The science of the cold plunge with Chris Ballard

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1:19Made with no seed oils or artificial ingredients. When food is made simple, there's more room in your day for everything else. Look for Nature Raised Farms Chicken next time you're shopping and make your choice a little easier. This was in February in Vermont, and they had taken the frozen surface of Lake Memphremagog, this giant glacial lake up there, and every winter they carve out a swimming pool with chainsaws out of this lake. and they hold a swimming race. And that experience was so cold, you can't necessarily discern between heat and cold. It could feel like fire. Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant.

2:04Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast with Ted on the science of what makes us tick. I'm an organizational psychologist and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.

2:20Chris Ballard is a journalist and the author of The Plunge, a fascinating book about cold water immersion. As part of his reporting on the subject, Chris got into ice swimming himself. That Vermont swim in the glacial lake he described? The water was 33 degrees Fahrenheit that day. You're literally reacting minute to minute. Like the first minute for your body in the water is different than the second minute, which is different than the fifth, which is different than the tenth. And it had a far more impactful effect on me than I expected. In this conversation, Chris does some myth-busting about the health benefits of cold water.

2:51We also talk about the broader lessons he's learned about the psychology of discomfort and endurance, and the art of taking risks and embracing challenges. Okay, so the place I want to begin is, I am no stranger to uncomfortable experiences. I seek them out for a living. It's almost a personal hobby. It's how I grow. But I hate the cold. I don't know if there's a sensation that bothers me more than cold. To me, cold is pain. Can you change my mind? In your case, I probably wouldn't try to. Really? This was one of the things I, yeah, one of the things I found interesting about reporting and writing this book was there's people who find this, like trying a jalapeno pepper or whatever it might be, right?

3:37They find it something they might want to try. And afterwards, like, I'm sort of glad they did that. And there's people where the dread and apprehension of the experience itself overwhelms any positive reaction you get on the back end. And so, you know, for just for recovery, which is one of the things people use it for, NBA trainers told me, look, there's a lot of players, you know, Steph Curry on the Warriors, Draymond Green on the Warriors, who find this helpful. And they will look forward to it. and that's the you stress, obviously. And then there are players, in this case, Andrew Wiggins and Kavon Looney, who just fear it so much that any positive benefit they get on the back end is outweighed by the negative emotional stress on the front end.

4:17So maybe this just isn't a thing for you. Well, I don't know if I'm quite ready to land there yet because you make a persuasive case that we should all be embracing the cold a little bit more than we might instinctively be inclined to. But at minimum, I actually don't struggle with the fear part. It's just the sensation of it that I can't stand. So I think about in my springboard diving days, the early morning practices where the pool wasn't heated or we were training outdoors and we'd have to just do a first dive cold, literally, and hit the water and it's 55 or 60 degrees. And I would rather touch a hot stove.

4:55I would rather be punched in the face. Can you help me understand why that is? and what is different about people who seem to like the cold? So one of the thermal physiologists I spoke to, he said essentially we're divided into what he called warmies and coldies. And if you physically shake someone's hand, you will often feel the difference. Someone might have a cold hand usually versus someone who's got a very warm handshake. This is a genetic component. And this also affects how we deal with cold. Some people like to have the heat on. They like to keep it quite warm in their house. And other people are fine going outside in winter wearing shorts.

5:30right? So there's definitely a genetic component to it. There's also a learned element. And this is, for me, I came into this from the outside. I was not a cold person. I literally own a hot tub, right? This was not something that would have naturally been drawn to. And so there was a lot of, this is terrible. This is terrible. And your body acclimates so quickly, usually within about a week of cold exposure, you get through the part of it that is unpleasant and you get to the rewards a lot quicker. So there is a learned element to it. Okay. So if that's true, why is it the case that after being married for more than 20 years to my wife, Allison, when she turns the thermostat down to 60 degrees at bedtime, I still freeze.

6:14I still shiver every night. Isn't that two decades of cold exposure? Shouldn't I be acclimated by now? Theoretically, yes. But also looking at it, you may have pretty low body fat, right? So there's a lot of reasons why you're going to react to the cold differently. Your circulation system might be different than some people's. So there are physiological reasons, and then there's mental reasons. Sounds like yours are probably physiological. So interesting. Okay, so the next time somebody calls me a wimp for not liking the cold, I'm going to say, actually, I'm just in better shape than you are.

6:43There you go. All right, so let's, no pun intended, let's dive into your experience. I would love to hear about how you got into the plunge and about the coldest place you have gone swimming. So professionally as a writer, I've always been interested in these little subcultures, and especially people who are really passionate about things that maybe to the rest of the world don't seem like natural things to be doing. So I was drawn to this world. It's a subculture. There's fascinating characters. and if you're going to expose yourself to the temperatures that these people are doing for the duration that they're doing there's nothing performative about it it's an authentic experience and so I was also curious what they found on the other side of that like why and how they did it right and then what they learned from it so as a writer I was drawn to it and then personally it happened to align with a point in my life where I had hit the end of the road as an athlete myself I'd been a college athlete, low-level college athlete, and I had a hip replacement at 40.

7:47And I had this long period of recovery, and I recognized that I had tied so much of myself to sports, in particular basketball for me. So it was my identity, you know, my stress release, my camaraderie, my community was tied to this. And you stole it away, and I realized, like, I need to get back on the court, but also longer term, finding a pivot. So this appealed to me originally as a way to recover and get back on the court faster. That was that NBA connection of an NBA trainer telling me, you know, this is what the guys in the league are doing. So I was like, sure, I'm game if they're game.

8:20So that would be the impetus. And then as far as the coldest, that would be in Vermont. And this was in Lake Memphremagog. And this was the thing that talk about my apprehension and my dread that I had worried about the most. because the temperature some years gets down to about 32 degrees. The year I was there was around 33 degrees. And you are, you know, stepping in a wooden ladder and you're swimming in some cases down and back, sometimes just down. And that experience was so cold, it could feel like fire. I found that to be a fascinating experience in the moment. But prior to it, there was just so much apprehension.

9:01Yeah. Yeah. No, I can relate to the feeling of cold fire from skiing in Switzerland when it was like below zero Fahrenheit. And it just it feels like your fingers and toes are burning, even though they're actually freezing. Yes. Yeah. And that experience is part of what some of these people chase is getting to that point where you've almost scrambled all your body's signals. And so there's certainly a sense of you are fully in the moment. You are fully present because your body has no idea what's going on. Okay, the inevitable question, why? Why would anyone subject themselves to that? Various reasons.

9:43I think of the ice swimmers, which is swimming in 41 degree water or lower. And these are people who are really serious about it, who commit to it, who will do it through the winter, wherever they are. With them, there was a sort of a Venn diagram of people who really liked extreme challenges. These are the same people who might be drawn to an ultramarathon, to a triathlon. And here is something wherein if you said to them, you know, only, you know, 500 people in the world have done this thing. And they're like, yeah, I want to do that thing. So the ice mile is the very tip top of this where you swim, you know, a mile and 41 degree lower water.

10:18Very challenging. Gene, the founder of it says sort of, it's something that exists between impossible and possible, right? More people fail than succeed. So that is a huge lure to some of these people. So there was some of that. Then there were some where this was a community element. And that was the strongest thing I saw, where it was a group of people and you went and did this hard thing together on a Sunday morning, whatever it might be. And there was this, they call pure positive of pressure, right? So they're all going to be there at nine. I'm in my bed at 7am. I don't really want to get up, but I'm going to go down there and we're going to do this relatively efficient, hard thing.

10:56I'm not going to go run a marathon. I'm going to go in for five minutes and then I'm going to feel this immediate bond with people afterwards. And part of that is the neurochemicals shooting into you, right? And part of it is what some of the people in the book referred to as essentially like a shared crisis. You both survived this five minutes in the cold water together and you are now bonded immediately. And often it can be strangers. So you'll see that element of it. And the third would be for mental health. And these are people who are looking for a way to create a moment of stillness and a moment of silence in their life.

11:28And that will last and maybe it's only a short period, but there is a value to that that people are finding. It's a feeling of here's something I can do that reliably makes me feel good about myself and reliably makes me feel good about the people I'm doing it with. That seemed to be a very strong theme. Yeah. Okay. When I think about these people who seek out challenges, they actually do come in three flavors. There are people who are pursuing achievement. It's a performance challenge for them. There are people who are trying to prove something to others. It's image related and they really want to post about it afterward.

12:01And then there are people who are just seeking intrinsic mastery. They want to excel at something. and they want to get as good as they can. They want to become experts, which is less about the outcome and more about the process. They like the experience of getting better every day. What is that about? What is the draw of the cold? So I think it's because of the immediate physiological effect that occurs. So the external environment immediately starts changing your body. And I've seen this with people who have gone from pool swimming to open water swimming to ice swimming. It's this whole new set of challenges.

12:35So immediately the blood is going away from your extremities. And so it's going to become harder. At a certain point, ice swimmers get like a claw hand where they can't really feel the water anymore. And then your back end is going to start sinking. And so there's all these physiological elements that you are fighting at the same time that you're dealing with, oh, my swim stroke. Am I sighting well in the water? How is my engine, my VO2 max? Those are the normal endurance things. I think that's what draws some people to this, is that it's a totally different challenge than you can find, I suppose, like if you're climbing Everest, right?

13:09If you're going to find another environmental aspect like that. I found that to be personally one of the most interesting elements of doing it myself. I know that at least a subset of people are kind of drawn to the idea that they're reengineering their bodies. And this is a bit of the acclimation that you were speaking to earlier, but I'm thinking of the extreme examples. I remember about a decade ago, first meeting Lewis Pugh, he swam the highest lake on Everest and also the North Pole. And I remember asking Lewis, how do you do this? And he explained to me that he had this anticipatory thermogenesis where he'd classically conditioned himself to the point where right before a race, his body would just naturally start to heat up two or three degrees.

13:51And that gave him the capacity to sustain a level of cold that most people couldn't. And I looked at that and I thought, okay, I can see the appeal of basically becoming a frog. That's what Lewis is doing. How many other people can do this? Can you actually train yourself to do it? Is he a genetic or physiological freak or is it actually learnable? Well, the people that have been studied for it are the people that are essentially already doing it, if that makes sense. So Lynn Cox, who is generally considered one of the greatest open water and cold water swimmers ever. You know, at 15, she set the English Channel record, male or female.

14:24She swam from Alaska to Russia. So remarkable. She was studied by scientists. She could do it as well. But it's one of those things where they haven't studied the rest of us, whether we could actually gain this. And Ram Barkai, who is the founder of the International Ice Women Association, also been studying in this realm. So you got to sort of like, you know, the cart and the horse situation. I would be curious. I don't know. I certainly have not, through three years of doing this, created the ability to warm myself up ahead of time. That would be a fun little superpower to gain, though. It would be.

14:56Yeah. So what has it done for you? Talk to me about the effects that you've experienced, how they square up with the science, and where you've landed on, should I learn to cold plunge at least? Even if I'm not going to be an ice swimmer, which I don't plan on, is there a case that this is going to enrich my health or my life or my performance in some way? I came in skeptical. I should start with that as an outside journalist who'd never really even been a swimmer. But it's also worth me noting to people that I started the way most people do, which is like cold showers, right? And then I moved on to cold plunges and I moved on to swimming in the bay here in San Francisco, which might be like 55 degrees.

15:34So it's sort of a gradual process to the point where I was doing lower temperatures and then competing in some of these ice swimming competitions. So this is definitely not the arc that someone who just, you know, occasionally cold plunges is going to follow. So with that said, doing it for a couple of years, I found these physiological changes for me. One of which was that my resting heart rate got really low to the point where right before the going to the world championships, when I competed there, they measured it at 39. And that triggered a visit to cardiology, except that I told them, A, I've been doing a lot of endurance sports and B, I've been doing all this cold exposure.

16:11And then so they, it's like, okay, that makes sense. So one, the resting heart rate, which makes sense if you're doing a fair amount of cold exposure, elite athletes often get down low. Two, heart rate variability went up, which is generally a good thing. But more, I think more personally, what I found was I had hit a point in my life, midlife, I think like a lot of us maybe do, you know, you have kids and you get set in your ways. And I think I had essentially underestimated myself. And so I went into this being like, there's no way I could do this. And it turned out to be not as hard as I expected or as I'd feared, I suppose.

16:47So that led me to bleed over into other areas of my life where my emotional regulation is better. If I'm on like an eight hour flight now, and there's a kid screaming in the row behind, I feel better suited for that. I feel better suited. You know, the peaks and valleys have leveled out a bit. And is that the cold or is that the process of continually having to manage it? Which maybe you could get through meditation, right? That's what I found to be most interesting was all these little tests that I took. Every day I was taking a test, and I was passing every day because that test was two minutes of my cold plunge.

17:23I never looked forward to the test, but just the process of continuing to take them, I think, is what has been most impactful. This is the point where I need to call you out on a contradiction between what you just said and what you were commenting on earlier, which is you said I became a competitive ice swimmer and I didn't do it very well. And now you're telling me you were at the world championships. those two things do not compute. So can you please own up to how good you got? Well, one of the great things about a sport like ice swimming is that the pool of ice swimmers is relatively small, Adam.

17:55So if I were to be going against my age group swimmers in the United States, I would be far the bottom end of like recreational swimmer. I mean, not maybe I'm overstating a bit, but if you go in the pool of ice swimmers, So all these elite swimmers, do you want to get in that cold water? The answer is usually no. What's the payoff for me, right? And there's a handful that have done it. So there were current Olympian and past Olympians at these world championships. But as far as the US national team, like if you're a decent swimmer and you would show up at the national championship and you were willing to be part of this, they're like, come on in.

18:35And there's age groups, which is great if you're a little older in life. So you could get a medal in the 50 to 55 and the 40 to 45, whatever it is. And that counts just as much at these world championships as an overall medal. So I was able to end up qualifying for the U.S. national team, which was amazing. That's the only national team I'm ever qualifying for. And go over there and be part of this experience and more so as a fly on the wall. But I got to race and that was fantastic. It's amazing. Congratulations. Can we make a case for ice swimming as a Winter Olympic sport? Yes. So a case can be made.

19:11And the case is this. Number one, it would be great on TV. So if you think about what does great ratings at the Summer Olympics, it's swimming. Now you add swimming, but it's outdoors. There is snow all around. Maybe you've dropped the pool into an actual alpine lake. You got mountains. You can see the breadth of the competitors, right? And then you've got this sideline correspondent who is forced to go down to the pool and report back about the temperature, what it feels like. And then maybe - And is wearing a giant parka. Yes, exactly. And gloves and a face mask. Yes. And hurries to and fro.

19:49And then you have elite competitors. And then finally, you got to make sure it's safe. And this is something that the ice swimming crew has spent a lot of time on. And they got to the point where at the world championships, there were no injuries. and that's largely because no one's in the water long enough to actually get hypothermic in these events. And so... How long is that? So for most people, that's going to be a, you know, mild hypothermia might kick in by 30 minutes and hours when you're really worried about. And the cutoff at most of these events is 20 minutes. And these are also elite swimmers.

20:23So there's no one who's swimming it super slow. Yeah, this is a little reassuring because I was starting to think, Like, you know what's not good TV? When you see an athlete turn blue and then start to turn into an icicle. No, I don't want to watch that. No, no. I think it's sort of like big wave surfing where the threat of danger is part of the appeal for people. From a viewing standpoint, I would say. You know, Chris, I want to come back to what you were alluding to with, you know, just feeling like you were more capable of just confronting challenges in your day. I think this is obviously bigger than cold.

21:00I remember years ago when I was doing work on productivity and procrastination, I got a lot of questions about how is it not hard for you to sit down and tackle writing a book? And I just had a hard time following the question because I'm thinking there is nothing, there's nothing that I've ever done in my job that compares in degree of difficulty to even jumping off a 10-meter platform for me. I was afraid of heights. I'm still afraid of heights, actually. And I forced myself to learn to flip and twist. I had to go day in and day out and force myself, you know, two hours every day to do things that I was terrified of.

21:38I would write a book every year before I even have to do one back takeoff on a 10-meter platform. Not even close. And it sounds like you're describing having experienced a version of that. Yeah. I'm interested in you basically put yourself through exposure therapy, right? Exactly. Which is wonderful. And most of us don't opt into that. And so in my case, I'll be honest, I would not have opted into this if I weren't gonna write a whole book about it. I might've been interested in it, but part of it was like, I know I have to do this today. To bring it back to you for a second, Adam, there was a great point you made about your diving career, which I heard you on, actually on Oprah's podcast.

22:17And you talked about that moment when you were afraid of heights and you're on the board and you're there for 45 minutes and you're shaking and you're up there and finally your coach is like, are you gonna go in? And you mentioned that that was the trigger for you to realize that it is not the confidence that leads to action. It is the action that leads to confidence. And I think that's exactly what you find in this world is that you just gotta do it. And then the more you do it, the more strongly you feel you could do it again. Well, I can't disagree with you using my own experience to make your point.

22:52Well played, Chris. Well played.

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25:11I think I've seen a lot of posts on social media and also encouragement from my friend Michael, who's very into cold plunging. It seems like it's become a fitness fad, sort of a health fad. Is cold plunging actually good for us? Yeah, that is the key question. Yes, but not in all the ways that you probably have heard on social media. would be my overarching answer. And I, the most frustrating part of reporting the book is you go to experts, usually when you write a narrative nonfiction story, and the experts answer the questions for you. And there is just a lack of deep, rigorous research in this world.

25:50So, you know, we can't really track all these claims yet. And that's frustrating because you want to be able to. And so I say there's four things that I would confidently say you would get out of cold plunging. The first is some level of athletic recovery. This has been shown. It's not great. It's not a magic bullet, but you're going to get it. And especially for soreness. Second would be the immediate mood boost, which can last up to a couple hours. And that makes sense because your body's going into fight or flight. And then you get, you know, dopamine and noradrenaline. All these neurochemicals flood you.

26:24That is combined with the fact that if you stay in at least 90 seconds, you will become weirdly calm because that fight or flight goes away and now your body's trying to preserve. It's, you know, lowering your heart rate. So you get this interesting state of being alert and calm. And we've seen studies around this. The resilience, which is what we spoke about. And then finally, the mental health, which most of the studies around have been experiential. And you could also argue how much of that's community, how much of that's being outside, and how much of it is actually the cold water and how much is swimming.

26:57So that's the interesting stuff to me. If you were to try to get really prescriptive, based on everything you've learned, what's the optimal regimen? Are you saying, okay, do a four-minute cold shower after a workout three times a week? What would you boil this down to? This also comes— And I know, by the way, I know this is a hard question to answer, and there's a ton of nuance, but you have, I think, done the most thorough investigation of this topic that has existed in human history, so who better ask than you? Well, thank you, Adam. So if you're looking for just like a time-saving way to do this, cold shower is great.

27:31That's the easiest entry. You'll get a little boost. You move on with your day. That's great. But ideally what you do is you do this with other people. So I would say that my number one thing would be like, find some friends, go to some outdoor place together. It doesn't have to be super cold, 60 degrees or lower. Go in, hang out together afterwards. You'll have a lot of positive associations about the experience in addition to any health benefits that accrue. Otherwise, we just don't have enough data to know how often you need to do it and how much. And I could say anecdotally from the people I know that the people who swim in the winter tend to go seek it out in the summer.

28:09They miss it. Okay. And if I don't want to do that because my distaste for wasting time exceeds my distaste for the cold, how long is the cold shower and how often? So you could use it strategically, right? I'm feeling stressed. Like today I've got a big day. I'm a little nervous this morning. Instead of going hot, I'll go cold or even like half the shower cold. That'll do it. You'll come out feeling different than you would have if you'd stayed in hot the whole time. So deploy it strategically. So if you did it two or three times a week and you did it for 90 seconds, you're probably gonna see some of these benefits.

28:46Do the James Bond shower that he did in the books, which is you start hot and then just end on cold. The order is counterintuitive to me. I think about, okay, if I have to do this, I'm getting the cold out of the way and then the hot shower is a reward for it. Why do you want me to go the other way? I've found, and most people find, that if you come out last in the heat, you're not energetic. You know, often it's almost like if you wanted to go to bed, you'd take a hot bath. There's that feeling. What the cold does is it fires you up. You're juiced, you're ready to go. You have the dopamine on board.

29:18You have the adrenaline on board. So for work productivity, for me, if I do cold plunge, I do caffeine ahead of time, cold plunge, and then go right into two hours of deep focus work in the morning, that's my most productive time. Because you don't want to waste all those neurochemicals. Okay, that makes sense. But it's also a violation of Danny Kahneman's peak end rule. I do not want to land on the most painful part of the cold because then I'm going to remember how much that sucked and not want to do it tomorrow. So it sounds like there's a tradeoff between what's good for me today and what might motivate me to sustain the routine tomorrow.

29:57And it also, the experience of the cold, for most people at least, you may be an outlier, right? The experience of the cold is not pleasant, but the 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes after is pleasant. And unless you're getting really cold and actually are shivering it out and there's a significant rewarm, yeah, the moment you get out of there, you feel good and the hard part is over. And hopefully your brain can latch on to whatever those 30 minutes were when you knocked out 15 tasks. Okay, this is an interesting question for peak end research. Can we essentially move the goalposts on where the end is and redefine it as, yeah, this isn't over until I'm 15 minutes post-cold?

30:37I mean, I guess, obviously, you know this world better than I do, but a question for you, perhaps, like, let's say someone really enjoys drinking alcohol, and the peak is a very high peak at the moment where they're most enjoying it, but the after effects can be a terrible hangover. I think which one you remember probably determines whether you're going to do that again. Yeah, I think which one you remember coupled with your self-control strategies for getting your should self to override your want self or outsmart your want self. Isn't that like the everyday challenge that we all face, right?

31:10It's one of the fundamental dilemmas of life. That is actually a great segue, Chris, to Office Hours segment. So give you the mic. What's your question for me? So I actually have a couple. So the first one I'm curious about is, as a writer myself, I find your interview questions really interesting. And I'm curious what the process of becoming an interviewer and doing all those interviewers has taught you not only about yourself, but what have you applied more widely in life and work? Ooh, well, thank you, first of all. Secondly, I think probably the thing that surprised me most is I often ask better questions when I'm less prepared.

31:50Huh. Because what happens is, you can probably tell, I'm hyper-conscientious and I like to set a goal and then make a plan for how to achieve it and then follow the plan. And what that means is I'm at risk for coming into a conversation, having a script and an agenda, and then kind of locking into it. Whereas the best questions stem from in-the-moment curiosity. And I think riffing on that is one of my favorite aspects of being a podcaster, right? I get to learn about things that I didn't even know that I was going to want to know about. And I think the ability to think out loud in this medium is different from any other form of communication we do.

32:32You can't do it in a book. You can't do it in an article. And so this is, you know, I think this is much more free form. And so I have actually learned in some cases to underprepare. I was just talking with our producer, Jessica, about this, where normally we'll create a script of questions. And I've noticed when I do live podcasts, I have a list, but I rarely look at it because I'm so attuned to what the audience is responding to. and also, you know, my reaction is a proxy for what the audience is going to respond to. And those are often my favorite conversations. And so my best questions come from, what is the burning question in the moment?

33:06And that's been a reconfiguration for me of how I instinctively work. Did that answer your question? That's a great answer. Because I think we always talk about, you know, fail to prepare, prepare to fail. But there's that point where if you're so locked in on what your initial goals were, you're missing those opportunities along the way. Absolutely. And for me, it's actually better in some cases, I don't want to go into an interview having not read your book, but I also don't want to come in having read it yesterday because then everything I ask you about is basically me choreographing. It's like you're an actor and I'm your director.

33:44I'm like, here, Chris, I have a line for you. Can you recite it as perfectly as possible? And then I'm going to pretend to be surprised by it for the audience's benefit. Whereas, you know, I think I probably read the plunge, I don't know, was it two, three months ago? What stuck for me are a few of the stories and a few of the, you know, unexpected insights and a little bit of your personal journey. And I feel like I know just enough at this point to ask about it in ways that I'm going to be delighted the same way it is, as opposed to going through the motions with you. So that, I think there is such a thing as over-preparing or maybe we at least need a lag between our preparation and our performance.

34:21I love the lag idea. That's great. I mean, it does mean you need to be really on top of things to do the prep well in advance. Yeah. I may not give that advice to my teenage daughters quite yet, but eventually down the line, perhaps. What was your other question? So one of the older swimmers in the book had this theory about older athletes and was that essentially the more hard things you go through in life, whether it's losing a job, divorce, loss of a loved one, whatever it might be, you build this endurance brain. And so his theory was some of the reasons that older athletes succeed in especially endurance sports is because they have built up this endurance brain.

35:02And essentially, the more hard stuff you do, the better you are doing hard stuff when it comes to sports. And I was curious via research if that's something that shows up in other areas of life as well. Oh, that's a really intriguing question. So I think the answer is a qualified yes. I think we can say with good confidence that the more experience people have, not just facing adversity, but overcoming it, the easier it is then for them to power through the next challenge that they're facing. but sometimes they have to be reminded of that capacity. So my colleague, Samir Nur Muhammad, led some research on this that I thought was very clever, taking people in the job search who were really struggling to find a job and having them write a narrative about not just previous difficulties they'd faced, but previous difficulties they'd overcome.

35:58And what he was doing was he was putting them in an underdog mindset, but reminding them, hey, I've done this before, I can do it again. And that boosted their effort in the job search and ultimately increased their likelihood of finding work. And I think this is, it's an American story, right? It's like, it's been David against Goliath and I have beaten the odds before and that means I can do it again. And I think that's a form of conditioning. And over time, I would guess, I haven't seen data for this, but I would guess that you need to be prompted less. it becomes part of your identity. I am a resilient person.

36:33I am someone who faces and surmounts obstacles. And so whatever you throw at me, I got this. That is great. And I love the idea of writing it down as well. We've seen the way that writing imprints a little better, or I'm sure verbalizing might have some of that effect as well. Yeah. You and I are both biased on that one though, as people who love the written word, but yeah, it's hard to argue with the power of forming a story and also getting the thoughts out of your head and seeing them staring right back at you.

37:04This episode is sponsored by Morning Brew Daily. If you're fascinated by ideas that challenge how you see the world, you're probably curious about what's happening in the world too. Let me introduce you to Morning Brew Daily, a daily business news podcast that's a quick, fun, and easy way to start your day. Reading traditional news can feel like a chore, but hosts Neil Freiman and Toby Howell make the show feel like you're catching up with two friends rather than sitting through a lecture. Whether they're breaking down the biggest stories in business, tech, or finance, each episode gives you the context you need to feel informed in a way that's genuinely fun and engaging.

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38:55Price and coverage match limited by state law.

39:03So are you ready for the lightning round? Let's do it. Okay. So this whole lightning round is geared around the extensive time you've spent studying elite performers, especially elite athletes. First question is, what is the worst advice that you see people give regularly for achieving and sustaining excellence? I think it's mastery at the expense of other aspects. When you see athletes who focus on mastery too early, and certainly when the outside world encourage them to do that, and they don't build, as Dave Epstein would say, the range around it, that usually doesn't lead to the same kind of outcome as if someone had other elements.

39:45Hard to argue with that one. Okay, good. What about the best non-obvious advice for becoming elite at your craft? I think it would be homework. And by that, I mean, like, in the NBA, the players I saw who had spent the most time looking back over their past performance, who had the best recollection, LeBron James has got a remarkable memory for past games. And you saw this again and again. Kobe Bryant was a total basketball nerd. The people who not only did the thing, but studied the thing, studied who came before. I have such a chicken and egg question about that, which is, is it the actual studying or is it the passion that led them to do the studying that ultimately propelled them?

40:27And I would assume it's a combination of the two. Right. Because if you're not passionate about it, it's not interesting to you. And so there's not the incentive to study. And so unless you're forced to do it, you're not going to do it. All right. You get to organize your dream dinner party of people who are going to help you understand what it takes to reach our potential. Who are you inviting, living or dead? To reach our potential. I would probably start with one person who's going to bring a humanist approach, maybe George Saunders, someone I've always felt understood us in a way that the rest of us don't.

41:02I might bring Steph Curry because I feel like he's reached greatness without sacrificing the parts of it that we often expect others to sacrifice. Maybe I bring Shackleton. That would be interesting if I can do that. And then probably someone in the research realm who could take a 30 ,000 view of this and study it. Whoever that might be would be the top researcher in the field. Interesting group. I would like to try to get invited to that dinner. Yes, you would be a good one. We'll see. What is something you've rethought or changed your mind about lately? I think the limits that we find as we get older.

41:41I think there's a fair amount of expectation that as we hit a certain age, there are certain things that are not available to us anymore. And the process of reporting this book, the process of reporting stories I've done recently have shown me that really it's just sort of like, rather than going through something, it's like water around a rock. And I feel like that is, it's a great thing to find in midlife. Okay, last question for you. You decline the opportunity to persuade me to embrace the cold. I asked you to rethink your resistance to asking me to think again. Now that you've heard me complain about the cold a little bit and you know more about my psyche than you did coming in, you get one sentence to convince me that I should make cold immersion part of my routine.

42:30What's your pitch? You'll be happy you did it. Now, I'm just noticing you didn't say I'll be happy while I'm doing it. No, no. This is like reading a classic. No, this is something that was told to me early in the process, and I was skeptical as well. And the other side of that bridge, you don't know how to get there, and you don't know what's there, but when you get there, you eventually realize, okay, I'm glad I did that thing. Well, as someone who likes both achievement and mastery, that is a very compelling argument to make. Because I look at that and I think, okay, you've just reframed this as a challenge for me.

43:07Why is it so hard for me? and what's the last time I back down from a challenge? I can do this. Yeah, the U.S. national team will hold a spot for you for the next world championships, Adam. No, no, I will not be competing, let alone finishing fifth. Thank you, Chris. This has been a lot of fun. Oh, this was great. I really appreciate it, Adam.

43:30Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is produced by Ted with Cosmic Standard. Our producer is Jessica Glazer. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our engineer is Asia Pilar Simpson. Our technical director is Jacob Winnick. And our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Roxanne Hailash, Banban Chang, Julia Dickerson, Tansika Sung Manivong, and Whitney Pennington Rogers. Original music by Hans Dale Su and Alison Leighton Brown.

44:00Yes! Oh! I feel like I accomplished something today.

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45:24Is the era of globalization over? Are trade wars, choke points, and great power rivalry the new normal? I'm Gideon Rachman, Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator of the Financial Times. And each week, I invite a special guest who I've met on my travels, a politician, a writer, or a business leader, to discuss one of the big news stories shaping our world. So join me every Thursday for the Rachman Review, wherever you get your podcasts.

45:54There's a reason millions of people start their day with Morning Brew Daily. Each morning, we break down the biggest news in business from the latest tech headlines to why nobody can afford a house right now. All in a format that fits seamlessly into your day. You'll leave each episode of Morning Brew Daily smarter and ready to take on the world around you. I'm Toby Howell. And I'm Neil Freiman. And we're ready to show you that business news doesn't have to be boring. So join us on Morning Brew Daily, available wherever you get your podcasts.