Eric Greitens: Resilience, Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
EPISODE 147
Why do we hurt, feel self-doubt and constantly struggle throughout life? What does it take to overcome all the obstacles? The bottom line is that hardship is a part of life, but only by facing up to it and learning to tackle all of life’s challenges will we achieve our full potential. So how do you do that? With resilience.
Author Eric Greitens, in his correspondence with fellow Navy SEAL veteran Zach, wrote his book; Resilience, Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life (Purchase on Amazon), where he tries to find the qualities, practices, and training needed to become resilient against the harder parts of life. His search took him through history, philosophy, and beyond. Ultimately, it seems the ancient struggle we face as humans has a solution that’s equally ancient.
SHOW OUTLINE
INTRO
Eric, what sets this book apart
Build a resilient life (1m46)
HOW TO PREPARE FOR DIFFICULTY
Eric, learn to worry productively
Mental rehearsal (2m03)
Eric, building mental toughness
Segmenting (2m44)
HOW TO FIND STRENGTH
Eric, you can forge strength at the broken places by taking control over aspects of your life
Circle of Control (1m39)
OUTRO
Eric, find inspiration from others
Find a Model for Life (2m33)
CLIP CREDITS
Eric Greitens: Resilience, Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
TRANSCRIPT
And welcome to The Moonshots podcast. It's episode 147. I'm your co-host Mike Parsons. And as always I'm joined by the man with the plan is to Mark Pearson Freeland. Good morning, mark. Good morning, Mike. And what a day for planning day for resilience day for digging in deep. It is today. How are you? I'm ready to get the job done.
And I think today's show is going to help us do that. Yeah, I think you're totally right. Last week we were hearing from Angela Duckworth and her studies, her research, her almost analytical, look at the idea of grit, the idea of resilience and how important that is in all of our lives, particularly when we're either about to, or currently going through things that are pretty hard day to day.
Mike, if last week was all about laying a foundation for you and me and our listeners to see the value in grit, the valley. In cultivating a resilient mindset this [00:01:00] week, Mike, it's all about practicality this week. We're going get digging into Eric, greetings his book, resilience hard, won wisdom for living a better life.
Yeah. It's all about getting resilience happening, making it something that is reasonable achievable and something within your means. Because as you said, Angela Duckworth, she made the case for why those that are resilient win and win big. And we've discovered that on the show, whether it's Einstein, whether it's Joe Rogan and everything in between, we're seeing resilience is a big part of success.
Way more than talent. Talent only gets you so far resilience and mindset. The game-changer and today I think we're going to hear from somebody who has not only survived on the battlefields of war, but somebody who has helped [00:02:00] millions of people to form a more resilient mindset, but to do it through hard or one wisdom, I think is spot on what a one, two punch Angela, and then Eric, mark.
I can't wait. Yeah, exactly me neither. I think it's a great little pat, because I think as Angela revealed to us, and as you just touched upon Mike, we're all gonna run into moments of hardship of challenge. Particularly in either our work lives, our careers or our personal lives on avoidable hardship is going to happen.
So with Eric coming from the frontline, as well as dealing with challenges in the personal life, and as we'll hear from some colleagues of his, he's really taken a look at how he got through different things in life, how he got through Navy seal training, how he gave practical advice to his friends, so that you and I, and our listeners can take a little bit of a lesson away from that.
And what's [00:03:00] interesting, Mike is there's references in there that, again, data all the way back to ancient Greece, this idea of stoicism, once again, is coming through in a lot of this idea, and this work about resilience. This is like for anyone who's enjoyed our Ryan holiday series, which you can, if you haven't heard, you can go and grab@moonshots.io.
We had a deep dive with Ryan holiday and his whole series of books around stillness around obstacles or why our egos are such a big problem. And in this show, we're going to take a, like a slightly different to this is going to be someone who also has a love of the ancients and the Stoics, but somebody who talks about it through a lens of the practicalities of life.
So I want you to think, I want you to imagine that we're going to have a look at how to prepare yourself [00:04:00] to how to cultivate resilience and then what you can do in the heat of the moment to hold on to that resilience. Because the biggest enemy here. Is giving up. And that's the thing that this show is really going to help you with.
So with no further ado, let's set the scene together with Eric and how he frames his book. Resilience hard, won wisdom for living a better life (buy on Amazon) with no further ado, let's hear from the author himself. So this book came when I was driving down highway 70 in the middle of Missouri and my buddy Zach Walker called me.
Now, Zach is a tough kid from a Northern California logging family. He was in my buds class, my basic underwater demolition seal training class. And even in a seal training class, he was one of the toughest of the tough guys in this class. And we stayed friends after we left the training. He went to the east coast.
I stayed on the west coast and he came back from a deployment in Afghanistan. And when he [00:05:00] came back, things were going all right. At first he was a good father to his two young kids. He bought a concrete pumper. He started a small business and then. His life was just hammered by hardship. What happened was his brother died.
He lost his business and then one day he drove his truck into his driveway. He got out of the truck and fell to the ground because he believed that there was a sniper watching him. And he laid there for hours until the sun went down and then he got up and he ran into the, into his house and he realized he had post-traumatic stress disorder.
And then he started drinking and on the weekend it was not a six pack, but a cooler full of beer that he was working on. And he called me after he'd been arrested. So you had this guy who was a Navy seal war hero coming home from Afghanistan. Who now is the unemployed alcoholic on disability. Who's looking at having his kids come to visit him in jail.
And we talked a lot that night. When I got home, I started writing him. He wrote back to me and we did this for months with letters back and forth. And [00:06:00] the book now is a series of edited letters to my friends at Walker about how you can take a lot of this wisdom that's in our philosophical and religious traditions, how you can take a lot of wisdom from your own experience and use it to build a resilient life.
What a great little introduction from Eric, Mike, this one is still so much. Yeah. I can relate to the undeniable hardships that both Eric, as well as his friend, Zach, who suffers from that, that PTSD have been through. I couldn't even imagine, but as. Think about the stresses or the seeming stress the illusion of stress that I have, day-to-day this concept of determining how to build that resilient life through fair experience and the teachings of others.
I'm so ready to learn from Eric and his book (buy on Amazon). I [00:07:00] think what's so great. Is this frames, the writing and the wisdom and the thinking of Eric Greitens, because you can see here that he's packaging it up for a friend who's going through immense hardship and look the practical.
And the most baseline reality is we all face challenge and obstacles. So if now you've leveled out and you can say, Hey. Stephane. Perfect. But that's all right, because we have a lot of answers here and the the wisdom that we're about to decode and to apply to our lives. It's so damn practical.
It's not necessarily easy to do, but it is definitely powerful for us because it really is very crisp, articulated arguments for how we can tackle hardship in our lives. And look, the reality is that most of us will face nothing like Zack. We won't be in [00:08:00] Afghanistan with people shooting at us.
So therefore, if this was something that Eric could do to help him and many others, it can help you, our listeners. So all you moonshot is I want you to know that what we're about to rip into is four big ideas, things that you can do in your life. And you should feel not overwhelmed at the idea of resilience, but you should feel excited that some of the practices that you can come back.
And use every single day are going to be in this show. That is, this is true moonshot of stuff, isn't it, man. Yeah. And it reminds me of a quote that I think we've covered on the show before the idea of replacing fear of the unknown with curiosity that. Spoke to me, as we were digging to Eric's work about resilience, fear of the unknown, being something that I think we probably a lot of us deal with day to day.
But when you look at it with the lessons that we're going to [00:09:00] learn today from Eric Greitens, his book, along with a lens of curiosity, okay, what can I learn from this? How interesting is this experience to test me and see how I react to things similar to how Angela was revealing to us last week?
That to me is inspiring me to get out and try and live that more growth mindset life, yeah. I think this is really captured in an experience that we all have, which is public speaking, and people often fear it the great coaches of public speakers and peak speakers talk about transitioning from the fear of speaking in front of people.
To the excitement to speak to people and what shifts do their preparation, what this book is by Eric greetings, resilience, hardwire, one wisdom for living a better life is preparation. And I think preparation is something we know that you and listeners really love to do. That's why you're listening to the [00:10:00] show to prepare yourselves, to be the best version of yourself.
And before we play the first clip, man, we shouldn't welcome. The new moonshot is the new members that have signed up to be part of this. So it might, who do we need to welcome today? We want to welcome Byron Jones, Tom Osmund, the Atmar Bauer. We're saying hello again to can to modulation Sandy Neil Brighty, Terry John Neils, and our grandfather moonshot or member Bob Nali as well.
We've got all sorts of exciting members joining us. Day-to-day week-to-week on our member series, Mike, and we really appreciate you becoming members because your support becoming patrons of our moonshots podcast means number one, you don't hear any crappy ads on the show. How good is that mark?
Give me an ad free life any day. Hey, mark. Do you want to get a Squarespace website? Come [00:11:00] on. Let's talk about Squarespace. What else? What else are all they're really crappy ads. We always hear there's a lot of CRM systems like monday.com. I see a lot of those. What else? I'm getting a lot of home gym, home, GS setups, and those are coming through on my.
The moonshots workout pack brought to you by whatever, none of that ladies and gentlemen. So we ask that that we kind of exchange value together, mark and I, and the whole team at moonshots, we packaged together for you a show every single week. And in return we ask you to become members.
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You can check out our transcripts, our clip lists, our recommended reading lists and all 147 shows including this week, Eric greetings and last week's Angela Duckworth, both part of our series on resilient. Okay. So I'm talking about resilience. It's all about preparation and preparation is something that Eric Greitens has some wisdom to share.
We all worry. And when you're worried, a lot of people will tell you, [00:13:00] don't worry. It's usually terrible advice because you're gonna worry anyway. So now you just feel bad about the fact that you're worrying. If you care about what you're doing, you are going to worry. That's a good thing. The key is to learn, to worry productively.
And the way to worry productively is to engage in a practice called mental rehearsal and mental rehearsal. You imagine things that might happen, and then you imagine how you'll react. You imagine your way through difficulty stoic thinkers often called this the premeditation of evils. Seneca said everyone approaches a danger with more courage.
If he has prepared in advance, how to confront. Resilient people know that life is going to be hard. So they prepare themselves for hardship. Go ahead and imagine bad things that might happen. Imagine that you've misplaced your notes. When you stand up to speak, imagine that you've lost your job. Imagine that you've lost a loved one.
Imagine that you're broke. [00:14:00] Then imagine what you'll do to make it through a Navy seal. Master chief mentor of mine will guile taught us that when you are ambushed by hardship, you can easily be overcome by events. And when you're ambushed and unprepared, you often don't react. If you're going to spend time thinking about bad things that might happen, then use that energy for a purpose instead of wallowing in your worries.
Imagine how you'll respond to them. If that happens, I could do this. When you mentally rehearse, don't imagine success falling into your lap. Imagine everything that tingling at the back of your neck, the fear in the pit of your stomach, your mind is built to prepare for problems. The goal of mental rehearsal isn't to fill your head with happy thoughts about the future, but to prepare yourself to succeed in the real world, the naive mind, imagines, effortless success, the cowardly mind imagines hardship, and freezes, the resilient mind, imagines hardship, and prepare.[00:15:00]
You are built to deal with problems and challenges. I like this approach, Mike, this idea of preparing yourself for difficulties, because as Eric's already called out, you will run into challenges. You will run into hardships. Mike I'm sitting here thinking this is great. I should start looking at my challenges that I run into and even the free moments that I have during my day and utilize those feelings of maybe anxiety or worry more productively because I can learn from them.
And I think I can utilize them to become that little bit more resilient. Oh yeah. And this is really good. I'll tell you from a personal perspective, the reason I like this is I think I was a victim of over optimism in my. Earlier years. I think I was perhaps a [00:16:00] little guilty of wishful thinking, oh, it'll be great.
And then things unravel, but there's this really powerful thought that we had in the Del Carnegie show, which is ask yourself what is the worst that can happen. Now, this is really interesting because there's also some mental models based around rather than saying, what do we need to do to succeed?
What you can actually do is ask yourself what failure would look like and call out what are like the three things that would have happened if this was to fail. And then you can say how do we prevent those three things from occurring? So you flip everything around. And for those of you who are listening, who are maybe a little bit guilty of over optimistic and wishful thinking, like I have a tendency to be this whole line of thinking mental rehearsal, asking yourself what is the worst that can happen.
Or as the Stoics would say, the premeditation of evils, I find this in [00:17:00] life, just insanely powerful for someone who's an optimist like me. Market. Would you consider yourself an optimist or a pessimist? And how does it work for you? You know what? I have a feeling I'm bridging between optimists and pessimists nowadays.
Oh, sorry. Now optimist and realist. Sometimes perhaps the same as you might, I fall into the pessimists side and I think what's the point. It's not going to work. Why should I spend any more time trying to make this thing happen? Why don't I just give up? In that mode, did the Angela Duckworth show help you by pointing out that it's natural to have those doubts, concerns, fears, and questions.
Did that kind of give you a convincing argument to, to keep going? Oh yeah. The Angela Duckworth grit has actually had quite a resounding [00:18:00] effect upon me since last week actually might come up in my mind. Quite a number of times, actually much as you called out episode 119 Dale Carnegie, how to stop worrying there were so many elements in both of those shows.
Sunk into my psyche. And I think you're right. I think when I was younger, I was probably a bit of an optimist as well. And the idea of grit and specifically today, the idea of resilience is how I can combat personally those moments when the worry or the anxiety really does turn me away from trying to solve the problem and to find that resolution and instead, just putting it away and thinking, man I can't deal with this.
Move on. Yeah. Yeah. So this mental rehearsal or premeditation of evils starts with asking the question, what's the worst that can happen. [00:19:00] And then if you, except that the worst thing that could happen today is X, Y, and Z. Then you can say how do I prevent it? What would be the steps to take?
And then if you are taking those steps, it is it's strangely calming. And what often has a whole lot of thinking that supports this idea that we often so much of what we worry about never actually occurs what the fear that can grip us, the concern or the anxiety that can grip us actually doesn't turn out.
So by doing this idea of mentor hustle that Eric Greitens is talking about, we can then almost preempt premeditate if challenge is coming away, which hopefully it is because it means you're really stretching yourself. Then actually when those things turn up, they don't shock you because you've actually already considered that this may occur.
So I love this idea. I have a plan, a have a plan B, have a plan C [00:20:00] and know that it could get really ugly. And at the end of the day, invariably, if you have done mental rehearsal, you will have accepted what the worst that could have happened, but it actually didn't. So you actually say, huh that's not such a bad result in the end, is it?
And I think that's the power of this practice, mental rehearsal. Yeah. One of the ways Mike, that I do it from a a practical perspective, I try and write things down on a bit of a writer. So I like either journaling or when I'm doing my work day, I'll put it in a Google doc maybe, and there might be a challenge.
So I'll break it down. I think this could go wrong because we might not get what we need or this could go wrong because I know such and such is going on a holiday. So we might experience some delays. So trying to. Almost right out, like you say, each of those experiences or [00:21:00] things that could happen.
Yeah. It is very cathartic because once you've done that, it's no longer a jumble of words in my mind, instead of now looking at it on a page and it's contextualized. So that mental rehearsal for me is all about bringing it out of my brain, putting it onto a piece of paper and then looking at it objectively and saying, okay yeah I could handle this.
Maybe I need to go and talk to such and such, but this feels now achievable. Yeah. So one thing that Eric just pointed out as well is not only think about this premeditation of evils, but actually feel it in advance. And sometimes this can be misconstrued as being very negative, but I think when you choose to premeditate those evil.
To mentally rehearse and accept that things could go bad and you're willing to entertain those thoughts. Here's the thing, when you are choosing to [00:22:00] entertain these thoughts, when you're rehearsing, Hey, I'm going to try option a, if that doesn't work BC it could get really there could be some real challenge here.
I accept that. If it happens, I'll probably think about it this way. What he's saying is feel it as well, because you are choosing to, so it is very different to you being in the moment, being totally unprepared for things to go wrong. And you from speaking out, experiencing stress, anxiety, fear, flight, all of those sorts of things.
You can be cool as a cucumber and just think about it. Think about great athletes who are mentally strong when the hour comes, when the moment comes, where they have to make the winning shot. They are prepared to do it. I think many of us, when we face great challenge, haven't done the mentor rehearsal and we're not mentally and emotionally prepared, which is why we, [00:23:00] what do we do, mark?
We give up, what else do we do when we're not mentally prepared? Yeah. We'll fall apart. And blame judgment. Look at him. He didn't do that. Look at her. She didn't do this. It's not my fault. Those are all the things that are symptoms of not having mentally rehearse, not having asked what's the worst could happen and being prepared.
What happens with great teams and great individuals is that they're prepared to be uncomfortable. They're prepared to be gritty as per Angela Duckworth and they're ready to fight hard for the wins in life for living a better life. And I think this is a great starting point, but man, There's a follow-up thought from Eric is in there.
That is just as powerful. And that's right. If mental rehearsal is let's call it part one our ability to prepare ourselves for difficulty, the idea of [00:24:00] segmenting is equally as important. So now let's hear from Eric telling us about how we can use segmenting to build mental toughness, to be resilient.
You have to build mental toughness. And when I was going through the Navy seal training, there was a great mentor of mine. Navy seal, master chief Wil Giled who taught me a really important mental toughness technique called second. Now segmenting is a fancy word for taking something that's really big, looks really scary and breaking it down into really small and attackable pieces.
And we saw at the hardest moment of the hardest week of the hardest military training in the world, why segmenting was so important. So what happened was we were going through hell week and how our week is considered to be the hardest week of the hardest military training in the world. And over the course of that week, they've got you doing things like physical training on the beach with logs away, several hundred pounds.
They have you're running races with your teams and out of the ocean, they have you're running the obstacle course, running down the beach, swimming in the ocean. It's a week of intensive [00:25:00] physical training. And the hardest moment of that week comes at the beginning of the second night. So for a lot of people, their adrenaline carries them through the first night, carries them to the next.
And then that we arrived at the beginning of the second night. And you're thinking to yourself, I am more tired and more exhausted and more beaten than I have ever been in my entire life. And what happened then was it, the instructors brought everybody out and they had us watch on the beach as the sun was setting.
And as the sun was going down, the instructors came out and they got on their bullhorns and they said, say, good night to the sun. We're all watching the sun go down tonight is going to be the worst night of your lives. We're home watching the sun go down. And I can remember I was standing there and I saw out of the corner of my eye that something broke in the class and people started running for the bell running forward.
And you could hear it going off. Ding ding, ding, as people quit our class. Now, what was amazing was after all of the difficult things that they'd asked us to do in the seal team training, swim 50 [00:26:00] meters underwater, swim down 50 feet and tie a knot, tie your feet together and your hands behind your back and make you jump in the pool, who would have thought that the hardest moment of the hardest week of the hardest military training in the world would come when all they had actually asked us to do.
It was stand on the beach and watch the sunset. But what happened then? And what happened throughout the training? Was it what made people quit was when they were thinking about how hard something was going to be, how painful something was going to be, how difficult something was going to be, what master chief will gile taught us was all you can do to be courageous is to master this moment.
That's all you can do. So be strong, be focused on doing what you need to do right now. And if you build that mental habit of segmenting and you build that kind of toughness, you'll become more resilient. What a great story that the the seals were all for hanging out when they were [00:27:00] just standing, watching the sunset and not when they were grinding it out in all these incredibly tough exercises.
Can you relate to that mug that. Like it was the, just the thought that they were telling the seals you are about to have the toughest night of your life. That sounds pretty crazy, doesn't it? Yeah. I think there's a juxtaposition that exists in what I would have anticipated or expected to be one of the hardest bits.
So what I would try to describe is physical hardships. So swimming, underwater, lifting heavy weights, being physically tired is quite different to the mentor. Tiredness that we can experience when you know, things are getting a little bit tough. And I think what Eric's calling out there is we've made it, me and the [00:28:00] team we'd made it through all these difficult things.
I mentioned being in a throne, a pool with your hands and your feet tied together, by the way, that's going to be difficult. And the fear, the anticipated fear that he and his classmates had as, as the sun was going down and the the master chiefs were calling out what's going to happen. Next is going to be even worse.
That fear of the unknown was actually more challenging. As they thought ahead then the physical side. And for me, I have, I think I've experienced that before, not to this extent, of course, but my I'm my own worst enemy is often myself because I'll exacerbate things in my mind or catastrophize things in my mind, to an extent where I'll almost be afraid of a situation.
And that I think is pretty consistent with this story that Eric's breaking down in the segmenting clip, because he's saying people were [00:29:00] folding at just the idea of what was going to happen next without even seeing what it was imagined. Yeah. Yeah. So this kind of really speaks to the fact that.
The things, the outcomes that you're imagining that have yet to occur are causing such fear that they went, rang the bell and left the program. Isn't that fascinating because I think if we all pause for a moment that we're all victims of, over-processing the possibilities of the future when they actually have yet to occur.
You can in a discipline where I do mental rehearsal, but you don't need to keep coming back. Experiencing the dread or the worry of something that has not happened [00:30:00] because it may in fact not happen. So how many times in life mark, have you experienced this thing where you worried a lot about something and it turned out to be something you didn't need to worry about?
Have you ever had that so many times? And the truth is I still do it. I still go through those processes even after spending however many years in a career, as well as life dealing with all of that. Isn't it crazy. So here's the really powerful practices segmenting, and I will I'll tell it a little bit through the show that we did on echo toe and the power of now.
So segmenting says. I appreciate that you have this big grand vision and purpose that you want to achieve in life. I appreciate that I'm going to do mental rehearsal and prepare for things, not working out, but the way [00:31:00] you can see that the Navy seals that got through this moment, they did something where they came back into the now, because those that rang the bell mark, here's what I propose.
They were too busy worrying about the future, right? Yeah. That's exactly how I hear it. Yep. So they're worrying about the future to such an extent that they can't even enjoy a sunset. They're just freaked out. So here's what Eric and his book says that you can do in the moment, which has great parallels with the show that we did on the power of now, what is the thinking?
Is this. There is, you can reflect on the past. That's fine, but there is no benefit for causing worry or in the case of the past or regret about the past something has happened. It happened. Okay. You can learn from it, [00:32:00] but don't go back and feel both mentally, emotionally, and physical. Don't go and keep dragging that back up because it's in the past.
So regretting the past is a very much a non segmenting practice. What Eric would say is forget about the past, like the cadets and the Navy seals, looking at the sunset. You have to stop worrying about the future. Okay. Because. Just cause they're saying it will be the worst night of your life.
Maybe when you finish it, you might say it was the hardest thing I ever did. And I'm so proud and it was great, it wasn't nice, but it was great for me. Okay. So back to the segmenting. So what do you do with segmenting? You appreciate that you've planned for the past paying for the future. You've learned and reflected on the past.
No regrets. No worries. [00:33:00] You bring yourself into the, now this is how you segment. What you do is you go and listen to which show number was . I can't remember, but I listened to a very good number episode 1, 2, 3 episode, 123 of the moonshots podcast. We spend a whole show going into this segmenting, the power of.
What do you do when you think about Paris? Now you may simply go to your senses. Can I feel smell? See here, this all brings you into the moment. Can I breathe?
Can I put one foot forward in front of the other? Can I hear the birds? This is the now. So if your, a Navy seal cadet in hell week, you have to stand on the beach. The sun is [00:34:00] setting and they're telling you it's going to be the toughest night of your life. You say, can I stand, can I see the waves? Can I smell the sea salt?
Can I appreciate the breadth that I am taking? This is the core practice to prevent oneself from regretting the past and worrying about the future. I'm not going to say it's easy, but these segments bringing yourself into the now just being in the moment, becoming very grateful for each step.
If you're eating a meal, savor each bite, these are all things that are told talks about, and this makes up this process or this practice of segmenting. And it's incredibly powerful because look, mark, we have to think about getting into the power of now because we don't want to be those guys that run for the bell and ring [00:35:00] the bell because just the thought of a tough night freaks us out Dewey.
I liked what you said a moment ago, actually, and I want to revisit it. It might actually be one of your best nights. Yeah, cause you complete it much like a marathon or a race of some kind of, if you train for it and you're going through it, oh, this is tough. But when you finish it, you've interacted fully.
You've really immersed yourself into that moment. And you've completed it. You can look back whether it's with relief or pride or whatever it might be when you know that you've completed it and you dug in deep and you pushed as hard as you could. That's a feeling that nobody else can give you only you can give yourself then.
Totally true. So there you have it. This is all about preparing yourself, setting yourself up to be resilient, to be gritty, mentally rehearse, and then segment [00:36:00] in the moment. Those are great ways to get yourself. Prepared ready to do the job, ready to go and embrace the discomfort to go out and do something that really means something that's like an extension of your purpose that helps people around you that serves people around you.
What a great site. It's a bit of a relief team to dig into this somewhat ominous topic of resilience. Isn't it markets. It's pretty empowering. Isn't it? I think it's quite natural that we will hear stories like with Angela from a research perspective. And now from Eric from a physical Navy seal perspective, because resilience quite literally interacts or engages every single person.
Doesn't it. It's something we all, we don't get taught. It's not something that we'll cover in school, but it's something that we almost learn dynamically throughout life. And actually as we found in today's episode, as well as [00:37:00] last week's, it's something that deserves attention much like the show and Eckhart Tolle, you will ride.
There is a parallel there that teaches us how to be more resilient and patients and cope with anxieties and worries because it's something that we all need to learn as we get older it's becoming more and more of a topic that I think is in the forefront of my mind as I'm coping with different pressures and so on.
It's such a huge topic that it's quite exciting to me to really dig into it and understand how I can be a little bit more resilient to. Yeah, good stuff. I'll tell you what else is good stuff. And that's our new master series that we've been producing. Market's pretty it's pretty cool that we have a second show.
Don't you think? Yeah, that's right. Listeners. You can pop along go and join us, come and join us on the moonshots members' site where you can not only check out our [00:38:00] first episode. Which Mike was all about a little thing, mode motivation. If there's anything that we really need to be motivated, you can go and really understand a comprehensive, deep dive into the concept of motivation.
Then Mike, we dug into this a little thing called first principles. I think that was a pretty big topic, right? Mental models. Oh my gosh. Huge. I love them. I wish I had more time to read up and mental models. Exactly. Listeners and members, you can go and check out our deep dive into first principles over in the members page.
And Mike we've even launched our third episode on teamwork. And that I got to admit teamwork was one of my favorite topics that we've done so far. Just because again, it's something that we will, we don't necessarily learn it necessarily, but it's something that impacts all of our lives and there's so much content and lessons and advice that we can dig into and learn.
With regards to the [00:39:00] teamwork and how we can collaborate better and communicate better with other people. So true. So true. It's teamwork is essential to success, but I don't think it's spoken about enough. I don't think there's enough training of individuals on how to be good team mates.
So that's why we did that show on the moonshots master series. And if you would like to get access to the moonshots master series, you need to go to moonshots.io, become a member and you will every single month get. What I think is like the definitive kickoff masterclass for first principles, motivation, teamwork.
There's some good ones to come. We'll tell you about those later in the show, but become a member, support us, join us. As we learn out loud together and how we become the very best version of ourselves and mark, there is a practice. If you want to [00:40:00] become the best version of yourself, there is this idea called the circle of control or your circle of influence.
It's sometimes called. And do you know what Eric has got thoughts on that too? So let's crack into an idea that is very powerful. It's a good build on segmenting, which we just talked about. Let's hear from Eric greetings, author of resilience, hard won wisdom for living a better life. Let's get into this idea.
Circle of control. Everybody has to deal with hardship. Everybody has to do is struggle. And there's this great quotation from Hemi. Hemingway. The world is a hard place. He said in the world breaks everyone. And he said, and many are strong at the broken places. Now people often remember this phrase strong at the broken places, but it's also important to remember his qualifier.
Many, not all are strong at the broken places. In some people when they confront hardship actually ended up in a place where they're helpless. Some people are broken by suffering. Some [00:41:00] people are actually really hurt by pain in such a way that they can't move forward. But it's also the case that some people deal with hardship and become heroic.
And one of the things that I've tried to do in these letters to my friend is actually show him what you have to do in a really practical way to actually build resilience and be heroic. Now, one of those things is that you have to learn how to take responses. Okay. If there was a single question that you can ask someone to measure how resilient they're going to be, you ask them, what are you responsible for and what you find is it even in the most difficult situations, when you look at stories of people who've been prisoners of war, for example, people who survived said, I'm going to take control of my thoughts, or I'm going to take control of the way that I breathe.
There are certain things, even though my freedom has been taken away from me, that my ability to eat, where I live, all of these things have been taken away from me. I'm still going to control something. And when you focus on actually taking control of something, and what [00:42:00] happens is your circle of control, begins to widen.
And people begin to see that even in the face of hardship and difficulty, there's a way for them to build power and live a purposeful life. Wow. This is such a huge piece of advice, Mike, that. Totally believe in and has actually helped me a lot over the past couple of years when w some of our liberties got taken away or at least restricted because of lock downs and so on.
For me, the idea that I was still in control of something, and I could choose what I physically did about it. What I mentally did about it was very valuable to me. Was it equally a concept, an idea, a mental model that you've encountered in utilized before? Yeah, I think I think it's something that I've run into this idea of [00:43:00] your circle of control on like where you can put your energy, but the relief of saying, Hey, something is within my circle of control means you can really devote yourself to it.
And when you say this is totally out of my circle of control then you can say, all right the weather is for example, something that's totally out of my circle of control. So that's a very like casual kind of thing, but there's many other things that, that, that form that totally out of your control category.
But it's very powerful because apart from knowing where you could put your energy, releasing yourself from oh it is completely out of my control too. This thing. So I will therefore not worry about it. I'm not going to let it ruin my day. [00:44:00] I'm going to focus on the things that I control and the benefit for me, mark has been that when I make a choice to be very focused on the things I control and I do them, that is the start of feeling fulfilled in life.
For example, if you say my work ethic, okay, how much I give to the tasks at hand, this is something that I have complete control over whether I get the results or not, or if it, that, that project or that task has a lot of dependencies that are out of my control. The bare minimum I can say is I turned up and in America, they have this great saying that you leave it all on the field.
Meaning regardless of the result of your sports game, you, the individual, or hopefully you, the team played as hard as you. For as long as you could, you gave your best and there's zero left in the tank. That is something [00:45:00] that to use the sports analogy, if you lost the game, but you gave it everything you can, it becomes far more easier to feel, to not only accept the outcome, but actually to still feel satisfied or even a level of fulfillment and pride Hey, I turned up and gave my best.
And in the end giving all of you, God, like in terms of your work ethic is directly within your control. So when you did that, you can accept the result because I turned up, I worked damn hard. That's how it's worked for me. And of course, yes. All the challenges of 20, 20 and 2021.
It's okay. Have probably made me more aware of my thoughts, my words, my actions, my reactions, my decisions, my attitudes, and my mood, all of those items, mark, I believe, are within our control and would meet Eric [00:46:00] Greitens practice of focusing on those things. Which of those do you think when you, when I go through that list, is there one there that you're like, Hey, you know what.
I should spend more time acknowledging that this one is in my control. Is there any of those kinds of strikes you've maybe let it slip out of your Sococo of control? I think the, so I'll just revisit them for our listeners. Your thoughts, your words, your actions, and behavior, your reactions, your decisions, and choices, your attitude and mindset, your mood, the work ethic are all within your direct control on.
They might, for me, I think the one that I can still work on or that I should prioritize working on are my emotional elements, my reactions, and I don't mean reactions from a physical perspective throwing a puncture or whatever it's reactions to myself [00:47:00] internally. So how am I reacting to this situation?
Interesting. I have a lot of anxiety over this issue. Okay. Let's have a look. How can I proactively fix this? Okay. Might it be that's I think something that bubbles to the surface, when I reflect on things that are within my direct circle of control. And it's very powerful, isn't it? So this, I want you to imagine, as you're listening to us talk, there's three concentric circles, right?
In the target things like your thoughts, your reactions, your choices you made, those are all directly within your circle of control. Now, the second layer are things that you have some effect on, but you don't have total control. Mike, what's a good idea or a good example of things in this second band of control directly related to the area that I want to work on.
So my reactions, my emotions to things, something that are not directly in my control are other people's thoughts. [00:48:00] How other people might be thinking about me or about the work that I do. I can't really control that. Can I, Mike you have some effect and you can. Do your best, you can make your case to other people.
Hey, here's what I've done. Here's how I've gone about it. Even if the result is not what you want. It's it's amazing. Like I think the goodness in people is when they actually can understand the effort and the contribution that someone has done the best, I think that can help. But in the end, if someone wants to draw a different conclusion from that, then you have to accept that.
You have to say, I accept that you choose to perceive it in a different way. And I think another good one is what's not in your direct control and I'm saying this as a parent is your child's future. Parents, [00:49:00] they love their kids. They want the best for their kids in the end they have some influence on that.
They can bring certainly opportunity. Good counsel, safety, love all that good stuff. But in the end they don't have total control because it's up to the kid who they want to be. So that's a good example. Isn't it? What else is a good example of this second circle of control, where you don't have total control, but you have some influence.
I think one that might be on people's mind is from a social media perspective. You might have influence, or you might inspire people to perhaps follow you on social media, but you can't really directly control Mike who actually follows you on social media. Can you totally true.
And so you can put your bet the best version of yourself out there. And then again, this is how Eric Greitens is helping us be resilient. You did your best. [00:50:00] You made your case in this kind of secondary, you did what you could for others, but in the end, their actions will be their choices. And this builds us a bridge to this third circle, which is things you have zero, zero control over, right?
So this is when let's keep the social media line going. This is when people who you don't know, come and attack you, criticize you do all sorts of crazy stuff. Mark, I've got a great example of this. We we had a review of our show a couple of years ago and the listener was absolutely shocked.
And thought it was terrible that we didn't interview personally these people, but that we will. Playing clips of these people and in their perception what we were doing was [00:51:00] incredibly deceptive to our audience. And my first thought is we never said that we were interviewing, but what you find yourself doing is you're tended to be in a conversation with that person.
But the best thing you can do is say I have zero control of that person. I don't even know them. They are drawing a conclusion that is pretty unusual for me and what you do. Is you forget about it. You do just ignore it. Joe Rogan famously said like he doesn't read any comments anymore on his work because he has zero control over it, but it is incredibly distracting.
It can get you very off track. So a big thing here is you've got these three circles, your inner circle, total control, your thoughts, your effort, [00:52:00] the second band of control. These are things that are affected traditions. This is how you're working with others. How you work within your family or your workplace, you have some influence, but not total control that's for sure.
And the third one is like the weather, the traffic, what crazies do out on social media getting trolled, you have zero control of it. So best to avoid worrying about it. You can read about these things. If you choose, but don't allow yourself to become occupied with them because you have no influence.
You have absolutely no influence on it. So where you can take a particularly when the world is crazy and this outer band of things. Focus more on the things that you're doing and that you control because you can derive satisfaction. You can derive fulfillment from them. I think this is a massive idea.
Don't you mind? What [00:53:00] are useful breaks down of these different circles in a, all the way to Alto control circles? I feel Mike is though I need to print this off and put it on my wall to reflect upon because much like Angela Duckworth's grit score. I feel as though this this I suppose mental model can be referred back to in the future content as a reminder, or not necessarily a mantra, but it is something, a template that you can refer back to and say, okay am I wasting time by worrying about that strangers comments on social media?
Yes. In which case is Eric would encourage us to do, go and use it. Productively and proactively and beneficially by working something that you can control. This is a huge distinction. Yeah. And what a great build off the work of Angela Duckworth, who's made the case for resilience. And now Eric is this is how you do it.
And I think what we have left till the [00:54:00] end of the show is perhaps one of the most newest thoughts surprising thoughts from author Eric greetings. So let's have a listen to his thoughts on how we find a model for life. Imagine that someone came to you and placed a giant bag of jigsaw puzzle pieces on the table in front of you and asked you to put all the pieces together.
Now think what's the first thing you'd ask for first. You'd probably ask for a reason, why are you asking me to do a puzzle? But if for the moment you accept that you're going to do the puzzle. What would you ask for I'm guessing you'd ask for a. You don't want to know how all of the pieces come together.
You'd want to know what you're trying to make. Now. Here's the thing. Life hands you pieces. You have to figure out how to put them together. Your life doesn't come with a picture of what it's supposed to look like on the box. You have to, you [00:55:00] get to choose that picture for yourself and you choose it by looking from model of a life.
Well lived. I started boxing when I was 19. I was in college. And during the day on campus, I studied Aristotle. Now Aristotle told his students that what is valuable and pleasant to a morally good person actually is valuable and pleasant. In other words, you know what the good thing is by seeing what the good person does.
If you want to know how to live well, don't make things more complicated than they need to be. Just look at a model of someone who's already lived in. Start there after reading Aristotle in class, I drive into Durham and make my way to a small boxing gym that was tucked in a corner of a rough neighborhood there, Earl my trainer.
And I would train with Derek, my training partner. Now Derek worked in construction. He was a tall, strong, fast fighter. And he'd fought professionally. When I asked Earl, how do I throw [00:56:00] a jab? He said, watch Derek do, as he does. We're all. Let me start turning on the heavy bag. He'd have me watch Derek. He'd say, there's your picture, Eric.
Watch how Derek works. The back Derek was my model and I learned faster by watching and imitating him than I ever could have done by reading a book or listening to a coach alone, Earl and Aristotle. They both said the same thing. Find a model and do, as they do. What's strange about the way most of us live is that we know how important it is to have models.
Everyone wants their children to have good role models. It, once we become adults too often, we stop looking and that leads to a lot of unnecessary pain. So at any age, in any endeavor, ask yourself, who's my mom. This is so true. Mark, I feel like we must have a whole series on a life, [00:57:00] lived and study some people that had that.
This is a big thought and he's right on so many counts. One, we are not given the the picture of the puzzle and the pieces for life. We just get given the pieces that how good is that gray metaphor. And then he goes on to say as kids, we all have role models and then what happens, we will be come out of this and think we've solved it all.
But actually that's when life is just getting real hands, I would propose to you. And maybe I'm being a little indulgent here. That's what we're trying to do on this show, mark. We started. These people who are role models for us, David Goggins, Matthew McConaughey, Eka toe that we've told about Brenae brown Dale, Carnegie, VIM, Hoff.
Oh my gosh, Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey make, there are all these amazing people, even just in the last show, Angela Duckworth, they are all revealing [00:58:00] something to us. If we can follow their example and what do we do here, mark? We ask, how do we do it? Don't we, how do you do it? Exactly as Eric calls out in that story as well.
How do I throw a jab watch Derek? How do I punch the heavy bag? Watch Derek. This is what we're doing, Mike, our.
Listen to the men shots, podcasts. There's the line that we were promising in last week's episode. So mark mental rehearsal, segmenting circle of control model for life which one has got you think in the most, all of them I'll take all of them, please. Okay. No I think the one that has surprised me actually is the, that final clip from Eric find a role model or find a model for life.
I think that really packages up really well for me, how I a, I want to find [00:59:00] out what kind of makes me tick. What's my passion, what's values and sod and B, how might I be able to practice some of those skills around patients around resilience better? So that for me is the homework that I'm taking.
Gotcha. I would say anywhere you go with those big four ideas there's like a lot of work to do sitting inside of this book, but mark, thank you. Thank you for helping me navigate resilience and grit so far. We have another show to come. It's been absolutely Empowering this series, it's the toolset for surviving for thriving in life.
So thank you to you, mark, and thank you to you, our listeners, because it really is a joy to learn out loud together to try and be better every single day. Even if it's just 1% thank you [01:00:00] to you. And today we definitely gave things a big nudge forward with Eric Greitens, author of resilience, hard won wisdom for living a better life.
And this whole wisdom that he has for us starts with a letter that he wrote to his friend, Zach, and it started with number one. Mentally rehearse, ask yourself what's the worst could ha that could happen and improve upon it too. He said, look, building toughness. It's all about segmenting. Put it into small attackable paces.
Don't regret the past. Don't worry about the future. Be into hearing. You can do this. You can focus on your circle of control because that's where you can forge your strength, focus on the things that you control, bring your best self and your best effort. And if we do all of those things, we can start to look forward.
We can find some of the pitches to the puzzle pieces in the [01:01:00] inspiration of others. We can find a model for life. We can find many role models, so don't just abandon them. Once you become an adult, hold on to them, go deeper and find all those people that can inspire you to be the best version of yourself.
And that is exactly what we do here together on this show, that moonshots podcast, that's a wrap.