I have a chapter in my new book called Awaken to the Strangeness of Being Alive. And it's about the fact that if you think about it, and how unlikely it is that we humans evolved at all, even that we even exist, all the bottlenecks in evolution that we had to pass through, including the disappearance of the dinosaurs and the emergence of mammals, but there are 20 other huge bottlenecks throughout the history of evolution.

We had to pass through all of those. We nearly went extinct 80,000 years ago from some virus that in fact, there were only 8,000 people, humans on the planet, all these different things. And here we are with Zoom meetings, etc, etc. It's like the strangest story you can ever, it's beyond science fiction, but nobody thinks about it.

Nobody sits down and goes, God, I'm alive. If you went back to the chain of people that had to connect and have children leading up to your parents, the unlikeliness of you ever being born is astronomical. I mean, unless my science is all wrong, 70,000 generations of people meeting, etc, etc, finally ending at your DNA, I mean, unless I'm missing something, it's pretty unlikely, but nobody thinks about it.

Well, I certainly think about it now because I almost died, I had nothing else to think about. I have to entertain my brain the way Milton Erickson had to entertain himself by observing people. So it's taken a lot away from me. I can't swim. I'm riding my recumbent bike, which I love, and 80-year-old grandmothers are zipping by me.

God damn it, how awful, I'm so envious, I'm so, my insecurity is all well up. But then I realize, hey, I'm on a boat, I'm sailing, it's wonderful, I'm outside. I have to go through these processes. But I think it's developed me in some way that's, in the end, very positive.

It sounds like you've had to adjust to a new frame rate on life. The old movie had a certain frame rate, this movie has a certain frame rate, but that within that frame rate, there are gifts to be had that you certainly missed in your prior version of self.

Is that about right? But also, like, I tell people this, I totally took my life for granted. I was swimming all this time, I was fantastic, I was bicycling, I was traveling, but I never sat back and thought, wow, this is wonderful how grateful it is, it could be taken away from me.

I tell people, don't do that to yourself. I try and teach them. It can be taken away from you tomorrow. When you're out walking the dog, think of me, think of me that can't walk the dog and appreciate those things, which I didn't appreciate. So I try and help people in that way when I can.

I think a critical message is also to inspire a sense of urgency in people. I think people hear a sense of urgency and they go, oh, I'm already under so much pressure, life's so hard. But we're not talking about a sense of urgency to take on more of what life has to offer.

I think we're talking about a sense of urgency to find one's purpose, which takes work and is an ongoing process, but to really get out of modes of apathy, laziness, languishing, and to start, as you've described it, paying deeper attention. I mean, this is a concept that was super important for me to hear about and I learned about it from you was, how do you get yourself out of a rut?

You start paying deeper attention to the things around you and inside you. And perhaps not coincidentally, you referred to that as, quote, death ground. - Yeah. So it's a strategy from my book, I wrote a book on strategy, my version of the art of war. It's called 33 Strategies of War, but it's really about strategy, the strategic thinking.

It's inspired from Sun Tzu, the great Chinese strategist, but it has vast philosophical implications. The idea is, you can almost think of it like barometric pressure. When necessity is pressing in on you, like your back is against the wall, like you have to get something done, and there's like this pressure around you, you find energy in there that you never believed before.

William James talks about this when he talks about getting a second wind, he explains it very eloquently. When you feel like your life's in danger, suddenly you can leap over things that you never could leap over before. So Sun Tzu says, put an army on death ground and it will fight until it wins, meaning put an army with its back to the ocean or back to the mountain, and it's either win or die, they're gonna fight 10 times harder.

You're gonna find the energy in you that you normally lack when death is facing you in the face or urgency or deadlines or people pressing in on you. When that barometric pressure loosens up and there's none of it, you think you have all the time in the world, you get nothing done.

Wow, man, I'm 23, I got all these years ahead of me, I'm gonna figure it out, right? I'm not gonna die, I got 50, 70, 80 years ahead of me. No, you don't. That pressure now is gone and you're wasting time, you're doing all sorts of things that aren't leading to any kind of skill, you're not learning or anything.

You need to put yourself on death ground, you need to feel that barometric pressure, which is the actual reality. The actual reality is you could die tomorrow, you could have a stroke tomorrow, you could be fired tomorrow, everything could fall apart. You need to have that sense of urgency now because that's the reality.

You're fooling yourself by thinking you have all of this time. And so when you feel that pressure, suddenly you can move mountains, you have energy, your life, you just have focus, et cetera. Neurologically, everything clicks in. And people who've had that experience where they've felt like the ship was going under and they better get their act together and survive, they talk about all these physical processes.

I have a story in my new book, I hope I'm not boring you with all this. No, quite the opposite. About a mountain climber who, he was climbing this mountain by himself and he was having a great time but there was a storm coming and he had to get down and he suddenly fell and he cut his leg open massively and there was like a branch sticking in it and he broke all these bones and he was going to die, he was on a ledge.

He could see that it was getting dark and storm clouds were amassing, this was in the Rocky Mountains. He was alone and suddenly he managed to get up on his two feet and he can't explain how but all of this energy, all this adrenaline started flowing in him and he said he was like a mountain goat.

He was like going down the ledge, he jumped, he was able to kind of get down to another ledge. He got out of it and for the next 20 years, he was haunted by how did that happen? I want that feeling again because it was actually the most ecstatic feeling.

I had energy that I never suspected in myself and so he tries everything to get that feeling back. He tries climbing other mountains, he tries going to Mount Everest and it doesn't come back and finally he kind of figures out the formula for it and why it happened. He studies a lot of neuroscience.

It's a great book. I'm using it in my new book. It's called Bone Games, it's a very interesting book, a lot of science in it and he got the feeling back in a smaller sense but it was the feeling of your life is in danger, I better get my act together or it's the end and suddenly adrenaline, dopamine, all the other things were occurring in him and he found that energy.

That's the ultimate kind of death ground right there. The human will to live is truly incredible and Sunai, I have to say, as I said before, I'm so grateful that your stroke didn't take you out because clearly there's still so much in there and you're continuing to share what is really exquisitely useful knowledge.