Feelings pt. 1 | Reacting or Leading: Who’s in Control | Ep. 14

Dane: [00:00]
When emotions are driving us, we tend to live in that flight or fight response mode. It's very reactive .

Dane: [00:05]
Something happens out here, I react to it emotionally. If that's leading the ship, I'm not really leading my life. As human beings, our humanness is fixated on making sure we're safe and it interprets danger in a lot of different ways. If I was in perpetual fear, it'd be a hard way to make any decisions. We're just setting ourselves up to miss the opportunity of leveraging the difficulty of life.

Dane: [00:33]
It could just be awful, or it could be our training ground. To become more fully ourselves, more fully human.

Dane: [00:38]
as humans we prefer the path of least resistance. We crave convenience, the payoff without the price. But when our lives revolve around comfort, it doesn't deliver. Living in perpetual comfort leaves us weak and asleep. This podcast is an invitation to flip that script, to choose the unlikely path, to get the life you really want through voluntary discomfort.

Dane: [01:03]
This is Strong & Awake. I'm Dane Sanders.

Dane: [01:07]
Mitch, I got to tell you a story.

Dane: [01:10]
I want you to picture a golden retriever, this beautiful puppy that is stopping people. Like if you're walking at the mall, like there's nobody that isn't stopping. Of course, you're not walking the dog in the mall. You're pushing the dog in a, in a little carriage or whatever. And, uh, this puppy is just like, Oh, it wants to jump up on you.

Dane: [01:32]
lick you and just a little nibble on your shirt, put a hole in it, but it's just a little thing. And, you know, it's, it's just, um, it's a, it's an absolute nightmare. It's a nightmare. In fact, so much so that this dog that my brother and sister in law got named Charlie, um, was so bad. They took the dog, the dog they got for their daughter, they took the dog back to the breeder and said, we can't do this.

Dane: [01:55]
This is going to ruin our family. Like the dad, my brother in law, he's getting hypertension over it and it's just undone. But then they feel so guilty. So they decide a couple of days later, That they're going to go back to the, like in tears, just beg the breeder, like, will you, will you give us the dog back that we gave back that we bought before that?

Dane: [02:15]
And they get the dog back a second round. So it's a second tier of this thing. And it still has all the, the charm of puppies, but the tyranny. That this dear family are living under because they're not telling the dog what to do. The dog is telling them what to do. Uh, everything from like, like, there's just no sense of, oh, the dog nibbles.

Dane: [02:39]
Oh, that's just what puppies do. Or, uh, of course they just moved into a brand new home and terrorizing all their new furniture and making messes everywhere. You could imagine like literal, like not good stuff happening all the time. Can you imagine if that's how you lived your life? I want to talk about that today.

Dane: [03:00]
I want to talk about the idea of putting the wrong boss in charge of your life. And I'm wondering if you're up for that.

Mitch: [03:09]
I am so up for that. And I can't wait to expand on this puppy analogy too.

Dane: [03:15]
I just remember. How it almost caused a divorce in my own marriage, uh, how desperate it was when the wrong thing was driving the ship and the intervention required, uh, and how that changed everything because all of a sudden, because there was an intervention with us and our puppy and all of a sudden we had a totally different experience, like radically, it went from like, we're being tyrannized to all of a sudden.

Dane: [03:38]
Not only were we finally at ease, our dog was at ease. Um, it was remarkable. And again, I'm being a little bit, uh, cryptic here, but I think this topic of having the wrong person lead when it comes to our lives, I think that's a topic that, um, we're gonna go into some, I think, um, sensitive areas for a lot of people, but I also think it could be highly helpful as folks are working at their own lives and trying to sort through the practices that they're picking.

Mitch: [04:09]
Well, let's get into it. There are so many different things that can be steering the ship or driving our lives. And I think for many of us, emotions or feelings are the ones in that driver's seat. So whether your emotions and feelings is this young, crazy golden retriever, Weimaraner, you know, GSP that's going nuts, or maybe it's an older soul, a gentler dog.

Mitch: [04:38]
That's beside the point. Either way, we don't want that driving our lives and steering the whole conversation.

Dane: [04:44]
Yeah. And this can be so tough because our emotions are so critical to being a human being. And what we're not saying is that emotions are bad. What we are saying is that our thoughts and our emotions are distinct. And when we, when we're doing our life, when emotions are driving us, um, we tend to live in that flight or fight response mode, like whatever kind of gets spiked is going to determine, it's very reactive, actually.

Dane: [05:14]
So something happens out here, I react to it emotionally. If that's leading the ship, I'm not really leading my life. It's, it's, I don't have any kind of cognitive executive functioning. What's happening is my emotional life is just responding to things. And humans are wired. for flight or fight or freeze or whatever you want to go with.

Dane: [05:33]
Like, we're wired for self preservation. As human beings, our humanness actually is fixated on making sure we're safe and it interprets danger in a lot of different ways. And those emotional spikes allows us to not have to think about something and we can just react. So I guess in those moments, so it's one to five percent of your life. It's good that the emotions lead, uh, the ship, but the problem is those moments happen very rarely in actuality.

Dane: [06:06]
Uh, we don't have saber toothed tigers chasing us. Um, and we don't, we're, we're right now, I mean, there could be an earthquake all of a sudden, but earthquakes, even in California, um, gosh, I've been here for over three decades and the big one might be coming, but right now it seems like there's a lot of days where it isn't here.

Dane: [06:23]
If I was in perpetual fear of that. Uh, it'd be a, it'd be a hard way to make any decisions. Um, but when I have something to think about, some ideas that can inform how I behave, then the emotions actually, they, they fall in line. Uh, there's a sense in which our emotions, which are so valid and helpful and the other 95 percent of the time, they're only helpful in that they're informing our The reality, what we're experiencing in the midst of the executive function and exist of in the midst of this agency and choosing to live a certain kind of way, um, in my experience, that's what opens up the flourishing life to choose consciously.

Dane: [07:10]
what I'm going to do. And there's even debate about that. I mean, there's a lot of folks that think that this is impossible, that we're not choosing anything. We're just big data. And, um, you know, most of life is just, you know, I'm just behaving like somebody would if they were like me in this circumstance.

Dane: [07:25]
And, and I don't know, maybe there's some truth to that. Um, I do think humans are very consistent in how they engage in life, but if we're going to have any chance of pushing against that, I don't think it begins with just being reactive with our emotions. I think it begins with us having some kind of framework on how we're navigating life.

Dane: [07:45]
And that's a cognitive sense that said to get out of our hypothalamus and into our, our neocortex and make decisions from here. When we do that, we're a lot more trustworthy. We're more awake. We're more in tune with what, what do we want and what are we trying to achieve? And, and when it's just react, react, react, um, I think we're in a dangerous position and highly vulnerable to, um, being manipulated, uh, highly vulnerable to, um, not just tyranny from outside, but tyranny from inside. Where I'm just perpetually undone.

Mitch: [08:21]
I've often heard you share in our community

Mitch: [08:23]
to de signify your emotions and, you know, signify is interesting because one can interpret that as, you know, signal like something that informs and directs or significance like it's order or weight.

Mitch: [08:36]
Uh, and I think you're probably advocating for Just an appropriate relationship, uh, with those, those emotions, uh, and not having to steer the ship, but not completely suppressing or ignoring or ridding yourself of all those which we're not advocating for.

Dane: [08:51]
Well, and, and we don't do, like, the, the reality is the more you, The people who are part of our community, men and women of discomfort, what they discover as they engage this work of choosing voluntary discomfort as an, in contrast with involuntary discomfort to choose that to do the hard thing is they actually become far more sensitive.

Dane: [09:13]
You feel things more acutely. And deeply. Uh, so even if we wanted to get rid of feelings, to delete them, you better not hang out with us because that that's, it's not what happens. Uh, you get into a cold shower, you feel things acutely, you get into, you hold your breath long enough, you feel things acutely.

Dane: [09:34]
You are intermittent fasting and you, you feel the hunger pains, you feel it acutely. And that, extends. If I have an upset with someone in my life, I feel it more acutely. Um, and that's some of the discipline is to acknowledge it, to see it, to, to, to go, Oh, I'm awake to that feeling. And in the midst of that, Um, de signify the feeling, like basically demote it.

Dane: [10:03]
Don't put it in the leadership position. Put it in the follower position because it's incredibly resourceful information to gather. Like I'm feeling this or that or something else based off of that input. What do I want to choose to do? with agency, with executive functioning. And that, that is, sets things in motion, I think, for proper functioning as a human being is cognitive first, emotional second, even though what we experience first is usually emotion.

Mitch: [10:34]
I do want to spend a little bit of time camping out on the importance of emotions because I think no matter how much we say it, they're important, they're, they're signals, like, I think a lot of people can still interpret it like they wrongfully interpret, you know, stoicism as this cold, stoic, unfeeling, unemotional just blah

Mitch: [10:53]
and that's not what we're advocating for. When, when we were kind of talking about the show, one of the things that came to mind is this idea of leprosy or Hansen's disease, I guess is what it's called now. And, you know, we often, uh, We associate this with, you know, skin legions and, or maybe, you know, Bible times, or, or the leper colony in Molokai.

Mitch: [11:13]
Uh, one of the, those are all symptoms of something that's going on, you know, below the skin. And what often happens in leprosy, and probably the most dangerous thing about it, is that, It's the nerve damage. It's the loss of sensing and feeling that is often the most dangerous part. Someone might cut themselves and be completely unaware of it.

Mitch: [11:32]
They might put their hand on a burner and then be suffering, but not even realize that they are suffering. Um, and I think that's such an interesting distinction, something really good to remember because, you know, oftentimes we want that comfort. We want that relief. And to feel no pain sounds like this.

Mitch: [11:48]
Dream. Oh, to rid the world of pain. Uh, but that's, that's not what you want.

Dane: [11:54]
Well, people are self medicating all the time with comfort all day long. Dopamine from scrolling to Netflix to donuts. It's all the same. It's just like, I want gratification and I want it now. And in that, even like getting grumpy at somebody, like getting angry, uh, the comfort of complaining, it's amazing what can come from that.

Dane: [12:15]
And it's, it's emotions driving the ship. There's no question about it. And. Largely it's unconscious. I, I, the big joke is, um, and this is of course, true still for, for me and everyone, uh, it's not like these things delete, but I can think of with, with a little bit of tragedy and hilarity, think about, um, so often in my life moments where like that joke of like, It seems like you're angry.

Dane: [12:45]
I'm not angry. Like, like I'm screaming, uh, cussing, doing all the things. And everyone around me knows that I'm undone, except for me. I have no clue. I am, I am unaware of my feelings when my feelings are driving the ship. That's the big. Irony and and in reverse it takes you think of like someone who has a steady hand of leadership somebody who's Leading something in a certain direction.

Dane: [13:13]
Those are usually the people who are absorbing feelings that are that are receiving there They know the consequences of what they're doing and they're moving with a steady hand because they see something beyond the horizon That we're trying to get to that. We won't get on our own unless we're led there We're not going to drift our way to that promised land.

Dane: [13:34]
We're going to get there because we chose the hard thing. That's a cognitive act. And when you do that, you're going to feel it more, not less. Ask any serious leader and they'll tell you. Now what is confusing is they don't always show it, right? It doesn't always show up externally because they don't want to trigger feelings in other people.

Dane: [13:55]
They actually want to make sure that people see that there's a steadiness to what we're doing. You don't want people to break ranks and, you know, run the wrong direction. You know, we're, we're going for something big here, something bigger than we could pull off on our own. And I'm inspired by that kind of leadership.

Dane: [14:13]
When I see people do that, it, it lands to me like mature, like strong, like awake. And it's not lost in me that our, our mantra, our kind of our go to, the reason we do what we do at Men and Women of Discomfort is to become strong, And awake for love's sake. So if love's sake is the horizon, love's sake is the highest ideal, what we want to see happen in the world, there's two, at least two variables that are required to get there.

Dane: [14:40]
One of them is I need to be strong enough to get there. And the other is I need to be awake enough to get there. Well, and I don't know which one comes first. We talked about this before, but the, the, the, The opposite of strong and awake is weak and asleep. And here's what I know. Weak and asleep people, they don't seem to feel as much.

Dane: [15:02]
They're anesthetized. They're numb. And, um, they're not getting anywhere. The, the weak people and asleep people are, are sedated. They're, they're not moving. Strong and awake people. have a capacity and are usually exercising it to get there, they're moving. And this isn't just about physical strength, of course.

Dane: [15:26]
Um, I saw a, uh, a video online, uh, just yesterday of a, a woman who had had a significant stroke and, uh, she was, um, sharing with great joy The life that she was living, even while she, when she was younger, she experienced an able body that could do all these things. And now like one of her hands, she doesn't have full control over her.

Dane: [15:51]
Half of her face is all droopy and very difficult. She sounds, um, irregular to a woman like her up here or who she would have been if she didn't have this massive stroke. And she acknowledged, man, that what she has felt through this process has been awful. The involuntary discomfort she experienced.

Dane: [16:13]
Awful, but she's choosing in the midst of that State to become strong and awake for love's sake in the context that I saw the video and she was talking about her relationship with her god and how significant that was to her and It raised the question like what how could you're supposed to feel like the reaction to that experience is you're supposed to be a victim You're supposed to be down and out Uh, and what I saw on the screen was a person who was You Remarkably strong, like disproportionate, like the kind of thing where I go, I want to be like that someday.

Dane: [16:49]
I don't want the condition she's under, but I want to be able to react to those, to life. If I, if I was under those conditions that way. And that doesn't come by accident. We don't, it just doesn't, uh, I keep saying drift, but we don't drift our way. To an unprecedented future, you swim against the current to that unprecedented future, and that requires a strength and an awareness.

Dane: [17:10]
The awareness means you're feeling it all the way, and you're, you have the discipline to not let feelings decide where you're going.

Mitch: [17:17]
I'm sure we've all had moments and can think. To a moment today or yesterday when we put our foot in our mouth or have this sense of regret or all the time or not for when we let that emotion drive the conversation, steer the ship.

Mitch: [17:32]
Um, but, but what happens when we. When we lean into that and we don't practice that agency, that strength, uh, and even awareness and awakeness, um, in those moments.

Dane: [17:43]
Yeah, and we could do a whole episode on this, but we're always off course as, like, our humanness, our flight or fight response, we're not getting rid of that anytime soon. That's hardwired, it's in our life. And I, you know, I get this all the time. People like, you lead men and women of discomfort, and every time I have a complaint about something, uh, my friends will say, Well, you're a man of discomfort.

Dane: [18:04]
You know, and it's like, I'm like, yes, you're right. I'm a human being. And I have feelings that really are fighting for dominance. And, um, and it's hard. It's just hard. Like I feel for my brother and sister in law and Charlie, like it's hard to raise a puppy. It's hard to raise a kid. It's hard to get through life.

Dane: [18:25]
Life is fricking hard. And that's universal. Even if you have a disciplined life and you're really working hard at it. So. If you have this dream in your head that you're going to get to a place where you set it and forget it and I'm done and I've, I've reached the promised land and I am so self actualized that I don't have to work on my stuff anymore,

Dane: [18:43]
that's not how we view it in our community. And it's to not acknowledge reality that humans still are. But that said, when I let emotions rule the roost and, and are driving the ship, the new metric for me is not that I never do it or do it. The new metric for me is how quickly can I notice that that's what's happening and unhook myself from the emotion so that the emotion finds its proper place.

Dane: [19:13]
The speed with which I can do that now, I still get hooked every day, but the speed with which I can get unhooked as increased radically after years of this involuntary Um, discomfort practice and that's the part that I'm so hopeful for. We're all aging. We all have a difficult future in front of us. And how do we set ourselves up for those features to flourish even in the midst of things like dying?

Dane: [19:39]
Uh, like I had to witness and got to witness my friend, Tim go through, uh, as we, as we navigated this, this journey. the beginning of men and women of discomfort. But, um, that was the big aha for me was if emotions rule everything, um, we're, we're just setting ourselves up to miss the opportunity of leveraging the difficulty of life.

Dane: [20:07]
Like the difficulty of life, it could just be awful, or it could be our training ground. To become more fully ourselves, more fully human. And that's the part that I think I'm, I'm most animated about in my own life. Cause I'm seeing ground being taken. And, um, it's not about perfect. It's, it's just not, it's, it's about.

Dane: [20:29]
Finding our way forward in a way that it feels like we're getting progress and momentum and and I don't just point to my own Life in that like our we have we have a whole community of people. You're one of them Mitch and People who aren't just kind of relating with men and women of discomfort like it's one and done But they're they're doing it round in round out round in round out and there's things that you can do People like you are discovering, and I am discovering, not a round in or two rounds in, but a year in or two years or five years in.

Dane: [20:57]
And that's where you realize like, oh, this is a much bigger game than I'm going to figure out how to lose weight, or I'm going to figure out how to get in shape. Um, this is how do you actually move out of self preservation exclusively and into a life that's about something bigger than yourself.

Mitch: [21:14]
I think there are a number of strategies that are shared and ink spilled on the topic of that acute moment of how do you kind of become aware and awake when it's happening.

Mitch: [21:26]
Um, and I think those resources are, are, are great to, to share, to talk about, and maybe we'll get into some of those here. Um, but I also think it's, it's, or, and I also think it's really important to talk about that higher order thing. Like, before you get to that moment, what kind of work are you doing leading up to that?

Mitch: [21:42]
Sure, don't go grocery shopping on an empty stomach. Like, there's plenty of those things that we can share that are really resourceful and helpful. There's things that you can do way before your pantry gets empty, way before you get in that car to go to the grocery shop, uh, grocery store, um, that I'd love to, To dig into.

Dane: [22:04]
Well, why don't we start with you, Mitch? I talk way too much. I want to hear like, like what are those things that you are, you are choosing in your own practice that set yourself, set yourself up to have that executive functioning?

Dane: [22:17]
On the daily.

Mitch: [22:17]
The overarching theme would be reps and giving myself moments when I feel that overwhelming emotion.

Mitch: [22:28]
and get comfortable being in that without immediately reacting and responding. You know, often in our community, some of the habits that we prescribe during your first round participating are things like you had mentioned, breathwork, cold showers, embodied experiences that elicit that strong response and reaction, that feeling.

Mitch: [22:52]
Exactly. That feeling. So I have found it resourceful as much as I dislike. those feelings, I found it incredibly resourceful to practice that agency in those moments, to intentionally and voluntarily put myself in positions where that is uncomfortable. In other contexts, it might look like having that hard conversation.

Mitch: [23:11]
I'm a kind of classic millennial where I'll kind of let things sit a long time and hope the problem goes away or kind of go quiet, quiet, quit, ghost people. Um, and you know, part of my declarations this round. And one of the things I'm focusing on is, you know, not letting two days go by without responding to a hard text or an email or having a hard conversation.

Mitch: [23:37]
Um, and it's those moments where I'm choosing those in a safe environment, in a controlled, you know, almost greenhouse of sorts. Uh, so that when I'm planted in the ground, when I'm up against those things in the real world, I don't have to worry In the real world, um, then I have done the work to at least start to cultivate that agency and have that moment of, Oh, I know what this is.

Mitch: [24:02]
I've been here before.

Dane: [24:03]
It's funny. I, I'm a big fan of the NBA and, um, we're in playoff time right now and, uh, I'm so struck by in all of professional sports, um, even collegiate, but especially, um, professional That's all they're doing, right? They have 90 percent of their life is practicing for 10 percent of the life where they're performing.

Dane: [24:26]
And the practicing is basically putting them under duress, just like a game, game like situations, five seconds on the clock, two minute drill, whatever the thing is. And their job is to perform under controlled conditions so that when they're in uncontrolled conditions, Controllable conditions. They have an opponent and other factors that are at play, uh, you know, referees, uh, who are deciding things that feel unfair or, you know, feeling, feeling, feeling, feeling, and it's all to put yourself in a position of likely success or like to increase your likelihood of success.

Dane: [24:58]
And. Every professional athlete and sport team that I know always talk about, um, like at the end of their season, if they win a championship, they talk about overcoming adversity, um, go and they, they all have a, they all have some pit, uh, not every single time, but most every team has some moment where they're like injuries, um, Bad news, something happened that just went, you know, the wrong way than they, than they needed.

Dane: [25:28]
Someone got hurt. Um, uh, coach got suspended, like whatever the thing is. And in the middle of those realities, they were off course, they were missing the mark. And yet they still go back to practice. They still do the thing. And the re, what they're celebrating on the, on the podium is not just that they want a trophy.

Dane: [25:50]
What they're celebrating is a group of individuals, individuals. Decided to put themselves in a set of conditions that were very difficult and they did it voluntarily and they did that alongside other individuals who were doing that on other teams, but they somehow found a way to become the kind of team and individual players that could perform under duress.

Dane: [26:12]
If that's not a metaphor for navigating life, I don't totally know what it is. We're all professional athletes. Just some of us neglect it. Some of us are really happy to sit in the stands or watch from the parking lot. And I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in living my life. And it turns out living life is a high skilled endeavor, and it's not something that you just get.

Dane: [26:35]
You, you work your way into it. And I, I just wish I had more years. I wish I could go back and I've started sooner. in this exercise. Um, but I'll tell you what, this is not an exercise that gets done in three months. It's an exercise that begins in three months. And then people begin to see that over the horizon, that, that potential reality, and they go, well, now I'm, I'm very interested in, in moving in that direction.

\[: [00:27:00]
Mitch: [27:00]
I want to camp out on, on this basketball metaphor for a second. Because if you've ever like been there before a game or watched some of the behind the scenes and seen them kind of pregame shooting, they never miss. It is wild.

Mitch: [27:15]
Like any, any NBA player outside of the game could probably just. Put up free throws, put up shots

Mitch: [27:25]
in a row.

Dane: [27:25]
20 free throws, 53. I, I actually saw, I went, yeah, I remember Steve, I watched Steve Nash back in the day. Um, when he played for the Lakers in the end of his career out of pregame. Like you were describing. We see this all the time with Steph Curry and Klay Thompson and all those things. But I remember I was watching, it had to be a hundred free throws in a row, but he wasn't just taking free throws.

Dane: [27:45]
He was doing it on one foot. And then he'd go to the other foot and then he'd go three feet back and then he'd go and it was just like, there was not a single miss totally under. And, and now, you know, even more modern basketball there, they're not doing it that way. They're doing scoops, you know, sideways and leaning with two hands this way and shooting from the other baseline and with remarkable success.

Dane: [28:10]
. but like you were saying, like, you gotta play games. Like, you gotta get in there. And not just that, getting in the game, having the scrimmages.

Dane: [28:18]
But you also have those debriefs. We talked about this in another episode. You're watching the tape. You're analyzing how you played. You're, you're holding space and watching how the other people played. You're inviting feedback from coaches and teammates. Uh, and I think that's often something that we can miss too.

Dane: [28:33]
We can go in and be like, well, I practiced this for days. But you're not holding space to actually like, give yourself those moments to become more awake, uh, inviting this feedback, which is super uncomfortable. Um, and I think that's one of the things that you cultivate so well in the community in particular, and you know, you've created a culture of that.

Dane: [28:53]
Um, but what is that importance of not just slowing down, of practicing, uh, pregame, getting in the games, but why is it important to kind of have that reflection time, have that time where you're inviting that feedback from yourself and others?

Dane: [29:09]
Yeah, just to go one more step on, um, Let's pick on basketball for a second. I, one of the things I've noticed, not just the, the, any one of the NBA is an elite level athlete and. But there's a certain class of elite that is, you know, they call them superstars or all stars or, you know, people are going to make it into the hall of fame or whatever.

Dane: [29:32]
And one of the, one of the phrases I keep hearing over and over again, I see it in multiple sports, not just in basketball, but, uh, people talk about, Um, they become students of the game and they, they honor the game and they play it the right way. They love the game. And, um, it's funny. We talk a lot about games and I'm just gonna, there's different kinds of games we can read all about finite and infinite and all the things, other places, but, um, in this context, I think that's a really helpful.

Dane: [29:59]
way to think about what you're asking. So if I'm going to get feedback that to take that feedback in and to de signify my personal feelings about that feedback and increase my interest and enthusiasm about that feedback, that's resourceful. I can do something with that. And a student of the game, the greats all do that.

Dane: [30:19]
They are, they don't stop being a student. They play the game the right way. They look to, um, or they, they just embrace the fact that that's part of the equation. You don't get to be great unless you study the game, unless you study your way of playing the game, unless you respect the game and play it a certain kind of way.

Dane: [30:39]
And if you think about being a human being as a game that we play, all of us who are fortunate enough to have breath in our lungs, you get to decide how you want to relate with it. I want to go back to the woman I mentioned who had that severe stroke for a second. There's a lot of good reasons why it would, no one would fault her for being complained, have a complaint about how things have worked.

Dane: [31:01]
And I'm sure there's feelings, deep ones. But what was evidence to me when I was watching her describe things was she was choosing an alternative path, not the default path, but an alternative path of ways of relating and she has feedback coming at her all the time. Like she wakes up in the morning and she can't move her left hand.

Dane: [31:21]
Like that's feedback. That's I, okay. So the feedback is you don't know how to use, you can't use your left hand. Right? I don't. So what do I do with that? Well, how you relate with that thing is primarily what you're describing. So relating with feedback, relating with considering what it means to be a human and how do humans flourish, how they always flourish.

Dane: [31:43]
What is the nature of a human? What, what, what are our flight and fight responses? What are our emotions? What are thoughts? How do we use, um, Embodiment things like how we relate with food and sleep and water and exercise. And like all these efforts, even community, how would you relate with others? Uh, people that we know and love Elsa, people that we don't know and seem foreign and others, all of these are like fertile ground for us to experiment with around this notion of building a life.

Dane: [32:13]
And I want to end my life. I want to, I want to go to the, The hall of fame of being a human. That's what I would like to be, uh, not for fame sake, but for a sense of satisfaction that my life was significant, that I lived it well, that I contributed to the lives of others that, um, that, uh, I don't. And with regret, I have lots of regrets in my life, uh, but I don't want the, the final chapter to be the regretful one.

Dane: [32:42]
I want the final chapter to be the redemptive one. And so much of building a practice is an exercise in redemption. I'm just, I'm just so grateful for reality. And usually it's my friends giving me feedback that open reality up for me. And that's the gift.

Mitch: [33:00]
Is a gift and going back to that, that interaction in that moment that you talked about earlier and just about, I'm not mad.

Mitch: [33:08]
I'm not angry. It's that sometimes your friends are there to tell you, uh, or as Michael Hyatt used to say, you know, well then tell your face that,

Dane: [33:16]
yes, yes. Yeah. Or, or one of the lines that Tim used to use it all the time. He's like, well, if there was more to know about how you are right now, would you want to know about it?

Dane: [33:25]
Uh, and, and, uh, because if the answer is no, it's like, okay, sounds good. You get to decide that you're not angry despite what I've seen. Um, but I, I do think, I'm hoping that people who are watching this right now, maybe you're chuckling right now. They're laughing because they're really, if they are laughing, they're probably laughing at themselves because they can relate.

Dane: [33:45]
Right. So the opportunity is to do something about, do something in response to this, noticing that this is how you're relating with the world up until now, but from now on, what if there was a new path? What if there was an unlikely path and whether you're a part of men and women of discomfort, or it's just you doing experiments around.

Dane: [34:06]
choosing the hard thing. Find traction wherever you can get it. And if you can do it with others, all the better, which is really why we created MWOD in the first place is, is we're just a bunch of knuckleheads, regular people, all shapes and sizes, all ages, looking to build a practice that helps you thrive in life and get out of just pure pain.

Dane: [34:26]
survival. And, um, and

Dane: [34:28]
that's why I hope as people watch this and they consider for themselves, is that something they want to consider that they, they go to mwod. io and they start poking around and they fill out an application and, or they track us online and, and, and just begin to tune into this as a consideration

Dane: [34:42]
as a contribution as to how you might choose to live your life.

Dane: [34:46]
Yeah.

Mitch: [34:46]
It's an individual, uh, game maybe like, you know, you've got the Kobe Bryants and they wouldn't be anything without doing the work themselves, but

Mitch: [34:56]
you can. Get that much further playing on a team and playing on a team that is there for you and that is pushing you and that is, uh, bringing awareness, uh, and inviting that curiosity.

Mitch: [35:08]
So I encourage all of you to jump in and Dane set us up here.

Dane: [35:13]
Well, it's funny. I, I, I just yesterday, I was in a conversation with, um, Taylor holiday, who was Man Of Discomfort Number one. Timmy and I worked with, um, and he, Taylor, he and I worked together and, um, he was. We work together in a company that he owns or that he's the CEO of and, um, The reason I have a job in his company is because he wanted the work at MWOD to translate into the employees within his organization and what he was laughing about yesterday was, he was like, I don't know how, how that all happened, but you guys are doing it in a voluntary environment.

Dane: [35:54]
We're actually paying people to do the hard thing. And like, we have a hard time getting them to do that. Like, what is it? So it's so funny. Like, this is. I don't care who is listening to this. Your life is more difficult than you're willing to acknowledge. And if you're courageous enough to really acknowledge it, what I have the, this open ended question for you, the listener, like, what are you doing?

Dane: [36:19]
About it? Like, is this as good as it gets? Are you, is it just like, You know, that old Kierkegaard line, I repeat over and over again, man finds the level of despair he can tolerate and he calls it happiness. What are you settling on? Is this as good as it gets or not? And if it's not, and if you don't have a path to get involved, friend, go to mwod.io

Dane: [36:42]
and consider Jumping in with us for a round, try it on for size. And, uh, if you don't want to do that, we have some courses and some other things you can go do, but the main thing is, uh, do something. If not this, then what, and if not you, then who, and if not now, then now is the time.

Dane: [37:01]
Men & Women Of Discomfort is our membership community and we are open to everyone but keep in mind our tagline is it's probably not for you if we're wrong about that or if you want to find out for yourself you can find us at mwod.io the information and material that we're sharing both of this podcast or anything connected to men or women of discomfort or flying s incorporated it's all for general information purposes only Only you should not rely on this material or information on this podcast as a basis for making any kind of decision.

Dane: [37:26]
We do our best to keep everything up to date and correct, and we do a lot of due diligence, but the responsibility is on you to make sure that you're in sync with your own medical professionals that you wouldn't see what we're offering here as somehow a warranty or representation in any kind expressed or implied about this being complete, accurate, reliable, suitable, or comprehensive in any kind of way.

Dane: [37:40]
It's critical you own your agency, which is at the heart of everything we do at Men & Women Of Discomfort. We invite you to take the input that we're offering and consider it for yourself. And if it's helpful, please do take advantage of it. But if you do, it's you who is taking the opportunity and we're assuming that you've done your due diligence with it.

Dane: [37:52]
Thanks.