(00:00:00) – Intro

full episode

Brent: Welcome back, Bracketeers. Happy time period, wherever you are. We are back with our next installment, Episode 5, if my memory serves me correctly. We are continuing our series on seeing your life as an epic story, and we’ve come to the next chapter in that story.

Paul: Speaking of epic stories and epic distractions, I can’t help when you say bracketeers to think that we’re going to need to get like army hats.

Brent: Yeah, I like it.

Paul: With like little brackets on them.

Brent: Or at least little mouse ears or whatever.

Paul: That’s what I was thinking. I was like, we have to have our version.

Brent: Yeah. They’re our little own Annette Funicello or something. I don’t know. Anyway, one day, one day, one day it could happen.

Paul: They’re going to pull it up on YouTube.

Brent: We’ll be here and they’ll be swarmed and be a whole army, like “yaaaaaaaah.” And you get a helmet and you get a helmet and you get a helmet. It’d be great.

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

Brent: If you’ve been watching along, or if you have not, we’ll bring you up a little recap here. We talk about our whole idea framework of seeing your life as an epic story, and it comes with seven elements. Element number one is seeing yourself becoming a protagonist. Number two, undertaking your quest. Number three, finding your tribe.

(Fact check: there are six elements but it takes us seven episodes to discuss them all.)

Paul: My favorite.

Brent: Which is what we did last time. Today, we’re going to talk about facing your obstacles.

Paul: That’s my favorite, too.

Brent: Paul has two favorites. After that, we’re going to talk about overcoming those obstacles and transforming.

Paul: Okay, I like it.

Brent: Which is Paul’s other favorite. And then finally, returning with a legacy, which I have to say is kind of a favorite of mine, too.

Paul: Yeah. The older I get, the more I realize how important it is.

Brent: Yeah, the more I start thinking about legacy. Back in my 20s, I’m like, yeah, I’ll rest when I’m dead.

Paul: I don’t even know what that means.

Brent: That might be tomorrow. I’ll actually rest now. Anyway, so today we’re looking at it, and what we’re looking at today is three key points, which we’re going to get out of the way now so you can follow along, because I know you’re all taking notes and memorizing all this. You’re not? Oh, well, okay. I’ll get over that. So, seeing your life as an epic story changes how you see the pain of your struggles.

Paul: May I interject something?

Brent: Yes, please.

Paul: Alright, so this is point number one.

Brent: Point number one.

Paul: And I stumbled upon this and I haven’t had time to post it yet, but C.S. Lewis said, if you think of this world as a place simply intended for happiness, you might find it quite intolerable. Think of it as a place for training and correction, and it’s not so bad.

Brent: That’s true, yeah. If you think that your life should be all about pleasant and pleasure and everything should be happy and sunshine and daisies, then real life is gonna slap you in the face. And it did to me for a good long time and I was always really mad about it and I could never do anything about it. Once you adjust your mindset to say, wait a minute, if I am a character worth the name in an epic story, then of course there’s gonna be complications.

Paul: Normalize this.

Brent: There’s gonna be complications. You should normalize your struggles. If you’re not struggling, Actually, Paul and I were talking about this off-air, and it’s like, if you’re not struggling, it’s like you’re not getting medical care anymore. You’re on palliative care. You’re basically in the hospice waiting to die. Here, I’m in pleasure land. Oh, I feel good. Oh, here’s my next show. Here’s my next hit. Here’s my next scroll. And then you’re not actually living your life.

Paul: Unnecessarily.

Brent: Unnecessarily. As we mentioned before, there are times you don’t have to grind 24-7. There are periods of rest. There are seasons where you will go and recuperate. That is healthy. But when you find yourself recuperating for, I don’t know, 5 to 10 to 15 years, maybe you’re not recuperating anymore. Maybe you’re just procrastinating and hiding away from life.

Paul: Point number two.

Brent: Point number two. Seeing your life as an epic story changes how you see the failure that accompanies your struggles.

Paul: Yes. And I would just like to point something out.

Brent: Yes.

Paul: I do not think that we are normalizing failure with all of the highlight reels that we have. Well, we’ve normalized. on social media.

Brent: How so?

Paul: Well, think about how everything that you see is somebody’s highlight reel.

Brent: Oh, that’s true.

Paul: Now, you know, I’ve had discussions with this, with people in the past and it’s like, what would that look like if you were going to,

Brent: Have like daily 24-7 cam?

Paul: Well, either that or like, how would people react, you know, if you were putting failures on your social media?

Brent: That’s just a different genre. There’s a compilation of epic fails. It’s like, bam, bam, bam, bam.

Paul: Which we’re getting into.

Brent: Usually they’re different people, though. It’s not the same person going bam, bam, bam every time.

Paul: That’s true.

Brent: That could be a little painful.

Paul: That’s true.

Brent: But yes, I mean, we do. And that’s kind of the social media effect where you put on your makeup and you’re like, oh, just woke up like this or this freak fluke achievement that I could never duplicate again. I caught it on camera. Yeah, this is my daily life. I look like this all the time.

Paul: It took 30, 30 different cuts to do that.

Brent: And I get the temptation, but ultimately that is so unsatisfying to me. I have my own personality is really lined into like being authentic. And it’s like, what good does it do to lie to everybody? It’s like, Oh, I’m a successful business person. Well, if you know that you’re not, What’s the point of that? To some people, there is a point to that, but for me, there isn’t.

Paul: Yeah, I can relate, for sure.

Brent: Anyway, so, yes.

Paul: Point number three.

Brent: So, we go back to that point number two, is like, it changes the failures, how you see failure that accompanies your struggles. It’s kind of unstated implication there that your struggles will lead to failure, inevitably. It’s like failure cannot be avoided. Dun-dun-dun-dun.

Paul: But we’ll talk about why this is not the end of the world.

Brent: Yes. You should probably come to peace with that right now, listeners. Bracketeers, your failures cannot be avoided, but that’s not a bad thing. And we will discuss that in a minute.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: So point number three, it changes how you see trauma and tragedy that inform your struggles.

Paul: I really like that, and I love the idea of being informed.

Brent: Yeah. Because, you know, your struggles today are not necessarily 100% connected to the tragedies of your past, but they feel connected. They’re definitely emotionally connected, but they could be completely separate incidences, but the way that we interpret things… Like oh, I’m back in the ditch again. Not unless you want to be.

Paul: Yeah, and we’re gonna unpack this idea. We are of being informed by trauma we have a whole packing crew.

Brent: They’re gonna be it’s gonna be great.

Paul: Oh, I like that.

Brent: A packing crew?

Paul: You got a pen hey?

Brent: Oh, man. Will we do a song about the packing crew? I don’t have a packing crew. I wish I knew more Chevelle, because we did point number one. I want to go, oh, boy. I don’t know enough. It’s in my head, but I can’t do it.

Paul: I’ve seen them a few times.

Brent: Anyway, So as we were implying before, every great story is full of struggle and adversity. Just think about a movie. Think about a novel. Think about any story, even like a bedtime story. I mean, Hansel and Gretel, Hansel and Gretel just don’t come up for breakfast in the morning, have oatmeal. They get lost in the forest. I mean, it starts with a tragedy like if there’s no struggle, there’s no story. But we don’t often want to live that way. Anyway, the bigger the problems you overcome, the greater and the more and more satisfying the story tends to be.

Paul: Yeah, I was just thinking about how, you know, sometimes these old nursery rhymes, you know, they the whole reason they exist was because of struggle.

Brent: Well, I think it was to train kids in harsher times to train kids about the dangers out there, the nursery rhymes and the bedtime stories. They’re like, don’t… Hey, dummy, don’t wander into the forest. We’ll probably never see you again. We don’t have GPS. We don’t have 9-1-1. You’ll just be gone.

Paul: Except for it wasn’t dummy. It was like, my dearly song to be gentle.

Brent: Yes, my dearest darling child.

Paul: Of course, nowadays, it could be like a metal version.

Brent: We never told you about your older siblings when they went into the forest. [Metal vocals] Heyyy Dummy] I like it. Okay, we’ll make a different podcast for that. Anyway.

Brent: So I mean you see this you see that this adversity the series of adversities it is really accentuated in like a Hollywood movie. It’s like because there’s always…you’ve got to compress as much adventure—now adventure is somebody else’s problem.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: Watching someone else solve their problems That’s a great adventure.

Paul: Compresses a good word too.

Brent: When it comes to you. It doesn’t feel very adventurous. It’s like, Who hates me so much to make my life like this?

Paul: And then on top of that, you have the compression, which your response is also like, well, my journey is a lot longer than that.

Brent: Yeah, because yeah, it’s a lifetime journey. You watch a movie over in two hours and you’re like, but, but I’m just getting started. Like the Hollywood thing is like, it’s not unusual to see a Hollywood protagonist. And he’s like, I defused the bomb, I stopped an alien invasion, I reconciled with my family, all while coming to grips with a chronic fear of gelatin desserts. And it’s like, and then they roll the credits. Dun-da-da-dun-da-da-dun! But it was a whole series of struggles.

Paul: That’s classic.

Brent: You got out of the frying pan, you got into the fire, you climbed in a different frying pan, and you just kept going throughout the whole story. It’s as if these stories function like tests that a character must pass to move forward in the story.

Paul: We’ve learned about tests.

Brent: We’ve learned a bit about tests.

Paul: I mean, we were having tests today.

Brent: True. Well, you know this, you might think because we’re so elegant and suave that this whole thing comes together like magic and our little elves put this together. I assure you, Bracketeers, that is not the case. We all have to coordinate and get here. We have to summon the mighty Brody from his fortress of solitude. There’s a lot. There’s a lot. So we have a couple running examples that we’ve been using through these episodes to kind of help people wrap their heads around these ideas.

Paul: My favorite Iron Man

Brent: Iron Man So think about all of the struggles that Tony Stark has in the first Iron Man movie. He’s grievously injured, he’s captured by terrorists, he’s enslaved to build weapons, and that’s just in the first act. He escapes, he finds his mentor is backstabbing him, he goes back for a second round with a terrorist, he goes back for a second round with the mentor, he flies in the stratosphere, ices over, crashes almost to his near death. It’s just struggle after struggle after struggle. Then his girlfriend says, you left me at the party. And it’s like, oh my gosh, I’m saving the world. Do I have to really deal with romance too? He’s like, yes, you do. You’re Tony Stark. And then we had another example we have is the Hunger Games, just to kind of split it out, a more dystopian look at it. You know, we start our story with Katniss. She’s out in the wilderness illegally hunting meat to supplement her family’s meager food budget. She comes home to find that her baby sister has been volunteered to a gladiatorial reality show game.

Paul: That’s scary.

Brent: She volunteers to take her place. She gets on a train. She gets thrown in with this Peeta guy that she barely knows, but now she has to pretend that they’re deeply in love. She gets thrown in with this alcoholic mentor. Haymitch, She has to figure out if he actually knows what he’s talking about or if he’s just all drunk.

Paul: I know a couple of those.

Brent: People who are drunk, and you don’t know if they’re talking about?

Paul: Yeah, but they were not sure.

Brent: I got you. Yeah. And you know and then that those all the backstabbing to go into the big city and this whole thing it just gets more complicated and more complicated. There’s a ton of battles before they ever actually get to the Hunger Games itself. And even why they’re doing it you see all this back backdoor stuff. And Haymitch is trying to finagle this and finagle that because there’s a battle behind the battle. Seems like that should be a catchy catchphrase.

Paul: Battle behind the battle.

Brent: The battle behind the battle. Anyway, so that’s how you see obstacles in light of these stories that we’ve been tracking.

Paul: A snowball of problems.

Brent: A snowball of problems. But these ever-increasing problems make the stories exciting. That’s what makes the stories exciting. If you watch a movie, and a guy gets in his car, and he drives to the grocery store, and you’re like, okay, here’s where the terrorists break in, and they don’t, and he gets back in the car, he’s like, oh, here’s where he gets in an accident, and he gets back home, he’s like, here’s where his wife left him, and then nothing happens. They’re like, this is a boring story.

Paul: Yeah, and I think, I don’t know, maybe other people are like my family, but my family sits there and likes to just talk about how much they would do it differently or they could do it better. You’re like, why is he doing that?

Brent: I only do that on movies that I have technical expertise.

Paul: Yeah. Of course, there’s foreshadowing, and there’s biases, and there’s all kinds of other things at play, and they’re just like, I would have done that differently. Yeah, well, you know what’s coming.

Brent: You have the advantage of distance. It’s somebody else’s story. So on our own lives, we tend to look at these problems differently. It’s like, oh my gosh, all these problems are hitting me. And it’s like, we don’t think that we’re living, it doesn’t occur to us that we’re living this great, exciting story. It just occurs to us that life suddenly starts to suck.

Paul: So kind of inherent in what you’re saying, it sounds like we want our listeners to increase their awareness.

Brent: Yes.

Paul: That their struggles.

Brent: Yes.

Paul: Are a part of an epic story.

Brent: Yes. Yes. I kind of like that. It’s easy to avoid struggles, particularly coming to our first point, because struggles usually have pain.

Paul: Pain. Yes. And I remember when we were talking through this, you know, we were talking about how, you know, it’s very natural for us to avoid pain.

Brent: Yes.

Paul: And it’s also very much impossible to work through situations that are overwhelming. That’s true. Without resources.

Brent: Right. So that would go back. And as part of that was the previous episode of Finding Your Tribe.

Paul: Exactly.

Brent: You have these social resources that you can lean on.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: Advice and understanding.

Paul: And I think that’s in what we’re talking about, even though we’re going in order of these elements, you know, sometimes you have to remember that we’re pulling in all these other elements.

Brent: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Paul: Every step of the way.

Brent: This order is somewhat arbitrary. If, if you haven’t listened to the rest of the episodes, you really should, because they all they all cross reference with each other.

Announcer: Full mental bracket. 14:13

Brent: Like you said, we do like to avoid pain. I like to think of it as like your body’s primitive autopilot system. It’s like your pleasure. You’re attracted to pleasure. You try to avoid pain. We’ve talked about how even your emotion system is a primitive autopilot system trying to drive you to a good solution. But it’s primitive and it’s very limited.

Paul: Right. So if we’re only relying on that for information, if we’re only informed about that part of us.

Brent: It drives you to what feels good and away from what feels bad, but it’s not very smart about discerning the long term from the short term. It functions like an animal or a caveman or something. Ooh, the fire’s warm. These potato chips are great, but you have another part of your brain that says, yeah, but if we keep eating these potato chips. We’re going to be in a world of hurt.

Paul: Yeah, and that’s a school of thought to kind of dumb it down. But I think it’s very clever. It’s a clever part of our brain.

Brent: Oh, absolutely.

Paul: It just doesn’t function the same as our higher thinking.

Brent: Yeah, it’s great in emergencies. It’s great to motivate us. But we have to couple it. It’s not smart enough to function by itself.

Paul: Well, yeah, I was never meant to be smart enough.

Brent: Exactly.

Paul: Yeah. And I mean, in many ways, it was it’s a part of us that informs us of potential. Right.

Brent: Yes.I like that.

Paul: And we we often forget that. We’re like, oh, it’s a fact. In fact, I have fear, there’s definitely danger.

Brent: And then some people try to turn off their emotions, or they make fun of other people for being too emotional, but emotions are, I’ve read quotes that the emotional circuits of the brain are everybody’s intelligent and developed as the formal cognitive ones.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: They just operate in a different sphere.

Paul: That’s why, yeah, that’s why I say it’s more about the function, you know, and the design, not so much, you know, oh, you know, this is the dumber part of us.

Brent: Since we’re going down this rabbit hole, we’ll say that the more formal higher levels, cognitive levels, they’re slow. You can work out a math problem, but you’ve got to grind through it. The emotional parts are maybe not as sophisticated, but they’re super fast.

Paul: It’s an alarm.

Brent: Yeah. You find yourself jumping in the air before you even recognize what the threat was.

Paul: Well, you have to think about all the possible things that we have to be quick. We have to be very quick with something that is dangerous or poisonous or yeah, or the opposite end of the spectrum, right?

Brent: It’s really good.

Paul: It’s like we got to find stuff that, you know, is tasty and, but not everything that’s tasty is good for you in the longterm.

Brent: Yes.

Paul: That’s why we need the other part of the brain.

Brent: Sometimes you gotta, you gotta jump on it.

Paul: Yeah.

Brent: So that whole, that whole drive, that primitive drive would also drive us to try to avoid our problems. It’s just like, maybe if we ignore them, they’ll go away. Maybe if we go find some happy thoughts, maybe if we drowned our sorrows in junk food, maybe I won’t have to deal with this.

Paul: Yeah, I like this. As we’re talking about it, I’m thinking about how we want to just pull the emotions the opposite direction. As opposed to what we are prescribing here is to change our mindset, which is the higher thinking. You know, it’s like thinking through this differently.

Brent: Right.

Paul: Right. So we want to just pull everything to the opposite side of the emotional spectrum. But instead, let’s take a different look at the pain.

Brent: Yes.

Paul: And then move from that perspective.

Brent: I think what all three of these points have in common that maybe we haven’t mentioned yet is that that they all involve accepting the problem. The problem is there. It’s not going to go away. We accept the problem. We accept the related pain. We accept the related failure. And then we move on.

Paul: Yeah, I mean specifically right now we’re talking about the pain, so it would be accept this pain. Because sometimes, like we said, if we think about this pain as a potential danger, but we’re not really sure yet, right.

Brent: Not all pain is good pain, you have to kind of evaluate it. But once you’ve evaluated it and say, hey wait a minute, there could be some value in this, this is part of an ongoing struggle for my long-term goals, this is not just a punishment or some random thing I should avoid, then you have to think more critically about it.

Paul: Yeah. So moving forward despite the emotion.

Brent: Yeah.

Paul: Yeah. Some people call that courage.

Brent: Oh, I like that. I like that. Yeah. Cause courage is not feeling less fear. It’s just not letting your fear stop you.

Paul: Exactly.

Brent: I like it. We had a, we had a pithy, not pithy. Hey, I won’t even qualify it. We had a phrase in the Marines and it was pain is weakness leaving the body. And it was just and it was it was kind of harsh especially when you were actually suffering at the time, but if you realize that this was an investment it was like a gym thing, no pain no gain. It’s like this pain is investment is providing you gain if you don’t know if it’s working see if you’re in pain. Oh, it must be working. I mean that’s not gonna work every time every time you’re in pain is not necessarily guarantee that you’re working, but in in many situations that we’re talking about.

Paul: I don’t know Goggins would disagree with you.

Brent: Okay. Oh, yeah. Well, we’re not going to we’re not going to go into that.

Paul: He’s definitely an anomaly, right?

Brent: Yeah. So…

Announcer: This is the full mental bracket. 19:34

Paul: Courage, I think, is necessary in leaning in.

Brent: Absolutely.

Paul: Leaning into the pain.

Brent: Yeah, because I mean, otherwise I was thinking if you try to ignore your pain, it doesn’t go away. It just gets worse. Sometimes I like to think of this as assuming the ostrich pose. You just put you bury your head in the sand, but if you think about what that does to your butt, it puts it up in the air for life to really dropkick you. It just really is not an effective strategy. It’s like might be comforting the short term, but it doesn’t not does not help you.

Paul: No, it increases your vulnerability.

Brent: That your problems stick around like schoolyard bullies still waiting for your lunch money. Like you took a side, you stick a side path, but they’re still there. So I guess what we’re talking about is that some pain is productive. Some pain is useful and actually achieves things in your life.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: And if you avoid that, you end up with the pain of avoidance. It’s like you can, you can go to the, I think it’s a, I don’t know if it’s James Clear or Mark Manson or something to talk about, you pick your pain. It’s like you can get the pain of going to the gym.

Paul: Pick your hard.

Brent: Or you can get to the pain of getting out of shape and you can’t get off the couch.

Paul: Yeah, choose your hard.

Brent: But there’s still pain. Yeah, there’s still, it’s gonna be hard, but you have to choose what kind of hard it’s gonna be. And if one of them is actually growing you and telling a great story and achieving your goals and helping you level up in life, then, spoiler, Bracketeers, that should be the one that you pick. It’s not cheating if I give you the right answer, it’s okay.

Paul: Thank you for your guidance.

Brent: But the other pain is you know due to stagnation.

Paul: Oh. Stagnation.

Brent: Stagnation. What in stagnation is going on over here? I came across a quote somewhere it said, it said, hell is meeting the person you could have been. It’s like all it’s like this compounded stagnation. You didn’t you didn’t grow. You didn’t push in. You didn’t accept the struggles. You didn’t accept the pain. And then one day you find your counterpart who did all of those things like I could have been that person.

Paul: I thought of a word when I was reviewing your material, I thought of that pain can also be due to suppression.

Brent: Okay, I like that.

Paul: Stagnation and suppression, I think in the same category. Again, prolonging the pain. Yeah, and I think suppression, most of the time, has a lot to do with fear and wanting to resolve that as soon as possible without thinking through what this pain could possibly produce in the long run.

Brent: And that tracks with my life. I mean, I don’t get it right all the time, but if there’s one thing I have figured out over the years, it was like, I remember being in high school and I’d be in dread or fear for some dreadful thing, and I would just hide. I would just hide from it and hide for it. And that dread would go on for weeks or months. And then sometime after my military experience and stuff, it’s like, you might as well just look it in the eye. It’s like, I might suffer, I might get fired, I might get demoted, but I will know today, the suspense will be over today. One way or another, I will know how this is going to end. And it’s not always possible. Whenever possible, I’ve learned to do that. Just get right in his face and say, all right, how bad are you? And then I lose less sleep that way. I can get working on the solution.

Announcer: Full Mental Bracket 22:58

Brent: Now, Paul, weren’t you saying something that sometimes we find ourselves all delaying working on something and when we actually get to working on it, it’s not as complicated.

Paul: Yeah. You know, I know this is. coming from hearing people over and over and over again. I mean, the stories, it’s gotten to the point now where, you know, if somebody is in my office and they are sitting there telling me that they’re afraid to do something and they’re reluctant, but they’ve been doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. Their cycle of insanity, you know, and, and they’re just, they’re telling me this, they’re, you know, this is their, their box they’re unpacking for me. And, um, and then they say something like, but I know, I know it’s not going to be as bad as I think. And I’m like, okay then. All right, well let’s give this a shot. Yeah. And then the next week they come in and they’re like, guess what? It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. I’ve, and so when people unpack their problem that they’re afraid to face, it’s like, I just expected that if they’re going to do their homework, if they’re going to lean in, they’re going to come back with the same phrase every time.

Brent: It wasn’t as bad.

Paul: It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.

Brent: Well, that reminds me of the difference between anxiety and fear. Fear is facing a threat in the here and now,

Paul: A real danger.

Brent: In the here and now. Anxiety is vague in the future and just very hard to pin down. Something terrible could happen at some point and it’s so vague, it just uses up your long-term resources. It just wears down your battery.

Paul: Oh gosh, and you can come up with every scenario. Like I often tell people, I mean, we’re talking about the lens of story. It’s very common for me to say, you’re writing a fictional story with your anxiety.

Brent: Yes. Oh, yeah. Because what if your protagonist, instead of actually trying to cut the red wire, like, oh, I could cut the wrong wire and just sit there and just a whole story? Yeah. A whole side.

Paul: I was like, how many volumes to this story do you have? How many versions?

Brent: And then cut cut to the end to find out it was all a dream sequence. None of it ever actually happened. And the audience riots. No. You shot JR. If you’re old enough, you’ll get that.

Paul: You see why it’s hard for me? Sorry, because I just I just I’m sorry. Enjoy.

Brent: All right.

Paul: So don’t apologize.

Brent: Don’t apologize. Bracketeers way back in the day. In the 80s, there was a sitcom called Dallas and the main villain was this nasty guy they called J.R. And then they shot him and they spent the whole episode, a whole season. They spent a whole period of time trying to figure out who shot him. And at the very last, they couldn’t figure out who did it. And they just said he just woke up as it was all a dream. And then the viewers were infuriated. Like, you can’t get me invest my emotions on something that didn’t really happen on this fictional show that didn’t really happen.

Paul: Started a riot.

Brent: It was very bad.

Paul: Worse than the Rite of Spring.

Brent: Yes.

Announcer: Full Mental Bracket 25:26

Brent: All right. So as we mentioned before, seeing your life as an epic story also changes how you view the failure that comes with your struggle.

Paul: I love this part.

Brent: It’s almost as if struggles always have some level of failure with them.

Paul: Yes, yes, yes, yes. It’s part of the growth mindset. I mean, failure is an opportunity to grow.

Brent: I agree with that. As you might be picking up right now, if you don’t remember our previous episodes, Paul is a counselor and deals with people’s stories and stuff, and I am not. I read Carol Dweck’s book on growth mindset maybe 10, 12 years ago as an adult, and it blew my mind. I’m like, wait a minute, failure is not a bad thing? I can learn to embrace this and grow from it instead of running and hiding and pouting and throwing fits. This is an option.

Paul: I think what’s sad is that the idea of the growth mindset and the way that it is framed and packaged came more out of the educational research than it did psychology. And I don’t know. I think that’s a. That just kind of speaks to, the mental health world doesn’t always get it right.

Brent: I mean, if I recall correctly, Dweck was working with students and she focused all her research on students. And it’s like, I got to help these kids. I got to help these kids. And then adults were kind of left in the, not against her, but I mean, no one really picked up them and say, hey, we can apply that to adults too.

Paul: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Brent: But as we’ve mentioned, I think we’ve mentioned before, part of getting into the growth mindset is you have to decouple Failure from humiliation.

Paul: Decouple.

Brent: If you were raised as I was, failure is humiliating. If you try something and you fail, you’re not gonna be coddled or consoled, you’re gonna be slapped around and said, you should’ve known better than that, boy. So you gotta disconnect that.

Paul: Nice, Paul Hambrick would be proud of you right now. Oh yes, he uses that word all the time. Decouple, yes sir.

Brent: And this is what we talk about, the re-evaluation, the interpretation. You look at your script, your own story, your own wiring, and it’s like, is that true? Do I have to continue with that? Is there a different story I can be telling here?

Paul: Yeah. I put in my notes that I think it’s important to learn to tolerate disappointment.

Brent: Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Because that has also been a struggle of mine.

Paul: Yeah, you know, there was a part of me I think at some point where I always thought it was you know, perhaps family of origin, you know, uh, the nurture and not nature until I, I really leaned into a story that my mom told me about how, uh, at a very, very young age, I would have a fit if my Legos did not lock together. And she was like, I didn’t teach you that. Like I wasn’t demanding that your Legos go together. You just were inherently disappointed that this thing was not working the way you wanted it to, or it was designed to.

Brent: And I’ve seen stuff on the other side. I had a flashback the other day. I did these film projects with my friend Dan, and we do these video projects, and we work all this stuff. Like one day, somebody showed up, right after we filmed a concert, and the next day, the guy showed up to grab the high-def camera and immediately erased the hard drive before we can get into the footage off it.

Paul: Oh, no.

Brent: And Dan would say things like, well, that’s disappointing. And I’d be in the back kicking rocks and screaming and stuff and it would make me sick. And it wasn’t. And I was like, why do we process this differently? And I always thought it was because Dan was kind of twisted in the head. Like, why are you not raging at the universe? That is the appropriate response to this and then I had this flashback of my mom always saying I’m just so disappointed I’m it makes me sick, and that was her refrain over and over again something fails, you should be physically sick that your plan didn’t come together. And I’m like I am living that script, and I have an option to get off that script. I didn’t even realize it. It just became part of my software. And I like I don’t have to do that if I don’t want to it not that it’s easy. But once you realize that there’s a choice.

Paul: Yes. And that’s where the when you learn to tolerate. Yeah. Because if there’s that part of you that you’re just like, you know, I think…

Brent: It’s not like a new year’s resolution from this moment on, I will tolerate disappointment. My life didn’t change. Paul,you failed me.

Paul: Oh. Man.

Brent: Yeah. Too close to home.

Paul: No! It’s just one of those things where it’s just like, you wish. Everybody wishes. Again, they wish that it was condensed and compressed like the movie.

Brent: Yes. The movie great. I like the musical montage where Rocky does sit-ups and push-ups and stuff and suddenly he’s fit. And I’ll go home and I’ll press the stereo and I’ll look at my abs and they don’t just appear after the song’s over. I’m very disappointed. I’m like, I want my money back. You lied to me, Sylvester Stallone.

Paul: Oh man.

Announcer: Full Mental Bracket. 31:04

Brent: Your everyday identity is a snapshot of where you are on your journey.

Paul: Yes, I like that.

Brent: You can’t fall in love with where you are today if you want to be better tomorrow. Sometimes we get hung up with our past. Well, that’s just how I’ve always been, or that’s how I was raised to be. Or, well, if you’ve learned that either of those things are not working for you, then there’s time to upgrade.

Paul: I’m sure this is another podcast, but I had to say it anyway.

Brent: Say it.

Paul: So the other side of the dialectic is don’t fall in love, but you should celebrate.

Brent: Yes. Okay. I like, I like that. So.

Paul: Yeah. Fall in love sounds very narcissistic. Right. Fall in love with myself today. I love who I’ve become.

Brent: Yeah, but I mean, yeah, you’re right. So you want to celebrate. You want to celebrate a good inheritance. If you were trained in something good from your family or if you have something, a characteristic that you feel is a strength, you celebrate that. But you also keep your radar open to realize that even the strongest strength is going to be a liability in certain situations. You have to realize that I’m not always going to go. Even though I’m known for this, I can’t always go with this in every single situation. Or did I change subjects again?

Paul: Well said. Well, while you’re pausing, I had written down in my notes a tool in radically open dialectical behavior therapy called Outing Oneself. And I really liked that idea because it was I think that, well, that type of treatment is for people that are so rule-bound and so feeling like they have got to be perfect in everything that they do. Again, they have no room for growth, no room for mistakes, no room for failure. And one way to train yourself, we’re talking about that learning process, changing the way you think. is a behavioral intervention is to out yourself when you make a mistake because people that are by the book and don’t like to make mistakes are often going to hide every mistake they make. almost, I would even say probably over time, probably even to themselves, right?

Brent: So by outing, you mean just reveal. When you make a mistake, you go public with that right away.

Paul: Yeah. Obviously a trusted tribe member.

Brent: Right. You don’t necessarily get on social media. Hey, I screwed it up again. You won’t believe this. Actually, we really do believe it. Shut up. Yeah.

Paul: I think, yeah. If they do it on social media, there’s probably secondary gain and they’re probably not as over-controlled as you think. But anyway, I digress.

Brent: No, but I like that, so if you, so I like the way that you put overly controlled as an enemy of growth, because you have to control everyone’s perceptions, you have to control how you come across, and if you’re not willing to be embarrassed once in a while, you can’t. I came across a quote, this guy’s name is Taylor John Simons, he’s on Twitter, and he says, cringe is the tax we pay to succeed.

Paul: There you go.

Brent: I was like, that’s it in a nutshell right there. If you’re not willing to be cringy a little bit in your attempts and struggles and your amateur way to get started on something, you will never succeed. If you have to control everyone’s, oh you can’t, don’t look at me like this while I’m learning. We’re all learning, hopefully.

Paul: you know, yeah, cringe is like street language for shame, you know, it’s like, yeah, in my world anyway. Yeah. So it’s like, yeah, it’s like, Hey, it’s, it’s just part, it’s part of growth.

Brent: Yeah. Cause that, that word does have a lot of meaning. Some things, some things, the cool kids these days. So my kids tell me a cringe is like, you should actually be ashamed of that stuff. You’re doing cringy behavior, but it also just means things that you are just randomly ashamed of whether they deserve to be or not.

Paul: But again, that comes from a culture that only shows people highlights.

Brent: Right? The social media mindset. Yeah, I gotcha.

Paul: I would drop this, but it’s, it’s a fixed mic, much like the mindset of someone who does not want their failures to be exposed.

Brent: Yes.So I was thinking, you know, as much as I would like to be, I think I’ve mentioned before, like, I wanted to be great at basketball. And then my dad told me how many hours it took him. I’m like, I changed my mind. I don’t want to be great at basketball anymore. That sounds like too much work.

Paul: And I was really, well, it’s a certain amount of hours for mastery.

Brent: Yeah. It was like 10,000 hours is the rough is the rough. It’s been pushed back a little bit, but as a general guideline, 10,000 hours, if you want to be great at something. But I kept holding out even before even decades before the movie was released I was really secretly looking for a matrix I was looking for something to plug this knowledge in the back of my skull and like I know kung-fu. But it just never happened, and I think a lot of people we all know better than that, and as kids we get it. We had to learn how to feed ourselves we had to learn how to walk we had to learn how to ride a bike We had to learn how to drive a car We had to learn how to work a job. We had to learn how to romance a potential partner. Uh, but then once we become adults, we’re like, well, I don’t want to, I don’t want to have training wheels again. I don’t have to learn. And it’s like, well, that, that process never ends. You don’t leave it behind. You just get this idea that you’re too good for it.

Paul: Yeah. And there’s a, there’s a concept of, of skills, uh, mastery within very specific contexts. Yeah, so you might, you might have a skillset that you think you’re amazing at and well, you know, a good, here’s a good example.

Brent: Tell me.

Paul: Musician. All right. You’ve got like these guitarists that you see at Guitar Center. I’m sorry if you’re one of these.

Brent: Apologies in advance for the feelings that are about to be hurt.

Paul: And man, they can go up and down those scales. You know, they’re, they’re just, they’re a beast on these scales. But you get them together with a band and a click track? I can’t do it.

Brent: Not gonna happen.

Paul: Yeah. Uh, again, great, great mastery of the fretboard. You know, then, and man, they can really tear it up.

Brent: Um, I have to confess that this sounds a little bit like me and my previous attempts at being a musician. I would find there’s this couple of things that I felt like I was doing really good. So I doubled down on those things. Like, what about these other things you need to learn to be well-balanced? Oh no, those aren’t nearly as fun. I keep sucking at those. I’m not going to do that. And then surprise, surprise, I didn’t turn out to be a really well-balanced musician. Because I didn’t tackle the hard things.

Paul: I was gonna say, but you gotta put in, you can put in the reps.

Brent: Right. I got, you could put in the reps. Yeah. Um, spoiler for me in the music world, it didn’t really work out that way, but I’ve learned from that and I’m putting in the reps, uh, in podcasting and talking and writing things and growing and being better with my family and my job and all the stuffs.

Paul: There you go.

Brent: So I came up with, I came up with a quote that I hope is almost as pithy as some of the other ones we quoted. It’s like, nothing lasts that comes fast.

Paul: I like it.

Brent: If you’re not willing to put in the reps, don’t expect to build a world-class legacy type thing.

Paul: I’m going to give you props for that.

Brent: A flash in the pan, a previous generation might call it. It’s like, just because it just comes and goes and it’s gone.

Paul: Yeah. There’s lots of pans in the last generation.

Brent: All right, I didn’t want to have to go down this rabbit hole, but Paul,everyone in this room is making me explain that a flash in the pan was a gunfire metaphor. It was like a musket or something, and then the gunpowder would explode in the chamber, but it wouldn’t actually shoot a projectile. So there’d be a lot of sound and noise and perhaps some injury, but nothing would actually be accomplished. It was a flash in the pan.

Paul: Okay.

Brent: A lot of, this is great for social media, a lot of wind and noise and likes and stuff without actually sometimes any real lifetime value on real world accomplishments or personal growth or anything like that. An alternative to personal growth, like a decoy. I could, it’s the same thing, it’s like I could be working on myself, or I could just get cheap likes on social media instead of working on my problems. Like you could, I don’t recommend.

Paul: Yeah, pay for your likes. If you pay $15, or you could get way more likes for $45.

Brent: Oh well. I tell you, Bracketeers, send me a quarter and I’ll kind of like you, how’s that? Halfway likes or something, I don’t know.

Announcer: This is the Full Mental Bracket 39:36

Brent: Oh. Something we’ve mentioned before in these other podcasts, and it comes right back to stories, these try-fail cycles. Every good story has a good try-fail cycle in it. I mean, we talk about some of the stories that are easy to see, is like Groundhog Day, and Edge of Tomorrow, and Source Code. You see these time loop movies.

Paul: Yes. I don’t think AI was involved in this, but I just happened to stumble on all these movies in the past month.

Brent: That was cool, though. That was cool. I mean, Groundhog Day is a legend with Bill Murray, and he lives the same day over and over again. He starts the movie as a very entitled jerk. And he’s surprised that that the woman in his life doesn’t like him. And then he learns to get better. He tries and fails over and over again. And then within two hours, suddenly he’s this amazing man that can play the piano and catches someone as they’re falling from a tree and rescues a cat.

Paul: But do we actually know how many groundhog days He went through?

Brent: I’mglad you asked because I came across an article, where the writer… I believe it was the screenwriter. He said it wasn’t ever telegraphed to the movie, but in his mind he spent a thousand years in that cycle. He had so many rough edges. It took a thousand years of sandpaper to get him to be a normal decent human being.

Paul: This is a genuine jaw drop right here.

Brent: So when that alarm actually changes and it’s the next day.

Paul: Put your little hand in mine.

Brent: He’s like, oh my gosh, I escaped. I finally escaped.

Paul: There’s no mountain you can’t climb.

Brent: And he’s a completely different person.

Paul: By the way, that song was strategic, wasn’t it?

Brent: I think so. I think so. I think so. I got you, babe. He ended up with a girl on that next. It was the first time he doesn’t wake up alone.

Paul: And he climbed the mountain.

Brent: And he climbed the mountain.

Paul: With his tribe.

Brent: With his tribe. Yes. I’ve got you. Yeah. That was good. That was a good song. There was some other time loop movie where they actually did a little easter egg where they played that song in the background. I can’t remember which one it was, but they were just like, hey, we’re alluding to Groundhog Day without actually saying something because we’re so smart. And I’m like, oh, that was good. That was good. I sat down and watched Edge of Tomorrow again, which didn’t get the love it needed because it had titling problems. So this is what happened. Someone gave it the name Edge of Tomorrow, which sounds like a soap opera. Next time on Edge of Tomorrow, will Maria reveal that Ricardo is the father of his baby? And so it didn’t really happen. And then when they re-released it, they changed the name to Live Die Repeat on video to further confuse people. Like you should have done that in the first time. But so they, instead of like, all right, well, we went this far with a terrible name, we gotta stick with it. No, we’re gonna completely change the name so no one will recognize it.

Paul: Wow, I didn’t even know that.

Brent: True story. You gotta pick your name.

Paul: It’s an excellent movie.

Brent: Not every name can be as genius as Full Mental Bracket, so I’m sorry. We need to be kind to people that aren’t as namely endowed as we are. I mean, they just don’t have the, sorry, we don’t wanna look down on you. Even if your name’s disappointing. So yeah, but Edge of Tomorrow, you know, it’s the same thing this this this colonel guy, he wakes up and he keeps living the same day over and over and again And it’s more of it’s more aligned to like a video game or he goes this far and he dies He gets a little bit further than he dies. He is a little bit further than he dies. And it just really, and then, and it really, I think it opens the eyes of some younger generations. They’re like, oh, this life can’t be like a video game. You grind to build these skills, and they pay off after a while.

Paul: It can only generalize it.

Brent: It’s like, oh, I’m, well, and that’s the thing. And as I play a fair amount of video games, and I recognize, I guess it’s the dopamine drop. It’s like, ooh, I’ve got this accomplishment.

Paul: That’s what it is.

Brent: It feels like I’ve accomplished something in my life.

Paul: Yeah. That’s what it is.

Brent: It’s a virtual accomplishment. You are now level 12. You have this fancy sword. It feels like you’ve got to actually sometimes feels more real than getting a promotion or some recognition somewhere else because that’s so vague. And they just like, yeah, whatever. Here’s your plaque. This one goes. And your armor improves, and you’re immediately seeing benefits, and you’re like, this is so real!

Paul: I mean, and there’s some that are even more slow-moving, like, well, some of the names are RuneScape. They’re like living actual life, accruing hours, making money. And by the way, I found out that you can actually sell your money, your RuneScape money for real. So, there’s like real currency going on.

Brent: Some people make some money.

Paul: One thing I was thinking is, man, I wish these skills would generalize. Like, but you know, I guess it’s lost. Lost in generalization.

Brent: We were talking about your musician skills. Like some things are like domain dependent. It’s like, it’s, it’s really great in this domain and it has a hard time switching over to a different domain. We all have that struggle.

Paul: That’s it. I’m going to put a title of one of my books is going to be lost in generalization.

Brent: I like it. Like lost in translation.

Paul: So one thing I had thought about when it comes to trial and fail cycles is that, you know, almost like Groundhog Day, Edge of Tomorrow, we can talk about Source Code here in a second, is that with every try, there’s a subtle tweak of some sort. You know, like I’m going to change this. I’m going to try this.

Brent: Right. You’re not doing the same exact strategy. You’re trying something slightly different.

Paul: Yeah. And then we talk about how it’s really hard to see your own adventure. Right. And I think this this is one of those things. It’s like I already tried this. And I’m like, yeah, but if you had and I got to be honest, since we’ve been doing this podcast, I have literally brought this into my sessions. Like I’m like, OK, so have you ever seen Groundhog Day, by the way? I would like to, this is a little rabbit trail, I really feel like there’s a correlation between this culture that we’re in right now, highlight reels, and there are no current or recent Try-Fail cycle movies. Because I tried to get everybody to recall one, and nobody that is like under 18 seems to remember any Try-Fail cycle movies. Anyway. Maybe another podcast.

Brent: All right. Filmmakers out there. You know what to do.

Paul: Yes. If you believe in the, if you know that this really exists.

Brent: If you’re a filmmaker and a screenwriter and you don’t understand a Try-Fail cycle, I wish you well. Your career is going to be pretty short, if you don’t understand this concept.

Paul: And that’s so true. Yeah. Like I’m starting to like, every time I hear somebody speak, I, if they catch my attention, I start analyzing and like, do they have a Try-Fail cycle? And everybody who engages me, or is engaging to me, or is anybody who keeps my interest, I shouldn’t say that. I’m like, Try-Fail cycle. Like I see it, I’m like, I heard it, I heard it.

Brent: Well the thing, you know, you’re talking about changing up the strategy, right? We were talking about before, like you were alluding before to doing the same thing in the same situation is a sign of insanity. If you keep doing the same thing in the same situation and expecting a different result, like you don’t see Bill Murray running away with a groundhog for 200 days in a row. Like that, I was desperate, I tried it, it didn’t work. I gotta try something different.

Paul: Yes, in the therapy world they call that response persistence.

Brent: Response persistence, I like it. So what these movies, Groundhog Day, Edge of Tomorrow, Source Code, all those time loop things have in common is that you’re seeing the same cycle repeated over and over again. It’s the same problems over and over again. So you get to see it really close because they’re going, it’s the same, oh, I woke up, I failed, I failed. But in most stories, most stories don’t involve a time machine of some kind, which is a grave disappointment to me, but that’s okay, I’m dealing with it. Other stories is that your try-fail cycles move from one event to another for one event and so you hear more about this you know You know a story a Story can have the story ask a question it can have four answers. It’s like the character needs to do this thing does he succeed does she succeed yes? No? Yes, but? No, and? And those last two are what’s most interesting, because like, does he make the leap? No, he’s dead, movie’s over, roll credits. Does he get the girl? Yes, movie’s over, roll credits. It just, the whole twist, the fail and keep trying, failing, and then okay, that kind of worked, but not really, let’s keep rolling. That’s what makes the movie exciting, what makes the story exciting.

Paul: And relatable.

Brent: And relatable, because that’s our life, none of us, I never get it right the first time.

Paul: No, and everybody’s kind of like, as soon as it says happily ever after, you’re kind of like, okay.

Brent: Let’s give them an example. All right, so we like to talk about the Matrix here.

Paul: Can I be the but?

Brent: Please.

Paul: Doesn’t that seem appropriate for me to say but?

Brent: I would never say that you are an appropriate but. That was far be it from me to allude to that on this podcast. We’re very respectful and honoring of each other. Yeah, sure, go ahead. So, let’s set the scene. So we’re mostly through the movie, Morpheus has been captured, he has a secret that will lose humanity to the war, no one’s ever survived a fight with the agents, suspense is high, the stakes are high, all the humanity’s on the line, they know what they need to do, but Neo says, no, I believe I can save him.

Paul: Again. Great, thank you.

Brent: So Neo and Trinity, they go in to save him, right? They’re on an apparent suicide mission. They fight their way into the building, they swoop in with a stolen helicopter, and they open fire with a minigun. Now this is where I kind of critique movies. If you’re trying to rescue a hostage, firing a minigun from a bobbing helicopter’s probably not the best way to take your hostage alive. So these are the kind of things I think about when I critique movies.

Paul: Oh, so you do the mystery science thing?

Brent: Sometimes I do. I’m like, and Morpheus died, and he died again, because that’s a lot of bullets.

Paul: So before we get started, I have this imaginary like crowd response in my mind. No, no, it’s it’s it’s after I say but and then I give the but, the crowd goes, you got to be kidding.

Brent: Oh, I like it. Let’s do it. All right. So the sequence that follows is a series of questions, complications and narrow escapes. Follow along if you know this movie. And if you don’t know this movie, well, we’re not going to shame you, but you really should fix that. All right, so does Morpheus get away from the agents? Yes.

Paul: But he’s injured and the helicopter is damaged.

Brent: No way, get out of here. Do they survive the helicopter crash? Yes, because Neo learned some of his fancy one powers, he pulls them out of the helicopter.

Paul: But they still need to find a phone to get out of the matrix.

Brent: You’ve got to be kidding me. Do they get out of the matrix? Most of them, yes. They run to an exit, and two of them get out, but Neo… I stole your line. Two of them get out. But!

Paul: But! Neo gets trapped, has to face the killer Agent Smith alone. The gunfight in the Subway Corral.

Brent: Wasn’t that a cool scene, though?

Paul: It really was.

Brent: For listeners, in case you didn’t realize that was a Wild West gunfight, they even have a little piece of newspaper float instead of a tumbleweed. Yes, it in there BAM BAM BAM BAM and it’s like hey cue the Western theme right here Yeah, it was great. So they start with guns and they start punching they do all this other stuff, right? So does Neo beat agent Smith? It looks like he’s winning at first. They go out of guns. He’s punching He’s like, oh my gosh, you wiped the blood away. He’s not break Smith’s glasses and everyone’s getting excited store some good hits um

Paul: but but he gets knocked down and Smith drags him and before he runs over to the subway. I know and.

Brent: And yes. So not only did he not win, but it also got worse. So he didn’t win the fight.

Paul: You’ve gotta be kidding me!

Brent: But now there’s an oncoming subway and the sound of inevitability or whatever he says.

Paul: That’s like, yeah, I quote that all the time.

Brent: Yeah. So does Neo survive the oncoming subway train? Yes, and he does defeat Smith,

Paul: but Smith instantly re-pawns into a new body. The fight is not sustainable.

Brent: He just respawns a brand new body and is like, okay, so I beat him, but. Tactically, I’m not gonna win like this

Paul: and then Neo gives up right?

Brent: He runs off to fight different He didn’t give up he tries a different like this strategy is not working this strategy has gone as far as I can go.

Paul: He does not give up.

Brent: He does not give up, but he doesn’t go back in wading into this fight that he now knows he can’t win. He won’t get he won’t look he can survive the fight, but he’s not going to beat an a total and an infinite amount of agents Hand-to-hand he’s got to find a different technique.

Paul: Got to.

Brent: looks like he’s running away, but he’s really trying to find a new strategy.

Paul: So if someone was living this in their own life, they might have the urge to just be like, I’m done throwing the towel.

Brent: Yes, I’ll say that if you threw in the towel with a killer robot agent after you, your life wouldn’t last very long, so he’s had a little extra momentum to keep moving. It’s a whole life and death stakes kind of thing. Usually our stakes are not that high, so we feel like we can retire for a while. And sometimes, as we mentioned before, sometimes that’s a good strategy. Sometimes you need to rest up, have a little rest cycle, go back to the comfort zone for a minute, get back with your tribe, revitalize, and then get back in the fight.

Paul: I think we even said it’s like the healthy and appropriate use of comfort.

Brent: Yes. But you don’t clock out and like, I am done. And you just hit the couch for the next five years. Because as we mentioned at the beginning of this episode, your problems are still out there. Agent Smith is just pacing back and forth in front of your front door waiting for you to come on out.

Paul: So are there any movies about like somebody going on a long vacation? Yeah. Encounter or them retiring and then oh, there’s tons of them tons of movies about people like wanting to retire and like just be done, and then all of a sudden there was like…

Brent: Lethal Weapon. I’m too old for this crap. He was like 41. I’m too old for this crap. I’m gonna retire tomorrow if you don’t get me killed first. You continue to be too old for this for like four more movies or something. I Yeah, and then there’s all kinds of movies about being called out of retirement. You know, this retired CIA expert thought he was all done, or she was all done, and then suddenly, they call that only she can handle, and dun-da-da-dun. And you come to find out that your most thrilling adventure is after you thought the adventure was done.

Paul: Yeah. I saw one the other day with Beekeeper. Oh, yeah. It’s very random. And I’m like, you know, I’m not buying it. Jason Statham is not just a beekeeper.

Brent: Right.

Paul: No way.

Brent: Why are you here? I like bees. Is it something more to it? No, no, I just like bees. Yeah, I’m not so sure about that.

Paul: Yeah. He’s like this kind, warm hearted guy that takes care of this old lady. You’re like, no, there’s more to that.

Brent: Yeah. It got real real real when I realized that that was Mrs. Huxtable. It’s like, they scammed Mrs. Huxtable? No! I’m with Statham. They’ve all got to go. Burn them to the ground.

Announcer: This is the Full Mental Bracket. Full Mental Bracket. 55:14

Brent: So you’ll notice with these Try-Fail cycles is that none of them are a one and done success. It’s like a one punch person. I don’t know. I have no idea what One Punch Man is, but I like the idea of like, pow, I’m done. I did my one punch and now I’m going to go sit down. I like that. My life never works out like that. Never. No. But it makes for a more engaging and suspenseful story. You know, you go this, and then you gotta run left, and you gotta run right, and it seems to work, and it kinda works, but, and then this one, oh, it didn’t work, it actually made things worse, so what are you gonna do?

Paul: I got a tight schedule, though. My adventures, they gotta end.

Brent: And how’s that working out for you so far?

Paul: I’m not tolerating my disappointment very well.

Brent: There you go. Yeah, that’s the thing is like we feel like this shouldn’t be happening to me in our own life. It’s like this shouldn’t be happening to me. This is not some Hollywood blockbuster. It’s like maybe it is. You just don’t know yet. I like it.

Paul: You know, my favorite word is adapting. It’s not my favorite word. It’s one of my favorite words. Adapting, improvising.

Brent: That was a different movie, I don’t know if you remember that, since you weren’t a jarhead, you didn’t really hit, it was Heartbreak Ridge with Clint Eastwood. And I was in the service about that time, and I actually did some work with the recon guys, and it was this thing like, adapt, improvise, overcome. And so every time someone would go bad, it’s like, your thing would break, and someone would go, adapt, improvise, overcome. It’s like, or you can hand me one that works. And it’s like, no, no, no, no. That was kind of our catchphrase. But as I got out, I think about more of that in life. It’s like, all right, so we had a Try-Fail cycle. It kind of worked. We’re going to have to improvise here. We had this great plan, and it lasted for about 30 seconds. And now we’re trying to figure it out. So the Try-Fail cycles, do they have a special application for trauma?

Paul: They do. So, as many people who have experienced tragedy and trauma, it’s very difficult to face your fears. Particularly because a lot of people experience these visceral reactions in their body. And so, it only makes sense, you know, I guess at face value to be like well, why would I want to experience that right, but it’s so interesting to me that there’s this correlation between story and healing of trauma. I mean, it’s amazing to me that you can actually work through it by experiencing those sensations more, but doing it in the presence of your tribe, a trusted tribe member who can help you to change the way that you think about your trauma. Because most of the time traumas are so sudden, and some of those fears, they set in because you don’t have that feedback loop, which we’re going to talk about in a minute too.

Brent: So if I understand you correctly, people are reluctant to relive their stories because it triggers an actual physical fear or pain in their body.

Paul: Yes.

Brent: Like they’re actually re-experiencing it. But re-experiencing it in a controlled setting with support is the way to actually heal and stop that from happening in the future or to begin the healing to eventually stop that from happening in the future.

Paul: That was a great interpretation.

Brent: I’m just trying to make sure I understand you.

Paul: Yeah.That was perfect. So they actually have a term for what happens as you re-experience this. They call this, it’s not just a trauma healing process, but they call this what happens by the growth process that occurs through the healing, they call this post-traumatic growth.

Brent: Ok.

Paul: And it’s interesting to me because there’s so much emphasis on PTSD, PTSD, and it’s interesting to me that it’s like, hey, there’s a concept here that if you can overcome this, if you can work through this, you are going to experience what’s called post-traumatic growth, which are these strengths, these benefits that develop from experience of trauma and then developing a new mindset around what happened. And so, you know, what happens is with the support of the tribe, it mitigates the effects of the trauma. So, you know, normally people that experience trauma, they’re going to be that in that chronic state of fight or flight.

Brent: Right.

Paul: And they’re going to experience, like I said, those body reactions. But what’s so interesting is that mindset change helps you to realize that there isn’t a permanence to what happened. And it’s something that has to be experienced in the presence of a supportive tribe member.

Brent: So that those, right. So those, but those things can feel permanent, but they have to have to learn that they’re not permanent.

Paul: And they learn that it’s, it’s interesting because I even wrote it down. I said, While they develop this courage to live in the present, there’s actually cellular-level healing taking place.

Brent: Oh, wow.

Paul: Yeah. You know what’s so cool is there’s a psychiatrist who wrote a book called The Body Keeps the Score.

Brent: Oh, yeah. It’s good one.

Paul: His name’s Besser Van Der Kolk. And stumbled upon an amazing quote that actually, what I felt like, read a lot like story.

Brent: Tell us, tell us.

Paul: Being a patient rather than a participant in one’s healing process separates suffering people from their community and alienates them from an inner sense of self. It’s almost like realizing that as he was doing his research, that he realized that there was a component of protagging that was necessary.

Brent: So instead of being a passive patient, you need to become the protagonist in your own healing.  So that you’re not isolated from your tribe. You can actually connect with your tribe and actually connect with the resources that you need.

Paul: Yes. And not invalidating the body responses.

Brent: Right. Not at all.

Paul: But understanding that there is an element of protagging involved, and again, it incorporates all the elements of story.

Brent: It’s a great hint that we’re not making this up. Everywhere we turn, we see these things reinforced in other references.

Paul: Yes. And I love that idea of even thinking that, you know, as I’ve done trauma work in the past, there’s a lot of assumptions that people come to before their mindset changes. Assumptions about the trauma, right? Sometimes, you know, they can be they can have some, you know, some preexisting pre-existing problems in the past that might have helped shape some of these assumptions. But this not being good enough was one that I thought of would come up in someone’s Try-Fail cycle, right? So I’m trying, I’m failing, I’m trying, I’m failing. I feel like I’m not good enough. Well, you know, there’s a kernel of truth that what you’re doing isn’t good enough. But that’s not permanent.

Brent: And that’s not your identity. And your problem is not the three P’s permanent, pervasive, personal.

Paul: Boom. Exactly.

Brent: Gotcha. I gotcha. And that’s it. We can identify with our failure. We can identify with our problems and make them part of our identity. Hi, I’m Brent, the failure. I’m glad to be here today. I probably, no one’s listening because I’m a failure, but you know, sit over here and just talk. Talk about yeah, so yeah, but yeah, I’m I say that kind of mockingly, but I kind of remember chapters of my life that were written like that. Yeah. Yeah, so I like what you’re saying about how even trauma can come into growth? Because these embracing these obstacles are all about growth. Trauma can make it more difficult to embrace your obstacles because you’re having this visceral, this body level, your body thinks that it’s being attacked again. And it’s like, death to the problem. It’s like, no, we actually have to face the problem. Okay, face the problem. And so you have to talk your body down.

Paul: Yeah. I am not the problem. Right. Right. And also the situation may not be our fault.

Brent: Right. And then the problem is not this timeless thing, although it may feel like that. There you go. That was something I think also in The Body Keeps the Score is that your trauma breaks the timekeeper of the brain and it just feels like this timeless, you just fall in this pit of like, oh, I’ll never be out. The cause and effect, the causation and the cause and effect of a narrative story gets broken and you’re just in this pit. So you have to help people. There was the pit and then there was the next chapter where we got out of the pit.

Announcer: This is The Full Mental Bracket.  1:04:35

Brent: So our next episode is going to be about growth because you have to embrace the obstacle to transform and grow. And we’re going to talk all about that in our next episode because we’re going to explain to you that you have to lean in in order to level up.

Paul: Bing, Bing. Bing.

Brent: I’ll say it again. You have to lean in in order to level up. If you don’t embrace your problems and lean in, you don’t grow. You don’t get the growth.

Paul: Leveling up requires it.

Brent: Yes. And everyone who plays a video game knows this. They had to put in hours. They had to smack so many goblins. They had to retrieve the treasure of the princess. But then you get in real life, you’re like, well, why is it not happening? It’s like, have you put in the reps? Well, no. It’s like, so are you really surprised. Well yeah. Maybe you should think this through again. Oh man.

Paul: But all those people became YouTube stars overnight.

Brent: Oh my gosh. YouTube stardom is like NBA stardom. It’s like music stardom. It’s like, you know, five people have all of the fame and everyone else has this long tail. Every field is like that.

Paul: But man, I mean, it has, it’s like a contagion effect. It’s like,

Brent: What do you want to do when you grow up? I want to be a YouTuber. I’m like, that’s a job? a job.” I’m like, okay, all right, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna poo-poo your dreams, but I…

Paul: Who’s doing research on that?  If you’re out there, I wanna know.

Brent: Research if YouTuber’s a job, or if people…

Paul: No, no, no. No, this contagion effect. Yeah, of everybody wanting to be a YouTuber and…

Brent: Well, I mean.

Paul: I say everybody.

Brent: Ideally, if you can…Theoretically, if you can be yourself and have fun and everyone will give you likes and stuff and send you money. I mean, I can understand that could be an appealing career. The truth of it is, are you really being yourself? Are you being this version that people want to see that gets you the clicks and likes? Are you losing your authenticity and chasing this fame and selling your soul or your real self to become a version that’s that can be a personality?

Paul: Well, and along with that,

Brent: which is true in any field, music or movies or anything else, that risk is there.

Paul: And I was going to say, along with that image, And it almost relates to how we were talking about how movies are condensed versions of our lives, right? It’s almost like people, when they see a successful YouTuber, they forget that there was a lot of business strategy behind it.

Brent: Oh, absolutely.

Paul: And yeah, there’s a few of those guys that just happened to stumble on some viral situation, but a lot of these guys are good business people. They had to protag.

Brent: Absolutely, they didn’t, very few of them accidentally wound up where they were. There was a plan involved. And I was gonna point out that in addition to music and movies, you also can lose this authenticity even in the business world. That’s something I’ve had to face where instead of trying to be more flashy, more engaging, you do the opposite. Hi, I’m way more, I’m pretending to be a boring person so that my corporate colleagues don’t look at me funny. And so I’m putting on my polo shirt and acting all jiled. dressed down and dialed in today and don’t suspect who I really am because then you’ll you won’t trust me with this project. Conformity has many faces.

Announcer: Full Mental Bracket 1:07:55

Brent: Takeaways. We’ve got some great takeaways for you today. So what we like to ask you these questions here at the end for you to chew on and meditate on and take some value from this discussion we’ve had.

Paul: before we do.

Brent: Yes.

Paul: You had an amazing quote here.

Brent: I did.

Paul: Yes. The executive mindset.

Brent: Oh, the executive mindset. All right. So this is actually a story. So I was, I was doing my corporate gig, which was putting a video together for one of the executives was retiring. And so we were all during COVID and they usually do this thing live, but they had to do it across from different countries and get together and stuff. And They all sent me their video segments, and I had to put them all together again, so I’m not usually invited to these things. But I was working, and I saw all these top-level guys, and their fond movie, their fond memories of each other, it’s like, hey, remember that time that we had the, we had that translation problem we had to face together? Remember that time there was the currency conversion problem? Oh, that was a great problem, man, we really solved that. And like these executives, these executives weren’t upset that they had problems. They said, that’s why we have a job. There’s always going to be a problem. We’re here to find the right strategy and solve it.

Paul: I like that.

Brent: Now, ideally, as a little bit of salt with this as an executive, and you can just throw people to solve it and you can just say, look, we solve that problem. There’s a little something to that. But they didn’t they weren’t frustrated, flustered or surprised that there were problems.

Paul: And I would say that’s probably after processing and coming to terms and looking back, because I could imagine a situation like Yeah, you remember, and so having a visceral reaction, being like, sorry, is it too soon?

Brent: But these guys, this was their happy, these were their accomplishments. Embracing the problem led to growth. They’re like, this is a great story. Remember when we had the thing, it looked insurmountable, and then we surmounted it, and then we were like the heroes, gave ourselves huge bonuses, or whatever, I don’t know, and then moved on?

Paul: I see, yeah. At least I have some label for it now. You know, this comes up in relationships as well. You know, it’s like we’ve been through so much together.

Brent: That’s true.

Paul: You know, that’s true. And that’s a value that has a high value in relationships. You know, it’s like, why is this relationship so special? Well, let me tell you why. We’ve been through so much together.

Brent: I started this thing with my wife where I say, remember that time when, and I was honestly, when I first started, it was just because we had this, we’ve got 35 years together of just like some crazy times that we didn’t think we were going to survive. And then we did. So I like to, it’s like, isn’t this great that we’re kind of having a little bit of this happily ever after, where actually, she’s not working nights anymore, I’m not traveling in the military, we can actually be together and have some sort of normal life. Like, remember that time, remember that time? And it kind of, I will admit, she’s probably listening, it got out of hand, and now it’s like, remember that time yesterday when I had two helpings of lasagna or something? It just, it kind of went out. Anyway, but it started as a really good thing. It’s like, you go back to the value of this relationship. We endured this thing together, That thing looked like it was going to break us, and it didn’t. This thing probably won’t.

Paul: It’s awesome.

Brent: All right, so now we’re going to go takeaways.

Paul: Now takeaways.

Brent: It’s not take out, but it could be just as tasty. I don’t know. All right. So what obstacles are currently intimidating you and why?

Paul: I like this one. What interpretations could you change to make them more approachable?

Brent: That’s good because remember we said that everyone has problems, but how you look at them and interpret them determines, and if you can deal with them or not. What tragedies in your life could you interpret and incorporate as strengths to power your quest?

Paul: To power your quest. I like that.

Brent: Because they are you know you don’t you don’t get on the quest on autopilot. You gotta you gotta strive.

Paul: That’s good. What would happen if you started to embrace your challenges instead of cursing them?

Brent: Like the executives? I Learned how executives think they’d like they’re embracing them challenges. I was busy going stupid challenges. They kept sending me new video clips of that stupid challenges stupid challenges like… well you know to be a highly paid executive you have to embrace your challenges. I’m like oh, I’m missing a clue here anyway. That’s that’s good. All right. No stories and take away time stop it bad me all right. Oh So thank you, Bracketeers. You have been awesome. You’re the best audience we could ever hope for. We’re going to come back with our next episode, as we promised, on growth. And wherever you are, whoever you are, have a great time period until we see you again.

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.

Announcer: This is a Brody Scott production.