The Financial Samurai Podcast - How To Get Better At Mastering Change In This Chaotic World With Brad Stulberg
Primer: Change is a constant in our lives. How do we handle the vicissitudes it brings? Brad Stulberg, author of Master of Change, has experienced changes after changes in his life. What did he learn? How can we apply what he has learned? Let’s find out in this episode of the Financial Samurai Podcast.
Writing Master of Change
Started as a personal inquiry and curiosity about change
Over the past 5 years of his life, he experienced all sorts of changes
It became a book that looks into some of the historical roots of why we think about change the way that we do and explores if there are alternative better models
His Experience With OCD And Secondary Depression
It was almost 7 years ago
It was a stark onset. He did not have a history of mental illness
Was wired to be a pusher. Scored high on conscientiousness and was always productive and able to channel his productivity
One day, things were haywire
Received care from a psychiatrist and therapist
After that episode, he wanted to explore why and how it happened and how the tools he had used could be applied to people who are not struggling with clinical mental illness
OCD Related To Achievement And Success?
Don’t think that it is related
True clinical OCD is far removed from neuroticism and anxiety
When he experienced the episode, he was not in a place where he was striving for the next thing
Steps Taken To Get Out Of It And Move Forward
Finding a therapist who practises evidence-based third-wave clinical therapies
What was most helpful to him was something called acceptance and commitment therapy
He worked with that therapist and took medication for around a year
He also saw a psychiatrist who specialized in treating OCD
Unsure whether medications for psychiatric conditions helped because the evidence is somewhat mixed
Tragic Optimism
A term that was coined by Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl is a Holocaust survivor and psychoanalyst. He’s most well-known for his book, Man’s Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl is less known for the essay that he published after Man’s Search for Meaning: The Case for Tragic Optimism
In that essay, Frankl states that life is full of inevitable tragedy and suffering, and he provides 3 reasons for it:
Humans are made of flesh and bone. As we age, we will experience illness and injury and nobody escapes life without going through this
We are one of the few species that can think ahead and make plans. Because we can think and make plans, when things do not go our way, we experience frustration and disappointment
Everything changes in life
“The things that we love, the people that we love, our skills, our capacities, our talents, our youth, all of that is impermanent.”
- Brad Stulberg
In spite of this, we can take tragedy and accept it and not let it delude ourselves, but combine it with resolute, reasonable optimism
There are 2 camps on the internet:
Bury your head in the sand and don’t worry about anything camp
The despair and nihilism camp
There’s a huge chasm between the two, and that’s where tragic optimism lives
Toxic Positivity
It’s a type of optimism or positivity that borders on delusional
He views it as the polar opposite of despair. Neither of these emotions are helpful because they absolve you of doing anything
“There's all sorts of research that shows that tragic optimism is associated with better well-being and resilience. Because it does two things at once. It is optimistic and hopeful, but it also acknowledges that things aren't always great and that's okay too.”
- Brad Stulberg
Suffering = Pain x Resistance
The equation came out of pain science and rehabilitation practices
Took it from clinical medicine and applied it more broadly
Example:
You pulled your back and have 6 units of pain
You think about not being able to go out with friends this weekend, about taking painkillers to resist the pain, about becoming addicted to painkillers, etc., so you have 6 units of resistance
As a result, you have 36 units of suffering
However, if you think you are going to be okay, seek out resources to help you, and not catastrophize about it, you have 0 units of resistance
Experiencing 6 units of suffering is a lot better than 36 units of suffering
“The more we freak out and catastrophize and resist or pretend it's not happening or delude ourselves, the more we suffer.”
- Brad Stulberg
The Mind-Body Connection Between Emotions And Pain
Is outside his area of expertise
Think that there’s a mind-body connection
What we experience as physical pain is probably more psychosocial pain that is manifesting as physical pain
At other times, it’s more organic and biological (e.g. herniating a disc in your back)
This is the evidence-based model that is used at Mayo Clinic Pain and Rehabilitation center
The first thing they help patients understand is that the goal is not to get rid of their pain
“It's like this Zen koan, right? The goal is to get them to accept their pain. And once they accept it, it tends to dissolve or at least get much better.”
- Brad Stulberg
Have to separate chronic pain from acute injury
The Freak Out And Catastrophize Culture
First reason is consumerism. It runs on an engine of people feeling like they need problems to fix or to do more to be enough
Second reason is that we have experienced accelerating changes societally
People think that they do not have the skills to navigate the shaky ground
The Psychological Immune System
A concept by Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert
The job of the psychological immune system is to help us heal and make sense of the big changes that occur in our lives
The larger the change, the longer it takes for our psychological immune system to help us integrate it into our narrative
When we undergo major disruptions in our lives, we all want a quick fix, but we can’t rush that process
Strengthening Our Psychological Immune System
It’s not as clear-cut and is harder to study
Strengthening our relationships
Developing good daily habits and practices that are portable
Developing tools to navigate change successfully
The most important skill is the skill of responding, not reacting
When a change happens, there are 2 roads we can go down:
We can react, which tends to be rash and with hot emotion
We can respond thoughtfully, deliberately
The more we respond to disruptions and changes in our lives, we develop self-efficacy
“All of these ways of zooming out from this acute, visceral, hardwired reactionary thing help us to create some space to respond. And the more that we go through the cycle, the more that we succeed in responding, the easier it becomes in the future.”
- Brad Stulberg
Deciding To Move Across The Country
Used to live in Oakland, California. Now they live in Asheville, North Carolina
His wife’s family is all on the east coast and she’s very close to her family
Moved to support his wife
It was a big change for him and it was hard
His psychological immune system kicked in and he found meaning and growth in Asheville
Easier to achieve their goals of financial independence in Asheville than in the Bay area
There’s a section in his book on identity. Where you live is going to have a huge impact on who you become
What Does Success Mean To Him?
Knowing his core values and living in alignment with them
Spending time and energy on the people and things that mean the most to him
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