PNTV - Spartan Up! by Joe De Sena

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hey guys, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book, Spartan up by Joe decenna. Joe decenna is amazing. He's a legend in the adventure and endurance racing communities and he started the Spartan race. Pretty awesome. And he's the kind of guy that literally in the book he talks about the fact that for him an ironman is kind of like warm up. He's used to doing 8 to 10 day just gnarly endurance races and an ironman is a warm up for him. That's all you need to hear about him to know that he is ridiculous and a stud. So we've got five big ideas I want to walk through today. The first one is kind of how I think of Spartan Up. So Spartan up, what does that mean to Spartan Up? Well, obviously we've got the ancient Spartan warriors who were just the embodiment of grit and character and just the warrior ethos. I like to think of it as being antifragile. So Nassim Taleb tells us to imagine. This is at least my interpretation of Nassim Tellb came up with the idea of anti fragile and he says, look, imagine you're a package, right? That's a package. The question is, what type of sticker are you putting on your package? Does it say fragile? If you're fragile, then if you get handled a little bit roughly, you break handle with care. I'm fragile. Wah. Right. Now you can also be resilient. Resilient is better than being fragile, particularly in the case of a package being shipped through the mail or a human life. So that basically means you got a sticker on you that says, hey, you know what, you can kick me around. I can handle a fair amount of pressure. I'm going to break eventually, but I'm pretty tough. I'm resilient, right? That's nice. Talib says, yeah, but what about if we were actually antifragile? What's the opposite of fragile? The opposite of fragile is something that gets stronger with challenges by being kicked around. So imagine if you put the antifragile sticker on you and said, look, kick me around. Take this package and throw it around. The more you throw it around, the stronger it gets, the stronger I get. That's what I think of when I think of spartaning up. We want to look at our challenges as opportunities for us to get better, to get stronger, to be anti fragile. That's the first big idea. Just love the concept of antifragile. So then he's got this ridiculous story. Next big idea is impossible for versus really hard. So he tells us we need to reframe how we see the world. Oftentimes we think things that are just hard are impossible. And he uses an example of a guy, adventure guy in Sweden. This guy hops on his bike, rides from Sweden to the Himalayas, hops off his bike, ascends Mount Everest without any help from a Sherpa with no oxygen mask or oxygen available, reaches the summit, comes back down, hops back on his bike and rides his bike back to Sweden. He says, look, you hear that story, you're like, that's impossible. That's crazy. If someone invited you on an adventure like that, now that might be really, really, really, really hard, but it's not impossible. So he challenges us to think, what in your life have you determined is impossible? You just can't do it. No, that's impossible. Well, think for a moment. Is it impossible or is it just really, really hard? Because hopping on your bike from Sweden and riding to the base of the Himalayas or the base of Everest and climbing up without a Sherpa or oxygen, climbing back down and then riding your bike back to Sweden, that's ridiculous. How is your set of goals measuring up to that? And are you telling yourself that something that's just really hard is impossible? You want to notice how often we tell ourselves things are impossible when they're not. They're just really hard and require us to go out and put in the effort to achieve it. As the Senate would say, to spartan up. Third big idea here is the cookie test. So you might have heard of this one before, but Daniel Goleman talks about it in his great book Emotional Intelligence. He tells us that one of the hallmarks of emotional intelligence is, is being able to delay our gratification. There's some great research done in the 70s, a guy out of Stanford who brought in these four year old kids and he said, hey, what's your favorite treat? Is it a cookie, a marshmallow or a pretzel? Well, I'll tell you what, I'll give you one of those right now. I'll give you a cookie right now if that's your favorite. Or I'm going to go out of the office and if you can wait for 15 minutes while I step out of the office, I, I'll give you two cookies. So one cookie right now or two cookies if you wait a little bit. 15 minutes, right? Well, what was amazing, was the kids who were able to delay their gratification achieved more success in their lives than the kids who couldn't delay their gratification. That test predicted their SAT scores and predicted their performance and other things as they aged more than IQ or anything else. It's amazing being able to delay our gratification to say, look, I'm not going to go impulsively after this one cookie. I'm going to set some goals that are going to challenge me and I'm going to go for them. I'm going to delay my gratification. Huge idea. Hallmark of spartaning up. We want to keep that in mind. The cookie test. So are you nibbling all your cookies all the time? Can you not turn off the distractions of email and Facebook and all the online stuff and all the entertainment TV shows you just have to watch? Really, can you delay that gratification and put that time into something more meaningful? It's worth thinking about as you do that. Think about the fourth big idea here, which is grit. Grit equals soul food. Grit equals soul food. So he shares this amazing story that Gandhi never got his cookies. India was not free when Gandhi died. He spent his entire life on a project, and he never saw the outcome that he had hoped to see. Made a ton of progress, but he never actually got his cookies. That's extraordinary. Grit, as Disena would say, that's Spartan grit. So we want to think of grit and how important it is for us to actualize our potential. It's soul food. Now, what is grit? Grit is basically. Elizabeth Duckworth, who's a leading researcher on this out of University of Pennsylvania, says grit is an intense passion. Grit is intense passion plus intense persistence. So imagine when you're super, super, super excited about something and into something. You just love it. You love it so much you pay to do it. And you're extraordinarily persistent. You're passionate and you're persistent. That's grit. It's kind of like willpower squared. So willpower, we know, is the greatest predictor of anything you want to predict out predicts. I mentioned this in another recent video. Willpower out predicts IQ for academic performance by a factor of two. Willpower out predicts IQ for academic performance by a factor of two. Whether you can get yourself to do that, what you know is best for you is the most important thing you could possibly do. Now, grit is kind of like willpower squared. Think about that. It is soul food. Feed yourself well. Delay your gratification on the cookies. Feed yourself Some grit muffins maybe. Alright, so that's the fourth idea. The fifth one is telephone poles. So decenna again, this is a guy who participates in events that are multiple days, like eight, ten day long events. And his idea is you don't think about the 26 miles you need to run. You don't think about the ironman you need to finish. You don't think about the huge big domino that we talked about yesterday in Wealth Warrior. You don't think about that huge domino that the huge goal and outcome you want to achieve. You think about the next telephone pole. So if we're running a marathon or whatever race, literally get to the next telephone pole. That's all you need to worry about. In our little dominoes thing we have the little itsy bitsy domino that built into the larger ones, right? Well, you don't need to think about this huge domino unless you want to stress yourself out. Think about this one right here. Just take the next baby step. Execute the next thing that needs to get done. Get to the next telephone pole. Don't stress yourself out with an iceberg of hugeness. Just chip away at the next little part of whatever you're up to. That is a big idea. Telephone poles. This again. The book is just packed with stuff, but I hope you dug this. Quick look at these five ideas. Spartan up the antifragile. What are you putting on your package? Fragile. Oops. I can't handle challenges. Or resilient. Pretty strong. I can handle a fair amount of challenges. We're antifragile. Challenges make you stronger. As Steve Chan, our my coach says you don't go to the gym to lift styrofoam weights. You go there to lift real weights so you can get strong. We want to keep that in mind and lift real weights as we're going out in life. Right? We don't want to go out in life and lift styrofoam. We want to challenge ourselves. Be antifragile. Spartan up. Remember the guy that hopped on his bike from Sweden and rode it to Mount Everest, climbed it and then rode back? That's, I would think, pretty darn close to impossible. But it's not impossible. It's just really hard. What in your life have you improperly framed as impossible when it's just really hard? What would happen if you reframed that and went and hid it? Cookie test. Are you just gobbling all the cookies or can you delay some gratification? Do what's really important. What's going to give you longer term value rather than immediate gratification. Grit is soul food. Gandhi didn't even get his cookies. He was committed to something so big. Intense passion plus intense persistence is grit willpower squared. And then your telephone poles. Just get to the next one. Don't stress yourself out. Just get to the next telephone pole. What is your next telephone pole? How can you get there with as much grace and awesomeness as possible? Think about that. Go rock it. And there you go. Hope you enjoyed. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have an awesome day. See you. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that Philosopher's Notes TV episode. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson me. Two basic things one our free newsletter. It's called the Optimizer. Over 50,000 people start their day with it and they tell us it's pretty awesome. And 2 our optimal living Membership program. This is where I put all my best stuff. 10 bucks a month for a ton of wisdom. 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