The Thermostat in Your Brain: Pushing Past Your Limits with Nick Thompson (#276)

3 Takeaways Podcast Transcript

Lynn Thoman

(https://www.3takeaways.com/)

This transcript was auto-generated. Please forgive any errors 

Lynn Thoman: We all hit walls in work, in life, in our own minds. But what if those walls aren't real? What if fatigue, fear, and even failure are less about our limits and more about what we believe our limits to be?

How can we push past our mental limits and see what's really possible? 

Hi everyone, I'm Lynn Thoman and this is 3 Takeaways. On 3 Takeaways, I talk with some of the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, newsmakers, and scientists. Each episode ends with three key takeaways to help us understand the world and maybe even ourselves a little better.

Lynn Thoman: Today I'm excited to be with Nick Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic and author of The Running Ground. Nick has led two of the most respected media brands in the world, first as editor-in-chief of Wired and now as CEO of The Atlantic.

He's also an accomplished marathoner and ultramarathoner who spent years exploring how the mind shapes effort and what pushing past limits on the road can teach us about persistence and life itself. Nick, welcome to 3 Takeaways.

Nick Thompson: I'm so happy to be here, Lynn. Thanks for inviting me on.

Lynn Thoman: It is my pleasure. Nick, I loved your book. I honestly didn't know what to expect, but I really did.

I love how you turn a physical act into life lessons.

Nick Thompson: Great. That was the goal. The goal is that there's something in there for everyone, not just runners.

Lynn Thoman: You've written a lot about endurance and how our brains sometimes slow us down long before our bodies truly need to, that fatigue can be a kind of protective illusion. How did you discover that, and how does that change the way you think about limits and potential?

Nick Thompson: It's a theory that has been circulating in the running world for 10, 15 years. The idea is that if you look at how fatigue works in running, there's some peculiar things. One is that at the end of a race, all your pain kind of goes away.

All these things that have been nagging you disappear, and then you finish the race, and the very strange pain you had in your hamstring might be gone. Secondly, there have been some interesting studies where you take athletes, and you explain that they have a hard task, or you put them in a room, and you tell them the task will get harder, like the temperature will go up. Then they will kind of feel more pain, even when they've done the exact same amount of work as runners or cyclists in a control experiment.

Then for me, what happens is I'll go and run a race, and I'm running a marathon, and weird things hurt, like my shoulder hurts. There's no reason your shoulder should hurt in a marathon. The way the theory works is that a lot of pain, not all pain, there is legitimate pain. 

You step on a rock, you stub your toe. I broke a toenail in my last race. That was real pain. 

But a lot of pain is just your brain looking at the task at hand, looking at where you are physiologically. What is your body temperature? What is your heart rate?

How many miles do you have to go? How fast are you running? Is this a scary pace?

Then determining whether it fears you're going to lose homeostasis, whether you're going to reach an unstable spot. If it does fear that, then it starts sending pain signals, and it tries to send pain signals to the weakest part of your body. Maybe it's your digestive system. 

Maybe it's your shoulder. Maybe it's your knee. That's why pain moves around your body as you're running.

That's the theory. The second part of your question, how do you prepare? One of the things I do is I think of the brain as like a thermostat, running all these measures about, basically, if you cross a certain threshold, shouldn't it hurt? 

Then the trick is to take all those component parts and to stress them in different ways so that the way they're being stressed in a marathon or an ultra[-marathon] isn't new. For example, I will go and run 20 miles without drinking water. That will train my brain to understand the dehydration level I'll reach in a marathon where I'm going 26 miles but drinking water.

I will go and I'll run hard down a mountain. I had this experience the other day where I had a pounding headache. I was like, I'm going to go run six miles with this pounding headache, not because I'm a lunatic or an addict, but because I realized that I'm going to have a pounding headache at the end of an ultra race.

If I've run these six miles with a pounding headache, maybe it'll be more familiar and maybe the brain's thermostat will be set a little bit higher and I'll be able to keep going. That's the way I think about it. It doesn't mean, even when you figure it out and even when you train this way, it doesn't mean that you can go and run a two-hour marathon.

It just gives you a different way of coping with the pain you get.

Lynn Thoman: You're describing pain as mostly a mental process. What does that reveal about how much of struggle in work or life happens in our minds?

Nick Thompson: It suggests that more of it happens in our minds than we think or are comfortable thinking and that the thing that prevents us sometimes from doing stuff is more fear than actual physical realities. Some of the fear is good. You don't want to be completely fearless because then you cross the street when it says don't walk and eventually you get run over.

The fear exists for reasons. If you're not afraid, you get eaten by bears. You have to learn to balance it and measure it, but I do think as a general principle, it does mean that a lot of what we think of as our limits or our lack of capacity is more a fear signal than a true reality.

Lynn Thoman: Nick, you returned to hard training and competitive running in middle age and you beat your best time from when you were a young man, as a middle-aged man, something that surprised even you. How did that happen and how did that change the way you think about improvement and aging?

Nick Thompson: It happened when I was 44. I ran my fastest marathon and then at 46, I ran probably my best race. It was when I set the American record in the 50K.

Then at 50, so earlier this spring, I ran maybe also my best race. I ran the world-leading time for my age in the 50 mile. The simple answers are I got some coaches.

I got these elite coaches who really figured out my psychology. They got me to eat a better diet, drink beet juice. Don't just avoid bad foods, but seek out the healthiest ones.

They had me running better structured workouts. They had me running a little more per week. That's part of it.

Some of it was I had had a mental block about going really fast. I had run 10 years of marathons at all the same time, 2 hours, 43 minutes, two hours, 42 [minutes], 44, 45, but just about the same time. I had a mental block about going faster.

I didn't think I could. I think that was tied up into the fact that I had run my first one, and then I'd gotten quite sick, and then I'd run another one. It was a way I was breaking through that mental block.

Then I also think it was partly about my father died, and running was a way to mourn him and understand him. He had been a man who always taught ambition and setting bigger goals, and also a man who set a lot of counter-examples for my life. Those factors combined led me to run much faster. 

There is a really good lesson that extends well beyond running, which is that if you have a challenge, you have a thing that you want to be better at, and age is making you worse at it. Maybe it's your memory. Maybe it's your deadlift.

Maybe it's the way you play chess. Who knows? Maybe it's tennis.

You can use age and wisdom, and you can use new skills to get better at it and to counter it. Time is a moving sidewalk that moves us backwards, but if we're smart and we can walk forward on that faster than we go decline. My favorite example of this is my mother, who is 77 years old this summer. 

We're hanging out at her house. She says, my reflexes are terrible. They're getting worse by the day.

I don't know. They're just going to keep getting worse. I'm like, Mom, no.

If you're worried about your reflexes, improve your reflexes. We go out on the porch and I toss her tennis balls and I bounce them and make her step to the side. The point I was trying to make to her is whatever you're worried about, yeah, of course.

You're 77. Your reflexes are going to get worse. My reflexes are getting worse, too.

But if it's something you care about and something you don't want to lose, you can push back against the forces of time.

Lynn Thoman: You write about those rare moments when focus itself becomes freedom, when the effort feels effortless and everything clicks. How do you reach that flow state in work and life?

Nick Thompson: Oh, man, I wish I knew, right? Because part of what makes it so magical is that you don't exactly know when you're going to reach it. In running, it's very easy to describe, right?

Or not easy, but I don't reach it that many times a year. But you go out and you run 12 miles or 14 miles and every time your watch beeps to say you've run a mile, you're a few seconds faster than you thought. There's a red line you can cross in running where once you start crossing it, hydrogen ions start to build up.

Bad stuff starts to accumulate. But if you can really train your fitness, you can run right on the edge of that line. And so technically, sports physiologists call it your lactic acid threshold or your lactic threshold.

And for me, when I'm fit, it's like 5 minutes and 50 seconds per mile. And so if I'm out there and I'm running like a 5.52, a 5.53, you can go out there and just feel like you can run forever. And it feels so good because you're going fast.

And it's great. And it's particularly nice if it's kind of a blustery day or it's a little cold. Or you're out in a beautiful place, like you're out on a country road, and you can just reach this amazing flow state.

And there's also a flow state you can reach in work where you can get it in writing. You know, there are times when I was writing this book. It took five years to write this book because I've got this job as CEO, and I wasn't really spending that much time writing it.

But where I would start to write, and, like, you didn't want it to ever stop. Like, oh, my God, I'm getting so much done. It's so great.

It's so great. And then eventually it stops. You know, like, oh, man, now I've got writer's block.

I'm confused. I just wrote something terrible. I know exactly how to reach it.

I know I'm more likely to reach it in the morning. I know I'm more likely to reach it when it's quiet. I kind of know, like, a few things I can do that increase the odds that I reach it.

But, you know, sometimes when you're running, I'm like, I'm going to go run 12 miles, and I'm going to reach that flow state. You go out, you run that first mile, and you're like, oh, God, I feel sick to my stomach. So it's not an on-off button. 

Lynn Thoman: As a boy, you wanted to run like an adult. Now you want to run like a child. 

Nick Thompson: I like that you like that sentence.

That's great.

Lynn Thoman: I love that sentence. 

What does that reveal about rediscovering joy and wonder as we age?

Nick Thompson: It's like one of these incredible things where when we're young, we like, we want the wisdom of the old person. When we're old, we want the joy of the youthful person. And it's great to try to, you know, there are different stages in life. 

You have to behave differently. You have different responsibilities. But to be able to hold things, you know?

So when I was young, I wanted to be strong. I wanted to grow into my body. I wasn't as tall as I am now.

I wasn't as strong as I was at my peak. I wanted to grow, right? I wanted to be a man.

And now as I'm old, I want to, like, recapture some of the joy that I had as a young runner, right? Like, the joy of the discovery. Like, the first time I ran up a mountain, what that felt like.

The joy of running when I was six or seven years old. And so I capture and hold onto those memories. And my kids, I'm hoping we're making those memories.

Like, we're going and we're running together. They're having a beautiful time. They're learning about speed.

They're learning about effort. They're learning about training. And I hope they hold those memories when they're old.

And when they, like, my 11-year-old son and I went and we, I guess we walked to the gym and then we ran home. We worked out for an hour, lifting weights and doing stuff. And then he, like, just ran home.

It was so beautiful. Running, he runs so quickly, so gracefully. You can tell he enjoys it, just, like, running through the streets of Brooklyn.

And I hope he holds onto that when he's when he's 50.

Lynn Thoman: How do you hold onto that? How do you rediscover that childlike joy?

Nick Thompson: You know, sometimes it just comes to you. There are places that are cemented in my memory. Places where I had, like, beautiful runs when I was a kid.

And they're mostly in New England. But they're not all. You know, I grew up in Boston.

I went to Andover. It's the Andover Bird Sanctuary. So if I'm ever in an environment that, like, reminds me of the Andover Bird Sanctuary, with the leaves, the rolling hills, the streams, like, that tight turn, that kind of steep downhill, the up with the pond on the left, you know, and, like, you can kind of trigger those memories running up Kinsman Mountain up in Franconia Notch.

If I go out and I run in the White Mountains, like, I remember, you know, the beautiful summers of doing that when I run in Acadia National Park, right? So it's partly, like, place and scent and feeling. So those trigger these memories.

And they're probably, like, memories that are buried deep that I can't remember from places where I had amazing runs that, you know, I'll rediscover at some point. When I go out, you know, it's less strong out in California. My running was, like, less positive when I was in college.

But sometimes I'll go out there and I'll go into, like, a eucalyptus grove and I'll just be like, wow, this is amazing. So it's partly about place and sensory and, like, Proustian memories and, you know, the Madeline triggering, like, the memory of your mother or the memory of these runs. So it's partly that.

And then it's also partly just forcing it, right? Like, when I'm stressed, like, okay, just release, like, forget about, like, forget about, like, even if I'm running, like, I'm running down Canal Street and I'm stressed, I try to transpose myself into the Andover Bird Sanctuary.

Lynn Thoman: Before I ask for the three takeaways, the three life lessons you'd like to leave the audience with today, is there anything else you'd like to mention? Nick, what should I have asked you that I did not?

Nick Thompson: You should ask me what the title of the book means.

Lynn Thoman: Okay. What does the title of the book mean? 

Nick Thompson: The book is about running and life and my father. And for a long time, then the book was called Run for Your Life, which is fine, right? It's like, it's cute, but it's pretty generic.

Any single runner could write their memoir and have it be called Run for Your Life. And, you know, I was discouraged for years that that was the best I could come up with and I tried to find others and I was up in the Catskills and I had on my wall a print that my father had given me as payback for a loan. Part of the book is about my father's descent into madness and fiscal irresponsibility.

And it's a quote from Maximus of Tyr, the Roman philosopher, that was turned into a print by Ben Shahn. And in it, it's just this wonderful paragraph about finding love and meaning in objects that we sort of consider God but aren't. And it says, you know, yearning for the knowledge of Him and in our weakness, naming all that is beautiful in this world after His nature, just as happens to earthly lovers. 

To them, the most beautiful sight will be the actual lineaments of the Beloved. But for remembrance' sake, they will be happy in the sight of a lyre, a little spear, a chair, perhaps, or a running ground, or anything in the world that wakens the memory of the Beloved. Why should I further examine and pass judgment about images?

Let men know what is divine. Let them know. That is all.

The Greek is stirred to the remembrance of God by the art of Thetis, an Egyptian by pain worshipped to animals, another man by a river, another by fire. I have no anger for their divergences. Only let them know, let them love, let them remember.

And I had looked at that and I had it on my wall, and I had never noticed that one of the things it talks about is a running ground, you know, an old Greek track. And so I saw that, and I was like, my God, there's the title. And so that's why it's called the running ground.

Lynn Thoman: That is a beautiful quote.

Nick, what are the 3 takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today?

Nick Thompson: I do think that the thing we talked about with pain is extremely important. I do think remembering that pain can be an illusion. 

I do think that the simplicity of running is a really beautiful thing, and even if you're not a runner, even if you're just, like you like to walk, or even if you go out in a wheelchair, one of the things that you can do is just go out and meditate. 

Go run a mile, or half a mile, or around the block, and like just think about what you smell, or what you hear, or what you see, just one at a time. 

And then I guess the third thing is the sometimes focus, sometimes lock in, and sometimes dissociate and just think you're a child. And I think that's a really good strategy for, you know, when things get hard in life.

Lynn Thoman: Nick, thank you for joining 3 Takeaways today, and for your wonderful book, The Running Ground. I loved it.

Nick Thompson: Oh, I'm so glad. Thank you so much, Lynn. It was an absolute pleasure to talk, and thank you for being so kind about the book.

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I’m Lynn Thoman and this is 3 Takeaways. Thanks for listening.

This transcript was auto-generated. Please forgive any errors.