Episode 5 | In this episode of Strong & Awake, hosts Dane and Mitchell explore the often misunderstood aspects of learning and personal growth. They challenge the common belief that outcomes can be easily bought and stress that real growth demands active engagement with challenges and discomfort. The discussion covers the misconceptions about learning, the importance of active participation over mere consumption, and the transformative effects of voluntarily facing discomfort. The episode delves into the differences between merely wanting something and being willing to endure necessary hardships for its achievement, highlighting the essential role of discomfort in development. Featuring personal stories and a philosophical look at commitment and learning stages within the MWOD CREDO framework, the episode concludes by encouraging listeners to accept discomfort as a key to unlocking their fullest potential.

Key Moments:

• 00:00 Desire vs. Commitment
• 01:09 Unpacking the True Nature of Learning
• 13:00 Difference Between Consumption and Learning
• 17:36 How To Shift From Wanting to Actual Learning
• 22:06 Embracing the Process 
• 24:28 The CRE of CREDO
• 32:51 Learning to Read vs Reading to Learn

Mentioned in this Episode:

• Socrates: Referenced in the context of acknowledging the limits of one's knowledge.
• Brene Brown: Credited with popularizing the phrase "hugging the cactus," although not the originator.
• Courtney Dauwalter: Highlighted for her achievements and mindset in endurance trail running.
• Seth Godin: Recommended for his book "The Dip," which discusses the importance of knowing when to quit.

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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.

*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.

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

Dane: 00:00

People are sold a marketing narrative that if they buy this thing, they will get that result, you know? And we see this all over the place. It's just easy to sell people out of an idea. There was an assumption that they were going to get it, just a purchase, kind of get downloaded into them. There's a lot of chat about wanting something, but based off of results, they don't really want it.

Dane: 00:21

And if they're not willing to embrace the discomfort or at least do the thing, even if they don't want to do it, they actually don't want it. If you don't know how to do hard things, it's very difficult to grow as human beings. As humans, we prefer the path of least resistance. We crave convenience, the payoff without the price.

Dane: 00:40

When our lives revolve around comfort, it doesn't deliver. Living in perpetual comfort. Leave this week 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. This is strong and awake. I'm Dane Sanders. I met you then excited to get in this conversation today in particular.

Mitch: 01:06

Me too. Me too. You know, both you and I, I think have, with our backgrounds in education, in the workforce, have probably reviewed lots of resumes that tout kind of lifelong learner or c, you know, these marketing materials for various schools promoting, you know, we're we cultivate lifelong learners and lifelong learner learning. It's such an important thing in society.

Mitch: 01:34

It's valued. But and I think a lot of us have not spent a whole lot of time thinking about or discussing how we're relating to learning the nature of learning, why learning is important because we take it as you know, of course, of course learning is important. But, oftentimes when we dismiss things like that or assume them, it leaves much to be kind of explored and cultivated.

Mitch: 01:58

So I'd love to cultivate that here with you to have that conversation together, but also invite others into that conversation.

Dane: 02:05

Yeah, yeah. So I think this is one of the more important conversations, because for most people that I know. Learning, active learning as an adult is largely an unconscious assumption. Well, if I'm living, I must be learning. And that's not true. Yeah. Based off of results, I think if you don't bring it into the conscious, it's very unlikely you're taking much ground when it comes to learning.

Dane: 02:36

And I'm hopeful that in this conversation we can be unambiguous about what we mean by making a conscious. I think that's going to be so much of it is like there's no judgment as to where you're at in the curve of learning, because we're all beginners in almost every category there is to learn in. So it's not about kind of a linear progression or who's in front or who knows what it's like.

Dane: 02:58

Socrates was wise enough to know he didn't know anything. And everyone goes, come on, man, and he wasn't kidding. So there's a there's so much to talk about when it comes to learning. It's not just, you know, content. It's not just where you locate yourself relative to the content. It's not just understanding that the more you understand, the more will become you'll become aware that you don't understand.

Dane: 03:21

And all of these things are good indicators of progression. But for most people, they don't think of it. It just doesn't occur to them to go like, how is how are things going with my learning? So I can't imagine a more important topic, especially because we don't just mean cognitive learning, we mean a.

Mitch: 03:39

Whole.

Dane: 03:40

A much more robust, holistic approach to learning. How does my body learn when I get cut off in the freeway? I have an opportunity to learn something, not just cognitively, but in my response. How do I how do I respond when I don't get my way from a retail worker at Home Depot? That's my go to because I've had trauma in my past.

Mitch: 03:58

You see orange?

Dane: 04:00

That's right. That's, little twit. I used to work at Home Depot, too, which is kind of funny, part of the story. But anyways, we'll get into it, but I, I even as we're starting the conversation, I just want to be overt to say we're not just talking about you read it in a book or even in class freshman year in college.

Dane: 04:17

It's a much more interesting, broad and deep topic. Learning is then than just those just absorbing content.

Mitch: 04:28

Yeah, I think that's an important distinction. And thank you for calling that out. I love to start with two things. One is like, why? Why learning? Why is learning even important? And where have we kind of like lost our way in relating to learning? I think probably if I think about some isolated times where adults participate in formal, proactive learning, it's like when I want a new certification, when I want to achieve something, when I want to climb this ladder, when I want to, or when I have to learn something.

Dane: 05:03

That's right. It's thrust upon you, right? You get bad news of the doctor, and all of a sudden you and web MD are best friends, and you start learning a whole bunch of things that you had no intention of learning. And you're like, probably the world's expert in your neighborhood. Neighborhood expert, at least. And except for the neighbor who that happened to them last week and now you guys are you found a new friend, and now you're kind of cool bringing your learning.

Dane: 05:26

But the thing that you're pointing out is the impetus. Like what? What was the spark that got things going. And when it just happens to you, it's a very passive posture where we're just waiting to discover, like circumstances, determining the things that we're going to pay attention to and try to grow in our understanding. But I love the original question like, what is learning?

Dane: 05:48

I mean, I haven't thought too much about a definition for it, but I do think it has to have something to do with growth. It has to have something to do with progression, with, you know, you're you have some kind of current reality as it relates to your understanding of some domain of knowledge, or some could just be it could be knowledge, but it doesn't have to be limited to knowledge.

Dane: 06:11

It could be like to your reaction to things. So we have if we have biases in our personality and our experiences growing up, have formed who we are, nature in our nurture. Here we are today. And now there's a kind of learning. We learned how to respond to things in our family of origin. We learned, how to react in life relative to our biases and disposition.

Dane: 06:34

And yet there's still a whole category of learning where we're active with it, where we get to raise our hand and say, I'm interested in that topic and really approaching it with a curiosity and humility that opens up whole dimensions of existence, whole kind of technicolor realities of what it means to be a human being. And those who go down those roads, they're they're the richest people in the world.

Dane: 07:02

They you know, we've I remember one summer years ago when I was a wedding photographer, I photographed it was a bit of a privilege. I photographed $2 million budgeted weddings in the same summer. So single event, both families spent $1 million on the event. The first event was one of the more extraordinary weddings I had ever witnessed. It was actually a very famous soccer player in United States names Landon Donovan, and it was at the Pokhara Hotel in Santa Barbara, California.

Dane: 07:34

If some of you who have watched the recent David Beckham Document docu series on Netflix, you'll see an episode for, I think Landon comes in because this is exactly the era I can remember shooting Land of Landon and his groomsmen in their hotel, and they were all talking about this. This thing that no one wants to talk about.

Dane: 07:54

The David Beckham was coming to the States and I was they should have had me sign an NDA and but all of that was just kind of fun lore leading up to this event where they had this thematic, they created Narnia like. And I'm not lying when I say this. Like they literally the ceremony itself was the entire wedding party wearing like, leatherback chairs.

Dane: 08:13

And they had a professional orator and they had just literal chestnuts roasting over an open fire and a boys choir. And it was just like in a very intimate setting, incredible ceremony. But then after the ceremony, everyone, all the guests, somehow it felt like the guests had expanded because the wedding felt so intimate. And then all of a sudden there were all these people.

Dane: 08:33

But to get into the ceremony, you had to go through a wardrobe of fur coats to get into the ceremony and then the ceremony that I don't even think they have a religious background, but they had this huge like crown of thorns around the roof. And just like it was un believable. How like the way that they the taste with which they brought like probably the event organizer more than I think that the designer, they just did such an extraordinary job.

Dane: 09:01

And it was New Year's Eve and at the end of New Year's Eve, they counted down 3 to 1. happy New Year's. Thanks for being here. I can't believe it. Let's not end this party. And all of a sudden, the back wall opens up and In-N-Out burger comes in with people on roller skates rolling up with burgers and shakes.

Dane: 09:19

And it was just like. And they party till four in the morning. And it was like this moment of surprise and surprise, like it was like a world opening up, opening up, opening up. Contrast that with the other million dollar wedding I shot, which was and I won't mention names this time, an American bride marrying a European groom.

Dane: 09:39

The European groom's family was very wealthy, and I believe they covered the bill and it was an amazing event. Ferrari's Lamborghinis, fancy Cuban cigars, amazing buildings and whatever. And in contrast, the reception at this wedding, the bride got drunk at her own wedding and when she was giving her toasts, was dropping F-bombs. And it was just like this.

Dane: 10:05

Like money wrapped around a group of people that candidly, they didn't they didn't take advantage of the moment because they couldn't. It wasn't available to them, at least not to the bride's side, bless her heart. And I'm hoping I'm painting this picture in a way that it's not about judgment. It's really just about description of what was available at the same budget, same people, same level of privilege, same kind of experience.

Dane: 10:33

Yet one group had an expanse of experience and the other group was anemic in their experience. And as an analog to what we're talking about or metaphor, maybe I get this mixed up. I need to learn more about those. But there's a there's a sense in which when I think about my own life and the life that I want to grow into, I'm interested in that multi-dimensional expanse.

Dane: 10:57

I'm interested in the few years we have on this earth to breathe in the biggest, baddest resource available. And what I'm discovering as I feel like I'm just getting started and becoming a learner, is there is no end. Like the depth of what's available. If only we're going to. We're willing to be uncomfortable to get after those things because it is uncomfortable to learn.

Dane: 11:24

It requires something of us. That is, it's just it's kind of painful to transform. It's like to like to go from a caterpillar to, you know, butterfly idea. There's something that compresses us in those moments and it's just not comfortable yet what comes on the other side and keeps coming. If we keep leading in all these different categories, it's worth it at a level that I don't, it's almost inexplicable the riches that people live into, whether they have money or they don't, they have a deep sense of like they're becoming bigger.

Dane: 11:58

It's almost like an asset on a balance sheet. The, the value of the asset ourselves increases simply by putting ourselves in a position where we can grow and learn.

Mitch: 12:11

and I think, I mean, thank you for taking me on that journey. I've got a new appreciation for Landon Donovan. Well, their wedding didn't work out.

Dane: 12:19

That's the only bummer part of the story. It was his first wedding, so he.

Mitch: 12:24

The wedding worked out great. The mayor.

Dane: 12:26

The wedding was incredible. Yes. You did indeed. And. Yeah. Yeah. And I know none of that was to disparage anyone just for clarity. It was simply to put on display. If there was more to life available to us, would we be interested to know about it and how exactly would we go about exposing ourself to that awareness or that knowledge?

Mitch: 12:49

Yeah, I think a lot of people, I don't think anyone would deny that they desire that. But I think an important distinction to make, and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this, is, you know, what's the difference between kind of consumption and learning? We've got a society. If you look at like kind of online courses or anything like that.

Mitch: 13:10

So many people, I think it's something like 80%, I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but it's astronomically high. Purchase these things and never complete them. Maybe never even.

Dane: 13:19

Know. It's like 99.

Mitch: 13:21

Is it like, what is that like, where is that gap? And again, coming back to that question, what's the difference between kind of consuming, maybe even what might look like on the surface as learning and actually kind of learning and growing and changing?

Dane: 13:37

Yeah. Well, I guess I'll add at least one more category. There's, you know, there's like there's no question you have to consume in order to learn. Like there's you have to take things in. But I think what you're describing is more people are sold a marketing narrative that if they buy this thing, they will get that result.

Dane: 14:00

You know? And we see this all over the place, like back in the 90s, there was kind of, a subtle when Michael Jordan jumped on the scene in basketball. I don't think they ever they said they wanted everyone to be like Mike Wright, one of the most famous ads in modern history. And they'll be like, my campaign.

Dane: 14:17

What he did, he drank Gatorade. Gatorade went through the roof, he wore longer shorts and others did. And like the Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, guess what? Size shorts? Everyone but you know, these are legal colored. The color of the shoes that he was getting fined or Nike was getting fined. He was getting fined. Nike was paying the bill for these shoes that were outlawed because they didn't have enough white in them, just awful.

Dane: 14:39

And long behold, everyone wanted that. It can you see it? Is there an NBA shoe now on the floor that has any white now which I, I again I think it's it's brilliant. I love all of it. But in all of it there's a sense in which if I just wore that length of short, if I just bought those shoes, if I just drank that Gatorade, then I'll be like, Mike.

Dane: 14:58

And there's this message comes across and all these things, the courses you're referencing. Oftentimes these courses really do deliver. Like there's free, large scale courses offered by Harvard and MIT and some of the most profound places on the planet that people sign up for. But they don't. They stop at that stage like they commit, but they don't, in our words.

Dane: 15:22

They don't release on their preferences. They get into it. And it's hard. And that's the part that's interesting to me, is not so much like it's just easy to sell people out of an idea. That part's actually pretty simple. Once they're sold on it, though, how do you enroll? How do you invite active participation? And I don't think that's entirely on the marketer.

Dane: 15:45

I don't think it's on the course creator, although there's kind of active participation there. But really it's on the individual who said, I want, I want that, but based off of results, based off of effort, I think, I think there was an assumption that they were going to get it just at purchase, like a checkout. It kind of get downloaded into them.

Dane: 16:03

And that's not.

Mitch: 16:04

How it works.

Dane: 16:05

Right. That matrix. Exactly. And but on the other side, if they understand that at least cognitively, it really comes down to, well, how did they really want the learning or not? Because it because packaged into the learning is the discomfort. And if they're not willing to embrace the discomfort or at least do the thing, even if they don't want to do it, they actually don't want it.

Dane: 16:26

So I don't I don't think it's actually entirely on the bad marketers out there, because there's just such amazing stuff that is out there and, and is being purchased but still not being completed. And that's largely because of the, the person who's, who's gotten it. They either they don't really want it as much as they say they do.

Dane: 16:44

There's a lot of chat about wanting something, but based off of results, they don't really want it. It's I mean, even at minimum discomfort. We say this all the time. It's probably not for you. Lots of people sign up and quit and we're not surprised by it ever, because it's probably not for that. They the purchase might have been, they thought, and then we invite them to get out of the game because it's probably not for them.

Dane: 17:08

And what we're really saying is you're not really interested in your body learning what your body is desperate to learn, and that's to do hard things. Because if you don't know how to do hard things, it's very difficult to grow in as human beings. In fact, it's impossible.

Mitch: 17:25

Yeah. And for the record, I was not throwing marketers under the bus, as both you and I are at a swim in those pools. and they circle sometimes. Yeah. So going back to the individual, I mean, what can we do? What questions can we ask ourselves to kind of start this process or shift from that initial commit?

Mitch: 17:45

Or I want to do this, that desire to actually kind of following through in our learning and being aware in that process.

Dane: 17:55

Yeah. I mean, part of it is I think it starts with just being honest. The good news is I don't think people it's really okay for people to realize, like, let's say I want to learn carpentry, okay? And I can say out loud, like how I see examples of structures being built or tables or buildings or platforms, like whatever you're excited about when you think of carpentry and like next door right now my neighbor's putting on solar on this house.

Dane: 18:24

I'm like, oh, so cool. And watching the process and not quite carpentry, but it's there's kind of a build going on. Right. And the midst of that, I might say I want that in my life. Now, if I say those words to not be tricked at that moment, to think that I actually want that in my life, because if I wanted in my life, I would not really pay much attention to my words.

Dane: 18:44

I'd pay attention to what I do next, what you do next is actually what's most interesting. So if someone says, I like carpentry and they don't do anything, you don't have to feel bad about it as long as you're honest enough to say, I actually don't want to do carpentry yet, but I want to want to do carpentry.

Dane: 19:03

There's a if you can give yourself the space to go. I'm not there yet, but I wish I would be there. What would I do to put myself in a position where I would be on a train to back to wanting the thing? And, you know, we see this with our kids all the time, right? Like they want to be piano players, or maybe they don't.

Dane: 19:21

The parents want them to be players and they, you know, they take piano lessons and they want to quit. And the parents, they have a decision to make, they either go like they just didn't want to do that thing, or they realize that nobody likes doing things that they're crappy at the beginning. And if they invite their kids to be to persist with this, enroll their kids, bribe their kids, and do whatever they need to do to get them to persist, that kid's future self will be grateful.

Dane: 19:48

I've never met someone who knows to play the piano well, who was forced to do piano lessons early in life, who didn't thank their parents later for the gift they were given even though they were screaming bloody murder with every lesson. When Mrs. McAuliffe came by to give her lessons. You know, the piano lesson and you understand what I'm saying?

Dane: 20:08

So if that's true for our kids, it's probably true for us. So when things get difficult and we don't want to do the thing, that's when learning begins. It doesn't begin when we say, I'd like to buy that product, I'd like to buy that book. You know, I'd like to buy that course. It begins when you don't want to read the book.

Dane: 20:25

You don't want to put that song to work. You don't want to, you know, do another lesson today when you said you were going to, but you do it anyways. That is the beginning. And I think if understanding those stages of commitment are helpful, that we think about this, a lot of men and women have discomfort committing to sign up.

Dane: 20:44

No big deal doesn't mean anything. We've we actually have a low view of you at that moment because we're not sure how serious you are. But in about a week, day eight, week two, somewhere in the long lines, you don't want to do it and you do it anyways. And you come on and you check in and you say, I am so mad, I didn't want to do it.

Dane: 21:01

We get so excited because that means your behavior is telling us you actually are interested in learning. And you are you're you're becoming the person you said you want to become. And this is a necessary, non-negotiable stage of the process. That's that's the end of the process. But it's certainly a stage of the process. And you will get if you persist, you will get past that to a point of not only it being continuing to be difficult because you're growing still, but you enjoying the difficulty.

Dane: 21:31

And for foreigners who don't understand what I'm describing, people who are unfamiliar with this, this kind of phenomenon, this might sound ridiculous, but there's a lot of people who are listening are like, oh, that reminds me of this category in my life where I did that could have been in business, or it could have been in school or could have been in, you know, athletics as a kid, the chess team, you know, whatever it is, where it was hard and then it wasn't quite as hard.

Dane: 21:55

It was actually fun even while it got harder. And that's the kind of stepping stones to learning.

Mitch: 22:05

Yeah. That just reminded me of a Parks and Rec episode where Ron is just eagerly awaiting mine. Yes, eagerly awaiting Leslie Nopes scavenger hunt. and while it's not exactly what we're talking about here, it's that joy in the challenge in that difficulty. And I wish it was that fun and lighthearted and easy, but it is certainly worth it.

Dane: 22:29

Well, and I will say like there can be a lightheartedness and easiness to it. Like I don't.

Dane: 22:38

Like, you can get into a cold shower and laugh in the process, and I bet you'll have a better time than if you're grinding your teeth and, you know, holding a fist there. There's wisdom in having a lightness of being in these moments. You don't have to like, you know, tense up. But sometimes that takes training, too. And it's it's part of the process of becoming who the person is that you say you want to become.

Dane: 23:04

But the last thing I'll say just quickly, because I don't want to show up too much of our time here, but if you say you want to grow, if you say you want to learn, and there's nothing that your body is doing to back up those words, it would be more resourceful for you to say, I actually don't want to learn like I thought I did.

Dane: 23:23

Like being honest with yourself. We'll get you closer than lying to yourself and having this kind of false sense of intention that someday, maybe I might just kind of. Because if your body isn't moving in that direction, you actually aren't. And we have this conversation a lot with participants who were, let's say they were athletes. I think of our dear common friend Emily, who amazing Division one athlete in college.

Dane: 23:50

Now she's a young mom. And we had a conversation about like her saying she was an athlete and I, I think I was the one who was asking her like, well, when was the last time you were actually athletic? Because it sounds like you were an athlete, but I'm not sure you are an athlete and you're still retaining that status when your body isn't agreeing with you based off of results.

Dane: 24:08

Be more honest. It would be more helpful for you if you're honest about where you're currently at. Not because it's a determined and a point because that, but because that could actually be the beginning of you becoming an athlete again, if that's what you're interested in.

Mitch: 24:21

Yeah. And I encourage everyone to go listen to our episode about honesty, because we unpack that too, in a lot more depth. And I think it'd be helpful to maybe take a step back. We've already stepped into credo a little bit, and at risk of, you know, being a hammer and seeing everything as a nail. I would love to talk about kind of the stages of learning or the stages of that beginning to learn through the lens of credo as that compass.

Dane: 24:49

Yeah. So credo is really a framework around commitment. So if we can apply that commitment to anything. So commitment to learning, let's just kind of look in there. And, and I'd also encourage people to see it as, as really descriptive. It's, it just it's almost like a map is descriptive. If you look at the or a compass around you look at the compass and you get your bearings, you can tell where you stand, you know, and what direction you're pointing toward.

Dane: 25:15

Right. And if you can combine a compass with a map, like you have intention as to where you want to go, that's pretty magical because you can, you know, where you stand in the direction, and you can see where you're at and where you want to go. Well, guess what? You're on your way. It sounds like an adventure.

Dane: 25:30

And that the credo part, I would argue, is kind of at least it kind of serves a little as both. But you probably I'll explain the metaphor in a second why you need a map that comes from the backhanded back half of credo. But if you think of it first as a compass, it just helps you get your bearings and it's just descriptive.

Dane: 25:48

So when you think about any commitment, I'm committed to learn X, whatever it is. that's stage one. It's necessary. It's important. It's almost like falling in love, you know, as an adolescent or something or even, you know, young adult or whatever. It's like you're drunk, you're like, you're not. You think you're doing something really important, but really your home runs are taking you further than your intention.

Dane: 26:15

It's just exciting and necessary, like critically necessary. If you knew what was in front of you, you would quit before you started. Not because it's not worth it, but because there's just a lot to it. And, it's it's it would be overwhelming. So I think the way we've been, I believe created is we're we're built for these stages.

Dane: 26:35

And there's nothing wrong with commit stage, but just hold it lightly. It's you've not done anything and you need that in order to get moving. So you have intention. You're thinking about a thing you're committed in a very, I would argue, provisional way. And, and you might even move from a provision to like a plan, like I'm planning to actually become this kind of person.

Dane: 26:56

You sign up for a, a course, you buy the book or you, you apprentice under someone else and say, I'm I'd like to apprentice under you. And they accept you for that apprenticeship. Great. All the stages set now for stage two. So in credo we have credo. Commit is the first stage. Are is release. Oh. Sorry. Oh he is embrace.

Dane: 27:20

And let's just hang out there for a minute. Commit. Release. Embrace. We'll get to that later. But I think like we kind of pointed to before and let's go with an apprentice model. I want to learn how to landscape. And you work under a master landscaper and, you go to work for her. And at work, she doesn't have to explain a lot to you.

Dane: 27:42

She doesn't have to give you a bunch of theory. She just says, do that. It's very kind of Mr. Miyagi, you know, paint the fence, you know, and it might not make any sense to you. And a good guy doesn't really care. It's like this is I actually know something that you don't know in your body. And I'm going to I'm going to invite your body to come learn that thing.

Dane: 28:04

And guaranteed, you won't want to do it. You'll be in the thick of it. And you might be thinking of, like, the end zone. what? What that master creator is able to produce. And you might go, how is this? I'm not able to do that yet. You're right. You're not ready for that. You're ready for paint the fence and metaphorically.

Dane: 28:24

So I think that second stage of you releasing on your preferences, releasing on you, thinking you have options, releasing on the idea that you know best as to what to do next. That is a fatal well. If you don't do it, it's a fatal error. It's critical that you release, and once you release, even if you're mad about it, it's a wonderful sign.

Dane: 28:44

It just means your body is cooperating with what you originally committed to see, committed, and you're in the thick of it. You don't want to do it, and you do it anyways. You're releasing. And in that releasing, you're creating compression. It's a compressed moment where you're supported by your guide and you're challenged by the directive. And in that compression, that's where growth begins.

Dane: 29:06

It's not sustainable, though, because if you're constantly white knuckling it and you're constantly like checking the box and doing the thing, it's so much challenge. The support starts to feel like it's waning and it's just too hard. And what's the point? And I'll never really get there. And you quit and we get this, this. I understand why people quit at that point.

Dane: 29:26

And some things you should probably quit. That's a great little book by a guy I talk a lot about named Seth Godin called The Dip, which is all about how to quit this little book, one of my favorite books of his that I would highly recommend. Because if you're going to quit, quit as soon as you can, that if you get to the release and you're like, I'm not interested, quit.

Dane: 29:43

Get after it. If you're not, if you don't see the highest value at the end, get out of it. But if you want to persist through the dip, through the release, you get to this magical third space, this magical kind of inner sanctum of transformation, which is you. You don't just do the thing you don't want to do.

Dane: 30:02

You embrace the thing you don't want to do. And it's that embracing the way we talk a lot about it is we take a there's a number of people who've used this phrase. I've been trying to figure out who said it first, but Brene Brown talks about hugging the cactus, but I know she wasn't the first one to say it, but the idea of it's not just like putting up with the uncomfortable feeling.

Dane: 30:22

It's like getting as much uncomfortable feeling out of it as you possibly can. And those people, they become unbelievable in their growth, unbelievable in their capacity to learn. They it's it's not even comparable. The people who are stuck in stage two compared to those who get to stage three, it's exponentially more value and growth. And all of a sudden becomes sustainable.

Dane: 30:47

They people develop a vision for becoming a certain kind of person, not even just learning a skill or learning an idea. It's it's bigger than that. And I've talked about this example historically, but it's one of my favorite ones is Kourtney de Walter, the world's greatest current and maybe all time female endurance athlete for trail running. She just won the Triple Crown this last year.

Dane: 31:09

She's won the this race, the 240 mile race in Utah, 240 miles on foot, 70 hours of running. She sat for one minute. She won. Men and women. The closest competitor than the male side was ten hours behind her. Like, just totally dominant at a level that we've never seen before. And in the middle of that, if you talked, if you if you survey her and kind of hear how she relates with it, she talks about how about five years ago as a professional runner, she was a voice.

Dane: 31:38

She was she was in stage two. She was releasing on her preferences and doing the work and just trying to get through a race and hoping that the wind was at her back and that everything went right, and she didn't get a blister, and she got the food she needed at the aid stations, but she switched. She moved from embrace or from release to embrace.

Dane: 31:54

And now she's in a race. From the minute the gun goes off, she's in a race to get to what she calls her pain cave, because she wants to get to the pain cave to remodel it, to expand it. She's interested in getting to the most uncomfortable position she can be in, because if she knows if she wants to get there while her competitors are trying to are resisting getting there, she creates a disproportionate advantage.

Dane: 32:16

And here you have this relatively speaking, the same athlete the five years ago was middle of the pack in the pro world is now so dominant people are calling her the greatest of all time. And that's the difference. That's a differential of what's available for people who can get from releasing their preferences to embracing the discomfort, and that those first three stages of transformation and growth and learning, really learning in our bodies is just the beginning.

Mitch: 32:43

That's that's huge.

Dane: 32:46

What's the it? What do you hear and match when you hear that. That seems significant.

Mitch: 32:50

It's just I just think so many of us have an improper ordering or a disordered relationship with change, with growth, with learning. We see the main kind of and the telos of our learning is just the information on the other side. And don't recognize that the process itself of learning is formative. That's when the information happens. I was talking speaking information.

Mitch: 33:19

I was talking with my wife the other day about literacy and, you know, things that you do when you're married to a, rhetorician and a principle. And she was kind of recounting this conversation they were having in one of their meetings about this shift that happens around eight years old, when students go from learning to read to reading to learn.

Mitch: 33:44

There it is. And I just thought that was such a beautiful thing. Obviously, that was shared in a completely different context, but it struck me because then, as I think about my kind of recent, relatively recent endeavor to learn to do hard things, to become someone that does hard things, I've been in that white knuckling stage that getting to release and there's glimpses.

Mitch: 34:11

There's moments when that veil is, is blown aside and I can get a glimpse of and experience that moment, where I'm doing hard things to learn and I'm, I'm embracing that. And I just thought whether it's literacy or ultramarathons learning as a whole, there's so much opportunity to leverage it. And it's so, so important. So that's what struck me, and that's what was rolling around in the back of my head when you said that.

Dane: 34:40

Well, your wife's articulation of learning to read versus reading to learn, I mean, that's so much more elegant than all the creative stuff we've been talking about, because it really is the set up. It's leading up to, to the relief. And then the other side of the release, what I'm struck about, I'm talking about two things is you're saying that they'll match.

Dane: 34:57

When I think about our friendship and getting to know you over these last few years, what's remarkable to me is in certain categories, what you're describing of still white knuckling it. I can see that. And in my life and every human I know has some version categories of that in their lives. But I also know you and other categories of your life where you are metaphorically reading to learn like there's of course, is uncomfortable for you to, you know, understand another nuance of building a community online, another nuance of building a workflow and a kind of a technical set of procedures to make things efficient and productive to, to win a person over.

Dane: 35:40

I mean, I think it's one of your most profound skills is your capacity to get curious with people and really listen and reflect back in a way that just win people over, over and over and over again. And these are superpowers that you have that you didn't I don't think you woke up with when you were a kid.

Dane: 35:55

I think somewhere along the lines you learned how to read, you learned it, and you might have had some propensity or kind of a bias where that there's talent built in, but it's a skill that you had to get good at and whether it was in the playground or, you know, someplace else, you've done it in other contexts.

Dane: 36:14

I think when we when listeners who are listening, tuning in can realize you've done this before, somewhere in your world, you're actually after something, and that after something is a great example of how you can take that skill in one context and apply it in another context, that right now you're not there, you're still learning to read. And that's not a problem.

Dane: 36:37

There's no judgment. There's no there's no like, you should be somewhere you're not. You're where you're at. This is reality. And there's so much gold in those hills. and then the other thought that I had is you were talking, and I might offend some people right now. I hope I do. I hope I find some people, but not in a personal way, in a in a hopeful way.

Dane: 36:57

There are a lot of folks who I know, like, I'll just speak of people in my own faith tradition who believe because of their belief about God and what they've heard. And, you know, Sunday school or whatever. It doesn't have to be strictly to the Christian faith. It could be in any faith tradition where there's some end zone, some ideal, some, you know, God or prophet or, you know, example emblem of what good is great is love is whatever the thing is.

Dane: 37:31

And they think that because they have mental kind of knowledge of the end zone of what these traditions are living out, that they automatically see matrix style, have downloaded all those things and have the capacity to live like that. Dallas Willard, this famous philosopher from USC and spiritual writer, talks deeply about, he calls it on the spot Christianity, where people think that they could because they believe in Jesus.

Dane: 37:58

They could on the spot be like Jesus. And that's a problematic view on how people become people. I suppose you could get zapped by God, but most people I know who are like that didn't get zapped. Most of them actually went through a process of becoming where they did the things they didn't want to do, but were prescribed to them by a guide or a master.

Dane: 38:19

And in that prescription, they did it anyways. And they got through it like piano lessons sometimes. And on the other side of it, they couldn't believe their good fortune and started embracing the difficulty at a level that their former self could never have imagined. But now they see the gold that's on the other side. They have eyes to see, they have ears to hear, and they actually practice becoming that kind of person with intention and awareness and growing strength, so that they then have a capacity to do the thing not on the spot lickety split, but over a lifetime.

Dane: 38:53

And there's no end to what you can access for those things. This is why I have such respect for people in other faith traditions who are seriously pursuing those traditions, in contrast with people in my own tradition who aren't pursuing it with their bodies or their lives in any significant way. And I there's a call here. There's a gift here for people who are willing to hear it, that there's so much ground to be taken when it comes to learning.

Dane: 39:19

They're looking in any direction, in any dimension, in any category. You have so much gold to access, if only you'll dig. And the digging is uncomfortable. It's it's a necessary requirement to getting access to the thing that you say you want. More importantly, to the person you say you want to become.

Mitch: 39:39

I think that's a great note to end on.

Dane: 39:41

Awesome.

Mitch: 39:43

I don't think I mean, like.

Dane: 39:44

Do you think I offended anybody? I hope I did a little just a smidge. Yeah.

Mitch: 39:47

Hopefully a little bit. Yeah.

Dane: 39:48

Good, good. Thanks for doing these conversations man I, I, I always am the benefactor because of it. And I'm grateful for the questions and the conversations. And you make me better, man I appreciate you.

Mitch: 39:58

Likewise. Likewise. Thank you for the invitation.

Dane: 40:02

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 material we're sharing. But in this podcast or anything connected to have men or women have discomfort or feeling as corporate, it is all for general information purposes only.

Dane: 40:23

You should not rely on this material or information on this podcast. The basis for making any kind of decision. We do our best to do everything up to date and correct. We do a lot of due diligence, but the responsibility 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 is somehow a warranty or representation in any kind, expressed or implied about the complete, accurate, reliable, suitable or comprehensive in any kind of way.

Dane: 40:41

It's critical you own your agency, which is the heart of everything we do at Men & Women Of Discomfort. We invite you to take them what they're offering and consider 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: 40:52

Thanks.