Discover the unexpected joy of life's twists and turns with Brad Stulberg, a master mindset coach whose insights into change will alter the way you view the world. As we converse about the richness that comes from life's impermanence, you'll find yourself equipped with the tools to navigate not only the coming year but also the many unpredictable moments that lie ahead. Together, we dissect the necessity of maintaining 'rugged flexibility' in the face of uncertainty, and how core values can be your guiding compass through the unpredictable. In addition, we explore the concept of tragic optimism as Brad excels in introducing powerful nuances to optimize our ways of being.
This episode isn't just about coping with change; it's an exploration of how to lean into it, grow from it, and find a purer form of happiness.
Become a 'Master of Change' in 2024 and understand the importance of building a strong relationship with change, as it's one of two things in life that are inevitable - the second being impermanence.
Connect With Brad!
Website
IG
LinkedIn
Growth Equation Podcast
Master Of Change - Brad's Book
4,000 Weeks - Brad's Book Recommendation
Thank you for tuning in! If you feel led, please subscribe & share the show to others who you believe would benefit from it.
Keep in touch below!
Discover the unexpected joy of life's twists and turns with Brad Stulberg, a master mindset coach whose insights into change will alter the way you view the world. As we converse about the richness that comes from life's impermanence, you'll find yourself equipped with the tools to navigate not only the coming year but also the many unpredictable moments that lie ahead. Together, we dissect the necessity of maintaining 'rugged flexibility' in the face of uncertainty, and how core values can be your guiding compass through the unpredictable. In addition, we explore the concept of tragic optimism as Brad excels in introducing powerful nuances to optimize our ways of being.
This episode isn't just about coping with change; it's an exploration of how to lean into it, grow from it, and find a purer form of happiness.
Become a 'Master of Change' in 2024 and understand the importance of building a strong relationship with change, as it's one of two things in life that are inevitable - the second being impermanence.
Connect With Brad!
Website
IG
LinkedIn
Growth Equation Podcast
Master Of Change - Brad's Book
4,000 Weeks - Brad's Book Recommendation
Thank you for tuning in! If you feel led, please subscribe & share the show to others who you believe would benefit from it.
Keep in touch below!
Whereas a path works in harmony with its environment and you have to pay close attention and you're going to fall down and you're going to get knocked off the path and that's not a bad thing.
Speaker 1:When you get knocked off a road, it's a crisis, but when you get knocked off a path or you make a wrong term, that's just part of being on a journey, that's part of being on the path, and I argue that, whether we like it or not, life is not a road, it's a path and we ought to go into it with the mindset of it being a path, because we're going to have a lot less freak out moments. And back to this notion of happiness versus meaning if you want to be really happy and not be scabed, yeah, just get on a road and get from here to there, but there's so much more texture in walking a path and growing from hardship and challenge and failures and, even if you don't grow and find meaning in hardship and challenge and failures, gaining compassion. That will then allow you to connect to other people who are experiencing hardship and challenge and failures.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Win Today Podcast, a weekly tool intentionally crafted to help people enhance performance, feel inspired and conquer life. Our commitment is that you will learn from some of the most disciplined, heartwarming and inspiring people on the globe, in addition to receiving a piece of a winning playbook from myself or a renowned expert in their field. My name is Ryan Cass and I am your host, and it is my purpose in this world to inspire people to establish a foundation for sustained success by developing systems that will enable you to accomplish your goals, break systemic trends of adversity and chart a desirable course for life. Thank you so much for tuning in. Please help us achieve our vision of becoming one of the top podcasts in the world by subscribing to the show, sharing it with somebody who you believe will benefit from it and leaving a review. Let's connect with our guest. Happy New Year, everyone and welcome to 2024.
Speaker 2:As we look at life, there are two things that ring true for everyone on this world. One is that we are not here permanently Life is impermanent and two is that, as life goes on, life will change. We're all accepting of the fact that life eventually will end for all of us, and sometimes not so accepting of the latter that life changes and change is a good thing to be embraced. Today with us, we have the master of change. We have Brad Stahlberg, who is a renowned mindset coach, bestselling author of the Practice of Groundedness and his newest book, master of Change. In addition to that, brad is the co-host of the Growth Equation podcast with fellow mindset expert, bestselling author and coach, steve Magnus, and Brad's work is really impeccable. He gets people to understand why change is important, how to build a positive relationship with change and, ultimately, how to take advantage of the life that we get to live. And it's an honor to have you, brad. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Ryan, thanks so much for having me out and taking an interest in my work. It's great to be here.
Speaker 2:Your work is absolutely beautiful and I love it, and I love what you do to optimize human performance and introduce a lot of nuances to our traditional Western ways of thinking. And, Brad, a simple Google search will yield countless results about you and you're a public figure have appeared on some of the largest podcasts in the world, including rich roles, so it's easy to find out a lot of the quick details. But what is something that we wouldn't be able to easily access about you that makes you really proud and why in your work?
Speaker 1:I think that and I hope that this would come out in my work but that I'm really interested in telling the truth, and what I mean by that is writing from a place of this is what the evidence says, or this is what people's experience says, this is what ancient wisdom says, this is what history says. Taken all of those strands and just trying to say I'm not doing this for marketing, I'm not doing this to please anyone. I am just trying to communicate. The truth is. I see it through all of these different lenses, even if that's not what I thought that it would be. I think that that is the thing that I'm most proud of right now and that I continue to work towards. It's just really holding truth is a core value for my work. Tell the truth.
Speaker 2:One thing that I really appreciate about your work, brad, and I absolutely love that it takes into account so many different angles and it's so well researched and oftentimes backed by science, and I love that there's even comparisons to how Western philosophies or Western cultures think about certain things and how Eastern cultures think about certain things, and you mesh it all together really to create this master class type experience that I find very intriguing and want to keep coming back for more.
Speaker 2:And, as I mentioned, the things that are certain in life is that it will end and it will change. We recognize the former, knowing that it will end for all of us at some point in time, but the latter is something that some people struggle with and there are a lot of folks that are resistant to change. In your most recent book, master of Change, it really dives into how do we embrace change and view it as a positive and necessary force. So, on the concept of change why is it important to build a positive relationship with change? And I believe this is such perfect timing now, with this episode releasing on the first day of a brand new year here in 2024.
Speaker 1:That's right. Well, I'd say two reasons. The first is we have no choice in the matter. One of the only certainties is that everything is going to change. So the research shows really clearly that the average adult undergoes 36 major life changes, about one every 18 months. These are big disruptions Injury, illness, loss, marriage, divorce, kids, kids leave the house, massive success, massive failure, new job, retiring from a job, making a new best friend, losing a best friend, geographically relocating, on and on and on. So we think that big changes are rare in these one off events, when in fact they're not rare, they're happening to us all the time.
Speaker 1:The second reason is that when we are not changing, we are complacent or stagnant, and that's one, a kind of boring place to be. And two, if you think that a big part of life isn't just to experience hedonic pleasure but to grow and find meaning, well, the only way that you grow and find meaning is through change. There's this fascinating thought experiment that if I could put you, ryan, into this pod and I could just inject into your veins, essentially like heroin or a happiness drug, and you'd spend your entire life in this pod just getting this happiness drug, nothing would change. You'd be really stable and you'd be happy all the time. Is that a life that you would choose right now?
Speaker 2:That's a hard pass, my friend Hard pass.
Speaker 1:No. So most people, most people don't want to be in a pod doing nothing, just feeling happy. And I think it's a really interesting philosophical thought experiment, because a lot of people say like I just want to be happy and happiness is good, but meaningful happiness you don't get without sadness, and you don't get growth without change. So I think that, again, we have no choice in the matter and most people, when they say they want to be happy, what they mean is they want to find meaning and texture and experience in life, and in order to do that, you have to be willing to step into the river of change.
Speaker 2:Now being willing to step into the river of change. Is it important for people even that consider themselves to be highly structured and disciplined? Even a person like myself, I consider myself to be highly structured and disciplined. Everything is very much systems oriented. So, thinking through what you just said, is it important for even somebody that could consider themselves to be that that they should manufacture some sort of change into their lives in various intervals? For instance, do I deviate from my structure at some point and purposely put myself through a whole new way of thinking or way of being in order to truly experience the benefits of change? How does that work? That's what's present on my mind right now as you introduce this river of change?
Speaker 1:It's a good question, ryan? I don't think so, because life is going to do this for you. You will have events that happen in your professional life, in your personal life, you'll have health challenges. Even the most average human existence incurs all of these changes, and having an expectation that that's going to happen, I think is really helpful.
Speaker 1:Second, what I would say is that, because life throws enough big changes, no, you don't have to go in and force chaos and disorder in your structure. But I do think allowing for small opportunities of curiosity picking up a book that you might not otherwise pick up, going on a hike and, instead of listening to a podcast, just walking, just creating some space for openness in your day that can go a long way for creativity, and we've seen that in the research. The research shows really clearly that again, like a key catalyst for creativity has changed. But that doesn't mean you need to completely overhaul your routine and quit exercise and try 19 different foods and get a master's degree in literature. That can be as simple as saying hey, normally I'm in the structured routine, but on Saturday I step out of it and I let my mind wander. That's enough disorder to spur growth and creativity, because again, life is going to throw you bigger disorder events and changes on its own accord.
Speaker 2:I love that. So, really having openness and truly exploring your curiosity that's a theme that has emerged from that statement Explore your curiosity in 2024. And as this conversation evolves, I intend to create a bunch of different nuggets and tools that people can go and test out in this new year. So what I heard is that, for somebody, even as this year continues, people will likely encounter now what I know to be one of these 36 major changes, whether they're planned or unplanned, and along the way, if there are things that you've been wanting to test out just to see what they're going to do for you, then now's the time to go do it, and it could be as simple as you just mentioned. You know what I always listen to music when I run. Now I'm going to test out what going for a long walk and listening to a podcast does. Is that tracking with what you've said?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. Just inject these little kind of curiosities and have an open mind. And you don't have to necessarily make them new habits. But if you don't try you're never going to know. And it doesn't have to be everything in your life, you can just pick a couple areas, pick three areas of life and say, hey, I'm going to make this little tweak and I'm going to give myself a month and see what I get out of it. An example for my own life is last year the idea of this digital Sabbath, so on Saturday, starting Saturday morning to Sunday morning, not having any devices except the flip phone, like an old school flip phone for emergencies. That was a big change and it really opened up my life in ways that I couldn't have imagined when I first took a note.
Speaker 1:I think something else that's important when we talk about these self driven changes is to know that things often feel worse before they feel better. So our mind, body systems get stuck into a pattern and they groove into a pattern and that pattern can be really comfortable, even if it's not optimal Getting into a new pattern. We always have to go through a period of disorder before we get into reorder. So I think that a lot of people flame out New Year's resolutions and big changes they're trying to make because they expect that, oh, I'm doing this for growth or I'm doing this for my health, so therefore it should feel good and it will feel good, but it might not feel good for a few months.
Speaker 1:There's this change cycle that I describe in the book of order, disorder, reorder, and there's no getting to reorder without going through disorder, and disorder means disrupting the current pattern and we're stability seeking creatures. But we have to go through that middle ground of instability before we get to new stability. And I think just having the expectation that things are going to be hard and anything worthwhile takes effort goes a really long way, because then when you jump into disorder and things aren't great right away, you don't just quit or abandon it. You say all right, yeah, like, of course things feel hard but they'll feel better later.
Speaker 1:Anyone that's ever taken up a running practice or weightlifting or yoga knows that you don't feel good after your first couple runs. The first day you go to yoga you're super sore and you think it's all woo-woo and none of it makes sense. But if you stick with the practice for a month, for two months, for six months, for a year. It starts to give all of this back, and that's true for any change that we inject. So maybe the second big tool is just thinking of change is a cycle of order, disorder, reorder, and when you jump from order you want to get to reorder but you got to go through the disorder period and you have to expect that that's going to be hard and uncomfortable for a period of time.
Speaker 2:That's a very useful cycle there, brad, and I especially appreciate that the disorder portion is one to be embraced and knowing that at the conclusion of that disorder is reorder, where we reach a new level or we achieve an upgraded way of being. And I love in the book how you bring up a theme that aligns to this, where you discuss homeostasis versus allostasis. So, as you bring up that cycle, how is this backed by science, that we should embrace this cycle of order, disorder, reorder and with that describe homeostasis versus allostasis and, from what I understand, allostasis is really what we want to focus more on. Correct that's right.
Speaker 1:So homeostasis is over 500 years old and it describes change as a cycle of order, disorder, order. It says that living systems do not like change and that when they're forced to confront chaos, the goal is to get back to order, to get back to where you were as fast as possible. And up until 10 years ago, this is just how the scientific research community thought about change. More recently, researchers stepped back and they said actually, when we look at really thriving, high performing people, or when we look at organizations that endure over the long haul, even at a species level, when we look at an entire species that has been around for a long time, they actually don't follow homeostasis at all. They don't go back to how things were after a change. They go from order to reorder. So, yes, we do crave order, we do crave stability, but that stability is always somewhere new. And that is the key difference in these models. Homeostasis says that change is bad and we should try to get back to where we were. Allostasis says that change is inevitable, it's neutral, it's not good or bad, it just is, and we never get back to where we were. We always reorder. We always end up somewhere new. This is true when you train your body. I mean, like I'm just going to give some really concrete examples here right, so the act of training you start and your body is ordered, you're in homeostasis, and then you go do a hard workout and you tear down muscles and you elevate your blood pressure and you get this cortisol response and stress hormone In. Biologically, your body enters a state of disorder and then the body eventually achieves stability through recovery. But that stability is somewhere new. It's with more muscle, more cardiorespiratory fitness. You reorder and training is just constantly going through this allostatic process. Right? So you have to be able to do some order-disorder-reorder your immune system. You get sick with a novel virus, your body enters a period of disorder. You have a fever, you get a runny nose, your throat hurts, you're contagious, you feel like crap. It's disorder. Then your body reorders, right, yes, it goes back to the stability. But that stability is somewhere new. It's with gained immunity. So it's very like apparent in our just natural biology that our system is meant to go through these cycles of order, disorder, reorder.
Speaker 1:You can think about it in a relationship. So everything's going well, you're in a relationship, and then there's some kind of rupture, there's a fight with your significant other, there's your first real parenting challenge. There's a struggle with a family member and you enter into disorder. Things aren't good. We don't like being there. Right, we wanna get back to stability. But we don't get back to stability. We get to a new stability, and ideally it's with a greater understanding for another person, for their opinion, for how to argue better, so on and so forth. And the way that relationships get stronger is they endure challenges. They go through cycles of order, disorder, reorder. So I think this is such a crucial mindset shift that changes in bad and, yes, we like stability, but that stability is always working towards somewhere new.
Speaker 2:I love that, the way that I'm interpreting this. If I visually equate this in my head, homeostasis is almost like expecting this linear route to some degree and if you get knocked off, okay I go back and I'm going down this straight road. But if we look at life and going back to what you mentioned at the very beginning, that we encounter on average 36 major changes in our adult lives alone, then that would be far from linear if we charted out that course. I give a lot of speeches throughout the year, especially to college students, and one thing that I do to start off some of my talks is I go to a whiteboard, if there is one, and as high as I can reach on the whiteboard I write success and I draw a dot to it. And then I go to a lower point on the whiteboard and I draw another dot and I ask for a volunteer and I say can somebody draw me the path from this lower dot to this higher dot of success?
Speaker 2:And there hasn't been a single person that has just drawn this one linear line from the low point to the high point. Because it's just not true about anybody's life that there is a linear path, although rather there are illusions in our world today, probably more prevalent than ever, especially on social media that there is this quote linear path. And one thing I love about these pathways, as we're drawing the dips in the valleys and these cycles of disorder, is that, even though it can feel that you're being knocked all the way down to the bottom, you're actually raising the bar along the way so long as you're making the conscious choice to continue showing up. I love how you describe that.
Speaker 1:That's right. The metaphor that I use throughout the book is a road versus a path, and a road is that straight line and it's paved and it's smooth and you just follow a map and you zone out and you just get from here to there and you try to do it as fast as possible and if you have to stop for gas or to use the bathroom, you do it really quick and then you're back on the road and you get where you're going and you're clean and suddenly you're there and often you don't even know how you got there. Anyone that's ever taken a road trip. You're like whoa, eight hours passed by and now I'm here. That's great for driving from Charleston to Asheville, but that's not a great way to live life, because then you get to the end of your life and you're like I don't even know why I got here.
Speaker 1:I was just kind of on autopilot, whereas a path works in harmony with its environment and you have to pay close attention and you're gonna fall down and you're gonna get knocked off the path and that's not a bad thing. When you get knocked off a road, it's a crisis, but when you get knocked off a path or you make a wrong term. That's just part of being on a journey, that's part of being on the path and I argue that, whether we like it or not, life is not a road. It's a path and we ought to go into it with the mindset of it being a path, because we're gonna have a lot less freak out moments and back to this notion of happiness versus meaning. If you wanna be really happy and not be scabed, yeah, just get on a road and get from here to there.
Speaker 1:But there's so much more texture in walking a path and growing from hardship and challenge and failures and even if you don't grow and find meaning in hardship and challenge and failures, gaining compassion. That will then allow you to connect to other people who are experiencing hardship and challenge and failures. So I think that homeostasis linear like a road paved change, is bad. Get back on the road. Allostasis cyclical ups and downs. Don't get back to where you are. Move forward, learn something like a path.
Speaker 2:Yeah, stay on the path in 2024 and get off the road. I love, throughout the book, how you create these comparisons and even introduce nuances, and this gets me thinking about the topic of rugged flexibility. So we associated, or rather defined, road versus path. Now rugged flexibility this is one of the nuances that I love. Typical Western thinking is you can have this or that, or you can be this or that, but not necessarily both. I love the topic of non-dual thinking and embracing non-dual thinking, and we talk in the book about what it takes to be a master of change is that you must be rugged and flexible. You often wouldn't associate those two words next to each other or things that can coexist. So talk through the importance of non-dual thinking and how the words rugged and flexibility, this concept, how they have a relationship with each other.
Speaker 1:Ooh, love it. So now we're getting into the meat of the book Non-dual thinking. You summarize really well it's not this or that, it's this and that. So not stress or rest, but stress and rest, not self-discipline or self-compassion, self-discipline and self-compassion, not head or heart, head and heart. And for so many of the most important things in life it's non-dual. Like we tend to think in polar opposites and extremes, but it's often both, and I didn't know that was gonna be the case when it came to change.
Speaker 1:So I did hundreds of interviews, read literally hundreds of studies, books on this topic, and once I had this allostasis model order, disorder, reorder once I had the metaphor of a path, not a road. Well then, the next question I naturally had is great, like, how do you walk the path? Like what's the core quality that you need? How do you navigate from disorder to reorder? And what I found is that individuals who do this really well are equal parts rugged and flexible. And this was it first surprising to me, because these things are kind of opposites. Right, rugged is tough, determined, durable, hard structured, flexible. It's soft, supple, it bends easily without breaking, and it's not either, or it's both.
Speaker 1:And so people that are really good at thriving over the long haul, at pursuing excellence, at growing from change.
Speaker 1:They're really rugged in the sense that they know their values, they know what they stand for, they know the hills that they're gonna die on and they hold on to those things throughout all kinds of weather. But then they're really creative in how they apply those things and they're flexible on everything else. So they have this gritty, rugged core and then they're super adaptable. And it's the combination of those two things that allows you to survive change, because without the gritty core, you change so much that you become a chameleon. You don't even know who you are. But without flexibility, if you cling too tight, well then when change happens you become neurotic or anxious and eventually you get selected out Like you adapt or die, right, but you don't want to adapt so much that you're no longer recognizable, because then who are you? So you've got to marry these two qualities, to put them together and ultimately you get rugged flexibility, which I define as a gritty endurance that helps you not only withstand change but thrive and flourish amidst life's change.
Speaker 2:Now, one thing I've discovered with my audience is that they're very much how-to people and desire the epistemological way of absorbing a concept, meaning what is the how-to? So someone may be listening to this amazing concept here, brad, of rugged flexibility. And if I'm somebody that is rugged flexibility not having rugged flexibility, but someone that is rugged flexibility then I am somebody who, like someone, might be thinking right now okay, how do I become that? How do I become rugged flexibility? It's a brand new year. What do you say to those people?
Speaker 1:So I would start by saying that for most people, your sources of ruggedness are going to be related to your core values, and these are the qualities and attributes that matter to you most. It could be things like intellect or presence or wisdom or health, compassion, strength, kindness, discipline, creativity, so on and so forth. In the book I have a list of 100 commonly-health core values, and something I do at the start of every year is I sit with that list and I say what are my three-to-five core values? Have they changed since last year? If you've never done this exercise, they might just be well. What are my core values in general? And if you're overwhelmed and you say, oh my gosh, there's 100, they all sound good, you got to get it down to three-to-five, because if you become a master of everything, then you're a master of none.
Speaker 1:One good way into core values is to imagine yourself 10, 20, 30, 40 years down the road, so like an older, wiser version of you looking back on current you. And what would older, wiser version of you be proud of? That's a good sense of what you value. Another way into this is to think of someone that you really admire, and it can be a person that you know well, but it can also be a public figure that you've never even met and then ask yourself what do I admire about this person? That's a really good way to figure out your core values. So select some core values, ideally no more than five, and then define them. So if your core value is creativity, what does that mean? If your core value is strength, what does that mean to you? These can't just be fancy words that you put out of post-it on your mirror, like they're not just mantras, to say they've got to be actions, things that you show up and you act out in your life. And once you have those core values, those are your sources of ruggedness, because, regardless of what's happening around you, regardless of how chaotic and tumultuous the world is or your life is, you can always say I know my core values and what would it look like to act in alignment with them? What would it look like to be creative? What would it look like to tell the truth right now? What would it look like to prioritize my health?
Speaker 1:And change becomes a lot less threatening because those core values, those are the ground that you stand on. That is your source of stability. You know it's like. You can enter a storm and have no way of knowing where you're going, and now you're just kind of out in a storm and you see no end to it and you have no notion of how to navigate it. Or you can go into a storm with a really good raincoat and a compass and an idea of where you're going to go, and it still is hard because you're in a storm, but it's a lot less hard and to me that's what your core values are. And then the flexibility part is well, now that you've got these core values, be open to the world and say all right, I don't have to be so rigid, I don't have to resist change, I can embrace change because I've always got these core values to fall back on and I can always ask myself what does it look like to practice these core values?
Speaker 2:A couple of things on that One.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that you have a condensed list of core values, and I completely agree with you, because when you're on this journey, when you're committed to personal development, one thing I've discovered, brad, especially as it relates to goal setting and the whiteboard that you see behind me, is that less equals more, and there's no point in writing down 100 goals for 2024 when the reality is we really only have capacity for sometimes even five really big things versus 100 small things, and thinking that by having this huge list, it means that you're a better person, or that more core values equals better Brad, or more ambitious Brad, and that's really not the case.
Speaker 2:And the second piece that I really appreciate, brad, is that you mentioned that you do this exercise every year, and it occurred to me that I was having some homeostatic thinking that core values are fixed, you write them down, you set them and that's that. But going back to life changing, it would make sense that perhaps your core values could change as well. So, on that note, have you had some core values over the years that maybe there's been one of those five that have remained fixed, or are you finding yourself with completely different sets of three to five every year.
Speaker 1:Ooh, really good question. No, I do have some fixed core values that have stayed fixed for quite a while. One of those is health and then the other one is family. Those haven't changed. The other values for mine have changed over time and they're all still within the same vicinity, like within the same neighborhood. But when I step back and I say you know, who am I becoming, who do I want to become? How do I want to show up in the world, prioritizing my own health, making sure that I have physical activity, that I go to my doctor's appointment, that I eat fairly well, that I sleep, that's not going to change. Family, making sure that I am there for my wife and my kids, that's not going to change. But the other values have changed a bit.
Speaker 1:So truth, I mentioned at the start like that's a new core value for me, and I came into that because I, as my work gets a little bit more read and I'm more in the public, I ask myself, like what's this all for? Sometimes, and we all ask ourselves this right, like what am I doing this for? And I want to help people and I really like the work, but then I'm like you know, there's got to be more to it. So I stepped back and I practiced what I preached and what's in the book. I said, well, who do I really admire right now?
Speaker 1:And I came up with two other people who are writers and I asked myself what do I admire most about them? In their kind, in their warm, in their decent. But more than anything, they just tell the truth and they think for themselves. And they're not radical, they're not polarized, they're not giving crazy hype speeches, they just tell the truth. And I said you know, I want to prioritize doing that next year. Next year is going to be messy In America. It's an election year. It's going to be messy and it's going to be so easy to get swept up into so much tumult. And I just want to, like, try to be a signal and tell the truth and do it in a compassionate way. So that's a new core value for me this year.
Speaker 2:And, as you say, that it's a great segue into, let's just focus on truth, and I think the distinction that you make in the book is having versus being, and I would argue that I don't believe truth is something that you're looking to have, but rather just something that you're going to become become in a source of truth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'd argue. For me, it's like it's a way of thinking and communicating, because if you say, like you have the truth, well, yeah, you have the truth today, but then two years from now you're a conspiracy theorist Because, like, there is no single truth, right, there's no ongoing exploration of what makes sense based on what's out there, based on what you've seen. And then for me, as more of a public figure, it's communicating not to get clicks or to get likes or to get readers, not to offend people and be an asshole, but just to say like, hey, here's an observation, here's a trend. I think it's important, here's why you don't have to like it, but I want you to respect where it comes from.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So with that, maybe it's safe to say that in 2024, we're coming. The beacon of truth.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I'm going to be the beacon of truth. I don't want to put that pressure on myself.
Speaker 2:I guess you just put it on me, we'll go with a beacon, not the beacon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, just a source of truth. Like you know that Brad's going to tell the truth or his truth, and you might not always agree with him, but you know that he's not doing anything you know strategically or to try to get from here to there or something like that. No, I'm just going to try to tell the truth and I did it a little bit in this book and it was hard for me. It's by no means a political book, but there's a section in there where I talk about like Trumpism and the movement behind Donald Trump and what I've observed in that. That is somewhat frightening.
Speaker 1:And then more recently, on the far left, I've called out like some delusion and some resistance to change and on the one hand, I'm pissing a lot of people off, but on the other hand, I'm pissing people off on both, like on two different extremes, and maybe that means like I'm doing my job Okay. Like if my value is truth, that's fine and that's new for me, I think. I think like it's a step into more confidence versus thinking like, ooh, if I write this, am I going to ostracize readers? And I want to be clear. Like it's very easy to become self-righteous doing this and then like be super judgmental towards people and just be like I'm right and I know and all you are wrong. And I hope that's not how I come across in my writing, because I don't want to do that at all. But I just want to like call out observations and then readers can agree with me or disagree.
Speaker 2:And as you focus more on this, brad, and really on this core value of truth and living that out in 2024, you're going to be covering some topics that are well publicized and generate a lot of opinion on both ends of the spectrum.
Speaker 2:I can imagine that that can create some personal discomfort and there may be even somebody that's tuned in right now that is looking to start something new this year that may be held back by the fear of what's to come by putting information out there. I remember, even as I was getting ready to launch this podcast, having those thoughts of well, what will the people perceive about the information that I'm putting out there, or the folks that I'm interviewing and what they have to say, and what could that end up becoming? And, who knows, are people going to bash me for information that comes out there? All of these thoughts started permeating my mind. So, as you go down this journey in 2024, I'm curious if you have something that you do to respond to the voices that may come up, as man, you shouldn't publish that, brad, or nobody's going to want to listen to you, or that's the furthest thing from the truth. How do you respond to those internal voices that may be paying you a visit?
Speaker 1:I think that you let them be there and you don't judge them. I think if you're never feeling any fear and security, you're not pushing yourself hard enough. And I think you say oh, thank you voices. I know you're just trying to protect me, but this is my value and I'm going to do it Now. Does that mean that you should get insane? No, if I if there was, but I would never do this Like if there was something I would say or write that would blow up my career, I wouldn't write it.
Speaker 1:But if I believe something like that, then I'd like. It's a hard look in the mirror. Why do you have such an extreme belief? So I think it's just about like acknowledging that all it doesn't matter if you're trying to tell the truth, or you're trying to be healthier, or you're trying to put more content into the world, or you're trying to be a better wife or husband, right? Like having some doubts and having some voices, that's okay, you're never going to get rid of those. It's about taking them along for the ride with you and saying, like I see you voice and generally those voices are trying to protect you.
Speaker 1:Right, because when you step into the arena, in any domain, you make yourself vulnerable because when you really care about something, there's a chance that you're going to fail. I mean it's like the kid in gym class in high school or middle school that like never tried. Well, they didn't try it because they were scared they were going to fail. You know the popular kids in high school. They never tried in gym class because they didn't want to, they didn't want to miss a shot, they wanted to be the big shot all the time. And I think that when you commit to a core value, you're kind of like you're making yourself vulnerable because it's not always going to work out and you're not always going to execute well. And again, I think that like that's okay, that's like the cost of stepping into the arena, but what you get is you get so much meaning and fulfillment and texture in your life just from trying. It's a lot easier just to go through the motions. Don't be the popular kid in high school.
Speaker 2:I was far from that and you said you are too. Yeah, it was far from that, and I love what you just mentioned here, though, that sometimes you jump in the arena and sometimes you're going to win, and sometimes you're going to get smacked in the face and you get up and you keep on going and going back to the allostasis. It brings you to a new level, and one thing that can help people is they're entering the arena. Is this other concept that I love from the book of tragic optimism, which is really another nuance that you created, similar to rugged flexibility? Those are two more words that you wouldn't associate next to each other, and you see tragic tragedy, and what the heck does tragedy have any place next to optimism, for? So how do we rather, what is tragic optimism in your view, and what does somebody who's tragically optimistic about life respond to chaos with and respond to these voices with, and what do they look like in a new year and just how do they go about life and what's their way of being?
Speaker 1:So tragic. Optimism is a term that's coined by Victor Frankel and it essentially acknowledges that even the most average human existence is going to have tragedy. Some of it is what you mentioned right at the beginning of this podcast that we're going to die and just knowing that we're going to die and everything we love is going to go away, that's really tragic and no amount of positive thoughts or like polyanotoxic positivity is ever going to get rid of that. You can deny it, but it's just going to be there under the surface. Another form of tragedy is we're made of flesh and bone and as we age, our bodies are going to have aches and pains. Again, we can do physical practice and eat well and physical therapy and all these things to help, but, like we're going to be sore at times, we're going to experience pain. That's just part of being a human. And we also have these big prefrontal cortexes in our brain that allow us to make plans, and that's wonderful. But sometimes our plans don't work out and we're going to experience frustration, and again, that's just part of being a human. And rather than deny these things or repress them, we ought to just accept them. There are certain tragedies that are inherent to living and at the same time, we ought to cultivate an optimistic, hopeful attitude nonetheless. So it's not denying tragedy, it's not toxic positivity, but it's also not nihilism and despair. It's taking these two seeming opposites and saying actually, the work of a mature adult is to be a tragic optimist, to not turn a blind eye to suffering and hardship, to not sugarcoat it, to see it for what it is and to still be optimistic nonetheless.
Speaker 1:And I think on social media you see these two extremes play out and they both drive me crazy. The one extreme is despair, nihilism. Everything is so broken all the time, why even try? Look how terrible things are. Society sucks, capitalism sucks, it all sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks. The other extreme is everything is great all the time. Just be positive, just be happy, don't worry. Polyana, this polyana that Bury your head in the sand. And I think both are complete cop outs, because if everything sucks so much, well then why do anything about it? You have no chance. And if everything's great, then why try to improve the world, why try to make it better? So they're both like cheap cop outs because they absolve you of doing anything, whereas the people that I look up to most in a researching or reporting this book, the people that perform the best and have the most fulfilling lives and actually make a difference. They avoid those two extremes and they are squarely in the middle and they say, yeah, there's a lot that sucks and yeah, I still have the agency to do something about it, and they don't fall prey to like either of these extremes.
Speaker 1:And I think it's so important, and it's also a huge weight off your shoulders, because we've all had that experience where things in the world may be really terrible but you're still having a great day and you kind of feel bad for having a great day. But no, you can be a tragic optimist. You can accept that there's a lot of tragedy and I'm still having a great day, I'm blessed with what I have. The flip side is also true. Everything around you could seem just perfect and you're like why do I feel sad? Why am I down? Well, that's okay too. So, like, you release this pressure to feel a certain way and you just open up your aperture of experiences in a more accepting way, in a more realistic way, because, back to like, the truth about life is that it is full of tragedy and it is full of wonder. Both those things are true In any wisdom tradition, from Christianity to Buddhism, to Islam, to Judaism, to Taoism. There are the 10,000 sorrows and the 10,000 joys, and you can't have one without the other.
Speaker 2:If I had to summarize that and extract what I'm hearing, it's really to embrace what is. Embrace what is right now, regardless of the situation whether it's the best day of your life or we're back in the pandemic times and recognize that thing or chain of events, recognize what it's doing for you or what it can be giving you in that moment, and always look forward to the future. Am I missing anything else?
Speaker 1:That's it and don't put pressure on yourself to feel good all the time. It's okay to like have those tragic feelings, but try to cultivate an outlook where you know that they'll pass. Like the one good thing about impermanence is, it's true for everything. So not only does the good change, but the bad changes too.
Speaker 2:Amen to that. Now, when we think about change you mentioned this towards the end of the book and the conclusion, which I love the conclusion, by the way, because there are a lot of useful questions to ask yourself to embrace change and become more rugged and become rugged flexibility not to have rugged flexibility, but to become it. One thing dealing with change you mentioned that there's four Ps. So we're in a new year. You've also mentioned that it's an election year, and so who knows what the world's going to look like here in a few months? But I would also envision that there's going to be some chaos, regardless of results, and we're all about to experience a lot of change. One way to deal with change is to embrace the four Ps that you've mentioned here in the book Pause, process, plan and proceed. Now can you walk us through those four Ps and how we can utilize those in this new year?
Speaker 1:So, whatever we're faced with a change be it a major change or just a day to day triviality you get stuck in traffic, your dog has diarrhea, on the carpet, you thought you were going to get to speak at a big presentation, but the meeting goes haywire. You can respond or you can react. Reacting is quick, it's rash. You often regret it. It's like when you snap, you send that email that you wish you didn't. You yell at your kid and you feel bad after Responding. It's slower, it's more thoughtful, it's more deliberate. So you want to respond, not react to most things. If you're on an actual path, not a metaphorical one, you see a bear or a snake, yeah, you want to react, but most of us aren't fighting bears and snakes in day to day life. We benefit from responding. When we react, we follow two Ps we panic and then we pummel ahead. When we respond, we follow the four Ps which you just said we pause, process, plan and proceed, and what you do is you create space between the stimulus and response, and this is something that so many philosophers throughout time have pointed out that our freedom, our agency, lies in the space between stimulus and response, and the four Ps help create that space. So first, just to pause, just gather yourself, take a couple deep breaths. Second, process what's happening. Third shows that something called affect labeling, which simply means naming your emotions, helps to create space and to process what's going on. Because once you name what you're feeling, you're no longer fused with it. When you're really caught up in overwhelm or anger or distress or excitement or frustration, you can become along with the situation and that's when you're primed to react. You just get swept up in emotion. And if you can name your emotion, if you can say I'm feeling excited, I'm feeling frustrated, I'm feeling tightness in my chest, well, you've already created space between you and it. Then you make a plan. So you step back and you say here's what I can control about this and here's what I can't. And I'm going to try to focus on what I can control and try not to worry about what I can't, and only then do you proceed. So, by definition, panic and pummeling ahead. It's real tight. You just go, you just do.
Speaker 1:When we respond, we extend that process. We give ourselves a chance of being more thoughtful, of being more discerning, of acting in alignment with our values. So here's what I can control, here's what I can't. And let me remind myself of what my values are and how can I act in alignment with these values. And I want to be clear that initial reactivity, that feeling, is never going to go away. It is in our DNA For 99.999% of our species history. We were fighting snakes in mountain lions out on the savanna. So there's good reason why we react. We evolved to do this. But in the modern world, reacting often goes against what we're trying to do here and that's why it can be so hard to get into a more responsive mode.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that this really just added another layer to what I believe is common advice, that we hear that, okay, take a pause, take a deep breath and maybe leave it at that.
Speaker 2:But you took it to another level, brad, that you name the emotion, because then, okay, you are allowed to separate yourself from it and let's be more specific about this moment, and then we go from there, and I believe it's a great tool that people can use here. In this new year, we're going to experience a wide variety of emotions and change, and just by simply naming it, it allows us to recognize it and separate ourselves from it. Brad, you mentioned that again at the start of the year, that you focus on what your core values are going to be, and now that we're in a new year, and for someone like you, who is a champion of this personal development domain and human performance, what's another best practice that you can share with us that you've adopted that will help us ensure 2024 is going to be a great year? Do you write all of your goals down? Do you do a vision board process? Just one more piece of your toolbox that we can absorb.
Speaker 1:I do in addition to the core values inventory. That's the main thing. I don't set specific goals, as much as I ask myself if I want to practice my core values, what are the activities that are going to let me? So, if a core value is mastery, I might say, hey, I really want to work on deadlifting as much weight as possible next year and getting really good at that movement, but I'm not doing that because my goal is to deadlift 600 pounds. I'm doing that because I want to live mastery. Does that make sense? It's a subtle shift, but I think it's an important one, because I think we could set these outcome goals and then we can fail or succeed, but then it's over, whereas I would rather say, all right, given my core values, what goals align with my core values? Not the other way around.
Speaker 1:So you want your core values to drive your goals, not reverse, because if you don't care about mastery, well, who cares? If you double it 600 pounds, instagram, come on, no one cares. If you do care about mastery, you should probably have a mastery goal. If you don't care at all about intellect or wisdom, but everyone else is putting together reading lists, well, you don't have infinite time. I think everyone should read. But maybe you say, actually, family is more important and I don't have infinite time, but if you value knowledge or learning or development, then yeah, you want to have a goal with that. So I think it's just like the subtle shift which is I don't go goal at the top and then everything goes down from that. I go core value at the top, and then what are the goals that are going to allow me to practice that core value?
Speaker 2:I like that approach because what it's doing is it's establishing connection over content, content really being the goal.
Speaker 2:And, at the end of the day, what I've come to find over this decade now of commitment to personal development and goal setting is that the goal is just the pie in the sky, but really what's important is that you have some sort of meaning assigned to it. For instance, when people will often tell me that they want to become a runner or they want to lose weight, then the next question is well, what is it about becoming a runner that is meaningful to you? Well, it'll allow me to become more healthy, which is going to create more longevity for your family. Boom, there it is. That makes sense and assigns some more meaning to being a runner or to hitting a certain weight number on the scale. And I've also found that it's about this process of becoming, and that's the real journey that we should all seek. It's not necessarily the goal, but the process of becoming. Who must we become in order to achieve XYZ? And that's where the real bread and butter is at.
Speaker 1:That's right and I think running is a good example. When you mentioned you do ultras and not to turn this into like a therapy session, but I would argue that ultras you're probably not doing for health and longevity. You're probably doing more for personal growth or for challenge or for learning about yourself. That's okay too, but you're not doing ultras because you want to say that you ran 100 miles and I know people like this. That is not a sustainable goal, because if you succeed, well then what? You're empty, because you already checked it off the list, and if you fail, well then you're a failure. But if you run 100 mile race because you want to explore what you do when you're faced with your limits, or because you're in a family where substance use disorder runs in your family tree and you know that you have, like an addictive personality and you want to channel it towards something that's not destructive, that is so much more meaningful and enduring than ticking off a box on a bucket list.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I couldn't agree more with you, brad. You hit the nail on the head and, man, what a great discussion Before we wrap up with the rapid fire session. How do we keep up with you in 2024 and all the amazing work that you're continuing to put out there?
Speaker 1:The places that I would say to go is if you enjoyed this conversation, I'd highly encourage you all to read or listen to the book Master of Change. I think it's my best work and certainly most timely as we start the new year. The place where I'm most on the internet is Instagram, or my handle is at Brad Stahlberg, and then my podcast, which was formerly the growth equation and is now actually called farewell, is another wonderful spot to catch insights and things that I'm thinking about, co-hosted with Steve Magnus and Clay Skipper.
Speaker 2:Got it. I'm going to be putting LinkedIn the show notes. I actually really enjoy following you on LinkedIn and I thought that I had growth equation right on the podcast name. That's what still appears in Apple. Perhaps I missed something.
Speaker 1:You're getting some inside baseball. We're recording this a little while before we're going to publish it. The podcast is transitioning, changing its name to farewell in 2024. So as of now, late December, it is the growth equation and as of January 1st, if all goes well technologically, it will be farewell.
Speaker 2:I was thinking that I messed up on my research, and that's such an easy one.
Speaker 1:No, it's non-dual thinking man, it's the growth equation. And farewell, Not either or but both.
Speaker 2:And Growth equation and farewell, I got it, brad. It's customary for the podcast and with a rapid fire session it's three questions. And imagine we're going up three floors on an elevator to have lunch somewhere together in Nashville at a rooftop, and on each floor someone gets in and recognizes you and they ask you one question and the amount of time you have to answer the question is the amount of time it takes to go up one elevator floor. This is called one gem, one step, one book. So someone gets on and they say, brad, what's one gem that you have, whether it's a quote or a mantra that you use to live your life that I can put in my back pocket to use for my life as well, motivation follows action.
Speaker 1:You don't have to feel good to get going. Just get going and you give yourself a chance at feeling good. So don't suppress your feelings, don't deny them. Accept them, but then take them along for the ride and just show up and act in alignment with your values.
Speaker 2:What's one step that I can take today to become a master of change in 2024? Get the book.
Speaker 1:No, I'm kidding, and maybe it is get the book. But I would say, pick one thing from this conversation, one insight, one idea, one practice, one tool. Ask yourself how you can apply it to your own life and just do that one thing for a month and then come back and revisit and maybe add another thing. I think that we tend to shoot too big too early, but consistency is the name of the game, so just start with one thing from this conversation.
Speaker 2:One thing, amen. Now, this may be the most difficult question for you, Brad. As voracious of a reader as you are. What's one book besides yours that people should read in 2024 to bolster their mindset?
Speaker 1:I read so many good books, I think for 2024 and it pairs really nicely with Master of Change is a book called 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman. The subtitle is Time Management for Mortals and it's not like any time management book that you've ever read. It is essentially a case for identifying what really matters to you and doing less so that you can do more. And I think in a world that's so filled with clutter and optimization and efficiency and just cramming stuff in, I think that we run the risk of not keeping the main thing the main thing, and Oliver's book is a real good manifesto about keeping the main things, the main things 4,000 Weeks.
Speaker 2:I haven't heard that one and I've just wrote that down so I can purchase a copy as well. Brad, it's been an absolute honor to have you on and to kick off 2024 with you here on the podcast. You provided so many amazing tips and tools that we can immediately incorporate into our lives that are going to serve us well in 2024 and help us embrace change. So folks, embrace change, understand that change is a good thing. It's inevitable and that is what will help you crush 2024 and win today. Thanks so much for tuning in and happy new year.