Speaker 1: If you've learned how to smile to suffering, you'll be
Speaker 1: able to handle all of it, and ultimately you create
Speaker 1: a more happy and meaningful life. Welcome to the One
Speaker 1: You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Yeah, thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is a Nanavati. This is Actual's second interview
Speaker 1: on The One You Feed. He's an explorer, volunteer, firefighter,
Speaker 1: former US Marine, and master's graduate in journalism. He's been
Speaker 1: mountaineering all over the world, glacier diving in Nepaul, skydiving,
Speaker 1: ice diving, cave diving, scuba diving, a whole lot of diving,
Speaker 1: and he's spent one month dragging a one pound sled
Speaker 1: three fifty miles across the second largest ice cap in
Speaker 1: the world. His new book is called Fear Vanna, The
Speaker 1: Revolutionary Science of How to Turn Fear into health, wealth,
Speaker 1: and Happiness. If you're getting value out of the show,
Speaker 1: please go to one you feed dot net slash Support
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Speaker 1: Some other ways that you can support us is if
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Speaker 1: with other listeners of the show and get support in
Speaker 1: feeding your good wolf. Thanks again for listening, and here's
Speaker 1: interview number two with an Avati Hi Actually, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Thank you so much for having me. Eric,
Speaker 1: pleasure to be here, Excited to have you on for
Speaker 1: a second time. You've got a new book coming out.
Speaker 1: We talked about it a little bit that you were
Speaker 1: working on it on our first show, but it is
Speaker 1: men out soon. It's called Fear Vanna, The Revolutionary Science
Speaker 1: of how to turn fear into health, wealth and happiness.
Speaker 1: And we will get into that and uh, all things
Speaker 1: related to it in a moment, but let's start like
Speaker 1: we normally do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's
Speaker 1: talking to his grandson. He says, in life, there are
Speaker 1: two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second.
Speaker 1: He looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do love that parable from ever
Speaker 1: since I've been following your podcast, and I think what
Speaker 1: it means to me, you know a little bit about
Speaker 1: you know, I think you know my story. I've had
Speaker 1: a few moments with the bad wolf has kind of
Speaker 1: come out on top. I have, you know, had faced
Speaker 1: drug addiction, faced alcoholism. I was on the brink of
Speaker 1: suicide where I thought about taking my own life. And
Speaker 1: I think what I've realized more and more is you're
Speaker 1: always going to fight those battles that I think that
Speaker 1: both wolves are always going to be there, right, they
Speaker 1: were always going to have demons to fight. It's not
Speaker 1: like now I'm in suddenly in a great place. It's
Speaker 1: just new battles. It's new wolves. But the more you
Speaker 1: focus on those right things, the more you take action,
Speaker 1: the more you stay in an empowered place, that good
Speaker 1: wolf you can feed in and it's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1: And that's what ultimately led to the book and lead
Speaker 1: to where I'm at now and led to me sobering up.
Speaker 1: So it's just about finding strategies on what that fuel
Speaker 1: is for the good wolf. And there's certain techniques that
Speaker 1: I think are universal, and there's certain things that are individual,
Speaker 1: like I'm sure I'll be happy to share as we
Speaker 1: kind of go along that, but are unique to each person,
Speaker 1: uh in terms of feeding that good wolf. Yeah, lots
Speaker 1: of good things you said in there. One is I
Speaker 1: agree with you about the fact that it's ongoing. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the things I like about the parable
Speaker 1: is it makes it sound like this is an ongoing
Speaker 1: battle and it's kind of close like between the wolves,
Speaker 1: and and so you've got a kind of way in
Speaker 1: to swing at one direction or the other. The other
Speaker 1: thing that you talked about, and we'll go into more detail.
Speaker 1: I like what you said there, and you you reference
Speaker 1: it several times in the book that there are these
Speaker 1: general principles around living a better life that that tend
Speaker 1: to apply to us all, but that our specific path
Speaker 1: is going to look very different. Yeah. You know, Uh
Speaker 1: so I studied a lot with the neuroscience of psychology spirituality.
Speaker 1: But for example, like I'll give you individualized pathways that
Speaker 1: work for me that may be too intense in fact,
Speaker 1: probably are too intense for a lot of people. Have
Speaker 1: heard that from a few people. So, for example, one
Speaker 1: of the things I do is almost every night before
Speaker 1: going to bed, I watch a few scenes or depending
Speaker 1: on if the night, but for war movies. So I
Speaker 1: watched like a scene from hacks All Ridge or a
Speaker 1: scene from black Hawk Down. And these scenes often tear
Speaker 1: me up. I mean, being a war veteran having that experience.
Speaker 1: I'll often cry myself very often through these scenes. I
Speaker 1: also watch a YouTube memorial video of a friend I
Speaker 1: lost in Iraq, and this sounds like a very intense ritual,
Speaker 1: right as you can imagine, it is very intense. I
Speaker 1: even have a poster off my up on my wall
Speaker 1: if my friend that I lost in Iraq, and it
Speaker 1: says this should have been you earned this life. And
Speaker 1: these are hard things to stay present to constantly, but
Speaker 1: they are drivers for me. They helped me stay sober,
Speaker 1: They helped me stay committed to the grind of my work.
Speaker 1: They help me remember that what it's all about. It's
Speaker 1: about the men and women next to you, of serving
Speaker 1: of a higher purpose. So these are intense rituals, but
Speaker 1: they they work for me. They leverage the neuroscience as
Speaker 1: well the neuroscience of how memories work, of how our
Speaker 1: brain works to keep me focused. So we all have
Speaker 1: different things the way to leverage the neuroscience, but that's
Speaker 1: one way for me that that's very individual that works,
Speaker 1: and you kind of figure that out through the process
Speaker 1: of experimentation and doing, because no matter what how many
Speaker 1: books you read, no matter what you study, the greatest
Speaker 1: lessons are always in the doing. Yeah, there's no doubt
Speaker 1: about that. It's it's not about I think most of
Speaker 1: us know a lot of this stuff already. We might
Speaker 1: hear another study, we might hear it set a different
Speaker 1: way that that impacts us, but it's really about about
Speaker 1: the action. Absolutely. So the book is um You've got
Speaker 1: a lot of great reviews on it, a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting people are promoting it. But the forward is written
Speaker 1: by the Dalai Lama, which kind of just blows me away.
Speaker 1: It was obviously just a huge honor, very just a
Speaker 1: blessing to receive afore from His holiness. And uh, I
Speaker 1: mean the way it happened was quite incredible. It was
Speaker 1: I mean through you know, it was through some healthy persistence.
Speaker 1: But I started off reaching out to the cold email
Speaker 1: on his website. Just the email list there, I didn't
Speaker 1: kind of get me anywhere. So I did a ton
Speaker 1: of research. I found one point of contact in his
Speaker 1: office and one thing past the other other, and three
Speaker 1: people later I found this one gentleman. I shot a
Speaker 1: personal video for his holiness, and that's been like the
Speaker 1: most powerful thing you can do, because in these days
Speaker 1: of online communication, we're often typing, and it's easier to
Speaker 1: send an email right just words, you can think it out.
Speaker 1: But when you're in video, people can see who you are,
Speaker 1: they can see your passion, your enthusiasm. It's the next
Speaker 1: best thing to connecting in person, which is obviously not
Speaker 1: as always easy to do. So I shot a video.
Speaker 1: I wrote a letter to him and I explained, you know,
Speaker 1: my own struggles that have led me to fear Vanna,
Speaker 1: what we're looking to do with the book, the impact
Speaker 1: we're looking to make. I mentioned how we're giving away
Speaker 1: all the proceeds to charity. And after about three to
Speaker 1: four months with this communication with this particular monk in
Speaker 1: the office there, he said, I still remember, he said,
Speaker 1: you know, considering who you are in your genuine desire
Speaker 1: to serve, he said, I'll press your case and those
Speaker 1: the exact words, I'll press your case. And two weeks
Speaker 1: after he said that, I got this beautiful letter in
Speaker 1: the house from his Holiness with the signature and the seal,
Speaker 1: and it was just the most humbling thing to have that.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just a tremendous blessing for the book.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's already a success, of course. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's incredible. Chris has been recording videos for the Dalai
Speaker 1: Lama also, but I think that's probably why we've been
Speaker 1: banned in half of the world at this point from
Speaker 1: our show. So yeah, my book definitely won't sell Angina,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. All good. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that you talk about a lot in the book is
Speaker 1: you say, anytime you might be feeling confused, lost, or scared,
Speaker 1: it is not your fault. What do you mean by that? So,
Speaker 1: neuroscience and spirituality has shown that we don't actually control
Speaker 1: what first shows up in our brain. That's a neuroscience
Speaker 1: actually measure that they can measure the brain sort of
Speaker 1: reactions like let's say I'm picking up this glass of
Speaker 1: coffee or this you know, glass of water, in my
Speaker 1: my brain has registered the action before I actually do it.
Speaker 1: So most of us live from the subconscious space. Right,
Speaker 1: unless we're truly practicing heightened sense of awareness, then we
Speaker 1: can regain this free will. So in spirituality, it's a
Speaker 1: really interesting concept that I learned that was transformational for
Speaker 1: me in my own battles with PTSD as well. Buddha
Speaker 1: says that we are all stabbed by two darts. So
Speaker 1: for example, let's say I stub my toe against the door.
Speaker 1: The first start is the pain in the toe. The
Speaker 1: second dart is when I say things like this door
Speaker 1: is stupid, or why do bad things only happen to me?
Speaker 1: You know, why does God hate me? Whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: And the same thing applies to our emotions. So we
Speaker 1: might feel fear, anxiety, stress, depression, whatever, But the real
Speaker 1: problem that's the first start that's out of our control anymore.
Speaker 1: The second dar is when we say things like, you know,
Speaker 1: when we judge the fear, when we say this, this
Speaker 1: fear makes me weak, or this anxiety means I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm never going to succeed, or this depression means I'll
Speaker 1: never be happy, you know, Like it's all these following things.
Speaker 1: For example, just in my own context, pt see I
Speaker 1: used to jump when there's loud noises after Iraq. Now
Speaker 1: they use that as it's criteria to say, Okay, that
Speaker 1: means I have post traumatic stress disorder. But that's a
Speaker 1: very normal response to war where my brain learned that
Speaker 1: loud noises equals death. So the symptoms of post traumatic
Speaker 1: stress are not indicative of a disorder. And when you
Speaker 1: let go of the judgment of you that you have
Speaker 1: over your emotions, you can then choose what you want
Speaker 1: to do with them and leverage them to drive you forward.
Speaker 1: And that's the essentially, like the most important thing you
Speaker 1: can do is you know, in terms of that emotional intelligence,
Speaker 1: is creating that space between your emotions and your conscious
Speaker 1: response to them. You call it the second Dart. I
Speaker 1: call it the second arrow. And it's probably outside of
Speaker 1: the Wolf Parable, one of my favorite, you know, parables
Speaker 1: of all We talk about it on the show all
Speaker 1: the time. I've done in many episode on it. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I refer to it as feeling bad about feeling bad.
Speaker 1: Love it. Yeah, it's perfect, And you talk about that
Speaker 1: and an awful lot in the book. And I think
Speaker 1: that the key thing there is you're right, we can't
Speaker 1: control what shows up in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 1: It's kind of what do we do from are, what
Speaker 1: kind of thoughts do we try and have? What kind
Speaker 1: of actions do we try and taken? Even for me,
Speaker 1: I found that a lot of times I can't even
Speaker 1: control what second, third, and fourth as far as maybe
Speaker 1: my thought or my emotions. Sometimes what I can control
Speaker 1: is behavior. And and that's kind of the back to
Speaker 1: that that other phrase we use a lot, which is
Speaker 1: sometimes you have to act your way into right thinking.
Speaker 1: You can't think your way into right action. It's it's
Speaker 1: a very similar concept there. Absolutely I love that. And
Speaker 1: that's how you ultimately change your brain patterns because wherever
Speaker 1: you are now, whatever triggers you've created, you know, the
Speaker 1: brain is always associating these patterns. So for example, if
Speaker 1: you come home at the end of the work and
Speaker 1: let's say you pick up a beer, your brain started
Speaker 1: creating almost like a physical wiring, like a highway. You
Speaker 1: can think of it that says okay coming home. You know,
Speaker 1: stress sequels beer and you In order to change those wirings,
Speaker 1: in order to create new highways, you have to do
Speaker 1: something differently so you separate yourself from the impact. If
Speaker 1: those emotions and then do something differently and you literally rewire,
Speaker 1: literally change the physical structure of your brain. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: before you hit the fast forward button. A couple of
Speaker 1: quick things. One, I will do the drawing for the
Speaker 1: Matthew Quick books this week and I will reach out
Speaker 1: to the folks who won directly. Sorry I haven't gotten
Speaker 1: to that yet, but I will do it this week. Secondly,
Speaker 1: if you want to support the show, one you feed
Speaker 1: dot net slash support, We always appreciate it. Thank you
Speaker 1: to those of you who have already supported the show.
Speaker 1: One other thing we could use your help with. We
Speaker 1: have been nominated for the Podcasters Academy to win an award,
Speaker 1: which I know I don't barely believe that's a thing myself,
Speaker 1: but we have. And someone's doing an article on the
Speaker 1: people who have been nominated, and they're curious about what
Speaker 1: our best episodes are and they've asked us to have
Speaker 1: our listeners rate their favorite episode. So if you guys
Speaker 1: could help us by voting on your favorite episode. In
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Speaker 1: and vote on your favorite couple podcasts, that would be great.
Speaker 1: Let's limit it to the last forty or so so
Speaker 1: that it's not spread all over the map. I would
Speaker 1: appreciate that a great deal if you have a chance
Speaker 1: to do that. And finally, if you are an Instagram user,
Speaker 1: we are out there now. It is one underscore you
Speaker 1: underscore feed on Instagram. Thanks so much as always for
Speaker 1: listening for your support, and now back to the rest
Speaker 1: of the episode. You have a quote in here from
Speaker 1: the author of Flow. It's a test to see if
Speaker 1: you can say his name there how to pronounce that correctly.
Speaker 1: Have a couple of different people in the show recently.
Speaker 1: I always see if anybody can pronounce his name. I
Speaker 1: I refuse to ever try anyway. He has a quote
Speaker 1: that I really liked, and you used it in the
Speaker 1: book and it's very on point for the rest of
Speaker 1: the book, and it says, of all the virtues we
Speaker 1: can learn, no trait is more useful, more essential for survival,
Speaker 1: and more likely to improve the quality of life than
Speaker 1: the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge. And
Speaker 1: you go on to say, teaching myself this trait brought
Speaker 1: me back from the brink of death. If there's one
Speaker 1: big takeaway from the book, it's that it's literally the
Speaker 1: most important skill, as he says, based on its research
Speaker 1: and happiness. And I like to put it in my
Speaker 1: own words in the book, is to develop a positive
Speaker 1: relationship to suffering, because suffering is so much of a
Speaker 1: harsher word than like difficult or stressed or hard, you know,
Speaker 1: or adverse, and suffering it's like the harshest, at least
Speaker 1: in my opinion, it sounds harshest. So if you can suffer, well,
Speaker 1: everything else seems a little easy. So I like to say,
Speaker 1: develop a positive relationship to suffering. And that's what brought
Speaker 1: me back, you know, because like we said, the demons
Speaker 1: don't go away. It's not that I'm in a you know,
Speaker 1: things are going well right now in my life, but
Speaker 1: it's a grind. It's struggle. You go through stress, you
Speaker 1: go through low moments, and you really have to be
Speaker 1: able to embrace that because when you can turn adversity
Speaker 1: into an enjoyable challenge, where we can. When you can
Speaker 1: develop that positive relationship to suffering, not only will you
Speaker 1: be able to overcome the inevitable obstacles that stand between
Speaker 1: any goal you have, like where you are now and
Speaker 1: the end result of getting that goal, it will also
Speaker 1: help you when life punches you in the face, you know,
Speaker 1: because there's those two kinds of struggles, some that are
Speaker 1: handed to you and the others you sort of seek
Speaker 1: out in the pursuit of a meaningful challenge, and uh,
Speaker 1: and none are easy. But if you learn how to
Speaker 1: smile to suffering, you'll be able to handle all of
Speaker 1: it and ultimately you'll create a more happy in me
Speaker 1: full life. I mean, writing this book was incredibly hard.
Speaker 1: It was brutal, it was exhausting, you know, so so
Speaker 1: you have to learn to develop that positive relationship to suffering, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of the David I think it's David
Speaker 1: Foster Wallace quote where he says there's nothing that the
Speaker 1: person who's impervious to boredom can't complete or can't achieve.
Speaker 1: You know, if you if you have the capacity to
Speaker 1: be bored and just keep going, you can accomplish anything.
Speaker 1: And that's a similar similar concept talk to me about
Speaker 1: the relationship between our evolutionary wiring for survival and our
Speaker 1: current life in the world today and how that influences
Speaker 1: how we live today and how we work with that.
Speaker 1: So our brain is very much designed for that archaic
Speaker 1: lifestyle where you know, there was constant threats living, you know,
Speaker 1: so it's the primary focus of the brain is to
Speaker 1: keep us alive. So anytime we enter something new, the
Speaker 1: brain is asking and so is this thing going to
Speaker 1: kill me or not? So we live in a sort
Speaker 1: of like what one scientist calls a cave man like brain.
Speaker 1: And these brains are not adapted to the complexities of
Speaker 1: modern life, which is why you see things like the
Speaker 1: paradox of choice with these extra choices, you know, we
Speaker 1: don't know how to make a decision. We're also seeing
Speaker 1: increase in depression, increase in suicide, or it's increase in
Speaker 1: all these things because people are cycling, psychologically struggling more
Speaker 1: than they ever have before, because the world is getting
Speaker 1: more complex, and that's why we feel scared of everything.
Speaker 1: Like I mean, our brain isn't handle it, so it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's constantly confused. It registers little things like fear,
Speaker 1: so for example, I worked as one client who's sitting
Speaker 1: on his computer to write terrified him, so he would
Speaker 1: inevitably retreat and go to watch TV. So we have
Speaker 1: to learn to work with this caveman like brain. And
Speaker 1: the way to do that is to find what I
Speaker 1: call that worthy struggle because when you commit yourself with focus.
Speaker 1: So in for example, in Iraq, life was all about
Speaker 1: living in you know, the greatest worry was living and dying.
Speaker 1: So life was very simple out there. In many ways,
Speaker 1: it was easier than the complexities of this world because
Speaker 1: all you had to worry about was dying. So when
Speaker 1: you can so all I've learned to do now is
Speaker 1: replicate the structures of life and war and reduce life
Speaker 1: to the simplest next step. And that's what the archaic
Speaker 1: brain is used to. It was that, you know, that
Speaker 1: that immediate return and environment where problems get solved instantly.
Speaker 1: So if I'm you know, hungry, I saw kill this
Speaker 1: thing and it's solved. Here, we have this delayed return
Speaker 1: where we don't know what's coming next. You know, if
Speaker 1: I could, I could work my butt off and in
Speaker 1: high school and still don't know if I'm getting into
Speaker 1: the college. Right, So in reducing life to these immediate
Speaker 1: next steps and creating that simplicity of purpose will channel
Speaker 1: your brain into the into the kind of focus you
Speaker 1: need to ultimately achieve your goals. Yeah, I guess we
Speaker 1: had on Noah Levine said, our brains are great for
Speaker 1: keeping us alive, but not necessarily that great for making
Speaker 1: us happy. Yeah, exactly. That's why awareness is so foundational.
Speaker 1: I mean, with self awareness, then you can channel that
Speaker 1: awareness into purpose of and meaningful action. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about fear. The book is called Fear Vanna. Fear is
Speaker 1: a big theme of the book dealing with fear. How
Speaker 1: do I turn fear into health, wealth, and happiness as
Speaker 1: the as the subtitle of the book. Yeah, so the
Speaker 1: first step is one acknowledging that fear is not the enemy.
Speaker 1: Fear is not this evil thing. It's a very natural
Speaker 1: human response to the unknown. So if you're quitting a business,
Speaker 1: to quitting a job to start a business, it's okay
Speaker 1: to be scared, right, Like I worked with this one
Speaker 1: client who said, you know, I just need to wait
Speaker 1: for the fear to go away so I can quit
Speaker 1: my job. And so that's your problem. You're waiting for
Speaker 1: the fear to go away because he made the fear
Speaker 1: mean it's something bad. So once you say, okay, I'm
Speaker 1: okay with this fear and accept it and label it
Speaker 1: and be just be okay with it, then you can
Speaker 1: step out of out of the fear and understand it.
Speaker 1: So what am I afraid of? You know? Write this down,
Speaker 1: step outside of the emotional brain and bring the rational
Speaker 1: brain into the picture. Right down, What am I afraid of?
Speaker 1: What are the worst case scenarios? How can I prepare
Speaker 1: for each worst case scenario? You know, and you're you're
Speaker 1: getting Basically, your fear can propel you to prepare if
Speaker 1: you're ready for it. That's what I learned in Iraq.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of my jobs in Iraq was to
Speaker 1: walk out in front of vehicle convoys and search for
Speaker 1: improvised explosive devices before they could blow up our vehicles.
Speaker 1: So it was a dangerous job. So you have to
Speaker 1: learn and but the fear allows you to say, okay,
Speaker 1: how can I be better prepared for this? And it's
Speaker 1: the same thing in life, if any pursuit any goals,
Speaker 1: Once you isolate yourself in the fear, then you can
Speaker 1: understand it. Then you want to have fuel. So the
Speaker 1: fuel is often remembering what are the rewards waiting for
Speaker 1: you on the other side of your fears, and what
Speaker 1: are the consequences if you don't engage those fears. So,
Speaker 1: for example, in writing the book, there was a terrifying process, right,
Speaker 1: So the reward was professedly and personally, would be huge
Speaker 1: to have a best selling book. And then beyond that,
Speaker 1: more importantly, I think is the impact it can make
Speaker 1: and the lives that can change with the book, you know,
Speaker 1: could spread so much further than you. And also remembering
Speaker 1: the consequences. So what image I'd like would literally imagine
Speaker 1: myself dying without ever having written Fear of Vanna And
Speaker 1: that's a terrifying thought, you know, like this message that
Speaker 1: I believe is my message to the world, never having
Speaker 1: shared it and if and so that kind of drove
Speaker 1: me to to actually engage in the action. Another really
Speaker 1: powerful technique is to visualize the pain involved in the
Speaker 1: in the process of achieving your goals. So instead of
Speaker 1: sort of visualizing the end result, which has often been
Speaker 1: preached in this law of attraction thing, is like, oh,
Speaker 1: visualize yourself all happy with the million dollars and the good, good,
Speaker 1: at home. Don't do that. Instead, visualize the pain and
Speaker 1: on the struggle of getting there, And studies have shown
Speaker 1: that's a far more effective way because it will be better,
Speaker 1: it'll better prepare you to handle the obstacle. Which is
Speaker 1: why Michael Felts used to visualize himself swimming, so when
Speaker 1: his goggles got letter, he keeps swimming and he still
Speaker 1: won Olympic gold and broke the world record. So those
Speaker 1: are some kind of valuable techniques to help you face
Speaker 1: your fears and embrace them as you move towards your goals. Well,
Speaker 1: this was a timely topic for me. I had to
Speaker 1: have a conversation today business wise that I was very
Speaker 1: unhappy to have, well not unhappy, I was afraid to
Speaker 1: have it. And uh so it was useful for me
Speaker 1: just to think about this book as as that was
Speaker 1: happening and really realized like, Okay, this is fear. It's
Speaker 1: a normal reaction kind of do the things you said.
Speaker 1: I think the other thing that you talk about, and
Speaker 1: I've heard in a couple other places recently, is this
Speaker 1: idea of they call it the challenge response, which is
Speaker 1: seeing fear, seeing what's happening in your body, not as
Speaker 1: this terrible thing, but recognizing that literally what your body
Speaker 1: is doing is preparing you for a challenge. Yeah, fear
Speaker 1: makes you stronger that way. I mean. The first story
Speaker 1: in the book is about a friend of mine who
Speaker 1: ran into a burning hum v to save a fellow marine.
Speaker 1: Now that's a terrifying thing to do, but but fear
Speaker 1: actually helped him do it because if he didn't have fear,
Speaker 1: if he paused to rationalize it, the rational brain is slower,
Speaker 1: it involves energy and cognitive energy. When fear takes over,
Speaker 1: it channels your focus to the purpose of action. So
Speaker 1: the fear allowed him to leap off his turret running
Speaker 1: to a burning humby before he was sort of consciously
Speaker 1: where he was even doing, so, you know, and because
Speaker 1: he had trained in fear, he was accustomed it was
Speaker 1: obviously being a marine trained a lot before going to Iraq,
Speaker 1: so he got practiced and fear comfortable with that fear response,
Speaker 1: And fear actually releases oxytocin, which is the love quote
Speaker 1: unquote love hormone. So it's kind of this cycle that
Speaker 1: you know, oxytocin can Yeah, when fear creates oxytocin, which
Speaker 1: is why you'll see people who suffer together. People who
Speaker 1: in military and combat come so close. I mean they've
Speaker 1: become brothers, right and I know from experience, of course,
Speaker 1: And that allowed him to run into the vehicle, which
Speaker 1: and again adrenaline, serotonin, these all these things allowed him
Speaker 1: to focus his energy into the into the purposeful action
Speaker 1: instead of being confused and thinking about what to do.
Speaker 1: So fear is a gift if you truly believe it
Speaker 1: to be in it will become. So. Yeah, the neuroscience
Speaker 1: of fear of what all gets released in your brain?
Speaker 1: And fear was like basically I think it was like
Speaker 1: every neurochemical I've ever heard of, it was. It was
Speaker 1: the best ones, Like one of my favorite quite yeah,
Speaker 1: there's the So the one of my favorites was this
Speaker 1: chemical called a none the mind ana. And there's the
Speaker 1: Sanskrit word call for bliss, so it's literally fear least bliss,
Speaker 1: which is a fear of onna is right. So it
Speaker 1: releases this chemical call of our bliss, which is why
Speaker 1: we seek novelty. I mean, human beings don't want to
Speaker 1: be static, and yet we have this negative relationship to fear,
Speaker 1: which is so silly, because we seek novelty, we seek
Speaker 1: doing new things, which is why we travel to new places.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be going to war, running, climbing
Speaker 1: a mountain, or whatever extremes, right, it can be in
Speaker 1: any way. But we're all looking for novelty to some degree.
Speaker 1: And that's why fear is actually a positive thing. We
Speaker 1: want that thing. It leads to our growth, our happiness, everything.
Speaker 1: There was a quote in the book I can't find
Speaker 1: it right now from a woman who was talking about
Speaker 1: how depression is often our inability to see novelty, that
Speaker 1: that that gets kind of shut down. We're either we're
Speaker 1: not seeing it or we're not seeking it exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean then then if life becomes static, obviously
Speaker 1: we're going to be you know, we're going to be depressed. So,
Speaker 1: which is why novelty is so essential, which is why
Speaker 1: fear is essential. And when you shift that relationship. There's
Speaker 1: so many studies that have shown that even when a
Speaker 1: person has when in two groups of people have the
Speaker 1: equally high amounts of cortisol, which is the stress hormone,
Speaker 1: one group will respond differently to things like a math
Speaker 1: test or anything like that based on their belief about stress.
Speaker 1: So if they don't think of stress being a negative thing,
Speaker 1: they'll actually respond differently, versus if somebody says stress as
Speaker 1: the enemy, then they'll respond differently. So simple, your your
Speaker 1: beliefs on these emotions will shape your biology and your physiology.
Speaker 1: And is a great book that I use as a
Speaker 1: ton of research for my own called The Upside of
Speaker 1: Stress by Kelly McGonagall. Yeah, and that is the basic
Speaker 1: theme of that book, right, is that if you see
Speaker 1: stress as being deadly, it will be exact, and if
Speaker 1: you see stress as being useful, it will be Obviously
Speaker 1: there are there are limits on everything, but in general,
Speaker 1: the idea says, how are you interpreting what's happening which
Speaker 1: is really underlying all this stuff? At the end of
Speaker 1: the day, it sounds like we could summarize this show
Speaker 1: up a lot of times, I think with basically, the
Speaker 1: world is not as it is, the world is as
Speaker 1: you are, and and how do you work with that
Speaker 1: in a more useful and skillful way. Yeah. Absolutely, And
Speaker 1: that's why it's so important to create that space between
Speaker 1: your automatic response to the world and and what you
Speaker 1: choose to do with it. You know, like Victor Frankel,
Speaker 1: the psychologist who survived Auschwitz uh in the Holocaust says
Speaker 1: between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that
Speaker 1: space lies our power to choose our response, and within
Speaker 1: our response lies our growth and our freedom. And that's
Speaker 1: one of the most powerful quotes ever. I mean that
Speaker 1: book Masters for Meaning was amazing because that quote, like
Speaker 1: you said, summarizes everything to what it what it takes
Speaker 1: if you can create that space and and master how
Speaker 1: you choose what you choose to do in that space. Indeed,
Speaker 1: speaking of changing fear into excitement or reframing how we
Speaker 1: see fear, You've got a story in there about Bruce Springsteen,
Speaker 1: who you know, throwing up before a lot of his shows,
Speaker 1: and um, you know he basically didn't think of it
Speaker 1: is being afraid. He thought of as being excited. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so words have a lot of power too, if that helps,
Speaker 1: you know, you can say the excitement. And other studies
Speaker 1: have shown where they've taken a group of public speakers
Speaker 1: and they had all of them were afraid, and you
Speaker 1: know that's the number one fear most people have, And
Speaker 1: they had they had one group say things like I'm calm,
Speaker 1: I'm calm, trying to eliminate the fear and coldent. They
Speaker 1: had another group saying I'm excited, and the group that
Speaker 1: said I'm excited perform better to third party objective viewers.
Speaker 1: So the same thing like Bruce Springsteen. And there's another
Speaker 1: story in the book I use of Bill Russell who
Speaker 1: used to throw up before every basketball game, and then
Speaker 1: the one game he didn't throw up and he was
Speaker 1: really calm, he performed awfully, and then he finally came
Speaker 1: back and when he started throwing up again and he
Speaker 1: got nervous again, he performed excellently. And you'll see athletes
Speaker 1: talk about this all the time. I interviewed some football
Speaker 1: players for this have heard, like just heard gian Lugi Bouffone,
Speaker 1: the awesome soccer goalkeeper, one of the best goalkeepers in
Speaker 1: the world, still talks about how he's afraid before a
Speaker 1: big game. It's natural to be afraid with athletes are masters.
Speaker 1: And that's why I think we worship him in society.
Speaker 1: Is these sort of you know, gods of humanity because
Speaker 1: they're truly master is in sort of embracing this practice
Speaker 1: of fear of honor. You talk about how those athletes
Speaker 1: and top performers believe in themselves with a great degree
Speaker 1: of intensity, and that they believe in the nature of
Speaker 1: human potential to a great degree. Talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about that. The foundational belief is this growth mindset. So
Speaker 1: there's are the two mindsets that Dr Carol Dweck want
Speaker 1: of leading researchers and human motivation talks about. Is the
Speaker 1: growth mindset is one that believes anything can be changed
Speaker 1: through effort and any challenge an opportunity to grow. The
Speaker 1: fixed mindset is that talent is ingrained. And a lot
Speaker 1: of society called beliefs in this fixed mindset. So you
Speaker 1: will hear things that people say, like you know, Tiger
Speaker 1: Woods was born for golf, for federers and natural at tennis,
Speaker 1: and all these things are awful because it it sort
Speaker 1: of sets this assumption, this belief that these things are fixed,
Speaker 1: that they were naturals as opposed to they work their
Speaker 1: butts off to create it, right to cultivated through effort.
Speaker 1: So that's a foundational belief. And then athletes a peak performers,
Speaker 1: they believe and not only that the growth mindset that
Speaker 1: any can anything can be challenged, like changed and grown
Speaker 1: through effort, but they believe in themselves to an insane
Speaker 1: amount of high degree. I mean, my one of my
Speaker 1: next books already in my mind. Is that I'm thinking about.
Speaker 1: Is writing is called a gift? I ego? Like we
Speaker 1: talked about ego is this bad thing too? But ego
Speaker 1: kis needed. I mean great Like Muhammad Ali says, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna show the I'm gonna show you how great
Speaker 1: I am. He knew he was great. The greats know
Speaker 1: they're great. Because if you want to be great, you
Speaker 1: have to believe it. You have to know it. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you have to be arrogant, but you have
Speaker 1: to know you're amazing at what you do. You know,
Speaker 1: and you have to really hold onto that core. So
Speaker 1: there are moments when you need ego. There's other times.
Speaker 1: Again it's all about exercising awareness where ego can be,
Speaker 1: you know, a bad thing, and I have I've had
Speaker 1: that moment. I'll give you a small example. I had
Speaker 1: helped somebody in my family there today with something and
Speaker 1: they didn't praise me, and for a second I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to get recognized. And then I
Speaker 1: immediately said, Okay, this is when ego is not helping me.
Speaker 1: Why don't need that I helped them, they got the help.
Speaker 1: This is not a time where ego is helping me,
Speaker 1: but by stepping outside of that ego and saying exercising
Speaker 1: awareness about it, I said, ego is not helpful here,
Speaker 1: but in other cases, I was like, I know, I'm
Speaker 1: amazing at this. I'm great at speaker, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go out there and speak right Like, So, ego can
Speaker 1: be used effectively when channeled with awareness, and it's needed.
Speaker 1: I think if you want to be great, Yeah, every
Speaker 1: job needs a different tool. If we keep using the
Speaker 1: same tool for every job, we we end up in trouble.
Speaker 1: And I agree. I think there's that idea. Our greatest
Speaker 1: strength can be our greatest weakness, and it's all a
Speaker 1: matter of how are we using it? When are we
Speaker 1: using it? And similarly, our greatest weakness can be our
Speaker 1: greatest strength. I mean, I realized I have a very
Speaker 1: addictive personality, right, so struggle first with drug addiction, then
Speaker 1: struggle with alcohol, and I realized that, okay, look I'm
Speaker 1: not good at moderation. Why am I bothering trying? So
Speaker 1: I channeled my addictive personality into my business, into running
Speaker 1: ultra marathons, you know, and that just worked for me.
Speaker 1: So this weakness became an now I same thing with
Speaker 1: my guilt. I mean it was a guilt that it
Speaker 1: was a struggle that drove me alcohol. Now my guilt
Speaker 1: is my greatest ally it helps me stay sober. Exactly. Yep.
Speaker 1: I relate with that. Also. I definitely have that have
Speaker 1: that tendency in my nature to be very um, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I had to use the word addictive,
Speaker 1: but very uh focused and excitable. Yeah, that's the positive
Speaker 1: spin exactly exactly. Know. I've heard your journey and it's
Speaker 1: truly incredible, totally relating speaking about taking action, you were
Speaker 1: talking about writing the book or not writing the book,
Speaker 1: And there was another quote in the book from an author,
Speaker 1: Jim Roan that I really liked. You said, we must
Speaker 1: or he says, we must all suffer from one of
Speaker 1: two pains, the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.
Speaker 1: The difference is discipline ways ounces well, regret ways tons. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I love that quote too, because is like
Speaker 1: we said, you know that worthy struggle will be hard,
Speaker 1: and I have the way I like to put it
Speaker 1: is if you don't find a worthy struggle, if you
Speaker 1: don't seek out that worthy struggle, struggle will find you anyway. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's why depression is a lack of novelty. If you
Speaker 1: just sit around doing nothing, you will find that existential struggle.
Speaker 1: It's essential to embrace that worthy struggle and and discipline
Speaker 1: isn't easy. It is hard. But when you when you
Speaker 1: imagine yourself on the deathbed. And I don't think it's
Speaker 1: about like living your life like I live every day
Speaker 1: like it's your last, because if you did, why would
Speaker 1: you do hard work? Right? Because if tomorrow is today
Speaker 1: it was literally my last day, I would not be
Speaker 1: sitting here working like you know. So I don't think
Speaker 1: it's about that. It's not about living every day like
Speaker 1: it's your last, that sort of cliche. It's really about
Speaker 1: picturing yourself dying like I sometimes do this. I mean,
Speaker 1: Buddhist practice talks about meditating on death. I mean, even
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs said that remembering I'll be dead soon is
Speaker 1: the most powerful tool have used to make the big
Speaker 1: decisions in life. So imagine that and remembering the consequences
Speaker 1: and then looking back and saying, you know, if I'm
Speaker 1: looking back on my life, would it be worth this
Speaker 1: little bit of effort right now? And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: might change your perspective in the fact that often will Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: There's been times in my life where, particularly around things
Speaker 1: that I'm afraid to do the pain of being the
Speaker 1: chicken finally outweighed whatever pain I thought might come from
Speaker 1: doing it. I eventually just was like, okay, this isn't
Speaker 1: you know? Enough is enough? I think today I'm better
Speaker 1: at recognizing that and not being driven to that limit.
Speaker 1: But that that does turn out to be absolutely true
Speaker 1: for me, that that that pain of not doing something
Speaker 1: or of regret is far worse than the short term
Speaker 1: discomfort sometimes of doing things that are difficult. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree with you more. Remind me of that
Speaker 1: as I work on this book. Sure, sure, I'll keep you.
Speaker 1: I'll keep texting you in reminding you stay present to
Speaker 1: the grind. Talk to me about some of the ways
Speaker 1: that you structure your own life to remain productive. So,
Speaker 1: you know, talking about embracing this positive relationship is suffering.
Speaker 1: So obviously it's hard, right, like using willpower, using cognitive energy,
Speaker 1: Struggling and something is hard. So what you want to
Speaker 1: do is balance the engagement of will, engagement of will
Speaker 1: power for when you need it, and the rest stiff time,
Speaker 1: keep things automated. So this is where you balance habits
Speaker 1: with willpower. So, for example, what I do is I
Speaker 1: have a very structured morning routine. So I'm just actually
Speaker 1: pulling up my phone and I have a morning ritual
Speaker 1: on an app. I don't have to think about it.
Speaker 1: It just says prayer, meditate, play, wake up music, push ups,
Speaker 1: brush teeth, review goals, and plan for the day. So
Speaker 1: when I wake up, let's say, wake up one and
Speaker 1: a little tired, I don't have to think, okay, what's
Speaker 1: the next step? I just follow stiff systems thinking is removed.
Speaker 1: Then I have already planned that detailed plan for the
Speaker 1: day is five particular things to do. So what I
Speaker 1: do is I break my day up and shifts one
Speaker 1: hour on timinute break, one hour on tim and break.
Speaker 1: And after two shifts, I usually take a little bit
Speaker 1: for a longer break, maybe get some food. And I
Speaker 1: try to do five to six shifts maybe and sometimes
Speaker 1: more depending on the workday. And then I have a
Speaker 1: night ritual. But one part of the day I like
Speaker 1: to have where I'm exercising my willpower. This usually comes
Speaker 1: either in the form of exercise or maybe writing. Writing
Speaker 1: was brutal as you know. So that's the part where
Speaker 1: I'm saying, okay, this, I'm consciously engaging my will because
Speaker 1: you know, they've shown studies what willpower is and sort
Speaker 1: of a finite resource. It gets exhausted by the end
Speaker 1: of the day. But you can't measure in labs is
Speaker 1: willpower is limitless when tested in the battlefield, so you'll
Speaker 1: see people do amazing things like running from the north
Speaker 1: pole to the South pole, or ryanhol Mesner clinbing everest
Speaker 1: solo without oxygen, and he openly says in that like
Speaker 1: at this moment he was pure willed because he's just dying,
Speaker 1: just doing it. So when channeled with focus, willpower is
Speaker 1: this limitless thing. So you want to balance your will
Speaker 1: into one specific thing and everything else make automated so
Speaker 1: you don't wasting cognitive energy. That makes such a difference
Speaker 1: knowing what you're gonna do. You you reference one of
Speaker 1: the studies in the book that people who make a
Speaker 1: plan for when and how they're going to do something
Speaker 1: or something like three times more likely to do it.
Speaker 1: And it's the same thing with what you're describing. When
Speaker 1: I have to figure out what I'm gonna do, I
Speaker 1: always struggle with and that's part of my life has
Speaker 1: been so much travel over the last you know, a
Speaker 1: couple of years, that it's made it very difficult for
Speaker 1: me to have like everyday, same routine, same sort of thing,
Speaker 1: And so that has made me have to expend a
Speaker 1: lot more effort to do the some things that I
Speaker 1: want to do versus where to your point, when I
Speaker 1: have everything very much laid out, I find the same
Speaker 1: thing on the weekends. It's like, if I've got time
Speaker 1: on the weekends and I figure out what I'm going
Speaker 1: to do in advance and I plan it, I have
Speaker 1: a great weekend. If on the other hand, I don't
Speaker 1: and I spend half that time sitting around thinking what
Speaker 1: should I do, and you know all the choices, I
Speaker 1: end up miserable. Yeah. Yeah, even like exactly like planned playtime,
Speaker 1: planned prograstination times. Sometimes I'll just say, Okay, this time,
Speaker 1: I just want to just do nothing to scroll on
Speaker 1: the internet, right, So plan that procrastination time. Yeah. Structure procrastination. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's about making every single minute of
Speaker 1: every day lockdown, but I do think it is having
Speaker 1: a general guide. There's that old saying structure liberates and
Speaker 1: I have found that to be so true for me.
Speaker 1: I've resisted it big parts of my life so much.
Speaker 1: If you thought of myself as this free spirit that
Speaker 1: just wants to do what I want to do, and
Speaker 1: I found that's the fastest way to misery for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally relating, and I agree it shouldn't be all the superstructure.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you want flow right, so and just being and
Speaker 1: see where it goes and spans. Life will just pand
Speaker 1: that to you what things happen, So embrace it and
Speaker 1: they'll go on the ride. Well, actually, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for taking the time to come on the show.
Speaker 1: It's our second conversation you and I have talked outside
Speaker 1: of this. Congratulations on the book. I look forward to
Speaker 1: seeing what is the actual release date. Official release is
Speaker 1: early October, but right now we're in the pre launch phase.
Speaker 1: So during the pre launch phase, we're giving away the
Speaker 1: book for free on the website for your Vona dot
Speaker 1: com just ask you to pay for shipping. So the
Speaker 1: whole pre launch phase we're given away the book for free,
Speaker 1: so excellent. I'll also have links to your website and
Speaker 1: the book in the show notes. So thanks so much
Speaker 1: for coming on. Actually, I appreciate it. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for having me Eric, it's a pleasure. Take care
Speaker 1: bite you too. If you just heard was helpful to you.
Speaker 1: Please consider making a donation to the One You Feed
Speaker 1: podcast head over to One You Feed. Dot net slash
Speaker 1: support