Ex-Marine Officer: Why Comfort is Quietly Destroying Your Life

24:08But you know that I should get started on that project I've always wanted to. I should call that, maybe that relative, that sibling that we had a falling out and we haven't talked in three years. Like I should repair that relationship, have that difficult relationship. I should start the podcast I've always wanted to or start writing the book. Like all these someday things, you know, instead of saying someday because of the fear, it's just we need to get started today. So, I mean, that's really what bravery is. I try to help people to stop hesitating, to do the things that you know that you really need to do to achieve your goals and start doing them today.

24:43And it's not that I want someone to say, I've always, someday I'll climb Mount Everest and I want you to do it tomorrow or today. That's ridiculous. But it's starting to take a step today of saying, okay, if I want to climb maybe Mount Kilimanjaro, right? If that's something that I want to do today, I'm going to go out and I'm five miles. And I'm going to at least create a plan to be able to like, if I've always wanted to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, which I want to do, so I want to do it in 2027. So now I got to plan a day. When am I going to do it in 2027? Let me plan when I'm going to do it and let me back plan all the training that I need to do.

25:17And then what can I do today? I can go out and hike five miles today. But we have to start at least taking some steps toward it. So take a little baby step. Maybe you at least come up with a plan on how you're going to do it. That's your baby step today. And then tomorrow you start executing. So, you know, I sometimes have a problem with people that talk about manifesting. Because manifesting sometimes means to people that I'm just going to sit in my room and I'm going to dream and go, I want to be famous. I want to be rich. I want a Lamborghini. And I'm just going to sit here and I'm going to just think about it and want it and put it out in the universe, right?

25:56That I want it.

26:00and they just wait for it to happen. So I do believe in mindset because my work is grounded in cognitive psychology. So we do need to master the mindset, but we can't stay in the dreamer world. We can't just be wishing for it or manifesting. And some people that I've talked to about manifesting, they're like, no, manifesting requires you to take steps. I'm like, then I'm okay with it. So we can't just say like, I want this, I want this, I want this someday, someday, someday. No, I want this, I want this, I want this. I believe, this is where the cognitive psychology comes, I believe that it's possible that I can do that, that I can forge the path to accomplish it.

26:34And I'm gonna take a small step today. So we need to move from someday being in a dream state to saying, I will do something. I'm gonna take a step today. And if each day we take little steps, you know, we don't, I mean, you probably know like the power of habit, things like that. We are what we consistently do, right? If you wanna write a book, that means you need to, what does a writer do? They write. every day. So what are you going to write today? Write 100 words today. So we need to start saying today. And if you're scared, good. You should be scared because it means you're getting out of your comfort zone.

27:11You're moving toward what you really want because it's really important. And the more you take steps toward what you want, even though you're scared, you'll get more used to it. You'll build your bravery muscle. You'll actually do some rewiring your brain.

27:23Ryan Hanley:yeah I'm with you on the manifesting thing I always thought it was complete nonsense I read The Secret I was like this is insane and so I had a couple manifesting experts on the show that's the beauty of having a podcast is you get to reach out to people and have them explain stuff to you have a good discussion and I'd say one of for one thing two of them were the most engaged shows in terms of like back and forth. People are very, people have a lot of opinions about manifesting. Like if you, if you're looking to pure engagement, harvest any type of content, just make it all about manifesting.

28:04Ryan Hanley:You will get crazies from both sides going bananas, uh, which is fun in its own way. Um, that's not why I did it, but I wanted to learn. One of them was very much like, I'm going to call it the more ethereal foo-foo-y, the universe listens to you. Okay. And the other was very much grounded in, in like the practicality side of it. Woo woo. Yeah. And I thought, you know, I'll be honest with you. When I heard the argument for manifestation from a psychological standpoint, from a how the brain actually works, you know, it's kind of, I always forget the name of this principle. But it's like when you buy a red car, all of a sudden you see red cars everywhere kind of thing.

28:49Ryan Hanley:Like that's what you're doing. Like from a, if you're doing manifesting right. Right. You are basically just giving your brain a signal to look for the thing that you want. Like, I want to be a speaker. Okay, what do I have to do? I'm looking for opportunities to speak. I'm looking for event planners. I'm looking for new pieces of content to fit into my, right? So now your brain like has a signal. That makes sense to me. It's very hard for me to believe that the universe cares enough about us that if we just think about something and sit in a, with our legs crossed, that somehow it's going to come to us.

29:20Ryan Hanley:I just don't know that it does. However, here's a question I have for you. How do we know that the thing we're somedaying is actually worth doing today? Because I, you know, just again, from having enough people on the show, I do know that a part of procrastination is an unconscious part of our brain saying that thing is not worth the effort, right? The juice isn't worth the squeeze. There is a portion of procrastination, not all of it, but a portion of procrastination that is like our body going, I know you think you want that, but you really don't want that. So if we're trying to figure out, I have these some days, I someday want to be a professional speaker, I someday want to be a bestseller, I someday want to be an entrepreneur, whatever that thing is for you, or you someday want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, how do we start to pick the some days that are worth taking action on today and the some days that are not?

30:19Yeah. I would point to the research on self-concordant goals. It's about making sure you're choosing the goals that are really meaningful to you, right? Like my husband thinks I'm crazy for wanting to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. He's like, why would you want to do that? So like there's certain, I'm running Spartans. I ran my first Spartan and I got bit by the bug. So I'm doing another one in a couple of weeks. Like I'm like, this is so fun.

30:44Ryan Hanley:He's like, why would you want to do? So for him, he would say, I'm not going to go through this because that's not what my goal is. But I, maybe it's my brain core background. I think that stuff is fun. And I have, you know, so you've got to make sure that whatever goals that you set, they're self-concordant, which is basically means that they are aligned with your intrinsic motivators. If someone wants to be a doctor, why do they want to be a doctor? Is it because it's a deep-rooted desire in them that they love medicine? They want to help people. They maybe have a story of something that impacts them.

31:16But if their parents tell them like, you need to be a doctor, see the difference there. So it should be intrinsically motivated goal. And I can, and I can share a story too. Like I decided when I was in my teenage years that I wanted to become a Marine. Right. And so I applied, I got a full scholarship on the Marine Corps and it was that self-concordant goal. And when I showed up in San Diego to report into my naval ROTC unit to begin my training. So most people show up to college to just get to know their fellow freshmen on campus and then have fun and party and then go to school, right? But if you go to ROTC, you show up a week earlier for naval ROTC orientation.

31:58And then the Marines do their separate thing, which is, of course, always harder because it's the few, the proud. So it's kind of like a mini boot camp. And And like when I showed up, I was pretty confident because I earned the scholarship. I was physically fit. I had academic grade grades. I was a leader in high school. I mean, I got the scholarship. I was kind of strutting and going like, I got my stuff going on. I was in for a rude awakening. I showed up, first of all, did not make the best decision on my outfit. I was an 18-year-old girl, so I put a lot of thought into my outfit. And this is so funny.

32:32I knew I couldn't wear jeans because Marine Corps officers cannot wear jeans and like if you're an 18 year old kid what are you going to wear if you because all you wear is jeans and I didn't want to wear a dress because I thought it would be too girly so I found the perfect it was actually a hot pink outfit with white polka dots we're talking about pink before with little pink pumps like like I showed up there and it was it was a disaster because like I was I did not look like anyone else. There's only two females. The other one quit like halfway through the year. And like that first day I had the guy I looked up to that was in charge of this, this, you know, orientation on day one, it came up to me and he, and he leaned over and said, you're never going to make it, you know, as a Marine.

33:14So you think of it there, like for me, like, did I, like, that was a really hard day. And then it got harder. I mean, then I showed up to my first run. I thought I was in great shape, but I grew up in Minnesota. Like the little running I did was flat. I went to school in San Diego. Like there are hills and that's exactly where they take Marines is to, we went and ran in the hills. So like my first run that first Friday, I couldn't keep up. And that is very shameful as a Marine if you can't keep up. So on this 18 year old, it was, it was miserable. But what I did is I kept showing up. And why did I keep showing up?

33:54because it was worth it. For me to earn the title of United States Marine, that was important to me. And you know another thing that motivated me too? Because that jerk said, you will never make it, that motivated the crap out of me. Like sometimes I wanna look into this and I don't know the answer from a psychological, like psychologically, I wanna know why do some people hear something like that and believe it and their self-belief goes down and other people like me, you tell me I can't do something like, oh, thank you so much And it took me, Ryan, it took me years, years to become that top performer.

34:30It wasn't until between my junior and senior year, so like freshman, sophomore, junior year, three years in college before I was at the level where I was not only keeping up, but probably outperforming a lot of the Marines. and because it was such a struggle, I think accomplishing and earning the title of Marine and getting my lieutenant bars put on, it meant so much more, right? So it's really about making sure that you set, when you set challenging, uncomfortable goals, I call them brave goals because if you're not a little scared, they're not really worth setting. So goals should be a little scary.

35:11Make sure that there's gonna be ups and downs to achieve your goal. Just make sure that you want it badly enough. It's really important to you intrinsically so that when you have those days when you're in the downs, you're not going to quit. So hopefully that story helps. You know, and my - No, it does. Yeah, my grandfather was a Marine. And I think part of my motivation too is I wanted, the Marine Corps was my ticket out of the Midwest. I mean, I love being from the Midwest, but I didn't want to live in the same small town. My dad was born in Pryor Lake, Minnesota, and he still lives there today.

35:44He's never moved out. But for him, that's what he wanted. I wanted a ticket out of the Midwest. I wanted my college paid for. And I wanted a career of something that really mattered and was meaningful. And so that's what motivated me. And I was not, I guess that's what called to me. But I didn't feel like getting up and going to run three days a week with my unit. In fact, that's the thing that I most wanted. I wanted to avoid that. I hated doing it because I wasn't really keeping up for a very long time. Now, I was a female keeping up with male Marines, but eventually I got there, you know, so self-concordant.

36:24We just, and I can also quote Angela Duckworth. She wrote a book on grit. She's at Penn as well, where I studied. And what she says is you first have to make, if you want to be gritty, If you want to have the grit, which is a long-term passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals, she said you first have to start off with that burning desire. It's got to be something you really want. It's got to be aligned. You know, if you don't have that alignment, it's really hard to be gritty when it's something you don't really want. So you got to start off like, what are you interested in? You know, what is something that you've always wanted to do?

37:03So a little soul searching, too, of like, what do you care about? What is the impact you want to make on the world? What is it you really want? And once you find that deep why, you really need to make sure you capture it because there are going to be times where you want to quit. And you got to go back to that why, and that's going to motivate you to keep going. And that's really where the most growth happens. I know I'm all over the place here, but you know how like when you go into the gym and you have the hardest workout ever and you're super sore? Like I did leg day and I haven't been able to walk for like the last three days, right?

37:34but I know that my muscles are growing and getting stronger. In those hardest moments where you just really want to quit and you show up anyway, it's the equivalent of having a really hard workout in your brain. This is the part of the brain that you're giving a workout. Like your amygdala, the feeling part of your brain is going like, I don't want to do this. This sucks. It's a part of your brain trying to control your behavior and seek comfort. But when you're getting that really, really good workout in, you're giving a workout to your prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that's our executive functioning part of the brain, but also a little part of the brain in the back, in the anterior singular cortex.

38:12There's a little part in there called the mid-singular cortex, sometimes known as the courage part of our brain. It's what really gets a workout when we do something hard when we really don't want to, or we do something that requires that courage or that bravery. So that part of our brain is getting stronger, and then our brain is also creating more neural pathways between our prefrontal cortex and our mid-cegular cortex. So we see in the functional MRI that part of the brain working up. So that's where I think when I explain the mechanism what's happening, at least for being a little bit of a science nerd myself, if I understand the mechanism of what's happening, it motivates me more.

38:51So when I really don't feel like doing something and I go like, this is like me doing like, you know, a max set of something at the gym and it really hurts and I like, I savor it. Like I embrace it because I know it's going to make me stronger. The same thing happens with us psychologically. So when you really don't feel like it, that's where it matters most that you keep that promise to yourself and you do it anyway. You're, you're, you're, you're having the best workout and you're helping rewire your brain to do hard things.

39:18Ryan Hanley:First, we got to get you on some BPC 157. So your recovery is in three days after, uh, after leg day. Okay. I need to learn from you on there because I'm just doing creatine and glutamine. So if I need to be doing more stuff. Have you looked into peptides at all? You know what? I was just listening to a Huberman podcast. I love geeky podcasts. And so I was just listening to one on my workout this morning and they were talking all about it. And I know there's not a lot of evidence out there yet, but it seems really promising. And the podcast I was on, they're like, it seems to be safe. There's no harm in doing it.

39:52And a lot of people's experience say It's great. So just this morning, I was like, I think I need to try it. So, yeah.

39:57Ryan Hanley:So I am on a cocktail of peptides. So I'm a huge, I will test anything. Anything that seemed like that isn't completely out of this world. But I'll test just about anything. Because I feel like I've done enough damage to my body playing football and sports and all the various things that I did. Kind of in very similar but different story. My way of getting out of my shitty little small town that I couldn't stand. Not that you couldn't stand your town, but I couldn't stand my town. I need to get out of there as well. Sports was the avenue that I took to get out. So I got a college scholarship and that's how I got out of there.

40:28Ryan Hanley:But I had a guest on the show. It was probably last year. But he was all talking about peptides. And this is before the big peptide. It may have even been two years ago now because this is before the big peptide craze. Awesome guy. Huberman talks about this stuff too. But I know we're a little off track, but I love to work out as well. I love to get after it. And my goal for this year is I want to pull 500 pounds on the deadlift. My current PR is 463. I did that two years ago or about 18 months ago. I downcycled because I kind of hit a plateau. And now I'm working my way back with a stronger base.

41:04Ryan Hanley:So trying to get back there. And I just, there's something about being 40 plus and pulling 500 pounds that just makes me want to look at every other guy. Like they're, you know, less can't help myself. There's a part of me that just looks at other people. Like there's only a few of you. Everybody else in my gym is about 22. too. So I'm pretty pumped that I'm here pulling with these guys, you know? Um, but one of the things that happens as you get older is that you just don't recover the same, no matter how you train, you just don't recover the same. You just don't. And what I was finding is that where maybe five to eight years ago, uh, if I did a heavy leg day or whatever, but mostly legs are where I, where I feel the longest, um, me too.

41:47That's where I feel the source, not as much for upper body.

41:50Ryan Hanley:Yeah. So where I could do maybe a squat, a pull, so deadlift, and then do like more of a base leg day. All the ancillary stuff is a third leg day every week. Now I can only do two. And if I go really hard, maybe even one leg day a week. Okay. So that was starting to bug me because it was impacting my ability to hit my targets. So I started digging into these peptides and I found a cocktail of three that has been amazing for me. I encourage everyone who is interested, you have to do your own research. Your primary care physician will not know anything about this stuff and they will push you away from it because they don't know.

42:31Ryan Hanley:Trust me, I have tried. You have to go find specialists and unfortunately most of those specialists are going to be online. I would start with guys or gals of the Huberman class and work your way down from there. There are a lot of charlatans in well who are just looking to sell you repackaged peptides that are of low quality. And you can find these things on websites all over the place. You have to be very careful where you get your stuff from. So find a professional, but it's most likely not going to be your primary. If you go ask your primary, they're going to push you away from it. That being said, if you are going to get after it in the way that you've discussed, I take a micro dose of trisepatide, which is a GLP-1, not for weight loss, but for inflammation, for gut health, and for it.

43:20Ryan Hanley:I have fairly severe ADHD that as I've gotten older has gotten worse. It's a whole nother story. And yeah, it really quiets your brain. It's a big time brain quieter. It's not going to cure the activity, which is not what I want. I want my brain to stay as active, but I want to have more control over what it thinks about. and I found that there's hepatite, particularly with food noise and other vice-related noises. So if you chew gum or you chew your nail, whatever crazy weird vices you have, everyone has different ones, it really reduces your brain cycles you spend on those types of things. So there's hepatite is one.

43:59Ryan Hanley:Tessamorin is for muscle growth. Again, micro doses. Again, this is why you want to work with someone that really knows what they're doing. Because if someone's just trying to sell you something, they're going to push a full dose on you, which is expensive and more than most people need. So microdose of trisepatide, that's like a growth hormone. And then BPC-157 is a recovery peptide. And here's my case study on the recovery. So having deadlifted now for almost seven years, I picked it up in 2020 after COVID. Like the day the gym opened, I was like, I want to do something new. I've never deadlifted despite all my athletic because I've always been told it's too dangerous.

44:40Ryan Hanley:It's not if you do it right. I want to try this. So I picked it up. Okay. Well, once a year, inevitably, I don't stretch properly. If my hamstrings are tight and I don't properly warm them up, I'll pull and I'll get really, my back will lock up. And it usually takes three to five days before I can get back into leg activities. Since I started taking BPC 157, this happened about a month ago I was back in the gym one day later wow one day later because it just it it what it does and I'm got if you if you guys are experts at this please go in the comments on YouTube let me know all the places where I'm off I am broad stroking this all the disclaimers that I am not advocating nor am I prescribing any kind of medication here however it naturally induces the body to produce whatever the chemicals or blood cells are whatever which repair which do reparative work.

45:36Ryan Hanley:So again, on a microdose level taken on a daily basis, what it's doing is just increasing the general amount of recovery molecules or chemicals or whatever. You're working out to get stronger and healthier. Okay. Yeah. And so I, not that we needed to take that quick diatribe, but I will say. I mean, it does relate though, because we're talking about like challenging our bodies and and we want to recover and challenging ourselves psychologically and doing hard things. And, and there's the recovery side there. There's a lot of these same agents, like, you know, our brains use so much energy. Um, you know, I am supplementing with creatine now, not just for muscle recovery, because it has a huge impact on our cognitive function.

46:17Right. So I, I just, I, now I sent it, I just sent it to my dad who's 76 years old, you know, cause he's worried about his cognitive function. I'm like dose 20 milligrams a day. I mean, And it's just, it's protein. It's good for you. So, you know, so just for you to be like psychologically strong to, you know, to make these decisions to set these self-concordant brave goals and then be brave enough to take steps toward them each day. You know, a couple of things that come to mind, too, is it is really important for us to get really good quality sleep. so that when we wake up, we're not going to take action based on how we're feeling, but we take action based on what we should do.

47:00So I always talk about if you really want to do brave things, it doesn't start first thing in the morning. It starts the night before. So really think about, yeah, preparation. And I always use analogies from the stage of like, you know, what do we do as Marines? We know like what we know our mission we want to accomplish tomorrow. We come up with our battle plans. We know exactly what we're going to do. and then we start preparing the night before. So we need to think about the same way. If you want to be successful in life, if you want to feel proud at the end of the day, the last thing you should do before you start relaxing or whatever is plan tomorrow, right?

47:31When are you going to get up? What are you going to do? What is the first hardest thing, you know, to attack the day? The thing that you dread most. Don't have just meetings with people like, I like to preserve eight to 10 to do your deepest work, you know? So just plan your day and then think about like, now what do I need to do tonight to be able to jump out of bed and have the most successful day. And usually that means that we're going to eat a healthy dinner, not drink too much alcohol, not have our phone or our TV on in front of our face with all that blue light. If you do, wear your orange glasses so that it's more like campfire.

48:08And then go to bed, get that deep sleep, and that way you can jump out of bed in the morning. And the last thing that just relates to this, and my kids are sick of hearing that because they're now like 18 and 20, but I always say like never ever press snooze, literally or figuratively on life, right? So snooze is like when you wake up and obviously you're like, oh gosh, I'm tired. I just don't want to get up. If you press snooze first thing in the morning, you're starting off the day breaking a promise to yourself. And it is not a good habit to get in because isn't there of that famous Navy commander that says, make your bed first thing in the morning.

48:44Like, sure. I don't even care if you make your bed, but I want you to just don't press snooze. Jump out of bed the second that alarm goes off because you've already had a plan. You know, so self-care isn't sleeping in and taking the morning off. No, self-care is keeping a promise to yourself. So don't press snooze in the morning. Get up and then don't press snooze on your dreams and your goals. And that's what that hesitating is. That's someday, someday, That's pressing snooze. And it's just, and the reason I care so much about this and, you know, this may sound a little woo-woo, but, um, so, cause I mainly like, you know, gritty Marine Corps Jill, but there's a little woo-woo in there.

49:21And the reason I care about this is the impact of your relationship with fear and discomfort is, is so, has such a huge impact on not only your success, but how happy and fulfilling your life is. If you allow fear to control your behavior where you don't apply for a job. You don't have a difficult conversation. You don't share an idea in a meeting. And it's not just big moments. It's little moments. Little moments day in and day out. You have an opportunity to be brave or to step back. And if you have a relationship with fear where you're like, okay, fear, it actually is a little signal that, oh, like sometimes something's important and it's something that I should do.

50:05And if you learn to move toward what you fear and you stop hesitating, you do it. And imagine like over a year if someone stops hesitating and they move, they do something today because it's that important thing to do to them. And so they do it week in and week out over a year. Imagine where their career and life is at. or imagine it five years down the road, Ryan, or 10 years down the road, what would their career be like? And the reason I talk about career and performance is because I get paid by Fortune 500 comes to come speak. So we talk about performance and success at work and that will come.

50:40But what I really care about is it's life satisfaction. It's like when you look in the mirror, do you like what you see? We have to change our relationship. Like stop allowing fear to control your behaviors because then you're going to look in the mirror, you're going to go like, I suck because I can't do it. And I keep promising myself and I keep breaking the promise. Like we need to change that. And it's possible.

51:04Ryan Hanley:I'm completely with you. I wanted to look up this stat real quick. I heard this on Chris Williams' podcast the other day. 45 % of men between 18 and 25 have never asked a woman out in person. 45 % of men, 18 to 25 at that. I'll be honest at that time, I was probably asking 45 women out a week. Cause you're just like spraying prayer, right? You're just like, Hey, you know, who knows? Eventually I'm going to get a yes. Eventually. That was the way, you know, I mean, back then when there was no internet and no cell phones, I mean, you had to like, you had no idea who anybody was. You were just walking up to, Hey, how are you?

51:39Ryan Hanley:What's going on? You know, Hey, you want to get a drink? I mean, you would, that, that was the only way to meet people in today for, I mean, think of, I mean, and that took, you want to talk about fear. Like I know maybe it's the same for women. I don't know. I've never been a woman, so I don't know, but I can tell you that there are few things that are as scary as seeing a group of women in a circle at a bar and walking up to them and trying to ask one out. That is one of the most fear-deriving moments of any young man's life. That is great. Right? Like, so you think about that and you think, Like, okay, like if they're not even willing to do that, then are they going to be willing, like you said, to ask the boss for a promotion or to, you know, reach out to the event they've always wanted to be a speaker at and give a pitch or whatever that scary thing is, right?

52:29Ryan Hanley:Like we're talking about baser instinct stuff. We can't even get past the fear of that. And we're going to start getting after the second level. You know, I, I, yeah. I want to, if I can add on that. Yeah. Please, please. So bravery isn't like, sometimes the misconception is people think bravery is just like moments of heroism. Like, would I run into a burning building to save a child? Would I, if I was a Marine, would I charge forward in the presence of danger? Like, you know, yes, though, that is bravery. That is absolutely examples of bravery. But bravery is so much bigger than that. It's all the little moments.

53:02It's, there's this girl at work, and I really want to ask her out, but I'm scared. Will I do it? Like you're saying. And so, you know, and just more research because I'm a nerd. When you look at all the research in psychology with experiential avoidance. So experiential avoidance basically means running away from what you're scared or running away from what's uncomfortable. There's a study that was published where they followed over 2 ,400 adults. And they followed them over four years. And they were like 18 to 65, so all age. and they found that experiential avoidance, running away from what you're scared of or not doing it, ended up leading to the development and persistence of anxiety and depression.

53:46So let's let that sink in because I care about this younger generation because I have two kids. They're 18 and 20, like this month, because it's April, they're gonna be turning 19 and 21. And I see the world through the younger generation and they are so chicken shit scared of everything. and they allow, they use this word of like mental health, mental health, I don't want to do it for my mental health. It's like mental health is now an excuse to not do things or even like, oh, you let a young person say, that causes me anxiety, so I'm not going to do it. And so that I think people are confused.

54:25They think that for my happiness and well-being, I need to avoid things that make me scared because I want the goal is to be happy and to be comfortable in life. But what they don't understand is that is a fast path to mental distress. Jill, it's also completely false.

54:45Ryan Hanley:Like I talked to my kids about this too. So they're, they're 12 and 10, two boys. And we talk about it in the context of sports a lot, just because that's like the most important thing in their world is small because they're, because they're younger. right but like i tell them i'm like guys michael jordan had fear he had fear this we're not talking about like the opportunity doesn't present itself when the fear goes away we're not you these people perform despite fear so don't even set the expectation i feel like we've sold an entire generation of children that somehow there are certain individuals who were born with zero fear and they're the ones who are able to do the exceptional shit.

55:26Ryan Hanley:And all the rest of us who have fear, we can't accomplish anything. And I'm like, no. I'm like, you think I've done 400 and at this point, 425 plus keynotes, paid keynotes in my career. Almost every state, pretty much all of North America, some in South America, haven't been to Europe yet. That's coming. Maybe I can help you out. Yes, we can help each other. I've been on stage quite a bit. And I said to them, I go, I've been doing this for almost two decades. it's the thing I love to do professionally more than anything else that that happens professionally yep and every single time before I go on stage I feel fear every single time every single time I go the difference is at this point I know how to harness that fear into energy and excitement I've learned how to develop that but don't I go don't think that when you're walking up to bat in baseball and you feel fear that you're wrong or bad or less than Aaron judge feels fear every time he walks up and he's one of the greatest hitters in the history of the game.

56:27Ryan Hanley:And he would even tell you that he gets that feeling every at bat, every at bat, 162 games, every at bat. He sees, I've heard him say it in interviews before. And it's like, so don't try to, we've like miss sold. I get fired up on this topic. No, I, I'm just, I'm so glad because this is exactly, this is my jam. I mean, I am a bravery expert. We need to change our relationship with fear. You're right. And that is the big misnomer. People think that if you're brave, you're fearless. Oh, like there's something wrong with me because I feel scared. So it means that I shouldn't do it. There's something wrong with me.

56:56No, that is, you're right. It's exactly, it's misinformation. So my TEDx that I just did, I named it fear more, not less. Like we have to change our relationship with fear. And I love, you talked about the cognitive reframe. So for your audience as well is, you know, first of all, if you're not a little scared, then you're just letting life take you by. You're not, you know, I want you to chart the path of the life that you want.

57:21Ryan Hanley:And life is dictating to you. You're not dictating the life. Yeah. It's like, you're just in like letting the, the, the life just carry you along the way so that life is just what it is because it comes to you. Like if you want to chart the path of your life, there, there's going to be discomfort. There's going to be fear and there's nothing wrong with you. Yes. And when you feel that fear, you know, we can do that cognitive reframe of really thinking about like, what is happening when I feel the stress or fear in my body? Like my, my, my heart is beating really fast now. This is actually my body from an evolutionary point of view, preparing me to get blood in every part of my body to be able to perform at my best.

57:59This adrenaline, this is energy. Again, it's, it's here to serve me so I can do the best job possible. This is excitement. Excitement and fear feel almost identical, right? Is this true?

58:13Ryan Hanley:I want to ask you this since I have you here. So I use this all the time, and I don't know if it's true, but I use it on my kids all the time. I say, when brain scans, look at your brain, they can't tell the difference between excitement and fear. Your brain lights up the same way when you're excited versus fear. So what I say to them is, what that means is it's a fucking choice. It means you get to choose whether you're excited for this thing or you're scared of this thing because your brain is operating the same way. Now, that's what I say. How much of that is actually true? I don't know. It sounds good.

58:48Well, and I just say like my background is I have a master's degree in positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. So like I am not a neurologist. I'm obsessed with, I think my next book might be Building a Brave Brain because I'm really into researching that. I love, but I'd say overall, based on what I know, that is a true statement. You know, the feeling of fear and excitement are almost identical and we have the power to reframe it. Like I gotta share one other thing because it's related, but I just love how we're just going back and forth. This is awesome. So some of the most exciting research that I love talking about is research by Dr.

59:28Aaliyah Crum out of Stanford. Oh, she is amazing. So she has talked about something called a stress is enhancing mindset instead of a stress is debilitating or harmful mindset. So like this is another, you know, lie that we have been sold where people think like stress is bad. Stress will kill you. Stress is horrible. You'll have a heart attack. Like if there is stress, you need to eliminate it. So she did this research on mindset on stress. So what she found in her research is that if you believe that stress is bad for you, it will be bad for you. What happens if you feel like stress is bad for you, you'll have a bad psychological response.

1:00:11You'll be like, oh my God, this is horrible. It's horrible. And then your response to the stress will make the stress even worse. And then you'll have a bad physiological reaction. If you think that stress is bad and you experience a stressful event, what happens is inside of your vasculature, inside of your lumen, which is the inside of your veins and arteries, it will constrict. And then when it constricts, it will increase your blood pressure. So if you for a lifetime think stress is bad, and guess what? In life, there's always going to be stress. You will have a negative stress response psychologically, the way you feel, and physiologically, what happens to your body.

1:00:49But if you believe that stress is enhancing, like, hey, being challenged, like, you know, this setback, this is going to make me stronger, right? If you believe that stress is enhancing, then your body and your brain will believe you. So from a psychological point of view, if you believe that stress or setbacks and challenges are good, like, you know what, we're going to learn from this, we're going to get through this, and all the other people, they're probably going to just tap out and we're going to get forward, so this is good, right? We're going to look at it as a positive thing. We're going to be more apt to be able to overcome the challenges and adversity if we think stress is enhancing.

1:01:27And also she really looks at the physiological part of stress. If you believe that stress is enhancing, your body believes you. So when the stressful event happens, you'll feel like your heartbeat will go up, you know, and you'll feel the endorphins in your body, but your lumen stays relaxed. So your blood pressure doesn't go up. You know, and if you look at a lifetime of that difference, that can be the difference between a premature heart attack at 55 versus someone living into their 90s. And so they have this really amazing study. And I want to just talk about this study because this is the one that blew my mind.

1:02:06I do work mainly in organizations in the workplace. So they took this research on, can we change someone's mind on stress? Can we educate them that stress is enhancing and does it make an impact? So they went into a stressful workplace. This was in finance, like really high stress. And they went in and they, the intervention. So, you know, when you do an empirical study, there's got to be the placebo where they get something, but it's not the actual like treatment. And then you've got the people who actually get the treatment. So the treatment arm was watching a three-minute video telling people that stress is enhancing.

1:02:44You know, we're built to strive. Stress makes us stronger. It makes us smarter. It helps us grow. It's all scientifically valid evidence, a three-minute video saying stress is enhancing. The placebo group, they had to also watch a video. But what they did on the placebo video is they filled it with all the headlines that you and I are used to seeing. Stress is horrible. Stress is going to kill you. So avoid stress at all costs. So everyone got a three-minute video, and then they followed these people over time. They looked at the impact on their performance and their job satisfaction, all these different things.

1:03:17So they found the difference in performance. All these people had the same job, same stressful job. The people that just were told that stress is enhancing ended up performing, outperforming. The other people that were told stress is horrible for you, and it was statistically significant. They looked at job satisfaction, again, statistically significant. But here's where it gets really interesting. They also looked at the physiological response. There was also a huge difference between the two. Actually, it was, I shouldn't say a huge difference. It was a statistical significant difference in these two arms.

1:03:50And they looked at blood pressure, like we talked about just right there. They also looked at DHEA, a hormone linked to resilience, was higher in the group that believe that stress is enhancing. By just watching a three-minute video. They watch their three-minute video, I think, a couple times a week. But this is why I'm so passionate about this work is I feel like people are sold lies. Stress is horrible, right? So avoid it. No, no. Like life will be filled with challenges and setbacks and adversity and stress. And your belief about stress, that's the thing that will kill you or make your life miserable.

1:04:29So the stress is enhancing mindset. So, you know, in my book, The Bravery Effect, like we talk about the cognitive side first and we talk about the growth mindset, which you probably know Carol Dweck's work from Stanford, like believing you have an ability to do hard things. It'll take work and effort, but you can have a growth mindset. But I also teach the stress is enhancing mindset. Like let's make sure we, I want to give everyone the benefit that Aaliyah Crum and Sean Aker and others did in that study. And I want people to know that this is the truth, right? Right? Stress is like a workout for your brain.

1:05:01Just like it's, you know, weights are a workout for your body. And when you stress your mind and you challenge your mind, you improve your cognitive function, you grow and you develop. So it's just really exciting research. And the fact that they did it in organizations and that simple intervention made us a significant difference. Like I'm on a mission to tell the truth. Stress is not bad. It's our beliefs about stress. And fear is not something bad. Fear is something we should, if you're not feeling fear, you're doing life wrong. I want people to seek out fear. And there's a difference between like what I speak about and resilient speakers, right?

1:05:38Because sometimes I get calls to speak on big stages because they're like, oh, we want a resilient speaker. And I'm like, let me tell you, resilience is really about making sure that people can bounce back when something bad usually happens to them. I'm like, I am the speaker that will tell people, I want people to seek out. I want you to proactively find things that will create challenges and adversity because you're trying to climb that mountain toward whatever you want in life. So instead of just passively like, okay, if you get knocked down, I'm gonna teach you how to get back up. That's not what Jill's message is about.

1:06:12I want you to be on the offensive. I want you to be seeking things where you're gonna encounter adversity and challenges. I don't wanna just wait until they happen to you. I feel like I was up on my pulpit for a while.

1:06:27Ryan Hanley:No, this has been absolutely fantastic. I think this is a wonderful place to wrap. I could talk to you for another couple hours about this stuff. I want everyone to buy the book, The Bravery Effect. We're going to have that linked up. So whether you're watching on YouTube, listening wherever you do, just scroll down, you'll find links to that. Where else can they get deeper into your world? Yeah, other than the book, people can find me on jillshulman.com. So it's my website, you know, and it'll be in the show notes, but Jill, last name is S-C-H-U-L-M-A-N. I've got a free bravery assessment. I have a free bravery blueprint.

1:06:59So if you go in and take the assessment, it takes three minutes, and then they get a free bravery blueprint that really teaches them how you can build this bravery muscle, right? And it's got cognitive workouts, like it's the reframing, it's got the behavioral psychology and social psychology, and it's all free. And then if you choose to buy the book, I love the audiobook because it's a parable. I wrote the book as a parable because I want people to actually read the whole thing, and I want the younger generation to read it. So if anyone has any kids that are confused and they think that comfort—I mean, I really—I dedicated the book to my daughters.

1:07:31And I'm just—I'm hoping they actually read it someday. So we'll see. It's been out of the market for six months. I'm still holding my breath. I don't want to task them to read it, but—so you can find me just online, jillshulman.com. My books, all—anywhere books are sold. And then I'm getting out of my comfort zone. I'm on Instagram. I'm on Facebook. I'm on LinkedIn mainly. But I make a commitment because one of the parts of helping us stay brave is to make sure that we fill our feed with the correct science and information that will help you do the brave thing each day. So that's my commitment at least three times a week.

1:08:08It's like three to five. I commit at least three times. I have a post that will be something that will motivate you to keep the promise to yourself and be brave every day. It's the everyday moments of bravery that has the profound compound effect of your life. So not just the brave moments, but be brave for yourself each day.

1:08:27Ryan Hanley:I absolutely love it. It's been my pleasure. We're out of here, guys. Peace.