The Art of Manliness - Overcome the Comfort Crisis

00:00:00.000 Hey, it's Brett. We're taking a break from publishing new episodes for the Thanksgiving

00:00:03.540 holiday. So we're going to rebroadcast episode number 708, overcoming the comfort crisis.

00:00:09.480 Hope you enjoy it. And while you're taking a break between eating Thanksgiving dinner

00:00:13.120 and eating pumpkin pie, I'd be grateful if you take one minute to give us a review on

00:00:17.760 Apple podcast or Spotify, it helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, please consider

00:00:22.020 sharing the show with a friend or family member who would think we get something out of it.

00:00:25.020 Word of mouth is the primary way we grow. Thank you so much. Happy Thanksgiving. And we'll see you

00:00:30.460 on Monday with a brand new episode. Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art

00:00:41.820 of manliness podcast. Our world has never been more convenient and comfortable with just a few

00:00:45.960 taps of our fingers. We can order food to our door, access endless entertainment options and keep our

00:00:50.020 climate at a steady 72 degrees. We don't have to put in much effort, much less face any risk or

00:00:54.420 challenge in order to sustain our daily lives. Some ways this quantum leap in humanity's comfort

00:00:58.740 level is a great boon, but in other ways it's absolutely killing our minds, bodies, and spirit.

00:01:03.680 My guest says it's time to reclaim the currently hard to come by, but truly essential benefits of

00:01:07.520 discomfort. His name is Michael Easter. He's a writer, editor, and professor, and the author of

00:01:11.500 The Comfort Crisis. Embrace discomfort to claim your wild, happy, healthy self. Michael first shares

00:01:16.360 how his experience with getting sober helped him discover the life-changing potential of doing hard

00:01:20.260 things before digging into what fleeing from discomfort is doing to our mental and physical health.

00:01:24.420 We then discussed the Japanese idea of misogi, which involves taking an epic outdoor challenge,

00:01:29.200 and why Michael decided to do a misogi in which he participated in a month-long caribou hunt in the

00:01:33.680 back country of Alaska. Michael shares what he learned from the various challenges he encountered during

00:01:37.860 his misogi, including intense hunger, boredom, solitude, and physical exertion, as well as what research

00:01:43.300 can tell us all about why we need to incorporate these same kinds of discomforts into our everyday lives.

00:01:48.120 After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash comfort crisis.

00:01:54.420 All right, Michael Easter, welcome to the show.

00:02:03.520 Thanks for having me on.

00:02:04.760 So you got a book out, The Comfort Crisis, Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self.

00:02:10.460 And this book is your journey of getting more comfortable with being uncomfortable and showing the research

00:02:17.020 that, you know, the benefits that come with that. What kick-started this whole thing of exploring discomfort?

00:02:21.820 Yeah, I mean, I think there's a handful of things. What really set it off for me, though, is a handful

00:02:29.520 of years ago, I ended up getting sober. So in the book, I talk about, I come from this long line of

00:02:35.380 men who just hum on booze and bedlam. Like my dad once painted his horse green and rode it into a bar

00:02:42.540 with a woman who was not my mom. It was on St. Patrick's Day, hence the green.

00:02:46.760 I mean, I have one hilarious story from my family is that I have a cousin who got thrown into a dry

00:02:52.620 out cell. And he comes to and he realizes that apparently we're having an impromptu family

00:02:58.000 reunion. He'd gotten thrown into this cell with my uncle just on accident, you know. So anyways,

00:03:04.320 I was kind of starting to ride that same metaphorical horse, if you will. And I realized

00:03:11.580 that I needed to change. You know, I tried a lot to quit drinking. And finally, just something took

00:03:18.700 where I, you know, asked for help. And getting sober was definitely the most uncomfortable thing

00:03:24.020 I've ever done. I mean, your body's really trying to figure out what is going on with this new way of

00:03:29.920 living. Because alcohol essentially becomes a comfort blanket for people who have a drinking

00:03:36.200 problem. It sort of, you know, comforts you from the stuff in the world that you just don't want

00:03:41.640 to face. You know, maybe you're like a little unsure of yourself, whatever. When you drink,

00:03:45.580 it fixes that. And once you take that away, it's like, oh man, now I got to live normally.

00:03:52.340 And so going through that, it was hell for a while. But then you come out the other side,

00:03:58.600 and it's like, my life just got so much better, like in every single way possible. I mean,

00:04:03.280 I can't even name. I mean, just anything that you could think could go better, went better.

00:04:08.320 And so from that experience, I could see like, when I was drinking, I didn't want to get

00:04:12.700 sober because I was like afraid of having to go through that and see what would happen on the

00:04:17.500 other side. But once I did, I was like, man, things got better. So I could see like, oh, there's

00:04:22.520 just benefits in discomfort and doing these things that we don't want to do facing our fears and

00:04:28.580 just really diving into discomfort. So, okay, you started doing this deep dive and you started

00:04:33.920 exploring in the ways in which modern life, you know, we're extremely comfortable and we should

00:04:39.140 all feel blessed and fortunate that we live in a way where there's antibiotics, there's running water,

00:04:43.540 but then you also highlight, you know, there's some downsides to that as well. How can comfort

00:04:48.320 cause problems in our lives? Yeah. So, and that was the thing is after I got sober, you know,

00:04:54.100 I had this, I noticed that going through discomfort was, was good and always leaning

00:05:00.240 into comfort. Like I had been doing maybe wasn't good. And then I sort of realized, oh my God,

00:05:04.320 my life is still completely, completely surrounded in comfort. I mean, if, if you stop and focus on

00:05:11.660 everything around you, basically everything in our daily lives now that most impacts our daily life,

00:05:18.280 it's probably new and it's probably made to make your life more comfortable or easier or less

00:05:24.600 effortful in some way. So think about climate control, right? We live at 72 degrees. We have

00:05:31.120 cell phones that we can use to basically cure any semblance of boredom we have or order food and have

00:05:38.080 it delivered directly to our door, stream down videos, whatever we have, you know, this whole

00:05:43.360 transportation system. We live behind screens and we sit in chairs all day. We have this food system

00:05:48.840 where we don't have to put in any effort at all for food. And it's had some consequences. I mean,

00:05:54.960 you can tie it to everything from chronic disease to depression, to even feeling a lack of meaning

00:06:02.840 because it's like humans thrive on, on challenges, on being pushed up against and coming out the other

00:06:09.220 side, just like I did having to get sober. Right. But we often don't have these in our lives

00:06:14.340 all the time now. And so it's had some consequences for sure.

00:06:18.720 Yeah. And that idea of like sense of meaning or purpose, you know, you hear people reporting how

00:06:23.280 life just seems harder now. It's like, ah, I'm just, everyone's like, everyone's tired. I'm so tired.

00:06:28.440 But it's like, you know, it's weird. It seems things feel harder, even though it's actually,

00:06:34.020 if you compare it to the whole length of human history, it's pretty easy. What do you think is going on

00:06:38.080 there? Why does life feel harder, even though we've got it pretty good today?

00:06:41.400 Yeah, that's, that's a great question. And there was a scientific reason for this. Actually,

00:06:45.500 I talked to researchers at Harvard psychologists, and there's this idea that the dorky name for it

00:06:51.940 is called prevalence induced concept change. And I tend to think about it as problem or comfort creep.

00:06:58.660 Essentially, the human brain evolves to make relative comparisons. It's this brain mechanism that

00:07:05.560 saved us energy. So we don't, when something new is sort of introduced to our lives, that improves

00:07:13.180 our lives, we adapt to it. And we don't sort of look back and think, oh, man, we're making great

00:07:18.380 progress. This is great. We kind of look back at the last thing and think, oh, man, now that's totally

00:07:23.260 unacceptable to us. Basically, what happens is we have, as we have more comforts introduced to our

00:07:28.820 lives, we don't necessarily become more satisfied with them.

00:07:32.680 We just sort of lower our threshold for what we consider comfortable. This also applies to things

00:07:38.280 like problems. So once we've solved the problem, we don't actually think in our brain, oh, I have

00:07:45.260 fewer problems right now, we just go looking for the next problem to solve. So we sort of end up with

00:07:49.920 the same number of problems, except our new problems are progressively more hollow. So you can think about

00:07:56.540 this as almost the science of first world problems. We keep on moving the dial into comfort and

00:08:03.540 convenience and having everything done for us. And we don't think, oh, man, 20 years ago, I didn't have

00:08:10.220 a cell phone. Wow, this is amazing. Instead, it's like, man, Instagram has crashed. This is the worst

00:08:16.420 thing ever. We freak out, right? And this is like put at scale to everything in our lives.

00:08:21.100 All right. So yeah, doing hard stuff can put some first world problems in perspective.

00:08:27.220 So in your quest to figure out, explore the science of being uncomfortable, one of the first guys you

00:08:32.780 talked to is this sports doctor. He works with a lot of pro athletes, NBA athletes, NFL stars to help

00:08:39.020 them prevent injuries. But he's also got this idea that he took from Japanese culture called Misogi's.

00:08:45.620 So can you tell us about this sports doctor and his idea of Misogi's?

00:08:49.700 Yeah. So this guy's name is Marcus Elliott. He's a far out character. So he's a Harvard MD.

00:08:56.980 And he decides he doesn't want to be a doctor. He's going to go into sports science.

00:09:01.340 And his first job was with the Patriots. They were at the time, this is in the early 2000s.

00:09:06.820 They had this crazy high hamstring injury rate. It was like 21 a year. And he applied, you know,

00:09:12.700 real science to sports, which hadn't really been done before. And he dropped their injury rate to like

00:09:18.840 three a year. Then he was like a performance director for the MLB. And now he has his own

00:09:25.200 facility where he has contracts with the NBA. So basically every NBA player, incoming NBA player

00:09:30.160 comes through there. And he does all this really technical scientific stuff where he tracks their

00:09:36.380 movement patterns and, you know, applies it to this big algorithm. And he can basically tell you,

00:09:41.020 okay, you have this specific movement pattern. When we see that in a player,

00:09:45.540 that means the player usually will have a say 60% chance of tearing an ACL that season.

00:09:51.800 But he can also tell you like, Hey, this is a skill you're really good at compared to everyone else.

00:09:56.300 Let's develop that because we think it could help your game.

00:09:59.100 So I told you all that to basically tell you, this guy is obviously very into science and data,

00:10:05.900 et cetera. But he also knows that, you know, not everything that improves, not only athletes,

00:10:12.280 but humans in general can be measured. And so he started doing this thing that he calls

00:10:18.960 Misogi. And it's based off this Japanese myth. It's essentially a big physical challenge and

00:10:24.500 conducted in nature. And there are only two rules. And the rules are that it must be truly difficult,

00:10:30.180 which he measures essentially by saying you should have a 50-50 shot of finishing it. True 50-50 shot.

00:10:36.340 And then the second rule is that you can't die. And that part's pretty straightforward, right?

00:10:42.980 So, and ideally the challenge is a bit kooky. So for example, one year, him and some athletes,

00:10:48.120 they got this 85 pound rock and they walked it five miles underwater in the Santa Barbara channel.

00:10:54.640 And then they've also done stuff like, okay, we're going to strap packs to our back and we're going

00:11:00.120 to drive out to the mountains and we're just going to pick the farthest peak we can see.

00:11:04.360 And we're going to try and hike to it in a day. They've done things like they stand up paddleboard

00:11:08.760 across the Santa Barbara channel after only having stand up paddleboarded a few times.

00:11:14.000 So the whole idea here is that you're putting yourself in a position, doing something physical

00:11:19.380 in nature that is going to be very truly challenging for you where you only have a 50%

00:11:24.420 shot of making it. And what he's trying to do is mimic these past challenges that we used to face

00:11:31.460 as we were evolving. You know, as humans evolved, we had to do true challenges in nature all the time.

00:11:37.160 And these were things that our environment would usually naturally show us. So this could be things

00:11:42.520 like having to go on a big hunt, or maybe you're trying to migrate down to your summering grounds and

00:11:49.960 you're going over a pass and like a gnarly storm hits. Maybe it's, you know, a tiger lurking in the

00:11:55.020 bushes. Nowadays, we don't face these type of challenges. And back in our past, when we would

00:12:02.140 go through these, we would sort of learn something about ourselves and dig deep and become a more

00:12:06.660 confident and competent person. But nowadays, we don't we don't really have challenges like you can

00:12:11.940 never be challenged in life. And you can still have plenty of food, you'll have a comfortable home,

00:12:16.540 you can probably have a decent job, you have a family, which seems which seems totally fine.

00:12:21.500 And it is. But at the same time, let's say like you have this, you know, big potential that's this

00:12:28.400 big circle. Well, it's like most people just live in this sort of dinner plate size circle within that

00:12:34.560 they never really go out and see what exists on the edges of the potential. And by not having any idea

00:12:41.020 of like what's out on those edges, you really miss a lot in life. And you miss learning something

00:12:45.640 about yourself that can really help you in life. So he believes that by doing these things like

00:12:51.080 Misogi, you kind of have this innate evolutionary machinery that gets triggered when you go out

00:12:56.620 and you do these hard things, and you really explore the edges of your comfort zone. So you're

00:13:01.280 putting yourself in a position where failure is totally possible. Because in the modern world,

00:13:08.060 failure is, you know, getting a bad look from your boss or not getting enough likes on Instagram.

00:13:12.980 So we kind of have this outsized fear of failure. And the repercussions of these failures that we

00:13:18.980 really fear, they're kind of all inside our head, like it's not really going to affect our livelihood,

00:13:23.380 it's just going to make us, you know, a little bit stressed and anxious. So by getting out into

00:13:28.020 the wild and doing these Misogi like challenges, you lose a lot of fear, you start to learn something

00:13:33.680 about yourself, things start moving for you and you come out on the other end, whether you made it or not,

00:13:40.960 as an improved person who's sort of a lot more confident, a lot more competent. And so the idea

00:13:49.240 is like, let's introduce some metaphorical tigers back into our life, right? And you see these things.

00:13:56.600 I mean, this, when I talk about this, people are like, well, this guy sounds kind of kooky, you know,

00:14:00.840 and it's like, yeah, maybe he is. But at the same time, you look at how past societies lived.

00:14:07.380 And this idea of a myth where a hero sort of leaves the comfort of home, he goes out into this

00:14:16.120 trying middle ground, really struggles, almost fails, but he makes it and he comes out on the

00:14:21.580 other side and improved person. These myths exist throughout time and space. So this is what

00:14:26.360 Joseph Campbell essentially called the hero's journey. And you also see them in things like

00:14:31.120 traditional rites of passage. So for example, the Maasai tribe, young men would have to go out and hunt

00:14:37.280 a lion with a spear in order to transition into this new, more competent part of life and become

00:14:43.360 a warrior in the tribe. You have things like Aboriginal walkabout, the Nez Perce tribe would 1.00

00:14:47.720 send people out on these nature quests where they'd go out into nature for like a week's time and they'd

00:14:52.560 fast and, you know, they'd have these challenges. But then when they came back, they had learned so

00:14:57.020 much about their potential and what they're capable on. They were ready to become leaders in the tribe.

00:15:01.420 So we're trying to sort of mimic those things that are very important for humans and have been for

00:15:06.960 millennia that we just don't face anymore. So in addition to doing these like analysis of

00:15:11.800 physiology, is he putting athletes that he consults with through these Misogis?

00:15:16.040 He makes it an elective. They want to, he tells them about it. Some don't want to do it, but those that

00:15:22.120 do, like you talk to him and he, he goes, those are the people that are, that tend to have the most

00:15:28.500 clutch performances, especially in, you know, high, high stakes situations because they have

00:15:35.200 this kind of new thing on board that they didn't really know was there. You know, they've really

00:15:39.420 been tested. And all of a sudden, once you've, I don't know, let's say stand up paddleboarded across

00:15:44.600 the channel, when you're maybe even afraid of water, you're like, man, all of a sudden a playoff game

00:15:50.960 becomes more manageable. Not that that's not a high stress situation, but you've had all these other

00:15:56.400 super high stress situations that help you sort of buffer that. And you can really dig deep and you

00:16:01.500 just feel like, man, I've got something on board. I think I can explore this thing and do it.

00:16:07.240 All right. So inspired by this idea, you came up with your own Misogi and that was to go

00:16:10.740 back country hunting for caribou in Alaska. Where did that come from?

00:16:15.800 Yeah. So I had, uh, I, I met Marcus and then through my work. So Marcus kind of tells me about

00:16:23.000 this Misogi idea and I'm, I'm fascinated by it. And through my work, I've become friends with

00:16:28.580 Donnie Vincent and Donnie Vincent for people who don't know, he's a back country bow hunter and

00:16:33.600 filmmaker. And he goes into the world's most remote off the grid sort of extreme places. And he'll hunt

00:16:40.560 for months at a time. He'll be up there for one month, two months, three months. And he invited me up

00:16:47.060 to the Arctic with him for more than a month on a caribou hunt. And I sort of thought of that idea of

00:16:51.900 Misogi and thought, man, this might also be a really good way to explore a lot of these discomforts

00:16:58.600 that we've removed from our lives. And I definitely did find some discomfort up there.

00:17:06.340 For example, you know, we faced constant hunger all the time. We're eating about 2000 calories and

00:17:12.040 burning a lot more than that. Everything took effort. I mean, this was from carrying our packs.

00:17:18.440 They were usually around 80 pounds all the time to everything like having to go get water so you

00:17:24.200 could make dinner and have water to drink. We'd have to hike down to this stream and then hike it

00:17:30.060 all the way back up to camp. And, you know, there was like grizzlies would hang out by the stream, you

00:17:34.760 know? So there's also mental stress. There was negative 20 temperatures, really crazy weather that

00:17:41.580 could have been perilous. And even things like long stretches of boredom because you don't have a cell

00:17:46.560 phone or TV or tablet or computer up there. Even things like being in solitude and really complete

00:17:54.940 silence can be eerie at first, you know, and because I'm hunting, I'm facing the life cycle.

00:17:59.860 And we faced some of those real challenges like I just talked about, you know, we got put in positions

00:18:05.160 where I wanted to quit, but if I would have quit, it could have been perilous, you know? So I had to sort of

00:18:11.900 keep going by coming out on the other side, you learn a lot about yourself. So that's how I ended up up in the

00:18:18.920 Arctic for a month.

00:18:20.620 Right. Well, we'll dig in. I want to dig into some of these things you learned about, you know, hunger and boredom

00:18:24.900 and things like that. But one thing you mentioned in the book, I thought was interesting as you were preparing

00:18:28.860 for this hunt. And then even after the hunt, you notice this as well, that you notice that it felt like time sort of

00:18:36.140 slowed down a bit. And then you actually do research like what's going on there. And there's actually a

00:18:40.700 scientific reason why time seemed to slow down a bit as you were doing this Misogi. What's going on

00:18:46.300 there? Yeah. So this, this was really, really fascinating to me. The human brain is essentially

00:18:53.220 programmed to default into a predictable routine. Now this is thanks to how we evolved because as we

00:19:00.640 evolved, you know, we lived in these dangerous, trying, uncomfortable environments and having

00:19:06.340 predictability in our life, it kept us safe. It like let us know how to avoid animals, where to

00:19:13.000 get food, and we would rinse and repeat, right? It could keep us safe. But now that our world is sort

00:19:18.180 of safe and predictable, it's kind of an evolutionary bug. It sort of traps us within this comfort zone

00:19:24.820 and this routine where we just do the same stuff every day, day in and day out. So, I mean,

00:19:31.800 take me in as an example, and this is slightly changed because of the pandemic, but, you know,

00:19:38.540 I drive, I eat the same breakfast every, every morning. I drive the same route to work and listen

00:19:44.560 to the same, you know, radio station or whatever it is. I basically have, do the same job. I have the

00:19:51.380 same conversation, basic conversation with coworkers. Then I go home and eat the same basic dinner. And on

00:19:56.440 the weekends, I do the same kind of thing, right? It's like we live in these very, very routine lives.

00:20:01.340 Now, the problem with that is that once you've really settled into a routine and just rinsed

00:20:07.420 and repeated it so often, it causes your brain to go on autopilot. So, you're essentially sleepwalking

00:20:13.920 through life. This saves your brain energy, but it also means you're like not aware of what's going

00:20:19.600 on around you. You can totally tune out. So, this is like why if you've ever noticed when you're driving

00:20:25.420 and it's a route you've taken all the time, you can drive for 20 minutes and then be thinking and

00:20:31.320 be like, oh, wait, like I don't even, I wasn't really paying attention, right? You're just kind

00:20:35.160 of stuck up inside your head. And I think William James said it best is that at the end of your life,

00:20:41.040 what your life is, is that which you've been aware of.

00:20:45.720 So, if you're stuck in this cycle of being up inside your head, just doing the same thing day

00:20:51.980 in, day out, like you're never going to remember having the same breakfast you ate every morning

00:20:57.180 and watching the same Netflix. Like this, these are just not memorable things.

00:21:01.320 And so, when you do new novel things, you know, for me, that was going up to Alaska, but also even

00:21:07.040 having to train to go to the Arctic and learn all this different stuff for this book, it essentially

00:21:12.860 kicks you out of this autopilot mode because all of a sudden your brain doesn't know what

00:21:18.160 to expect and how to respond to what's coming in. So, you essentially get kicked in the butt 0.99

00:21:24.080 into awareness. It's like a nice little wake-up call. So, in this sense, I almost think about 0.99

00:21:29.400 it as, you know, getting out of our comfort zone to do and learn new things. It's kind of

00:21:34.240 a lot like meditation, but, you know, you don't have to sit and focus on your breath. You just,

00:21:39.280 it forces you into that awareness that meditation is sort of looking after. And the research also

00:21:46.080 shows that when we do new things, it slows down our sense of time. And this goes back to you can't,

00:21:54.640 you don't know what to predict. You can't expect what's coming on. So, you really have to be aware.

00:21:58.780 And this seems to have a contracting effect in terms of time. And this is actually why time seems slower

00:22:06.160 when we were kids. Because everything was new then, right? So, you're constantly learning and

00:22:11.360 doing new things. And it just, like, makes the time go by slower. This is another thing that

00:22:15.560 William James, the father of psychology, was writing about in the 1800s. And they've followed

00:22:21.300 up with studies on this. And people consistently report that when they're learning and doing new

00:22:27.460 things, time slows down, which I find funny. So, my background for a little more is I worked at

00:22:33.340 Men's Health Magazine for a lot, a lot of years. And I still am a contributing editor there.

00:22:39.940 And now I'm a professor at UNLV and I write books. But, you know, and some of my work for Men's Health,

00:22:45.440 like I'm always covering these guys, it tends to always be men, to be honest, who are really

00:22:52.880 fascinated by longevity and living longer. And I've covered people who've done, frankly, some really

00:22:58.060 strange things like gotten illegal pharmaceuticals that they think are going to help them live longer.

00:23:02.220 I've covered, you know, guys who, I don't know if you've heard of blood boys, but the idea is 0.97

00:23:06.740 essentially by pumping the blood of a younger person into your blood, the plasma can help you

00:23:10.840 live longer. So, just like all these kind of wacky methods to live longer. But to me, it's like,

00:23:17.240 who cares if you have more years if you're stuck in this routine and you don't remember any of them,

00:23:22.960 right? Like, and it just goes by in this sort of blur where you look back in your life and you're like,

00:23:27.320 oh man, wait, what did I do? I was like kind of stuck in my head the whole time. Like by doing

00:23:32.200 and learning new things, you're slowing down time and it makes, allows you to really sort of squeeze

00:23:37.640 more out of the time that you have on earth. All right. So, if you feel like, you know,

00:23:42.340 you're on cruise control to the grave and you want to disrupt that, just start doing some hard things.

00:23:47.000 That's one quick way to do that where life feels more extended and prolonged.

00:23:51.380 Yes, exactly. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:23:54.880 Cheers. And now back to the show. All right. So, let's talk about, you go on your hunt and

00:24:01.600 one of the things you talk about, you noticed first right away was just being bored. Really,

00:24:07.300 like not just like bored, you're in the off doctor's office waiting for your appointment. It

00:24:11.160 was like the most boredom you've ever felt in your entire life. Like how soon did you,

00:24:15.260 did you feel that boredom? Oh man. So, we're up there hunting caribou and my time in the,

00:24:21.720 my month in the Arctic is the overarching narrative of the book. And then as I talk about each of these

00:24:27.020 elemental discomforts that humans need to face, I go into different on ground reporting, but

00:24:33.020 we're up there hunting for caribou and caribou migrate up to summering and wintering grounds.

00:24:39.180 They're always moving. They can run like 55 miles an hour, which is insane. So, a lot of it is,

00:24:45.220 you know, you get on a glassing knob and where you think that they might be coming through and you

00:24:50.560 just sort of wait to see if you're right. And my cell phone doesn't work up there. It's essentially

00:24:56.400 a useless brick. I didn't bring a book. It's not like I brought any other real electronics.

00:25:03.160 So, it's like, what do you do with your time? All of a sudden, I'm like, holy crap. 0.86

00:25:08.780 I've never been this bored in my life. So, I start, you know, I think for a while and then I'm like 0.96

00:25:16.400 reading the labels on my cliff bars, just really scrutinizing them, reading all the labels on my

00:25:22.080 outdoor gear. Then when that gets, that eventually gets boring, right? So, I ended up writing some of

00:25:27.660 the book. Then that gets boring and I'm like, okay, I guess I'll come up with my Christmas list,

00:25:33.500 you know, like figure out what everyone's getting for Christmas. So, I'm kind of doing one thing after

00:25:37.820 another to stave off boredom. And this is so radically different than life at home.

00:25:44.240 Because when I'm at home, anytime I feel boredom, I've got a cell phone in my pocket. I've got a TV

00:25:51.260 on the wall that has Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Max. I mean, I can go on for days, right?

00:25:58.860 I've got a computer that has access to the internet. Like we have so many different ways,

00:26:04.580 easy, effortless ways to deal with our boredom now. And our default is to just dive into some

00:26:10.940 sort of electronic device to deal with boredom. Because boredom is uncomfortable. It's this

00:26:16.400 evolutionary discomfort that we evolved to have that yells at us to say, hey, whatever you're

00:26:22.420 doing right now, it's an inefficient use of your time. So, you should do something else.

00:26:26.900 And back in the day, that thing might have been like, okay, I've been picking berries at this bush

00:26:33.120 for an hour. And once it became harder and harder to pick berries, boredom would kick on and they'd

00:26:39.820 be like, okay, this isn't a good use of your time anymore. Why don't you go hunt? Or why don't you

00:26:44.020 go to another bush and pick its berries? Because it'll have more and they'll be easier to access.

00:26:48.240 But now our escape from boredom, as one researcher put it, is like junk food for our mind. We just dive

00:26:56.300 right into usually our phone. So, we now spend, if you look at the data, 11 hours a day on average

00:27:04.860 engaging with media, which is a ton of media. Media wasn't even in our lives 100 years ago. And now,

00:27:13.120 it's essentially become our lives. And this has had definite repercussions for our brain.

00:27:19.080 Up in Alaska, because I didn't have this super easy outlet for boredom, I have like this 11 hours

00:27:26.880 a day back. It's like, what do I do with it? My mind went inward. I thought of different things that

00:27:33.040 I could do that would be productive. I did productive things like writing a book in my little weatherproof

00:27:39.740 notebook. I thought and I planned and I did all these sort of productive things. Also had great

00:27:45.040 conversations with the 2 guys I was up there with. Noticed nature, sat with myself. And it was really

00:27:52.040 enlightening and frankly, productive and a lot more interesting than what I might find on Instagram

00:27:59.260 or watching another episode of Top Chef. And so, when I got back home, I looked at a lot of the

00:28:07.460 research on boredom. And it also turns out that when we are paying attention to anything in the

00:28:13.740 outside world, our brain is working really, really hard. And when we face boredom and have to go inward

00:28:20.060 and think about, okay, what am I going to do next? It kicks on a restorative state called the default

00:28:26.680 mode network. So, this is kind of like this rest period that lets our brain revive and come back

00:28:31.540 to become stronger, more or less. So, the benefits of giving your brain downtime by facing boredom is

00:28:40.680 it's associated with a lot more creativity. It's associated with lower rates of anxiety.

00:28:46.140 And it also can lead to more focus and productivity. So, I think we live in a world now where

00:28:52.300 because cell phones are new and they actively steal our attention, everyone... You read all

00:28:57.480 these stories that are like, use your cell phone less. Use your cell phone less. How do I use my

00:29:01.620 cell phone less? But the reality is, if you decide you're going to use your cell phone less and you

00:29:07.060 just use this time you've gained to watch Netflix, your brain doesn't know the difference.

00:29:12.120 So, I think it's a lot better and more productive to think more boredom instead of less cell phone or

00:29:18.960 less TV or less computer. Just put yourself in these positions where you can become bored. And it's not

00:29:23.360 easy. I mean, cell phones are great. Don't get me wrong. I mean, but we need this.

00:29:29.560 And another thing you notice when you're out there is how alone you were. There was like probably no

00:29:33.740 one for hundreds of miles except for you and the guides. And you noticed there was actually... I mean,

00:29:39.180 it was kind of hard to be away from people. But then you also noticed there's actually something

00:29:43.880 enjoyable. You had a benefit out of the solitude. What was that?

00:29:48.580 Yeah. So, at one point, you have to take all these... To get way out in the Arctic on the

00:29:55.300 tundra, you have to take all these little planes and they land on the tundra. And you have to do a

00:29:59.800 lot of ferrying. So, at one point, I got dropped about 100 miles from any semblance of civilization.

00:30:06.900 And the guy I was with, he was going to go before me to our next stop because you have to take

00:30:13.760 successively smaller planes. And so, I'm totally alone out there, except there's big clods of

00:30:20.160 grizzly bear poop all around. So, I'm freaking out. And it hits me that I've never been that alone

00:30:28.220 in my life. I mean, there's no one around me in terms of humans for miles and miles and miles.

00:30:33.900 But there's also no one with me through my cell phone, through text, through Instagram,

00:30:41.860 say, through podcasts or TV or whatever. Today, even when people think they're alone,

00:30:48.140 they're usually not because they're usually engaging with other people through different

00:30:51.600 devices. And this is kind of a paradox now because despite the fact that people say

00:30:58.040 they're more lonely than ever, and the data does really bear that out, we're never actually

00:31:03.140 alone. We're always kind of with people somehow. And being alone out there was definitely

00:31:10.960 uncomfortable at first, right? Because you're like, oh, man, if a storm comes in,

00:31:17.840 I could be stranded out here for days. If a grizzly bear comes around, I mean, I'm a buck 70 and he's

00:31:23.800 about 1500 pounds. That's not going to be fun, you know? But then it sort of became interesting because

00:31:29.900 I started to sort of introspect and think, man, all of a sudden, like I'm totally freed from

00:31:34.380 society. And without society in the equation, this social narrative of how that I should think

00:31:41.320 and act and behave, it doesn't actually hold up. All of a sudden, you start to realize, man,

00:31:46.400 I do a lot of stuff in my life just as a reaction to society because this is what society says that

00:31:51.640 a man at, you know, 30 whatever years old should be doing. So, it's kind of freeing. You feel a little

00:31:57.680 bit unencumbered and unaffected. And it's kind of a welcome change, you know, from home.

00:32:03.060 And so, the message here is not that social connection is bad. Not at all. You know,

00:32:09.300 social connection is super important. We know this from the research. We know that there are big

00:32:14.160 downsides to loneliness. But the message is more that there's a difference between loneliness and

00:32:19.940 solitude. Solitude is sort of choosing to be by yourself and using that time for positive

00:32:25.820 introspection, for creativity, and for growth. And sort of getting to know yourself, which kind

00:32:32.040 of sounds cheesy, but I think a lot of us just kind of run on autopilot all the time. We don't

00:32:35.800 really understand how we really feel about things. And we also know from things like, I mean, there's

00:32:41.640 research backing this. And I talked to scientists, but we also know things from thousands of years of

00:32:47.220 religious, spiritual, and intellectual disciplines around the world that solitude is important.

00:32:52.200 So, think about, you know, Jesus spent 40 days in the desert in solitude, sort of coming to the

00:32:57.400 center of his faith with the temptation of the Christ. You had Buddha. He exits the, you know,

00:33:02.580 wealthy palace gates to go, you know, roam the world in solitude. You had Henry David Thoreau. He

00:33:08.240 goes out and he lives at Walden Pond alone away from society. Even Lincoln was very, very heavy into

00:33:16.440 solitude. That's where he got his best work done. So, the researchers I talked to think that,

00:33:22.200 we should be thinking about trying to build this capacity to be alone. It's a thing that we have

00:33:26.900 less and less of now. When they poll people, they tend to say, I feel very uncomfortable when I'm

00:33:33.620 alone. But we need to flip that. Because if your social connections ever die off, and you are alone,

00:33:41.080 well, you're going to be in a pickle. But if you can build this capacity to just be with yourself and

00:33:45.400 use solitude as a time to introspect, get to know yourself, use it for creativity, use it for

00:33:51.200 whatever you want to do. But really, just to sort of get something on board, be okay with yourself,

00:33:57.280 that's going to move the dial for you in your life and help you really understand yourself better and

00:34:03.800 live a richer life, frankly. All right. So, another discomfort you experienced on this trip was hunger.

00:34:09.000 So, you're out in the Alaskan wilds. The only thing you have to eat is what you pack in or what you

00:34:14.780 kill. And so, it took a while before you actually got anything. So, you're just basically relying on

00:34:20.240 what you brought in. What was that hunger like? And have you ever experienced a hunger like that

00:34:24.860 before? No, sir. I had not. So, we packed in about 2,000 calories a day in these freeze-dried

00:34:33.520 mountain house meals. I don't know if you've ever had those.

00:34:35.760 Yeah. They're tasty. Yeah. Yeah. They're not bad. They're not bad.

00:34:40.440 They're actually very, very delicious when you're on day 30 of not enough food. But we'd pack in those

00:34:46.640 and a Clif Bar. So, about 2,000 calories. But the thing is, is we're burning anywhere from 4,000 to

00:34:53.540 8,000 a day because we're just moving and carrying heavy stuff all day. So, probably after the first

00:34:59.900 week, I just started to become totally ravenous. It's like I'm having to go into my next

00:35:05.600 belt loop, just losing weight pretty quick. And also, to your point, the hunger is increasing

00:35:11.520 over time. And we're hunting. There's a real objective to this. Like, we can solve this.

00:35:17.720 But hunting is not easy. I mean, I'm up there with Donnie. And he's arguably one of the best

00:35:22.520 hunters in the world. And it took us a long time to finally get a caribou. So, as we're hungry,

00:35:29.860 your mind starts to really go to food. All you can do is think about your hunger and really feel

00:35:35.920 it deeply. And before I got up there, though, in my normal life, I couldn't have told you the last

00:35:42.080 time that I was truly, physiologically, deeply hungry. I would eat because, oh, it's breakfast.

00:35:49.500 And I eat breakfast at 10 a.m. or whatever the time is. Or because I'm stressed. It's like,

00:35:54.560 oh, man, I just got this crappy email. I'm just going to reflexively have some M&Ms or whatever

00:36:00.500 it might be. A lot of research has shown that most of our eating today is not driven by true

00:36:07.780 physiological hunger. Most of it is driven by reasons other than hunger. So, things like stress

00:36:13.460 or maybe even boredom or just because a clock says this is the time we eat.

00:36:18.620 And this is a big reason why 70% of the country is overweight or obese. It's just we're constantly

00:36:28.080 eating. I talked to one researcher who studied historical and current eating patterns. And

00:36:34.080 back in the day, humans used to have two meals a day on average. They just eat whatever. But now

00:36:40.640 we're eating across this 15-hour window like we snack all the time. One researcher basically told me,

00:36:46.720 I truly don't think that people are ever actually hungry anymore. Of course, it's like there's

00:36:53.200 individual variation. But as a whole, the country is just eating a lot and often, never facing hunger.

00:37:00.500 And this has had some repercussions. Being overweight and obese is the number one

00:37:04.820 risk factor for chronic disease. The only thing that overtakes it is smoking. But so few people smoke

00:37:11.000 now, the rates have dropped that obesity is really becoming our biggest problem.

00:37:17.320 And having worked in the health, nutrition, fitness space at Men's Health and for different

00:37:25.320 magazines, millions of people try to diet every year. But I think the stat is something like 90

00:37:32.920 something percent of diets fail. And we have all these diets out there that tell us,

00:37:37.320 eat this, not that, where it's like one food or one ingredient. That is the culprit. That is the

00:37:43.240 reason why you're fat or why you can't lose weight. But the reality is that all diets work by the same

00:37:49.560 mechanism. By eating less, you end up dropping your calories and you lose weight. And there's a little

00:37:56.420 bit of debate around that. But the vast majority of scientists I speak to, that's what's going on here.

00:38:02.940 And so by being in Alaska, like, I'm eating this crappy ultra processed food, tastes like crap, but I'm 0.96

00:38:12.940 having to go through hunger. And when I get home, I step on that scale, I'm 10 pounds lighter. So it really 0.67

00:38:18.360 showed me, oh, like the key to really changing your body. Not that I was really overweight going in, but it

00:38:25.760 really showed me what you eat is not as important as how much you eat and also why you eat. Right? So

00:38:34.720 humans, humans have two kind of two types of hunger. You know, I've sort of alluded to this. We have

00:38:40.080 reward hunger and real hunger. As we evolved, we developed these mechanisms that really reward us

00:38:45.740 to overeat, to eat too much too often. Now, back in the day, that wasn't possible. There just wasn't

00:38:52.900 enough food, but now we're sort of surrounded in this sea of food and we can use those reward

00:38:57.520 mechanisms to essentially comfort us. So you think of a term like comfort food, right? So food can kind

00:39:03.220 of become a widget for a lot of people. And being in Alaska and coming back with that, you know, 10

00:39:10.000 pounds lighter, I wanted to learn more about this idea of how people relate to food. So I traveled down

00:39:17.100 to Austin and I meet this kid whose name is Trevor Cashy. And to say that Trevor is smart is to

00:39:24.640 basically say that LeBron James is good at basketball. I mean, this kid is another planet

00:39:29.280 brilliant. And he got his... He finished college at 18. He got his PhD at 23. He did a bunch of work in a

00:39:37.620 cancer lab. And then he decided that he'd always been interested in sport and nutrition. And he'd been

00:39:44.940 sort of working with people on the side and was really good at it. And he decided to open his own

00:39:51.120 sort of nutrition firm. And what's interesting about him is that, to the point I made earlier,

00:39:58.380 that really, he's wondering why you eat. He doesn't care so much what you eat. That'll figure

00:40:03.440 itself out over time. And you'll find foods that help you fend off hunger for longer. He's more

00:40:08.980 interested in why you eat. And he's more interested in getting you okay with facing the discomfort of

00:40:14.740 hunger. Realizing that hunger, feeling hunger, real hunger every now and then is good. You're going to

00:40:19.380 need to do that if you want to lose weight. And his clients, they tend to be either really great

00:40:25.860 athletes or like Navy SEAL types, CEO types, or they're people who have tried literally everything.

00:40:33.740 And as a last-ditch effort before bariatric surgery, they're going to come to him. And he's

00:40:39.440 really moved the dial for people. And he's just a fascinating, fascinating person. Getting people to

00:40:44.020 unpeel these layers of, okay, what does hunger feel like? Why are you eating in the first place?

00:40:49.240 Et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, it was definitely an interesting phenomenon. I'll tell you that.

00:40:53.920 And there's other really fascinating... I won't get into this too much, go off topic. But there's a

00:40:58.140 really interesting study called the Minnesota Starvation Study from the 1940s. And they did it

00:41:03.840 in the run-up to World War... During World War II. Because during World War II in Europe,

00:41:08.860 more people... About the same amount of people died from starvation as did in battle. And so the U.S.

00:41:14.920 wanted to figure out, okay, how do we refeed these people safely? And what happens to starving people?

00:41:19.580 So they got these guys and they basically starved them and tracked what happened to them. And your body

00:41:25.420 has all these amazing mechanisms to keep you alive. It slows down your metabolism, drops your core

00:41:33.100 temperature, and it makes your brain start to obsess about hunger. And I definitely felt that obsession

00:41:38.820 for sure. And I think lots of people probably read those articles too about fasting. There's

00:41:43.840 benefits there. Like your body just... When you don't have any food, it starts eating itself in a way

00:41:48.700 to just kind of clean things up. And that can help with longevity as well. They found that mice that

00:41:53.860 fast or don't eat that much live longer than mice that eat all the time.

00:41:57.720 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So that research is really interesting.

00:42:00.780 So it kicks on this thing called autophagy where your body starts to burn cells. And it tends to

00:42:06.300 burn its weakest cells, ones that are damaged. And those cells are associated with disease and even

00:42:12.540 diseases like cancer. So they think that fasting can be a good way to just sort of keep your body

00:42:18.020 cleaner, get rid of a lot of the damaged stuff that's associated with disease. It's not a miracle cure,

00:42:23.400 of course. I think one of the messages of this book is that

00:42:27.540 we've lost so many of these different forms of discomfort that we used to face.

00:42:34.900 Now, in and of themselves, any one of the discomforts can be relatively powerful.

00:42:40.280 But once you start to figure out how to weave them all together, man, that is what really,

00:42:44.860 really moves the dial. And I think a lot of times too often today,

00:42:48.840 people think, oh, I can find this one thing. And that's going to fix all my problems.

00:42:54.320 It's like, no, we, a lot of times it's a combination of things. So that's kind of what

00:42:58.860 I'm trying to get at with, with the overall fame of discomfort.

00:43:02.140 So a lot of people, they know that they, they got to move their body, right? They know they sit at

00:43:06.520 the office or their sofa all day. So what they say, they tell us, well, I'm going to go to the gym

00:43:11.320 for an hour and that will sort of just mitigate all that. And so we exercise, we do the treadmill,

00:43:16.360 we lift weights. When you were out there in Alaska, you didn't like, it seems like your training

00:43:23.480 that you might've done in the gym probably didn't prepare you much for the actual physical activity

00:43:27.640 you did. What surprised you about the physical activity out there in Alaska and how it differs

00:43:32.620 from what we think of as physical activity in our modern life?

00:43:37.700 Yeah. I mean, I tried to prepare. Heck, I spent a lot of time in the gym, but yeah, I mean,

00:43:43.640 nothing can prepare you for constant, constant movement. And I mean, the hardest thing that we did

00:43:49.400 is after we finally killed the caribou, we had to pack it back out to camp. So this is probably

00:43:56.220 a hundred, 110 pounds in my pack. And, you know, I have like these antlers bursting out of the pack.

00:44:03.440 It was pretty spectacular scene, but then we had to hike five miles all uphill across the tundra back

00:44:11.100 to camp. And the tundra is, I mean, it's like one mile on the tundra is like five miles on a normal

00:44:17.200 trail. It's just so terrible to walk on. It's covered in all these things called tundra tussocks,

00:44:22.280 which are these big basketball size things of weeds. Some parts of the ground will be frozen

00:44:27.760 or really spongy or muddy. Like it's just terrible. And so with my background, having been at men's

00:44:34.740 health for so long and still doing a lot for them, like I've, I've had to embed myself in some

00:44:39.260 really extreme gyms. I've done some 24 hour endurance events, which is not to say that I'm like a pro

00:44:45.640 athlete here. Like at the end of the day, I'm this gangly rider, but you know, I'm a pretty thick

00:44:51.120 gangly rider. But this carrying this weight across the tundra was by far the hardest thing that I'd ever

00:44:59.060 done. And what I thought was most interesting though, is that this is essentially what life

00:45:04.880 was like for our ancestors all the time. You look at the data and our ancestors were 14 times more

00:45:10.740 physically active than us on average. And so I really got interested in this idea of like, man,

00:45:15.620 how has our physicality changed? What did we used to do for quote unquote exercise, which was really

00:45:21.640 just life because people didn't exercise in the past. And how does this compare to what we do now?

00:45:28.440 So as you alluded to, now we go into a gym, this, you know, temperature controlled gym,

00:45:32.680 and we get on a treadmill and an elliptical and we do our, you know, 30 minutes on that.

00:45:37.340 Then we go down to the weight room and we, you know, curl some perfectly balanced weights a few

00:45:42.100 times. Maybe we do some bench presses, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I traveled to Harvard and

00:45:49.260 I meet a guy whose name is Dan Lieberman. He's a anthropologist there. He basically told me, look,

00:45:56.020 when you compare us to other animals, humans are athletically pathetic. Those are the words that he 0.99

00:46:01.720 used. And I just love that. We are slow compared to most other mammals. We're also very weak,

00:46:08.380 but in 2004, this guy discovered that humans are good at a couple of things. And one of those is

00:46:16.220 running long distances in the heat. So we evolved to do what's called persistence hunting. We would

00:46:22.740 see an animal and we'd slowly, but surely run it down over time on a hot day. Eventually the animal

00:46:29.780 would overheat and topple over from exhaustion and we would spirit. And then we would have to

00:46:37.340 carry it back to camp. So we, these persistence hunts could be anywhere from 10 to 20 miles. I mean,

00:46:44.840 we're talking long distances here. So the, the 2004 study was really about distance running and how we

00:46:51.960 sort of evolved to do that. And he, that study is actually the one, if you're, I'm sure everyone

00:46:58.140 who's listening remembers when barefoot running and like very, very minimal, minimalist running shoes

00:47:04.240 were popular. It sort of set off that whole craze because early humans would have run without

00:47:10.040 shoes on. And, you know, there was maybe associated with less injury, which they found wasn't necessarily

00:47:16.540 true. And the Lieberman guy I talked to, he just, he secretly hates that he's been associated with this

00:47:21.900 crazy barefoot running movement. Um, but as I'm packing this caribou out across Alaska,

00:47:27.080 it occurs to me, okay, we are so-called, you know, born to run. But once we run, we have to carry this

00:47:35.960 weight all the way back to camp. And it's like, well, how did that shape us? So I went down this

00:47:41.760 crazy rabbit hole of the act of carrying heavy stuff. And humans are the only animals, it turns out,

00:47:50.000 that are any good at carrying weight across distance. And it's really shaped our body. So

00:47:55.400 the combination of, of running and then carrying explains why we have these long legs,

00:48:01.080 why we don't have much fur keeps us from overheating, why we sweat. That also keeps us

00:48:05.760 from overheating. We have these complicated noses that humidify air. And we also have really strong

00:48:10.960 grips to grab stuff so we can walk it. And we also have short torsos, which helps with, with carrying.

00:48:16.940 So like the acts of running and carrying really shaped us as human beings. It allowed us to more

00:48:22.920 or less take over the globe and like hunt better and also explore and, um, you know, engage in warfare.

00:48:31.700 And when you look at what humans do now, we still run. So we've sort of reintroduced running back into

00:48:36.880 our days, but very few people carry heavy things for distance. And it's this thing that we evolved to

00:48:42.760 do that these Harvard researchers think is probably uniquely good for us from a, from a fitness

00:48:48.560 perspective. Yeah. That led you down to, you know, hooking up with, uh, go rock and learning about

00:48:54.960 that community there where they're carrying heavy things for distance. Yeah, exactly. So after Harvard,

00:49:00.040 I bombed down to Jacksonville, Florida, and I meet Jason McCarthy and he's a former green beret. Some of

00:49:06.940 your readers are sorry. I always say readers cause I'm a writer. Some of your listeners might, uh,

00:49:12.260 know him and he started go rock, which is a company that makes these beautiful military spec backpacks

00:49:17.900 that are specifically designed for rucking, which is carrying weight in a pack for distance. So the

00:49:23.620 only people who have really reintroduced carrying back into their days is the military and rucking is

00:49:29.180 really the foundation of military fitness. And for the average person, you know, Jason describes it as

00:49:35.660 it's, uh, cardio for people who hate to run lifting for people who hate the gym. So you're working both

00:49:41.500 strength and endurance at the same time, which is uncomfortable, right? But it's also very approachable.

00:49:48.420 One of the best things you can do for your fitness is to rock, just throw, you know, try not to go over

00:49:54.840 50 pounds. Cause that is tended tends to like set off injuries, but 50 or below, it's one of the best

00:50:03.020 things you can do for your fitness. You're like doing all these amazing things that we evolved to do that we

00:50:07.500 don't do anymore. And it's so different. And I think than most workouts now, which I'm not saying that, you

00:50:13.400 know, going to the gym and, and lifting weights isn't important or that running on treadmill is important. Like

00:50:18.620 those things are obviously good, but is it, does it really in play with how we are adapted to exercise?

00:50:24.840 I mean, something like a rock, you're not only you're working strength and endurance, but you're

00:50:29.400 also probably outside having to navigate your environment. And there's some research that says

00:50:34.140 exercising while having some demands on your brain, like hiking along a trail is how humans

00:50:42.000 evolved to exercise. So it has these benefits that can really improve your brain health over time.

00:50:47.660 So I think we've just come so far away in general from how we used to be physically active and

00:50:54.680 we've sort of had to engineer this, these kinds of new, strange ways of physical activity when it's

00:51:01.020 really a lot, can be a lot simpler than that. And by simplifying it and thinking about what we used

00:51:06.740 to do in the past, it probably can be more effective in some ways.

00:51:11.520 One last thing I want to talk about. You noticed on your trip, you didn't shower or bathe. Obviously you

00:51:16.660 might've gotten a wet washcloth and cleaned yourself up from some river water, but you notice that

00:51:22.680 actually I'm okay. Like you would, I'm not, I don't have any diseases. I'm fine. And you actually

00:51:28.820 did some research saying that our overemphasis on cleanliness might be backfiring in some ways.

00:51:34.820 Yeah. And now this has become an interesting question, especially in the time of COVID. But when I'm up

00:51:40.520 there, I don't shower. If I'm washing my hands, it's probably in some river water. And when I get

00:51:46.460 back, I'm of course smell like a garbage dump mixed with a salmon run. It was the hotel staff was really

00:51:53.140 happy to greet me. But we've essentially sanitized everything from our lives. We learned about a hundred

00:52:01.900 years ago that germs are associated with disease and we thought, okay, well then we should kill every

00:52:06.300 germ, but it turns out that very, very few germs are actually associated with disease. And a lot of

00:52:11.980 germs and microbes are actually good for us. So you look at the data and younger people have about a two 0.99

00:52:18.340 to four fold risk of things like colon and rectal cancer compared to people born in 1950. Now, the reason

00:52:27.300 for this, they think is because we really started to sanitize everything and are always using Purell all the

00:52:33.100 time and kids don't go outside as much. We no longer go out and get dirty, but it turns out that like when we go

00:52:39.100 out and we expose ourselves to, you know, dirt and some natural germs, it builds up our defenses and it improves

00:52:47.360 our gut microbiome, which has a lot of benefits for our health. It kind of gives us this armor where our body is

00:52:53.740 like able to deal with things. You can almost think about it as the same idea as a vaccine, right? By like, giving you

00:52:59.000 this low dose of sort of a mimicking a bug, your body builds up resistance to the real thing, more or

00:53:06.120 less. So we don't have that anymore. And the message is not, you know, just stop washing your

00:53:12.100 hands. Cause like I said, we're in the time of COVID need to wash our hands, need to practice all the

00:53:16.040 sanitary things. The message is really that, you know, going outside and getting dirty can be a really good

00:53:22.540 thing. There's a lot of researchers who study this, who make their children garden and go outside and, you know,

00:53:28.520 kind of play in the dirt because it can be so good for their system as a whole. And even our food,

00:53:34.140 we've lost some of the benefits because we now, all our food is like washed and perfectly prepared.

00:53:40.400 And it's also totally refined. Whereas the research says, if you eat more raw vegetables,

00:53:44.880 that can also help your gut microbiome because there's fiber. And you're also usually onboarding

00:53:50.280 some germs that just happen to be on a low level on the vegetables.

00:53:54.580 So, I mean, you went on this hunt, this Misogi, and you experienced all this stuff and you learned

00:54:00.660 some things about being uncomfortable. How have you incorporated this into your regular life? Are

00:54:04.720 you like rucking while fasting in silence and then rolling around in the mud? What are you doing?

00:54:10.960 Well, no, I live in the desert. So I do all that, but I do it in just dirt. It's too dry out here.

00:54:16.080 No, I tend to think about this stuff as like, what can I do across the days, weeks, months, and years?

00:54:24.740 You know, it's not like I'm fasting every single day, but like I do try and incorporate times where

00:54:31.300 I go through some hunger. I do try and leave my cell phone when I go out on walks in nature,

00:54:38.580 oftentimes with a rock on my back. You know, it's like, how can I add these little things back

00:54:44.540 into my life that make me just make my days just a little bit more uncomfortable? And then when I

00:54:50.600 think about it on a longer perspective, I try and do one really hard thing, sort of this Misogi idea

00:54:58.080 once a year and spend a lot more time outdoors. So for example, one of the guidelines of Misogi

00:55:05.700 is that you don't really advertise about it, but I talked to Marcus and he was like, well, you're kind

00:55:10.140 of like preaching this idea that I think will help people as you can talk to people about your Misogis.

00:55:13.720 So I did one the other day where I had never run 16 miles, more than 60 miles in my life,

00:55:21.520 you know, and I went out into the desert on this trail and I was like, okay, I'm going to try and

00:55:27.240 run, you know, what would be really hard for me? What's that 50-50? And I said, could I run 32 miles?

00:55:34.120 And I thought, yeah, I could probably run 32 miles if I really had to. So it didn't feel like 50-50.

00:55:40.200 And I was like, well, could I run like more than 45? I was like, I don't know if I could do more than

00:55:46.660 that. And so that was kind of the key to me where I really had this apprehension. And I went out and

00:55:52.260 did it and it was super hard. But along the way, like I learned so much about myself and I returned

00:55:56.700 from that being like, man, that was awesome. Like in the moment, you're like, this sucks. Why am I 0.69

00:56:02.200 doing this? This is terrible. You need to quit. You definitely need to quit. You should quit right now.

00:56:06.060 But by just putting one foot in front of the other and doing that, it was like, oh man,

00:56:12.860 if I don't have to quit at that and I can do that, what else is possible? We just tend to sell

00:56:18.040 ourselves short, I think. So finding these ways to integrate discomfort back into your life in small

00:56:23.600 ways and big ways, I think is the key. And the book really is sort of a blueprint for how you do that

00:56:31.200 because there's a lot of different discomforts that we've lost over time. And by not having those

00:56:36.220 in our lives, we're missing something vital, not only for our health and our mental health,

00:56:41.720 but also for our spirit. I think a lot of this, I think there's a lot about humans that you can't

00:56:48.800 necessarily measure in a hospital or a doctor can't exactly explain. But when we do stuff like this,

00:56:56.500 that stuff sort of bubbles to the surface and it kind of tells you a little bit more about

00:57:00.320 how to live an interesting, memorable life. Well, Michael, this has been a great conversation.

00:57:04.420 Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:57:07.160 So the book is called The Comfort Crisis and it's available, I don't know, wherever you buy books.

00:57:13.060 Find an independent store. I'd love it if you do that, if you're interested. And then

00:57:16.680 if you want to learn more about me in general, you can go to my website. It's eastermichael.com.

00:57:22.980 And I'm also on Instagram posting about random stuff. Not too often because you just heard me

00:57:29.900 talk about how I try to not spend too much time on my cell phone, but I do post there.

00:57:34.020 And that's Michael underscore Easter. And it was awesome to talk to you, man. I really

00:57:37.800 appreciate you having me on. Well, thank you, Michael. Appreciate it. Take care.

00:57:41.660 My guest today was Michael Easter. He's the author of the book, The Comfort Crisis. It's

00:57:45.020 available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more information about his work

00:57:48.460 at his website, eastermichael.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is

00:57:52.360 slash comfort crisis, where you can find links to resources, where you delve deeper into this

00:57:55.420 topic. And if you're looking to do hard things, looking for some structure to do hard things,

00:57:59.680 check out our membership platform, The Strenuous Life. We've basically taken all the content we've

00:58:03.220 talked about and written about on the art of manliness for the past 15 years, put some

00:58:06.400 structure to it. We have badges based on hard skills like hunting, orienteering. We've got

00:58:11.120 self-defense. We've got soft skills too, personal finances, public speaking, et cetera. And we also

00:58:16.280 have weekly challenges that are going to put you outside of your comfort zone on a physical,

00:58:20.440 social, and mental level. So check it out, strenuouslife.co. We've got an enrollment

00:58:25.020 opening up in June. Hope to see you there.

00:58:34.380 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast. Check out our website at

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00:59:08.460 thank you for the continued support. Until the next time, this is Brett McKay. Remind you not only

00:59:11.820 listen to the AOM Podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - November 23, 2022

Overcome the Comfort Crisis

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