The Mental Frame & Specific Daily Actions to Succeed | Andy Stumpf

Pick the choice as often as possible that is slightly more difficult. To me, it's the small stuff that nobody sees that makes the biggest difference in the world. Everybody knows the harder choice versus the easier choice. Everybody to include myself will look externally and say what do I need to do? I know what I need to do and so do they. They need to do the thing then even if it's microscopic that they want to do less more often than they do the thing that they want to do more. That over time is the juice. Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss [music] science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and opthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Andy Stumpf, a retired Navy Seal and subsequently a member of the Red Bull High Performance Team where he was a wing suitor, where they literally get into what some people call squirrel suits and fly. He set two world records wing suiting. But today's discussion is not really prompted by his career in the military, nor his wing suiting, although it does impact the discussion. Today's discussion was prompted by my reading of Andy's recent book called Drown Proof. Now, there are a lot of books out there by former Navy Seals, but upon reading it, I realized that this was a special book and that Andy's experience and the lessons he shares and most importantly, the tools he shares are both unique and indeed important for everyone to hear. For instance, he describes a tool in there that I now use every single week, which has allowed me and many other people, and I'm certain you to separate out issues of concern versus issues of impact. meaning to allow you to actually be able to impact perhaps not control but certainly have an impact on certain things while ignoring the issues in life that distract you that pull you into drama and that can numb you out and that essentially waste your life. Today you'll learn what that exercise is and how to implement it in your life. You'll also learn a lot of other simple tools about how to take the slightly harder road in certain moments versus the easier road. You'll also learn from Andy about the most difficult things that he encountered in life and how he navigated them. And no, those weren't in the military nor wings suiting. It actually comes from his personal life which he shares very candidly. And finally, we have a very serious and in many ways somewhat emotional discussion about suicide and mental health more generally. I do hope that that discussion will benefit all of you. I'm certainly we are certainly I should say very open to your input. That discussion of course raises more questions than it provides answers. But I think we can all agree that this is an extremely important and timely topic. The frequency of suicide is increasing significantly in all communities. So for reasons related to the range and the nature of the specific topics that we discuss today, you're in for a very special episode. Thank you, Andy Stumpf. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. All right, my book is finally ready for release. Protocols, an operating manual for the human body is coming out in 3 months. It's my first book and I've been working on it for many years now and it's really a reflection of decades of research and experience that came even prior to starting the book. My goal for this book is that it serves as an easytouse manual for dealing with any number of different pain points or performance goals that you might have in terms of mental health, physical health, and performance. It covers the science and most effective protocols for sleep, nutrition, exercise, focused learning, and neuroplasticity, stress management, and much more. I'm super excited to share it with all of you. The launch date is September 15th. You can learn more about it or pre-order by going to protocolsbook.com. It's also available on Amazon.com. And I'm super excited that Protocols is finally ready for release. And as always, thank you for your interest in science. And now for my discussion with Andy Stumpf. Andy Stumpf, welcome. Thank you for having me. I read your book, Drown Proof Reese, which makes me nervous, by the way. Telling you that before we started. Listen, I've read [laughter] a lot of books, including a lot of the quote unquote seal books. It's awesome. I'll mention a few of the reasons why it's awesome, but I'll let people read it for themselves. But just to really get right to it, one of the practices that you describe in the book is something that I decided to do right away, and I've been doing every week since I listened to it. Now, granted, I just listened to the book a few weeks ago, so that means twice, but I found it to be tremendously useful, not just during the exercise, but in the days that follow. And it's really uh remapped a lot of uh what I would call my unhealthy tendencies and given me much more sense of agency and my days are are just going so much better. In fact, I was on time today for the first time in my life. Influence versus concern. Yes. So, could you describe this uh simple exercise because I I'll tell you having having done it, it is immensely powerful. I only wish I had learned about it like in junior high school. Story of my life. Yeah. Uh so first off, not my creation. This is something I don't remember and I think I said this multiple times in the book because I want to be very clear that of basically taking ownership over nothing in that book because they're not my unique ideas. They were things that were taught to me that I'm trying to pass forward. So, I don't remember exactly where I first saw this, but the way it was first uh positioned to me was your circle or sphere of influence, which is very small, and your sphere of concern, which for most people, to include myself, is very large. So, if it was the size of this table, that would be your concern. The influence would be the size of a pin drop on the table. And the exercise is actually really simple. Take a standard piece of paper, draw a line down the middle, concern on one side, influence on the other, and you just take the time to write down the things that are occupying your waking hours. I don't know if you're anything like me, I try not to set an alarm unless I have something really pressing that day, but if I do wake up and my brain does a revolution, I have to get out of bed because otherwise I'm staring at the ceiling in the bedroom. And if I have really sticky things in the morning, I'll I'll usually do this about once a month or once every six months now. But almost every time that thought will be on the left hand side of the column. It's just a concern. Why is it preventing me from going back to sleep? Why can't I let go of it? And it's social media, the world that we all live in. It's things you can't control. It's just all the stuff that you spend your energy and effort focusing on. And then you go to the other side of that paper and I'm still yet to find more than one thing that you can write down. And that's the direct influence that you have. And all you really can write on that is yourself. Now you can you can tunch that out and say your thought process, the way you speak to yourself, the way you plan your day, the way you manage your time. But all that goes back into things you can actually directly control which leads you to the realization or leads me to the realization that I have no control over what happens to me in my life but I have absolute and complete and total control over how I respond to it. And I think that speaks to the agency piece and it helps me especially when I have those sticky thoughts. It helps me at least take a step back. I'm not going to say I'm perfect and I can put down a lot of the things that I'm concerned with, but it will identify for me a healthy or an unhealthy attachment to those things and it does help me cross back over to okay, I understand that this is scary or concerning, but being scared or concerned about it doesn't impact outcome. Everything on the right hand side of the paper does. So that's what it does for me. Man, you want to talk about developing some more efficiencies? It's a great tool. It's startling how much is going to be on the left and how little is going to be on the right. Yeah, it's been a game changer for me because and maybe I misinterpreted the exercise a little bit because on the uh right hand side of the uh the page, I've been listing out the things that I can control and the things that I can do with my time. That still goes back to you're controlling the management of your time. That's totally fine. And with all these tools, I don't think there is a wrong answer if it has the impact that you're looking for. Again, you could titrate all that back up to you controlling yourself and what you do with your time. I think it's perfect. Yeah. Again, just an awesome exercise. I really encourage everyone to do it for me once a week has been very helpful and it just pops to mind anytime I'm thinking like I saw something in the news yesterday and and you start going down these rabbit holes and you're like, wait, what am I doing? Like, what am I doing? And and we can blame the algorithms, we can blame the world, but ultimately Yeah. You know, it's, you know, once you realize that you're being manipulated, I think the obligation is to not follow that that path. The algorithm is real. I don't know what it means. I've listened to people argue about it at nauseium, but I have the choice as to whether or not I interface with the algorithm. And that's where the power that's what I think the algorithm is trying to do is figure out a way to take that power away from you and put it back into their hands. But it's optional. You learned this some years ago. Yes. In the teams. But you still do it now about once a month. Mhm. Mhm. [clears throat] you carry around with you. If you're anything like me, I spend a lot of time on airplanes. It's a really good time to occupy yourself with something that is for me at least productive as opposed to just tuning out and watching YouTube videos of sovereign citizens get arrested, which is one of my favorite pastimes. I highly recommend people get into it. These are the people that um that say you can't arrest me. I'm a sovereign citiz. Are they out there testing the law or are they hoping that they'll get, you know, flagged and and that there'll be a video so they can promote the sovereign citizen thing or they are they just really into being sovereign citizens and living their lives? I think some of them fall into the first category and I think some of them actually just legitimately believe. Okay. And they uh there's amazing things on the internet. You shouldn't believe all of them, right? [laughter] Maybe even most of them. That's a fair point actually. the vast majority of things you should take I think with a large dose of scrutiny on We're about the same age. So late 40s for you, 50 for me. I was thinking about this in light of this concern versus influence exercise, which is, you know, that they created these like 10 and 20 and 30 year high school reunion things. I think for the reason that you have the choice to go back and learn about what people are doing and who's still married, who's still alive, who's thriving, or what whatever, whatever the reason is, we have these things called reunions. But with social media, there's this opportunity to be constantly aware of everybody you grew up with, them of you, uh people you knew 5 years ago in a job that you no longer think about. So I I feel like that left column now has grown tremendously regardless of somebody's age. The opportunity to be aware of so many more things not just distant in other countries and other other issues entirely but like our past lives are very much like anchored to us now unless we really literally draw that line and and sever from all that stuff. Because like as much as I wish the best for all my classmates and all these people in graduate school and whether like it it really a lot of it should not occupy one's mind. Do you ever wonder whether social media itself is making it harder to do this exercise? I think it could be. Do you know who Chad Wright is? Yes, I know of him and we've corresponded a little bit. He is hilarious. You want We should probably describe it. He does the same type of stuff that Gogggins does. He's an endurance athlete. Long red beard. I call him the Forest Gump of the Seal teams to his face so I'm comfortable saying it. He's amazing. I've had him on the show a couple times. Uh knew him when we were in the teams together and he came on the show on my show in November and I don't know [clears throat] how we started talking about it but it was this conversation around screen time. It's like all right bud [clears throat] let's pull the phones out. Let's see what we got. It's not awesome. I think it was 4 and 1/2 hours. So, we decided that in January of this year, we're going to try to drive our screen time per day to under an hour for total phone usage. I think phone calls we were able to strip out of that. [gasps] I think the closest he got was about 90 minutes. And then the last week of January for me, I got mine down to 30 minutes. Now, for clarity, I was still doing a lot of the stuff that I was doing on my phone, but I forced it over to my laptop, which was a really interesting experience because it's way less sticky on that platform. So, Instagram on your laptop sucks. [snorts] It's not intuitive. The things that you would normally just do with your thumb, they don't exist. So, you end up closing your laptop up. So, I'd get on there, post what I wanted to, and then just leave. My mental health was better in January than it had been in a long time. So, I 100% think that social media is not only designed to suck up as much as that left-hand portion of your list as possible, but again, it's it's optional. I mean, you create content, you have a massive platform. I create content. We can easily tell ourselves we have to exist on these platforms, which to a degree we do. The question I ask myself is, is the platform working for me or am I working for it? And that's the healthy relationship. And I think actually that goes right back to that exercise. Am I targeting what I do with my time and being efficient with it and then moving on? Or am I just getting stuck into this thumb scroll of death, which is right before bed? I've heard you say it's the best time to have electronic device light. Yeah. [laughter] Real bright in a dark room right before bed. Right. If you really want to maximize, make sure you do it first thing in the morning, too. And don't get outside and look at the sun, you know. But it's so sticky. I'm telling you, when I hopped over to my laptop, at first I couldn't even figure out how to post a picture and it's so clunky and so not intuitive that you don't want to play with it. Are you still there now? Oh, no. I went right back to using my thumb. What's Chad doing now with his uh social media? Is he still He's probably doubled it. He said the same thing, too, by the way. Man, this is amazing. We should do this more often and just right back to being on your thumb again by probably March. So what's mindboggling about this is and you'll tell me no we're just ordinary people who were trained to do extraordinary things but you know seal seal selection you know pairs down you know for every hundred guys you know maybe 15 get through maybe 10 you know consistently right discipline is certainly a piece of that resilience mental toughness you know whatever language you want to throw at it you have that Chad has that you guys were weaned in that you were forged in that then you do high-risisk high consequence work right and on minimal sleep etc etc And here are two guys challenging each other to spend less time on social media. Accomplish it by virtue of competition. Okay, cool. And then you say revert. What does that say? Not about seals. [laughter] What does that say about the platforms? Cuz I mean, think about the rest of the world. It says everything you need to know about the platform. The fact that you could, like you just said, you can recognize all of those things. You can both text each other back and forth and you're limited phone usage for the day. Man, this is awesome. and 60 days later, you're back to the same behavior that led you to the November or December conversation. That's all you need to know about the platforms. Okay, I I have to drill into this. This is not where I thought we would [laughter] we would go first, but but it gets right to the heart of discipline and self-control versus influence and time and and time is everything. When you are on a social media platform and you're scrolling away, are you aware of the time that's drifting away from you? Are you thinking why am I doing this but I feel compelled to do it or are you oblivious? Is it like being drunk where you don't you you're not thinking about the the the fact that you shouldn't be doing it until you sober up. I'm aware. I am aware that it's not healthy and I will actually sometimes I don't know if you're like this. I talk to myself out loud. Somebody from the outside would probably think I'm a psychopath, but uh I will I will say to myself, why why are you doing this? This doesn't feel good. And just for hours. An hour. An hour. 45 minutes. I can't go that far. I I would I would feel as if I needed to take a shower if I went that far. But if I have 15 minutes, man, it's it's enticing. And I don't know what it is about it. I don't feel joyful after doing it. I try not to compare myself to other people. Good luck being on the internet and doing that. I try not to get caught in the uh the negativity aspect of it because I can I recognize the negativity bias in myself where you'll get 99 like this is amazing and one guy is like you kind of suck and you're just like you mother [laughter and clears throat] that's the only comment you pay attention to. It's the brain is is uh wired for to identify those outliers. So I refuse to be mean on social media. I won't make negative comments. Um well don't get me wrong you can insult people by not being mean. just have to work your way around it and takes a little bit longer. But, uh, I know it's not healthy. I know I could do anything other than that time and be more productive and maybe move my life just a little bit in the direction I want to, but I don't. I'd like to take a quick break to acknowledge our sponsor, Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware. Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as PASES or forever chemicals are still found in 80% of non-stick pans as well as utensils, appliances, and countless other kitchen products. As I've discussed before on this podcast, these PASES or forever chemicals like Teflon have been linked to major health issues such as hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues, and many other health problems. So, it's very important to avoid them. This is why I'm a huge fan of our place. 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Please, that I've been thinking about a lot lately, having just spent some time with, let's just say, one of the major providers of online content. It's not a social media platform. So, I have this theory that unlike being drunk or doing drugs of any kind, opioids or or or amphetamines or something where people exit the state of of intoxication and and they realize like, oh my god, like that was a huge waste of my time, my life. I made these mistakes. etc. Being on social media is different because there's this awareness that we're on there and we probably could or should be doing something else often. And I have this theory that it's the perfect addiction because it's what I would call low resolution enough that it doesn't occupy all of your mind. Like when people are really intoxicated, they're not thinking about the fact that they shouldn't be intoxicated. That's the state they're trying to achieve. This is a state that people come out of and report. There are data on this. They go, "Yeah, it didn't feel good being on there for the last 45 minutes or 30 minutes or I feel like I wasted a lot of time." So, they're aware of that even while they're doing it. Very unusual for addictions, right? Most addictions fall into the category of trying to erase the sense of time, lose themselves in the activity, forget the trauma if you think it's trauma related, just forget everything else and just be in this moment. Gamblers will say this, right? It's that zone they they crave so much. This is different. Doesn't feel really good. you're aware that you're not supposed to be doing it quite like that or that much. So, I actually think it's it's the quote unquote ultimate addiction because it's low resolution enough that your brain circuits can get attached to it and keep doing it while you're monitoring yourself and yet you can run these two tracks at the same time so you're not getting absorbed and coming out of it going, "Oh my god, I didn't study for my final exam. Oh my goodness, I didn't pick up the kids from school." It's just low resolution enough that you can still kind of tend to the the kids, kind of be in a conversation, sort of be on the Zoom, sort of like and doesn't totally fall apart. Exactly. And so in some ways, because it's not so extreme, I think that's actually one of the problems. The other problem is, of course, our brains can, but are not really designed to be split into these, you know, two different activities for for terribly long. It's not just an inability to multitask. I actually think that low resolution thing is you can kind of do it while you're doing other things. So I'm just this is something that I actually want some laboratories to look at. Where does that lead if left unchecked? Well, for you and for me, the consequences are different and probably less immediate because we've already built our careers. There's the social detriment, you know, relationships to family and stuff that undoubtedly suffer somewhat, right? But they're doing it too, right? So there's that. I do worry now I really sound like I'm in my 50s like about the younger generation because I don't know whether I would have been able to escape this tunnel. Yeah. Had these devices been around. So I think that otherwise incredible accomplishments and human beings and careers and families and everything in between art and music is literally not going to be made. I fear this much more than I fear AI to be honest. I much much more. Yeah. in terms of taking away jobs and taking away careers. I think that because it's it's I'll tell you this, I am confident that it is way way worse than the than the quote unquote opioid crisis which was already terrible. I think we're going to be okay. So, I have three data points which happen to be my children. So, almost 18, almost 21, almost 23. My middle son has got it dialed. He's going to college in Bosezeman. I think he's getting ready to start his junior year in mechanical engineering. He's doing an internship at a quantum computing laboratory. I don't know what that means. He tries to tell me. I'm like, he just talked to my wife. It's super cool stuff. He made a robotic hand. Of course, the first way he tested it was a middle finger, which I deeply, deeply appreciate. He is your son 100%. He exists on social media. Mhm. He downloads the app once per week, spends an hour on it, erases it because it's the pendulum going the other direction for him. My oldest keeps it on his phone, but uses it very sporadically and it's almost at least so the middle one's going to be 21. The other one's going to be 23. My oldest now is almost at the point and I think his peer group is almost at the point a little bit of mocking people who spend, you know what I It's almost now it's almost almost on the other side like oh you're one of those even though they were raised with electronic devices in their hand. My daughter on the other hand surgically connected to her hand and is constantly consuming. So, I think she will get there as well, too, because when I can kind of pull her out of that digital world or we go places that have less than optimal cell coverage intentionally and somehow the Wi-Fi doesn't show up because dad unplugs the router like, "Oh, there's no Wi-Fi at the house. That sucks." She can see the light, but my other two, as they've gotten a little bit older, they have they have seen it and found it on their own. And I I think we're gonna be okay because I think that generation now is really viewing these platforms with a little bit more of a wary eye. And I don't know why, but my middle son was the first one. He just was like, "Nope, this is what I do. I'm on there for an hour. It's 100% for memes for him." And then he just deletes the thing. Great. No, I'm I'm I'm very reassured by by what you just said. That's a data point of three, though. So, well, it's interesting because the data on, for instance, um, smoking in teens, like when we were growing up, a lot of people smoked. Young people smoked. You know, that'd be your first act of rebellion. There were all these campaigns to try and get young people to quit smoking. And they did not work. It's going to give you lung cancers. This is your lungs after smoke. None of that worked. What worked was the ad campaign that had these old white dudes cackling and talking about all the money they were going to make on these young kids smoking. So, the rebellion of youth, if you leverage it against the big industry platforms, no one likes to be manipulated, but when kids realize and teens realize that they're being manipulated, they'll push back in a way that can be really good for them, which is a little bit of what what we're hearing here. So, so you know, as a parent, I can tell you they push back in ways super hard, maybe almost pendalum the other way. I tell you what they're also pushing back on in my all three of their generation, alcohol consumption. Damn. Don't get me wrong, they there's a time and place for everything. We go to a yearly jiu-jitsu retreat in Costa Rica. The drinking age is 18. One of my sons is in college. Like I said, it's an interesting watching those two. That might be the only singular time they drink in an entire year. That was the opposite of me growing up and the the culture of the first community I went into. It is wild to see the push in the other direction. And now I talk peptides or my middle son. I told him I was coming here. He's just like, "Oh, oh, ask him what I need to be doing for sleep optimization." Like, "Oh [laughter] my god." Happy to send it to him. That's his generation. I was not I think I started looking at sleep optimization about last Thursday. You know, it just wasn't the thing that we were looking at. So, I actually, as much as my children, I truly believe children are just designed to sharpen their teeth on the parents bones, I also have a lot of faith on the next wave coming through. This is not a question I ever thought I would ask on this podcast as somebody who did an episode on alcohol that got some reach and got people rethinking whether or not they wanted to drink. And I should just quickly say the major response to that was one of three different um types. One was, I don't like drinking and now I can justify not drinking. There were a lot of people who felt that they had to drink and now they had justification not to. Other people who said, "Wow, I didn't realize that, you know, it can increase breast cancer risk. You know, we have cancers in our family and that's a real thing." So, you know, class one carcinogen, etc. And then the third category, like, you know, I wish you hadn't told me this information. I really enjoyed drinking and now my friends don't want to drink with me. Fair and I don't tell people what to do and I, you know, etc. But I have to ask, do you think that your kids and their generation are possibly missing out by virtue of, you know, not drinking at all? That's a fantastic question. I mean, it is a social lubricant for a degree. I was probably and still am antisocial in large crowds. Is there an aspect of that where it legitimately helped me not necessarily feel more comfortable, but maybe get out of my own way when I was younger? Yes. Did it lead to some bad decisions along the way? Yes. Did bad decisions and those consequences shape the human being that I would become along the way? Yes. I don't know where it it where it lands. I do think that there is a chance that yes, they are missing out on maybe not formative life experiences, but important life experiences. Well, I think the the camera phones are a big concern with drinking now because people are so worried about becoming uh less inhibited and maybe not even saying or doing the wrong thing, but even things as trivial as like look, not everyone is an awesome dancer. They can get filmed, they can get posted, they can get teased, there's social shame. The other problem is that many many people are awesome at certain things and those are the things that tend to be high amplitude also and so people feel like they you know if they're going to be seen online they have to be in some in impressive form. So I don't really know. I I do worry about the cannabis thing because I'm not anti-cannabis, but I do think given a couple drinks a week versus smoking weed in terms of like the the overall risk benefit, alcohol seems less risky to me. But the the can Yeah, I think so. I mean, look, there are high high performers and people who can use cannabis and that like not a problem. Young males in particular who have a predisposition to psychosis or bipolar disorder. Yeah. Some of them smoke high potency weed or even low potency weed and they never come back from the psychotic episode. I know a lot of examples of that and that's in the data now. So alcohol, yeah, you can drive off a cliff, you can run somebody over, you can say or do something really really stupid. But assuming those things don't happen, the the immediate risks and long-term consequences of like having having a couple beers or a couple drinks or maybe even a few more, you get home safe, you don't say or do anything stupid, like you're not going to make yourself psychotic. I'm kind of in the same boat that you are. I'm not here to tell people how to live their life. I do think that they should pay attention to the risk versus reward. you know, live your life how you want. Your choices are going to have potential consequences, and some of those can be pretty big. There's some things I deeply regret about my expressions of being a human being when I was drinking when I was younger. And there are some things that I feel like my life would be completely different without that I would never want to give those experiences back. I don't know how you table that though. This is a fascinating cover. Didn't know we were going to go here. Yeah. It's I mean I at my own life I wouldn't give up those experiences but I also don't feel comfortable saying you have to drink to have them. I don't know what the difference looks like though. Maybe later on as you grow into your I mean I'm a more confident person now absent alcohol than I was a more confident person younger absent alcohol. So maybe time will help you get to those places where you could take those actions where you needed that social lubricant. But maybe not. I don't know man. Well, it's like sleep is super important and I think it's great for everyone, especially young people, to understand just how great they can feel and mentally and physically perform when they're well rested. I think it's also an important not just right of passage, but experience to know just how terrible you can feel after a night of no sleep and still go take a midterm exam or go for the run you were supposed to go for. because it's quote unquote the best thing for you, but just because how do you explore the outer margins of your capacity unless you know how feeling really great feels and how let's just say not lousy but how po like minimally good you can feel and still complete something while you're completely crushed like I mean after a breakup after two or three nights of poor sleep in a very stressful time not having eaten perfectly like it's good to understand what a workout or what going to class and forcing yourself to stay awake or having a hard conversation with your significant other feels like when it's like the the last thing your body wants you to do. I think there's utility there. You know, it's kind of like the ice bath of of mental experiences, right? Are you a fan of the ice bath? I am. And what temperature? Cold. I So on Rogan, I said, you know, low 50s. And he he like he was shocked and dismayed. He looked he seemed it was like an older brother or guy you respect looking at you like oh man should we even continue this podcast. I was like you and I quickly went to yeah but I go into the sauna at 220 degrees Fahrenheit you know which I do. I'm very heat tolerant not as cold tolerant. I like to do cold shower cold plunge or whatever like you know low 40s now. All right. To me, there is nothing as reliable and provided you don't like jump into an ice hole or something stupid like that or do you know hyperventilation breathing and then jump into cold water which has killed people. Provided you don't do that. I I don't know of anything that is both safe and reliably can give you that adrenaline spike in a way that you can start to learn to work with what it's like to be in a highly adrenalized state. I think there's just value in having your but body flooded with adrenaline somewhat against your will but you're controlling some of it and learning. I think it's a great space to explore, okay, do I distract myself? Do I lean into it? Like you can you can explore a lot of your own consciousness in these high arousal states. And I do think there's carryover. And yes, there's a nice long wave of dopamine that lasts many hours. That's known. There's a nice long wave of adrenaline. But yeah, I think it's a great training tool if you don't want to do it immediately after resistance training because it can uh it can reduce some of the the the quote unquote gains you would get because it it vasa constricts. You want blood flow. You want to peruse the muscles in order to, you know, get get the strength and hypertrophy uh benefits from the training. But provided you do it before or on off days or 6 hours after you resistance train, I think it's a really valuable tool. What protocol would you use? I like to have my cold plunge at about 80. What would you do like 10 in, five out a couple times? 80° F. It's great. I can bump it to 85 if you think that that's a little too low. You know, team guys have this advantage that they did all that so they can be like, "I did it. I don't want to do it." Right? That's kind of like I went through that. That's an advantage. You know, it's like the people who are sleepd deprived in medical school. They're like, "Yeah, I don't do that anymore." I get it. Like you guys suffered enough. When I went down to Jacos, he he specifically had me um do a heat cold protocol because I like to do three rounds of each. You know, heat somewhere about, you know, 210 215, maybe as high as 220, which is hot, but I'm pretty heat tolerant. For how long? That would be 20 minutes. and then go into the you don't want to start right off with that right and then go into the cold. And so they packed the sauna, they cranked that thing up and they kept resetting the clock and literally he'll tell you I was down on the floor where it's you know not cool but it's still colder heat rises obviously and his daughters they were laughing his family and then so everyone in there young and old male and female was just laughing at me. So, he has what he calls the factory reset protocol, which is where you don't know how hot or how long you're going to be in there, and you don't know how cold or how long you're going to be in there. And we'll talk about this a little bit about time, but I don't know if you don't like the cold, you don't have to do it, but I do think most people can really benefit from it. I'm saying I'll develop a protocol for 80. The sauna will be at 97. Easy transition back and forth. Who knows? All right. um taken from the guy who jumps out of uh or off of mountains in a in a squirrel suit. Let's talk about the squirrel suit. Sure. And why in the world anyone who values their life seriously though would do this? And is there an off-ramp? Is there a parachute? And uh when you learn how to do this, how hard is it to learn? And what's the juice there? Okay, a lot of questions there. Okay, it's funny. A lot of people call them squirrel suits. It's just a wing suit. Squirrel is actually a manufacturer of one of the suits. fantastic branding. They happen to be the suit that I jumped. So, essentially, it is a human body turning into a nylon wing. That's really all it is. It's nylon. It's some neopre around the wrist. So, you have a little bit of flexibility in the wrist. They're really actually advancing the leading edge technology with the fabrics. Just I mean, it's crazy to look I don't know the name of the program, but you're looking at all of these images from the side of wind angles and how the suits they're looking to reduce drag. Um, and it's more than just the rigidity of your body. So, at least the suits that I jumped are modern suits. They are ram air inflated. So, there is an outer layer on both sides, an upper layer, let's say, for the your back, and an under layer for your belly. In between, it's much like a canopy. There's ribbed fabric with port holes. And on the front and back of the wing, as you give it air speed, either exiting an airplane that's already in flight, it's most skydiving airplanes are probably doing 80 to 120 miles an hour or in the base jumping world, and this is where it can get spicy, is you have no air flow for about the first 4 seconds because base jumping, for those that don't know, is fixed, call it a fixed object. Building antenna span or earth is what the acronym stands for. You're probably not going to do it off of buildings because it's it you need time to get the suit actually flying. But it's a different experience because if you jump out of an airplane, those ram air inlets fill up. Your suit is it's pressurized. You can feel it and you can already fly your suit. You can flip over. You can actually I've gotten above aircraft many time. You can basically translate that horizontal lift into power and go above them shortly. You're going to come back down. Um otherwise you'll stall the suit and it starts waffling down. But in the base jumping world, it's a zero airspeed exit. So for the first about 0 to 4 seconds, you don't have any air filling up the ram air inlets. So if you don't go off in the right body position or if you go head low and are scorpioning or head high and then you pitch through that and there is terrain below you, that's how a lot of people die. But the suit itself is is basically that. It's uh there's wings. There's a large wing between your leg, a wing underneath your arm on both the left and right hand side. And they come in a variety of sizes. So learning it is It's simple, not easy. First off, skydive before you throw a wings suit on in the skydiving world. I think I had 3,000 jumps before I put a wing suit on the first time. Is it important that people do different types of skydiving? By the way, I'm not versed in skydiving. So, what's the most basic type of I I assume a tandem jump, then you start doing individual jumps? Some people go like I went right to the first time I did a skydive, I had an instructor holding on to me from for both sides until my parachute deployed. It's a very structured program that most modern drop zones will have. A lot of people will do a tandem first, which I recommend. If you're un if you've never done it and you're uncertain about whether or not you would like it, I I think there's two really good options. One is a tandem, but if even that idea makes you a little bit uncertain, there's now enough wind tunnels around, commercial wind tunnels. There's down there's Oceanside wind tunnel. There's one in LA. There's one in San Diego. They're all over the place. I was just in Virginia Beach. There's one in Virginia Beach. So, it simulates the sensation of falling through the air in an environment where you don't have to wear a parachute. You don't have to ride an airplane. You literally hop in there. They can hold on to you and it feels like skydiving. Sounds like fun. It's leveled up what people can do in the air cuz it's this contained environment where you can see if you're moving a millimeter. The number of jumps I have had where you get out, you jump out into the air where your only reference is another person that's moving around and you get you were sliding all over the place. [ __ ] you. You were sliding all over the place. Neither of you know cuz your reference is the earth just flying around and then you get into win tunnel and you're both up against the glass. You're like we both suck. So makes it a little bit more difficult. The most basic type of skydiving would be just exiting the plane in flighting with your belly to the oriented towards the ground and deploying your parachute on time. Skydiving is two parachutes, main parachute and reserve. Reserve is packed by an FAA rigger and I believe it's for one period of time it was 90 days in between pack jobs. I think it's 6 months in between pack jobs down but full. They open it up, the reserve, they open the parachute up, they inspect it, they make sure that the canopy is good, the lines are good, um the automatic activation devices, which are computers sensing uh fall rate, barometric pressure with a firing criteria, which will fire your reserve for you if you do nothing, which has hundreds of documented saves, by the way, um for an unconscious jumper, whatever it may be, or somebody, as crazy as it is to say, somebody falling through the air, forgetting to look at their altimeter. because they're having so much fun. It happens. So, cypresses or vigils or just AADs, automatic activation devices have saved hundreds of lives. So, that reserve parachute is packed by a rigger. Most civilian jumpers will pack their own main parachute. It takes 5 minutes for an experienced jumper, maybe 20 minutes for somebody who is learning. And you can go do I think the most jumps I've ever done in a day was probably 30. That was at a at a an event called a boogie where it's just as fast as you can go and you're just jumping jumping jumping. An average day for me when I lived in San Diego would be six to eight jumps. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast, and I've been taking it every day since. 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Again, go to drinkaga1.com/huberman to get a free bottle of the new Omega-3 co-enzyme Q10 with your first AG1 subscription. For somebody's first non-tandem jump, how high is the plane off the ground? 13,000 is about average. 13 AGL. So, if you're learning in Colorado or another Rocky Mountain state, you might only get 12 AGL because you might be up to 16 to 18,000 ft. Mhm. But there's [clears throat] flying with your belly oriented to the earth. There's people who like to do it vertically, either feet down or head down. People who fly on their back. There are formation jumps where they'll get a bunch of people together. I think the world record is hundreds of people linked up in freef fall. You can watch it from the ground. It's crazy to see. They'll have eight aircraft and you just see these just people bombing out of the back and they'll make these snowflake configurations and people just sitting there on the ground watching either naked eye or with uh with binoculars. And then at breakoff altitude, everybody's tracking away and then all these canopies open up and then on landing it gets a little bit wild. So it can get as much as you want. And then um wing suiting is just a part of that. But you can jump a a smaller wing suit. So if the suits I ended up jumping had a lot of fabric because I wanted to have a nice glide ratio and I wanted to be able to extend the amount of time in the air. You can get suits with a smaller wing which give you more maneuverability and you learn in those and then get a little bit bigger, a little bit bigger and bigger, bigger. So, as safely as possible, graduating your way towards those larger suits that can have more consequence. Uh you can end up on your back in the wing suits and flat spins. And I've seen people they you can get out of it. You need to get out of it quickly, but we're talking fully blown uh red eyes when they get to the ground from centrifugal force. and pretty quick, too. That's the skydiving world. Two parachutes. The base jumping world is you're now down to one parachute that is packed very similar to a reserve, but it's packed now by the jumper who is doing the base jumping. And the reason for that is you are generally very close to the ground at an altitude where a reserve isn't going to save you because it does take a couple hundred feet for a reserve to open up. And um in the US there's one place to legally do it 24/7 365. It's the Pine Bridge up in Twin Falls, which is where I learned it's, you know, the legality aspect is if people pursue to go that they want to go that way, um, do your research because there's some cities that had some problems with it. So, they made it a felony, which will change your life if you want to test gravity off of a building. I don't know if the capital F is necessarily worth it. Vegas and New York are two good examples of that. Um, most people start off with that bridge. Uh, and then an antenna is, of course, exactly that. radio antennas and there are other countries in the world where that is legal to do and a lot of times people will travel [gasps] uh buildings you can get permission uh depending um I know one of your guys worked with Red Bull not for Red Bull he clarified for us shockingly enough if you write a large check things that were once illegal can become legal for short periods of time so they will get permission to go off of buildings or you can go to Dubai where for I think it was a year they had this huge just it was fully just set up for legal base jumping off one of the top floors of one of those skyscrapers, which is unbelievable. And then Earth, which is obviously that and cliffs. Um, my first uh base jump off of a uh actually was from the bridge. I have I should I have done an antenna buildings not many building not many buildings but my first jump uh off the earth was Monte Brento in Italy which you jump open your canopy land walk across the street and there's an Italian espresso just waiting for you perfect it's basically heaven and then we stayed there for two and a half weeks and went into Lauder Brunin in Switzerland but I had been skydiving and flying a wings suit then I had to learn how base jump and then at some point you have to combine those two. So one day you have to go from never having pushed off of a cliff in a wings suit and having time flying it in the air to kind of bridging that gap where now you have this first 4 seconds that you have to deal with where the the suit feels really sloppy. It doesn't feel rigid and you can't really do anything until it powers up and you can pull away. So that's kind of the activities. The why I can't answer for anybody other than myself, but the why for me actually had nothing to do with the activity itself. And it is dangerous. There are some people who try to romanticize the danger of that. And if people want to part participate in things because they're dangerous and that's how they want to define themselves. I leave that to you. Um just, you know, be aware of the potential consequences you might get yourself into. For me, I got into that about three years after I got out of the Navy, and I didn't realize what it was I enjoyed so much, but it was the mental reset associated with that. Um, at about 1 minute out on a helicopter, for me, and I can only speak for me, your entire, you know, we talking about time, your entire circle of concern goes away, completely gone. And there are very few times in my life where I've ever been able to get into that headsp space. But it might be the most powerful headsp space I've ever been able to arrive into. And my ability to find my way there lasted for months afterwards because overseas, yeah, they ask you to do some some bizarre stuff, but you also likely at some point in in your career [clears throat] will have a family, maybe your first house, whatever it is, and like [ __ ] the washing machine just broke. And you're dealing with real life stuff. Did I Did I write enough checks before I left the before the digital age? Did I write enough checks before I left to make sure that the rent was already paid? Now, these are the things you're thinking about just normal everyday life, an argument with your spouse, your kids, the holidays you may have missed, all that stuff. You get on a helicopter and you start heading towards an objective and all that stuff starts to go away. And in about for me about the one minute and in until it e lands or you're stepping off it becomes this focus on the next 3 seconds of your life is the only thing I was capable of thinking about and that is such a beautiful place. God you want to talk about the ability to perform and not feel like you're necessarily you're not trying to force it. you're just there's books been written about the flow state for lack of a better term. Incredibly impactful and I didn't realize how much I needed that and I didn't realize how much that job was providing for me until it was gone. And then the static of everyday life just is overwhelming. Skydiving, I guess you could get that or maybe I got that when I first started, but after a few thousand jumps, about everything that's going going to go wrong, you're going to have your first cutaway. you're going to have a mount, you know, I mean, you're going to deal with your gear, your reserve is going to open. And so that that really narrowed focus, it actually starts opening back up. The base jumping world, I remember the first time I was the guy who taught me, he's like, "All right, you just climb over the edge of the rail here and you're looking at 486 ft. You test the wind by spitting and if you can if it drifts past a certain point, you're good to go. [laughter] So you can track your spit to where you are going to deck if you don't pull your parachute. Now on the first one, he's holding on to the pilot shoot so it rips it off for you so you don't have to worry about it. [snorts] But you want to talk about that right back into that space. Holy cow. That's what base jumping was for me. I had some of the the deepest conversations with my friends on the 4-hour hikes that would lead to a 90-second jump. and two weeks of those 90-cond jumps, I could get myself into such a more dialed headsp space for 6 months and be better at business, better, you know, a more patient father, a more patient husband. That's that to me is why and at some point it probably due to the death of my friends and I had found other activities that had started to provide that it crossed the metric for me where the risk was no longer worth worth the reward. I I have been skydiving since 1999. I could take 5 years off and go jump out of an airplane and I'd be fine. But I can't do that in the base jumping world. The currency and competency piece is so important. And then when I moved to Montana, my access to the drop zones and the ability to maintain currency and competency in that wings suit really decreased. So it got to a place where it just it wasn't worth the risk. Skydiving is still a bunch of fun, but I found other activities that I could kind of lose myself in. Maybe not to the same I don't think to the same degree. I I it's hard to describe zipping up in that suit with a maximal heart rate to the point where you're looking over your buddies like, "Hey, can are you hearing my heart too?" Cuz it's pretty loud. It's about the you know what I mean like that thrush in your ears. That's informative uh [laughter] to hear that your heart was maxed out because I wondered if you you know if adrenaline was low, if it was higher, you know, something had had happened systematically over the years in the teams where your adrenaline was set too low, you need to crank it above a certain threshold. Sounds like you were right where any rational person would be, which was terrifying because at some point you grab your little tail wing and you make a little nice little teepee with it and you get your toes to the edge and you check all your stuff and then you are just looking out into the abyss and you have to make yourself rock forward past a point of no return that if you change your mind, whoopsies, that doesn't work anymore. And then you need to have maximal human performance for about the next 4 seconds of your life if you want your life to continue. So if you're not scared in that environment, I would recommend you stop that activity immediately because you're not paying attention. It was terrifying and that's probably why I liked it so much. It was awesome. Don't get me wrong. Ripping down a mountain in Switzerland 6 feet off the ground almost playing tag with your shadow and then turning around and like carving through trees. Amazing. So, you're actually pretty low to the ground, just going very very fast over steep ground. Yes, if you want to be. Not everybody chooses to fly that way. And you can you can have on the exact same jump. I can think of one very spe uh specifically. It's at the far end of the valley in Switzerland. It's a 4-hour hike up. And it's I mean, you're getting water in your in your, you know, canteen or algaene out of like these glacially just spouting out of the rocks and there's sheep and stuff and, you know, it's like a postcard. You walk for 4 hours. You can have a really aggressive jump on that and fly for 60 seconds or you could flatten your suit out and just glide and glide for two and a half minutes. Same jump, different choices. Not that, you know, necessarily flying farther out. You still need to pack your parachute correctly and all those things, but your likelihood of impacting a tree at 100 miles an hour with your face is a lot better than flying six feet off the ground around corners that hopefully you've done some test jumps on and gotten lower and lower and lower and lower instead of just flash pointing that thing and hoping for the best as you come around the corner, which people do. How fast are you moving once you're above the ground? If you really bend those suits over, I'd say you could get them to about 120 face first. You're a human missile. It's awesome. [laughter] I can, you know, we can the those of us like myself listening to this can only wonder, right? You can [clears throat] feel it in the suit. So, again, the Ram Air inlets when you're a little bit flatter flying slow, you just it feels like you're on an air mattress is really what flying them feels like. As you bend the suit over and you're just violently diving at the ground, you can feel the suit. It's almost like it's it just your power meter is just all the way up. And so if you get in trouble, you can flatten that out. And that's how that's your safety. You can disconnect from the terrain, which is how unfortunately some people die. They're not paying attention to that sensation and they're slowly getting flatter and flatter and flatter and flatter. Then they encounter flat terrain and they don't have enough performance in the suit to clear it and they impact. But that when you're pitched over like that and that thing is just and you it feels like you are licking the largest 9bolt battery you've ever licked in your life. [laughter] Would your uh would your parents say that this this is a window into the young Andy Stump or or is this a departure or an an evolution? Devolution evolution. I don't know if they would have called that one. I don't think I I don't know if I would have called that activity if I would have said this one was going to be interesting to me. Let me ask you this. When you were a kid, I'm not recommending anyone do this, but when you were a kid and your and your guy [snorts] friends uh someone found one of the larger firecrackers available, were you the kid that would hold it after it was lit until the last second and then throw it? Cuz I knew that kid, but it wasn't me. Does he still have both hands? Uh yes. But the he was a great skateboarder by the way between pro skateboarder right out of high school. Um moved on to other things eventually. I think those things were correlated right. I he big railings like he had a very very good relationship with confronting fear. There was another kid in our crew who would have been around the corner the moment the thing came out. Okay. I was neither of those kids. Yeah. Right. And then there's a distribution in the middle. Where were you? My answer is not going to make sense to you because holding it that long sounds dangerous. [laughter] It is dangerous, but wings suit. I know. That's what I'm saying. It's not going to make sense. That sounds dangerous, but just for the sake of danger, which somebody could 100% say about base jumping as well, but I don't know if holding on to say an M80 and wondering, you know, how long you can provides for you that mental I mean, I'm talking about your canopy opens, you land, you're laying in a [ __ ] meadow in Switzerland on your back like at a sense of ease and peace. I don't think you're getting that from an M80. Yeah, the reason I ask is that, you know, there are a lot of questions that the scientist in me wants to know about, you know, resetting of adrenaline set points and, you know, and because people can become desensitized to to um high-risisk, high consequence type situations. You see that in the wing suiting community, I would say specifically the wings suit based jumping community, the fatality rate is high. I would never tell anybody that it is a safe activity, but I think you can do it as safely as possible. There's still immense residual risk, so you have to ask yourself, what is it worth? If we were to plot out um number of wings suit jumps and plot fatality time of fatality relative to first jump, right? So, so that the question like the area under the curve. So, are you getting to address what you just said, are you getting more deaths the longer people have been doing it independent of the number of jumps, right? You can't really do that experiment. It's it's not a perfect experiment. The the question is, are people getting more dangerous to themselves because they need they're pushing further and further into the abyss, getting closer to the edge, uh, taking risks, or is the novice more dangerous because they're a novice? I think the Dunning Krueger effect is always the most dangerous aspect of it. I think it would probably track, you certainly see people, especially in the content age, I've seen people reach out, not to me, but to forums, hey, I just want to get into wings suit base jumping as fast as possible. And everybody on there is like, whoa, no, you need to go I mean, most people will recommend skydiving 200 jumps to even before you put a wings suit on, which for most people who aren't doing it professionally, that's going to take a year or two. It's a slow progression. But that person reaching out saying that doesn't have time for that. So you're definitely going to get some people early on. The guys who are around the longest, the ones that I know who are kind of the titans in the sport. It's not that I don't worry about them. I worry less. I think it's maybe more. I honestly I think it's that Dunning Krueger curve where it's going to get people. Especially when let's say you do this amazing job, right? you ripping around a corner and things you learn later on like, hey, is it ascending or descending thermals right now? Where's the wind coming from? What type of day is this? Is the slope I'm just jumped off. Maybe it was a westernfacing slope that I jumped towards and I felt this amazing upbrush of air, which is what you want to feel on an exit point. Same thing as why airplanes take off into the wind. It helps with performance. Well, as I am cruising down this mountain, am I thinking about the fact that threequarters of it is covered in the shade and maybe the thermals have swished along the way and you're going to start feeling this pressure of almost a hand on your back? You, you know, you do it the first time you do that jump and you survive. The dangerous thing to say is nailed it. But did you nail it or did you get away with it? And that's what kills people. And that's that perfect Dunning Krueger ascending line. And there's a a quote that should be stamped into everyone's brain, young and old. Did Did you nail it or did you get away with it? Because it translates to a lot of areas of life that could spare people a lot of pain and some important insights. I got away with it more than I nailed it. I'm I am Are you just being humble? No. Okay. No, you don't know what you don't know until you see somebody else get bit by the same thing or you're on a jump with somebody and only one of the three makes it out or two of the three makes it out and they all had the same idea and plan and you describe some of that in your book. I don't want to give that story away but with Alex specifically. I wasn't there for Alex's jump but I had jumped with Alex enough for years. The the one thing I wish I could do looking back with him is I was there with him for some close calls that he had. A few were bad decisions that he I would like to think corrected for because there there is a phase in anything that you're doing that my uh instructor taught me how to fly helicopters. He's like, "Listen, once you know better, you can do better. But there's a phase where you don't know any better. And so you think what you're doing is correct until either somebody points it out or you watch something so horrific happen and you pay attention to an investigation afterwards or a debrief afterwards and you can learn from that. But with uh with Alex, I I wish I could go back and just honestly slap him around a little bit because that's what it would take for him to pay attention. He would be appreciative of it, I think, if he understood what it would save. But I I would associate his death directly also with that Dunn and Krueger curve. And he had been doing it for years. That doesn't mean you're out of that. It's that middle area where you think you have everything dialed. I think he had gotten away with it more than he had nailed it. And I and I had to. Would you let your kids squirrel suit? Do I have the right to stop them? knowing the risk. I mean, I would do everything I could to prepare them as much as possible and and by that I mean scare the absolute dog [ __ ] out of them with the reality and confront them with the actual reality of it. Show them how long it would actually take, what they would need to do, what they would need to sacrifice in order to be able to get at that level. But then if they wanted to make that choice, I don't feel like I have the right to stand in between them and that desire. Appreciate the honest answer. I'm sure I'm sure they do, too. I don't know if your wife appreciates that particular answer, but we'll ask her. I don't get involved in marital disputes. That's a That's a We don't have any. Our relationship is perfect. [laughter] Excellent. Excellent answer. Wait, you've been married before. No, that was that was a joke. That is correct. I tell you what, I learned some stuff. I learned some stuff. You talk very openly in in the book. I mean, to the extent you don't reveal specifics, but about the the challenges of of uh of that the ending of that first marriage, hardest thing I've ever done in my life. People think that being a seal is hard, and it is. Um, but a lot of that is truncated with, hey, we're going to go overseas for this short period of time and time away, and it can be physiologically and psychologically challenging. But once you're in that community, I didn't encounter anything. The military never asked me to do anything that that got me to a place where I was judging or asking myself what type of person I was or if I was a good enough person to be able to continue going forward with anybody other than just myself. Like those questions I wasn't asking myself in the military at the lowest points of a nearly 2-year divorce process. That was very contentious. And quite frankly, the reason I I don't go into details is I have built a larger or a platform and my ex-wife doesn't have one. And that's the fairest way to be about it. I totally respect that. If people want to go talk with her, trust me, I know the story you're going to get. Enjoy it. Believe what you want to believe. I always tell people if you hear bad stuff about me, please believe That's what you tell them. Yeah. I mean, why not? It it I am certainly not everybody's cup of tea. There's no way to please everybody ever. Amen to that. So if somebody is out there who wants to run me through the mud, cool. Just believe every word that you are told if you want to. But if you want to get the real spit, come hang out with me for a bit and maybe compare and contrast those two things. But if you don't want to do that, cool. Yeah, that's on you. It took every tool that I wrote about in that book to get through that circle of influence, circle of concern, all the things that I was worried about. What can I do today? Breaking time down into the shortest chunks humanly possible. controlling how I talk to myself. It was absolutely soulc crushing 10 out of 10. Do not recommend. Yeah, zero stars on Trip Adviser. Yeah, that portion of the book um stopped me, I have to say. And and I uh there were other parts of the book that that paused me where I was like, whoa, I didn't expect this coming. And you know, I take notes on what I listen to. I also read the hard copy. I should have mentioned that earlier. I like to do both. It's really helpful for me. Uh I think maybe other people would benefit from that as well. But that segment where you said this is the hardest thing I'd ever been through and it was as you put it again soul crushing. And what I gathered was and I certainly can say I've experienced this before in a different context that when other people's narratives start to the boundaries between other people's narratives and and your narratives and then and in your case kids were being affected which is um which is huge as a child of a divorced parents. I think it's also probably got to be somewhat different. you I mean you talk very kindly of your own parents your story of of of your relationship to your mom and her passing which we can also get to that also stopped me also got me to call my mom um [laughter] so she'll thank you right I call my mom you know well you know time and you know and you never know how much you have left you never know how much time you have left but what inspired you to talk about that in particular I know you're not one of these guys and you know I don't want to say team guys in particular But you're not one of these guys who wants to paint a perfect picture of himself. Yeah. But talking about how a contentious divorce came close to, you know, brought you really close to your edge, maybe to your edge, but fortunately not over it. It's an interesting choice and one that I appreciate and I know readers will appreciate. It humanized the whole thing. But what at what point did you decide that you wanted that in the book? I mean, probably from the beginning. I think one of the biggest mistakes people would make is if they would look at a job like the one I used to have and think that the people who do it are not normal people. I was talking with uh Chris Williamson about this and it's a mistake that people make. There's no Captain America shield and cape and cowl that you actually wear. The things they ask you to do are sometimes pretty nutty. But after that, you go take your gear off, clean yourself up, get some food, get together with the guys, and you just talk about normal dayto-day [ __ ] If you were having an argument with your wife before you went out on an operation, you're coming back to that. If your house would had burned down, which I wish I could say I didn't know somebody's house burned down, but I did. They got that notification shortly before we went out on objective. Hopefully didn't allow that to invade their mental thought process during, but when they came back, that's what they're dealing with. Then you come back from deployment and you're presented with all of those things. It's just it is such a mistake to think that there are people out there who have everything figured out or that are impervious to the things that are damaging to you as the person. I started doing Q&A sessions on Friday for my show because I kept getting just this volume and wave of emails [snorts] and at first I wasn't really trying to, you know, tunch them into buckets and I thought if I started doing the Friday episodes it would decrease but instead it m multiplied them by orders of magnitude and I realized there really were some deep themes. You know, one of them is I I just don't know how to get started on my goals. But another one is and this is the most dangerous one. I feel like I'm alone. I feel like I'm the only person dealing with this. How can you give me some advice? I look at your life from the outside and it seems like you just have, you know, you were able to do all these hard physical things. What would you do if you were me? I'm like, dude, I am you. So, you have to put that in there. How can you not? I mean, at the end of the day, I don't know what I want to do with my life, but I want to try to help people. I don't think you can do that if you're trying to sell [ __ ] But I do think you can help if you can talk about your own personal experiences and your own mistakes and the thing the the things that you have suffered with not always past tense because my life is certainly not perfect and I go through seasons of my life now as does everybody. Why not be honest about that? Why try to portray this, you know, follow my 12step program for 1999 every month and you're going to have it all figured out? Those are some of the most unhappy people that I know, by the way. and often times not nearly as successful as they are presenting themselves. Definitely. I would rather just be like, "Listen, you think your life is bad? Why don't you put a seatelt on your chair? I got a little story for you." And then people hit, they're like, "What? You mean you guys deal with that stuff, too?" It's like, "Yes, that's the whole point. You're not alone. You're not unique in this." So, I think from the very beginning of deciding to write it, I I didn't know necessarily that I would that I would use that particular example, but if it's the most difficult thing I've done in my life, I'm obligated to put that in there and talk about it as openly as possible while maintaining the privacy of the other person involved. Yeah, I was impressed how you m maintained respect for your kids, for your ex-wife, your your current relationship, you know, and um and at the same time acknowledged that, you know, the the exchange was anything but cordial. It was anything but cordial. And you know, I've talked about this before, but and I don't know if it made it in the book, but I lost contact with my oldest son for 18 months. I was the one who initiated the end of the relationship, and he was the oldest at the time. And I don't know if it was a matter of him being in a a certain phase of his own life. And dude, you know the deal. Being a a young man is not the easiest path, nor is being a young woman by any stretch. But it's really interesting how adults forget how difficult it was in those years to just get through the day when you think that everything is you don't even know who you are. You're trying to figure it all out. But for 18 months, I I tried calling him. I tried texting him. I tried writing him letters to his mom's house. I would pull up next to him at a parking lot that he would go to before he went to work and he would burn [clears throat] out out of the parking lot without even acknowledging that I was there. And you think SEEL training is hard? Imagine something that you don't have the vocabulary to describe how much you love and thinking every day, I don't know if I'm going to get this back. What else can I do? And now thankfully by staying the course I think I have a closer relationship. I mean and not everybody has that that outcome but our relationship is probably closer than it has ever been. and he'll call and ask for my advice or just want to bounce stuff off of me, which I think as a parent, like if your kids are soliciting your time to ask questions, whatever it is you're doing, stop doing that and take the time because it's pretty awesome and it means that they care about what you say. But I thought that was gone, man. You want to talk about soularching? There's nothing I did in the SEAL teams that made me wonder whether or not I was a good enough man to still exist. But that experience did. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Function. Function provides over 160 advanced lab tests to give you a clear snapshot of your bodily health. This snapshot gives you insights into your heart health, your hormone health, autoimmune function, nutrient levels, and much more. They've also recently added access to advanced MRI and CT scans. 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