10 Lessons from Embrace Discomfort
Important lessons on life, fitness, and improvement from my Audible series.
Post summary
I’m pulling my favorite quote from each episode of my new Embrace Discomfort Audible series.
You’ll get one nugget of wisdom from each episode that gives insights into improvement, mental and physical health, reaching goals, and tapping into the bigger picture of life and living it.
Housekeeping
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Audio/podcast version
Listen to Embrace Discomfort on audio.
Note: Embrace Discomfort is free to all Audible subscribers without using a credit. If you’re not a subscriber, you can get 30 days for free here.
The post
My new Audible series, Embrace Discomfort, just dropped. Listen here. (Audible members get it for free without using a credit. Non-members can sign up for a free 30-day trial and cancel after listening).
I had amazing conversations with some of the world’s wisest and most inspiring people—people exploring the edges and helping us all think differently and better about improvement.
I’ve pulled my favorite quote and lesson from each of the 10 interviews here. You’ll learn:
The greater point of Misogi.
How to improve your endurance (it starts in the mind).
A smarter perspective on walking with weight.
A counterintuitive way to overhaul your health backed by 75 years of behavioral science.
The new science of fear and conquering it.
What we get wrong about mindfulness, and a better way to frame it.
Why you should seek extreme experiences.
How to live authentically.
How to overcome a major downside of modern life.
The truth about Two Percent.
1. Find Your Misogi
Source: John Bucher, Ph.D., a mythologist and the Executive Director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation
Quote:
In its simplest form, the Hero’s Journey is about going out into the world to achieve something and then bringing that "something" back to your community. That journey, though, is usually anything but simple. It’s challenging.
And it’s not about doing something that will make you famous, make you money, or bring you back a golden treasure. It's about finding that thing that is going to fill the empty void, that's going to fill the space in your soul so that you recognize yourself as part of something greater. There's a larger experience going on. And it's one reason why most hero’s journeys involve the death of the ego. The hero's journey is never just about us. It's about something that we can transcend to that's much larger than us.
Lesson:
Take on epic challenges. Learn that they’re not about you. I’ll quote Campbell here: “We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known … we have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a God. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outwards we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone we shall be with all the world.”
2. Endure
Source: Emma Cook Clarke, ultra runner, ski mountaineer, and wildland firefighter
Quote:
(When it comes to expanding your capabilities) I think there's a huge difference between intellectual understanding and experiential understanding. I could tell somebody, ‘oh, you just have to push through a hard run. Oh, this is what happens and it’ll be fine. Oh, don't worry, be happy’ and all of that. But until you truly break through and feel it yourself, I don't think you actually understand it. We need to experience that we still have more left when we think we’re done to believe it ourselves.
Lesson:
By exploring your edges, you find you’re capable of more than you imagined. But you must experience that—you’ll never know unless you go there.
3. Walk with weight
Source: Christopher Gavigan, founder of The Honest Company and an important new venture.
Quote:
I think the story of walking is about the potentiality of connection to ourselves and to each other. It's a story about now and tomorrow. We’re all blessed to walk, but we don’t notice it. It's just like breathing. It's this autonomic system within our bodies that propels us forward and propels us through our lives.
Walking can bring a unique connection to ourselves if we’re intentional about it. It is a reminder of the simple truth that motion is the world's greatest medicine. We live in a cult of busy, a feverish pace that we all embrace every single day without really knowing it. The pace of a walk is much different than a run or something of high intensity. It’s more intentional. And in many ways, more beneficial. Every step you take over 4,000 steps a day reduces all-cause mortality. The research is here, but no one talks about it.
Lesson:
Walk, duh. It delivers something we don’t get from high-intensity workouts. And if you walk with weight, you’ll get more from every step. Read more here.