Episode 3 | In this third episode of Strong & Awake, hosts Dane Sanders and Mitch Dong explore the paradox of choice and how an abundance of options can lead to decision paralysis, effectively limiting our freedom. They discuss the concept of true freedom and how it is tied not to the plethora of choices but to the ability to commit and move forward with decisions. The episode highlights that comfort and an overload of options can be inhibiting rather than liberating. Through personal anecdotes and discussions on human behavior, the episode delves into reducing options and embracing discomfort to foster growth, strength, and a sense of purpose. The conversation also emphasizes the importance of knowing who you want to become and taking small, discomforting actions towards that goal.

Key Moments:

• 00:00 Introduction
• 01:05 Options are bad news
• 08:48 Freedom in Commitments
• 15:56 Comfort is the curse
• 18:50 Higher Order Thinking
• 33:48 Anchor Action

Mentioned in this Episode:

• “Atomic Habits” by James Clear
• “The Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz

Anchor Actions:

Identify people in your close circle who excel in different aspects of life - from handling challenges to maintaining a positive outlook. Note down their specific strengths and observe their daily actions rather than just their words. Over the next few months, incorporate one or two of their behaviors into your routine each day. Embrace discomfort and push yourself to undertake challenging actions like your mentors, even if they seem difficult at first. Remember, facing discomfort is the key to achieving the freedoms and success they enjoy. By adopting their habits, you'll steadily progress towards personal growth and enjoy the benefits it brings.

Join Us:

Our Membership Community (MWOD) is where we embrace discomfort as a path to personal development. Remember, it's probably not for you... but if we're wrong about that, or if you want to find out for yourself, visit us at MWOD.io 🦬

Connect With Us:

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Disclaimer:

The information shared on this podcast and any related materials from Men & Women Of Discomfort (MWOD) or Flying S Incorporated are for general informational purposes only. You should not use this information as a basis for making decisions without consulting your own medical and legal professionals. We aim to provide accurate and up-to-date information, but we make no guarantees about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability, or comprehensiveness of the content.

At Men & Women Of Discomfort, we promote agency and encourage you to carefully consider the input we offer. If you find it helpful, we invite you to take advantage of it, but do so with the understanding that you bear the responsibility of due diligence. By using our content, you acknowledge that you are taking opportunities at your own risk. Thank you for understanding.

Copyright 2024 Men & Women Of Discomfort (MWOD.io)

*Transcript Note: The transcript of our podcast is AI-generated and may contain errors. We aim for accuracy but appreciate your understanding and feedback on any discrepancies.

Dane: 00:00

You don't have to be in prison to be in jail. How we relate with things can be imprisoning. There's a kind of paralysis that shows up when I have 7, 500 options.

Dane: 00:12

What it does is it puts paralysis on our decisions and our ability to commit to things and move forward with things. So if I'm paralyzed in my ability to commit, how in the world can I say that I'm free?

Dane: 00:22

(VIDEO / AUDIO Intro - after cold open)

Dane: 00:25

As humans we prefer the path of least resistance. We crave convenience, the payoff without the price. But when our lives revolve around comfort, it doesn't deliver. Living in perpetual comfort leaves us weak and asleep. This podcast is an invitation to flip that script, to choose the unlikely path, to get the life you really want through voluntary discomfort.

Dane: 00:49

This is Strong and Awake. I'm Dane Sanders.

Dane: 00:53

Hey, Mitch.

Mitch: 00:54

Hey, Dane. Good to see you. Good to see you.

Dane: 00:57

Gosh, there's a lot we could talk about today.

Mitch: 01:00

There are so many options. We've got unlimited options of things we could talk about, but how about we talk about options themselves?

Dane: 01:07

That's a good idea. And, and the idea that options aren't good news.

Dane: 01:13

Actually for humans who are interested in becoming someone new.

Mitch: 01:18

Yeah. Tell me more because in society these days and maybe even written into the foundations of some of our countries and the motivations behind that we have this idea that Optionality is the goal or that's true freedom.

Dane: 01:34

Yeah, that's right.

Dane: 01:34

Well, the key word there is liberty and freedom, right? So like when when we equate Options equals freedom. I can do more things. First of all, I want to affirm the logic holds. I can see why people would conclude more options equals better. But we have to get clear on what we mean by freedom. So if you think about freedom as just extending options if you have no options, getting options from outside in sure feels like freedom to me

Dane: 02:08

I want to affirm that, but what we're talking about specifically isn't so much things that are given to you, but what we're talking about is the kind of freedom that you have. Have access to regardless of what others do. How do you find freedom? I have some dear friends who do extraordinary work with incarcerated women and men where they'll, they'll go into places where obviously there's a lot fewer options for the people in the jails that they work with.

Dane: 02:35

But they are very quick to point out that you don't have to be in prison to be in jail. There's a sense in which how we relate with things can be imprisoning.

Dane: 02:47

There's a kind of paralysis that shows up when I have 7, 500 options. I even just think of like very practically my wife and I are sitting in the evening thinking, Oh, let's watch a show. And we, you know, we pull on one of ourDane 17 streaming services. And we never get to the show. We just go through the trailers and that's two hours of work, you know, and we're like, okay, what's up?

Dane: 03:09

But what if we, what about that one? What about this one? That kind of fear, missing out, keeps kicking in. And, and really what it does is it puts paralysis on our decisions and our ability to commit to things and move forward with things. So you can see very quickly that if I'm paralyzed in my ability to commit, how in the world.

Dane: 03:26

Can I say that I'm free?

Dane: 03:27

What if I have all the options in the world, but I can't pick one because I'm too nervous about if I pick that, I don't get this. And then you start applying that in a certain context. Like, how does that work out relationally? How do people find, you know, in depth kind of romantic relationships that turn into partnerships and you know, that create generations of human beings that have a foundation from which to find security and strength and they can launch out from things break down very quickly.

Dane: 03:56

If you don't have the ability to commit to things. So in my view and in the view of a lot of folks who've, we've had a chance to work with that men and women have discomfort. Especially at the beginning in this cultural moment, if you can get to a place where you can remove options, you can find freedom if no other reason, freedom from the cognitive load of having to decide just it's being decided for you.

Dane: 04:22

And even as I'm saying these words, anyone who's listening or watching, I'm confident there's a kind of a sigh of relief for some people. It's a sense of like, Oh, what would that be like if I didn't have to navigate all of the options that I have in front of me? Well, what it would be like is freedom at least in the short term now in time as you You have things prescribed for you in a very healthy way.

Dane: 04:47

You can get to a, you can kind of set a foundation and you're actually going to be in a much stronger position. You're going to have an ability, true freedom, intrinsically, to make decisions. And you'll do it with strength. You'll do it with a consciousness to kind of all that's going on around you.

Dane: 05:01

You'll do it even in the direction of things that aren't just about you but are about others. And that becomes remarkably significant. And people's lives even meaningful and gives people a sense of purpose to continue forward and even continue to make hard decisions that yield a great life.

Dane: 05:23

Yeah.

Mitch: 05:24

It's funny. I almost just said we have so many different directions we could go

Mitch: 05:28

With this conversation and I caught myself there. Yes, indeed. But, but it's true when we're faced with, it seems like All of these options you see, there's all these challenges that exist. There's all these diet plans and even books about forming new habits and practices and things like that's right.

Mitch: 05:48

Where, where, where do we start? And is thinking about where do we even start the wrong place to start, if that makes sense?

Dane: 05:57

Well, I, one place that I like to start is it happened just for me this morning. So this morning I was at CrossFit. I just finished a workout and I ran into a friend of mine. Her name is Dawn who was considering joining men and women of discomfort.

Dane: 06:11

And she said, how, how does this work exactly?

Dane: 06:14

What I led with was I basically said, look, here's, here's how it works. You make one decision to participate and then all of the other decisions in your life are made for you for about three months. And. She paused and she actually put her hand on her chest and she said, Ooh, I just felt something inside kind of jump like, and it was a double edge.

Dane: 06:33

One edge of it was, and I don't want to speak for her when I say this, but this is how I, the story I made up as I listened was on the one hand, there was a sense of I don't like how that feels like that somebody else would determine something for me. Like, this isn't that antithetical to what it means to, to be a free person, you know, and.

Dane: 06:53

And then she said, but the other part of it was like, that sounds kind of relieving, like to kind of hand off the responsibility for a second and to trust the source by which, you know, that would be happening. And, and to be clear, people who do M1, we are not telling people what to do. What we're doing is we are taking, In a sense, MWOD is telling people what to do.

Dane: 07:11

It's, it's a prescription that we're all submitting to, myself included, as a co founder. We submit to the process that has proven itself out over and over and over again. And, any human, any time, who's participating can say, I'm not into it anymore, I'm out. And we go, great! Shame-free zone. We're not gonna chase you.

Dane: 07:27

I'm not gonna bug you. It's just if we do it, if you're gonna be a part of this thing, this is how we do it. We'd love for you to do it. If you wanna do it this way, if you wanna do it a different way, no problem. Do it somewhere else and we, we bless you for it. So from that perspective, it's still, you still have the option of opt opting out whenever you feel like it.

Dane: 07:44

It's why we say it's probably not for you. But the reason I bring that up in this context is where do you start? Ironically, you start by finding a trusted source and you submit. To their authority. And usually if they have authority, that means they have empathy too. This is the old, the age old guide and everyone's every great story that's ever been told the guide has been there and done that the guide has has empathy for how hard it is to do the thing.

Dane: 08:11

So they have authority to stand on. They know what it feels like to be in your shoes and they recognize why, why you wouldn't do it.

Dane: 08:20

But if they, if you practice what they say for a series for a significant amount of time, what in time, it'll, It'll get inside of you. You, you're going to gain that empathy and authority. You actually have a capacity now to guide other people, which happens all the time in our community.

Mitch: 08:39

Yeah.

Mitch: 08:39

When I, when you brought up prison earlier and I couldn't help but think there's a certain simplicity to that, obviously, there's a lot going on there I'm not trying to say that it's like necessarily good or bad or whatever thing. But I also think about another kind of analog for this kind of limited optionality that breeds a certain simplicity to life.

Mitch: 09:03

And that's like summer camp. I think back to like, as a kid. Like, yeah, you leave your video game consoles behind, you leave the communities, your stuff, your toys, and you're in this bunk bed. You have the cafeteria where you don't get to choose what the meal is. And I think that is a lot of like our childhood.

Mitch: 09:24

And again, I'm not speaking for everyone's childhood, but you think about how simple it is and how beautiful that is in a lot of ways. But it also gets to a certain point as kids, as growing adults, where we need to kind of bring in our own kind of agency and we're exposed to more options, whether we choose it or not.

Mitch: 09:45

So how do we make that transition? So we found a guide. We found a program, a plan, a community that can kind of prescribe these things. But how do we, how do we graduate from that? Or how do we then begin to own those things for ourselves?

Dane: 10:01

Yeah. First of all, I want to acknowledge it. It does. I get why how counterintuitive it sounds that we're going, we're trying to empower people to have agency.

Dane: 10:11

And we're doing it by reducing options. How does that, how does that compute? And the best way I can think of it is just to say it's temporary. It's just foundational. It's just setting, setting the table. And for me, I like to think of it as how do I develop a practice or rule of life or kind of a an operating system or a mechanism by which I do a modus operandi for my days everyDane 24 hour window, how do I do my days?

Dane: 10:34

If that's our goal, it's for every individual to, to create a customized pathway for you to flourish as a human being,

Dane: 10:43

I would say if that's where you're trying to get to, and by the way, even in getting to it, It continues to refine. We get to keep kind of working the edges and polishing and fine tuning.

Dane: 10:52

And it's actually so great because even while you're doing that, you're coming in different seasons of life. I mean, you know, I'm becoming an empty nester right at the moment, Mitch, where you're still in the thick, you know, the valley of the diapers and you're navigating so many different things. And, and in the middle of that, like we're in different phases yet.

Dane: 11:08

We're still working out our own practices all the time. So the question I'm hearing you say is how do you get to a state where it's your practice, not just a prescribed practice? And. I would say it's, there's probably stages or steps that get you there. And you know, in, in, in MWOD, we talk a lot about this thing called Credo, which is really our framework to ways, ways to think about the stages of, of commitment.

Dane: 11:32

And we can get into that conversation if you think it would be helpful. But in broad strokes, I would just say starting by reducing options, by making it very, very simple. Creating something, a minimal viable practice. If you just think, want to think of like, you know, James clears habit stacking, like create it, create a list of little habits, minimal viable.

Dane: 11:53

Like don't work for an out for an hour, work out for five minutes. Don't even work out, buy a pair of shoes and put them on and take them off. And that counts for the first couple of days. But if you don't miss a day over time, you'll, you'll start building on it. So keep it simple, build a little foundation.

Dane: 12:07

And that's really what the first three months of M what is, is we, we build a really firm foundation. And with that, and all of the accolades that come with it, you know, people losing weight and people getting in they just have a greater sense of self and stability, even in the midst of storms that are going on in their lives.

Dane: 12:25

And as that begins, what we want to do is begin to reintroduce your choice to things, but doing it from a more responsible place where you have. Proven foundation character. You have, you have like some data to point to and say, I did those things when it was prescribed for me, I did all those things.

Dane: 12:45

And now I'm interested in prescribing to myself what that is. So I'm going to grab a little category and just own that little section, kind of isolate the variables and do one of the time. So I might say like, Okay, I'm gonna, I go throughDane 12 weeks of, of everything being decided for me and I noticed that going out, going without alcohol really had this positive impact on my life.

Dane: 13:06

I just feel better generally. But on the, on the negative, socially, it's really difficult. Like I, when, when our family celebrates something and they pull out of a bottle of champagne, I don't get to participate.

Dane: 13:16

And that feels like I'm missing out on something that's really significant. How do I hold those two things in tension? Well, what if you made a rule for yourself that you don't get for you? No one's giving this to you, but you for yourself are saying I don't drink alcohol unless two things are in place one it's celebratory.

Dane: 13:32

It's social. It's connected to the the relationships that matter most to me in my life and two I set a cap on it. I decide You One drink, or you could say three drinks in a week, and commit to it for yourself, and just begin to play, like, how does that feel?

Dane: 13:46

Does that seem right? Does that, is that getting me the kind of life that I say I want to get? Again, we're trying to get to a place of human flourishing, and doing the practical steps to put yourself in a position where that's what you receive. Well, to get that kind of experience, these are the kinds of choices that seem really hard.

Dane: 14:06

But as you gain some reps, you discover it's actually not nearly as hard as it appears. It's largely it's only hard for a second. And then all of a sudden, we get past that moment and we realize, like, I am, I did that. I, I'm doing such an uncommon thing. I'm getting the uncommon benefits of it. And you extrapolate that over time and it's just, it's mind boggling.

Dane: 14:28

So a very long winded answer to how do you build your practice when you start with foundation and you slowly but surely keep adding to it and you don't treat this like a sprint. This is a marathon and it's not really even a marathon. It's an ultra marathon. You know, if, if things go right and you, the trick is to, to not be in a rush, but to realize there is some urgency here.

Dane: 14:50

The stakes are very high and you want to put yourself in a position of strength and awareness so you can, you can live this way. So I don't know if that translates, but that's, that's how I view it.

Dane: 15:00

Yeah.

Dane: 15:01

Yeah. And we're, we're talking a lot about kind of practice and things a little bit further down the road.

Dane: 15:06

That are still very relevant to ourselves today. But for those of us that, you know, we've become slaves to this optionality this, this lie that optionality is the end of the gold standard. What are, what are some things that we can do? One to become more awake and aware. Of where that's showing up in our life.

Dane: 15:26

And I know you shared a couple kind of initial steps that we could take to, to begin reducing that optionality, but in a, in a way that is, is going to be the highest kind of leverage. I don't want to say sustainable because oftentimes some of the beginning stages in themselves. Aren't sustainable by design.

Dane: 15:45

But I'd be curious what,

Dane: 15:46

What that is. Let me come at it from a slightly different angle and I'm actually going to count it. So, you know, we're framing this conversation as options are a curse, but probably a more true statement would be comfort is the curse. Comfort in the, in the front end is the curse.

Dane: 16:01

If you really want to get technical and options, You know, when you think if you have a bunch of options, what are the most attractive options? Well, they tend to be the most comfortable options. What's easiest? What's most convenient? What's quickest? What's the least painful? What's the most pleasurable?

Dane: 16:15

I think front loaded comfort is is the real problem and The road to that is a bunch of options. And if you're paralyzed by options, you're probably paralyzed by options because you want to pick the right option and the right option.

Dane: 16:28

If you really drill down and say, what, how am I defining that? You tell me whether or not it doesn't have, it doesn't rhyme with comfort. It probably does. So, so. I want to make that distinction because when we say options are a curse, what we mean is the kinds of options that, that shut you down, that, that create cognitive load, that you're, you know, you want to work out, but you're not working out.

Dane: 16:51

That's telling you something. You think you have options, but in truth, you're paralyzed because you're not doing the thing. So true options are, I have the option to eat whole food and not processed food. I've got that's really an option to me, but that's not true if I never choose whole foods, if I always choose Doritos,

Dane: 17:10

So if I am, if, if I'm actually not exercising my options towards the healthy choice and I say, what I really want is more options. That's not, that's not the biggest consideration for you right now. Really what the consideration is, is, are you, do you have any good options that you're actually picking?

Dane: 17:28

You're actually putting yourself on the hook for, because if you have those in play, that's probably a good sign that you're, you probably already have a healthy practice moving the right direction. And, and there might be just ways to extend that if you could notice the gaps in your practice.

Mitch: 17:42

Mm. So, so the initial step is like almost reducing your bad options if we're going to label them good or bad.

Mitch: 17:51

Right. Yeah. I like that.

Dane: 17:54

Well, think of the other side. So the hard option on the front end gives you the good comfort on the back end, the bad comfort on the front end. If that's you're driven by comfort, I want to get early comfort without much effort leads to a paralysis of where you think you're like, Oh, I'm doing this so I can get more options on the back end.

Dane: 18:13

But the truth is, you're actually not, you're not picking any of the good ones. So it doesn't, you're, you're actually stuck in a corner, not able to pick the thing, not able to choose anything. It's, it's being chosen for you. You're putting yourself in a state of being a victim to what, Those comforts are going to give you so sorry to interrupt.

Mitch: 18:34

No, no, that's great. Yeah, absolutely I want to talk a little bit about You use this phrase a lot, which I really appreciate and it's "higher order". Like what's further upstream? How, how does that come into play when we're talking about reducing optionality? Cause it's easy to get myopic or focus on, okay, I'm reducing options, but I don't see like the end purpose of this, or what is this doing besides just Reducing options and making it uncomfortable for me right now.

Mitch: 19:10

What, what is, what do these things do for us when we choose to kind of reduce this optionality or choose the hard thing in the moment for a greater reward at the end?

Dane: 19:19

Yeah I think upstream and downstream is probably the right metaphor to think about. So think of like downstream problems and upstream problems. And, and what I mean by that is if, if downstream you're looking for fresh water and all you're getting is like you know, bad stuff.

Dane: 19:37

Like there's stuff in the water's yard. Yeah. You know, there's trash there's, you know, whatever. Well, how do you get to the good water? Well, you go closer to the source, you go further upstream, you get to the higher order thing. And when we, When we consider our actual lives, moving away now from the metaphor to kind of what we're experiencing, if all of a sudden, downstream, the, the things that are showing up in my life are, gosh, when people bring out Halloween treats and I can't, or like, I'm at work and people put stuff out you know, the donuts, the, the sugary drinks, the, you know, whatever.

Dane: 20:18

And I find myself staring at him and going like, Well, maybe I'll just have a little bite. Maybe I'll cut it in half. Maybe I'll cut it in a third. But you find yourself eating a third and then the half and then the whole thing and then three. And you're like, if you look at the actual results downstream, it appears as though the problem are the donuts or the sweets or the whatever.

Dane: 20:39

But that's not the problem. The problem is you don't have the capacity to say no to the thing. The capacity to say no to the thing is upstream. So the question becomes, how do you say no to things that you know are bad for you, but you keep choosing? If you look at you know, you step on the scale and you don't like the weight that's on the scale. It's like the weight on the scale.

Dane: 21:02

Isn't the problem. That's the symptom. The problem is you're not doing the kinds of things that put yourself at a weight that your, your body says, Oh, that's the weight I'm supposed to be. Thank you. It's a gift. And there's a lot of reasons for this. Like I recognize like, gosh, we live in a comparative culture and it's vanity and like you were trying to fit in.

Dane: 21:21

And, and I was in the conversation this morning with a colleague about if she's in her forties and her mom just passed away and she's trying to figure out how to make healthy choices. And she was talking to her therapist about how. In talking to her therapist she said, why do I, why do I resist the whole workout thing?

Dane: 21:41

It turns out this colleague I'm talking about is a Chinese woman, executive, very smart and able person.

Dane: 21:46

She remembers beingDane 20 and trying to fit in to a culture that felt foreign. And it was all about externals. She was just craving a different kind of motivation.

Dane: 21:54

Something that actually wasn't because of external people deciding because of internal. And as we were talking, I suggested, well, what if instead of getting on the, on the scale or looking in the mirror, when you get to the shower, as your metric of success, what if you went and got a DEXA scan?

Dane: 22:10

Like, and for those of you guys who don't know what a DEXA scan is, it's kind of an internal photograph of yourself that measures total percent body fat, body fat. Lean muscle mass, visceral fat, which is the fat around our organs, which really has a huge determinant effect on your longevity and your health span.

Dane: 22:25

And then bone density, bone density happens to be a very important metric to consider in your fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, hundreds, and so on. And for her, that was kind of an unlock. She was like, Oh, that's interesting. Like if I could be motivated by what's going on internally and think about longevity.

Dane: 22:42

And so she's, she's envisioning something further upstream, finding mechanisms by which she can measure success in that direction. And she's beginning to make those kinds of decisions.

Dane: 22:52

And, and when you can get further up to a higher order thinking, the downstream effects kind of take care of themselves. Largely those kind of symptomatic things, they just kind of go away.

Dane: 23:03

They don't, they're, they seem so challenging when you're in isolation going, I'm going to will my way through this. But if upstream you decide, no, I'm going to actually overhaul my whole life. I'm not interested in a, in aDane 20 day weight loss program. So that 40 days from now, I'm actually heavier than I started.

Dane: 23:20

I'm interested in a life. Well, that's, that's again, higher order further upstream thinking.

Mitch: 23:26

Yeah. I love that. And to going further upstream, it almost gets back to that Delta or that source where it's not just affecting that particular stream. But all of the other things that feed off of that you think about, we've been talking about food a lot and picking on donuts like you said, but yeah, it's one thing to like have the grit and the will and the deter determination to refuse that donut that's in the break room.

Mitch: 23:50

But it's another thing to, when a moment comes when you feel threatened or triggered, and you instead of deciding whether you're going to get frustrated and act out or, you know, punish your kids or That's right. Or speak in a really unhelpful way to your spouse. It's already been decided because you've cultivated that way upstream.

Mitch: 24:11

Yeah, I think that is, it's such an important thing to focus on for that, for that very issue.

Dane: 24:17

If I, I just add one more piece and this might be a helpful kind of a simple, simpler, simpler way to think about upstream and downstream. If, if you think about human beings, there's kind of three realities that are true phenomenon that happen for, for humans.

Dane: 24:32

One is they do things, right? Everyone knows that we, humans do things. Not just humans, but a lot of, you know, animals do things, whatever, but just go with humans. Humans do things. But humans also get things. Based off of the results of what they do, things happen, right? They get the, they get stuff. So they do, and they have.

Dane: 24:53

So they do things, they have things, and they become things. So being, and becoming, doing, and having. Those are the three kind of phenomenological states of a human. I be, I do, I have. I would argue that the furthest upstream is being. Who you are becoming is the, the highest level order thinking. And if you get that clear in your mind, that that comes first, if you get that right, the results largely take care of themselves, the having. You get what you do, but the doing is informed by who you say you want to be.

Dane: 25:34

Most people skip becoming. Most people don't even give any consideration to who it is that I'm becoming. They, they focus exclusively on just tell me what to do, tell me what to do, tell me what to do. And we recognize that that's a human condition thing. So, I would argue that that default state of like, just tell me what to do.

Dane: 25:52

We say, okay, we'll tell you what to do. We'll make all your choices for you and just do these things. And it's relieving at first. You're like, oh my gosh, look at all the ground I'm taking, look at all I'm getting. As a result, but the trick is to go to the next step. The trick is to go, okay, I've noticed that went from a guide.

Dane: 26:06

Who's telling me if I do these things, I'm going to get that stuff. But what if I could own who I say I want to become? What if that became the centerpiece of my life? And I went, who am I actually becoming?

Dane: 26:16

What, what are the doing things that I'm doing setting me on the trajectory for? Is that highest and best? Is that who I actually want to become? If I eat this doughnut, what will that lead to? If I, in terms of who I will become? This is why James Clear spends so much good energy helping people understand that you don't want to be the kind of person who runs a marathon.

Dane: 26:40

You want to be the kind of person who never misses a day of running. Because if you, if you're becoming, that's how you become a runner, runners run. So if you, if you never miss a day, well, never miss a day of what? Well, you're running and when you're running, guess what? You, you, you're going to get your marathons and way more.

Dane: 27:00

And, and it doesn't stop with the physicality. It happens with like, to your point, my reactions to things. My, one of my goals for the most part of this year is I want to become unoffendable. That's my ambition. And if you were my wife and you knew how offendable I have been up until now, by default, you would realize how remarkable of a commitment that is.

Dane: 27:26

But to be unoffendable means that someone would act like someone could, what if someone, I could, someone could spit in my face and, and I could be. Maligned in public and I could, like, I could my reputation could be trashed because of something that wasn't true. I could, I could be taken to court, like, doesn't matter what the thing is, but if I get to a place where I, I wasn't offended by it, I was just neutral, do you realize how strong I would become in every area of my life?

Dane: 27:54

But that informs, well, what kind of behaviors ought I to do if I want to become that kind of person? Well, now, when I have a customer service person in a particular role who doesn't do what I would prefer them to do, I don't get to get angry at them anymore. It's, I've removed the option. It's, it's not available.

Dane: 28:14

And if that's a committed action, if I'm going to remove that what am I going to do instead? Well, What if I'm going to thank the person for giving me this opportunity to be trained and working with someone who is unreasonable or is not giving me what I want.

Dane: 28:27

Now, I might not say that to them because that could be a little passive aggressive, but I could, I could say it to myself. I could, I could land, get in a place where I'm like, well, what if there actually is something to what they're saying? And, or what if someone's giving me feedback that I don't like, but if I could learn how to consider it, I might learn from it.

Dane: 28:44

I don't freak out. Well, what I would get is probably a reputation and probably get a reputation for somebody who is actually interested in growing more than he's interested in being right. And you see the ancillary benefits that start to come from it. But being doing and having focusing on who you're becoming, I think is central, central to flourishing as a human being.

Mitch: 29:06

Yeah, I love that. And I love that you emphasize the importance of, of a guide and also becoming that guide. That guy to that hero in your own story. Oftentimes, you know, in our community we're very much a request culture. So folks will ask, Hey, They won't actually ask a formal request. They might say something like, man, I'm having a really hard time with X.

Mitch: 29:31

What do you recommend? And that's, that's great. Like, good that you're asking those questions, but oftentimes they know the answer. And one thing that I've seen you model so well is asking them, well, if you knew the answer, what would it be? Or if you look to the person that you want to become, what would they do?

Mitch: 29:48

And oftentimes, It's sitting right there. We just don't want to explore that option. And so I love that you bring that up about the, the, the being, the doing, the having, cause it comes back to that. And it's not just an external force that we're subjected to, but we can, we can do that for ourselves as well.

Dane: 30:07

Well, and arguably more so like most every great guide rarely Lords anything over anyone. It's really like, well, what do you want? That's that's the question I hear from the guides in my life. Well, what do you actually want? And what would that person do? And Well, why don't you go do that? They haven't actually given me any directive at all Yet they were wise enough to Walk me through a process where I owned it.

Dane: 30:37

Well, that's interesting owning my life Because you think about the opposite like let's say We just stayed at men and women of discomfort where all we did was prescribe prescribe prescribe prescribe We're going to tell you what to do over and over and over again. That's all we ever did ever Well who gets the credit?

Dane: 30:53

You know lame. I don't want the credit. I don't want m1 to get the credit I want the people to participate. I if i'm doing the work. I want the credit if you're doing the work you deserve the credit and I There's something to be said for like a deeper power that has nothing to do with us That is empowering all of this stuff like air in our lungs and you know, no matter If you read any of the ancients, they may have a lot of different perspectives that there's something bigger than us at stake, but the ancient, the wisest of the wise, the perennial people that we keep going to over and over again for thousands of years, they keep pointing to there's some source that's bigger than us that's driving, that's, that's enabling all this stuff, but it is a cooperative, we, we can, we engage the process and if we don't, we get what we get.

Dane: 31:41

The drift of life will take us, and we've talked about this before, but it'll take us places we don't want to go. And that place we don't want to go is entropy. It's the energy dissipating. It's the second law of thermodynamics. It's this, slowly but surely depletion of our lives. But isn't it amazing that the wise, no matter how old they are, no matter how much, what's going on with their physical bodies they seem to be getting bigger as people, even if they're suffering.

Dane: 32:07

That, to me, is a mark of, of flourishing. And, and a, and a way to kind of, you know, Push back against the erosion of our lives. And I want to be that person. That's what we're emulating. And I think that's, I live in a community of people that is our ambition together. And it's, it's just delightful.

Dane: 32:26

Like we laugh and enjoy and make fun and have a good time in the midst of it too. And it's kind of amazing to me because I would have thought, I think before getting into this kind of a life, I would have thought this would have been a very intense, like hyper, I don't know, like heaviness. And ironically.

Dane: 32:45

The more our community decides like let's go suffer together in a voluntary way that actually isn't that big of a deal There's a lightness of being there's an ease we kind of laugh A lot more than I I laugh a lot more than I used to laugh and and i'm grateful for it, man I'm, really grateful for it when I think about like growing up without a dad.

Dane: 33:02

My dad didn't have a dad and I know there's lots of listeners who have you know, crazy Hard traumatic stories in their own lives. And this is kind of just my version of it. But all of those hard things happen to me. And again, when I choose the hard thing, it's like, it's like I'm pushing back and I'm actually seeing redemption of the thing that happened to me.

Dane: 33:22

And that's one of the most profound things to experience in this world is to have something that's so horrible, actually be turned for good. And and the fact that we can participate with that is one of the greatest pleasures of being a human being, in my view.

Mitch: 33:36

Hmm.

Mitch: 33:38

Beautiful. So as we, we've talked about a lot of things, ironically, and we've talked about everything from upstream guides, optionality freedom, true freedom and flourishing if we could bring this back to kind of an anchor action, I'd love to end on something.

Mitch: 33:59

And as it relates to, Ooh, Becoming or being doing and having this might be a little bit backwards, but I'd love for you to share maybe one thing that we could be doing in this next week or maybe right after they finish watching this or listening to this that, that would kind of prompt us or steer us in this direction of becoming.

Dane: 34:18

Yeah. Well, who do you want to become to sign? That's a clear action. Like if you survey your world and you think about highest and best, who are the people that you look at and they seem to be. The ones that are thriving the most in your immediate world. Take note, like pull out a piece of paper and a pencil, start making a note and actually get specific, like, you know, write their name and talk about what area are they the best at that you've ever seen in your Immediate world, not just someone that is foreign or someone celebrated or you read and they're dead.

Dane: 34:57

Like I'm talking about, like in your actual world, if you were to emulate a handful of people, who, who are those people? Now, some of the challenges with this kind of exercise is some of you might be feeling like not very many people are in my world are thriving right now. And I get that. So if that's the case, Go, go another circle out, go and then you can start including people you're reading or people you're exposed to, but but try to start close by someone, a group of people and close proximity and think about as many categories as you can come up with, like who thinks the best, who responds to adversity the best, who seems to be have, have a a strength about them in difficult times.

Dane: 35:41

Who has the levity, the lightness of being everywhere they go. And by the way, that lightness of being people just notice, they probably have suffered in some way. I've found a way through. There's something really interesting relationship between those things.

Dane: 35:53

Could be, it could be very, Practical, like, you know, who's, who's really good at the job you want to have someday who's really skilled at the sport that you really think is cool. It doesn't matter what the thing is, but who has the body that you wish you had? Like some of that is I, the body stuff is I don't know, it can get a little complicated pretty quickly because our bodies are very, very distinct and different, a lot of different things going on, but at least they seem to be demonstrating a discipline that's getting them the thing that they want.

Dane: 36:21

That's what you want to look out for. And then I would just I would start with that list. And I would, I would, whether you talk to them directly about it or not, I would start paying attention to their behaviors. What are they actually doing? Not what are they saying? What are they doing? If they happen to say the things that they're doing and they match, that's fine, but don't pay too much attention to their words.

Dane: 36:41

Pay attention to what their actions are on aDane 24 hour basis every day and see if you can't pick up one or two things. And for the next, you know, three or four months, just put that on your list and do those things every day. And see if your life doesn't radically shift the thing you want to look for once you've built your list and you've identified the behaviors, what you want to look for, though, and maybe this would be a good topic next time we're together is what are the things that they're doing that as soon as you hear they're doing it, you're like, Oh, I would love to become that kind of person.

Dane: 37:13

I just don't want to do that to get it. That looks really uncomfortable. That looks, and that is the gold. You need to kind of wire your mind to go the hard thing that they're doing that you're resisting is a reason you're not experiencing the freedoms that they're experiencing. That is the pathway.

Dane: 37:30

Moving in the direction, I've heard this metaphor several times, but becoming the kind of person that when you hear the bell, you have the fear, you have that jump. My conversation with Dawn this morning when she felt that double edge in her soul of like, Oh, I don't want to give up my options, but it sounds right to me.

Dane: 37:46

That is the tell that you need to run towards the sound, not run away from it, that, you know, our, at NY we have buffaloes as our little mascot. And the reason we think of buffaloes a lot is because when the storm hits, the buffaloes run toward the storm. They don't run away. They're one of the very few animals on the planet to do that.

Dane: 38:04

Well, we're those freaks too. And I would encourage you, your mentors that you've just named are telling you precisely the hard thing to go do. And if you go do them, even like in a minimally viable way, you will take ground and as you're patient with it you'll get the fruit that come from it.

Mitch: 38:21

Hmm. Well, thank you, Dane.

Mitch: 38:25

I can't wait to have that conversation with you and make sure you tune in as we have that conversation and unpack that in the following weeks. Right. Until next time.

Dane: 38:32

Thanks, Mitch. Thanks.

Dane: 38:34

Men and women of discomfort is our membership community and we are open to everyone but keep in mind our tagline is it's probably not for you if we're wrong about that or if you want to find out for yourself you can find us at mwod. Io the information and material that we're sharing both of this podcast or anything connected to men or women of discomfort or flying s incorporated it's all for general information purposes only Only you should not rely on this material or information on this podcast as a basis for making any kind of decision.

Dane: 38:59

We do our best to keep everything up to date and correct, and we do a lot of due diligence, but the responsibility is on you to make sure that you're in sync with your own medical professionals that you wouldn't see what we're offering here as somehow a warranty or representation in any kind expressed or implied about this being complete, accurate, reliable, suitable, or comprehensive in any kind of way.

Dane: 39:13

It's critical you own your agency, which is at the heart of everything we do of Discomfort. We invite you to take the input that we're offering and consider it for yourself. And if it's helpful, please do take advantage of it. But if you do, it's you who is taking the opportunity and we're assuming that you've done your due diligence with it.

Dane: 39:25

Thanks.