Brian Johnson (Heroic +1) reflects on Jonah Hill's documentary Stutz and Phil Stutz's therapeutic practice, especially the "reversal of desire" mantra ("Bring it on. I love pain.") He argues that accepting and even loving pain, uncertainty, and hard work (framed as the acronym PUH) is necessary for growth, referencing researchers Elizabeth Blackburn and Kelly McGonigal to support how stress interpretation affects health. The clip ends with a playful exhortation to embrace PUH.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. One of the big ideas from Jonah Hill's Netflix documentary on our mutual coach, Phil Stutz, appropriately called Stutz, have you watched it yet? Is the fact that we will never be exonerated from three pain, uncertainty, and hard work. Note Cristiano Ronaldo Instagrammed wisdom from the documentary to his 200 million followers. Check out the Plus One for a link. Now, most of us spend most of our lives trying to pretend that isn't true. And that's the source of most of our frustration. We need to radically accept the fact that life is challenging. Even the Buddha's first noble truth established the fact that life is full of pain and suffering. And yet, when we learn to not only accept that non negotiable existential fact of life, but learn to love it, everything changes. Which is why Phil's first tool in his first book, the Tools, is what he calls the reversal of desire, the mantra he and Barry Michaels tell us to scream in our heads every time we feel even a niggle of fear, doubt, or overwhelm. Bring it on. Followed by I love pain. Pain sets me free. Why does pain set us free? Because, as we discussed in one of our very first plus ones, your infinite potential exists outside your comfort zone. And how does it feel outside your comfort zone? By definition, uncomfortable. That's pain. And that's why embracing pain sets you free. Now, as we've discussed many times, Nobel Prize winner Elizabeth Blackburn and leading positive psychologist Kelly McGonigal tell us the same thing. How we interpret the stress and stressful moments in our lives determines how they affect us all the way down to our telomeres. They also tell us to say bring it on as we approach rather than avoid life's challenges. Why? Because that's the only way we can grow using the turds of life, as Phil playfully says in the documentary, as fuel for our growth. Which brings us back to pain and uncertainty and hard work. I've been thinking about how to make those three things into a practical tool and a playful acronym. Then it landed pain, uncertainty, horrible hard work. That's puh. Or yes, pronounced poo. And that, my hero, is today's plus one. Remember, it takes poo to make a seed grow. And it takes puh, pain, uncertainty, and hard work to make an aspiring hero truly heroic. So say it with me now with a smile. I love poo.
