Brad Stulberg || Finding Groundedness

In his coaching practice, Brad works with executives and entrepreneurs on their performance and well being, and he regularly speaks to large organizations on these topics as well. His latest book is called The Practice of Groundedness, A Transformative Path to Success that feeds, not crushes your soul. Brad, It's so great to have you back on the Psychology Podcast. It is always great to be back and to be

talking with you, Scott. Thank you for having me. Likewise's credible what you've built up and what you've done, And I kind of the niche that you carved off yourself where you combine science as well as personal experience and as well as in this new book you talk about the wisdom of the ages. So you try to you kind of try to integrate it all here, don't you Yeah, you know, I'm very fortunate to be able to do that.

I think what's unique about being in the seat of a writer or a coach is that I don't have the pressures of an academic to a stay really narrow in search of something novel and be to publish in academic journals. So it gives me perhaps a little bit more space to read widely, pull from disparate domains in a kind of different approach to try to get into truth with the capital T. Oh, so, what is truth with the capital T? Yeah, I'm glad that you asked. So truth with the capital T. There are very few

things that we know are unequivocally true. Sewage is really good for public health, True climate change is happening. I'm going to say truth with a capital T. Vaccines are effective, a very important one right now, Truth with the capital T. When it comes to well being performance some of the quote unquote softer sciences, it's often a game of probability. So it's what is the likelihood that this is true or in what context is this true? And what I try to do in my work by looking for patterns

in different areas of academic inquiry. Is you mentioned over different timescales and history, and then also what's actually happening

in the real world, what is practice show? If I can find certain themes that are pointing in the same direction, I can be confident with my coaching clients and with my readers that it's probably close to the truth with a capital T. Another way that I like to think about this is imagine a stool with three legs, and one leg is empirical research, the other leg is theory. Does this make sense? And then the third leg is

history and practice? And if all three of those legs are sturdy, you can sit on the stool and it's probably going to hold your hypothesis. If only two of those three legs are sturdy, you can probably sit on the stool, but you might want to proceed with caution. One or zero lags in your hypothesis might not be correct. You might want to start looking elsewhere do you find in your field? In the fitness to mean, is there

a lot of war case tea going around these days? Oh, my gosh, one hundred percent in physical fitness and fitness for life, I'd save it. The latter has almost caught up to the former. So certainly in physical fitness. There's

all kinds of lowercase tea truth. But also in some of the topics that I write about around productivity and optimization and the things that you study subjective well being, I think that there is all kinds of lowercase t truth, often fueled by consumerism, right, Like you need sexy products to sell, you need bright and shiny objects to chase, and if those things were to work, it would almost ruin the business model because then you wouldn't come back

searching for more. Yeah, So I mean not everyone in that spaces intro. Their goal is not the truth for a lot of people. Now, but now, when did you become a coach? You have a coaching practice? Did you train it all, did you like go to did you study coaching principles? Or are you relying on what you've learned personally over the years. So I would say that it's both formal and informal. So I'll give you kind of my more formal path to coaching, and then I'll

explain informal. So way back when, right out of undergraduate school, I went to work at McKinsey and Company, a big box consulting firm, and I was never the person working on the financial model. I was always the person doing the client management. They said that I had good client hands, so ultimately the other folks would figure out what to do and I would coach the clients on how to

implement it. Following graduate school, where I studied public health, I went to work for a large healthcare system and I was running a program where they've identified high potential young physicians and they would have me coach them on leadership, so physicians they studied medicine, particularly just out of residency. So then I started coaching physicians at that job, and as I started writing more and more publicly, I had requests for coaching, and I distinctly remember the first time

one of these external requests came in. I said, I who am I to be a coach? I don't have whatever coaching accreditation there is. And at the time I was living in northern California, where executive entrepreneurial coaching is a big thing. So I reached out to a long time executive coach, a guy named Ed Baptista, who I really admired, and we met for coffee and he basically said, you know, there are no real credentials like you've written

a book on peak performance. People are reading it. Go give it a shot and just be honest with your first clients that, hey, you're new to this. So it started out as like a little hobby almost I was charging next to nothing. I just wanted to see if I was providing any value to these people. And over the last what six years now, there's been quite a feedback loop of referrals and now I've built a small little coaching practice. So that's the long answer. The short

answer is, you know, I don't. There are various accreditations in coaching. I'm not really sure what any of them mean. So for me, it's simply, hey, these are the books I coach to the principles that I write about. I help with implementation. I'm not a therapist that I don't pretend to be. And you've been seeing results in your clients and helping them with their growth. What's some of the most remarkable things you've seen from point A to point B. It's a great question, and I probably don't

spend enough time reflecting on this. I think that one of the biggest things is being able to develop a solid foundation of identity that is a little bit more unwavering in the face of professional and personal ups and downs.

So getting people who are willing to pay for executive coaching so they take their work seriously, getting them to still take their work seriously, but not have so much of their mood, so much of their identity attached to work, which paradoxically ends up freeing these people and they perform better. I'd say that that is certainly one bucket, and then

the other bucket. Are these dramatic what I would call truly dramatic transformative life changes that happen from the most con create detail oriented behaviors, stuff like taking your phone and laptop and storing it in the glove compartment of car in your garage so you're not tempted to check it after eight pm, switching to walking meetings. I mean, all these things that are so concrete and it doesn't

take a rocket scientist to do them. But when you actually follow through on these behaviors, and ideally a few at the same time or a few over a few months, you get dramatic changes in your ability to be present and to care about the things that matter to you. It's beautiful and true, capital t true for sure. Yeah, It's like, how do we go from the big, lofty, esoteric down to down to actual behavior? Something that I

know that you're familiar with. One of my favorite episodes of your show is when you had Stephen Hayes on who's the one of the founders of acceptance and commitment therapy, which you'll do a better job summing it up than me, But in shore it asked to see clearly, see clearly and accept what's happening. Know what your core values are, and commit to acting on them and work when I do with my clients is well off an outline, Well, hey, what are your core values? And then how do you

define them? Because anyone can say love, health, integrity, respect, these are just mission statements on a corporate wall. What do those things actually mean to you? And then the next level, where the rubber meets the road, is what are the daily or weekly practices that will help you exude this value so you can take someone from a value of love very noble. One of my core values but kind of ambiguous to defining love is being present and engaged in the people and things I care about,

to the practice that supports love. Being I turn off my phone at seven PM and I take it out of the room. So that's self love. Yeah, well, self love and it allows you to love other people because you're present for them where Yeah, so I think in a nutshell you know again, And it's a long witted answer to your question. It's helping people achieve these big things by very concrete steps that they can take in their own lives that they have some control over. I

love your definition of love as this kind of this presence. Oh, it's beautiful, it's beautiful. It's very much on my own human humanistic way of thinking about love is, you know, being itself, not something that you do like, you know, if you're only worthy of love or only showing love when you donate to a you know, big nonprofit, you know, it's it can be with just the choices you make and the being with another person. Anyway, love love all that. I would love to dive into your new book, Are

You Down Down? I would love to dive into my new book as well, the play in the Sandbox. I'm a little bit intimidated, Scott, because you you think about these topics all the time as well. So you're a beautiful conversation partner, but also slightly intimidating one, so let's do it. Absolutely no need to be intimidated. So your new book called the Practice of Groundedness, a transformative path

to success that feeds, not crosses, your soul. In this book, you talk about achievement, and this is kind of a common theme across a lot of your books, the cost of achievement being the goal. Why did you write this book because that's a theme that's come up over the years and a lot of your work. You know, how did you then link this idea to this idea of groundedness.

So my first book, Peak Performance, was a book about the principles and practices that help you sustain your best when everything is clicking, when you're at like the top of the metaphorical mountain. My second book, The Passion Paradox, talks all about the difference between harmonious and obsessive passion or colloquially motivation. So how do you develop motivation, how do you harness motivation, and how do you stay motivated about joyous pursuits or things that bring you meaning and

not get caught up just chasing status or relevance. So if the first book is what to do on the top of the Mountain. The second book is How You Climb the Mountain. What I realized was I hadn't spent enough time in my writing and in my own life in investigating and exploring the principles that make the foundation. So when the sun is shining and the weather is good, peak performance in the passion paradox are great, they'll get

you there. But if there's rough weather and you don't have a strong foundation, the whole thing's liable to collapse. And this was brought about based on my own experience of suffering stark onset, very serious, debilitating obsessive compulsive disorder, which completely toppled over whatever mountain I was climbing. And it just so happens that the timing of the book coincide with more of a societal storm, which has been the COVID nineteen pandemic. Well, can we double click on

the O c D a little bit? Yeah, I am. I am more than happy to go there because you found that a lot of your exercise, a lot of even weightlifting. Well, you know, I love your article. What you got me into weightlifting, bro, You got well to a certain degree, you got me back into it. I used to heavily be into it when I was in my mid twenties when I was trying to pick up chicks, and then I sort of just the reason into late weightlifting. I know, I know, bro, No, now now I'm I'm

into it for a different reason, you know. So I'm like, I'm now like more mature weightlifter, you know, but really inspired me, you know, talking about the health benefits of it and sort of the you know, how can heal anxiety and and even help with OCD because I suffer from a certain form of OCD as well, maybe mild or than than than the clinical form, but still nevertheless, you know, I get stuck in my ruts and it

is helpful to me. I would love to hear some of your own personal experience about how weightlifting and other kind of fitness practices have helped you with your own

mental health, for sure. So the first thing that I'll say is that there is kind of garden variety ruts in stagnation and mental health, and these are having a rough stretch of days, being excessively nervous about something, having some intrusive thoughts, repeatedly being really sad, not wanting to get out of bed that last for a period of

time and they pass. And then there is what I would say is true pathology or really serious, more clinical mental illness, and that is when you find yourself terrified to leave your house because of anxiety, thinking the same intrusive thought thousands of times a day, having thoughts of self harm, being able to get out of bed for over a week. Exercise helps both. Exercise alone can potentially prevent or reverse number one. Exercise alone can very rarely

prevent or reverse number two. So I think it's really important to be clear that exercise is a tool and the toolkit along with meditation, medication, therapy, these other modalities, particularly for more severe cases of individuals experiencing mental illness. Now it's still a really powerful tool for number one, for kind of helping, you know, not having you get on the path towards really being in a rut that

you can't get out of. Exercise is pure gold. So my own experience with exercise is it is just such a foundational habit of my day. I like to say that when I exercise, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to have a good day and feel good, but it always gives me the chance to and there's all sorts of research that which is or at least hypothesizes why this might be the case. So there's very clear biological hormono excuse me, hormonal effects of exercise, so certain neurotransmitters

are being released. There are theories about the muscles exuding chemicals that can cross the brut blood brain barrier that affects mood. So there's all these things that are happening in our bodies. Then there's also the psychological benefits of starting at point A, working towards something and getting to point B based on nothing but your own work. What's

that mastery? Yes, And then there are the social benefits, which is if you can find a good community, a supportive community to work on movement in, even if this is just taking a walk. I shouldn't say even walking is so effective, then you get this community benefit. You're seeing other people, you're out in the world. So it's like this perfect trifecta biology, psychology, and social or community

that that makes exercise. And I actually I over the years of change that I like to call it just physical practice or movement, because I think too often exercise is immediately thought of as sweating on an elliptical or bench pressing, squatting, doing CrossFit. And while it can be those things, those things worn't great. It can also be a brisk walk, gardening, dancing, playing a team sports. Just something that gets your body moving is so powerful. Why

are we so stationary right now in this interview? Well, I can tell you I already I already trained pretty hard this morning. What's your excuse? Okay, that's fair enough. Bro. I I put bro at the end of very sentence whenever we talk about fitness. But I'm gonna go for a run after this, Bro anyway, awesome. I love, I love, I love that you're bringing awareness to this. I think that within the sort of bro community sometimes there there's sort of this stigma against being vulnerable, and I think

that's really problematic. Right. There are a lot of people, a lot of men and women who are suffering mentally, but there's this attitude of like just be gritty, you know, like come on, come on, come on, and some of them might not feel, you know, fully free to express what they're going through. So kudos to you for helping

to normalize that. Yeah, I very much appreciate it, and I think that it is increasingly being becoming more normalized in the In the book, I tell the stories of Kevin Love and DeMar de Rosen to NBA basketball stars who were very public about their struggles with anxiety and depression, in how both of them were concerned that it was going to result in blowback, even that they might lose their contracts, and instead all they got was support from

other players as well as fans. More recently, Naomi Osaka, the women's tennis player, withdrawing from wimbled in citing mental health. So I like to think of what I did as just such a small, little little drip in the ocean of people with much bigger profiles that are courageously coming out with these things. So it doesn't take being so courageous to do so for future people. Yeah, I love it. So what is groundedness? How do you even define that term? Yeah?

So the I'm gonna start with the problem. So the problem is what I call heroic individualism, and it's this notion that in order to be quote unquote successful, you have to constantly engage in a game of one opsmanship with yourself or others, where measurable achievement is the main arbiter of success, title, status, money, car house, on and on and on. And individualism is a part of this because as a result of this, we've booked more isolated.

Because if you want to optimize your life, bro, you's got to put a lot of time into doing that, and the first thing that gets crowded out is time for community, social engagement, and relationships. So years ago, in ancient Eastern wisdom traditions, there's this notion of the hungry ghost, and the hungry ghost has a very very long neck and diaphragm in this enormous bloated belly, and the hungry ghost just keeps on stuffing him or herself full and

it never gets full. It just keeps eating and eating, and the food goes right down this long neck and into the belly, and it's just bloated and it feels sick. And the parable of the hungry ghost says that that's how we can be. If we crave these outward things, we can just keep eating and eating, but they never fill us up, they never satiate us. And to me, heroic individualism sets us all up to be hungry ghost. We're looking for love in all the wrong places. It's

as simple as that. Groundedness is a model of success and a model of striving that allows you to try to maximize your potential and do so in a way where you have firm internal fulfillment. You can stand strong amidst rough weather. You are playing really hard, you're still playing to win, but there's a joyousness with it because you're already fulfilled. Another way to think about it is heroic individualism is performing from a place of anxiety or tightness.

Groundedness is performing from a place of love or openness. And it's really scary to do that because our egos say, be anxious, be tight, achieve get status, refresh Amazon a million times to see the ranking of your book. How many Twitter followers do you have? But when we actually let go of that stuff and we're just free to express ourselves from what I would call a place of love or like I said, freedom, openness, not only do we feel so much better, but the research shows that

we perform better too. Well. This, okay, this is really you're hitting the nail on the head here because a lot of people can really relate to this idea of never feeling enough. But then you know what is there is there a middle path, because I'm just gonna speak on personal experience. I only I feel like I operate

between two extremes. So it's like a never enough And then sometimes when I'm like I'm enough, I'm fine, I'm good, then I get bored and so and I'm like, I don't like that state either, like that this is boring, you know. So is there like something where like it's not like I'll never be enough, but it's like, well, I'm not enough right now, you know, like there's more I can be doing, you know, like the legit truth is there's more to my potential. That's the truth, you know.

But I think, yeah, I think go ahead. I was like, do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, oh for sure. I think this is like such a trap of the Western mind. Western thinking is so dualistic, like I'm either enough or I can get better. I'm either good or bad. And in Eastern thinking and in some of the Eastern wisdom traditions that I reference in the book, nondual thinking is such a part of their culture, which means that you can hold two competing ideas at the same time

and they can both be true at once. So in this case, you can feel whole and feel like you are enough. I still want to achieve more and get better, and what I argue in the book is that the best path to getting better is from a place of being enough. I particularly spend a lot of time talking to elite athletes and entrepreneurs, and without fail, what you find is they go through this phase of heroic individualism, chasing, chasing, chasing, trying to perform from a place of compulsion anxiety. They

just need to do it. Eventually exhausting themselves, hitting rock bottom, seeking therapy, getting in communities, switching coaches, whatever, it is, starting to feel more enough, and it's like shackles are removed, and then suddenly they start performing much better. There's an Olympian,

Slane Flanagan, who is a four time Olympian. I've had the great honor to become quite close with her counsel her through the course of her career, and she hit this point in her career where she just realized that, hey, like, I don't need to be anything more than I am right now, and I still want to get better. And she hit that point. For the next two years, she completely dominated the sport and won the New York City Marathon. And again I think people can intuit this, So I

write about this in the book. I talk about this all the time and coaching. So if you think about you pick an endeavor in your life, listener Scott might be writing a book, might be starting a business, might be doing research, might be falling in love with another person, might be parenting. And when you are in a mode and we've all been there, myself included, I've been there before. I'm sure I'll be there again. When you are in a mode of feeling like you have to have it.

I have to have the best seller, I have to publish the research, I have to get the promotion. Most people immediately they do exactly what I'm doing on the screen. For the people that are watching, their shoulders kind of cave in and they get really tight. Now, if you think about just being enough, being where you are, you're healthy, you're here, shoulders drop, you're more loose. Ninety nine percent of people perform better from that place of being more loose.

And that's what this is all about. It's not about being completely content sitting on the couch smoking weed or not just sitting on the couch without smoking weed. It is about feeling enough, feeling grounded, which then can support your striving. But you can strive in a more wholesome way,

something that I discovered in research in the book. Buddhism is often associated with contentment, but one of the noble eightfold factors of enlightenment is what the Buddha referred to as right effort, which is literally like how to strive correctly. So it's not that we shouldn't strive, but that our striving should come from a place of stability, and that allows us then to really pursue meaningful things out of love. Yeah,

there's a quote here that I love. These notes made me realize that we do everything we can to optimize our entire existence so we can finally feel like we're enough. I mean, I'm gonna go there, because the word optimized is very big in the biohacking community. Do you think that psychologically there might be a deep sea thing for a lot of people in that community who are obsessed with hacking and optimization, for them to kind of constantly try to feel like they're enough? Oh, for sure, I do.

That Is that a controversial question? I don't, I mean, to me, it's not no. I think that yes is the short answer. I think that there is some kind of deep seated insecurity or fear of death or fear I mean, right, in security and fear two sides of the same chord. Fear of fear of death, fear of not being perceived. Is a high achiever a high performer. It's just wild. I mean, some people like become so obsessed with sleep that the way that they track and

measure sleep sleep becomes work. So you are literally working when you're sleeping. I have this theory that part of the reason that so many people in that kind of optimization hustle culture are so tired all the time is because all of their life has become work. Right. If you're tracking your sleep and you're stressing about your sleep score,

then that's work. If you can't eat dinner without taking a picture and seeing how many retweets or likes or whatever on Instagram, you're going to get suddenly eating dinners work, And the more of it that encroaches on your life, the more anxious and uptight you're going to be. Yeah, you're absolutely right. So what would like an alternative to

biohacking be? That's like a groundedness sort of movement. So, in your ideal world, would this book kind of start a new movement where people kind of start coming from a different kind of starting space, a different sort of motivation or way of being. Oh, my gosh, Yes, that would be like a dream come true. It'd be cool, right, a new movement. Yeah, yeah, I would love that. I would love nothing more than that. And you know, the word practice is in the title of the book because

this isn't a switch, right that you can flip. It's an ongoing practice, particularly because, as we discussed earlier, we're in a culture that promotes the opposite. I'm gonna I'm gonna dog on consumerism for a minute again. But if you pay attention to commercials for the most like banal stuff like dishwasher detergent or notebooks or pet food, the people in the commercials are always ten out of ten, beautiful, smiling,

ear to ear in perfect families. In the notion the underlying notions, Oh, if you use this dishwasher detergent, then your life will be perfect. If then, and it's that kind of if then thinking that can become such a trap if it permeates your entire life. As you pointed out, there's a fine line between not pursuing things that can actually make you happy or healthier, better and in becoming

obsessed with it. But in the book, I argue, and what the data certainly supports is we've kind of like way overshot the target and we've forgotten to be where we are, and as a result, we're not present as often, We're not as patient as you alluded to earlier. We're not vulnerable, even though it's our vulnerability that connects us to each other. We don't spend enough time building community because it's not quote unquote efficient, and on and on none.

You just said data in my ears pricked up the data. So there's a science of groundedness. What you know, What can you tell me about some of the some of the research findings you're most excited about that have come out recently. Yeah, I can, so there, you know, I would love for you to empirically study this particular framework of groundedness with the principles I have not done firsthand

in peer controlled research. What I am alluding to is studies that show that loneliness and social isolation are at the highest they've been in the last four decades and this was pre COVID, and unfortunately that has undoubtedly gotten worse. The former Surgeon General now current Surgeon in General again, Vivek Murphy, wrote a beautiful book on this, talking about how one of his biggest fears is that COVID is going to ingrain like this pattern of already being isolated

and more lonely. We know about the opioid academic epidemic. What's not spoken about is often is death and disease resultant from alcohol? Is it three years ago? Is it all time highs? More people are suffering from anxiety and depression. Gallop shows that over sixty percent of people feel burnt out somewhat or often. So if you were to consider heroic individualism is a syndrome of optimization or hustle culture, then the outcome of the syndrome are these very concrete

disorders that can be researched. Well, I'm realizing, even after this call with you today, just how much on the same page I am with you. I guess I was always implicit in our friendship, but it's I want to join your movement, like maybe you'll do some of the empirical research on it. So i'd love to figure out actually, and I know you have at least I'm making the assumption that you have a lot of research psychologists that

that tune into this podcast. So, as I mentioned at the outset, I have the luxury of not having to get into the weeds and do the data analysis. I also just don't have the brain that's capable of doing that, so I applied able to but looking across the board at different areas of research, ancient wisdom traditions in practice, right, I've come up with six principles, which which is the

through line of the book. Each principle is a chapter, and those are acceptance over delusional thinking, presence over constant distraction, patience over speed, vulnerability over invincibility, deep community over optimization

or efficiency, and then physical movement over sedentary lifestyles. And I'm sure that this list is not completely exhaustive, but I would love if there was a way to empirically take these practices or take these traits or principles ways of being and kind of see like, hey, if you put these together, then can we have a measurable effect where people feel more at home in their bodies, more at home in their communities, more content and ultimately more well.

And I argue in the book then again, looking across history in different areas of inquiry and daily practice, that the answers are resounding, Yes, it'd be fascinating to test it empirically, well, it definitely would. You could. You could create a training program and do a randomized control trial. Sounds fun, doesn't it sounds fun? Yeah? I mean, I'm looking through your list of six things here. There's definitely measures that are either created or could easily be created

or with a little bit of effort. I want to talk about this one except where you are to get where you want to be, want to go. A lot of people do have this misconception of acceptance as just being like the Fats law, that's the way it is. You know, like, but you know like you're saying acceptance. You know that you're saying sounds more in the lines of like of the humunistic psychologists like Carl Rogers said,

once you accept yourself then you can change YEA. Or is the meditation teacher John Cabot's in so eloquently says acceptance is not passive resignation. So the way that I use acceptance is seeing clearly the situation that you are in and that enables you to do something productive about it instead of being delusional, buying stuff, tweeting, numbing whatever

situation you're in with substances. Those all provide a great little short term boost, but long term they stop you from actually working on the thing that you're working on. So yeah, acceptance is both seeing clearly what's happening so then you can take the right steps to address it, and it's not fighting against what's happening, because again, if you're resisting what's happening, you're probably more caught up in that resistance energy than in being able to be wise

and analyze what's going on. What's the difference between groundedness and Ryan Holiday's notion of stillness? Is there is there a relationship? Are they related? So? I really am a big fan of Ryan's work, and I would say that they're absolutely related. They're absolutely complementary. I think that, and I'd be curious to hear what Ryan would say. My hunches heat agree is that stillness is really focused on

the present. Part of groundedness, I'm being present or equanimity, like really just kind of you know, being where you are and being fully there and movement is a big part of Ryan's book. I'm really happy to see that where I was where where Where there's maybe a little bit of a difference is that I think groundedness is a little bit more broad so if I remember correctly,

and stillness is the key. Ryan didn't really treat the role of community and not necessarily vulnerability either in vulnera vulnera ability in community I think go hand in hand, right, because I'm sure you know the way that we forge deep, loving bonds of trust, be it with particular individuals or entire groups of people, is by being vulnerable. So the more vulnerable you are, the deeper your relationships will become, the more you'll connect with other people, and that's how

you build deep communities. And I think that what some of the work on presence, well, it's all very important. Sometimes that can miss is the role of other people. And again looking back to the ancient wisdom, you know, meditation and mindfulness is a wonderful tool, but in Buddhism it's only one of the three sacred jewels, right. The other jewel is what they call buddhen nature, which is the love inside of all of us, the loving awareness, and then the third jewel is sanga, which is community.

So I think, I think again not to completely rag on like consumer capitalism, but I would argue that our pursuit of optimization and efficiency at all costs is cherry picked these practices from ancient wisdom that fit in while neglecting the others, because anyone can meditate for ten minutes day on their own and then be calm and perform better. But what about the thousands of pages recorded from the Buddha's speeches and talks and dharma talks about building community.

Why don't we focus as much there? You know, Well, there's an interesting paradox there, because a lot of people interpret a lot of that in the West as we need to empty our mind. Contents don't matter, just the focus matters. And what you're kind of saying is, you know what, the content of that focus does kind of matter, you know, Like it's not just you don't get a free blank check to just you know, completely empty your mind. Nothing matters. You know, It's like no, some things do matter,

you know. So I'm just saying that, I'm saying the bestardization of the ideas in the way it's been you know, kind of interpreted over here. Yes. No, that's really good. I'm glad that you focus on community. You have a whole section of your book, it's part two, from Principles to Action. Can you tell us a little bit about what you mean by focus on the process let the

outcomes take care of themselves. I can. So if you think about outcomes, they might be I'm a calmer person, I feel better about my relationship with my partner or my brother. I am more quote unquote productive at work. I have an easier time falling asleep. These are just

a few examples. If you become really attached to attaining those outcomes, often there's an anxiety associated with that, because you feel like you have to get there, and if you don't, you're somehow a failure, and you can end up spending more time and energy worrying about the outcomes than actually taking the actions you need to take to

get there. So what a process mindset says is, hey, for each of these principles of groundedness, for acceptance, for patience, for presence, for vulnerability, for community, for movement, what are the concrete things that I can do? I don't even have to do them well, that I can show up and I can do every day, every week, every month, And if I just focus on doing those things, then the outcomes will be a byproduct of that. They'll take

care of themselves. Now, it's not to say completely ignore outcomes. If you're doing the same practices every day and a year later nothing's changed, maybe you should switch up some of your practices. So it's just the outcomes aren't so central to one's thinking. They become more like informational checkpoints that help tell you if you're on the right track or if you need to adjust. We've experienced this in weightlifting.

If your current one rap max is I don't know, big round number two hundred, and you want to get it to two fifty, well, if you get too attached to that goal, you end up getting reckless and injured because you're chasing it, you're doing more than you should, or you're taking bigger risks. Whereas if you can say, all right, that's a big goal, I'm going to give myself six months to get there, and I'm going to get there by taking these small, consistent stats every day,

then the outcome suddenly takes care of itself. There's a beautiful quote in the book from Tanahasse Coats about this, and you know, Tanahassee Coats had been writing for a good twenty years before he had any notoriety. And what he says is that people think it's like this mystical thing that happens. And he says, no, no, no, that's not it's not the case at all. It's twenty years of like putting in the work, grinding, catching a couple lucky breaks, and then he says, so beautifully, suddenly you

become something that you never could have imagined. I love. That's very inspiration. That's very inspirational. There's a lot of people that work their whole lives and that magic never comes for them. So I guess the point is, don't hang your hat on it that you know, don't worry.

You're not like a failure in life. You don't need to regret your whole life if on your deathbed that magic never came, right, like you never became famous, especially because so much of that magic's bullshit, like people, let's be advertising and all, let's talk bingo, let's talk about the domain that we know best. And this is not like you know, bitching authors. This is real. So getting on a New York Times bestseller list it's like one of the first things that writers think about. It turns

out that people by their way onto those lists. It turns out that those lists aren't entirely based on sales. They're based on what certain editors at certain institutions think of your book. And suddenly it becomes as kind of a morphous subjective thing. And you could spend your whole life chasing that and anxious about it and sad that you're not on the list, or worried about making the list. I guess the same thing as being anxious and miss out on all the joy that writing brings to you

and the connections that you get because of it. You know, results are this is like just physical properties of the earth. Results are concepts, and there at the very most little points in time, where's the process to chase after those results? That is what makes up your entire life. What is

getting on the New York Times bestseller list. It's a concept and you'll get really high off it for maybe a day, minute writing or a minute right whatever it is writing the book, developing the relationships, doing the reading, the research, all the things that got you there. That's what your life is made out of. So why do we spend so much time focusing on these conceptual points of time when in fact, what it really is is

the process of getting there. Something that I talk about often with coaching clients is we should absolutely set big goals, but the point of a goal should be like a destination of a journey that you want to take. So you should only try to get to the top of the mountain if you think you're going to enjoy climbing up the mountain. It keeps all roads keep coming back to enoughness, doesn't it. That's the that's the central theme here, brother.

You know, Scott, it's funny. I was the working title of the book was, I mean, man, we're on the same page. Was good enough? I mean, I'm taking my head. There needs to be a book called good enough. I was just thinking my my publisher said that, you know, it might not sell as well because like it's not as inspirational, and right, I do want this book to sell.

I want people to read it. But yeah, a huge argument in the book is good enough and then bringing in that nondual thinking because I'm a pusher you're a pusher, like you're a person that you can be good enough and you can still strive, and the texture of that striving changes, so it's more meaningful, more relational, more loving,

versus a compulsion to need to succeed. Yeah, and there's another theme, you know, your the OCD compote the idea of compulsion, the idea of your own journey, like letting go of that control. I mean, some of all this stuff is you know, you see the patterns in one's life leaving up to the leading up to these ideas, but you don't see it. You know along the way. You didn't necessarily know ten years ago that you would

write a book on groundedness. And that's why I personally am so deliberate about when I speak to groups with coaching clients in my book sharing those stories, because you know, there is no overnight breakthrough. I didn't like have a dream and wake up enlightened. Like I suffered really, really really badly for a long period of time. I will probably forget and suffer again, and then hopefully I'll remember

a little bit quicker. And that's just how it goes. Well, maybe I'll just end this interview today with the quote that I think ties up a lot of this. You say, the key to being happy isn't to always want and strive for more. Instead, happiness is found in the present moment, in creating a meaningful life and being fully engaged in it. Right here and right now. Really a game changing book, and I just wish you all the best with you know,

the tour and with the movement. Thank you. I love you, brother, and in the fullest definition of that word. I love the work that you do. I love your energy, your smile, So you just keep being you. Scott All, thanks bred them in a lot. That made my day off. I'm off to work out now. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com.

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