How to Create a Meaningful Life with Brad Stulberg | Being Well

Hello and welcome to Being Well. I'm Forest Hansen. If you're new to the show, thanks for joining us today. And if you've listened before, welcome back. Today we're talking about something that's both topical for the start of the year and has been very relevant for me personally. Life tends to feel better when we are trying in a sustained way at things that genuinely matter to us. We're not checked out or disengaged or drifting, but we're also not white knuckling it through life. We're in a kind of middle place with it. It sounds simple and obvious, but it runs counter to both much of the advice that we receive these days and is surprisingly hard to do. How do you find good things to care about in the first place and decide what to stick with and what to move on from? How do you work with fear and distraction or even just the structure of modern life altogether that makes this stuff really difficult? How do you avoid common traps and pitfalls along the way like chasing goalposts that get constantly pushed back? To help me dig into this topic and answer some of these questions, I'm joined today by writer and coach Brad Stolberg. Brad is a regular contributor at the New York Times, the co-host of the Excellence Actually podcast, and on faculty at the University of Michigan's Graduate School of Public Health. He's also the author of a number of books, including Master of Change, which he came on the show to talk about a few years ago and now his new book, The Way of Excellence: A Guide to True Greatness and Deep Satisfaction in a Chaotic World. So, Brad, thanks for joining me today. How are you doing? >> I'm great, Forest. It is a pleasure to be here back on the show. >> Yeah, for sure. And you mentioned that this is like one of the first kind of big interviews you're doing for the book. I was so so happy to be in that position. Yeah, I am fresh and and ready to to roll. So, listeners, um, all success goes to forest and all mistakes are mine. >> Oh, well, I wouldn't put it that way, but I do appreciate it. So, I would love to start here, Brad, with a with kind of a funny question. Uh, what do you mean by excellence? >> I define excellence as involved engagement in something worthwhile that aligns with your values and goals. So, it has three parts. Involved engagement means uh deep concentration, a sense of caring, um a sense of intimacy. And often we think about intimacy is love for a romantic partner. But you can also have intimacy with an activity with a craft. Then something worthwhile that's going to lie in the eye of the beholder, but it has to be something that you find meaningful, that you find energizing, and then that aligns with your values and goals. So excellence is very much a process of becoming rather than a destination. So you might think that you're working toward running a marathon or launching a business or writing a book, but you're also working on yourself. And that is where the in alignment with values and goals comes into play. I think that's a fantastic way to think about it because you've immediately taken how good are you at the thing off the table essentially like you you've just moved away from outcome goals kind of definitionally and I think that where a lot of people get stuck with this is they think to themselves something like either a I've got some complexity about just kind of like buying into the rat race or b I just don't feel very good at things and I think that when you shift the focus to that involved D engagement in something you care about. You know, obviously you can be an excellent or a not excellent parent. You can be an excellent partner. You can be an excellent reader in terms of your just engagement with something like is it fulfilling you as you're participating in the activity? >> Yeah, that's right. I think that there are these common misconceptions about excellence. Um a couple of them are this notion of perfectionism. Um, and if anything, perfectionism kills excellence because if you're constantly holding yourself to an impossible bar, uh, then you're going to fatigue, you're going to burn out, or you're not even going to try to begin with. There's this notion of needing to win at all cost. Um, get the gold star, get the straight A's, very outcome focused. Um, but what we know from tons of research is that individuals that go into a craft or an activity with a relentless focus on outcomes, um, they tend not to last very long versus those who are more oriented around the process. So, it's important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. In many pursuits, results do matter. If you're competing in sport, you want to win. If you're a creative, you want your work to reach a lot of people. But those results are always the byproduct of a really high quality process. And you can't control the results, but you can control the high-quality process. And though we think that the results are going to provide us this kind of fulfillment or contentment, that is a trap. The fulfillment in the contentment arises in that highquality process. And if you have a high quality process, if you put your heart into it, then the result is going to be as great as it can be. And that that's excellence. In a nutshell, >> what has helped you stay more focused on the path as opposed to the destination, which I think is like the crux of this for so many people? Like, how do you stay plugging away, particularly if you don't feel like you're seeing immediate results? >> Well, I think that there's a few things. The the first is that the more that you can enjoy what you're doing and find satisfaction in the act of what you're doing, >> Yeah. Yeah. >> So, yes, I was just going to say there's this intrinsic reward of I really enjoy what it feels like when I'm training at the gym. Meditation. It's funny. I I think that to say that you want to be excellent at meditating would defeat the purpose of meditation. But I can say that what keeps me coming back to the mat, what what keeps so many meditators coming back to the the mat is the process of meditating. It's the reward of a sit. Um, it's what you you gain from that. Uh, if you're an artist, like what keeps you coming back to the canvas is generally not the number of paintings you sold, but that feeling that you get when you're just in the zone and you feel so close and so intimate with what you're doing. And it's that feeling of truly being alive um that if we can savor and if we can tune into it really helps keep us focused on the path. Now very practically speaking I think something that is really helpful is that after a big success or a hard failure it is so important to give yourself some time and space to feel the emotions. So to celebrate the victory to grieve the defeat but then you have to nudge yourself and sometimes you have to firmly nudge yourself to get back to doing the work itself. So I have I have this off-hand term I use the 48 hour rule. So give yourself 48 hours to celebrate or to grieve and then get back to doing the thing itself. Because what that does is it keeps your nervous system, it keeps your reward circuits in your brain very much remembering that hey the reason I do this is because I like the work. It's not for the external validation. Um it's not for the people telling me how great I am. It's because I like I like the work. And some people are very literal and they say, "Come on, Brad. I I just won an Olympic gold medal and you're telling me I can only celebrate for 48 hours. There's nothing special about 48 hours. Some losses and wins you're going to want to take longer to sit with and savor or longer to process the defeat. Others you might get back to work within a few hours. But the point is we can often get lost and we can often latch on to the disappointment of defeat or the high of external validation. And the more that we can get in the work and stay in the work oursel, the more that we stay rooted in that process. I think that sometimes language gets in the way a little bit. So the word excellence comes with associations for people. They think, you know, top 1% this this small segment of of people. And again, with how you've kind of broadened the thinking on this, it really includes, you know, 100% of people, 90% of people, whatever it is, big big chunk of people. And one of the things that I appreciated that you did pretty early in the book was you talked about how this is a natural part of who we are. And not just who we are as humans, but kind of like all living organisms have this kind of drive to to realize themselves is maybe the word here in a in a way that's meaningful to keep on going to meet a whole bunch of little goals along the way and how that's not something that's just reserved for like a very small subset of the population. That's just kind of baked into who we are. >> Yeah, that's right. So we we evolved um scientists call this homeostatic upregulation and it essentially means that we are constantly looking to flourish and to achieve our full potential. And this goes all the way back to single cell bacteria. So to the very very beginning of life and for the longest time achieving your potential flourishing simply meant surviving and then reproducing and that was it. And that's what's driven a lot of evolution. But for us humans, we we can do more than just survive and reproduce, right? We can create. We can be generative. We can contribute. We can experience joy. We can experience love. And it's that same evolutionary hardwiring to keep going towards these goals that is what makes the experience of excellence, as I define it, so enlivening. It's that feeling of just clicking on all cylinders, of being in a groove, of challenging yourself, of getting that feedback, not just external, but that internal feedback of this is how something feels. Um, and and really feeling like you're in the slipstream of of something. Um, and and and I and I want to just really reiterate here that it it's not about the result, but by pursuing excellence and by focusing on it, you give yourself the best chance at the result. Because I think another push back is Brad, you're just being so woo woo here and you're you're essentially taking results out of excellence. And it's like, no, go look at the blurb on the book. Steve Kerr, one of the most excellent based on winning um athletes and then coaches of a generation, is like, "No, this is the way." And if you follow the way, then the results are going to take care of themselves. And I think so many people inverse that. and they focus on the results and then they try to back into the way versus starting on the way and then and then letting the results take care of themselves. >> The other piece of this that I I hear from a subset of people and maybe this is just the the the subreddits I'm a part of or whatever um is that kind of the opposite of that, you know, life is just Sophus with the boulder, right? We're we're all on kind of the capitalist treadmill or however you want to talk about it. Um there are a lot of tasks in life that people feel they're just kind of doing day after day. You know, they just got to kind of plug away at them and they don't necessarily have that feeling that you're describing of that intimate engagement with something in a meaningful way. So if life is just this way, if life is, you know, we're constantly pushing the boulder uphill, uh why care about pushing the boulder really well? And I mean that in kind of a tongue-in-cheek way, but I think that it's actually a good question to to take a little time with. >> I think it's a great question. So the the the myth of Seisphus, which is what you're referencing, there are many interpretations of it. And one interpretation which comes from the philosopher Camu is that the entire point of life is to push the boulder well, to learn how to smile. I believe that's what he says in the myth of Sisphus is to to push the boulder with a smile on your face. And I think that you can look at life as a series of pushing a boulder up a hill and then it comes back down and then you push it up the hill and then it comes back down over and over again and then we die. Now, if that's true, then I would say that well crap. We better try to figure out how to enjoy pushing that boulder up the hill. >> Got to find some fun somewhere in there. >> Find some fun somewhere in there. And I get for the person that might be in a job or multiple jobs that they don't like. Um that might feel like they're trapped by a structure and a system that they feel is inherently in perhaps actually working against them. All that is real. And if you can set aside 30 to 45 minutes a day to make art, to train for a marathon, um to try to write literature, to bake, like just to have some kind of craft in your life where again like you are learning, you are getting better, you you are getting a sense of mastery. Um there's so much satisfaction that comes from it. Um, and and I think that what happens and and what I'm really trying to do, a big part of this project is is I talk about it as reclaiming excellence because I think what you're getting to, and correct me if I'm wrong, is you've got these two extremes. So, you've got the bros that say you have to have a 50-step routine and you have to be perfect at everything and you have to eat a certain way and lift a certain way and sleep a certain way and you got to breathe out of certain holes but not other holes and it's just on and on and on and that is not very serious. Like that's not what excellence is. That's a performance for the internet. And then on the other extreme, you've got people that say life is so hard. Like why even try? Why try to be excellent? And I think that both of those camps are misguided because the the latter camp, the why try, I think they look at excellence is like the hustle culture bros and they're like, well, why would I do that? >> But if you think about excellence is like great art. If you think about excellence is the science underlying antibiotics or underlying vaccines like those were people who were committed to a craft and working toward it. Um if you think about excellence as a parent >> just showing up fully present for their child and viewing their relationship with their child like this ongoing dance where you're in rhythm with another person. I I don't know anyone that hears that and says, "Oh, that's not for me or I don't want that." This almost takes us into a totally different topic, but I'm I'm curious what your take is on it. And you know, we're here. I I think that's sometimes what happens is that uh when good ideas get captured by a kind of subculture, if you're outside of that subculture or you view that subculture kind of critically, sometimes you can throw the baby out with the bathwater, right? Like if the if the tech bros of it all have kind of taken this idea and turned it into kind of a caricature of itself, then why would I if I view myself as part of the separate group kind of buy into that at all? And it's like, well, okay, sure, but you're losing something kind of important here, which is that involved engagement in general makes us feel better, bottom line. So, if you want to live a good life, it's really hard to live one without involved engagement. >> That's right. And I think it's really important um and I spent some time upfront in the book separating um pseudo excellence from real excellence >> and >> which has been a big topic for you also on Instagram and stack places like that because I feel like there's this there's this term that um that really has been has been I like how you put that like taken up by a subculture and kind of appropriated and bastardized. Um, and it gets so far away from what the root of the the actual thing is. And the root of the thing in Western culture is um, which is this ancient Greek concept of like really trying to fulfill one's potential. Um, in Buddhism it's right effort or right striving. So like it's east and west, it's everywhere. But no one talked about like winning at all cost and then posting a picture of yourself cold plunging giving a hype speech at 4:00 a.m. on the internet. Like that's not excellence. That's performance. Um and and my goodness, like I just want to try to reclaim this thing as something that one is for all of us and two that like we actually need the real genuine version to make the world go round. How do you think about separating out doing something really well, doing it like skillfully is maybe a better word for it from the idea of doing it uh excellently? >> That's a great question. I think that you cannot do something excellently without over time building skill and learning how to do it skillfully. >> Sure. However, you can do something extremely skillfully but not be excellent if you're doing it in a rote way without um a sense of deep care and without an underlying feeling tone. So, I spend a lot of time in the book talking about how excellence really has a feeling associated with it and it's a pre-intellectual feeling. So what I mean by this is that if you look at a beautiful piece of art, you feel it in your body before your brain has any chance to register why you like it or why it has high quality or why it's excellent. If you watch Steph Curry play basketball, long before your brain is like, well, here are his stats and here's what the opposing players do. No, you just see him out there moving like that and you're like, this is this is the real deal. Um, a master chef's creation, you don't think about the different flavors in your mouth. If you taste it, you feel it. So when you are witnessing excellence, when you're observing excellence, it is this feeling. And the same thing goes for when you're working toward it or when you're creating it. You know, if you are working at let's take your your sport dance, my guess is that when you are just on and you are clicking and you are in a rhythm, I guess in this case, both literally and figuratively, it's not an intellectual thing. Like your brain's not telling you that you're doing this excellently. You feel it. And I think that you only get that feeling tone from this sense of caring and concentration and repeated practice and coming back to the thing again and again and again. And I think that at its zenith excellence starts to look a lot like love because it is showing up consistently. It's repeating practice. It's paying attention. It is adjusting as you go. And it's this ongoing dance between you and something that you care about. And that sounds a lot like love. And I think that the greatest creations, like the reason that we feel them so deeply is because they're a lot like love. I mean, you you you hear scientists use the word love, like a love for their process, a love for science. You hear athletes use that word. Um, and and I think that that is again back to where we started, that is so different than this kind of methodical ro machineike optimization. >> I don't know a better way to put this than to say and it's kind of unsexy. So, so what I mean is that in the more performative versions of these, um, they're very polished. They look a very specific kind of way. I know so many people who, um, often are a little bit older just because that's the way our body works, right? And they've been really engaged with dancing for a long time, to use my use my subculture as the example, my hobby as the example. Um, and I think that they would be the first to tell you that they are objectively not the best dancer at this point in terms of like if you externally appraise their skill set, but I would say that they have been doing dance excellently for a pretty darn long time. Their target isn't the objective performance standard anymore because that's just not realistic for them. It's finding the fun. It's enjoying it. It's putting what they have into it. It's staying engaged with it. It's really caring about it. It's loving it. Exactly like you were talking about. Um, then I think that sometimes you can see the opposite. You can see people who are very technically proficient at something, but I'm not sure if I would I would describe them as being really excellent at what it is that they're doing cuz often they're pursuing some other kind of target. They're trying to get the social media likes. They're trying to post the clip that has been hyperedited. They're trying to really present a very specific version of who they are. Uh, and so there's this lack of I don't know like self-realization >> or integrity. Integrity. Yeah. integity. Integrity twofold. Sometimes it's a lack of integrity >> with the most common use of that term, which is it's the person that takes a ton of steroids and then goes and shows you how fit they are when in fact they're they're fit because they're using performance-enhancing drugs. Um, but it can also be a lack of integrity, meaning like there's no integration between them and what they're doing. Like they're they they might be very proficient and technically skilled, but they're alienated from it. Because if you are just doing something for all the validation, then you're a lot closer to the validation. Like that's what you're paying attention to, but you kind of alienate yourself from the pursuit. Um, in researching the book, I talked to a lot of artists and what they all said is that their best art comes when they're not thinking about the end result, let alone how it's going to be received. Their best art comes when they are wholly immersed in the process, when there's no space between them and what they're doing. And if you're thinking about the end results, well then you're already creating some space between you and what it is that you're doing. Um, so I I I it's a great question and and I'm so glad that you asked it. Um, because again, I think that if you're working towards excellence, you are going to develop skill and I think developing skill in this path of mastery is a highly fulfilling thing. It's a basic human need. Kind of gets back to what you said in opening, trying reasonably hard and getting good at something or or improving that makes us feel really good. However, you can have great technical proficiency. You can be very good at something but not be doing it in an excellent way because you're alienated from it because you see it as a means to some other end. And the other end might be filling this hole that you have from whatever happened in your your childhood where you need to be loved or you need to be validated. Um and and and then it's really not about the feeling of doing the pursuit. It's it's more about what you think you may or may not get on the other side of it. Hey there, thanks for watching and sorry for the brief interruption, but it turns out that over 60% of the people watching this right now are not subscribed to the channel. So, if you could just take a moment to hit the subscribe button, it would really help me out. I'd appreciate it a lot. All right, back to the show. The caring deeply piece is a big part of it because for that person who is um hunting the validation a little bit more, there's a little bit of a question in me of what is it that you're caring about? Are you caring about the activity that you're participating with or are you caring about something else? And so the first step toward any kind of excellence, however we're using that word, is is caring about what you're doing? But we're living in a cultural moment here that often celebrates not caring. We just did a New Year's episode that talked a lot about like the the nonchalance wars and the kind of irony and disenchantment moment that we're living in. This topic has shown up in your work a lot recently. I've read a lot of stuff that you've written about it. Why do you think that this nonchalance moment is happening in general and then what are kind of the costs of it? >> It's hard to diagnose uh like a massive social social thing and I think it is a massive social thing. Some people have called it an epidemic of nonchalant. So it's probably multiffactoral. The one that I pay a lot of attention to is I think that in no small part probably thanks to social media and thanks to this need that a lot of people especially young people feel to like broadcast their life. Um people want everything to be like really smoothed um and in and polished and the path of getting good at something and caring deeply tends to be quite messy. >> So I think that what happens with nonchalantness is you protect yourself >> from the mess by not really trying. >> I think disinterest and ease can kind of look similar if you don't really know what you're looking for. Yeah, totally. And the example that I I like to use is um everyone has had the experience of being in middle school. Well, everyone that's of middle school age or older. And there there was inevitably um a cool kid who never tried in gym class or who never tried on the test. And they didn't try because they were too cool to try. They were very nonchalant. But what was underneath that was always a insecurity and a fear of failure. So, the reason they didn't try in gym is because they were scared of losing. The reason they didn't try hard on the test is because they didn't want to get a B. And if you don't try your hardest, then you automatically have this defense mechanism if things go wrong, which was, well, I wasn't really trying. That's why I failed. Whereas, if you care deeply and you try your hardest, you inherently make yourself vulnerable because you know that you're giving it your all and you still might fail. However, we never get the best out of ourselves. We never get the experience, the satisfaction from giving it our all if we don't care deeply and if we don't make ourselves vulnerable. Like every time you step in the arena and lay it on the line, you make yourself vulnerable. And that vulnerability though is the cost of a super meaningful inextured life. I think another way to think about it is um the things that we care about like they inevitably break our heart because at some point in time they don't go as we'd hoped and that hurts. But not only do they break our heart, they fill our lives with texture and satisfaction in in joy. So it's a long-winded answer to your question, which is the angle that I come at this from is I think a lot of people are just scared of failing or scared of vulnerability and as a result they put on this veneer of nonchalants. It's like a bubble wrap. Um I'm so cool. Like why would I care? Uh, but it's just a protective mechanism against the heartbreak, the potential heartbreak that comes when you care. But you also don't get all the upside of of caring deeply. >> Was that something that kind of came relatively naturally to you? Is that something that you had to to work out and develop? >> The sense of caring deeply? >> Yeah, the sense of caring deeply. Yeah. Or or maybe a better way to put it, it dealing with all of the stuff that comes up that gets in the way of us caring deeply. cuz I think that caring deeply is like wired into us as mammals. >> It's more that we have to deal with all the obstructions to it. >> I would say that for whatever reason, it's come relatively naturally to me all the way back to school. Like I was just someone that was willing to go all in and if I failed, I failed. Um, I think that where it really became visceral and I was more aware of it, uh, was when my wife and I had our first child, Theo, in to really let myself care so deeply about something that I know is going to break my heart. Um, cuz eventually, if things go well, he's not going to be a little kid anymore and he'll probably move out. Um, and there's a temptation to not like have a space or a distance, but like, oh, to like kind of like keep it in arms length so the hurt's not so bad >> when he grows up, when he moves out. >> And every day I kind of face that and I'm like, nope. Like, it's going to break my heart. And I know it's going to break my heart and that's all the more reason that I have to care so deeply about him. Now having a child in the relationship with a child is very different than the relationship with my craft of writing. But the similarity is that I know that every book is not going to be great. I know that people are going to like my work and people aren't going to like my work. I can't control that. But what I can do is I can give the writing my all because I've only got this shot in time to work on this book. and rather than have some distance between me and it and then maybe some defensive mechanism if things don't go exactly as I wanted like I'm happy to get my heart broken because the upside the upside of it is is so high. Um so yeah, I think that I think that that that's the kind of the deal that we make. Um I also think that there are things that we can do to to soften the blow a little bit of the heartbreak. Um, I think this is what great books and great art and great music uh is for. I think this is what good friends are for. Um, I use this metaphor also of um of an identity house and how um it's helpful to think of our identity like a house. And if you have a house that only has one room in it and that one room catches fire or floods, it's going to be so discombobulating. You're going to have to move out of the house altogether. However, if you have a house with multiple rooms and one room catches fire or floods, you can seek refuge in the other rooms. So, if the only room in your identity house is athlete, well, if you get injured, it's going to be really a shock to the system. If your only room in the identity house is parent, you have no other room. Well, then when your kid moves out of the house, who are you? But if you have >> empty neester stuff in there, >> 100% it's empty neester stuff. It's uh Olympic transition out of sport for athletes. high rates of depression, anxiety. Um it's entrepreneurs when they sell their companies. Um so the house analogy says that hey, even if you're pursuing excellence, even if you care deeply, even if you're kind of like quote unquote all in on one thing, you want to make sure that you don't leave other rooms in your identity house completely behind. All the rooms don't have to be the same size. You don't have to spend the same amount of time in every room. You just don't want to let other important rooms get moldy because you never know when you're going to need to come back to them. So, the way that I talk about this with artists or Olympians or parents is you can be allin on winning a gold medal. You just can't be all in all the time. You can be allin on being a parent, but you can't be all in all the time. So, what does that mean for the parent? It means you should still have a hobby. You should still have a relationship with your partner outside of just parenting your kid. Um, you should still have friends. doesn't mean neglect your kid, but it means you're going to be a better parent and you're going to be a more resilient person if you have those other rooms in your identity house. >> Yeah. I think that there are kind of two two places that be I I love talking about self-concept as as I think you remember from our our last time doing this. It's one of my favorite topics. And how do you create a a flexible resilient sense of who you are is a big question in psychology as well. A big big question. And it's not a it's not a simple one. Um, and people tend to run into problems at I think two sides of the spectrum here. The first one is the kind of elite performer type who basically says, "Hey Brad, that sounds nice, but I'm competing against a thousand other people who are all allin on this sucker. And I need to be at least as allin as they are in order to kind of maintain my competitive advantage. you know, if I'm paying attention to A, B, and C when I'm trying to fill in the blank, do whatever it is that they're doing, I'm going to be at a competitive disadvantage and and so I I just like I'm not willing to do that essentially. Um, so that's kind of like one circle that can be tough for people. I think that that applies to a relatively small group of people, so I'm a little bit less interested in it. The other one that I'm really interested in is how do you let yourself be changed by what you're doing, if that makes sense. like how do you bring something new into that identity house and start to think about yourself as a dancer or as a weightlifter or as a whatever it is that you're doing. >> All right, I want to take on both buckets because the first bucket is a a a very pervasive myth. >> Yeah, there's so much research that shows that elite performance improves when you have greater self-complexity. And self-complexity is just the sciency sounding word for more rooms in your identity house. And I was just talking to an elite tennis player about this today. The reason for that is if you're in the middle of a tennis match >> and things start to go haywire, things start to go south and you start to get really frustrated, if all you are as a tennis player and your entire sense of selfworth wraps around you playing tennis, you are going to have a freakout moment on the course. >> Yeah. You you the stakes are too high. >> They're way too high. Whereas if you are a 90% tennis player but 5% partner, sibling, community member, 2% reader of books, 2% lover of dogs, and 1% neighbor in your community. So you're still 90% tennis. You know that even if you lose that match, people are still going to love you and you still have a sense of self. And as a result, you perform better as a tennis player. So again, it's kind of like don't throw the baby out with the bath water. If you want to be the best in the world at something, yeah, you've got to be probably 90 95% that thing, but you've got to have other sources of identity. >> You're uh you're you're middle pathing excellence here, Brad, and I like it for you. >> Other otherwise, you are going to you are going to blow up and and and it's just like it's a fact of the matter. There are so many examples of this. Roger Federer, one of the greatest tennis players of all time, he talks about how it was so important to him to be more than just a tennis player. And because he was more than just a tennis player, he could play free. He could play to win instead of playing not to lose. So if the the listeners who want to be the best at what they do and who have this temptation to just go all in, cuz that's what the bros say, right? There's this whole movement on social media that you've got to be obsessed >> 16 hours a day. >> Yeah. Whatever it is, like you you've got to care really deeply, but like actual elite performance requires having more to you than the thing because then that really frees you up to let it rip. That's the first bucket. The second bucket that you mentioned I think is part and parcel of how I think about excellence. I think that often we go into something and we think I am going to change myself to deadlift 600 lb or I'm going to bring myself to the marathon or I'm going to bring myself to this creative process of producing this work. But what often happens is the creative process of producing the work, the marathon, the deadlift, it changes us. And so like letting yourself be changed, >> letting yourself be changed is is a thing. Totally. >> Yes. And and that is the in alignment with values and goals. And that's why the the big projects that we pursue, we should do them for the person that we want to become. So I spend a lot of time. I'm a powerlifter. Like you're a dancer. That's kind of my my armchair mastery pursuit. And I've gotten quite good. Deadlifting. My favorite lift. It is literally, for those that don't know, it's just picking a bar off the ground to your hips and locking out your hips. You could argue, Brad, you just said it should be worthwhile. That is the least worthwhile thing in the world. You know, you're not even picking it up above your head. Picking up a heavy bar to your hips and locking it out. Like, what's the point? But what getting pretty good at deadlifting has taught me, it's taught me about patience, it's taught me about fear. Because you walk up to a bar with over 500 lb on it and it's scary. Like just the feeling in your body. Are you going to be able to do this? It's taught me how to be patient. People think, "Oh, you just hoist the bar up." No, no, no. You got to take the slack out of that thing and you have to sit while you build tension and feel the weight before you even start pulling. That is a very uncomfortable space to be in. It's taught me how to sit with this that that discomfort. Um, it's taught me the power of community and how I could never do this if I just trained alone in my basement, but how I have to go into a gym where I can mentor younger athletes and where I can be mentored by older athletes. Um, it's taught me about the object objectivity of doing something that's so visceral and real in the world. You know, unlike working in a large organization or unlike doing work that is received based on the subject subjectivity of a critic or a reader, you either make the lift or you miss the lift. Okay, these are all things that you can take out of the gym and apply to the rest of your life. It's taught me more than anything to be curious. So, my training partner and I when I lived back in California, we'd go up to a heavy bar and promise I'm not going to spend too much time on weightlifting here, but this there's metaphors. I talk about the gym all the time on the podcast. It's fine, Brad. They're used to this. Yeah. >> All right. So, you walk up to the bar and again, if you're attempting a PR, there there there's an element there can be an element of fear and not fear that I'm going to miss the lift because I'm a pro alete. I've got nothing riding on this, but genuine fear of what it's going to feel like in my body, right? pressurizing to try to lift three times your body weight is an insane feeling. And my training partner one day looked up to me and he's like, "Brave new world." Like, "What are you talking about? That's all this Huxley's book." He's like, "No, not that brave new world. Like, this is a brave new world. Like, who the hell knows what's going to happen? Let's find out." And it's a shift from fear to curiosity. And oh my god, has that changed my life because now we had our second kid. It's not, "Holy crap, how are we going to have two?" It's brave new world. I take on a big writing assignment that feels way over my head. It's not fear. It's brave new world. None of that would have happened without picking up this bar and locking it out to my hips. And that is how pursuing excellence, that is how getting really intimate with a craft can change you as a person. Now, as a person, I'm a little bit less fearful and I'm a little bit more curious. >> There's so much in that just as like a very simple practice. It's lowering the stakes in a kind of way. It's shifting your focus from something that could be scary and painful to something that has implicitly a kind of positive tone like positive hedonic tone. Curiosity for most people has a positive hedonic tone. It's uh it's embracing failure in a funny kind of way where you're like, well, if I fail, I fail. So be it. I'm curious. Oh, okay. That's you know, we found out. I don't know. There's there's just a lot in it that I think it's a very rich uh very rich way of approaching it. Yeah. And I think but that gets back to like gets back to excellence in the definition. That doesn't happen without involved engagement, without caring. >> Yeah. >> It doesn't happen without having a mindset that says, "Oh, like I'm not just working on the deadlift. The deadlift is working on me." >> I really like that. The deadlift is working on me. You know, whatever it is, the thing that you're working on is working on you as well. And I think that's also a way to open yourself to being increasingly changed by it. >> Yes. >> Just that kind of mindset with it. >> 100%. Uh there's a furniture maker who's in the book, Peter Korn, and and what he said is that for the longest time, he thought that he wanted to build a table with sound structure and integrity. And then later in his career, he realized that what he actually wanted was for his character to have sound structure and integrity. And he wasn't actually chiseling away at this table. He was chiseling away at himself. And like that's excellence, that's high quality. And as a result of that, the table's going to be beautiful. I love to cook, and I wish I lived in a world where I always had the time, the energy, and the brain space to cook three delicious and nutritious meals a day. But these days, that's just not always the case. And when I'm moving through my day or I'm tired at the end of it, that's when it's easy to make less than ideal choices about what I'm eating. That's why I was really curious when Hule reached out to sponsor the show. Hule makes nutritionally complete, convenient, and affordable food. And they're also thoughtful about minimizing their impact on animals and the environment. They sent me a couple of things to try. One is Hule Black Edition, which is their higher protein line. The ready to drink bottles, that are these right here, are a complete meal with 35 g of protein and 27 essential vitamins and minerals with no artificial sweeteners, colors, or flavors. And if you want something even more flexible, their protein powder version gives you 40 g of protein per serving. That's this guy over here. They also sent their daily greens ready to drink. It's developed by nutritionists and dieticians with 42 vitamins, minerals, and superfoods. It's only 25 calories, 4 g of fiber, 1 g of sugar. All of the products that Hule sent are vegan and gluten-free. And the black edition ready to drink comes out to under $5 per meal. The powder can be under $3 per meal, which when you compare it to the time and the cost and the mental load of shopping and cooking when you're busy, that's pretty compelling. So, for a limited time, you can grab Hule today with my exclusive offer of 15% off online with my code being at hule.com/beingwell. New customers only. Thank you to Hule for partnering and supporting our show. So, we've already named a lot here that is suggesting a kind of road map. If you want to get excellent at a thing, whatever it is that you're doing, kind of domain non-specific. Uh we've talked about letting yourself be changed by the activity. Really opening up your self-concept, allowing yourself to start to think about yourself as, you know, a powerlifter, as a dancer, as an artist, as a whatever it is for you, as a dad. So, we've talked about a lot of that. that's that's been quite big picture. Inside of this whole territory, there's a lot of stuff that's more process driven. So, if I kind of asked you Brad, hey, I want to get really excellent at something. Doesn't really matter what domain non-specific, what general advice would you give me? >> Oh, I'd give you so much advice. Um, I wrote a book on this. All right, so here we go. Um, I think that the the first >> broad strokes to five things you would highlight. Yeah, >> totally. The first thing that I would say is you want to set a goal. So you want to have some kind of objectivity of something that you can strive for and then you want to break that goal down into its component parts and have these micro milestones along the way. So it gives you something to focus on. Not I want to achieve this in two years but I want to achieve this in two years which means I want to achieve this in a year which means this quarter I want to work on this which means this month I'm going to do this. this week I'm going to do this and here's what I'm going to do today. So yes, the big ambitious motivating goal then broken down into small micro process steps. That's the first thing. The second thing that I would say is to prioritize consistency over intensity. So what often happens is we're motivated. You listen to this conversation, you read a motivational book and you're like, I'm going to become great at uh poetry and then you think, I got to lock myself in a room for six hours with Red Bull and espresso and write poetry. And what's going to happen is you're going to burn out really fast. If you can shift that mindset to what I need to do is I need to sit down and write six days a week for the next two months and I'm going to cap myself at just an hour a day because I know that if I go over that, I'm going to burn really bright, but then I'm going to burn out. That's how you get on the path of mastery. That's how you get on the path of excellence. So, shift the mindset from intensity to consistency. Something else that I think is worth mentioning that is that is just so important here um is the role of um discipline. And discipline not being internet pseudo excellence discipline of look how tough I am. I'm going to thump my chest and and and show you. But discipline meaning giving yourself a chance to actually do the thing you want to do, which often requires constraints. That might mean I need to create a distraction-free environment for an hour by putting my phone off and in the other room. That might mean I need to go to bed 45 minutes earlier so that I can wake up the next morning. That might mean I need to really pay a little bit more attention to the food I'm putting in my body so I'm fueled to take on this challenge. Um people often think about freedom as freedom from something, freedom from constraints. Philosophers call this uh negative freedom. But there's this whole other kind of freedom which is called positive freedom which is the freedom to do something like the freedom to be your best. And often the freedom to do something, positive freedom requires some kind of constraints. So the constraint might be I can't stay up all night and binge watch excellence. So, I'm actually not free to do that. But what I am free to do now is wake up in the morning and and go run because I really want to do my first 5K or my first 10K or whatever it is. Um, so so genuine discipline, which means giving yourself the best chance at something that that you want to do that's meaningful. You asked for you asked for five, so I think I'm at I'm at >> I was like three to five, I think. You know, whatever. We're in the zip code. Yeah. I just wanted to kind of keep it bounded because I knew again, like you said, you've written a book about this. >> I'm trying to pick I'm trying to pick some of my favorites here. Um, I think another I think another one worth talking about is the importance of community. >> Love this. Yeah. >> And if you want to climb a big mountain, generally speaking, it's best not to go climb it alone. Uh, and that's true for actual mountains and that's true for metaphorical mountains. >> Look, I mean, what got me into dancing was the social aspects of it. >> Yeah. I I I wanted a social hobby. I was, you know, kind of a kind of a nerdy on my computer guy. I still am to some extent, but I I wanted something that pulled me into engagement with other people. And you know, my sister when I was 18 or something was like, "Hey, you want to go to a dance class sometime?" And there was a part of me that was like, "No, not really." But then there was a part of me that was like, "Hell, why not?" And that just kind of set the course for it. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that if you can if you can make what you're doing relational in some way and maybe it's joining a club, maybe it's taking it on, taking on a challenge with a family member, a friend, a colleague, uh that that also goes a long way to um to bolster the the process. And then the the final thing that I'll say is to realize that intensity in a will to get better can coexist with joy. So, this is another one of these misconceptions about excellence. People think that, oh, I got to be like David Gogggins, you know, angry all the time. Um, suffering, >> just screaming at people. >> That's the path to greatness. >> Yeah. >> Um, but that's nonsense. Like, you got to be able to smile while while you're doing it. And smiling doesn't mean always taking it easy. You can go really hard and be really focused and push yourself and make yourself uncomfortable while also having so much fun. uh because if you're not having fun, you're not going to last very long at what you do. >> Yeah, I would love to talk about that a little bit with you here because I think that again for starters, big misunderstanding about this and also just something that based even on just the way that our brains work and the way that modern life is set up, this is really challenging for people. So, you talked, I want to say 30 minutes ago in this conversation about how there's a kind of feeling tone associated with with excellence, a really positive feeling tone. And this comes a bit from our evolutionary heritage, right? We were we were constructed in a way to approach certain things and avoid other things because there were evolutionary benefits to each one. Made a lot of sense when we're living in the stone age with stone age brains. Now, unfortunately, we still have stone age brains, but we're living in not the stone age. So, our modern environments are really, really good at giving people a lot of call what you will free dopamine from scrolling on TikTok or whatever. It's a very uh you know hedonically enjoyable activity maybe. Um but nobody would really say that this is pulling you closer to your excellence goals. On the other hand, there's a lot of stuff associated with maybe some of those excellence goals that doesn't necessarily seem obviously enjoyable or fulfilling in the moment. Um I've built a a real practice around being a gym person. Uh the first I don't know several months I was a gym person, I did not particularly enjoy the physical experience of it. It took a little while for that to come online. And so this is just a a core tension that people are needing to live with in modern life. Like how do you approach the things that you kind of know on some level are good for you and avoid the things that you know maybe aren't so good for you, but man, they feel really enjoyable in the moment. And I'm I'm wondering how you think about all of that. >> Yeah. So I think about this um it's a great question. I think about this first the difference between excellence and flow. So flow is a psychological construct um coined by Mahali Chapat Mahali which is the feeling of being completely in the zone and flow is groundbreaking at the time it was groundbreaking. It's something that anyone in performance psychology knows about and it is a great construct. However, flow is valuesneutral. And before we had Tik Tok and before we had Pornhub and before we had X and before we had, you know, McDonald's French fries, um, flow wasn't so dangerous because it was generally pointed towards good things. But now that we have all of these technologies that can make us feel good in the short term, but don't align with our long-term values and goals, we enter what the psychologist David Pizaro calls flow. So flow, one of my favorite terms in the book is >> has all the hallmarks of flow. So when you're let's take my my guilty uh you know my my flow example is scrolling social media. So when I'm scrolling social media, I lose a sense of time. >> I think I'm going to go there for 10 minutes. It ends up being an hour and a half. I lose a sense of self. So there's no self-consciousness. I'm just like in the social media zone. >> You never remember it, >> right? You don't remember it. It just like it's like a perception warp. And it's it what's sad is it's no different than having like your best basketball game or your best time dancing in the moment. >> Yeah. >> So it has all the constructs, but because it's values neutral, it doesn't align with your values and goals. It doesn't align with the person you want to become. >> And I think that's why excellence is perhaps a more appropriate term for our times is excellence says it's not just enough to feel good in the moment, but there's got to be alignment with your values and goals. So this is where you can check yourself and you can say, "Hey, if I enter into the the social media wormhole, does that align with my values and goals?" Another way to do this, this is a little bit more of a a psychotherapy way, would be to ask yourself, how am I going to feel after I come out of the social media warm-up? >> I think this is a great one for people. >> Yes, it's very very >> tactive forecasting. >> Effective forecasting 100%. And if you can think about how you're going to feel 2 hours later, and for me with social media, it is gross, it is icky, it is angry, it is impatient, it is like I need a warm shower, >> then I am less likely to hit open on that app and I'm more likely to do something else. >> So I think the intellectual way into this is does it align with my values and goals? That's very cerebral. The a effect of the feeling way is let me think about what it's going to feel like after I binge watch, you know, videos on X. And you put those two things together and then you give yourself a chance. It's still hard because the modern world's rigged against us, but you give yourself a chance to say, "Nope, I'm going to pick up a book instead." >> Yeah. I think that the the other side of that is something we've already talked about, which is finding the aspects of the activity that you're pursuing that are legitimately earnestly enjoyable for you. Uh there's a, you know, to return to the gym example, I'm sure people are exhausted with it, but I'll just keep on going back to >> You're a real gym bro now, Forest. I didn't know this. >> I I I have. It's true. I mean, I late late 20s it kicked in, but it really kicked in probably more early 30s for me. So, I was a late blooper with it. But sensations are complicated. So, experiences are made up of parts and there are a lot of parts, even the sematic sensations, that might not be super enjoyable if you're pushing your body hard. You know, you're out of breath, your heart's working. But even in that, there's also something in the body experience alone that can be deeply fulfilling about whatever it is that you've engaged with. There's something in the the spentness of it that can feel really good. And for me, learning how to pay more and more attention to those aspects of the just like the sematic markers of the experience that are authentically enjoyable even in a hard thing was just a total game changer for me. Um, and I think that it's something that we kind of that we just don't talk about enough because we have this model of these activities are hard, these activities are easy. So, when I'm engaging with a hard activity, it feels hard. It must feel hard. Well, like what if it didn't? What what's the the opportunity in that activity for it to feel a little easier? I don't know how you think about this, but I think of the word satisfaction. There's to me a difference between easy, good, and satisfying. >> Yeah. And I think often times something that feels hard also feels satisfying. Whereas something that might be a cheap thrill and easy might feel good, but it probably doesn't feel satisfying. And I think that back to that evolutionary wiring, like we're we're wired toward satisfaction more than just good. And for me, it is remembering to look for that feeling of satisfaction. Um, it doesn't just have to be in sport or in art. It can also be in knowledge work. So, there's a difference between using AI and being really efficient in how you feel when you're doing it in sitting down and like really engaging in the creative process and thinking deeply, which is very hard and very uncomfortable to really think deeply, but it's satisfying. There's a difference between kind of having a very shallow I don't want to say shallow it's a very judgmentladen term but a more alienated relationship with someone whether it's someone you know or someone you don't know or in today's world whether it's an AI bot on the internet versus the actual work of building a friendship or building an intimate partnership. It's much easier to talk to a robot that tells you exactly what you want to hear and it can feel good in the moment but it's not as satisfying. And I think a part of satisfaction often comes from overcoming challenge and struggle. And I think that if you can tune into that, it makes it easier to do the hard thing. There's a part of this that's about confidence where there are people who just find it a lot easier to try something on and to see for themselves what's in it that they enjoy, what's in it that they don't enjoy. And then there are people where that's just a very difficult thing for them to do. Uh there could be a lot of reasons that somebody is in the first group or the second group like personal experience, uh getting teased in gym class by the other kids, you know, whatever it is for a person. Um but it does seem like one of those things where if you're able to develop confidence as a trait, and I don't even know necessarily that confidence is like the exactly right word here, but maybe put your spit on it. Um, it can just be incredibly valuable for a person as because it allows them to brave things that are that are new and uncertain and scary in the way that we're talking about here. I don't know if you think that that's something that can be built or if it's something that people just have. How do you think about this? >> I absolutely think it's something that can be built and I think the only way to build it is by putting yourself out there and getting those reps in. So, I think the way that you're describing confidence is no different than strengthening a muscle. And in order to strengthen a muscle, you have to make it uncomfortable. You have to push it and then it grows bigger and it can tolerate more. And I think the way that we build up our capacity for challenge is by taking on challenges, by making ourselves a little bit uncomfortable as we take on those challenges. And then we build capacity to take on everinccreasing amount of challenge. I >> think you're totally right. There's a little bit of a catch22 in it for people that that they often start bumping their heads in, particularly inside of like a coaching context where you see this a lot in exposure forms of therapy as well. It's it's somewhat related where somebody is saying, "Okay, this sounds nice. The way that I develop confidence is by being uncomfortable, but I don't particularly like being uncomfortable. So, you're saying the way that I get better at being uncomfortable is by being uncomfortable." You know what I mean? And so, actually getting people through the door can be really tough. I'm wondering how how you work with people around that. Yeah, I think here a question that um is really powerful. I got this from the psychotherapist James Hollis um is to ask yourself will this shrink my life or enlarge my life. So this is again this interplay that is at the core of this most recent part of our conversation but also at the core of excellence between feeling and thinking between a effective and intellectual and you need to have a conversation with both of them. So if you're just driven by intellect you're kind of like rope machineike. But if you're just driven by feeling then you're not going to do the hard thing because it feels uncomfortable at first. So this is where you can bring the intellect online and say, "Hey, if I don't do this thing that is challenging, and if I never take on challenges, is that going to shrink my life or is that going to enlarge my life?" You might not know this about me, but the YouTube videos that I watch most frequently aren't about psychology or mental health. They're about cooking. I love cooking and I do a lot of it. So, I'm pretty picky about cookware. When you're touching an object everyday, you want it to feel nice and perform well. Carowway sent us their 12piece ceramic nonstick set in the Marold color, and Elizabeth and I have loved them. The color is great. I think they're really beautiful, and I've used this uh 10 1/2 in ceramic coated fry pan literally every day since I got it. It heats up really nicely. The surface is very slick, and this has made it great to use with sticky ingredients like eggs and fish. and it's also very easy to clean. Unlike most other non-stick cookware, Careway's nonstick products have a mineral-based coating that won't leech toxic materials into your food. They also sell durable stainless steel and enameled cast iron products that are made to the same high standard. Over a 100,000 people have given their Careway kitchen products a fivestar rating, and Careway's cookware set is a favorite for a reason. It can save you up to $190 versus buying the items individually. Plus, if you visit carawayhome.com/beingwell, you can take an additional 10% off your next purchase. This deal is exclusive for our listeners. So, visit carowwayhome.com/beingwell or use code beingwell at checkout. Careway, non-toxic cookware made modern. I think you asked me, have I always been confident? And I said, "Yeah, I I remember in school being confident, but you know, there's a six-year period of my life that was essentially characterized by like severe anxiety, obsessivempulsive disorder, and depression. I was not a very confident person during that component of my life. >> I am an expert at being terrified. I went through intense exposure therapy. It was extremely uncomfortable. But what got me through it was the 1 to 2% of my brain even in that state that could essentially say like, "Whoa, if I keep living like this, my life's just going to get smaller and smaller and smaller, and I don't want that." Like that that wouldn't be worth it. And a really good therapist that said, "All right, well then like you're going to have to relearn what it's like to be really terrified and really uncomfortable and do it anyways." And I think that for as far as performance psychology and sport psychology and humanistic psychology has come, there's a lot to say for the nuts and bolts of hardcore evidence-based like behavioral therapy, which essentially says like do the thing that you're fearful of and do it in an environment where you have loving kindness and support and self-compassion and get over it and then your life's going to open up. And if that works for someone with OCD or a terrible phobia and it's powerful enough to confront that, then imagine the power it has for someone that's just a little bit uncomfortable trying something new. And it come all these things are interrelated, right? Cuz I did mention it comes back to this community part. Like it's so much easier to do that if you know that you've got a coach or a therapist or a partner or a friend at your back. um gym culture. Like there are some gyms where it's completely uncomfortable to go there because everyone is, you know, an influencer with their head up their ass. There are other gyms where it's like, "Come on in, you know, great grandma who's just starting to squat at age 84. This is awesome. Let me show you how." It's going to be so much easier for great grandma to face the discomfort in that environment than the other one. So, the people around you play a huge role in this. >> Totally. and you've written pretty openly about what you were just talking about like OCD, depression, anxiety. Um, I'm wondering how those experiences that you've had, which are very challenging. I mean, extremely challenging. We talk about them on the podcast all the time. They're kind of our bread and butter, how did they shape how you approached this topic in general and maybe the book in particular? The first book that I wrote, I co-authored with Steve Magnus. It's called Peak Performance. And I wrote this before my experience with anxiety, depression, OCD. And I stand behind everything that book. I think it's a great book. It's very defensible. That book is very much about how to be a great performer. There's not much in there about how that shapes you as a person. 10 years and a lot of life later, I think that excellence is so much broader and encompasses not just becoming a better performer, but also becoming a better person. Because at the end of the day, like whether or not you make it to the top of the mountain just doesn't matter as much as how the climb shapes you as an individual. And I think that that is perspective that I gleaned through my mental health experience. I think that I also have so much more self-compassion now. So, I think that you have to have pretty solid self-discipline to be a good athlete, to be a good writer, to be a good business person. Um, cuz it's hard to show up and do hard things as we're just talking about. I think that my experience of of mental illness has taught me that that self-discipline isn't sustainable unless you also learn to be really kind to yourself. I talked a little bit about intensity and joy coexisting. I think that fierce self-discipline requires fierce self-compassion. So >> you go into a bookstore and you've got the self-discipline books that tend to be written by Navy Seals and football coaches >> and they say no one's coming to help you, you know, personal responsibility, pick yourself up by the bootstraps. And then you've got the aisle upper >> lip >> 100%. Then you've got the aisle written by yogis >> and that I'm painting in broad strokes says, you know, life is really freaking hard and that's all the more reason to be kind to yourself. And there's a lot of truth in that. But the way that I've come to think about it is actually you need both in life. Like you need to have the ability to do the hard thing and to pick yourself up and to take accountability. And you need to be so kind to yourself and you need to realize that life is hard and this human existence is full of pain and suffering. And you have to be able to sing kumbaya at the same time that you're really selfdisciplined. And I think that my my mental illness experience really taught that to me. And not because I was this like beacon of self-discipline before. I think because particularly for OCD, the only way through OCD that I knew, everyone's path is different, is exposure therapy. And that takes so much self-discipline. >> Like you know, I was good enough. I was good enough to be a collegiate athlete. I published my first book before I was 30. Like I thought I was a self-disciplined person. No, no, no. like the amount of discipline it takes to do exposure therapy is next level. So I had to cultivate that discipline, but it was only possible because I also cultivated kindness for myself and realized that doing hard things like that is so hard and if I can't be kind to myself, I'm never going to be able to get through. And I think that's the biggest thing it taught me. And in like that, there's a whole chapter in the book on the marriage of self-discipline and self-compassion. And I don't think that I would have had that without my experience of mental illness. I think that there's something in what you're saying about letting doing the hard thing be a source of of a kind of pride for you as opposed to it being a this is a really hard thing so I can't do it. And again, this is just like a little movement and how how we hold something internally. And I, you know, when I when I think about people I know who've done incredibly hard things and many of these things are in that world of more mental health related or physical health related, somebody who's who's dealing with a diagnosis that's a chronic diagnosis, very serious. Um, and you're you're engaging in in treatment for it that is hard and painful and uncomfortable, whatever it is that you're doing. We've normalized some of these things in a way that I think we can sometimes lose the reality of just how hard this thing is. Like you're saying about exposure therapy, exposure therapy is unbelievably difficult. And yet we prescribe it to people kind of like taking a pill. You know, just take this pill, you'll get better. And it's like if you're working with somebody who's good at doing exposure therapy, they're very real with you about how hard it is. Um, but just the way that we talk about it, there are probably people listening to this podcast who hear what you said about being high performing person, author, athlete, all of that. And then went like, wo, exposure was just like a whole other thing. It was a whole other category of difficulty. And that's probably quite meaningful for them because it gives credence to their own experiences and the difficulty of them and therefore the kind of pride that they can have in them which I think is a really wonderful thing to be like, "Yeah, this is hard and I did it and and I'm still doing it. I'm in active engagement with it and I'm allowed to feel good about that." >> Yeah. And and also that you wouldn't wish that on anyone. You wouldn't wish it on yourself. However, it's the hand that you're currently dealt and it's going to make you a stronger, more resilient, more robust person. Even if it doesn't feel like it now, in the future, in the future it will. Um, I I I think that like hitting, you know, I don't want to say rock bottom because it's such a cliche term, but like being in a really tough spot with mental health kind of makes everything else pretty easy by comparison. like it it it's again it's nothing that I would wish on anyone, but it's it really resets your reference point. >> Um at least it can reset your reference point and and it could also allow you if you get on the other side of it to find a lot more joy in things. Um so yeah, I I think it's a very convoluted long-winded answer to I think that like excellence is about so much more than just performance. Again, it's about like really becoming um and life is long and I'm still hopefully got a lot of time left to continue to become and and I think that the work will evolve with it, but um it's a process like there's no finish line. >> You wrote a whole chapter on gumption, which I think is relevant what we're talking about right now. I kind of um I know it's a word that people might not be familiar with. I'll let you do the the defining here rather than me doing it for you. But I just thought it was so funny that that was a dedicated chapter in the book. There was just something about it that tickled me and and also I think it's so relevant to what you're talking about here having a kind of feeling as you're dealing with a hard challenge. >> Yeah. So the best definition of of gumption that I got um comes from Robert Persig who's one of my intellectual heroes in in in Zen the art of motorcycle maintenance >> and he talks about gumption as a feeling that no obstacle can stop you. So it's this momentum, it's this enthusiasm, it's this forward inertia. And notice that he said no obstacle can stop you. He didn't say it's the absence of obstacles. He didn't say that everything is clicking. He didn't say that it's easy. He said, "No obstacle can stop you." So, you've got this swagger. You've got this confidence. I envision it like you're on this train track and the train is just chugging along and you're going to have to change pace and you might have to reverse at times, but there's a forward momentum that you've built and you might get knocked off the track and then you got to regain the gumption, but it's like this thrust. It's this forward thrust. And I think that it's really important to to excellence because as you get skilled at something, as you become more skillful, you you build you build gumption. Another way to think of it is just measured enthusiasm. So it's not out of control January 1st, new year, new year, I'm going to crush this enthusiasm, but it's a sense of like, yeah, like I got this. It's going to be hard. I don't know how long it's going to take, but I got this. It's a great feeling if you can find it. And for me, one of the practices that has been extremely helpful and I've seen it help uh coaching clients and and also just people who I've talked to, people who have sent in messages, emails to the show, that kind of stuff, is just introducing a lot more what if into a person like you were saying, that stance of curiosity. Um because I think that when you give a description of something like that, it would be very natural for a person to be like, well, that sounds nice, but it's not me. And it's like, well, well, what if it were you? Like, what would it be like for it to be you? What what would that look like in your life? What would it mean if you um kind of like tried to step into that a little bit more? Could you try it on for a day or a week or a month or you know, could you uh some people sometimes this can come to parts work, which is a little contentious these days, but and the idea that there's an aspect of you that carries this and like what would kind of tapping into that aspect mean for you? What would that look like? And I think that could be a really useful question. >> Yeah, it's a great question. And I think that you're you don't either have gumption or not. Like you develop it. So one of the best ways to develop gumption is um the metaphor I use in the book is just see the ball go through the net. And where this comes from is in basketball. If a player is really struggling and they're not shooting well, the number one thing that a coach is going to tell them to do is get to the free throw line because a free throw line is a really high percentage shot for most athletes. >> Yeah. >> And when you're at the free throw line, you see the ball go through the net and sometimes all it takes is you make one or two free throws and now your jump shot starts to come back or now you start to attack the basket. So you felt locked in and locked up but then you saw the ball go through the net. you you did this easy thing that then gets the inertia back, gets the inertia going again. So in whatever it is that you're trying to pursue, what's the equivalent of seeing the ball go through the net? >> Yeah. What's the like too small to fail? >> Yeah. So like let's make this like really concrete. So when I'm working on a book project, there are periods of time when I have gumption and there are periods of time when gumption is lacking. So for me, what's seeing the ball go through the net? Sometimes it's just sitting down for an hour and coming up with one card, you know, less than 50word Instagram post and writing one or two bangers. I don't even have to post the things, but I know when I write a banger. Like, it's a lot easier to write an Instagram banger than it is to write a paragraph than it is to write a chapter of a book. But, okay, like I just wrote these two bangers. Then maybe the next day it's like I still I don't feel like I've got the book, but like let me write a newsletter or let me pull up an email and email a friend. Let me email Forest the idea in this chapter and just do it in free form like an email. It's like oh the creative juices are flowing and then you sit down a week later and you work on that chapter and you've got the gumption back. So I I think that that is like a very tangible practice is define what what what is seeing the ball go through the net mean for you and then when you feel like you're losing gumption, go back and get some of those those easy wins. So the very last chapter of the book and maybe it makes sense to talk about it a little bit because we we're getting toward the end of our time together here is on completion which I think is an interesting idea given everything that we've talked about about you know staying on the path and not getting so distracted by the by the goalpost or not so sucked into the results of whatever it is that you're doing. So what does completion mean to you even as we're engaged with that kind of process focus? >> All right. So completion means to me milestones and markers for reflection on what is a never- ending path. And the never- ending path is the process of becoming becoming the best person you can be. And best doesn't mean points on a scoreboard. Best means kindness, strength, wisdom, compassion, right? That's that that's the game that never ends. But within that game that never ends, there are all kinds of games. There's the game of trying to deadlift 600 pounds. There's the game of being a parent. There's the game of starting a company. There's the game of starting a blog or a newsletter or learning how to make sourdough or trying to become a master gardener or just trying not to kill an orchid. Right? There are all these little games. There are all these little pursuits that we take on. And if we never stop to celebrate those and to learn from them and to say, "Wow, like, yeah, I'm just trying to be the best version of Brad that I can be." And whether or not this book succeeds or fails doesn't actually change too much about what the process of writing it, excuse me, what the process of writing it did to me. But I still ought to stop when I turn in the manuscript and reflect on it and go out to dinner with my wife and have a good time because otherwise all these things just bleed into each other and we lose a sense of gravity in our lives. And I think that completion moments and rituals they imbue our lives with gravity. um both in the the the literal and the figurative sense, right? In the literal sense, like they hold us to the ground and they remind us that hey, like we are doing concrete things in this world, that's very grounding. And then in the more figurative sense, they also imbue our lives with meaning. Because if we can stop and take stock of where we've been and where we're going, there's a lot more meaning. In the book, I use the story of the San Antonio Spurs organization, uh, one of the best basketball organizations ever, and particularly under this coach named Greg Papovich, master coach, and he was known for these elaborate team dinners during the regular season and during the playoffs. And the dinners would go on for 6 hours. They would rent out restaurants. Um, huge pain in the ass. Like, the last thing a basketball team that's playing an 82 game plus playoff season needs is a 6-hour team dinner in the middle of road trips. But Papovich did these because he knew that without these kinds of markers, without these rituals of coming together and saying, "We just completed the first half of the season or we just completed the first playoff round, whatever it might be, the whirlwind of the season. Everything would just bleed into each other and it would just feel like this this constant kind of um moving forward without time to really stop and savor and reflect and learn and grow." So he instituted these team dinners and they're a crucial part of the Spurs championships, the the five championships that he's won there. Um so that's how I think of completion. And then I think of it myself as a as a driven pusher. I know that um we can do all kinds of spiritual practice and meditation, but we're still wired to be driven pushers. Sometimes it's hard to stop and to pause and to honor where we've been. And since writing the book, I've tried to do more of that and I've tried to figure out more ways to ritualize that so it doesn't get overlooked. >> I think so much of this as a kind of macro theme for what we're talking about today comes back to different forms of enjoyment. Can we really find enjoyment in what it is that we're doing as we're also finding fulfillment? And the fulfillment and the enjoyment start to like blur together with each other in a really wonderful way. And this is another way to kind of put a pin on it to to find that moment of enjoyment to appreciate what you've done. You know, if you're doing something that's challenging for a period of time, yeah, you want to enjoy it while you're doing it. You also want to enjoy it when you come to the milestone for whatever it is. And so, it's just another opportunity to really take that in. >> Yeah. You know, to go back to the Sisphus metaphor and in in Great Minds Think Alike, I end the book with that is that maybe we really are just pushing a boulder up the hill and then it rolls down and that's what we're doing for our entire life. But it's worth stopping for just a second when you get to the top and admiring the view and asking yourself what you learned before you start pushing it up the next hill. And I would argue like that's that's the completion ritual and that's the the path of excellence. And I would also say that when you combine enjoyment and fulfillment, you get satisfaction. Um, and there's there's a reason that the subtitle of the book is not finding joy or finding fun or finding ease. It's also not doing hard things. It's finding deep satisfaction. And I think like that that is if there's any result of this, if there's any feeling tone of a commitment to this path of orientation, excuse me, of an orientation where you're striving towards excellence, it's that your life becomes more satisfying. Um, and it might not be the sexiest thing, but like having experienced it and having done all this reporting to other people who have experienced it, like I think it is a north star worth pursuing. >> The second to last line of the myth of Sephus is the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill one's heart. That's the end of the line. And I I referenced it at a at a different episode we recorded recently. But I think that it's such a um such a banger as a line and it's such a good encapsulation of of so much of what we're talking about here today. And I think you're right on. Um, I think that satisfaction might not get the airtime or might not sound as sexy as some of the other things that people talk about in terms of all these big outcome goals, but maybe this is just me entering like sliding into the second half of my life or something, but man, it's become an increasingly big target for me. >> Yeah. And I think that you you've had some success, man. Like you've you've done great. The podcast has grown and like >> Thank you. >> you get the success and it's great, but you also realize like still me. >> Yeah. No, it's super true. It's totally true. Yeah. And I think like we talked a little bit about the arrival fallacy, but the best way to get over the arrival fallacy is to to kind of be burned and to have some success and then realize like it's still me and then the good stuff happens because then you start to to realize that well I better start to really focus on finding the satisfaction in the process cuz that's all there is. >> Yeah. No, I think you're right on. Is there anything else that you would like to let people know about as we get to the end of this? Are there anything that you think that um we we haven't touched on as much that you just wanted to get in there or also where could people find you? All of that good stuff. >> No, I I think that this was such a a wonderful conversation. So, I'm really grateful. I feel very energized by it. So, first, thank you. >> Uh thank you listeners for coming along for the ride. Um the the best place to find me is you can just put my name in the internet, Brad Stalberg. Uh, and you'll see my website, you'll see my Instagram, and um, the best place to to continue to learn and explore these these concepts and topics and and hopefully to get on this path of excellence in your own life is is through the book, The Way of Excellence. Um, it's available wherever you get books. >> Amazing. I really appreciate it, Brad. It's always great talking with you, man. I always enjoy it. >> I feel the same, Kindred Spirits. Um, thanks again. This was this was a pleasure. It was a real honor. >> I had a great time talking with Brad today. I always have a great time talking with Brad. He is a smart, engaged guy who really cares about this stuff. And the part of his work that I've so appreciated these days is how he's trying to reclaim this word excellence. Because for lack of a better way of putting it, this is a term that has gotten just totally co-opted by a pretty questionable group of people. There's a lot of grifting around it. There's a lot of performative excellence out there. There are a lot of people trying to convince you that if you want to be successful in life, you've got to white knuckle your way through it. you have to uh buy in to the capitalist treadmill. You've got to work 16 hours a day. You have to look a certain kind of way. You have to act a certain kind of way. And then on the other side of the whole thing, you've got this group of people who I think that I empathize with a little bit more who just look out at life and they go, you know what, life is sophistic pushing the boulder up the hill. It's going to roll back and crush me anyways. Why should I really care too much about pushing the boulder excellently? And you know, I get that to a certain extent, but as we talked about during the episode, if you're pushing the boulder all day, every day anyways, well, you might as well find some ways to enjoy it. And that's really what Brad is focused on. Moving away from caring so much about the destination and more toward caring about the process. This energizing process of becoming that characterizes excellence. I loved how we talked about allowing ourselves to be changed by the things that we're pursuing where sure you're you're working on the chair or the table to give the example that he gave, but the chair or the table is also working on you. You are working on going to the gym, but the gym is also working on you. I'm I'm working on the dance piece or whatever it is that I'm engaged with. It's also working on me. And there's something in that that feels a lot better. Excellence is explicitly not perfectionism. It's not winning at all costs. It's not even necessarily being great at the thing that you're doing. Although pursuing something excellently almost always results in getting pretty darn good at whatever it is that you're going after. But I gave the example during the during the episode of somebody who's maybe a little later in life and their body just doesn't move the way it used to. There's so many people like that who dance and who dance excellently because they are engaged and energized and they are enjoying what they're doing. And in some ways I think that those people are pursuing dancing more excellently than many of the people who are constantly slicing up their clips for Instagram because they are active intimate engagement with the activity itself. They have found the fun in it. Doing anything excellently requires caring about it. And the kind of nonchalants moment that we're living in puts a lot of value on not appearing to care if you never really try. The stakes can't get that high. You never have to find out what would have happened if you had really tried. You never have to be disappointed by this thing where you really wanted it. You really went after it and still it just didn't work out for whatever reason. You're not allowing your heart to be broken by the thing it is that you're pursuing. I loved it when Brad put it that way. I thought that was such a wonderful way to talk about excellence in general, but then also parenting specifically. There's a part of you that knows that your heart's going to be broken by this process probably several times. But that doesn't make it not this deeply enjoyable, deeply meaningful pursuit. That deep connected engagement with something, that intimacy, to use a word that came up during the conversation, is a hallmark of excellence. You have a kind of intimacy with the work itself. you're really into whatever it is that you're doing, whether that's, you know, being a a parent or a caregiver or it's pursuing some kind of specific athletic goal, you know, however general it is or how specific it is. You're also intimate with other people in a kind of community that are also engaged with that sort of work. Maybe you're you're learning about parenting from other parents or you're engaging with whatever your athletic community is. For me, the dance community is a huge part of my life. And then you also have a kind of intimacy with yourself, an intimacy with your values, what you really care about, your limits, the the reality that you are existing in as a unique individual with all of the constraints that come with life. You're being intimate with that as well. You are you are in the arena. As we do something in this way, we cannot help but be changed by it. And to be changed by something, we have to kind of open ourselves up to that change. This got to a whole topic about self-concept that we spent some time with. When people have a very specific identity, they are a person, a kind of person, they do a thing. Well, if that identity gets imperiled by something, if their their identity is a parent and then their kids move out, it would be very natural for that person to feel kind of at sea, like they've lost touch with who they are. If your identity is elite basketball player and it's coming down to this one moment where you're at the line and you got to prove whether you're an elite basketball player or not, the stakes are incredibly high. People who have more flexible identities. There are more rooms in the house of who they are tend to be more successful because yes, the stakes are high. They really care about whatever it is that they're doing, but they've got something else to fall back on. This then leads to more resilience. So, it's a great target to go after. So, it's important to ask ourselves, what helps us build this more flexible identity? what helps us diffuse around our identity to use a a kind of word from psychology. We're getting some space around it. I'm not just a this kind of person. I'm also a that kind of person. Or to allow our identity to be updated as we take on new things. As you start going to the gym, you're thinking of yourself as a gym goer. As you start dancing, you're thinking of yourself as a dancer. As you start baking, you're thinking of yourself as a baker. Whatever it is for you, this could be a really important part of the process as well. We also spent a good chunk of the conversation talking about more specific advice related to getting it good at things. Uh Brad effectively talked about smart goals, ways to set goals that are not just about shooting for what's going to happen at the end of the year, but instead are really detailing the process goals that are going to get you to that outcome goal. He also talked about community, again emphasizing finding the reward in experiences. We talked a bit about confidence and gumption and how to develop both confidence and gumption. Brad talked about his own experience dealing with depression and OCD and exposure therapy and these incredibly difficult things and how he had already gone through a lot in his life by the time that he got to exposure therapy as something that he needed to do. He had already built a pretty strong identity as a successful person, an athlete, an author. And even so, after all of that, exposure was still really difficult for him. And I appreciate it as somebody who runs a a mental health and you know psychology focused podcast how he was willing to talk about that and how he was willing to emphasize how this was such a difficult thing because I know that there are people who are listening to this who are going through those same experiences and I hope that they are giving themselves the credit of saying this is a really hard thing and yet there's a kind of reward a kind of satisfaction in doing this hard thing and giving themselves the full credit for back again. Brad's book is the way of excellence, a guide to true greatness and deep satisfaction in a chaotic world. And I think it was that deep satisfaction part that we were really focusing on during today's conversation. I appreciate Brad taking the time. He's a great guest. He's a great guy. Check out his work. You can find him also on Substack and on Instagram. If you got to this part of the episode and you somehow haven't subscribed to the show yet, please subscribe. We really appreciate it. It really helps us out. You can find us on YouTube. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. You could leave a rating and a positive review. That's really great. You can also leave a comment on YouTube. And if you would like to support the show in other ways, you can find us on Patreon. It's patreon.com/beingwellodcast. And for the cost of just a couple of dollars a month, you can support the show and get a bunch of bonuses in return. So again, thanks for making it this far. Thanks for listening to the show. We really appreciate it. Until next time, I'll talk to you soon.

Top performance coach and author @Brad.Stulberg joins me to explore how we can lead more meaningful lives by passionately pursuing the things we care about. Brad explains how real excellence is the healthy middle path between over-the-top hustle-culture and detached nonchalance. We discuss the current culture of pseudo-excellence, the risks and rewards of caring deeply, how modern life can derail us, and how the real prize is the person you become while trying to reach your goals. Brad shares practical tools to build the habit of excellence: clear aims, micro-milestones, consistency over intensity, constraint-based discipline, and connection. About our Guest: Brad is a regular contributor at the New York Times, the co-host of the Excellence, Actually podcast, and on faculty at the University of Michigan’s Graduate School of Public Health. He’s also the author of a number of books, including The Way of Excellence: A Guide to True Greatness and Deep Satisfaction in a Chaotic World. Key Topics: 0:00 The middle path of effort 1:56 What does Brad mean by excellence? 3:42 What excellence is not 5:06 Staying on the path: how to keep going when results are slow 11:56 Excellence vs. skill 21:10 The Nonchalance Epidemic 27:29 Building your “identity house” 35:29 From fear to curiosity 38:10 Sponsor #1: Huel 39:56 Specific tools for excellence 46:25 Excellence vs flow 56:03 Sponsor #2: Caraway 57:35 Brad's experience with anxiety and OCD 1:02:51 Gumption 1:05:57 “See the ball go through the net” 1:07:56 How to finish a process that never ends 1:15:22 Recap I'm not a clinician, and what I say on this channel should not be taken as medical advice. Sponsors: Grab Huel today with my exclusive offer of 15% OFF online with my code BEINGWELL at https://huel.com/beingwell. New customers only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show! Over 100,000 people have given their Caraway Kitchen products a 5 star rating, and Caraway’s cookware set is a favorite for a reason. Visit https://Carawayhome.com/BEINGWELL or use code BEINGWELL at checkout. Subscribe to Being Well on: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/being-well-with-dr-rick-hanson/id1120885936 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5d87ZU1XY0fpdYNSEwXLVQ Who Am I: I'm Forrest, the co-author of Resilient (https://amzn.to/3iXLerD) and host of the Being Well Podcast (https://apple.co/38ufGG0). I'm making videos focused on simplifying psychology, mental health, and personal growth. Subscribe to Rick on YouTube: http://youtube.com/@RickHanson?sub_confirmation=1 Get Rick's Free Newsletters: https://rickhanson.com/writings/newsletters-from-dr-rick-hanson/ Follow Rick Here: 🌍 https://rickhanson.com/ 📸 https://www.instagram.com/rickhansonphd You can follow me here: 🎤 https://apple.co/38ufGG0 🌍 https://www.forresthanson.com 📸 https://www.instagram.com/f.hanson