December 17, 2024 • 43 mins
Are you tired of feeling like you're not measuring up to society's definition of success, even when you're doing well on paper?
Society often pushes men toward toxic masculinity and endless achievement, many struggle to find authentic connection with themselves and others. This episode tackles the challenging journey of breaking free from cultural expectations while managing depression and finding genuine fulfillment.
Learn how to reframe your relationship with success, discover practical tools for managing depression without medication, and understand why connection might be the missing piece in your personal growth journey.
Join us for an honest conversation about masculinity, mental health, and the power of asking better questions to transform your life.
Topics Discussed:
- Redefining modern masculinity beyond cultural stereotypes
- Managing depression through alternative methods like exercise
- The impact of social comparison on mental health
- Connection as a pathway to fulfillment
- The importance of asking better questions
- Breaking free from achievement-based identity
- Finding purpose beyond financial success
- Processing trauma through physical activity
- The role of therapy in personal growth
- Balancing self-improvement with self-acceptance
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hey, what's up?
It's the Fit Mess.
This is Jeremy.
Zach's not with me today.
That's all right.
It's just you and me and my guest, Adam Dorsey.
He's a psychologist.
He knows a thing or two about how to get happy, about how to find your purpose, about howto figure out what it is to get through this life without loads and loads of pain
(00:22):
constantly.
Getting to the end of the year here and I don't know about you, my mental health is on thebrink.
It's not always great.
I get a little nostalgic at this time of year, which I don't love.
I don't love it because it keeps me stuck in the past, which triggers a little bit ofdepression, triggers a little bit of feeling sad, missing what's gone, grieving what I've
(00:46):
lost.
And it doesn't usually kick in to the happiness, the looking forward, the hope, all ofthat sort of kicks in when the sun comes back up in the spring.
Because that's the other thing, this time of year, the dark.
the short days, the sunsets at four o'clock in the fucking afternoon.
Jesus.
Can we just live with daylight saving time?
Anyways, enough about that.
(01:07):
Again, my guest today is Adam Dorsey.
We're going to talk about his book, Super Psyched Unleashed the Power of the Four Types ofConnection and Live the Life You Love.
What a cool guy.
You know, when you do these these sort of interviews all the time, some people you connectwith, some people it's you you kind of talk to them and
time goes by and you sort of forget you did that interview.
(01:28):
I think I have a new best friend though because we played best friend bingo sort ofaccidentally and we have a lot of pop cultural connections that intertwined and we talked
about a lot of those while talking about the questions I started with.
know like trying to figure out what it is to even be a man these days.
You know there's people throw around toxic masculinity and what it means to participate inthat.
(01:52):
Talk about being happy.
It's the elusive being happy, something that you get blips of desperately hang on to andthen it disappears again.
Maybe that's just me.
And what it means to be a success, right?
Like I still don't know that I have a purpose in life beyond being my kid's dad.
(02:17):
That's the thing that drives me.
That is my everything.
And part of me knows that that's unhealthy because one day they'll grow up and
move out and live their own lives and then I'll be left here trying to figure out what'snext for me.
And so I'm trying to accept that I'll deal with that when the time comes and just leaninto what needs to be done right now because that's where I usually find the most peace is
(02:41):
in the moment and trying to just stay focused and grounded on what's in front of me, whatneeds my attention right now because there's no guarantee that tomorrow is even coming.
So be aware, know that it's there.
prepare as much as possible, but stay focused in the moment.
In this moment, we have an amazing interview with Adam Dorsey, very cool guy.
(03:01):
We hit it off immediately.
And I'm excited to share this conversation with you.
We were just sort of chit chatting when the conversation got started.
And he was asking about the origin of this show.
And so I decided to leave this part in for those of you that may be a new listener, don'tknow how we got started.
We've been around for a few years.
But I wanted to leave that in just so for those of you that don't know how this show gotstarted.
(03:23):
That's where going to pick up the conversation, but we will get into all of the questionsthat a lot of people face that I know I face.
what it means to be a success?
How do you cope with happiness coming and going?
What does it mean to be a man?
These very big questions that I think a lot of people wrestle with.
I know I do.
And so I just wanted to share this conversation with you, but again, we'll pick up withhow the fit mess got started.
(03:48):
started where I think we're in our sixth or seventh year now.
I've been podcasting for 20 years.
I worked in commercial radio for 20 years.
But yeah, about seven years ago, my buddy and I, who I normally do the show with, we wereboth on kind of get our shit together journey and having a lot of really open, vulnerable
conversations.
And we kind of looked at each other and went, dudes don't do this.
(04:10):
We should do a show.
And so we did, we just started basically having the same conversations we were havingaround campfires into microphones and built a little following.
Jeremy, that is an incredible backstory.
And I'm totally with you in terms of dudes don't do this type of thing, fill in the blank.
It's like, yeah, can't we though?
(04:33):
Can't we be straight men and still do these things?
Right?
Yeah, it's, I know it's scary and the feelings are terrible.
And as you've said, you would rather shock yourselves with the electrical devices thantalk about them, but here we are.
and I mean you actually physically look like one of my friends and even kind of resembleeven his mannerisms who is of this ilk who just gets it and it's like you know what when I
(04:58):
was a kid we had basically three-ish options I should have included in my book or my TEDtalk TEDx talk to be more precise but yet we had like basically James Bond John Wayne and
Joe Montana
three J's and I was none of those.
(05:19):
No, totally, right?
There was an eye guy too, Indiana Jones, but he's kind of, he's like James Bond.
it was none of those.
No, I was I was much more like farm boy Luke Skywalker than Jedi Luke Skywalker.
I actually think they're the same guy.
That's a campfire conversation.
(05:41):
I think they're the same.
You think they're the same guy?
Both the Jedi and the farm boy.
So, how does the farm boy become the Jedi in the modern world?
Because there are so many cultural poles and a number of directions.
Most of them are in the manly, know, rub some dirt on it.
(06:02):
How dare you have feelings path.
But how does Luke become a Jedi?
You know, I haven't really given it much thought, I'll tell you my knee jerk.
see Luke is Jedi in episode six, return of the Jedi.
When he walks into Jabba's hut and he's a badass, like it is on.
(06:22):
And yet he maintains his integrity and kindness and decision to not go his father's route.
And he basically said what
many of us in our generation said have said and that is this stops with me whatever thisthing is it stops with me and he proceeded you know we see him in seven eight nine people
(06:45):
have different ideas about you know how good they were actually i guess more like end ofseven and then eight and nine a bit i freaking loved those movies so i get so much shade
for that
a Star Wars t-shirt right now.
And that's how much of a dork I am.
So.
I mean, seven, eight, nine, you know, the JJ Abrams, some people give me a lot of shadefor loving those and saying, gosh, know, seven was just basically the same as, you know,
(07:11):
episode four.
But you can tell I've given this a lot of thought.
mean, the cat in the box who's behind me, sadly, who died and his remains remain with me.
His name was Yoda.
So you can guess that, you know, this whole idea of this Jungian archetypes that informedso much of George Lucas's thinking.
I think are so crucial and I almost consider it required watching at least four, five andsix, which, you know, five in my opinion is the best of the three by a long shot.
(07:41):
yeah.
As a young man, I don't remember how old I was, but I specifically remember having aposter on my wall that had a picture of Yoda and it said, everything I needed to know
about life I learned from Star Wars.
And it's like key life lessons that are just listed on this.
I wish I still had it because it was like a guiding force in my life to have this posteron the wall.
But I don't want to make this all about Star Wars.
Let's make this a little bit more about how you're out there helping guys like us that arehaving these struggles.
(08:06):
And I'm going to warn you, this is very likely to turn into a therapy conversation.
I literally went to my therapist last night and came home with just like these kind ofopen wounds that I've been ruminating on ever since.
Because a lot of them, think, relate to parts of what a lot of your clients deal with.
I know you work with a lot of like highly successful, know, very powerful people thatstill, like many of them, achieve all the success, but still end up hollow inside.
(08:32):
Talk to me a little bit about what their struggles are and then I want to sort of contrastthat with my own experience and see where some of the healing can begin.
Absolutely.
So the billboards we grew up with, you know, when I was talking about James Bond, JohnWayne and Joe Montana, those were the advertisements we received.
That's what it meant to be a man.
(08:54):
And part of that, if you think of all three of them is ignoring your pain, which by theway, great short term strategy, I'm totally down with getting through the football game, a
huge Joe Montana fan, loving some James Bond, even though he's a sociopath and probably alittle bit of a psychopath.
John Wayne, please.
mean, I don't think that that's a way to go through life in any way, or form that thatversion of masculinity may have some elements that are good, but for the most part, not
(09:23):
really down with it.
Michael Meade, who's one of my all time favorite thinkers, describes three brothers whoneed to go save their father's life.
And each of them rides off on a horse in succession and each of them passes.
dwarf at the side of the road who asks them where are going and the first two brothersbasically say f off you know you're just a dwarf I don't need you the third one gets off
(09:49):
his horse and says I don't know where I'm going and the dwarf says it's really good thatyou got off your horse because your brothers actually just rode off a cliff and that's
really hard for us guys we're supposed to know we're going I mean the old tiring chestnutof the guy who doesn't want to ask for directions we hear about that guy all the time
And to some extent I can be that guy too.
(10:10):
I mean, I'm definitely a guy.
And we need to get off our horse, get a little bit more introspective, ask ourselves,where are we going?
Because generally these successful guys who did amazing things basically sacrificed inorder to get into the best colleges and to the best internships, perhaps graduate school,
(10:33):
and then work their way up the ladder only to find out.
that they're still just them.
Conan O'Brien talks about this a lot in his podcast.
He's like, you know, you'd expect with all the accolades and all of the incredible thingsabout being Conan O'Brien would allow him to say, I'm, I'm free.
I'm emancipated and lo and behold, it still sucks to be Conan in certain ways.
(10:55):
He describes that.
So it's not achievement, but it's about following our true path.
Now, Conan, I'm pretty sure has followed his true path.
But many of the folks who, you know, married the quote right person, lived in the quoteright neighborhoods, had the right jobs, et cetera, find that those weren't actually the
(11:19):
things they really wanted from their lives.
And if they just taken a moment to do what Adam Grant talks about out of Wharton, and thatis not ask themselves who they want to be, but ask themselves what verbs are true for
them.
We talk a lot about pronouns, what about our verbs?
what is it that you really...
Jeremy, what is it that you really, really love to do?
(11:41):
What are the verbs that relate to that?
Come on, man, really?
was gonna ask you about.
And quickly, I'm gonna check off my best friend Bingo card over here.
So far we've talked about Star Wars, Conan O'Brien.
You're doing very well for yourself.
And by the end of this, I'm pretty sure we're gonna be best friends.
I love that and by the way for the listener, I'm not providing therapy.
(12:02):
is for informational purposes only Jeremy could very well become a very good friend basedon the vibe I'm feeling so and I can't do therapy on friends But but I can have a real
discussion the way I would over a beer with a friend Which would be something like this
so this is this is where we landed last night in my therapy session.
So I have never been one of those guys, one of those driven, ambitious, go to the topschool, get the best job, make loads of money.
(12:32):
I'm good with just like getting to spin around on this rock for a while.
Like this is pretty cool.
And so
That led me to, you know, just taking the job that fit, that seemed kind of cool, did thatfor a while, burned out, got sick of it, moved on, got super intentional a couple of years
ago about the kind of life I wanted to live, where I wanted to live.
It made all the jumps to have that happen.
(12:54):
But what's still missing is that job, right?
Like that thing that I am to the outside world.
And
What's hard about it is trying to wrap my head around your very question.
Where am I going?
What do I want to do?
What do I want to be doing with my life?
I don't know and I have never known.
(13:15):
Now I grew up in a house with alcoholism where it was an issue and so there's definitelysome little T trauma issues that came with that and I've lived with depression my entire
life which is probably a big reason why I have a hard time figuring out what I want to beand when I grow up and all of that.
But there is not a single thing that I wake up every day going, I can't wait to do that.
(13:38):
That let's go.
I want to be the best at that.
Like I'm, I'm good.
Right?
Like I've, I've got the wife I want, the kids I want.
live where I want it.
Like I'm, I'm good, but there's this cultural pull to be the success, to make the money,to be able to write the check, to pay for whatever my kids want, to provide the life of
their dreams.
(14:00):
And
I'm not driven enough to chase anything hard enough to make their dreams come true, whichultimately is making my dream come true.
I want to provide for them, but I can't attach myself to something enough to go be thebest at it.
So you're dropping a lot of good stuff and a lot of useful stuff for the listeners.
(14:23):
I'm quite sure that many people will connect with this conundrum that you're in and someof the things that you've done to alleviate it.
But of course, none of us ever reaches the top of that mountain entirely and says,
Finished solved cured.
it's like we die.
I mean, like Leonardo da Vinci once said, there's no, you know, art is never finished,only abandoned.
(14:47):
And similarly, I think existentially our lives are never, you know, fully finished.
They, we, we just kind of run the clock, but if we use that dash between our birth dateand our death date really well, and it sounds like you're already doing that.
And I mean, you are already.
example to many of the listeners who could benefit from it.
(15:10):
You're engaging in many of the verbs that you like and many of the verbs that a personlikes are predictive of what they'll want to end up doing.
I'm guessing that one of the things that you care about is learning that you've got a tonof curiosity and learning is great for you.
I'm guessing also that love as a verb is very important to you and these are all true
(15:34):
core strengths.
These are what are referred to in positive psychology as values in action or virtues orcharacter strengths.
And you're rocking those muscle groups every day.
And that's one of the reasons why I love what Adam Grant talks about is because many ofthe jobs that our children want are not yet in business.
(15:55):
We don't even know what the jobs a decade from now will look like.
We didn't know that there would be an AI wrangler just 20 years ago.
And when I was in college,
little over 30 years ago, we did not know what a web designer was.
And now everybody knows what a web designer was and is.
you know, many, in many cases, AI may even be handling that.
So people who love that type of thing may need to also engage their verbs in other ways.
(16:21):
but in terms of what you just described, the idea that we should be doing more, we shouldbe getting more is social comparison.
I roll up.
to meet my friend and he tells me about all of his massive business successes that arejust, I mean, have so many zeros after them.
And I've got a few options.
(16:43):
One of them is I can celebrate what he's done and cheer him on.
Or I could get really envious or I could do both or themes and variations of other things.
Of course, I might feel a little bit envious.
Wow.
Are you serious?
That many zeros, you never need to worry about money again.
(17:04):
That's amazing.
And I might feel some sense of being inferior or envious or whatever it might be.
And I can claim that inside, but the right answer, I think, with that friend, as much aspossible is to cheer for them and to then ask myself, and what do I got?
(17:29):
And how can I appreciate it even more?
Not get complacent, not go for more if I want to go for more.
But how can I appreciate it more?
What we appreciate appreciates.
And your determination to ride this rock and love what you've got is amazing.
Depression sucks, by the way.
Depression will cloud.
(17:50):
It's like wearing the world's worst pair of glasses because it informs the way we see theplanet and it needs to be addressed.
It can really suck the life out of anything.
can cause us to take less joy in things that we previously found joyful.
It can ruin our sleep.
It can ruin our eating.
It can even cause other more troubling issues like suicidal ideation.
(18:12):
So depression really needs to be handled in some meaningful way, whether it's throughtherapy or medicine or both, or something else.
There are even lots of studies that indicate that
doing six days of intensive cardio, as long as it's not medically contraindicated, canhave the same effect as an SSRI medication on depression and anxiety.
(18:35):
So that's really comforting.
Even the American Psychiatric Association has acknowledged that.
And they have a vested interest in seeing that patients take medications.
So coming from them, that's a pretty massive endorsement for engaging cardio.
But for some people, that's not enough.
Yeah, but social comparison's just terrible.
(18:57):
So let me, so on the, there's a couple of roads I wanna go there and one is the socialcomparison thing because I probably do compare myself to my peers, my friends and things
more than I even would acknowledge or can think of right now.
But what I do do is compare me now to me 20 years from now.
(19:19):
And that's where I get scared.
I get scared of, because,
I'm looking through the lens of, I've spent the last decade plus getting my shit together.
Like growing up, putting down the bottle, like being a better person.
And so I look back 20 years and go, God, what if I had known?
What if I had known how much better things could be now if I'd started then?
(19:42):
So I get scared looking 20 years into the future going, what are you screwing up right nowthat you're gonna wish you had done then?
And that's where a lot of it, because money is like the missing piece of the puzzle forme, I get stuck there.
It's like, what should you be doing?
You should really be setting yourself up for the future.
And then that's when I kind of just end up in this no man's land of like, don't know.
(20:04):
But that's where I was at 20 going, what are you going to do with your life?
How are you going to take care of yourself?
And rather than deal with it and face my fears and all that, I drank a lot and hung outwith my friends and did dumb crap that kids in their 20s do.
So my comparison is to the fictional version of me in the future that has failed me asmuch as, you know, the 20 year old version of me failed me now.
(20:30):
Do what you can with that.
Well, Jeremy, I'm not going to be the only guy who says this, but you just spoke in classtoday, except you're not going do what he does at the end of the song.
Eddie Vedder, the greatest, one of the greatest voices of all time.
mean, come on.
All right.
So you're asking yourself, I mean, first of all, you're doing the first thing that you'redoing about comparing yourself to who you were 20 years ago.
(20:54):
I think that's one of the best measures.
We can compare ourselves to others.
We can compare ourselves to what we perceive as norms in society.
Or we can compare ourselves to ourselves.
I like the third one.
The third one is going to give you the biggest ROI.
Because if I compare myself to my buddy Scott, who's got a master's in engineering and hasa very different mind than mine, what's the point of that?
(21:19):
I mean, that's just going to drive me nuts.
So first thing first, compare yourself to yourself.
Compare yourself to who you were 20 years ago.
And think about yourself 20 years from now.
One thing, and this is a big one, the quality of your questions determines the quality ofyour life.
(21:41):
So if you ask yourself, Hey Jeremy, what are you screwing up right now?
It's like a Google search.
Like imagine your brain having like a Google search bar.
You're going to get a lot of answers and you're going to feel pretty crappy about it.
It's not going to necessarily inform you.
What if you asked a different question, something
This is not necessarily the right answer for you, but something like, what would you liketo grow over the next 20 years?
(22:07):
Are you making daily deposits toward that growth?
Are you keeping the main thing, the main thing, or are you spending a crap ton of timedoom scrolling?
Cause that's probably not the way you're going to want to rock basically the 1440 minutesthat are in everybody's day.
You've got the same number of minutes.
(22:28):
that anybody's got.
And some of those minutes got to be used for sleeping so that we can, you know, power upour brain after we've powered down.
But one other thing that I'd like to drop and that is I love this ancient Chinese quoteand that is the best time to plant a tree with was 20 years ago.
The second best time is now.
And it's not to make us feel crappy that we didn't anymore.
(22:51):
Then what if I was to ask you, Jeremy, dude, what's wrong with you?
Why didn't you have an iPhone?
20 years ago.
Right?
Because, yeah, they weren't a thing.
weren't yet invented.
We had this Palm Trio that sucked and died.
If you remember those Palm pilots that were trying to make it made into phones, those werethe early, they called them PDAs back then, not even smartphones or PDA phones, God knows
(23:17):
what.
Sadly, that company, you know, was ahead of its time and, and, but not quite in sync withthe technology, regardless of their story.
We know that
Asking yourselves why didn't you do this 20 years ago is basically the same as askingyourself why didn't you have that iPhone 20 years ago in 2004 there were no iPhones you
(23:40):
didn't know better and one of my favorite Maya Angelou quotes have a lot of them is thebest you can and when you know better do better boom mic drop love that one She's great
The other path I wanted to go down was depression, because this is another.
(24:02):
This is something that I wrestle with because.
I've tried the meds, they made me either want to kill myself or feel nothing or feelworse, and they were all trash for me.
They didn't work for me.
If they work for other people, cool, take them, live by them.
God
for me, best medicine I've ever taken is, going to the gym three to five times a week.
(24:23):
Like I go, I lift heavy things.
feel better.
Life's manageable.
I cry a lot when I'm lifting things, not just because it's hard, but because I'm likedoing some inner work through the lifting and it's been great.
I'm struggling with, and I'm sure you've heard this before, the concept of, I sick or isthe world sick?
And I see it for what it is.
(24:45):
Because I don't like the idea of me taking a pill to fit into a world where I don't fitin.
Because I don't think I'm the sick one.
I think the idea that we have this finite amount of time to spend around on this rock andwe spend it making rich people richer.
Just rots me to my core.
I don't want to live that way.
(25:07):
So then the overwhelm, the comparison, am I doing enough?
Have I come far enough?
Am I, am I enough?
All starts to creep in because socially, culturally, I'm pulled to do these things I don'twant to do.
Financially, I'm pulled to do things I don't want to do.
And we call it depression.
But am I, am I sick or is the world sick?
(25:27):
Yeah so it's a great question and I would say that neither is true.
I would say that we adapt as well as we can and we cope as well as we can and just toborrow from Nietzsche and Kelly Clarkson what doesn't kill you makes you stronger is
partially true it's actually how we cope with what didn't kill us that might make usstronger it actually might make us a lot weaker but in terms of am I sick or is the world
(25:52):
sick well first of all
There are at least two realities.
The world has always sucked and the world has always been awesome.
And we have always been sick and many of us have found other ways to adapt.
The question is, where is your attention going?
And are you basically to borrow from going a lot of places from Seinfeld, are you the kingof your domain?
(26:15):
Like, can you recognize?
Yeah, I even got the pen.
I got this, one that Jerry keep the pen.
Why did you keep the pen jury?
I love that.
Love that episode.
but are you in control of your, things that matter most to you?
Are you spending time with the people who matter to you?
(26:38):
Are you paying attention to the things that matter to you?
And are you working on fixing the things that matter to you in the, in the places whereyou can be effective?
Because there are things that will suck and will always suck.
that we will never be able to touch.
There are people who we will be able to touch.
(27:00):
We will be able to, you know, connect with and perhaps even grow with.
to your point, by the way, about, antidepressants for some people, that is not an optionfor many people.
It's the lifting of weights.
Personally, I used to do long distance cycling and I noticed that when the lactic acidwould build up in my thighs, old memories would come to me painful.
(27:23):
would be, my brain would associate the pain to other pain.
And sometimes I'd yell, sometimes I'd scream, sometimes I'd cry, sometimes I'd havememories of that mean second grade teacher I had who sucked so bad.
And other voices show up when we're in pain.
asking ourselves more questions, the more questions we can ask ourselves, some of them,you'll see that the premise of them may not lead us where we want to go.
(27:52):
Do I suck or does the world suck?
I don't think it's complete enough.
I'd ask myself, what do I want to grow once again?
Is that realistic?
What's the timeline for growth?
Where am I focusing my attention?
Are there things that are that are bleeding me rather than feeding me?
Like some of us doom scroll and see all of the awfulness in the world.
(28:17):
And I'd have to ask them, does that feed you?
Is that actually using your dash correctly?
Or is it basically tantamount to a form of porn that goes nowhere?
And.
cheap dopamine hit that you get from the from the phone.
Yeah.
could be a cheap dopamine hit, can be a whole host of things that drive us to do this.
(28:37):
Could be, you know, compassion.
But we also know that there's compassion fatigue, that how dare I live in this world andnot see this.
Then I would ask that person, are there causes you want to work for to make your butterflyeffect?
generously said earlier that perhaps what I'm sharing here relates to many of ourlisteners.
(29:00):
God, I hope so, because that's the whole reason I'm doing this thing.
So walk me through some, I love the idea.
This is something that I'm hearing more and more from my coach, people I work with, isjust ask yourself better questions.
That is a hell of a tool to keep in your tool, when you're...
asking the wrong questions and ending up in the same desperate loop.
What are some other tips or I guess tools to have in the toolbox that you recommend toyour clients and people that really moves the needle for them?
(29:28):
one of the things that I try to help people realize is that working on yourself is notselfish.
It's actually good for the people around you.
All of the stakeholders benefit when we become less intolerable because we all have, Idon't care who we are.
All of us has something within us that is kind of sucks to be around.
None of us is a free lunch.
(29:49):
I remember reading somewhere, I think it was Brad Pitt who said it, one of these great,you know,
people who could walk into any room and leave with anybody you wanted basically said ifthey really really really got to know me they would be surprised and probably disappointed
and you know i've done years of work i still can be shown my ass by my wife who knows mereally well and i'll be like man you're right that sucked yeah and it will remain a work
(30:18):
in progress i will always be working on reducing it so
All of us need to connect with ourselves first.
So the reason I wrote this book about connection and the four ways that we connect isbecause I keep hearing that word connection.
I've done, I've provided approximately 20,000 hours of individual and couple therapy.
(30:40):
have conducted well over 200 interviews on my own podcast and I've read tons of books inevery step of the way, whether it's
the therapy that I've conducted or the podcasts I've had or the books I've read, this wordconnection keeps showing up, but no one's really defined it.
It's been this nebulous thing.
We all want this.
(31:01):
We're all chasing this thing, you know, and now I'm going to go Lord of the Rings.
mean, my precious is not a ring.
My precious is really connection.
And, and unlike my precious, it doesn't end up killing us, unless we connect with thewrong things, but
So we connect with ourselves first.
Who are we?
What do we want?
(31:22):
Like what, what creates an important life?
What are the things that make us come alive?
And for each of us, there's a different connection formula for you and me.
I would bet that if you and I were like right out of the chart of the things that bring usalive.
And by the way, that's the working definition, the short end.
have two pages of a definition of what connection is, but it's whatever brings us alive.
(31:44):
And it's either there or it's not like
I would love to be able to sit with my dad through six hours of Wagnerian opera and say,wow, that was amazing.
But for me, that would be a very expensive place to sleep.
For my dad, I mean, he comes alive.
For me, I need to be around pets every day.
(32:05):
Every day, I love dogs, love cats, I'm a convert.
Yoda behind us is the guy who jumped me into the cat gang.
I think cats are amazing.
And as an extrovert, they've really taught me a lot about introspection and introversionin a good way.
They've kind of been, they've been amazing.
I love, love a good cat, a dog like cat, somebody, a cat, not, not a skittish cat, but,but a really a hands on.
(32:28):
Yeah.
Like so funny.
My cat literally just ran over to me as I said that.
My dad does not need to touch a cat or a dog for the rest of his life or any animal forthat matter.
That is not part of his connection formula.
And each of us has a connection formula.
And the problem also with being a high achiever is oftentimes these high achieving folksare paid very well to look for problems.
(32:52):
And the problem with looking for problems is that when we come home, we continue to lookfor problems rather than to look for what's good.
And that actually interferes with our connections.
So one of the things I did was I looked at connection in all of its dimensions, connectingwith ourselves and then rippling outward, connecting with others.
Like I'm connecting with you or the way I might connect with my wife and kids or thepeople who come to see me.
(33:15):
And then connecting with the world, connecting with the world is connecting with art,nature, work, things like that.
And connecting with something greater.
I don't care if you're an Orthodox atheist, if you go to the Himalayas.
Or to Yosemite or the Grand Canyon, you're going to be like, wow, it's something hits you.
(33:37):
But something greater is also what you and I are doing right now.
You and I, Jeremy, are bigger than me alone.
Like the two of us together, if you and I were like to workshop an idea of like a thing,we'd come up with better ideas.
That is something greater in and of itself.
The Dodgers has won the World Series.
(33:57):
Shohei Otani did not do it alone.
In fact, there were some other really, as a diehard Giants fan, know, to celebrate theseguys is a little tough, but it was pretty, I saw them, I mean, they executed beautifully
and they did it together.
There was something greater going on and that was teamwork.
(34:19):
And I love, you know, the dream team, not the dream team, I guess it was the miracle.
on ice that took place in 1980 when the US team that was comprised of individuals who werenot necessarily the best of the game, no real stars, but they congealed and created a unit
that blew away the so-called better team.
(34:42):
The underdog won because of something greater and it wasn't necessarily spiritual.
It was a bunch of men converging and doing something bigger and better and saying
the team matters more than any of us individually.
So I really geeked out to this.
spent 20 months writing this book basically every weekend.
(35:04):
I mean, it was really hard.
and there were moments of great fun and flow.
And one of the things I recognized when I was writing this is one of the best ways toascertain if this activity is good for you that you're doing, whatever it might be, could
be podcasting and Jeremy, I'm going to bet you five Canadian dollars that
(35:24):
not a lot of money these days.
Sure.
I'm gonna bet you five Canadian dollars, obviously jokingly that you being a podcastermeets all four criteria that I'm about to drop.
And one of the ways we can do this, these are all research based.
These are not fluffy or new AG.
Nothing in my book is.
(35:46):
Everything's backed by research, but I'm going to guess that this activity really goes
with the acronym FEED, F-E-E-D, FEED.
First one is, it provide you with flow?
Does a 30 minute interview feel like 10 minutes?
Or does it feel like, you know, 10 hours?
(36:08):
If you're experiencing flow, if you're experiencing total immersion, losing yourself, likeEminem talks about, if you're experiencing that, you're experiencing flow in all
likelihood, if it's challenging you as well.
The second one is, does it energize you?
Does it require energy from you and does it give you energy on the other side?
(36:30):
Third one is educate.
Does it move the needle?
Are you learning something every episode?
And the fourth one is, does it provide depth?
Is there meaning for you in doing this?
And if it provides all four, it's very predictive of being anti-depressing, anti-moment,at least temporarily, reducing anxiety and boosting fulfillment, happiness, whatever word
(36:55):
you want to use.
So.
that's one of the best ways to connect with yourself and connect with others.
And I talk about connecting with friends and the scenario when you're with a really goodfriend and time just flies by and you get in your car and you're just like way taller and
like, wow, I call it the driveway test.
Like, did you drive away feeling bigger and taller and better?
(37:16):
And like, that was an amazing use of time.
Or do you feel like shrunk and they were like talking at you and bringing it all back tothemselves.
It's like, yeah, let me tell you more about me.
And
What do you think about me?
It's like, okay, well, if you, if it's diminishing, that's obviously not a very good useof time.
(37:36):
and probably is not very feeding.
Anyway, those are some of the thoughts that I have on connection and making sure thatyou're connecting with yourself and others.
if in the former one, it would probably go on the feed, probably time goes by fast.
You're probably getting energy back and using energy.
You're probably learning something and it probably is meaningful.
(37:57):
Yeah, I've got a pretty pink Canadian $5 bill here somewhere for you.
I'll dig that up and send it over.
So last question here, on the other side of that, for the person that doesn't have thatthing that feeds them, where do they find it?
They need to find it for themselves.
And it's actually not.
(38:20):
It's actually not because if you see yourself as a human experiment, my friend and one ofmy heroes, AJ Jacobs, who uses himself as a human experiment in all of his books, if we're
willing to look at our life as an experiment and have an experimental mindset and realizeit's all an experiment, we don't know the outcome.
(38:43):
But try different things.
Will Schwalbe, who was on my podcast, he's an author, amazing human being.
One of his closest friends is a Navy SEAL and he's an out gay man.
it's like these, he's willing to stretch and be cognitively flexible.
Every week, once a week, he goes to an activity that he thinks will not interest him.
(39:07):
A book reading, an art showing, a play that looks...
Every week he does one thing.
that he thinks will not interest him.
Now I'm not recommending that people do.
right there.
That's commitment.
That's amazing.
love that.
But I'm a big fan of do something different.
Try something else out.
Come up with a laundry list.
(39:27):
Come up with like what we used to use in Netflix when we were renting the DVDs.
Come up with like a queue of things that you can do.
Try them out and see if you come alive.
We don't know.
Now there may be things that interfere with our abilities to come alive like depressionand that would compel us to seek out therapy, possibly medication.
I'm aware that you're not a fan.
(39:48):
of the latter at least, it could be coaching, it could be an exercise regimen, I don'tknow.
But if there is depression that will, that can occlude our ability to actually feel joydue to what's called anhedonia, or it saps our ability to find joy in things that might
otherwise be joyful.
But even for the depressed individual, they may not be entirely shut down to the joy thatthey experienced.
(40:12):
One of the things that we know for sure, by the way, if you're experiencing depression isgiving to others.
Volunteering for a cause that matters to you.
I remember when I was I've gone through depression a few times myself and it sucks I mean,there's a reason why Cancer survivors who also experienced depression When they were asked
afterwards after both were basically in remission They were asked which would they ratherexperience the cancer or the depression?
(40:38):
Most of them said very clearly I would rather get the cancer back than the depressiondepression sucked that much So depression is no joke
and it can it can ruin our relationships, can be irritable, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's very, it's a tough thing.
But if we give of ourselves, human beings, we're pro-social, unless we're psychopaths, weare pro-social, we want to give of ourselves.
(41:03):
I mean, just a little throwaway that's really funny is Ben Franklin, arguably the greatestrelationship maker of all time, knew that if he wanted to convert an enemy into a friend,
he would ask that person a favor.
Sounds counterintuitive.
know like why would an enemy want to do a friend of do a a do a favor for someone.
(41:27):
And the reason is we have these pro social brains.
actually generally care about people and it's like, wow, well, and it also means it's kindof a compliment.
It's like, wow, Ben Franklin thought I was smart enough to be asked an opinion or asked toborrow a book or whatever it might be.
And then they start caring about
the cause.
(41:48):
the bottom line is when we give, we feel better.
In fact, even looking at the elderly and one of their biggest complaints is yes, I'm beinggiven to, but I don't get to give.
I don't feel useful.
Humans want
be useful.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, his book is titled Be Useful and that was you know a mandate fromhis father and he's gone on to be very useful I would say.
(42:11):
He's amazing.
Yeah, incredible.
Well, Adam, I'm so glad we did this.
I don't often say yes to interviews.
I'm so glad I did because you have won the Best Friend Bingo game.
So thank you for doing that.
This has been incredibly helpful just to help me reframe some of the stuff that I'mliterally in the middle of trying to cope with right now.
So personally, thank you for the audience.
(42:32):
Thank you.
I think they'll find a lot of value in this too.
The book would be an incredible benefit for them as well.
Where can we find out more about that?
Excellent.
Yeah.
It's available on Amazon, borns and noble audio book is available on audible and, it'salso available on Kindle.
I'm really excited that it's out there.
It's getting really well reviewed.
people love it.
And that makes all of that time that I put into it.
(42:57):
So, so worth it.
Amazing find the link to that in the show notes for this episode Adam.
so much for your time today.
It really means a lot
blast, loved hanging with you.
Alright, that was my conversation with my new best friend Adam Dorsey, a psychologist andauthor of Super Psyched Unleashed the Power of the Four Types of Connection and Live the
Life You Love.
You can find the links to him and to the book and to all the things related to him in theshow description of this episode and on our website, thefitmess.com and that's where we'll
(43:24):
be back in just a few days with another new episode.
Thank you so much for listening.
We'll talk to you next time.
Hey, what's up?
It's the Fit Mess.
This is Jeremy.
Zach's not with me today.
That's all right.
It's just you and me and my guest, Adam Dorsey.
He's a psychologist.
He knows a thing or two about how to get happy, about how to find your purpose, about howto figure out what it is to get through this life without loads and loads of pain
(00:22):
constantly.
Getting to the end of the year here and I don't know about you, my mental health is on thebrink.
It's not always great.
I get a little nostalgic at this time of year, which I don't love.
I don't love it because it keeps me stuck in the past, which triggers a little bit ofdepression, triggers a little bit of feeling sad, missing what's gone, grieving what I've
(00:46):
lost.
And it doesn't usually kick in to the happiness, the looking forward, the hope, all ofthat sort of kicks in when the sun comes back up in the spring.
Because that's the other thing, this time of year, the dark.
the short days, the sunsets at four o'clock in the fucking afternoon.
Jesus.
Can we just live with daylight saving time?
Anyways, enough about that.
(01:07):
Again, my guest today is Adam Dorsey.
We're going to talk about his book, Super Psyched Unleashed the Power of the Four Types ofConnection and Live the Life You Love.
What a cool guy.
You know, when you do these these sort of interviews all the time, some people you connectwith, some people it's you you kind of talk to them and
time goes by and you sort of forget you did that interview.
(01:28):
I think I have a new best friend though because we played best friend bingo sort ofaccidentally and we have a lot of pop cultural connections that intertwined and we talked
about a lot of those while talking about the questions I started with.
know like trying to figure out what it is to even be a man these days.
You know there's people throw around toxic masculinity and what it means to participate inthat.
(01:52):
Talk about being happy.
It's the elusive being happy, something that you get blips of desperately hang on to andthen it disappears again.
Maybe that's just me.
And what it means to be a success, right?
Like I still don't know that I have a purpose in life beyond being my kid's dad.
(02:17):
That's the thing that drives me.
That is my everything.
And part of me knows that that's unhealthy because one day they'll grow up and
move out and live their own lives and then I'll be left here trying to figure out what'snext for me.
And so I'm trying to accept that I'll deal with that when the time comes and just leaninto what needs to be done right now because that's where I usually find the most peace is
(02:41):
in the moment and trying to just stay focused and grounded on what's in front of me, whatneeds my attention right now because there's no guarantee that tomorrow is even coming.
So be aware, know that it's there.
prepare as much as possible, but stay focused in the moment.
In this moment, we have an amazing interview with Adam Dorsey, very cool guy.
(03:01):
We hit it off immediately.
And I'm excited to share this conversation with you.
We were just sort of chit chatting when the conversation got started.
And he was asking about the origin of this show.
And so I decided to leave this part in for those of you that may be a new listener, don'tknow how we got started.
We've been around for a few years.
But I wanted to leave that in just so for those of you that don't know how this show gotstarted.
(03:23):
That's where going to pick up the conversation, but we will get into all of the questionsthat a lot of people face that I know I face.
what it means to be a success?
How do you cope with happiness coming and going?
What does it mean to be a man?
These very big questions that I think a lot of people wrestle with.
I know I do.
And so I just wanted to share this conversation with you, but again, we'll pick up withhow the fit mess got started.
(03:48):
started where I think we're in our sixth or seventh year now.
I've been podcasting for 20 years.
I worked in commercial radio for 20 years.
But yeah, about seven years ago, my buddy and I, who I normally do the show with, we wereboth on kind of get our shit together journey and having a lot of really open, vulnerable
conversations.
And we kind of looked at each other and went, dudes don't do this.
(04:10):
We should do a show.
And so we did, we just started basically having the same conversations we were havingaround campfires into microphones and built a little following.
Jeremy, that is an incredible backstory.
And I'm totally with you in terms of dudes don't do this type of thing, fill in the blank.
It's like, yeah, can't we though?
(04:33):
Can't we be straight men and still do these things?
Right?
Yeah, it's, I know it's scary and the feelings are terrible.
And as you've said, you would rather shock yourselves with the electrical devices thantalk about them, but here we are.
and I mean you actually physically look like one of my friends and even kind of resembleeven his mannerisms who is of this ilk who just gets it and it's like you know what when I
(04:58):
was a kid we had basically three-ish options I should have included in my book or my TEDtalk TEDx talk to be more precise but yet we had like basically James Bond John Wayne and
Joe Montana
three J's and I was none of those.
(05:19):
No, totally, right?
There was an eye guy too, Indiana Jones, but he's kind of, he's like James Bond.
it was none of those.
No, I was I was much more like farm boy Luke Skywalker than Jedi Luke Skywalker.
I actually think they're the same guy.
That's a campfire conversation.
(05:41):
I think they're the same.
You think they're the same guy?
Both the Jedi and the farm boy.
So, how does the farm boy become the Jedi in the modern world?
Because there are so many cultural poles and a number of directions.
Most of them are in the manly, know, rub some dirt on it.
(06:02):
How dare you have feelings path.
But how does Luke become a Jedi?
You know, I haven't really given it much thought, I'll tell you my knee jerk.
see Luke is Jedi in episode six, return of the Jedi.
When he walks into Jabba's hut and he's a badass, like it is on.
(06:22):
And yet he maintains his integrity and kindness and decision to not go his father's route.
And he basically said what
many of us in our generation said have said and that is this stops with me whatever thisthing is it stops with me and he proceeded you know we see him in seven eight nine people
(06:45):
have different ideas about you know how good they were actually i guess more like end ofseven and then eight and nine a bit i freaking loved those movies so i get so much shade
for that
a Star Wars t-shirt right now.
And that's how much of a dork I am.
So.
I mean, seven, eight, nine, you know, the JJ Abrams, some people give me a lot of shadefor loving those and saying, gosh, know, seven was just basically the same as, you know,
(07:11):
episode four.
But you can tell I've given this a lot of thought.
mean, the cat in the box who's behind me, sadly, who died and his remains remain with me.
His name was Yoda.
So you can guess that, you know, this whole idea of this Jungian archetypes that informedso much of George Lucas's thinking.
I think are so crucial and I almost consider it required watching at least four, five andsix, which, you know, five in my opinion is the best of the three by a long shot.
(07:41):
yeah.
As a young man, I don't remember how old I was, but I specifically remember having aposter on my wall that had a picture of Yoda and it said, everything I needed to know
about life I learned from Star Wars.
And it's like key life lessons that are just listed on this.
I wish I still had it because it was like a guiding force in my life to have this posteron the wall.
But I don't want to make this all about Star Wars.
Let's make this a little bit more about how you're out there helping guys like us that arehaving these struggles.
(08:06):
And I'm going to warn you, this is very likely to turn into a therapy conversation.
I literally went to my therapist last night and came home with just like these kind ofopen wounds that I've been ruminating on ever since.
Because a lot of them, think, relate to parts of what a lot of your clients deal with.
I know you work with a lot of like highly successful, know, very powerful people thatstill, like many of them, achieve all the success, but still end up hollow inside.
(08:32):
Talk to me a little bit about what their struggles are and then I want to sort of contrastthat with my own experience and see where some of the healing can begin.
Absolutely.
So the billboards we grew up with, you know, when I was talking about James Bond, JohnWayne and Joe Montana, those were the advertisements we received.
That's what it meant to be a man.
(08:54):
And part of that, if you think of all three of them is ignoring your pain, which by theway, great short term strategy, I'm totally down with getting through the football game, a
huge Joe Montana fan, loving some James Bond, even though he's a sociopath and probably alittle bit of a psychopath.
John Wayne, please.
mean, I don't think that that's a way to go through life in any way, or form that thatversion of masculinity may have some elements that are good, but for the most part, not
(09:23):
really down with it.
Michael Meade, who's one of my all time favorite thinkers, describes three brothers whoneed to go save their father's life.
And each of them rides off on a horse in succession and each of them passes.
dwarf at the side of the road who asks them where are going and the first two brothersbasically say f off you know you're just a dwarf I don't need you the third one gets off
(09:49):
his horse and says I don't know where I'm going and the dwarf says it's really good thatyou got off your horse because your brothers actually just rode off a cliff and that's
really hard for us guys we're supposed to know we're going I mean the old tiring chestnutof the guy who doesn't want to ask for directions we hear about that guy all the time
And to some extent I can be that guy too.
(10:10):
I mean, I'm definitely a guy.
And we need to get off our horse, get a little bit more introspective, ask ourselves,where are we going?
Because generally these successful guys who did amazing things basically sacrificed inorder to get into the best colleges and to the best internships, perhaps graduate school,
(10:33):
and then work their way up the ladder only to find out.
that they're still just them.
Conan O'Brien talks about this a lot in his podcast.
He's like, you know, you'd expect with all the accolades and all of the incredible thingsabout being Conan O'Brien would allow him to say, I'm, I'm free.
I'm emancipated and lo and behold, it still sucks to be Conan in certain ways.
(10:55):
He describes that.
So it's not achievement, but it's about following our true path.
Now, Conan, I'm pretty sure has followed his true path.
But many of the folks who, you know, married the quote right person, lived in the quoteright neighborhoods, had the right jobs, et cetera, find that those weren't actually the
(11:19):
things they really wanted from their lives.
And if they just taken a moment to do what Adam Grant talks about out of Wharton, and thatis not ask themselves who they want to be, but ask themselves what verbs are true for
them.
We talk a lot about pronouns, what about our verbs?
what is it that you really...
Jeremy, what is it that you really, really love to do?
(11:41):
What are the verbs that relate to that?
Come on, man, really?
was gonna ask you about.
And quickly, I'm gonna check off my best friend Bingo card over here.
So far we've talked about Star Wars, Conan O'Brien.
You're doing very well for yourself.
And by the end of this, I'm pretty sure we're gonna be best friends.
I love that and by the way for the listener, I'm not providing therapy.
(12:02):
is for informational purposes only Jeremy could very well become a very good friend basedon the vibe I'm feeling so and I can't do therapy on friends But but I can have a real
discussion the way I would over a beer with a friend Which would be something like this
so this is this is where we landed last night in my therapy session.
So I have never been one of those guys, one of those driven, ambitious, go to the topschool, get the best job, make loads of money.
(12:32):
I'm good with just like getting to spin around on this rock for a while.
Like this is pretty cool.
And so
That led me to, you know, just taking the job that fit, that seemed kind of cool, did thatfor a while, burned out, got sick of it, moved on, got super intentional a couple of years
ago about the kind of life I wanted to live, where I wanted to live.
It made all the jumps to have that happen.
(12:54):
But what's still missing is that job, right?
Like that thing that I am to the outside world.
And
What's hard about it is trying to wrap my head around your very question.
Where am I going?
What do I want to do?
What do I want to be doing with my life?
I don't know and I have never known.
(13:15):
Now I grew up in a house with alcoholism where it was an issue and so there's definitelysome little T trauma issues that came with that and I've lived with depression my entire
life which is probably a big reason why I have a hard time figuring out what I want to beand when I grow up and all of that.
But there is not a single thing that I wake up every day going, I can't wait to do that.
(13:38):
That let's go.
I want to be the best at that.
Like I'm, I'm good.
Right?
Like I've, I've got the wife I want, the kids I want.
live where I want it.
Like I'm, I'm good, but there's this cultural pull to be the success, to make the money,to be able to write the check, to pay for whatever my kids want, to provide the life of
their dreams.
(14:00):
And
I'm not driven enough to chase anything hard enough to make their dreams come true, whichultimately is making my dream come true.
I want to provide for them, but I can't attach myself to something enough to go be thebest at it.
So you're dropping a lot of good stuff and a lot of useful stuff for the listeners.
(14:23):
I'm quite sure that many people will connect with this conundrum that you're in and someof the things that you've done to alleviate it.
But of course, none of us ever reaches the top of that mountain entirely and says,
Finished solved cured.
it's like we die.
I mean, like Leonardo da Vinci once said, there's no, you know, art is never finished,only abandoned.
(14:47):
And similarly, I think existentially our lives are never, you know, fully finished.
They, we, we just kind of run the clock, but if we use that dash between our birth dateand our death date really well, and it sounds like you're already doing that.
And I mean, you are already.
example to many of the listeners who could benefit from it.
(15:10):
You're engaging in many of the verbs that you like and many of the verbs that a personlikes are predictive of what they'll want to end up doing.
I'm guessing that one of the things that you care about is learning that you've got a tonof curiosity and learning is great for you.
I'm guessing also that love as a verb is very important to you and these are all true
(15:34):
core strengths.
These are what are referred to in positive psychology as values in action or virtues orcharacter strengths.
And you're rocking those muscle groups every day.
And that's one of the reasons why I love what Adam Grant talks about is because many ofthe jobs that our children want are not yet in business.
(15:55):
We don't even know what the jobs a decade from now will look like.
We didn't know that there would be an AI wrangler just 20 years ago.
And when I was in college,
little over 30 years ago, we did not know what a web designer was.
And now everybody knows what a web designer was and is.
you know, many, in many cases, AI may even be handling that.
So people who love that type of thing may need to also engage their verbs in other ways.
(16:21):
but in terms of what you just described, the idea that we should be doing more, we shouldbe getting more is social comparison.
I roll up.
to meet my friend and he tells me about all of his massive business successes that arejust, I mean, have so many zeros after them.
And I've got a few options.
(16:43):
One of them is I can celebrate what he's done and cheer him on.
Or I could get really envious or I could do both or themes and variations of other things.
Of course, I might feel a little bit envious.
Wow.
Are you serious?
That many zeros, you never need to worry about money again.
(17:04):
That's amazing.
And I might feel some sense of being inferior or envious or whatever it might be.
And I can claim that inside, but the right answer, I think, with that friend, as much aspossible is to cheer for them and to then ask myself, and what do I got?
(17:29):
And how can I appreciate it even more?
Not get complacent, not go for more if I want to go for more.
But how can I appreciate it more?
What we appreciate appreciates.
And your determination to ride this rock and love what you've got is amazing.
Depression sucks, by the way.
Depression will cloud.
(17:50):
It's like wearing the world's worst pair of glasses because it informs the way we see theplanet and it needs to be addressed.
It can really suck the life out of anything.
can cause us to take less joy in things that we previously found joyful.
It can ruin our sleep.
It can ruin our eating.
It can even cause other more troubling issues like suicidal ideation.
(18:12):
So depression really needs to be handled in some meaningful way, whether it's throughtherapy or medicine or both, or something else.
There are even lots of studies that indicate that
doing six days of intensive cardio, as long as it's not medically contraindicated, canhave the same effect as an SSRI medication on depression and anxiety.
(18:35):
So that's really comforting.
Even the American Psychiatric Association has acknowledged that.
And they have a vested interest in seeing that patients take medications.
So coming from them, that's a pretty massive endorsement for engaging cardio.
But for some people, that's not enough.
Yeah, but social comparison's just terrible.
(18:57):
So let me, so on the, there's a couple of roads I wanna go there and one is the socialcomparison thing because I probably do compare myself to my peers, my friends and things
more than I even would acknowledge or can think of right now.
But what I do do is compare me now to me 20 years from now.
(19:19):
And that's where I get scared.
I get scared of, because,
I'm looking through the lens of, I've spent the last decade plus getting my shit together.
Like growing up, putting down the bottle, like being a better person.
And so I look back 20 years and go, God, what if I had known?
What if I had known how much better things could be now if I'd started then?
(19:42):
So I get scared looking 20 years into the future going, what are you screwing up right nowthat you're gonna wish you had done then?
And that's where a lot of it, because money is like the missing piece of the puzzle forme, I get stuck there.
It's like, what should you be doing?
You should really be setting yourself up for the future.
And then that's when I kind of just end up in this no man's land of like, don't know.
(20:04):
But that's where I was at 20 going, what are you going to do with your life?
How are you going to take care of yourself?
And rather than deal with it and face my fears and all that, I drank a lot and hung outwith my friends and did dumb crap that kids in their 20s do.
So my comparison is to the fictional version of me in the future that has failed me asmuch as, you know, the 20 year old version of me failed me now.
(20:30):
Do what you can with that.
Well, Jeremy, I'm not going to be the only guy who says this, but you just spoke in classtoday, except you're not going do what he does at the end of the song.
Eddie Vedder, the greatest, one of the greatest voices of all time.
mean, come on.
All right.
So you're asking yourself, I mean, first of all, you're doing the first thing that you'redoing about comparing yourself to who you were 20 years ago.
(20:54):
I think that's one of the best measures.
We can compare ourselves to others.
We can compare ourselves to what we perceive as norms in society.
Or we can compare ourselves to ourselves.
I like the third one.
The third one is going to give you the biggest ROI.
Because if I compare myself to my buddy Scott, who's got a master's in engineering and hasa very different mind than mine, what's the point of that?
(21:19):
I mean, that's just going to drive me nuts.
So first thing first, compare yourself to yourself.
Compare yourself to who you were 20 years ago.
And think about yourself 20 years from now.
One thing, and this is a big one, the quality of your questions determines the quality ofyour life.
(21:41):
So if you ask yourself, Hey Jeremy, what are you screwing up right now?
It's like a Google search.
Like imagine your brain having like a Google search bar.
You're going to get a lot of answers and you're going to feel pretty crappy about it.
It's not going to necessarily inform you.
What if you asked a different question, something
This is not necessarily the right answer for you, but something like, what would you liketo grow over the next 20 years?
(22:07):
Are you making daily deposits toward that growth?
Are you keeping the main thing, the main thing, or are you spending a crap ton of timedoom scrolling?
Cause that's probably not the way you're going to want to rock basically the 1440 minutesthat are in everybody's day.
You've got the same number of minutes.
(22:28):
that anybody's got.
And some of those minutes got to be used for sleeping so that we can, you know, power upour brain after we've powered down.
But one other thing that I'd like to drop and that is I love this ancient Chinese quoteand that is the best time to plant a tree with was 20 years ago.
The second best time is now.
And it's not to make us feel crappy that we didn't anymore.
(22:51):
Then what if I was to ask you, Jeremy, dude, what's wrong with you?
Why didn't you have an iPhone?
20 years ago.
Right?
Because, yeah, they weren't a thing.
weren't yet invented.
We had this Palm Trio that sucked and died.
If you remember those Palm pilots that were trying to make it made into phones, those werethe early, they called them PDAs back then, not even smartphones or PDA phones, God knows
(23:17):
what.
Sadly, that company, you know, was ahead of its time and, and, but not quite in sync withthe technology, regardless of their story.
We know that
Asking yourselves why didn't you do this 20 years ago is basically the same as askingyourself why didn't you have that iPhone 20 years ago in 2004 there were no iPhones you
(23:40):
didn't know better and one of my favorite Maya Angelou quotes have a lot of them is thebest you can and when you know better do better boom mic drop love that one She's great
The other path I wanted to go down was depression, because this is another.
(24:02):
This is something that I wrestle with because.
I've tried the meds, they made me either want to kill myself or feel nothing or feelworse, and they were all trash for me.
They didn't work for me.
If they work for other people, cool, take them, live by them.
God
for me, best medicine I've ever taken is, going to the gym three to five times a week.
(24:23):
Like I go, I lift heavy things.
feel better.
Life's manageable.
I cry a lot when I'm lifting things, not just because it's hard, but because I'm likedoing some inner work through the lifting and it's been great.
I'm struggling with, and I'm sure you've heard this before, the concept of, I sick or isthe world sick?
And I see it for what it is.
(24:45):
Because I don't like the idea of me taking a pill to fit into a world where I don't fitin.
Because I don't think I'm the sick one.
I think the idea that we have this finite amount of time to spend around on this rock andwe spend it making rich people richer.
Just rots me to my core.
I don't want to live that way.
(25:07):
So then the overwhelm, the comparison, am I doing enough?
Have I come far enough?
Am I, am I enough?
All starts to creep in because socially, culturally, I'm pulled to do these things I don'twant to do.
Financially, I'm pulled to do things I don't want to do.
And we call it depression.
But am I, am I sick or is the world sick?
(25:27):
Yeah so it's a great question and I would say that neither is true.
I would say that we adapt as well as we can and we cope as well as we can and just toborrow from Nietzsche and Kelly Clarkson what doesn't kill you makes you stronger is
partially true it's actually how we cope with what didn't kill us that might make usstronger it actually might make us a lot weaker but in terms of am I sick or is the world
(25:52):
sick well first of all
There are at least two realities.
The world has always sucked and the world has always been awesome.
And we have always been sick and many of us have found other ways to adapt.
The question is, where is your attention going?
And are you basically to borrow from going a lot of places from Seinfeld, are you the kingof your domain?
(26:15):
Like, can you recognize?
Yeah, I even got the pen.
I got this, one that Jerry keep the pen.
Why did you keep the pen jury?
I love that.
Love that episode.
but are you in control of your, things that matter most to you?
Are you spending time with the people who matter to you?
(26:38):
Are you paying attention to the things that matter to you?
And are you working on fixing the things that matter to you in the, in the places whereyou can be effective?
Because there are things that will suck and will always suck.
that we will never be able to touch.
There are people who we will be able to touch.
(27:00):
We will be able to, you know, connect with and perhaps even grow with.
to your point, by the way, about, antidepressants for some people, that is not an optionfor many people.
It's the lifting of weights.
Personally, I used to do long distance cycling and I noticed that when the lactic acidwould build up in my thighs, old memories would come to me painful.
(27:23):
would be, my brain would associate the pain to other pain.
And sometimes I'd yell, sometimes I'd scream, sometimes I'd cry, sometimes I'd havememories of that mean second grade teacher I had who sucked so bad.
And other voices show up when we're in pain.
asking ourselves more questions, the more questions we can ask ourselves, some of them,you'll see that the premise of them may not lead us where we want to go.
(27:52):
Do I suck or does the world suck?
I don't think it's complete enough.
I'd ask myself, what do I want to grow once again?
Is that realistic?
What's the timeline for growth?
Where am I focusing my attention?
Are there things that are that are bleeding me rather than feeding me?
Like some of us doom scroll and see all of the awfulness in the world.
(28:17):
And I'd have to ask them, does that feed you?
Is that actually using your dash correctly?
Or is it basically tantamount to a form of porn that goes nowhere?
And.
cheap dopamine hit that you get from the from the phone.
Yeah.
could be a cheap dopamine hit, can be a whole host of things that drive us to do this.
(28:37):
Could be, you know, compassion.
But we also know that there's compassion fatigue, that how dare I live in this world andnot see this.
Then I would ask that person, are there causes you want to work for to make your butterflyeffect?
generously said earlier that perhaps what I'm sharing here relates to many of ourlisteners.
(29:00):
God, I hope so, because that's the whole reason I'm doing this thing.
So walk me through some, I love the idea.
This is something that I'm hearing more and more from my coach, people I work with, isjust ask yourself better questions.
That is a hell of a tool to keep in your tool, when you're...
asking the wrong questions and ending up in the same desperate loop.
What are some other tips or I guess tools to have in the toolbox that you recommend toyour clients and people that really moves the needle for them?
(29:28):
one of the things that I try to help people realize is that working on yourself is notselfish.
It's actually good for the people around you.
All of the stakeholders benefit when we become less intolerable because we all have, Idon't care who we are.
All of us has something within us that is kind of sucks to be around.
None of us is a free lunch.
(29:49):
I remember reading somewhere, I think it was Brad Pitt who said it, one of these great,you know,
people who could walk into any room and leave with anybody you wanted basically said ifthey really really really got to know me they would be surprised and probably disappointed
and you know i've done years of work i still can be shown my ass by my wife who knows mereally well and i'll be like man you're right that sucked yeah and it will remain a work
(30:18):
in progress i will always be working on reducing it so
All of us need to connect with ourselves first.
So the reason I wrote this book about connection and the four ways that we connect isbecause I keep hearing that word connection.
I've done, I've provided approximately 20,000 hours of individual and couple therapy.
(30:40):
have conducted well over 200 interviews on my own podcast and I've read tons of books inevery step of the way, whether it's
the therapy that I've conducted or the podcasts I've had or the books I've read, this wordconnection keeps showing up, but no one's really defined it.
It's been this nebulous thing.
We all want this.
(31:01):
We're all chasing this thing, you know, and now I'm going to go Lord of the Rings.
mean, my precious is not a ring.
My precious is really connection.
And, and unlike my precious, it doesn't end up killing us, unless we connect with thewrong things, but
So we connect with ourselves first.
Who are we?
What do we want?
(31:22):
Like what, what creates an important life?
What are the things that make us come alive?
And for each of us, there's a different connection formula for you and me.
I would bet that if you and I were like right out of the chart of the things that bring usalive.
And by the way, that's the working definition, the short end.
have two pages of a definition of what connection is, but it's whatever brings us alive.
(31:44):
And it's either there or it's not like
I would love to be able to sit with my dad through six hours of Wagnerian opera and say,wow, that was amazing.
But for me, that would be a very expensive place to sleep.
For my dad, I mean, he comes alive.
For me, I need to be around pets every day.
(32:05):
Every day, I love dogs, love cats, I'm a convert.
Yoda behind us is the guy who jumped me into the cat gang.
I think cats are amazing.
And as an extrovert, they've really taught me a lot about introspection and introversionin a good way.
They've kind of been, they've been amazing.
I love, love a good cat, a dog like cat, somebody, a cat, not, not a skittish cat, but,but a really a hands on.
(32:28):
Yeah.
Like so funny.
My cat literally just ran over to me as I said that.
My dad does not need to touch a cat or a dog for the rest of his life or any animal forthat matter.
That is not part of his connection formula.
And each of us has a connection formula.
And the problem also with being a high achiever is oftentimes these high achieving folksare paid very well to look for problems.
(32:52):
And the problem with looking for problems is that when we come home, we continue to lookfor problems rather than to look for what's good.
And that actually interferes with our connections.
So one of the things I did was I looked at connection in all of its dimensions, connectingwith ourselves and then rippling outward, connecting with others.
Like I'm connecting with you or the way I might connect with my wife and kids or thepeople who come to see me.
(33:15):
And then connecting with the world, connecting with the world is connecting with art,nature, work, things like that.
And connecting with something greater.
I don't care if you're an Orthodox atheist, if you go to the Himalayas.
Or to Yosemite or the Grand Canyon, you're going to be like, wow, it's something hits you.
(33:37):
But something greater is also what you and I are doing right now.
You and I, Jeremy, are bigger than me alone.
Like the two of us together, if you and I were like to workshop an idea of like a thing,we'd come up with better ideas.
That is something greater in and of itself.
The Dodgers has won the World Series.
(33:57):
Shohei Otani did not do it alone.
In fact, there were some other really, as a diehard Giants fan, know, to celebrate theseguys is a little tough, but it was pretty, I saw them, I mean, they executed beautifully
and they did it together.
There was something greater going on and that was teamwork.
(34:19):
And I love, you know, the dream team, not the dream team, I guess it was the miracle.
on ice that took place in 1980 when the US team that was comprised of individuals who werenot necessarily the best of the game, no real stars, but they congealed and created a unit
that blew away the so-called better team.
(34:42):
The underdog won because of something greater and it wasn't necessarily spiritual.
It was a bunch of men converging and doing something bigger and better and saying
the team matters more than any of us individually.
So I really geeked out to this.
spent 20 months writing this book basically every weekend.
(35:04):
I mean, it was really hard.
and there were moments of great fun and flow.
And one of the things I recognized when I was writing this is one of the best ways toascertain if this activity is good for you that you're doing, whatever it might be, could
be podcasting and Jeremy, I'm going to bet you five Canadian dollars that
(35:24):
not a lot of money these days.
Sure.
I'm gonna bet you five Canadian dollars, obviously jokingly that you being a podcastermeets all four criteria that I'm about to drop.
And one of the ways we can do this, these are all research based.
These are not fluffy or new AG.
Nothing in my book is.
(35:46):
Everything's backed by research, but I'm going to guess that this activity really goes
with the acronym FEED, F-E-E-D, FEED.
First one is, it provide you with flow?
Does a 30 minute interview feel like 10 minutes?
Or does it feel like, you know, 10 hours?
(36:08):
If you're experiencing flow, if you're experiencing total immersion, losing yourself, likeEminem talks about, if you're experiencing that, you're experiencing flow in all
likelihood, if it's challenging you as well.
The second one is, does it energize you?
Does it require energy from you and does it give you energy on the other side?
(36:30):
Third one is educate.
Does it move the needle?
Are you learning something every episode?
And the fourth one is, does it provide depth?
Is there meaning for you in doing this?
And if it provides all four, it's very predictive of being anti-depressing, anti-moment,at least temporarily, reducing anxiety and boosting fulfillment, happiness, whatever word
(36:55):
you want to use.
So.
that's one of the best ways to connect with yourself and connect with others.
And I talk about connecting with friends and the scenario when you're with a really goodfriend and time just flies by and you get in your car and you're just like way taller and
like, wow, I call it the driveway test.
Like, did you drive away feeling bigger and taller and better?
(37:16):
And like, that was an amazing use of time.
Or do you feel like shrunk and they were like talking at you and bringing it all back tothemselves.
It's like, yeah, let me tell you more about me.
And
What do you think about me?
It's like, okay, well, if you, if it's diminishing, that's obviously not a very good useof time.
(37:36):
and probably is not very feeding.
Anyway, those are some of the thoughts that I have on connection and making sure thatyou're connecting with yourself and others.
if in the former one, it would probably go on the feed, probably time goes by fast.
You're probably getting energy back and using energy.
You're probably learning something and it probably is meaningful.
(37:57):
Yeah, I've got a pretty pink Canadian $5 bill here somewhere for you.
I'll dig that up and send it over.
So last question here, on the other side of that, for the person that doesn't have thatthing that feeds them, where do they find it?
They need to find it for themselves.
And it's actually not.
(38:20):
It's actually not because if you see yourself as a human experiment, my friend and one ofmy heroes, AJ Jacobs, who uses himself as a human experiment in all of his books, if we're
willing to look at our life as an experiment and have an experimental mindset and realizeit's all an experiment, we don't know the outcome.
(38:43):
But try different things.
Will Schwalbe, who was on my podcast, he's an author, amazing human being.
One of his closest friends is a Navy SEAL and he's an out gay man.
it's like these, he's willing to stretch and be cognitively flexible.
Every week, once a week, he goes to an activity that he thinks will not interest him.
(39:07):
A book reading, an art showing, a play that looks...
Every week he does one thing.
that he thinks will not interest him.
Now I'm not recommending that people do.
right there.
That's commitment.
That's amazing.
love that.
But I'm a big fan of do something different.
Try something else out.
Come up with a laundry list.
(39:27):
Come up with like what we used to use in Netflix when we were renting the DVDs.
Come up with like a queue of things that you can do.
Try them out and see if you come alive.
We don't know.
Now there may be things that interfere with our abilities to come alive like depressionand that would compel us to seek out therapy, possibly medication.
I'm aware that you're not a fan.
(39:48):
of the latter at least, it could be coaching, it could be an exercise regimen, I don'tknow.
But if there is depression that will, that can occlude our ability to actually feel joydue to what's called anhedonia, or it saps our ability to find joy in things that might
otherwise be joyful.
But even for the depressed individual, they may not be entirely shut down to the joy thatthey experienced.
(40:12):
One of the things that we know for sure, by the way, if you're experiencing depression isgiving to others.
Volunteering for a cause that matters to you.
I remember when I was I've gone through depression a few times myself and it sucks I mean,there's a reason why Cancer survivors who also experienced depression When they were asked
afterwards after both were basically in remission They were asked which would they ratherexperience the cancer or the depression?
(40:38):
Most of them said very clearly I would rather get the cancer back than the depressiondepression sucked that much So depression is no joke
and it can it can ruin our relationships, can be irritable, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's very, it's a tough thing.
But if we give of ourselves, human beings, we're pro-social, unless we're psychopaths, weare pro-social, we want to give of ourselves.
(41:03):
I mean, just a little throwaway that's really funny is Ben Franklin, arguably the greatestrelationship maker of all time, knew that if he wanted to convert an enemy into a friend,
he would ask that person a favor.
Sounds counterintuitive.
know like why would an enemy want to do a friend of do a a do a favor for someone.
(41:27):
And the reason is we have these pro social brains.
actually generally care about people and it's like, wow, well, and it also means it's kindof a compliment.
It's like, wow, Ben Franklin thought I was smart enough to be asked an opinion or asked toborrow a book or whatever it might be.
And then they start caring about
the cause.
(41:48):
the bottom line is when we give, we feel better.
In fact, even looking at the elderly and one of their biggest complaints is yes, I'm beinggiven to, but I don't get to give.
I don't feel useful.
Humans want
be useful.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, his book is titled Be Useful and that was you know a mandate fromhis father and he's gone on to be very useful I would say.
(42:11):
He's amazing.
Yeah, incredible.
Well, Adam, I'm so glad we did this.
I don't often say yes to interviews.
I'm so glad I did because you have won the Best Friend Bingo game.
So thank you for doing that.
This has been incredibly helpful just to help me reframe some of the stuff that I'mliterally in the middle of trying to cope with right now.
So personally, thank you for the audience.
(42:32):
Thank you.
I think they'll find a lot of value in this too.
The book would be an incredible benefit for them as well.
Where can we find out more about that?
Excellent.
Yeah.
It's available on Amazon, borns and noble audio book is available on audible and, it'salso available on Kindle.
I'm really excited that it's out there.
It's getting really well reviewed.
people love it.
And that makes all of that time that I put into it.
(42:57):
So, so worth it.
Amazing find the link to that in the show notes for this episode Adam.
so much for your time today.
It really means a lot
blast, loved hanging with you.
Alright, that was my conversation with my new best friend Adam Dorsey, a psychologist andauthor of Super Psyched Unleashed the Power of the Four Types of Connection and Live the
Life You Love.
You can find the links to him and to the book and to all the things related to him in theshow description of this episode and on our website, thefitmess.com and that's where we'll
(43:24):
be back in just a few days with another new episode.
Thank you so much for listening.
We'll talk to you next time.
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