00:00:00 – Intro

full episode

Paul: Here we are.

Brent: Here we are.

Paul: Are we actually recording?

Brent: We are recording the Full Mental Bracket podcast.

Paul: It’s here.

Brent: No, if you’re looking for the half bracket, you’re on the wrong channel.

Paul: Round two.

Brent: 100% or go back.

Paul: [Laughs]

Brent: Something. We’ll work on that. It needs to be catchier.

Paul: Don’t give up.

Brent: Don’t give up. Yes.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: So, we are continuing from a theme that we introduced on our previous episode, which was living your life—seeing your life—as an epic story.

Paul: Ah

Brent: And so, we’re going to boil that down into what it’s like to be a protagonist.

Announcer:  Transforming your life through story. This is The Full Mental Bracket.

Brent: We were so excited in our first—

Paul: Yeah

Brent: …Inaugural…. smashing the champagne into the ship episode, that we kind of skipped where we got this whole story thing from.

Paul: Oh yeah

Brent: It’s like we invented the art of story. “Well, Paul and I were sitting around a campfire in a cave as cavemen and we invented a story,” but that’s not true.

Paul: [laughs] No, it’s not. Lots of research behind this.

Brent: Yes.

Brent: So, in addition to just story, what we’ve been kind of dealing—what we’ve been kind of leaning into is the Hero’s Journey story-form, which is an ancient form. It was…I don’t know if discovered, but proposed and codified by Campbell.

Paul: Good word.

Brent: Codified. It wasn’t a cod before, but it was— [laughs] it was a trout before when he was done, it was a cod, 100 percent whitefish. I don’t know if that’s good or not being a white fish. Anyway. So yeah, he did that in what is it? 1949?

Paul: Yeah, it was a while, back.

Brent: And he was basically—He’s more of like a sociologist or anthropologist.

Paul: Mm-hmm

Brent: He’s like, “Hey I’ve noticed that all these famous stories and legends that everyone (has) they have these common elements.” And so he kind of listed these common elements and they became the Hero’s Journey. And then sometime later, Vogler, I believe his name is. He shrunk that down and Hollywoodized it, it became part of the Lion King. It became part of—it was part of Star Wars, and then all these Hollywood writers are like, “Oh, this is great, this is where the magic is. I can turn off my brain and just follow the Hero’s Journey.” And so, in some corners of the world, it’s kind of worn out, a little overdone, but we’re looking at it a different way.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: So hopefully, if it’s overworn, you’ll have patience with us. If you’ve never heard of it before, this is going to be a journey of exploration.

Paul: And if I’m hearing you correctly, it sounds like Hollywood monopolized on this…what we’re calling a natural operation of the brain.

Brent: Yeah. The native format of the brain…We said last week that story is the native format of the brain.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: And then the Hero’s Journey is a type of formatting, a skeleton for that story—

Paul: Skeleton. That’s good.

Brent: And it made Star Wars a bazillion dollars. And it made Lion King a bazillion dollars. And these writers are like, “Do you smell that money in the air?”

Paul: [laughs]

Brent: We can put Hero’s Journey in everything!

Paul: Yes.

Brent: Well, the most recent people to get on that bandwagon were actual social psychologists.

Paul: Um hm

Brent: And Paul and I came across this paper. You know—Paul and I, when we’re not doing the podcast—we’re knee-deep in research papers, and you know… No, no, I’m making this entirely up. That is not true.

Paul: Well, for the last couple months, that’s actually been true.

Brent: Well, in preparation for the show, we’ve been kind of going back to school a little bit, but that’s…when you picture us, you know, we’re not in a shared man cave, tossing papers back and forth. Although…

Paul: That does sound appealing, though.

Brent: That could be fun, though, yeah.

Paul: Yeah…”Hello, Brent? What’s the topic today?”

Brent: All right. So, this group of scientists, Benjamin Rogers and company—there was a whole bunch of them. And they did a study…an experiment where they had a streamlined version of the Hero’s Journey. And they challenged people to apply that—to restate their life in terms of those phrases and phases. And they measured them with surveys before and after. And they seemed to come out of that feeling like their lives were more meaningful. Their lives didn’t change before and after. They didn’t inject meaning in them, but they gave them a new viewpoint. And when they came out, they’re like, “Oh, I didn’t see my life like that. This is great.”

Paul: This has been appealing to me, too, because I actually was able to take part in some research years ago and cultivating meaning in people’s lives. And Viktor Frankl is a huge influence. Man’s Search for Meaning. I mean, purpose and meaning is a huge topic.

Brent: Frankl is amazing.

Paul: Yes. I’ll reference him later.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: You know, as I mentioned, I did some time in boot camp as part of my military experience. You know, they take a bunch of stuff away from you. That was nothing compared to Frankl and like a Holocaust camp.

Paul: Right.

Brent: And literally everything taken away from him. It’s like the only thing I got left is my attitude. And you can’t take that. It’s like, “I can make it bad.” Like, “No, you can’t.”

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: It’s like that guy is just got mental power. Just amazing.

Paul: Talk about a protagonist.

Brent: Yes. Yes.

Paul: Viktor Frankl was the protagonist of his story.

Brent: You know in the Marines you talk about mental toughness, but I don’t think I (ever) met anyone I think can hold a candle to Frankl. He was like…He sounds like a real gentle guy, but his brain was buff like Schwarzenegger [sound effect]. And like you can’t you can’t shake—you can’t shake him.

Paul: I see what you did there.

Brent: What did I do?

Paul: Oh, you just brought that concept of mental strength, into it—

Brent: Oh yeah, well you know I think about it a lot.

Paul: uh-huh Well, I know I was going to mention him earlier, and you pretty much quoted him just a second ago, but I love what I had typed into this. Viktor Frankl, he believed that even in the most horrific and dehumanizing situation, everything can be taken from us except for one thing, the last of the human freedoms: the freedom to choose one’s attitude.

Brent: Right.

Paul: Which you summed up earlier.

Brent: And I think that’s a powerful phrase. I think we—I think we kind of dismiss it sometimes because, you know, you kind of grew up with that from your parents. So like, “I don’t like your attitude, change your attitude.” And instantly it gets this rebellious button and it’s like, change your attitude. It sounds like you’re a kid or something, but it’s a superpower.

Paul: It really is something. Yeah, it’s—it’s something to take hold of.

Brent: You know, and there was this whole catchy phrase for a while, like, what was it, “Your attitude determines your altitude?”

Paul: uh, huh

Brent: But I googled it and like attitude is like an aviation term. It’s the angle that your plane is at.

Paul: Ooo. I like that.

Brent: Your attitude is whether your plane is aimed away from the earth or aimed towards crashing to the earth.

Paul: I love it.

Brent: That literally, if I understand it correctly and remember it correctly, that is your attitude.

Paul: Yeah…If we’re talking about what makes it a skill, you know, uh we all of us have this negativity bias, right?

Brent: Right

Paul: And that’s our brain’s way of protecting us.

Brent: From danger.

Paul: Yeah. Um, so, in order to rise above that, we have to apply a skill. We have to develop…

Brent: Yes

Paul: …a skill.

Brent: That’s an excellent point. Our brain, from survival mode, is biased to look at danger, look at negativity.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: You know, “That’s going to bite me, that car’s going to crash, she hates me,” this is, everything—it’s the worst possible. Your brain is wired for survival and brings up the worst possible explanations for everything, which is great for keeping you alive, but it makes you miserable. You have to override that like, “Thank you autopilot, but I’ll take it from here. I don’t think she really—after 29 years of marriage. I don’t think she really hates me I think maybe there might be another explanation there.”

Paul: I like that. I actually use a tool in counseling called thank the brain.

Brent: Really?

Paul: But I really like this idea. Thank the autopilot.

Brent: I’m going to borrow it. “I must thank my brain It’s really working overtime today. Good job.”

Paul: [laughing]

Paul: Step aside for just a moment, though. I…We’ve got to get out of this frame of mind here. Speaking of…

Brent: Yes. My friend.

Paul: Back to Hero’s Journey, back to Rogers.

Brent: Right, so Rogers and company they reduced the Hero’s Journey so Campbell’s original version was 27 steps.

(Fact check – Campbell’s original formulation of Hero’s Journey include 17 stages)

Paul: It sounds like me.

Brent: So, sit down audience we’re going to go through all…no we’re not we are not and then Vogler reduced it to 17 steps but still that was a lot.

(Fact check – Vogler’s version of Hero’s Journey included 12 stages)

Paul: Still a lot.

Brent: And then so Rogers and company reduced it to seven steps.

Paul: Yes

Brent: And then because we’re even lazier than Rogers and company we reduced it to six steps.

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: It’s a six-step program. Not really. But it’s six elements in the Hero’s Journey.

Paul: And really, we’ve got like two kind of—

Brent: Yeah, we did that kind of—basically because we meshed two of them together. Maybe it’s not because we’re lazy. We’re just not as smart as Rogers and co. They saw distinct steps. And we just—it looked like all mashed potatoes to us. And so we just kind of ran with it.

Paul: That is true. That’s why it’s taken three months to get ready for this [laughs].

Brent: Good job, Rogers and Co. We would never mean to say that you’re over-organized or discriminating or whatever.

Announcer: Full Mental Bracket

Paul: I bet that you could guess what number one is.

Brent: Being a protagonist.

Paul: Good guess.

Brent: Shall we list all of them?

Paul: Why not?

Brent: And quiz them later?

Paul: Okay.

Brent: So, the six elements of a Hero’s Journey is that you have a protagonist, which we’re going to explain today what that means. The protagonist then undertakes a quest. In the process of undertaking this quest, they find their tribe: their allies, and their helpers, and their…

Paul:  Support?

Brent: Their brainy people…Their mentors. Yes, brainy people. “Come, brainy people.” They face obstacles, they overcome those obstacles and transform, and then they return with a legacy.

Paul: Aw

Brent: That’s the hero Journey in a nutshell. Like I said, other people break it down in more detail, but that’s the high points. And those are the points that we found as we were looking at it. As Rogers found, this can really help people think about their lives. It doesn’t change your life inherently. It’s not like, “Here’s a million dollars,” or “Here’s a new super skill,” or “Here’s, I’m inherently making you better.” It changes the way that you’re looking at your life.

Paul: It really does.

Brent: It gives you a tool for cranking that attitude in a different direction.

Paul: Yeah.It’s such an important tool. And I think it’s pretty unique that an anthropologist, you know, back in the 1940s, you know, discovered this. And then psychology came along. It’s like, “Hey, maybe he’s on to something.”

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: Right? So, I was just looking up narrative therapy. The other day and …this will be real quick. There’s a there’s a group called the Dulwich Center. It’s the gateway to narrative therapy and community work.

Brent: All right, so I’m trying to resist this joke, but there are dual witches running this center?

Paul: [laughs] No, I believe that this is a in another country. So it’s—

Brent: Okay.

Paul: DUL

Brent: Yes. I mean, I’m not biased. I’m not I’m not going to stop him, but I was curious.

Paul: D-U-L-W-I-C-H

Brent: I gottcha.

Paul: Yes. Yes. So, all I’m going to do is run down all of this…

Brent: Okay.

Paul:  … research and what the Hero’s Journey has been researched and has been found to be effective in treating…

Brent: Oh yeah.

Paul:  …in the mental health world.

Brent: Tell me.

Paul: So, we got, I mean, 30-plus articles just on this page. You got resilience—

Brent: Okay.

Paul: Increases resilience. The Hero’s Journey is effective in career counseling.

Brent: Okay

Paul: It’s effective in dealing with chronic pain.

Brent: I can see that.

Paul: It’s effective with schizophrenia. Post-traumatic stress.

Brent: Okay

Paul: which I’m aware of. Social phobias. Autism. What else? ADHD.

Brent: Really?

Paul: Yes.

Brent: Okay.

Paul: Self-harm.

Brent: Okay.

Paul: Body image.

Brent: All right.

Paul: Major depression.

Brent: Yeah, I can see that.

Paul: Anxiety.

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: And last but not least, it improves academics…if children can see their lives through the Hero’s Journey.

Brent: Yes!Yes. I can see that. I remember as a kid, just like, “math hates me,” but if I didn’t have—had a different framework of like, an obstacle I had to overcome to level up as a hero, you know.

Paul: I really do think that this idea, it was instilled in me somehow. I mean, I’ve got a couple people I can name, but my life at some point changed when I felt like I was in an epic story and when my life had purpose and meaning and that every obstacle that I was dealing with was going to help me become everything that God wanted me to be or he had created me to be.

Brent: I like that. And I think we talked last episode about my time machine thing. I want to go in the time machine and undo all my mistakes. And then I realized that that’s who made me what I was.

Paul: Uh, exactly.

Brent: And if you go back and…you tear down all the two by fours, then your building falls apart.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: Oh, man. I thing—an idea that Paul and I had is like, I don’t think I haven’t come across anyone that explicitly spelled this out, except for when we were talking about it—is like, maybe the reason that a Hero’s Journey is so popular over the centuries and the millennia is not just because it’s just this randomly popular story-form, but because it describes a person having a meaningful life.

Paul: Ah Yeah, I like that.

Brent: Yeah. And so—

Paul: I like that perspective.

Brent: Yeah. And so, it was like, “Maybe that’s why it’s so popular.” Maybe that’s how it connects—it connects for us, because although we may struggle to see the purpose in our struggles and our environment and our situation, we see someone else like, “Oh, that’s what it looks like to live with purpose.”

Paul: Because beforehand, it’s it can be confusing.

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: I mean, you’re experiencing, you know, adversity and you’re experiencing, you know, twists and turns in life and…

Brent: Well, that’s one of the beautiful things of the story is that—it’s like living your life—It’s like you’re in a in a tiny little raft in the Whitewater Rapids. I’ve done a lot of rafting. I enjoy it. [sound effect] You’re going up and down. You’re going crazy. But if you’re looking at a story—if you’re looking at your life as a story, then you’ve literally—your perspective is literally risen above and you’re looking down at the boat. You’re looking down at the waves.

Paul: Aaah

Brent: You have a different perspective. Like, “Oh, yeah. I see there’s a calm patch after that,” and he goes around the corner, “oh, yeah, I see.” But when you’re down in it, it’s like, “I’m drowning. I’m going to die. I’m going to die.” And so, story gives you like the psychological distance…

Paul: That’s good

Brent: …from the events of your life and you can look at it from a different perspective.

Paul: Gives you Objectivity.

Brent: Yes.

Paul: Wow.

Brent: So much of our struggles are subjective. And if you can find even a tiny bit of objectivity, I think it’s very helpful.

Paul: Valuable.

Announcer: Full Mental Bracket

Brent: Audience that was our breakthrough. Hero’s Journey kind of represents, describes, does something about a meaningful life. And then as we mentioned in our previous episode, you know, the thing that we do with stories—we sometimes don’t apply that to our lives. We watch stories and we’re entertained by them, but then we don’t actually learn from them. Like, “Hey I can instead of just watching Neo or Luke Skywalker or Katniss, or  whoever, I can do what they did in a situation that’s similar to mine in my life.”

Paul: Yes.

Brent: And that next step is kind of what we’re talking about: applying story.

Paul: And I think that that’s why it’s so important to remember that being a protagonist doesn’t mean that it’s just all about you.

Brent: Right. Right.

Paul: Right.

Brent: And that is an important point that we have to clear up.

Paul: Yeah. I know it’s a little ways down.

Brent: Right. Right. No. And I think we’re getting there. So, when you become a protagonist, we’re talking about becoming the central character—the central hero of your life. But a lot of people, they hear that and they’re like, “Oh, that’s right. Life’s all about me.” And like, that’s not what we’re saying.

Paul: [negative murmur]

Brent: It’s like you are the central character of your life. You have to be engaged in your life. You have to be trying to solve your own problems. You need to be embracing your own adversity as opposed to holding back and waiting to be rescued, or complaining ,or any other sort of victim type of thing.

Paul: That’s it.

Brent: But at the same time, everyone else is also the hero of their stories and your stories are interweaving with their stories for this glorious narrative.

Paul: Yeah. Yes.

Brent: And if you think—and that’s one thing, like if you watch—not novels so much, novels are good about different viewpoints—but if you watch like, I don’t know, Die Hard or something like that, you’re just—you’re with—you’re basically with the hero the whole time.

Paul: Right.

Brent: And even when you’re not it’s—these characters are described in a way that makes it clear that they’re not the hero. They’re shallow characters, or they don’t get much screen time and every time—every two seconds we look back to see what John McClane’s doing. It makes it clear that it’s his story.

Paul: Right.

Brent: But life is not like that.

Paul: No.

Brent: It feels like that. But all the “bit players,” air quotes, are also heroes of their own story. And our story has to interweave and intertwine with them. And we have to respect them, and honor them, and try to help them. Because ideally, our story can’t be just about us. It’s got to be more than just us.

Paul: Well, and you can see that inherent in what happens to us when we’re listening—

Brent: Yeah

Paul: —Or when we’re watching someone else’s story, because we see ourselves and suddenly we’re motivated to be the protagonist. To take on the struggle or the quest that’s in front of us. Whereas earlier, we weren’t quite sure how to, how to approach it. We weren’t quite sure how to face it. And then all of a sudden we’re like, “That’s the way we can do it right there.”

Brent: And a lot of times it’s because there’s a need in the community. There’s—and we’ll get to that in another episode—but there’s like, there’s a need in the community. You’re like, I’m fine to hide away in the village, on the couch, or whatever, but this need gets so big—

Paul: [affirmative murmur]

Brent: —That we have to accept the quest. And it impacts the main character, but it also impacts the whole…the whole community. And that’s kind of what I was talking about. It’s like—you talk about today—in our life today it’s like, “I don’t understand why I’m not happy. I mean, I have everything I want and every convenience and I can tap my phone, and tap my microwave, and everything happens instantly and I have everything I want for my life and I’m not happy.” It’s like, “Well, because maybe you’re aiming too low. You’re just trying to meet just your wants and your needs and you’re ignoring being a part of anything bigger.” The research is there. People who are involved in things bigger, things outside of themselves, generosity—

Paul: Yes.

Brent: —or charity, or religious, or whatever—something bigger than themselves are measurably happier than people who are just focused on just their own wants and satisfying their own desires.

Paul: Measureably.

Brent: Measurably.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: There’s a happy meter—We’ll invent one, a happ-meter. “Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.” Like a scene from Alien. “Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Oh, I’m getting happier.” “He’s getting happier.”

Paul: Yeah

Brent: That’d be great.

Paul: It’s funny that you’re talking about happiness because I stumbled in all this research that we’ve been doing. I stumbled on this idea…It was actually, it was G.K. Chesterton. Yeah. And he was talking about happiness as being something that connects us to the supernatural. And I was like, “hold on.” That’s not typically what you hear from some people, because I think people want to reduce happiness to being only emotional.

Brent: Right.

Paul: But I think what we’re saying is that happiness is more of a gauge. Definitely a gauge of things that are, you know, going according to plan.

Brent: Right.

Paul: However, what we—I feel like what we’ve uncovered today—we uncovered! That’s what we do—

Brent: We discovered something that’s uncovered and discovered and excavated a mine?

Paul: Yes.

Brent: That’s great.

Paul: That it’s not just when things go according to plan that creates happiness. It’s having a life of meaning and purpose.

Brent: Yes.

Paul: Because we just said it’s measurable.

Brent: A tiny word-geek aside, um, if you dial down on the actual word “happiness”, it’s rooted in “happenstance.” In “All my circumstances are aligning perfectly to make my life as great as possible.” And that’s why happiness is so hard to find, because happiness is external.

Paul: Right.

Brent: We should probably mention that on this podcast, about an external and internal locus of control.

Paul: [laughs]

Brent: That should be something we should probably bring up in the next couple minutes. But happiness is all about having an external…

Paul: Good idea.

Brent: …an external (locus), like “All my circumstances are great, therefore I am happy with my life.” But if you— you just cede your power, you give away your power, to everything outside of you. The weather determines my happiness. Whether my wife is nice or grumpy today determines my happiness. Whether my boss appreciates me determines my happiness. And you’re giving away all your power to all these external things.

Paul: Sounds like a passive observer.

Brent: Yes. Which would not be a protagonist.

Paul: Not a protagonist.

Announcer:  This is The Full Mental Bracket.

Brent: Tell us about a protagonist.

Paul: So, there’s a protagonist mindset, and there’s a few things that define what this mindset looks like. So definitely the mindset is not going to be what we just said, is this victim mentality. I’ll tell you what it’s not, though. It’s not just, not-being-a-victim.

Brent: Alright.

Paul: It’s also not being a protagonist that overshoots on assertiveness.

Brent: Ahh, Yeah. When I was looking at this—

Paul: Yes.

Brent: I was looking just at—as I think we mentioned last (episode)—I was on the couch and I wanted to get back in the adventure, and that was my two modes. It was either you’re passive, waiting for life to fix itself, or you were active, and there was only two modes. And then Paul says, “You know, there’s a third mode. “I’m like, “Shh, don’t talk about that right now.”

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: But you know—so my initial—when I was thinking about it, I thought a protagonist mindset is opposite to a victim mindset. A victim mindset is, “There’s nothing I can do. I have an external locus of control.” —We need to define that. So locus of control is like the steering wheel of your life. It’s just a fancy word to make us feel smarter. Locus, locus, locus. You feel my IQ going up? I feel it.

Paul: Are you talking about an insect, or…?

Brent: No, not a locust.

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: So, I googled this too because I was trying to understand it. Locus is similar to focus. So focus is the point that you look at. Locus is kind of the point where the telescope is at. So, it’s kind of weird, focus is the way you look at it, but locus is where the controls are actually positioned.

Paul: Aah.

Brent: So, the locus of control is this: “Is your steering wheel inside the car or is it outside the car?”

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: Are you just a victim as someone is driving your car around going, “No, not that way, not that way, no, we’re going to crash.” Or are you—steering wheel inside the car and you’re actually driving the car?

Paul: Man, man the visual on that is hilarious.

Brent: Then you brought up this antagonist thing where like, they’re grabbing everyone else’s steering wheel and driving their car for them.

Paul: That’s it, that’s it.

Brent: It’s like, that’s genius.

Paul: They’re reaching through the window—

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: They’re like, “You need to go this way.”

Brent: Yes.

Paul: “You will go this way.”

Brent: So, I was looking at it as very similar, yes/no, black/white, but we took it beyond to a dialectic where sometimes the best setting is in the middle of two extremes rather than just…

Paul: And that’s what we do here, right?

Brent: Yes.

Paul: That’s what we do here.

Brent: Middle ground is often very powerful.

Paul: Yeah. And when I think of internal external locus of control, I like to remind people because people will feel validated when you tell them, “There still are things happening out in the street. You still have to be a defensive driver.” Right?

Brent: Right.

Paul: Right. It’s not like you grab the steering wheel and now it’s just, you know, going straight. You know, you’re going to have to turn, you’re going to have to do—I mean, you’re going to have to deal with the adversity. Nonetheless, it is you steering that wheel.

Brent: Correct. I mean, I was talking about the whitewater rafting and something I learned very quickly is that if you steer the front of the boat into the waves, you tend to stay in the boat. If you don’t, [laughing] if you hit the waves sideways, you and the boat part company very rapidly.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: So, you can’t control those waves. They’re going to be fast. They’re white. They’re rushing. They’re going up and down. But your attitude, the direction of your boat, really changes how you experience that.

Paul: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Brent: And people who don’t, people are like, “Oh, I’m helpless”— and some people do, they panic and their boat goes in sideways. And it’s like, “So that was your first mistake was you panicked and you threw your oars away and you lost all control of your boat and then you got dumped out of it.”

Paul: Man. Training. You got to train the brain.

Brent: And that’s—and no one is great at that the first time around, they’ve got to practice. Hey, if I keep my nose pointed this way, it works a little bit better.

Paul: No one makes the first jump.

Brent: No one makes the first jump.

Paul: Well, I’m from the North, so everything you just said makes sense to me when it comes to driving on ice.

Brent: Oh, OK. There we go. Yeah.

Paul: Right. Yeah. I mean, again, negativity bias, right, is (to) jerk the steering wheel the opposite direction.

Brent: Yes. And just kind of over control, overshoot,

Paul: Overshoot.

Brent: Overshoot.

Paul: Um, but then you’ve got the training, right?

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: And, you know, you’re told this—you know, growing up north—you’re told this when you’re riding in the car at five years old, “OK, Paul.We’re sliding and I just want you to know what’s happening right now.” My none of my parents sounded like this.

Brent: OK, I was just curious.

Paul: Not even my grandfather. But anyway, but I’m still going to go with it.

Brent: Right.

Paul: [laughing] “We’re sliding right, we’re going to turn right.”

Brent: We’re going to turn into the skid.

Paul: Turn into it.

Brent: Turn into the skid.

Paul: Oh, it’s so, oh man. It’s just…

Brent: Oh man, that would tie into our Embracing Adversity episode that’s coming. You have turn into the skid.

Paul: Let’s remember that.

Brent: Yeah. Note to self.

Paul: Note to self.

Brent: We need to do a Bill and Ted and just go back in time and send ourselves a note to remember the thing with the—never mind. Carry on.

Paul: Well, I don’t want to spend too much time on locus of control. I just, I think sometimes people, when they think that you’re— you know, focusing on that—

Brent: Yeah

Paul: That internal—it’s like, okay, somebody might come and, you know, sideswipe you—you know, on the road. And you might have to—you might have to sit there, call your insurance company and do all this stuff. But there still is a big difference between sitting there with your hands on your face going, “I can’t believe this happened.”

Brent: I spent some time in the Middle East, and you’d see people, when they were in a traffic accident, they would literally take their hands off the wheel. It was like an Islamic version of Jesus, take the wheel, and they’re like, no, no, that’s not helping. You need to, all right, we’re already halfway dead. What’s going to keep us the other halfway alive is you keeping your hands on the wheel. And you would just— and honestly, not everyone was like that, but it was kind of a thing that you saw. It’s like, “No, no, please don’t do that. I need you to locus your control a little bit better.”

Paul: Yes. Yes.And the steering wheel goes figurative, too, because if you get hit. Right?

Brent: Yes.

Paul: And you’re sitting there on the side of the road, you know, you still can’t become the passive observer.

Brent: Yeah. Some people get an accident, I feel like, and they just rip the steering wheel out and fling it out. “Well, that was it. I gave it a try. And now I’m just going to sit here until Triple A comes in.”

Paul: [sighs]

Brent: “No, no, no, no. You’ve got to get back up, man. Back up.”

Paul: “Paul and Brent were full of it. It does not work. I tried turning the steering wheel. [laughing] Those guys don’t know anything.”

Brent: Oh Man. All right so part of the protagonist mindset is that they focus on meaning and purpose, they focus on persistence, on grit, and driving through, and they focus on personal responsibility.

Paul: Ooh, that’s a big one.

Brent: Yeah. Like, “This has happened to me, and it may not have been my fault, I didn’t decide to crash the car, but it’s my car, and it’s my crash, and now I have to do something.”

Paul: I have to solve the problem now.

Brent: This is part of protagging, which is (opposed to) just sitting there and waiting for the problem to solve itself.

Paul: Yeah.Yes. Probably my favorite, favorite dialectic right there.

Brent: I like it too.

Paul: Yeah, I think that grit and that word, it’s, you know, just one syllable

Brent: Grit

Paul: But it’s, I don’t know, it’s just got something to it.

Brent: And that’s the thing. If you think about it, and we talked about it in our previous episode, he’s like, the protagonist is the one, you know, that’s trying to get out from the terror—They’re trying to break through—They never give up. They’re not like, “Oh, man, that was our one shot. We cut the green wires to the red wire. I guess we’re all going to die.” And the protagonist is like, “No. I can’t quit. Never give up, never surrender, like we got to keep we got to keep going on.”

Paul: [laughing]

 Brent: And so that’s kind of defines the protagonist in the story is the one person who doesn’t want to quit.

Paul: Don’t give up.

Brent: Not always, but generally speaking, yeah.

Paul: Yes. Never back down never give up.

Brent: So, I think one thing that we were going to mention that we might not have mentioned is that when you have a victim’s mindset It’s almost like you’re an NPC. You’re a Non-Player Character in the video game. You’re sitting there, “Oh, my puppy ran into the cave. If only a brave hero would go in the cave—”

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: …and reclaim my puppy, I will give you 12 golden points, 12 pieces of gold and the legendary sword.” It’s like, “Well, if you’ve got the legendary sword, go in the cave and get your own puppy.”

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: “Oh, no, that’s not what I do. I’m not a brave adventurer like you.”

Paul: Oh, man!

Brent:  But If you’re a protagonist, you are.

Paul: Man, I hear that! “That’s not me. That’s not what I do.”

Brent: That’s not what I do.

Paul: I’m like, “Well, do you want to?” I mean, what is this?

Brent: Well, that’s the thing, and we’re going to get into it in other episodes, is part of what separates the protagonist from the beginning of the story and the end of the story is that they learn how to become the person who does that. That’s the point of the story, is that they level up, they change their identity, they change their ability, they become the person that can do that.

Paul: But what if they fail?

Brent: Well, they fail a lot. We talked about the try/fail cycle.

Paul: OK.

Brent: I mean, you know, in like a Hollywood three act story, changing that is like, almost the last thing that happens. “I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t do it. Oh, I can do it.” [trumpet sound effect]  “Climax, we’re done.” And it’s like, oh, wow. The whole—most of the battle was mental.

Paul: I mean, all anybody I’ve ever met that’s into gaming, I mean, they don’t ever get where they got in a game, whatever the game is, by doing it once, doing it twice—

Brent: Yes.

Paul: They do it over, and over, and over, and over again.

Brent: I’ve got a game that I play pretty regular and people come on like, “It’s so hard and the bugs are so mean.” Like, “The setting was insane. It said on the tin, it was insane. If you wanted the baby version, go to the baby version. This is where the grown people do the insane stuff.” “But they’re so mean.” “That’s why you shoot them. “ —Bugs, not people.

Paul: I don’t want to come off as an expert, but just the therapist in me right now—it’s just responding right now internally. I’m just feeling like people need to remember that this tool, being a protagonist, that they may find it very easy to be a protagonist in one area of their life, right?

Brent: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul: Right. And they’re going to have to apply this skill to different areas of their life, right?

Brent: Yeah, yeah you can go to work and be awesome and then come home to, like, your family of origin and say, like, I’m a little kid again, I don’t know how to protag this with these people that I have this entrenched power dynamic with.

Paul: There are subplots.

Brent: Yeah, yeah.

Paul: And fake out endings.

[laughing]

Brent: “I’m the best race car driver in the world. “It’s like well. “Well. How are you with relationships?” “Oh, I suck.”

Paul: [laughing]

 Brent: “Well, how about your kids?” “Oh, I suck at that too.” “How about making money?” “Oh, I suck at that too.” It’s like well, maybe you need to branch out that skill set and apply it to other areas of your life.

Paul: [laughing] But they need that perspective.

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: That’s where the tribe comes in right?

Brent: Exactly, and we’re going to get to that in future episodes.

Paul: We’ll get to that we’ll get to

Brent: Just know that, you can’t—you can’t go it alone.

Announcer: This is the Full Mental Bracket

Paul: We’ve got some examples.

Brent: Yeah, so I think it’s helpful to look at some examples.

Paul: Yeah

Brent: So, one example would be in one of my favorite films, which is Iron Man. And what’s great about it is—

Paul: Mine too

Brent:  I didn’t really—when I watched that movie—I really didn’t care for that character, Iron Man. I’m like, “Why are they starting with this lame character? He’s not nearly as cool as five other ones.” Spoiler, that’s why they started, in case they screwed it up. [laughing] They didn’t want to screw up their best character.

Paul: [laughing]

Brent:  But Robert Downey made it their best character, and he kind of outmaneuvered them. Um, but what made that great is that—you know, we’re going to talk about these movies that are at least 10 years old, and if we spoil them, well, you’ve had 10 years to figure it out, so—

Paul: [laughing]

Brent:  Here we go. So, in Iron Man, the whole movie starts with Tony Stark being the spoiled playboy, and instantly he’s injured, captured by terrorists, and enslaved to build weapons for them. Like, this is a great time to just give up. I mean, if all you’ve known was respect for your genius and being pampered and being spoiled by having a gazillion—more money than God, suddenly you’re down to ground level. This is the time to quit and roll over.

Paul: Which is kind of interesting, if you don’t mind me pausing for a second.

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: He doesn’t necessarily have the victim mindset, but he does have this passive—like, I’m just going to coast through life.

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: And then he’s met, wham, with his obstacle.

Brent: And we’ll get into that in our future episode about finding your tribe, but a big thing was his Yeltsin, the guy that was in the cave. Like, “Well, this is a very important week for you then, isn’t it?”

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: “We’re going to die in a week.” “Well, then this is where all your last decisions are made. Maybe instead of feeling sorry for yourself, you take responsibility for your own life and start protagging.” He’s like, “Oooh, I could do that.”

(fact check, the character’s name is Yinsen)

Paul: Yes. Love it.

Brent: So, he’s captured so he has a choice. He can be helpless and roll over, or he can decide that he’s a protagonist and work on a secret plan. He’s like “If only I was a genius weapons inventor trapped in this cave with all these weapons. Wait a minute. I am.”

Paul: [laughing]

 Brent: “Hold on.” And then another example is with The Hunger Games, which I’m going to say that the book was better than the movie, but that’s beside the point. But even in the movie, you have Katniss, and she’s trapped in this dystopian world where she has no power, and she’s paying the price for the sins of others. You get far enough in the book, you realize there was a civil war, and all the other areas are being punished because of the civil war—

Paul: Um hmm

Brent:  And they have to give you their tributes (to) gladiatorial games, but she just wakes up. She was born in this world, And she’s like, “Am I going to fight this, or am I just going to say it’s too big for me?”

Paul: [agreeing murmur]

Brent: And she does say it’s too big for her until it becomes her little sister. And then suddenly she’s got skin in the game,

Paul: Yep.

Brent: And she’s like, “Okay, we gotta fix this.”

Paul: Yep.That changes everything.

Brent: And I think that’s a good point that we been brought into, is often the protagonist doesn’t look like they’re the right person for the job.

Paul: Yeah, they definitely seem to be lacking in the skills that you would think.

Brent: I mean, if it’s a different version of Iron Man, and they came up to Tony Stark, and they’re like, “Hey, I need you to help me pick out the best expensive sports car.” That wouldn’t really be a stretch for him. It wouldn’t be a very entertaining story. Like, “Yeah, I’ve always liked the Corvette.” Roll credits.

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: Movie you over. But the thing was, he was the worst possible guy to be trapped in a cave at the hands of terrorists.

Paul: Which kind of goes to show you how protagging is the skill, right?

Brent: Yes.

Paul: It’s not necessarily all the other things, right?

Brent: It’s a master skill.

Paul: Because you could be missing all these pieces. But if you have the protag skill,

Brent: Yes, and that’s what makes Hero’s Journey a tool for growth and exploration and leveling up, is that, that’s a master skill that helps you develop the other skills that you need.

Paul: Did you see what I added in there to the element? S

Brent: Oooh.

Paul: So, Brent,he put that a key ingredient is persistence in protagging. And I put humble and persistent.

Brent: Yes, yes. And that was a hard lesson for Tony Stark. He was not a very humble guy.

Paul: No. he wasn’t.

Brent: But he kind of got humbled a few times.

Paul: Right.

Brent: He learned that the world was much bigger than he realized it was.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: So, when we have an unqualified, a seemingly unqualified protagonist, like in Lord of the Rings, we’ve asked a tiny hobbit to take the One Ring across the world—

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: Into the hostile wastes and fortresses of Mordor. It’s like, well, “We have knights and giants and giant trees, but we didn’t ask any of them to do it. We asked the most unassuming, the wrongest person for the job possible.”

Paul: Well, and they had an opportunity, a couple of them, right?

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: And they were all like—

Brent: They failed.

Brent: Yeah. They’re all like looking around like, I don’t want to do it.

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: And then here comes Frodo.

Brent: His qualification was he was the most qualified to resist the ring. He didn’t have the longest legs, he couldn’t walk through the snow, he didn’t have the best battle experience, but he had this master skill that unlocked these other skills.

Paul: Ah. Yes.

Brent: Everyone else was more qualified, but then they would fall to the power of the ring much more quickly, as we saw in some of the scenes.

Paul: Something to think about.

Brent: So, as we’re talking, yes, skill, a master skill, a master skill that unlocks other skills. As we mentioned for Iron Man, you have an immature, egocentric man-child who somehow learns to become a selfless hero needed to stop terrorists and arms dealers.

Paul: Man, I mean, that’s a tall order.

Brent: That was a big change for him. That’s what made that movie so satisfying.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: All right. So, here’s my favorite scene from that movie. So, he’s—he has escaped from the terrorist. He’s at home working on his hobbies. He’s changed his company. “We’re not going to sell guns anymore and blah, blah, blah.” And he’s getting pushed back. So, he goes back to his little hobby room and he’s ignoring the whole world, doing whatever P.T.S.D therapy or something.

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: I’m going to just play with my suits and forget everything else. And he’s working with the thing is doing the thing. And the news comes on. It’s like “In the city of Gulmira,” where Yeltsin’s from, “terrorists are coming.” And the newscaster looks at the screen at Tony and said, “Who is going to stop them?”

Paul: Yes.

Brent: And he stands up, he’s sitting down, he stands up like, “Pick me, send me,” this kind of thing.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: And he points at the screen and he’s like. “She’s talking to me. This is, no one but me can handle this. I’m going to handle this.” And he stands up out of his selfishness, out of his licking his wounds and stands up and is like, “Oh crap, the world still needs me. I escaped, but there’s tons of people who are still trapped.”

Paul: So this, this proves my point from earlier that you can, experience multiple layers of your own story.

Brent: Yes.

Paul: Because he had to be humbled.

Brent: Yes.

Paul: Right? And he had to be motivated to get out of that camp.

Brent: Yes.

Paul: Right? Out of the cave. Then he goes home and he thinks that he’s being a protagonist. Right? Creating the suits, he’s doing all this. And then it’s another level of protagging.

Brent: Because he’s hiding away from the constant—He discovered a bigger world and he comes back to his comfortable world and doesn’t want to follow it up.

Paul: Yeah. So sometimes I think that happens to all of us. You know, we think that we’ve gone to the next level, and it’s like, no, you’re only halfway through the level.

Brent: There’s another scene, I’m not recalling it correctly, but he goes to this cushy party and this reporter shows up. “So, are you comfortable in the cushy party? Because the world is going to heck while you’re not looking.” He’s like, “It is? Hold on, I must leave this cushy party.”

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: And that’s—he’s like, oh, wow. He’s like he was trying to hide from his destiny or from the thing he discovered, and it chased him down [laughing] and said, “Hey, are you forgetting something? “

Paul: I love the way you said that.

Brent: Well, it’s like our struggles, we try to avoid our struggles sometimes. We end up just going around the mountain. We just go, we run and run and run and run and go all the way around the entire mountain and come back and find the exact same scene that we ran from.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: It’s waiting for us to pass it so we can level up. And until we pass it, we won’t level up.

Paul: But he thought, you know, like I think for a moment there, he thought he was over with the struggle.

Brent: I think he was

Paul: I think that was that was a bad struggle.

Brent: So that was rough. But now I’m back into the lap of luxury.

Paul: Right.

Brent: But then he has his attitude and his viewpoint of the world had changed and he couldn’t ignore it anymore.

Paul: Aah. Changed enough.

Brent: Yes. Same with Katniss. And once her sister got looped into the whole thing, she couldn’t ignore it either. So Katniss was a backwoods hillbilly hunter.

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: Who has to take on the sophisticated media machine of the big city gladiatorial industry—

Paul: Again…

Brent: From the inside.

Paul: …she didn’t have those kind of skills.

Brent: She didn’t even know how to put on makeup. She’s going on in front of the camera and doing all this stuff. Like I know how to hunt rabbits and stuff, but I don’t know any of this other stuff. I’m not horribly—all the smooth political stuff left and right. She’s fighting against that. I don’t need to do this.” And her mentor person’s like, “Oh, you absolutely need to do this. Or you’re going to die.”

Paul: You know what’s coming to mind right now?

Brent: What’s that?

Paul: That phrase that we talked about where somebody else’s adventure looks a lot better than our own.

Brent: Yes. It’s like the grass is always greener. It’s like, “Oh, I want that adventure.”

Paul: Yeah. Cause I mean, we’re watching that movie and we’re, there’s a part of us that can relate. We’re like, that’s right. You know, rise above.

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: Yeah. But then it’s like when we’re actually—do you realize how vulnerable she was?

Brent: Oh, absolutely.

Paul: Like if we were in that place—

Brent: she left everyone she ever knew. Except for the Peeta guy and then they’re there—and I mean—they go from the out in the backwoods Kentucky hillside coal mining community and now they’re in like, Washington DC and there’s glitz and there’s glamour and there’s cameras and there’s backstabbing and she’s like “If there is anyone who is unqualified for this. I am that person.”

Paul: She’s like rough around the edges

Brent: Like “Y’all watch this.” “Yeah, that’s not that’s not what we say here, Katniss.”

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: If you’re from the Kentucky coal mining region, that’s not against (you.) It’s just how this movie was portrayed.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: It’s like district 12 or whatever. If I Google it, I think it was Kentucky somewhere, somewhere around that. It’s that general idea.

Paul: Oh, no kidding.

Brent: The general idea.

Paul: That’s fascinating. I learn something new every day.

Brent: Now, the hunting and fishing people from district whatever, they were like from the Pacific Northwest, and that’s why they applied—I thought, although from the Pacific Northwest, they should like had like a lumberjack axe or something—but they chose to go a different way with that. Missed opportunity, if you ask me. That’s okay. Oh yeah, and then we talked about Neo from The Matrix.

Paul: Right.

Brent: So, Neo doesn’t seem like he’s the best guy to be the chosen one either. He’s just kind of this cubicle jockey trying to figure out stuff, living a double life.

Paul: Kind of homely dude.

Brent: Yeah, just kind of living quiet and like, “Okay man.”

Paul: Yeah, he’s smart.

Brent: Boss says, “You gotta do something.” “Okay boss, whatever you want.” He’s not the standup guy that’s going to face down the machines and change the world.

Paul: I mean, think about everything that it took at the beginning for him—

Brent: Oh. Yeah.

Paul: for him to even be motivated to take the protag role, right? I mean, he’s sitting there climbing out the window, he’s unsure about himself.

Brent: They talk about like resisting the call for adventure. The call for adventure comes and you resist it. Luke’s like, “I couldn’t possibly be a Jedi because I’m a whiny. a whiny teenager and I gotta be with my aunt and uncle.”

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: “Well, your aunt and uncle are dead.” “Well, that does change things. I’m a little less whiny, but I guess I should leave because my home is a flaming wreck. I got nothing here, but burning desert.” You only had desert, and then the desert burned. There’s even less. That’s kind of negative numbers. I don’t know how that works.

Paul: And then I feel like later on, he was still whiny, but just kind of in an old man kind of way.

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: But I digress.

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: He just had a beard.

Brent: Well, yeah, but we could.

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: Sometimes when the story changes writers, some things change—you know anyway

Paul: Well, you know it just goes to show you that you’re still going to have to protag you when you get older.

Brent: Yes.

Paul: Even after you have—

Brent: Okay, so we could go there—so in the in the in the sequels, Luke gets a major force butthurt [laughing] and hides away on the island and shuts himself down, and is like ”I’m the most powerful being in the universe, but I’m not going to do anything. I’m going to sit over here and hide because life went wrong. I did an adventure and it went out badly, so I’m throwing my steering wheel.”—He literally, he put his spaceship in the water. He threw his steering wheel out the window.

Paul: He threw his steering wheel out.

Brent: And just sat there with, drinking seal milk—

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: [laughing] Green seal milk or something with the little flying birds and stuff.

Paul: I mean, is that what we were supposed to feel? Because I just, I was like, dude, you’re pathetic.

Brent: Well, some people got upset about that, but they’re like, well, wasn’t, wasn’t Obi-Wan hiding in the desert and wasn’t Yoda hiding in the swamp? It’s kind of what, what pouting, [laughing] pouting Jedis do.

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: I’m going to go back in the mud and the crap and feel sorry for myself.

Paul: Uh, I have—in my journey of being more dialectical—have realized that—

Brent: You need a swamp?

Paul: well, no, just realize that the Jedis are not all that like. There was a sect of Jedi that were much more dialectical.

Brent: Oh, really?

Paul: Yeah. Yes. We’ll talk about that another time.

Brent: Yeah, we can get to that—But they were very black and white. It’s like, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.” Like, “Isn’t that an absolute statement that you just said?”

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: I mean, think—Anyway, yeah.

Paul: Also, there was a lot of force there…No pun intended. [laughing] In other words, the Jedis were being a little antagonistic at times.

Brent: Yeah, they were trying to control other people, weren’t they?

Paul: Oh man.

Brent: So, when you find yourself trying to control other people and make them live the story better, you’re kind of drifting a little to the villain side. You need to— you can be responsible to people, but you’re not responsible for people. You coach them, you can coax them,

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: But ultimately their decision is their decision. When you start—you like, “This society needs order,” and you build a police state and try to make people be ordered, then that’s how you know you’ve slipped into villain camp.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: If any politicians are listening here, don’t slip into villain camp. People have to make their own decisions.

Announcer:  This is the Full Mental Bracket.

Paul: So, with my worldview, it’s like it’s that the protag is that middle.

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: because I definitely—

Brent: Between the helpless victim and between the antagonistic trying to control everybody else.

Paul: And I truly think that like—

Brent: Just the right amount of control.

Paul: We struggle with that.

Brent: I think so.

Paul: I think often we’re like probably sitting right in front of something that we can control that’s in our life, that’s in our sphere of influence.

Brent: It’s tempting to deal with somebody else’s problem.

Paul: Yeah, we’re like dealing with somebody’s over here, right? I mean, that’s a big reason why the serenity prayer is a huge part of my life, because it’s like, “Okay, let’s, let’s just find the difference between all these. I need some help.”

Brent: What you can control versus what you can’t control.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: That’s true. You get stuck on one thing. It’s like, “Well, I’m just going to sit here until this one thing clears up.” It’s like, “Well, there’s other things you can be doing.” And it’s like, and that happens a lot. Like, you know, we do some work, my wife and I with, with marriage and stuff. And it’s easy to see your partner as the problem. “What’s the problem?” “Her.”

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: It’s like, “Well, if that’s really the problem, there’s nowhere this conversation can go. Is there, is there something you can do?” “Well, she won’t—it won’t work.” Like, “No, no, no, stop. Is there something you can do in this situation to push the situation forward?”

Paul: Go get your steering wheel.

Brent: “But I don’t want to, I want to blame it on my partner.” And it’s like, “Well, that’s, that’s not helping.“

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: It may be accurate that you’ve been frustrated and feel betrayed, but the fact that you’re like, there’s nothing we can do, my steering wheel is gone, then you can’t ever go forward. You can’t go past that. So, let’s talk about this power of persistence. Let’s talk about this grit.

Paul: All right

Brent: The gritty protag.

Paul: I like it. I really like the idea of grit.

Brent: [Music] “She was a leggy blonde. She walked into my office of all the”—I don’t know, some gritty, gritty noir kind of story. I don’t know. That didn’t work.

Paul: Cigar?

Brent: Yeah, cigar. Feet on the desk.

Paul: Yeah, well, I think that—I often tell people like anxiety in and of itself, it sure is a liar. It seems to paint this like awful picture.

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: And then if you can just keep putting one foot in front of the other, at some point you realize, oh, that was just a painted picture. It really wasn’t as horrible.

Brent: Yeah, that makes sense. I think that ties into our talk about the negativity bias too.

Paul: Yes. That’s it.

Brent: You’re seeing everything wrong, all your warning flags are going off, like I’ll just hide back in a cave.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: It’s like, “You could, but you’ll never get past this if you don’t.” It’s going—and once again, going around the mountain, you’ll never get past this—’

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: It’s like, “Yes, this could go horribly wrong. Have you, have you done the best you can? Have you made the best plans you can? Have you, have you done everything you can?” [laughing] I may or may not have had this talk with myself before we filmed this episode today and the video and everything.

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: It’s like, “Have you done everything you can?” “Yes.” “Can you be on the other side of the camera and watch yourself?” “No, I can’t. So hopefully it’ll work.”

Paul: [laughing] Well, for whatever reason, I just, I’m imagining somebody sitting in a car, and they’re in a parking lot, and here comes a car, and it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming, and it’s that moment, that moment of…what am I going to do? “Am I going to yank the steering wheel, pedal to the metal, and get out of the way, or am I just going to let this car hit me?”

Brent: And I feel we can get beaten down and ground down, or sometimes you just feel like, “Oh, I’m just going to give up.” And that might be a season where you feel that, but you can’t just stay there. You’ve gotta get up.

Paul: It’s a big part of life. I think that sometimes when you sit there and you’re like, “I don’t know how many more cars I can take.” [laughing]

Brent: Yeah, but it’s like well we talked about in the previous episode that being a persistent protagonist doesn’t mean stubbornly going forward when everything fights you. You don’t quit, but if all your plans have failed, then maybe it’s your plan that’s wrong and not you—You don’t go back to the couch and quit you’re just like, “Okay back to the drawing board. Let’s come up with a different plan. We’re still going to achieve the goal or a related goal, but the way we were going about it wasn’t working,”

Paul: Yes.

Brent: And sometimes people don’t want to—(they’re) like, “I don’t care if it works or not, but it’s gotta be this way.” And it’s like, “That, that’s not going to help.”

Paul: That’s a—I mean, that is such a good…where does that fit into this?

Brent: Well, people kind of fall in love with their plan—with their tool—with their plan. “It’s gotta be this.” And it’s like, “Well, if it’s not working, maybe it doesn’t have to be that.”

Paul: So, you’re asking for flexibility?

Brent: Well, that’s why in this podcast, we’re going to give people multiple tools.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: So like, you know, I don’t do much golfing, but I like the fact that they carry a bag full of different things. And it’s like, “Oh, this one calls for a big woody club. I’m going to, I’m going to smack it with it.” “Oh, what about a thin metal one?” “No, this is, that’s the wrong tool for this situation.”

Paul: I mean, I can relate.

Brent: I mean, I have a shotgun in there too. And I would just shoot the golf ball across the thing, but apparently that’s cheating.

Paul: [laughing]But I mean, how many times have I been like working on something? I’m sure you can relate to this. And you’re tinkering around with everything you’ve got in your workshop.

Brent: Right.

Paul: And then you either go down to the store or you Google and you realize that they have a tool made for this job.

Brent: A perfect tool for that. Just for that.

Paul: And you’re like, This would have made my life so much easier.

Brent: And in true dialectical fashion, sometimes you do the opposite, is that you spend all your time on Google buying random tools and you never get around to using them. [laughing]

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: Like, “Well, when that happens, in this Batman situation where everything in the sky is green and the water’s rising, I’m going to have the perfect canoe.” Like, “Where are you going to put a canoe?” Your wife says. “Shh, I’m being prepared for every situation.” [laughing]

Paul: [laughing]That happened to me yesterday. I don’t know if we’re bringing in personal stories here,

Brent: Yeah. Go ahead.

Paul: Yeah, so my wife’s glasses, they fell apart and it needed a small screw, and I’m like, “I bought a glass repair kit at some point.” So, I go fumbling through my toolboxes and I’m like, “Man, I have got some pretty random stuff in here.” I got lock-picking kits.

Brent: Really?

Paul: Yes.

Brent: The police won’t have a word with you.

Paul: I know! I’m like, where did I get this? How do I have this?

Brent: Amnesia and criminal tools. [laughing] That’s not a good—that’s not a good combo.

Paul: [laughing]

Paul: But I can relate to having all these tools. I’m like, “I sure have a lot more tools than I thought I did.”

Brent: Yes. So, it’s being able to pick the right tool for the right job right and not…

Paul: And well And in like you said like—

Brent: Like collecting tools like collecting books can be a different hobby than actually using the tools or reading the books. [laughing]

Paul: I really think so. I think there’s a reality to that.

Brent: I think so.

Announcer: Full Mental Bracket

Brent: So, let’s talk about the protagonist. We talked about giving the steering wheel and giving it a yank and getting back in traffic. So, things that a…protagonist has a mastery orientation.

Paul: [agreement murmur]

Brent: So, it’s different than a victim mindset. It’s more of the mastery mindset or the growth mindset. It’s like, “I want to—I need to master this situation.”

Paul: Yeah. Yeah. I think that when you, when you start to practice doing something, Well, I mean, let’s go back to like hardware.

Brent: Okay.

Paul: You know, I’m thinking of, I’m actually thinking about doing this like for some clients of mine, videotaping myself, cutting a straight line on a piece of plywood with a handsaw.

Brent: Okay.

Paul: And then just closing the camera in on the line and be like, “You see that, that is not that straight. but I’m going to do better next week, right?”

Brent: Right

Paul: Because just because I can cut a line—like it’s a decent line—like I’m sure that it’s fine for some rough project or whatever, but if I’m making cabinets or something, that’s not going to do it.

Brent: Right. Right.

Paul: I’m going to have to get much better. I’m going to have to master that skill.

Brent: And that comes—like we talked about our try-fail cycles—that comes through experience. And if you’re afraid—and this is kind of a recent thing for me— if you’re afraid to fail. If failure has been linked in your brain with humiliation, then you never learn to get any better. This is the thing with the fixed mindset and this is kind of more of the Carol Dweck’s work on the fixed mindset and growth mindset, and the thing that jumped out of me is just the fear of failure.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: If you, through your childhood or whatever, have just been—connected failure with disaster, failure with humiliation and failure was you—you were too big for your britches and life slaps you back down where you belong—

Paul: Yep.

Brent: And that’s kind of some messages that you might internalize—then it’s going to be hard. Then failure is like this thing to avoid, but it’s the path to growth.

Paul: Yep.

Brent: You have to make 100 bad cuts before you make a good cut. You have to do 100 bad karate chops before you learn the form. If you’re not willing to put in the work and make the mistakes, you never get to the mastery. You never get good at it.

Paul: Yeah.And I want to touch on this, so let’s put a pin in this.

Brent: Okay.

Paul: But, um, you know, when it comes to childhood and us having these parts of ourselves that are fearful, it really—you have to be in a tribe of people that have a growth mindset.

Brent: Yes.

Paul: You have to. You’re not going to heal and you’re sure not going to be encouraged and motivated to put the protag robe on.

Brent: And I think that’s true for the locus of control too. You need a tribe that’s going to say, “All right, so vent and feel like a victim for 30 minutes. Now get back up. And what are you going to do now?” So, you need people in your corner. I like that. That’s good.

Paul: I think that what we just brought up brings up that point that, you know, the P’s that we’re going to talk about, that there really is this sense when you’ve grown up in an environment when you were young that has that fixed mindset—

Brent: Right

Paul: You do feel like there’s permanence to a failure.

Brent: So, a thing that we’ve come across is a different subtool or whatever it is, like Martin Seligman, and he talks about how people who don’t have a growth mindset, they see failure in terms of three Ps. They see that it’s personal, that it’s permanent, and that it’s pervasive. So, it’s not like, “I failed at this situation.” “I am a failure.” You own it. It’s like you yourself are the failure, but that’s not true.

Paul: No, that’s toxic.

Brent: We talked about you can be really great at one thing and really bad at another thing. So, clearly you’re not the failure, just in this particular arena—in this particular task, your effort— your current efforts and strategy failed. It’s time to roll back and try a different effort and strategy and see if it will succeed.

Paul: “I can do that?”

Brent: And then it’s permanent. Like sometimes, “Oh, I’m a failure. I’m therefore going to be a failure for the rest of my life,” or “I’ll never get better at this.” When we just talked about with the mastery mindset, you have to fail to get better.

Paul: Yep.

Brent: You have to fail forward.

Paul: And I have to say that I probably just fell into the victim mindset just now just blaming like childhood on it. But, you know, sometimes just our negativity bias is what we’re fighting to.

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: You know, because there is something in our negativity bias kind of in that—that realm that even when we experience trauma, you know, it wants to—you know, that part of the brain, you know, which is kind of isolated from other processes that are more adaptive, that they can pull in other information that lets you know that it’s not permanent, sometimes in that that moment of trauma. You feel like this is permanent.

Brent: Right. I read across something with — Maybe it was The Body Keeps the Score or something that the trauma and PTSD feels timeless. It breaks the timekeeper part of the brain, and you just feel trapped in it forever.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: So that could very well be an actual clinical connection for that failure is permanent thing.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: And I want to just tell people, when I came across this thing from Seligman, and it’s got to be like 10 years ago or something, it really opened my eyes. I’m like, “This is amazing.” I instinctively was thinking all of these things until he said, “Don’t do that.” I’m like, “Oh, that’s great.”

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: And the third P is pervasive, is that failure fills every area of your life. It’s like, “Alright, so I’m not doing very good at my job per se, but I could still be a good father, a good husband, I could still be good at other things.” “No, no, no, I’m a failure. I’m a blanket failure across everything.”

Paul: Yeah

Brent: And it’s like, “Alright, so it feels like that, but you’re totally being a drama queen. That is not true.”

Paul: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had to remind myself even this past weekend, we were spending some time out of town, and we had this moment where the whole family was experiencing excessive heat from the sun. I felt like the sun was out to get me. I felt paranoid. [laughing]

Brent: The sun. It’s vindictive, I’ll tell you.

Paul: But in my in my vulnerable state, you know, I might have been a little harsh toward my family. And, you know, after we came back to the headquarters and cooled down and we all apologized, you know, I had to remind myself, you know, that was momentary.

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: I repaired. The rest of the trip is fine. I didn’t ruin the trip.

Brent: You ruined the trip.

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: I’ve had the opposite experience when on a trip and like the first day something terrible happened or something aversive happened, but it was interpreted as terrible and it really ruined the trip. It was just like no one was getting along and it just overshadowed the entire trip. And now I’m like, “Every day is a do-over. Every hour is a do-over. We’re not going to do that.” And I learned that for myself, and I learned to do that as a little bit more of a leader in my family. It’s like, family, we’re going to reset our mindset here, and we’re, this trip is not a failure.

Paul: My oldest daughter actually said that when we went back—

Brent: Reset?

Paul: Yeah, into the air conditioning.  [laughing] She laid down on the floor, she goes, “Reset.”

Brent: When you get hot, hot is hard. Heat is hard.

Paul: Oh man, oh yeah, I’ve talked about that on another mental health podcast. It will. It definitely…

Brent: “It’s cooking my brain.”

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: “I can’t do it.”

Announcer: Full Mental Bracket

Brent: So, I think we’re coming to the bottom of this episode here, but we have some takeaways, some questions for you, dear Bracketeers. To apply to you and respond to us. What do you think about these? What are our questions, Paul?

Paul: Well, I think the first one definitely—especially we addressed it at the very beginning—is asking yourself the question, like, do I feel like a victim? Do I feel like a passive observer?

Brent: And how are you living? And your feelings can be one thing. Are you letting them dictate how you approach your life?

Paul: That’s a good differentiation there. And then I would actually say the opposite too, right? Do you feel so out of control that you—do you feel like maybe you’re trying to control other people?

Brent: Oh, that’s good. That’s a good point that we wait until the very end of the podcast is that the people that control other people are often because they feel out of control instead of dealing with their own junk. They’re like, “It’s much more tempting to deal with your junk.”

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: Then the final question is, how could finding, developing, creating a protagonist mindset change how you approach these situations in your life? How could that tool—how could you use that tool to change how you’re addressing these situations in your life?

Paul: That’s a good question. I might email you about that.

Brent: I like it. If you were going to email me, you would email me at contact at fullmentalbracket.com. That’s where you contact the Full Mental Bracket people.

Paul: I’m doing it.

Brent: So, let us know how you’re doing. We want to know what you think. We want to know what struggles you’re struggling with. We want to know if you think these tools are going to work for you. If you try these tools, let us know. Contact at Full Mental Bracket. We’ll be happy to know that we might even mention you in a podcast. You can be our new best friend. Who knows?

Paul: I’m looking forward to that.

Brent: You want to be my new best friend?

Paul: Yes.

Brent: OK, you got to contact me.

Paul: All right.

Brent: Full Mental Bracket dot com. Have a great week. Have a great day. Have a wonderful time. And we will see you next time on the Full Mental Bracket.

Credits: Full Mental Bracket podcast hosted by Paul Berkes and Brent Diggs. Executive producer, Brody Scott. Art design, Colby Osborne. Interact with the show at fullmentalbracket.com. This is a Brody Scott production.