Mark: The very drive that makes you successful might be the thing that's slowly breaking you. We're told to hustle, optimize, and crush it. But what if that's the worst advice you could ever follow? Michelle: Wow, okay. That feels like a direct attack on my entire to-do list. But I get it. It’s that whole “rise and grind” culture. If you’re not exhausted, you’re not trying hard enough. It’s a badge of honor. Mark: Exactly. And it’s that very idea that our guest author today is challenging. We're diving into The Practice of Groundedness: A Transformative Path to Success That Feeds—Not Crushes—Your Soul by Brad Stulberg. Michelle: I like that title. It feels like a deep breath. Mark: It is. And what makes this book so powerful is the author's own story. Stulberg is a top human performance coach and writer, he co-authored the bestseller Peak Performance. But this book came about because, at the height of his own success, he was diagnosed with severe Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. His own relentless, problem-solving mind, the very thing that made him successful, turned on him. Michelle: Oh, wow. So he’s not just writing this from an ivory tower. He lived through the dark side of that drive. Mark: He was in the belly of the beast. And it forced him to find a different way. A more grounded way. Michelle: Okay, I’m in. So what is this 'soul-crushing' success he's talking about? What does that actually look like for people who aren't, you know, having a full-blown mental health crisis?

Mark: It looks surprisingly normal, which is the scary part. Stulberg gives it a name: 'heroic individualism.' It’s this cultural belief that your worth is tied to measurable achievements. It’s a constant game of one-upmanship, not just with others, but with yourself. You’re always on, always optimizing, always looking for the next win. Michelle: It’s like being on a hamster wheel that’s also on fire. You have to keep running, but the running itself is burning you out. Mark: That’s a perfect analogy. He tells the story of a client, a chief physician we'll call Tim. Top of his field, running a huge department. He desperately wants a weekend off, but he finds himself physically unable to stop checking his work email. He says, "I’m dying for a break... but I can’t seem to go more than a few hours without opening my work email." He feels restless and insecure when he’s not productive. Michelle: I totally know that feeling. It’s the sense that if you stop moving, you’ll fall over. Or worse, you’ll realize you have no idea where you’re going. It’s the arrival fallacy, right? The belief that ‘I’ll finally be happy when I get that promotion, or launch that business, or hit that goal.’ Mark: Precisely. And Stulberg features another story, an entrepreneur named Samantha who finally launches her dream business, gets the funding, and feels… nothing. She’s just worried, thinking, "If this isn't enough, I'm not sure what will be." It’s this chronic feeling of never being enough, no matter what you achieve. Michelle: So it’s not just about burnout from overwork. It’s a deeper, more existential problem with the mindset itself. The game is rigged from the start. Mark: The game is rigged. Your own mind, trained for heroic individualism, becomes the enemy. For Stulberg, his OCD was his hyper-driven, analytical mind pointed in a dark direction. He was trying to solve the problem of his own intrusive thoughts, which is an unsolvable problem. Michelle: That’s terrifying. It’s like your greatest strength becoming your greatest liability. Mark: It is. And he uses this beautiful metaphor to show the alternative. He was on a hike with a friend, both of them going through a rough time. They were in a forest of massive redwood trees, and the wind was whipping the top branches around violently. But when he looked down, the trunks were rock solid, completely still. Michelle: I love that. So the chaos is happening up in the canopy, but the core is stable. Mark: Exactly. The redwoods' strength isn't in their height, it's in their roots. Their roots grow outward, not just down, and they intertwine with the roots of their neighbors, creating this incredibly stable, interconnected foundation. Stulberg’s epiphany was that we spend all our time worrying about our overstory—our achievements, our status, our online persona—while completely neglecting our roots. Michelle: And those roots are what he calls 'groundedness.' Mark: That's the core idea. Building that deep, internal, unshakable foundation.

Mark: And that redwood trunk, that internal stability, is what Stulberg calls 'groundedness.' The first, and maybe hardest, principle to build it is acceptance. Michelle: Okay, but hold on. 'Acceptance' sounds a lot like giving up. In a world that tells you to fight and conquer, how is accepting your situation a strength? It feels passive. Mark: That’s the critical distinction he makes. Acceptance isn't passive resignation. It's seeing reality with absolute clarity, without the filter of wishful thinking. You can't change a situation if you're pretending it's something else. You have to start from where you actually are, not where you wish you were. Michelle: So it’s less about surrendering and more about getting an accurate map of the territory before you start your journey. Mark: Exactly. And the most powerful story he uses to illustrate this is about the elite triathlete Sarah True. She was a favorite for a medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics. The pressure was immense. During the race, her leg starts spasming. She tries to push through it, to deny what’s happening, but her body just gives out. She collapses, completely devastated. Michelle: Oh, that’s just heartbreaking. To have your body fail you on the world’s biggest stage. Mark: It sent her into a deep depression. She was an endurance athlete, taught her whole life to just push harder. But pushing harder was making it worse. Her recovery only began when she finally went to therapy and started to accept her reality. She had to accept the failure, accept the depression, accept that she was sick. Only then could she start taking the right actions to heal. Michelle: Wow. So her resistance to the truth was the real prison. The acceptance was the key that unlocked the door. Mark: It was. As the psychologist Carl Rogers said, "The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change." It’s a foundational step. And it leads directly to the next principle, which is just as counter-intuitive: Patience. Michelle: Okay, you’re really testing me now. Patience? In our world of instant gratification, where we get angry if a webpage takes more than two seconds to load? Patience feels like a massive liability. How does going slow make you faster? Mark: Stulberg argues it’s the only way to go far. He says, "Be patient and you’ll get there faster." He contrasts our "get it now" culture with the reality of mastery. He points to the world’s greatest marathon runner, Eliud Kipchoge. Michelle: The guy who broke the two-hour marathon barrier. A human cheetah. Mark: Right. You’d think his training would be all about brutal, heroic efforts. But his philosophy is the opposite. His mantra is "slowly by slowly." He rarely trains at more than 80 or 90 percent of his maximum effort. His focus is on consistency, on stringing together weeks and months of solid, non-injurious work. He’s playing the long game. Michelle: So he’s leaving a little in the tank every day, so he can show up again tomorrow. Mark: Exactly. It’s about improving the average, not having a few heroic days followed by burnout. It’s what Stulberg’s own psychiatrist told him during his OCD recovery: "Be patient. It’s a nine-inning game." You don’t win in the first inning. You win by showing up for all nine. Michelle: You know, it’s interesting. A lot of this, on the surface, might sound like common sense. Readers have pointed that out. Be patient, accept reality. But I think the power here is in the reframing. It’s not just common sense; it’s that common sense is not common practice. We know these things, but our culture actively pushes us in the opposite direction. Mark: That’s the whole point. The book isn’t selling a secret formula. It’s giving us a framework and, more importantly, permission to practice what we intuitively know is true, even when the world is screaming at us to do the opposite.

Michelle: So we're caught in this massive cultural tug-of-war. On one side, there's this siren song of 'heroic individualism'—be more, do more, achieve more. And on the other, this deep, quiet, human need for what Stulberg calls 'groundedness.' Mark: And the core message of the book is that you get to choose. Groundedness isn't about having less ambition or drive. It’s about channeling that ambition in a smarter, more sustainable way. It’s about building a foundation so strong that you can weather any storm, not just chase the sunny days. Michelle: It’s about building the redwood trunk, not just fussing over the branches. Mark: That’s it exactly. The book’s real value isn't in some revolutionary new idea, but in its powerful synthesis of ancient wisdom—from Stoicism to Buddhism—and modern science, all wrapped in deeply human stories. It gives you a practical toolkit to build that internal strength. Michelle: I like that. It feels less like a self-help hack and more like a life philosophy. A practice, like the title says. Mark: It is a practice. And maybe the first step is the simplest. Stulberg suggests just noticing. For the next week, just notice when you feel that pull of heroic individualism—that urge to check your phone for validation, to compare yourself, to push when you need rest. Michelle: Don't judge it or try to fix it, just see it. Accept that it's there. Mark: That’s the first step. Acknowledge the map before you try to change the journey. We’d love to hear what our listeners notice. What does heroic individualism look like in your life? Let us know, and let’s continue the conversation. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.