Brad Stulberg | Principles for Success That Feed Your Soul

Srini Rao

 Brad, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Brad Stulberg

It's so great to be here.

Srini Rao

Well, it is my pleasure to have you here. So you have a new book out, The Practice of Groundedness, and your co-author from your previous book, Peak Performance, Steve Magnus, was also a guest here and absolutely amazing. I just finished reading this book, all of which we will get into, but before we actually get into the book, as you know from having heard the show, I want to start by asking you about something that has nothing to do with the book. And that is, what social group were you a part of in high school, and what impact did that end up having on what you've ended up doing with your life and your career?

Brad Stulberg

The social group that I was a part of in high school was really the football community.

So I was a, I would say pretty good high school football player, um, which would translate to a, a bad college football player, but someone just on the cusp of being able to take the game to the next level. So as the captain of the team, I played all four years and, um, the group of guys that we had at my high school that made that team was a really special group. The team hadn't been to the playoffs in 30 years and both my

junior and senior year, we won our division, we were competitive in the playoffs. And it was also really neat because it was one of those, like modern day feel good football team stories where there were so many really dedicated driven student athletes that took the student part seriously. So I remember that our offensive line had a cumulative GPA of like 3.9. But then there were also these kids that are your

Srini Rao

Wow.

Brad Stulberg

stereotypical, just phenomenal athlete that don't really care about school and are on the verge of perhaps getting into real trouble. And they became a part of this football community and their grades started to go up and they started to realize that you could be both cool and be a nerd at the same time. And that was a really neat thing to be a part of in high school. And now, obviously, my relationship with football, having a young son is so complex because we continue to learn how dangerous the game is.

yet I've also seen firsthand the real benefits that football has, especially for kids that might not have other outlets to feel a part of something.

Srini Rao

Where did you actually grow up?

Brad Stulberg

I grew up in a smaller town called Farmington Hills, Michigan. It's about 30, 35 minutes outside of Detroit.

Srini Rao

Okay, cool. Yeah, I mean, I spent seven years in Texas. So as you might imagine, football was kind of a part of my life, although I basically realized I was getting the shit beat out of me in seventh grade, you know, when they do those tackling drills, where, you know, defensive lineman, offensive lineman go up against each other. They had me go up against this like kid who was 300 pounds because in seventh grade in Texas, there are seventh graders, the size of growing men, and he pushed me back 20 yards, the whole team laughed and I was like, Okay, I'm definitely not

Srini Rao

When I watch a TV show like Friday Night Lights, for example, I see something really magical about football. And so obviously that leads to a whole lot of questions. But the first being what misperceptions do you think that those of us who are not student athletes in high school have about student athletes? I mean, obviously, the first one being that they only care about school. Like, what do we not see about the lives that you lead when somebody like me is a band geek?

Brad Stulberg

Yeah, I think that student athletes are just as insecure as everyone else in high school. And perhaps part of the reason that so many put on a facade of being tough or super cool is because perhaps they're even more insecure than the quote unquote band geek. And

I think that it just goes to show that most kids between 14 and 18 who are still developing identities and a sense of self and a reputation and what they want to be known for and hormones are flowing and all that stuff.

I mean, everyone's just insecure. So at the time that I think I was super cool because I was on the football team. Absolutely. Looking back on that, was that born out of nothing but insecurity? Absolutely. I could have been just as cool if I was the head of the model car team. It doesn't matter. Follow your interests.

Srini Rao

Ha ha ha!

Srini Rao

Mm hmm. Yeah. Well, what about coaches in high school? Like what impact did they end up having on where you've ended up? Because I know that you now coach people.

And every time I watch Friday Night Lights and I see, you know, the coach Taylor character, I always think to myself like, why did I not have somebody like that in my life? I mean, I was fortunate that I had a band director who took a profound interest in me from sixth through almost seventh through ninth grade. But I wonder, you know, what impact your coaches had on you and the way that you think about leadership, the way that you think about performance and all the things you ended up doing later.

Brad Stulberg

Well, I've had two very different experiences with coaching in high school and no one's ever asked me this question, so thanks. It's really interesting to reflect on this in real time here. Football program, I had a good coach.

I wouldn't say like, you know, he was a father figure or anything too crazy, but he was a good coach and he cared. The basketball program, which was another sport that I played and I was quite good at, was just absolutely awful. He was the high school version of Bobby Knight, that coach at Indiana that's just throwing chairs and yelling at everyone. And he really coached from a place of fear and power born out of fear.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Brad Stulberg

to fear him, he made you feel terrible, he would go off on you in a second. I remember once he told me that, you know, not everyone can play the piano, some people need to carry the piano, and some people need to sit and fill out spreadsheets billing for the piano, that's who you're going to be. And I was like a 14 year old kid, and I'm just like, fuck. So I think that I very quickly realized that there's these two extremes of coaching. One

Brad Stulberg

someone towards independence, not dependence. That is you try to make yourself useless as a coach because you equip that person with the decision-making skills that they need in the moment. The other way to coach is from a place of fear and towards dependence, where you develop a relationship with the person you're coaching, in this case, the athlete, but it can be an entrepreneur, an artist, a writer, you name it, where they feel like they need you and they're scared of you.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Brad Stulberg

And the vast, vast majority of research shows that it's the coaches who coach from a place of love and towards independence who tend to have higher performing people under them. Even though in the short term, coaching from a place of fear works really well. You freak someone out, they're timid, they're going to do exactly what you say. But that is not a sustainable way to build good people, again, whether this is athletes or outside of sport.

Srini Rao

Yeah, well, let's talk specifically outside of sports, because I think that what's fascinating to me is self-improvement in a lot of ways, like the entire industry is built on dependence. We did an entire series on cults of personal development. We had Sarah from Nixxiom here, the guy who wrote the cult deprogramming book and several others. And there's a sort of interesting paradox. The Landmark Forum is a perfect example.

Srini Rao

the copywriters apparently in a barber shop with him. He said, sum up the whole S thing, which that's what it used to be called for me in one sentence. He said, we sell independence, but we breed dependence. And the funny thing is like, I I've done landmark. I think the information is phenomenal. I think the organization is a shit show. And who knows, maybe they'll sue me if they're hearing this. But the thing that struck me about that is that the people who end up getting immensely like just powerful results are the ones who never go back.

Like they realize exactly what you're talking about. So when you think about that in the context of self-help, I mean, in a lot of ways, the work that you and I do falls into that genre. How do you get people to take in knowledge from authority figures without becoming dependent on them?

Brad Stulberg

Ooh, this is a doozy. So here we go. I think that, well, there's a few things and maybe your editor will cut out all my stuttering, but it's because you asked a really complex question and there's a lot to, there's a lot, you're good at your job. There's a lot to unpack here. So the first thing is this. I think that in the broader self-help genre,

Srini Rao

I've been known to do that to people. Ha ha ha.

Brad Stulberg

there is a lot of making things needlessly complex, making them sound all sciencey, because that way the reader thinks that there's some special value or they're getting this special secret. Whereas what we know looking at decades of research in productivity, wellbeing, and peak performance is that most of what matters is just nailing the basics.

that is simple, not easy. So the first thing is you've already got this barrier, because I've got to compete with Dave Asprey, who's telling people that if they put special butter in their coffee, they're going to feel like Superman or Superwoman, and I don't buy that. Then the second thing is, well, if it's so simple, why should I buy your book? Why should I read this? And there, I think, is the crux of your question. In the book I call this, and just in life, I call this the knowing-doing gap.

Srini Rao

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brad Stulberg

So first you have to know something, but just because you know it doesn't mean that you're going to do it. And doing the simple things to perform well, to be productive, it is not easy. And my role as an author, as a coach, is to often just walk the path with someone, hold their hand along the way, give them encouragement, and help them stay on the path.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Brad Stulberg

superpower, structure, authority from me telling people the benefits of moving their body for 45 minutes a day, or of being present, or of focusing on being patient. These are virtues that modern science now of course supports, but are as old as the oldest ancient wisdom traditions. So there's nothing new here. What I argue is that that's the point. If someone comes to you with all this new, sexy, bright and shiny object kind of stuff, generally my bullshit detector goes off.

Srini Rao

Yours and mine both.

Brad Stulberg

Whereas if someone comes to you and says, I'm not gonna blow your mind with anything, I'm gonna tell you to do the basics, but they're hard, and I'm gonna give you a language for it, and I'm gonna hold your hand while you do it, that's the kind of person that I wanna work with.

Srini Rao

Okay, so let's talk about this balance between tough love and fear and I'll give you some context for this. So I had a mentor who is funny because the version of him that people on my podcast and people on, you know, at our conference get is this like highly motivational, inspiring guy. And I'm like, yeah, I get the version that kicked my ass every week. And at the same time, I realized that he was actually preparing me for a high stakes situation. So you know, I had a breakup that made a mess of my head and I kind of went off the deep

And when I told him, I was like, Greg, yeah, I'm human too. And he said, yeah, Shreeni, you don't get to make that excuse because of the position you're in. And that was really tough to hear at the time. And then I realized now five, six years later, after a round of venture funding book deal with the publisher, speaking agents, that he was absolutely right because I have a public presence, the way that I act has a very big impact on a lot of other people in my life.

And yet, in a lot of ways, if any other person was dealing with him, they might say he was coaching through fear, but at the time, it seemed like that, and in retrospect, I realized it was tough love.

Brad Stulberg

And I think that there's definitely a time and a place for it. And it sounds like you had already developed a really trusting relationship with this person. Is that right?

Srini Rao

Yeah, I mean, he came up with the name unmistakable creator. I wouldn't be where I am without him today. But that those three or four months definitely strained our relationship. Not only that, he was basically told that he was going to die in nine months. Yeah.

Brad Stulberg

Ooh. So, you know, without knowing, we could probably unpack these details forever, but without knowing the details, I think the key is that it was already built on a lot of trust and love. And I think there's a difference between tough love, which is the word that you used, and just fear-based coaching. And tough love requires that there's some love and connection and trust there first.

So I think there's a role for a coach to tell you what you don't want to hear. I think it's important that a coach is able to do that, but I think it has to be built on a foundation of deep caring and mutual respect and trust.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, I think there's this distinction in my mind between what you want to hear and what you need to hear. You've written books. I remember I worked with a writing coach and she didn't sugarcoat feedback for shit. It was amazing how ruthless she was. And I specifically chose her for that reason. And I realized after about a month, I was like, she's not telling me what I want to hear. She's telling me what I need to hear. And my books are a thousand times better because of it.

Brad Stulberg

Yep, and that takes a lot of self-security on your part, right? Because it's easy to find someone that tells you exactly what you said, what you want to hear, but that person's probably not going to make you much better.

Srini Rao

Well, let's shift gears a bit. Walk me through the trajectory from being this high school athlete to how you end up doing what you do today, writing books, coaching, and then doing all the things you've done, because that doesn't seem like the most natural or linear path, which is pretty much the story of everybody I've ever interviewed.

Brad Stulberg

Right. So I always wanted to be a writer. And I mentioned that high school athlete, but also a nerd. So I was a good student. I cared about school and I was a part of the school newspaper. And I thought that I was going to go to journalism school. So way back all the way at age 16, 17, I'm like, I'm going to be a writer when I grow up.

So I applied to the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, which is the top journalism program in the country. And I didn't get in. And like most young teenagers, I figured, all right, like, I guess journalism's not for me, so I'm going to go study economics at University of Michigan. And, um, even though I wasn't doing writing formally at school, it was very clear that that's where my strength was.

Srini Rao

Yep.

Brad Stulberg

I eventually quit economics because the calculus that was needed for it, I just wasn't good at and didn't want to do. So then I started studying like organizational behavior and psychology. So I gravitated more and more towards these quote unquote softer sciences and I excelled in anything that had to do with storytelling. PowerPoint presentations, essays, case reports, anything that involved a spreadsheet I was no good at, I didn't enjoy.

Out of school, like most good students, high achieving, that have no idea what they want to do with their life because they're only 22, I did what at the time, everyone was doing in that situation, which is get a job at a big management consulting company. So I went straight from school to work for McKinsey and Company. And same story, anything that involved the financial model there pushed me to the edge. I didn't like it, I wasn't particularly good at it.

But man, writing PowerPoint decks, I was an all-star. And in hindsight, I could have never known this at the time, but being a management consultant is great training for writing nonfiction. Because there's a thorny problem, and you have a thesis about how you're gonna solve it, and then you do all this research, you interview people, and then you tell a story about different ways to solve the problem. And if you're any good at your job, you also identify how you might be wrong and address those things too. Which is basically what a good nonfiction book does.

But I don't know any of that, right? So I'm a management consultant at McKinsey. I'm making PowerPoint decks. That's where my skill sets lie, client hands, telling stories. And I get a really interesting opportunity to follow one of the partners at McKinsey to the White House to go work for Barack Obama doing health reform. So I took that. I'm a young 24-year-old kid. I'm single. I don't need much money. I'm like, hell yeah, I'm going to get a job and have an office in the executive building. This sounds great. And I got really into healthcare.

But then I realized that A, I have no interest in politics or policy. Things move too slow. It's way too much of a status game. And B, our healthcare system is broken. It's more like a disease care system. So I became fascinated by, well, what does it take to be well? So then I went to public health school. And in public health school, I got super into triathlon. And this is, oh, 10, 11, 12 years ago. Enter WordPress. Everybody and their sister has a blog.

Brad Stulberg

about triathlon. Now nobody is reading the blog. Maybe my girlfriend at the time was reading it but even she wasn't reading it, right? The only readership was me. I was doing this to feel cool but it was also regular writing. So this common thread through all these random strands is I was writing because I enjoyed writing and eventually some blog post that I read was shared with someone and they offered me a chance to write. So I just kept writing and writing and

what started out as a hobby and a side hustle. I just pursued it because I found it fun. And then gradually over the last 10, 15 years, I've been able to make it what I do professionally. And the coaching part, I think is kind of born from the public health education, the time at McKinsey and Company, my time going all the way back to high school being an athlete, that I think it's really important to also have some skin in the game. So it's one thing just to write about these concepts.

From the ivory tower perched and a nice comfortable chair with a laptop looking at papers It's another thing to actually go work with people on applying the things that you write about Because it gets messy and you get pattern recognition and you see what sounds good But doesn't work and you see what sounds good and does work. So now I wear those two hats So a very circuitous path that could have never made sense While I was doing it but in hindsight makes perfect sense and I know that that's such a theme

on your podcast and I don't know, probably 95% of the guests would say the same, which is it's really just about being curious and following your interest within reason. So I was also really interested in football and basketball, but I didn't decide to try to play in the NBA or the NFL because that wouldn't have been within reason. So that's like the advice that I give all young people that ask, I said, you know, do the work if you're smart.

lot of quantity, increase your surface area for luck, and follow your interest within reason.

Srini Rao

It's funny Jason with that last piece you said, this is why anytime I do any one-on-one work with somebody or even teach a class, I preface everything by saying I want you to consider the possibility that everything I'm telling you is bullshit because it might be for you. But we'll come back to that. I'm really struck by how parallel our paths are because I applied to the Northwestern School of Music and didn't get in.

Srini Rao

Michigan as the Berkeley of the Midwest. But.

Brad Stulberg

Yep. And then I lived, you know, I lived in Oakland for like five years. So I love Berkeley. It's got a, it's not Ann Arbor, of course, but it's got a special place in my heart too.

Srini Rao

Yeah, well, so and I was an econ major, but unlike yourself and just like yourself, I pretty much shined anytime anything involved doing PowerPoints, presentations, storytelling.

I didn't figure that out until my junior year. By that point, my GPA had plummeted, and I ended up just taking a sales job. I didn't have the grades to go to a place like McKinsey. But the question that comes from that is, when somebody is young, particularly like I was at that age, or anybody is, even somebody listening to this, when they have that moment of, you know what, I really hate this, and I'm not that good at it.

Why the hell do they persist through doing something they hate through four years of college because of the way they've been conditioned? Like, how do they break that? Like, I realized I missed out on so much that I could have experienced at Berkeley because I did that.

Brad Stulberg

So is the question why do people stay in those ruts?

Srini Rao

Yeah, like so, yeah, you know that for example, you're like, okay, I suck at economics. It took me three and a half years in a 2.97 GPA to realize, oh, I'm not any good at this. And I barely got out of Berkeley.

basically because I just had enough requirements just to change my major to environmental economics and get the hell out of there. The degree was just a way to get out. I didn't actually get anything from it. I remember I knew I was at a low point and I'm like, wow, I'm listening to this guy talk about how to maximize the amount of milk he can get from a cow using a utility function. Funny enough, economics plays a much more interesting role in my life now than it did then because of what I do.

Brad Stulberg

Yeah.

Brad Stulberg

You know, I think that the honest answer is probably luck. I don't think I was like an exceptional 20 year old. I think that Econ 401, that's what the course was called in Michigan, was just so damn hard. And I was just so fed up with it that I didn't care what my parents said. I didn't care what my friends said. I didn't care that the undergraduate business school at Michigan was like the thing that everyone wanted to get into. I'm just like, look.

I know that if I start getting Cs and Ds, I'm not going to get a good job out of college. And again, put yourself in 20-year-old mode. You want to get a good job out of college. That's at least a lot of people do. That's certainly what I did. So it was a very, it's funny, it was a very economic decision. It wasn't like following my curiosity or passion back then. It was simply like, if I stay on this path, I'm going to get Ds and I'm going to have to work really hard for Cs. No one gets jobs with a 2.0 average. So I better change this.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Brad Stulberg

And that was it. There's no like greater enlightened stories. It's, yeah, I never realized the irony that it was probably the most economic decision, economically driven decision I ever made was cost benefit to quit economics.

Srini Rao

Yeah, I mean, I wish I had had that foresight. Trust me, I know what it's like because I'm sure the people who go to Michigan are just like people who go to Berkeley, given that you got a job at McKinsey. They hire one or two Berkeley grads and I'm guessing it's the same at Michigan.

Brad Stulberg

Yeah, and there's no way if I would have gone to the business school, I would have been hired because my GPA would have sucked.

Srini Rao

Well, let's shift gears and let's actually get into the book. I think that the thing that struck me most about this was you opened the book by talking about the fact that you wrote two books before. One was about peak performance and the other was about the passion paradox. And this book, in a lot of ways, seems like a counter argument to what you've talked about in your previous books. So what prompted you to want to write this book of all the books that you could write?

Brad Stulberg

Well, I wouldn't necessarily say counter argument. I would say a precondition to the other two books. So I like to think of peak performance as when you're at the top of the mountain and everything is clicking, here's how you stay at the top of the mountain. Here are the evidence-based strategies and practices that will keep you there.

Srini Rao

Mm. Yeah.

Brad Stulberg

And I like to think of the passion paradox as how do you get the motivation to climb the mountain and how do you make sure that you control that motivation and passion and it doesn't control you. But what I hadn't written about was the base of the mountain. And without a strong foundation, without a strong base, anytime there's truly rough weather, the whole thing is fragile.

And like so many people, you write what you know, I experienced a period of truly rough weather in my life and all the tools that I had written about and that are defensible and that I know, they weren't working for me. And I personally had to go back and rewrite the base of my own mountain. And once I got to the other side of that experience, I became intellectually interested in, hey, how come I overlooked this in the first place?

Brad Stulberg

the patterns that help someone build a really solid foundation from which they can then rise and perform really well.

Srini Rao

Well, you open the book by defining the term heroic individualism, which you say is an ongoing game of one upsmanship against both yourself and others paired with the limiting belief that measurable achievement is the only arbiter of success. Even if you do a good job hiding it on the outside with heroic individualism, you conically feel like you never quite reach the finish line that is lasting fulfillment. And yet we live in a society that basically ranks us by measurable achievement, particularly now that you can see everybody's stupid fan and follower accounts.

you know, we put billionaires on the covers of magazines, we celebrate measurable achievement. So when you live in a society that basically ranks you using measurable achievement, how do you make that transition from heroic individualism and measurable achievement to lasting fulfillment and what you call groundedness?

Brad Stulberg

Right, I think that it is why I wrote the book. It is a huge freaking challenge. It very much requires swimming upstream and going against the grain. Cause you are 100% right. Like we, the water we drink and the air we breathe in this culture is filled with heroic individualism.

So it involves really making a practice of the six principles that are the basis of the book. These aren't principles that I come up with. These are the principles that cut across all the modern based therapies, cognitive science, neuroscience, and also Stoicism, Buddhism, Taoism, many forms of Judeo-Christianity as well. It does require, there's a reason. It's so funny that the offline before we were talking about publishing, my publisher was very keen

on the title, Get Grounded. And I'm like, no, like that misses the point. Like you don't just get grounded. It's not a switch that you flip. It's an ongoing practice.

Srini Rao

Hmm.

Brad Stulberg

And I think so many people think that, oh, they can just turn on this switch or have this hack or this magical habit that will then suddenly ground them in this heroic individualistic culture. And that's not the case at all. It's an ongoing practice. And to be honest, if I shoot 60 to 70% of the stuff in my book, that's a good day or a good week. So it's really hard. And I think that it also comes down to, can you...

Take that external stuff.

your dashboards, your sales ranks, your follower counts, your fan counts, whatever it is. And can you have a playful relationship with it? Can you treat it more like a game and have a sense of self and identity and self-worth that is deeper than that game? And if it is, of course, the paradox is you play the game better. Because if that game is all that you have and your whole identity is that game, you are very fragile.

Because when things go south, that means you as a person, your identity goes south. Whereas you have a deeper sense of self, a deeper identity, what I would call a more grounded identity, then it frees you up to not care as much about that game. In getting back to performing from a place of fear versus a place of love, most people perform better when they're in a more relaxed state.

Srini Rao

Well, let's get into the first principle, which is acceptance. And the thing that you say is that, um, we bury our heads in the sand or do precisely what society's heroic individuals on superficial success culture tells us to do, think positive thoughts, numb and distract ourselves by stuff. And tweet, we engage in frantic compulsory activity, distract ourselves from our problems and our fears. We expect things to get better without ever acknowledging or accepting our true starting point, which.

It kind of makes me laugh because sometimes I think I'm perpetuating this by creating this show.

Brad Stulberg

Say more, why do you feel that way?

Srini Rao

Well, OK, you know, I think that I've been hyper critical of a lot of the self-help industry over the last year, mainly because I'm beginning to question a lot of the things that I have thought were universal truths as context dependent, because I realized everything that everybody says on the show doesn't apply to everybody who's listening because everybody's life is different. But I think there is this sort of delusional optimism that

we have a tendency to perpetuate. And I think that what struck me about this was that what you're talking about is realism here, but not like negative realism, but I think what really to me acceptance is, it's rational optimism.

Brad Stulberg

Yes, I call it tragic optimism, but same thing. So rational optimism, I assume what you mean is like non-delusional, like life is hard, being a human is hard, everyone's making it up as they go. And what I call tragic, I would say it's like accepting the inevitable hardships and suffering and challenges of life and saying, well, this is what it is. So might as well give it my best shot.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I guess, why is it then that people basically fight where they're at? And ironically, they sort of like, oh, this is not where I wanna be. I wanna make more money. I wanna have more, you know, better relationships, whatever it is. So I'm gonna just basically bury my head in self-help books, which ironically is a resistance to where you're at in a lot of ways.

Brad Stulberg

Yes, and it keeps you stuck there because you keep trying all of these things without addressing the true thing that needs to be addressed or at least not fully. My answer to that question would be it's easier in the short term but harder in the long term and we're short term thinkers. If you have big problems in your career or you have big problems in your relationship or you have big health problems, being honest with yourself about that is really hard and scary.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Brad Stulberg

Drinking alcohol, getting your Twitter or Instagram follower count up, buying some stuff, just trying to continuously get promoted at a job you don't even love, that's a lot easier in the short term because you don't have to face the really hard thing.

But in the long term, that's the shit that just wears you down. So this notion of acceptance is really very much tied to playing the long game and realizing that, Hey, if we can't accept where we are, then we'll never make meaningful progress on the things that actually matter. And accepting where we are is fricking challenging. And this isn't just for acute problems. I mean, we're an area of self-help, um, kind of bullshit that I've gotten into recently.

and by gotten into I don't mean like in support of but trying to have people step back from it is this whole optimization longevity health guru live forever movement and ultimately what they're selling is non-acceptance of death because accepting death is fucking terrifying it's hard

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Brad Stulberg

Anyone that ever has engaged in spiritual practice knows that at some point, you're contemplating, you're meditating, and you just start crying. Because you realize that you're going to die and everything you love is going to die. And that sucks.

But by accepting that, you can open your heart and suddenly have compassion for all of our living creatures that also have that knowledge, for all other human beings. And that is, to me, such a more realistic way of living because all this longevity science is built on a house of cards every time that there's this magic fix, whether it's resveratol, antioxidants, cold plunges, you name it, none of it works.

or at least none of it works more than just eating whole foods and exercising. In B, you're kind of like setting yourself up for these unrealistic expectations of being Superman or superwoman and being immortal instead of just accepting your short time here. But once you accept that, then it's suddenly everything becomes so meaningful. So it's not just acute problems. I think in self-help, it's on a really like broad scale as well.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, I think that makes a perfect segue to talking about the second principle of groundedness, which you say is presence. And you say it's about being fully here for what is in front of you. Presence is a concentrated quality of mind that lends itself to strength and stability. If you deliberately practice presence, it can drastically improve your life, both personal and professional. You say if the goal is to optimize, we shouldn't be focused on doing more for the sake of doing more. Rather, we should be focused on being fully present for the pursuits and people that matter most to us. And

I think that that really struck me out of the entire section on presence because I started writing this new book on time Called eight thousand seven hundred sixty hours I don't know if anybody's gonna publish it and I could care less because I will self publish it But and I wrote a blog post about this night. I spent all this you know time and energy and you know Writing about productivity and how to increase it and how to save time. I had a hack time only to come to the realization that This is a resource that you can only spend

and do nothing else with and that the entire premise of the time management industry is false because you can't save it, you can't manage it, you can only decide how to spend it. And so I realized I'm writing a book about spending time, which I think has a lot to do with presence. But there's so much that is standing in the way of our ability to be present in the world that we live in today. So how do we get back to a place of presence with all the craziness and constant input that we're dealing with?

Brad Stulberg

Well, my first question before I answer yours is what's the magic number of the 8,760 hours?

Srini Rao

That's the number of hours in every year.

Brad Stulberg

Got it. Love it. Wow. That's both not so many and so many at the same time.

Srini Rao

Yeah, it's well, here's the thing you get. So I, I category, I broke it down. And the reason this whole idea came about is I went on a date with a girl who I was like, you know what, we didn't have much chemistry. I don't know that we should see each other again. Even if you want to go on a second date, you're really not that into me. And I'd be wasting your time in mine. So I'm not going to do that because I'm about to turn 44 and I don't have much more time left. And I got to talking to my cousin. I, we were packing to go to the airport and we're talking about all the ways in which humans spend time and we're like waiting.

deciding, doing, being, giving. I mean, those are like our overarching categories, but yeah, that's where it came from. So you're right, it's not a lot of time.

Brad Stulberg

Yeah, and then the question of course is, you aptly put it, what you call time, I call attention. And I think it's one in the same, because if you're conscious, then you have attention towards something. And I think that it's about setting fairly rigid boundaries. So the way that the literature tackles this problem is twofold. One,

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Brad Stulberg

is you can train yourself to do a better job being present amidst distraction, and the other is that you can try to eliminate distractions. And to date, we know that the latter tends to be a more reliable path to success. So there is a reason that monks find enlightenment in monasteries, not in front of their computer with nine browsers open.

Because in monasteries, the noise is turned down. And I think we should learn from them. So for the important things in our life, we have to create the environments that turn down the noise that can facilitate us being present. You could spend hours and hours and hours and hours meditating, but if you are in a busy, frenetic, frantic situation,

Might you be present more so than the person next to you? Absolutely. But is it going to be the same type of presence as if you're in a distraction-free situation? Absolutely not. So I think that here is another place where kind of traditional self-help gets in the way. There's all these books about becoming more mindful and training your brain and all this stuff, but none of them put an emphasis on your environment. Yet again, what the research shows is that environment is far more powerful. So...

The way that I like to think about this is it is about identifying your core values, the things that matter most to you, figuring out how you practice those core values day in and day out. How does your doing reflect your being? And then scheduling and prioritizing time for those activities in a very deliberate fashion where you're eliminating distractions.

Um, hard, right? Simple, not easy. I mean, that is grounded at all these principles. Nothing I'm going to say, I promise is going to blow anyone's mind, but none of this stuff is easy, which is like kind of what I said. I think a good book or a good coach that at least is authentic in this space, isn't going to give you the silver bullet. They're going to tell you stuff that is intuitive, give you language for it, and then hold your hand. And I think this is such a clear example of that. So how does this work in practice?

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Brad Stulberg

is love. And let's say that you define love as being fully there for the people in pursuits I care deeply about. Well then how do you practice that? Is it you put your phone off and in another room and keep your computer in your garage during dinner with your family? Is it that you schedule time to work on a creative project for an hour and a half every day and during that time you go into a room where the door is shut and there are no digital

Brad Stulberg

creative pursuit. Well then you spend $250 on an old HP and you break the internet card. These are the kinds of things that I believe help facilitate presence. The second thing it's important to talk about is more of a mindset shift. In the book I write about this as the difference between peanut M&Ms and brown rice. Peanut M&Ms and brown rice, right? Let's talk about this. If I'm sitting in front of a bowl of brown rice or a bowl of

peanut M&Ms, I'm gonna eat the peanut M&Ms every single time because they taste so much better. But if I eat peanut M&Ms for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 10 days, 20 days, 30 days, God forbid a couple months, I start feeling like shit.

Whereas if I eat brown rice for that time, I feel really nourished and full. And the activities in our life are the same way. We have peanut M&M activities, checking social media, refreshing email for the 90th time, God forbid going to like CNN or Fox News or MSNBC.com. And we have brown rice activities. Intimate conversations like this, working on creative projects, engaging in art, deep focus on math, memo, problem solving, you name it. And

The brown rice things, they're always less fun right off the bat, but once you groove into doing them, you feel so much better. And to me, presence is about identifying those brown rice activities. And even if taking the first few bites isn't as good as the dopamine, peanut M&M stuff, take those first few bites. And eventually you start building a lifestyle where you're eating more brown rice than anything.

Srini Rao

Well, let's talk about patience. This is one of my favorite ones because my dad and I have constant arguments about this. So you say the third principle of groundedness is patience. Patience neutralizes our inclination to hurry, rush and overemphasize acute situations in favor of playing the long game. In doing so, it lends itself to stability, strength and lasting progress. And it's funny because I see two sort of sides to this when I've talked to people. I have had people who have come to me and said, I want you to help me write a book that will sell a million copies. And I'm like, wait a minute.

that you have no audience, you've never written a book. I'm like, one, I've never done that, so I'm not gonna help you do that. And two, you're gonna fail because you're basically setting yourself up to be disappointed right from the start. And then on the flip side of that, my dad gets on my case when I'm impatient about bureaucratic bullshit that I think is unnecessary, that prevents me from doing meaningful things. So how do you start to cultivate this kind of patience in a world that moves at breakneck pace? Because I think the thing that...

I always came back to was something Sam Altman said when they made the Y Combinator curriculum available as a podcast. He said, you know, a lot of founders go into the startup thinking, you know, they're going to do this thing for three or four years and go count their cash on a beach somewhere. He said a long-term view is your greatest competitive advantage, which he defined as 10 years, which feels like a lifetime in the world that we live in today.

Brad Stulberg

Mm-hmm. And the research supports that. You know, the average founder is...

No pressure, but the average founder peaks at like age 45. So the reason for that is Well, if you think of these two curves and one curve is what I'm gonna call fluid intelligence and that's your ability to be super clever and creative and quick on your feet and think really fast and That peaks it between 25 and 30 for most people and then start sloping down The other curve is what I'm gonna call wisdom and this is pattern recognition

recognition, learning from failures, meeting other people. This curve goes up as you get older. In most creative pursuits, in most entrepreneurial pursuits, those two curves cross right around 45. So, you're quick thinking, you're no longer as sharp as you were when you were 30, but you're still pretty sharp, but now you also have amassed all this wisdom from living life. Excuse me, living life.

And I think a lot of people want to immediately crush it. And as a result, they quit early because they don't see those observable achievements that they think that they ought to have after just one year, two year, three years. Now, it's important because sometimes quitting is actually really beneficial. So we're gonna slay another sacred cow in self-help, which is this notion of grit or passion and perseverance

So grit is both really good and really bad.

Brad Stulberg

When is grit really good? If you're working on something that you enjoy, that you're good at, and that you have a good fit for. When is grit really bad? If like you at Berkeley, just put your head down and don't quit because someone told you that you should always grit it out, well then grit is really bad. So before you're gritty, before you dig in and be patient, you wanna have the right fit, which is again, connection with what you're doing, some level of skill. So the way I write about it in the book is,

I use myself as an example, if I would have been a really gritty econ student, there's no way I'd be writing this book. I'd be working a nine to five and accounting miserable somewhere.

Whereas if I wasn't a gritty writer, obviously I wouldn't be writing this book either. I would have quit when I didn't get into journalism school, I would have stopped writing altogether. So the precursor, the precondition to patience is first identifying, hey, these are the things that matter to me that I like, that I'm good at, and then committing to those things for the long game. So it's like this two-step process. You could almost think of it as wise patience. So rote patience is just saying, I'm gonna be patient with everything always. Wise patience is saying,

Here are the things that I like. I know that the society tells me that I should see observable progress in one year, two year, three years, but what the research shows is that most things take five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten years to really see that big progress.

Srini Rao

Well, in the interest of time, let's talk about vulnerability and deep community together. You say that vulnerability is about being honest with yourself and others, especially when that means confronting perceived weaknesses and fears. Vulnerability has long been a part of traditions like Buddhism, Stoicism, and Taoism. I think that takes us back to part of the beginning of our conversation about sort of public vulnerability and this sort of fine line between being a train wreck and being vulnerable. In fact, when I realized we're going to talk about this, I pulled up a quote from Anna

book, Dopamine Nation, where she says, the line between honest self-disclosure and a manipulative drunkologue is a fine one, including subtle differences in content, tone, cadence, and effect, but you know it when you see it. And I guess, from your perspective, particularly somebody who's in the public eye, where is that line? How do they draw it? Because if you're the president of the United States, yeah, if you're the president of the United States, your words have weight that other people's words don't.

Brad Stulberg

So I agree with Anna.

Brad Stulberg

Mm-hmm. Well, so I think about this in a few ways. The first is if you're not the president of the United States, if you're just me or you, there's a big difference between performative vulnerability and the real thing. And performative vulnerability is very calculated and it feels good when you're doing it. Real vulnerability is not calculated and generally you don't feel very good when you're doing it. It makes you feel uncomfortable.

and I strive towards real vulnerability versus calculated. If I have the thought, oh, I'm gonna tweet this thing about my experience of depression because I think that, you know, it's gonna resonate and I'm gonna get more followers, that's performative bullshit. If I'm in a hole, or I feel like someone I know is in a hole, and I wanna get deep on what it feels like to be depressed, I never actually wanna do that, but something inside of me says you ought to do this. That's real vulnerability. Now, if you're the president,

And right, it's not great to go on a stage and be like, everything's a train wreck, everything's going to shit, I'm in over my head, I'm just making it up as I go like the rest of you. Even though that's probably what most honest presidents are feeling. So then I think that the practice is asking yourself what you actually want to say, and then getting as close to that as possible. And that goes a long way. Because

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Brad Stulberg

The minute that you can kind of drop the facade of performing, the more comfortable in your own skin you feel. And of course, the more you'll connect with other people and they'll connect with you. I think a moment of that.

is a really good example is, I forgot, unfortunately, they're so numerous. I forgot which school shooting it was, but during a time of his tenure, Barack Obama basically just broke down in tears because Congress couldn't make things happen on any bill with gun control. There had been another school shooting and he just started crying. And he said, this just sucks.

And at that moment, I'm like, wow, policy stuff aside, I really like this guy. To me, that's an expression of real vulnerability.

Srini Rao

Wow. Well, let's talk about deep community because I think that those two really kind of go together. I think community in particular is interesting to me in the midst of COVID when we've all been isolated to our homes. You say many digital technologies offer us the illusion of connection while eroding the real thing. We think that if we can tweet, repost an alternative, text, direct message, or email someone that we're making a connection, and we're doing it in an efficient manner, but this is wishful thinking.

And that, it's ironic. Part of the reason I moved away from San Diego is just like, yeah, thousands of people listen to the show and I don't have a single friend that I can call on a Friday night to hang out with.

Brad Stulberg

Mm. Yeah. Woo. So I think that you hit the nail on the head with that story, that it's better to be a celebrity in your neighborhood than a celebrity on the internet, even though...

Srini Rao

Ha ha ha.

Brad Stulberg

Being a celebrity on the internet is good and exciting and your dopamine goes and you feel relevant and self-important, but it's not the same thing is your neighbors taking out their garbage or your garbage for you when you're on vacation or you sharing a coffee or a bourbon with Joe down the street. Or even something as simple as working at the same coffee shop every day and getting to know the regulars and the barista. You know, our species did not evolve to be connected to thousands of people

on a screen, our species evolved to be in smaller groups where we are physically present with each other. And you can't outgrow thousands of years of evolution in 20, 30 years or social media, what, not even 15 years. So um...

That is the importance of deep community. This isn't to say that it's not beneficial to have an online presence. Shit, I met you on the internet. We wouldn't be having this conversation without it. It's simply to say that it might be necessary, but it's not sufficient. And even on the internet, there's research that shows that...

Srini Rao

Totally

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Brad Stulberg

Building relationships online is beneficial if you then take those relationships offline. So again, this is a prime example. I follow your stuff, you follow my stuff, but now we've taken it to the next level by having this conversation. If I roll through your neck of the woods or you're in Asheville, we meet up in person. There the internet can be really powerful. If the internet acts as a replacement for that and that's the end point, then the research shows that it's associated with poor mental health outcomes.

Srini Rao

There's one other part of this that that intrigues me. So my parents I remember talking to them about this sometime While I was living in San Diego and my mom has these very close friends who were Supposedly distant relatives like anybody who's from our part of India is distantly related to us But they talk to each other daily and they see each other two or three times a week And I remember thinking I was like wait a minute. I have friends who live two exits down I don't see them three or times a week two or three times a week and my dad when he came to Canada

from Australia after he finished his PhD. You know how he met a community of 400 plus people that are from the part of India we're from? He literally opened the phone book, found one Telugu name, that's the language that we speak, called the person and just told them, I'm a grad student here. And that person said, oh, well, everybody's at a wedding this weekend, but come to this party next weekend. And that was the start of a 400 person community and friends they have known for 30 years.

Brad Stulberg

No, how?

Srini Rao

And this was before the internet. And yet, it seems like generationally, we don't prioritize connecting in person the way that even my parents do. Sometimes I feel like they have a more active social life than I do.

Brad Stulberg

Mm.

Brad Stulberg

Yeah, well I think that that's because, um, back to heroic individualism...

We're so busy playing this game of one-upsmanship in observable progress and so-called productivity that time for building deep community just gets crowded out. I mean, deep community is really inefficient, right? Going through the phone book, calling 400 people with similar last names, having them come over, keeping up those relationships. That is not the same thing as scheduling tweets or working 16 hour days to get promoted at the office.

office. So I think that back to another principle, you know, all these things are intertwined, brown rice and M&Ms. So the M&Ms is just pushing yourself at work, getting these little reminders of that you're relevant and you're important and you're doing quote unquote good. Whereas deep community, that's the brown rice, man. It is a slog. It takes time. It takes effort. People disappoint you. People flake out. People don't show up.

Here is the text with the timestamps removed:

Brad Stulberg

you know, peak heroic individualism stage, I would get into these intense writing grooves where I wouldn't even wanna walk to the coffee shop 10 minutes away because it would like take me out of my productive flow. And looking back on myself then, I just feel sorry for myself because it's like, come on man, like A, you'll get back in that flow and B, if you can't have 20 minutes round trip to walk to a coffee shop, then what's the point of doing this work and making the money anyways?

Like there is none. So, um, I think it's realizing that we often optimize our way out of deep community because deep community is not an optimizable thing.

Srini Rao

Well, I know we're probably well over our time here, so let's finish this up by talking about, yeah, sorry.

Brad Stulberg

And one more thing here, because I think it's important. Like, I try to have skin in the game on all this stuff.

You know, so it's a big part of the book. Like I suffered from debilitating OCD and depression. I don't like talking about it. Clearly we haven't really even gone into it. There's vulnerability on community. We moved from the Bay area to Asheville, North Carolina, which is a small mountain town, a lot of people say Ashland in Oregon. Nope. Asheville, North Carolina. And a big part of it was the pace of life in the Bay area and the amounts that my wife and I would have to work to feel like we could afford to

Brad Stulberg

time for deep community. Whereas here, we can really build that. Now, do I miss a lot about Oakland? Absolutely. It's just a trade-off that I'm making because I believe in the research that I write about and I think a lot of people would be wise, and it's a privileged position, no doubt, to be able to reconsider geography, but do you live in a place where you feel like the environment is conducive to deep community? And that doesn't just mean people that you get along with, that also means where you don't have

kill yourself working just to afford living there. I find all these people that talk about how much they love New York or Silicon Valley or San Francisco because of the energy, but then they don't take advantage of any of the things the cities offer because they're just crushing themselves at work all the time. And I've got no horse in this race. I know people that live in those big cities and they love it, but I also know a lot of people that live in those big cities and are quite lonely. And to me, it's like, well then move.

I know another mutual friend of ours, Ryan Holiday, talks about this all the time. He moved to a farm an hour outside of Austin. So I think that kind of like presence, deep community also is a factor of the decisions that you make upstream of the moment that you're trying to find a friend or a group of people to hang out with.

Srini Rao

Well, let's wrap this up by talking about movement, which I think was fitting that that was the last chapter of the book considering, you know, I was snowboarding all day yesterday. And I remember your email was like, how was it? It was like, it was the best day I've had in two years. And I came back completely energized, which was the most wonderful feeling. It was like, God, this is the feeling that I've missed. And in my mind, I think part of what prevents people from movement is they don't find a way to move that they actually enjoy.

Brad Stulberg

Yep, 100%.

Brad Stulberg

Couldn't agree more. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. I'm just like, yes, yes. Yeah, I mean, I could riff on this forever. Again, heroic individualism says you need to run a marathon or you need to do CrossFit and you need to post pictures of yourself vomiting on Instagram. Bullshit. We know based on multiple meta-analyses that include over 100,000 people that brisk walking.

Srini Rao

Yeah, I know.

Brad Stulberg

i.e. walking at a pace where speaking in complete sentences becomes challenging, gets you 99% of the way there in terms of the benefits of physical activity. We know that gardening and dancing get you about 95 to 96% of the way there. So, if you love CrossFit or running marathons, and I got nothing against either, I used to run marathons and now I strength train, that is great. But oftentimes, I think people are scared away from this because they think the bar is that high.

your body and why I like enthusiastically agreed with you so quickly is because I think most people have this barrier of they think that they have to do something that they don't like it should feel hard and grueling and that's just not true. I took a lot of people from this journey of doing this training that they feel like they're forcing themselves to do to doing things with their body that they enjoy and then everything falls into place and I think some really good examples

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Srini Rao

Oh yeah.

Brad Stulberg

are things like skiing or snowboarding, where there's a huge skill element and you're in the outdoors, and then also things like walking or hiking, where you don't really even need a skill, assuming that you don't have a lower body disability, most anyone can walk or hike, and you can titrate the speed to make the challenge appropriate for you. And another great part about walking or hiking is you can do it with other people, you can do it outdoors in nature, and if you have the balls, you can leave your smartphone in the glove compartment of your car,

and also realize what it's like not to have that thing on your hip all the time. Now again, I strength train. I go to a gym where people train hard. I think that's great, I love it. I don't do that for health, I do it for mastery. If all you're interested in is health, find something that you like that elevates your heart rate, ideally something that you can do outside and consistently and just do that and don't worry about what all the CrossFit or running bros or cycling people say.

Srini Rao

Yeah, it's funny because I'm a surfer snowboarder. I did CrossFit. And I remember when I went to CrossFit, and I'll tell you, the best part of CrossFit was the community. But I remember I would tell the instructors, I'm like, I hate every minute of this, but I love how I leave when I feel. Whereas surfing and snowboarding, it's funny. People are like, this is about exercise. Exercise is a convenient fringe benefit. You talk to any surfer or snowboarder, they'll tell you working out is the last thing on our minds.

Brad Stulberg

Yep.

Brad Stulberg

Yeah, and I feel, you know, it's funny. I feel the same way with strength training. Like, it's the community.

It's going to sound crazy if you don't do it and I don't surf, but I think that like deadlifting and surfing are probably more connected than people think. Timing is so important in feeling like the kinetic chain in your body, in the force against the ground. That is the stuff. Yes, I could go on and on. I'm a huge fan of movement.

That was a little bit of a back and forth with my publisher. You know, so the first five principles are like these acceptance, patience, presence, vulnerability, community. They're very much rooted in, um, evidence-based therapies for mental health. They're in wisdom traditions. And, um, you know, back to like being authentic and genuine, I felt it would be intellectually dishonest not to include physical activity or movement, because the research is there for that just as much as any other of these things.

And I think that there's this like spiritual benefit that when you get really into a sport, it is a way of having these peak experiences that the mystics talk about. Joseph Campbell, who is the foremost expert on mythology and mysticism of ancient times, sadly he recently passed away, but had this beautiful career writing about myths and mysticism of all these different lineages and traditions. And he had this famous interview series on PBS

with Bill Moyers. If you haven't watched it, you should watch it. You'll love it. And Bill Moyers asks him, he says, Hey, have you ever had a mystical experience? Like have you ever seen God? And Joseph Campbell says, Oh yeah, oh yeah, I've been very, very honored and privileged to have been able to have these experiences. I've had them a couple of times. And Bill Moyers says, you know, were you in a monastery? Were you on a meditation retreat?

Brad Stulberg

Candler says, no, I was on the track running 800s.

Srini Rao

Ha ha ha.

Brad Stulberg

And this is a guy who devoted his whole life. He's not a track coach. He was never a college runner. He studied myth, but there's something about getting into those flow experiences where you're in your body and your ego dissipates and it's just you in the wave or you in the mountain or you in the track or you in the bar. And these are such nourishing experiences. They are so good for mind, body and soul.

Srini Rao

Wow, well I have two final questions for you. I feel like you and I could talk for four hours about this stuff. We could have done an episode on each one of these principles.

Brad Stulberg

We could do a part two. I would keep going if, I know that you know this, but our son is home from school because of some COVID stuff in our community. But yeah, let's keep going for a minute here.

Srini Rao

Yeah, no sweat. All right, well, speaking of your son, that is actually gonna be my next question. So you have this background where you understand all these different elements of peak performance. You work with high performers. And I remember asking Daniel Coyle about this, you know, about the talent code, because I remember thinking to myself, I'm like, why the hell didn't my parents tell me to practice for 10,000 hours? And he said, if they had, you would have turned out at a royal fuckup probably.

Brad Stulberg

Oh, great guy. I know Daniel a little bit. Yeah.

Brad Stulberg

Because he said this is why often child prodigies don't become successful musicians when they grow up So knowing all of this information, you know that you do about Pete performance How do you think about raising children without becoming sort of a helicopter parent?

Brad Stulberg

Ooh, I think that my job is to give him a safe space.

to unfold on his own and probably to bite my tongue a lot more than to speak. And I think the things that I will be maybe more explicit about that I know our generation, that is me and you didn't get, is that it's okay to feel really sad. It's okay to have periods where nothing feels like it matters.

Brad Stulberg

If you feel it, here's what you can do. Like you don't have to judge yourself. You don't have to be scared about being sad. You can just be sad.

That's the stuff that we as older millennials, Gen X, we didn't get, right? It was all self-esteem, put on a positive face, think positive, the secret, good energy, fake it till you make it. That's the stuff that I hope to course correct in my kid. But everything else, it's just gonna be biting my tongue. If you go to youth sports, you can always tell the people that have actually had skin in the game versus those that haven't. So the dads and moms yelling,

at the umpires and chewing out their kids and sitting on the edge of their seat at a peewee football or little league baseball game, those people have never done shit. The people at the top of the bleachers with their hat down over their eyes just quietly watching, those are the people that used to be in the NFL or the NBA. So I think a big part of good parenting is just to step back and yeah, course correct occasionally, but it's really about like creating that space for your kid to explore these things on their own.

Srini Rao

Beautiful. Well, I have one last question, which is how we finish all of our interviews of the unmistakable creative. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Brad Stulberg

I know and I know that you were gonna ask me this question and I didn't want to like I didn't want to have a Plug-and-play answer. I think it gets back to that authenticity and vulnerability and well

Srini Rao

Hahaha!

Brad Stulberg

I'm going to be a rational optimist to steal your words. Rationally, you are unmistakable. There is no other organism in the world that has your combination of DNA and life experiences. So in this moment, there is only one of you and therefore by definition, Aristotle's rationality, you are unmistakable. And I think doing what you can to express that in a way that is within reason, within

visiting something we said earlier inauthentic, that's enough. And I think that would be my answer.

Srini Rao

Amazing. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story, your wisdom, and your insights with listeners. This has been such a riveting conversation that I felt could have gone on for three hours. Where can people find out more about you, your work, the book, and everything else you're up to?

Brad Stulberg

Right. So, um, my website is just my name, www.bradstahlberg.com. Uh, the only social media platform that I'm on is Twitter where I'm at B Stahlberg. And the book is available wherever books are sold. So local bookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the practice of groundedness. Um, and I also have a relatively newer podcast venture called the growth

to take an evidence-based look at true wellness, not the kind of fad wellness that we hear so much about these days.

Srini Rao

Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.