Michael Easter, Author Of The Comfort Crisis, On How To Leverage Discomfort For A Happier & Healthier Life

Once you have so many problems taken care of, we just start searching for more hollow problems and that starts to stress us out and drive us absolutely insane. And more importantly, you miss, like, how amazing it is to be alive right now. Like, it is the best period in time to ever be alive. And yet when you look at holes, people are more miserable than ever.

Okay, guys, major fangirl moment. This is it. This is it for me. This is one of them. This is a biggie who I have on the show today, and I know you're going to love this person. So the human being that I have on my show is somebody whose book I came across because of my amazing sister friend, Jackie Koch, who introduced me to a book called the Comfort Crisis this last summer. And this book rocked my world. I was in a place where my business was kicking my ass and because of that, I had let a lot of things go. I was really in a tough spot. I was feeling anxious, depressed. I was having trouble wanting to get out of bed. I was having trouble being excited about life. I was feeling like my fitness was slipping. I wasn't eating very well anymore and I had started having a glass of wine almost every single night. And I didn't feel like myself. And this book really rocked my world and reminded me that it's so important that the we how we frame challenge and that we seek out challenge. And I will read this book once a year, every single year. So the human being on my podcast today is Michael Easter and he is an author, professor and adventurer. He writes and speaks about how humans can integrate modern science and evolutionary wisdom into their lives to expand their potential, better physical and mental health, more profound experiences, and increase performance in business and fitness. He's the best selling author of the Comfort Crisis and to develop his ideas, he travels to the world's most remote and dangerous places, reads thousands of studies, and speaks to hundreds of experts. You guys, all the things that I am not willing to do right now. So if you're not traveling all over the world and doing that as well, trust me, just get his Cliff notes because it will change your freaking life. His ideas have shifted how top institutions view topics ranging from exercise to mental health to improving performance. And I think you're going to love this conversation because I really feel like all of you listening are like me, where you want to reach your potential. You don't want to die not knowing what you really had in you and what you were capable of. So this book, I want you to read it once a year. Listen to the podcast do me a favor. Listen to the book on audio because the story is so good and it moves you into action. This is one of those books, guys. This is one of those books. Okay, let's get started. Michael, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for coming on.

I'm really excited to be here. It should be fun to talk.

Oh, my God, you guys. So before I hit record, I was being the ultimate fan girl, but for good reason. You are about to be the ultimate fan people, after you hear this podcast. No pressure, Michael, whatsoever.

But yeah, not at all. Not at all.

So take it away. No, I'm just kidding. So your book has completely changed my life, my family's life. It is in my top three of most recommended books that I really, really think if you want to have a good life, personally, mentally, emotionally, relationship wise, and then I can't even tell you what this did, even for my business. So I'm really excited to dive into this concept, you guys. He has a book called the Comfort Crisis, and it is all about the evolutionary need to be challenged. And I can honestly say that your book has helped me really fall in love with some of the most challenging experiences and periods of my life over this last. So I think I first want to just start out with saying, where did this concept first for you really take roots when you were like, oh, this is kind of everything to me.

Yeah. So, I mean, you've mentioned challenging periods in your life. So I didn't know my dad because he liked to go out to bars and that sort of stuff. My mom got sober before she had me, and I found a period in my life where I was kind of doing that same thing and getting sober. It was very uncomfortable, but it improved my life just across the board. So I would say it sort of, yeah, started from there and, yeah, I don't know, the ball started rolling and started getting ideas. And now we have a book.

Yeah. When. So when you were getting sober. Because obviously you have that moment of the realization that you're. I still have cocktails, but I absolutely used to be extreme drinker. But those moments and realizations where you're like, oh, my God, my joy is completely only wrapped up in the thought of when I get to go drink or when I get to go eat or when I get to go do these things that are sabotaging. So what was that like for you, switching where you find joy? Like, can you speak a little bit about that experience of, like, trying to navigate that?

So to your point, when you are a person who drinks like me, and I like to say my favorite drink was always the next one.

I feel that.

Yeah. So my problem was never that I was drinking every day. It's just that when I would drink, which tended to be the weekends, one was never enough, two was never enough. And when you drink like that, you might find yourself in some pickles in life every now and then, right?

I definitely did.

And I would say that my life looked pretty good on paper. Like, I worked at this big magazine everyone had heard of, I had a house, but just internally I was a mess, personally. Just the walls were caving in. And I had tried to stop drinking like literally hundreds of times using different ways, and obviously it never worked. And for whatever reason, one morning I just woke up and it was very clear to me, one, that if I continued to drink, I was probably going to die early. Didn't know if I was going to die. I read about this in the book. I didn't know if I would die 35 or 55 or 75. I just knew it would be earlier.

Yeah.

And the second thing is that all the times I tried to stop drinking, I tried to do. Tried to do it the easy way, like, okay, I'm going to come up with some strange hairball scheme to like drink less. Never worked, right. And I think I realized that I had to do the absolutely hardest thing, which was just stop all at once. And I knew that that was going to be totally hard, totally uncomfortable. It was going to be hell for a while, but there might be something there for me. I did that and I was totally correct, it totally sucked. But only, only in the short term. So one of the lessons of the book is that in order to improve your life, especially in the context of today, you often have to go through short term discomfort to get a long term benefit. And that was 100% the story of me getting sober. Now the other thing is still the magazine I worked out was Men's Health magazine. I Get Sober. I'm like, oh, yeah, that was terrible in the short term, but my life has improved in the long run. And I start thinking about all the things I write about at Men's Health. Improving your fitness. What do you have to do that you have to work out? Working out sucks as you're doing it right, but you get healthy. On the other side of that, you're glad you did it. If you want to lose weight, probably going to have to eat less, you're going to be hungry, that sucks. But your health will Likely improve if you were in. If you're overweight when you start, right. Even improving your mental health, you're probably going to have to ask yourself some tough questions and that psychological onion. And that's no fun in the short term, but you improve. Once I sort of noticed that trend, I had to go do. I'll kind of keep this part short, but I had to do a story for Men's Health where they commissioned me to go profile this guy who. His name is Donnie Vincent, and he's this backcountry boat hunter and filmmaker. Basically, I had to go hunting with this dude off the grid, like, deep in the backcountry for only like, five days. And it absolutely sucked. I mean, I was cold the entire time. I was hungry the entire time because we had to pack in food. Hunting is very boring. If we wanted water, it was like this epic hike down to the stream and then hike back up to the peaks to get it. But when I got home, I felt just way better. And not to mention, when I get home, I'm like, in my house in Las Vegas, that's 72 degrees and there's food right there, and I don't have to do any effort for water. And you just kind of hit you like, oh, wow. Life is pretty comfortable today for most people, most of the time. And that is so much different than how humans lived for two and a half million years of human evolution. So in the past, the world was never comfortable. It took effort. Survival required basically doing hard things, like, all the time. And this was all in this uncomfortable context of the world. So if you could do the next easiest, most comfortable thing, you'd have a survival advantage. So we were basically humans evolved to seek comfort, to do the next easiest thing. And that kept us alive when we lived in uncomfortable environments. But now our environments have shifted, but we still have that drive. And that's leading to problems that you would expect, like lack of fitness, the obesity crisis, but also ones that maybe you wouldn't expect. Like, it's very much tied to this sort of huge rates of anxiety and depression and all these other mental health problems. So, yeah.

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That is one of the biggest things that I notice is when I'm, I'm going through, like, when I choose challenges, especially, I'd rather, you know, and we'll talk a lot about this, but I'd rather choose my challenge than have challenge choose me because it will e. And, you know, when I'm going and choosing challenges that have a reward on the other side, whether it's just something that I, you know, feel great, that I accomplished because it was challenging, I don't. I notice in my life, I'm not sitting there going, oh, I'm so anxious. I'm so overwhelmed. I feel so depressed. Yes, it's a different set of challenges, but I think the energetic, like, vibration of the challenge feels very different. It's like I'm overcoming, I'm learning, I'm proud. Whereas the other challenges, it's like, oh, God, I feel hopeless. I feel desperate. I don't know what to look forward to. I'm anxious. Like, we're dwelling on these, you know, at the time, they don't feel ridiculous, but looking at them after, you're like, wow, those are really, like, ridiculous problems to be thinking about and so small. It's so very. Like, you're in your bubble. You're not thinking of other people when you're doing that as well. So where do you think you give so much good context in the book to kind of set us up around where we're at? Kind of in America and in life in terms of how we're viewing just like, life, comforts and challenges. Can you share a little bit about that?

Well, I think what you just mentioned about how we can kind of get sucked up in the problems we have, and they're probably not that big of deal in the grand scheme of our lives. So there's this concept in the book I talk about called prevalence induced concept change. Now, this is a dorky way of basically saying problem creepy. So there's these two psychologists at Harvard, and they're in line for tsa, and as they're waiting in line for tsa, they notice that TSA is really good at finding problems, right? Like you go through TSA and they're like, giving you the whole body pat down because you forgot a bottle of water in your bag or whatever, like, crazy. And so they wonder, they go, okay, if all of a sudden everyone followed the rules, would TSA just let people fly through security and they go, I don't think so. Because the job of TSA is to find problems. So they think they would just widen what they consider a problem so the problems would come more shallow. And as they're sitting there, they're talking and they're like, well, that's kind of like people though, right? So they decide that they want to study this and they carry out a couple different studies. But the one that's really interesting, they have people look at 800 different faces in a row. And the people's job is to decide whether these faces are threatening or whether they are non threatening. So the people are going like, not threatening, non threatening, not threatening. Oh, that one's threatening, not threatening, non threatening. But what they don't tell these study participants as they're showing them faces is that about on the 200th face, they start showing them fewer and fewer threatening faces. So if this is a black or white scenario, people would start to say threatening less often. What they find is that people said threatening the exact same amount of times. So they started to judge sort of ambiguous down the middle faces as threatening ones. They would have said non threatening to before. And they did a similar setup. And it was looking at proposals and deciding whether they're ethical or unethical. And so what this found is that as humans experience fewer and fewer problems, we don't actually become more satisfied. We just lower our threshold for what we consider a problem. Now, as the world has improved over time, which I think we can all agree it has, if you look at the world over the last 500 years, say what's happened is that we haven't actually become more satisfied. We've simply just looked for new problems to get annoyed about. But our problems have become progressively more hollow over time. This is like the science of first world problems. You think about if your biggest problem is that you literally cannot afford dinner, you probably aren't as annoyed if you, if someone cut you off in traffic.

Or something like that.

But once you have so many problems taken care of, we just start searching for more hollow problems. And that starts to stress us out and drive us absolutely insane. And more importantly, you miss, like, how amazing it is to be alive right now. Like, it is the best period in time to ever be alive. And yet when you look at holes, people are more miserable than ever.

Okay, so you talk about the concept. I think I'm remembering to say it right. Misogi.

Yes, yes.

Okay. And this is essentially kind of the theory of getting to choose like, choose your hard, choose your problem. And tell me a little bit about this, how this got introduced into your life. Where were you at at? Why was this so intriguing to you? Let's maybe talk about your first one and what it did.

So I come across this guy whose name is Marcus Elliot, and Marcus graduated from Harvard Medical School, decides he doesn't want to be a doctor, decides that he wants to revolutionize sports science, which is like kind of an arrogant statement. You're like, okay, yeah, whatever, dude. But it turns out he actually does. So the guy has contracts with the NFL and the NBA and he's the first person to basically put big data and AI over human movement. Now with this, he can predict injury rates pretty accurately. He can help players improve their movement, improve their game. So he's like very much about numbers and figures, but he also realizes that when it comes down to the end of a game and the whole thing's on the line, there are certain people who you always want to give the ball to because they've got that gear, Right? Certain people just have the gear where they're unruffled. They can just affect things. And so what's up with that? Because that's not a measurable thing.

Yeah.

So to get to these, that sort of gear, as it were, he does this thing called misogi. And the idea is that once a year you're going to go outside into nature and you're going to do something really hard. There are two rules. Masogi. Rule number one is make it really hard. Rule number two is don't die is sort of a joke, a tongue in cheek way of saying, be safe. But the idea is basically this, is that as humans evolve, as I mentioned earlier, we have to do hard things all the time. We are challenged all the time. This could be from hunting. This could be from moving our family from point A to point B. And these things were without safety nets. We didn't get to choose them. But when we would take on these challenges, we would sort of be thrust up against our edges, right. We'd be like, I don't know if I can finish this thing. But by sort of going past that and accomplishing whatever we had to, we would learn a lot about what we were capable of. Because you can only really learn what you're capable of when you get to that point where you're like, I don't know if I can do this.

Yes, it's the only time I've learned. Only time.

But you do the damn thing anyway, right? You don't quit. We don't face those challenges as often as we used to in the past. Especially challenges that incorporate physicality, psychology, and even like spirituality, right? Like these three things at once where it's just like this epic. Like you have to dig deep physically, mentally, even just like, you know, you just gotta find your stuff. So the idea of Masogi is that he's trying to mimic those sorts of challenges that we used to face in the past. And what that does is that he defines the rule one, the really hard rule, as saying you should have a 50, 50 shot at finishing whatever task takes time. Now, when you think about how people approach challenges today, we usually know we're going to accomplish it hard, but we're like, I'm gonna finish. So think about marathon running, right? People know they're gonna finish the marathon. They just aren't sure if it's gonna be in some arbitrary time goal. So with a Masogi, like, you should have a coin flips chance of actually finishing that. Because at that difficulty level, you will face the moment where you aren't sure if you're gonna keep going, where you're like, I'm done. I want to quit here. But if you can just kind of keep going, you get past that edge and you can look back and go, oh man, like, I thought I didn't have anything left, but I'm past that edge. So you've. I've sold myself short, right? And with that realization that you've sold yourself short out there, you can ask yourself, well, like, where else in my life am I selling myself short? And that will change you because you realize that you're probably capable of far more than you ever realized.

I love this because the times in my life where I've really just made. And I do believe that you can make such crazy transformations in short periods of time by using this. And I love this idea more than I can tell you because it's how I went from kind of not even believing in myself whatsoever. I was from a really small town. I didn't graduate high school. I was homeschooled through high school. And in my 20s, I had started doing out of the blue. Had no dance background, had no fitness background, for the most part, had started doing fitness competitions. And then I decided to do like the fitness routine competitions. No gymnastics, no nothing. Totally did not know if I would complete it, if I would fail, what that was going to look like. And that was probably the hardest. I did that for about four years, and it was the hardest four Years of my entire life, I had no social life, But I've never, like, that was the most transformative part of my life for. And we'll talk about this because I know you experienced this. I trusted myself after doing that. I didn't trust myself before. I had so much confidence in myself. I was willing to bet on myself where I would have never, ever done that before. I could walk into a room knowing what I brought to the table, because I was proud of the things that I completed where I had never completed something before. So for you, before you started doing this, what would you say are some of the biggest emotional changes for you that you can look back at the man you were before and then the man you were after, really incorporating this into your life?

Yeah. I'll answer that two ways. And first of all, I'll say that when you look at all of human history, you know, when I talk about Masogi, people will often think it's kind of, like, weird. They're like, okay, it's, like, vaguely interesting, but it's kind of kooky, like, okay, whatever. But there's actually, like, massive historical precedents for it. We used to call things like this rites of passage. So in all these different tribes around the world, when you had a person who was at point A in their life and you wanted to get them to point B, where they were more confident, a better contributor to society overall, it's not like you just hand over the keys. They would usually send them out into nature to do something hard so they were tested, so they would learn something about themselves, and then they could come back to society and be better overall. It improved as a human. So for me, I definitely think so. In the book, I did 33 days.

In the Arctic, like, one of my favorite, favorite stories. Okay, good.

The narrative. Yeah. So the narrative of the book, the overarching narrative, is about that trip that I took. And I'll say that when I went out there, like, you know, I'd done some stuff outdoors, but this was, like. This was like, serious stuff.

Very different.

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Yes. Very different. This was not camping for.

I was, like, nervous, you guys listening to this. You have to read the book, but. And listen to the audio. Like, sorry, but they got to get the audio. It's the. It's the best ever. I was, like, nervous for you. I was like, oh, my God, my safety. Okay.

Yes, there was definitely some harrowing moments. But what happens is when you face those harrowing moments out there, you're learning things along the way and you're putting yourself in situations that are extreme enough that for me, when I got back, all of a sudden I have a lot more perspective around the sort of quote unquote extremes of modern life, which are not at all like the extremes out there. Like, there's so much like, modern life is very safe, right?

Yes.

Out there, it wasn't entirely safe. So you learn from that. And so for me, what it really did is, I would say it just massively elevated what I would consider a problem in my life, what I would consider a stressful situation. So my wife's main comment when I got back, I was like, you know, how do you think this changed me? She's like, oh, you're just like, impossible to ruffle now. Oh, it's true. Because I just didn't like, you know, the things that used to really annoy me or get me worked up that I would worry about. You're just like, well, I got plenty of food. It's warm in here. Can't see any grizzly bears nearby. So I'm good. Yeah. And I think that sticks with you. And I will say also that I've learned that I need to go do something similar at least every year because it's kind of a reset. Humans adapt to our environment fast. That's why we took over the world. That's why we're so smart, but at the same time, we're so good at it. In an environment that is not entirely natural and geared to us being. Having perspective that if we don't sort of get out of that, I think it can come with some downsides, definitely.

I love that so much. You guys listening? Imagine being unruffleable. Let's make of that word. Imagine, you know, all of these things coming your way that you're not putting so much energy towards. So you have. You have so much more energy, I can imagine, for your relationships, for the goals that you want to achieve. It's like, I can definitely say that we work with a lot of entrepreneurs, and I think the things that they're putting their energy towards are so small that they get exhausted really easily in the beginning. In the beginning, especially when they're. When they're starting out. And I would say that that is one of the biggest problems that we see is the problems they think they're having are so small compared to what they're going to encounter on the journey that I think that these are such beautiful ways in business and life and relationships to put those problem into perspective. Because then you do have so much more energy for everything that you want to do. And yeah, it might be, you know, kind of what you said, there is a lot of energy output into these, maybe physical activities or these mental challenges that you're choosing in your scheduling, but in the grand scheme, I think it gives you your life back. Like, I really believe you get to start living life when you understand this concept rather than being in this very small bubble. I realized how small we can live when we're not really getting outside of our problem.

Yeah. I mean, thinking about it from the perspective of an entrepreneur, especially one that's just coming up, that's a risky endeavor. Only in the context of modern life, though.

Yes.

So think about how lucky you have to be to be an entrepreneur. And let's say it does fail. Are you going to die? No. What's going to happen?

You're probably still going to have shelter and food.

You're gonna have friends, you're gonna have shelter. You're literally gonna have everything you need to survive still.

Yeah.

All of it. You'll still have. The worst thing that can happen is the number in the bank account isn't what you wanted it to be. And you drive a crappy car instead of a really nice one. Right. And you feel kind of bad about yourself, but you're not gonna die. Right now is the absolute best time ever to just push all the chips across the table. Now, I'm not saying do stupid Thing and things in business. But I think that what holds a lot of people back is fear from failure. But they haven't sat down and been like, okay, well what would happen if I did fail? And it's like, oh, I'm going to be embarrassed. It's like, no one's going to remember this shit. All of the best entrepreneurs have failed at some point or another. And looks back and, you know, I don't have examples off the top of my head, but like say Mark Cuban, no one looks back and go, oh yeah, Mark Cuban, that's the guy who like started that one store and it like didn't work out. Right. They're like, no, he's the guy who owns the Mavericks.

Right, Exactly.

So, yeah, I just think that it's easy to worry too much in a world where we, we probably really shouldn't worry all that much. I'm not saying everyone's life is perfect and that life isn't hard, but for most people, most of the time, it is the safest time to be alive ever.

When you're looking at the things that are challenging in your life. Because I can imagine now you really appreciate the challenges. Like, tell me about how you perceive them now when you're going through them. Like, really knowing this is actually helping me, you know.

So I'll give a couple different examples. I think in business, I do go back to that, what's the worst thing that could happen?

Yeah.

I also, I would say am better at asking myself, why am I doing this in the first place and what am I giving up by doing it? Do I want to do? Like, I'm better with my time and going, okay, this is a venture that could probably make me more money, but I have zero interest in doing it. And it's probably just going to annoy me. So I have a better perspective of going, what is enough in my life.

Yeah.

And if something, if I choose to do something, if it doesn't pull me below enough and I, it's fun and I, it gives. It's very life giving to me, that's a great idea. Whereas something could push me well past enough. But if it makes me miserable, like, what is the point here? Relationship wise, I would say that I have better perspective. I'm not that I'm better able to pull back and go, are you just like defending your ground in the moment? So now I ask myself a lot of times, do you want to be right or happy?

Yeah.

Because the reality is that no one's ever 100% right. We change our minds all the time. We learn new things as we go. And so in arguments, you just kind of go, like, whatever, you know, oh, my God, My.

So my husband and I have been married 17 years now, and we've come to this conclusion of kind of like this blanket statement I'll share that's like, when we're fighting, we're like, so is this gonna end with us together? Because it's always gonna end with us together. So we go, then do we just kind of want to let this one go? Because it's. It's like, we know we both want the ending to be the same, with us together underneath the same roof talking. So let's not keep, like, kicking the can down the road of misery knowing, like, we're going to end up together anyway. Like, that's the choice.

Yeah.

Because the only reason you would really keep arguing is if you think you're going to go and, like, you're going to get a different outcome or someone's going to win. And let me tell you, when you're married to someone, there is no one person winning, period.

And I also think about it in terms of, you know, maybe before. So a good example is that, you know, like, I'm a writer, sort of creative, and I fall into all the cliches of just like, my desk has a million different papers on it, right. My wife, meanwhile. I mean, if it were up to her, the house would be run like a prison. Everything would just be. There wouldn't be a lot out. Everything would be perfectly in this place. And so we used. I just used to leave stuff out because I would just be like, like, who cares? It's just stuff. But now I can be like, what is my job as a husband? It's, like, to make my wife happy. And is it that big of a deal for me to just, like, maybe move your shit to the office and, like, in your space? Like, it's not that big of a deal. Right. That, too, has been beneficial for me. Definitely for her, too.

I've absolutely had those same realizations where I'm like, is this really that big of a deal to me to make someone feel. Feel so much happier about something? Like, yeah, yeah, totally. Again, like, where's the winning. Trying to figure that out. Okay, so you talk a lot about how you learned about how death really has made some cultures. Much like talking about death, experiencing death, learning about death on a daily basis has made a lot of cultures experience more happiness. Can you share a little bit about that?

Yeah. I started thinking about this because in the book, we were in the Arctic because we were hunting caribou. Now, I had never hunted before, and I didn't even know if I wanted to hunt. So I kind of had some hesitations going into that. But the guy I was with was like, I think you would understand why we come up here. So long story short, I go up and I go, okay, maybe I'll hunt. And the whole time I'm thinking, like, I don't have to do this. Maybe I'll hunt, maybe I won't. We get into a position where there's this very old caribou who is limping. Like, the thing has two weeks left. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna hunt. And I pull a trigger. Trigger of the rifle. The animal goes down, and I just totally lost it, like, emotionally. Like, so much regret. And we go over to it. I still feel the exact same thing. Like, what have you done? Then we start breaking the animal down because we're going to use every single part of it that we legally can. You have to leave some of it by law. And my mind sort started to shift. And that's because we're taking meat from the animal. And it's like, oh, wait a minute. Like, that's meat. It's like the same stuff at the grocery store. And it's like, well, dude, you eat meat every single day and never once have you felt emotion.

Like, this was so much perspective for me. Like, I was crying during this portion because this blew my mind because I was in the exact same emotional place you were, obviously, because you're not the exact same place. But, like, that was so impactful for me, going, I eat this, yet I'm not willing to, like, look at it and like, cherish it and all the things. Okay, keep going.

Well, I was crying too. So I kind of realized, you know, for one thing to live on, another often has to die. And then you go, well, wait a minute. You're not left out of that equation, are you? Oh, shit. That's a heavy thought.

Yeah, very.

So I. I start thinking about this and. And death. And I will tell you, that is the most uncomfortable thing to think about for me. It was. I think most people it is. But what I found happen is sort of that lesson that I mentioned before is that although it made me exceedingly uncomfortable in the short term, like, totally the worst thing ever, it improved my life in the long term because it changed my behavior, because it helped give me perspective. Like, I didn't get as flipped out about small things. You know, because you're like, I'm gonna die. I got a limited stretch of time here. Why am I spending it on this? And so I wanted to learn more about that. So I ended up traveling to Bhutan, which is. It's right by India and Nepal. Super small country. It's about the size of South Carolina. And Bhutan is interesting because it is one of the least developed countries on earth. It's like 160 or something out of 185 on the development list. They don't have a stoplight in the entire country. They don't have any, like, international fast food. I mean, it feels like you're going back to like 1940, 1930, really. But what's interesting is that they also consistently rank as one of the happiest countries on Earth. When scientists do, like, really extensive studies, they're always in the top 20. Yet they don't have all the stuff that we would consider the American dream. Yeah, right. Because that's what we think is going to make us happy. And there's a lot of different reasons for their happiness, but one of them is that people in Bhutan are instructed to think about their death at least once a day. So I want to learn, what does this do for people? So I go meet with this guy whose name is Kenpo Puncho Tashi. And he's a Kenpo in the Buddhist faith. And getting to him, well, I mean, this was like, this was a trip altogether. But then actually getting to him, like, we have to go up this crazy, crazy dirt mountain road, like in a smart car. Then I get dropped off at this trailhead and I have to hike into this dude shack. And there's no electricity, no running water. I like, go in the first room, there's nothing in there. The second room is like this kitchen with a cooktop. Third room, I pull back this drape. There's this big altar with a statue of the Buddha on the right. And I sweep my head to look left and I just see this guy's face, right? And he's this monk. He's sitting in the lotus position in his gold robes, shaved head, the beads, the whole deal, meditating. And he just looks over at me and he's like, welcome. You want to talk about death? Oh, my God.

This is not my everyday experience.

No, this is like some straight up Indiana Jones stuff. But I sit and I talk to this guy about death and the Bhutanese perspective on death. And he explains it to me like this. He's like, pretend that you're walking down a Trail. And the end of this trail is a cliff, and the cliff is death. He's like, we are all walking on the trail right now. He's like, don't you want to know that there's a cliff there? He's like, he goes, in the United States, you guys don't want to know that there's a cliff there. No. You ignore death. And we see that in our funeral system, our medical system, our food system. So in Bhutan, we want to know that there's a cliff there because it changes how we walk the trail. If you know there's a cliff, you're going to walk that trail differently. You're going to stop and take in the view. You're going to smell the roses along the trail. You're going to have different conversations with the people that you were walking the trail with. So when you realize that the trail is going to end, metaphorically, it changes your behavior. And those behavior changes can result in improved happiness and improved perspective. And this has been proven by a few different studies in the U.S. so.

The summer that we were reading your book, we had lost my husband's dad the year prior. So it was the first summer that. Because we'd always go home, that's where they lived in Wisconsin. And it was super sudden. It was unexpected. He was like the healthiest guy. He'd bike ride 17 miles. He was like the. The. If there could be a star of a family, he was the star of our family. Like, he was just the best, like the best human. And we kind of were having that summer where it's like, are we gonna feel happy again? Like, is this ever gonna feel normal? And we're simultaneously reading your book and listening to that, which was so powerful. But we're also learning that death can teach you so much. And it's like the. Honestly, it was the biggest. Like, viewing his life as a gift rather than like mourning it and being stuck in that place of loss and instead saying, wow. This human lived his life wanting to impact people in little moments, like in everyday moments. Like, he was the one where you pull into the driveway and he'd be at the neighbor's house because he's like, I went over to see if they needed help with X, Y and Z. In every single home, he'd be at helping different people. And it was just a moment of, what can we take from his life? And really looking around and going, what can we leave behind with people? Not, like, with things. Don't get me wrong, I love money, I love things. I think it's great to be aspirational, but the biggest realization was like, what can we leave behind in people? And what can we enjoy along the way and take from each moment and each interaction, each person? And I think it was just. Just such a moment where, you know, when you're in your 30s and 40s, you're like, wow, am I ever going to get old? And all of a sudden, one day your parents are getting old and people are dying around you, and it's like, oh, my God. It actually makes your life so much more purposeful and meaningful. And, wow, there's a time limit on this thing. I better actually start living. And what he left behind was just this gift of we stopped waiting to live because we were like, oh, when we do this, or we'll get that down the road, or we want to do this thing later. And it's like, no, we gotta do it now. We don't know if we're gonna be around. We don't know how many of our family members are gonna be around. It was actually. It was the hardest thing. But also now living like we know we're gonna die or we could lose our family is so much more. We live such a more enriched life in the last couple years than we've ever lived because of it.

Yeah. And it's often that we unfortunately need things like that to change our perspective, you know, but that is something that often comes out of that. You know, you also see that when people get, say, if they survive a cancer diagnosis or something, it's kind of like the thing that changes their course. Right. You kind of start living. And so I'm. You know, it's terrible to hear that he passed away, but some people, when that happens, it doesn't teach them anything. And it sounds like it taught you something that was important.

The whole family, we try to make it mean something, you know, try to make that life mean something. So that's been a really beautiful way to, I think, help with the morning period as well. So, all right, you have a kind of blueprint for leveraging discomfort. Is this something that you just follower that you can share with us, or what does that look like?

So there's this concept that I talk about a lot called being a 2 percenter. And in the book I talk about, and this is a study that, like, totally changed how I think and really affirmed how wired we are to do the next, easiest, most comfortable thing. And it is that only 2% of people will take the stairs when there is also an escalator available.

Only 2%.

Only 2%.

Holy smokes.

So when I think about being a 2 percenter, it's really what small decisions can I make every single day. Although they will be uncomfortable in the short term, they are going to add up over time to a massive benefit. And it's not just about taking the stairs. It's everything. It's how am I spending my attention, what sort of effort I'm putting into my business or my writing. Right. It's like the little things tend to add up and for me that looks like I make sure to sort of have a blocked off period of writing because that's my main thing. But I also attention wise, you know, the, the time that I think is good for someone who writes and has to think of ideas, which is everyone has to think of ideas. I mean like that's like how you come up with good stuff. It breaks new ground, right. Even having times where I go through the discomfort of boredom because it's so easy now to just kind of default to a screen or something. So spending more time outside, more time totally unattached from my phone. Although in the short term I'm like, why the hell am I out here? I'm so bored. Usually some interesting idea will pop up, like leverage that in the future. I think about it in terms of just everything I do in my life. I really try and abide by that 2% concept. And I noticed that just by doing that, having those like little moments where you're like, this isn't the thing I wanted to do, but I know I'm going to have this long term benefit that, that really adds up to a big benefit. So I have like a newsletter that I write every week and it's called the 2% newsletter because it's all about this.

So and we can just join that if we go to your website.

Yeah, and there's like a 2% challenge thing too that kind of introduces people to a lot of the concepts. So yeah, that's kind of what I'm all about now.

I love that. You know, I think we need these little one sentences, like these little mantras that we cling to in those moments. I've always had to have something to grab instead of our old programming of the kind of like you said the I'm bored or this is uncomfortable or whatever. It's like the I want to be a 2 percenter or I'm going to be a 2 percenter. Identifying as a 2 percenter literally in that moment makes you say, oh, this is good for me. Me oh, this is making me better. So I think I'm gonna grab that mantra and use that for whenever I see in front of me. That's been huge for me is just having something to say, oh, this discomfort is making me better. Or kind of like you like this. Oh, this boredom, or not looking at my phone and looking around, like, look up. Just let yourself actually think your own thoughts. That's been huge for me. Like, stop looking at your phone. Such an addiction. And right now you're so you guys, number one. You have to go and get this, this other book. Because it's one of my top books. Like literally top three books in all of. All of historical book reading. I'm a huge reader. I have a huge. Yes. Library. And it's definitely because it's so impactful, you guys, you will experience the impact right away. But you're writing another book. And that is also an experience in and of itself. Like you just said, like, that is a discipline. Sitting down to do work. And whether you guys listening are an author, whether you're an entrepreneur, and it's those mundane tasks that you have to just get your shit done. What do you say in those moments of like, just show up even when you're not feeling like, inspiration. Can you just like, take us through some of those so everybody knows they're normal and it's uncomfortable?

Oh, yeah. I mean, so I wake up very early. People are always like, oh man, that's so inspiring. It's like, okay, well, the catch here is that I go to bed at 8:30 today too.

I love it.

But I get up, I make a cup of coffee and it's like, I'm gonna sit in that chair from 4am to 7am Some days it's like, oh man, I'm on a heater. I feel great. Other days it is pulling teeth. It's reading studies. I don't want to read. But like, I found especially with like, say I'm reading a piece of research, it's so dense and so like, complicated. And frankly it's like, like, why do scientists write this way?

I was just reading some and I was like, this is so stupid. Just tell me the point.

Exactly. But then you'll get to some, like, little point and it connects with this other thought you had, which connects with this other thought which brings this whole thing together. And it's just like, bam. And then it starts moving. But if I wasn't willing to sort of sit in the chair, do the work, struggle through the. I suck at this. No one's going to read this. This is going to bomb, have like, you know, panic attacks along the way of writing the book. It wouldn't be what it needs to be. You kind of need to go through all that discomfort to put something out that is meaningful and hopefully affects things. You know, my. When I'm writing a book, my rules are, would I myself read this because I'm the world's best. I finished the first quarter of the book person. I just have a terrible attention span. And do I think that this could actually help someone's life? Do I think that this could help most people most of the time? Is there something in this book that I think could help someone? And if I've done that, then I consider it a win? Now, that sounds easy. It's just. It's not though. You got to put in. They have to put in the work. It's, you know, to the whole point of this podcast, it's like, earn your happy. And I found that kind of going through that stuff. It's like once the pieces all connect, that is one of the things that I consider the most life giving in my life. Like, aha. Moments where it's like, oh, my God, you just. The secret. Everything connects. Like the last final piece that was.

Missing, you know, oh, it's the best moment. Who would you be right now if you weren't living this way, if you didn't take some extreme challenges into your life? And I do think it's like those extreme moments, some people don't love that word, but I think it takes that to like, break through and get to those edges and become someone new. Who would you be right now if you hadn't started doing that?

Well, if I didn't get sober, I'd probably be dead. But then second of all, once I sort of got sober, that was such a good teacher for me that, you know, to improve, it's. It's going to be terrible. And that sort of going through that hell of getting sober was like, it's never going to get that low again. So it kind of makes all things so much more manageable. And so I think continuing to try and sort of push that edge in an intelligent way. You know, a boxer doesn't improve by just sticking out their face and saying, hit me. But a boxer is going to get hit in the face a couple times along the way to perfecting their craft is kind of how I think about it and just continually trying to, like, sharpen the edge, do things that I think are going to move the dial even if they're going to be challenging and being will. Being willing to go there, because I do feel like too, it's never quite as bad in the moment as we think it's as hard as it. We think it's going to be. You know, we can kind of get worked up beforehand. So I don't know. That's kind of some psycho battle. I don't know if that gives any actionable information, but that's just what I've experienced.

I learned so much about that when I was just trying to compete in fitness because, wow, it was very challenging. You had to be so consistent, and it took a long time to see a result. And I have that reference point now, though, with anything I do, I'm like, okay, if I've learned anything, it takes a lot longer to get the result that you want. There's probably going to be a lot more pain and you have to add a lot more weight. The more that you go and you want to, like, push, push that goal forward. If you want to get better, you have to add even more weight or more time or more challenge.

What kind of fitness competition was it?

I did figure for a long time, I did bikini, I did Fitness America. So where you do the routines as well?

Yeah.

So, yeah, that was quite intense. I did that for four years, but I did end up winning, so that's really nice.

Well, that's also. That is different than any other sport, I would imagine. I would have done it. Because you have to control for every factor in your life.

Yes.

Like, the food thing becomes so down to the minutiae of it and the gym time and the sleep time, and that takes. I could see how you come out of that. And you're like, yeah, I got this.

So disciplined. But you also learn that as disciplined as you need to be, there's actually, you know, as you do it more, you learn that you didn't have to be as disciplined if you learned more specifically, either the science or, you know, it's really interesting. I could go on and on about it, but. But let's leave everyone with this for whomever is listening right now. I really know that people listen to this podcast. They want to get to the next level so bad. They want to do the thing. They have this dream on their heart or this big vision, and there's something blocking them from, like, getting to the next level. What would you suggest for them?

Go out and do? I mean, try masogi. Go do something really hard out in nature. That is, you legitimately think you have a 50, 50 shot at finishing and you will learn something about yourself out there. Now, this might seem not. May not seem like a direct, you know, business to have direct business application, but it does because that's with businesses. And people will go out and they'll do something. They will learn something about themselves and it will change their perspective in such a way that the business life becomes more manageable. They're more willing to do the thing that they didn't want to do, and they have a better assessment of risk. And what risk actually is, is not. And that is something you could do literally tomorrow. Just pick something and you'll learn from it.

So good. You know, I was on the treadmill the other day and literally thought of you in the book because I was like, this is so hard. And it wasn't even. I was probably running at like 5.6 and I was only going to run for like 20 or 30 minutes. And I was like, why does this feel so hard? And I said, do you know how to make this easier? I need to make this harder right now. And I was like, I'm going to make this harder for three minutes and then this 5.6 is going to feel like a field day and I'm going to be so grateful for it. So I cranked it up to like 7.7.5 and sure enough went back down to 5.6 and said, I'm so grateful for 5.6.

That's amazing.

So make your life easier. You're going to have to make it harder in the beginning. So I'm so grateful and it's such a good reminder. Michael, this is like, so exciting for me to be able to talk to you and also let you know how big of an impact the book made. And I hope that everybody listening goes and grabs it again. I'm just gonna stress I loved the audio because you're such a great storyteller. I was literally on that hunting trip with you was so awesome. So thank you so much. And again, when your next book comes out, this is an open door for you. I'm so excited for you.

Awesome. Well, I will make sure you get a advance copy and we can then come back and we can talk about it and yeah, talk more. I really enjoyed talking to you.

Oh, thank you so much. And you guys, one of the biggest things that we can do for our guest, obviously go grab his book, but go follow him too. I love your social. Every day you give great, like, just quick reminders of this whole theory and concept. Go tag him and let him know what your biggest takeaway was from this podcast episode. It's always nice to know the impact and who was listening. And he'll actually get to, you know, see your face on social media. So until next time, everyone, earn your happy bye. Bye.