Mastering Change When Everything is Changing with Brad Stulberg

For Brad Stulberg, the idea of rugged flexibility became a central theme in his understanding of change and resilience. In this episode, Brad and Eric explore what mastering change when everything is changing looks like. They also discuss practical strategies to navigate life’s challenge with rugged flexibility to live a more meaningful life.In this episode, you will be able to:

• Discover the power of embracing change and adaptability for personal growth and success
• Uncover the secrets to navigating change and finding deeper meaning in life’s transitions
• Learn how to strike a perfect balance between determination and adaptability to thrive in any situation
• Unlock the key to shifting your perception of time during challenging moments and emerging stronger
• Explore the importance of rugged flexibility and its impact on resilience and mental strength

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Even the most average human existence undergoes major inevitable life changes,
and there's just no way around it. We're always in
conversation with change.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't

(00:40):
have instead of what we do. We think things that
hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
the right direction, how they feed their goods. Wolf, Thanks

(01:14):
for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Brad Staalberg,
a researcher and writer who focuses on sustainable excellence and
mental health. He's a best selling author and writer of
the Practice of Groundedness. He regularly contributes to The New
York Times, and his work has been featured in The
Wall Street Journal and Atlantic, among others. Today, Brad and

(01:34):
Eric discuss his new book, Master of Change, How to
Excel When Everything Is Changing, Including You.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Hi, Brad, welcome back.

Speaker 4 (01:43):
Hey Eric. It's a pleasure.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
I'm excited to have you on again. As I've said
to you before, I feel like our philosophy and our
approach and the things that we talk about and teach
are so aligned that I love connecting with you. We're
going to be discussing your new book, which is called
Master of Change, how to Excel when Everything Is Changing,
including You. But before we do that, we'll start, like

(02:07):
we always do, with a parable. In the parable, there's
a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops think about it

(02:28):
for a second. They look up at their grandparent and
they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says,
the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
by asking you what that parable means to you. In
your life and in the work that you do.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
I love that parable because it gets to the non
dual nature of just about everything that is complex and nuance,
including ourselves. And we like to think that we're good
or bad, but in fact there are parts of us
that are good and parts of us that are bad.
To me, that parable means that our actions in the

(03:04):
world shape our character. Character is just a habit. It
is what you show up and do. And I think
that the good wolf or the bad wolf are being.
Influences are doing, yes, but are doing also influences are being.
And I think what this parable means, at least how
I interpret it, is that the more that we can

(03:26):
show up and we can act in alignment with our
good nature, our better angels, then that's feeding the good wolf.
And that's really what trying to be a mature adult
is all about.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
I love that. So character to you is not like
who you are at a thinking level or a values level.
It's who you are via action.

Speaker 4 (03:48):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
And I think that who you are via action shapes
your thinking and your values every bit as much as
your thinking in your value shape your actions. Yes, I
see being and doing again, I see them as non dual.
They're part of a cycle, right one leads to the
other and vice versa. And in this case, to me,
the feeding the wolf is the doing actually impacting the being.

Speaker 4 (04:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
Yeah, and I'm sure we talked about this last time,
and it's something I've enjoyed about your work from the beginning.
Is I think that that perspective that these things are
two way streets, right, our actions can actually change how
we think and feel. You know, I probably shared the
quotes that's been most important to me in life or
the phrase, and it was I learned it early in
AA and it was sometimes you can't think your way

(04:35):
into right action. You have to act your way into
right thinking. And I think the keyword there is sometimes,
because sometimes you can think your way hitto right action,
and you do, but sometimes that's not going to work
and you need to be able to go both directions.

Speaker 4 (04:47):
Love it. I could not agree more so.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
You and I agree on nearly everything, it seems, but
there is one thing that we do not, and it
is that you love Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance as one of your favorite books, and I want
to love it. I mean, I'm a Zen student. I
want to love that book. People I know love that book.
But I have tried multiple times and I get part

(05:11):
way in and I just am like, I'm not really
enjoying this. I just don't know what it is. What
am I missing?

Speaker 1 (05:18):
There's got to be some day life between us somewhere,
and unfortunately for Robert Persig, the author of Zen and
the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I guess it's there.

Speaker 4 (05:29):
That book was really formative for me.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
I read it first as an undergraduate student, and I'd
say it was the moment that I chose something that
was more intellectual versus just partying or smoking a bomb
with my friends, Like I distinctly remember them starting to say,
you're against having fun because I wanted to go and
read this book alone. But then I reread that book
in graduate school, and I reread it before I became

(05:54):
a father. I reread it after I became a father.
I reread it recently is research for an upcoming project.
And every time I reread it, there's a part of
me that's a little bit worried, that thinks, huh, is
this just like a young kind of this is a
cult like book? And I did a spiritual bypass with it,
and I'm going to come back to it and realize
I was immature, But every time I read it I

(06:15):
like it more.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
Yeah, well, I'm certain that at some juncture in my
life I will try again. There are certain books that
are like that that I'm like, well, I'm going to try. However,
I did love your book, so we can agree on that.
I want to jump into that book now. And I
love this idea of you know how to excel when
everything is changing, including you, and that is always right.

(06:39):
I mean, the Buddhist notion of impermanence means that things
are always changing. However, there are times that things change
a lot, and I think those are the sort of
things when we talk about change being difficult, that tends
to be what we're talking about, these big shifts. I've
heard them referred to as life quakes by someone I

(07:01):
maybe been a guest on the show, Bruce Filer. I'm
not sure if you use that term, but you say
that these disorder events are really common. Research shows that
on average, people experience thirty six disorder events in the
course of their adulthood, or about one every eighteen months.
And we're talking about getting a job, losing a job,
getting into a significant relationship, ending one moving. I mean,

(07:23):
those are some of the key ones that come to mind.
What are some others that fall into these sort of
disorder events?

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Having kids, having kids leave the house after you raise them,
starting school, graduating from school, distancing from a best friend,
meeting a new best friend, getting a challenging health diagnosis
or an injury, recovering from that challenging health diagnosis or injury,
falling in love and then losing love. Yeah, even the

(07:51):
most average human existence undergoes major inevitable life changes, and
there's just no way around it. We're always in conversation change.
And then there's the more gradual change, so not the
major disruptor, but aging or having a body that used
to be able to do certain things that it no

(08:11):
longer can, or identifying with a certain esthetic and having
that shift over time. So we have these major changes
that feel like significant disruptions, and then we have the
ongoing process of change that is much slower but equally
as significant.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
You end up in the same place, right, which is
sort of you may have been able to track it
over a period of time, but you're like, this is
this is different. I want to ask about the friend
thing a little bit, because that's interesting. I would not
have thought getting a new best friend or losing the
best friend, or maybe losing the best friend. It speaks
to the centrality of friendship in our lives and how

(08:50):
influential friendships are in our lives.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
That's right, and I think that it is a real
problem right now. I'm not the first person to say this.
The loneliness epidemic and crisis, especially perhaps amongst men, is
friendship has really been on the decline, and I think
that part of the reason that folks might not think
that meeting a new best friend or distancing from a

(09:14):
best friend is a major life change is just because
the centrality of friendship has shifted. It's not essential to
many people's lives anymore. Yet I believe that it's so
so important. It takes pressure off of an intimate partnership.
If your partner doesn't need to be a switchblade and
be able to do everything. You can find that in
really close friends. It is a spiritual relationship, someone that

(09:39):
you can just share everything with that you know is
going to be there for you. Or maybe it's not
as complicated or complex as a partner and I do
think that welcoming someone like that in your life and
then distancing from someone like that, those represent really big changes.

Speaker 3 (09:53):
Yeah yeah, I mean my best friend Chris is listening
and editing, and you know, as part of the reason
I started the show. Certainly, any big change in that
relationship would be a huge thing to me. I think
that's interesting that, Like you said, if that doesn't seem
like it would be, it's probably because friendship may not
be as central in your life. But I mean it's

(10:14):
one of to me, the great gifts in life. I
just am extraordinarily fortunate and blessed in the friendships that
I have, and I'm so grateful. So you go on
to say, you know, we're always somewhere in this cycle
of order, disorder, reorder. Right, we go from things being
as they are, changing and then how they emerge from there.

(10:36):
And you say, the way to stay stable through the
process of change is by changing, or at least to
some extent. So we're meeting change with change.

Speaker 4 (10:47):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
In the scientific community, the old and conventional model for
change is one called homeostasis, and it describes change as
a cycle of ordered dis order. It inherently says that
change is bad, we should resist it, we should avoid it,
and if we have no choice but to enter into it,

(11:08):
we should try to get back to where we were
as fast as possible. This has been the prevailing model
since the late fifteen hundreds, since the beginning of empirical science.
Only more recently have researchers stepped back and said, actually,
when you look at individuals that thrive over the long haul,
that excel for long periods of time, that's not a

(11:29):
good fit model. Homeostasis doesn't accurately describe how they navigate life,
and they coin this term alostasis, which, as you alluded to,
describes change as a cycle of order, disorder, reorder. And
the etymology of these two words tells the whole story.
Homeostasis comes from the Latin root homo, which means same
in stasis, which means standing, so it argues that we

(11:52):
achieve stability by staying the same. Alostasis comes from the
Latin root alo, which means change, are variable, and then
standing with which means stasis, so it argues that we
achieve stability through change. And it has this beautiful double meaning,
which is one, it's possible to be stable through change,
and number two, the way that we're stable through change

(12:13):
is through change, is by changing, at least to some extent.
And this gets to the subtitle of the book. How
can we think about having a strong and enduring sense
of self while that very self is changing all the time.

Speaker 3 (12:26):
Yeah? Yeah, and I'm excited to get into those things.
You mentioned the term non dual earlier, and some people
use that term in the sense of reality, like that
reality is nondual, as in, there's only one thing, but
you're using in the more philosophical sense, which says that
life isn't all one thing or the other, it's actually

(12:48):
these different things. So change and stability are both there.
They're both true exactly.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
Other examples, not self discipline or self compassion, but the
importance of self discipline and self compassion, Not stress or rest,
but stress and rest. Not tragedy or optimism, but tragedy
and optimism. And in the book, the key construct is
what I've come to call rugged flexibility, which is another

(13:18):
example of nondual thinking, which is individuals and organizations that
are really good at weathering change, that are good at
navigating that order disorder reorder cycle. They're not rugged or
flexible they're rugged and flexible. Yeah, And they have determination
in grit and toughness, and they're durable, and they're soft

(13:41):
and supple and highly adaptable. And by marrying these two qualities,
that is what allows them to thrive and be anti
fragile amidst change.

Speaker 3 (13:52):
I love that term because it is a really great
description of what we are trying to be right, which
is both strong and supple. O the words you use.
We're both fans of the Dowada Chain. Those words are
in there a lot. You also talk about an important
way of dealing with change is to think of life
as being on a path versus on a road. Say

(14:13):
more about that.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
This is a central metaphor in the book. And a
road is very linear. The whole goal on a road
is to get from here to there. It's very smooth,
and it plows through its environment. It doesn't care what's
around it. It paves right over it. And when you're
on a road, the goal is to stay on the road.

(14:34):
And if you were to get thrown off the road
or make a wrong turn, you would immediately navigate to
get right back on that road to get where you're going.
A road again, it is an opposition to its environment,
whereas a path works with its environment. And on a path,
the goal is to go in a general direction, but

(14:55):
you're finding the way you go as you walk, and
you have to pay really close attention to your environment,
and you have to work in concert with your environment.
And there's no such thing as getting.

Speaker 4 (15:05):
Knocked off a path.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
You get knocked off a path, you can still head
in that general direction. You just pick up another outlet
or you bush whack. And the mindset that you have
when you go on a path is one of openness, curiosity, caring, attention.
The mindset that you have on a road is often
being rushed or being checked out, or just staring at
a map to get where you're going, not paying much

(15:27):
attention to your surroundings. And I think a big risk
is treating life like a road and really just setting
these goals in trying to get from here to there
as fast as possible, when in fact, viewing life like
a path is so much more realistic because we don't
know what obstacles are going to come in our way.

(15:49):
We don't know when the weather is going to change,
we don't know when we're going to get seemingly thrown off,
and if we can go in with that mindset, it
just sets us up to have the expectation. But yeah,
things are going to change and things are going to shift,
and that's okay.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
As I was reflecting on that metaphor, it made me
think of spiritual path, right, that's the way we refer
to it as spiritual path or you know Jack Cornfield's
book A Path with Heart, right, And yet a lot
of us, if we're not careful, we treat it not
as a spiritual path but as a spiritual road, right.

Speaker 4 (16:23):
You know.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
It's why the metaphor path is so good for a
spiritual path, because that's really what it has to be
for it to be lasting and effective. But our culture
tends to make everything a road, and so we're on
the spiritual road. And I've been disabused to that notion
countless times, I mean, like I'm guilty of it, countless
times of like trying to want to get there directly,

(16:45):
you know. And I've been disabused of that as a
workable way to pursue a spiritual life over and over
and over again, or is any way to approach life
at all?

Speaker 1 (16:54):
And I think that we all are and I think
that that is a sign of maturity, is just realizing that.
It makes me think of the spiritual bypass, which I'm
sure is a term that you've heard of, Yeah, which
is like you have a teaching or you go do
one meditation retreat and suddenly you're enlightened. And well, the
term bypass comes from civil engineering. You know, a bypass

(17:14):
is a bridge that takes you over water or that
runs through the middle of a mountain, which is fine
for transporting in a car, but it's very hard to
actually bypass through life in a way that is lasting
and sustainable. Better is learning how to navigate that weather
and growing from it, so on and so forth.

Speaker 3 (17:32):
Yeah, it makes me think of a verse in the Dow,
and I don't remember exactly what verse, but I've actually
been working on my own interpretation of the Doo using
lots of different translations, and it's something along the lines
of the Dow is broad and straight, but people always
want shortcuts through the mountains.

Speaker 4 (17:51):
Ooh, I love that. Yeah, we are on the same page.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yeah, So in the book, you come up with ten
tools for developing this rugged flow mixibility. You also have
five questions, and I thought that might be a way
for us to sort of orient I don't think we're
going to get through all ten tools in all five questions,
but I thought we could hit a couple of them.
And one of them that I wanted to talk about
was frequently update your expectations to mesh reality.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
If you are running a marathon in you expect mile
twenty to feel really easy, and then you get to
mile twenty, you are going to freak out. You might
even call for paramedics. Your heart's going to be raising,
your legs are going to be hurting. If you thought
that mile twenty would feel easy, you would really have

(18:37):
a rough psychological and physiological spot When you got to
mile twenty, you think something is very wrong. If you
go into a marathon expecting mile twenty to be really hard, well,
then when you get there you'll be able to meet
the moment, and on a good day, you might even
be pleasantly surprised. And this is true for all hard things.

(18:57):
Our expectations really spe how we experience the world. Psychologists
use this very shorthand equation, which is our mood at
any given moment is a function of our reality minus
our expectations. So when our expectations are way better than
our reality. We tend not to feel very good, and
we tend not to be able to take wise, skillful action. Now,

(19:20):
this is so pertinent to change because in many ways,
change is simply our expectations going awry. What we thought
was going to happen didn't happen, or doesn't happen in
those moments. It is so important that we update our
expectations to match reality. Another example of this during the
beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, absolutely horrible, and then we

(19:44):
kind of got used to living with it, and it
still was. Again, I don't want to minimize at all, horrible,
and I'm so fortunate my family experienced. My immediate family
experience no death, no hospitalization, so relative, I had it easy,
but still really rough. And then about a year and
a half in in the summer of twenty twenty one,
cases started to decline precipitously, and I distinctly remember those

(20:06):
dashboards cases per hundred thousand. It started to look like
one or two per hundred thousand, and we started to
go into restaurants, and we started to go hang out
in other people's homes. And this went on in June, July, August,
and we thought that the pandemic was over. It was
as if we had gotten to the other side of
this really hard thing. And then what happened in October

(20:27):
and November, the delta wave in the Delta variant, and
it was such a gut punch. And I was already
reporting on this book when that happened, and I remember
asking people did they feel worse then, or did they
feel worse a month or two into the pandemic, And
just about everyone felt worse with the delta variant, even
though objectively the reality was much better. We had vaccines,

(20:49):
we had medications, we understood more how this thing was transmitted.
Yet we still felt worse. Why because our expectation was
that we had gotten to the other side of this thing.
Visuals that were quickly able to say, Hey, I don't
have to like what's happening, but this is reality. I
can see it clearly for what it is, and I
need to update my expectations. They felt better, and they

(21:10):
were able to meet the moment with more compassion, more strength.

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(22:10):
You say, in my own experience, the worst way to
be happy is by trying to be happy all the time,
or worse yet, assuming and expecting that you ought to
be and that I totally relate with when I expect
that I should be happy all the time, Like, Oh,
I've read all these books, I've talked to all these people,
I've done all these silent meditations, I've done all this stuff,

(22:33):
and now I should be happy. That raises the expectation, right,
that's right, when I am better able just to go well, no,
not always, and when I'm like, yeah, you know what,
I kind of have a melancholy tendency in my overall
being and I just let that be. It's so much

(22:54):
better than fighting it and saying, oh, you know, I
should be some other way and you know, yeah, expectations
are in aa. I heard a phrase once expectations are
premeditated resentments.

Speaker 4 (23:07):
Ooh, I like that.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
I too have perhaps more of a melancholy disposition. I've
experienced significant clinical depression. And something that I have realized
this really in my own life and then certainly through
my research and reporting more recently, is that happiness is
probably the wrong goal, and even if it's the right

(23:32):
goal for many people, it's not attainable. Is a constant,
consistent state, right, And a better goal is meaning in
texture text, because if happiness is the goal and you
have a melancholy disposition, not only are you feeling down,
but now you're judging yourself for feeling down or you're
freaking out that you're feeling down. Why can't I be happy?
I'm supposed to be happy, right, But yes, goal is texture. Well,

(23:57):
you don't have to like those down moments, you don't
have to like impermanence, but when it comes, you don't
judge yourself.

Speaker 4 (24:05):
You accept it and you expect it.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
Yeah, and think.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
About what makes truly great art beautiful. It's not smooth
and shiny and perfect edges.

Speaker 4 (24:14):
It's texture.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
And I've really tried to adopt that as a goal.
Novice isn't to say that I actively seek out suffering
and I celebrate bad things, but it's I have an
expectation that those things are going to happen, and a
part of my life is navigating those things when they
do happen. And therefore, because of that expectation, I experience

(24:38):
those things and a little bit more of a stable
stance than I otherwise would.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
Yeah, and I think that's important to well. A first,
I love texture as an idea. I've heard people talk about,
you know, seek meaning seek fulfillment, but I love the
addition of texture to that. That's great. The second thing
I was going to say is I think what you
just said there is really important. That it allows me
to do it with a little bit more of a
stable stance, And I think that is really critical because

(25:05):
often when we hear this stuff and I know I
can be this way, I think that that means that
by applying these principles, it's going to hurt less. And
that's not actually often how it works. But there is something,
and I've been through some really difficult times over the
last six months, there is something about even hurting a

(25:26):
lot and yet there being a more stable sense underneath that,
like this is to be expected, this is natural, this
is normal. It sucks, and things will move, things will change.
All of that. I described it as the big container
is one of knowing that things are okay, and the

(25:48):
small container is like drowning in sadness. But the bigger
container is knowing that things are generally okay. And I
think that's what we're referring to here as a stable stance,
is that, at least to me, it means that broader
sense of everything's not awry. It just doesn't feel.

Speaker 4 (26:05):
Good, that's right.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
This also segues to another concept that I think is important,
which is having multiple rooms in your identity house. And
if you think about a house and it only has
one room in it, and that one room floods or
catches fire, you're really kind of screwed. You've got nowhere

(26:28):
to go. You're going to have to move out of
the house. It's going to be really disorienting. If you
have a house that has multiple rooms in it. In
a room catches fire floods, well then you can go
seek refuge and stability in those other rooms while you
work out the flood, while you let the fire extinguish itself.
And identity is the same way. We want to have

(26:50):
multiple rooms in our identity house because then when a
big change comes in one of those rooms, we can
go seek stability and go seek refuge in those other rooms.
So what are examples. You could have the professional room,
you could have the partner room, you could have the
parent room. You could have the athlete room, you could
have the spirituality room, you could have the recovery room,

(27:13):
you could have the musician room. Doesn't matter what the
rooms are. It's just so important to have more than
one room because what happens when.

Speaker 4 (27:22):
You only have one room.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
If you just identify with being an olympian, well, then
when you get injured, you lose that stable stance. If
you just identify with being someone's partner. If there's a
rupture in the relationship or a divorce or God forbid
a death.

Speaker 4 (27:39):
Again, it's so freaking hard.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
I'm not minimizing this, but if that's your only room,
you lose stability, Whereas if you have a friendship room
or a community room to support you, you can seek
refuge there. The last example that I'll give is for parents.
It's so easy, and I'm a parent of young kids,
to just make that your identity, to make that the
only room. And then of course people experience all kinds

(28:01):
of suffering when their kids move out of the house
because they have no other rooms. So I think, in
addition to expectancy, diversifying your sense of identity, having multiple
rooms in your identity house, these two things together are
what creates that stability.

Speaker 4 (28:16):
And I love how you said.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
That, not that you're going to hurt less, but you're
going to hurt at least from a stable stance.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yeah. Yeah, I love that identity analogy. And I think
a lot about identity and how important flexibility is in
identity and how difficult it is when we get locked
into a particular identity. I often talk about this a
lot around the idea of somebody being alcoholic, right the
diagnosis of that and knowing that condition is really really

(28:46):
helpful until that becomes the entire thing, you know. It's
what ultimately sort of pushed me away from twelve step
programs I still go sometimes. Was this sense that that
identity is an alcoholic was fixed. You were always that
and it defined something about you, and I just was like,

(29:08):
that does not accord with my sense of reality, Like
I am not the same person who walked in here
the first time twenty three years ago at all.

Speaker 4 (29:18):
Now.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
Can I still not drink alcohol successfully?

Speaker 2 (29:20):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (29:20):
That seems to be a truism, But in so many
other ways I am a radically different person. And so
to continue to orient around this thing, you know, being
my primary identity and it being somewhat limited and not
flexible became problematic for me. And I think we can
all look at lots of areas in life, but if
we become too identified with one aspect of identity, it

(29:45):
is problematic in a lot of ways, not only in
times of big change as you're describing, but just day
to day life and the ability to update your sense
of who you are. You know, doctor Rick Hanson once
said to me something like our sense of who we
are is often like six months out of date, and
I was like six months. I mean, that's a a

(30:06):
great insight, but b I think it can be years
out of date sometimes if we're not careful.

Speaker 4 (30:12):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
And when we get stuck into fixed ideas about our identity,
we just become fragile because one, if those are positive ideas, well,
eventually they change and they get taken away. If those
are negative ideas well, then we don't have the confidence
that we can go meet the world. We kind of
can fall almost into a victim mindset. And what you

(30:36):
said I think is so important, which is the label
of alcoholic was helpful until it got in the way. Yes,
And that's another example of nondual thinking. And I think
this is so true of all identity labels. They can
be really really useful as tools and means of understanding
and getting effective help in treatment. And then at some

(30:58):
point in recovery. I've never been an alcoholic, but I
had really bad obsessive compulsive disorder. At some point in
my recovery, shutting the label OCD was actually the most
important thing to do. So at first for yours, OCD
was nothing but helpful, and then it started to get
into yes, yep, and having the flexibility to say, hey,

(31:20):
you know, underneath that is maybe a slightly obsessive temperament
and that might not change, but OCD this disorder that
is not who I am.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, it's something we
talk about on the show a lot, which is exactly that.
You know, identity just being something you hold somewhat loosely
and you adopt when it's useful and you let it
go when it's not. And knowing that can you know
knowing when to do, which can be difficult. But I
think this is the case with almost all diagnoses, particularly

(31:53):
of a mental health sort, is that they are often
very early on, very empowering, and over time they can
become very disempowering if we're not careful. You talk about
self in a variety of ways, and I thought maybe
we could just spend some time here. It's a topic
that I think about a lot, and you talk about

(32:14):
these different aspects of self, and I'm going to talk
about them. But you say that a fluid sense of
self is nondual. It's not differentiated or integrated, but it's
differentiated and integrated, you know, it's not independent or interdependent.
It's not separate or connected. It's not conventional or ultimate. Right,
it's both of those things. So let's pick a couple

(32:36):
of those descriptions and talk a little bit about them.
Talk about independent and interdependent as aspects of ourselves.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
So, an independent self is influencing, autonomous, controls its environment,
problem solves, has a will to power, impacts the world
around its Western notion of self separate from everything else.
An interdependent self is rooted in community and belonging. It's

(33:09):
very much affected by its environment. It works in tandem
with things around it, and it relinquishes from control and
problem solving. That's a very Eastern sense of self.

Speaker 4 (33:21):
Really good.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
Anthropology research shows that the vast majority of people that
grew up in the West predominantly have an independent self,
in the vast majority of people who grow up in
the East have an interdependent sense of self. But this
is not genetic. We know this because someone born in
Asia that moves to America grows up with an independent
sense of self and vice versa.

Speaker 4 (33:42):
So these can be learned.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
And I think that the best method of identity for
navigating certain changes is to realize that they're both true
at the same time. Yes, we can where both of
those solves when it behooves us to. So when I
am at a red light in an intersection and the
light turns green, I'm really glad to have an independent

(34:05):
sense of self that can be autonomous and put my
foot on the gas and go. But when I'm on
my deathbed, I hope that I can channel that interdependent
sense of self that is connected to everything and everyone
around me that I've ever touched and just try to
rest in that as best as I can say me
different lenses. And this is at the heart of so

(34:28):
many ancient wisdom traditions, particularly Buddhism, just the non dual
nature of self. There's this passage in the Polycanon, which
is one of the older Buddhist tax and i'll paraphrase,
but essentially a wander asked the Buddha if there's such
a thing as a self? And the Buddha remains silent,
and then he says, well, is there no such thing
as the self? And the Buddha remains silent again, And

(34:50):
scholars interpret this is the Buddhist saying there is a
self and there's also not a self, and if that sounds.

Speaker 4 (34:56):
Woo woo and spiritual. Let's just talk physics here.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
Clearly, I am here having a conversation with you, So
I definitely exist as a self, but my cells turn
over every couple of years. I'm nothing without my parents.
I'm completely impacted by what I ate earlier in the day.

Speaker 4 (35:12):
It is true that I'm.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
Connected to everything, and both of these things are true
at the same time.

Speaker 3 (35:17):
Yeah. Absolutely, And that sort of speaks to conventional and
ultimate a little bit too, right. That's a similar idea.
I talk about this from time to time. It's a
Buddhist idea. Particularly in Zen. We talk a lot about
the absolute and the relative right, which is a similar thing,
but talk about it from a self perspective.

Speaker 4 (35:34):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (35:34):
So Tick not Han Zen Buddhist teacher Master sadly passed
away recently. He talked about the conventional and ultimate selves.
And essentially, the conventional self is the self that shows
up to work, that sets its alarm clock, so on
and so forth, and the ultimate self is the self

(35:55):
that is connected to everything. Tick not Han uses this
beautiful metaphor of the conventional self is a wave, and
the ultimate self is the ocean. And sometimes we identify
with the wave, and sometimes we identify with the ocean,
And in periods of change, it can be really helpful
to do both because for most changes, there are things

(36:15):
that we can control where we want to be the
wave and identify as the wave trying to make its
way wherever it's going. But there are other times when
we just need to accept and we need to identify
with the ocean, and we need to kind of let
go and surrender.

Speaker 4 (36:29):
And it's not either or, it's both and right.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
And as you were saying that, I was thinking very
much about that, like, I may have to surrender to
the big change that may not be what I want, right,
I have to surrender to that, But within the context
of how I choose to respond to that, there are
all sorts of little things that I'm going to want
to do or control or take action on that are

(36:56):
going to make the response to that thing better. So
I'm doing both the same time. Right, I'm acquiescent in
saying this is the direction life's going. I guess I'm
going this direction, right, But as I'm going that direction,
I have all sorts of little decisions I can make
that can make that trip a little bit easier exactly.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
And it reminds me this isn't in the book. But
as you're saying that, another way to think about this
is the accepting self versus the problem solving self. And
if you're problem solving a lot and you're not getting
much out of it, maybe ask yourself, hey, would it
make sense to practice acceptance a little bit more of
what's happening? And if you have a tendency to just

(37:34):
throw your hands up and accept whatever's happening, well, then
maybe look the other way and.

Speaker 4 (37:37):
Say, hey, what would it look like to problem solve
a bit more?

Speaker 1 (37:39):
Because for every situation we're faced with in life, there's
some degree of acceptance in some degree of problem solving,
and we never know exactly where we're going to be
on that spectrum. But it's never either or it's always both.

Speaker 3 (37:50):
End Yeah, yeah, And that is a question. I have
been very even more than usual, thinking a lot about
which is that e versus changing circumstances in life? Right Like,
when it's very clear that I can change it, or
it's very clear that I can't change it, it's relatively easy.

(38:10):
I don't want to minimize the emotional turmoil of accepting
something that you really don't like. But if you just
know you can't change it at some juncture, you go, well,
I guess the only path is to go with this.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
Right.

Speaker 3 (38:23):
It's all that muddy middle ground that is so hard.
And I love that this idea of I'm actually going
to bring both those skills into this very situation at
different times in different ways, because that's better than trying
to rest it into one of those two categories. Right,
Like the Serenity prayer says, either I've got the courage

(38:45):
to change it or I accept it, right, And what
you're saying and I love is that in most things
of life have complexity. We're not going to land on
acceptance or change. And I mean by like us changing
like we're not going to either fully accept it or
we're not going to fully control it. We're going to
find a mixture of those two. But I love what

(39:05):
you said there, which is knowing our tendency. If I
have a tendency towards over control, and I do, right,
there are certain situations in my life this is one
of my really good qualities is that when there's a
problem presented, I will move into problem solving mode and
I will become very creative, and I will become very dexterious,
and I will respond, well, but that's not the way

(39:27):
to approach everything, and so I bring that to everything.
So for me, sometimes it's really helpful to be like,
all right, knowing that's my tendency. If I'm not sure
which way to go, I know which way to at
least think about going, because i know I'm almost always
over on this side.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
Yeah, And that's the work. It's just being sure to
look the other way. And that is the power of
nondual thinking, that you always can pause and ask yourself, Hey,
what would it look like to consider myself a little
bit more independently now, or a little bit more interdependently now.
Maybe I'm really identifying with my conventional self and as
a result, I'm feeling a lot of neuroticism. Or maybe

(40:06):
I'm over identifying with my ultimate self and as a result,
I'm feeling kind of helpless. And it's just always about
having those two bookends and working your way between the
two over and over again.

Speaker 3 (40:36):
My senses, most of us in a Western culture are
over identified with the conventional self, right, just we don't
have much experience of interconnection and unity and absolutism, right,
Like I can say that I have to go seeking that,
like it's not a matter of correcting, it's like that's
you know, if I'm not careful, I'm in conventional all

(40:59):
the time, and I have to actually, you know, make
myself go seek the other side a little bit. I
want to talk about another of the steps, and I
love this one too, and I'm so glad to see it,
which is, don't force meaning and growth, let them come
on their own time. And I'll just apply this back
to me recently, as I was going through a difficult time,

(41:19):
I knew that meaning and growth would come because I've
had that experience countless times. I mean, every time I
go through something really difficult, I'm like, I know this
is gonna turn out, like I'm gonna grow from this.
But in the moment, I was feeling like, but I
don't know what it's gonna be. How am I gonna grow?
How am I going to change? I don't see the
lesson here. I don't write, which was not an allowing

(41:42):
way to be. And I would have loved this reminder
then that meaning and growth occur on their own time,
not ours, say a little bit more about it.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
When we go through major changes, positive and negative doesn't
really matter, which we often come with a lot of.

Speaker 4 (42:03):
Baggage for what we expect to happen.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
So the example of a positive change is you have
kids or you get married, and you just expect that
there's going to be all this immediate meaning and growth,
and then a week later you're kind of like, huh oh, like.

Speaker 4 (42:18):
I kind of feel the same as I did two
weeks ago.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
Yeah. The negative is you experience a rupture in an
important relationship or a health diagnosis, or a depression or
anxiety or substance use disorder, and you get into recovery
in week one or week two, you say, you know,
skills come from suffering. I got to find the meaning
and growth in this, and this is what spirituality is

(42:43):
all about. So how am I going to grow from
this terrible thing that just happened to me? And in
both cases what ends up happening is you actually get
in the way of that meaning and growth occurring because
it has to come on its own time. So when
you are in the thick of a big life event,
your job is just to show up with openness and
curiosity and just to keep showing up and with kindness

(43:05):
for yourself, understanding that you don't get to reorder without
going through disorder. And when you're in disorder, that's enough.
Just working through that, adapting, being rugged and flexible is enough.
You don't have to know how the story ends. You
don't have to immediately find growth and meaning that you
can go podcast about and tell your friends about. Just
showing up and getting through is enough. However, once you

(43:28):
are on the other side of disorder, looking back on
these experiences, we do almost always find meaning and growth,
but it cannot be contrived or force. It has to
occur on its own time, and we have to be patient.
One of my favorite studies in the history of studies,
and I've looked at thousands of studies for my work,
is conducted by the neuroscientist David Eagelman, and he's very

(43:52):
interested in how we perceive time, and he wanted to
explore this very common phenomenon about when we're in the
middle of disorder, when we're going through through a big change,
especially if it's a negative one to challenge, time slows down,
minutes feel like days, days feel like yours. It just
feel like you are just stuck in the mud, you're
in molasses. So for this experiment, he took participants to

(44:14):
an amusement park in Texas where they have a ride
called the SCAD and it stands for Suspended catch Air
Device and it is essentially just a mattress that falls
two hundred feet to the ground bungee jumping without the bungee.
This ride can only be allowed in Texas because no
other state regulator would ever permit it, right, just insanity.
And he has participants go on the ride and he

(44:34):
asks them how long did it take them to fall?
And then he lets them regroup and gather themselves in
an hour later, he has them watch other people on
the ride from the stability of the ground, and then
he says how long did it take those people to fall?
And what he found is that when they're on the ground,
they can very accurately predict how long the fall takes.
But when they are in mid air, when they are

(44:55):
the ones falling, they say it takes about forty percent
longer than it actually does. And it's this beautiful metaphor
that when the ground is swept out from underneath us,
when we feel like we're in free fall, when our
world is upside down. Our perception of time slows and
there's nothing we can do to speed it up. But
just knowing that nothing is more important than just knowing

(45:15):
that if you are going through a hard time, just
reminding yourself that my brain is making this feel like
it is going to be forever.

Speaker 3 (45:23):
Ye.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
But if in when I get to the other side
of this, when I look back on it, it will
not feel that bad. I can't speak to substance abuse.
I can't speak to depression. One day in depression can
feel like it is going to be the rest of
your life forever. That's what makes depression so hard. But
if you get to the other side of that day,
just two weeks later, you look back on that day
and it feels like any other day of your life.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Right.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
But when you're in it, you are in it and
just remembering and reminding yourself that it feels like this now,
but it won't in the future. That is such an
important source of strength and consolation during challenging times.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
Yeah, I think everything you said there is so accurate
and so important. You know, going back to this, you
know meaning and growth. To me, the most helpful stance
is to just at least hold the kernel of hope
that meaning and growth will come. Right. It's it's helpful
in the midst of a dark time to just even
see that there's a little bit of hope there. But
as you said, then sort of let go. I love

(46:21):
that idea that like, when you're in disorder, you have
to be in disorder, right, You're not in reorder, you're
in the disorder phase. And when you're in it, you
just kind of have to be in it and respond
as wisely as is possible.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
Victor Frankel has this term tragic optimism, and it essentially
says that we can both accept the inevitability of tragedy
in our human existence and still try to hold on
to optimism nonetheless. And I think that comes into play
here too, because when we're in the disorder, it's not
about being a Pollyanna or toxic positivity. No, this this sucks,

(46:59):
this is track, this is hard. But if just one
percent of ourselves can hold out and have hope that,
you know, I think I'm going to get to the
other side of this, And even it feels impossible right now,
when I do, I'll look back on this and I'll
probably have grown or learned a thing or two like.

Speaker 4 (47:14):
That's it, that's the work.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
There's a quote from Bruce Springsteen in the book of
Course is Bruce Springsteen, who and I'm paraphrasing, says that
the work of a mature adult is meeting the world
on its terms, not yours.

Speaker 4 (47:28):
In staying hopeful anyways, Yep, that's kind of it.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
So if you're listening to this and you are in
the thick of a struggle or for future struggles, sometimes
you can just let things suck and listen. You're listening
to this podcast because you're like me and Eric, you're
probably into personal growth and development, and it's a strength
to search for meaning. And often we do find meaning,
and we grow very quickly from challenges, but sometimes that's

(47:52):
not available in the moment, and in those periods, the wisest, kindest,
most spiritually mature thing you can do is just drop
that way altogether and do whatever it takes to get through.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
Yeah. We hit on the idea of behavioral activation kind
of early on when we talked about, you know, thinking
your way into right action versus acting your way into
right thinking. But let's talk about it using behavior activation
in the context of what we're talking about here.

Speaker 1 (48:19):
So one thing that often happens to people during periods
of change is they freeze up. Sometimes it's because what
they're going through feels so overwhelming, so they just don't
even know what, if anything, they could do. Other times
it's because the path forward is unknown, it's ambiguous, it's
uncertain what they ought to do, so they freeze. And

(48:41):
behavior activation essentially says that you don't have to know
the answer to get started. Sometimes you have to get
started to find out the answer. Or you don't have
to feel motivated and inspired to get going.

Speaker 4 (48:52):
Sometimes you have to.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
Get going to feel motivated and inspired. And behavior activation
is of particular important during change because the changes that
happen within our brain. So neuroscientists call this the difference
between the rage pathway and the seeking pathway. So the
rage pathway is the amygdala, it's fear, it's threat, it's

(49:16):
very reactive and often overfaced with change. That's what gets activated,
it's how we evolved. The seeking pathway is activated when
we are taking some sort of action that feels productive.
In the work of Yakpan Schep, a neuroscientist, shows that
the rage pathway and the seeking pathway. It's a zero
sum game. If you activate the seeking pathway, you turn

(49:37):
the rage pathway off. And the best way to activate
the seeking pathway is by taking some sort.

Speaker 4 (49:43):
Of action toward a goal.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
So even if the action itself turns out to be
futile or hardly bends the needle, simply by doing it
you get that rage pathway turned off, and you put
yourself in a better state to be able to respond
not react.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
Yeah, as I was reading that section of the book,
I also thought a really important point was that the
rage pathway at a certain point, if it's activated for
too long, turns into the sadness pathway. I mean, I've
often heard depression as anger turned inwards, right, So it's
a similar corarel it say a little bit more about
this sadness pathway sounds like the road going to Chris's house.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
But anyway, the sadness pathway is essentially activated under neuroimaging
when you are feeling depressed, despairing, despondent, And it often
happens as you said, after the rage pathway is exhausted,

(50:41):
So anger turns into depression. Unchecked panic and anxiety often
turns into depression. The very close cousins, and in all
of these cases, I think what's happening is that rage pathway.
Eventually it just flames out and you feel sad. And
there's all kinds of fancy neuroscience that backs this up,
but I think everyone's had the experience of snapping on

(51:04):
someone that you care about, whether it's a partner, a child,
a good friend, a colleague. And when you're in the
process of snapping and you're really angry, kind of feels good.
It's like scratching an itch. You just go, go, go.
But then once your brain kind of exhausts that, you
tend to feel really sad and really bad. And if
you were to put someone under an fMRI machine while

(51:25):
they were doing that, what you'd probably see is the
rage pathway on and then boom their sadness pathway. And again,
the way to short circuit all this is just by saying, hey,
what are my values, and how can I just take
one small action, one right action to use recovery speak
in the direction of my values and that just completely
changes your brain and gives you a chance to get

(51:47):
on a better path.

Speaker 3 (51:48):
Yeah, and so when we say pathway in the neuroscience sense,
are we talking about brain networks. What are we talking
about when we say a pathway in this case, what
do we mean?

Speaker 1 (51:58):
Yeah, we're talking about brain networks exactly. And this is
outside of my area of expertise. I'm not a neuroscientist.
I cite them often, but it is essentially a circuitry
of neurons that are lighting up at the same time
in a predictable fashion.

Speaker 4 (52:11):
Got it.

Speaker 3 (52:11):
You talk about real and fake fatigue, Tell us about that,
because I was very intrigued by that idea.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
All right, So, real fatigue is when your mind body
system is genuinely exhausted. You are biologically psychologically tired. You've
just been sick, you've been through a really stressful time

(52:39):
in work or in a relationship, you just launched a book,
you just finished a marathon, race at work, whatever it is,
and of course you feel exhausted, You feel tired, and
the right thing to do is to rest. Fake fatigue
is when your body continue us to feel that way,

(53:01):
even though you're recovered, and even though you're rested and more.
Rest just creates inertia of continuing to feel exhausted. And
the way out of fake fatigue is the polar opposite,
which is behavioral activation, just to get going, just to
get started. Another way to think about this is there
is fatigue that responds to rest, and then there's fatigue

(53:22):
that responds to action. And in the book I use
real and fake fatigue. I wish I would have used
fatigue that responds to rest versus fatigue the response to action,
because fake fatigue isn't really fair because when you feel tired,
you feel tired.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
It's real, Yeah exactly, You're not making it up. It's real.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
It's a real feeling. What it responds to is different,
yeah exactly. So that's ultimately what it's about. And I
think just reminding yourself when you're feeling really down, when
you're feeling really tired, and saying, hey, you know what
strategy am I trying? Am I trying rest? And if
you start to feel better, great, that's the right strategy.
But if you continue to feel lethargic, or maybe you
feel worse, then it might be helpful to say, hey,

(53:58):
I wonder if this is actually the variety of fatigue
that responds to action.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
I don't do as much of it as I used to,
but I used to do a lot of coaching work
and a lot of behavioral coaching work, and a lot
of the people that I was working with were people
who they would often have something that was really blocking
an easy path to action. Meaning it might be this
extreme sense of fatigue that you're describing, It might be
chronic pain, it might be you know, depression, right, And

(54:25):
it was always an art to figure out exactly what
you're saying, when is the answer to say, you know what,
I like, I got a rest today, I'm going to
get myself a break. I'm just going to take it
down a notch and be here. And when is that
just feeding the thing? And the action, as you said,
is to push through that and get into motion. And again,

(54:48):
like I said, it was an art, and I found
it frustrating from the outside because I couldn't say right,
you know, but I love that you're sort of saying, like,
start with the rest in the book that one of
the reasons to do that is the cost of pushing
through quote unquote real fatigue is bad, right, you push
too much, you head into burnout, you sort of start

(55:11):
to fry the system. Right, So if you're in doubt,
start by resting because it's safer. And then if that's
not working. Respond with action, and I think internally with us,
if we pay attention over time, we can start to
feel this.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
Right.

Speaker 3 (55:26):
I've gotten much better at doing it with depression right
where I'm sort of like, okay, today is a day that, yeah,
I'm just really down. I'm gonna I'm just gonna let
myself be there, right versus the action is to get
moving now. In my case, what I have found, and
it's why I love the phrase depression hates a moving target.

(55:46):
Is that nine times out of ten for me, it's
about getting into some kind of motion, not necessarily pushing
hard on something, but movement. And I will calibrate the
movement based on what I feel like. I'm you know,
sort of capable of I know that movement is the
right direction for me, but I will often be like,

(56:07):
you know what, some days like I'm going to be
up here in movement. In other days I'm going to
be way down here in movement. But I know movement
is the thing, but not always. That's a lot of
empirical testing for myself to sort of figure out.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
Yeah, I don't have much to add because you just
describe that so eloquently. Perhaps the one addition is just
another example relating to what might be called depressive fatigue
or fatigue that responds to action. And there I think
the trap is that when you have the flu or
you have COVID, it can feel a lot like depression.

Speaker 3 (56:42):
Yes, oh yeah, And then.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
The default could be like, oh crap, I'm getting depressed again,
like I better go exercise, when in fact, like, no,
you actually just have the flu. And anyone that's experienced
depression knows that when you get the flu or you
even get a bad cold, it's really scary because it
feels so similar to falling into a depression.

Speaker 4 (57:01):
But there you actually want to rest.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
Yeah, And I think it's just about cultivating that self
knowledge and that self awareness and just pausing to ask
the question, Hey, what do I think is going on?

Speaker 4 (57:13):
What am I going to try?

Speaker 2 (57:14):
First?

Speaker 4 (57:14):
Am I going to try rest? Or action?

Speaker 1 (57:15):
And let me just be aware that if things don't
move in the right direction, I should probably go the
other way.

Speaker 3 (57:21):
Yeah, that's so well said. And I think some of
it also is you can read the situation. So for example,
if I'm really tired at night, you know, as it
gets to the later hours, sometimes my mood will just drop,
you know, and I would have called that being depressed.
Now I've learned better to say, Oh, I'm just really tired.
It's been a long day. I've got a lot of

(57:41):
good stuff done. I'm just kind of out of gas.
And as I'm doing that, my mood is sort of
falling in that situation, right, Hopping on the peloton bike
is not the right response. It's eleven at night, right,
So situationally, I kind of know like, Okay, well, what's
most likely to be going on at eleven at night.
It's probably that I just actually need to rest.

Speaker 4 (58:01):
Yeah, so well said.

Speaker 3 (58:02):
So let's come kind of all the way back to
where we started and talk a little bit about rugged
flexibility in the context of change. Maybe give us some
last words around those ideas that we can sort of
take with us as we get near the end here.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
Well, we talked a lot about nondual thinking, and rugged flexibility,
to me is the ultimate example of nondual thinking for
not only navigating acute change, but really just sustaining whatever
your version of excellence is over the long time. And again,
to be rugged is to be determined, durable, to know

(58:36):
your values, to know your sources of stability, but not
to hold on to them too tightly, and not to
get rigid around them, not to calcify around them, so
that when you change, and when the world changes, which
is going to happen, you can meet the moment with softness,
with suppleness, and just taking that mindset as you chart

(58:58):
your path towards whatever goal you're chasing, or even if
it's just life as a whole, and always reminding yourself,
am I being rugged and am I being flexible?

Speaker 4 (59:07):
Not either or, but both?

Speaker 1 (59:08):
And it's such an important mindset to excelling over the
long haul and navigating the inevitable changing weather patterns in life.

Speaker 3 (59:17):
Thanks Brad, I think that is a beautiful place for
us to wrap up. You and I are going to
go into the post show conversation where I would like
to talk about the five questions we can ask ourselves
to see are we developing along the lines of rugged flexibility?
But thank you so much. Has been a great conversation. Listeners,
if you'd like access to the post show conversation with
Brad a special episode I do called the Teaching Song

(59:40):
and a Poem. And you want to support an organization
that shares your values, go to one you Feed dot
net slash join. Thanks so much, Brad, Thank you Eric.

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