The Art of Manliness - Beyond Resilience — How to Become Shatterproof

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

00:00:11.940 Resilience is often touted as the end-all, be-all of coping with life's challenges and

00:00:15.980 setbacks. But my guest knows from her studies, executive coaching, and her own life that

00:00:21.160 sometimes resilience just isn't enough. Dr. Tasha Urich is an organizational psychologist

00:00:26.500 and researcher, and the author of Shatterproof, How to Thrive in a World of Constant Chaos.

00:00:32.260 Today on the show, Tasha explains why the concept of resilience rose to prominence in the 2010s,

00:00:37.440 how resilience can be improved a little as a skill, but is largely an exhaustible capacity,

00:00:41.940 and how you know when you're hitting your resilience ceiling. We then talk about the

00:00:46.040 more sustainable skill set and strength of becoming shatterproof. We discuss the potential to grow

00:00:50.360 forward instead of simply bouncing back, the psychological needs that have to be met to

00:00:54.380 become shatterproof, and research-backed tools for thriving in life instead of just surviving.

00:00:59.400 After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash shatterproof.

00:01:18.020 All right, Tasha Urich, welcome back to the show.

00:01:20.980 Thanks for having me back, Brett.

00:01:22.140 So we had you on a couple years ago to talk about your book, Insight, which is all about

00:01:26.940 self-awareness and becoming more self-aware. You had a new book out called Shatterproof

00:01:32.600 that makes the case that resilience sometimes isn't enough to cope with all the chaos that life can

00:01:39.680 bring. And what's interesting is that as you started to research this book a few years ago,

00:01:44.920 your life was upended by debilitating health issues. And then your research about resilience and

00:01:51.420 thriving in chaos, it really started to become me-search. So what happened to your health?

00:01:55.320 What was going on in your life at that time?

00:01:57.800 So the very short story is I've had a lifetime of medical issues that have perplexed every

00:02:04.360 specialist I'd seen. Really, really bad pain. Somebody told me I had the spine of a 70-year-old

00:02:10.720 when I was 25. But a lot of things that couldn't be stitched together. But generally, what would

00:02:16.440 happen is I would be resilient. Whatever weird health challenge I was facing, whether, again,

00:02:22.660 it was pain or I would sometimes have these full-body allergic reactions, even though I didn't have

00:02:29.080 allergies, I would just try to grit through it. And basically, until the age of 40, I was able to

00:02:35.940 keep living my life with some limitations, knowing that probably there was something that was

00:02:42.140 diagnosable, but nobody knew what it was, and I had a pretty good life. But COVID happened. I think

00:02:48.720 all of us were going and going and going. And then when we had to stop, my body was no longer fueled

00:02:54.540 by adrenaline. And what happened over the course of about two years was it started with a pain in my

00:03:01.220 arms that kind of spread to basically my entire body. Every time I'd stand up, I would be dizzy or

00:03:08.380 I'd faint. My resting heart rate was 150 beats a minute, just all of these crazy, crazy symptoms.

00:03:14.880 And eventually, by about mid-2021, I was completely bedridden. I would dust myself off and go do a

00:03:23.300 keynote for 24 hours and come back and pay for it for five days. And so it was really interesting about

00:03:29.220 this process, as you mentioned, that I started this research in 2020 on how do people bounce back when

00:03:35.740 bad things happen. This became something that was so critical for me. And I've never been in this

00:03:42.260 situation as a researcher where I have needed an immediate answer to whatever I was investigating in

00:03:49.120 order to save myself. And going back to this idea of resilience, I did all the things I was supposed

00:03:55.540 to do. I put all my resilience practices, so things like gratitude and social support and optimism and

00:04:03.180 trying to reframe my challenges as opportunities, I put them all in a spreadsheet. And at the point

00:04:08.880 where I was gunning the most on resilience, I would print the spreadsheet out every day and I would check

00:04:14.780 the practices that I had used that day. But I couldn't help but notice, as my physical health was

00:04:21.260 deteriorating, I was more anxious, more stressed, more depressed than I had been in as long as I

00:04:28.180 could remember. I was thinking to myself, this isn't the worst thing that's happened to me. Why

00:04:33.560 can't I crawl out of this hole? And that was what led me, and we'll talk about it today, to discover

00:04:38.980 that resilience is actually not the end-all, be-all solution to helping us cope with hard times.

00:04:45.260 So, when I wrote this book, I guess the bottom line is, I was personally experiencing the limitations

00:04:51.780 of resilience while I was going through this physical spiral.

00:04:56.000 Yeah. And come to find out, you ended up, you have like a rare genetic disease, right?

00:05:00.600 I did. And so, flash forward between when I was about to give up because my resilience practices

00:05:07.480 weren't working to six or eight months when I started to use these shatterproof practices that I

00:05:13.280 talked about, what I ended up getting diagnosed with is a genetic connective tissue disease called

00:05:18.900 Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, or EDS. And it happens when your body actually doesn't know how to produce

00:05:25.360 the proteins of collagen and elastin. And the problem with that is those proteins exist everywhere in your

00:05:32.240 body. And most physicians are told that it's so rare that they'll never see a case in their practice

00:05:38.720 in their lifetime. But there are estimates that it's as common as one in 5,000 people.

00:05:45.020 So, it's very interesting. And I feel really privileged to be able to talk about it with this platform

00:05:50.080 is, you know, some of the diseases that we think are rare might not be as rare as we think.

00:05:55.380 Yeah. So, you had your career the same time you were trying to figure out what was wrong with you.

00:06:00.060 And that's another added stressor. So, you have to go to different specialists.

00:06:03.720 And you talk about in the book, you had to track your own health records because, again,

00:06:08.940 a lot of the doctors were like, what is this? I don't know what's going on. So, you had to become

00:06:12.440 an advocate for yourself. And then you're writing a book. And yeah, as you said, resilience wasn't

00:06:17.620 enough. You were doing all the resilience things that people talk about. So, let's talk about

00:06:21.800 resilience first. And then we'll get into Shatterproof. We've talked about resilience on the

00:06:25.560 podcast before. We've actually written a series about it way back in the 2010s when resilience was hot.

00:06:31.220 What do psychologists mean by resilience? And why do they become such a big thing in the 2010s?

00:06:37.960 Yeah, that's a really important question. Psychologists define resilience, particularly

00:06:42.320 empirical scientists, right, as the capacity to cope with hard things. And there's some debate

00:06:48.640 in the literature about this, but I think that's kind of the commonly accepted definition.

00:06:52.840 But what that means is, you know, you sort of hear the word capacity. And there's all these

00:06:59.040 practices that we can do to increase our capacity. But if it's a capacity and not a skill set,

00:07:06.300 it means that there's a point at which we are going to exhaust that capacity. So, I know we'll

00:07:12.540 come back to that, but I think that's a really important nuance of this definition. The other way

00:07:16.420 to look at resilience in kind of a more practical way is it's a tool to keep us together during,

00:07:21.600 you know, shorter term crises versus, as we'll see, kind of a singular strategy for coping with,

00:07:27.980 like, chronic long-term stress. But I think, you know, the reason, in my opinion, that it became

00:07:35.100 so popular in the 2010s is, you know, you can sort of argue that we live in a chaos era where,

00:07:42.860 you know, every day is another headline, another crisis. There's more uncertainty than we've sort of

00:07:48.240 ever experienced. That era arguably began with the global recession in 2008 and 2009. And right around

00:07:57.600 that time, resilience went from being this kind of, you know, esoteric scientific concept to something

00:08:05.620 that really went into the mainstream. So, instead of a capacity, it became a skill that anyone could

00:08:13.280 develop and summon at will, right? And so, this obscure scientific concept was suddenly this,

00:08:18.900 like, empowering self-improvement tool. And there's a lot of good that came out of that,

00:08:23.840 I think. You know, the last thing I want to do is come on today and say anything negative about

00:08:29.480 resilience. But I think the problem was some people took it too far. Like, I talk about quotes in my book

00:08:35.880 that I wish I could conjure at will, but, you know, it's stuff like, resilience is the singular

00:08:40.220 strategy to help us lead a better, happier life. And if you go back to the scientific research on

00:08:46.920 this and including our research that we did, that's just not empirically true.

00:08:52.360 Well, I thought that was interesting. You highlight, and this happens to all concepts,

00:08:55.840 like psychological concepts that become popular. There's a lot of buzz and people get excited about

00:09:01.060 it. But then consequently, there's a lot of myths that pop up because people misread the research or

00:09:06.640 they're not explaining the research completely. And it contradicts even what the initial resilience

00:09:12.140 researchers talked about. So, what misconceptions have grown up around resilience as compared to what

00:09:17.620 the research actually says? So, in my research on this, I looked at several hundred articles,

00:09:24.280 but in particular, the 200 most highly cited. So, those are the articles that other researchers

00:09:30.460 go back to and find credibility in. And the three myths that came out of this really threw me for

00:09:37.300 a loop. And I'll just say as a preface, you know, I'm a fourth-generation entrepreneur.

00:09:41.920 Gritting through is in my DNA. And I was shocked because, again, as I said, I first found these

00:09:47.880 patterns in my data, didn't understand what that meant, where they were coming from. And then when I

00:09:53.400 went back into the research, I said, oh, other people have found this. This has been true.

00:09:57.180 So, the first myth is, you know, I think we all think that if we do all of these practices,

00:10:03.520 that it's going to help us thrive. But what the research says is resilience is actually intended

00:10:10.000 to help us survive. And I don't know about you, Brett, but I feel like we all deserve more

00:10:16.440 than just surviving. And I think, you know, everybody that's listening to this has their own experience of

00:10:22.120 it, of like, you know, it's easy to feel like at the end of the day, like, I barely got through today.

00:10:26.560 And then I'm going to do it again tomorrow. So, that's the first one.

00:10:29.740 The second myth is, I think, with this concept of resilience moving from a capacity to a skill,

00:10:35.940 there's a thought that like, oh, I can strengthen my resilience muscle. I can dramatically improve.

00:10:40.840 I'm in full control of my resilience. But what the research shows is that actually,

00:10:47.100 some of us have more resilience than others. And all of these like training programs to improve

00:10:52.320 resilience have pretty spotty records in terms of whether or not they help us be more resilient.

00:10:59.340 And this leads to something called grit gaslighting, right? Of like, well, you should have just spent

00:11:03.960 more time on your yoga mat, or, you know, you didn't do your gratitude affirmation today.

00:11:08.420 And to me, I think that's really powerful because if it's not under our control, in all cases,

00:11:13.900 we can't beat ourselves up for it.

00:11:15.300 The third myth is, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. What we know from the research is that

00:11:23.100 ongoing or extreme stress doesn't make us stronger. Like in small amounts, it does. It's called the

00:11:29.620 stress inoculation hypothesis. But ongoing stress actually depletes our resilience and makes us more

00:11:36.440 vulnerable to breaking. So, I'm curious, how does that strike you? What's your reaction to those myths?

00:11:42.680 I mean, to me, it makes sense because I just experienced it in my own life. I mean, I think

00:11:46.040 resilience is useful. I think it's the conclusion you make. Resilience is a useful capacity to fall

00:11:50.880 back on in the short term. But then if you're continually getting beat down, like you just get

00:11:55.580 worn down where you're just like, okay, I'm done. And you quit your job or you got to take a sabbatical

00:12:01.480 or whatever, or even worse, you might resort to drugs or alcohol to sort of soothe the pain. That

00:12:07.700 happens to a lot of people. And that one point about resilience, like some people are more resilient

00:12:12.400 than others. Like it's just inherent. That actually lines up. I've seen research. Maybe you came

00:12:17.000 across this as well. A lot of times when people talk about resilience, we always talk about the

00:12:20.620 Navy SEALs. Oh, the Navy SEALs. You can be resilient like a Navy SEAL. But what they found

00:12:24.540 amongst Navy SEALs is that most SEALs, they have like, there's like this peptide, neuropeptide Y,

00:12:29.800 I think is what it is. And it helps you be more resilient. They've made a connection between this

00:12:34.580 peptide, neuropeptide and resilience. And SEALs have more of it for some reason. And they think it's just

00:12:39.980 like a genetic thing. And so the idea is that what the SEALs are doing with like their BUDS training,

00:12:45.920 they're not actually trying to train people to be more resilient. It's just like, they're trying

00:12:49.340 to filter for the super resilient type. And like, that's fine. I think it's fine. Cause like, I know

00:12:54.940 I probably don't have that neuropeptide Y Navy SEAL gene and I'm never going to make the SEALs and

00:12:59.780 that's okay. There's other things I can do. Yeah, no, I think that's a really good, that's helpful to

00:13:04.000 keep in mind, right? Because there's nothing wrong with us when we exhaust our capacity for resilience.

00:13:09.980 You know, particularly people who have had like early childhood trauma or who are experiencing

00:13:17.060 chronic compounding stress in multiple parts of their life, which I think is living in the 21st

00:13:22.320 century, frankly, those are the things that deplete resilience. And so, so there's nothing wrong with

00:13:27.560 you if you, as we'll talk about, hit your resilience ceiling. Yeah. Let's talk about this. So you talk

00:13:32.220 about, there's like a resilience ceiling. How do you know when you're reaching your resilience ceiling

00:13:37.420 and like what determines our resilience ceiling? So I think, you know, the first thing is going

00:13:42.520 back to what we were just talking about, everybody has a different ceiling and I wouldn't argue that

00:13:47.300 it's set in stone because I think there is some evidence that we can improve our resilience, you

00:13:51.220 know, even if it's just a little bit, but because our physical and mental energy are finite, resilience

00:13:58.500 is something that can run out, right? It's, it's an exhaustible capacity. And so when we reach

00:14:05.240 that limit, it's kind of this idea of like, you're fine until the second you're not. When I talk to

00:14:12.320 high achieving people, stressed out strivers, I call them, our fellow stressed out strivers about

00:14:17.020 hitting their resilience ceiling, people talk about like, you know, it was the smallest like setback or

00:14:22.860 demand or annoyance. And I just suddenly was done. I could not deal. You know, I had a, I had a kind

00:14:30.080 of embarrassing moment with my scanning my manuscript about a month ago. And I had a moment where I hit my

00:14:35.080 resilience ceiling. It was kind of a minor break, but you know, it was a signal to me that I needed to pay

00:14:40.000 attention. So I think the signs are number one is a sense of lost mojo. You have less energy, less

00:14:48.300 motivation to keep all the plates spinning. It's kind of this like, oh, I don't even care if everything

00:14:52.720 falls apart. The second thing I mentioned is that little things feel big. So you're getting unusually

00:14:59.080 worked up by issues that are relatively minor that maybe even wouldn't normally send you over the

00:15:04.300 edge. And then probably the biggest signal that I've personally found is when your top tools are

00:15:11.720 failing. So everybody has their coping strategies, their resilience practices, but as soon as they

00:15:17.340 start to feel like piling on instead of providing relief, that's a signal you're getting close to your

00:15:23.900 ceiling. And you know, for me with my resilience spreadsheet, when that started feeling like

00:15:29.080 another stressful thing I had to do that day, that was a signal that I needed to pay attention.

00:15:34.220 So we all have a different resilience ceiling. There's different symptoms. If you're feeling the

00:15:37.820 burnout, the lost mojo, your yoga is not working, your exercise being outdoors is no longer helping

00:15:43.980 you recharge, then you've probably reached your resilience ceiling. So let's talk about shatterproof.

00:15:48.460 You argue that if we really want to make it in this world of chaos and stress, we got to move

00:15:53.380 beyond resilience. We're not going to give up on resilience. Again, it's a useful tool,

00:15:56.600 but we need to start thinking about becoming shatterproof. What does it mean to be shatterproof?

00:16:02.000 So put simply, becoming shatterproof means we proactively channel the hard things that happen,

00:16:09.280 not to bounce back, but to grow forward. And we do that by harnessing the cracked or broken parts of

00:16:18.520 ourselves to access the best version of ourselves. And this is all based in our research on, you know,

00:16:26.760 we found three different reactions people had to adversity. One was, you know, sometimes it breaks

00:16:32.480 you. Two is, you know, you resiliently bounce back. And three is you become better and stronger.

00:16:39.660 And what we discovered with this third group of shatterproof people was when you're able to be

00:16:45.380 strengthened by adversity, you don't try to pretend and power through or deny that you're cracking or

00:16:52.580 deny that you're struggling. Instead, you use that as a source of insight, of motivation, and to pivot,

00:17:01.300 to align your life more closely to the life that you want to live. And it was really inspiring to sort

00:17:08.920 of hear some of these stories, big and small, where people were experiencing really tough things and,

00:17:14.200 you know, said honestly and genuinely, that brought me closer to my loved ones. It brought me a new

00:17:21.540 source of strength or meaning. It brought me peace, purpose, joy in the worst things that were

00:17:27.020 happening. So I think it's, you know, if we can all become 25% more shatterproof, I think not only

00:17:33.300 would we all be a lot happier, I think the world would be a better place. Yeah. It reminded me as I was

00:17:38.160 reading about shatterproof of Nassim Talb's idea of becoming anti-fragile, where it's like, you're not just

00:17:42.400 resilient. The chaos actually makes you stronger. And he kind of talks about it in sort of an economic

00:17:47.560 ways. And I think with shatter, what you do with your book is like, how can you apply this on the

00:17:51.560 personal level? And you talk about one of the things you have to do if you want to start becoming

00:17:55.460 shatterproof is there's some mindset shifts you got to make happen in your head, like to become that.

00:18:00.600 So what are some of those mindset shifts we got to make to become shatterproof?

00:18:03.560 So there are three big ones. The first is, and this is, they all involve deprogramming for

00:18:10.020 stressed out strivers in my experience. The first is we have to move from kind of ignoring or pushing

00:18:16.760 through when things get hard to proactively embracing them and not celebrating them, not,

00:18:24.340 you know, platitudes about, oh, there's an opportunity in this crisis, but truly saying,

00:18:29.440 okay, you know, chaos is swirling around me. It's starting to break me. How can I channel this

00:18:36.520 to come out on the other side a little bit better for it? The second is kind of moving from the

00:18:43.180 capacity to cope, right? Of like, I just need to keep filling up my resilience reserves to the courage

00:18:50.460 to reinvent ourselves. I think there's a difference between sort of waiting for things to get better

00:18:56.520 and proactively saying this situation may or may not change, but I am going to make sure that I

00:19:03.960 change in a positive and proactive way. And then the third is, I think it kind of sums this up,

00:19:09.280 but it's from bouncing back to growing forward, to use these situations as fodder for growth.

00:19:16.160 Yeah. That second one can be hard because it's so easy to get stuck in inertia and kind of stick with

00:19:21.880 the devil, you know, it's like, well, I've always done this. If I make this change,

00:19:26.140 it might not work out. It could be worse. So I'll just stick with muddling along.

00:19:31.380 Right. I have this horrible job and my choices are either keep doing what I'm doing with no changes

00:19:36.200 or get a new job. And I'm too tired to get a new job, right? And I think so many of us are just

00:19:41.860 involved in daily firefighting that it feels like that's all we can do. But what I've discovered about

00:19:48.360 this framework, this, this shatterproof roadmap that we're going to talk about is it takes the

00:19:52.620 same amount of time as white knuckling through it. You know, it does take the awareness to step 0.50

00:19:57.940 back and say, okay, I need to pay attention here, but it's not any more time consuming than the misery

00:20:04.240 of gritting through those situations. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:20:09.300 And now back to the show. Okay. So let's do some recap here. Resilience is a certain skill set that

00:20:18.160 can help us bounce back in the face of short-term adversity, but it functions more like a limited

00:20:23.780 resource that can be depleted when we're facing ongoing or extreme stress. Being shatterproof gives

00:20:31.640 you a second skill set that it not only works for dealing with the current challenge, but then it

00:20:36.640 prepares you for your future ones as well. And I also, I think it's more sustainable. It's more

00:20:41.540 like a lifestyle that it's not something you just summon up during a crisis. It's something you're

00:20:45.500 doing all the time. And rather than depleting resources, being shatterproof actually generates

00:20:52.420 energy and renewal through the process of transformation. So you don't just bounce back,

00:20:57.880 you bounce back stronger. You're to come out better. So let's get into this. Let's learn how to be

00:21:02.860 more shatterproof. And you've got some research back tools to help you do this. And the first one

00:21:07.520 you talk about is to probe your pain. What do you mean by probing your pain?

00:21:12.640 What we discovered about shatterproof people is they didn't see their pain as a personal failure.

00:21:18.480 They saw it as a signal to pay attention and specifically a chance to challenge their

00:21:25.400 preconceptions, a way to kind of guide them to new ways to meeting their needs. Because the alternative,

00:21:34.480 you're pushing through it by denying it exists. And if you're denying it exists, a couple of things

00:21:40.420 happen. Number one is you get what's called negativity rebounds, which are when we try to

00:21:46.480 suppress our negative emotions, we are worse off in the long run. And then the second thing is it robs

00:21:52.280 us of the insight that we could get by saying, okay, what's going on here? Like this thing is

00:21:57.720 really disproportionately affecting me. I wonder what that's about. And so probing pain is a curious

00:22:04.080 way of examining what's going on with us in our tough moments. And so you're not wallowing in it.

00:22:10.400 You're not ruminating in it. You're not saying, oh, why me? It's just like, okay, what's going on?

00:22:14.680 If pain is a signal for something, what is it trying to tell me?

00:22:17.900 Right. Biologically, pain is a signal that something is wrong. And I got that signal pretty

00:22:24.980 clearly physically during my illness, but I also had that signal emotionally and mentally.

00:22:31.180 And I spent a really long time, I spent months and months and months just ignoring it and saying,

00:22:37.280 surely tomorrow will be better, but just hope alone. And as a good friend of mine says, hope is not a plan.

00:22:43.700 Hope is not a plan. Yeah. And so it's not just physical pain. Like in your case,

00:22:47.260 there was physical pain with your health issues you had. That was definitely there. But this,

00:22:51.420 you're talking, pain could be like existential pain. Like Kierkegaard talks about this. He's

00:22:56.100 one of my favorite philosophers. People listen to the podcast. They know I love Kierkegaard,

00:22:59.400 but he talked about anxiety. And for him, anxiety wasn't like, oh, I'm nervous. It's more like

00:23:04.560 it's two o'clock in the morning and you're laying in bed at night looking to the ceiling. It's like,

00:23:08.420 oh, geez, what is going? My life, something's not right here. He said,

00:23:11.300 you got to listen to that. Existential dread. Yeah. The existential dread. He said,

00:23:13.980 you got to listen to that because it's telling you need to do something. So, you know, if a guy

00:23:17.980 listening to this podcast is feeling that, probing your pain means, okay, what is this trying to tell

00:23:22.860 me? What's going on here? Right. And by the way, anyone who is a fellow existentialist with you and I

00:23:29.400 might notice a lot of those themes show up in this work as well. So I love that connection.

00:23:34.740 Okay. So you probe your pain, trying to figure out like, what is it trying to tell me?

00:23:37.440 Maybe my job is terrible. Maybe I need to move, get out of my hometown where I'm at.

00:23:43.740 Maybe that's what it is. Then you talk about how you can use self-determination theory to start

00:23:49.680 helping you formulate a plan for yourself to become more shatterproof. For those who aren't

00:23:53.820 familiar with self-determination theory, I'm a big fan of this theory. What is it and how can it help

00:23:57.960 you become more shatterproof? Self-determination theory is the coolest theory in psychology that no

00:24:04.560 one knows about. And I love that you're familiar with it because part of my mission with this book

00:24:09.720 is to really bring it out maybe into the mainstream a little bit more. But it's a theory that explains

00:24:15.540 what brings out the best in us and what brings out the beast. And those are not my words. Those are

00:24:23.060 Edward Deesey and Richard Ryan's words. And that's kind of this idea of what are the things that have

00:24:29.400 to happen for us to live a beautiful life, for our fundamental needs to be fulfilled. And then what

00:24:34.680 happens to us when we become that worst version of ourselves, when those needs are being actively

00:24:40.660 thwarted or frustrated. And self-determination theory outlines three fundamental biologically

00:24:48.680 programmed psychological needs that all humans have. And the idea is if these needs are being met,

00:24:56.240 we're the best version of ourselves. If they're being frustrated, we become the worst. And if

00:25:02.220 they're sort of just not there, then it's somewhere in between of just like a motivation. But the needs

00:25:06.940 are so confidence, which is a sense that we are doing well and we're growing. The second is choice,

00:25:14.520 which is feeling like we have agency and authenticity. And the third is connection, which is really just a

00:25:21.760 sense of kind of belonging, a sense that we have mutually supportive relationships. And all three

00:25:28.720 matter. And all three are important for not just being the best version of ourselves, but enjoying

00:25:34.580 and really finding meaning in this ride we call life. Yeah. So it's called self-determination theory

00:25:39.660 because it's the idea that when people have their psychological needs met, they have an innate

00:25:45.920 ability to self-determine their actions and behaviors. So when your needs are met, you're able to run on

00:25:50.980 intrinsic motivation instead of just extrinsic motivation. So you're able to direct your life

00:25:56.340 in a self-driven way. And those needs are, as you said, confidence or it's competence, choice,

00:26:03.700 that's agency. You can also say autonomy there and then feeling connected to others. So how does

00:26:09.040 self-determination theory line up with becoming shatterproof? Yeah. So I think fundamentally,

00:26:14.360 if I had to explain like how do you become shatterproof, it's about pivoting in the way

00:26:20.560 that you can under the constraints that you have to design a life where you're getting more of those

00:26:27.960 needs met. And it can be kind of a situation by situation thing where if you probe your pain,

00:26:33.720 you say, wow, I'm feeling like incredibly alone and incredibly disconnected. What can I do to restore

00:26:40.480 that sense of connection? Or it can just be sort of generally in life. Like how am I making decisions

00:26:46.080 overall in the longterm for myself that's supportive of those needs? Or am I living a life

00:26:52.600 of mustivation, right? Where I'm not actually acting in the interest of my own needs. I'm sort of just

00:26:58.220 trying to be everything to everyone and probably failing at that because no one can do that successfully

00:27:02.760 in my experience. So I think that's the heart of becoming shatterproof are the insights and

00:27:09.420 guidance from self-determination theory. And something you talk about is that sometimes or

00:27:15.580 oftentimes when people are feeling overwhelmed, stressed out, burned out, I think people intuitively

00:27:22.760 know that, okay, I need more, maybe I need more choice, more autonomy, or maybe I'm just feeling down

00:27:28.480 and need more confidence. But then you say sometimes what we do, instead of doing things that will

00:27:33.320 actually give us those things, we start chasing shadow goals. What are shadow goals?

00:27:38.320 Shadow goals are quick fixes for finding self-worth, power, or approval. And you see the difference?

00:27:49.420 So the difference between confidence and self-worth, the difference between choice and power,

00:27:55.340 the difference between connection and approval. What's really interesting is if we can't sort of get these

00:28:01.320 more intrinsic needs met, we start to look for substitutes for them. So for example, if our

00:28:08.600 confidence is being thwarted, let's say your boss at work just gave you a negative performance review,

00:28:13.480 we might fall into behaviors that, not even consciously, where we think we're trying to get

00:28:19.900 that thing that's being frustrated, but it's actually taking us further away from it. So we might

00:28:25.460 start to pursue achievement at all costs, or we might become a perfectionist, or we might start

00:28:32.400 just avoiding all situations that make us feel incompetent. And sort of the classic example,

00:28:40.520 you think about what it's like to be a young person today, maybe you're in high school,

00:28:44.920 and the friend click that you're a part of doesn't want you to be a part of it anymore.

00:28:49.340 And so you decide you're going to become TikTok famous, right? Where that true human connection

00:28:55.780 that met your needs, it's been taken away from you, but you substitute it with something that will

00:29:01.140 not actually fulfill that need, right? Becoming TikTok famous, there's a lot of reasons somebody

00:29:05.960 might do that, but it's not going to necessarily fulfill our need for connection.

00:29:11.980 Yeah. And a lot of people avoid things. That's a common tactic. It's like, well,

00:29:16.880 let's pretend like it's not happening. Right. Or I'll just downplay, oh, it's not that big of a

00:29:20.920 deal. Or they'll do the escape thing. Well, I'll just go on lots of vacations, even though the

00:29:26.300 problem never goes away. Agree. Yeah. I think that's a great example.

00:29:30.600 And I think too, I think resilience tools can also become shadow goals or shadow habits. Because

00:29:37.360 these tools, they do give you a sense of autonomy. It's like, well, I do have control. I can meditate.

00:29:42.460 I can exercise. I can go outside and spend time in nature. And all those things are good,

00:29:48.620 but then they don't really solve the main problem. It gives you like a sense you have autonomy,

00:29:53.940 which you do because you chose those things, but it's not actually solving the underlying

00:29:58.380 problem that's causing the stress. That's it. It's a band-aid. It's not a fix.

00:30:03.500 Yeah. So how do we figure out if we're chasing shadow goals?

00:30:06.800 So I think a question that I think can be helpful is, I call it a shadow spotting question.

00:30:14.420 How is my current behavior different from when I'm at my best? So for me with my illness,

00:30:21.900 when I was holed up in bed and eating and drinking myself into oblivion because I had

00:30:27.060 reached my resilience ceiling and I just couldn't anymore. I asked myself that question and the

00:30:33.040 answer was, I mean, it was stunning to me because I was doing what you said. I was avoiding.

00:30:38.300 And I'm somebody who makes a living wrestling the personalities of CEOs, right? I didn't get my

00:30:44.800 nickname, the Velvet Hammer for nothing, my favorite nickname from my clients. But yet here I was

00:30:50.820 shuffling from doctor to doctor, just doing what they told me, not taking any agency, not being the CEO

00:30:57.320 of my own medical journey. And that question really helped me understand, okay, this is not the best

00:31:04.480 version of me. I mean, clearly, but then it also starts to get you into, okay, what would the best

00:31:10.380 version of me be doing in this situation? And as I started to examine that, I said, there is no

00:31:15.960 cavalry coming to save me. If I go on like this, at the time, I didn't know. I didn't know if I was

00:31:21.640 going to not be here anymore. So I said, if nobody's going to save my life, I need to save my

00:31:27.660 life. And that was when I shifted from a resilient journey, I think, to a shatterproof one.

00:31:34.440 So something you talk about is that instead of having shadow goals, we should develop

00:31:38.540 shatterproof goals. What does a shatterproof goal look like?

00:31:42.960 So this is really cool. So once I figured out that self-determination theory and our three

00:31:47.520 fundamental human needs were at the heart of being shatterproof and building our best life,

00:31:53.480 all I had to do was go into the scientific research and find every goal that has been shown

00:32:00.240 to fulfill those needs. So the shatterproof six are kind of an organizing framework for the types of

00:32:08.900 goals that if we pivot away from our shadow goals, right? For me, it was sort of escaping or going along

00:32:15.380 to get along towards these goals, then we are automatically going to be in a mindset where

00:32:23.220 we're fulfilling our own needs. So just some examples, I'll give you the shatterproof six,

00:32:29.120 and then maybe a couple of goals that might be under it. So we might decide to rise to make ourselves

00:32:34.000 better. We can do that through mastery, focusing on learning something or relearning a skill. We can do it

00:32:41.660 through self-development or we commit to personal growth and we expand our horizons. Others might be,

00:32:48.620 you know, I want to flourish. I want to make my life better. I want to enjoy this experience of living

00:32:54.420 on the earth. And we might decide we're going to try to rediscover like my love of the game, immersing

00:33:00.260 myself in things that I like to do. For me to flourish, I had to focus on my health. I had to focus on

00:33:06.020 maximizing my mental and physical health. So that's confidence. That's a choice, right? So rising is

00:33:12.340 confidence. Flourishing is choice. Or, you know, another example is we might want to relate. We want

00:33:18.560 to maybe make meaningful connections. So things like that might be finding belonging, building positive

00:33:26.060 social bonds. We might try to deepen a close relationship that we have. A controversial but

00:33:31.580 really science-backed example of relating is forgiveness. Letting go of old grudges for our own

00:33:39.220 needs and our own well-being. And so this is kind of like a menu. If you want to be shatterproof, you

00:33:44.340 know, you can go through the whole process. But the other thing you can do is say, which of these

00:33:48.040 things is going to help me sort of deepen something that I'm missing the most right now?

00:33:53.780 I want to dig deeper, drill deeper into some of these tools that you've uncovered with your

00:33:57.420 research. Let's talk about that confidence aspect of self-determination theory. What are

00:34:01.580 some research-backed tools that you've uncovered to help you increase your confidence when things

00:34:07.500 are spiraling out of control? I'm sure a lot of people experience this, like their job is in

00:34:12.180 turmoil. Maybe their home life is, you know, marriage is bad. Maybe the kids are doing something

00:34:17.700 that's just causing a lot of stress in their life and they just feel like, I can't do anything. I'm

00:34:24.220 incompetent. What can people do to feel more confident? But like, actually, like, it's not like a fake

00:34:30.500 confidence where it's like, oh, hey, I got this. And you're actually, you're just trying to convince

00:34:35.800 yourself. How can people increase their actual confidence? So let me give you two tools that I

00:34:41.780 really like that I use with my clients and frankly, personally. One of them is kind of how you measure

00:34:48.100 success and competence. And then the other is getting some data to maybe give you a clearer picture

00:34:55.920 of your strengths. So let me start with the second one. It's called the reflected best self

00:35:00.860 exercise. And it's been insanely supported by research in terms of like all of the benefits

00:35:06.720 that this can give us. And it's all the stuff we've been talking about. But essentially what

00:35:10.780 it boils down to is you pick 10 to 20 people from as many different parts of your life as possible.

00:35:16.220 You want to get a super wide range and you send them each an email and you say, you know,

00:35:20.640 whatever preface you want to give, ask them for two to four examples of when they've seen you at

00:35:26.620 your best. And a lot of people say, oh my God, I can't ask my family and friends that. They don't

00:35:31.960 have time. I think what you'll discover if you try it, if you take a leap and try it, is that they will

00:35:37.480 be thrilled to help you. It's such a positive, positive, you know, feel good experience for

00:35:42.260 everybody. So the responses start rolling in. You start to look for themes. What are the things that I'm

00:35:47.400 hearing over and over and over? And what strengths do those point to? And then the third step is you

00:35:54.360 basically sit back and you write a portrait of you at your best. When I'm at my best, I am. I was

00:36:01.900 talking to a CEO today that I coached about two years ago who I actually feature in this chapter in

00:36:07.100 the book. I was talking to her about an hour ago. And she told me that she has her feedback report,

00:36:14.360 which is kind of a version of this where I get, you know, I interview everybody that they work with

00:36:19.400 and all their friends and family and say, you know, here's a picture of you. But she said, I read the

00:36:24.600 positive comments more often than you think. And to your point, this isn't an ego boost. This isn't a

00:36:30.780 feel-good woo-woo exercise. Like, come on, you know, nobody needs that. What this is, is a chance to

00:36:37.860 see yourself through other people's eyes when you're struggling to find a sense of self-worth.

00:36:44.700 Because especially when lots of people see these strengths, it's kind of hard to deny that they

00:36:49.860 exist. So that's the first piece is really kind of feeding that need. The second thing is mindfully

00:36:56.120 paying attention to your standard. So a lot of times people who struggle with confidence are

00:37:02.380 perfectionists, right? That's a shadow response to thwarted confidence. And so I talk about a tool

00:37:08.760 called the 10% buffer. It's really simple. And by the way, it doesn't work if you're an air traffic

00:37:13.620 controller, a surgeon, an accountant, you know, like in the technical aspects of your job, but it can

00:37:18.840 still work in your life. Whenever possible, give yourself permission to be excellent only 90% of the

00:37:25.720 time. And what's behind that is almost no one expects perfection from other people nowadays,

00:37:34.400 right? We're all just getting by. So like pretty good, even like great, like a 90 out of a hundred

00:37:39.420 is an A minus. And people have lots and lots of data on how you show up such that the difference

00:37:46.360 between 90 and a hundred might be one mistake. What happens if you make a mistake? The world doesn't

00:37:51.860 right. People have other data and you have other data to, to assess sort of how you're showing up

00:37:58.760 and, and your worth and your value. So those would be the two tools I'd start with.

00:38:03.320 I like that first one you talked about. Cause I think maybe you've, you've probably seen this with

00:38:06.500 other stressed out achievers. You just, you're so freaking hard on yourself. And when you're going

00:38:12.560 through a hard time, you just feel like, man, I am, I am a loser. I can't do anything right.

00:38:17.660 But then you completely discount or just overlook all the good stuff you've done, the success you've

00:38:23.540 had. Um, I said, I think it's a really great practice of bringing those, the good things that

00:38:28.120 you've done to the forefront of your mind. Like, Oh yeah, I have done hard things in the past. I can

00:38:32.760 do this again. Right. Yeah. I'm gonna have to do that. Cause I, I, I'd sometimes get down on myself

00:38:38.420 like that. Okay. So those are things we can do to increase our confidence during a period of a lot

00:38:43.720 of stress and overwhelm. Let's talk about that shrinking sense of agency that we can have when

00:38:49.880 we're going through a hard time. Now, I imagine you experienced that firsthand with your health

00:38:54.300 issues. Cause you kind of felt like you're beholden to insurance companies and doctors, but everyone

00:38:59.800 has felt this where they're going through a hard time and it's like, well, it's the economy, it's the

00:39:04.900 corporate shakeups, just these things, they feel like they don't have any control. So what can people

00:39:10.100 do to start taking back a little bit more control during a difficult situation, but, but not in a

00:39:15.920 way where it becomes like a shadow goal where you're kind of like faking yourself that you have

00:39:19.720 more control than you do. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. You're not just like, Oh, I'm just

00:39:22.320 meditating. I can do that. Well, that's great. But is it actually helping you solve your problem?

00:39:27.500 Yeah. I think that's a really important distinction you make. And I think the difference between sort

00:39:31.840 of false choice and true choice is does it fulfill our need or is it just like window dressing,

00:39:38.360 right? Is it just trying to convince ourselves that we have it? So a couple of things. The first

00:39:44.140 is, you know, we all are constrained by so many things. I always make this joke, like the employees

00:39:49.980 in an organization are constrained by their supervisors. You know, like the, all these people,

00:39:54.280 all I, all I do is what they want. The supervisors are constrained by middle managers. Middle managers

00:39:59.420 are constrained by executives. Executives are constrained by the CEO. The CEO is constrained by the board.

00:40:03.900 The board is, you know, constrained by shareholders. So on and on it goes. Almost no one feels a complete

00:40:10.080 sense of agency in their lives. So the question becomes, what is it that's within my control

00:40:15.460 that I can start to take choice back? So, you know, an authenticity check question, like,

00:40:22.340 am I doing this because I want to or because I have to? If it's something that I have a choice over,

00:40:27.680 it's really simple. How do I feel about doing this? Do I feel like positively or do I feel,

00:40:34.840 you know, am I dreading it? Am I feeling like I want to put it off? Am I feeling like it's just

00:40:39.840 an obligation or I'm doing it to make someone else happy? Those types of small questions throughout

00:40:44.820 our day can help us make micro choices more in the spirit of our best interests. Because what's been

00:40:51.480 shown, particularly with choice, is just taking a small moment and exercising agency and authenticity

00:40:58.260 and kind of what we really need boosts our choice overall. So you might even think of it like I can't

00:41:04.880 control what my boss is asking of me necessarily. I can influence it. But I can control all of those

00:41:11.420 little choices I'm making every day. So I think the authenticity check is important. Do you want to

00:41:17.500 talk about the 2-2-2 method now? Yeah, I like that. That was a cool one that I really liked and

00:41:22.900 resonated with. I like this one too. I actually came to it out of desperation since we're talking

00:41:28.160 about my health journey. Early on in the process, I managed to talk myself into a clinic that diagnoses

00:41:34.220 EDS because by that time I knew what I had because I was dedicating 30 minutes a day to reading all the

00:41:40.220 rare disease research. And I thought this was going to be my ticket. I thought I was going to come in.

00:41:46.020 They were going to take one look at me and say, ah, EDS. But unfortunately, I left with what doctors

00:41:53.820 call garbage can diagnosis of fibromyalgia. And they ignored a lot of objective signs of EDS,

00:42:00.480 which was unfortunate. And I remember leaving the clinic and walking back to my hotel room that day

00:42:05.220 and just feeling like this is the lowest I have ever been in this journey. I'm trying to be

00:42:11.640 shatterproof, but I just don't even know what to do at this point. And so the tool that I'd been

00:42:16.780 developing at the time is this idea that in the moments where we are struggling, particularly if

00:42:23.020 we've been shatterproof and we face a setback, is to pause and ask ourself, what do I need in the next

00:42:30.960 two minutes, two hours, and two days to get my fighting spirit back? And the idea here is it's an act

00:42:39.280 of confidence, of saying, I know what I need. It's an act of choice. It's saying, I'm going to

00:42:46.800 take 48 hours for me. And it's an act of connection with ourselves and saying, what is it that I truly

00:42:53.600 need? So two minutes is immediate psychological first aid. I got into my hotel room. I went under

00:43:00.180 the covers and I started taking deep breaths, just taking deep breaths and just trying to center

00:43:05.240 myself, like feeling the ground beneath my feet, feeling the sheets on my legs. And then two hours

00:43:12.140 is, what's a small thing that I can do to make me feel a little bit better? So I realized I needed

00:43:17.700 Thai takeout. So I got Thai takeout and I didn't just eat it while I was working. I actually let

00:43:23.700 myself have a meal and enjoy it and take a minute. And then in the next 48 hours, two days, I think this

00:43:30.760 is the most important one. It's giving yourself permission to not agonize or troubleshoot or solve

00:43:40.320 this problem. Because I didn't need to figure out my next move immediately. Every once in a while,

00:43:46.900 we need an immediate response to something like this and that's okay. But just saying,

00:43:51.740 I'm going to give up for two days. I'm going to give up trying to save my own life and I'm going to

00:43:57.220 come back to it on day three. And it's pretty amazing. I use this tool more often than I wish

00:44:03.940 I had to, but it's pretty amazing how powerful it is in getting us back on track.

00:44:09.100 I think it's a good one. That's something I struggle with when I'm feeling overwhelmed.

00:44:12.720 My tendency is to power through it. And I just tell myself, I don't have time. I don't have time

00:44:17.180 to take a break. But my wife's like, you need to go sit in a sauna, take a nap. She has all these 1.00

00:44:22.500 suggestions of things to do. I'm like, I don't have the time to do that. And she's like,

00:44:25.660 you don't have the time to not take the time.

00:44:28.280 Your wife is very smart.

00:44:29.820 Because what ends up happening is when I try to power through it, it just makes things worse.

00:44:34.440 And I just crash out even worse than if I had just taken an hour to take a nap or something.

00:44:40.740 So yeah, I like that. The two, two, two rule. So what can you do in two minutes,

00:44:44.500 two hours, two days? So that can help you increase your sense of agency. Let's talk about connection.

00:44:49.920 What can we do to increase the amount of connection in our life when we're going through a really hard time?

00:44:54.540 I think the first thing to know is what fuels our connection. And there's two things that

00:45:00.700 researchers have found. So the first is belonging. And this comes from frequent positive social

00:45:08.260 interactions. That can be everything from somebody at the grocery store to our soulmate in life,

00:45:16.880 right? And everything in between. So I think the first thing about building connection is,

00:45:21.900 especially in the world that we live in where, you know, it's just so much easier to stay home in

00:45:26.880 your pajamas and order it from Amazon than like go out and do things in the world or DoorDash,

00:45:32.920 right? Even if I don't feel like it, am I making sure that I'm getting those sort of common frequent

00:45:39.060 positive interactions? Like go run some errands, right? You know, most people in the world are good.

00:45:45.900 You might have one annoying thing happen to you, but I don't know, especially lately, I feel like

00:45:50.980 the world is so hard. You can find a lot of positive interactions in just the everyday kindness of

00:45:58.480 other people. The second component of connection is relationship depth. And this thrives on trust and

00:46:06.460 vulnerability and giving and getting support. What's interesting about relationship depth is it has to

00:46:13.400 be a two-way street. There's been research that's shown that when we're giving more than we get

00:46:19.060 to a relationship or getting more than we give, it doesn't fulfill our connection need.

00:46:26.640 So that's one way to think about it. It's like equalizing my relationships. I'll give an example.

00:46:31.520 You know, I've been in my book hole. I spent five years writing this book, pushing off my poor

00:46:37.460 friends and family who have been more understanding than I ever could be, I think, to say like,

00:46:43.280 okay, now that I have a little bit of time and space and the book is done, how can I give back

00:46:48.240 to all of these people who have been so generous and understanding with me? That's an example of

00:46:54.060 sort of balancing the scales a little bit. But another piece of this, just to sort of move away

00:46:58.780 from those two building blocks more generally, is to pay attention during the toughest times in your

00:47:06.060 life, who shows up for you and who is unwilling and unable to. This is something I learned from a

00:47:12.420 CEO I worked with a couple of years ago. He calls it backers and barnacles. So backers are those people

00:47:19.140 who show up and stick by our side, however imperfectly. And barnacles are the ones who, you know,

00:47:26.560 act just the same during good times. They're really hard to distinguish. But when things are tough

00:47:32.280 and you really need somebody to show up for you, they're simply unwilling or unable.

00:47:37.940 It's unfortunate that tough times can be that like relationship litmus test. But I think it's one of

00:47:44.420 the most powerful ways to figure out who our people really are. And, you know, you're probably not

00:47:50.080 surprised. I found out during the period of my illness who those backers were. And by doing that,

00:47:58.260 I was able to shed the barnacles and give that sort of precious time and energy to the people that are

00:48:05.920 backers. Okay. I love that. So we've got some great tools that people can start using today to

00:48:10.620 increase their sense of self-determination. I'm curious, where can people get to learn more about

00:48:15.480 the book in your work? Because this is, we just really scratched the surface with this stuff.

00:48:18.920 We did. Well, and I just want to tell you, you have taken us through this entire book,

00:48:22.540 which is so exciting. But yeah, we have only scratched the surface. So if people want to learn

00:48:26.780 more, you can go to shatterproof-book.com. And there's actually one tool that we're launching

00:48:33.120 with the launch of this book. It's a free five-minute assessment of how close you're at to your

00:48:38.100 resilient ceiling. We're just finishing it now. I think it's going to be really, really cool.

00:48:42.320 So you find out by the five dimensions of your resilient ceiling, and you get a couple of really

00:48:47.640 practical tools that you can start doing right away to restore and renew those reserves.

00:48:54.120 I love it. Well, Tasha Urich, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:48:56.460 Always great to talk to you. And thank you so much for this, Brett.

00:49:00.240 My guest name is Tasha Urich. She's the author of the book Shatterproof. It's available on

00:49:03.460 amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about her work at our website,

00:49:07.080 tashayurich.com. Also check out our show notes at awim.is slash shatterproof,

00:49:11.280 where you find links to resources, where you delve deeper into this topic.

00:49:21.400 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website

00:49:25.040 at artofmanliness.com, where you find our podcast archives, and sign up for a new newsletter. It's

00:49:29.180 called Dying Breed. Sign up at dyingbreed.net. It's a great way to support the show directly.

00:49:34.400 As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay.

00:49:37.360 Remind us not to listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:49:40.660 in your bed.

00:49:40.720 And I'll see you next time.

00:49:41.100 Bye.

00:49:56.860 Bye.

00:49:58.000 Bye.

00:49:58.820 Bye.

00:50:00.420 Bye.

00:50:02.660 Bye.

00:50:07.920 Bye.

00:50:08.480 Bye.

00:50:08.780 Bye.

00:50:09.220 Bye.

00:50:09.860 Bye.

The Art of Manliness - April 01, 2025

Beyond Resilience — How to Become Shatterproof

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