Stress Is Fuel | Kyle Shepard | The Sean Trace Show

On The Sean Trace Show, I sit down with Kyle Shepard, a Navy audiologist and resilience expert, and this conversation completely changed how I think about stress. 

We break down why stress isn’t something to avoid, it’s something to train with, and how learning to function with it, recover from it, and grow because of it can reshape how you show up as a parent, leader, and human.

What if the stress you’re feeling right now is actually trying to level you up?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

But then getting to stress. I like to define that word too, because again, there's a lot of definitions for that, and a lot of them carry negative connotations. What I like to say is stress is the prediction of a response to things that we care about. So it's the our body's prediction, because a lot of times we're predicting things that are happening in the future, whether that is subconsciously, because that's what happened. There's this great book called Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain. And actually, what came before that, the author is Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett. She wrote how emotions are made. And my goodness, it changed my understanding of how the brain works, how the mind works. And she differentiates those two beautifully. But it is a predictive mechanism based on past experience. So it's always trying to maintain this process called allostasis. Through allostasis, it's trying to maintain this process to keep us alive. So allocation of resources based on what it believes it needs to keep us alive. And predictions of things that could be threats or things where our neurotransmitters get released, whether it's adrenaline, whether it's cortisol, DHA, our parasympathetic nervous system to slow us down. You hear me rambling and running because it's just wild how much we've learned and we still don't fully. I mean, we have good basic understanding of the brain, but we're not even close to fully understanding the brain, let alone the soul and the spirit. And we have all kinds of theories and great ideas, but man, we're we're we're not even close to fully understanding it.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Welcome everybody back to the Sean Trey Show. We are having a blast already before we even start this interview. And we want to include you guys. So thank you so much for tuning in. And I have an awesome guest with me today. Would you like to tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do, man?

SPEAKER_01 1:43

My name's Kyle Shepard. I'm in the United States Navy as an audiologist. That's my primary job. Um, but what I do quite a bit these days, public facing, is uh write in on resilience. So I have a substack called Resilient Mental State, which came from I used to call everything a mental state as a kid. I have no idea where that came from. Um, but I was one of those guys, like pain's a mental state, being cold's a mental state. And when I joined the Navy 12 and a half years ago as an audiologist, one of the first collateral duties they call it is uh that I took on was stress management. And just becoming trained formally in that and uh learning about how the military emphasizes certain programs to prevent burnout and train ways to manage stress. And uh doing that for over 10 years now, I became really passionate about resilience. And back uh during COVID, when I came to my new duty station, I broke my shoulder and so I couldn't do jujitsu, which you know I love doing. And I started writing on Substack and uh grew into something else that I didn't expect. I have a podcast, but uh I love all things resilience and uh working that into my life, which is behind my primary wives, a dad, and a husband.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

That's awesome, man. I um I think that we don't teach, first of all, I want to ask what an audiologist is. We'll get to that. Because I and second, like all I can think of, like, and I'm gonna date myself here, was like the movie Hunt for Red October, where the guy's sitting there, like the sonar guy, he's like, it's got this sound and this, and I'm like, Dana, it's like what do you do there? You know? But um, I love that you're talking about resilience because I think that it's something that we don't train enough. You know, I I look at what shaped me the most. And for sure, it was martial arts and sports, you know, like the the the what I learned in those places uh shaped who I became as an adult more than anything. That and the books I read as a kid, those were the things that really, really kind of changed the way I saw what it wasn't grade school, it wasn't um uh yeah, it wasn't grade school, it wasn't Sunday school, it was the books I read because the moral lessons were coming from the books. Everything was coming from there. And the lessons in resilience, hands down, were from my jujitsu teacher, my muay thai teacher, from my my my sports coach, whether it be volleyball or some other sport that I played. Um, you know, I had to show up. I remember like for when I was in high school, I was on this like the senior varsity team. And in college, I played team sports at like high level, you know, volleyball for professional or for um for college sports. And I was like the shortest guy on the team, too. And one of the things that's crazy is like we were showing up 5 a.m. every day for practice, you know, and because we had to practice before school. And it was it was a non-negotiable. And I mean, teaching a 13-year-old kid to wake up every day at 5 a.m. to go and to commit to something that they want to be doing, you know, oh you shouldn't make the kids wake up that early. And it's something that I have a problem with now. Like I was a teach teaching my my my alumana, my university, I was teaching communications classes, and I had a bunch of the guys on the basketball team in my my con class. Um, and this is the reason I stopped teaching in university, because these guys were showing up in for my class remotely, and they were in basketball practice. And I was like, and finally I took it up with the the players. I said, You can't, you can't be, I hear you dribbling in basketball. You can't be calling into my class while at practice, you know, and they're like, Well, coach, this is what time the practice is at. And I was like, it's 3 p.m. in the afternoon, uh, you know, at a university, like you guys can schedule either in the evenings or in the mornings. This is not the only time for practice. You know, I was there, I trained, I went to the same school. We did 5, 6 a.m. You know, practices. Well, coach, you know, and then I talked to his coach and I said, You can't be doing that. Well, you know, it's the easiest time for the guys to show up. And I was like, so so that's what we're doing now? We're we're looking for the easiest time for people to get their stuff in. We're looking for the easiest time, you know. And I was like, maybe you gotta look for the best time, you know, or a time that, you know, it's okay to do things that are tough. It's okay to do things that are uncomfortable, you know?

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Couldn't agree more. And like you, it was extracurricular activities, books, um, wisdom from my mentors, including my parents, but then life experience. So without formal education, you figure out a lot of things on your own. And sometimes you figure it out the wrong way. And that was definitely true for me when it came to resilience and managing stress. And even when I was trained in the Navy, um, focusing on stress management and all about managing stress. And there was still even this feel that stress is this bad thing. Um, and I definitely thought that as a kid, stress is the enemy. I'm watching people I love dearly suffer from this event or stress or where I'm seeing other people function pretty well in response to it, and just this wide variety of what I thought resilience was, just like this lowercase S stoic, this unemotional, take it on the chin, no problem, keep pressing forward, good to go, otherwise, not feeling emotion anyway. Um, and so I was I I misinterpreted what resilience was, I misinterpreted what stress was, and I thought like suppressing and just pressing forward, and there's a time and place for that for sure. Um, of course, I'm in the military. If you're in a in a life or death situation, if you are in uh combat, you you lean on your training, you work with your teams, and you press through no matter what because your life is on the line. But we are very fortunate uh across the world now in industrialized nations and many areas where a lot of the decisions we make and a lot of the stressors that we deal with are not life or death. But we have a system that has been adapted to treat all threats almost the same way if we don't know any better. And unintentionally, as I started reading more and leaning more into okay, like how can I take this collateral that I have in stress management that I'm passionate about, serve it to myself so I can be a better, soon-to-be husband and then father, and then just man in general, which is my primary goal in life. How can I be a good husband, father, and man? Everything else feeds into that. And that's when I started really reframing what resilience is. And there's a lot more science behind it now, of course, as psychology and evidence and the culture shifts towards it. Of course, the pendulum swings many directions. Then you start seeing psychological safety and safe areas, and let's pursue, uh, pursue easy, like in your story that you gave. And I like saying easy now, hard later, hard now, easy later. Of course, there's gonna be um exceptions to every rule. But but man, uh I reframing what these words mean and removing some of these connotations is a big part of the passion that I have about writing because stress is necessary. Stress is inevitable and it's also invaluable. It's what allows us to narrow our focus, to give us energy and to find ways to respond and grow from adversity. Without stress, you're not gonna get better, you're not gonna learn, you're not gonna care. If stress is caring, and if you care, you're gonna experience stress. Stress is not a bad thing, and I'm sure we'll talk about that plain tonight.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

100%. Well, one of the things too, like and I like that you bring up the idea that this stoic idea of like, you know, grin and bear it is not resilience. Like my daughter, um, she had a really bad uh like sinus infection, and then it just the postnasal drip stuck with her for two and a half weeks, almost a month. And we were trying to keep up our normal routine, keep going to Muay Thai, keep doing all this stuff. And then every time after Muay Thai, she would feel chills and then she would get vomity. And finally we took the the realization, we're like, and I looked at her and I said, Ailani, you're gonna take you know a couple weeks off of Muay Thai. We're gonna take a couple weeks off of this exercise. And she's like, Oh, but I want to go. And I said, But your body's telling you it needs rest. And I said, but resilience is about like, so now she's recovered and we're going back to Muay Thai on Tuesday, you know, because resilience isn't about always having to be on. It's about, you know, taking the ebbs and flows of life and continue to show up when things reset. And, you know, her health is back to where we need it to be. Now we get back in there. She had a sprained ankle that she was nursing along as well. And so she was like, wow, my ankle feels better too. And I was like, Yeah, sometimes you got to give yourself those those things because resilience is about, you know, continuing to learn to show up. And I love that what you're talking about, the um do the hard things now, easy later. Because I I think that we are we don't always realize that, you know, and and I think that hard things are inevitable. And if you can remind yourself of that, hard things are inevitable. They will show up, whether you like it or not, they are going to be there. And your job is to sit there and go, all right, I can handle that. Whatever might come, I've got this. And and not to sit there and freak out as exceptionally, you know, not to sit there and you think that the world is gonna shut down when it does, because you know what we train for is what's going to is how we're gonna perform. So if you train at a really low level and you're sitting there, you know, like that that happened to my daughter and her cousin. They were like joking around in Muay Thai and just having fun. And then some kid came in whose mom, she's like, he's only had three classes formally, but I saw that kid square up and I was like, all right, three classes is not telling the full story, so right there. That kid's got a perfect muay thai stance. He's like, you know, doing the Y crew and warm-up, and I'm just like, something ain't right right now. And she's like, Well, I have trained Muay Thai for 20 years, and I did train him a little at home. I said, Hey, you know, but good for her, good for her. He walked into the ring and moped the ring with my my nephew, and you know, and I, you know, I was like, my nephew's like, it's so good. And I was like, it's good for you. You learned right there to take this a little bit more seriously, and you know, it was interesting to watch all three of them kind of get more serious, but I want to ask you something because it leads me to a question that I was thinking about. Like, you work at the intersection of science and performance. How do you personally define resilience beyond just pushing through? Because we talked about the whole push and through thing. And for me, it's continuing to show up even, you know, through the ebbs and flows. But what is it for you?

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Yeah, that's what I thought it was when I was younger. Pushing through, just sucking it up, endurance, keep going no matter what. And uh I've come to reframe that and redefine resilience quite a bit. And uh I like to define it now as the ability to function with, recover from, and grow because of stress. And so I use that definition very intentionally because you can break that down into multiple parts, where it's function with, recovery, grow, and then, of course, that word that was negative in every way for me as a kid, toxic stress. It stress is bad, you want to avoid it, it ruins the people I love most. How can we get rid of stress? So, starting with function with, that is where stress management comes into. Stress is inevitable. So, how we manage, first and foremost, we have to be aware because a lot of us have things on our plate that we put on the back burner, even though the stove is still cooking, it's on the back burner. We didn't realize the weights that we're carrying, the stress that we have. So, awareness, I always like to talk about quite a bit, recognizing the signs and symptoms, whether that's changes in your breathing, noticing your heart rate, uh change. I'm very attuned to my breath. So that's one of my biggest tells. Um, if and I I always like saying you can't, you can't hyperventilate through your nose. So if I can't breathe through my nose and I'm having to breathe through my mouth, but I'm not physically exerting myself, that might be a tell that that I'm a little stressed out. Some people get like the butterflies or the different gut symptoms. And uh there's evidence for why that happens. Blood rushes away from your intestines to fuel other areas of your body. Digestion slows down when you are the sympathetic nervous system is running. So recognizing your symptoms and having awareness of stress first and foremost, and then figuring out ways to manage that stress so you can function with it. Not to get rid of it, but take it from whatever level that might be dysfunctional, where you're gonna say or do something that you regret, to a more functional level. So you have the ability to reason and act accordingly while you get through whatever the adversity might be. Recover from, there's all kinds of practices, of course, to get back to your relative baseline. I mean, the main ones, good night of sleep, eat well, move your body, connection with others. I mean, it's really simple, it's said all the time. You can't sell that, so you don't see a lot of that stuff online. You want to sell products a lot of people do, but but those are the best ones. Other things, sure. But if you don't have your sleep doubt in, I don't care what you do for recovery, you're gonna be you're gonna be struggling. Grow from this is where I like thinking about how can I, it's very hard to tell somebody that's even hard for me to tell myself that when I'm dealing with some of the significant adversities that I have in my life, like this might be of benefit to me one day. Maybe not in the exact way that makes sense, but but you you have the capacity to grow, even if it's just in your perspective and your gratitude, and your ability to know that you can do, you have done hard things, and therefore whatever comes next, you're able to respond to it. Like you said before, with the easy now, hard later, hard now. I sometimes like to say easier later if it's the same kind of hard because the hard never ends. So, like hard now doesn't mean it will be objectively easy later, because it's always going to be difficult, but your capacity to manage difficult will grow, and therefore you can take more on, you can manage more resources, and more most importantly, you can help others, particularly the ones that you care about. But then getting to stress. I like to define that word too, because again, there's a lot of definitions for that, and a lot of them carry negative connotations. What I like to say is stress is the prediction of or response to things that we care about. Uh so it's the it's our our body's prediction, because a lot of times we're predicting things that are happening in the future, whether that is subconsciously, because that's what happened. There's this great book called Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain. And actually, what came before that, the author is Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett. She wrote how emotions are made. And my goodness, it changed my understanding of how the brain works, how the mind works. And she differentiates those two beautifully. But it is a predictive mechanism based on past experience. So it's always trying to maintain this process called allostasis. Through allostasis, it's trying to maintain this process to keep us alive. So allocation of resources based on what it believes it needs to keep us alive. And predictions of things that could be threats are things where our neurotransmitters get released, whether it's adrenaline, whether it's cortisol, DHA, our parasympathetic nervous system to slow us down. You hear me rambling and running because it's just wild how much we've learned and we still don't fully. I mean, we have good basic understanding of the brain, but we're not even close to fully understanding the brain, let alone the soul and the spirit. And we have all kinds of theories and great ideas, but man, we're we're not even close to fully understanding it. But predictions and responses too, because of course, something happens in front of you, you realize it's something that you are concerned with, you care about, you're gonna experience stress. But stress is neither bad nor good. Stress, once again, is inevitable. And it is something that shows you you care. You wouldn't stress if you didn't care. So just that simple memory, like me remembering, like when I'm having a hard time, as I told you before we started recording, I have four children. And I between them and my wife, there's nothing I care about more in this world. So guess where I stress out most often with the people I care about most often. And sometimes like I forget about like my strategies that I'm trying to utilize. My wife and I are trying to utilize as a parent, and I get frustrated with my four and a half year old for being exactly who he is. Four and a half looks exactly like me, acts exactly like me, presses all my buttons in every way. And so I get frustrated, I get stressed out because I'm trying to keep my baby daughter asleep. I'm trying to help manage things for my wife who carries the load when I'm at work, and I get wrapped up into trying to control things outside of my control. I get wrapped up into stressing over things that at the end of the day are external to me. The internal management and function with that, so I can show up for what matters most. And just remembering, hey, you're experiencing it right now because you give a shit. And if you care, that's a good thing. You're lucky to care. And then there's a lot of strategies to help you realize how lucky you are to experience stress in the first place, like some extreme ones of contemplating death, or reflecting on really past adversities that you've experienced and how fortunate you are to have this on your plate right now to deal with in the limited time that we have on this planet.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

I love that because we are so fortunate to have all of this drama in front of us, you know, and it's like we are drawing breath. And as long as you are drawing breath, you gotta think about that as a gift. And you know, I was sitting there stressed about I created like I really leveled up my company this year. And one of the things that came with that was an increased level of stress, you know? And I sat there and I was thinking about it, and I said, Sean, a year ago, would be thankful for this level of stress. Sean 10 years ago would be like, I didn't know that I could achieve that level of stress. So I said, you know what? It's all good. Like stress is inevitable. Stress is here, stress there. Whether you're at the top of the ladder or at the bottom of the ladder, you're gonna have stress. So how can I work with it? How can I sit there and go, yeah, that's normal? Let's have a game plan for it. Let's figure out what we can do with it. Because if you do that, it's all gonna be okay, you know, and you'll at the end of the day work through it and figure it out. Um, but you know, I wanted to ask you because you studied auditory performance, something most people never think about. How much does our environment, noise, stress, input actually affect how we perform? Because, like, for me, um we we my family goes to this one restaurant called Hayilao, and it is overload for me. Like, actually, right now I have the podcast going, but what you don't know is that I'm wearing my headset, and in the background, I've got this really chill, like spa music playing just to help keep me kind of calm. And otherwise, like I deal with anxiety constantly. And one of the biggest triggers for me is is auditory, like, oh man, we just had construction finished next door. It was about four and a half months of jackhammers, of like power because this in Southeast Asia, everything's concrete, and they were drilling into they they build it up and then they chisel it away, you know, jack, air hammer it away. And it it I couldn't handle it. Talk to me about this, man.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

I'm gonna answer that we could go down so many paths with your question here and the and the example you just gave to take up the rest of this time. So I'll do my best as an audiologist not to do that. But I just want to say real quick, I love the temporal distancing strategy that you mentioned with your current job and all the hardship that you've taken on as you've grown. So you reflect back one year from now. I'm sorry, one year in the past and 10 years in the past to think about how grateful you'd be for what's on your plate right now and not even imagine it 10 years ago that you'd be at the level you are now, just as a quick reframe to remind yourself, man, I'm lucky. And then another way that you could take that is hey, one year from now, will I be exact, will I be stressed about this if I stay on the path and if I manage this the best way I can, communicate what I can't handle myself and deal with it? Will it will this still matter in a year? Will this still matter in 10 years? So that temporal distancing in any direction, another great. Strategy to manage what's on your plate right now. Auditory performance, audiologist. First and foremost, you're you're more uh familiar with audiology than most. So I have some people say, like ideologists, do you come up with ideas? And because they just mishear the word ironically, because audio, so yes, hearing. I'm a doctor of hearing and balance, and that a clinical doctor of hearing and balance. So I got my AUD at what's called the Northeast Ohio AD Consortium, graduated in 2013, and then commissioned into the uh into the military after that. And uh so yeah, it's a four-year doctoral program after four years undergrad and all things hearing and balance, which I love. And tinnitus, vestibular balance disorders, and of course, hearing, the main reason I'm in the military, the number one injury in the military every year, without question, is noise-induced damage. So hazardous noise affecting the inner ear, where we have hair cells that are finely tuned to all the different pitches, frequencies that we can hear, and they send all of that together, the spectrum of noise to our brain where it processes and we understand the music you listen to in the background, speech or you name it. But not all noise or sound is wanted. And we call the unwanted stuff noise. And hazardous noise for sure. I don't care how tough you are, how resilient you are, if you don't protect your hearing, there is no amount of willpower that can prevent that. More often than not, it is a painless injury, too. If you can feel hazardous noise, my goodness, are you experiencing some damage? But we do have a resilient system. Sometimes it can bounce back. Um, and we call that temporary threshold shifts. So you can have like temporary damage that recovers back to uh a baseline that we screen for. So we manage programs in the military, hearing conservation programs. When you come in, you get your hearing screened, and then every year, if you're in the hearing conservation program, you get it screened again to compare to that baseline so we can detect a potential shift. Even those temporary shifts, if it is due to noise, they're still damage most likely to the nerves and the connections there. And all kinds of things can come from damage to your ears. And I learned in school about a term uh it's called presbicusis or age-related hearing loss. And while it is true that age is correlated with hearing loss in industrialized nations, it is not true. We know now through a lot of great science and just comparative research that just because you age does not mean your hearing gets worse. It's wear and tear throughout the lifespan. So industrialized nations, our vehicles, our music, our power tools, of course, if you pursue activities like recreational shooting or if you're a musician or other things where you're experiencing hazardous noise, you're more likely to acquire damage sooner. But even simple, moderate levels of noise, if you're not a librarian or hiding out in a cave, you're exposed to some noise that's loud enough to cause, like a rock in a river, erosion over time. And then your nerve becomes more sensitive, your brain becomes more sensitive. So you can experience things like tinnitus, which I've done a few podcasts on this, I could talk about that for hours and hours, and I won't do that today, but ringing or an auditory perception in your head, even though there is no external sound causing it. You can experience misophonia or sensitivity to certain types of sound. So even if it's not hazardous, you have an aversion to it where it causes stress, which I think is kind of what you just described, where things are going outside your house, it disrupts your sleep, it bothers you. And there's a lot of evidence that shows people who live around airports or railroad tracks do experience higher levels of stress, higher levels of mental health issues, and other stuff that can lead to downstream uh problems. There's a lot of interventions that can help that too, because when the noise is not hazardous and it's just an aversion, there's something that can be trained called habituation, like we do with a lot of other sounds in our environment that we don't perceive as a threat, we don't perceive as annoying. So unless you bring it up, you wouldn't realize it's happening. It's just another part of your background. So, how can we retrain that brain to treat the sound like a threat? And then um, so yeah, misophonia is a big one. And then there's sensitivity to loud sounds too, where it's not hazardous, but just because it's a a little louder, sometimes that happens from hearing loss, sometimes that happens from uh psychological issues. Um, but people get hypersensitive to uh those kinds called hyperacusis. And uh it's fascinating the connection in my profession as an audiologist with stress, because noise is a stressor. Hazardous noise for sure can cause damage regardless. But even moderate level noise is a stressor. So, how do we find ways to maximize our function with it, recover from it for sure if we're exposed to hazardous noise, or protect ourselves adequately, not overprotect, which translates very well to the stress realm because we're just trying to avoid and protect against stress. If you try to avoid all stress, moderate and mild levels of stress will become more significant. If you actively pursue or embrace the potential benefit of stress, particularly for the mild and moderate forms, then guess what? You can handle that much better too. So there's this concept that is not new. You heard me say lowercase S stoic earlier. And I did that very intentionally because I'm a big fan of the philosophy of uppercase S stoicism, which is not about being lowercase as stoic. It's about embracing your impressions and figuring out how to manage what those impressions are so you can function virtuously, so you can take on those cardinal virtues that we're all aware of courage and wisdom and discipline and justice. So the emphasis on virtue, and one of my favorite philosophers, Masonius Rufus, talked about voluntary discomfort, taking on stressors on purpose, so you can manage other forms better. And so I very intentionally, and inspired by him and and uh and many other books that I've read, I like to use the term intentional stress. So I use that because I think that word stress really needs to be reframed. And there are some great books on it. There's people that talk about this, but it's still not prevalent across culture. Um, and once again, stress is not a bad thing. So if we pursue it intentionally at a manageable level, and we get a little bit more comfortable with what initially made us uncomfortable, now we can keep pushing the boundaries in the areas that matter most to us. And then one year from now, you have things on your plate that you wouldn't imagine you would have had because you've grown in your business, you have more children, you have uh different aspects of your life that you care about where you are you have adapted to it. And of course, it continues to be hard, but you're managing more now and you're better because of it. And then if you keep embracing and believing the productive benefits of being able to take on stress, and then you do it to get your small wins intentionally, you can progressively overload yourself to become more resilient and then train resilience proactively rather than just reactively trying to manage everything on your plate. So I do try to overlap these realms in auditory performance for my job in uniform as an audiologist, but I spend a lot of times even in uniform because of what I got trained in 10 years ago and how I've reframed it to resilience, talking about that as well, both in uniform and of course uh public facing as well.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

I love that, man. Um one of the things that I was curious about was from a scientific perspective, what actually happens in the body and brain when we're under stress? And and how can we work with what with that instead of against it?

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Yeah, so uh awareness first and foremost of those symptoms. Even if you don't understand what is happening physiologically, just awareness of, hey, this is an indication that I'm stressed. For people you care about, if they're aware of that. So if I if I talk faster, if I talk slower, if I'm usually an extrovert and then I become an introvert or vice versa, basically anomalies in your behavior, changes in behavior can be a big tell. But some people blotch on their neck when they're public speaking. That's a big tell that they're experiencing stretch. Uh, other people sweat on their palms. So there are visible and of course invisible internal, and the more sensitive you are to those, now you know you have stress and you can start managing that through different systems of differentiating your stressor from your stress, thinking about where you have control and where you don't. And I won't get into that because you're asking about the sympathetic nervous system. So when the stress response is activated, um, so that comes from the sympathetic nervous system. And that's once again from a prediction of or response to a perceived thing that we care about. Um, well, it could that could be a threat, that that could be it, it could also be joy. So, so when you're elated, that is stress. And if you're elated all the time, and if you're just pumping your system with dopamine, you'll burn out in the same way you will if you're pumping yourself with adrenaline or cortisol or anything else. So these neurotransmitters, whether it's for our positive connotation experiences or negative connotation experiences, they vary in levels, but the response of the sympathetic nervous system is relatively the same when the stress response happens. And once again, because our blood flows out of certain areas like our gut to activate muscles, it's kind of the standard fight, flight, or freeze response. This is that true threat response that can help people do incredible things, like you hear of children lifting cars to save their father, or mother ripping doors off to save their like all kinds of amazing things. And this is what kept our species alive for many years when it was truly, whether that's other tribes, other animals, ways that they needed to function almost superhumanly because of a true life or death threat. Again, most stressors are not emergencies. All emergencies are stressors, but most stressors are not emergencies. So if we are not tapped in to understand that system, it can operate like this is a true threat. Oh my gosh, if I don't pay my bill this month, it's all over. And our body floods, and then, but we're able to ruminate. We're able to keep that stress response going, and that can that can wear on you. And then ironically, you start compromising your sleep because you're still thinking about what's on your plate. So, what is happening in that first moment when it dumps? Yes, our vision narrows because our pupils dilate to take more light in, but our vision typically narrows and whatever we're focused on. So we don't we don't have as good of situational awareness around us if we think we've detected a problem. Um our heart rate changes, our breathing changes, the blood rushes out, like I mentioned before. That's all sympathetic nervous system revving us up, giving us energy for that thing that we care about. Parasympathetic nervous system, opposite. Other things rush the system that aren't there already that might help us slow but slow us down based on our perception. But that is the brakes, if you will, of the vehicle. Rather than hitting the gas, the sympathetic brakes parasympathetic to get us back to homeostasis, baseline, whatever you want to call it. Um, everybody's different. I don't like using that term baseline because you don't just recover. You you change your that experience changes you every time, which is why I add in grow because you can get better from stress. You can also get worse from stress based on your belief about it and your ability to truly recover from it. Because you never recover it back to normal. Every experience changes you, but it's your perspective of the experience and how you function with it that your brain will then use for the next prediction or response to. Um, and it's pretty fascinating what we can do by intentionally pursuing experiences, leveraging that system so we can actually cause adaptations in our stress response. So not everything is flight or flight. And then the whole the neurotransmitters actually do change based on there's different terms for those responses, but we can change relative forms of adversity and look at them like challenges and look at them like opportunities to connect. And that is just from practice. This is a skill that can be trained resilience, and we can leverage the stress response and pursue it intentionally with prepared strategies to make these skills in response to adversity subconscious eventually. That the more you do anything, the better you get. And initially, we have to practice it consciously, but muscle memory, just like in Mui Tai Jiu Jitsu, you do the same move enough times, particularly in a live situation. Now you're doing it before you're even recognizing you're doing it. You're just so adapted, you're subconsciously competent. And that is the goal. How can I actually act the way I would want to without having to derive or think about all my resources in the moment to do just that? Because it's very hard to react to challenging things if we haven't practiced it intentionally.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

I haven't done um, I I shifted more to I just couldn't find a great like judo uh Japanese style jujitsu dojo here. And so that was one of the reasons I slid into Muay Thai. I love BJJ, but the gyms are really far from me. But there's a Muay Thai gym just right there, like right there. And it's like one of the best. So, you know, I have like striking, so I was like, Yeah, dude, I'd love to get more back into striking. So we we we've been going there. One of the things that's interesting is my daughter, when someone kind of locked up with me and I spun right into a, you know, like a sewinage throw, they were on their back in two seconds. And she's like, How did you do that? And it was like, I haven't done sewinage in 20 years, man. But it's there because I drilled it thousands and thousands and thousands of times. And you know, it's like the the stuff is obviously it was a bit rusty, and I was like, All right, man, we're getting back in some judo classes. I found a good judo gym up the street, and I was super excited about that. But one of the things that I think people forget is again like those raps, man. The I I love Stoicism as well, absolutely huge fan of Stoicism. And going back to the classics, I also love the stuff by Ryan Holliday. I love um Ronald Robertson, I love all the guys that are you know, Massimo Kuj. I can never say Massimo's last name, um but he's great, great writing as well. Yeah, and you know, I mean then going to the classics, like literally going back to um the works of Marcus Aurelius, uh the the the um meditations. And you know, when you go and look at the what these people were talking about, you think about that. Marcus Aurelius was literally the emperor of an entire empire in the middle of a time that was, I would say are really much harder to be alive than it is now, you know. Or we have health care, we know a lot about food, we have all of these conveniences, you know, that are around us. Though I think that living in the Roman times would be pretty interesting, but you know, there would be a lot of things that would be really challenging, you know. And here he was, and he put together these rules, these simple ideas, he had great teachers. And you know, one of the things that I think one of the core aspects of my parenting style is right at the beginning of um the book of meditations of Marcus Aurelius, where he talks about the people who helped him. And thank you to my father for getting me great teachers, you know, and he talks about that. A couple years ago, my wife and I had a choice. We were putting my daughter in a bilingual school, and it was like not cheap. It was like$8,000 a year uh in Vietnam. Like, that's like insane. And then I looked at my wife finally and I said, baby, this is the exact same education they give in the public schools here. I said, if we took that$8,000 a year and we put it into private tutors, so we have people come to the house doing art, doing math class, doing, you know, piano class, doing singing, doing all of these different things, she's gonna get so much further ahead than if we just do this one drop on a school. I was like after their uh martial arts class, my daughter's like, Oh, yeah, we had our karate class today at school. I was like, Cool. I'm so glad we're paying more, and the school's giving you a karate class. What happens? She was like, We had a karate calm. I got to kick the back one time, and then we sat on the floor of the cafeteria, and I was like, that was it for me. I looked at my wife and was like, nope, that's no, like, we're not paying eight grand a year for that. Like for some fancy looking school where the kids are just doing normal stuff, and we switched. And it was interesting because I switched in all these things that were really hard for my daughter and said, Let's give her a gift of resilience. And one of the things that it's leading to this because you know, first of all, I was inspired by the meditations, and I was like, you know, he sat there, and those teachers are gonna be the people that she looks back and she's gonna say thank you. One of her teachers sits there with a ruler and s the table next to her every time she messes up. And at first I was like, whoa. But then I realized, you know, we get she's not hitting my kid, and she's just getting her, like doing that little bit of that. Get yourself back in line. And I was like, and I noticed something versus the soft teacher. We had two piano teachers, it's okay, you can do do it again. And my daughters that teacher inspires my daughter's creativity. So we kept her, but the other teacher, the tough teacher, inspired my daughter to learn the stuff that she was avoiding. She was so bad at sight reading, she had a great, she has a great memory. She can remember all of these pieces by but we're like, if you want to really explore the world of music, you need to sight read. You need to know those notes, you need to know what that means on the paper. Just like you can remember stories people tell you, but if you can't read a book, you're not gonna be able to find new stories. So, you know, the tough teacher allowed her to go places that the the easy teacher couldn't. But the easy teacher was good for other things. But it leads me to this next step, this next question, because a lot of people want to build mental toughness, but don't know where to start. What are some of the first habits someone can build to become more resilient? Because, like, that's the question I think that's probably one of the most valuable from this whole this conversation's been rad. We've been all over the place, but that's something that I think can really help people that are listening right now.

SPEAKER_01 40:03

Yeah, um, I I love the duality that you just talked about with uh your daughter's teachers, that different styles may facilitate different types of skills. So that there's not one right or one wrong. And I like looking at most things. Like I don't think there is anything that's just absolutely right versus absolutely wrong. There's probably exceptions to every rule. Sure, we can probably all agree across philosophies and religions on virtues that are admirable and some acts that are just deplorable and can't happen. But man, most things are in between. But to answer your question, what can most people do to start developing the skill that is resilience? Um, I a lot, one of the main things that I do on Substack is I write what's called intentional stress challenges. So I look at ways to leverage building the skill of resilience through intentionally pursuing stress at a manageable level, once again, with prepared strategies to get a little bit more comfortable with initially made you uncomfortable. And once you get comfortable, expand from there. So I have ones in the physical domain, which I'm a functional fitness coach. Of course, I do jujitsu, as you know, and I'm a big fan of all things fitness. So there's a lot of great things that you can do there physically. Um, I look at mentally, I look at socially, and I look at spiritually. But who cares about a lot of them if you don't have your own orientation, your under under your own understanding of what is important to you in your life right now. And your respective why will change over time through different phases of life. If you're not a dad yet and you might become one one day, most likely that why is going to change. It definitely did for me. I know it did for you based on our conversation beforehand. But just self-reflection, honest, genuine, deep self-reflection, that's challenging. So putting pen to paper or shame on me, I put thumb to phone, I write on my phone quite a bit. I have four kids, as I told you about. So I just find those spots, throw things in notes, and then I use that to help create some of my articles. But we can use different problems, like a mission statement. A recent post that I created is just creating a mission statement, a personal mission statement. Like, what is your mission in life right now? That one sentence that might be hard to derive if you've never thought about it. What is your why? And where is that why coming from? Was it given to you based on some system that you've grown up in, from uh trying to make your parents proud, from trying to trying to make anyone else other than yourself proud? What is your purpose right now? And then from there, you can start doing things. One of my favorite exercises I did that I still do today when I work with clients or when I'm in a leadership position, or that I do with myself and my wife, but it's called the core values exercise. All kinds of them available online. So you you find this, you could Google search core values exercise, you'll see 20 different ones, if not more. So you'll see a bunch of different values. Um they're usually about a hundred, and you can add in more if you want to. But of those 100, select six that are the most important to you right now in your life. And that by itself is challenging. So, what values, if you gun to the head, you had to pick are most important to you, pick six. What I've recently started doing because of the influence from a friend named Michael Osterlink in a conversation that we had, who I've been talking to. So we did a podcast and he was talking about I love that exercise too, but he added in another step here that I hadn't been doing much before. Just like I said, with your purpose, why are those your top six values? Where did those come from? Are those obligated? So, what's the why behind you picking those six before prioritizing them? One through six. What is your number one most important value down to six? And then, even harder yet, here's where we need to be really honest. How are your actions right now aligning with those values? And that's gonna be tough because I guarantee you, you are not in perfect alignment. If you are, it's not gonna last very long. That idea of balance, it's a great thing to try and strive for. And if you get there, hell yeah, you're not gonna maintain it. Life's gonna throw you curveballs and things will change. But that core values exercise, doing that every once in a while, can give you an idea of your how that you're trying to execute. And then when you think about your actions, the what. And then you can start thinking about okay, I know my purpose, I know my values and what I'm doing alignment right now. What are some of the things? I'm avoiding? What are my aversions? What are my fears? What are my strengths? What are my areas of opportunity? And then we can start talking about areas that we can pursue to use intentional stress to build skills that relate to your why. So to shortly answer your question, self-reflection first, and then I have a hundred ideas and more for you on ways to build different skills in different domains to align with that why and your most important values.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

I love that, man. You know, if you could go back and give some advice to your younger self, what advice would you give yourself?

SPEAKER_01 44:35

Communicate more, uh, particularly about the hard stuff. So I learned to swallow it, I learned to suppress. Um, I was conditioned to, hey, don't let your pain hurt other people you care about. Keep that inside. And while that served me well in some areas of my life, it's also caused me some issues that I would have liked to have avoided, particularly um connecting with my wife when we lost our first child. Um, so I have four living children. I've also lost three, um, all miscarriages. Um, and uh our first uh pregnancy was when we moved around the world to Guam back in 2016. So newlyweds, other side of the world in beautiful Guam out there, kind of close to you, and uh loved everything about that duty station. But we got there and in the first few weeks found out we were pregnant. Unexpected, but we were stoked. We knew we wanted to have children. Um, and uh, about eight and a half weeks into that, and we didn't know at the time, but pretty common to experience a miscarriage on first pregnancy. And my goodness, it's like one in five pregnancies end in miscarriage. Like you talk about having a child is the most common miracle that happens in the world because of how prevalent it is uh for people to procreate, which is beautiful. It's a beautiful thing, as you know. But the most prevalent at trap proud, most prevalent tragedy that you don't hear about as often is loss of a child. And that one hit us hard. Um, we just we were so stoked and surprised. We told everybody, and then when we lost that child, um didn't realize how common it was, and hearing that didn't help. She was struggling. I had already gotten into mixed martial arts and jujitsu. I was working full-time and training twice a day. Um, so I had my outlets, but I was definitely struggling too. I was coping in my own way, but my way of connecting with her and supporting her was through physical acts. I was making sure I kept everything off her plate so she could grieve, but we weren't connecting. We weren't talking. I wasn't telling her about how I was hurting. And while this was only a month from the loss of our child to when we got pregnant again with my daughter Evelyn, um, that month feels felt like five years. We almost separated during that time. So many things happened that I almost lost the love of my life because I wasn't sharing like she didn't know I was hurting. We weren't connecting. I was making assumptions about her because she she wasn't recovering. Why doesn't she like just we were not communicating well? So, like this suppression, this management of emotion inside without sharing it outside was uh something that I adapted to when I was younger that I still struggle with. And there's there's a place that you can take it too far, of course, where you start sharing everything that's unnecessary and putting your stuff on, but like that there's nuance to all things and kind of balancing that dichotomy of too much versus too little. And I definitely had too little in the communication realm. And that lesson leading to our next three children, and then unfortunately, we suffered a few losses. One on paper, even much harder than our first loss. It was a second term. We had her named regular blood tests, and I guess like 0.2 or 0.02, I can't remember, percent of miscarriages happen after a positive, uh, I'm sorry, like just like a normal blood test, gender known, and just don't know why we lost Cecilia. It doesn't make sense. It was extremely hard, but because of that initial loss, our ability to respond to that adversity, don't get me wrong, we grieved, and and I still grieve Cecilia to this day. But it led to Lucy, my my baby girl, um, who's nine months old now, and I am thankful for that. But I still, I still hurt with that. But I also am proud of how my wife and I responded to that thing outside of our control. And that happened because of our first loss and because of lessons that particularly I learned that I had to uh unlearn, if you will, from um what I would have told my younger self. Like, hey, it's okay to share a little bit more than what you do, particularly with the people that matter most to you.

SPEAKER_00 48:35

I think when we can share and talk about what we're going through, it allows other people to understand that their challenges are not that strange. And other people can speak up as well, you know, because I think that so many people get locked into the fear about speaking up and sharing their lives, you know, and sharing the challenges they're going through. And they feel allowed. But I want to ask you one last question, man.

SPEAKER_01 48:58

I want to say something real quick. Your point that you just made is so important. And like ironically, I'm trained in audiology, yes, from undergrad, but I also double-majored in psychology. And I did counseling classes, and I'm I'm a provider, and I'm I really I really am proud of how I approach case histories and connection with patients, and I'm good at open-ended questions and letting people share. And I know that if you share, someone else is more likely to share. So like I had all these things, but in my personal life, I didn't translate that lesson. So not only if your intention is to help the people you care about most, and or anyone else for that matter, which mine definitely is, my my purpose right now is be a good husband, father, and man. And like it's as simple as that. And so many things feed into that, but that is that's my why. For if I write my mission statement, that's it. And then I have all kinds of things that I write on that that like the jujitsu stuff, that's so I can be a better provider and protector if and when needed, that's so I can be healthier. I do that with my children. There's so many things that feed into my respective why. But if my intention is to be a good husband and father, but I think I'm helping them by not sharing, uh, how stupid is that? Because I know that if I share, they're more likely to share with me. So if I'm lowercase as stoic once again and not sharing anything, and then if they think I'm able to hand everything, are they gonna share with me when they're struggling with something perceptually mild? Probably not. So I really still try to um kick myself when I realize I'm not sharing as much. Not crying. I do cry, but not like crying over everything, making everything harder than it needs to be, but letting it know it's okay that things are hard. We can we can do hard things, but also we can acknowledge that they're hard. It's important to do that. It's important to talk about our frustrations because I experience them every day. And if I'm not sharing that, I'm leaving something on the table, especially those I love.

SPEAKER_00 50:48

I love that, man. I love that 100%. You don't hold it inside. Um, you know, if someone is feeling stuck though today, overwhelmed or just going through the motions, what's simple, one simple shift that they might be able to make starting today to improve their quality of life?

SPEAKER_01 51:05

So going back to the philosophy of stoicism and just the idea of what we have control over. And it's not much in this life, but one of my favorite things to focus on and challenge myself, which I fail regularly at this, but is an orientation and an intention that I try to set every day, and that's have a good attitude about whatever's on your plate. That doesn't mean unrealistic optimism and everything's great, but we control our attitude. That doesn't mean we feel good or we feel great. So you don't have to like feel pleasant in order to have a good attitude. You can have a good attitude when things suck. And that doesn't mean you're smiling and like expressing gratitude. There's a place for that, of course, but you can have a productive attitude for sure. And I like to call it like you said, stuck. I like I had a good conversation with somebody recently, um, and it was all about getting out of a rut. And so I thought about like how would I define a rut? And I I I came to the conclusion I would define that as a prolonged, unproductive attitude. And so, like, the the longer your attitude is poor, everything else is going to be poor with it. So if if you can control your attitude, it a lot of things will change. And when I think about the things that we truly have control over, and and you can say various things, sure, but you'll hear some people say thoughts. I can't control my thoughts. Some shit comes in my head, I don't know where it came from, not proud of it, but it's my interpretation of my thoughts. I definitely have control over. So thinking about that, and this aligns with your attitude. My impressions, coming back to stoicism, the interpretation of my thoughts. What do I act on, what don't I? Because my subsequent actions are what I truly have control over, thought interpretation and your subsequent actions. So those things, your attitude and those controllables are absolutely something that people can do if they're feeling stuck. And then to go with that, I've said it a few times, intentional stress. Do something hard on purpose with a good attitude. Get yourself that small win. If you're if everything is about obligations, with which by the way, I don't believe in obligations. I don't think obligations exist. You don't have to get out of bed in the morning. There's consequences for all actions, but you don't have to get out of bed. You get to get out of bed. And if you look at everything like, I get to do this, I get to do that. And hey, if it's not serving you, another thing that I think people get wrong about resilience, other than just like the pushing through part, is like that never quit mentality. I believe in quitting. Now, I I'm not going to quit on some things, so the things that are most important to me, but even then, like, I'm not like anti-divorce. I don't think divorce is the worst thing in the world. I think it makes sense for some people. I think some people just change or maybe a toxic relationship for whatever reason, or just that I don't see that happening in my life, but I I am never certain about anything. I but uh the closest thing I'm certain about is you heard my purpose. But man, like what we truly have control over is our actions. And if we pursue things on purpose that make us a little uncomfortable, that intentional stress, then we can get better at managing stress and training that skill that is resilience. But me giving you what to do, I could do that with conversations, but I don't like giving this one answer. Like prolonged planks, I love them, by the way, not to like enhance your core, but to train your mind. I have all kinds of ideas, but I'd much rather see what's important to you and then come to conclusions that you're trying or you're thinking could be possible. But I know for sure conceptually, pursue what makes you a little uncomfortable on purpose to get more comfortable, and then expand your capacity.

SPEAKER_00 54:40

I love that. And one of the things too is I think that I would say two things that I, if my daughter came to me, I I would like, I've got checklists upon checklists, but I would ask her, what's the one thing that you can do today? And that's not something that I can tell you. Like you said, I don't know the one thing for you, man. If someone wants to make their life better, find, but find that one thing that you can do right now that can make your life better. And then after that, a separate point, find something that makes you uncomfortable and lean in on that. Do one thing that's uncomfortable today for you. And I'm not talking like it doesn't have to be going and sitting in an ice bath. God knows that I would love to have a giant ice bath and saw a thing that you know. I there was a great movie with uh Keanu Reeves uh recently where he pays an angel and they're like doing these ice baths, and I thought it was a great movie. Hilarious. Um you gotta watch it. It's it's one of the best movies I've seen in the last couple years. Uh good spirits or something. I'll figure out the name and send it to you later. But you know, I would love the ice bath thing, but you know, that might not be it for you. It might be, you know, having the conversation that you didn't want to have. It might be, you know, getting out a jump route and doing you know, 10 jumps up with the jump rope. Whatever it is for you that's tough. Try to do something like that today and and push yourself because I I feel like, you know, life's not easy, but that doesn't mean that we should, you know, just let it go. Find ways to step up to the plate because future you will thank you. Your kids will thank you. You're you're you know, again, I think that that future you is one of the best things that you can remember. Like, you don't want to exercise today. Well, future you that's getting uh, you know, a bypass at you know 55 will be like, hey, really wish you had gone running that morning. It would have been very helpful. I really wish you had hopped in the sauna. That would have helped me, you know.

SPEAKER_01 56:40

Yeah. And another thing, just as you're talking, I remembered that I got wrong about resilience, is I assumed because somebody was resilient in one domain, they were a resilient person, like this exceptional athlete or this amazing business person or this gray dad. Like we have different domains of life. And don't get me wrong, when you have strength somewhere, that strength is there, not because you were born with it. Yes, you may have had a certain aptitude and started a little bit better off than others, but you got there through pursuing stress, through those intentional reps over and over and over with good effort to get to your strength. So you have the mindset, but the skill set doesn't necessarily apply to different domains of opportunity. So when you pursue that hard, really make sure it aligns with where you're trying to get better. So, yes, I can do physical exercise and derive some um lessons that I can do hard things on purpose. But if I'm not having those difficult conversations that you mentioned with my wife and getting out of my own way, my calloused actions and reactions that I have to stress and these suppressive things, if I'm not doing that domain in that domain, and even though I'm really good at jujitsu and I do all these cool fitness things, that doesn't that doesn't matter to my wife. That doesn't matter to our relationship. That's not gonna benefit us. So pursuing hard intentionally in the areas that matter most to you is that one thing I would add on just because of what you were saying.

SPEAKER_00 57:59

Yeah. It makes you better, so that you know, it might not help your relationship, but when you have a challenge, it's gonna make you more calm. And that sure as hell is gonna help your relationship, you know? When you have other things, road bumps, and you're able to weather that storm, you know. I my wife sits there and thinks that I overthink things at time that I'm always like planning and strategizing. And we just recently flew uh from the US, uh from Vietnam back to the USA for one of her shows and Norfolk, and then we flew back. Now, when we flew back, there was uh a big snowstorm, and we were uh really in a challenging spot because all of our stuff was rerouted, we had to adapt. I stayed calm through it all. But I was even more nervous about something else because our transit point was through Qatar, and there was everything in the news about waiting for look, Trump might attack Iran, Trump might attack Iran. If we had flown four or five days later, uh, we would have been stuck in Qatar for a nice little long holiday while no flights were going. And me in all of the stuff, I was like not freaking her out, but we're in Qatar. And she's like, How you doing? I was like, I'm good, but I'm ready to get going. And she's like, Why? And I was like, and then I shared with her what I had been processing the last couple of weeks as we were leading up to that. And she's like, Oh my goodness, I never thought about that. And I said, You didn't need to, because I did. Because I was three steps ahead of that looking at how we could adjust, how could we could manage, how we could handle things in case things did hit the fan. I said I had money backed up in case we had to buy different tickets. We flew on to our destination. Luckily, three days before everything kicked off. And, you know, it was one of those things that you prepare premeditorium allorum, a stoic concept. You know, prepare for things to go south. And if you can do that, you're gonna be much happier, you know, in the long run.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:08

Hell yeah. And then you have contingency plans, ways to reorient and adapt if and when you need to. Premeditation or future adversity, another great concept to think about how you can apply to your life, not for anxiety, but for figuring out what you can control if said hardship were to come. And you do that, and now you come up with training plans. You come up with things that you can do to maybe ease the anxiety. Um, if it were to happen, of course, now you've experienced the adversity and and you have no tools, but also you can start implementing things within your control to progressively get more comfortable with what makes you uncomfortable as you build up to potentials in your life. Love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:49

Where can people find out more about you and what you do?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:52

I would probably just push people toward uh resilientmentalstate.com. Um, so that's my Substack account. Yes, I have a podcast called Resilient Mental State on on Apple and Spotify, but that all comes through Substack as well. So uh that's kind of where I do everything. I post and ghost on other uh on other uh social media outlets like LinkedIn, which I check a little bit more because I've been meeting some amazing people on LinkedIn like yourself, and I'm very thankful for that and you reaching out. Um but Substack would be the main place for all of my people.