Mark: You know that advice, 'Just be positive'? It might be the worst thing you can do when facing real change. Today, we’re exploring a radical idea: expecting life to be hard is the secret to making it easier. Michelle: Hold on, that sounds completely backwards. Expecting things to be hard makes them easier? That feels like a recipe for being a professional pessimist. My grandmother would have a field day with that. Mark: I know, it feels wrong! But it's the central argument in a really fascinating and highly-rated book, Master of Change by Brad Stulberg. Michelle: Ah, Brad Stulberg. I know his work. He's not just some academic in an ivory tower. He coaches top-tier athletes and executives, the kind of people whose lives are defined by high-stakes change. And I heard he wrote this book after his own life got completely turned upside down. Mark: Exactly. This isn't just theory; he says it was forged in fire. And his core concept is something he calls 'Rugged Flexibility.' It’s this powerful blend of toughness and adaptability. And it all starts with flipping our entire relationship with expectations on its head. Michelle: Okay, I'm skeptical but intrigued. Where do we even start with an idea that big? Mark: We start with a simple equation that dictates your happiness every single day, whether you realize it or not. Happiness equals your reality minus your expectations. Michelle: Reality minus expectations. Okay, that makes a certain kind of intuitive sense. If I expect a five-star meal and get a stale pretzel, I'm going to be miserable. Mark: Stulberg uses that exact analogy! He calls it the Spaghetti Alfredo experiment. Imagine you've worked a long, hard day, you're starving, and you've been promised a gourmet pasta dish. Then, at the last minute, you get a bowl of cold, unsalted pretzels. Objectively, pretzels are better than nothing. But you'd be furious, right? Because your reality fell so far short of your expectations. Michelle: I'd be flipping a table. Absolutely. Mark: But now flip it. Imagine you expect nothing, and someone surprises you with that same bowl of stale pretzels. You'd probably be grateful! The pretzels didn't change, but your expectations did. Stulberg argues that our modern world constantly sets us up for the Spaghetti Alfredo disappointment. We expect linear progress, stability, a life that constantly goes up and to the right. Michelle: Yeah, the classic 'road' mindset. A smooth, paved highway to success. But life is more like a messy, overgrown trail through the woods, with fallen trees and unexpected forks. Mark: Precisely. And that's where he introduces a crucial scientific concept. For a long time, we've thought the goal of our bodies and minds is 'homeostasis'—a return to a stable, fixed baseline after any disruption. Michelle: Hold on, homeostasis. That sounds like a term from a high school biology textbook. Can you break that down? Mark: Think of it like a thermostat. If the room gets too hot, the AC kicks on to bring it back to exactly 72 degrees. It's all about returning to the same state. But Stulberg says that's an outdated model for life. A better one is 'allostasis.' Michelle: Allostasis. Okay, another science term. What's the difference? Mark: Allostasis means 'stability through change.' It's not about returning to the old baseline; it's about finding a new stable point after a disruption. The system adapts and evolves. Think of evolution itself—it’s the grandest example of allostasis. Species don't revert to a past form when the environment changes; they adapt and become something new, or they die out. Michelle: So, you're saying our minds and lives are supposed to adapt and find a new normal, not just bounce back to the way things were? That’s a huge shift. It means change isn't an interruption to be fixed, but a fundamental part of the process. Mark: It is the process. And resisting it, trying to force homeostasis when the world is demanding allostasis, is a source of immense suffering. Which brings us to one of the most intense stories in the book, about the professional climber Tommy Caldwell.

Michelle: Oh, I know his name. He’s a legend. What happened to him? Mark: In his early twenties, he and his climbing partners were on a trip of a lifetime in the remote mountains of Kyrgyzstan. They were on a portaledge, basically a hanging tent, thousands of feet up a cliff face, when they were ambushed at gunpoint by armed militants. Michelle: What? No. On the side of a cliff? That’s unimaginable. Mark: For five days, they were held hostage, forced on a death march through the mountains with almost no food or water. They were starving, freezing, and terrified. At one point, the rebels split up, leaving Caldwell and his friends with just one of their captors. Caldwell, seeing his one and only chance, made a split-second decision. He ran up behind the man and pushed him off a cliff. Michelle: Wow. I mean... to save his own life and his friends' lives. But the weight of that. He had to kill someone. Mark: Exactly. He said, "The whole world came crashing down on me." They escaped and were rescued, but the trauma was profound. He was a climber, a peaceful guy who loved nature. Now he was also a killer. His identity was shattered. He was trying to force himself back to the 'homeostasis' of who he was before, and it was tearing him apart. Michelle: That makes total sense. His old self was gone. He couldn't go back. He had to find a new way to be stable, a new identity that included this horrific event. That’s allostasis in action, but in the most brutal way possible. Mark: And then, as if that wasn't enough, about eighteen months later, he's at home remodeling his house. He's using a table saw... and he accidentally cuts off his left index finger. Michelle: Come on. You're kidding me. A professional climber losing a finger? That’s not just an injury; that’s a career death sentence. Mark: Everyone thought so. The doctors tried to reattach it, but the surgeries failed. His sponsors were ready to drop him. But here’s where the mindset shift happens. With the kidnapping, he resisted the change for a long time, which caused immense suffering. With the finger, something was different. He hit what the book calls the 'inescapability trigger.' The finger was gone. It was an unchangeable reality. Michelle: So he couldn't fight it. He had to accept it. Mark: He accepted it almost immediately. He stopped resisting and poured all his energy into adapting. He started training obsessively, figuring out how to climb with nine fingers. He developed new kinds of strength to compensate. He didn't return to the climber he was. He became a new kind of climber. A different, and ultimately, stronger one. Years later, he would go on to complete the Dawn Wall ascent, one of the hardest climbs in history. Michelle: That is just... incredible. It’s a perfect illustration. Resisting change leads to suffering. Accepting it, even when it’s tragic, opens the door to growth. This is what Stulberg means by 'tragic optimism,' isn't it? Mark: That's the term. It's not about being happy that bad things happen. It's about maintaining hope and finding meaning despite the fact that life includes pain, loss, and suffering. It’s acknowledging the tragedy while still optimistically moving forward. Michelle: Okay, so if you accept that life is hard and change is constant, that must do a number on your sense of self. If you're always changing, who even are you? How do you not just fall apart? Mark: That's the perfect question, and it leads directly to the second major pillar of Rugged Flexibility: cultivating a fluid sense of self.

Michelle: A 'fluid self.' That sounds a bit new-agey. Does that just mean you have no core identity? Mark: Quite the opposite. It means your identity is more complex and resilient. Stulberg uses the work of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who found that the most resilient people have identities that are both 'differentiated' and 'integrated.' Michelle: Differentiated and integrated. Okay, more jargon. Let's break it down. Mark: Differentiation means you have multiple, distinct sources of meaning and identity in your life. You're not just a lawyer, or just a mother, or just a runner. You are all of those things and more. Integration means you have a coherent set of core values that connects all those different parts into a whole person. Michelle: I see! It’s like diversifying an investment portfolio, but for your identity. If you put all your self-worth into your job, and you get laid off, you're bankrupt. But if you're also a painter, a volunteer, a good friend, and a loving sibling, a hit to your career is just that—a hit to one part of a much larger, more stable portfolio. Mark: That is the perfect analogy. And the story that brings this to life is just fantastic. It’s about a Swedish speed skater named Nils van der Poel. Michelle: A speed skater. I'm guessing he was obsessively focused, training 24/7, living and breathing the sport? Mark: That's what you'd think. And for a while, he was. But he realized it was making him fragile and miserable. So, leading up to the 2022 Olympics, he did something radical. He started to aggressively build a life outside of speed skating. Michelle: Wait, to prepare for the Olympics, he spent less time focused on his sport? That goes against every success story we've ever heard. Mark: Completely. He wrote this amazing 62-page manifesto after he won, and he said his rest days were for living a normal life. If his friends wanted to go hiking or alpine skiing, he’d go. He said, "I drank beers like any other twenty-five-year-old." He was actively differentiating his identity. He was Nils the friend, Nils the hiker, Nils the guy who enjoys a beer. He wasn't just Nils the speed skater. Michelle: And how did that work out for him at the Olympics? Mark: He didn't just win. He obliterated the competition. He won two gold medals and set a new world record. He said that creating meaning outside the skating oval made him less fragile to the ups and downs of training. When he had a bad day on the ice, it didn't crush his entire sense of self, because something else in his life was probably going well. Michelle: Wow. So his fluid identity was his secret weapon. By not tying his entire self-worth to one single thing, he freed himself up to perform better at that one thing. That is so counter-intuitive. Mark: It is. He said, "There was no longer anything to fear." Because the worst thing that could happen—failing as a skater—wouldn't destroy him as a person. He had built a self that was rugged enough to withstand a blow to one part of his life, because it was flexible enough to draw strength from others. Michelle: That makes so much sense. It's not about being less committed, but about having a broader, more stable foundation for that commitment to rest on. Mark: And that fluid identity gives you the stability to do the final, most practical piece: to act deliberately instead of just freaking out when chaos hits.

Michelle: Okay, this is the part I really want to know about. It's all well and good to have a flexible mindset and a fluid identity, but in the heat of the moment, when you get that nasty email from your boss or your kid throws a tantrum, my first instinct is to react. To panic. How do you actually respond instead? Mark: Stulberg dives into the neuroscience here, and it's fascinating. He says our brain has two primary pathways for dealing with threats. The first is the 'RAGE' pathway. This is your immediate, emotional, fight-or-flight reaction. It's fast, it's primal, and it's often destructive. Michelle: I am very familiar with the RAGE pathway. It's my co-pilot in traffic. Mark: (laughs) Right. But there's another, more evolved pathway. It's called the 'SEEKING' pathway. This is the part of your brain associated with curiosity, exploration, and goal-oriented action. It's fueled by the neurotransmitter dopamine. And here's the kicker: the RAGE and SEEKING pathways are mutually exclusive. You cannot be in a state of primal rage and curious, deliberate response at the same time. Activating one shuts down the other. Michelle: So the trick is to consciously switch from the RAGE track to the SEEKING track. How on earth do you do that when you're seeing red? Mark: By taking one small, productive action. Stulberg introduces a simple heuristic: the 4 P's. When a crisis hits, instead of reacting, you Pause, Process, Plan, and only then Proceed. That initial pause is everything. It creates a tiny space between the stimulus and your reaction, and in that space, you can choose to engage the SEEKING pathway. Michelle: Pause, Process, Plan, Proceed. I like that. It's a concrete tool. Mark: And the story he uses to illustrate this is one of the most powerful in the book. It's about a woman named Cristina Martinez. She grew up in Mexico in a family that made barbacoa. She was married off to a man whose family also made it, but they were brutal. They forced her to work insane hours, and her husband was abusive. She wanted a better life for her daughter, but she had no money and no power. Michelle: That sounds like a hopeless situation. The RAGE pathway must have been firing on all cylinders. Mark: It was. But she didn't let it consume her. She made a plan. She decided to immigrate to the United States to earn money. She crossed the border, made it to Philadelphia, and got a job as a prep cook in an Italian restaurant. She was a phenomenal worker and got promoted to pastry chef. She met a new man, Benjamin Miller, and fell in love. Things were looking up. Michelle: A great American success story. Mark: Until she got fired. Her boss found out she was undocumented and refused to help her get a green card. So there she was. Fired, undocumented, in a foreign country. This is a moment where most people would spiral into despair. The RAGE pathway would exhaust itself and lead to the 'SADNESS' pathway—hopelessness, depression. Michelle: But she didn't. Mark: She didn't. Instead of reacting, she responded. She paused. She processed. She looked around her South Philly neighborhood and noticed something: there was no good, authentic barbacoa. She saw a need. That was her plan. She started cooking out of her tiny apartment, using her family's recipes. She and Ben found a local farmer to source the right ingredients. Michelle: She engaged the SEEKING pathway. She got curious. She started a project. Mark: Exactly. She took a small, productive action. And then another. The business exploded. People lined up down the block. She eventually opened a restaurant, South Philly Barbacoa, which became a sensation. She's been featured on Netflix's Chef's Table, she's a James Beard Award winner, and she's a powerful advocate for immigrant rights. She turned all that pain and rage not into destructive reaction, but into the fuel for a deliberate, values-driven response.

Michelle: Wow. That story ties it all together. She had the mindset to endure hardship, she had to build a completely new fluid identity in a new country, and she took responsive actions instead of reactive ones. Mark: That's the whole model right there. A mindset that accepts hardship, a fluid identity that can adapt, and a commitment to deliberate action. Rugged Flexibility isn't about being unbreakable, like a diamond. It's about being more like clay. You can be hit, you can be broken, but you have the capacity to re-form yourself, often into something stronger and more interesting. Michelle: I love that. It’s not about preventing the breaks, but about getting really good at re-forming. It feels so much more realistic and, honestly, more hopeful. Mark: It's a profound shift. You stop fighting the current of change and learn how to steer within it. Michelle: So if there's one thing our listeners could try this week, to start building this muscle, what would it be? Mark: I think it has to be that first 'P' from the 4 P's: Pause. That's the gateway to everything else. When something frustrating happens—a tech glitch, a rude comment, a plan that goes wrong—just take one single, deep breath before you do anything else. Michelle: Just one breath. That feels manageable. It creates that tiny space you were talking about, the space to choose a response over a reaction. Mark: Exactly. And we'd love to hear how it goes. Let us know what you think about this idea of rugged flexibility. Does it resonate with you? Find us on our socials and share your story. Michelle: We really do want to know. It feels like a conversation we all need to be having right now. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.