#2022 WTF is Hardiness? - Dr. Paul Taylor

collaborating over the years ever since. For those who don't know you, who are meeting you for the first time, give everyone a little bit of a because we have a turnover of listeners and we constantly have new listeners. So give us a little bit of it. Rather than me reading some bio, give us a bit of a snapshot of you.

of us. Spent eight years flying in helicopters, doing anti submarine more for helicopters, starch and rescue, went through combat survival, resistance to interrogation training, did another master's part time, and then moved over to the Australia as an exercise physiologist nutrition has set up in your business, and then started doing corporate speaking, and then realized that it wasn't about telling people what to do, it was about behavior changing

me and you had many conversations about that. So I went and studied neuroscience and the last bit of the puzzle for me was doing the pH d in psychology, where I explored cognitive fitness, which is performance under pressure and hardiness psychological hardiness, which is the topic of my new book. So now me and Gig is I'm a corporate speaker. I've also got a podcast like yours and an author as well. So following in your footsteps, Graig.

funny how much our kind of lives parallel. But as the guy who is not a doctor of psychology to the guy who is a doctor of psychology, congratulations, sincerely. I'm obviously I'm personally interested to know what's the feeling like. Is that relief? Is that joy is at fucking pride? I don't know because it's in years.

still be on it. So yeah, relief. And then and then when I reflected, I remember actually I went in the day after I went in to Carly maybe I get up in the morning and I was saying, you know, I was. I was sitting there and I was I was going through my miner right right, what's the next one we're doing next? And then I said to Carley, I think I just need to slow down and take a bit of a break for a while. And she laughed at when she went, Paul, it's been less than twenty four hours for God's sick.

of you know, you deserve to be there. It's the I think it's probably the best thing is it's killed that little residual thing that's in the back of your mind, you know, that that whole imposter syndrome that has been around for a long time, and I think it's now finally Dad.

I don't know. I don't know if for a PhD is going to get rid of it, but I'll let you know when the time comes. But yeah, that whole I don't feel worthy. I don't feel good enough. I don't feel whatever enough. Whether it's pretty enough, funny enough, you know, clever enough, talented enough, skilled enough, it's almost it's almost unavoidable for human beings some version of.

am naturally good at. But the only thing is communication, building rapport connection, which is not a bad thing to be naturally that good at, right, But other than that, you know, building businesses, academia, you know, creativity, writing books. All of those things were definitely not impossible, but it's not it's not like, oh yeah, crag, you just are

natural at that shit. And so for me, that underlying self doubt, and that not even just self doubt, but self awareness around my own ability and lack of ability in certain spaces. It kind of kept me motivated and inspired because I knew if if I didn't fucking work hard, and if I wasn't resilient, and if I didn't have some hardiness beautiful segue harps, if I didn't have that, I wouldn't fucking succeed. I just knew that I wouldn't. And so it's almost that cliche of out workout perform, outlast.

It's like, for me, literally true.

because it's not one thing, it's many things. And I love I love that there's a lot of intersecting variables around this and a lot of factors, and I love that you've chosen something which is pretty much relevant to every human you know, when I mean, sometimes I'm interviewing someone about their book and it's like, well, six of my listeners will to this because you know what it's like really really specific and not not broadly kind of representative.

But this is broadly representative. So the book was called The Hardiness Effect, Growth from Stress, Optimized Health, Live Longer. Doctor Paul Taylor, congrats on that. Give us the synopsis, give us like and then I want to dive in.

Is it an outcome? If? Is it something you're born with, something you have, something you develop, and there's so much to be at about it. Hardiness is it actually tells you how to get there. It's called the courage to grow from stress. So the early research, particularly in the US military, there was a bunch of it by a guy called Paul Bartone who was a bit of a mentor of me in this area doing my PhD. He when they screened recruits going into military training, they did

a whole heap of psychometric assessments on them. And the one thing that they find at the end when they saw who passed and who field, and they went back and looked at it to say, was there anything predictive? The one thing that was predictive of passing and field was hardiness. They then found that hardiness predict who passed and who field. Special Forces selection training the toughest course you could possibly imagine that's been found in different militaries

around the world. It also predicts who passes police special operations. It predicts career longevity and high pressure environments. This is the military, police first responders. It's been called the greatest, the trade, the key trade of fifty of the world's greatest leaders. And it also impacts our health. People who

are hiring hardiness and have better overall well being. Their immune systems respond better to stress, they recover quicker from serious illness, and even school kids who are hiring hardiness are much more likely to go to university than those who are lower independent of socioeconomic status. So I love it because there's so many real world outcomes. What I added into it, and this was part of my PhD as well, was physiological hardiness because all the research is

about psychology. But for me, as a psychophysiologist, I believe anybody who tells you that you can optimize for mental health and cognitive health just with thinking skills is fucking batshit crazy because your physiology has this huge impact on your biology. So part one of the group of the books, sorry, it was all about psychological hardiness, where I unpack the three c's and I've added a fourth. We can jump

into that if you want. And then the second part of the book is all the physiological heartiness, and it turns out that nature has actually designed certain things to make us heartier, which I'm sure we'll unpark as we go through.

And I say that to you know, people in suits as part of my job, and I say, even when, and to demonstrate it, I say, you know, and you've heard this old chestnut from me, and you probably use a version of it. All Right, Let's say, right now, you have a thought, and the thought right now is

that you're in danger. And let's say you believe that thought, and then we talk about, you know, the cascade of physiological consequences as a byproduct of that thought, right, And then people go, oh yeah, And then I say, and also what's happening emotionally, and what's happening to your blood pressure and to your nervous system? And then and what's happening you know, all of these things are happening, but

it happens kind of both ways too. Something happens to us physically, then there's a psychological consequence to that physical experience, and that Yeah, I think the idea that heartiness or resilience or navigating life or trying to increase your capacity to poor form under pressure is purely a psychological you know process or cognitive process. Yeah, is as you said, fucking ridiculous.

and the same with mood. And I always say to people, if you know, we're in this mental health crisis as they talk about and lots of people, you know, it's all about the solutions are all about psychology or medication any like, if you're not moving and you are not looking after your sleep and you're eating your crappy diet, which is the average Australian lifestyle, good luck with your mental health because you are swimming up stream massively against

a huge tighte, right, a huge tighte. And you know, part of but my sort of mission is to bring that awareness to people, but also give them that integrated solution of how they can improve their lives.

Da da da da da. You know, we're talking about all that stuff that needs to be in some way kind of improved or addressed or spoken about. And I'm like, yeah, all of that's good, and we'll do that. We'll talk about that. But how about we talk about like, let's step back a few steps and let's talk about how's Dave when he gets out of bed? Is David two out of ten? Or is David nine out of ten?

You know? How's Sally? How's her nervous system when she starts checking shit on her phone at four forty five and she gets out of bed at five forty five, and she's already fried she's already stressed. And I said, you know, if we've got people who are mentally, emotionally and physiologically fucked before they get to work, good luck being a good communicator or problem solver or conflict resolver or negotiator or team leader or lawyer or anything. Because if you show.

like every world class athlete does before performance. How about we start the day like that, right, and then we continue today operating in peak performance mode. You know that's that's really key. There's so many things that are out there that steal our attention. And you know, me and you were both involved in that DELFI study around the

cognitors drive cognitive drivers of peak performance. And I don't know if you talk about that, but I actually realized when you look look at that the number one thing there was sixty four of us experts around the world, or sixty two plus me and U squeezed in, but all business psychologists and military psychologist, sports psychologists, and we were all asked to rea it the cognitive drivers of performance under pressure, and the thing that everybody said was

number one was attentional control. And our attention is being stolen left, right and center, and then it drags our nervous system with it. That's the key thing.

walk to the cafe. And I literally asked myself this question or a version is that is, in terms of who I want to be, how I want to be, and what I need to get done today, what's the best use of my time, energy, and attention, Like, what's the optimal use of me? You know, because it is you think about people whose brain or attention is hijacked by their phone and the people who you are, you know, talking about whose list. Fucks they're looking at their phone

before their feet hit the ground. They're almost doing if not, they are doing that on autopilot, like they don't wake up and go, you know what I think I should do.

I should reach from my phone, I'll grab my phone, I'll have it, Like they're just doing that before their brain is really like this is this is an addiction, This is a this is a groundhog day that is destructive, Like, this is a this is now a habit that's actually derailing your fucking everything from your potential and talent to your energy and your physical health.

Netflix or whatever your streaming platform is. And I don't remember Aristotle or Socrates or the Buddha saying that the purpose in life is to be entertained. Right. It's about being engaged in life, being curious about life, right, and actually just wanting to immerse yourself in it. And it's also you know, commitment orientation. When you're fully engaged in life, that's when you can find a sense of purpose and meaning. And life has no meaning other than what we give it.

That's the key thing, right, there's no fucking purpose. Very it's going to come along and show you what your purpose is. We actually have to find it through meaningful engagement in life, and that's hugely important, and that's commitment orientation, but also then being committed to your own well being. I'll tell you a quote that I show today, I show all the time, so I say, my favorite quote. It's from Seneca, and it's kind of paraphrasing his stuff, right,

But here's what it is. Every individual burs the responsibility to be of value to humanity, if possible, to benefit a large number, if not, to benefit a smaller group, If that too seems unattainable, then to benefit their immediate community. But above all else, they must prioritize self growth and personal well being. And I love that statement because it

encapsulates everything about hardiness. It encapsulates that sense of meaning and purpose, but gives people a clear path that it's about engagement with others, it's about being useful to your community, about being a member of a tribe. All the research and human flourishing points as this where and you will know that. But then it's about being committed to your well being because if you look after yourself, you're going to be much more effective at whatever your meaning and

purpose is. If it's to be the best mom or dad that you can be, if you short your shit out, you will be a much better parent. Right, Seemen work all of those things, and that really encapsulates hardiness. Commitment, which is one of the key season hardiness.

A definition of hardiness versus a definition of resilience. And what's the overlap and what's the difference.

this and and here's the other thing. Hardiness can be learned, whereas resilience is a lot harder to learn. That that's the key thing. A lot of things will say resilience is is is a is a treit it's something you have, and the other people are arguing, is it a state, is it something you do? All of this, but hardiness is very clearly a process, a set of psychological orientations

that anybody can learn. So I often have people in workshops create their own personal tombstone statement in three minutes flat, and I give them a few little a few little prompts, but get them to create a tombstone statement, something which they would like to be remembered for that sums up their commitment. And I often talk about mine. I talk

about it in the book, and it happened. The trigger for this was eight friends of mine getting killed in a helicopter crash two of my best meets, and I was pretty lucky not to be in one of those helicopters. And anyway, through a series of events, I ended up deciding to leave the military and go down this path. And so my tombstone statement is military man turned educator

to help others be better versions of themselves. So I encourage everybody to write a tombstone statement about how you would like to be remembered and what your contribution would be, and remembering what Seneca said, you know, it can be many people. It can be a small group or it can be just your immediate community. So it can be about being the best mom or dad, or son or

daughter whatever that you can be. But once you've written down a rough draft, I like to get people to spend ten minutes a day deliberately acting on that purpose, because then your attention is on it, and then you start to become more aware of it, you start to think about it more, and it starts to develop. So you don't need perfect, don't let don't let perfect be

the enemy of goot. You know, just get some sort of a tombstone statement dying, spend ten minutes a day working on it, and it will start to become clearer and clearer as you go.

but not really I'm building ourselves. You know. It's like, how much time do I spend like trying to be to build, you know, to develop hard in us or to be developed, in my instance, self awareness, or to even think about my fucking thinking that metacognitive door that I like opening, or more specific than my research, trying to understand how other people think one and two how

they think about me. Like these kind of internal processes that really make life, communication, problem solving, teaching, leading better, we don't really. I feel like, despite all of the psychology and all of the research and all of the for one of a better term, self help personal development,

we still don't truly work on ourselves much. And we kind of you know, you, if you meet Dave today and then you see Dave in ten years, even if there's a whole bunch of shit that Dave wants to change and needs to change today, a fair chance is just going to be a ten year old version of the same bloke in ten years, unless I feel like, unless there's some kind of almost fucking revolutional internal revelation that switches something.

and then dropped and ain't got back into it. But but that's the stuff where you do create meaning and purpose in life with those philosophical questions. And there's a there's a brilliant book that I actually got and that we were then sitting with our kids at dinner and would read it. I think it's called thirty second Philosophy, and it's basically taken some of the big philosophical thinking and having a story in a way that that that

everybody can understand, and then imposing some questions. And actually, my you know what, I knew that this was all worth it. So my daughter Kira made it's going to blow your mind. She's at UNI. She's at Melbourne UNI. Now you remember her when she was a little baby, So she is. She's studying biomedicine at UNI. And she was to take a broadening subject this year and she came back and said, I'm studying philosophy as a broaden I'm like that.

a gratitude survey. And we also did cognitive testing that was thelloped in at Britain Park where you're doing your PhD. And so these cognitive assessments were part of the whole cognitive fitness program that measure performance under pressure. And what we found is statistically significant improvements in hardiness, in resilience, in mood, in gratitude, in perceptions of stress, in inhibitory control,

and attentional control. The only one that didn't move the needle on was working memory, and we think probably because that takes longer to change. So and the research shows that hardiness can actually be learned. And that's why I love it because there's that clear process. And this is what I explore in the book. You know, the four season things that you can do to enhance your level amongst all of those things.

We know that lifestyle. We know that being around people that you love, the way that we socialize. We know that lying on the floor with your fucking golden retriever, if you love a golden retriever. We know that all of these things can change what's going on in our body. But it seems are the breaks coming on a little bit?

Do you think with this over medication of fucking throwing pills at everything, like, are we starting to learn that lifestyle and exercise and food and movement and who we hug or don't hug is as powerful or more powerful than drugs.

but her name is actually Kakia, which is vice. And he says to him, come this way, you will have an easy life. You will have a life of all of the comforts and indulgences and and all of that will be the expense of others, and it will be such a good, enjoyable life. And then then Araty that that basically translates his character, approaches him, and she's much plainer looking, but has this natural beauty, and she says, well, if you follow my path, this is the path to

true happiness. But it is the hard path. You will have to undergo severe challenges that will test and develop your character. But all and this is not easy, but ultimately this is the true path to fulfillment. And Hercules, as we all know, chooses the hard path of arity and has to go through the twelve trials of Hercules, and eventually he gets killed. But Zeus is the the the ultimate god, is so impressed with his character that he deifies him right, he makes them, he makes him

a demigod because of what he's actually done. And I think we are not at a crossroads. That that is how I set up the book. We are at the crossroads where we have comfort all around us. We have food at the tip of our fingertips, we don't have to move, we don't have to go through physical discomfort. We're in climate controlled environments. And if you've got an issue, where we have a pill for that, and it's the

path of Kakia. It's the easy path that seems to be the path that we should go down, but ultimately the true path is taking the path of ouritay and taking the path where you deliberately actually encounter hardships and you approach them with the right character. And that's the stuff that drives you on and gives you a life that you could be proud of.

I can. I can. We can just have this delusional kind of experience for an hour, or I can tell you shit that will actually if you do the work and if you apply the information, potentially change what's going on in your life now and forever. But you might not love it. You might not love the presentation, you know. And then and it's it's a bit of a it's complicated because they're like, well, you know, and of course they normally choose the latter, but it's that, you know,

that that obsession that we seem to have. And I'm using the global w and of course listeners, this is not everyone. It may not be you. But the addiction that we have to instant gratification, and whether that's whatever, drugs, booze, food, sex, comfort, you know, lying down whatever it is, like, what is the apart from telling me delaying gratification, what's the antidote to instant gratification? Because it feels like, and I'll shut up after this. It feels like where many of us

anyway are perpetually starting on Monday. Right it's not yeah, but it's because we love saying look not now for these reasons. And the reasons generally are not reasons by the way their excuses dressed up as reasons. But we always have this listen Monday or you know a similar version of Monday, because and then we wake up and it's fucking two thousand and thirty.

of honey or fat, right, is actually rewarding. It's the neurobiology of preference because fat is energy dense, honey is is quick, glue, quick sugar. Right, it's good, good for you in the in nature, but that has been hijacked by these food companies and ultra processed foods that give our brains a hit of dopamine that we were never designed to hold, right. And and all of these, all of the recreational drugs, they all act on neurotransmitters in

the brain. If we didn't have the neurotransmitter, if we didn't have an opioid receptor, heroin would do call for you, right, If we didn't have a serotonin receptor, Ecstasy wouldn't feel good. If we didn't have dopamine receptors, Cocaine wouldn't feel good. Right. So we have all of these things that have been created on our environment that hijack these natural systems that

motivate us to do stuff. And so what we've got to do for me really is making that choice about what path we go down, and choosing the hard path and that really that brings us into challenge orientation. Right. So challenge orientation is people high in hardiness challenge they view both change and adversity as opportunities for them to grow and develop, right, Whereas people low in heartiness challenge actually view these things as things to shy away from

and they get in a threat response. So and let me, let me explain how this works for people. So it's said, great, let's sake me and you are presented with the same potential stress or don't matter what that is if you view it as a challenge and I view it as a threat, and this happens instantaneously in your brain very quickly, you make a decision whether this is a challenge or a threat. With you viewing it as a challenge, you

go into what we call approach mode in psychology. So you know, you know about for our listeners, this is you lean in. You're motivated to actually engage with me with threat. I'm in the runaway mode, the flight part of fighter flight. You're in fight part. I'm in flight or freeze. I procrastinate, I delay, I bury my head in the sand, I run away, I avoid. We go to avoidance mode and then with the physiology, with a challenge response, you activate

Mark series showed this at Buffalo University. You activate the sympathetic adrenal modulary access the fight part of the fighter flight which involves the chemicals adrenaline and no adrenaline. That means that your cardiovascular system prepares for action. Your blood vessels dilate, blood flow gets more, it's more, cardiac output increases, oxygen uptake increases. It prepars your body to deal with things. Whereas may with a threat response, I go into HPI axis,

Cordisole comes over the top. That means that my blood vessels become constricted. Blood flow is less, blood flow to the brain is less. We go in, I go into shutdown mode. Now, the half life of those chemicals are very different. Adrenaline a new adrenaline. The half life is one to two minutes, and within about four half lives that chemical is back to base level. So within five minutes of this stressor you are back to homeostasis. Cordisole has a half life of about an hour an hour

and a half. That means that five hours later, I still have significant amount of stress hormones running through my body attacking my organs impacting upon my brain, affecting my ability to get to sleep right. These are the people who go to bed in their brain on fire. So and that's that can be a choice though, that challenge orientation. Yes, and I'll give you I'll give you an example. So you know some of the listeners who knows know that.

Last year I went to see a made a Man of carreologist just to get a check up on my health. Came in to get the results. He said, Hey, good news, your feller's a fiddle. Bad news. You were born with a dodgy aortic valve and you need open heart surgery. At some stage, I remember walking out of there and the words of Seneca hit me like a slap across the face. I pitied the man who has not faced adversity, because he has not faced a worthy opponent, and no one,

not even him, knows what he is capable of. So in that moment, I choose to And because I've learned this from reading all the hardiness research, reading Victor Frankel, reading the Stoics, we don't get to choose our circumstances, but we always get to choose how we respond. Now I embraced my open hearts as a worthy opponent, something

that would test and develop me. And I knew I have six months to prepare myself for my worthy opponent, and I actually embraced the open heart surgery, fully embraced it as a challenge to actually make me better and make me optimal. And we all have the opportunity about how we choose to face adversity and challenge. I was talking to Aunt Middleton the other day, you know Aunt Middleton from says You're tough enough. It was on his podcast and we were talking about this thing about life

and we have very similar views but slightly different. So for him, everything in life is a game. It's always a game, and the challenge comes up. This is a game, right I because I've been influenced by the stoic life is a contest and Epiciteta says, the Olympic Games are upon us. There is no time to waste, and so

you've got to be in the fucking contest. That's the thing, right, And you've got to welcome adversity that comes up, because it's just a shit sandwich from the universe, and you can play the victim and moesmy or you can go, Okay, this is a test, right, Yes, it's the Olympic Games of life. What am I going to do about this? And that leaning in and viewing as a challenge means that you're much more likely, number one, to engage and be proactive about it. But secondly, it massively changes your

physiology hugely. So someone is constantly in threat mode, they're just they've got corse all coursing around their friggin body. And this sorry, it's great just to add on this,

to expand on it. This is where I think we're going wrong because in schools they talk way too much about mental health conditions, and they're making all the kids aware of what anxiety is and what depression is, and the research is showing that it's making kids mental health worse because it's suggestible, oh fuck, maybe I do have anxiety, maybe I do have to pressure. And then their social

development stuff is about peers and acceptance. And so if I'm a group of friends and some of them have anxiety, oh I want to have anxiety so that I can fit in. And this this is this is evidence, bas this is this is not me, This is evidence, bast So what happens is that because this is the unintended consequence of well intentioned interventions. Right, and in the workplace, there's so much talk about psychological safety. Amy Edmundson created

psychological safety. Psychological safety is not about the right not to be fucking offended. That's horseshit. Psychological safety is feeling that I can speak up and give my views without fear of reprisal. Right, It's not that I feel a little bit off today. I'm on because somebody's spoken badly to me, So I'm going to have a fucking day off.

That's not what it's about. So we have gone and again well intentioned, but we've gone too far, and everything is threat threat threat threat threat out there.

meant to have. And so I feel a huge amount of sympathy for people who are like that. We now have to definitely choose the hard path, right, and we have to have this also, I'll throw in the last one, the control orientation, which is a deep belief that I control or heavily influence my environment and my destiny. And I focus on what I can control and don't put my energy in the stuff that I can't control and

look for me, it's that whole existential crisis, right. And you know, I'm not religious at all, but I actually think society has suffered from the breakdown of religion because religion give people a set of values and behaviors and a group to connect in with U and ways to actually behave and integrate. And now without that, lots of people are in an existential vacuum where they don't have that sense of meaning and purpose. They've never actually sat

down and gone, fuck, what are my values? Right? What are the key things that I want to live my life by? What's my compass? So for me, you know, they're things like like curiosity, gratitude, equanimity, and also just wanting to test myself. And so when you have that, authenticity is another one of mine. So this is the reason you know I'm irison ex military. I like a

tipple as much as anybody else. The reason I'm not an absolute piss head is the value of authenticity because I can't stand up and talk about peak performance if I'm drinking four or five nights a week, right, So we have to really find out what are our core values, what's our meaning and purpose in life, because that becomes the north star to guide us around behaviors and to help us to make the harder choices in life.

And I feel like some people would listen to you and go, well, he's a fucking genius. He's smart, he's articulate, he's a weapon, he's got this background that he's all these things. I'm not that I'm a pile of shit with no fucking potential and no you know, and not that any of our listeners are. But I know that people feel like that. I feel like it's easy to listen to podcasts. I feel this, but I also know this because I get told and it's almost overwhelming, Like,

where do I start? So somebody's listening to this, I would suggest probably lots of people are listening to this, and they go, Craig Paul, all makes sense. Nonetheless, I'm overwhelmed. I'm fucking overwhelmed mentally, emotionally, financially, I'm fucking terrified out of every second thing. I live in fucking upper wherever. And it's all well and good, and I love you both, and it makes sense. But where the fuck do I start? How can I open the door and create a little bit of momentum?

So if you start the day like that and do some work, do some get your get, do your tombstone statement, work out your values. You can just google a list of values to give you a bit of a guide around it. Right, So get clear on what you want to be remembered for, how you want to contribute, and get clear on your values, and then do an audit of your life. You know, how am I doing in my exercise, my food, my recovery, my family, all of

those things. Do a little bit of an order on your life, and pick with the low hanging fruit that you can get a small win. Set yourself some goals right, and get a process and just see if you can achieve something right and then take the next step. Because self efficacy for people who really struggle, they need some self efficacy, the belief that what they can do makes the difference. And it's so hard when you're in that hole.

You have to get clear on purpose and values and use those as a guide to help you to do the behaviors when it's hard, and then over time what you're doing is your devel up being disciplined. This is the big thing that people don't talk about. Why is it easy for Craig Harper, Why is it easy for Paul Dealer, Why is it easy for Aunt Middleton? Because we've all developed discipline from doing the stuff that we need to do even when the motivation for area is fucked off for a holiday.