The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 603: Michael Easter - How To Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits to Thrive with Enough... "Have Fun, Don't Die, Read Books, & Do Strange Things"

Duration: 59m
Broadcast on: 06 Oct 2024
Audio Format: other

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Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Michael Easter's investigations have taken him to meet with monks in ancient monasteries in Bhutan, lost tribes in the jungles of Bolivia, US Special Forces soldiers in undisclosed locations, gene scientists in Iceland, CEOs in Fortune-500 boardrooms, and more. He's a professor at UNLV and he's the best-selling author of The Comfort Crisis and Scarcity Brain.

"The modern world is designed for short-term survival and pleasure. It is not set up to help us thrive in the long term." "Have fun, don't die, read books, and do strange things."
Be a 2 percenter. 98% of people do the easy thing. We are programmed to do the easy thing.
The world was uncomfortable a while ago...
It makes sense to do the easy thing. You get the short-term reward for it.
Handle adversity, adapt, do the slightly harder thing
Some ideas: do walking meetings, work in silence, embrace hunger, don't cut corners, pick up the trash, call people on the phone. Ruck the airport. Don't sit down, walk. Read while exercising. Workout outside. Sprint. Lift weights. The ability to move a limb quickly is what helps old people not fall. Need to be powerful and springy to move quickly (and not fall).
Diet - One ingredient foods. Tribe in Bolivia with the healthiest hearts in the world. Be outside, eat one ingredient foods.
Scarcity brain - We all suck at moderation. We overconsume... Casinos, slot machines. Quick, repeatable, predictable. The speed makes it powerful.
Silicon Valley learned this from casinos and it's how they build their apps.
The smartphone withdrawal effect. Worse in short term. Better in the long term.
Break bad habits - Slow down. Respond, don't react. Wait 72 hours to buy the thing in your online cart.
Junk food is super easy to eat fast. It was designed that way. Your body doesn't know it's full because of the speed.
What did Michael learn from a tribe in a Bolivian jungle?
- They seemed very happy. What did they do? They ate single-ingredient food. They spent a lot of time outside. And they spent a lot of time together. What can we learn from that? Eat healthy, go outside, and spend time with people you love.
"A lot of problems are not our fault, but they are our problems to solve." Remember, we are wired to choose the escalator, fast food or to cut the corner. We need to be intentional in taking the stairs, slowing down, and responding instead of reacting.
How the scarcity loop works: It has three parts: opportunity, unpredictable rewards, and quick repeatability. Becoming aware of it can help you fall into it less often.
Michael has been sober for 9 years. His drinking addiction stemmed from having a boring life (job he didn't like). Needed to explore the edges. Booze did that for him.
Iraq - Sandstorm. We don't read books here. We don't have that luxury. We have too many problems to deal with.
- In America, we live in a country where we can read books.

A lot of the things that we get in trouble with today they really prey on our sort of evolutionary wiring to do this next easy thing to be comforted. No one's going to come save you. What does it mean to be a 2%er? 98% of people do the easy thing even when it doesn't serve us in the long run. What's your workout and diet regimen like? 80% of eating today is driven by reasons other than true physiological hunger. The work I do gets me to is this kind of ability to do everything like pretty well but be a master of of nut. People worry about death causes. What the media covers death causes and what actually kills people and there's a giant mismatch like it's insane. What are some methods to help us break bad habits? If you can slow down any bad habit that's going to be huge. What is scarcity brain? Everyone knows everything is fine in moderation and yet we all suck at moderation. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show presented by inside global. I am your host Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Tech Hawk 2 6 6 8 6 6 to become part of Mindful Monday. You along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week. All right. You also received details about how our book The Score That Matters will help you become a more effective leader. Tech Hawk 2 6 6 8 6 6. Now on to tonight's featured leader Michael Easter's investigations have taken him to meet with months in ancient monasteries in Bhutan, lost tribes in the jungles of Bolivia, US Special Forces Soldiers in undisclosed locations, gene scientists in Iceland, CEOs in Fortune 500 boardrooms, and so much more. He's also a professor at UNLV and he's the best-selling author of The Comfort Crisis and Scarcity Brain. During our conversation we discuss what it means to be a two percenter and why we should become one. And then the long-term benefits of intentionally choosing the harder path and then Michael shares some tactical ways to break bad habits as well as build better ones. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Michael Easter.

What does it mean to be a two percenter? So I'll tell you where the stat comes from. Two percent of people take the stairs when there's also an escalator available. Now 100% of those people know that taking the stairs would give them a better long-term return on their health, on their well-being, even their mental health, and yet 98% of people do the easy thing they take the escalator. And the reason for this is because humans are wired to do the next easiest, most comfortable thing, even when it doesn't serve us in the long run. And so I think we're in a space today where our world has become so comfortable that we're faced with all these decisions every day where we can do the easy thing and that's kind of what we're programmed to do. And yet being that two percent of people that chooses the slightly harder thing, that is what gives you a real long-term return on your health, on your well-being, on all these critical metrics. And people will often say, you know, this is for one, this is just a meta, the stairs are a metaphor for all the decisions we make in life. But two, people will say, oh, well, it's just like one staircase. When you look at the data behind people who even take five flights of stairs a week, it is insane the amount of return that it gives people on their health. It's like a 20% reduced risk in all cosmortality. Like it's crazy. And yet we overlook these simple decisions that can make us live better. Why are we programmed to do the easy thing?

So when you think about a lot of my work, it looks at human health and well-being from sort of evolutionary lens, because I think that the past and how we lived in the past can explain a lot of the problems we face today. So when you think about how humans evolve, the world was uncomfortable, right? It was always harsh and we didn't have enough food. Life took effort, it took doing hard things. And if you were the type of person who avoided discomfort, tried to do the next easy thing, whether that eat more food when you have the opportunity, avoid any excess movement, because that's going to save energy. You want to avoid the heat and the cold, right? Because I could eventually kill you. That would give you a survival advantage. And so that is sort of programmed into our genes, if you will. And we still have that ancient DNA that says, hey, do the easy thing, do the comfortable thing, in a world that has become increasingly comfortable in so many ways. So we've got escalators, we've got delivery food, we've got climate control.

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