Beyond Resilience — How to Become Shatterproof
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Summary
Resilience is often touted as the end-all, be-all of coping with life s challenges and setbacks. But my guest knows from her studies, executive coaching, and her own life that sometimes resilience just isn t enough. Dr. Tasha Urich is an organizational psychologist and researcher, and the author of Shatterproof: How to Thrive in a World of Constant Chaos.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Resilience is often touted as the end-all, be-all of coping with life's challenges and
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setbacks. But my guest knows from her studies, executive coaching, and her own life that
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sometimes resilience just isn't enough. Dr. Tasha Urich is an organizational psychologist
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and researcher, and the author of Shatterproof, How to Thrive in a World of Constant Chaos.
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Today on the show, Tasha explains why the concept of resilience rose to prominence in the 2010s,
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how resilience can be improved a little as a skill, but is largely an exhaustible capacity,
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and how you know when you're hitting your resilience ceiling. We then talk about the
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more sustainable skill set and strength of becoming shatterproof. We discuss the potential to grow
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forward instead of simply bouncing back, the psychological needs that have to be met to
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become shatterproof, and research-backed tools for thriving in life instead of just surviving.
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash shatterproof.
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All right, Tasha Urich, welcome back to the show.
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So we had you on a couple years ago to talk about your book, Insight, which is all about
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self-awareness and becoming more self-aware. You had a new book out called Shatterproof
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that makes the case that resilience sometimes isn't enough to cope with all the chaos that life can
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bring. And what's interesting is that as you started to research this book a few years ago,
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your life was upended by debilitating health issues. And then your research about resilience and
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thriving in chaos, it really started to become me-search. So what happened to your health?
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So the very short story is I've had a lifetime of medical issues that have perplexed every
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specialist I'd seen. Really, really bad pain. Somebody told me I had the spine of a 70-year-old
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when I was 25. But a lot of things that couldn't be stitched together. But generally, what would
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happen is I would be resilient. Whatever weird health challenge I was facing, whether, again,
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it was pain or I would sometimes have these full-body allergic reactions, even though I didn't have
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allergies, I would just try to grit through it. And basically, until the age of 40, I was able to
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keep living my life with some limitations, knowing that probably there was something that was
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diagnosable, but nobody knew what it was, and I had a pretty good life. But COVID happened. I think
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all of us were going and going and going. And then when we had to stop, my body was no longer fueled
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by adrenaline. And what happened over the course of about two years was it started with a pain in my
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arms that kind of spread to basically my entire body. Every time I'd stand up, I would be dizzy or
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I'd faint. My resting heart rate was 150 beats a minute, just all of these crazy, crazy symptoms.
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And eventually, by about mid-2021, I was completely bedridden. I would dust myself off and go do a
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keynote for 24 hours and come back and pay for it for five days. And so it was really interesting about
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this process, as you mentioned, that I started this research in 2020 on how do people bounce back when
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bad things happen. This became something that was so critical for me. And I've never been in this
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situation as a researcher where I have needed an immediate answer to whatever I was investigating in
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order to save myself. And going back to this idea of resilience, I did all the things I was supposed
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to do. I put all my resilience practices, so things like gratitude and social support and optimism and
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trying to reframe my challenges as opportunities, I put them all in a spreadsheet. And at the point
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where I was gunning the most on resilience, I would print the spreadsheet out every day and I would check
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the practices that I had used that day. But I couldn't help but notice, as my physical health was
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deteriorating, I was more anxious, more stressed, more depressed than I had been in as long as I
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could remember. I was thinking to myself, this isn't the worst thing that's happened to me. Why
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can't I crawl out of this hole? And that was what led me, and we'll talk about it today, to discover
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that resilience is actually not the end-all, be-all solution to helping us cope with hard times.
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So, when I wrote this book, I guess the bottom line is, I was personally experiencing the limitations
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of resilience while I was going through this physical spiral.
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Yeah. And come to find out, you ended up, you have like a rare genetic disease, right?
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I did. And so, flash forward between when I was about to give up because my resilience practices
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weren't working to six or eight months when I started to use these shatterproof practices that I
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talked about, what I ended up getting diagnosed with is a genetic connective tissue disease called
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Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, or EDS. And it happens when your body actually doesn't know how to produce
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the proteins of collagen and elastin. And the problem with that is those proteins exist everywhere in your
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body. And most physicians are told that it's so rare that they'll never see a case in their practice
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in their lifetime. But there are estimates that it's as common as one in 5,000 people.
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So, it's very interesting. And I feel really privileged to be able to talk about it with this platform
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is, you know, some of the diseases that we think are rare might not be as rare as we think.
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Yeah. So, you had your career the same time you were trying to figure out what was wrong with you.
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And that's another added stressor. So, you have to go to different specialists.
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And you talk about in the book, you had to track your own health records because, again,
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a lot of the doctors were like, what is this? I don't know what's going on. So, you had to become
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an advocate for yourself. And then you're writing a book. And yeah, as you said, resilience wasn't
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enough. You were doing all the resilience things that people talk about. So, let's talk about
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resilience first. And then we'll get into Shatterproof. We've talked about resilience on the
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podcast before. We've actually written a series about it way back in the 2010s when resilience was hot.
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What do psychologists mean by resilience? And why do they become such a big thing in the 2010s?
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Yeah, that's a really important question. Psychologists define resilience, particularly
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empirical scientists, right, as the capacity to cope with hard things. And there's some debate
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in the literature about this, but I think that's kind of the commonly accepted definition.
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But what that means is, you know, you sort of hear the word capacity. And there's all these
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practices that we can do to increase our capacity. But if it's a capacity and not a skill set,
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it means that there's a point at which we are going to exhaust that capacity. So, I know we'll
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come back to that, but I think that's a really important nuance of this definition. The other way
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to look at resilience in kind of a more practical way is it's a tool to keep us together during,
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you know, shorter term crises versus, as we'll see, kind of a singular strategy for coping with,
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like, chronic long-term stress. But I think, you know, the reason, in my opinion, that it became
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so popular in the 2010s is, you know, you can sort of argue that we live in a chaos era where,
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you know, every day is another headline, another crisis. There's more uncertainty than we've sort of
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ever experienced. That era arguably began with the global recession in 2008 and 2009. And right around
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that time, resilience went from being this kind of, you know, esoteric scientific concept to something
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that really went into the mainstream. So, instead of a capacity, it became a skill that anyone could
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develop and summon at will, right? And so, this obscure scientific concept was suddenly this,
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like, empowering self-improvement tool. And there's a lot of good that came out of that,
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I think. You know, the last thing I want to do is come on today and say anything negative about
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resilience. But I think the problem was some people took it too far. Like, I talk about quotes in my book
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that I wish I could conjure at will, but, you know, it's stuff like, resilience is the singular
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strategy to help us lead a better, happier life. And if you go back to the scientific research on
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this and including our research that we did, that's just not empirically true.
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Well, I thought that was interesting. You highlight, and this happens to all concepts,
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like psychological concepts that become popular. There's a lot of buzz and people get excited about
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it. But then consequently, there's a lot of myths that pop up because people misread the research or
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they're not explaining the research completely. And it contradicts even what the initial resilience
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researchers talked about. So, what misconceptions have grown up around resilience as compared to what
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the research actually says? So, in my research on this, I looked at several hundred articles,
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but in particular, the 200 most highly cited. So, those are the articles that other researchers
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go back to and find credibility in. And the three myths that came out of this really threw me for
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a loop. And I'll just say as a preface, you know, I'm a fourth-generation entrepreneur.
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Gritting through is in my DNA. And I was shocked because, again, as I said, I first found these
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patterns in my data, didn't understand what that meant, where they were coming from. And then when I
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went back into the research, I said, oh, other people have found this. This has been true.
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So, the first myth is, you know, I think we all think that if we do all of these practices,
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that it's going to help us thrive. But what the research says is resilience is actually intended
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to help us survive. And I don't know about you, Brett, but I feel like we all deserve more
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than just surviving. And I think, you know, everybody that's listening to this has their own experience of
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it, of like, you know, it's easy to feel like at the end of the day, like, I barely got through today.
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And then I'm going to do it again tomorrow. So, that's the first one.
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The second myth is, I think, with this concept of resilience moving from a capacity to a skill,
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there's a thought that like, oh, I can strengthen my resilience muscle. I can dramatically improve.
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I'm in full control of my resilience. But what the research shows is that actually,
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some of us have more resilience than others. And all of these like training programs to improve
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resilience have pretty spotty records in terms of whether or not they help us be more resilient.
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And this leads to something called grit gaslighting, right? Of like, well, you should have just spent
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more time on your yoga mat, or, you know, you didn't do your gratitude affirmation today.
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And to me, I think that's really powerful because if it's not under our control, in all cases,
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The third myth is, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. What we know from the research is that
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ongoing or extreme stress doesn't make us stronger. Like in small amounts, it does. It's called the
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stress inoculation hypothesis. But ongoing stress actually depletes our resilience and makes us more
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vulnerable to breaking. So, I'm curious, how does that strike you? What's your reaction to those myths?
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I mean, to me, it makes sense because I just experienced it in my own life. I mean, I think
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resilience is useful. I think it's the conclusion you make. Resilience is a useful capacity to fall
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back on in the short term. But then if you're continually getting beat down, like you just get
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worn down where you're just like, okay, I'm done. And you quit your job or you got to take a sabbatical
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or whatever, or even worse, you might resort to drugs or alcohol to sort of soothe the pain. That
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happens to a lot of people. And that one point about resilience, like some people are more resilient
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than others. Like it's just inherent. That actually lines up. I've seen research. Maybe you came
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across this as well. A lot of times when people talk about resilience, we always talk about the
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Navy SEALs. Oh, the Navy SEALs. You can be resilient like a Navy SEAL. But what they found
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amongst Navy SEALs is that most SEALs, they have like, there's like this peptide, neuropeptide Y,
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I think is what it is. And it helps you be more resilient. They've made a connection between this
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peptide, neuropeptide and resilience. And SEALs have more of it for some reason. And they think it's just
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like a genetic thing. And so the idea is that what the SEALs are doing with like their BUDS training,
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they're not actually trying to train people to be more resilient. It's just like, they're trying
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to filter for the super resilient type. And like, that's fine. I think it's fine. Cause like, I know
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I probably don't have that neuropeptide Y Navy SEAL gene and I'm never going to make the SEALs and
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that's okay. There's other things I can do. Yeah, no, I think that's a really good, that's helpful to
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keep in mind, right? Because there's nothing wrong with us when we exhaust our capacity for resilience.
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You know, particularly people who have had like early childhood trauma or who are experiencing
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chronic compounding stress in multiple parts of their life, which I think is living in the 21st
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century, frankly, those are the things that deplete resilience. And so, so there's nothing wrong with
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you if you, as we'll talk about, hit your resilience ceiling. Yeah. Let's talk about this. So you talk
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about, there's like a resilience ceiling. How do you know when you're reaching your resilience ceiling
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and like what determines our resilience ceiling? So I think, you know, the first thing is going
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back to what we were just talking about, everybody has a different ceiling and I wouldn't argue that
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it's set in stone because I think there is some evidence that we can improve our resilience, you
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know, even if it's just a little bit, but because our physical and mental energy are finite, resilience
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is something that can run out, right? It's, it's an exhaustible capacity. And so when we reach
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that limit, it's kind of this idea of like, you're fine until the second you're not. When I talk to
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high achieving people, stressed out strivers, I call them, our fellow stressed out strivers about
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hitting their resilience ceiling, people talk about like, you know, it was the smallest like setback or
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demand or annoyance. And I just suddenly was done. I could not deal. You know, I had a, I had a kind
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of embarrassing moment with my scanning my manuscript about a month ago. And I had a moment where I hit my
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resilience ceiling. It was kind of a minor break, but you know, it was a signal to me that I needed to pay
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attention. So I think the signs are number one is a sense of lost mojo. You have less energy, less
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motivation to keep all the plates spinning. It's kind of this like, oh, I don't even care if everything
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falls apart. The second thing I mentioned is that little things feel big. So you're getting unusually
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worked up by issues that are relatively minor that maybe even wouldn't normally send you over the
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edge. And then probably the biggest signal that I've personally found is when your top tools are
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failing. So everybody has their coping strategies, their resilience practices, but as soon as they
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start to feel like piling on instead of providing relief, that's a signal you're getting close to your
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ceiling. And you know, for me with my resilience spreadsheet, when that started feeling like
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another stressful thing I had to do that day, that was a signal that I needed to pay attention.
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So we all have a different resilience ceiling. There's different symptoms. If you're feeling the
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burnout, the lost mojo, your yoga is not working, your exercise being outdoors is no longer helping
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you recharge, then you've probably reached your resilience ceiling. So let's talk about shatterproof.
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You argue that if we really want to make it in this world of chaos and stress, we got to move
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beyond resilience. We're not going to give up on resilience. Again, it's a useful tool,
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but we need to start thinking about becoming shatterproof. What does it mean to be shatterproof?
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So put simply, becoming shatterproof means we proactively channel the hard things that happen,
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not to bounce back, but to grow forward. And we do that by harnessing the cracked or broken parts of
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ourselves to access the best version of ourselves. And this is all based in our research on, you know,
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we found three different reactions people had to adversity. One was, you know, sometimes it breaks
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you. Two is, you know, you resiliently bounce back. And three is you become better and stronger.
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And what we discovered with this third group of shatterproof people was when you're able to be
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strengthened by adversity, you don't try to pretend and power through or deny that you're cracking or
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deny that you're struggling. Instead, you use that as a source of insight, of motivation, and to pivot,
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to align your life more closely to the life that you want to live. And it was really inspiring to sort
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of hear some of these stories, big and small, where people were experiencing really tough things and,
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you know, said honestly and genuinely, that brought me closer to my loved ones. It brought me a new
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source of strength or meaning. It brought me peace, purpose, joy in the worst things that were
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happening. So I think it's, you know, if we can all become 25% more shatterproof, I think not only
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would we all be a lot happier, I think the world would be a better place. Yeah. It reminded me as I was
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reading about shatterproof of Nassim Talb's idea of becoming anti-fragile, where it's like, you're not just
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resilient. The chaos actually makes you stronger. And he kind of talks about it in sort of an economic
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ways. And I think with shatter, what you do with your book is like, how can you apply this on the
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personal level? And you talk about one of the things you have to do if you want to start becoming
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shatterproof is there's some mindset shifts you got to make happen in your head, like to become that.
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So what are some of those mindset shifts we got to make to become shatterproof?
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So there are three big ones. The first is, and this is, they all involve deprogramming for
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stressed out strivers in my experience. The first is we have to move from kind of ignoring or pushing
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through when things get hard to proactively embracing them and not celebrating them, not,
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you know, platitudes about, oh, there's an opportunity in this crisis, but truly saying,
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okay, you know, chaos is swirling around me. It's starting to break me. How can I channel this
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to come out on the other side a little bit better for it? The second is kind of moving from the
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capacity to cope, right? Of like, I just need to keep filling up my resilience reserves to the courage
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to reinvent ourselves. I think there's a difference between sort of waiting for things to get better
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and proactively saying this situation may or may not change, but I am going to make sure that I
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change in a positive and proactive way. And then the third is, I think it kind of sums this up,
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but it's from bouncing back to growing forward, to use these situations as fodder for growth.
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Yeah. That second one can be hard because it's so easy to get stuck in inertia and kind of stick with
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the devil, you know, it's like, well, I've always done this. If I make this change,
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it might not work out. It could be worse. So I'll just stick with muddling along.
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Right. I have this horrible job and my choices are either keep doing what I'm doing with no changes
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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
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involved in daily firefighting that it feels like that's all we can do. But what I've discovered about
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this framework, this, this shatterproof roadmap that we're going to talk about is it takes the
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same amount of time as white knuckling through it. You know, it does take the awareness to step
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back and say, okay, I need to pay attention here, but it's not any more time consuming than the misery
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of gritting through those situations. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
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And now back to the show. Okay. So let's do some recap here. Resilience is a certain skill set that
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can help us bounce back in the face of short-term adversity, but it functions more like a limited
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resource that can be depleted when we're facing ongoing or extreme stress. Being shatterproof gives
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you a second skill set that it not only works for dealing with the current challenge, but then it
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prepares you for your future ones as well. And I also, I think it's more sustainable. It's more
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like a lifestyle that it's not something you just summon up during a crisis. It's something you're
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doing all the time. And rather than depleting resources, being shatterproof actually generates
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energy and renewal through the process of transformation. So you don't just bounce back,
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you bounce back stronger. You're to come out better. So let's get into this. Let's learn how to be
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more shatterproof. And you've got some research back tools to help you do this. And the first one
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you talk about is to probe your pain. What do you mean by probing your pain?
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What we discovered about shatterproof people is they didn't see their pain as a personal failure.
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They saw it as a signal to pay attention and specifically a chance to challenge their
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preconceptions, a way to kind of guide them to new ways to meeting their needs. Because the alternative,
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you're pushing through it by denying it exists. And if you're denying it exists, a couple of things
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happen. Number one is you get what's called negativity rebounds, which are when we try to
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suppress our negative emotions, we are worse off in the long run. And then the second thing is it robs
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us of the insight that we could get by saying, okay, what's going on here? Like this thing is
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really disproportionately affecting me. I wonder what that's about. And so probing pain is a curious
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way of examining what's going on with us in our tough moments. And so you're not wallowing in it.
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You're not ruminating in it. You're not saying, oh, why me? It's just like, okay, what's going on?
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If pain is a signal for something, what is it trying to tell me?
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Right. Biologically, pain is a signal that something is wrong. And I got that signal pretty
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clearly physically during my illness, but I also had that signal emotionally and mentally.
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And I spent a really long time, I spent months and months and months just ignoring it and saying,
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surely tomorrow will be better, but just hope alone. And as a good friend of mine says, hope is not a plan.
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Hope is not a plan. Yeah. And so it's not just physical pain. Like in your case,
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there was physical pain with your health issues you had. That was definitely there. But this,
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you're talking, pain could be like existential pain. Like Kierkegaard talks about this. He's
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one of my favorite philosophers. People listen to the podcast. They know I love Kierkegaard,
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but he talked about anxiety. And for him, anxiety wasn't like, oh, I'm nervous. It's more like
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it's two o'clock in the morning and you're laying in bed at night looking to the ceiling. It's like,
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oh, geez, what is going? My life, something's not right here. He said,
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you got to listen to that. Existential dread. Yeah. The existential dread. He said,
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you got to listen to that because it's telling you need to do something. So, you know, if a guy
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listening to this podcast is feeling that, probing your pain means, okay, what is this trying to tell
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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
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,
00:44:29.820
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.