Latest / The Strategize, Adapt, and Overcome Podcast by Brad Young / The Battle Within

Transcript

The Battle Within · The Strategize, Adapt, and Overcome Podcast by Brad Young

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: There's a war happening inside you right now. You cannot
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: see it, and most people never name it, but it
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: shapes every single decision you make. It is the quiet
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: battle between the person you are today and the person
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: you know you could become. I want to talk to
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: you about that battle, because winning it is the foundation
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: of everything else. If you cannot win the war against yourself,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: no outside victory will ever feel like enough. My name
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: is Brad Young, and I've spent years studying how people change,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: how they grow, and how they fall apart. I have
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: watched brilliant people with every advantage waste their potential. I've
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: watched ordinary people with almost nothing build something remarkable. The
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: difference was never talent. The difference was rarely luck. The difference,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: again and again, came down to who won the battle within.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Sunsou wrote something more than two thousand years ago that
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: has stayed with me. He said that the one who
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: knows the enemy and knows himself will not be endangered
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: one hundred battles. Most of us spent our whole lives
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: studying the enemy out there, the competition, the market, the
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: people who doubt us. We spend almost no time studying ourselves,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: and that is exactly backward. The most important intelligence you
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: will ever gather is intelligence about your own mind. So
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: let me start with a simple truth. Your brain is
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: not built to make you happy or successful. Your brain
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: is built to keep you alive and to conserve energy.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: That is it, every impulse to to scroll, to snack,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: to avoid the hard conversation is your ancient survival wiring
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: trying to keep you safe and comfortable. This matters because
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: once you understand that your resistance is biological, you stop
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: taking it personally. You stop believing you are lazy or broken.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: You are simply human running very old software in a
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: very new world. And here's where it gets interesting. Researchers
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: who study self control found something that changes how we
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: should think about discipline. In a large stufy body of
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: people going about their daily lives, the ones who reported
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: the highest self control were not the ones white knuckling
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: their way through constant temptation. They were the ones who
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: experienced fewer temptations in the first place. They had built
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: environments and habits that removed the fight before it started.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Let that sink in. The people who look the most
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: disciplined are often the people who set up their lives
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: so they had to rely on willpower the least that
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: reframes the whole battle. The war against yourself is not
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: one in the heat of the moment. It is one
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: long before the moment arrives, and the choices you make
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: about your environment, your routines, and your identity. The strongest
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: warriors do not seek the fight. They shape the ground
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: so the fight favors them. Son Su understood this. He
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: taught the victorious warriors win first and then go to war,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: to win. You do not want to be the person
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: relying on a burst of motivation at ten at night
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: to do it matters. You want to be the person
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: who already made the decision this morning, who already cleared
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: the path. Let me give you something concrete about habits,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: because this is where the real laborage is. Behavioral scientists
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: studied how long it actually takes to form a new habit.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: The old myth was twenty one days. The real number
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: was far messier. On average, it took about sixty six
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: days for a behavior to become automatic, and for some
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: people it stretched past two hundred days. Why does that
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: matter to you, because it tells you that the reason
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: your past attempts failed was probably not weakness. You quit
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: it day fifteen or day twenty because you thought it
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: should feel easy by then, and it was never going
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: to feel easy by then. You were pulling out of
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: the race right before the ground got firm under your feet.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: And this is the part of the inner battle. Almost
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: nobody prepares you for the middle. The beginning is exciting,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: the end is glorious. The middle is where wars are lost.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: The middle is boring and quiet and full of doubt.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: And it is exactly there that your survival brain whispers
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: that this is not working, that you should stop, that
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: you are wasting your time. Learning to keep marching through
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: the middle is one of the most powerful skills a
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: human being can develop. When you feel that pull to quit,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: I want you to recognize it for what it is.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: It is not a signal that you are failing. It
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: is often a signal that you are right in the
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: middle of the change. Now, I want to talk about
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: the enemy that hides inside almost every inner battle, and
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: that is fear. Not the loud, dramatic fear, the quiet fear,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: the fear that keeps you from sending the message, starting
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: the business, having the conversation, taking the shot. Here's something
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: that helped me understand it. Neuroscientists have shown that the
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: brain process is uncertainty in a way similar to how
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: it processes threat. Your mind would often rather have a
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: known bad outcome than an unknown one. This is why
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: people stay in situations that are clearly hurting them. The
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: misery is familiar, and familiar feel safe. Understanding this gives
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: you power. When you feel that grip of hesitation, you
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: can ask yourself a better question. Am I actually in danger?
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Or am I just facing uncertainty? Ninety nine times out
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: of one hundred, it is only uncertainty wearing the costume
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: of danger. There is a stoic idea I return to constantly.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: The philosopher Epictete is taught that it is not events
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: that disturb us, but our judgments about events. Two people
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: can face the exact same setback. One is destroyed by it,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: the other is strengthened by it. The event was identical,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the judgment was different. This is the emotional core of
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: the battle within, because so much of what defeats us
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: is not the situation itself, but the story we tell
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: ourselves about the situation. You have far more control over
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: that story than you have ever been taught. And when
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: you take command of your own interpretation, you take command
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: of your emotional life. Let me connect this to something measurable.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Research on emotional regulation show that people who practice naming
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: their emotions simply putting a clear word to what they feel,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: experience less intensity from those emotions. Scientists have observed that
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: labeling a feeling actually reduces activity in the emotional alarm
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: center of the brain and increases activity in the reasoning center.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Think about how practical that is. When anger rises, when
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: anxiety spikes, when self doubt floods, in the simple act
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: of saying I am feeling anxious right now begins to
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: loosen its hold. You are not suppressing it. You are
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: not pretending, you are observing it, and observation is the
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: first move of the strategist. You cannot govern what you
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: refuse to look at. This is what it means to
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: know yourself. It is not vague self reflection. It is
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: active reconnaissance on your own patterns. When do you tend
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: to quit? What triggers your worst reactions? What time of
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: day is your discipline's strongest, and what time is it weakest.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: What people leave you drained, and what people leave you charged.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Most human beings live their entire lives without ever map
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: in this terrain, and then they wonder why they keep
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: losing the same battles over and over. The map is
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: available to you, you just have to be willing to
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: study it honestly, and honesty is the price of admission. Here,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: the war against yourself cannot be won with comfortable lives.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: You have to be willing to look at where you
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: have been avoiding, where you have been blaming others for
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: choices that were yours, where you have settled because settling
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: felt safer than reaching. This is not about beating yourself up.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Self attack is just another way to stay stuck, because
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: a mind under attack goes into defense, not into growth.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: The goal is clear eyed honesty, paired with genuine self respect.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: You look at the truth and then you decide calmly
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: what you were going to do about it. I want
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: to give you a practical way to think about your
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: daily choices. Every day you're casting votes for the person
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: you have become. Every time you do the hard thing,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: you cast a vote for the discipline version of you.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Every time you take the easy escape, you cast a
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: vote for the version that stays the same. No single
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: vote decides the election, but the pattern of votes over
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: weeks and months absolutely does. This takes the pressure off
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: any one moment and puts it where it belongs, on
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: the direction of the whole. You do not have to
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: be perfect today. You just have to make sure the
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: majority of your votes point toward who you want to become.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Here's another piece that change how I operate. There is
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: a well known idea in psychology about the difference between
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Of People who
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: believe their abilities are fixed tend to avoid challenges because
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: failure would prove they are not good enough. People who
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: believe their abilities can grow tend to embrace challenges because
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: they see effort as the path to mastery. Ut He's
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: following students and professionals found that those with a growth
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: orientation show greater resilience and stronger performance over time, especially
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: when things got difficult. The battle within is often a
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: battle is between these two voices. One voice says this
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: is who I am and I cannot change. The other
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: voice says, this is where I am right now, and
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: I am still building. Which voice you feed is a
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: choice you make daily. Now, think about what all of
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: this means together. You are not fighting a random enemy.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: You are fighting a predictable one. Your survival brain wants comfort.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Your fear disguise as uncertainty as danger. Your judgments amplify
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: your suffering. Your habits take longer than you expect to set.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Your mindset shapes what you attempt. Every one of these
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: is knowable. Every one of these can be worked with
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: once you see it clearly. That is the whole promise
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  Speaker 1: of this. The battle within feels overwhelming only while it
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: stays invisible. The moment you name your opponents, they shrink.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: So what does the strategist do with all this? You
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: start by shaping the ground. You remove temptation before it arrives,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: instead of trying to resist it in the moment. You
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: expect the middle to be hard, and you decide in
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: advance that you will not quit there. You treat your
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: fears information about uncertainty, not proof of danger. You name
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: your emotions so they lose their grip. You study your
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: own patterns like an intelligence officer studies terrain. You cast
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: your daily votes toward the person you are becoming, and
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: you feed the voice that says you are still growing.
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  Speaker 1: I want to leave you with this before I go.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: The version of you that you dream about is not
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: waiting on the other side of some giant, heroic moment.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: The person is being built in the small, quiet and
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: glamorous choices you make when nobody is watching, and nobody
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: would blame you for taking the easy road. That is
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: where greatness is actually forged, not in the spotlight, in
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: the ordinary battles of an ordinary Tuesday. Pulled together what
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: I hope you carry with you. The first thing is
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: that your resistance is biological, not moral. You are not
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: lazy or broken. You are running an old survival wiring,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: and that means you can stop taking the struggle personally
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: and start working with your nature instead of against it.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: The second thing is that discipline is won before the
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: moment arrives. The people who look the most self controlled
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: are usually the ones who built environments that spare them
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: the fight. So shape your ground and win before you
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: go to war. The third thing is that change lives
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: in the middle. Habits take far longer to set than
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: the old myths promised, often around two months, and sometimes
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: much more so. The doubt you feel part way through
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: is not a stop sign, It is a mile marker.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: The fourth thing is that most of your fears uncertainty
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: in disguise, and asking whether you are truly in danger,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: simply facing the unknown gives you back your power. The
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: fifth thing is that your judgments create much of your suffering,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: and when you take command of the story you tell
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: about an event, you take command of how it lands
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: on you. The sixth thing is that naming an emotion
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: loosens its grip, because observation is the first move of
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: every strategist. And the last thing, the one I want
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: you to hold tightest, is that you cast votes every
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: single day for the person you are becoming, and it
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: is the pattern, not any single vote, that decides who
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: you turn out to be. Know yourself, shape your ground,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: keep marching through the middle, and keep casting your votes
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: toward the person you already have the power to become.