Episode #40： Undefeated Mind with Alex Lickerman
Episode Stats
Summary
Dr. Alex Lickerman is a physician, a practicing physician, but he is also the author of a book that just came out last November, called The Undefeated Mind: On the Science of Constructing an Indistructible Self. It s all about building your resilience, something we ve talked about on the site before. And he goes into depth, bringing in a lot of scientific studies that talk about how you can become more resilient.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. So yeah,
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we've been on hiatus with the podcast for almost a year. I stopped doing it because we just got
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too busy with other projects and other things. But I've had a lot of people email me, tweet me,
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Facebook me asking, hey, when are you gonna bring the podcast back? So we're doing it now.
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And I'm really excited about our guest that we have on today. His name is Dr. Alex Lickerman.
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He is a physician, a practicing physician, but he's also the author of a book that just came out
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last November. It's called The Undefeated Mind on the Science of Constructing an Indestructible Self.
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It's all about building your resilience, something we've talked about on the site before. And he goes
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into depth, brings in a lot of scientific studies that talk about how you can become more resilient,
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how you can strengthen your, I guess, your mental fortitude to handle whatever challenges that come
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your way. Well, Alex, welcome to the show. We appreciate you taking time out of your busy
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schedule to talk to us. Thanks so much for having me. So Undefeated Mind, that's what the title of
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your book is called. How would you describe a person with an undefeated mind? And why is it so
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important that we try to develop this undefeated mind that you talk about? So I think about an
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undefeated mind as basically a mind that is resilient. And by resilient, I mean two things.
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And there's sort of two sides of one coin. The first side is that when bad things happen,
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when adversity strikes, when tragedy lands on you, that you are able to not just survive it,
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but actually thrive in the face of it. So that may mean you go through it maintaining,
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you know, your poise and your confidence, or maybe you go through it and you're horribly
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discouraged and even depressed and anxious, but then at the end of it, you come out of it sort of
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not just back to where you were, but even stronger in some way. The other side of that coin,
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you know, is that when you are striving to achieve something, you have a goal that you
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don't know how you, don't know if you can do it, that when the obstacles arise, that invariably
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arise whenever people try to achieve something great, when those arise, that even if you become
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discouraged, that doesn't stop you, that you continue on no matter what, that you don't give
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up when everything is telling you to give up and you feel like you need to give up or that
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it's hopeless, but you go on and then, uh, even if you don't achieve your goal, the reason
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you don't achieve it isn't because you quit, but just because it didn't work out.
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So resilience and hardyhood is how you describe someone with the undefeated mind.
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Yeah, that's basically it. Personality, hardiness.
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Yeah. So what experiences in your life, um, led you to discovering the principles and practices
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that you talk about in your book? Um, I found that very fascinating. You talk about some of
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your experience. What were some of those, uh, principles and, or some of those experiences
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Yeah. So I, um, as I talk about in the book, I'm a Buddhist and I started practicing Buddhism,
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uh, my first year of medical school. And frankly, up until that point, um, I hadn't really encountered,
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uh, any obstacles or tragedy in my life out of the ordinary. Uh, and then, uh, the woman who
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introduced me to Buddhism, uh, in my first year of medical school was a woman I then began dating.
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She was the first great love of my life. And when we broke up, I was just absolutely devastated.
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I was, I was, uh, in retrospect now, uh, absolutely politically depressed, but since it was only
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my first year of medical school, I hadn't yet learned to diagnose that. So I didn't know
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I was depressed. Uh, and I was just, um, completely shattered by it. And, um, the practice of Buddhism
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involves chanting. It's a little bit foreign to many of those of us raised in the West, uh, but it's
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sort of a, uh, a form of meditation. And it was actually while doing that and chanting about the
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fact that I was just suffering far out of proportion to what I thought I should be just
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because I had, uh, broken up with my girlfriend. And I had a, uh, a, uh, great insight at Epiphany
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that the reason I was suffering, uh, really had nothing to do with the fact that she and I had
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broken up, but what I believed that meant. And what I believed that meant, I was surprised to
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discover at that moment was that I could never be happy that without this woman to love me, I,
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my, my chance at happiness was gone. And I, um, was stunned to discover this. And from that
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insight, I realized that the key to being happy, you know, how can we be happy when so many terrible
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things happen to us? There's no way any of us get to live a life without having trauma and tragedy
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happen in our lives. It just doesn't happen. You live long enough, something's going to happen. So
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how can we be happy when those things happen? And the answer is we have to become so strong
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that no matter what happens to us, we feel we have some power, some ability to overcome whatever
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it is that's happened. Uh, even if it's not overcoming in a way we want to overcome it,
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but still in some way achieve some kind of victory so that we can say we're done with this. We,
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we got through it, we overcame it and we're moving on and, and maintain our ability to be happy.
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It really, the bottom line is it comes down to happiness is strength.
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Yeah. And what I found fascinating was, um, your, your practice of Buddhism and what you,
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you, you practice a particular kind of Buddhism that I never heard of. What's it called again?
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It's called Nichiren Buddhism. Okay. And it's, uh, the practice is chanting a phrase,
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which is Nam-myo-ho-renge-kyo. And, um, the idea, the Buddhists will tell you that
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the reason chanting Nam-myo-ho-renge-kyo has the power it does is because you're tapping in
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to a mystic life principle. Um, I don't actually believe that I have to say, uh, but I have still
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found that chanting that phrase over and over again with, uh, it's not like meditation where
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you are trying to, uh, focus on the moment and clear your mind of thoughts. It's actually,
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um, in a sense, it's a war cry. It is a, you are making determinations when you are chanting
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that you're going to solve your problems. Because a lot of times problems occur to us
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or happen in our lives and we think we know how to solve them and we try those things and they
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don't work. And we, then we try something else and it doesn't work. And when we exhaust those
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possibilities, typically what we do is go back and start trying things we tried the first time,
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even though it didn't work the first time because we're out of ideas. What I've learned
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through the practice of Buddhism is that there often are answers buried within me somewhere that,
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uh, either haven't occurred to me or they have, but I haven't truly opened my mind to
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the possibility of trying to employ some of those answers because they're either too fearful,
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I'm too fearful, or they seem to risk too much. What I have learned is that, um, when I, when I
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chant with a, uh, uh, focused determination to overcome a particular problem, answers will often
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come to me and it just sort of pop up just the way thoughts do that are surprising, that are not
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things I would have thought of on my own, but that end up often being the very things I need to do.
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And sometimes, uh, things I don't want to do, but if I could only muster the courage to do them,
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they end up being the things that enable me to solve the problem.
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What I found fascinating was, uh, the insights you gained, um, from Buddhism, you know,
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an ancient philosophy. What I found fascinating throughout the book, you show how cognitive
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science is actually confirming the insights that these, you know, ancient philosophers had
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Um, that's what actually sparked my interest in writing the book was that, that, you know,
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in studying Buddhism for all these years I've done, uh, and being a physician and taking care
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of patients, I'm very much, uh, evidence-based. I need, I need something proven to me to really
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believe it. And, uh, I started looking into a lot of research that ended up sort of supporting
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a lot of these 2,500 year old ideas. And, you know, we finally applied modern scientific
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methods to answer, asking these questions and the answers end up being what the Buddhism has
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been talking about all along. So it's kind of a neat synergy.
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Yeah. So going back to what you talked about, your experience with, uh, you know, breaking
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up with the first love of your life. And you said that thing that really, I guess the epiphany
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you had was your change of perception, right? You had this perception change and it seems
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like that was a main thread throughout your book. That's a main principle. When I, what
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I found, um, uh, interesting, I'm not very familiar with Buddhism, but one, one philosophy
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that I am familiar with is Stoicism, uh, of the ancient Romans, you know, Seneca and Marcus
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Aurelius. And that's something they talk about too, that, um, are the pain that we experience
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in life often isn't, you know, caused by the, you know, a tragedy. It's our perception of
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that tragedy. Um, and that's, that's kind of a hard, I guess, a hard concept for us moderns
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to, to swallow this idea that our perception is what causes us pain.
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It is, uh, but Buddhism and Stoicism are very similar that way. The, the idea is that,
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um, it really isn't what happens to us, it's how we think about what happens to us that affects
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the way we feel about it. And, uh, this is not too hard a concept to really grasp. If
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you pause for a few minutes and examine just your own reactions to things, you know, in
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your own life, when something bad happens or something difficult arises in your path, you
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know, when you're trying to reach a goal, if you feel that you can manage it, it may be
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uncomfortable and it may, uh, you know, be, uh, depressing to imagine, but you're not defeated
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by it. If you feel confident to be able to solve that problem, if you're thinking about
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it in such a way that you can solve the problem. On the other hand, if something happens where
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you think, I don't know what to do, the next thought that most of us have, the automatic
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thought is, therefore, there is nothing that we can do. Uh, and therefore that's when depression
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can set in. And so it really is our thoughts about things that govern our emotional responses.
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It's our emotional responses that matter. You know, are we suffering over this or are
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we not? And there's this thing, this really is, uh, reflected in modern psychology and
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cognitive neuroscience. There's this notion of the self-explanatory style that we all bring
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to our lives. So when things happen, we typically explain them to ourselves. Why did I fill that
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test? Or why did that girl turn me down for a date? And we come up with our explanations
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that we don't notice this, but we, we quickly settle on them as true. We, without often any
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evidence whatsoever, our first thought often is what we decide. This is the reason. The girl turned
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me down because, uh, I'm not good looking enough or, uh, because she's snobby or I failed that test
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because I'm just not a good test taker. What we don't realize is that these ideas are just that
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they're just ideas. You know, they may be right, but more often than not, they're wrong.
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And yet we completely believe them without any question, the moment we think the most of the
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time. And that governs number, not only how we think about what happened and therefore how we
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feel about what happened, but also what we're going to do. You know, so if a test taker, someone
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fails a test, they say, I'm just not a good test taker. I failed that test because I stink at taking
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tests. They're, they're far more likely, uh, to not study for a makeup test and fail it again.
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But if instead they tell themselves when they fail a test, you know, I, I failed that test because I
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just didn't study hard enough. I got to study harder. Well, then they're much more likely to
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study harder the next time, therefore more likely to pass the test. So it's not even just how you
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feel about what happens to you that is determined by your perception, but what you do about it and
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what you're able to do about it. Yeah. So do you think, as I read this book, um, I started thinking
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about, uh, I have ancestors, right? That crossed the plains in covered wagons. And, you know, you read
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journal entries that they face so many, so much adversity, uh, children died. And I just, and yet,
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despite that, uh, they're, they're able to continue. They're able to thrive. Um, and I, I look at my
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life, I think I couldn't do that. I mean, I can't believe what they were able to do. Do you think
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modern society in some ways has made us less resilient in some ways?
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No, no, I don't. I think that your estimation, what you're able to handle is wrong. You can handle
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far more than you think you can. It's interesting because they've done studies, uh, on people's
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expectations for how they will be affected by trauma in the future. And, uh, reliably people
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far overestimate how devastated they will be by imagined traumas, uh, and, and don't actually
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predict how well they'll be happy in the future either. So you look back, back at your ancestors who
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went through some of those trials, you say to yourself, I could, I could never have done this.
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But in fact, were you confronted with it? The answer might be very different. And you don't
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really know how strong you are, how resilient you are until you are facing a trial that forces you to
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be resilient. You know, in a sense, you know, strength only appears when you are forced to
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lift a heavy weight. That's when you know how strong you are. So I, I suspect that, um, in general,
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the, the population, uh, alive now modern people are actually as resilient as our ancestors. We just
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haven't had to face the same things for which, you know, we're all very grateful. But, um,
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if we were to, I think we would surprise ourselves. Yeah. So I guess the, the takeaway
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there is whenever you go, whenever you do face a really, I don't know, life-changing adversity
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or life-changing challenge, uh, I guess the, uh, takeaway is realize you're going to be able
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to get through it and that you're stronger than you think you are. Absolutely right. And interestingly,
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um, when you look at, you look at studies of people who've actually gone through horrible
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things that most people don't go through and you, you look and see over time, how they do
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most of the time, most people not only get through those things, they come right back to the certain,
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their, their previous level of happiness, whatever that was eventually. But what's interesting is when
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you tell people that, and you say, you know, there really are great studies that show as awful as it
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seems today, you will eventually be happy again. Knowing that even when people believe it does not by
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itself make going through that thing easier. It's not enough just to know it, but, um, sometimes it
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is. Sometimes people will have that thought and they think I will be happy again. And when they
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believe it, that can sort of get them through this. But, but again, that's why I wrote the book to sort
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of hand people techniques they can do to sort of maintain their confidence in their resilience when
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they're going through those really difficult times. We're going to take a quick break for your
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word from our sponsors. And now back to the show. Definitely. So another one of my favorite
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concepts in your book, uh, is this idea of turning poison into medicine. And, uh, can you explain what
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you mean by this and maybe give an example of turning poison into medicine? Sure. So that it's
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a Buddhist idea. And the notion is that, um, it seems to be inherent within the human mind and the human
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heart that when, um, tragedy or trauma adversity strikes, and we are so quick to judge the final value of
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those events as all bad. Um, that in fact, we have within us the capability of transforming
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events that appear to be all bad at once into something that creates value for us.
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Now, this does not mean that you can reverse necessarily the bad thing that's happened to you.
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You know, if, if some, you know, your, your son dies, some horrible thing, it doesn't mean that
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you're going to bring that son back to life by any means. Um, nor does it mean necessarily you're going
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to be as happy as you were, or that you're going to ever stop hurting or missing, you know, your son.
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But what it means is that there is nothing that could happen to you, no matter how awful you can
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imagine it, from which you cannot create value, some value. And in fact, in that really the most
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extreme circumstance, you talk about parents losing children, studies have actually shown that,
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um, parents actually do get unsurprising benefits from that as, as almost kind of perverse
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that sounds, uh, that they become closer to their surviving children, that they, uh, become more
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courageous in general. I'm not for a minute suggesting that those benefits make up for
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such a loss, but a lot of times in more mundane, uh, uh, more common losses and, and, uh, traumas that
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we may suffer, you actually can come out actually ahead. It, it, you just can't predict the future. So,
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you know, um, the, uh, the example that I would give, which I think I write about in the book as
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well is, um, my, when I was a second year medical student, uh, right after my girlfriend's first
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love we talked about and I broke up, I became so depressed. I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't
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study. And I failed part one of the national board exam. And I thought my life was over. I thought I,
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you know, if you, if you don't pass part one, you can't graduate medical school. Uh, I was already
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in debt and I thought I'm not going to become a doctor. I don't know what to do because I didn't have time
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to study for it. You're supposed to launch into the third year, which is where you do all your work
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with patients, uh, a year that is renowned for swallowing, um, days, uh, at a time of a person's
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time. So, um, you know, I thought this is the worst possible thing that could have happened to me,
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but, um, so rather than give up, I, I just decided, okay, so my choice is to, to drop out of medical
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school or I'm going to find some way to start this test, take it again and pass it. And I, I decided
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that's what I was going to try to do. I ultimately did it, um, you know, by completely eliminating any
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free time, any social time whatsoever for a year, uh, and, um, got through it and, um, scored actually
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above the mean, which I had never done in any test prior to medical, in medical school. Uh, and then,
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uh, so I thought, okay, I got through that. I graduated, uh, got a great residency and ended up,
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uh, as a teaching attending at the University of Chicago. Um, and then one day, uh, a student had come
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to see me, uh, who had failed her third year internal medicine clerkship, her rotation up on
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the wards. Again, you can imagine just devastated. And, uh, I found myself telling her the story of
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how I had almost completely flunked out of medical school, but I persevered and, and was able to, to
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succeed and, and eventually, um, uh, uh, pass the test. And I told her, you know, I realized that
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being forced to go back and study all that material made me a better doctor that I, as a result of
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having to learn that material again, I learned it and could sort of manipulate it and think about
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medicine and science in a way that I was looking around and seeing my peers really weren't doing.
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And in many instances, it was leading me to make diagnoses. I really didn't think I otherwise would
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have made, but then the real benefit, the real medicine of that poisonous experience was then
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suddenly I had this story to tell her. And in telling her, I could see, I literally was watching
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her hearing my story and her face changing, thinking, I know what she was thinking. She was
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thinking if he could do it, then I could do it. And I think, you know, even if we can't find some
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benefit in horrible tragedy or trauma that's happened to us, and we don't, you know, actually
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turn it into some real, uh, victory that, that we feel in some way we won, we can always use those
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experiences to encourage other people. And in that way, create a value that can be surprising to us
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and really actually enable us to one day say, I'm almost glad that happened to me because I've been
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able to encourage so many people with that story. And I have with that story.
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That's fantastic. So what, um, do you think is one of the more counterintuitive
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principles or practices that you talk about in the book that, uh, that if someone applied,
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they would become more resilient, uh, more hardy, but if you told them that, Hey, you need to do this,
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they would think, nah, that, that wouldn't work. And I'm not going to do that. Are there any,
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are there any counterintuitive principles or practices like that? So one of them that I
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consider counterintuitive, at least it was to me when I sort of stumbled across it, um, is the
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notion of accepting pain. Um, you know, people who, uh, like to lift weights really hard, they get
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this already. They understand that pain is gain, but when you apply that sort of to your life,
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it becomes a little less obvious how that can be beneficial, but it basically works like this.
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So it turns out that a lot of suffering that people experience in life is not as a result of
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bad things happening to them, but it's as a result of them trying to run away from the bad feelings
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that bad things happening causes. So people turn to drugs and alcohol because they're, uh, they're,
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uh, anxious about things and end up destroying their lives when, you know, really just trying
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to avoid the feeling of anxiety or men will try to sabotage relationships with women to prevent the
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women from breaking up with them because they have such a fear of rejection. And so they, they,
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they ruin perfectly healthy and happy relationships because of their fear. They're trying to avoid
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something that feels bad. And so, you know, the idea that there is legitimate pain for us to feel
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and that when we feel it, we should allow ourselves to feel it, um, can be very powerful because
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we all have goals in life and it is often our own, um, uncomfortable feelings that prevent us from
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achieving them. So for example, if, if a man wants to ask a woman out or maybe go to parties to meet
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women, but has horrible social anxiety, just really has a hard time doing that, it's actually
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the, I think the feeling anxiety that they, they want to avoid. And so they learn to avoid it by
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avoiding the circumstances that trigger it, meaning, you know, asking women out and going to parties.
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On the other hand, they have this goal of wanting to meet somebody. So what do they do? Well, this,
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there's this new therapy, uh, called acceptance and commitment therapy that basically talks about
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this notion of acceptance, which is that you say to yourself, uh, my goal is not to stop feeling
00:21:02.080
anxiety. I'm going to allow myself to feel anxiety and I'm going to actually take the action that's
00:21:06.800
going to get me towards my goal. Even if it makes me feel anxious, I'm just going to, I'm going to
00:21:11.340
accept, I'm going to feel anxious. Just that mental, um, 180 where you, you stop reflexively trying
00:21:19.280
to avoid those painful feelings and allow yourself to feel them is incredibly empowering and adds to
00:21:24.860
resilience. And, and interestingly, paradoxically, what studies have shown is that when people
00:21:28.740
actually approach, say, anxiety that way, it actually reduces anxiety, which importantly is
00:21:35.640
not the goal. It's not the goal. The goal is to actually become more comfortable feeling it and
00:21:39.980
not allowing it to stop you from doing what you need to do to accomplish the goals that you have.
00:21:45.660
Um, and so I've actually, you know, done this work, introduced this principle to many patients of
00:21:50.480
mine who have told me anecdotally, it really does work. When you suddenly transform yourself from
00:21:55.680
someone who does everything they can to avoid whatever pain you're feeling, you know, it can be
00:21:59.980
even physical pain, uh, to someone who sort of bucks up and says, yeah, I can withstand this.
00:22:04.100
It's really awful. It's really uncomfortable, but I'm just going to suck it up. Suddenly you become
00:22:08.100
really powerful and the things you are able to do will surprise you.
00:22:12.220
Seems like, yeah, by taking away the uncertainty of pain, except, yeah, just no, you're no longer uncertain
00:22:18.100
that there'll be pain, that anxiety clears up. Yes. I mean, you, you accept the fact and you
00:22:24.280
actually, in a sense, almost embrace it. You know, the way a weightlifter embraces the pain of,
00:22:28.000
of lifting weights, because he understands it's that pain that represents hard work and therefore
00:22:34.060
growth. And so the experience of feeling even physical pain, when you understand that it does
00:22:39.520
not mean harm, that it's okay to feel it, uh, it's much less emotionally aversive. It's interesting.
00:22:47.160
They've actually studied when, when people experience pain that is caused intentionally by
00:22:52.260
someone, it actually hurts more than when pain is caused by someone accidentally. The way we think
00:22:57.460
about it has a profound effect on our subjective experience of it. That's really interesting.
00:23:02.740
Well, here's the last question. Um, as I read this book, uh, I just, I kind of perceived that, uh,
00:23:09.800
developing an under undefeated mind is a lifelong process. It's not something that's going to happen
00:23:14.380
overnight. Um, so my question is, how do you maintain the motivation to develop an undefeated
00:23:21.340
mind or a more resilient personality when you face setbacks in the process? Cause I've, I've had
00:23:26.620
this challenge. I I'm trying to work on becoming more hardy and more resilient and I'll do good,
00:23:31.280
uh, for a few weeks. And then I'll have this, something happens where I just, I, I, uh, I break
00:23:36.020
down and I kind of have this breakdown in my resilience. Um, and you get, and so you kind of,
00:23:41.520
I begin this like cycle where I get discouraged about my inability to be resilient and I get
00:23:46.960
sort of this horrible cycle where I just, uh, sort of renumerate about things. Um, so yeah,
00:23:52.780
how, what's your advice on someone who wants to develop a more resilient attitude, a more
00:23:57.000
undefeated mind? Uh, how do they maintain that motivation to do that?
00:24:01.260
So if I use what you just said as an example, um, you would, you would, uh, think about it like a
00:24:07.260
dieter. Somebody's trying to lose weight. So what, what dooms people who are trying to lose weight
00:24:11.740
is not when they, when they cheat on one day and, and thank God, you know, they blown it. That's,
00:24:17.300
it turns out that, uh, caloric intake, um, on a daily basis does not correlate to long-term weight
00:24:22.500
gain or weight loss, which means if you, if one day out of the week you eat terribly, um, but they
00:24:28.440
immediately go back to eat to following your diet. It's as if that one day didn't happen.
00:24:32.840
What dooms people who are dieting is when that one day happens, when, when they give into temptation
00:24:37.360
and they, they blow their diet, then they say to themselves, well, I've blown it. And they,
00:24:41.860
they call themselves all types of names. And then they, they say, well, I might as well give up
00:24:45.140
because I've blown it already. It's too late. And then it is the subsequent days that actually
00:24:49.740
ruin them. So if, for example, you know, when you're trying to become a resilient person,
00:24:54.360
you're doing really well. And then something happens, you get knocked off the horse and then you,
00:24:57.460
you say, ah, I blew it again. And I just, I can't do this. First thing is you don't judge yourself
00:25:01.540
because being resilient does not mean you don't get knocked off your horse. It means you get back
00:25:05.640
up on it. And so, um, it's really hard to practice the things I talk in the, about in the book, uh,
00:25:13.340
to develop yourself into a more resilient person when you're not facing something that makes you
00:25:17.280
need to be resilient. And of course, if you're not facing that at the moment, it's okay. You don't
00:25:21.600
need to sort of practice these things other than to sort of be prepared. So when something does
00:25:25.940
happen, you can reflexively go to them. But I, I view like when things hit you as an opportunity
00:25:31.440
for you to train yourself to be more resilient, sort of like, you know, when you, when you lift
00:25:35.400
weights, uh, you're not going to feel your strength, experience your strength, or actually
00:25:40.040
increase your strength unless you're actually lifting them. There's got to be some obstacle
00:25:44.160
for you to push again. So in fact, it's those very moments when you feel most discouraged
00:25:47.440
that you have the greatest opportunity to actually become resilient. But even, even I,
00:25:51.440
you know, I've been this Buddhist for 20 plus years and I wrote this book when, when bad
00:25:57.100
things happen, often my first reflexive response is, Oh no. And what am I going to do? And I
00:26:03.020
can't survive this. Uh, and then you start to have to, you have to reflexively get in the
00:26:09.160
habit of examining your negative self-talk and recognize that this is just another voice in
00:26:13.180
your head and, and say, remind yourself, I do have the tools to become resilient. I just
00:26:17.760
have to grab ahold and pick them up. Um, sometimes that takes longer. You know, you don't
00:26:21.420
do it right away. Sometimes it takes a week, sometimes longer, but at some point you do have
00:26:25.320
to say to yourself, okay, I have to own the situation. I have to figure out what I can do
00:26:28.660
and, um, take care of myself and buff up or buck up my inner self so that I can actually
00:26:34.120
manage the situation. So once you suddenly start having those thoughts and then you remember,
00:26:38.380
Oh yeah, there are these things I can do. I've learned to do that actually will lead me to
00:26:42.200
success and help to buoy my, my life condition, um, while I'm going through this. So it is like
00:26:48.920
anything else. It takes continual practice and say, which means sometimes you'll be better at it.
00:26:52.660
Sometimes not as good. Be very gentle with yourself. If you don't meet your expectations
00:26:57.000
today, that's fine. That's okay. As long as you try again tomorrow, you are being resilient.
00:27:02.220
Very good. Well, that's actually really helpful for me. Well, uh, Alex, thank you so much for
00:27:06.640
taking the time to speak to with us. Uh, the book is the undefeated mind on the science of constructing
00:27:11.540
an indestructible self. And you can find that on Amazon. Alex, thanks again for being with us.
00:27:21.220
Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
00:27:26.340
make sure to check out the art of manliness podcast at artofmanliness.com. And until next time, stay manly.