PNTV: The Ultra Mindset by Travis Macy with John Hanc (#362)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another episode of Philosopher's Notes. TV Today, another great book, the Ultra Mindset by Travis Macy. The Ultra Mindset Travis Macy Subtitle in Endurance Champions 8 core principles for success in business, Sports and life. Dean Karnazis wrote the forward of this book who's one of the old school ultra endurance athletes. Travis is kind of the next generation. He is the champion of Lead Man. Set the world record or the record for lead Man. If you've heard of Iron man, if you're doing an Ironman, you are a very strong man or woman. Take iron, then go to lead man and you get something even more crazy. So imagine the ultra, ultra version of Ironman where you're doing everything from mountain marathon runs, 10k mountain sprints, mountain biking, and then ultra marathons at crazy elevation. Then they call it the Grand Prix Ledman, the Grand prix of ultra endurance sports. Travis Macy, best in the world at that. Incredibly inspiring guy who's done some other great things. And this book unpacks his eight principles for living with that ultra Mindset. I really enjoyed it. If you're into that sort of thing, I think you will enjoy it as well. Philosopher's note A bunch of my favorite big ideas. Five of them we're going to look at now. So first big idea here. If you want to cultivate an ultra mindset, whether it's in sports or just in life, to be able to show up and go the distance and reach your potential and see what you are actually capable of. He says the first thing you want to do is train your mind. And one good way to do that is to create a new mantra. He says a great mantra is it's all good mental training, whatever happens to you. How about you make your response? Travis tells us it's all good mental training. It's all good mental training. This happens to you whether you get laid off or a challenging conversation at work or an injury or whatever. It's all good mental training. It's all good mental training. How can I choose to step in between the stimulus of that event and my response right here? There's a gap. That's where our freedom lies. Viktor Frankl says that's where our power lies. Stimulus, response. You want to get better at that if you want to optimize and actualize and give your gifts to the world. Therefore, whatever happens, it's all good mental training. It's fun too, because you could break that mantra into two different styles, right? You can say it as it's all good mental training or you could say it's all good mental training. Either one works. I highly recommend it. I've had fun with that since I've read the book. Second big idea is 60, 40. Travis tells us when he's running 100 miles, just pause for a moment when he's running 100 miles. If you're into ultra sports, that may not seem like a big deal. If you're not into ultra sports, that feels like a really big deal. Right? So this guy goes out and he runs 100 miles. Now, when he's 60 miles into that run, how do you think he feels? Do you think he's loving running at that point? He says, look, I love running, but no one 60 miles into a 100 mile run is feeling particularly great and in love with running at that point. Right? And he knows that. And then what he does is he realizes that's going to happen and then he runs the next 40 miles. We're going to talk about how down here in another couple ideas. But I just want to emphasize the fact that whether we've talked about this so many times, but I love seeing someone like this who performs at the very peak of his domain, ultra endurance sports. He's not feeling like it. You look at it and go, well, that guy's just a freak. Superhuman. Hundred mile run is just a small part of what he does in his competitions. He's just different, right? Not like me, who gets a little bit tired of doing different things at different times. But of course he gets tired and doesn't want to show up, doesn't want to put the next foot forward. And that's the whole point, is that how he feels in that moment isn't what's dictating what he's doing. He has his identity and then that's driving the behaviors, that's driving the feelings rather than feelings driving the behaviors, which drives the identity, which we talk about all the time. Now, I found this particularly refreshing because I'm sitting here looking at 1000 notes. I'm over 400 into it. And I love to read, just like he loves to run. But when you're doing this all the time and I'm 40, 400 miles or notes into my thousand, I'm not always feeling like it. That's a good opportunity to revisit. It's all good mental training. Show up, do the work, take the next baby step. Again, we'll talk about some details on how to do that in a moment. But just remember he's not feeling like it at mile 60, 61, 62, 63. He does it anyway, period. In part because he's removed his option to quit, which we're going to talk about at the end. The next big idea is what he calls the 4:30am Rule. The 4:30am rule. I think he came up with this with his dad. And the basic idea here is whether you get up at 4:30 in the morning or not. I happened to get up at 3:27 this morning. As you know, if you follow my work, going to bed early so I can get up early is a sport for me. So I went to bed a couple hours after the sun went down. Sun set at 4:45, read Harry Potter to my son. I tucked him in. I'm in bed at 6:45, get up at 3:27. I'm ready to hit it. Right. I don't even think about it at this stage. It's just what I do. But if you're trying to get yourself to get up early, first note, your day begins the night before. Get to bed early. So it's easy, no alarm necessary, etc. But let's say that's challenging for you. But you say, look, I'm getting up at 4:30am that's my new game. And again, fill in the blank for whatever your game is, right? But when you've made the decision that you're going to get up at 4:30am it doesn't matter how you feel. Again, when that alarm goes off and and it's 4:30 the next morning, you do it. Period. 100% all in. You've decided. And that's the heart of an ultra mindset. You want to go to the distance. You've got to discipline yourself to be able to honor your commitments each step of the way. That's the 4:30am rule. Remember, 100% is paradoxically way easier than 98%. If you're going to bed and you're saying I'm going to get up at 4:30 tomorrow morning, I'm 98% sure I am. That's really hard relative to I'm just getting up, period. There's nothing that's going to happen that's going to prevent me from getting up. Because if you got that 2% gap, that's where the voice comes in and it can start negotiating with you. You want a super bright line. You want to make what willpower scientists call a pre commitment. You've burned your ships. You're all in, you've already decided. Then you save your willpower and you just do it. And you make that a habit. You do it long enough. As we discussed in the last episode, there's a honeymoon phase of getting up at 4:30, for example, and that might be not something you want to do. Who cares? Whatever your thing is, there's the honeymoon phase then, where it's just fun, right? Oh, this is oh so great. I'm getting up at 4:30 in the morning, however long that lasts. Then you hit the fight through phase. And they say Jason Selk and Tom Bartow, you need to win those fight throughs. You need to be the type of person that honors your commitments to yourself. Win the fight throughs. So it becomes second nature. This is how everything works. All the habits I've installed, from meditation to training to getting up early, to going to bed early, to digital sunset, whatever, right? It all goes through the same process. Honeymoon, fight throughs and then second nature. Whatever your 4:30am Rule is, think about that. What's your keystone habit? What's the habit that if you installed it, would have the most positive impact in your life? Think about it, make it your 4:30am rule. 100%, all in, non negotiable, just done. And then honor it. Win the fight throughs. Each time you want to give up, that brings us back to our 100 mile run. So we're on the 100 mile run. We already know that 60 miles in, we're not feeling like going the next 40, right? Then how do we get from the 60th mile to the hundredth mile? Well, Travis says you better break it down. If you're just thinking about the whole thing, you're in trouble. He says his approach is he just gets to the next aid station. He's not worried about the whole distance. Get to the next aid station, get to the next aid station, get to the next aid station. Joe Decenta, founder of Spartan Race, another ultra endurance epic athlete. He says he just gets to the next telephone pole, next telephone pole, next telephone pole. Navy SEAL Mark Devine says in the chaos, the fog of war, you need to simplify the battlefield and have front side focus. What's the next most important thing that needs to get done. And it was funny because as I was preparing for this, I went, it was super early in the morning, as it always is. I get up an hour or two before the family gets up. And Alexandra was up with our little baby girl. And then our son came up super early as well. So we were all Hanging out. And for whatever reason, we were talking about their birth. Our son is five years old and his birth came up. So we had both our 5 year old son and our 10 month old, almost 10 month old daughter. And here at home and we were talking about it and Alexandra was talking about her contractions. So you could say that a natural home birth is kind of like running 100 miles. I wouldn't know. I just know I have an amazing amount of respect for her and her power. And she said the way she got through it was she wasn't thinking about the whole thing. She broke it down and she said, and we weren't even talking about this. She just happened to say it. She said to herself, I can get through this contraction. That's all I'm going to think about, this contraction. Then she'd have a little break. Then she'd say, I can get through this contraction. I'm just going to focus on this contraction. Have a little break. Next contraction. And there we go. Same basic idea. Aid station, telephone pole, next contraction. What is the application of those metaphors to your life? Right? What is your big goal? How do you chunk it down? Just get through the next whatever it is. For me, it's deep work session, right? And then whatever PDF and then MP3 and then this episode, one aid station at a time. That's how you get through 100 mile run. You simplify the battlefield. You're always to use another Navy SEAL metaphor that I love. I'm forgetting who shared this at the moment, but the basic idea is here's your big, big goal, right? Well, you take it. Alden Mills is who shares this. He says in Unstoppable, he says, here's your big rock of a goal. Take a sledgehammer to it and just hammer away at it and get a little piece that falls off. And then take this piece and carry it wherever you need to take it today. Then the next day, repeat the same exact thing. The next day, repeat the same thing. The next day, repeat the same thing. This is basically what we talked about with organize tomorrow today. What are the three most important things you're going to get done today? And what's the number one most glow in the dark thing? Boom. Get it done, get it done, get it done. That's how you take what seems to be impossible and make it totally achievable. Break it down. Fifth big idea is quitting. When do you quit? Is it okay to quit? Well, yes and no. And Travis walks through this. I think it was the last principle is Basically quitting. He says there are a couple things you want to think about, right? There are different situations that call for different responses, obviously nuanced, it's going to be personal, etc. But the basic idea is if, you know, if you just have a sense that the path you're on isn't quite the right path for you, it's not what you're here to do, it's not how you're going to give your greatest gifts and greatest service to the world, well, then you need to check in and you might have a fear of not wanting to change course that's stopping you. The example he used, and you do need to quit, quitting is the right thing in that situation. He uses the example of he was going to become a certified or become an actual school principal. That was his thing. He was teaching and he was thinking about becoming a principal. And he realized, you know what his path was to really focus on ultra endurance sports. That wasn't his authentic path. So he needed to quit that principal certification program in order to become a fully engaged ultra endurance athlete. Now he quit that so he can have grit in the other, right? You got to quit some things to be gritty at times. I. I had a similar experience when I was in law school, right? So I was in law school. And I knew before I went that it wasn't quite what I wanted to do, but it was my ticket out of what I knew I didn't want to be doing into something that I thought was slightly better, but I knew I didn't want to do it. I knew I wanted to drop out, but I wasn't. This is 20 years ago now. I had none of these skills and perspectives and fundamentals, et cetera. It was a very, very challenging time for me. And everyone in my life basically was telling me, oh, just stick it out, Just stay there. You know, you get a degree from this school, it's a top law school, you can do whatever you want afterwards, right? But I bet that was not kind of how I operate, right? And it took a lot of courage for me to quit that. I didn't even know what I wanted to do other than a little kindle of inspiration to coach a little league baseball team for free as a volunteer, which led to my first business, which led to my life unfolding in ways I never could have anticipated. So in that scenario, quitting when I knew it just wasn't quite my path was the right decision. Now juxtapose that with when Travis is committed to his path as an Ultra endurance athlete. Now, he's categorically removed the option to quit as a career and a profession. And then specifically in any given event, he starts an event, he signs up for an event, he's categorically removed. I love this phrase, categorically removed. The option to quit. Quitting is simply not an option. Period throughout his training. And then he starts the race, he's finishing it. Aside from an injury that's going to force him to stop, you're going to see him at the finish line. Doesn't matter how long it takes him, doesn't matter how slow he goes, he's finishing. He's categorically removed the option to quit. I love the metaphor. Yet he had to quit something in order to get to a point where he can demonstrate that level of grit. So there you go. Sometimes you need to quit something so you can have grit for the thing that really is worthy of your energies. So for me, it's this. I've quit a number of different things and I've tested a number of things, but the ultimate underlying thing of I'm dedicating my life to helping people optimize their lives so we can change the world together. That's just the commitment. I'm Angela Duckworth. All in her four principles of grit. Do you remember those? I talk about them all the time. What are they? Number one, you want the science of how to cultivate grit. One, you want. You need to be passionate, not fireworks. I'm super excited that I'm not, but compass passion. Number two, you need to practice. If you're gritty about something, you show up every day and you give effort to it. You practice that what you're gritty about. Number three, you have a purpose that's bigger than you. If you want to have truly exemplary grit, it can't just be about you. You've got to have compassion and love and see that you're serving something bigger than yourself. To truly tap into the essence of grit, then number four, you need to have hope. In those inevitable moments when you want to give up, you've got to see that your commitment to something bigger than yourself and to mastery of your craft and your practice and this goal that you've set for yourself is worth it and it's going to get better hope, right? So we have our passion, we have our practice, we have our purpose, we have our hope. The four aspects of grit. And sometimes you only get there. Almost always, actually, you only get there after you quit some things that just aren't quite it. So Quit and grit. Think about it. Then, when you figure out what you're here to do, go all in. Categorically remove the option to quit again. Unless you realize not from fear, but from data that comes in that you need to make a slight change. But then it's probably going to be more of a pivot than a quit. Right? You haven't stopped, you've just chosen a little different direction. I've done that a number of times now. I'm going to continue doing that. There's our fifth big idea. The fourth was our hundred mile journey. Right, you want to get to the next aid station, the next telephone pole, through the next contraction, whatever the metaphor is. Just take the next step and get to the next little milestone. Our 4:30am rule. What is your non negotiable I'm all in. This is what I'm going to do. Whether it's getting up early or fill in the blank, you've made the decision. Done. Non negotiable. 60, 40. Remember, we're not feeling like it at mile 60. It doesn't matter. Do what you said you're going to do as you use your mantra. It's all good mental training or it's all good mental training. There you go. Quick look at the ultra mindset. Travis Macy. I really enjoyed it. If you're into it, I think you will. For now, what was your favorite big idea? How can you make it a more integrated part of your life? Get on that and make today another awesome day. See you. To learn more about the 300 day Optimize coach program, visit Optimize Me Coach. Hi, this is Brian with some super exciting news. Optymyze is now absolutely free. All 600 philosopher's notes, the 50101 master classes, thousand optimize, plus ones free. So what do you want to optimize today? Your productivity habits? Sleep? Mental toughness? We've got 33 categories here, each of which comes with its own Optimal Living 101 masterclass and a collection of philosopher's notes to help you go to your next level with more wisdom in less time. 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