The Art of Manliness - Overcoming the Comfort Crisis

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast our world has

00:00:11.360 never been more convenient and comfortable with just a few taps of our fingers we can order food

00:00:14.960 to our door access endless entertainment options and keep our climate at a steady 72 degrees we

00:00:19.820 don't have to put in much effort much less face any risk or challenge in order to sustain our

00:00:23.480 daily lives some ways this quantum leap in humanity's comfort level is a great boon but

00:00:27.720 in other ways it's absolutely killing our minds bodies and spirit my guest says it's time to

00:00:32.200 reclaim the currently hard to come by but truly essential benefits of discomfort his name is

00:00:36.320 michael easter he's a writer editor professor and the author of the comfort crisis embrace discomfort

00:00:40.980 to claim your wild happy healthy self michael first shares how his experience with getting sober helped

00:00:45.840 him discover the life-changing potential of doing hard things before digging into what fleeing from

00:00:49.820 discomfort is doing to our mental and physical health we then discussed the japanese idea of

00:00:53.860 misogy which involves taking an epic outdoor challenge and why michael decided to do a

00:00:58.180 misogy in which he participated in a month-long caribou hunt in the back country of alaska michael

00:01:02.860 shares what he learned from the various challenges he encountered during his misogy including intense

00:01:06.940 hunger boredom solitude and physical exertion as well as what research can tell us all about why we

00:01:12.360 need to incorporate these same kinds of discomforts into our everyday lives after the show's over check out

00:01:16.840 our show notes at aom.is comfort crisis all right michael easter welcome to the show thanks for having

00:01:31.580 me on so you got a book out the comfort crisis embrace discomfort to reclaim your wild happy healthy

00:01:37.320 self and this book is your journey of getting more comfortable with being uncomfortable and showing the

00:01:44.260 research that you know the benefits that come with that what kick-started this whole thing of exploring

00:01:48.580 discomfort yeah i mean i think there's a handful of things what really set it off for me though is

00:01:55.860 a handful of years ago i ended up getting sober so in the book i talk about i come from this long line

00:02:02.800 of men who just hum on booze and bedlam like my my dad once painted his horse green and rode it into a bar

00:02:10.140 with a woman who was not my mom it was on saint patrick's day hence the green i have one hilarious

00:02:15.980 story from my family is that i have a cousin who got thrown into a dry out cell and he comes to and

00:02:22.300 he realizes that apparently we're having an impromptu family reunion he'd gotten thrown into this cell with

00:02:27.940 my uncle just on accident you know so anyways i was kind of starting to ride that same metaphorical

00:02:35.740 horse if you will and i realized that i needed to change you know i tried a lot to quit drinking and

00:02:43.840 finally just something took where i you know asked for help and getting sober was definitely the most

00:02:50.520 uncomfortable thing i've ever done i mean your body's really trying to figure out what is going on

00:02:56.520 with this new way of living because alcohol essentially becomes a comfort blanket for people

00:03:02.520 who have a drinking problem it's sort of you know comforts you from from the stuff in the world

00:03:08.400 that you just don't want to face you know maybe you're like a little unsure of yourself whatever

00:03:12.140 when you drink it fixes that and once you take that away it's like oh man now now i gotta live normally

00:03:18.940 and so going through that it was hell for a while but then you come out the other side and it's like

00:03:26.640 my life just got so much better like in every single way possible i mean i can't even

00:03:31.380 name i mean just anything that you could think could go better went better and so from that

00:03:36.500 experience i could see like when i was drinking i didn't want to get

00:03:40.280 sober because i was like afraid of having to go through that and see what would happen on the other

00:03:45.220 side but once i did i was like man things got better so i could see like oh there's there's

00:03:50.480 benefits in discomfort and doing these things that we don't want to do facing our fears and just

00:03:56.380 really diving into discomfort so okay you started doing this deep dive and you started exploring in

00:04:02.500 the ways in which modern life you know we're extremely comfortable and we we should all feel

00:04:07.060 blessed and fortunate that we live in a way where there's antibiotics there's running water but then

00:04:11.960 you also highlight you know there's some downsides to that as well how can comfort cause problems in

00:04:16.720 our lives yeah so and that was the thing is after i got sober you know i had this i noticed that going

00:04:24.320 through discomfort was was good and always leaning into comfort like i had been doing maybe wasn't good

00:04:30.280 and then i sort of realized oh my god my life is still completely completely surrounded in comfort i mean

00:04:37.180 if if you stop and focus on everything around you basically everything in our daily lives now that

00:04:44.400 most impacts our daily life it's probably new and it's probably made to make your life more

00:04:50.480 comfortable or easier or less effortful in some way so think about climate control right we live at 72

00:04:57.120 degrees we have cell phones that we can use to basically cure any semblance of boredom we have or order

00:05:04.780 food and have it delivered directly to our door stream down videos whatever we have you know this whole

00:05:10.960 transportation system we live behind screens and we sit in chairs all day we have this food system

00:05:16.440 where we don't have to put in any effort at all for food and it's had some consequences i mean you can tie

00:05:23.080 it to everything from chronic disease to depression to even feeling a lack of meaning because it's like

00:05:31.060 humans thrive on on challenges on being pushed up against and coming out the other side just like i did

00:05:37.940 having to get sober right but we often don't have these in our lives all the time now and so it's

00:05:43.820 had some consequences for sure yeah and that idea of like sense of meaning or purpose you know you hear

00:05:49.940 people reporting how life just seems harder now it's like ah i'm just everyone's like everyone's tired

00:05:54.760 i'm so tired but it's like you know it's weird it seems things feel harder even though it's actually

00:06:01.520 if you compare it to the whole length of human history it's pretty easy what do you think is going on

00:06:05.680 there why does life feel harder even though we've got it pretty good today yeah that's that's a great

00:06:10.140 question and there's a scientific reason for this actually um i talked to researchers at harvard

00:06:16.480 psychologists and there's this idea that the dorky name for it is called prevalence induced concept

00:06:21.260 change and i tend to think about it as problem or comfort creep essentially the human brain evolves to

00:06:28.600 make relative comparisons it's this brain mechanism that saved us energy so we don't when something

00:06:37.340 new is sort of introduced to our lives that improves our lives we adapt to it and we don't sort of look

00:06:43.980 back and think oh man we're making great progress this is great we kind of look back at the last thing

00:06:49.020 and think oh man now that's totally unacceptable to us basically what happens is we have as we have

00:06:54.640 more comforts introduced to our lives we don't necessarily become more satisfied with them we

00:07:00.560 just sort of lower our threshold for what we consider comfortable this also applies to things like

00:07:06.040 problems so once we've solved the problem we don't actually think in our brain oh i have fewer problems

00:07:13.460 right now we just go looking for the next problem to solve so we sort of end up with the same number

00:07:18.120 of problems except our new problems are progressively more hollow so you can think about this as almost

00:07:24.900 the science of first world problems we keep on moving the dial into comfort and convenience and

00:07:31.980 having everything done for us and we don't think oh man 20 years ago i didn't have a cell phone wow

00:07:38.480 this is amazing instead it's like man instagram has crashed this is the worst thing ever we we freak

00:07:45.320 out right and this is like put at scale to to everything in our lives all right so yeah doing

00:07:50.220 hard stuff can put some some first world problems in perspective so in your quest to like you know

00:07:56.540 figure out explore the science of being uncomfortable one of the first guys you talk to is this sports

00:08:01.820 doctor he works with a lot of pro athletes nba athletes nfl stars to help them prevent injuries but

00:08:08.280 he's also got this idea that he took from japanese culture called misogies so you tell us about this

00:08:14.160 the sports doctor and his idea of misogies yeah so this guy's name is marcus elliott he's a far

00:08:21.480 out character so he's a harvard md and he decides he doesn't want to be a doctor he's going to go into

00:08:27.580 sports science and his first job was with the patriots they were at the time this is in the early 2000s

00:08:34.420 they had this crazy high hamstring injury rate it was like 21 a year and he applied you know real science

00:08:41.200 to sports which hadn't really been done before and he dropped their injury rate to like three a year

00:08:47.060 then he was like a performance director for the for the mlb and now he has his own facility where he

00:08:53.680 has contracts with the nba so basically every nba player incoming nba player comes through there

00:08:58.480 and he does all this really technical scientific stuff where he tracks their movement patterns and

00:09:05.200 you know applies it to this big algorithm and he can basically tell you

00:09:08.400 okay you have this specific movement pattern when we see that in a player that means the player

00:09:14.080 usually will have a say 60 chance of tearing an acl that season but he can also tell you like hey this

00:09:20.940 is a skill you're really good at compared to everyone else let's develop that because we think it could

00:09:25.860 help your game so i told you all that to basically tell you this guy is obviously very into science and

00:09:32.760 data etc but he also knows that you know not everything that improves not only athletes but

00:09:40.640 humans in general can be measured and so he started doing this thing that he calls misogi and it's based

00:09:47.540 off this uh japanese myth it's essentially a big physical challenge and conducted in nature and there are

00:09:54.340 only two rules and the rules are that it must be truly difficult which he measures essentially by saying

00:09:59.940 you should have a 50 50 shot of finishing it true 50 50 shot and then the second rule is that you can't

00:10:07.360 die and that part's pretty straightforward right so and ideally the challenge is a bit kooky so for

00:10:13.700 example one year him and some athletes they got this 85 pound rock and they walked it five miles

00:10:20.120 underwater in the santa barbara channel and then they've also done stuff like okay we're gonna strap

00:10:26.040 packs to our back and we're gonna drive out to the mountains and we're just gonna pick the farthest

00:10:31.140 peak we can see and we're gonna try and hike to it in a day they've done things like this they stand

00:10:35.820 up paddleboard across the santa barbara channel after only having stand up paddleboarded a few times so

00:10:41.720 the whole idea here is that you're putting yourself in a position doing something physical in nature that

00:10:47.660 is going to be very truly challenging for you where you only have a 50 shot of making it and what he's

00:10:54.380 trying to do is is mimic these past challenges that we used to face as we were evolving you know as

00:11:00.920 humans evolved we had to do true challenges in nature all the time and these were things that

00:11:05.860 our environment would usually naturally show us so this could be things like having to go on a big hunt

00:11:12.700 or maybe you're trying to migrate down to your summering grounds and you're going over a pass and like

00:11:18.860 a gnarly storm hits maybe it's you know a tiger lurking in the bushes nowadays we don't face these

00:11:25.960 type of of challenges and back in our past when we would go through these we would sort of learn

00:11:31.440 something about ourselves and dig deep and become a more confident and competent person but nowadays we

00:11:37.540 don't we don't really have challenges like you can never be challenged in life and you can still have

00:11:42.020 plenty of food you'll have a comfortable home you can probably have a decent job you have a family

00:11:46.340 which seems which seems totally fine and it is but at the same time let's say like you have this you

00:11:54.400 know big potential that's this big circle well it's like most people just live in this sort of dinner

00:12:00.080 plate size circle within that they never really go out and see what exists on the edges of their

00:12:05.760 potential and by not having any idea of like what's out on those edges you really miss a lot in life and

00:12:12.000 you miss learning something about yourself that can really help you in life so he believes that by

00:12:17.840 doing these things like misogi you kind of have this innate evolutionary machinery that gets triggered

00:12:23.440 when you go out and you do these hard things and you really explore the edges of your comfort zone so

00:12:28.660 you're putting yourself in a position where failure is totally possible because in the modern world

00:12:34.940 failure is you know getting a bad look from your boss or not getting enough likes on instagram so we

00:12:41.160 kind of have this outsized fear of failure and the repercussions of these failures that we really

00:12:46.860 fear they're kind of all inside our head like it's not really going to affect our our livelihood it's

00:12:51.300 just going to make us you know a little bit stressed and anxious so by getting out into the wild and doing

00:12:56.360 these misogi like challenges you lose a lot of fear you start to learn something about yourself

00:13:02.240 things start moving for you and you come out on the other end whether you made it or not

00:13:08.540 as an improved person who's sort of a lot more confident a lot more competent and so the idea

00:13:16.820 is like let's introduce some metaphorical tigers back into our life right and you see these things

00:13:24.120 i mean this when i talk about this people are like well this guy sounds kind of kooky you know

00:13:28.240 and it's like yeah maybe he is but at the same time you look at how past societies lived

00:13:34.960 and this idea of a myth where a hero sort of leaves the comfort of home he goes out into this trying

00:13:44.020 middle ground really struggles almost fails but he makes it and he comes out on the other side an

00:13:49.920 improved person these myths exist throughout time and space so this is what joseph campbell essentially

00:13:55.240 called the hero's journey and you also see them in things like traditional rites of passage

00:14:00.000 so for example the maasai tribe young men would have to go out and hunt a lion with a spear in order

00:14:06.340 to transition into this new more confident part of life and become a warrior in the tribe you have

00:14:12.320 things like aboriginal walkabout the nez pierce tribe would send people out on these nature quests

00:14:17.460 where they'd go out into nature for like a week's time and they'd fast and you know they'd have these

00:14:21.980 challenges but then when they came back they had learned so much about their potential what they're

00:14:25.840 capable on they're ready to become leaders in the tribe so we're trying to sort of mimic those

00:14:30.580 things that are very important for humans and have been for millennia that we just don't face anymore

00:14:36.580 so in addition to doing these like analysis of physiology is he putting athletes that he

00:14:41.600 consults with through these misogies he makes it an elective they want to he tells them about it

00:14:47.300 some don't want to do it but those that do like you talk to him and he he goes those are the people

00:14:53.480 that are that tend to have the most clutch performances especially in you know high high

00:15:00.120 stakes situations because they have this kind of new thing on board they didn't really know was there

00:15:06.060 you know they've really been tested and all of a sudden once you've i don't know let's say stand up

00:15:11.300 paddleboarded across the channel when you're maybe even afraid of water you're like man all of a sudden a

00:15:17.740 playoff game becomes more manageable not that that's not a high stress situation but you've had all

00:15:23.580 these other super high stress situations that help you sort of buffer that and you can really dig deep

00:15:28.780 and you just feel like man i've got something on board i think i can explore this thing and and do it

00:15:34.140 all right so inspired by this idea you came up with your own misogi and that was to go

00:15:38.340 backcountry hunting for caribou in alaska where did that come from yeah so i had uh

00:15:44.760 i i met marcus and then through my work so marcus kind of tells me about this misogi idea and i'm

00:15:52.020 i'm fascinated by it and through my work i've become friends with donnie vincent and donnie vincent for

00:15:58.420 people who don't know he's a backcountry bow hunter and filmmaker and he goes into the world's most

00:16:04.280 remote off the grid sort of extreme places and he'll hunt for months at a time he'll be up there for

00:16:11.180 one month two months three months and he invited me up to the arctic with him for more than a month

00:16:16.560 on a caribou hunt and i sort of thought of that idea of misogi and thought man this might also be a

00:16:22.500 really good way to explore a lot of these discomforts that we've removed from our lives and i definitely did

00:16:30.920 find some discomfort up there for example you know we faced constant hunger all the time we're eating

00:16:38.240 about 2 000 calories and burning a lot more than that everything took effort i mean this was from

00:16:44.100 carrying our packs they were usually around 80 pounds all the time to everything like having to

00:16:50.780 go get water so you could make dinner and have water to drink we'd have to hike down to this stream

00:16:56.260 and then hike it all the way back up to camp and you know there was like grizzlies would hang out by

00:17:01.780 the stream you know so there's also mental stress uh there was negative 20 temperatures really crazy

00:17:08.080 weather that could have been perilous and even things like long stretches of boredom because you

00:17:13.480 don't have a cell phone or tv or tablet or computer up there even things like being in solitude and

00:17:21.440 really complete silence can be eerie at first you know and because i'm hunting i'm facing the life cycle

00:17:26.640 and we faced some of those real challenges like i just talked about you know we got put in positions

00:17:32.700 where i wanted to quit but if i would have quit it could have been perilous you know so i had to sort

00:17:39.400 of keep going by coming out on the other side you you learn a lot about yourself so that's how i ended up

00:17:45.380 up in the arctic for a month right well we'll dig in i want to dig into some of these things you learned

00:17:50.660 about you know hunger and boredom and things like that but one thing you mentioned the book i thought

00:17:54.720 was interesting as you were preparing for this this hunt and then even after the hunt you noticed this

00:18:01.060 as well that you noticed that felt like time sort of slowed down a bit and then you actually did

00:18:05.940 research like what's going on there and there's actually a scientific reason why time seemed to

00:18:11.040 slow down a bit as you were doing this misogi what's going on there yeah so this this was really

00:18:17.380 really fascinating to me the human brain is essentially programmed to default into a predictable

00:18:24.020 routine now this is thanks to how we evolved because as we evolved you know we lived in these

00:18:29.880 dangerous trying uncomfortable environments and having predictability in our life it kept us safe

00:18:36.760 it like let us know how to avoid animals where to get food and we would rinse and repeat right

00:18:43.240 it could keep us safe but now that our world is sort of safe and predictable it's kind of an

00:18:48.640 evolutionary bug it sort of traps us within this comfort zone and this routine where we just do

00:18:55.080 the same stuff every day day in and day out so i mean take me in as a an example and this is

00:19:01.640 slightly changed because of the pandemic but you know i drive i eat the same breakfast every every

00:19:09.700 morning i drive the same route to work and listen to the same you know radio station whatever it is

00:19:15.560 i basically have do the same job i have the same converse basic conversation with co-workers

00:19:21.260 then i go home and eat the same basic dinner and on the weekends i do the same kind of thing right

00:19:25.840 it's like we live in these very very routine lives now the problem with that is that once you've really

00:19:33.140 settled into a routine and just rinsed and repeated it so often it causes your brain to go on autopilot

00:19:38.940 so you're essentially sleepwalking through life this saves your brain energy but it also means you're like

00:19:44.940 not aware of what's going on around you you can totally tune out so this is like why if you've

00:19:51.280 ever noticed when you're when you're driving and it's a route you've taken all the time you can drive

00:19:56.740 for 20 minutes and then be thinking and be like oh wait like i don't even i wasn't really paying

00:20:01.640 attention right you're just kind of stuck up inside your head and i think william james said it best is

00:20:07.320 that at the end of your life what your life is is that which you've been aware of so if you're stuck

00:20:14.980 in this cycle of being up inside your head just doing the same thing day in day out like you're

00:20:20.460 never going to remember having the same breakfast you ate every morning watching the same netflix like

00:20:26.000 this these are just not memorable things and so when you do new novel things you know for me that

00:20:33.240 was going up to alaska but also even having to train to go to the arctic and learn all this

00:20:38.080 different stuff for this book it essentially kicks you out of this autopilot mode because all of a

00:20:43.220 sudden your brain doesn't know what to expect and how to respond to what's coming in so you essentially

00:20:49.960 get kicked in the butt into awareness it's like a nice little wake-up call so in this sense i almost

00:20:56.660 think about it as you know getting out of our comfort zone to do do and learn new things it's kind of a

00:21:01.980 lot like meditation but you know you don't have to sit and focus on your breath you just it forces you

00:21:07.720 into that awareness that meditation is sort of looking after and the research also shows that

00:21:14.640 when we do new things it slows down our sense of time and this goes back to you can't you don't know

00:21:22.580 what to predict you can't expect what's coming on so you really have to be aware and this seems to have

00:21:27.620 a contracting effect in terms of time and this is actually why time seems slower when we are kids

00:21:34.800 because everything was new then right so you're constantly learning and doing new things and it

00:21:39.920 just like makes the time go by slower this is another thing that william james the father of

00:21:45.100 psychology was writing about in the 1800s and they've followed up with studies on this and people

00:21:51.060 consistently report that when they're learning and doing new things time slows down which i find

00:21:57.620 funny so my my background for a little more is i worked at men's health magazine for a lot a lot of

00:22:04.280 years and i still am a contributing editor there and now i'm a professor at unlv and i write books but

00:22:11.000 you know and some of my work for men's health like i'm always covering

00:22:14.040 these guys it tends to always be men to be honest who are really fascinated by longevity and living

00:22:22.580 longer and i've covered people who've done frankly some really strange things like gotten

00:22:26.840 illegal pharmaceuticals that they think are going to help them live longer i've covered you know guys

00:22:32.060 who i don't know if you've heard of blood boys but the idea is essentially by pumping the blood of a

00:22:35.900 younger person into your blood the plasma can help you live longer so just like all these kind of

00:22:41.060 wacky methods to live longer but to me it's like who cares if you have more years if you're stuck in

00:22:48.340 this routine and you don't remember any of them right like and it just goes by in this sort of blur

00:22:53.420 where you look back in your life and you're like oh man wait what did i do i was like kind of stuck in

00:22:58.300 my head the whole time like by doing and learning new things you're slowing down time and it makes

00:23:02.240 allows you to really sort of squeeze more out of the time that you have on earth all right so if you

00:23:09.100 feel like you're on cruise control to the grave you want to disrupt that just start doing some

00:23:13.860 hard things that's one quick way to do that where life feels more extended and prolonged yes exactly

00:23:20.020 we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:23:22.520 and now back to the show all right so uh let's talk about you go on your hunt and one of the things

00:23:29.940 you talk about you noticed first right away was just being bored really like not just like bored

00:23:36.180 you're in the off doctor's office waiting for your appointment it was like the most boredom you've

00:23:40.560 ever felt in your entire life like how soon did you did you feel that boredom oh man so we're up

00:23:47.240 there hunting caribou and the my time in the my month in the arctic is the overarching narrative of

00:23:52.580 the book and then as i talk about each of these elemental discomforts that humans need to face i go into

00:23:59.020 different on-ground reporting but we're up there hunting for caribou and caribou migrate up to

00:24:05.560 summering and wintering grounds they're always moving they can run like 55 miles an hour which is

00:24:10.580 insane so a lot of it is you know you get on a glassing knob and where you think that they might

00:24:16.880 be coming through and you just sort of wait to see if you're right and my cell phone doesn't work up

00:24:22.940 there it's essentially a useless brick i didn't bring a book something like i brought any other

00:24:28.420 real electronics so it's like what do you do with your time all of a sudden i'm like holy crap i've

00:24:37.440 never been this bored in my life so i start you know i'm i think for a while and then i'm like

00:24:44.000 reading the labels on my cliff bars just really scrutinizing them reading all the labels on my

00:24:49.680 outdoor gear then when that gets that eventually gets boring right so i ended up writing some of the

00:24:55.380 book then that gets boring and i'm like okay i guess i'll come up with my christmas list you know

00:25:01.420 like figure out what everyone's getting for christmas so i'm kind of doing one thing after

00:25:05.420 another to stave off boredom and this is so radically different than life at home because when i'm at home

00:25:13.300 anytime i feel boredom i've got a cell phone in my pocket i've got a tv on the wall that has netflix

00:25:21.060 amazon prime hulu hbo max i mean i can go on for days right i've got a computer that has access to

00:25:28.400 the internet like we have so many different ways easy effortless ways to deal with our boredom now

00:25:35.440 and our default is to just dive into some sort of electronic device to deal with boredom because

00:25:41.780 boredom is uncomfortable it's this evolutionary discomfort that we evolved to have that yells at us

00:25:47.880 to say hey whatever you're doing right now it's an inefficient use of your time so you should do

00:25:53.840 something else and back in the day that thing might have been like okay i've you know i've been

00:25:59.280 picking berries at this bush for an hour and once like it became harder and harder to pick berries

00:26:06.100 boredom would kick on and they'd be like okay you're this isn't a good use of your time anymore why

00:26:10.520 don't you go hunt or why don't you go to another bush and pick its its berries because it'll have more and

00:26:14.820 it'll be easier to access but now our escape from boredom as one researcher put it is like junk food

00:26:22.020 for our mind you know we just dive right into usually our phone so we spend we now spend if you look at

00:26:29.320 the data 11 hours a day on average engaging with media which is a ton of media like that media wasn't

00:26:37.700 even in our lives 100 years ago and now it's essentially become our lives and this has had

00:26:43.340 definite repercussions for our brain up in uh alaska because i didn't have this super easy

00:26:51.060 outlet for boredom i have like this 11 hours a day back it's like what do i do with it my mind went

00:26:57.420 inward i thought of different things that i could do that would be productive i did productive things

00:27:03.760 like writing a book in my little weatherproof notebook you know i i thought and i planned and

00:27:10.240 i did all these sort of productive things also had like great conversations with the two guys i was up

00:27:14.940 there with noticed nature sat with myself and it was really enlightening and and frankly productive

00:27:22.440 and and a lot more interesting than what i might find on instagram or you know watching another episode of

00:27:30.600 of top chef and so when i got back home i i looked at a lot of the research on boredom and

00:27:36.540 it also turns out that when we are paying attention to anything in the outside world our brain is working

00:27:42.980 really really hard and when we face boredom and have to go inward and think about okay what am i going

00:27:49.700 to do next it kicks on a restorative state called the default mode network so this is kind of like

00:27:55.700 this rest period that lets our brain revive and come back to uh you know become stronger more or less so

00:28:03.120 the benefits of giving your brain downtime by facing boredom is it's associated with a lot more

00:28:09.980 creativity it's associated with lower rates of anxiety and it's also can lead to more focus and

00:28:16.740 productivity so i think we live in a world now where because cell phones are new and they actively steal

00:28:22.740 our attention everyone you read all these stories that are like use your cell phone less use your

00:28:27.860 cell phone less how do i use my cell phone less but the reality is if you decide you're going to

00:28:33.340 use your cell phone less and you just use your this time you've gained to watch netflix your brain

00:28:38.580 doesn't know the difference you know so i think it's a lot better and more productive to think

00:28:43.180 more boredom instead of less cell phone or less tv or less computer just put yourself in these

00:28:49.040 positions where you can become bored and it's not it's not easy i mean cell phones are great don't

00:28:53.160 get me wrong i mean but we need this and it's another thing you you notice when you're out there

00:28:59.300 is how alone you were there was like probably no one for hundreds of miles except for you and the

00:29:04.520 guides and you notice there was actually i mean it was kind of hard to be away from people but then

00:29:10.280 you also notice there's actually something enjoyable you had a benefit out of out of the solitude what was

00:29:14.880 that yeah we so at one point you have to take all these to get way out in the arctic on the tundra

00:29:23.140 you have to take all these little planes and they land on the tundra and you have to do a lot of

00:29:27.700 ferrying so at one point i got dropped about 100 miles from any semblance of civilization and

00:29:35.180 the guy i was with you know he was going to go before me to our next stop because you have to take

00:29:41.360 excessively smaller planes and um so i'm totally alone out there except there's big clods of grizzly

00:29:48.120 bear poop all around so i'm freaking out and it hits me that i never been that alone in my life i mean

00:29:57.140 there's no one around me in terms of humans for miles and miles and miles but there's all but there's

00:30:03.160 also no one with me through my cell phone through text through instagram say through podcasts or tv or

00:30:11.540 whatever today even when people think they're alone they're they're usually not because they're usually

00:30:17.200 engaging with other people through different devices and this is kind of a paradox now because

00:30:23.200 you know despite the fact that people say they're more lonely than ever and the data does really

00:30:29.020 bear that out we're never actually alone we're always kind of with people somehow and being alone

00:30:36.940 out there was definitely uncomfortable at first right because you're like oh man if a storm comes in

00:30:45.020 i could be stranded out here for days if a grizzly bear comes around i mean i'm a buck 70 and he's about

00:30:51.620 1500 pounds that's not going to be fun you know but then it sort of became interesting because i started

00:30:57.880 to sort of introspect and think man all of a sudden like i'm totally freed from society and without

00:31:04.220 society in the equation this social narrative of how that i should think and act and behave it doesn't

00:31:10.700 actually hold up all of a sudden you start to realize man i do a lot of stuff in my life just as a

00:31:15.820 reaction to society because this is what society says that a man at you know 30 whatever years old

00:31:22.240 should be doing so it's kind of freeing you feel a little bit unencumbered and unaffected and it's

00:31:28.280 kind of a welcome change you know from home and so the message here is not that social connection is

00:31:35.020 bad not at all you know social connection is super important we know this from the research we know that

00:31:41.200 there are big downsides to loneliness but the message is more that there's a there's a difference

00:31:46.100 between loneliness and solitude solitude is sort of choosing to be by yourself and using that time

00:31:52.360 for positive introspection for creativity and for growth and sort of getting to know yourself which

00:31:59.400 kind of sounds cheesy but i think a lot of us just kind of run on autopilot all the time we don't

00:32:03.400 really understand how we really feel about things and we also know from things like i mean there's

00:32:09.240 research backing this and i talked to scientists but we also know things from thousands of years of

00:32:14.820 religious spiritual and intellectual disciplines around the world that solitude is important so

00:32:20.080 think about you know jesus spent 40 days in the desert in solitude sort of coming to the center of

00:32:25.340 his faith with the temptation of the christ you had buddha he exits the you know wealthy palace gates

00:32:31.320 to go you know roam the world in solitude you had henry david thoreau he goes out and he lives at

00:32:37.180 walden pond alone away from society even uh lincoln was very very heavy into solitude that's

00:32:44.740 where he got his best work done so the researchers i talked to think that we should be thinking

00:32:50.720 about trying to build this capacity to be alone it's a thing that we have less and less of now when

00:32:55.680 they when they pull people they tend to say i feel very uncomfortable when i'm alone but we we need

00:33:02.580 to flip that because if if your social connections ever die off and you are alone well you're going

00:33:09.180 to be in a pickle but if you can build this capacity to just be with yourself and use solitude as a time

00:33:14.720 to introspect get to know yourself use it for creativity use it forever whatever you want to do

00:33:20.160 but really just to sort of get something on board be okay with yourself that's going to move the dial

00:33:27.460 for you in your life and help you really understand uh yourself better and live a richer life frankly

00:33:32.660 all right so another discomfort you experienced on this trip was hunger so you're out in the alaskan

00:33:38.660 wilds you can only the only thing you have to eat is what you pack in or what you kill and so it took

00:33:44.300 a while before you actually got anything so you're just basically relying on what you brought in what

00:33:49.600 was that hunger like and have you ever experienced a hunger like that before no sir i had not um

00:33:55.700 so we packed in about 2 000 calories a day in these freeze-dried mountain house meals i don't know if

00:34:02.480 you've ever had those um yeah they're tasty yeah yeah they're not bad um they're surprised they're

00:34:09.040 actually very very delicious when you're on day 30 if not enough food but we'd pack in those and uh

00:34:15.260 cliff bars so about 2 000 calories but the thing is is we're burning anywhere from 4 000 to 8 000 a day

00:34:22.440 because we're just moving and carrying heavy stuff all day so probably after the first week you just i just

00:34:29.820 started to become totally ravenous you know it's like i'm having to go into my next belt loop just

00:34:34.120 losing weight pretty quick and also to your point the hunger is increasing over time and we're hunting

00:34:41.500 there's a real objective to this like we can solve this but hunting is not easy i mean i'm up there with

00:34:47.940 donnie and he's arguably one of the best hunters in the world and it took us a long time to finally get

00:34:55.880 a caribou so as we're hungry your mind starts to really go to food you just all you can do is think

00:35:01.600 about your hunger and really feel it deeply you know and before i got up there though you know my

00:35:07.560 normal life like i couldn't have told you the last time that i was truly physiologically deeply hungry

00:35:13.820 i would eat because oh it's breakfast and i eat breakfast at 10 a.m or whatever the time is or

00:35:20.580 because i'm stressed it's like oh man you know i just got this crappy email i'm just gonna like

00:35:26.040 reflexively have some m&ms or whatever it might be a lot of research has shown that most of our

00:35:32.920 eating today is not driven by true physiological hunger most of it is driven by reasons other than

00:35:38.800 hunger so things like you know stress or or maybe even boredom or just because a clock says this is the

00:35:45.520 time we eat and this is a big reason why 70 of the country is overweight or obese you know it's just

00:35:54.860 we're constantly eating i talked to one researcher who studied historical and current eating patterns

00:36:01.000 and you know back in the day humans used to have two meals a day on average they just you know eat

00:36:07.340 whatever but now we're eating across this 15 hour window like we snack all the time one researcher

00:36:13.020 basically told me he's like i don't i truly don't think that people are ever actually hungry

00:36:17.320 hungry anymore of course it's like you know there's individual variation but as a whole the country is

00:36:23.480 just eating a lot and and often never facing hunger and this has had some repercussions being overweight

00:36:31.080 and obese is the number one risk factor for chronic disease it's the only thing that overtakes it is

00:36:36.920 smoking but so few people smoke now the rates have dropped that obesity is really becoming you know

00:36:42.860 our biggest problem and having worked in the health nutrition fitness space at men's health and for

00:36:52.220 different magazines millions of people try to diet every year but i think the the status something

00:36:59.820 like 90 something percent of diets fail and we have all these diets out there that tell us eat this not

00:37:05.820 that where it's like one food or one ingredient that is the culprit like that is the reason why you're fat

00:37:12.220 or why you where you can't lose weight but the reality is is that all diets work by the same

00:37:17.160 mechanism by by eating less you end up dropping your calories and you lose weight and that's i mean

00:37:23.460 there's a little bit of debate around that but the vast majority of scientists i speak to that's that's

00:37:29.780 what's going on here and so by being in alaska like i'm eating this crappy ultra processed food

00:37:38.860 tastes like crap but i'm having to go through hunger and when i get home i step on that scale

00:37:43.300 i'm 10 pounds lighter so it really showed me oh like the key to really changing your body not that i was

00:37:51.660 really overweight going in but it really showed me the what you eat is not as important as how much

00:37:58.800 you eat and also why you eat right so humans humans have two kind of two types of hunger you know

00:38:06.020 i've sort of alluded to this we have reward hunger and real hunger as we evolved we developed these

00:38:11.600 mechanisms that really reward us to overeat to eat too much too often now back in the day that wasn't

00:38:19.360 possible there just wasn't enough food but now we're sort of surrounded in this sea of food and we can use

00:38:24.520 those reward mechanisms to essentially comfort us so you think of a term like comfort food right so food

00:38:30.400 can kind of become a widget for a lot of people and being in alaska and coming back with that you know

00:38:37.160 10 pounds lighter i i wanted to learn more about this idea of of how people relate to food so i i

00:38:44.300 traveled down to austin and i meet this kid whose name is trevor cashy and to say that trevor is smart

00:38:51.540 is to basically say that lebron james is good at basketball i mean this kid is another planet

00:38:56.880 brilliant and he got his he finished college at 18 he got his phd at 23 he did a bunch of work in a

00:39:05.180 cancer lab and then he decided that he he was he'd always been interested in sport and nutrition and

00:39:12.140 he'd been sort of working with people on the side and was really good at it and he decided to open his

00:39:18.420 own sort of nutrition firm and what's interesting about him is that to the point i made earlier that

00:39:26.220 really he's he's wondering why you eat he doesn't care so much what you eat like that'll figure itself

00:39:31.380 out over time and you'll find foods that help you fend off hunger for longer he's more interested in

00:39:37.100 why you eat and he's more interested in getting you okay with facing the discomfort of hunger realizing

00:39:43.180 that hunger feeling hunger real hunger every now and then is good you're gonna need to do that if you

00:39:48.180 want to lose weight and his clients they tend to be either really great athletes or like navy seal

00:39:55.020 types ceo types or they're people who have tried literally everything and as a last-ditch effort

00:40:02.600 before bariatric surgery they're gonna come to him and he's really moved the dial for people and he's

00:40:08.800 just a fascinating fascinating person getting people to unpeel these layers of okay what does hunger feel

00:40:13.960 like why are you eating in the first place etc etc so yeah it was it was definitely an interesting

00:40:19.880 phenomenon i'll tell you that and there's other really fascinating i won't get into this too much

00:40:24.400 go off topic but there's a really interesting study called the minnesota starvation study

00:40:28.220 from the 1940s and they did it in the run-up to world war during world war ii because during world war ii

00:40:36.060 in europe more people about the same amount of people died from starvation as did in battle and so the u.s

00:40:42.520 wanted to figure out okay how do we refeed these people safely and what happens to starving people

00:40:46.880 so they got these guys and they basically starved them and tracked like what happened to them and

00:40:52.500 your body has all these like amazing mechanisms to keep you alive like it slows down your metabolism

00:40:58.880 drops your core temperature and it makes your brain start to obsess about hunger and i definitely felt that

00:41:05.600 obsession for sure and i think lots of people probably read those articles too about fasting there's

00:41:11.440 benefits there like your body just when you don't have any food it starts eating itself in a way it

00:41:16.380 is kind of clean things up and that can help with longevity as well they found that mice that

00:41:21.460 fast or don't eat that much live longer than mice that eat all the time yeah yeah exactly so that

00:41:27.240 research is really interesting so it kicks on this thing called autophagy where your body starts to

00:41:31.840 burn cells and it tends to burn its weakest cells ones that are damaged and those cells are

00:41:37.500 associated with disease and even diseases like cancer so they think that fasting can be a good way

00:41:43.240 to just sort of keep your body cleaner get rid of a lot of the damaged stuff that's associated with

00:41:48.920 disease it's not a miracle cure of course i think one of the messages of this book is that

00:41:55.140 we've lost so many of these different forms of discomfort that we used to face now in and of

00:42:03.540 themselves any one of the discomforts can be relatively powerful but once you start to figure

00:42:09.020 out how to weave them all together man that is what really really moves the dial and i think a lot

00:42:14.980 of times too often today people think oh i can find this one thing and that's going to fix all my

00:42:21.360 problems it's like no we a lot of times it's a combination of things so that's kind of what i'm

00:42:26.580 trying to get at with with the overall theme of discomfort so a lot of people they know that they

00:42:32.160 they got to move their body right they know they sit at the office or their sofa all day so what

00:42:36.940 they say they tell us well i'm going to go to the gym for an hour and that will sort of just

00:42:40.480 mitigate all that and so we exercise we do the treadmill we lift weights when you were out there

00:42:46.600 in alaska you didn't like it seems like your training that you might have done in the gym probably

00:42:52.460 didn't prepare you much for the actual physical activity you did what surprised you about the

00:42:58.040 physical activity out there in alaska and how it differs from what we think of as physical activity

00:43:02.600 in our modern life yeah i mean i tried to prepare heck i spent a lot of time in the gym but

00:43:09.700 yeah i mean nothing can prepare you for constant constant movement and i mean the hardest thing

00:43:15.860 that we did is uh after we finally killed the caribou we had to pack it back out to camp so this is

00:43:23.360 probably 100 110 pounds in my pack and you know i had like these antlers bursting out of the pack it

00:43:31.100 was pretty spectacular scene but then we had to hike five miles all uphill across the tundra back to camp

00:43:39.140 and the tundra is i mean it's like one mile on the tundra is like five miles on a normal trail it's just

00:43:45.820 so terrible to walk on it's covered in all these things called tundra tussocks which are these big

00:43:50.500 basketball size things of weeds some parts the ground will be frozen or really spongy or muddy

00:43:57.000 like it's just terrible and so with my background having been at men's health for so long and still

00:44:03.300 doing a lot for them like i've i've had to embed myself in some really extreme gyms i've done some

00:44:08.820 24-hour endurance events which is not to say that i'm like a pro athlete here like at the end of the

00:44:14.640 day i'm this gangly writer but you know i'm a pretty thick gangly writer um but this carrying this

00:44:22.260 weight across the tundra was by far the hardest thing that i'd ever done and what i thought was

00:44:28.800 most interesting though is that this is essentially what life was like for our ancestors all the time

00:44:34.760 you look at the data and our ancestors were 14 times more physically active than us on average and so

00:44:41.340 i really got interested in this idea of like man how has our physicality changed what did we used

00:44:46.200 to do for quote-unquote exercise which was really just life because people didn't exercise in the

00:44:52.080 past and how does this compare to what we do now so as you alluded to now we go into a gym this you

00:44:59.060 know temperature controlled gym and we get on a treadmill and an elliptical and we do our you know 30

00:45:04.180 minutes on that and we go down to the weight room and we you know curl some perfectly balanced

00:45:08.560 weights a few times maybe we do some bench presses etc etc etc but i traveled to harvard and i meet a guy

00:45:17.520 whose name is dan lieberman he's a anthropologist there he basically told me look when you compare

00:45:24.160 us to other animals humans are athletically pathetic those are the words that he used and i just love that

00:45:30.700 we are slow compared to most other mammals we're also very weak but in 2004 this guy discovered that

00:45:39.520 humans are good at a couple things and one of those is running long distances in the heat so we evolved

00:45:47.140 to do what's called persistence hunting we would see an animal and we'd slowly but surely run it down

00:45:54.040 over time on a hot day eventually the animal would overheat and topple over from exhaustion and we

00:46:00.740 would spear it and then we would have to carry it back to camp so we these persistence hunts could be

00:46:10.340 anywhere from 10 to 20 miles i mean we're talking long distances here so the the 2004 study was really

00:46:17.680 about distance running and how we sort of evolved to do that and he that study is actually the one if

00:46:24.560 you're i'm sure everyone who's listening remembers when barefoot running and like very very minimal

00:46:30.340 minimalist running shoes were popular it sort of set off that whole craze because early humans would

00:46:36.900 have run without shoes on and you know there was maybe associated with less injury which they found

00:46:42.960 wasn't necessarily true and the lieberman guy i talked to he just he secretly hates that he's been

00:46:48.700 associated with this crazy barefoot running movement um but as i'm packing this caribou out across alaska

00:46:54.680 it occurs to me okay we are so-called you know born to run but once we run we have to carry this weight

00:47:03.880 all the way back to camp and it's like well how did that shape us so i went down this crazy rabbit hole

00:47:10.940 of the act of carrying heavy stuff and humans are the only animals it turns out that are any good

00:47:18.980 at carrying weight across distance and it's really shaped our body so the combination of of running and

00:47:25.060 then carrying explains why we have these long legs why we don't have much fur keeps us from overheating

00:47:31.520 why we sweat that also keeps us from overheating we have these complicated noses that humidify air

00:47:36.640 and we also have really strong grips to grab stuff so we can walk it and we also have short torsos which

00:47:43.160 helps with with carrying so like the acts of running and carrying really shaped us as human beings it

00:47:49.860 allowed us to more or less take over the globe and like hunt better and also explore and um you know

00:47:57.480 engage in warfare and when you look at what humans do now we still run so we've sort of reintroduced

00:48:03.820 running back into our days but very few people carry heavy things for distance and it's this thing

00:48:09.480 that we evolved to do that these harvard researchers think is probably uniquely good for us from a from a

00:48:15.920 fitness perspective yeah that led you down to you know hooking up with uh go rock and yes learning

00:48:22.340 about that community there where they're carrying heavy things for distance yeah exactly so after harvard i

00:48:27.820 bombed down to jacksonville florida and i meet jason mccarthy and he's a former green beret some of your

00:48:34.720 readers or sorry i always say readers because i'm a writer some of your listeners might uh know him and

00:48:40.700 he started go rock which is a company that makes these beautiful military spec backpacks that are

00:48:45.760 specifically designed for rucking which is carrying weight in a pack for distance so the only people who

00:48:52.100 have really reintroduced carrying back into their days is the military and rucking is really the

00:48:57.360 foundation of military fitness and for the average person you know jason describes it as it's uh cardio

00:49:04.920 for people who hate to run lifting for people who hate the gym so you're working both strength and

00:49:09.940 endurance at the same time which is uncomfortable right but it's also very approachable one of the best

00:49:16.660 things you can do for your fitness is to rock just throw you know try not to go over 50 pounds

00:49:23.240 because that is tended tends to like set off injuries but 50 or below it's one of the best

00:49:30.620 things you can do for your fitness you're like doing all these amazing things that we evolved to do

00:49:34.400 that we don't do anymore and it's so different i think than most workouts now which i'm not saying

00:49:40.660 that you know going to the gym and and lifting weights isn't important or that running on treadmill is

00:49:45.780 important like those things are obviously good but is it does it really in play with how we are adapted

00:49:51.780 to exercise i mean something like a ruck you're not only you're working strength and endurance but

00:49:56.860 you're also probably outside having to navigate your environment and there's some research that says

00:50:01.740 exercising while having some demands on your brain like hiking along a trail is how humans evolve to

00:50:10.360 exercise so it has these benefits that can really improve your brain health over time so i think

00:50:15.740 we've just come so far away in general from how we used to be physically active and we've sort of

00:50:23.020 had to engineer this these kind of new strange ways of physical activity when it's really a lot can be a

00:50:30.180 lot simpler than that and by simplifying it and thinking about what we used to do in the past

00:50:35.060 probably can be more effective in some ways one last thing i want to talk about you noticed on your

00:50:41.060 trip you didn't shower or bathe obviously you might have you know gotten a wet washcloth and cleaned

00:50:47.100 yourself up from some river water but you notice that actually i'm i'm okay like you would i'm not i

00:50:53.880 don't have any diseases i'm fine and you actually did some research saying that our over emphasis on

00:50:59.220 cleanliness might be backfiring in some ways yeah and now this has become an interesting question

00:51:05.160 especially in the time of of covid but when i'm up there you know i don't shower i if i'm washing my

00:51:10.740 hands it's probably in some some river water and you know when i get back i'm of course smell like a

00:51:16.440 garbage dump mixed with a salmon run it was the hotel staff was really happy to to greet me

00:51:22.140 but we've essentially sanitized everything from our lives you know we we learned about 100 years

00:51:29.800 ago that germs are associated with disease and we thought okay well then we should kill every germ but

00:51:34.400 it turns out that very very few germs are actually associated with disease and a lot of germs and microbes

00:51:40.400 are actually good for us so you look at the data and younger people have about a two to four

00:51:46.480 fold risk of things like colon and rectal cancer compared to people born in 1950 now the reason

00:51:54.880 for this they think is because we really started to sanitize everything and are always using purel all

00:52:00.560 the time and kids don't go outside as much we no longer go out and get dirty but it turns out that

00:52:05.980 like when we go out and we expose ourselves to you know dirt and some natural germs it builds up our

00:52:12.680 defenses and it improves our gut microbiome which has a lot of benefits for our health it kind of

00:52:19.460 gives us this armor where our body is like able to deal with things you can almost think about it as

00:52:23.700 the same idea as a vaccine right by like giving you this low dose of sort of mimicking a bug your body

00:52:30.140 builds up resistance to the real thing more or less so we don't have that anymore and the message is not

00:52:38.280 you know just stop washing your hands because like i said we're in the time of covid

00:52:41.640 need to wash our hands need to practice all the sanitary things the message is really that

00:52:45.640 you know going outside and getting dirty can be a really good thing there's a lot of researchers who

00:52:51.740 study this who make their children garden and go outside and you know kind of play in the dirt

00:52:57.220 because it can be so good for their system as a whole and even our food we've lost some of the

00:53:03.240 benefits because we now all our food is like washed and perfectly prepared and it's also totally refined

00:53:09.740 whereas the research says if you eat more raw vegetables that can also help your gut microbiome

00:53:15.180 because there's fiber and you're also usually onboarding some germs that just happen to be

00:53:19.520 on a low level on the vegetables so i mean you went on this hunt this misogi i mean you experienced all

00:53:26.680 this stuff and you learned some things about being uncomfortable how have you incorporated this into

00:53:31.440 your regular life are you like rucking while fasting in silence and then rolling around the mud what

00:53:37.180 are you doing well no i live in the desert so i i do all that but i do it in just dirt just to dry out

00:53:43.500 here no i tend to think about this stuff as like what can i do across the days weeks months and and

00:53:51.520 years you know it's it's not like i'm fasting every single day but like i do try and incorporate

00:53:57.640 times where i go through some hunger i do try and leave my cell phone when i go out on walks in nature

00:54:05.920 oftentimes with a rock on my back you know it's like how can i how can i add these little things back

00:54:12.140 into my life that make me just make my days just a little bit more uncomfortable and then when i think

00:54:18.380 about it on a longer perspective i try and do one really hard thing sort of this misogi idea

00:54:25.680 once a year and spend a lot more time outdoors so for example um one of the guidelines of misogi is

00:54:33.480 that you don't really advertise about it but i talked to marcus and he was like well you're kind

00:54:37.740 of like preaching this idea that i think will help people so you can talk to people about your misogis

00:54:41.340 so i did one the other day where i had never run 16 miles more than 60 miles in my life you know

00:54:49.520 and i went out into the desert on this trail and i was like okay i'm gonna try and run you know what

00:54:56.420 would be really hard for me what's that 50 50 and i said and could i run you know 32 miles like that

00:55:02.100 yeah i could probably run 32 miles if i really you know had to so it didn't feel like 50 50 and i was

00:55:08.060 like well could i run like more than 45 i was like i don't know if i could do more than that

00:55:14.600 and so that was kind of the key key to me where i really had this apprehension and i went out and did

00:55:20.020 it and it was super hard but along the way like i learned so much about myself and i returned from

00:55:24.500 that being like man that was awesome like in the moment you're like this sucks why am i doing this

00:55:30.240 this is terrible you need to quit you definitely need to quit quit right now but by just putting

00:55:34.960 one foot in front of the other and doing that it was like oh man i don't have to if i don't have

00:55:41.460 to quit at that and i can do that you know what else is possible we just tend to sell ourselves short

00:55:46.300 i think so finding these ways to integrate discomfort back into your life in small ways

00:55:51.660 and big ways i think is the key and the book really is sort of a blueprint for how you do that

00:55:58.800 because there's a lot of different discomforts that we've lost over time and by not having those in

00:56:03.920 our lives we're we're missing something vital not only for our health and our mental health but also

00:56:09.720 for you know our spirit i think a lot of this um i think there's a lot about humans that you know

00:56:15.900 you can't necessarily measure in a hospital or doctor can't exactly explain but when we do stuff like

00:56:23.700 this that stuff sort of bubbles to the surface and it kind of tells you a little bit more about

00:56:27.920 how to live a interesting memorable life well michael this has been a great conversation where can

00:56:32.260 people go to learn more about the book in your work so the book is called the comfort crisis and

00:56:37.280 it's available i don't know wherever you buy books find an independent store i'd love it if you do that

00:56:42.700 if you're interested and then you if you want to learn more about me in general you can go to my

00:56:47.400 website it's uh easter michael.com and i'm also on instagram posting about random stuff not not too

00:56:56.380 often because you just heard me talk about how i try to not spend too much time on my cell phone but i do

00:57:00.440 i do post there so and that's uh michael underscore easter and it was awesome to talk to you man i

00:57:05.220 really appreciate you having me on well thank you michael appreciate it take care my guest today was

00:57:09.820 michael easter he's the author of the book the comfort crisis it's available on amazon.com and

00:57:13.880 bookstores everywhere you can find out more information about his work at his website easter

00:57:17.180 michael.com also check out our show notes at aom.is comfort crisis where you can find links to

00:57:21.660 resources where you delve deeper into this topic and if you're looking to do hard things looking for

00:57:25.160 some structure to do hard things check out our membership platform the strenuous life we've

00:57:29.460 basically taken all the content we've talked about and written about on the art of manliness for the

00:57:32.500 past 15 years put some structure to it we have badges based on hard skills like hunting orienteering

00:57:37.880 we've got self-defense we've got soft skills too personal finances public speaking etc and we also

00:57:43.900 have weekly challenges that are going to put you outside of your comfort zone on a physical social

00:57:48.980 and mental level so check it out strenuouslife.co we've got an enrollment opening up in june hope to see you there

00:57:54.840 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at art of manliness.com

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00:58:59.140 he's still alive on your own, 27ái w h h a h h h h h h h a h h h h h h h h h h h h h

00:59:02.340 options h h h h h h h h h h a h h h h h .

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

Overcoming the Comfort Crisis

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