[@hubermanlab] How to Grow From Doing Hard Things | Michael Easter

Link: https://youtu.be/SsKkZTjUJEk

Short Summary

Here's a summary based on the provided transcript:

• Number One Action Item/Takeaway: Consciously incorporate small, daily acts of discomfort (the "2% rule") to combat the tendency to lower your threshold for what constitutes a problem, and periodically engage in larger, challenging "Misogi" experiences to reset your perspective and expand your sense of what's possible.

• Executive Summary: Modern comforts can lead to a diminished sense of satisfaction and increased neurosis. By intentionally incorporating discomfort into daily life and undertaking larger, meaningful challenges, individuals can improve their mental and physical health, derive deeper connection with others, increase gratitude and develop a more robust sense of self.

Key Quotes

Here are 5 quotes extracted from the transcript:

1. "The comfort crisis made me realize that every activity available to us, easy or challenging, destructive or constructive, can and should be viewed through the lens of whether it spends our dopamine reserves or invests them in a worthwhile way." - Andrew Huberman (Introduction)

2. "I think that the sort of uh promise and peril of modern life is that we no longer have to do these hard challenging things to survive." - Michael Easter

3. "So, when a person runs outdoors on the other hand, let's say it's on a trail, well, now you have all these other forms of discomfort and stimulation that are coming your way. So, one, you've got the physical activity, obviously. But two is that the trail isn't this perfectly predictable thing, right?" - Michael Easter

4. "So as people started encountering fewer truly threatening faces, they started judging faces that were on the borderline as threatening. So they said threatening just as many times, even though the faces weren't truly threatening, faces that they would have let slide before." - Michael Easter (explaining David Lavar's "prevalence induced concept change")

5. "I'm going to do the same thing every morning. I'm going to get my 72 pound kettle bell and I'm going to join you in those morning walks and then I will be cursing your name from now on. So, it'll be fair." - Andrew Huberman

Detailed Summary

Here's a detailed summary of the YouTube video transcript in bullet points, excluding sponsor announcements and advertisements:

• Introduction to Michael Easter and the "Comfort Crisis":

  • Andrew Huberman introduces Michael Easter, a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a writer who focuses on how modern conveniences can negatively impact mental and physical health.
  • Huberman credits Easter's book, "The Comfort Crisis," with profoundly changing his daily life and perspective.
  • The core concept is viewing activities (easy or challenging) through the lens of whether they deplete or invest dopamine reserves.
  • The video explores these ideas and their practical implementation for greater focus, motivation, avoidance of compulsive behaviors, and deeper connection in relationships.

• Modern Life vs. Ancient Nervous Systems:

  • Human brains and nervous systems evolved in an environment where hard things were constant and necessary for survival.
  • This included being outdoors, physical activity, carrying heavy loads, periods of boredom, and temperature fluctuations.
  • Modern life has removed these challenges through easy access to food, reduced physical exertion, readily available entertainment (phones), and temperature control.
  • Humans are wired to do the easiest, most comfortable thing (conserving calories), which now backfires due to overconsumption and sedentary lifestyles, representing an "evolutionary mismatch."

• Side Effects of Comfort:

  • Most modern diseases result from overconsumption of food and lack of physical activity.
  • Modern problems are driven by overly comfortable environments.

• Mimicking the Outdoors Indoors:

  • Health and wellness trends often aim to recreate the conditions of outdoor living (sunlight, fresh air, green spaces).
  • Exercise is an invention to compensate for sedentary jobs, a "strange idea" historically.
  • Running on a treadmill lacks the mental and emotional stimulation of running outdoors on a trail with its unpredictable terrain, weather, and natural beauty.

• Movement and Fear Suppression:

  • Optic flow from hiking, walking, or cycling can suppress brain areas involved in fear.
  • Repetitive, lateral eye movements can suppress the amygdala, the brain area that activates during fear.
  • Forward ambulation could have been evolutionarily advantageous for hunting by suppressing fear during dangerous hunts.

• Experiential vs. Intellectual Understanding:

  • Easter discusses how as a writer, sometimes the best information and narrative comes from direct experience.
  • Personal experiences (visiting war zones, jungles, the Arctic) provide deeper insights and can lead to more impactful writing.

• The 2% Rule:

  • Easter describes people's tendency to do the easiest thing due to that wiring
  • Humans can improve on a daily basis by trying to adopt and use the 2% rule in their lives.
  • He argues that the people who want to live better in modern life, have to start doing obvious things that they're aware of will improve their long term health and life.

• Practical Implementation:

  • The discussion explored the question of how to explore leaning into discomfort in a way that actually grows oneself and makes discomfort dissolve away.
  • Easter offered his own anecdotes of travelling to the Arctic.
  • He described that his expectations of comforts are set so low as the baseline while up there, that on returning home, small comforts like the flight home, and other activities were pure luxury.
  • This experience was contrasted with prevalence induced concept change, a theory that states as people experience fewer problems, they don't become more satisfied, they simply lower their threshold for what they consider to be a problem.
  • The discussion also included methods of resetting that goal post like volunteering, going to recovery meetings, going into a place where your problems are more acute and and say objectively more realistically problems.
  • The discussion turned to shaping narratives around life events because shaping a narrative around an event becomes critical for mental health and how you frame issues.

• Daily Difficult Things:

  • In order to avoid neuroticism it's almost like we live on a neurotic treadmill, where as problems fade, we just keep searching for problems and finding them.
  • Easter gave actionable items of how people can try to improve things through the 2% rule by parking farther away, taking stairs instead of the escalator, walking on the phone etc.
  • The value of silence and how when a person is introduced to silence in that situation there is often an uncomfortable feeling, where we tend to calm down later on and see it as a great reset.
  • Easter describes that he wants people to really embrace moments of bordem and be in a space where that will kick in because the mind will wander, but in a way that will often lead to good ideas.

• The Value of Boredom and Reflection:

  • Boredom is an evolutionary signal telling us to do something else.
  • Instead of immediately reaching for phones, consider sitting with boredom to generate new ideas.
  • Reflection is necessary, taking the opportunity to press against others and create context in everyday life.

• Brain "Attractor States":

  • The brain tends to settle into "attractor states," or patterns of activity, linked to specific events.
  • Constant scrolling trains the brain for noise and prevents focus, training these attractor states.

• The Misogi Concept:

  • Misogi is a modern rite of passage: take on a huge challenge with a 50/50 chance of completion, but safety is paramount.
  • Overcoming self-doubt during the challenge allows people to be better versions of themselves.
  • Challenges are meant to thrust you beyond the bounds of what you thought you were capable of.
  • The point of the act of taking on something really hard is to see what you learn, even if you fail you will still learn along the path.
  • One must be cautious about making this into a social media game as that will have a negative effect.

• The Importance of Adventure:

  • People should find adventures to break out of routine and predictability and embrace a sense of discovery.
  • Adventures enhance your life, make you feel alive and as such that will improve yourself when you come back to normality.

• The Idea for a New Experiment:

  • Huberman proposed starting an online experiment to get people to not use social media for certain hours each day.
  • Then those people can gather together to discuss the effect and what was learned.

• Communities and Gathering:

  • There is a great community building function from the internet.
  • The best thing that can happen when you have an online community is to meet that community in person.
  • There needs to be more community places that are organic and are more than a place with the unique identity that are only found at corporate chains.
  • The value of getting out into the world to talk to strangers and connect.

• Intentionality:

  • In regards to social media, there are those that want to be social with and be able to share experiences and learn from one another in a real way.
  • However one should be cognizant of the fact that many aspects of social media offer to numb out or to experience drama, so it must be managed.

• Dopamine as Investment:

  • Dopamine can be viewed as a "currency": we can spend it or invest it.
  • Scrolling is spending and dissipates it.
  • Effortful activities (exercise) are investments and return something worthwhile.
  • Reflection is another way of investing your dopamine by thinking more on life moments.

• Reframe and Focus

  • That if we can invest more dopamine then people that have to come together to form more connections with other humans.
  • Dopamine doesn't always give great benefits but must try and do things with other people and must be a point of contact to enhance people.
  • Happiness will be a rolling behavior of doing things that are amazing and push yourself a little bit and learn something.

• Importance of Relaxation:

  • One should learn to strike a healthy balance and then also not try and only invest because then you need to give yourself sometime to be able to spend.
  • People can relax and enjoy the investments that we've made like connecting with a spouse.
  • It shouldn't be meaningless relaxation but it can work so that you're all ready for the next hard day.
  • Goggins is one that enjoys that self punishment which in a way is one of the biggest things to go for in order to continue and build more dopamine.

• Actionable advice:

  • With that knowledge, one should take steps to be the most authentic self possible to enjoy the best of the moment.

• The Sea Squirt

• Just like the sea squirt the most progressive narrowing comes down to a thing called jump landing throwing navigating uneven surfaces and it's so connected because of these things.

• In some point there's something that we can offload onto devices because for so many to grow over time we have to be a sharp thinker and be so open-minded to be ready to be the better you.

• Is all about finding whatever's going to work for you from those magic hours and a lot of others and a lot of things from the people around us with people in different states?

• Rucking

  • Was born out of hunting and to be able to run in long distance from chasing long distances with animals in hunting.
  • Humans have to be able to carry what we need to hunt and gathering food and things like that.
  • All about getting the right tools in the body and doing the heavy lifting so they can stay in tune to the daily work load.
  • When humans evolve to carry and walking with heavy weights help burn fat when carrying.

• The 3-Day Effect

  • Has to come a fact that we have to do something a lot more human and be outside to do all of the work so there can be a very smooth relationship going.
  • As a result of this has made those good relationships from doing that a little and can change them with a great person to do with so many questions and answers.

• Why is everything Getting harder

  • Why are these things getting too easy or so hard for each one? Because the trail is where on each side can slip and one should know not to have all these at one time because you'll have it and can make it a big deal down the road and to remember to take all of that and appreciate it.

• Slot Machine Addiction

  • There should be always things to leverage and not helping in helping in the end is a good amount to keep one always in check.
  • People would come out of gambling and had to start to think so much and just can't win as much as people would try.
  • The industry of the machine and then do have more of the ways in there because its the only to just see all of that there.
  • The average person that uses the machine will have a great time, have so many more things the do but people might try to use it a lot.
  • Also will use social media, dating or just other parts of the brain because everything's is in there to have so people can to always have that.

• Value and Advice

  • There should be always that one's soul and that can show so many things and to just meet people will that or find the help with you and that.
  • Do not want to hear about how it was in social media since its an experience and let that take over as if you don't.
  • It can open so much doors too and its nice because you can go to a place and know if you've done something wrong from that point to.
  • All about the value of not have those issues that all those are great that will help be aware of the people in one's one's life in the long run and what is about that a personal can come up with.

• The next Book is about:

  • The next book might be about extension of a mental health crisis that might be all around to deal with that.
  • To try and do something and the show all different the thing that does.

I hope this detailed summary is helpful!