Transcription
So, I was just reading this study on mental toughness, and the results are so mind-blowing that I thought I should make a video about this.
See, in 2012, scientists conducted MRI scans to active duty military soldiers to try to get a better understanding of what was going on in their brains both before and after they were exposed to live combat. What they were looking at was this part right here. It's called the hippocampus, and it's the part of your brain that helps you deal with emotional regulation.
18 months went by. These soldiers, they went off to war. They did some things. They saw some [ __ ] as they say. And then the soldiers came back and they got another scan. And this is where things get absolutely fascinating.
See, even after going through some of the most gruesome, stressful events of their lives, the scans revealed that many of the soldiers weren't as emotionally messed up as you would expect. In fact, many of them, their hippocampuses grew. Hippocampuses. Hippocampi. Is that a word? Hippocampi.
But not only that, the connective tissue to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is here, also grew in size. This matters because the prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that controls rational decision-making. It's the part of your brain that overrides your emotions and your fears and your inhibitions.
So, what's more, these soldiers with the larger hippocampi and the stronger connectivity to their prefrontal cortex, they exhibited better self-control, more discipline, and remained calm under pressure. They had fewer PTSD symptoms. It's as though their brains went to the gym and came back bench pressing 300 lb.
So, this raises the question, can you train your emotional resilience the same way you I don't know, train for a marathon or go to the gym?
So, my team and I, we've been studying the past 2 weeks for the upcoming Solved episode on resilience. And as you guys know, we go really hard on these podcast episodes. It's like four to five hours, hundreds of citations, and I can't escape this question. I've become obsessed the past couple weeks.
I did something a little bit crazy. I decided to run an experiment on myself. I signed up for an endurance race. It's an endurance race of 15 km through mud and freezing water. It has about 20 to 25 military style obstacles. Everything from crawling under barb wire to climbing over walls, up ropes, dealing with electrocution, you know, basic stuff. Oh, and it's done in like nearly 100° heat. And what's more, other than a moderate running habit, I have not trained for this. I'm going to be completely relying on my mental preparation based on my research the past few weeks to essentially endure 5 hours of intense pain and discomfort. Sounds like fun. I don't know what the [ __ ] I'm doing.
But first, we need some groundwork. We need to actually define what is mental toughness, what is resilience, and what is the method you go about building it.
There's actually a really good book about this. Let me grab it. Nasim Taleb writes in his famous bestseller that every system falls into one of three categories. Fragile, robust, and anti-fragile. Now, fragile systems are harmed by stress or volatility. Think a glass breaking or a house of cards falling. Robust systems resist volatility and outside stress. Think of like a cement block. These things are strong. They resist change.
But then there are anti-fragile systems. And TB argues that if fragile systems have negative responses to disorder and stress and robust systems are indifferent to stress, anti-fragile systems actually have a positive response. They get stronger. He uses the example of the hydra from Greek mythology, which each time you cut off one of its heads, it would grow too back in its place.
TB goes on to argue that the human body and mind are anti-fragile systems. that they actually grow stronger, more adaptive, and more resilient when they're exposed to outside stress. Now, he used an example of deadlifting a heavy weight. And then he goes on to brag for a few too many pages about how much he can deadlift. But the point remains that when you stress your body, it grows back and adapts to become stronger. Similarly, the mind is an anti-fragile system. We gain from our failures. We learn from our unexpected setbacks. we become better because of the stresses in our life.
So the key seems to be if we can just find out what stressors to push onto ourselves, we can improve our mental toughness infinitely. We can train our mental strength much in the same way that we go to the gym and train our physical strength by sustaining conscious periodic challenges and then recovering and growing from them.
But there's a problem with this theory. Let's go back to the soldiers in their brain scans. Not all of the soldiers came back with enlarged hippocampi. Not all of them improved their self-control and self-discipline. In fact, some of them came back with much smaller brain volume around the hippocampus. And you want to guess which ones those were? That's right. They were the soldiers who suffered from PTSD. Shocker.
It turns out that stress is both a good and a bad thing. It has a way of bifurcating outcomes for people. The more extreme the stress, the more extreme that bifurcation. So when you go through really really traumatic [ __ ] you either on the one hand become David Gogggins or on the other have PTSD. There's not really an in between.
So this means that we have to take a step back and before I can mentally start preparing for my endurance race, we have to understand what types of pain actually make you stronger and what types of pain just [ __ ] you up.
So it turns out that not all pain is created equal. Imagine pain on a spectrum. Over here on this side you have very minor pain and then over here you have very intense pain. Now if you were to graph out the relationship between pain and growth, you would get a graph kind of like this. And there's three different categories that our pains fall into. We have let's call them inconveniences. These are just minor nuisances. They don't really add a whole lot to your life, but they're also not very challenging. Here we have challenges and then over here this is trauma land and this is where the struggle is so severe that it debilitates us and we end up becoming far more fragile.
The research shows that inconveniences do nothing for our mental toughness. In fact, inconveniences just make us miserable and weaker. Challenges increase our mental toughness. The more we overcome, the more capable we are of overcoming even more. The question is where are the boundaries between these three categories? Ideally, we want to be in this middle area as much as possible.
So, it raises the question, what is the difference between an inconvenience and a challenge? The primary difference is a mindset. An inconvenience is something that feels meaningless and pointless, but as soon as it feels meaningful, well, now it becomes a challenge. For example, when your mom bugs you to take out the trash, it feels like an inconvenience. But if you just bought your first home and you're trying to take care of your living space because you care very deeply about the quality of your own life, suddenly that just feels like a minor challenge.
Now, what's super interesting is that the difference between a challenge and a trauma is also a question of mindset and perspective. So, in both cases, moving both out of trauma and towards challenge is a question of mindset. And moving from inconveniences to challenge is also a question of mindset. And this is where the real [ __ ] magic happens because the difference between becoming fragile and anti-fragile is merely a difference of our perspectives. And it turns out you can actually train yourself to adopt the right perspectives to make sure that you're always living in this world of challenge and improving yourself.
When you put people in difficult situations, when you force them into difficult situations, when you make them commit to difficult situations, their limit to what they're capable of is often way further to the right than they ever suspected. And so, in a way, what I'm doing with this endurance race is I am making that bet on myself. I have never done anything like this before, but I know that I've done a lot of hard things in the past. Part of this experiment is forcing myself to have an experience that in this very moment does not feel possible to me. But I think once I get in it, I'm going to realize it's much more possible than I ever thought.
Now, in my research, I've identified five mindsets that help you see things as challenges that you can overcome. I fly to Chicago in about 10 days, and I need to prepare both my body and my mind for this thing. Enough talking. Time to start training.
So, part of the tough mutter is that the water sections are made of ice water, which is part of what makes it tough, I guess. To work up my resilience, I'm going to do some cold plunges over the next week. I [ __ ] hate cold water. Not a fan of it. But I'm not going to let myself say that because here's the thing. Research shows that like the most important thing when it comes to doing something difficult is the belief that you can do it. In psychology, it's known as self-efficacy. basically people who feel that it's realistic and possible.
God damn it. Why do I do this to myself? Guys, when you don't want to do something, your mind starts making up narratives and stories about why you shouldn't do it. So, I'm going to practice being narrative free and just [ __ ] doing the thing. Oh my god. [ __ ] Oh god.
So, uh, what was I talking about? So, right now, my mind is coming up with all sorts of reasons not to do this. Telling myself, you know, it's too cold. I don't need to be in here that long. I'm going to be racing. Uh, this is [ __ ] video. We can just edit it to make it look like I did a cold plunge. I didn't do really do a cold plunge. This is really cold. [Laughter] I was not expecting it to be this cold. How many minutes has it been? Do we know? I'm at four on this iPhone. All right, [ __ ] this [ __ ] We forgot to bring a towel. Go get a towel, master, please.
So, I'm not going to lie. Training started out a little rough. In fact, the first few days I kept asking myself, why the hell are you doing this, Mark? You could just go sit behind a desk with a microphone like a normal YouTuber. But I do think the important thing was the extent of the commitment. I had to buy plane tickets. I had to tell the team. Everybody blocked off their schedules. I bought the [ __ ] ticket to the tough mutter. Like, at a certain point, you're just pot committed. And so, you go with it.
Over the following week, I went up into the Santa Monica Mountains and ran almost every day. I did cold plunges every other day. And in my free time, I did a lot of grip work, pull-ups, uh, arm hangs, things to help with my forearms and grip strength. But as I was going through all of this, I wanted to make sure to practice the mindsets that I had researched for the podcast episode. So, this meant really telling myself that this was possible, not allowing any sense of doubt into my head. All sorts of things started coming to my mind and as the week went on, I got better at just cutting them off at the source, just not even letting the stories fully flesh out in my brain before they happened.
Fortunately, the social support and accountability was built in by bringing the team along with me. And as I always do with my team, I tried to make it as fun as possible. Another thing that the research shows drastically improves your odds of dealing with a challenge or a setback is doing it with somebody else. Having that social accountability, that emotional support, just know that somebody's suffering with you in the trenches. So, fortunately for me, my my director of photography runs ultramarathons and she [ __ ] loves pain. Let's go. So, she's going to be doing the tough mutter with me. Are you excited, Jeff? I'm so thrilled to be doing this with you. Check it off the list with you, Mark. Every hour counts. Every mile counts. Only have a few days till we head out. Not built for this anymore. LA made me [ __ ] soft. It's a [ __ ] resilience video. The whole video is about being tough, staying hard. Gogggins. Make Gogggins proud. Oh, yeah. What would Gogggins do? Probably laugh at us. Gogggins would have started at 3:00 a.m. That's what Gogggins would have done. Would have called us all a bunch of [ __ ] Yep. Stay hard. All right, we're leaving tomorrow. Number one mindset, don't even believe that it's cold. Number two, mindset. Don't believe any [ __ ] [ __ ] narratives about anything.
Have I ever told you guys about Ernest Shackleton? No. Ernest Shackleton was supposed to be the guy who got to the South Pole first. He actually got within about 20 miles and he had to turn around and go back. And it turned out his ship was hit by an iceberg while he was gone. And so they had no ship out of Antarctica. So him and his men were stranded in Antarctica for almost 6 months. And during that time, every single one of them survived. When Shackleton came back, they asked him how they survived. You know what he said? He said in forced cheerfulness. that the whole time they were stranded in Antarctica, he forced his men to sing songs, tell jokes, and he attributed that to the reason that they survived. And I'm going to enforce my cheerfulness on all of you right now by telling dad jokes. You You guys ready? Yeah. All right. So, why can you never trust a staircase? Why? Because they're always up to something. Why didn't the two skeletons fight each other? Why scared of each other? Because they didn't have the guts. Did I ever tell you guys I only know 25 letters of the alphabet? What? Yeah. I don't know why. But I'm like, you're a writer. That's impossible. Yes. Yes.
Now, on top of all of this, I'm going to throw in a mindset that I didn't really talk about in the training. And this is the mindset that I don't know, maybe scares people sometimes, but I've used it a few times in my life to great effect. It's a bit of a dangerous mindset. So, I think you you have to be very careful when you implement it. And it's this. It's basically deciding I will die accomplishing this goal and being at peace with that. Now, that sounds a little bit insane, but let's just hang with me for a second because think about it. If you can reach a point where you're like, I will die trying doing this thing, and you actually believe it. You have conviction in it, nothing else is going to slow you down. Nothing else is going to stop you. A tweaked ankle, a bad night of sleep, things that would normally completely derail you, none of it is going to stop you.
Now, obviously, this mindset can become dangerous if you're doing extremely dangerous [ __ ] But generally in my life, you know, I'm a pampered white boy from the suburbs, so I'm not doing a ton of dangerous [ __ ] And I actually find it extremely useful. Once I'm that committed to a thing I'm doing, I just I seem to become impervious to excuses at that point.
So, we flew out to Chicago on Friday night. The race was first thing on Saturday morning. So, according to my research, the average person completes a tough mutter in around 4 hours. Now, again, that's over 10 miles of running plus 25 military grade obstacles, plus or minus a few. While we were in the airport, I decided to add some stakes to the race. I think we could do it in three hours 15 minutes. Okay. Ambitious. I'm up for the challenge. You're up for the challenge. I'll buy us tickets to 9inch nails. Done. Done. Say less.
Now, I don't know where you're from, but where I'm from and Jess is from 9-in nails might as well be Allesium. It might as well be heaven. I [ __ ] love you, Trent Resner.
So, we got up that morning. We carb loaded. I ate a shitload of pancakes. And then we went out to the race. I actually wasn't nervous. I was just I was excited. I just wanted to get going. Honestly, my biggest fear right now is that I'm gonna get an hour in and I'm gonna have to take a [ __ ] I did not poop this morning.
We were off. I did some calculations and I estimated that if we ran at roughly 10 minute per mile pace, we should comfortably be able to hit our goal. And so that was coming out of the gate. Like that was my main focus. Try to stick to 10 minutes per mile and try not to [ __ ] up the obstacles. The early obstacles were easier than I expected and the running was a little bit harder. It's also extremely humid and so for these reasons I actually started to feel a little bit tired around the 3 3 and 1/2 mile mark. All right, we're about 5k in about a third of the way. I'm definitely starting to feel tired. All the early obstacles seem designed to tire you out. So it's like climbing over logs, carrying sacks, carrying Jess, just it's like not stuff is not hard, but they like tires your legs out. Between that and the terrain, definitely feeling sluggish, but third of the way and keep pressing on.
Then we got to the mud. Ironically, I think the mud in the tough mutter is the saving grace of it. At least for me, it was because it did a few things. One, jumping into ice cold water is actually incredibly refreshing when you're running in a hot sunny day. Like that water couldn't have felt better. Number two, once you're covered in the mud, it actually keeps you cool as you run further into the course. And then number three, because you're stopping to climb up mud walls and loose people up mud walls, you're actually catching your breath. And you don't realize how much you're catching your breath, but it is a nice break in between all the running. So, we're 4.8 8 miles about halfway almost exactly. The mud and the water was actually refreshing. Like I was struggling mile three and four and now I feel okay. Yeah. So we probably look like barbarians at this point. I mean we are barbarians. Obviously. Obviously.
Before we started the race, we were barbarians. Savages. Now the back half of the course had most of the obstacles and it had by far the hardest obstacles. So, I expected our pace to slow down quite a bit, and sure enough, it did. But I think at this point, at least for myself, I was hitting a bit of a runner's high, a lot of endorphins going, a lot of adrenaline. And I don't know, man, when you get teargassed and electrocuted, like, you just start getting goofy and weird. We're tough, resilient. We're [ __ ] warriors. We're savages, Jess. Savage. All the metal bands would be proud of me.
Now, I will be honest. Most of this was genuine, but some of it was a little bit of that enforced cheerfulness. I mean, there were definitely moments, uh, especially running through the back half that I was feeling a little beat up, but I said, "Fuck it. I'm going to sing Bon Joy." Whoa. We're halfway there. Living on a prayer. Take my hand, we'll make it, I swear. Wo! Living on a prayer. living on a prayer. And sure enough, it made me feel better.
Now, part of Jess and I's agreement with each other is that we would not skip a single obstacle. We are absolutely crushing everything until we started to get to some of the grip strength stuff. Now, in my case, I'm a big boy. After doing like multiple arm hang, monkey bar, ring swing, rope climb obstacles, my grip strength really started to give out. In Jess's case, she's just very small. No. Now, there were a few obstacles here that we failed a few times and it it kind of held us up, but I'm proud to say that at least one of us completed every single obstacle in this course.
Now, by the time we rolled into mile 8 and 9, I was pretty beat up. About 7 and 1/2, 8 miles in, my legs are starting to give out. Paces slowed. 11, 12 minute miles. What would Gogggins say? Come on. Gogggins told me to shut the [ __ ] up. That's what Gogggins would say. Get your ass up and lay some. Stay hard. This is where I had to go into the pain cave, as David Gogggins calls it. I was absolutely exhausted. I had torn a bunch of skin off my left hand. I had cuts all up and down my legs. I had been teargassed. I'd been electrocuted. Uh I had crawled through barbed wire. Um I was absolutely at the end of my gas tank. But when you're 90% through an endurance race, you don't [ __ ] stop.
By the ninth mile, my body had pretty much completely fallen apart. I was starting to get cramps in my left leg. I had multiple blisters on my feet. My shoes were completely full of mud. But in the distance, we could see the finish line. We could see the last obstacles and we could see the finish line. And so I just got absolutely locked in. Even though I'm in a lot of pain, like these are the moments in your mind matters the most. Just like keeping focused on the next step, making success as small as possible. Not thinking about the finish line. I'm not thinking about the next obstacle. I'm thinking about just moving my feet forward each step.
Now, the last few obstacles were a hell of an experience. We had to swim through the coldest pool of water I have ever been in in my life, bar none. We had to climb a massive rope mountain. I think they called it Mount Everest. It seemed like it was 100 ft high. It was probably not nearly that high, but it it just seemed to go on forever. And let me tell you, it was a little freaky up there at the top. Not a whole lot to stop you if you fell off. To top things off, right before the finish line, you have to run through dozens and dozens of live electrical wires. I was a little cavalier about this. I thought, you know, it's just a little shock. I'll probably be fine. Look at him. He's got that camera trained right on his face. Forget about Hey, he's the star. Oh no. Oh no. He's no good at this obstacle or that camera. No, that [ __ ] hits you like a [ __ ] punch in the chest. Oh. Oh no. Poor Willy Wonka. He's getting it bad. God.
But our time 2 hours 23 minutes and 51 seconds. We [ __ ] crushed it. We are [ __ ] savages. We are savages.
Now, I'd love to tell you that there was a bunch of euphoria and celebration and elation and we cried and hugged and no, man. I was a wreck. I was so [ __ ] tired. I think at one point my producer was like, "Do you want to say anything?" And I just looked at him and I was like, "I can't think right now." I feel like I should say something inspirational here, but no, I'm in pain. I'm in a lot of pain and I and I and I want to go eat something. But if I was to go back and say something profound and inspirational in that moment, this is what I would say. I would say the most important lesson from this entire experience is to become a person who does hard things. I had no idea if I was in good enough shape. I had no idea how much it was going to hurt, how much it was going to suck, if I was going to get injured, if I was going to look like an idiot in this video. I didn't know any of those things. I think I've built up a portfolio of challenging [ __ ] throughout my life and I've survived all of it and I've gotten through all of it. Having that stack of evidence for myself is ultimately what enabled this sort of experience.
Ultimately what resilience really comes down to like sure adopting these mindsets in the short run is very powerful. It can help you in that moment. But I think the most important thing in the long run is to become a person who does hard things. it is to become a person who accepts challenges, who endures pain, who can handle setbacks, who doesn't give up at the first obstacle. Because once you do become that person, then you feel like you're set for anything. It's not that I know how to do a tough mutter. It's not that I know how to do an endurance race. It's not that I know how to get electrocuted or teargassed, but I trust myself to figure it out in the moment. And I think that trust is actually what tough-mindedness is. And if you can find that, then you become [ __ ] indestructible.
[Music]