Daily Habits for Increasing Grit & Resilience | Michael Easter & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | I want to distinguish between daily self-induced discomforts and these larger discomforts like

00:00:09.220 | going to the Arctic. I want to get to the Masogi theme and this idea of taking on things that are

00:00:14.560 | truly hard that you might not finish. But if we were to shrink this down to the morning,

00:00:18.640 | wake up, you can scroll on your phone, or you can hop in the cold plunge, take a cold shower.

00:00:23.820 | These days, there's a lot of discussion around doing the cold shower has numerous benefits,

00:00:28.220 | wakes you up, dopamine, norepinephrine, but also it kind of sucks. Nobody likes cold water.

00:00:34.380 | If you do, send me a note because I'll send you a neurologist's phone number.

00:00:40.180 | But we all like the feeling of getting out of it. But what are some things besides cold showers and

00:00:48.140 | exercise, which I do believe everyone should do and get sunlight, et cetera, that we can do on a

00:00:52.640 | daily basis, morning or in the afternoon if we're feeling just kind of low,

00:00:56.440 | besides cold showers and exercise and sunlight that are hard? Like, is it if I, like, I love

00:01:03.080 | eating strawberries and I hate putting, like, I leave the hulls in weird places without even realizing

00:01:07.800 | it. And I'll walk by a hull of a strawberry. And I'm thinking, and I, this morning I thought,

00:01:12.600 | oh my Easter is going to laugh at me. Like, I'm like, I got to pick this thing up. I'm not just

00:01:15.880 | scattering them around my home, by the way. But I'm like, like, what is it? Like we create these

00:01:19.960 | barriers to doing the simplest of things. So what are some difficult things that we can introduce

00:01:25.340 | to our daily routine that have been shown to make us feel better besides exercise, sunlight,

00:01:31.380 | and cold water?

00:01:32.640 | Yeah. So sort of my big picture answer here is my substack is called the 2% newsletter. And I'll

00:01:40.280 | tell you why it's called 2%. So there's this study that found that only 2% of people take the stairs

00:01:45.900 | when there's an escalator available. 2%. Now, 100% of people know that if they were to take the stairs,

00:01:53.280 | that would be better for them, right? They get a better long-term return on their health,

00:01:57.200 | on their wellbeing. And yet 98% of people do the easier thing that could actually hurt them in the

00:02:04.860 | long run in the context of this environment where we don't move enough. So this tells me that we're

00:02:09.500 | sort of wired to do the next easiest thing. But living better in modern life often requires doing these

00:02:17.800 | slightly uncomfortable things that are just so obvious and in front of us. And it's like,

00:02:23.240 | you have to get to the second floor. So which route are you going to take? You're going to take

00:02:28.540 | the one that's a little bit uncomfortable now, but improves your life in the long run? Or are you

00:02:31.920 | going to do the easy thing that might actually hurt you in the long run? So that to me is just a

00:02:36.320 | metaphor for like, how do you improve in daily life, right? In the trenches of daily life, how do you

00:02:41.420 | improve? So I apply this, I try and apply this to as many different areas in my life as I can. It's like,

00:02:47.620 | if I can make something just a little bit more uncomfortable, I'm not talking about extreme,

00:02:51.680 | do the slightly harder thing that I know will give me a long-term return. I got to take that.

00:02:56.700 | So for me, it's like, okay, if I'm in my office, go through some examples, and I have a phone call,

00:03:02.980 | I could sit here and take the phone call, or I could pop in my headphones and I could go for a walk and I

00:03:08.840 | could take that call while walking. I would say for the vast majority of phone calls, unless you're like

00:03:13.200 | talking to the CEO, your big boss, right? Maybe sit behind the computer for that one. But like,

00:03:18.640 | you're getting in all these steps that are going to be beneficial. And steps are one of like the metric

00:03:24.800 | that is most correlated to better health. Like people just need to generally walk more. And

00:03:30.280 | that's an easy way to do it. It's like, you got to take the call. Might as well get some steps in

00:03:34.500 | as you do it, right? Things like that. Things like, could you even just carry your groceries

00:03:39.380 | at the grocery store? You get the basket, you're carrying stuff. You're getting in this like

00:03:44.560 | low load of carrying that's going to really help with back health, strength, all these different

00:03:49.160 | things. Even things as simple as like, I'm going to park in the farthest spot away. Like people go,

00:03:55.560 | roll their eyes and go, that's so obvious. Everyone says that. It's like, okay, but no one actually does

00:03:59.580 | it. And if you look at just non-exercise activity thermogen, it's neat. This is basically a dorky way of

00:04:07.380 | saying all the movement in a person's life that isn't dedicated exercise. That often outweighs the

00:04:14.240 | benefits of exercise in many studies. Certainly by calories burned. Certainly by calories burned.

00:04:20.440 | Also, some data suggests even health outcomes in the long run. There's some Mayo Clinic data that says

00:04:27.480 | that people who just move around a lot more in their daily life, they're burning like 800 calories just

00:04:31.680 | from moving around, this incidental movement. It's like running eight miles or something. If you do some

00:04:36.720 | really rough back of hand math, right? And so I think looking for those opportunities, even beyond

00:04:42.440 | exercise, something like, so in the comfort crisis, I write about a value of silence, for example.

00:04:48.600 | We have increased the world's loudness fourfold as human beings. And yet silence is actually pretty

00:04:57.280 | good for us in this context of noise. So you put someone in silence and like, yeah, it's a little

00:05:01.300 | uncomfortable at first. People will generally report being like, oh, it's so quiet. This is weird.

00:05:06.060 | Well, weirded out. But as time goes on, people tend to calm down. It's sort of like a nice reset. And so

00:05:12.500 | can you even go, hey, like I go into my office and I just start blasting music immediately. Like most

00:05:16.960 | people keep the TV on, who keep the TV on all day. It's not that they're watching it. It's that they just

00:05:21.980 | need noise in the background or else they feel weird. But if you can sort of cut that out, even though

00:05:25.760 | it's a little bit hard at first, it's probably going to improve you over the long run. Like how can we

00:05:31.100 | apply this to different areas? I did a post. It's called the 2% manifesto on my sub stack. So I'll

00:05:36.420 | link to it in that link I mentioned. And it lists a bunch of different ways. I think it really is. It's

00:05:41.360 | just like this mindset shift. Like how can I take this thing I have to do and maybe make it a little

00:05:45.820 | bit harder and get a benefit. And once you start to stack those things up, like things start moving,

00:05:51.320 | things start changing. Yeah, I agree. I, um, you know, my trivial example about the strawberry

00:05:56.380 | hulls, which I always put like next to the bowl of strawberries and they'll just sit there. Um,

00:06:01.620 | this is actually really beneficial for me because I do that too. And my wife, my wife goes, what kind

00:06:06.300 | of psychopath does this? And I'd be like, well, there's two of us now. Uh, at least two of us. Um,

00:06:12.220 | if you are a strawberry hull, um, a non, uh, throw away or, um, definitely put, put a comment and we'll,

00:06:19.720 | we'll start a support group. Um, it taught me an important lesson though, because, um,

00:06:25.940 | it's less about the strawberry hulls, um, than noticing the feeling of resistance. Like what is

00:06:33.100 | that? And then recognizing how trivial that resistance is, but how, um, pervasive it is.

00:06:38.760 | It's like the, the things that we resist doing, like, uh, I've got the making the bed first thing

00:06:43.460 | in the morning down. I've got the morning sunlight thing down. I've got, got all that stuff down,

00:06:47.820 | but it's the little things that we can get away with not doing for a while that I think are the,

00:06:54.640 | the ones that really erode this, whatever this, um, circuit in our brain is that, that you're

00:06:59.680 | talking about. And, and I do want to talk about brain circuitry a little bit. Um, but I don't think

00:07:05.040 | we have a name for it. And, um, because it's, it's, it's a little bit of willpower. It's a little

00:07:09.640 | bit of tenacity. It's a bit of reflection, but what I, what I'm getting to here, forgive me,

00:07:16.240 | cause I'm stumbling through this a little bit because it's, it's something I'm just arriving

00:07:19.960 | to in this conversation is that there's something about the contrast between prior experience and

00:07:25.640 | current experience where we could say level of discomfort from, you know, one to 10. Um,

00:07:31.380 | the more uncomfortable something is in our prior experience, the better the next phase of life is

00:07:37.620 | going to feel whether or not to hours or days later, as you said, a month, you go to the Arctic for how

00:07:42.280 | long were you there? 33 days. So more than a month. And you got a month of zenned out blissed, uh, you

00:07:49.120 | know, super Michael to you and to everybody else. Right. And then the crazy start to slowly work their way

00:07:55.400 | starts to work its way back in. And I think that it's a, um, this is a microcosm for a lot of things

00:08:01.300 | about nervous systems. They adapt and so forth. So when I think about the examples you gave, and I love

00:08:07.660 | the one of taking the stairs, I always think when I travel, I'm going to sit a lot. I don't like to sit

00:08:11.700 | too much. I always feel better when I've moved a lot. So I'm a farmer carrying my luggage of big

00:08:17.120 | supplement bag, you know, hence the secondary screening and, uh, you know, security. And then the

00:08:23.080 | stairs are a great opportunity. So we can reframe, right? As humans, we can reframe, uh, tell ourselves

00:08:27.920 | that things are good for us. Um, but it's these areas where we, where we experience a lot of

00:08:32.960 | resistance to ourselves, I think that are the most challenging as opposed to resistance to the world.

00:08:36.780 | As you point out, the world isn't, um, uh, lacking opportunities to, to walk on a call or take the

00:08:43.660 | stairs. It's all around us, but it's that internal kind of like, you know, shift towards what's more

00:08:49.300 | comfortable. What do you think about the, the more psychological things like, um, like God forbid,

00:08:55.240 | reading a book in paper form as opposed to listening to it. And I love audio books, but,

00:08:59.880 | you know, forcing oneself to read, um, having the phone out of the room, um, read something difficult,

00:09:07.060 | like a hard book. Like if I want a really good hard book, I ask Mark Andreessen for a book

00:09:11.720 | recommendation. Usually I have to go find the book from a, like a special bookseller because some of these

00:09:16.760 | books are hard to find. And then I open up the first page and I go, well, I knew he was really

00:09:21.060 | smart. He's one of the smartest people I've ever met. I've met a lot of smart people, but this is

00:09:24.660 | really challenging. And then I have to just start lathing through it and lathing through it. And it

00:09:29.300 | reminds me of being a PhD student and learning about the nervous system for the first time. And that stuff

00:09:32.880 | feels so good when we like find a nugget of, of understanding. Yeah. But get through it and get through

00:09:40.480 | it. Yeah. But, um, so in the, in the cognitive domain, in the emotional domain, like do you

00:09:47.240 | intentionally sit down with your wife and go, let's have like a really hard conversation so that we can

00:09:51.320 | have a really great weekend. Do you do that? Do you do this in all areas of your life? Um, well,

00:09:56.300 | I'm definitely not perfect. My wife and I actually, we go on very long walks and that's where all the

00:10:01.200 | magic happens. There's something about walking as a couple. We'll do like 12 miles on a Saturday,

00:10:05.940 | eight to 12 miles on a Saturday. It was our long walk. Yeah. And you got like four hours

00:10:09.760 | together and you know, the first hour you're just kind of this and that, and you know, how was your

00:10:13.880 | work week? It was good. How was yours? And then like by hour two, you're getting into like the deep

00:10:19.020 | and the gritty stuff. And I think there's something about forward ambulation, uh, with other people that

00:10:26.020 | is really, um, life giving. And there's something even sort of spiritual about it and the amount of

00:10:31.980 | connection that you can get from people. So that's something that we definitely do. And I don't think

00:10:35.340 | those conversations would come if we were like, let's sit on the couch. Okay. We'll turn on this

00:10:39.920 | Netflix show. Hey, how are you? Like the shit just wouldn't happen. Right. Yeah. The walk's a little

00:10:45.420 | bit harder, of course. Um, but magic happens there. I would also say there's a, there's a section in the

00:10:51.520 | comfort crisis and I've written about this a little bit in my other book, scarcity brains. Well,

00:10:56.660 | we're talking about the value of boredom. So boredom is effectively this evolutionary discomfort

00:11:02.620 | that tells us go do something else. It's neither good. It's neither bad. Simply tells us whatever

00:11:09.080 | you're doing right now, the return on your time invested is running thin, go do something else.

00:11:14.180 | So in the past, if you think of us, say, um, we're out foraging for food and we're in this one area

00:11:22.420 | and we can't find anything. There's nothing. Boredom would kick in because we're not getting a return.

00:11:27.980 | And it would say, well, go do something else. And we'd probably go say, okay, well, what if we try

00:11:31.520 | fishing this river or something? Right. And I think what happens in modern life is that when that

00:11:37.740 | evolutionary discomfort that tells us to go do something else kicks in, that something else is

00:11:42.880 | this like really easy, effortless escape. And it's in the form of a cell phone, it's Instagram,

00:11:48.140 | it's whatever, right? It's like this hyper stimulating content. But I think that sort of sitting with

00:11:55.300 | boredom and leveraging it to see where else it might take you beyond a screen can be really valuable.

00:12:00.800 | Yes, it's uncomfortable. Um, but I've found I've get my best ideas. And I think that there's

00:12:07.360 | centuries of thinkers who would say the same, like my best ideas come when I've sort of removed myself

00:12:16.280 | from outside stimulation. And yes, like my mind wanders, I'm bored, but then bam, some magic happens.

00:12:23.260 | One point of messaging around screens today that I want to touch on too, is that like, there's so much

00:12:28.620 | media around cell phones and like, you got to use your cell phone less. Here's a million different

00:12:35.460 | ways to use your cell phone yet less. Yes, that's important. Yes, we should all do it. But I think it

00:12:40.840 | misses a big point. And that is, if we take, let's say two hours off our phone screen time, what happens

00:12:47.740 | is that people often get bored and they go, well, shit, what am I going to do? And then they turn on

00:12:53.240 | Netflix. Not much different, right? It's not an algorithm. No, but you're still just like taking

00:13:00.220 | this information that is being beamed into you rather than seeing what else the world can offer

00:13:05.280 | you and sort of coming up with your own ideas and creativity. So I like to say, rather than focusing

00:13:09.800 | on less phone, I like to think more boredom. Get yourself in a space where like, boredom is going

00:13:15.600 | to kick on. It's going to be uncomfortable. Your mind's going to wander and you might find some good

00:13:18.980 | ideas. Yeah, you'll have some weird stuff in your brain. Of course, that's what happens when your mind

00:13:22.460 | wanders. But I think you can find some interesting things out there.

00:13:26.440 | Does boredom include reflection or it's true boredom? Like, I think we need to be removed from

00:13:32.800 | the hyper-stimulating stuff that we often, when we get that moment of I've got nothing to do, like

00:13:39.500 | stand in a grocery line, right? What do people do? Everyone's on their cell phone. Like you can't just

00:13:45.300 | like sit with our thoughts for more than three seconds. So I think even just having the moment where you go,

00:13:50.100 | okay, going to do nothing. Might get a little weird. Might get a little uncomfortable. Might be a tiny

00:13:56.640 | bit bored, but like your mind's going to go some interesting places I think can be productive in

00:14:00.500 | the context of today. Well, I'm chuckling because what were your thoughts on the brief appearance of

00:14:06.600 | the raw dog flight experience that showed up last year? Did you see that? Where guys were posting

00:14:11.760 | online, it did seem to be guys, saying that they quote unquote raw dog, terrible use of language.

00:14:18.980 | Um, I didn't pick it. Uh, they would do a 10 hour flight or a six hour flight with no media. Just sit

00:14:27.300 | there as a, as a kind of sign of their toughness. I thought it was kind of interesting. Uh, here's what,

00:14:34.080 | here's what came out of that is my wife said, the hell these guys are weak. She's been doing that

00:14:41.120 | ever since I knew her. She literally sits in that seat and she turns on the flight screen map and she just

00:14:47.040 | zones into that. I'm like, you're a crazy person. Now it turns out she's just like the original raw

00:14:52.880 | dogger. I love it. That was not the answer I expected. Um, yeah, that, that trend kind of came

00:14:59.180 | and went. Yeah. Came and went, I think that, you know, and there's the, there's a performative element

00:15:03.800 | to that. Right. And so it was kind of became a performance for the, for the algorithms and

00:15:09.100 | whatever, where it's, uh, I think maybe we need to get a little more nuance behind that and put some

00:15:13.660 | thought into it. It's like how, it's like, okay, if I'm not on my screen, like, how am I going to use

00:15:17.300 | this time? Can I use it to go sort of deeper into my thoughts? And I do think people need time,

00:15:24.820 | especially when you're dealing, trying to chew off big ideas. Like I've found that a long walk where I

00:15:31.320 | don't take my cell phone. It's like, I need that. And I think a lot of people, I think there's a lot

00:15:35.880 | of anecdotes historically that, um, good ideas come from these moments where you're just, that's all

00:15:41.560 | what you're focused on. Maybe you're on a walk and just kind of sitting and just peeling away the

00:15:45.780 | layers. Not easy, but worthwhile.

00:15:49.840 | Thank you.

Daily Habits for Increasing Grit & Resilience | Michael Easter & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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