Order of Man - How to Rewire Your Mind and Body

00:00:00.000 Between stimulus and response, there is a space in that space is our power to choose our response

00:00:05.420 in our response lies our growth and our freedom. Now, most of us have heard some variation of that

00:00:11.520 quote accredited to Viktor Frankl, but most of us don't know how to manage that space effectively

00:00:16.220 and condition our minds and bodies to respond properly. And that's why today's conversation

00:00:21.160 with New York times bestselling author, Scott Carney is crucial. During our discussion,

00:00:26.000 we talk about the gap between stimulus and response, how to put ourselves into a highly

00:00:31.000 effective flow state, the fight and flight chemistry, and how to rewire your mind and body for maximum

00:00:38.440 results. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears and boldly chart

00:00:44.020 your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time you are not easily

00:00:50.160 deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who you are. This is

00:00:57.480 who you will become at the end of the day. And after all is said and done, you can call yourself

00:01:02.840 a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Mickler, and I am the host and the founder

00:01:08.440 of the movement and the podcast Order of Man. I want to welcome you here and welcome you back and let you

00:01:13.160 know that if you're a man, you're in the right place. And I don't know what your goals are, what

00:01:16.820 your objectives are, what you're trying to accomplish. But my goal is to give you all the

00:01:21.040 tools, resources, conversations, everything that you might need to become a more capable,

00:01:27.240 proficient, effective man for your family, for yourself, for your loved ones, for everybody

00:01:32.620 you have a responsibility for. So we continue to grow each and every week, which is a testament

00:01:36.780 to the work we're doing here and a testament to the fact that you are sharing this, that you're

00:01:41.080 letting other people know what we're doing here, the work that is so important. And I got to tell

00:01:45.260 you first and foremost, thank you for sharing and for spreading the word of reclaiming and

00:01:51.100 restoring masculinity in a society that certainly needs it. And I would argue that maybe in a lot

00:01:56.760 of ways now, more than ever, I've got a great conversation lined up for you today with a repeat

00:02:00.860 guest. His name is Scott Carney. A lot of you have probably read his book. What doesn't kill us.

00:02:05.360 He's got a new book out. We're going to talk about that here in a minute. But before I do,

00:02:08.720 I want to mention my friends over at origin, they're doing some very, very cool things.

00:02:15.280 And I've got a little bit of insider information and I can't disclose everything, but they are in

00:02:19.640 the process of pivoting and adjusting. And they're going to be making a lot more lifestyle slash

00:02:27.620 exercise equipment. They've got a plyo box. They've got a new kettle bag called the burden. I don't know

00:02:33.800 if that one's available yet. They're working on some clubs and some maces and some other,

00:02:38.020 some other tools that you're going to want to look into to strengthen your mind and body.

00:02:43.160 So if you're interested in that or their supplemental lineup, Jocko supplemental lineup,

00:02:47.640 then you can check it out at origin, main.com origin, main.com. Make sure you use the code order

00:02:53.400 because not only will it let them know that we're sending our, our, our group of men over there,

00:02:58.360 but you'll also get a discount and that's even more important. So use the code order at origin,

00:03:03.800 main.com. All right, guys, let me introduce you to Scott. Again, he's the author of what doesn't

00:03:09.200 kill us. And also his new book, the wedge Scott is an investigative journalist. He's an anthropologist

00:03:15.160 and he's done work for wired magazine, men's journal, playboy discover outside fast company.

00:03:20.900 His work is everywhere, but really he gained a lot of notoriety when he trained several years ago

00:03:25.900 with Wim Hof. Originally he intended on debunking a lot of Wim's teachings, but found the practices to be

00:03:32.780 life-changing and a critical part of his life and work. Now he's been a friend for several years

00:03:38.660 since him and I talked with about his, his last book, what doesn't kill us. And I think you're

00:03:44.620 going to hear how much excitement he has for life. Quite frankly, it's infectious. So I hope you enjoy

00:03:50.640 this conversation. Scott, what's up, man. Thanks for joining me on the podcast. Thanks for having me

00:03:56.380 back. We decided it's been what three years or so roughly since you come back or since you've been

00:04:00.620 on the podcast. Yeah, I think about three. That's when what doesn't kill us. My, my earlier book

00:04:05.720 came out and yeah, what a wild ride life has been since then. Yeah, it really has. We're going to

00:04:12.440 get into that. What's funny is two weeks ago, I went on a little bit of a, an adventure with some

00:04:18.900 friends that was in part with some of Wim Hof's team. And we went through some of the same experiences

00:04:27.260 that I know you've gone through. And it was funny because as I was posting this stuff on Instagram,

00:04:31.000 people were messaging me and saying, Hey, you should read what doesn't kill us. I had a handful

00:04:35.560 of people mention it. I'm like, actually I've read it. I've had Scott on the podcast and he's coming

00:04:39.920 back on in two weeks. So the timing just happened to work out pretty well. Yeah. I saw the pics. You

00:04:45.200 were like in a, in, in some sort of like frozen lake situation. And I think you all had your arms

00:04:49.840 around each other in a circle. Yeah. That looks, that looks great and a great way to spread COVID. So that

00:04:55.080 was like the last time you got to do that. It was, it was our last hurrah. It was funny because

00:04:59.540 when, so I live in Maine now, I was in Utah last time we talked, but, uh, I went back to Utah for

00:05:05.500 this thing. And there was a little bit of, you know, chatter about coronavirus and maybe looking

00:05:11.700 into some social distancing. And it really started to hit after I had already got to the, to our thing.

00:05:18.560 So my wife and myself and our four kids cut our spring break trip early, came on home. And that's

00:05:24.780 when everything kind of started to shut down. So it was our last hurrah before this, uh, before

00:05:29.620 this, uh, uh, uh, lockdown. Well, it's good. Cause I, I, I think doubling down on, on Wim Hof

00:05:36.120 practice, it's probably a really good idea right now. Like it makes you a little bit more resilient

00:05:40.640 to things. I don't know if it's going to cure COVID or whatever, but I think it gives you a

00:05:44.000 better shot. Yeah. I mean, that's a great way of looking at it because sometimes I tend to be a

00:05:49.400 little bit more skeptical when it comes to these things. I know that you do too, based on just some

00:05:54.360 conversations that we've had. And I've always wondered with the Wim Hof and with float tanks

00:05:59.400 and sauna and infrared and breathing and all these other things that we're introduced to.

00:06:04.360 I've kind of thought, yeah, maybe they help a little bit. Maybe it's placebo, uh, or maybe there's

00:06:11.740 actually something like legitimately to this. And I've always tried to find what that balance is.

00:06:17.040 Cause I'm sure it's a lot of different things that go into it. Yeah. I mean, every one of those

00:06:22.560 things you mentioned, I write about in depth in the book and yeah, you know, I'm just going to

00:06:27.260 click onto one word you mentioned, which was placebo. Maybe this stuff that we're doing is

00:06:32.900 just the placebo effect. And there's this sort of like bad, it is placebo is like a bad word in

00:06:39.420 medicine. It's like, well, he got better, but it was just the placebo effect. And I find that

00:06:44.520 a little bit, um, mistaken because if you look at like a clinical randomized control study,

00:06:50.640 we have the placebo arm, which is the sugar pill you get. And then you have the chemical

00:06:54.300 active arm, which is the drug and the FDA approves drugs if they're better than the placebo.

00:07:00.340 But sometimes the better than the placebo is like, you know, for instance, like I love talking about

00:07:04.780 Rogaine, you know, that, that hair club for hair on bald men. The active arm is effective. I believe

00:07:12.240 it's like 28% effective and growing hair on your head, but the placebo arm is like 21% effective at

00:07:20.540 regrowing hair on your head. So, so while the, the, the, the hair regrowing powers of the, of the

00:07:28.260 active drug are, are better. You can just look at a numbers that that's bigger. The largest percentage

00:07:33.320 is still like the, whatever it is that powers this, the, the, uh, the healing power of the body,

00:07:38.420 the, you know, expectations, whatever that is. And I think that there's something really important

00:07:43.180 to be said about trying to build better placebos and trying to interact with whatever it is in that

00:07:47.820 body, in your body that makes you better. Uh, and, and it's, this is not to say that we ditch

00:07:54.080 Western medicine. This is definitely not the direction I'm going here. What, what I am saying

00:07:59.640 is that we can, uh, accentuate the benefits of Western medicine by doing practices, by doing things

00:08:06.240 that engage whatever it is about our bodies, that subjective thing about our bodies, um, that let us

00:08:12.840 heal and get better. And so that's a lot of the journey that I'm on right now. Yeah. Well, it's

00:08:18.340 interesting. What, I mean, do you, what is it? Do you know what it is that, that, that, uh, allows our

00:08:24.940 body to heal itself, to be more resilient, to adapt to these, uh, difficult and physically and mentally

00:08:31.460 and emotionally demanding situations? Is it, is it our mindset? Is that the placebo effect? If you

00:08:37.060 will, is it a combination of a lot of different factors? Uh, like what exactly is happening to the

00:08:42.400 best of your knowledge and experience? It's the second thing, you know, we evolve to survive. Like

00:08:48.000 the whole process of evolution is pitting our bodies and our minds and our intentions against the

00:08:53.020 environment in which we live in. And there's this conversation, which is always going on between

00:08:57.680 stimulus and response. Like the thing, the stress coming in from the outside world, that's the

00:09:02.520 stimulus and the response, however your body deals with it. And mindset and intention is part of it.

00:09:08.120 Underlying health is part of it. It's a million factors all coming in together. It's not just one

00:09:14.740 thing. Um, and you know, even with, with the best medicine we have, it doesn't always work, right?

00:09:21.340 You know, Rogaine, you know, 28% grows hair on your head, still the vast majority, it's not working.

00:09:25.680 Sure. So, so it's not just, it's really hard to give you just one thing. Like this is the thing

00:09:32.180 that makes us better. But what I can say is that we are able to engage with, with difficult things,

00:09:39.060 difficult subjects, difficult emotions, difficult environments, and we can learn to be resilient in

00:09:44.520 those environments. Uh, you know, anyone who has, has gone outside and done something difficult knows

00:09:50.680 that you have this anticipation of something being difficult and then you, you get through it and you

00:09:56.000 feel exhilarated usually. Oh my God, I've, I've busted past my, my, uh, preconceptions of what I was

00:10:03.340 able to do. And then when you do that, you become a little bigger, I guess you become a, you become

00:10:07.980 more expansive. You've expanded the terrain you can operate in. And I think that makes you a better,

00:10:13.080 more confident, more well-adjusted person. And I think there is an immune effect here too. I think

00:10:19.700 there is something about the unconscious processes that govern the immune system, which are often

00:10:24.660 governed by your fight or flight responses. And we can, we could go into the chemistry if you want to,

00:10:29.560 but, but in general, um, the, the, the systems we have in our body to fight infection, to fight,

00:10:36.080 uh, um, uh, any sort of like hostile thing coming into our bodies are modulated by adrenaline, by

00:10:43.740 cortisol, by these hormones that we pump into our system. And if we're able to control those hormones

00:10:49.100 better, which means controlling our experience and stress better, you can have an impact on your immune

00:10:55.420 system, which is not to say you can defeat every pathogen in the world and like, you know, just go drink

00:11:01.080 bottles of plague and you'll be fine. But, but, but you can, you can give yourself a better shot

00:11:07.140 in these things and, and, uh, and operate in really cool places. Like at the end of, of what

00:11:11.700 doesn't kill us, you know, I ended up climbing up Mount Kilimanjaro in a bathing suit. It's negative

00:11:15.980 30 degrees outside. I'm not like this feels amazing all the time. I'm freezing, right? It's hard,

00:11:22.980 but, uh, I was able to get there. I was able to do these things and I was able to push my body in a,

00:11:28.940 in a place that was really remarkable. Yeah. That's interesting. You know,

00:11:32.840 it's funny because I hear a lot of people talking about or using phrases like, well,

00:11:37.260 our ancestors used to do this. They used to walk barefoot in the snow and, and they talk about all

00:11:43.520 these things our ancestors used to do. And at the same time, I think to myself, well, our ancestors

00:11:47.540 on average died when they were 40 years old or younger. So what makes that better than living to 72

00:11:54.420 using, uh, modern medicine. And I'm not saying that one is better than the other or always the

00:12:01.400 best approach, but I certainly think we ought to take it in stride and really ask ourselves if we're

00:12:06.040 going to go to ancestral knowledge and information about how our physiology works. Like we ought to also

00:12:12.120 consider that there's some modern technology and advancements that play a pivotal role as well.

00:12:17.480 Anyone who says you should become literally a caveman is a idiot, right? I mean, you know,

00:12:23.240 the concept of a great, um, you know, of, of our ancestors being stronger than us is true

00:12:30.600 because they had to deal with stresses all the time. They had constant physical stresses,

00:12:35.260 whether it's environmental changes, whether either, you know, hunting animals and had to get

00:12:39.460 their food because this food was scarce. They were dealing with all sorts of environmental pressures

00:12:44.220 and their bodies had to respond, which made them stronger. Like if you're going to go on a foot race

00:12:48.400 against a Neanderthal, you're probably going to lose. If you're going to wrestle a Neanderthal,

00:12:54.260 I, you know, I pity you, uh, doesn't mean I want to be a Neanderthal, right? I don't want to actually

00:13:00.880 go there because all of the benefits of the modern world, um, uh, have, have given us a huge quality

00:13:07.420 of life. Like I'm, you know, if we go back to like the middle ages right now and I said, um,

00:13:12.480 where do you live? I forget. You're in Maine right now. I'm in Maine. Yeah. And I said that I could

00:13:17.540 communicate with a man in Maine and talk with him instantaneously. They'd be like, you're a witch.

00:13:24.220 Right. Of course. Sure. You've got magic and they would be these superpowers and I'd probably get

00:13:30.080 burned at the stake and it'd be really unfortunate. Um, so, so there is a balance here, right? Like even

00:13:35.540 though those people could definitely deal with harsher conditions in the middle ages, right? They,

00:13:39.300 they, they, they had scarcity. They had, they couldn't eat their houses. So they could thrive

00:13:43.500 in those environments, uh, easier than I could. Um, it doesn't mean we get rid of what we do now,

00:13:49.320 but what instead, what I'm saying in the wedge, what I'm saying, uh, I said, and what doesn't kill

00:13:54.320 us and where I'm trying to push us is to say, look, let's give ourselves stress that make us better.

00:13:59.640 And yet still also, uh, take all of the advantages we can out of the modern world.

00:14:05.180 I think that's, that's the healthy approach. Cause I see a lot of individuals who,

00:14:09.300 you know, I can appreciate some of these individuals who take it to the extreme because

00:14:13.060 you always need those extreme people to show you what's possible. I consider, for example,

00:14:18.200 Wim Hof to be one of those individuals. Like he's taking this to the extreme. The average man

00:14:23.580 probably isn't going to live that sort of lifestyle, but he's moving, he's moving the needle a little

00:14:29.360 bit and he's showing what's possible and he's expanding capabilities. The question, I guess we all need

00:14:35.480 to ask ourselves is what, what type of techniques and activities do we put into our routines? Cause

00:14:44.240 I mean, look, we're limited on time. So if we're talking about doing sauna therapy and then doing

00:14:49.860 cold exposure and doing breath work and doing all the things that we could possibly do, right?

00:14:55.880 There are certain things that are more beneficial and advantageous than others that we ought to direct

00:15:00.660 our resources and attention to. Right. So how do you decipher the activities you should engage in

00:15:06.380 versus the ones that might produce a nominal return for you, but really aren't worth the effort?

00:15:12.040 So I'm not a big person for optimization is essentially what you're saying is like,

00:15:16.120 what is the most efficient way to get the best you can? And I think there are tons of people who

00:15:20.600 are really into this and they can go talk to them. What, what I am interested in is what is best for

00:15:26.460 you? What is your subjective best? And I do not think, and incidentally my book, um, the wedge,

00:15:31.920 uh, has went through multiple publishers, right? And, and, and eventually I have decided to self

00:15:37.420 publish this because, uh, my most recent publisher was like, we need to make this the self-help book

00:15:42.480 about the 10 best techniques to make you super awesome and human. And you've seen this book out

00:15:48.520 there. It's great. They're all out there already. Right. And that is not what I wanted to do.

00:15:53.540 What I wanted to do was say, look, here are the concepts that will, of what we need to apply

00:15:59.720 ourselves to. There is, there are things that are hard out there. And by pitting yourself against

00:16:04.060 things that are hard, you can change the way your inner physiology works. You can start to take

00:16:09.140 control of your body in interesting ways. And here are 10 things that I did. Here's 10 things that

00:16:14.640 worked for me. Uh, but really the question is, I want you to understand the underlying concept is that

00:16:21.440 there are stimulus out there, the stresses, and then you have a bodily response, which is,

00:16:26.080 you know, oftentimes automatic. It's a reaction. It's an emotional response. It's,

00:16:30.120 it's any number of things that happen sort of automatically. And what I'm suggesting is that

00:16:35.220 there is this moment where you have the ability to separate stimulus from response and decide whether

00:16:42.840 you want to go that direction and use the autonomic system or use a different system. Do you use some

00:16:49.980 other way to deal with things? And, and I like to think about it, you know, you do the Wim Hof method,

00:16:54.520 right? You jump into the ice water and you know that the trick in the ice water is not to clench

00:16:59.080 every freaking muscle in your body and fight the fucking ice water. The point of the, of what you do

00:17:05.240 in the ice water is you relax and, and you have this huge, strong signal coming in through your nerves.

00:17:10.780 And then you say, I can do this. I can let that signal flow through me. And all of a sudden I realize I

00:17:17.260 am capable without fighting. And this is the switch between grit and flow that, you know,

00:17:23.440 in grit, you're fighting the environment and you're expressing your individuality, which is

00:17:27.160 a super useful skill. There's nothing wrong with grit, but this flow is about connecting to the

00:17:33.360 environment. It's about, it's about coming in there to that stimulus and saying, okay,

00:17:36.520 I don't need to fight this because actually the stimulus is not deadly, right? It's not dangerous.

00:17:42.840 I don't need to, to express myself against this. In fact, I can use that, that information that

00:17:48.540 it's giving me to retrain my body. And, and that moment is the wedge, that moment where you're like,

00:17:56.560 oh, I can navigate this world in a different way. And we can apply that to everything. And,

00:18:02.140 you know, the reason why the wedge, the book came around is because I did the Wim Hof method.

00:18:06.680 See, that was seven years I'd been doing the Wim Hof method when what doesn't kill us came out.

00:18:11.340 Now I've been doing the Wim Hof method for almost 10 years and I still do, but I wanted to know,

00:18:17.000 well, what other frontiers can we push? How can we use that same moment in between stimulus and

00:18:23.040 response to train ourselves, to do all sorts of different things? And so that's where I am now.

00:18:28.800 And it's not about being optimal. It's about feeling deeply. It's because what is optimal for me and what

00:18:35.500 is optimal for you is probably different. You have a different background. You have different

00:18:38.660 interests. You have different relationships with the world. And for instance, I hate the gym. I don't

00:18:43.880 know what your gym routine is, but for me, I'm like, oh, why would I go to the gym? I look at it

00:18:50.280 as like work, you know, but I love going outside. And I do this thing where I throw kettlebells and

00:18:57.380 like I'm either with a partner or with myself. And for me, that's really fun. It's like engaging.

00:19:04.160 And it speaks to something which is deeper in me. Meanwhile, my wife loves the gym. She goes all

00:19:10.120 the time. And it's not like I have the way to do things and then hers is wrong. It's about,

00:19:15.260 no, we're all finding things that make us bigger, more full people. And then when we do that,

00:19:22.160 we actually are connecting emotions like joy, fulfillment, you know, competence, creativity

00:19:28.360 into our practices. And that makes them even deeper. I like that you're talking about understanding

00:19:34.480 if it works for you, because I think one of the dangers of the quote unquote self-help space,

00:19:39.340 or even just influential people that we would follow on social media is we are led to believe

00:19:46.060 that in order to be successful, like that individual is, we have to be doing exactly what

00:19:50.300 they are. So we wake up at the same time. We engage in the same hobbies. We lift the same weights.

00:19:54.980 We do the same activities. And although it may help and it may move the needle,

00:20:00.460 I found as I pursue other people's interests that I'm not more fulfilled. In fact, if anything,

00:20:05.760 I'm moving in the wrong direction because I'm living somebody else's life.

00:20:09.580 Yeah. And you said earlier, you know, you think Wim Hof is one of these extreme individuals who's like

00:20:14.360 pushing the boundaries and becoming, you know, and pushing us into a great place. And I agree. I think

00:20:20.020 that he's like a prophet in many ways, but he's also a freaking madman. And I don't know anyone who

00:20:24.780 wants to be Wim Hof. Right. Right. Like if you, you've heard him talk on podcasts, you've been

00:20:30.140 out there. I know him very well. I've known him for 10 years and I love the dude. We talk on

00:20:34.960 Instagram, on WhatsApp all the time. And, and, but the thing is like, he is a madman. He is freaking

00:20:42.320 crazy. He almost killed me on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. I do not want to be Wim Hof. I want to be

00:20:48.080 me. And I want to look at Wim Hof and be like, look, you did something really cool. You have opened

00:20:52.660 a door to something really, really interesting. And maybe it took a madman to open that door,

00:20:58.740 but I want to go through that door and then maybe go a different direction.

00:21:03.040 Right. Right. And this is true with every one of those amazing influencers out there who's gotten

00:21:08.180 their thing. And if they tell you, this is the thing that you need to do. I mean, you can follow

00:21:13.600 their path, I guess. And I'm sure that there's a use for that, but it does, that doesn't speak to me.

00:21:18.560 Yeah. I think it's just important to evaluate because we're all after primarily the same

00:21:24.320 things. Generally, we want some money in the bank account. We want the experiences that that

00:21:29.800 money affords. We want some connection with other people, not only romantically, but friendships as

00:21:35.160 well. We want to feel strong and powerful and capable. Like all of us want the same thing. And

00:21:41.340 there's a thousand or more ways to get to that ultimate result. And we don't have to do it like

00:21:47.080 everybody else does it. Right. And this is another one of the underlying messages in the wedge. We

00:21:52.920 have these, we have these life plans that are assumed that in the United States and around the

00:21:57.280 world, and actually every country has sort of a different life plan, but in the States, the one

00:22:01.700 is you, you, you get born, you make some friends, you go to high school, you excel at high school.

00:22:06.600 Maybe you do some sports, you get a girlfriend, you go to college, you get married, you get a job,

00:22:11.580 you fully fund your, your 401k. Uh, you re you retire, you die comfortably in your bed. And that's

00:22:18.940 your story. That's, that's, that's where we're going. Um, but that does not need, it can be a

00:22:24.700 great path. If you want to do that, there's nothing wrong with it, but we know that at the end of the

00:22:30.700 day you die end of the day, death is here and it's coming. And it's not like you're going to beat

00:22:36.980 death. Like death is definitely there. It is the ultimate stress. And, but we get to choose

00:22:42.580 to some degree how we get there. And if we want to veer off that life path, you're still going to be

00:22:49.140 just as dead at the end of the day. And, and you, you have a choice. You have a moment between the

00:22:55.020 stimulus and the response where you get to express your choice in what you do, and you can make your

00:22:59.080 decisions, your own. And, and I think that's very important. I think that, that one of the things

00:23:03.620 that the wedge taught me is that as you push against a stress, you sort of have an obligation

00:23:09.400 to do that. Because if you just, if you didn't push yourself against any stress, right. And you

00:23:15.740 had no stress in your life at all. You'd be a thing of jello. You'd be in a, you'd be in a float tank.

00:23:22.080 You'd never be doing anything. And where are you expanding yourself? Um, and you're still going to be

00:23:28.500 just as dead at the end of the end of time. So, so what I think that our obligation is to try new

00:23:34.080 things, to feel things deeply, whether or not they're positive or negative. Like I want to love

00:23:39.040 deeply, but I also want to have rage. I also want to have, you know, these really big emotions and

00:23:44.580 then learn what those mean to me and then identify them. And then, then maybe I want to kick rage out

00:23:50.160 and never experience that again, but I wanted to have had it at some point. So I know it, you know,

00:23:54.520 and, and, and that is like one of these, I mean, that this sort of big concept is what

00:23:59.120 undergirds everything and the wedge is that want to have those big experiences and learn from them.

00:24:04.120 I don't think that the concept of, of exploring new ideas and doing new things and maybe taking

00:24:10.720 the path less traveled is a new concept to a lot of the listeners. But that said, I think it is

00:24:17.440 foreign in that most people don't do it, right? We, we know we should be doing it. We feel like we

00:24:23.760 should be doing it. And yet we don't, what is it that keeps people from walking their own path and

00:24:28.580 keeps them on this, you know, predetermined expected path that everybody else has for us?

00:24:34.460 Is it just the fear of death, failure, risk? What is it?

00:24:39.160 No, it's comfort. It's, it's the easy path, right? You know, someone told you at some point what you

00:24:44.200 should do and, and, and you say, great, that's, that's a great thing. You know, and, and they even

00:24:50.360 showed you an example of why it was good, right? You know, you, you've had your kids, you did your

00:24:55.160 thing and like, oh, cool. And, and it's hard to, to veer off that path. It takes, I was going to say

00:25:03.960 courage, but it's not just courage. It takes the idea of failure to be really a part of yourself.

00:25:09.300 You have to be like, look, if I veer off this path, I don't even know what the outcome is going

00:25:13.020 to be, right? It could be absolutely anything. And, and, and, you know, you can do something dumb.

00:25:18.300 Like you could go on a path that, you know, you're like, you, you, you graduate college and you,

00:25:22.940 let's say you went to a really expensive college, right? It was like, you know, you're a hundred

00:25:25.920 thousand dollars in debt. And you're like, I just want to be a ballerina. And, you know, but you look

00:25:29.980 like me, that's going to bat. That's a bad life choice. Be reasonable about what you want to do.

00:25:38.060 And, and, and, and, and it's always about the, the, the stimulus and response. It's always about

00:25:43.760 sort of charting your course in a smart way. Um, as you, as you go forward.

00:25:49.180 Yeah. I mean, you say courage and I can certainly agree that, that maybe it's not courage. The word

00:25:53.980 that was coming to mind for me was faith, you know, faith that if you try something new,

00:25:58.320 you'll be exposed to something that may serve you. It may not, but it might. And then faith also in

00:26:04.960 that, if you veer down this path and you realize, uh, it's not the right path for you,

00:26:09.720 faith that you can course correct and adjust and maybe take a little different path as

00:26:14.400 those opportunities arise. Yeah. I like that a lot. I think that's actually a more apt metaphor,

00:26:20.300 um, because you know, the, the, one of the things that I accept very deeply in myself is that I can

00:26:26.020 fail. Like I can do things, I can go down a path and I can just bomb. Like everything can freaking

00:26:30.680 fall apart in my life and, and I can build it back up as long as I wasn't catastrophic. You know,

00:26:36.680 as long as I didn't die on that, it's like, there's always another step. There's always

00:26:40.380 another thing that I can do. Um, and, and I have that privilege to try to, to express that and go

00:26:47.900 into that. Yeah. And not only is there always something else that you can do, I actually believe,

00:26:53.180 we've got some feedback there. Um, I actually believe that you will open up doors and opportunities

00:27:00.240 by taking these paths that will not be available to you on the current path that you're on. Like you

00:27:06.560 won't even see that there's other opportunities. So not as only as it, can you get back on track,

00:27:10.680 but in order to get to that ultimate path that you're supposed to be on, you might actually need

00:27:16.340 to take a step off the current trail in order to see that, that new opportunity.

00:27:22.200 Sure. Well, if everyone's on the same trail, like where's the, everyone's going to be looking at the

00:27:26.340 same exact opportunities and there's going to be a, it's a funnel that you're sort of pushing

00:27:30.320 yourself through. And some guys get pushed through and spurted out to the end, but a lot of them

00:27:34.420 get like, Oh shit, I'm up against the wall of the funnel. Cause you know, not everyone doing that

00:27:39.400 same path can become more than a cog on the wheel for the guy who's above them. Right. And, and that's

00:27:45.100 definitely, and this is why, you know, throughout all of my career, there was, I've always been these

00:27:50.060 ideas like there's the way to do things, right? You do it this way and things work. And my response,

00:27:55.400 you know, back into my twenties has always been, well, what's the backdoor, right? Like what's the

00:28:01.320 other way into that? Because, you know, we could try the way that everyone else is going, but maybe,

00:28:07.740 maybe there's, there's another way into it. And, and that has had varying levels of success for me.

00:28:12.720 Sometimes I've tried a backdoor and people are like, no, slap my hand. I'm like, you have to go

00:28:17.100 through the front door. And other times it's been like, Oh, here's a whole world of, of, of cool

00:28:21.860 opportunity. And, you know, it's funny, these are like the really big concepts in the book, but I'd love

00:28:27.420 to like, if you don't mind, tell you a little bit about one of the really interesting physiological

00:28:32.100 concepts that I think is really useful for people to understand. Yeah. I do want to get into that

00:28:37.580 before we do though. Let me, let me back up because I feel like I was so anxious to get into this

00:28:42.000 conversation that we just rushed right into it without providing much context. So the wedge is

00:28:47.480 a foreign idea. It's something that you've articulated, identified and articulated. So the way I'm hearing

00:28:54.160 you describe it, it's, it's the margin, the space between our circumstances and the inputs and the

00:29:01.360 surroundings, and then the way that we respond to it. Am I understanding that correctly?

00:29:06.520 Exactly. It's like, it's like literally creating space and time between stimulus and response. And

00:29:14.180 I, and I first learned it physiologically, right? So we've been talking about sort of the bigger

00:29:19.480 concepts, the philosophical lessons, but it's also like hardwired into our biology because our biology

00:29:26.600 is fairly conservative. It says, well, if I've tried something before and I'm still alive, I can try

00:29:32.800 that same thing again and I'll, and I'll get the same result. And I'll, and which is not necessarily

00:29:37.820 the, the always true, but that's just the way we're sort of programmed to exist. And, and this actually

00:29:43.280 comes very nicely into, into, to, um, one of the central concepts in the book is what I call neural

00:29:49.520 symbols. And, and this is the fundamental way that our brain, uh, learns information and codes

00:29:57.620 information about, about everything. It doesn't matter what, everything. These are the ones and zeros,

00:30:03.080 the, the bits and bytes of the software that, that, that our hardware of our brain runs. Okay.

00:30:10.040 And the way it works is that if you think about the, the human brain, it is really just this organ.

00:30:17.000 And this is where consciousness more or less exists. Uh, it's sitting in a bath of ice water.

00:30:22.840 I'm sorry, not ice water. Here I am. I'm hoffing. Yeah. You're, you're so used to talking about ice

00:30:27.840 water. It's sitting, it is sitting in salt water in your brain, right? In bright spinal fluid. And it's

00:30:35.060 encased in your skull and the, and that's attached to your spinal cord and your peripheral nervous

00:30:39.760 system. And then we get to the outside world. Now for you to get, to become conscious of anything,

00:30:45.980 it needs that signal. That stress needs to come through your peripheral nervous system,

00:30:51.940 get translated in some way into your head so that you can make sense of it. And when you're born,

00:30:57.120 you've got no information in there, right? You've got some, maybe some instinctual reactions,

00:31:01.060 but you're, you've got nothing. Right. So you have to learn absolutely everything

00:31:05.200 through that perimeter of your box. And now how does this work? Now I'm going to use the example

00:31:11.200 of ice water because it's very evocative and people can think, even if you've never jumped

00:31:15.440 into an ice bath, you can think about what that might feel like. And you're probably going to

00:31:18.920 clench. Everybody's been into cold water before, whether it's an ice bath and deliberately we've

00:31:22.920 all been there. Yeah. So, so you, you understand what that feels like. Now let's say this is the very

00:31:28.580 first ice bath you've ever had. Right. And, and let's, let's make you young. So you don't have a

00:31:34.300 lot of previous experiences. This was actually me two weeks ago. I had never done an ice bath before

00:31:39.240 two weeks ago. So this was me, except for the young part. I continue to get older and older.

00:31:45.540 So, so when you jump in, there is a very strong signal, right? You're, you're, you're peripheral.

00:31:51.260 And this all happens super fast, right? Right. It comes onto your skin and, and your skin's like,

00:31:56.660 whoa. And it sends the whoa signal up, up through your arms and you're everywhere. Right. It goes

00:32:02.840 into your spinal channel. It rockets up your, up your spine to the brainstem. And this is where

00:32:08.360 consciousness starts. Right. And, and here it goes, the first place is to the limbic system,

00:32:14.780 which is what they call like the lizard brain. Right. It comes in here. And I like to think of the

00:32:20.460 limbic system with the metaphor of a library. It is a, a library of every sensation you've ever had.

00:32:26.200 And the head of this library is the librarian and the signal comes in and she's like, wow,

00:32:31.320 there's a volume thing on that signal. And then there is a quality, but she's like, I don't know

00:32:38.180 this quality. I've never felt ice water before. What is it? And she's looked at all of her books,

00:32:43.200 all the other signals that have come in. She's never had this one. She's like, oh, weird. I wonder what

00:32:47.880 it means. So she kicks this up to a place called the Paralympic system, which is like a centimeter away.

00:32:53.120 And the Paralympic system is essentially a book finder. And what he does is he takes that,

00:32:58.460 that, that signal kicked up from the librarian and he says, huh, this is my current emotional state

00:33:05.320 that I'm feeling right now. So he bonds that, that the quality of that signal to your current

00:33:11.260 emotional state, which is unmitigated horror and terror. Right. Right. And the reason that signal

00:33:19.160 is there for ice water is actually because we do have experience going from hot to cold,

00:33:24.680 but at birth, right. You're in a warm environment and then you're in a shitty cold environment.

00:33:28.980 Right. And that's sort of like why it's a very early signal. So he's like unmitigated terror and

00:33:33.260 horror. I sort of got some birth stuff in here, binds it all together, kicks it back down to the

00:33:37.240 librarian. She's like, oh, cool. Ice water, unmitigated horror and terror puts it on the shelf. And

00:33:41.740 then you do whatever you were going to do in the ice water. But we have that book and it's in the

00:33:45.480 library. Now, this is the most important thing to understand about our brain and neural symbols is

00:33:50.380 that the next time you jump into that ice water and that same signal with that same quality comes

00:33:56.000 up the spinal channel. She says, cool. She sees it and looks at her books and says, we already have

00:34:02.160 that book. And she takes that book off, off the shelf. And now you are reliving your emotional past.

00:34:10.060 And that's the key. That's the key to everything is that. And then if you get enough neural

00:34:14.140 symbols together, and it's not just for ice water, it's for like every sensation you've ever had,

00:34:19.000 it's been bonded with an emotion. You build that up with billions of these symbols, you get human

00:34:24.420 cognition. This is the fundamental underpinning of everything. It's the quality of sensation,

00:34:30.980 quality of emotion. And then put a lot of those together and you can get higher thought. You can get

00:34:36.400 me talking to you, like my brain processing what to say next. It's all in that language of neural

00:34:40.920 symbols. So if you have a, what we've also learned, and if you've done the Wim Hof method,

00:34:46.420 you've realized that you can get into the ice water and you can say, no, I'm going to override

00:34:51.840 the unmitigated horror and terror. And I'm going to put, I know that you want to pull this other

00:34:57.520 book off the shelf, but I'm going to make another book. And then you do, you create another book.

00:35:01.640 And then all of a sudden it becomes confidence. This becomes endurance. It becomes something,

00:35:07.460 maybe you even bond it to the emotional feeling you feel after, which is exhilaration. It's like

00:35:12.900 warmth. It's, you can create these new qualities. And what you're doing is you're putting more books

00:35:17.400 on that shelf so that the next, and you never get rid of the first book because it's always hard to

00:35:22.600 look at a nice bath and say, I want to jump into it. I'm 10 years in.

00:35:25.160 Yeah. Unless you're extremely strange, like it's still cold and you still know it's going to be cold

00:35:30.320 and painful when you get in. But, but you now have choice. You now have more choice. And this

00:35:36.760 is really where the wedge comes in. It's like, we're trying to create more fundamental grammar

00:35:40.620 by bonding new emotions to sensations, to give a vocabulary to influence, not the past, but

00:35:47.800 influence how we will feel in the future. And when, and then when you get to the future,

00:35:51.540 you've got more tools and more resources.

00:35:53.720 Man, let me, let me pause the conversation really quickly. I want to tell you about our

00:35:59.820 iron council, our exclusive brotherhood. As we close out the month of April, I want to give you

00:36:04.700 the heads up and let you know that for the month of May, we're going to be covering the topic of

00:36:09.000 prioritizing and executing. Now, obviously, you know, as well as I do, that we are living in some very

00:36:14.580 interesting, interesting times, and it's becoming increasingly difficult for many men to navigate

00:36:21.820 the uncertain waters that are dealing with. So for the month of May, we're going to be doing a deep

00:36:26.480 dive into effective strategies for organizing and prioritizing your life. But more importantly than

00:36:32.420 that, learning to take massive action on those priorities that are going to produce the biggest

00:36:37.820 results, even in the times that we're dealing with. Now we're going to uncover variables that are

00:36:43.360 keeping you back, that are distracting you from what you want to achieve. And I think the biggest

00:36:48.780 benefit is giving you the opportunity to band with 500 plus other high achieving men who are going to

00:36:54.280 hold you accountable, who aren't going to pull any punches. We're going to say what needs to be said

00:36:58.100 and potentially give you the kick in the pants that you need to get life going. All right. So check it

00:37:03.280 out. If you're interested, if you want to know more about what we're doing and claim your seat at the

00:37:07.600 table, then head to order of man.com slash iron council. Again, that's order of man.com slash iron

00:37:14.220 council. You can do that right after this conversation. But for now, I'm going to get

00:37:18.840 right back to it with Scott. Yeah. I like that. I like also the, the idea of intentionality behind

00:37:24.900 it, right? Because I think so many of us live just the status quo, the default method, stimulus

00:37:30.180 response, stimulus response. We never think about it. We just respond. And then what's funny is then

00:37:35.200 we have responses to our responses, right? So maybe we, we mess up and then we feel guilty about

00:37:41.120 messing up. And then it just turns into this cycle without inputting any sort of wedge time or

00:37:45.760 intentionality about it. I know this was a very, it was, it's an anecdotal obviously experience,

00:37:51.660 but a very real experience for me is that first time of getting in the ice bath. We all got into

00:37:57.900 the pool together. There was 10 of us and we all got into the pool at the same time. And naturally you

00:38:02.860 start to hyperventilate in a way, right? Your body constricts and you start to hyperventilate.

00:38:06.840 And we had learned a few techniques and it was about, uh, lengthening out your, your breath and

00:38:12.060 just being able to control yourself. And it was fascinating to see how quickly you can override

00:38:16.800 that automatic response. I didn't have to think about clinching and going, my body just did it

00:38:23.160 naturally, but I could very quickly within a matter of seconds, override that automatic response to

00:38:28.780 something that was more beneficial and healthy. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, our, the way we're

00:38:34.160 wired, uh, and, and I like the word wired because it's, it's very accurate because the nervous system

00:38:39.640 looks a lot like wires that's floating through you. There are two general responses in the, in the sort

00:38:45.380 of passive side of your, of your body. And it goes through the, you've probably heard this for the

00:38:49.880 vagus nerve, right? There's this big important nerve. That's not your spinal channel. It's in front of

00:38:55.240 the spinal channel. And, and what it does is, is it, they say innervate, which means, um, activates,

00:39:01.420 uh, either your fight or flight responses or the other set of responses, which is rest and digest.

00:39:08.720 And, and when you are, and those, and that's it, it's just binary. You've only got two branches

00:39:14.320 really of this, of this autonomic system. And you're choosing when you're in that ice water to move

00:39:20.900 from the sympathetic fight. And so fight or flight means sympathy is the sympathetic nervous system,

00:39:26.060 right? Okay. Rest and digest is parasympathetic. Sorry. I'm going to throw a lot of vocabulary at

00:39:30.260 you. Um, we can, we can stick with fight or flight. Um, one side is always fight or flight. That's

00:39:34.900 your adrenaline. That's your cortisol. That's these hormones that are like giving you the energy to go

00:39:40.080 deal with that situation. And the other side is like, Oh, I can relax. I can go do this. And you only

00:39:46.040 have those two paths. So when you jumped into the ice water, what you're doing is you're putting

00:39:50.600 in a stimulus that always triggers sympathetic, right? You're hard. It's like, you got to go

00:39:55.880 fight because you got to go survive. And then you are saying, no, I'm going to go use the other

00:39:59.700 channel. I'm just going to go switch to that one and body. You're going to have to figure out how to

00:40:04.320 survive. And then your body does like, that's the, that's the wondrous thing is that your body

00:40:09.380 switches to a metabolic, metabolic, um, program that allows us to heat itself in that rest and digest

00:40:15.360 phase. And now you've expanded your abilities. And that's the magic of the Wim Hof method.

00:40:19.840 Uh, and, and then you can do this with everything else, right? We can do this with,

00:40:23.500 with any stimulus, like fear, something that just freaks you out, you know, looking at an

00:40:28.200 ice bath is fear, but so is facing down somebody with a gun. So is facing down and jumping out of

00:40:32.660 an airplane. So is maybe riding a horse the first time or, you know, whatever it is that makes you

00:40:36.380 scared. Um, there's an autonomic arousal to that, which triggers adrenaline and cortisol. It hits these

00:40:45.400 fight or flight responses and you can choose how you want your body to respond because oftentimes

00:40:50.680 in that heightened state of energy, you, you can get, you can get very unfocused and there's just

00:40:57.180 like sort of one way to act, but in your rest and digest mode of thinking, you actually, you can

00:41:04.720 actually think about the world in a different way. You actually connect with the world in a different

00:41:08.520 way. Uh, and so one of the things that I do in this book a lot is, is throwing kettlebells. And I

00:41:13.160 think that, that this is something that, that, you know, you've, you've now it's taking you three

00:41:17.480 years to jump into an ice bath after talking to me last time. Yes. I want you to throw a kettlebell

00:41:21.400 at some point, um, because this is really a magical moment. And I was doing this because I was trying

00:41:27.320 to understand what fear is, right? Like, and I just gotten out of this, this, um, neuroscience

00:41:33.040 laboratory in California. Um, Andrew Huberman, if you've ever heard of me, he's a sort of a famous

00:41:37.660 neuroscientist. He was telling me all about fear and me, he had me swimming with great white

00:41:42.840 sharks, but in a virtual reality environment. Yeah. That's manageable. Cause I talked with,

00:41:47.780 uh, Brian McKenzie, who's who you highlight in the book and he has swam with great white

00:41:54.640 sharks. Yeah. With actually Andrew Huberman. He actually swam. Oh, he did. Okay. I wasn't

00:41:59.320 familiar with him. So yeah. Interesting. So, so what he's doing and what you're doing in that

00:42:04.560 environment is you're trying to control your reactions and connect with the sharks in different

00:42:07.540 ways. But, but anyway, what Huberman has done is taken those shark dives. And I think

00:42:12.720 actually Brian's in the video I saw, I was swimming in. Oh, is that right? Weirdly. Yeah.

00:42:18.160 Yeah. Um, so, so there you're swimming with sharks, but it's a virtual reality thing. And

00:42:21.720 for some people who have like an underlying phobia, they have such a strong neural symbol

00:42:26.720 that's associated with sharks in their brain that it's like shark. And you're like, fuck.

00:42:30.700 And you're, you're scared. Right. For me, I doesn't really do much. Right. I feel like I'm

00:42:35.580 in a desk chair. I've got some glasses on it. I don't trigger those responses. Um, so, um,

00:42:42.340 so, but I wanted to, like, I wanted to experience fear so that I could apply a mental resilience to

00:42:50.040 it so that I could, you know, work on the wedge. That's what I was trying to do there. So I'm

00:42:53.760 leaving Huberman's lab and I'm like, cool. I learned something about neural symbols and the

00:42:59.260 wedge and whatever, but I didn't feel it. And then I get this text message from a friend of

00:43:03.360 mine named Tony. And he was like, Scott, you got to go hang out with my friend, Michael

00:43:08.260 Pastor Giovanni. He throws kettlebells at you and he puts you into a flow state, which

00:43:12.920 my first reaction to this is like, whatever. Um, because you know, when I think of kettlebells,

00:43:23.480 I think of like overly burly dudes, like probably have Russian accents and you know, whatever it's,

00:43:31.080 it's not my thing, but, but, uh, but I did it anyway. Like I was like, okay, cool. I'll go meet

00:43:36.220 him. And so we go, I'm in San Francisco and, and, uh, we go up to this hill in the middle

00:43:40.700 of a park and then I meet Michael and Michael is this big dude. Like I'm, you know, I feel

00:43:46.660 like I'm an average guy. I'm like six to 200 pounds, whatever. I'm not all muscle. And,

00:43:51.080 and, uh, Michael is all muscle. He's a gorilla. Like he's bent over his legs are as big as

00:43:56.860 my arms, you know, big neck, you know, and he's standing across from me. He's holding, um,

00:44:01.760 a kettlebell and it's like 25 pounds of iron. Right. And think about this in any other context,

00:44:08.200 two dudes facing off of each other. One of them's holding a weapon and you, and you know,

00:44:13.000 they're going to throw it at you. Like this is, this is butt puckering fear coming in on me. And,

00:44:19.660 and I'm like, Oh, I don't even know this dude. Right. And so here's how the rich it's, there's a

00:44:24.240 sort of ritual to it, right. Where, where he's going to swing the bell three times and he's going to

00:44:29.420 throw it to me. Okay. And I, and I know he doesn't want to kill me, but everyone's thinking

00:44:33.560 in their head when they heard this guy throws kettlebells, they're thinking you're going to

00:44:36.640 break your foot. Sure. And, and it's, and honestly, that's a real threat. That is part of this whole

00:44:42.340 thing is like, you need that presence of danger. It's not a virtual shark. Right. It has a real,

00:44:46.740 fear has a real, real consequence and risk has to be present. Absolutely. Right. So, so then he,

00:44:54.000 he, he comes off me and he swings the bell once and we're looking in each other's eyes. And this is

00:44:58.460 really important. You're looking at each other's eyes. He swings it once. You're still looking at

00:45:02.220 his eyes. He swings it twice. And now on the second swing, you move your focus from each other's eyes

00:45:07.900 to the bell, the thread itself, the thing that's going to break your foot. And on the third time,

00:45:13.540 he lifts it up and he throws it. It flips through the air, my asshole puckers. And I grabbed the bell

00:45:20.420 and I go and I throw it right back to him. And all of a sudden we've gone from something that is

00:45:25.980 potentially adversarial and dangerous to two dudes dancing with a weight. Right. And we enter into

00:45:32.760 like our movements start to coordinate because the threat of that bell is real. Right. The threat of

00:45:39.760 the thing breaking your fucking foot is real. And, and now instead of like it normally when two dudes

00:45:46.460 face off, it's, it's, it's not, it's, if it's not beating each other up, it's competition. I'm a better

00:45:51.740 person that I'm going to, you know, I can do whatever thing is I'm doing better than you.

00:45:56.080 But in this, if one person is trying to hurt the other person or kettlebell better than the other

00:46:01.320 person, you're going to drop the bell, you're going to fail. And that's just wrong. So instead you,

00:46:07.500 your movements like coordinate, you're both afraid of either hurting yourself or hurting the other

00:46:12.280 person. And this becomes a practice of trust, of empathy, of connecting with another man. Cause

00:46:19.100 you know, how many men have trouble connecting with each other. And it's all without words.

00:46:24.700 And, and for me, this is almost a spiritual thing because I am finding a way to, to where my

00:46:32.160 movements are with this other dude and we're here. And when Michael throws this bell, sometimes he'll

00:46:37.560 say to you as he's throwing it, it's like, you know, one, two, three. And he's like, I love you,

00:46:42.160 Scott, which totally throws me off because you're supposed to throw this bell with love.

00:46:47.220 And, and what the beauty of this whole experience was, is I went from thinking this was sort of a

00:46:52.780 lame, whatever, working out bro-y thing that just didn't speak to me to something I was like, oh,

00:46:58.040 this is about so much more than that. And, and it's, and I used to think that kettlebells were

00:47:03.300 all about grit, right? Getting big. Right. But this was all about flow states. This was all about

00:47:09.340 experiencing the same sensations and feelings with another person. And, uh, you know, Michael,

00:47:16.960 and one of the things that's so great is a lot of the things I do in the book I do with my wife.

00:47:21.540 And what is so interesting is when you take this into a relationship,

00:47:24.900 you play out issues of trust that you can't talk about in your, you know, you're married,

00:47:31.580 you're in a happy marriage. Right. And, but there are still islands in your relationship that you don't

00:47:36.140 want to go to. Sure. Everyone has them. This is just the nature of being in a relationship.

00:47:40.960 And those, those things, it's not necessarily even bad to have those things, but they can

00:47:45.500 undermine trust in certain ways where you're just not speaking about things. Now in the kettlebell

00:47:50.440 passing, there's a thing that could break your wife's foot. She could break your foot. You're both

00:47:55.980 equally foot breaking possibility here. And you have to trust each other to, to get there. And you

00:48:01.740 actually work out some really intense things totally without words. And usually, and this is,

00:48:07.960 um, usually when partners start passing, they suck at it. I'm sure when you're, you and your wife

00:48:14.500 are terrible at throwing kettlebells with each other because you have all these trust things

00:48:18.480 and you actually have to learn to do it with each other. You have to learn where each other's limits

00:48:23.040 are in it. And it's a, it's a really amazing wedge practice because of this. Yeah, that's interesting.

00:48:27.780 It almost in a way, a little different, but almost in a way reminds me of, uh, a military unit,

00:48:34.300 clearing a room, for example, and all working together and coordinating together and moving

00:48:39.100 based on the way the other person's moving without having to necessarily audibly communicate.

00:48:43.920 They're communicating through other, other ways and other means. Uh, and you can see how powerful

00:48:48.840 it is when they all work together and they're trying to accomplish the same thing together.

00:48:52.600 You know, it's interesting. I would think that the, this sort of practices would be very useful

00:48:57.960 for someone in the military who wants to get to that level of flow state, because I mean,

00:49:03.100 honestly, the person clearing the room, if they're doing it for real, the stakes are real.

00:49:07.220 Of course. I mean, life and death. Um, but, but this is one way to sort of build that trust with

00:49:13.100 somebody. And I would see this as a great introductory practice for somebody trying to build a team,

00:49:17.660 trying to build a connection with people who want to operate automatically at some point.

00:49:23.460 This is a, this is a, and you can do, you know, it goes from just throwing two bells, right? You

00:49:27.920 can go onto like my Instagram or the guy who founded this is Instagram thing. And you can see that it

00:49:32.620 builds up to sort of very complex movements. You're doing flips with the bell and all sorts of crap,

00:49:38.020 but, um, but it all comes down to that fundamental emotional component.

00:49:41.840 Yeah. Yeah. Is, is the idea here to rewire your sympathetic response? Like, let me give you an

00:49:50.000 example. So I've had some amazing people on the podcast as guests of mine. And one individual that

00:49:55.660 I'm thinking of right off hand is, is Kyle Carpenter. He's the youngest living medal of honor

00:49:59.820 recipient. And he, he, he jumped, uh, an insurgent through a grenade on the top of his,

00:50:07.080 his roof, which was his position and one other, uh, Marine. And he jumped on this grenade and

00:50:14.200 saved his fellow Marine. And in the process nearly killed himself. In fact, he did kill himself and he

00:50:21.480 was revived. Uh, anyways, I asked him about it. I said, did you consciously, did you consciously do

00:50:28.820 that? And he says, I don't know, because I can't remember anything prior immediately prior to the

00:50:34.380 blast. He's like, I don't know if I thought about it. I don't know if I did it and reacted.

00:50:38.360 And I've thought a lot about this, you know, because these Marines and you look at these elite

00:50:42.060 soldiers and warriors, they've, they've trained their response system. So I'm wondering if,

00:50:48.960 if you can rewire it so that your sympathetic response becomes something that's intentional

00:50:56.320 versus something that your body just naturally does as a human being. Does that make sense?

00:51:01.520 Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You can do that. And, and these practices are out there in a number of

00:51:07.260 different ways. You know, it, it's basically putting yourself into a pair of something that

00:51:11.240 gives you parasympathetic response, which is the, um, rest and digest, something that forces you into

00:51:17.320 that. And one thing would be like a sauna would be a great way to do that. That sort of forces you

00:51:21.180 into a rest and digest state. Um, and then putting a sympathetic side to that. So this could be,

00:51:26.820 you're in a sauna that you jump into an ice water, right? That's one very common thing that people do.

00:51:31.000 Um, that's training actually both systems, especially if you go back and forth, but it's

00:51:35.260 like, we're, we're toggling that switch back and forth. And then by learning those sensations,

00:51:39.360 you start to learn how to trigger these things, but you know, hot yoga, that's another, or, or high

00:51:44.760 intensity interval training in a hot, um, room, which is one of the ways the military uses, um,

00:51:52.020 acclimates people to fighting in Iraq, right? They, they put them through really intense workouts

00:51:56.940 in heat to get them more used to heat. Um, but yeah, you, you, you can start to learn to trigger,

00:52:03.600 um, your, your adrenal response when you need it and then also tamp or tamp it down. Um, these are

00:52:10.260 things that are, you know, I mean, and this is really that this is like sort of the big concept,

00:52:15.460 right? Is that we're trying to find the things that automatically trigger responses in our body.

00:52:20.420 And then we're trying to learn how to control those responses. Uh, and it's usually by proxy

00:52:25.360 or it's usually you need something else coming in to give you that response, but you can also sort

00:52:31.700 of, there are also like mental tricks you can do. Like if you think right now, what is it really like

00:52:36.700 to jump into ice water? Right. And you try to like meditate on this, you can start to, you clench

00:52:42.420 up, right? You can like, okay, I'm doing that. Well, well you're triggering your sympathetic

00:52:46.960 nervous system, not as hard as you might by actually jumping in ice water, but you are sort

00:52:52.220 of like getting into that. And there's sort of like more deeper and deeper mental practices

00:52:55.540 that you can get in where you can get that rage. You can get that movement. Um, I mean,

00:53:00.960 even just think about people psyching themselves up before a performance, right? Jumping up and down

00:53:06.040 and be like, yeah, I can do it. Right. They're doing the same thing. They're, they're intentionally

00:53:09.560 amping themselves up in order to get that performance boost in the moment.

00:53:15.000 Yeah. That's interesting. Cause I, you know, I think about that when I was younger and playing

00:53:19.180 sports, you know, me and my buddies would always listen to hardcore, you know, rock before a

00:53:23.300 football game so that we get amp ourselves up, get hyped up. And hopefully what was your

00:53:27.040 favorite band carry over? We listened to a lot of ACDC, you know, we listened to like guns

00:53:32.200 and roses, Metallica, stuff like that. Rage against the machine was my rage. Yep. Rage would work

00:53:37.280 as well for sure. But yeah, that's, I mean, that got us pumped up and I can see, cause I'm

00:53:41.320 always, I'm always curious when I have conversations like this, my question is always, what's the

00:53:45.740 point? You know, you see these people doing this crazy stuff and always in the back of

00:53:50.480 my mind, it's like, okay, so you're jumping in the snow, but like, why, what the hell's

00:53:54.360 the point of doing that? And I think there's a lot of people who are asking the same question

00:53:58.160 who are listening to this podcast right now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, agreed. Like the point

00:54:03.340 of, of, of jumping into ice water is not to become a better ice water jumper. Right.

00:54:07.760 Nobody cares about that or a few people. Yes. Nice job, dude. No, it's to become more adjusted

00:54:15.280 to the world because the skills are transferable, right? The it's to give ourselves a proper outlet

00:54:24.420 for our body. Now let's talk about, we talked about evolution a little bit briefly, but I want

00:54:29.360 to like frame it in a certain way here is that if we go back to our ancestral roots, um, our threats

00:54:36.060 were physical, right? There was a, you're, you're, you're sitting there and you see the

00:54:39.820 lion and it's like a mile away and it's running at you. And as it's running at you, you're,

00:54:44.680 you're getting amped up because you're going to have to fight or run from this lion. You're

00:54:48.540 grabbing your spear. And as you're, you're releasing adrenaline and cortisol and all these things

00:54:53.760 into your body. Right. And that's going to be what makes you able to fight or fight that

00:54:58.120 lion. Now fast. And, and, and in that time period, all of the, the, the problems you had were solved

00:55:05.640 with your body. Like that's what you had fast forward to now. We don't have lions, right? We

00:55:12.180 have, we, we, we have very few threats, right? If you're a soldier, obviously it's a little different,

00:55:17.440 but, but in the everyday world, my threats are like, Oh, how's my stock portfolio doing? Oh,

00:55:23.080 is COVID-19 going to kill me or my friends or, Oh, or even more like dumb. My God, the politician I

00:55:30.080 like or I don't like is a real asshole. Right. Right. We all are. We're all there. And we're

00:55:35.840 posting on the internet, like your politician's an asshole. And, and, and we do that because the

00:55:43.760 signal coming in from the world is triggering our fight or flight responses. And we're releasing the

00:55:48.960 same archaic signals, the adrenaline and the cortisol to go fight that problem, but we don't

00:55:53.740 have a problem, right? There's no physical threat. And so, and, and nothing about me typing angrily on

00:56:01.080 my, my internet is going to solve the political problem that I'm concerned about. Like I have no

00:56:06.620 power there. You have no power there. We're, we're, I mean, maybe you do, and maybe you're a senator and

00:56:10.760 that's different, but, but more likely we have no power. And, and so that's sort of like, we can,

00:56:16.200 we know the anxiety that creates that. We know that bad feeling it creates in ourselves and what

00:56:22.220 we actually need are physical outlets. So things like jumping into ice water and learning to control

00:56:28.060 yourself in that stress is your virtual lion that's coming at you because it's releasing that

00:56:34.000 adrenaline. And then you're being like, Oh, I have the adrenaline. And now I have the physical output

00:56:37.560 and now I'm managing this. And now you become a better adjusted person. You become, you like,

00:56:43.020 and, and, and, you know, the example I just gave about writing anger on the internet, that was me

00:56:47.120 like a week ago when the COVID-19 stuff was first going crazy. And I was very angry at our politicians.

00:56:54.840 And I, I wrote things that were angry about our politicians. And then I stood and I got in a fight

00:56:59.640 with my cousins and I stood about it all night and I was up all night thinking about the stupid

00:57:03.700 things that people were saying. And then I, and then I woke up and I was still like, I was just in bad

00:57:08.480 shape. And I did my normal breathing methods. I do the Wim Hof breathing every morning. And then I

00:57:13.420 was like, Oh my God, like it broke that cycle because it gave that anxiety that was all pent up

00:57:19.920 inside of me, this physical output. And I got out of it. I was like, Oh my God, I feel so much better.

00:57:24.340 And I also had perspective on myself. And I was like, why? Right. I still like agree with the things I

00:57:31.820 wrote. Like I haven't changed that, but I'm also like, but why was I doing it? Like I don't have any

00:57:37.200 control. I'm, I, I, and I'm like yelling at people on the internet who don't have any control.

00:57:43.840 Exactly. Yeah. And they're yelling. I think it's interesting because mutual helplessness.

00:57:49.380 That's, that's a good point. But this, you know, doing these types of things really gives you point

00:57:53.000 of a point of a reference to, you know, I think about my time in the military and I served overseas

00:57:57.740 in 2005 and I came back, you know, we had very real situations that were life and death situations.

00:58:04.580 And then you come back and you see what people are upset about. You know, they're upset about

00:58:08.300 getting cut off on the road. They're upset about some kid at McDonald's or whatever,

00:58:12.580 got their order wrong. And it's like, I thought to myself, like, this is the shit that you're

00:58:16.700 worried about because I had a different point of reference. And, and I think this is the idea

00:58:22.300 of, of making yourself tougher, more resilient is it gives you this point of reference. And you even

00:58:29.220 look at this coronavirus stuff. Now, you know, we see less, at least I do. And maybe it's because

00:58:35.180 I'm so entrenched into what we're doing. I see less of these like social, you know, injustice type

00:58:41.780 issues that are kind of just like fabricated and made up. People don't seem to be as concerned

00:58:45.660 because there's actually a real threat that we're dealing with as opposed to some of this

00:58:49.940 surface level BS that we had to make up to have something to fight against.

00:58:53.660 That is such an important point right now, because if we, you know, if we're attentive

00:58:58.600 to what's going on in the world right now, our minds are in totally different places than they

00:59:04.280 were before because we have a stress. And while I'm not going to go as far to say COVID-19 is a

00:59:09.620 good thing, you know, our, our medical workers are stressed out to the max. There's a real human

00:59:13.820 tragedy happening. But however, it's also a really positive thing for us to adjust and realize that

00:59:21.740 some of our bullshit that we cared about before wasn't really that relevant. Like we have something

00:59:26.400 to actually push against that's meaningful. And because that is a real stress and, and, and,

00:59:32.760 and how we respond to it is very critical now. And, you know, most of us are now social distancing,

00:59:38.700 you know, I'm, I'm in my house and I can't, I don't go and see people and, and, and, and that

00:59:44.240 creates new relationships, our economies reforming, and that's going to be really bad for a lot of

00:59:48.660 people. But it's also going to allow us to innovate in new ways. Like it could be that after

00:59:53.140 this, all these people who are, who, who have been working in offices where they were, you know,

00:59:58.660 40 hours a week in this, in this like neon lighting that was draining their life. Maybe they're going

01:00:05.020 to learn, actually, I can do this at home and organize my own time in a way that, that is more

01:00:10.680 beneficial. And I like to see that there is going to be a silver lining that comes out of all this,

01:00:14.820 where our society does take lessons from it that aren't just about how not to spread a virus,

01:00:20.460 but how to actually be a person in the world in a different way.

01:00:25.340 Yeah. I definitely think we're going to see this. I would also suggest to anybody who's

01:00:29.240 listening is look for opportunities to create stressors now voluntarily so that when involuntary

01:00:39.100 stressors arise, like a global pandemic, we're more capable of dealing with it because we've,

01:00:44.740 to use the word, inoculated ourself to some degree against the stressor that we're, we're facing,

01:00:50.620 but you've got to do it voluntarily before something involuntary happens.

01:00:55.460 Right. Yeah. And, and, and the more involuntary stress you, or sorry, voluntary stress you give

01:00:59.880 yourself, the more elasticity you have in the face of the other stress that comes. I mean,

01:01:05.160 I can't guarantee you, you're going to be able to defeat COVID, right. Or, or anything that comes

01:01:09.680 at you, but it gives you some, some bandwidth and some negotiating room to do it. And I really do

01:01:16.540 believe that the practices that I'm doing right now, the saunas, the breath work, the ice stuff,

01:01:21.440 the kettlebells, I think all of that does make me more fit, more, more resilient. I think it helps

01:01:28.080 my immune system. And I think that gives me a better shot at what, if I should get like a biological

01:01:34.540 threat of me. I mean, of course the science behind that is like iffy because we don't know for sure,

01:01:39.340 but all we have is our faith, right. All we have to say is like, what can I do right now? And certainly

01:01:44.680 those practices help with the anxiety for it. Right. They help with the depression. They help

01:01:49.040 with the feeling of helplessness, which is, I think just as toxic, uh, as, as this, as well,

01:01:55.840 close to as toxic as, as right. We understand. Yeah. We understand. Yeah. And, and the way I look at

01:02:01.620 this as layers too, right. So there's not, Oh, if you take ice baths and you're going to make

01:02:06.020 yourself immune from Corona virus or from any other thing that you might deal with, but it's just a

01:02:11.580 layer. It's just one added thing. And you start adding, adding all these layers and these strategies,

01:02:16.720 then yeah, they're going to compound. And the effects that, that come from it are going to

01:02:20.380 compound as well. And it's also about what you do with your life in general. You know, we began this

01:02:25.560 discussion today saying that, you know, you're going to die. It's going, it's definitely going to

01:02:30.320 happen, whether or not it's this pandemic or a car accident later, or you die comfortable in your bed

01:02:35.260 in your, in your nineties. Um, it's definitely, definitely coming. So who do you want to be right

01:02:40.140 now? Right. Who do you want to be right here, right now in this particular moment? And, you know,

01:02:47.480 some of us may just want to huddle into our house and become more and more comfortable and more and

01:02:51.880 more insulated and not, there's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't need to be. And in these times,

01:02:59.540 I think that certain physical practices are very useful right now. And I think that getting

01:03:04.140 out of nature right now, it's very useful. I think that, that putting yourself in something

01:03:07.960 that is difficult is useful. You know, I, and I have, you know, in my house, we have all these

01:03:13.120 toys that I've, I've, I've gotten, you know, I have the kettlebells, I have the ice cold shower.

01:03:16.640 I've got, I've got a sauna. I'm not many people have a sauna. Like, but I use the things that I

01:03:21.820 have around me to, to provide sort of a routine stress every day. Like, you know, 20 minutes

01:03:28.920 before I got on the phone with you, I was lifting kettlebells in my front yard. I was like juggling

01:03:32.760 kettlebells in my front yard. And, and it's just to sort of give me something to push against.

01:03:39.540 Right. Right. Well, Scott, this has been a great discussion. I want to ask you a couple of questions

01:03:43.820 as we wind things down. The first one, what does it mean to be a man?

01:03:49.980 It means to have agency. It means to be in, to be a player in your own life, right? To not take

01:03:58.720 things passively and to be able to say, I am in command of a certain space. And then also to be

01:04:04.660 generous with other people. Like it's, it's, I think it's very, very important to, to use whatever

01:04:09.680 skills you have as best you can to try to do good in the world. I don't know if it's just men,

01:04:14.500 that's also human. I think it's also good women do this too. But I think that it's about being an

01:04:19.640 adult. It's about, about I'm taking responsibility. I like that. I like to be the, be a player in your

01:04:25.960 own, in your own life. That's a, that's very valuable being, being assertive, right. As opposed

01:04:31.900 to just being passive and letting things pass you by and letting yourself be acted upon. I like that.

01:04:36.640 Yeah. Well, Scott, how do we connect with you and pick up a copy of the book, The Wedge?

01:04:41.380 So go to my website, scottcarney.com, C-A-R-N-E-Y. You go to my website, you can get a

01:04:47.560 free chapter. And then you sign up for my email list and I send you like three emails a year. It's

01:04:52.400 great. It's a good, good trade. And then it's also on all of the places you might find. It's on

01:04:57.240 Amazon. It's on Instagram. It's on, is it on Instagram? I don't think it's on Instagram. You don't buy

01:05:02.740 it on Instagram. Wherever it is, people can find it, right? Yeah. Yeah.

01:05:06.480 Use Google. You'll find it, man. It's out there. There's an audio book. If you like the sound of

01:05:10.660 my voice, it's there too. You know how to buy books. You're, you're, you're, you've done this

01:05:15.160 before. Right. Right. But by all means, yeah, if you do want to read a sample chapter on my website,

01:05:20.640 go check it out. Excellent. We'll connect it. So all the guys know where to go. I really

01:05:25.180 appreciate you. I'm actually excited over the past several weeks to be diving deeper into this than I

01:05:29.280 have in the past and using some of the information that you've used and shared in the book.

01:05:33.700 Um, it's been good and I'm anxious to see where this goes. So thanks for imparting some of your

01:05:38.820 wisdom and taking some time today. Hey, thanks for having me on. I really like what you do.

01:05:42.960 Thanks brother. All right, gentlemen, there you go. My conversation with one and only Scott Carney.

01:05:47.960 I hope you enjoyed that one. We had a lot of fun. Obviously I told you earlier that the man's

01:05:52.260 energy and excitement for life is infectious. So I hope you took that away. And I hope that you'll pick

01:05:57.580 up a copy of his book, the wedge because in it, he uncovers and explores some very effective

01:06:04.080 strategies, uh, practices that maybe you haven't considered before. Like we talked about throwing

01:06:09.740 kettlebells, for example, as a way to rewire your mind and your body and get you thinking about

01:06:15.560 different things and activities and, uh, and, and looking at life a little bit differently and then

01:06:21.600 rewiring the space between stimulus and response, like we talked about earlier. So make sure you

01:06:27.440 pick up a copy of the book, the wedge, uh, connect with Scott on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. I think

01:06:32.140 he's on YouTube as well. Do the same for me. Uh, let us know what you thought about the show.

01:06:36.040 We're going to have this, uh, continue the conversation on the, on the, uh, the socials.

01:06:41.040 So check it out at Instagram and Twitter and Facebook, all at Ryan Mickler. And if you want to watch

01:06:47.160 the video, if you're not watching this, you're just listening to it and you want to watch it,

01:06:50.600 then head to youtube.com slash order of man. All right, guys, I'm going to let you get going. Hey,

01:06:56.540 if you find any value value in this show, uh, this one or any others, please do us a solid and leave

01:07:01.260 a rating and review. I just go into your podcast app, whatever program you're using, leave us a

01:07:07.260 rating review. iTunes is the best because that's the biggest and the biggest reach. So if you are using

01:07:12.100 iTunes or podcast, Apple podcasts, then please leave a rating and review there.

01:07:16.540 All right, guys, that's all I've got for you today. We'll be back tomorrow for our ask me

01:07:20.760 anything, but until then, go out there, take action and become the man you are meant to be.

01:07:25.400 Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life

01:07:30.000 and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.

Order of Man - April 28, 2020

How to Rewire Your Mind and Body ｜ SCOTT CARNEY

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