The Charlie Kirk Show - The Comfort Crisis with Author Michael Easter

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody, today the Charlie Kirk show.

00:00:02.000 You are probably too comfortable.

00:00:03.000 It's time to get uncomfortable.

00:00:05.000 If you are unhappy, it's probably because you're spending too much time on the couch.

00:00:10.000 This book is the most influential book of this calendar year that I have read, and I've read quite a few.

00:00:15.000 I love reading.

00:00:16.000 I know you do too.

00:00:17.000 We present a lot of books to you.

00:00:18.000 So I think you'll really enjoy this conversation by Michael Easter: Comfort Crisis.

00:00:22.000 If you have a son or daughter that is depressed, if you are depressed, if you're anxious, this book I think might help you.

00:00:28.000 It has a lot of insights.

00:00:30.000 Michael talks about how comfort is something that is a new phenomenon.

00:00:36.000 He does mention that he believes we were evolved.

00:00:39.000 I didn't correct him on air.

00:00:40.000 I didn't find it to be appropriate, but I did say at the end, I believe we are designed by God.

00:00:45.000 So that is probably just something I just want you to know before listening to this program.

00:00:49.000 I didn't feel necessary to chop up our conversation there.

00:00:52.000 It's just a little distinction or disagreement, not necessary to say on air.

00:00:56.000 But regardless of that, that aside, we do both agree that human beings, at least in the modern context, our species, are not built for what we're currently living through.

00:01:12.000 Sitting on our tail, doing nothing, and staring at a screen.

00:01:15.000 It's making us deeply unhappy.

00:01:16.000 I think you'll be blessed by this conversation.

00:01:18.000 I know I was.

00:01:19.000 Email me freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:01:20.000 Support the Charlie Kirk show at charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:01:23.000 That's charliekirk.com/slash support and get involved with turningpointusa at tpusa.com.

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00:01:51.000 Tickets can be found at tpusa.com.

00:01:54.000 Buckle up, everybody, here.

00:01:56.000 We go.

00:01:56.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:01:58.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:02:00.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:02:04.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:02:07.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:02:08.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:02:09.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

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00:02:41.000 Welcome back, everybody.

00:02:42.000 Email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:02:44.000 You are probably too comfortable.

00:02:46.000 In fact, comfort might be killing you.

00:02:50.000 I was recommended this book repeatedly by a member of our team, Spencer, who just put on a phenomenal men's summit.

00:02:56.000 Actually, inspired by this book, he said, Charlie, you got to read Comfort Crisis.

00:03:00.000 Have you read Comfort Crisis?

00:03:01.000 I said, all right, fine.

00:03:02.000 So I, and again, I get recommended books all the time.

00:03:05.000 And I bought the audio book and I started listening to it.

00:03:08.000 And I turned to Spencer after about 20 minutes.

00:03:10.000 I said, this is really good.

00:03:11.000 He said, keep listening.

00:03:13.000 I said, okay.

00:03:14.000 So I listened to it, and it was so profound, and it changed a lot of ways that I viewed how I was acting and things that I was doing.

00:03:23.000 And then I reread it, and then I recommended, I actually told our entire senior staff, all 35 of them at Turning Point USA, that they got to read the book.

00:03:32.000 And they did.

00:03:32.000 And we had this great conversation about it.

00:03:34.000 And there's so much wisdom in it.

00:03:36.000 And it's brilliantly written because it's written partially in a narrative form of kind of an experience of hunting in Alaska, but then also part of it really kind of from a clinical data perspective of talking to experts.

00:03:49.000 And the author of that book is Michael Easter.

00:03:52.000 The name of the book is The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, and Healthy, Healthy Self.

00:03:59.000 Michael, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:04:01.000 Thanks for having me, Charlie.

00:04:02.000 I'm excited to be here.

00:04:04.000 So it's a phenomenal book.

00:04:05.000 I really enjoyed it.

00:04:06.000 Why don't you start for our audience, just kind of what is the thesis of the book?

00:04:10.000 What is the main argument you're trying to get across?

00:04:13.000 Sure.

00:04:14.000 So the argument is that as the world has become more and more comfortable over time, and it has, especially after the Industrial Revolution, we've lost things that help keep us healthy.

00:04:27.000 So, for example, we have engineered movement out of our lives.

00:04:30.000 Our food system is mostly around comfort foods.

00:04:33.000 We've also removed most challenges from our lives, and especially from our children's lives, and on and on and on.

00:04:39.000 We've removed boredom from our lives.

00:04:40.000 There's all these different forms of discomfort that humans evolved to face that used to keep us healthy that are no longer in our lives and we're paying the consequence for it.

00:04:50.000 So let's start with the boredom one.

00:04:52.000 The boredom one was one of the most interesting parts of the book.

00:04:54.000 In fact, after I read the book, I noticed that I'm not bored anymore.

00:04:58.000 I always have my phone and I always have these different devices at my disposal.

00:05:03.000 And I started to embrace boredom.

00:05:05.000 I actually felt myself becoming calmer and thinking more clearly.

00:05:10.000 Can you talk about how the idea of no longer being bored is this very unique and probably harmful modern phenomenon?

00:05:18.000 Yes.

00:05:19.000 So to give you some context, I started thinking about this because, as you mentioned, the overarching narrative of the book is that I did this month-long hunt, backcountry hunt in the Arctic wilderness.

00:05:29.000 Now, hunting, for people who aren't familiar, it's not this action-packed sport that you might think.

00:05:34.000 It's actually quite boring.

00:05:35.000 So, we're sitting on these hills waiting for these caribou to come through and they don't come through.

00:05:39.000 We're up in the middle of the Arctic, so my cell phone doesn't work.

00:05:42.000 Didn't bring a computer, a TV, didn't bring a book, a magazine.

00:05:45.000 So, all of a sudden, I find myself in a strange state, and that is that I am bored again, right?

00:05:50.000 How often are we bored now?

00:05:52.000 So, to deal with my boredom, I didn't have this easy, effortless escape.

00:05:56.000 What did I have to do?

00:05:57.000 I had to think of things to do, right?

00:05:58.000 So, I start doing push-ups.

00:05:59.000 That'll kill the boredom.

00:06:00.000 Start reading all the labels on my energy bars and stuff like that, right?

00:06:04.000 Come up with my Christmas shopping list for like five years, right?

00:06:07.000 Like everyone's covered for a long time.

00:06:10.000 But I also did some more important things.

00:06:13.000 I started writing some of the book.

00:06:15.000 I came up with a bunch of ideas for my business.

00:06:19.000 So, I told you that to tell you this: boredom is this evolutionary discomfort that basically tells us whatever you are doing with your time, the return on your time invested has worn thin.

00:06:30.000 You're no longer getting a good return on what you're doing.

00:06:33.000 So, boredom would kick in to tell us, go do something else.

00:06:36.000 You think about, you know, let's say you and I are hunting and it's in the past.

00:06:41.000 So, food is scarce.

00:06:42.000 We need food or else we're going to starve.

00:06:44.000 And there's no animals coming through.

00:06:46.000 We would get bored and that would tell us go do something else.

00:06:49.000 And that something else would probably be go pick potatoes or berries or whatever so we could survive.

00:06:54.000 So, boredom is this discomfort that can push us into do something more productive.

00:06:59.000 Well, now that we have cell phones, TV screens, computer screens, all kinds of different screens around us, boredom has been co-opted.

00:07:11.000 We now have this very easy, effortless escape from boredom 24-7.

00:07:16.000 You look at the average American, they now spend more than 12 hours a day engaging with digital media.

00:07:22.000 I mean, anytime you feel boredom, you just pull up, pull out your phone or you turn on the TV.

00:07:26.000 But boredom is interesting because it has a lot of upsides.

00:07:29.000 It's associated with higher rates of creativity.

00:07:32.000 Being bored is associated with less stress, less depression, increased happiness.

00:07:38.000 So, I'm not saying everyone throws away their phone and all that, but I am saying that, you know, maybe 12 hours a day embedded in media might be quite a bit.

00:07:46.000 Yeah, no doubt.

00:07:46.000 So, if you talk about the healing properties of boredom, again, when I say this to parents, you know, parents will come to me, you know, 15, 16, 17-year-old kids, they say, my kid's super depressed.

00:07:54.000 And I just, thanks to your book in the last couple of weeks, I say, how often do you see your kid bored?

00:08:00.000 Oh, never.

00:08:00.000 He's playing video games.

00:08:01.000 He's on his phone.

00:08:02.000 He's on Snapchat.

00:08:02.000 He's on TikTok.

00:08:03.000 And I say, look, I'm not a neuroscientist, but someone like Andrew Huberman would argue that the brain is just getting overwhelmed.

00:08:10.000 It needs some time to retreat.

00:08:11.000 It needs some time to just reorganize itself.

00:08:13.000 Can you talk a little bit about the potential healing properties of boredom in a world where we're just kind of drowning in kind of just this white noise of social media, of which most of the information we actually don't retain?

00:08:27.000 Yes.

00:08:28.000 So your brain essentially has, and this is, I'm simplifying this a bit, but your brain essentially has two modes.

00:08:32.000 There's focused mode where you are focused on the outside world, and there is unfocused mode.

00:08:37.000 That's usually where you're mind wandering.

00:08:39.000 So you're thinking internally.

00:08:40.000 Now, focused mode is anytime we're focused on that screen, that social media, whatever it might be, your brain is actually working really hard when it's, when you're outwardly focused with your attention.

00:08:50.000 And in the past, we didn't have as much time in this focused mode because now when we feel boredom, we focus on something.

00:08:57.000 Whereas in the past, we would probably mind wander.

00:09:00.000 We would go internally.

00:09:01.000 We would have time to sort of let our thoughts sort of flow and see where they'd take us.

00:09:06.000 And it turns out that, so this focus mode is kind of really hard work for your brain, whereas unfocused mode is more like a rest break.

00:09:13.000 It's this period to sort of let thoughts percolate, to have this rest period and revive your brain and thoughts.

00:09:20.000 So with all this time we're now spending outwardly focused, it's associated with burnout, stress, with drops in creativity and all these different problems.

00:09:28.000 And, you know, since you brought up teens and social media, I think also we need to ask the question, what are we focused on?

00:09:35.000 You know, maybe if our attention was always outwardly focused on, I don't know, volunteering, helping others, having deep conversations, maybe that would be a good thing.

00:09:46.000 But what it's focused on is whatever is on TikTok, whatever nonsense is on TikTok, is on Instagram.

00:09:52.000 It's like these reels that are very much just junk food for your mind.

00:09:56.000 And especially for teens, there's a lot of times bullying happens on social media.

00:10:00.000 And teens are particularly at risk of mental health problems for bullying because your brain is going through a stage where you're really valuing social acceptance at that point in your life.

00:10:11.000 You don't have the perspective that you might when you're say 25 or 30 to be like, yeah, I don't really care what those people think of me. 0.99

00:10:18.000 They're kind of ridiculous people. 0.95

00:10:19.000 When you're a teen, you think that's really important. 0.98

00:10:23.000 And it happens quicker and it happens harsher on social media than it even did in the 1980s.

00:10:29.000 I mean, bullying is terrible, but it has always been terrible, but it's worse.

00:10:33.000 It has an exponent on it.

00:10:34.000 And then you have a kid that then stares at the screen looking for the next rush of dopamine and their brains are just getting overcooked.

00:10:43.000 But I just want to talk a little bit about another part of the book here that I found super interesting, which was about diet.

00:10:50.000 Can you just tease our audience a little bit about some of the discoveries you made with diet and how that ties to the general thesis of Americans or Westerners being too comfortable?

00:11:00.000 Yeah.

00:11:01.000 So we tend to focus really a ton on what are you eating?

00:11:05.000 Are you eating X amount of vegetables?

00:11:06.000 Are you eating low carb?

00:11:07.000 Are you eating low fat?

00:11:08.000 Are you on and on and on, right?

00:11:10.000 Rarely do we ever step back and ask the question, why are you eating?

00:11:14.000 You look at the data and 80% of eating in America is driven by reasons other than hunger.

00:11:20.000 We eat because it's a certain time, because we're stressed, because we're unhappy, because all these different reasons.

00:11:26.000 So I think the key insight there, and we can talk more about it later on, is just that people need to understand, one, how much they're eating because everyone totally underestimates how much they eat.

00:11:36.000 And then number two, why are you eating?

00:11:38.000 What is triggering you to eat?

00:11:38.000 Do an audit.

00:11:40.000 Is it because you're actually hungry or is it because you have some other thing going on where you're looking for food for comfort?

00:11:47.000 That's right.

00:11:48.000 And we obviously have an obesity problem in our country and embracing, you know, missing a meal or fasting, pretty, pretty actually not just important, but our ancestors used to do that all the time.

00:11:59.000 I mean, this idea of eating three times a day is a new phenomenon.

00:12:03.000 And don't be shocked when you have all these other kind of costs associated with it.

00:12:10.000 Look, I love Good Ranchers, and I know a lot of you love them too.

00:12:13.000 And do some good this August as everyone goes back to school and do some good by helping feed kids who are facing hunger and food insecurity.

00:12:21.000 Good Ranchers is on a mission to donate 100,000 high-quality meals to young kids who often go unfed or end up malnourished from poor access to nutritious food.

00:12:31.000 You can join this campaign by ordering a box of 100% American meat.

00:12:35.000 Every order contributes meals to the cause and makes a massive difference in the lives and minds of these young kids.

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00:12:59.000 When they send us Good Ranchers to our office, smiles populate across the landscape.

00:13:06.000 A good meal goes a long way for anyone, especially a child.

00:13:10.000 They need protein, vitamins, and nutrition to help them grow.

00:13:13.000 So fill your plate while you fuel their minds with good ranchers.

00:13:17.000 So go to goodranchers.com slash Kirk to join the movement today.

00:13:22.000 You get $30 off your order, free shipping, and donate life-changing food to kids in need.

00:13:26.000 Giving back never tasted or felt so good.

00:13:30.000 Let's help them hit or pass their goal of 100,000 meals donated.

00:13:34.000 All we have to do is change the way we buy meat.

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00:13:42.000 So don't think twice.

00:13:42.000 Go to goodranchers.com/slash Charlie or use my promo code Kirk to claim your $30 offer off any box of beef, chicken, or seafood.

00:13:50.000 Again, it's the back to school giving back campaign.

00:13:53.000 School is right around the corner, and many kids do not know where their meals are coming from.

00:13:56.000 Every order with good ranchers fills plates and fuels minds.

00:14:00.000 Do your part.

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00:14:12.000 So go to goodranchers.com/slash Kirk.

00:14:15.000 I want us, I want the Charlie Kirk show to donate the most meals of everyone.

00:14:19.000 Go to goodranchers.com slash Kirk.

00:14:21.000 That is goodranchers.com/slash Kirk.

00:14:27.000 I want you to expand also just on the great paradox of comfort, which is we're actually wired to seek comfort because for a long time, we as a species didn't have shelter, food, and comfort.

00:14:38.000 So now that we have it, it actually makes us unhappy.

00:14:41.000 So talk about diet and then unpack that paradox for us.

00:14:44.000 Yeah, so to talk about diet, first of all, humans evolve.

00:14:51.000 So hunger is this discomfort that basically told us you need food, right?

00:14:56.000 And when we had the opportunity to eat food, we would often overeat because that provided a survival advantage.

00:15:02.000 It would help us gain fat.

00:15:05.000 We were essentially, before we had refrigerators, eating too much allowed us to have an onboard refrigerator in the form of fat.

00:15:13.000 So now, though, we have this ample access to really calorie-dense food, and we have ample opportunity to overeat it whenever we want.

00:15:23.000 That's what we're wired to do.

00:15:25.000 But this is obviously backfiring now.

00:15:27.000 And so to your question about how does this play into the larger theme of how comfort has changed over time, in our past, seeking comfort was a good thing.

00:15:37.000 We evolved in these environments of extreme discomfort.

00:15:40.000 It was always too hot, too cold.

00:15:42.000 We didn't have enough food.

00:15:43.000 There was always something we could do to move our life forward.

00:15:46.000 We didn't get to sit on the couch and go through Instagram.

00:15:50.000 We didn't evolve to be active.

00:15:51.000 Like we were, our lives forced us to be physically active, but we had no incentive to do any more activity than we needed to, because again, food was scarce.

00:16:00.000 You don't want to burn extra energy.

00:16:03.000 So then you plop us in an environment that we've engineered where everything is easy, effortless, easy to come by, food.

00:16:11.000 We've engineered movement out of our days.

00:16:13.000 We've engineered boredom out of our days.

00:16:15.000 And all these drives we have to always do the next most comfortable thing, they start to backfire.

00:16:19.000 So you can, this is associated with everything from heart disease to our mental health crisis in the country to just people, you know, really sort of missing the boat on life.

00:16:30.000 When you look back at your life, you know, we were just talking about boredom.

00:16:35.000 William James said, your life is essentially a culmination of the moments that you were aware of.

00:16:40.000 So I think when we look back on our lives, I don't think we're going to be like, man, I really wish I would have pumped up my hours on TikTok.

00:16:47.000 That's what I really should have paid attention to, right?

00:16:49.000 So I think that we're just kind of missing these moments that are really profound for being a human and make us well.

00:16:57.000 I totally agree.

00:16:59.000 And, you know, I've been more aware since I read your book just about, you know, keeping my phone away.

00:17:05.000 So I do a Sabbath from Friday night to Saturday night anyway before I started reading the book.

00:17:10.000 But what I realized is that, okay, I turned my phone off from Friday to Saturday night.

00:17:14.000 That's fine.

00:17:15.000 But I was still looking at other screens.

00:17:17.000 I would still kind of look at a TV or look at an iPad.

00:17:19.000 And so when I read your book, I was like, I'm doing no screens.

00:17:22.000 And, you know, my wife laughs. 0.74

00:17:24.000 She walks into the room once in mid-July, and I was just staring at the wall.

00:17:28.000 She's like, what are you doing?

00:17:28.000 I was like, I'm just embracing boredom.

00:17:31.000 And so it's kind of become this kind of running joke.

00:17:34.000 And it's actually really healing because I'm non-stop getting pings.

00:17:39.000 And then I turned on screen time.

00:17:40.000 I get something like a thousand notifications a day to something insane.

00:17:44.000 And that's a lot of work for the brain.

00:17:45.000 It has to constantly be there.

00:17:47.000 And, you know, every so often the amygdala is going off and you're fight or flight and you're always trying to juggle stuff.

00:17:51.000 And it could wear you down.

00:17:53.000 And a lot of young people who might think they are depressed, it might just be the brain just saying, like, hey, can you just cool out, man?

00:17:59.000 Can you just take a second?

00:18:01.000 And that's a great segue, which is what you call organic Xanax.

00:18:05.000 That's in my notes from the book, which is nature.

00:18:08.000 This was one of my favorite parts of the entire book where you talked about just spending time in nature.

00:18:13.000 It might be the fractured images.

00:18:15.000 It might be something we can't even explain.

00:18:17.000 Lowers depression, lowers anxiety.

00:18:19.000 About 90 seconds, explain, and then we'll pick off from there, Michael.

00:18:22.000 Yeah.

00:18:23.000 So first you have to know that humans now spend 93% of our time indoors.

00:18:28.000 In the past, we were outdoorsy in the sense that we lived outside entirely.

00:18:33.000 And because we came up in these environments, they seem to do good things for the human brain.

00:18:36.000 So time outside, there's different types of nature that you can be in to improve your mental health.

00:18:43.000 But you can get everything from stress reduction to increased happiness, from something as simple as spending 20 minutes in a park three times a week.

00:18:51.000 And then the longer you spend in the more wilder types of nature, that's when some really profound changes happen to the human brain that are, like I said in the book, akin to organic Xanax, where there's even some research now where they are taking soldiers who have PTSD.

00:19:06.000 They are taking them deep into nature on, say, like a 12-day river rafting expedition.

00:19:11.000 And they're coming back with marked, market improvements in mental health.

00:19:15.000 And these improvements last.

00:19:16.000 They're not just washing off after their first shower back at the hotel.

00:19:20.000 And what's so profound about that is if you have your phone while you go, you almost get none of the benefits.

00:19:27.000 That's what really stuck out me when writing about that.

00:19:30.000 Writes in comfort crisis, the wilder the nature, the better.

00:19:35.000 And nature can heal so many of our problems.

00:19:37.000 20 minutes outside, three times a week, but no phone.

00:19:39.000 Let's talk about that, Michael, because some people say, Yeah, I go outside all the time.

00:19:42.000 I'm have my phone.

00:19:43.000 And listen to podcasts, but you say, no, the studies show that if you have your phone, it actually you don't get the benefits.

00:19:49.000 Please talk about that.

00:19:50.000 So, nature, when you're in nature, it incites this mode in the brain that researchers call soft fascination.

00:19:56.000 Now, this is a terrible name, but that's what happens when you leave naming up to scientists.

00:20:01.000 But it's basically like meditation, except for your focus is outwardly focused.

00:20:07.000 You're kind of quietly taking in this nature, you're like turned down, and you're just kind of letting your mind wander as you're seeing all these sort of nice things to see that you see in nature.

00:20:16.000 Now, if you have your phone and you're looking at it, all of a sudden your attention is on TikTok or Instagram or whatever it might be.

00:20:23.000 And the same goes with listening to music sometimes.

00:20:26.000 So, you're kind of taking in the music.

00:20:28.000 So, really, just having this quiet downtime in nature, that's where the benefits seem to really come in.

00:20:35.000 Yeah, and I find that to be totally true.

00:20:38.000 I mean, so I read this as I was listening to the book, I was like, Oh, yeah, I spent all this time in nature, and then I was like, Wait a second, but I always have my phone and I'm doing phone calls and all that.

00:20:46.000 It's no different than just a nicer office, right?

00:20:48.000 You lose all the added benefits.

00:20:50.000 So, I wanted to spend some time here in our longer segment to talk about just a very unique part of the book called the Masogi.

00:20:58.000 What is a Masogi, Michael?

00:21:00.000 And it's kind of like Fight Club, which is there's all these rules.

00:21:03.000 Like, the first rule of Masogi is you can't tell anybody about Masogi, and then also don't die.

00:21:09.000 What is a Masogi, and why is it so important for we as a species to challenge ourselves in environments where we might not succeed?

00:21:18.000 When you think of how humans were in the past, we used to have to do hard, challenging things all the time.

00:21:25.000 This could be from hunting, this could be from moving to summer into wintering grounds, this could be from a tiger lurking in the bushes, right?

00:21:32.000 And each time we would take on one of those challenges, we would learn what our potential was, right?

00:21:36.000 Because we get put in a situation where we really struggled, where we really had to challenge ourselves, and we would have moments where we thought, I don't know if I'm going to make it out of this one.

00:21:45.000 But when we would come out the other side, we would go, Oh, I can do pretty amazing things that I hadn't realized.

00:21:52.000 Nowadays, it's all of a sudden possible to survive and never be challenged, right?

00:21:56.000 You're going to have enough water, you're going to have enough food, you're probably going to have a family who loves you, all these things, and that's great.

00:22:02.000 But at the same time, by not ever really being challenged, you're never going to learn what you're truly capable of.

00:22:08.000 You're not going to be put in that position where you either make the decision to endure or decide to quit.

00:22:14.000 And so, by not having that, we really, I think, lose something that's very important about not only being a human, but being able to level up our life in a lot of domains.

00:22:25.000 So, enter this wacky idea called Masogi.

00:22:28.000 To talk about the Masogi, that's where it really kind of caught my attention.

00:22:31.000 Talk about this, it's like a Japanese like nature bath or something.

00:22:35.000 Talk about it.

00:22:36.000 Oh, you're thinking of so, Masogi is the challenge element of the book.

00:22:42.000 Uh, the nature bath you might be thinking of is from the nature section.

00:22:45.000 So, I'll quickly talk about Masogi and then, um, or do you want me to turn to nature immediately?

00:22:50.000 No, Masogi, I might be conflating the two.

00:22:53.000 I'm sorry, I think that I misunderstood the root of the term Masogi, but talk about Masogi as being a challenge that you might not succeed in, just don't die, and you have to keep it to yourself.

00:23:04.000 So, you can't, you can't live stream your Masogi, which I found to be a brilliant component of it.

00:23:08.000 So, let's go there.

00:23:10.000 So, I just told you all that about challenge to basically tell you in order to recreate these challenges that we used to face in the past that are important for us as a species.

00:23:21.000 There's this idea called Masogi.

00:23:22.000 And the idea is that once a year, you're going to go out into nature and you're going to do something really, really hard, challenging for you.

00:23:30.000 There's two rules to Masogi.

00:23:32.000 The first rule is that whatever nature task you decide to take on, it's got to be really hard.

00:23:38.000 I said, and we define that by saying you should have a true 50-50 shot finishing whatever it is.

00:23:44.000 Now, this is important because today, even when we decide to take on challenges, we usually know we're going to finish.

00:23:49.000 You know, when people decide, hey, I'm going to run a marathon, they don't say, I don't know if I can run it.

00:23:53.000 They say, I don't know if I can run it in four hours or three hours, whatever the time goal is.

00:23:58.000 Now, rule two of Masogi is don't die.

00:24:01.000 And that one is pretty straightforward.

00:24:03.000 It is be safe, pick something where you're going to be safe, set some safety boundaries along the way.

00:24:09.000 And I learned this from a guy whose name is Marcus Elliott, and he has totally overhauled sports and training for it.

00:24:16.000 So he owns this facility called P3.

00:24:19.000 They work with all kinds of professional athletes.

00:24:21.000 They do all this data and modeling, very scientific.

00:24:24.000 But he started doing Masogi because he realizes that what ultimately improves human spirit and potential, it can't be measured.

00:24:31.000 So they do these Masogi tasks where, again, you go out into nature, do something really hard.

00:24:36.000 But the important thing is that along the way, you're probably going to have a moment where you think you have to quit, where you think that you have reached your edge and there's no going past this thing.

00:24:46.000 But if you can just keep putting one foot in front of the other, you're going to get another moment.

00:24:51.000 And that's where you look back and say, hey, wait a minute.

00:24:55.000 I thought my edge was back there.

00:24:57.000 I thought I was completely done back there, but I am clearly past that edge.

00:25:01.000 And that shows you that you've been selling yourself short.

00:25:04.000 And then the important question from there is, where else in my life am I selling myself short?

00:25:10.000 Because that, there is definitely a lot of domains where you are.

00:25:13.000 You know, I think that humans really are far more capable than we believe.

00:25:18.000 We just need experiences and moments that really show us that.

00:25:22.000 Yes.

00:25:24.000 And so you write in the book that they must be inward facing.

00:25:28.000 And I found it interesting because it would be tempting for most of modern culture to want to tell the world of the difficult nature task they did after they did it.

00:25:38.000 I did a rim to river to rim run, or, you know, I ran 48 miles or whatever it is.

00:25:44.000 But you say, no, no, no, no.

00:25:46.000 It's only a true Masogi if you might tell your wife or one other person, but it's not the world's business.

00:25:51.000 In fact, that screws up the incentives to talk about that.

00:25:55.000 Yeah, we do so many things today just because we want validation from others.

00:25:59.000 And we have a million different ways to get that validation.

00:26:02.000 Now, I mean, millions of people could follow a person on Instagram and you could get yourself a million pat on the backs by posting about something.

00:26:10.000 But what tends to happen is that people start to steer their behavior towards what they think others will approve of.

00:26:15.000 Well, Masogi is against that.

00:26:17.000 It's basically saying, I want you to go out and see if you can do something only for you.

00:26:23.000 Because at the end of the day, that's going to be what's really important at improving your potential and improving the human spirit.

00:26:31.000 And the other thing that I like about Masogi is it's best to think of something quirky, something made up, right?

00:26:39.000 So don't run a 10K or a 5K because then you can compare yourself to others.

00:26:44.000 And comparing yourself to others, it ultimately just sets a ceiling on your potential because you're going to fall to what others have done, not rise to what they've done most of the time.

00:26:54.000 So by just making up some weird thing, like for me, it might be, oh, yeah, there's this, there's this mountain peak I see every day.

00:26:59.000 I'm like, mute, I'm going to see if I can get up there in a day.

00:27:03.000 The 50-50 chance part of it is beautiful because, you know, for example, example, my mother, she's 72 years old, going on 73 and next week.

00:27:13.000 And she read about this concept and she challenged herself to a hike that was farther than she'd ever done before.

00:27:20.000 Now, of course, it wasn't that long of a hike, right?

00:27:22.000 She's 72, but at the same time, it was really long for her.

00:27:25.000 And it showed her that she was a lot more physically capable than she thought.

00:27:29.000 And because of this, there's this trip she wanted to take overseas, but she decided she wasn't going to do it because she didn't think she could do all the walking that it required.

00:27:36.000 Well, after that, she signed up for the trip and she's going.

00:27:42.000 Once you see your limitations actually aren't your limitations, it's unbelievably liberating.

00:27:47.000 And the other rule of Masogi is: don't die.

00:27:49.000 Just for everyone out there that's listening to this, yes, quirky and all that.

00:27:53.000 I mean, when I was listening to it, you were describing one of these masogi's.

00:27:56.000 They're like moving a barrel, they're moving a boulder on the bottom of like the Santa Barbara Bay.

00:28:01.000 I'm like, geez, I hope they thought this through.

00:28:04.000 And so don't die, everybody.

00:28:06.000 That's a very important part of this because if it's quirky and if it's in nature and you have a 50-50 shot, I want to be very clear: it's a 50-50 shot of completing the Masogi, not a 50-50 shot of survival.

00:28:16.000 So that's a very important thing.

00:28:19.000 Good distinction.

00:28:19.000 That's there.

00:28:20.000 So, yeah.

00:28:21.000 So, Michael, I want to ask you also just about your own personal story, which I found to be super interesting.

00:28:27.000 And you know, you're a very talented writer, and the way you did the book was brilliant because it weaves in and out of narrative.

00:28:33.000 So, it's not just all this, you know, data after date after data, but it's this story of you going up to Alaska for this caribou hunt, which was obviously out of your comfort zone.

00:28:43.000 And it seemed as if this almost had, you know, I don't want to say religious significance, but almost like a rebirth significance.

00:28:49.000 It was definitely out of your comfort zone.

00:28:51.000 I wouldn't say that the hunt was a masogi.

00:28:53.000 Maybe you would.

00:28:54.000 I mean, you wrote about it, so it wouldn't necessarily be, but it was something that really pushed you to your boundaries and had a profound impact.

00:29:01.000 There's a lot of young people watching this.

00:29:03.000 Talk a little about your story, but kind of some of your background and kind of how you've become this kind of thought leader in this ever-growing genre of discomfort can actually lead you to happiness.

00:29:15.000 Sure.

00:29:16.000 So, I, in the book, the second chapter, I talk about my family backstory.

00:29:20.000 Now, my father left my mom when I was in the womb, and that side of the family has always been quite the rabble-rouser. 1.00

00:29:28.000 So, they're well known in the Idaho state prison system, and they tend to drink and get in trouble.

00:29:34.000 So, I found myself, this was maybe nine years ago now, I found myself kind of going down that same path where I was drinking too much.

00:29:43.000 I wanted to quit, I couldn't quit.

00:29:45.000 And then one morning, for whatever reason, I just woke up and I could very, very clearly see that if I were to continue on this path of drinking, it would be very much more easy and comfortable in the short term, but it would ultimately end up killing me early.

00:30:00.000 Now, I didn't know if I was going to die at, say, 40, 60, 80.

00:30:04.000 I just knew it would be earlier than I needed to.

00:30:06.000 And more importantly, is that my life would be a lot less interesting and well-lived and significant.

00:30:11.000 And this other path I saw, that was going to be very uncomfortable.

00:30:15.000 I was going to have to relearn how to live and go through, go essentially into the dark cave where you don't know what lies there.

00:30:23.000 But I chose that path and I ended up getting sober, and it was very, very uncomfortable in the short term.

00:30:30.000 But on the other side of that, and this is what's important, is that my life improved across the board.

00:30:36.000 I mean, full stop across the board.

00:30:38.000 You name anything that you can measure and not measure, it got better.

00:30:42.000 I lost weight.

00:30:43.000 I had more money in the bank.

00:30:45.000 My friends liked me more.

00:30:46.000 My girlfriend stuck around.

00:30:48.000 I was able to, you know, pay off my car.

00:30:50.000 But, but even more important is how I felt internally.

00:30:53.000 I finally felt good about myself, right?

00:30:55.000 Because I think most people, when you have a problem like that, you're drinking to find comfort because for whatever reason, you're not comfortable with yourself or something in your life is wrong.

00:31:06.000 And in order to get over that, you have to go through the discomfort of fixing that, figuring out what is going on.

00:31:12.000 So there's that.

00:31:13.000 So that tells me this thing that, oh, discomfort, like you have to go through discomfort if you want to improve your life.

00:31:20.000 On the other coin, I was working at this magazine, Mental Health Magazine.

00:31:24.000 I was mostly on fitness, health, nutrition.

00:31:27.000 Literally every single thing I wrote about, you had to go through discomfort to improve your life.

00:31:31.000 You want to get fit, you got to work out.

00:31:33.000 Working out is not fun.

00:31:34.000 It's uncomfortable, right?

00:31:36.000 If you want to lose weight, you're probably going to be hungry.

00:31:39.000 If you want to improve your mental health, you're probably going to have to unpeel some onions and ask yourself some hard questions.

00:31:45.000 And so that all kind of accumulated to basically ending up meeting a guy whose name is Donnie Vincent.

00:31:52.000 Great guy, backcountry bow hunter and filmmaker, real thought leader in space.

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00:32:56.000 You met Donnie, who has a little bit of a colorful language based on the book.

00:32:59.000 Tell us about Donnie and how that got your journey going.

00:33:02.000 Yeah, I'm long-winded.

00:33:03.000 Sorry.

00:33:03.000 So I make this observation about going through discomfort being good for us, improving our health, improving our mental health.

00:33:11.000 And then I meet Donnie.

00:33:14.000 We do this.

00:33:14.000 We first do this hunt in Nevada, and I sort of realize, oh, the world has become very, very comfortable because I'm up in the backcountry for five days, freezing my butt off, starving, having to hike around everywhere to get water, hunting, bored out of my mind.

00:33:28.000 Then I get back home to Las Vegas and my house is air-conditioned.

00:33:31.000 I can sit all day.

00:33:32.000 The food is everywhere.

00:33:33.000 So I'm, oh, wow.

00:33:34.000 Yeah, we're surrounded in comfort now.

00:33:36.000 Then Donnie invites me up to the Arctic for this 30-day backcountry expedition, hunting expedition.

00:33:42.000 And I say, you know what?

00:33:43.000 Sure.

00:33:44.000 Let's see if I can learn something else.

00:33:46.000 I went through discomfort before and it gave me something good.

00:33:48.000 This sounds exceedingly uncomfortable.

00:33:50.000 The Arctic is very dangerous.

00:33:52.000 A lot of weather, a lot of animals, a lot of hiking, a lot of this and a lot of that that is uncomfortable.

00:33:57.000 And I thought, all right, let's sign on and see what happens.

00:34:00.000 And the trip changed my life.

00:34:02.000 Full stop changed my life.

00:34:03.000 But I'm also not saying that everyone has to go up to the Arctic for 30 days to see the benefits of discomfort.

00:34:09.000 In the book, I talk about a lot of little ways that you can weave discomfort purposefully into your life to improve your health.

00:34:16.000 I'm really an advocate of thinking, how can I make everyday life just a little bit harder in different ways?

00:34:21.000 Because I think that's where the benefits usually accumulate the most over time.

00:34:26.000 So in closing here, Michael, you know, right now, young people are living in the most suicidal, depressed, alcohol-addicted, anxious, and psychiatric drug-addicted generation in history.

00:34:37.000 Your book, I think, addresses a lot of that, but just any other thoughts on how we go about solving it?

00:34:43.000 I think your thesis is profound and is really kind of, in some ways, pioneer work where you argue that the best of modernity is actually now harming this generation, where they have everything on demand, and now it's time to embrace discomfort as a virtue.

00:35:00.000 Just any closing thoughts on what we're up against, which I consider to be the crisis of our time, which is a generation that is killing themselves at record numbers, medicating themselves at record numbers, and no one really seems to know why, but I think you've done the best job of pinpointing that closing thoughts.

00:35:16.000 Yeah, you know, I'd be pretty sad too if I sat around on TikTok for 10 hours a day and in my home and not ever in nature.

00:35:23.000 And I think that we've lost out on a lot of connection.

00:35:26.000 And I think that when you look at all the research, what makes humans happy is struggling for something, really going up against it, going through challenges, and coming out on the other side, having learned something about yourself.

00:35:38.000 We're really missing these experiences that we used to have that bolstered our youth, that brought them from point A to point B in their lives.

00:35:47.000 And there's just so many different ways that life has become so easy for young people.

00:35:51.000 And I think it goes from easy access to entertainment on cell phones to the fact that they spend so much less time outdoors, the fact that nothing is hard anymore.

00:36:01.000 Everything is safe.

00:36:02.000 Everything's about safety, from playgrounds to spaces to classrooms to this and that and this.

00:36:06.000 Everything's got to be safe.

00:36:07.000 You can't ever have a feeling that makes you feel bad, right?

00:36:10.000 But in doing that, we actually create a ton of bad feelings down the road.

00:36:14.000 So do the hard thing.

00:36:16.000 Do the hard thing.

00:36:17.000 If you're listening right now and you're, let's say, unhappy, you're probably too comfortable.

00:36:24.000 This book, I think, will really make a big impact.

00:36:26.000 It's Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter.

00:36:29.000 And it's not just, it's not written like a scientific journal.

00:36:32.000 It's entertaining and it's compelling.

00:36:34.000 Michael, I hope to meet you one day.

00:36:35.000 Thank you for the phenomenal work.

00:36:36.000 It made an impact on my life and hopefully the listeners as well.

00:36:39.000 Thank you, Michael.

00:36:40.000 Thanks so much, Charlie.

00:36:41.000 I really appreciate your time.

00:36:42.000 Thank you.

00:36:44.000 And so, yeah, look, I got recommended this book by our team member, Spencer, and it's phenomenal.

00:36:50.000 And I just want to reiterate this: that right now, some of you might be dealing with depression and anxiety.

00:36:54.000 And look, I'm not a neuroscientist.

00:36:55.000 I'm not a psychiatrist.

00:36:56.000 I'm not going to diagnose, you know, everyone, you know, not anyone.

00:37:00.000 That's not my point here.

00:37:00.000 My point is, though, that there might be some value to maybe I'm using my phone too much.

00:37:05.000 Maybe I'm not bored enough.

00:37:06.000 Maybe I haven't gone out to nature to really enjoy what it has to say for me.

00:37:11.000 And obviously, I'm a Christian.

00:37:12.000 I believe God designed us for a certain purpose.

00:37:15.000 And I believe in that design, he actually designed us not to be inside all the time.

00:37:19.000 And there was a really profound thing that Michael just said to close out this conversation.

00:37:23.000 It was just amazing, where he said, quote, struggling for something and learning about yourself.

00:37:29.000 Boy, is that not the biblical story?

00:37:32.000 That really is struggling for something.

00:37:35.000 I do not believe that God designed us to sit around and just accept things.

00:37:41.000 He designed us to serve and to give and to push to new levels.

00:37:46.000 That is the parable of the talents.

00:37:48.000 So we have a generation that's struggling right now.

00:37:51.000 And I think Michael Easter, he weaves in some concepts that I think are biblical and wise and are just fabulous.

00:37:57.000 I really, really enjoy it.

00:37:58.000 It's great.

00:38:00.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:38:01.000 Email me your thoughts as always.

00:38:02.000 Freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:38:03.000 Thanks so much for listening.

00:38:04.000 God bless.

00:38:08.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - August 31, 2022

The Comfort Crisis with Author Michael Easter

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