00:00:00 – Intro

full episode

Brent Diggs: Good time period, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen. Powered to you by the..

Paul Berkes: Famous?

Brent: Furious engine of Brody Scott.

Paul: Yes. The man, the myth, the legend. Yes.

Brent: We’re coming to you today from our studio, and we are on episode three. We are a continuation of our previous series, which is grabbing the tools from your tool bag. This particular collection of tools is seeing your life as an epic story.

Paul: That’s right. We started off with that, laying out all of the parts of the story.

Brent: Yes. And last episode, we went into how we kind of got this material. We got this material from a study by Rogers and a whole bunch of other psychologists about applying the hero’s journey framework to your life and how that gave your life more meaning—or the people that they measured. They’re measurably happier with their life, more satisfied with their life, felt that their life was more meaningful once they just looked at their life through a different lens.

Paul: And has since been picked up by all kinds of areas of study.

Brent: Right. Not the least of which us.

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: Not that we’re all that, anyway. It has the Paul and Brent stamp of approval, which, I mean, — a bunch of psychologists…Paul and Brent…it’s about a 50-50. Yeah. I’d say.

Paul: It gets us excited.

Brent: Equal weight, you know, we have a… Anyway, so we’re continuing on. Last week was, last episode was about the seeing yourself as a protagonist, becoming the protagonist. This week is about undertaking the quest.

Announcer:Transforming your life through story.

Announcer: This is the Full Mental Bracket.

Paul: This is a powerful one.

Brent: Yes. So just to recap, these are the phases that we talked about last episode, and we’re going to go over. But just so you can keep track at home, phase one is becoming the protagonist. Phase two is undertaking the quest. Phase three is finding your tribe.

Paul: It’s one of my favorites.

Brent: Yes. Phase four is facing the obstacles. Then overcoming and transforming, and then returning with a legacy.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: Because it’s not just about you. You’re bringing back goods,

Paul: What?!

Brent: You’re bringing back treasure, you’re bringing back healing, you’re bringing back the elixir.

Paul: The treasure’s not for me?

Brent: The treasure is in part for you, but you have to bring enough treasure to share. You have to bring enough for the whole class.

Paul: Okay, okay.

Brent: Right because if the treasure if you’re all about the treasure and the treasure is only for you Then you’re no longer the hero of the story you’re the dragon.

Paul: Oh.

Brent: —And might likely burn down the town. It could I don’t know I don’t know I don’t I never raised a dragon But I feel like burning down the town is a significant risk

Paul: Yeah, I think that that poses a lot of problems.

Brent: If you’re writing a book Dragons for Dummies You should put that chapter in there.

Paul: Do you feel like you’re the dragon I? And that’s just a question for another episode.

Brent: It depends. And if we’re talking about my book collection and my wife thinking that we need more space for other things, then my dragon…

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: [laughing] Dragon nature comes out. Oh, I feel you. I’ve never thrown fire at her, but it’s crossed my mind a couple of times.

Paul: Oh, man. Yeah. My family would say I’ve definitely thrown some fire, some emotional fire.

Brent: [laughing] All right, so I think we mentioned last episode that this Hero’s Journey framework has been adapted several times. Campbell originally came up with it in 1949, I believe. He had 27 steps.

(fact check Campbell had 17 steps)

Vogler narrowed it down a little bit to 17 steps.

(fact check Vogler had 17 steps)

Rogers narrowed it down to seven steps. And that was just one to me for us. We narrowed it down to six steps. So, this step, if you’re technically following along with some of—there’s a couple of different steps, which is, Accepting the shift which is where something changes in your environment, and you try to go into denial for the longest time

Paul: Ah.

Brent: Eventually you’re like, “Oh, I just I can’t just sit here and ignore this I’m gonna have to become the protagonist.” I’m have to start protagging, which goes into accepting the quest.

Paul: Yeah, In many ways that defines dysfunction not that we’re gonna go into that—

Brent: Well, tell me how

Paul: Well, if there is a certain way that works, and then a shift occurs, and you continue to operate…

Brent: Ahh.

Paul: In that same way,

Brent: Gotcha.

Paul: Life has changed. Everything’s different, but you’re operating the same way you did before.

Brent: You’re going back to your old tools.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: Yeah. I know people like that. They just like, “This is my tool. “And it’s like, “Yeah, but you’re not, in a situation that that tool works anymore.” “This is my tool.” It’s like, “These go to 11.” [Laughing]

Paul: Yeah. They, they roll out from underneath the car and they have a hammer in their hand.

Brent: [Laughing]

Paul: And you’re like, what?

[Laughing]

Brent: That is not the right tool. That is not the right tool for this task.

[Laughing]

Brent: So, we’re mixing those two—we’re kind of wedging those two together. There’s a shift in your environment, you had a whole groove, you had a tool, you had a way of life that worked, and now it doesn’t work,

Paul: Umm

Brent: So, you’re gonna have to do something different. And as we mentioned with the legacy, and it doesn’t just necessarily affect you, it could be affecting your entire community. But it’s upon you to go out and find the solution.

Paul: That’s so good. I mean, as you’re talking, it reminds me and we’re going to touch on purpose later.

Brent: Right.

Paul: But it’s amazing. It’s like the opposite because purpose, a great working definition of purpose is that it benefits you and your community.

Brent: Oh, I like that.

Paul: Right? But it’s amazing how on the flip side, it hurts you and the community if you’re not the protagonist, if you don’t answer the call.

Brent: Oh, if you like try to evade your purpose.

Paul: Yesss.

Brent: Okay. I see what you’re saying Yeah, yeah, if you try to evade—and you know there’s a bunch in Storytelling techniques about that. There’s the refusal of the call. You know and there was like, “Luke you must come with me and be a Jedi.” “I can’t I got to stay home and comb my hair.” It’s like, “my aunt needs me.” “She’s dead.” All right, I’ll go.

[Laughing]

Brent: Because that was one of the first films that like really took the hero’s quest and just as a template to write that script and so…that that’s a Typical example of refusing the call. It’s like you have to…in some circles and film writing in some stories I suppose it’s matured along past that but in some circles It’s like if you don’t resist the call a few times and you know flirt around like, “Oh I couldn’t oh I couldn’t..”

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: You’re not really as a protag as you could be.

Paul: Ohh.

Brent: But I think that applies to a real life, you know, there’s like, “I’m living my own life. I’m going to work. I’m dealing with my kids. I’m dealing with my wife I’m doing stuff,” and it’s like, “Well, you have to engage this huge quest to change the way you do things Undertake struggles and travails.” And it’s like, “Do I have to? Isn’t there an app for that?”

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: Maybe if I will I’ll get a second opinion. I’ll ignore it for a while and see if it goes away.

Paul: Oh Man.

Brent: And I don’t think that’s terrible. I don’t think you have to be. You don’t have to be ultimately proactive to protag, it’s like sometimes you evaluate, you know, it’s not like—

Paul: Small steps,

Brent: It’s like, you know, you’re waking up, you’re going to work and like, “Why weren’t you at work today?” “Well, I was on my way to work, but then I saw a quest and I started driving because it looked like this maiden needs…” “None of that. You still have a job. You still have to…” You know, there’s a certain counting the cost involved.

Paul: So, we have like three different ways to call, or three different reasons to answer the call, right?

Brent: I think so. List them for me.

Paul: All right. So, the, the proverbial bandits saving the village from the bandits.

Brent: Yes, Yes. Well, yeah, that’s the thing. So when you answer the call and go on a quest, it can look differently. So, you know, we recognize this in Hollywood. It’s like, you know, sometimes you have to save the village from the bandits, which is something that was started in Seven Samurai

Paul: Um-hmm.

Brent: Recycled in the Magnificent Seven.

Paul: That’s right.

Brent: And then, props to my wife, we were watching the Magnificent Seven and she screamed out, this is just a Bug’s Life with guns.

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: And I’m like, I’ll be darned. A Bug’s Life is the Magnificent Seven…de-violenced for kids.

Paul: Wow. That’s brilliant.

Brent: There’s seven insects that come to save the village, except for, surprise, we’re not really fighters. They take that same framework and they twist it and invert it and change it around a few times.

Paul: Which is, I guess, what we’re saying happens.

Brent: I was like the story buff. I’m like, I’m telling her the whole lecture. I’m like, well, see, there were seven samurai and then, you know, we didn’t want a three hour black and white movie. We wanted something about cowboys. And she’s like, “I know, there’s a Bug’s Life.” And it’s like, Yeah.

Paul: I’ll be honest, when I saw it in the notes, I was like, let me think about that for a second. And then after thinking about it, I’m like, wait a minute.

Brent: Wait a minute. But it’s just another way of that. Some of these classic story forms get recycled for new generations and new… It’s that  satisfying.

Paul: It’s that universal.

Brent: Yeah. And we talked about last episode that perhaps our theory, our working theory, which has never been proved or disproved, is perhaps that these story forms, Hero’s Journey or Seven Samurai or any of these things are so satisfying because they at least in part define what it means to have a meaningful life.

Paul: That’s it.

Brent: And so it resonates with us. We recognize something deep and timeless in it.

Paul: Yeah. And motivates us.

Brent: Yes. I know I’ve been to a lot of movies where like, I want to, you know, my wife used to dread if we go to a movie about chasing your dream and throwing off the shackles of your boring life, she’s like, “Oh, not again.” “Honey, I had this great idea. I’m going to quit my job. I know we’re going to move and be, you know, be yorpas.” I don’t know. That’s not even a word.

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: “We’re going to go to Australia and live in a yurt.” And she’s like, “No, baby, no.” I was like, “This is great—We could just…” “No, honey.”

Paul: Yeah, no, no.

Brent: I come. I’m so excited. I’m like, I need to change my life rapidly and radically after this movie. And it’s like, well, sleep on it {laughing] and see how you feel in the morning.

Paul: Man, I hear it all the time. I hear all kinds of stories. “I bought 100 acres,” or “I bought some land in Brazil.” These are real stories, by the way. “I bought some land in Brazil, and it’s surrounded. It’s several people, and it’s just a commune. We all grow our food.” Now, I’ll be honest with you, that is enticing. [Laughing]

Brent: It is enticing. But you do need to think about it. And…I’ll point out, as a special bonus, if you have a life partner in your life, you don’t make these decisions unilaterally.

Paul: Ohh

Brent: It doesn’t matter who you think wears the pants in your relationship. “Oh, by the way, I took out three mortgages, [Laughing] and now we’re going to do,” like, that is not a unilateral decision.

Paul: Whoo.

Brent: Extra tool there. Extra tool. Bonus tool.

Paul: Bonus. Yeah, when you speak like that, I believe all over again in truth. [Laughing]

Brent: Truth. You got it. It’s a partnership. If you have a life partner, it’s a partnership. It’s like you have to get some buy-in, you have to talk, you have to be on the same page.

Paul: Because you’re allies.

Brent: I think so.

Paul: In each other’s story.  

Yes. I agree. Yes, Yes.

Paul: I can’t drop this mic, but…

Brent: Oh, mic drop. I don’t know. Does that help? Okay.

Paul: All right, moving on, moving on.

Brent: All right. So, you can, you know, something that you see a lot of movies is, you know, you got to save the village or save the city from the bandits. Or you move into more Hollywood movies or more recent blockbusters. You got to save the world. You know, aliens are coming or whatnot.

Paul: Zombies.

Brent: Zombies. You could destroy the horrifying world-ending weapon, which applies equally to Terminator 2, as well as Lord of the Rings.

Paul: Oh, yeah.

Brent: It’s the same.

Paul: I like that. I like that spectrum.

Brent: Yes, because it’s that same thing. It’s like you have to…some idiot build a weapon that’s going to kill us all. And you, although it’s not your fault, you have to take responsibility for it. I think we should probably talk about that “have to” because we keep saying you have to. You don’t have to take. You don’t have to be the one that picks up the ring and takes it to Mordor. You don’t have to be the one. But it’s beneficial.

Paul: Yeah. And I think even if you’re a supporting protagonist. That’s still your story.

Brent: Yes.

Paul: So in your story, you are the protagonist. You’re playing that role of supporting protagonist. Yeah, that makes sense.

Brent: No, that makes sense. But I think the sense that I was talking about is I keep saying ”you have to,” like you don’t have a choice. Like you’re walking home one day and there’s this ring like, “Oh, clearly I have to take this ring.” And it’s like, no, I don’t want to gloss over the choice.

Paul: Well, that’s what I say. If you pick up that ring and you’re like, OK, something must be done. Right. And but I may not be the guy for this job, but I am being the protagonist by finding the person for that job.

Brent: Yes.

Paul: Right.

Brent: Yes. And as we mentioned in the last episode, sometimes the true protagonist looks like the wrong person for the job and yet somehow becomes the right person for the job.

Paul: Right. There’s the plot twist right there. Somebody might pick up that ring. I need to find somebody and then they realize it’s them

Brent: I like that phrase, “something must be done.”

Paul: Yes.

Brent: It’s like this breaking point. It’s kind of where this Accepting the shift/Undertaking the quest comes. It’s like, “Somebody has to do something nobody’s doing something.”

 Paul: Yeah.

Brent: I may not be fully qualified But I’m gonna take the first step because if I because things are going wrong. Community’s broken—the world is broken—things are falling apart.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: And this is the breaking point I got to do something

Paul: I found a quote that—I know we’re skipping ahead just a little bit. We can backtrack.

Brent: We can.

Paul: Yeah. But this quote for something must be done, right?

Brent: Yes.

Paul: I found something that is a great augmentation of what we’re talking about here. It’s like the only way to achieve real security And I like that idea of security. Living life feeling secure is by embracing change, growth, and actively seeking reform rather than trying to maintain a static and unchanging situation. And that is Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

Brent: Oh. I like her.

Paul: I believe that’s the wife of Charles Lindbergh.

Brent: She wrote Gift from the Sea,

Paul: Yes.

Brent: Which was an amazing book for a certain time in my life. But that’s okay. We won’t get into that story right now….We will get in that story right now.

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: All right, rabbit hole alert. I was getting ready—I was shipping out to Desert Storm. I was in the Marines, we were leaving, we had this little stopover, and there was just like, “Hey, take some books with you, because there’s a lot of sand and dead time and you’ll be really bored.” And I grabbed this book, Gifts from the Sea.

Paul: No kidding.

Brent: And I’m like, what the heck is this? I just threw it in my— because I’m like, where’s Tom Clancy, where’s Sci-Fi? They didn’t have any of that stuff. I grabbed that, I put it in my book, And we survived, we made it through the ground war, and then there was some dead time waiting to go home and trying to process everything we did. And I pull that book open and I’m just like, it was all about the joy of solitude and processing your thoughts. And I’ve been trapped in a Humvee with like these three other people for like days and days and I’m stressed out thinking I was going to die at any moment. And it was just it was amazing. Like it was the perfect… book.

Paul: We’re actually going to go there later, right?

Brent: Yes. Yes.

Paul: Comfort as a place. Yes. Comfort preparation.

Brent: Comfort is a good tool. It’s just not the place that you live.

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: Right. Yes. So that was a foreshadowing of talking about comfort.

Paul: I love when unplanned things are awesome.

Brent: So that book was amazing. I reread it and it was still good. It didn’t really work like at that point in time, but that was like the perfect time. And I’m like rummaging through my bag of which had, I don’t want to date myself. Okay. Cassette tapes—

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: Cassette tapes with sand filled in them and stuff. Cause I was traveling and there’s a book and I’m like, “Okay, let’s check it out.”

Paul: It’s okay. I’m on the tail end of that. My first, my first album that I bought was a cassette tape, man.

Brent: That’s right. Me too. Me too. So let’s go back to that quote, because that quote was long and deep, and I kind of sidetracked us with this little rabbit hole.

Paul: Oh, I don’t know. That’s not a sidetrack.

Brent: Let’s look at your quote again.

Paul: Can you tell me that again? Yes. “The only way to achieve real security is by embracing change, growth, and actively seeking reform rather than trying to maintain a static and unchanging situation.”

Brent: So instead of locking all your doors and creating a prison state, you know, virtually—actual through laws or whatever. But instead of making your life a prison to save yourself

Paul: Like The Village?

Brent: Like the village

Paul: M. Night Shyamalan’s.

Brent: Yes. Yeah. Or like any number of political actions after 9-11, there’s like, “We’re going to make ourselves safer.” And it’s like, “Are we safer, or are we just locked in more?”

Paul: I know.

Brent: I’m not so sure.

Paul: Yeah, another area that I take the middle path on, because I consider myself a prepper, but not like some of my friends.

Brent: Well, yeah, you’ve got to have a balance. You have to accept the risks of freedom while at the same time… taking good preparation for danger. But if you’re just always hiding from danger and then you’ve you just live your whole life inside this lock—you know, we’ve seen those movies. “Hi, I’m the I’m the reclusive hermit who never leaves my house because the world is unsafe and I’ve got three layers of bars on every window.” And it’s like, “OK, you’re safe, but how free are you? Are you really safe if you can’t even leave your house?”

Paul: Yes.

Brent: And maybe that’s kind of what she’s talking about.

Paul: Yeah. And maybe we’re speaking to somebody.

Brent: So, I will say that this Anne Morrow Lindbergh, she knows what she’s talking about. A little bit of history there. She was married to Charles Lindbergh who flew—but her baby was kidnapped and died.

Paul: It was tragic.

Brent: If anyone should be worried about putting bars on her doors and windows and locking down security, it’s this woman. So, when she talks about how security is more than just living in fear and bars and locks, we should all listen to her because she has far more experience in the area.

Paul: Man, yeah, that’s reality. And sometimes the areas of the story that we have to address and undertake, they are a little more real, right? Kind of like our third one, which is simply providing for the community or providing for your family.

Brent: Right, providing. So, we talked about saving the village, saving the world, or providing for your family, which doesn’t really read like a great Hollywood thriller, but it’s more real world for us.

Paul: But I thought of Robin Hood.

Brent: OK, tell me.

Paul: Well, I’m thinking to myself, OK, so this guy, he lives, you know, among the peasants.

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: And there is definitely injustice. There’s inequality. There’s definitely economic oppression. And then this guy, he’s like he can’t take it anymore. He’s going to do something about it.

Brent: Right.

Paul: Right. And so, he I mean, I’m this is the cliff notes version. Right. Right. He definitely..He’s gonna do something about it, and instead of sitting by and watching things happen, he figures out some way. Now, right or wrong, he figures out a way.

Brent: And I think what’s interesting about the, you talk about he’s hanging out with the peasants, but then if he hadn’t done this, how often would he be actually be hanging out with the peasants? Because he undertook this quest.

Paul: Um-hmm.

Brent: He’s learning things from people for all different cultural levels, all different levels of economics. He’s learning how the other half lives. He’s learning street level life. He’s becoming more knowledgeable and empathetic.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: And if he stayed away and hidden away in his castle or something.

Paul: Right.

Brent: Just complain about the administration, “This king sucks. How come taxes are so high?” So, Paul, what you’re saying is that you’re not telling our audience to go out and start robbing people. We’re not really going down that far down the rabbit hole. But as a general principle, Robin Hood did get off of the couch and leave the comfort zone and do something about address the problems that he saw.

Paul: Exactly.

Brent: I like it.

Announcer: Full mental bracket.

19:33

Brent: So what we were talking about before, we get a point where something has to change.

Paul: Something has to change.

Brent: We hear this call to adventure. It kind of competes with our life of comfort. And it’s like, is it really worth leaving the comfort zone to do this? And some days it doesn’t feel like it is.

Paul: Yeah. Yeah. When I was, again, going through what we were going to talk about, I was thinking of this phrase that somebody taught me a long time ago, long before Tony Robbins was famous.

Brent: Right.

Paul: Which at this point, he’s been coined saying this. I’ll give him props, though. But a long time ago, probably ‘03. And I don’t know who exactly it is. I tried to do a little research to find out who said this, but I love the quote. It’s, “Change occurs when the pain of the status quo becomes greater than the pain that it takes to change.”

Brent: Oh yeah. I heard that one like back in the 90s.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: That’s an old quote. I like that you only change when the pain of change is less than the pain of staying the same.

Paul: Exactly.

Brent: Once that bar rises, it’s like, all right, I can’t just stay here anymore.

Paul: Can’t do it.

00:21:04 – Finding Meaning Beyond Self

Brent: I think something that we’re going to talk about here in this episode is that although we love comfort and here in Western society, we’ve been really advertised and primed for comfort. But sometimes people live very comfortable lives and like, “It just doesn’t feel like I have any meaning.” It’s like, well, what have you done in recently that’s been difficult.

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: Or challenging or rewards someone outside and bigger than yourself? Well, I don’t do that. Well, maybe that’s why your life feels empty.

Paul: Yes, yes. I would like to say, just for the audience, that the voices that we use, I relate to these voices. So, I am not judging you. I am simply saying these voices are within me as well.

Brent: Okay. I was trying to, the internal dialogue, the accents I was throwing on, because I don’t want to offend anyone either. If you talk like this, don’t think I’m making fun of you. Because you’re probably my next door neighbor, but that’s all right.

Paul: Oh my gosh. So, in the last podcast, I had mentioned that seeing my life through Epic Story actually really motivated me. And I think one of the reasons why it did was because there was something bigger than me. And that really motivated me to make some changes. And so, I know that that’s a big part of change is that you accept the quest because this quest is bigger than you. (QUOTE)

Brent: Right.

Paul: And you want to be a part of something that is that you are a part of. That’s it’s epic.

Brent: Yes. Yeah. And that’s something I think we’ve been kind of just skirting on the edge of is that there’s a lot of research in about subjective well-being and happiness and satisfaction in life, being tied to causes that are bigger than yourself,

Paul: Um-hmm.

Brent:  To giving back to the community, to giving a larger cause, whether it be religious or charitable or whatever, something beyond your own personal benefit, gives this incredible happiness, at least in relation to just selfishly chasing just things that benefit you only.

Paul: Right.

Brent:  And that’s counter-cultural here in America.

Paul: There is a song that I absolutely love by a band called A.L.O. It’s called Barbecue. It basically talks about all the dreams that never came true. So again, the chorus has something to do with welcome to your barbecue where we roast all the dreams that never came true. Welcome to your barbecue, pig out and dream anew.

Brent: Oh, wow. So we’re not holding on to yesterday.

Paul: Yeah.

 Brent: So, although yesterday’s dreams didn’t come true, you don’t just sit there and cling to them. You cast new dreams and go out chasing that.

Paul: And that song popped up in my mind with the Joseph Campbell quote, where Joseph Campbell says, we must let go of the life we have planned so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.

Brent: Yes. And to me, that’s accepting the shift in and accepting the quest. It’s like I had this plan for how this day was going to go or the rest of my life was going to go. But then the world fell apart and something bigger than me needs me. So,

Paul: Um-hmm

Brent:  I’m going to adjust that plan. And in the episodes that will come, we’ll just discuss and discover how accepting that plan, although it’s a big hassle, is the great tool for growth and satisfaction in your life. You level up your identity, you level up your abilities, you learn to enjoy the challenge.

Paul: I’m hearing like the Super Mario.

[Laughter]

Announcer:This is the Full Mental Bracket.

Brent: So, I think we were talking about this to seeing your life as an epic story and still instills a sense of purpose.

Paul: My favorite part.

Brent: So, you have to accept the call to adventure. And we talked about how the protag often refuses to call.

Paul: Mm hmm.

Brent: And the thing, the point is, is that you can refuse the call, but your problems don’t necessarily go away. So, it’s like, it may feel good for the moment to hide your head under the pillow and pull the covers over you, but oftentimes the problems are still there waiting for you to embrace the call.

Paul: It was like I only just the trailer yesterday. I didn’t even I didn’t watch the movie, but it just reminded me of this concept. And it’s the last Mission Impossible.

Brent: OK.

Paul: And he’s like, you might lose everything. Right.

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: I mean, well, that’s a daunting call.

Brent: Yeah. And we like stories like that, stories where you’re taking incredible chances and taking incredible risks to get incredible rewards. But as we’ll talk about later, we’re not all that excited about living that kind of story. That sounds a little risky. I like to I’ll watch you.

Paul: [Laughing]

Matter of fact, I need some more popcorn while I watch you.

Paul: Oh, man. The passive observer, huh?

Brent: Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s just how we’re wired to want comfort and safety, but at the same time to not actually get a lot of meaning from it. You, get the more meaning from the risk from the larger than life, but it’s a lot of work and it’s some risk and it’s

Paul: What a paradox.

Brent: Yes. And so that’s what we get with these. I know it happened for me for a long time. It’s like, “I have everything I want and I’m miserable.” I was like, “why is that?”

 Paul: Yes.

Brent: You’re not wanting big enough. You need something and not just like a Lamborghini. You need something outside of you. You need something huge.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: A huge goal.

Paul: Oh, my goodness. Yeah. So, in my Christian faith, I spent time reading scriptures and I saw this concept pop up. I don’t remember anybody telling me this, but apparently they cultivated the ground in the Garden of Eden.

Brent: Okay.

Paul: And I’m just like reading that and I’m like, hold on a second. I just thought they sat around and just kind of like ate fruit and had sex.

Brent: And that was also a difficult concept for me. I was like, “What do you mean they’re in paradise and they’re working?” And then, you know, they talk about the biblical descriptions of heaven and it’s like, “Yeah, we’re going to have a really satisfying work.” “Wait a minute. Stop. Work? I retire at 65 and then I die and I go up to the streets of gold. I ain’t gonna work.” And it’s like, you’re just seriously going to sit around for all of eternity on a couch complaining that Netflix doesn’t have enough channels or you’re going to find something satisfying to do with your afterlife.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: I’m like, oh, that’s fascinating. But as a youngster, I didn’t know. The ultimate value is comfort and laziness and being on vacation forever.

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: And then you get to go on vacation for a couple of weeks and like, “This is—I’m ready to go back and do something.” This was nice, but it’s it’s—comfort is a temporary phase.

Paul: Intuitively, I think that I just felt like that was true, that we were going to do some work because I’m such a curious person. I mean, I meet my—the guy who picks up my garbage. And he will explain something about the truck or he’ll explain something about the process. I’m like, man, that’s kind of intriguing. Like, I wouldn’t even mind doing that in heaven a little bit. I don’t know if there’s going to be garbage in heaven.

Brent: I think the holdup we have with the idea of work is bad is that so many of us haven’t found any sort of fulfilling work. It just feels like you’re a cog in the machine, you’ve got to do this thing, people are complaining that you, bosses are giving you bad reviews,

Paul: Yes.

Brent: And it doesn’t feel like a good thing, you know. And I worked decades like that before I found a job that was actually even halfway satisfying. Like, “Oh, this is great.” I mean, I would rather be—I don’t—I’m not going to work through my weekends and do it, but it’s enjoyable work that’s challenging. It gives me some dopamine by doing it, instead of dread.

Paul: See, I think you ran into something there. Like when I was talking to that gentleman about his job, picking up trash.

Brent: Right.

Paul: He felt, I could tell, I mean, now this is an interpretation, but I do interpret things a lot every day. He was feeling a sense of purpose in what he did. And so even something like collecting trash. He felt like he was doing something for his community. And so, he did not see that as just a dead-end job.

Brent: I think that segues into some of the points that we’re going to get to, which is the real difference is how you interpret the events of your life, whether they’re—

Paul: Nice

Brent: Adversity or adventure on whether they suck or whether they’re an actual challenge for you.

Announcer: Full Mental Bracket.

Paul: Are you going to be talking about whitewater rafting anytime soon?

Brent: You know, we could talk about that. So—and that’s kind of the interpretation. Right? So, if you…I enjoy whitewater rafting and I’ve done it quite a few times. And so you get excited and you’re in there and the water splashing in your face and the waves are pounding you and you’re pounding the boat and stuff. And what’s often the difference between enjoyment and panic is if your boat hits it frontwards or sideways. And maybe I talked about this last episode. You hit the boat sideways and you’re in the water. You’re like, [sound effect] if you thought being so down low in the boat was scary, wait till you don’t even have the boat and you’re just like bouncing off rocks and stuff.

Paul: [laughing]

Brent: Spoiler, I’ve done that. And so that gets a little challenging, but the difference the attitude, the interpretation, hitting the waves straight on instead of sideways it makes all the difference—

Paul: Ohh

Brent: Between an enjoyable challenge that’s manageable and a panicky thing where you’re afraid you might drown.

 Paul: So that reminds me of power lifting.

Brent: Okay

Paul: One of my hobbies. So, when you walk up to the bar, let’s just say you’re squatting, when you walk up to the bar and you put the weight on your back, you literally have to frame it, mentally frame that you are the force acting on the weight.

Brent: Okay.

Paul: If you are out of that frame, and it happens to I think everybody, even the best of them, they put the weight on their back and all of a sudden it feels heavy, right? I guarantee you’re not gonna do as well that day. Unless you can shift it.

Brent: I hear about this. It’s hard. It’s like about how when you’re lifting weights and doing physical workout, you have to focus your mind on the exercise, which I’ve never been able to do. This is so boring and so uncomfortable. My mind is far, it’s like a torture thing., “I’m going to my happy place now and I’m not gonna think about all the weight I’m lifting.”

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: Which is probably why I haven’t done as well as some other people have in this challenge. It’s difficult for me. But I believe you. Focusing, mentally engaging it, the mental attitude, the mind space that you find while you’re engaging this effort has a great effect on your results.

Paul: Well, and I think, again, going back to getting out of the comfort zone. You know, it’s, again, I think this even goes back to the protag episode. I mean, if you feel like the weight is the force on you, you know, even though pragmatically there’s a reality to that, but mentally, if you’re like, I am the one doing this, I am the one controlling this, that you’ve decided I’m getting out of the comfort zone. I’m going to force, I’m going to produce force upon this weight. and you’re more successful. And you actually reach the goals that you want to reach that way.

Brent: Because you’re protagging. You’re engaging with the challenge. So, let’s look at what this looks like, the difference between comfort and adventure, and some examples we’ve got.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: So going back to the Iron Man movie, the original Iron Man movie, which I really love.

Paul: Me too. Number one, baby.

Brent: We find Tony Stark is gravely wounded, and he’s been captured by terrorists and placed in a no-win situation. The terrorists say, you have to make weapons for us, or we’re going to kill you.

Paul: It probably is why this is my favorite. Ironman.

Brent: Why is that

Paul: Because it is…Visually he literally is in the worst spot.

Brent: Yeah, it illustrates the whole

Paul: Yes.

Brent: Yes So, he meets his new mentor (Yensin.) I think I talked last episode about how much I love Yeltsin Yeltsin is amazing He’s like “Oh, they’re gonna kill us at the end of the week.” He’s like, “Well, then I guess this is a very important week for you.

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: He’s like, “Are you gonna whine and feel sorry for yourself? Are you gonna rise to the challenge?” so Yeltsin he gives um, he gets Tony thinking about his legacy. He’s like, “These guys are killing people, innocent people, with your weapons that you designed, and they want you to design a new master weapon so they can kill even more people. That is your legacy. If you die now, that’s how the world will remember you. That’s what you’ve done for the world. You’ve made the world more dangerous. Do you want to change that?” He’s like, “Yeah, but we’re stuck in a cave.” And he’s like, “But wait a minute. Aren’t you the genius inventor wonderkind who can invent things without half a brain?” “I’ll be darned, I am.” And so, he takes the fight to his captors. Even though he’s still locked in the cave, there’s still guards out there, everything has changed. His identity’s changed, his mission’s changed. He’s like, screw these guys, I’m not going down like this. I may not win, but I’m going down fighting.

Paul: It does sound like he fits the description of an adversarial ally. Yeltsin? Yes.

Brent: Yeah, yeah. A mentor, and yeah.

Paul: Well, just in that irreverent tone of, here’s your legacy if you follow this path now.

Brent: Right. Right. I think there’s some grey area between some of these different roles. But I think he he’s functioning like that. But in the tone of more of a mentor, it’s like, “Hey, buddy, you’ve had a—yeah, there’s a hole in your heart. You’ve had a rough week. I’ve been a lot. But, you know, my wife and kid are dead. I’ve been locked in this cave for a year. You know, must suck to be you. But, you know, I think, welcome to the welcome to the cave club.”

Paul:  Ouch.

Brent: You know, and he’s like, he’s very gentle. He’s very gentle with him. He reminds him that he was, he was drunk at a conference in Germany and gave this amazing lecture while he was halfway inebriated.

Paul:  Right

Brent: He’s like, you have the skills to get out of this situation. You just don’t yet have the attitude.

Paul: Yeah. We call that the reality rub-in. Yeah.

Brent: I like it. Is that like a, is that like a, a barbecue sauce?

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: Do you rub it in? No.

Paul: Oh my gosh. That’s a, that would be great.

Brent: Tell me the reality Rub in. I want to know about this. I want to know.

Paul: Well, I mean, I mean, just think about it. You’ve got Yeltsin. He’s literally saying like, “This is what I’ve been through. This is going to be your legacy.”

Brent: Right.

Paul: This is the reality of the situation. Yeah. You want to go that way?

Brent: And that’s a good point. Yeltsin—you’ll notice that Yeltsin—I think if I were Yeltsin, its like, “I’ve been in this cave for nine months. Welcome to the club. This is where the bucket toilet is. We’re going to be here until we die.” But he’s not, he’s like, “Hey man, now that you’re here, I think we can do something different.”

Paul: Man.

Brent: Now, another example of this in a completely different context comes from the Hunger Games book and movie. So, you know, in the hunger games, it’s, it’s not this exciting superhero movie. It’s a dystopia.

Paul: Right.

Brent: All these people are trapped in this world that they didn’t make and they’re paying the price for the crimes of their forefathers and they’re trapped in this whole gladiatorial thing. So, Katniss does her best to ignore the injustice of the world that she lives in. She’s like, yeah, there’s a Hunger Games, there’s a reaping, all this stuff, but you know, if I can sneak out after the thing and go hunting, we might have enough squirrel to live for another day.

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: That’s kind of her mindset. But then her baby sister gets picked. And now the stakes are very personal for her. She could ignore the problem. But now something must be done because this can’t happen to my baby sister. This has happened to a lot of people that I know and maybe even care about. But this can’t happen to my baby sister. Now it’s for real.

Paul: So, this goes back to providing for the family. Community

Brent: Yes, and through the series of the books and the movies and stuff, she ends up providing for the whole community by carefully disassembling the system. But it’s so entrenched that it takes several books, several movies to do that. Three books and four movies because it was a money-grabbing split that movie, that book into two movies.

Paul: I think that idea is worth repeating. Carefully disassembling the system.

Brent: Carefully dismantling the system.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: That was oppressing her.

Paul: Carefully.

Brent: So, she has to, she has to answer this call. This call comes to her. She’s sitting there, you’re forced in this assembly and it’s like, “I pick a baby sister.” And now she has to, it’s a call to adventure, but it’s a horrifying call. Is what is her legacy going to be? Is she going to be the woman who watched from safety as her little sister was taken away and died painfully and publicly to protect to protect herself?

Paul: And it’s the ultimate legacy, right? To lay down your life.

Brent: Well, it’s so egregious. It’s just like, okay, so we’re gonna take these people who have no combat training, and we’re gonna make them in a gladiatorial game, and then we’re gonna film it. We’re gonna make everybody watch these people die in pain.

Paul: Shame city.

Brent: For sport. And then we’re gonna gamble about it and drink champagne while these people — I mean, they wrote it to really accentuate the evilness of it.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: The evil, and the self-absorption of it. So, does Katniss wanna risk her life? Does she want to kill other people for the pleasure of spectators? No, she doesn’t, but she’s willing to accept that cost to protect her sister. There’s something bigger than her out there.

Paul: I like that perspective, by the way. I think I’ve got lots of different perspectives on the Hunger Games, but seeing this part of story, answering the call and the quest, this is, that’s great.

Brent: Because it’s a messed up call. It’s like, it’s not something you—oh, I know that like, even like, you know, my daughter was like really obsessed with Hunger Games, but I don’t see anyone like putting that poster on their wall. “If only I could be a scrappy bow hunter in this corrupt den of corruption.” I don’t think anyone dreams of that.

Paul: Yeah

Brent: Maybe the final scene and you’re on the stage, but no one wants to go through all that. But yet our lives often are like that.

Paul: That’s what I was about to say. I was like, people can relate to this because there are so many complexities in life, right? And it’s hard because you have people over here you know, these voices over here that are like, you know, I like to keep life simple and, and you’re like, “I don’t know how you’re going to simplify this.”.

Brent: Right.

Paul: Sit down and let me tell you about this. Okay.

Brent: And you get sometimes you just get dealt a sucky hand and you never see it coming. You know, you could be going great. And suddenly the doctor gives you some horrible news. And suddenly, suddenly your first 20, 30, 40 years was just a prologue. And the story is actually starting now. You know, like “I thought I was going out good. And I was like, well, you were. And welcome to the new story.”

Paul: The shift.

Brent: The shift that you were going to say something else.

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: This is some really shifty news I’m getting. I don’t appreciate this at all.

Announcer: This is Full Mental Bracket.

Brent: I’ll just mention real quick an example of going beyond comfort. I remember when I first watched Star Trek Generations way back in the day, and it was the handover from Captain Kirk to Captain Picard, and it’s a big movie. And Captain Kirk, somehow through sci-fi hand-waving magic, he’s found himself in sci-fi heaven. And he’s able to do everything he wasn’t able to do in his career life, and he’s there with the woman of his dreams, and he’s riding horses. And then this guy Picard says, “The galaxy needs you to save it. You need to leave heaven behind.” And he’s like, “All right. I was getting bored anyway.” And as I told about the earlier chip, like “What? You found the perfect comfort?” I would have told Baldy to go packing.

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: It’s like, “No, this is it, man. I did my bit for Starfleet. I’m here for the duration.”

Paul: Retired

Brent: But the too much comfort got to him It wasn’t the comfort of the predictable and everything going right and everything being happy Wasn’t a significant—wasn’t a strong enough draw to keep him there.

Paul: He rested and he rusted

Brent: He rested and then he left.

 Paul: Yeah.

Brent: So even when you—once you undertake the quest you can’t really go back, I think, to the comfort zone.

Paul: Ah, yes.

Brent: I mean, think about Iron Man. So, Tony Stark escapes the cave, he builds a suit, he escapes the cave. He’s like, all right, story’s over. No, story’s not over. He’s like, he still can’t get out of his mind. Yeltsin died. Spoiler, Yeltsin died. So, Yeltsin died, he’s thinking about that. He’s thinking about his legacy are still weapons of mass destruction. He goes home, has a press conference, says, hey, we’re not making guns no more. He’s tinkering with his suit. He’s trying to make some sense of his life. But now that he’s seen how the world really works, he can’t go back. He’s home, he’s eating hamburgers and he’s in his little mega mansion, but he’s not back in the comfort zone.

Paul: And I think there’s certain thresholds that once they get crossed, there’s no turning back. Like you mentioned Yeltsin dying. I think that when you are on a mission with someone and they lay down your life, I mean, that’s a threshold. You cross that, it’s really hard to go back once somebody has laid down their life for that purpose.

Brent: To go back to your petty, small life.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: Yeah. Yeah, there’s a rabbit hole about people thanking me for my service, but we won’t go into that today. We’re behind schedule. We’re going to carry on.

Paul: I saw those gears turning. [Laughing]

Brent: Too many rabbit holes for Brent on this one episode. So, another example in Katniss in the Hunger Games right so she goes to she gets the best food She’s ever had in her life the most food. She gets the best clothing the best weapon She gets a fancy bow, but she’s not in the comfort zone. She’s training. She’s in the training before the games So things seem like they’re getting more comfortable, but she can’t let down her guard for a minute It’s actually more dangerous than it ever was.

Paul: Ohh, man.

Brent: So, the comfort once you leave the comfort zone. I mean you’re kind of out for a minute You got a—

Paul: I feel like you’ve you’ve really in—but do you have an essay on this cuz I mean you are laying it out

Brent: I do not but since we’ve been having this conversation I’ve been thinking about it a bit,

Paul: Man

Brent: Well, I told you know so we mentioned all the episodes previously I was really had an obsession with comfort zone. I was like I got in the comfort zone I ain’t never leaving and now I was like, “Well, I guess I can leave”—and so now I It was such a change in my mentality. It was like, “Okay, I’ve had a rough life where I’ve made the most of it, had adventures by no choice of my own, but to actually volunteer for an adventure? I don’t know about that. I barely survived the last ones.”

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: So it’s been a change in my mind. It’s like, oh yeah, there’s some real value in this and some growth in this. And the new me—the old me doesn’t recognize the new me. “What are you talking about, old man? That’s where you need to take the money and run. We need to sit here on the couch. and watch Netflix.” I was like, “No, we can only do that so much.”

Paul: You know everybody’s looking at that food that Katniss was eating on the train and they’re like, “Man, that’s the life, huh?”

Brent: Yeah. I mean, they’re all probably, people back home probably would be jealous of that, but not the consequences that go with it.

Paul: I mean, if we’re rigorously honest with ourselves, we probably would let our guard down.

Brent: A little bit.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: I mean, if I, yeah, if I was getting some good sleep and there was actual heat and air conditioning and good showers and stuff, I might be…But you know, that’s an example of what we were talking about before, about how we like to watch stories that are exciting and rigorous, but we don’t want to live them.

Paul: Right.

Brent:  So, we like to watch, we like stories that are exciting and unpredictable, and there’s high stakes.

Paul: I think that’s a good point to make right now, is that movies are snapshots of phases that probably take a lot longer in real life.

Brent: Right, they’re very compressed.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: A Hollywood movie is like the most important one to three days in a person’s life. And it’s just been compressed into two hours.

Paul: Right.

Brent: And it’s like a whole life building up to that, a whole life after you’ve learned the lesson. But that little that’s the crucible right there. This is where everything changed.

Paul: That’s why I I often. I think now that I’m looking at life through the lens of story, even when I see happily ever after. And I know that there’s another shift coming right after that.

Brent: Right. That’s that’s a good point. That goes right with the comfort thing. We say happily ever after—

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: It’s like, well, that sounds really boring and probably not controllable. You think it’s going to be happily ever after. As we mentioned last episode, you know, happy is built into happenstance is built on circumstances.

Paul: Right.

Brent: So, after that circumstances completely agreed with them and their external locus control was all happy, happy because they went through this…this fairy tale.

Paul: That’s just so you can go to bed after the movie.

Brent: Yeah. So,

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: So, let’s talk about some of the movies we like to live.

Paul: Okay.

Brent: So we talked about, you know, we like to watch Die Hard. We like to, I like to watch like The Fifth Element and The Whole World is Waiting on You.

Paul: Oh yeah.

Brent: But when it comes to my life, I liked different stories like The Day Nothing Went Wrong or An Uneventful Journey.

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: Minimum Risk: The Couch Potato Story. It’s like, that’s the kind of movie I want to live. But then you find that they’re just not that satisfying.

Paul: Man. That’s so true.

Brent: Sometimes you do everything you can to stay in the comfort zone and you just, you don’t want to, like, “I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go. “And I’m thinking, we talked about this scene from the movie Stranger Than Fiction.

Paul: Uh huh.

Brent: If you haven’t seen this movie, pause this episode, watch this movie immediately because your life is deprived. So, our protagonist, Harold Crick, finds out that his life is indeed a story being plotted by a stranger, much to his dismay, and after several misadventures, he’s like, “Fine, screw it, I’m just gonna hide on my couch in my living room and I’m not gonna participate in the story.”

Paul: Well, he gets pushed [Laughing]

Brent: [Laughing] A wrecking ball comes through the side of his house.

Paul: Man. Yeah, that claw machine—

Brent: [Laughing] Yeah, we’re demolishing your house. And it’s like, “You’re what?” And it’s like,I was going to stay here.” “Not no more.” And then the forces of circumstances, the forces of story knocked him out of the comfort zone to get back into the story.

Paul: Can you imagine the cognitive dissonance that he had? I mean, that any of us would have, you know. or that we do have sometimes [Laughing] when we realize that there are a lot of forces at play.

Brent: Yeah.You want to blame the storyteller, but it’s like, you’re also the protagonist, so what are you doing? How are you riding these waves? How are you, you know?

Paul: You can’t drop your mic either, can you?

Brent: Yeah. Are you going to take the boat? I mean, you can fuss at the waves and fuss at the course that created this canyon, but if your boat hits sideways, [Laughing] you’re still going to be in the water.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: So are you going to fuss or are you going to do something about it?

Paul: Marsha Lanahan, a video of her saying, “You know, you can you can look at the sky and wish it wasn’t raining. But when you do that, you’re basically saying I could run the universe better.” [Laughing]

Brent: That’s true. That’s true. There’s a section of that in A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin, probably mangling her last name. And it was all about this wizard that gets this power. And he’s like, “You can make it rain?” “Yeah, I can make it rain right here. But then they’ll have a drought over there.” And he’s like, “The best magic is the minimum amount possible. You, you want to, you, you got to assume that the universe is doing pretty good and you just bump it every little bit when you absolutely can’t find any other task.”

Paul: Reminds me of Bruce Almighty.

Brent: Oh, I love that.

Paul: All the prayers, you know, are coming down in the, the “ya-way.” And he’s like, “Yes to all.” Click. And all of a sudden the world goes up in flames, like—

Brent: People don’t actually know what they want.

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: You can’t just give them what they say they want. You got to make them think about it and really wrestle with it.

Paul: Oh, man.

Brent: What are your thoughts on comfort? Is there…?

Paul: Well, again, I just to bounce back real quick to how do you pronounce his name in Stranger Fiction? Mr…?

Brent: Harold Crick.

Paul: Crick.

Brent: Harold Crick.

Paul: It’s spelled…

Brent: Anyway, maybe I’m wrong.

Paul: No, I think you’re right. Harold Crick. Yeah, I thought it was really interesting how many…how many steps it took to continue to push him. Now, yes, that was like the ultimate push.

Brent: Right.

Paul: Obviously.

Brent: Right.

Paul: But I also was thinking about all the steps toward that, you know, when he meets Anna Paschal and, you know, she’s, you know, “Yeah, you’re…”

Brent: She’s she’s not happy.

Paul: Oh, man, she’s yelling at she gets like a whole crowd, you know, to yell at him. And then at some point he finds himself and she’s got the cookie. And like at this point, it’s almost like she is challenging him to get out of his comfort zone in subtle ways, right? With the cookie.

Brent: Well, he’s the super organized IRS agent and she’s like this anarchic…anarchist wannabe kind of like, I don’t, I don’t organize anything. I just live my life. And they’re just as opposite as they can be.

Paul: What I love about it, though, is that she seems that way until you hear her backstory. And then you realize, okay, there’s more to this. She actually wants to save the world one cookie at a time, right?

Brent: And that’s the thing. If there’s nothing else, listeners, that you get out of this episode, it’s don’t assume you know someone else’s backstory. Just because they’re operating in a way that you don’t understand, there’s probably, in their brain, a very good reason for that. It may be wrong, or it may be right, and you just don’t know the story.

Paul: Yes. Yes

Brent: Proceed with caution.

Paul: Yeah. Because I think our ultimate goal here is that we really want to encourage and motivate people to be the protagonist.

Brent: Yes.

Paul: To answer the call.

Brent: Yes.

Paul: Right?

Brent: But once again, as we mentioned before, everyone, hopefully if everyone that’s embraced the call is the protagonist of their own life. So sometimes you come across them and you think that they’re, they’re the enemy or they’re the villain or something. Take some time. They’re on a journey themselves.

Paul: Yes

Brent: And you don’t know what that journey is. So, feel free to ask some questions and to engage with them and wrestle with these struggles instead of casting instant judgment.

Paul: Speaking of journeys, all right, so I got to present my daily dialectic.

Brent: [sound effect] Daily dialectic.

Paul: So, you know, when people are settling for comfort, I think often people are seen as being self-centered, right?

Brent: I feel like that’s true.

Paul: And then you have a group of people that look like they’ve just given up and they’re apathetic and they also look self-centered and they also look like they’re just wanting to live in comfort. When in actuality, I think there’s a group of people that often get overlooked, and that is these people that are in a state of hopeless apathy, where they have tried and tried and tried, and yet they don’t have the resources yet to help them to try again. And so, you see them, they are passively sitting by, not answering the call, but they’re not answering the call because they have found themselves in a state of hopelessness.

Brent: So, it’s not that they’re like really comfy with the way that they’re living, they just don’t believe that anything could ever change?

Paul: Exactly.

Brent: Sometimes those people are going to need a little help up then.

Paul: Yes. So some pre-step to actually get them to understand and motivate and believe in themselves a tiny little bit so they can get going.

Paul: I’ll bring up Marsha Linehan again, but she described a ladder out of hell. She’s like, there’s one ladder out of hell and you’re sitting there and you’re, you’re looking up at the top of the hole. You know, I’ve got to climb this ladder, but every rung of this ladder is going to burn the skin off my hands and my feet. Am I going to get out or am I just going to sit here in hell?

Brent: Well, I’ve never heard of Marshall before today, but now I’m intrigued.

Paul: Marsha Lanahan.

Brent: Marshall Lanahan.

Paul: The developer of DBT.

Brent: Okay. Yeah. Is that all one name or is that two names?

Paul: Marsha. Marsha Lanahan.

Brent: Oh, see, I thought it was Marshall. See, I thought it was Marshall Lanahan. You like do that summoning and somehow dialectics just happened or something like that.

 Paul: No, maybe I was using my, uh—

Brent: I’m just curious.

Paul: My Columbo voice.

Brent: All right. I like it. Marsha.

Announcer: Full Mental bracket.

Brent: To reinforce one last time, I mean, these are counter to the narratives that we get every day. We get told that we deserve a break today,

Paul: [Laughing]

Brent: That we deserve a softer couch, juicier sandwich meat. It’s like, “You’ve been robbed. You deserve a more comfortable life.”

Paul: Yeah. And sometimes when I…Oh man, all right, sorry if anybody’s in this state, but we’re encouraging you, okay? But I mean, some people are like, I gotta go work on myself.

Brent: Right?

Paul: And I literally am like, “Well, what are you gonna do while you’re working on yourself?” And they’re like, “Well, man, I’m gonna go and just, I’m gonna go watch a movie by myself. I’m gonna just lay around.”

Brent: That doesn’t sound like you’re working on yourself. That sounds like you’re running away.

Paul: Exactly.

Brent: So, when you say I’m working myself, I’m thinking of a different movie. I’m thinking of Mr. Miyagi. Like you do the daily chores that you don’t want to do and you find by accident you’ve actually done some work on yourself and you’ve learned all of these things by embracing the adversity.

Paul: Well played.

Brent: So that’s the way we work on yourself is maybe working on yourself is just being more intentional as you live your life

Paul: Uh huh

Brent: And more intentional about how you deal with things rather than running away and having a hot rock massage or whatever. Maybe that’s part of it, but that can’t be the whole thing. We’re not saying that you can’t be comfortable, you can’t take a rest, you can’t have a massage, but you get recharged and then you get back in the battle.

Paul: That’s it.

Brent: That’s the trick, you get back up again.

Paul: It’s, there’s a difference between the way that you are framing comfort.

Brent: Yeah. It’s like more like the way we’re talking about it seems to me more like a boxer between rounds. It’s like he’s like rubbing his thing and wiping his brow—

Paul: There you go.

Brent: “Okay, now get back in a fight again.”

Paul: Yes, love it.

Brent: It’s not like months and years on the stool there waiting to go back in.

Paul: So, for those who are fixated on this idea that comfort is a destination, maybe they need to be rethinking the whole idea of suffering. Suffering is not a crisis, necessarily.

Brent: Mmm. Oh, yeah, it’s a good point sometimes when you when you feel discomfort, when you feel like something’s becoming more challenging than you think it’s right, It feels like a crisis.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: My life is going horribly wrong. Why? Cuz I have a groove and we’re outside the groove or you know my Marriage or a relationship is suddenly really difficult or my kids are being difficult or I’m having difficulty with a job, It’s not fair that it shouldn’t be this way. I But, you know, I mean, don’t hang up on us now, listeners, but I mean, life is often like that.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: It’s not a groovy, smooth comfort zone. When you’re out of the comfort zone, you take on the challenges. And we’re going to have future episodes, we’re going to talk about that, the value of embracing the challenge.

Paul: Yes, yes.

Brent: Because you grow through that. You develop and you become better than you were before.

Paul: It does remind me of a scripture. One of my favorite scriptures is Romans 5:3. It says, not only that, we rejoice in sufferings, knowing that it produces endurance.

Brent: Right. So you don’t just stop with rejoicing in suffering, because then that would be the Holy Grail movie [sound effect] where they whack themselves to the board. [sound effect] And they’re like, flagellating themselves to punish themselves.

Paul: [Laughing] No.I see that whole idea as just a reframe. It’s just like, it’s just remind yourself that this is going to come out better.

Brent: Well, it goes back to purpose and meaning. When you realize that your current sufferings have a purpose

Paul: Yes.

Brent: And create meaning, then they’re not just something to rage against and to fast forward through. It’s like, “Are we done yet?”

 Paul: Yes.

Brent: If you can keep in mind that this is working a purpose in your life and strengthening and growing in your life, then you’ll hopefully be more patient…with the things that, you know. If you’re in the gym, and you know you’re getting stronger, then you’re more patient with the burn. If you’re just in there—if you’re me, you’re like “Ahh get it away from me. Why are the weights so heavy? Where’s the inflatable weights I was promised?”

Paul: I think that’s a constant process though for anybody. It’s like, “Why am I doing this again?” Oh yeah.

Brent: And I think that’s a fair question. Like, why am I doing this again? I think it’s good to reframe and you remind yourself, you excavate your own story. Can I do, yeah, I’ve done stuff like this before. Why am I doing this again? I do this all the time. And it’s like, what is the purpose of what I’m doing? Did I just get randomly stuck in a habit or does this actually serve a purpose in my life?

Paul: This is a good segue into some questions.

Brent: Okay, let’s ask some good questions.

Announcer: This is the Full Mental Bracket..

Brent: All right. So, here’s our takeaways for this this episode. Our dear Bracketeers. Question for you. Does your life as it exists now have an objective?

Paul: In other words, what is your quest?

Brent: What is your quest?

Paul: Yes.

Brent: And if you answer wrong, you’ll be thrown off the bridge of forever. [sound effect] No, but seriously, a lot of times we don’t think about that. You’re like, hey, do I actually have a purpose? If I were going to say why I get up in the morning, can I say why that is?

Paul: Um-hmm.

Brent: And so, your other question is, what purpose would it take? What purpose or meaning or cause would it take? to give you the motivation that you need to get outside of your comfort zone?

Paul: Yeah, that’s a good question.

Brent: What is it going to take? What kind of crowbars are going to take to pry you out of this comfort zone? Do you require a wrecking ball in the side of your house? Or is there something good and worthwhile out there that can lure you out?

Paul: Maybe just a cookie.

Brent: Maybe just a cookie.

[Laughing]

Brent: And another related question is also providing motivation. So, what would you like the legacy of your life to be? And are you currently on track for that? Like Tony Stark and Iron Man, if you don’t like the trajectory of your life and what your legacy is, it’s not too late to change that. It’s time to make some course corrections. And that also can motivate you to get out of your comfort zone. So think about these questions, Bracketeers, and contact us. Let us know what you’re thinking. If you have questions for us, let us know how you’re engaging with these questions and these mysteries. Contact us at contact@fullmentalbracket.com. We want to know.

Paul: Yeah, we really do. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.

Brent: We do. Because, I mean, if we don’t hear from you, I’m just going to have to keep talking to Paul. And then Paul’s like, oh, my gosh, please shut up. So, we need another voice in the conversation.

Paul: It’s an echo chamber in here.

Brent: [Laughing] We really do. All right. Thank you very much for joining us for another episode. We will see you next time.

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