah, it's an amazing sentence. If you unpack each of those things, really it's eat well.

Starting point is 01:03:24 It's more about, you know, having more green stuff, more vegetables and the like. Move more, as you say, you know, in a lot of your writing you talk about just moving 30 to 45 minutes a day. And any way that you'll do consistently doesn't really matter that much. Stress less. So anything from breathing techniques to meditation and love more, which is the importance of community. And so I just thought that was a beautiful example of the reduction of this incredibly complex subject to something that was essential and true. You've written a lot on your website and on your blog and talked about on your podcast about the bizarre things that people do to kind of sell us on

Starting point is 01:04:01 great complexity. And it's complicated because our audience, these are high performers. We want to perform at the top level. But you point out, you know, that all of these things like, you know, Jocco Willink and Huberman sort of saying we should do this factory reset by, you know, having hot saunas and then cold and then hot saunas again and cold and doing it again and again. Or, you know, Huberman talking about getting lots of morning sunlight or selling AG1 and measuring our VO2 max, as Peter Ateo would talk about, or wearing the aura ring or the woup strap or a continuous glucose monitor or light blocking glasses or whatever. It's interesting and it's saleable.

Starting point is 01:04:37 and I think if you're an incredible top performer, maybe some of this stuff is valuable. But I think it's so, I don't know, I bought a lot of these things while I was reporting that book. And I don't use any of them anymore. The only thing I think I continued to use was this really weird gadget that you strap onto your arm. What was it called? It's called an Apollo neuro that vibrates. And it was developed, I think, at the University of Pittsburgh for people with post-traumatic stress disorder. and for some reason I find it unbelievably soothing.

Starting point is 01:05:09 And when I lost it for several months or it didn't work for several months, I remember finding it again and putting it on and just, I almost like burst out crying. I was so happy that I had it back on. It was like finding an old friend again. So if all of those things that I used, you know, I have masses of 81 sitting in my fridge untouched. I don't know, my aura ring sitting beside the bed unused.

Starting point is 01:05:27 I don't mean to insult anyone, but I think this gets at something really important. Do you have any thoughts about what I just said? I do. So it's funny timing. I just had an op-ed published in the New York Times, the Sunday Times, on this very topic. And I'm going to quote from it, I say that over the last decade, I've studied excellence, and I've worked with some of the world's best performers in the process. And this is true. I've worked with Iron Man World Champion, MBA, dynasty teams, really the best of the best when it comes to performance. And what makes a professional athlete or an Olympian great, it's not waking up at 5 a.m. to cold plunge and gaze at the sun. I mean, none of them do it. I've never worked

Starting point is 01:06:08 with an elite performer that's worried about a morning cold plunge and low angle sunlight, not one. But what they all have in common is a relentless focus on the fundamentals of their craft, executing those fundamentals with roofless consistency for years, adopting the right mindsets, and surrounding themselves with the right people. And then having the right genetics is also really important. And that's it. So I think that actually when you look at the tippy top, No one is engaging in any of these kind of cockamamie health things because they don't have the time to do it. They're focused on nailing the fundamentals.

Starting point is 01:06:40 And I think what happens is I had a conversation about this with Morgan Houssel, I'm sure your audience knows of psychology of money and same as ever. And then I talk to my cousin, who I'm very close with, who I mentioned, runs a very successful financial advisory practice. And I think that the trap that investors face is you don't have time to sit around and evaluate these claims and you want to be on the cutting edge and you want to be a peak performer. But what I say to them is it's no different than all the cockamamian investment advice that goes around. And this stuff comes in cycles.

Starting point is 01:07:10 And right now we're in a health and longevity cycle. 15 years from now, we might be back in a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme. Here is 10 ways to beat the market in 10 days if you buy my online course schedule. And because you have domain expertise, you can look at that and you can say, no, no, no. The way to become a great investor into a mass wealth is, I don't know because I'm not a great investor. but presumably there's a set of fundamental principles that are rather boring, and you have to adhere to them for a very long time. Yeah, for example, value a business and buy it for much less than it's worth.

Starting point is 01:07:40 You know, Joe Greenback has said to me, that's the essence of all investing. So move your body every day, love more, and avoid ultra-process foods. That's it, but people don't want to hear that because it seems too simple. And I think that it's important to also note in this health and longevity space, and I've never met Andrew Huberman in person. I've never met Peter Attia, so I can't judge them. And they're both brilliant. I don't mean to knock them. I mean, they're gifted people. They're very gifted communicators. And there is a kernel of truth to all of that. Like, getting outside early in the day and getting natural light is undoubtedly helpful for one's circadian rhythm.

Starting point is 01:08:16 No one would argue that. However, the notion of low angle morning sunlight, it has to be a certain angle and it has to be within 90 minutes of your waking up, that's extrapolated from five studies that looked at mice. There's no evidence that it makes a difference, especially if you're stressing about it and you're waking up earlier than you would in forfeiting sleep or if you're forfeiting exercise. Peter Atia in V.O2 Max. VO2 Max, it's great to have a good VO2 Max. Of course, but how do you get a good VO2 max? There's no special program. You just move your body more. You exercise. So I think that what a lot of these communicators have done is they've latched on to these kind of complex scientific sounding terms that are proxies for very boring behaviors.

Starting point is 01:09:02 And then people get very caught up in the science that sounds sexy and the bright and shiny objects and the new device. But at the end of the day, for health, again, it's regular exercise, avoid ultra-processed foods, the combination of those two things ought to result in a body weight that is not obese, because that's what we're talking about here, having community, not using tobacco products. And then if you're going to drink, do so in moderation. And if you can't drink in moderation, then abstaining altogether. That's it.

Starting point is 01:09:30 Like there's nothing else really matters. Now, if you want to be a great performer in a physical attribute, then you have to pick your sport and you have to train for that sport, no different than how you develop mastery or domain expertise in anything. And the last thing I'll say to loop back to something you said earlier, I couldn't agree more. The way that I like to think about mastery is you go from simple to complex back to simple. So when you're brand new to something, everything's simple.

Starting point is 01:09:55 How do you deadlift 600 pounds? You take all this weight and you lift the bar up off the ground. And then you get into complexity. There's switch grip versus overhand grip. There's pushing into the ground versus pulling. There's sumo versus conventional. There's pause deadlifts that you can do in your training. Do you need bigger quads or do you need stronger hip flexors and on and on and on?

Starting point is 01:10:12 And you can spend six years just reading about moving a bar from the grounds to your hips. And then after the six years, how do you deadlift? You just pick the bar up. it goes from simple to complex back to simple. Yeah, it's very profound this idea. I write a lot about it in that chapter on simplicity and quote Josh Waitskin, who's also a master of this idea. It talks about the mastery of very simple techniques that usually it's not something

Starting point is 01:10:38 very complex that accounts for success. It's the mastery of a very simple technique. So another thing just to change subject that's very important in terms of building this kind of rugged flexibility so that we can handle change and disordial. are well, is controlling our reaction to things, because as we know from Stoic philosophy, we can't control what happens to us always, but we can control how we respond. One of the things that you talk about that's a very practical technique in Master of Change is what you call the four peas technique. Can you explain how you use this technique in a way

Starting point is 01:11:14 to become less reactive so that we're not controlled what happens? Because this really affects as investors, when the market's getting hit and we're likely to do something stupid or when we're getting over-excited or when we're in a fight with our kid or our spouse or whatever it is. I often think that these kind of these hinge moments day or our week or our life really kind of define whether we're going to be okay or not, how we handle these moments that could go either way. So we are programmed as a species. it's our genetic inheritance to be very reactionary.

Starting point is 01:11:50 And the reason for that is for over 99% of humankind, we didn't live in a modern world of computers and email. We didn't even live in civilized society, right? We lived on the savannah. And there were snakes at our feet and there were lions over the horizon. And if you see a snake or a lion, you do not want to be very thoughtful. You don't want to deliberately respond. You want to react, right?

Starting point is 01:12:13 You want to get out of Dodge. Where I live in North Carolina, there's tons of snakes and bears. So I see big snakes and bears at least once a week when I'm out hiking. Even though I've seen them now a hundred times, my blood pressure goes up and there's no thinking involved. I just jolt. And that's good. We're programmed to jolt because our survival depends on it in circumstances when we're

Starting point is 01:12:32 dealing with snakes and bears. But when we're dealing with a stock market or a crying six-year-old or a teenager or a spouse, generally speaking, jolting doesn't make sense. What ends up happening is we snap on someone or we make a poor decision and then we regret it later. So how do you shift from a reactive mode and how do you overcome millennia of evolution that primed us to react and get into a more responsive mode where there's more space, more thoughtfulness, you can be more deliberate. Many philosophers have said that our humanity lies in the space between stimulus and action. So something happens in what we do about it. The space between that, that's where

Starting point is 01:13:09 our humanity lies. That's where our wisdom, our ability to make decisions lies. Four P's. First, pause and just do nothing. Take a couple deep breaths. Name the sensations that you're experiencing. Psychologist called this affect labeling. I'm feeling angry. I'm feeling frustrated. I'm feeling overwhelmed. I'm feeling restless. I'm feeling tightness in my brow. I'm feeling my fist clench. I'm feeling heat in my chest. I'm feeling a pit in my stomach. I'm feeling butterflies. I'm feeling excited. Name the emotion. Name the actual physical sensation. What this does is by naming it, you no longer are it. So you put some space between yourself in the situation

Starting point is 01:13:47 or yourself and the emotions that you're experiencing. And already you've diffused that reaction. Then you want to process what's actually happening here. What's going on? What does it mean for me? What pattern recognition can I draw on? What would happen if I wait until tomorrow to do something about this? What would happen if I do what my first instinct is?

Starting point is 01:14:04 How might that play out a week from now, a month from now? How would I feel about that? Only then do you make a plan and say, given my resources, my capabilities, my skills, my patterns, given my values, here's how I think I want to move forward and then you execute on that plan and you proceed. So you pause, you process, you plan and then you proceed. And what that does is it creates space, right? Because the opposite is you panic and you pommel ahead. Yeah. And if people want to learn more about this, I would definitely recommend that they go back and listen to my episodes with Daniel Goldman, the author of Emotional

Starting point is 01:14:37 intelligence, who also has thought a great deal about how to respond in these moments. And obviously, meditation is huge in expanding that space between stimulus and response. It sort of puts things in slow motion a little bit. And if I may interject real quick, because I think that I share this with Daniel, the goal isn't not to feel the reactionary sensations. The goal is just not to act on them. I think it's very hard without taking massive amounts of sedatives to overcome that evolutionary hardwiring to feel reactivity. And I think if you judge yourself for feeling that way, you're always going to be judging yourself.

Starting point is 01:15:14 What matters is that you don't act on it. So you can feel that reactivity and sit with it and let it calm down and then move forward. And I think this seems somewhat small, but it's very important because often a lot of people say, I keep feeling reactionary. I must be doing something wrong. I'm not meditating enough. Or why am I so high stressed? And it's because, well, you're constantly in stressful situations. And it's okay to feel a stress response. Actually, if the stress response is shut down, then I'm worried. That's like chronic fatigue or a chronic stress state. You want to feel that initial jolt, and then you don't act on it and you want it to come down really fast. So it's not about

Starting point is 01:15:51 getting rid of that initial jolt. It's about not immediately letting it take over and tell you what to do. As you mentioned at the start of our conversation, you were totally blindsided a few years ago. I think this is back in 2017 by a period of depression and obsessive compulsive disorder. And you wrote in the book, it was a chaotic and bottomless spiral of pain and terror really for about eight months. And I wonder if you could talk a little about what you learned from that experience. That also is really important in terms of developing. an ability to deal with adversity because you write in the book about self-compassion, surrender, acceptance, leaning on others and the like, can you use that experience to talk about

Starting point is 01:16:37 some of these other tools for building resilience, really in times where everything kind of goes to hell? Sure. So the first thing is to recognize when you're in one of those times. I'm sure I'm going to miss some examples, but the big ones that come to mind are severe physical illness, severe mental illness, and grief. Those are the big three. And when you're experiencing something like that, the worst thing that you can do is try to immediately grow or find meaning in the experience. It's like the other 99% of the time, practice gratitude,

Starting point is 01:17:13 write down what you're grateful for, have a growth mindset, be really gritty, all those things. but the worst thing to do to someone that is in acute pain, be it physical or mental, or who has just lost a partner or a child, is to go to that person and say, well, what are three things you're grateful for? That would be the most tone-death possible thing. And why? Because then you judge yourself, because you start to say, well, I don't feel grateful for anything. So now not only am I going through grief or depression or chronic pain, but I can't even

Starting point is 01:17:43 do what all these self-help people tell me to do. I can't feel grateful for something really must be broken and wrong. when the reality is no. It sucks to go through grief and to have that kind of physical or psychological distress. And there are periods of life when things aren't meaningful. I mean, there's very little meaning to losing a child. That's an extreme example. But sometimes things just suck.

Starting point is 01:18:04 And I think to be able to say that and to be able to name that, even if you're an Uber optimistic, growth-oriented person in all the other times of your life, there might be times of your life when things just suck and that's okay. And the smartest thing to do, the real growth, is just letting things suck. There doesn't have to be any meaning associated with it. Sometimes things just suck. Now, what's fascinating is the research shows that often, not all the time, but often, you get to the other side of these experiences in one year later, five years later, a decade later,

Starting point is 01:18:34 you look back on them and maybe you've grown and maybe you've derived some meaning from them. But when you're in the thick of the challenge and in the thick of the pain, just letting showing up and surviving be enough, like, that's it. So sometimes things can just suck and that's okay. What tools can help? Nothing is more important than community and leaning on others for support. Study after study of resilience shows that it's much less an inside game and much more an outside game.

Starting point is 01:18:59 It's about being able to ask for help, to lean on a community for support and then to take that help, to receive it. Voluntary simplicity, something that you've thought a lot about. When things in life feel chaotic and out of control, simplify wherever possible, right? If showing up and getting through is going to be a real challenge, make showing up and getting through as easy as you can. So instead of looking to add solutions, look to subtract things that are causing you additional distress. Surrender is really important. There are times when problem solving and fixing really work in our favor.

Starting point is 01:19:33 But there are also times when problem solving and fixing get in the way because we are not in a position to fix something or to solve the problem. And it's so hard for driven type A people that have been hyper successful to eventually at some point let go and realize I can't fix this. Maybe this thing is unfixable. And it's only when we surrender and when we do that that we start to give ourselves a chance to get a little bit better because we stop getting in our own way. I wanted to ask you one last thing, which is you have two kids, right? You have, I think, a six or seven year old, Theo and a one-year-old, I think, Lila, who's excellently named after a robot. perfect novel. When you think about all of the change and uncertainty and disorder they're liable to face as adults, whether it's climate change or political extremism or artificial intelligence,

Starting point is 01:20:22 all the things that scare the hell out of us, what are you trying to model to prepare them? I mean, what can we do when we're trying actually to model the kind of qualities that our kids, the people around us are going to need in order to deal with really what we know is going to be, probably accelerating disorder and change rather than a return to some more peaceful era that we dream of. I hope to model focusing on what we can control in trying not to waste energy, worrying about what we can't, tragic optimism and not being blind to all the tragedy, but also not letting all that tragedy turn into despair, nihilism, and then self-compassion and self-discipline.

Starting point is 01:21:09 an age appropriate level right now for my seven year old, I think that's the most practical, which is you can do really hard things and you should try to do really hard things. And you need to be kind to yourself. Because the only way it's going to be sustainable to keep showing up and doing hard things is if you don't beat yourself up when you fail. He had earlier this year, his first strikeout in Little League baseball, because it used to be T-ball where you don't strike out. And he was devastated. He's a very competitive kid. He's crum. He's crum. And I remember my gut reaction was to say, Theo, don't cry. But I didn't.

Starting point is 01:21:45 What I said is Theo, it sucks that you just struck out. And the reason that you're sad is because you care so much about hitting the ball and being a good teammate and you try so hard and you really want it to hit it. And sometimes, even the things that we practice and we try really hard and we want, they don't go our way and you strike out. Sometimes it happens in baseball. It's going to happen in basketball. You're going to miss shots.

Starting point is 01:22:05 It's going to happen with friends. And it's okay to feel sad and it's okay. to feel sad and it's okay to cry right now and you're going to get another shot and you're going to get another at bat and you can go back in there and try again. And then of course, like many parents, we talked about how the best hitters, you know, they hit 300, they miss seven times and they hit it three. But really overriding that gut reaction to be like, don't cry and replacing that with like, you care deeply and that's why this hurts and that's okay. And you don't have to beat yourself up. You can be sad, but you shouldn't feel guilty or ashamed because you're trying to do something

Starting point is 01:22:36 really hard, which is hit a baseball. And I think that more than anything, that's what I want to teach Theo in Lila as she ages and it becomes appropriate in various contexts of their life. Thank you so much. Brad, it's been a real treat chatting with you. And luckily, we have so many things left over to talk about it, though I'm going to have to talk to you again down the road. But thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you, William. It's been a great pleasure. Nice to see you. All right, folks. Thanks so much for joining me for this conversation with Brad Stolberg. If you want to learn more from Brad, I would definitely encourage you to check out two of his books that I've found very helpful. One is titled Master of Change, and the other is titled The Practice of Groundedness.

Starting point is 01:23:18 Personally, if I'm honest, I've found the last few days pretty intense and challenging, partly because I'm recording this one day before the U.S. presidential election, and partly, I guess, because yesterday a fire wrecked the home of a very nice older couple living a couple of doors away from me. So I've been thinking a lot about this question of how you maintain some degree of calm and equilibrium amid the maelstrom of life. So I wanted to share with you one exercise from the practice of groundedness, Brad's book, that I hope you can use if, like me, you're not finding this the easiest time in your life to maintain a sense of peace and calm. Brad describes this practice as a way to cultivate the lens of a wise observer. So I'm going to

Starting point is 01:24:05 to read you this page from chapter two of his book, The Practice of Groundedness, and so excuse me if it takes a minute or so, he says, rather than being so involved in whatever you were experiencing, it can be useful to step back and view it from afar. This helps create space between yourself and your situation so that you can accept it and view it more clearly. The lens of a wise observer can be cultivated via formal practice and also by developing tools you can call upon in everyday life. So then he starts with a description of what he calls formal practice, and it goes like this. He says, sit or lie down in a comfortable position, set a timer for anywhere between five and 20 minutes.

Starting point is 01:24:47 Close your eyes and focus on your breath. You can concentrate on the sensation of air, moving in and out of your nostrils, the rising and falling of your belly, or any other place in your body where you feel it. Whenever your attention drifts away from your breath, simply notice that it has drifted and bring it back to the breath, without berating yourself for getting distracted. Once you settle in, perhaps after a minute or two, though sometimes longer, imagine yourself as a life force that is separate from your thoughts, feelings, and circumstances. Imagine you were awareness itself, the canvas upon which all of your thoughts, feelings,

Starting point is 01:25:25 and circumstances arise, the container that holds everything. You can also imagine your awareness as a blue sky, and anything that pops out. as clouds floating by. Look through this lens of awareness to see your thoughts, feelings, and circumstances. It may start to feel as if you are watching a movie instead of being in it. When you get distracted or caught up in your experience, note it without judging yourself, and then return to concentrating on the sensation of your breath moving through your body. Once you've stabilized your awareness on your breath, go back to viewing your thoughts and feelings from afar. Let this awareness become a vessel to hold whatever it is you are grappling with.

Starting point is 01:26:07 From this space, you can accept and see situations clearly and thus make wiser decisions. The result of adopting this perspective is similar to the observer effect in quantum physics. When you change your relationship to what you are observing, the nature of what you are observing changes. In this case, challenges go from being permanent and insurmountable to impermanent and manageable. Keep practicing. You might notice the strong of the thought feeling, urge, or situation, the harder it is to maintain space between it and your awareness of it. But just a single degree of separation goes a long way. The more you practice, the more separation you'll be able to create, and the faster you'll be able to zoom out when you find yourself converging with a challenging

Starting point is 01:26:52 experience. The more you strengthen the perspective of a wise observer in formal practice, the more available it will be to you in daily life. Anyway, so there it is. That's a page or so from Brad Stolberg's book, The Practice of Groundedness. It comes from chapter two, which is titled, Accept where you are to Get Where You Want to Go. I hope that it gives you a taste of his work and hopefully inspires you to buy his books and read more of his writing.

Starting point is 01:27:18 I'll be back very soon with some more terrific guests, including a famous British investor named Terry Smith and a legendary American investor named Bill Priest, who's best known as a member of the Barron's Roundtable. In the meantime, please feel free to follow me on X at William Green 72 and connect with me on LinkedIn. As always, do let me know how you're liking the podcast. I'm always really happy to hear from you.

Starting point is 01:27:43 Until next time, take good care and stay well. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to follow Richer, Wiser, Happier, on your favorite podcast app and never miss out on episodes. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only, before making any decision consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - RWH051: Master of Change w/ Brad Stulberg

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