The Art of Manliness - #105： Lessons from a Navy SEAL on Resilience With Eric Greitens

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Well, I am really

00:00:19.840 excited about our guest today. One of the most fascinating people I've ever encountered. His

00:00:24.140 name is Eric Greitens, Truman Scholar, Rhodes Scholar, super smart guy, studied at Oxford.

00:00:28.860 He did humanitarian work with war refugees in Croatia and Rwanda and then other places in the

00:00:34.660 world. After he graduated from Oxford, he decided to become a Navy SEAL. Did that, went through budge 0.85

00:00:39.660 training, became a Navy SEAL, actually did combat, earned the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star. And after

00:00:45.760 that, he's continued his work with humanitarian aid, teaching people how to be leaders. He wrote a

00:00:51.600 book about his experience as a humanitarian and as a Navy SEAL. It's called The Heart and the Fist.

00:00:55.860 And his latest book is called Resilience. And I'm going to say right here, it's the best book I've

00:01:01.800 read so far this year. And I think it's going to be the best book I've read in 2015. Hands down,

00:01:07.720 one of my all time favorite books. What it is, it's a book that's inspired by the letters that he wrote

00:01:13.240 to a Navy SEAL bud who was going through a hard time. And it's all about becoming more resilient

00:01:18.980 in life. And Eric combines philosophy from Aristotle, Thucydides, modern psychology,

00:01:26.700 and his own experience as a Navy SEAL and lays out a philosophy of resilience. And I've read a lot

00:01:33.580 about resilience, studied a lot about resilience, and this is by far the best book I've read about

00:01:37.800 the topic. Eric and I are going to talk about resilience, what it means, how to develop it.

00:01:42.140 Fascinating discussion. So let's do this. All right, Eric Greidens, welcome to the show.

00:01:51.220 Hey, Brett, great to be on with you. Real pleasure to be with you.

00:01:54.160 All right, well, so before we get into your latest book, Resilience, let's talk a little

00:01:57.920 about your background, because it's really fascinating. So you started out as a humanitarian,

00:02:01.600 doing humanitarian work in Africa, but then you became a Navy SEAL. And those things seem like

00:02:08.420 diametrically opposed. But you make the case in your book, The Heart and the Fist, that they're

00:02:13.520 actually very compatible. Can you explain how you went from humanitarian to Navy SEAL and how you see

00:02:19.960 those sort of fitting together into your mission? Yeah, of course, Brett. So you're right, I did a lot

00:02:27.340 of humanitarian work before I joined the military. I'd worked in Bosnia with refugee children. I worked in

00:02:33.960 Rwanda with kids who'd been orphaned and abused, who are survivors of the genocide, worked in

00:02:39.560 Cambodia with kids who'd lost limbs to landmines, kids who were survivors of polio. And I remember

00:02:46.160 actually, there was one time I was in Bosnia. And as you and the folks who are listening to our

00:02:52.480 podcast will remember, there were horrible campaigns of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia in the 1990s.

00:02:58.260 I was 20 years old at the time working in a refugee camp. And I sat down with this guy and he said to

00:03:05.020 me, he said, you know what? He said, I appreciate that you're here. He said, please understand. I

00:03:09.120 appreciate that you're here. I'm glad that there's a roof over my head. I appreciate that the international

00:03:14.020 humanitarian communities provided food for my family, that there's a little kindergarten for my

00:03:18.680 kids to go to school. He said, but I said, if people really cared about us, they'd be willing to

00:03:24.940 help to protect us. And I didn't know what to say to him at the time, Brett. I was 20 years old

00:03:30.780 sitting in this refugee camp. But I realized later that what he said was true, that if you really love

00:03:36.160 anything, if you really care about anything, you're willing to respond not only with compassion, but

00:03:40.560 you're willing to respond with courage, that you have to be willing to stand up and protect those

00:03:45.440 things that you care about and protect the people that you care about. And I believe that, you know,

00:03:50.400 you have to bring, you have to live a life that involves both courage and compassion. I think that

00:03:55.240 without courage, your compassion falters. It's courage that really makes your compassion meaningful.

00:04:01.460 At the same time, without compassion, courage doesn't really have any direction. You've got to

00:04:06.280 have that compassion that provides direction for your, for your courage. And so after I joined the

00:04:11.640 military relatively late, I was 26 years old. I finished a dissertation writing about how international

00:04:17.460 humanitarian organizations worked with kids in war zones. And then I made this transition from

00:04:22.400 the academic world to officer candidate school and to the SEAL teams. And it was one of the best

00:04:27.920 decisions I ever made in my life. Yeah. For those of you who don't know, you're a Rhodes Scholar

00:04:32.480 as well, right? That's part of your career. I was, I had a great time at Oxford, got a wonderful,

00:04:38.260 wonderful education there. Yeah. I mean, I think you wrote that, you know, in order to be good,

00:04:42.460 you have to be strong and then in order to be strong, you have to be good. That's exactly right.

00:04:48.220 And I think that, you know, and men know this instinctively, right? We know that there is a

00:04:54.140 real power that comes when we're living for a purpose that's larger than ourselves. There's a

00:04:59.220 strength that comes from having compassion, from having friends who we care about, that those things

00:05:05.020 actually make us stronger when we're, when we're good. And we also recognize it in order to do things

00:05:11.200 well that care for people, to provide for people. You have to have some strength and you got to find

00:05:15.900 ways to bring that strength and goodness, that courage and compassion together to really live

00:05:20.440 a full life. Okay. So yeah, if you, if you haven't read his book, Heart in a Fist, go check it out. It's

00:05:24.980 a very great read, but let's talk about your most recent book, Resilience. Can you tell me the story

00:05:32.100 how that book came to be? Yeah. So I was driving home in the middle of Missouri. I'm on highway 70

00:05:39.820 heading from Columbia, Missouri back home. And I looked down and my, my phone is ringing and it

00:05:46.680 was my, my friend, Zach Walker. And Zach is a guy who had been through BUDS training with me. BUDS is

00:05:53.360 the basic underwater demolition seal training, the basic Navy seal training, really good friend of

00:05:58.300 mine, but the kind of guy who you, you know, you have a real intense experience like that with your

00:06:02.860 great friends. And then you stay in touch, you know, maybe once a year. And when I saw him calling Brett,

00:06:08.500 I actually, I thought it was going to be bad news. I thought he was going to call and tell me that

00:06:13.140 another one of our friends from our, from our BUDS class had died. And I answered the phone and it,

00:06:18.560 it turned out not to be that. Now you got to understand a little bit about who Zach Walker

00:06:22.820 was. This is a kid from a Northern California logging family and a tough guy, like even in a BUDS class

00:06:29.500 of people who are all trying to be Navy SEALs. Zach Walker was, was one of the toughest. And,

00:06:35.780 you know, we'd been through training together. And after that, he went to the East Coast SEAL

00:06:40.100 teams. I stayed on the West Coast and he told me what, what had happened. You know, he went to

00:06:44.400 Afghanistan, did a deployment and came home as this kind of Navy SEAL war hero. You know, he'd done his

00:06:51.260 service over there, came home and then he bought a concrete pumper, started a small business, taking

00:06:57.660 care of his family, had two young kids at the time. And then Brett, his life was just hammered by

00:07:03.420 hardship. His brother died. He lost his business and pulls into his driveway one night, gets out of

00:07:12.640 his truck and drops to the ground because he thinks there's a sniper watching him. And he lays there for

00:07:19.540 hours until the sun goes down. And then he gets up and runs into his house and he realizes, man,

00:07:24.960 I've got post-traumatic stress disorder. He starts drinking and Zach never did anything in moderation.

00:07:31.280 So it's not a case, but a cooler full of beer that he's working through on the weekend. And he called

00:07:36.920 me after he'd been arrested. So you got a guy who's, you know, Navy SEAL war hero, small business

00:07:43.500 owner taking care of his family who goes down then to being an unemployed alcoholic on disability who's

00:07:50.320 looking at the possibility of having his kids come to visit him in jail. We talked for a while. And then

00:07:56.420 that night I got home and I started writing him a letter, um, about what it takes to build resilience.

00:08:02.140 And, you know, I drew from my experience, not just in the SEAL team training, but doing that

00:08:06.960 humanitarian work, working with veterans who'd come home. He wrote back to me and the book is a

00:08:12.440 series of 23 letters to my friend, Zach Walker, who, who I love and was, was going through a tough time.

00:08:18.620 Yeah. And what I loved about that format, cause it is, there are letters that you, to your friend

00:08:24.600 Walker is that it felt like you were like talking to the reader, right? There'd be some, I knew you

00:08:29.420 were like, you were talking to your friend, but like, it felt like when I was reading, it's like,

00:08:33.340 man, he's talking to me because it was, that's what I loved about that format. It's very personable.

00:08:37.760 Well, thanks a lot. You know, I, we've had, we've had a lot of folks who've, who've said that to us.

00:08:41.660 And I think that is one of the really nice things about the letter format is that everybody can read

00:08:48.360 this and everybody has to deal with pain in their life. Everybody has to deal with, with hardship.

00:08:53.820 And you can really take this. It's a very practical, um, advice that I was giving to, to a friend.

00:09:01.020 And, uh, the, you in the book is, is often, you know, the readers say like, Hey, this guy's,

00:09:06.380 he's talking right to me. It's a, you bring an interesting point. So your friend, I mean, he,

00:09:10.480 yeah, he was a Navy SEAL. He saw some, just some terrible stuff. He, and he was tough. Um,

00:09:17.220 but then you see people where they're put in a different context and they become unresilient,

00:09:22.320 even though you think, wow, wow, you were resilient in this situation. Why doesn't resilience

00:09:27.660 translate over to civilian life where you don't have to, you know, checking your six all the time?

00:09:33.500 Why, why is it possible to have like uneven resilience or uneven courage?

00:09:37.340 Yeah, I think it absolutely is, Brett. I think you've hit on something that's really important.

00:09:42.620 And I do think that people have uneven courage. Like we all have uneven courage. I have uneven

00:09:48.640 courage. You have uneven courage. Zach has uneven courage. And the reason why is that you build

00:09:53.460 courage through the practice of facing fear. And so while you can learn to face fear very comfortably

00:09:59.240 in one context, you can still act cowardly in, in another. I mean, and, and I saw this a lot in my

00:10:06.020 work with veterans. You'd work with people who, you know, every day got up, they'd put on body armor,

00:10:11.060 check a radio, load a rifle, step into a Humvee, drive into the streets of a place like Fallujah Rock,

00:10:16.920 kick down a door behind which they believe they were all kind of terrorists. And then

00:10:20.600 they come home and maybe they've been burned or they've lost a limb and they're afraid to go to the

00:10:25.840 mall because they're afraid of what kids might say. And, and so you do find we all have uneven

00:10:32.280 courage. It was something that I, you know, I actually learned a good story from time when I was,

00:10:38.900 was boxing. I was, I knew a guy who had once been a trainer to one of the heavyweight champions of the

00:10:44.100 world. And he told me the story. He said that one day the heavyweight champion of the world calls

00:10:48.560 him on the phone and says, Hey man, Hey, I need you to, I need you to help me. I need you to talk to

00:10:53.120 somebody for me. And the trainer says, well, what is it? What do you, what do you need me to do?

00:10:57.040 And the heavyweight champion of the world says, there's this guy, he's, he's in the other room

00:11:00.120 and I'm going to take the phone in and you got to talk to him for me. And the trainer says, well,

00:11:04.040 well, who do you need me to talk to? And the heavyweight champion of the world says to him,

00:11:07.220 he says, man, it's, it's my gardener. And the trainer says, well, why do you need me to talk to,

00:11:11.520 talk to your gardener? And the heavyweight champ says, well, he's got this bill and he's trying to

00:11:15.940 overcharge me. And the trainer said to me, he said, Eric, this is one of the reasons why so

00:11:23.000 many of these men are taken advantage of once they become champions. He said, they've had all

00:11:28.080 of this training and how you confront one kind of fear. And no one would question their physical

00:11:33.300 courage in the ring. And yet they've never learned how you confront somebody over an emotional issue,

00:11:38.540 a social issue, a financial issue. And then they become champions and they're hit by all of these

00:11:43.180 issues and they're often beset by fear. So I think it's very true. We all have uneven courage. And I

00:11:48.580 think the promise of, you know, what I hope is, is the promise of the resilience book is it gives

00:11:53.720 everybody, points us in a direction to show us how we can start to build that courage in our lives.

00:11:59.240 How do you define resilience? Because we've written about it before on the site. We've

00:12:03.200 interviewed other guests who've talked about resilience. Do you define it as bouncing back

00:12:08.100 or is it something else? So I actually, I think it's something else, Brett. I think that

00:12:13.240 resilience is the virtue that enables us to move through hardship and become better. That's how I

00:12:20.140 define it. It's the virtue that enables you to move through hardship and become better. And I'll tell

00:12:24.060 you why I don't think of it as, as bouncing back. So you may know the resilience, our use of the word

00:12:31.840 resilience actually comes to us from physics. So in physics, there's this principle of elasticity

00:12:37.640 and the basic idea is that you hit an object with compressive stress and resilience is the measure of

00:12:44.700 how quickly that object can return to its prior state after it's been hit by an outside force.

00:12:50.760 And so that's what we've taken that idea of resilience and we've applied it to human beings. And we tell

00:12:55.360 people you should just bounce back, bounce back, bounce back. And I actually believe human beings can't

00:13:00.980 bounce back. And the reason why you can't bounce back is because you can't go back in time.

00:13:06.760 So the 19 year old Marine who leaves for Afghanistan is never going to be 19 again. And parents who lose

00:13:13.840 a child are never going to be the same parents again. The entrepreneur whose business goes bankrupt is

00:13:19.080 never going to be the same entrepreneur again. So what resilient people are able to do is not to bounce

00:13:24.380 back from hardship, but they're able to integrate hard experiences into their lives in such a way that they

00:13:30.020 become better. And that's what I think is really at the heart of resilience.

00:13:34.500 Do you think, and we've, I've asked this question too, you know, when I look back at my own ancestors,

00:13:40.220 right. And, you know, they, they crossed the plains with hand carts, buried children, buried wise,

00:13:47.200 buried husbands, and they just seemed really tough. And, and now you look at, I look at myself and

00:13:52.980 there's like situations where I'm just like, I kind of like, I'm like that boxer. I'm like, oh gosh,

00:13:56.920 I got to like talk to this, this guy who's overcharging me. That kind of freaks me out.

00:14:01.240 Do you think our modern culture, sort of our comforts make us less resilient because we don't

00:14:05.200 have opportunities to practice it all that often?

00:14:08.260 I definitely think that cultures in the past had to live harder lives. And it's one of the reasons

00:14:15.820 why so much of the wisdom about resilience that's in the book is ancient wisdom. It's because 2000 years

00:14:23.000 ago, if your friend who is 22 years old got a toothache, they might die. The odds of your children

00:14:29.900 living past the age of seven were slim. People had to deal with starvation. They had to deal with

00:14:35.940 drought. They had to deal with disease and hardship in a way that was, that for many of us can't even

00:14:41.680 fathom today. And so what's powerful, I think, is when you look back though, you see there is

00:14:47.460 all of this ancient wisdom about how to deal with hardship. And what I've tried to do in resilience

00:14:53.900 is to make a lot of that wisdom really accessible to people so that you can see how, what people

00:15:00.920 learned in the past can be applied to your life today. Okay. So throughout the book, each letter

00:15:06.240 has a topic. Yes. I guess it's sort of a component of resilience. I mean, I know you can't go through

00:15:12.340 exhaustively all of them, but what are some of like the big components of resilience and how do you go

00:15:16.980 about developing these? Well, so I think, you know, big picture, I'd say in terms of how you develop

00:15:23.280 resilience, it's, it's the same, like the way you develop any virtue, right? It's like courage. It's

00:15:28.100 like compassion. It's like humility. And you, you develop a virtue by practicing it. If you want to

00:15:34.040 be courageous, you act with courage. If you want to be compassionate, you act with compassion.

00:15:38.860 It's a very Aristotelian approach. Yes, yes, exactly. It's a very Aristotelian. And what's great about it

00:15:44.140 too, Brett, is that it's so hopeful because what it says to you is that you do not have to be the

00:15:49.920 person that you are today. If you want to be someone else, if you want to change your character,

00:15:55.340 if you start acting in a certain way, you can literally shape and build your own character

00:16:01.040 through by, with the right intention followed by the right actions. And that's, what's really,

00:16:06.640 that's, what's really hopeful about this. And so, you know, some, just some of the pieces that we

00:16:11.000 talk about in resilience is that, you know, people are much more resilient when they have a purpose,

00:16:16.400 when they have a why. One of the things that I quote in the book is a philosopher who said that

00:16:21.900 if you have the right why, you can make it through any how. A lot of times when people are in a place

00:16:27.760 where they're dealing with hardship and change and challenge and chaos and confusion, they're

00:16:32.720 overwhelmed by how they're trying to think, you know, how am I going to support my family? How am I

00:16:36.420 going to deal with this? And if people have the right why, if they know that I have to do this

00:16:41.980 because my family needs me, because my community needs me, because my friends need me, that why

00:16:48.280 actually makes people much more powerful. So, you know, I talk, for example, about how you build that

00:16:53.480 sense of purpose. Also, people who are resilient find ways to take responsibility. Even in situations

00:17:01.540 where lots of things are out of their control, they find ways to take responsibility for what

00:17:07.560 they can be responsible for. And as you know, there are other chapters about how you find a model for

00:17:12.700 yourself, how you build mentors into your life, how you build mental toughness. All of those different

00:17:19.080 pieces actually go into helping us to live resilient lives. And one thing that struck me as I read this

00:17:25.760 book, and a lot of the books that I've read about resilience is that I think misses is that I think

00:17:33.440 Americans often think of this idea of resilience that you'll achieve it. And then once you're there,

00:17:37.360 like you're good to go, like, you'll never like everything, it doesn't matter whatever comes you

00:17:42.080 you've achieved resilience. So you're good. But to reading your book, it sounds like it is a continual

00:17:47.740 thing. Like some days you'll be more resilient. And then other days, you might be less, but you have to

00:17:51.920 keep working at it. Yeah, that's exactly right. That this is, this is a practice that you build

00:17:58.260 into your life. And just like being humble, or being courageous, or being compassionate, it's not

00:18:03.920 like you get to say, you know what, I achieved courage two years ago. And now I don't have to act

00:18:10.280 with courage anymore. You, you, the virtues manifest themselves by what we do in the world. And so if you're

00:18:17.460 going to be resilient, you have to be resilient every day. And what's fortunate is that life

00:18:22.560 provides us with all of these different opportunities to learn and to grow and to build

00:18:27.860 our character every day. So you have to be process oriented, not outcome oriented. Absolutely,

00:18:33.440 absolutely. Now, that doesn't mean that you don't have set of goals, and you push yourself and you

00:18:38.500 challenge yourself towards that. But what it does mean is that you recognize that the process of

00:18:43.560 building a virtue is something that's never complete, you never get to say, like,

00:18:48.360 I'm resilient. Now I'm done, I finished the course, like we all every day have to build resilience.

00:18:54.040 Even for me, what was fun, Brett, about writing the book was that it actually made me reflect on my

00:18:59.720 own life. And I think, you know, helped me to build build resilience in my own life.

00:19:05.040 So you're going back to that idea about taking responsibility is an important part of you mentioned

00:19:09.520 somewhere that really stuck out to me was this, you know, oftentimes we live in a society that has

00:19:13.420 that we have a morality of intentions, that, oh, you know, like, you have like, I want to do that,

00:19:19.400 but then you really don't do anything. I mean, can you explain what you meant by a morality of

00:19:24.080 intentions? And how does that make a culture or a person less resilient?

00:19:29.720 Yeah, so what happens a lot today, Brett, is that I think there are two ways of thinking about

00:19:34.580 morality, right? You can think of either a morality of intentions or a morality of results.

00:19:39.900 And the morality of intention says that we get to measure our goodness in terms of what we hope to

00:19:45.780 accomplish rather than what we actually accomplish. It tells us that our thoughts and feelings count for

00:19:51.400 something in their own right. And it's an appealing philosophy for people who exist or want to exist in

00:19:56.720 a world of pure thought and feeling. But it can actually be a very selfish kind of morality. I think

00:20:02.220 one of the examples I used in the book as I was writing to Zach, as I said, look, Zach, I said,

00:20:08.360 think about somebody who decides that they want to tutor a third grader, right? They're going to go

00:20:13.620 after school, they're going to tutor a third grader who's having trouble, where they're going to teach

00:20:17.260 them how to read. Right now, our society starts applauding for that person because they've got

00:20:22.700 the right intentions. And it's certainly nice if they want to show up every day. But what I say is

00:20:27.800 it's wrong to go to those lessons unprepared and incapable of doing real good. Why? Because you'd waste

00:20:34.040 that child's time and you'd stand in the way of the help that she really needs.

00:20:37.240 From the perspective of intentions, the volunteer can pat himself or herself on the back. But from

00:20:43.200 the perspective of results, that volunteer is actually making a contribution to the child's

00:20:48.160 illiteracy. And the reason why it's so important to have a morality of results, if you want to be

00:20:53.440 resilient, is that you have to actually look at the results that the world is showing you.

00:20:58.380 Okay. Oh, go ahead.

00:21:00.360 Yeah, yeah. No, no, please.

00:21:01.920 Yeah. Well, I mean, sort of related to that, and this is sort of a common theme throughout,

00:21:05.800 sort of related to this idea of wanting to live in the world of feelings. A lot of your

00:21:12.800 advice to your friend was like, it was just action oriented.

00:21:16.460 Yes.

00:21:17.460 And I think oftentimes in society, we have this idea, if you feel it, and then you'll do it,

00:21:22.060 what you feel, but you actually propose it's actually different. If you want to feel a certain way,

00:21:26.080 you need to do those things that will make you feel that way. Is that right?

00:21:29.760 Exactly. Exactly. And it's actually, you know, and this is key to actually understanding how we

00:21:34.660 create happiness in our lives and how we build joy. One of the things I said to Zach, you know,

00:21:40.320 we were having this discussion one time, and he was telling me about how he was feeling bad in the

00:21:45.000 morning, and then he was feeling better, and then he was feeling bad, and how his doctors were asking

00:21:49.420 him how he's feeling, and his wife was asking him how he's feeling. And I said, like, what matters right

00:21:54.500 now is not how you were feeling, right? It's not that I don't love you. It's not that I don't care

00:21:59.700 about you, but that's not what's most important right now. And that our culture sometimes puts

00:22:05.020 people in a trap where we first ask them how they're feeling. It's the first question, hey,

00:22:10.300 how are you feeling? How are you doing? How are you feeling? And what happens then is that people

00:22:14.700 begin to think that, well, if I'm feeling a certain way, then I should do something. I should act a certain

00:22:20.580 way. And then what happens, of course, is that they act a certain way, and if you act a certain

00:22:25.540 way repeatedly, you actually build your identity that way. What I said to Zach is you actually have

00:22:31.420 to flip that. And the first question you ask yourself is, who am I, and who do I want to be?

00:22:38.580 If you say, and the answer to that question might be, I want to be a good father. Might be, I want to be

00:22:43.500 a good boss. The answer to that question might be, I want to be a good athlete. And lots of different

00:22:48.460 questions, but the first question you ask yourself is, who do I want to be? And then, you know, if I

00:22:54.180 want to be that kind of person, well, therefore, I must do these things to be that person. And then

00:23:00.120 what you find, and this is the magic piece, is that the way that you act will shape the way that you

00:23:05.000 feel. And we all know this at a really basic level, right? If you get two hours of sleep, you feel

00:23:09.780 different than if you get eight hours of sleep. If you eat healthy, you feel different than if you don't

00:23:13.620 eat healthy. But our culture sometimes puts this privacy on feelings where if we really want to be

00:23:19.880 resilient, we first have to think about our identity. Okay. And so, I mean, what could you do?

00:23:25.740 I mean, if you see someone who's struggling, like your friend, I mean, do you, I mean, what's the best

00:23:33.140 approach to help them? Do you not ask them about their feelings? Or do you say, hey, let's just go,

00:23:37.180 let's go do something? I mean, what, like, what, how do you put that into practice if you're trying to help

00:23:41.200 someone who's having a hard time? Yeah. So, you know, I mean, there's lots of different ways to

00:23:46.260 put it into practice. And I'll mention just, just a few. I mean, first is to actually ask the question,

00:23:52.920 like, who do you want to be? And a lot of times, you know, I asked, I asked Zach, like, who do you

00:23:58.560 want to be? I told him at one point, like, look, you've got a choice here. Like, you can either be

00:24:03.580 the courageous Zach Walker, who I knew when we were going through buds, or you can be the guy who doesn't

00:24:08.740 show up for the job interview, because he's afraid. So who do you want to be? And so instead

00:24:13.300 of starting with the feeling, oh, I'm feeling afraid, you just ask the question, who do I want

00:24:17.680 to be? And then, you know, oftentimes, they end up answering their own question. Well, that's who I

00:24:21.760 want to be. So that's what I need to do. But you also raise a really good point, Brett, is that

00:24:26.520 oftentimes, instead of just asking people how they feel, when people start acting in a certain way,

00:24:32.600 they'll start doing, they'll start feeling it in a different way. So you go out and you exercise with

00:24:37.300 them, you go for a walk with them, you go out and you do a service project together in a community in

00:24:42.520 the community. And what happens is all of a sudden, as people start acting in that way, they actually

00:24:47.880 start feeling a different way. And you can really help help your friends. And when you when you help

00:24:52.740 pull them into the right kind of action with you. Okay. Well, one thing I loved about your book was

00:24:57.960 that you you wove in all these different authors and thinkers from ancient times and even modern times.

00:25:04.260 were there any thinkers or philosophers or writers in particular that really spoke to the issue of

00:25:11.780 resilience in a very articulate way that influenced a lot of your thinking when you're writing to your

00:25:17.340 friend? Well, so there were there were a lot of different thinkers, as you mentioned, who I drew on

00:25:23.500 and a few of them who are really solid who I'll point to. And I mean, there are, you know, for folks who pick up

00:25:29.280 the book, I think there's 150 some plus different sources. Yeah, it's awesome. Lots of places for

00:25:35.520 people to go for further for further reading. But you know, one one author who I really enjoyed was

00:25:42.000 Edith Hamilton. Edith Hamilton wrote a book called The Greek Way. And in The Greek Way, she actually

00:25:49.580 writes this wonderful chapter on Aeschylus. Aeschylus, you and some of our listeners will remember

00:25:56.280 Aeschylus is often considered to be the father of tragedy, the person who really started writing

00:26:01.080 tragedies. And what was interesting was, was Aeschylus was also a soldier. He was a soldier

00:26:07.120 who'd lived a lived a hard life. And he knew what it took to move through pain and create wisdom,

00:26:12.720 what it took to move through suffering and create strength. And so I think that everybody would benefit

00:26:18.360 from reading Edith Hamilton's book. I think you mentioned, you know, earlier when we were talking,

00:26:23.720 Alistair McIntyre's After Virtue, excellent book there, really gives people a solid sense for for

00:26:30.540 how Aristotle and others thought about virtue and how it how it's created. It's a hard read.

00:26:37.920 It's super dense. Yes, we should, we should warn people ahead of time. That's, that's a tough read,

00:26:43.880 you can you can bite it off in small, small chunks. You know, but one of the things I'd also say in

00:26:50.640 terms of reading, like where I direct people, is I'd say, you know, if you're really thinking about

00:26:56.180 how you build resilience in your life, one of the best things that you can do for yourself is to read

00:27:00.800 a really good biography. Because what a really good biography will always show you is that great

00:27:07.460 people suffered. Every great person who did anything worthwhile has suffered. Every great person has had

00:27:14.460 to do in indoor critics, and criticism. And, and always in a really good biography, you'll see

00:27:21.100 how that person actually put all of these different pieces of their life together to actually create

00:27:27.100 something meaningful. And so I'd encourage people as they're thinking about reading to also think about

00:27:31.340 picking up a really good biography, to understand how somebody else managed to build this kind of

00:27:37.900 resilience in their life. Well, I'm curious about this, and you don't have to answer it if you don't want

00:27:41.460 to. But from your own life, are there examples when you showed resilience, or unresilience? And

00:27:48.240 what did you take away from those personal experiences of yours?

00:27:53.000 Yeah, of course, there are. Look, you know, I mean, I think one of the nice things about reflecting on

00:27:58.760 your life, and, you know, even writing this book for me, is it helps you to reflect on all of these

00:28:03.840 different places where, you know, where you were courageous, and where you weren't, where you're

00:28:08.300 compassionate, and where you could have been more so, where you were resilient, and where you

00:28:12.760 weren't. I think what's also nice about resilience, I'll say, is that, you know, there are a lot of

00:28:19.680 virtues that you see, like, they happen in a moment. So somebody's either courageous or cowardly in a

00:28:24.820 particular moment. What's interesting about the virtue of resilience is that we see it manifest over

00:28:30.040 time. So you can go back and look at your life, and always, and say, you know what, I really,

00:28:35.700 I really learned something, or I haven't yet learned the lesson that I needed to learn

00:28:40.400 from that experience. And, you know, one of the things that I write about in the book that was

00:28:44.320 really hard for me, one of the hardest points in my life, was when I got divorced. I felt ashamed,

00:28:51.740 I felt like I'd let people down. This was one of those places in my life where I remember,

00:28:59.820 you know, I'd come home, I was a Navy SEAL at the time, I'd come home, I'd get in bed, and it was

00:29:06.540 hard to get out. And what that did for me, though, was it over time, it really helped me build an

00:29:13.340 empathy that, you know, even after having done all of that humanitarian work and working with kids and

00:29:19.100 families in tough situations, I think personally experiencing that kind of hardship really helped

00:29:25.580 build an empathy that I hope has made me a better leader and a better friend.

00:29:32.020 Fantastic. Well, Eric, where can people find out more about your book?

00:29:35.620 Well, Brett, the book is available. Certainly, we'd invite everybody to come out to ericgritens.com.

00:29:41.620 It's just E-R-I-C-G-R-E-I-T-E-N-S.com. You can go out to the website there. Also, it's available on

00:29:49.020 Amazon, Barnes & Noble. People can go out to their local bookstores. And at all those places,

00:29:55.320 they'll be able to learn more about resilience.

00:29:57.700 Fantastic. Well, Eric Gritens, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:30:00.860 Brett, it's my pleasure. Honored to be on with you. Thank you for having me.

00:30:04.340 Our guest today was Eric Gritens. He's the author of the book, Resilience,

00:30:07.300 Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life. It's available on Amazon.com. Do yourself a favor,

00:30:12.820 go pick up a copy. Like I said, best book I've read in a long time. I'm going to reread it again here

00:30:18.080 in a bit. I'd love to hear what you think about it. Tweet me at Art of Manliness. Leave a comment on the

00:30:23.440 podcast. If you share any tidbits that you enjoyed from it, go get it. It's a fantastic read. You can

00:30:28.200 also find out more information about Eric's work at ericgritens.com. Well, that wraps up another

00:30:34.680 edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the

00:30:39.040 Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And a great way you can show your support for the

00:30:43.540 podcast and for the website is stopping by the Art of Manliness store, store.artofmanliness.com.

00:30:49.120 We're actually having a sell on all our apparel right now. 30% off all t-shirts. We also have a

00:30:55.120 hat from Ebbets Field flannel that's there. Yeah, again, 30% off. Pick one up. Got some other stuff

00:31:00.540 in there. Coffee mugs, Benjamin Franklin journal, lapel pins, tie bars, you name it. We got it.

00:31:05.900 Store.artofmanliness.com. Your purchases will support the podcast as well as the content we do

00:31:10.360 on the site. I'd really appreciate it. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay

00:31:15.160 manly.

The Art of Manliness - March 13, 2015

#105： Lessons from a Navy SEAL on Resilience With Eric Greitens

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript