Perform Podcast: Mastering Change with Brad Stulberg

I'm Alex Auerbach and I'm a performance psychologist with experience working in the NBA, NFL with elite military units and Fortune 5 executives. I'm excited to bring you the Perform podcast, where we unlock and uncover the principles and practices of health and high performance for teams, individuals and organizations so that you can be your best when it matters most. Welcome back to the Perform Podcast. I'm excited to be joined today by Brad Stohlbarg. Brad, how are you?

I'm doing well, Alex. It's a pleasure to be here.

Well, thank you for joining me. It's been a long time coming from all of our Twitter exchanges. And here we are, pseudo face to face from Asheville and Tucson. Before we jump into the book that you've just written and published, which I'm so excited to talk more about because a lot of the concepts really resonate from my training and acceptance and commitment therapy and some of the work I've done as a performance coach. I'd love to hear and have you share more about you. So tell us a little bit about who you are and how you got here.

Yeah, so I wear really three major hats. The first is, well, professionally, I've also got a family and friends and all that stuff, so my wife would kill me. But my professional hats, first and foremost is a writer where I'm really interested in applied psychology and philosophy. So taking concepts and big ideas from modern science and ancient wisdom and looking for common patterns and then helping people myself first and foremost figure out how to apply these things. The second hat that I wear as is a coach. And in my coaching practice, I work with a variety of executives, founders. I've counseled some athletes as well. And that's really just application of what I write about at a more intimate one. On one level, the coaching came from the writing. After my first book came out, peak performance co author was Steve Magnus. People asked me if I coach. I said no, didn't know what it was, kept saying no. About a year in, someone told me I should say yes. I started coaching a little bit and that kind of organically took off. And then the third hat I wear is someone that just always tries to have skin in the game on this. So I train myself. I'm by no means an elite athlete, but I train pretty hard. I'm an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan, so I have my ear to the ground with the younger folks and students. So I want to be both in the world of ideas, helping people apply it one on one, and then also really close to the ground trying to practice what I preach.

That's super cool. We'll allow you to sort of glaze over the first part. So we'll edit that out so your wife doesn't hear that you left her out at the beginning. We'll move forward, really. Before we jump into the book, what class are you teaching in Michigan? What do you cover there?

Yeah, so I'm on adjunct faculty, so I'm not a full professor or anything like that, but I work with the Graduate School of Public Health and I really say two things. The first, and what they probably say and where I actually come in and lecture is on personal development and leadership. So they have courses in the Graduate School of Public Health helping epidemiologists, future hospital administrators, physician leaders, figure out what it means to be a leader and lead well. And all of my lecturing falls under that umbrella. And then the second thing that I try to do is just help the entire enterprise think less about the absence of disease and more about health as human flourishing. And that is a trend that is slow. But I think it's really important when we consider what it actually means to be healthy.

I think that's awesome. I love to meet people and hear from people who are doing that work. You're shaping the future of where people are going. Hopefully all these people graduate, become leaders in their respective spaces, and are promoting some of these same ideas. And we could probably spend a full hour on health promotion and Health as Human Flourishing, but we won't get there quite yet. So I want to dive into Master of Change because I think obviously very timely with everything we've just gone through globally in the pandemic. And it just keeps evolving. There's more and more that's going on that we're navigating on a regular basis, I guess. Start. Tell me the genesis of the book. How do you decide change was a topic that you wanted to dive more into?

The kernel of the idea came early on in the pandemic. I kept seeing versions of the same headline, which was essentially, when are things going to get back to normal? Or what are we going to have to do to get back to normal? And something about that just viscerally rubbed me the wrong way. I didn't know what it was at the time, but it really got me thinking about when we're faced with chaos or disorder or instability, how our knee jerk reaction is one, to resist that and then two, to try to get back to where we were before. And that just felt very counter to like the basic principles of Evolution, which is you take instability, chaos, disorder, and you get through it, and yes, you end up stable, but that stability is somewhere new. And ideally, you use that disorder to improve, to evolve. And this is true at a personal level, it's true at a species level. So that was really, as I said, kind of like the insight. I distinctly remember it was early 2021, so we've been living with the pandemic for almost a year. I was in my kitchen in Asheville on my wife's iPad. New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist, Atlantic. For whatever reason this day, they all wanted to talk about what it'll take to get back to normal. And that set off the intellectual exploration of the topic of, really, disorder and instability that then more broadly became change.

That's awesome. So I, I, it resonates a lot for me. I mean, I remember everyone talking about the new normal and getting used to that, and it's like, yeah, I think this, this does not seem like something we're going to reverse and just go, go back to try, try as we might. And so how do we adapt more effectively? So as you were doing the research for this book and started to unpack what sort of lives at the center of mastering change, like, what concepts most surprised you? What did you discover here that you were not expecting to find?

I wouldn't necessarily say it was the most surprising, but I think the most foundational is just how much homeostasis has penetrated, like the collective psyche. So for those that may not remember high school biology, homeostasis essentially says that living organisms like to be stable, and therefore change is bad, and they resist it and avoid it. And when they're forced to change, they try to get back to where they were as fast as they can. So homeostasis describes change as a cycle of order disorder, back to order. And more recently, the research community has decided, like, this is actually not a very accurate fit model of what healthy individuals or organizations do amidst disorder. And they coined this term allostasis, which is order, disorder, reorder. So, yes, living systems crave stability, but that stability is always somewhere new. And I think the etymology of these words really tells the story. So homeostasis comes from the Latin root homo, which means same, and stasis, which means standing. So it says we achieve stability by staying the same. Whereas allostasis comes from the Latin root allo, which means change or variable, and then stasis, which means standing. So that says that we achieve stability through change. And I love it because it's got this double meaning that we can be stable through change. And the way to be stable through change is by being open to change, at least somewhat. And in the scientific community, there's been this somewhat rigorous debate over the last decade about homeostasis versus allostasis. Now, some researchers will say homeostatic upregulation, which is essentially the same thing as allostasis, but in the lay press, the people that are doing really good work writing about behavior change in habit development and organizational leadership, What I found is that 99.999% of that work is still operating in a homeostasis model. And the first kind of surprising finding was just again, how deep homeostasis has penetrated the psyche. I read so many articles on the Internet again by, like, people whose work I like, well, respected bloggers and losing weight. Got to fight homeostasis. Saving money in a different way. Got to fight homeostasis. Quitting smoking. Fight homeostasis, Start a new workout plan. It's like all homeostasis, and it's just the wrong model. So that was the first big surprising thing. And then I think the second surprising thing, and I'll let you determine where we go from here, because it's a little bit of a non sequitur, is just the importance of the B in cbt, so cognitive behavioral therapy in acceptance and commitment therapy as well, but like the importance of the B. And I am not a psychologist like you, but I have a theory that is a lot of the positive effect that we see of behavior change, whether that's an extreme helping someone that is clinically depressed or anxious recover or someone that's already doing well get to the next level. I really think that most of the magic is driven by the B, not the C. And I didn't know that heading into this book.

That's fascinating that you uncovered that. So I remember when I was in graduate school training under a woman who was sort of like one of the OGs of acceptance and commitment therapy. She had trained under Kelly Wilson and was one of the first people to make act accessible for kids. That was her shtick. And she was brilliant, brilliant woman. And I remember one of the things she said very early on was like, the only thing that really matters is the behavior. Like, everything else is just sort of like, you know, window. Window dressing, essentially. And I was like, huh? You know, all we think about especially popularly, is, well, I want to feel better, right? I want to think positively. And I was like, yeah, maybe, right? But that's not probably going to lead to the material change in your life. And the overall quality of life that you're. You're looking for. What's really going to make the difference is moving the needle with the bee, with what you do in the behavior. So I think it's really cool that you. You've arrived there, and I think the evidence would probably back you up, you know, pretty robustly. I think in terms of what we know about things like behavior modification and behavior change more broadly, the behavioral elements of most interventions tend to have far more power than things like cognitive reframing, even though I believe those are helpful, too. It's just. Is probably not the most important mechanism of change there.

I think that's right. And what's interesting is we're in a cultural moment where there's a lot of attention paid to stories and to the thoughts that we think and what we tell ourselves about ourselves in our inheritance in capital T trauma, or lowercase T trauma. And I think that we can do a whole lot of digging for insights. And I think having those insights is important, and they feel good, and they do help us craft narratives that are helpful. But at the end of the day, I think the only way that you make any kind of positive momentum and work through any kind of instability or disorder is through actions, through behaviors. And, you know, I'm somewhat skeptical about neuroimaging just because I think that it's still in so much of its infancy, and I think that we know so much less about the brain than we think we do. However, with that disclaimer, I came across this fascinating work on the rage pathway versus the seeking pathway in the brain. And it's developed by the late neuroscience researcher Jan Panscape. And the rage pathway is essentially what happens when we get, like, really angry or, like, we're feeling really hot when we react. And it's a very predictable pattern of neural circuitry in the brain that they can show under imaging. And the rage pathway often then leads to depression. Like, it literally burns itself out. You get, like, really angry or anxious or panicked, and then you get sad. The seeking pathway that gets activated when we're working towards some kind of goal or when we're able to reframe what we are going through as a challenge instead of a threat. And the seeking pathway is associated with more positive affects, more positive feelings and thoughts. And what's fascinating is, like, you look at the neurochemistry of this, and yes, cognitive reframing, making a plan, thinking about what you're going to do next, that releases some of the neurochemicals that shift you From a rage pathway to a seeking pathway, but actually doing the behavior, it's like 100 times bolus of those positive neurochemicals. So it's almost like if you're not super stuck, cognitive reframing works great. And there's all sorts of research on the power of self talk and mantras. And this stuff really, really does help and work. If you're not super stuck, because you don't need a huge bolus, you just need like a little jolt in your brain. But if you're stuck or you're navigating massive uncertainty and you just feel overwhelmed and like you want to shut down, then I think the strategy shifts to just like, do the thing. If you're so stuck that you don't even know what the thing is, have a friend, a coach, a therapist tell you what to do and just do the thing. And that has the best chance at unlocking your brain. And I found that just fascinating.

I'm smiling right now because when I was in my second year of graduate school, I remember sitting in what was called practicums, like this group meeting where we're reviewing each other's tape and talking about something, and I made the comment, like, I think they just need to do it. And my supervisor sort of mocked me at the time, was like, oh, is this Nike therapy? Like, you just go do it. And I'm like, yeah, kind of like, I think. I think kinda. So it's funny to hear that be validated now, however long later, you know, a decade at this point. But I think that's exactly right. And what ties this concept together and love learning about. About the rage pathway and the seeking pathway in the book. And I connected it back to, like, Lisa Feldman Barrett's work and some of the work around the brain and allostatic processes in the brain. And I think that's, to me, how this all started to fit together as I'm moving through. What you had written is like, yeah, the brain is trying to really predict how to best move the body to make the world work for us. And you're sort of saying, yeah, and if you can do that consistently, you can grow and develop through change. You can better manage the change that you've got going on. Am I getting that right?

Yes, 100%. That's a really elegant framing, so thank you for it. Essentially, like, when we're working through change, the goal is to keep moving in alignment with our values. Because the minute that we stop moving or we try to get back to where we were before, that's when we can kind of like get stuck right in a homeostatic response, like resistance avoidance, trying to get back. But if we know our values and we view ourselves in conversation with change and we're showing up and we're taking actions in alignment with our values, we might treat these actions as experiments. Because under change disorder, we don't know the path forward. But we show up, we act in alignment with our values, then we navigate disorder and give ourselves a chance to be stable through change versus avoiding rejecting. So I think that's right. And then I think the second way that this relates to change is a part of what makes disorder, chaos and change so hard is the uncertainty and the lack of pattern recognition for our brain. So like you said, our brains wants to come up with patterns for how the world will work. And when those patterns are accurate, we feel really good. And when they're not, we get thrown for a loop. And I think that when a big shift occurs or even a smaller shift and our patterns are not matched, if we can avoid that rage pathway and stand the seeking pathway by just saying, all right, this is what's happening right now. I'm going to update my expectations and I'm going to meet the moment with the next best action. That is better than some grand plan or grand strategy for how to navigate change, because we don't know what's going to happen. By definition, things are uncertain.

I love that framing. I really like the language around, like a conversation with change. And this brings me, I think, to the central concept and kind of a really cool framing of how you name this around rugged flexibility. And so I've trained as an act person. You see some of the links. I'm wondering if you could unpack that a bit more because you're starting to sort of weave the model together. So let's give everyone more of the conceptual framing around that.

All right, so this is the real only concept that I coined in the book that is original. I drew so much from just fascinating, phenomenal research. But in my reporting in particular, I found that, well, first let me step back. Rugged flexibility. That's the construct. And these things at first kind of seem like opposites, right? Be rugged. People Think of toughness, grit, determination, durability. Pick yourself up by the bootstraps, Jocko Willink. Discipline is everything. And then flexibility brings to mind for most people, soft, supple, bending easily without breaking, adaptability. And during my reporting, I found that just about every individual or organization that had successfully excelled over the long haul through ups and Downs through periods of change and disorder. They didn't show characteristics of ruggedness or flexibility. They showed characteristics of both ruggedness and flexibility. They were really durable and determined on certain attributes, the so called hills that they're going to die on. And then they were extremely flexible on everything else. So you zoom way out then, or at least this is what I did. And I looked at like I asked myself what is the most empirically large example of disorder over time. And evolution is the answer like it is. It is the best thing that we have in terms of massive pattern. And you think about evolution in evolution, a species that sticks around for a long time is constantly navigating cycles of order or stability, disorder or instability and then reorder. And if a species changes so much that it's no longer recognizable, well then it's out of existence, it's evolved into something else. But if the species doesn't change at all when the environment shifts, then it's going to get selected out, it's adapt or die. So at the species level, like species that are around for a very long period of time, they're both rugged. They have these evolutionary biologists we call the central features. So things that really make the species what it is and those don't change much at all. But then they're highly flexible on everything else and that's what allows them to survive and excel over time.

I love this concept because I 1 really appreciate the both and nature of the organization of this idea. It doesn't have to be one way or the other. You don't have to be up at 4:30 taking a picture of your watch or you never work out right. You can find the in between to sort of figure out what works for you. And you, I thought had one of the best explanations of how like interpersonal boundaries might work in some of these situations too in the book because I was like oh, this is a really interesting way of thinking about it where you're sort of drawing hard lines in some places and you're also willing to work with people in some places. And so I thought that was really elegant. And so as you kind of, you know, coined this term rugged flexibility and you sort of marry these two concepts together. You can start to see where the concept of allostasis comes into play. And now you're reordering through the change and you're keeping those central features and adapting in other areas in what other I guess like help us make it applicable. Where do you see rugged flexibility showing up in your day to day life? Suppose you're not undergoing a massive change. How do we embrace, embody, bring this forward and what we do on a regular basis?

I think that it's just having a sense of, well, you're. I'll start like a little bit 5,000ft and then we'll go into like 0ft. So 5,000ft would be having a sense of like your values and what you want to accomplish and what you stand for and who you are. And then being a mature adult, which means realizing that the world doesn't conform to those values. And unless you are a self righteous asshole, you're never going to practice your values at 100% in the world and be anything but an insufferable person. So the values are the ruggedness and then the flexibility is how do you have a give and take with the world, with the people around you, with the organizations that you interact with, where you hold on your values enough so that you can look in the mirror and sleep well at night. So you're not sacrificing your values, but you're also applying them flexibly to meet the world. And then like at the zero foot level. And this is where it's perhaps most useful is have a sense of what you want to get done in a given day or a given week, and then be flexible enough when the weather of your life changes, when you get stuck in traffic, when your dog gets sick, when your kid gets sick, so on and so forth. And don't try to be so perfect that the minute there's disruption you say, I can't do any of it, to hell with it. But don't be so flexible that the minute there's disruption you just release the agenda. And I think this is the art of being productive really in a sustainable way, is not letting perfect be the enemy of good, but being good enough over and over and over and over again. And I think that what ends up happening is people try to be perfect and that gets very hard so they burn out. Or people say, well, I can't be perfect, so might as well like not do it all or not show up at all. And you also don't get very far that way. So that's how I think about it. And then at the grander level, I think a really good example here is the tennis player Roger Federer. So in brief, Federer known as one of the most dominant tennis players of all time, this audience probably knows that, but also known for his longevity. So Federer played at very, very high level into his early 40s and he did this before Tom Brady before LeBron James, you could argue he was kind of like the original gangster of career extension in a highly physical sport normally dominated by people in their early to mid twenties. What a lot of people forget about Federer is between the ages of 33 and 36, he didn't win a major championship. He dropped out of so many tournaments that he once would have won in his sleep. And the tennis community and critics said that, well, aging finally caught up to him. I mean, he's 33, right? Not many tennis players exist beyond 33 at a World class level. And what Federer did in those three years was essentially realize that like the disorder event or the change that came for him comes for all of us as aging. And he could not continue to play the game the same way he was going to get selected out. So Federer steps back, he identifies his values. So excellence, competition, love of the game, those are the hills he's gonna die on. Those are, those are his sources of ruggedness. But then he had to say, like, can I let go of everything else that made me the best player in the world and change my game and adapt so that at age 37, 38, I can still compete with these young kids? So he learned a one handed backhand, he started playing at the net more to shorten points. He completely overhauled the stress rest cycles of his training. And he even got a new racket, which is crazy because like for a world class tennis player, you know, think about it, he used this racket to become the best tennis player in the world at the time, and then set it aside for a new racket with technology that all the young kids were losing. So, excuse me, not losing, we're using. They started losing to him once he did it. So at age 37, he comes back, he wins two majors, he has the best winning percentage of his career, arguably the best year of his career. And what didn't change were those values, right? The competition and the excellence, those were the rugged sources of what makes Roger Federer who he is. But everything else he was flexible on, which allowed him to continue to compete. And I think at the level of an individual that wants to be excellent over the long haul, or a team or an organization that wants to be excellent over the long haul, I think it is so freaking important to define those values, the things that you stand for, and then be really creative and flexible on how you apply them in different environments.

I want to spend a moment on values because it's such a central theme here. But I do think it's hard for people a little bit to know what their values are. And I often hear people ask, is it okay for my values to change? So I'm really curious what your take is on that. And then I want to double back to this Roger Federer example because I can't let a conversation about one of the world's athletic best athletes, you know, just sort of like, peter out. Right? But I want to. I want to unpack values for a minute and then we'll go back.

All right, that sounds good. Uh, so I think about values probably similarly to you, rooted in acceptance and commitment therapy. Uh, so they are the qualities or characteristics that you aspire towards. They're your internal dashboard. When you're living in alignment with these qualities, you feel really good about yourself. They can be things like presence, excellence, reputation, integrity, love, compassion, strength, wisdom, kindness, so on and so forth. And sometimes people will say, well, how do I identify these values? And there's a couple of ways. The, the, I guess, like the most textbook way is just to look at a big list of commonly held core values and use them to get brainstorming going. In the book, I include A list of 100 Common Core Values from the American Psychological Association. So that's like one way to start. Another way is to. And I find this really helpful to think about people who you really admire. They can be people that you know well, close friend, a family member, or they could just be role models from afar. An athlete, a leader, a performing artist, a religious figure, whoever. And then ask yourself, like, what do I admire about that person? And odds are it's not going to be how they look. It's going to be something about them. Their grit, their determination, their authenticity, whatever. And that's a really good inroad to then things that you deeply value. And then the third way is to imagine you yourself later on in life, 20, 30, maybe 40 years down the road, looking back on current you and what do you want to be proud of? And that's another really good way to identify values. So then once you have values, they can't just be nice words that live on a 3M note on your mirror. Or if you're an organization like live on the wall, you want to get really concrete into what do these things mean and how do you practice them. So, for example, one of your values might be presence. And let's say that you define presence as being fully there for the people and things that you care about. Okay, that's pretty good. That's better than just one word. But then I would ask, well, what Are the people or what are the things and who are the people that you really care about? Like, let's define those. Okay, well, I really care about my writing and I really care about my family and my close friends and my neighbors. Okay, well, you want to be fully there for them. So what does that mean? Well, I'm going to block off three blocks of deep work a week to focus on writing. And during those three blocks, my phone's not going to be near me. And for my family, I know I'm really distracted in the evening by social media. So I'm also going to have my phone in another room and I'm going to make sure that I'm hanging out with my friends at least one day a week. So you get from like this lofty value of presence all the way down to like where your cell phone is at night, but that's like where the rubber meets the road and that's how you actually practice these values. And then of course, when you're faced with change and the path forward is not clear, you can ask yourself, well, what would it look like to be present in this moment? Or what would it look like to be authentic or strong or kind or whatever it is that your values are?

I appreciate you unpacking that for us a bit because I think it speaks to some of where I want to go in the Roger Federer conversation. Because what jumped out real quick before.

We do that, Alex, we had like a really interesting exchange on social media and I forgot when it was a while ago. And this is an area where I've kind of changed my mind. And I'd be curious where you sit, but purpose often comes up a lot like, what's your purpose? One of the best selling books of our generation is Start with why Simon Sinek all about like, what's your why, what's your purpose? And there's a whole section in my first book that I co authored with Steve Peak Performance about like finding your purpose. And I've completely changed my mind on that. I actually think that it doesn't really matter if you have a purpose in any given moment. What matters is that you know your values and you can act on them. And I think now that I hear myself say it, this is kind of like central to my shift of the B mattering more than the C, because to me, purpose is a C. It's a cognitive thing. And when you're feeling great and you tell yourself your story and that's what you're here for, it's really easy to believe but when you're in a rut, or if you are experiencing clinical depression, something I have, or you're grieving, or you're just, like, having a really shitty day, you can tell yourself what your purpose is, but you might not feel anything related to it. And then you might say, oh, man, am I a terrible person? Am I becoming a nihilist? I don't even feel my purpose anymore. Whereas if you have that list of values, it doesn't matter what you feel. You can just show up and act on those things, and then the feelings and the thoughts follow. So I'd say it's one of the biggest things I've changed my mind on is I actually think knowing your why and your purpose is. And this is going to sound like sacrilegious is not actually that important. What's important is knowing your values and how you enact them.

I love that. I wish I remembered exactly what we were going back and forth about on Twitter. It was probably engaging, I think. I wouldn't have thought of it. And so I like your messaging around it. I wouldn't have thought of it as purpose being a C construct, but I think that's right. And I mean, this is purely anecdotal, my own kind of thinking about it, but I'm very aligned with you on this because I think what purpose ends up doing is constraining people to their own narrative. And so it totally misses this flexibility part that you're describing. And similarly, why I like values is, you know, even as you're talking about presence as the example and showing up a certain way for your friends and putting your phone away, there's also probably hundreds of permutations of presence that would also apply and fit in that moment. So even if for some reason you can't put your phone away tonight because you're waiting for an emergency phone call and you're an ER doc, and this, like, really matters to you, right? You can still find other ways to be as present as possible. But if your purpose is like, I live for my family now, you're sitting in this deep conflict between what you say you're all about and what it's all supposed to be about and who you're trying to become or what it is that you're trying to shape as your identity. And so that's how I've interacted with purpose. I think sometimes purpose can be helpful if you need that kind of narrative arc and structure, but I don't know that that actually moves people forward in changing their behavior and creating the life that they want. And then secondarily, oftentimes people set these like incredibly lofty purposes, which of course I'm, I'm happy with. Right. Like I want people to go for big ambitious things, but the reality is like there's no map for how to do that. And so if you have this big ambitious goal and no sense of, well, what qualities are you going to use to get there and what's the plan and how does the purpose become real? Then it becomes a benchmark to compare yourself to where oftentimes I think you're not really going to feel any closer. And the gap between expectations and reality has a huge impact on our well being, as you know. And so those would be a few of the reasons why I sort of stray away from purpose as a central feature of a lot of the work that I do.

Yeah, And I think that your point about constraining is really good because like the following, your values, you don't know where they're necessarily going to lead you, but like they chart a general direction. You know, like the metaphor in the book is a road versus a path. So like following your values like that gets you on the path and where you're going to end up, who knows. But that's part of the fun of it. And your values might change, like you might find other paths and other segues to go off on and that's fine too. Whereas if you have a purpose, I feel like that is like a pre kind of defined destination and it makes it really hard to veer off without feeling bad about yourself. So I love that like it's way, it's maybe too, you know, I was going to say too rugged, but it's just, it's a little too constraining. And then I think it's not as concrete and then I think so much of this is informed. Like I spent the better part of a year like quite depressed when I was 30 years old and just after peak performance had come out. So like I'm thinking about all this purpose stuff and like big part of clinical depression is like you don't, you can't connect with your purpose. It just feels meaningless. So then I judged myself for not having a purpose. Whereas working with a phenomenal therapist, a lot of acceptance and commitment, she's like, screw your purpose, throw it out the window. What are the things that normally non depressed you does to make you feel good? And you might not even feel that those things can make you feel good, but just what are they? You name those things and these are starting to link to your values. And then the work is just like, all right, well, just start freaking showing up and doing those things, regardless of how you feel. And that was also my first personal experience, like the power of the bee or behavioral activation. I also took an ssri. I don't want to say that was the magic cure, but from a therapeutic standpoint, I really think that kind of getting away from purpose, which just led to a lot of self judgment and accepting that it's okay, that sometimes things feel meaningless and I don't have to freak out about that. And I just try to show up and act in alignment with my values as best as I can. It just feels so much more attainable and to your point. Now, at the risk of sounding redundant and repeating you, I do think. I'm not a nihilist here. When you're on a great motivational wave and things are feeling great and everything's clicking and you've got your purpose, that is phenomenal. Ride those waves. But when the tide changes and you're off those waves, you don't have to freak out. You can just put your purpose aside and be like, I guess I don't really have a purpose right now. But then you can still come back to the more concrete values.

Yeah, I completely agree. And I think you're describing it in your own therapeutic journey, and I know you touch on that in the book. And I thought that was a really powerful message to hear in some of the way that you talked about how you moved through your work with a therapist. I think the other subtext for me that jumps out and what you're sharing is part of the beauty of the values is you can do that with whatever percentage of you you have to give. I think of purpose as this thing where, like, I gotta give 100%. Like, it's live and die. And I think of values as like, look, if the best I can do today is 15% of my 100%, I can still do 15% of this value, and it's gonna look better, feel better, move me more than any act in any other way. And I think you're saying, like, that's the experience you have. You had to, of course, accept that 15% might be the best that you can do at any given point, but it allowed you to move through that and make real progress.

That's right. It's almost like instead of start with why, it's like, end with why. Like, the why will come, you know, on its own. Yeah. All right. Anyways, Roger Federer didn't mean to derail us.

Well, we write start with why, with end with why. Well, we'll have a new book coming out.

Yeah.

I mean, the thing that jumped out to me about Roger Federer in the book, and it ties in here, too, is this idea that, like, I think there would have been one way to think about it or describe it, which is sort of like, he was kind of floundering for these three years, and he kind of was just like, meh, and like, figuring it out. But all of a sudden, because you anchored the conversation and his values, now it becomes like an act of exploration, of experimentation, of trying all these new things. And I think what was eloquent about it is his values didn't have to change for him to go through this process. They can change. I'm all for people changing their values, but they didn't have to change for him to become better. What had to change was some of his behavior. And in some ways, the values actually guided the new behavior as much as the old behavior. And I think that sort of, like, pivot point is just fascinating to me because my background's in coaching, and one of the things I've constantly seen for sport coaches I've worked with is this, like, pretty aggressive die on the hill about my way of doing the values, not my values, but my values have to be this, and they're carried out this way. And if you don't buy into this message, you don't belong here. And it's like, well, it's kind of a recipe for people transferring or doing whatever else they do. And so I think that your story around this is just, like, such a unique way of explaining excellence. And I'm just now rambling, but I'm curious to hear your response to what I'm thinking about.

Yeah, that's what I was going for. Like, the values are the ruggedness, and then the behaviors are the flexibility. So you want to be really rugged on your values, but you want to be really flexible on the behaviors. And that's not to say that you start doing, like, reconstruction of meaning. So you know your value is grit. But you quit every single day and tell yourself that's gritty. Like, no, you're lying to yourself. But your value might be grit. And a part of being really gritty is knowing when to quit when things change. Aging, like, quit a certain style of play that actually allows you to be gritty over the long haul. So I think you can't be so cheap with these values that they become meaningless. But, yeah, not having the behaviors be the thing. Roger Federer's value was not a two handed backhand. And as a result of that, he was able to ditch the two handed backhand or at least work in this new one handed backhand because that drove his value of excellence. So I think like that is, that's, that's the name of the game with navigating any kind of disorder is this like, know your sources of ruggedness and then be really flexible in how you apply them. And with values change even then like, your old values are what take you to your new values. So another metaphor that I use a little bit in the book is of a river. And this is be like water, Bruce Lee, Heraclitus. I can't step into the same river twice. Like, I am not the first person to call upon a river to talk about identity, but I pay more attention to the bank of a river than the river itself. Because if the river is the fluid sense of identity, whether that's you as a person or an organization, then the bank is what guides the evolution or the becoming. In my framework, the bank, those are your values. So like Alex, you yourself, the Philadelphia 76ers, an organization that is not a static entity that is constantly going through cycles of order, disorder. Reorder. Like your identity is a long process of becoming, but something's got to shape it and give it form. So physically, what shapes it and give it form? Like, it's your musculoskeletal system, it's your epidermis and your bones and your muscles. Psychologically, I think your exoskeleton or what gives it form are your values. And your values kind of guide how you evolve and where you go over time. And like I said, your old values ultimately take you to your new ones.

I think it's so eloquent because to me this is like the antidote to the way we've always done things. It's like you can still hold on to what you believe is central and what's really important to you, but you can find new ways to do things that make it relevant, timely, allow you to elevate to a new level of performance. And I really, I enjoyed the banks of the, the river metaphor. And just tangentially, as a fun fact for you, you probably know this, but I think it's something like every seven or eight years, every cell in your body actually completely changes. And so it's like it's truly, you are constrained in some ways. Your boundary is your, your musculoskeletal system. Right? But Everything about you is completely different.

But you're also the same. That's like, and this is the root of like, every single, like good ancient wisdom tradition is like, what does it mean to have a self when you yourself are always changing? And it's both. And it means like you, you have a self. We're both here having this conversation. I have a sense of who I was 25 years ago and I'm a very different person, but I'm also the same person. And both those things can be, can be true at the same time. And then I think the other, the other important thing about values is during periods of life transition. So having kids, kids, leaving the house, getting married, getting divorced, being in an elite position in your career, retiring or transitioning to a new job, not over identifying with the current state, but identifying with a value. So personal example is I grew up playing power sports and then got really into endurance sports in college. Coming out of high school, I was like right on the cuff of being good enough to play like mid sized big school college football. But I wasn't good enough. So instead of going to a small school, I chose to go to a big school. But like, I had to reinvent myself as an athlete and I took up endurance sports. I got the marathon bug and I was a runner. And I was a runner for 10 years. And then I developed this chronic condition called exertional compartment syndrome. Don't have to go into the details of it, but essentially it made running impossible. I had orthopedic surgery. It helped, but like, I'm not a pro athlete. The amount of stress that it would take to train at the level I wanted to and pain in my calf, like it just, it wasn't worth it. But I really struggled with that transition for a long time because I kept seeing other runners being like, oh, like I'm not a runner anymore. Like I get like shots of anxiety. Be like, well, I'm not a runner because I was identifying as a runner. This is long before I wrote this book. And I don't know what it was, maybe it was just time. But at some point, like I had this realization that I don't, I'm not a runner. Like I'm an athlete. What I value is training in the community and the pushing myself physically and just having that switch, being like, oh, like my identity is not a runner or my value isn't running or being a runner. My value is athleticism and using my body and pushing limits and being curious about where that goes. And objectively, like my behaviors didn't change. I was getting into strength training nonetheless. But in between my ears, I like, it changed dramatically. I like, I felt at peace. I didn't have to be a runner. So I think when also we think about our values, it's worth like really asking yourself at the highest level, like what it is that drives you. And what most people find is that it's not the activity, it's not the behavior, but it's something underlying it for a parent, like, your value could be my kids or like parenting, but what's underneath that is probably love. And if your value is your kids, well, when your kids leave the house, you're going to be wrecked. But if your value is love, it will still be hard. That disorder, period, doesn't go away, but you'll have a compass to guide you through it, which is, well, how can I love my kids given that they no longer live under the same roof as me? So like really being thoughtful about at what level you define these things.

I appreciate you sharing that and it resonates for me personally as someone who is going through a bit of a career change now and has gone through one before where I was a college football coach and then went on a bit of like a soul searching tour to become a psychologist and sort of figure out what I wanted to do. I remember having this experience you're describing where I'm like, I'm a coach, like, this is it. This is what I've worked so hard to do. This is what it's all about. And as you know, like, getting to that level in sports is hard. Like it takes a lot of work to get there. And then to be like, it's, something's missing here. Right. I'm not moved in the way I thought I was. I feel burnt out. I don't feel as energized. What should I go do next? It was so, so hard to let go of coach and let go of like, that's the journey and that's what I had my eye on. And I now I'm putting it together as we're talking. But I think what was underneath a lot of that for me was really around like the environment of sport was more important to me than the role I played. And pursuing excellence with a team of people was more important to me than the role I played. And now I get to do that too, but in a totally different hat. And so I think it's just, you know, I appreciate you sharing that because for me I'm like, yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense that I lived that, too, and can really resonate with this transformation you go through as you anchor yourself in the value and not the identity component.

That's right. And I think it's really important for athletes, of course, who really struggle during periods of transition. But, you know, there's a difference between being a basketball player and someone that really values sport. And again, like, these are. We're operating at the C level, so these are just words. Transitioning is still really, really hard. But if you're a basketball person, well, then you kind of have a roadmap. Well, maybe I'm going to volunteer as a high school coach. Maybe I'm going to do some scouting work. Maybe I'm going to start a podcast. Like JJ Redick is a great example of this. But I'm going to stay with basketball. But maybe you're a basketball player and it actually has nothing to do with the sport. And it's just you love pushing yourself. Well, great. Go join a startup company. You know, like, push. There are other arenas to push yourself in. Maybe you just really like training. Okay, well, then, like, go Reggie Miller style and take up mountain biking. But the point is, like, a part of you dies when you have a big transition, which is that activity. But the part of you that was driving that activity, that's still alive. Like, what's the value and how can you pursue that? So, like you said, in your case, it's like working with people to pursue excellence or performance or however you define it, it sounds like. And then having, like, a foot in sport, whatever that means. And that is so much more rugged and flexible than saying, like, I am a head coach of D1 football program, which really is pretty constraining.

Very, very constraining. Brad, this has been amazing. I'm mindful of time. There's just one area I want to just graze the surface of because I think it's fascinating about the work you do. And you've touched on it a couple times, which is your dip into ancient traditions. And I know someone like me, we're trained to be a scientist. Some of that stuff is almost, like, taboo. Like, oh, don't think about that. But I think there's so, so much there that we ignore because no one collected any data on it, which just seems wild to me. So I'm going to ask you the tough question. Being mindful and sensitive of your time, like, from all you've read and learned putting this book together, what's the one piece of ancient wisdom you'd want us all to hold on to.

That is a tough one. All right, so I'm going to go back to what I found to be like a very thorny intellectual problem, which is, what does it mean to have a strong sense of self when your cells are turning over completely every seven to eight years? All right, so in the Western modern science, modern psychology, way to think about this and correct me if I'm wrong here, I'm going to speak in some generalities. A self that is completely unbound, that is completely fluid, that is truly just porous, and one with the universe is either complete spiritual nirvana and enlightenment or psychosis. And unless it's in a very structured spiritual setting, it probably is psychosis. And a lot of great spiritual leaders that have said they got there, it turns out it was actually just psychosis. So that's not good. But a self that is really tight and rigid and not at all porous and not at all expansive, that tends to be associated with anxiety and depression. So we don't want to be too tight. But if we're also completely loose, then that's not good either. So, okay, how do we think about identity? And you asked me about ancient wisdom. There's a parable in Buddhism where the Buddha, who is a historical person in the text, is confronted by a wandering traveler. And the traveler asks the Buddha and essentially says, like, Buddha, Buddha, there's a lot of repetition. Blessed One, you teach that there's no such thing as the self, yet here I am. Is there a self? And the Buddha just doesn't answer. And then he says, well, maybe there's no self. I'm like, I think the wanderer, like, moves. He's like, well, now I'm over here. Does that mean that there's no self? And the Buddha just doesn't answer. And this parable has been debated by scholars. I learned in researching the book for millennia, you know, for the last 2000 years, since it was allegedly said and based on other times that the Buddha doesn't respond, what he's essentially saying is that that is not an answerable question, or that is a yes. And so is there a self that is real and constrained and defined? Yes, absolutely. But is there also a self that is connected to the universe and always changing and never the same thing? Yes, absolutely. And when you're in an intersection and the light goes from red to green, you want to identify with the self that is very stable in there and objective, so you can hit the gas and go through the intersection. But when you want to think about making an impact in your life and confronting aging and eventually death and dying, you probably want to get in touch with the self that is more expansive and that is connected to legacy and is going to live on. And it got me to stop thinking so hard about like identity and what it means to have a strong self when that is always changing and just to accept like we are one big allostatic process and we are both very concrete and real and stable, but we're also always changing. And even though Western thought doesn't like this and that Eastern thought does, and I think this is an area where Eastern thought is really powerful.

I love it. Thank you so much. That was an incredible story. I love that there's like hours more to unpack here, but I did book you for hours, so I appreciate your time. Before we wrap, tell us where, where can people find you? Follow you? I'll go ahead and link to each of your books in the notes for the podcast, but tell us more where you live on the Internet and how we get in touch.

Yeah, thank you for that. So on the Internet I am becoming more active on Instagram where my handle is Radstalberg and I also co write the Growth Equation newsletter with Steve Magnus and the books Master of Change is the most recent and then the Practice of Groundedness are available wherever you get books and in whatever format you like.

Brad, thank you so much for joining me. This was awesome.

Thanks again.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Perform podcast where we unlock and uncover the principles and practices of health and high performance for individuals, teams and organizations. Until next time, thanks for joining.