We often think happiness will be found in the completion of a goal. We often think happiness will be found in ease and comfort. My guest says real joy is found in the journey rather than the destination, and that if difficulty and discomfort are part of that journey, that’s all the better.
Dr. Adam Fraser is a peak performance researcher and the author of Strive: Embracing the Gift of Struggle. Today on the show, we talk about what Adam calls the “strive state,” where we have to grow and be courageous to tackle a meaningful challenge, and why this state is the source of the greatest fulfillment in life. We discuss why we often resist embracing the strive state and what happens when we don’t have to struggle in life. We also talk about what successful strivers do differently.
Resources Related to the Podcast
- Adam’s previous appearance on the AoM Podcast: Episode #909 — Master Microtransitions to Improve the Happiness, Success, and Flow of Your Life
- Sunday Firesides: Pursuit as Happiness
- Sunday Firesides: No Bad Feelings
- AoM Podcast #708: Overcome the Comfort Crisis
- AoM Podcast #108: The Upside of Your Dark Side
- AoM Podcast #868: Escape the Happiness Trap
- “Pass the Parcel” episode of Bluey
Connect With Adam Fraser
Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!)
Listen to the episode on a separate page.
Subscribe to the podcast in the media player of your choice.
Read the Transcript
Brett McKay: Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. We often think happiness will be found in the completion of a goal. We often think happiness will be found in ease and comfort. My guest says, real joy is found in the journey rather than the destination. And that if difficulty and discomfort are part of that journey, that’s all the better. Dr. Adam Fraser is a peak performance researcher and the author of Strive: Embracing the Gift of Struggle. Today in the show we talk about what Adam calls the strive state, where we have to grow and be courageous to tackle a meaningful challenge and why the state is the source of the greatest fulfillment in life. We discuss why we often resist embracing the strive state and what happens is we don’t have to struggle in life. We always talk about what successful strivers do differently, after the show’s over check at our show notes at aom.is/strive. All right, Dr. Adam Fraser, welcome back to the show.
Adam Fraser: It is great to be here, especially for the second time.
Brett McKay: Yes. We had you on last time, it was last year to talk about your idea of micro-transitions. It was a really popular episode. Really resonated with people. So the idea of micro-transitions it’s those moments when you’re switching between, when you’re at the office going from one client to the next. You have that space in between what you can do in that space to get you ready to move into that next space. The one that really resonated with me was those micro-transitions you have with your kids. You’re coming home from work, you have that space between office and home. What are you gonna do to get ready so you can be your best self? You got another book out that I really enjoyed and I think there’s some connection to, I think we’ll bring in some of the micro-transition things as well. It’s called, Strive: Embracing the Gift of Struggle. So you are a human research… You research human performance. That’s what you do and you consult for companies and individuals in how to perform their best. And in your book Strive you take readers through a surprising discovery you and your team made. You guys are researching the flow state and you wanted to see what are the benefits of flow state and performance. But then you guys discovered something and it was really surprising. So.
Adam Fraser: Yeah, it was surprising for us.
Brett McKay: Yeah. So first, for those who aren’t familiar, walk us through what is the flow state and its benefits and then what did you all discover in your research?
Adam Fraser: Yeah, well, flow is also known as being in the zone and we tend to, whenever we think of that, we go straight to sport, we think of Michael Jordan, what was that game where someone criticized him and said he couldn’t shoot three pointers. So he went out and shot a ridiculous amount or where he was at the foul line and the other team were giving him… Were trash talking him. And he said, “I’m gonna shoot this one with my eyes closed.” And he closed his eyes and just went straight in. And we think of that hot performance state where you literally kind of can’t miss. And what flow’s made up of is you’re in a situation that has high challenge, you don’t get flow watching TV. So you’ve got to have some sort of challenge in front of you. You need to bring all your skills.
So high level of skill is needed, but it’s a state where there’s high level of enjoyment, high level of interest. You really engaged and time starts to distort. So often I’m sure you would experience on a podcast where, yeah, it’s an hour and it feels like it was five minutes. That’s flow. It’s just where you’re totally absorbed and lost in this environment. Now we were studying that and we were looking at multiple different groups and how they got into flow. But what came out of it is they said that flow state’s awesome and I love it, but the experiences that build my self-esteem and build my skill the most have high challenge, high skill, time distorts, but it’s low enjoyment, low interest. So it was kind of those experiences where it’s like I don’t really want to be doing.
This is really hard, this is really difficult, but I have to bring my high game to this. And if you think about examples, they said, I had to have this really hard conversation with a staff member, or I was doing this presentation and I was dreading it ’cause I thought I was gonna mess it up, but I nailed it. Or even I have to give my team member feedback and I don’t really want to give them this feedback ’cause I know they’re gonna find it challenging. So what we discovered is people said flow’s brilliant, but the stuff that really evolves me and makes me get better are those sorts of situations where they’re challenging and I don’t really want to do them, but afterwards I kind of look at myself with amazement of I can’t believe I handled that. So that’s the discovery we made.
Brett McKay: And you call this state of low interest, low enjoyment, but still requires high level skill, high challenge. You call it the strive state. So what’s your thumbnail definition of the strive state?
Adam Fraser: Well, striving is when we take on a challenge that requires us to be courageous and to evolve in order to handle that challenge. So an example, if I think of a personal one, like what would I say was a real strive state for me? Oh, years ago I had to present at the Dalai Lama conference. So it was this conference in Melbourne, in Australia. It was a really big deal. All my heroes were there and I had to present at this conference. And in the front row I had all my heroes, Carol Dweck, Edina, like all these amazing researchers. And I had to stand up and present in front of them. And the Dalai Lama, I thought I was gonna vomit beforehand. I was just simply terrified and dreading it. But I went out there, nailed it, and I walked out of that experience going, oh my gosh, I really had to be courageous. I really had to grow to handle that. And that has had this long lasting effect on me where I just kind of go, I can handle so much more than I thought. I amazed myself in that moment. And that’s that strive state.
Brett McKay: And you can experience this in your personal life as well. Maybe you have a temper problem or an anger problem you’re trying to overcome that you have to struggle with it or you have some sort of tragedy a family member gets sick, lose a job or something like that, that can also put you in the strive state.
Adam Fraser: Yeah, totally. And so many people during covid in that initial lockdown or I had to change the way I work, just said I got into that state and I amazed myself in terms of what I could do and what I could handle. And most organizations actually said, we were stunned at our capacity to transition people into working from home, still be effective, still get stuff done. There was so much striving happening there. But also in your personal life, like I think I strive the most in my parenting, both my children can be really challenging and it can drive me nuts. And probably where I’ve strived the most is to stay calm, to stay compassionate, have a constructive response when they’re really pushing my buttons. So we can find this in any area of our life.
Brett McKay: Okay. So yeah, right here you have this definition, striving is where we tackle difficult things, high end challenge and require high level skill and have to display courage to overcome low enjoyment and low interest. And this is, I think important in the pursuit of a meaningful goal, aspiration or vision. So you’re not just… You don’t just get in the strive state when you’re just doing stuff that’s hard for the sake of it being hard. Like there’s a bigger purpose behind it.
Adam Fraser: Yeah. And what helps you stay in that strive state is that there is some sort of purpose to this. Like if I think about my kids one of my biggest drivers is I just don’t want to, having worked with high performers, I’ve worked with so many people who are parents who go, oh, I just regret I have so many regrets about my parenting. So my meaning and purpose around my children is I don’t want to be one of those dads. I wanna be that dad that’s connected, that’s fun, that’s playful that they come to for advice. So in those moments, I think about that bigger purpose.
Brett McKay: Okay, so in the first part of the book, you talk about the downsides of not being in the strive state and instead pursuing a life of low struggle. And you make the case that our culture, I mean even as individuals, I mean we’re already kind of wired for not struggling, right? We like to take the path of least resistance, but also our culture is designed to encourage that as well. What happens when we don’t have to struggle for things?
Adam Fraser: Well, I mean, it starts to become dysfunctional when we don’t have striving and struggle. And probably the most interesting group I interviewed for the book were lawyers for really wealthy families. And I’m talking multi-billion dollar families and also lawyers that looked after multi-billion dollar trust that handed out money to people and they are just the most fascinating group to talk to. And their collective advice was, when you give people something for nothing, it’s disastrous. And what they talked about is that that third generation rich kid just what they talk about, they have so… In terms of their personality, in terms of their lack of compassion for people, they usually have drug problems. They usually have some sort of mental health problem, just to, when we don’t have to work for it and it’s given to us, it’s really, really dysfunctional.
They need the challenge. And an extreme example of this is when I was at that conference, the Dalai Lama conference, a member of the royal family of Kuwait was in the audience and she contacted me and said, we are trying to make the country of Kuwait happier. We want you to come to Kuwait to work on this. I started to go there and work on this project of how do they start to elevate their level of happiness. And one of the challenges was that they are a very rich country with a very generous government and a very generous royal family. And so many people get rescued and handouts or a given so much that it started to reduce the amount of striving that was going on in the country and particularly with younger generation. So what we were working on is how do we get this group to re-embrace doing things that are difficult. And when we saw that increase, we saw an increase in happiness and purpose. So when striving is taken away from people, what the research shows is that their mental health just falls apart.
Brett McKay: And you also talk about okay, we want to be happy, that’s a goal for everybody. Everyone wants to be happy, but you make the case that our constant obsession with happiness is counterintuitively not making us happy, it’s making us miserable. You have a chapter, I think it’s funny. Could everyone please shut up about happiness what happens when we think about trying to be happy too much?
Adam Fraser: Well, we just get obsessed with it and one of the biggest fallouts is that we’ve started to demonize negative emotion. So if you think about the happiness movement as well, meaning as its intention, what it’s become is that positive emotional states and positive thoughts are good and good for us. Negative emotional thoughts and negative states are bad and bad for us. And so anytime we feel a negative emotion, we go, there’s something wrong with me. We think to ourselves, I’m not happy. What’s wrong with me? Well, nothing’s wrong with you. You just don’t happen to experience happiness right now because you are experiencing other emotions like anxiety and I mean we’ve built anxiety up to be this terrible thing, but anxiety is a very normal emotion. If I’m feeling overwhelmed, I’m gonna be anxious. If I’m having a falling out with my best friend, I’m gonna experience anxiety about that.
Or if I’m about to do a presentation at school and I’m a school student, I’m gonna be anxious. And that’s a really normal response. So what’s happened is we’ve just swung so far where we’ve made everything positive is good and everything negative is bad. And that limits us so much, to learn, you have to be uncomfortable and experience negative emotion. To have a debate with someone if they’re challenging you, you should feel uncomfortable, but that’s normal and that’s okay. Or even if you get negative feedback, say you’re a leader at work, you get negative feedback and you feel bad about that, well that’s a normal response. But because we don’t wanna feel like that, we tend to go, well I have to get rid of that emotion. So rather than sitting with that emotion and learning and going, alright, people think my leadership is bad, I feel bad about that, which is normal, but what am I gonna do to evolve it? But because we don’t wanna feel like that, we go, well, I’m gonna blame my team or I’m gonna blame something else rather than taking it on. I mean, if you think about your podcast, you’ve talked to so many people, like have you seen this sort of trend creep into the way we live?
Brett McKay: Oh yeah. The whole positive psychology movement we’ve had a lot of positive psychologists on and I think there’s, yeah, like you said, there’s good things there. But as you said, I think if you take it overboard, then you start seeing downsides. And we actually had a guest on a couple of years ago to talk about that, Jesse Singal, he talks about the downsides of too much positive psychology. And we also had you cited him in the book, Todd Kashdan, he’s a professor here in the United States.
Adam Fraser: Todd is a good mate of mine.
Brett McKay: Yeah same thing. The obsession with happiness and when you aim for happiness, you actually counterintuitively make yourself less happy.
Adam Fraser: Yeah, completely. And I mean, what we should aim for is fulfillment. What we should aim for is impact to grow and evolve and to live a life like that, you are gonna be more uncomfortable. But that’s part of the process. And I don’t know, I can’t quote the researchers, but I know there was a collaboration between Harvard and Yale and what they showed is that people that feel a wide range of emotions, on both positive and negative have better mental health and better wellbeing. So yeah, and I see it in my kids is just that desire to constantly wanna feel good.
Brett McKay: Yeah. I see that too. I think I’ve talked about this before. I coach football, flag football and the kids just get really upset when they feel anxious. And I’m like man, you don’t have to feel… That’s okay. You’re okay to feel anxious, it just means you’re getting ready for this challenge. And it was so, okay, this aversion to negative emotions, what it does, it prevents us from getting to that strive state where we can find meaning and fulfillment and you a boost to our self-esteem because the strive state’s hard, it’s uncomfortable.
Adam Fraser: Yeah, actually I was just gonna say, something popped in my head, I watched this. I’m working with a very, very senior, like the most senior leaders of a multi-billion dollar company and they’re going through a massive transformation and the CEO said, I don’t think we’re at a point where we can handle this transformation because we are just not gelled as a team. He said, I want you to come in and work on that. And one of the things I did is I interviewed all their direct reports and man the feedback was scathing. It was yeah, they don’t collaborate. This one doesn’t get on with this one. I don’t know where the company’s going. Like it was really negative. And I gave it to each of them and I said, I want you to take 10 minutes to read it and process it and think about it.
And each said to them, how do you feel? And they talked about all the negative emotions they were feeling. And then I watched them start to debate the feedback, oh actually I know who wrote that and they’ve got a thorn in their side about this. So I don’t think we have to listen to that. And what they started to do was combat the feedback so that they didn’t have to change. And it was almost like anti striving piece of, well how do we argue with all of this so we don’t have to put it effort into changing rather than going, yeah, this feedback sucks, I’m really uncomfortable, but it shows that we have to grow and evolve. So I think the anti-striving message is stopping us evolving.
Brett McKay: Okay. So this anti-striving message that’s out there cause people to take easy street. We also have this idea of happiness or fulfillment that, okay, as soon as I complete this one goal, if I can get this one ring, if I can tick off this one thing, then I’ll feel good, I’ll feel happy, I’ll feel complete. But your research has found, nah, it’s actually, that’s a myth what’s going on there.
Adam Fraser: Yeah. I mean we call it the completion myth and this is where we massively overestimate how good we are going to feel once we achieve a goal. So it’s kind of like well once I finish this, I won’t be stressed or my life will be perfect. And we interviewed a huge range of people from gold medalists that came back from the Olympics. People that sold their businesses for hundreds of millions of dollars. And everyone said, man, once I achieved that, I thought I would be happier. I thought I’d feel better, or I thought it would make more of an impact on my life.
Many of the gold medalists said, oh, I thought that would last longer. But they said I’m being back a couple of months and people have kind of forgotten about it. And they massively overestimated how much the achievement of a goal was going to affect their life. And even people in retirement we spoke to them as well. ’cause so many of them said, oh, once I retire life’s gonna be amazing. I’m gonna not feel stressed, I’m gonna feel brilliant. And so many of them said, oh wow, I thought I’d have more energy. And I’m kind of a bit flat and I don’t know what to do next. So yeah, this completion myth was hugely common among people. I don’t know like, have you ever come across this in your interviews?
Brett McKay: I haven’t come across it in my own life. There’s always these things where you’re like, Oh, as soon as this happens, I’ll be happy. And then our brains, we’ve got the hedonic treadmill, like you get the thing and then you get used to it. And then you’re like, man, I’m still not happy. I gotta find the next thing. And if I get this thing, this thing for sure will make it and it doesn’t.
Adam Fraser: When I was younger, like buying cars or once I get an AMG, then I would have made it. Life’s gonna be amazing. And you buy the thing and you’re like, Oh, it’s kind of really, nothing has changed.
Brett McKay: Yeah. No, I saw this firsthand when I was really into powerlifting and I was, you call it chasing numbers. I was going for new PRs, and I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed, what’s interesting, I really enjoyed the process of getting to a next personal best or next personal record PR. But as soon as I get the PR, I’d feel good for like three seconds and then I’d be like, all right, well, that’s done, time to go. It wasn’t as satisfying as I thought it would be.
Adam Fraser: Yeah. And that’s the completion myth. That’s what we’re talking about. And I mean, powerlifting is a beautiful example ’cause it’s so tangible. It’s like sprinting or swimming you’ve got this number you wanna hit. But yeah, we found it was incredibly pervasive.
Brett McKay: Yeah. We think we tell ourselves, if I get the thing, that will make me happy. But in reality, we actually feel the best when we’re striving for the thing.
Adam Fraser: Yeah. And for the people listening to this, if you picture like a goal achievement, say you go, okay, I wanna hit 400 pounds on my deadlift. And you set that goal, you start to walk towards the goal and then you achieve the goal. And when we interviewed people, we said, if you think about this goal setting process, what’s the most fulfilling part? And they kind of looked at us weird and went, well, of course, the fulfillment, like that’s the only reason I do the goal is to get the outcome.
So that’s retrospectively, but when we actually got them to diarise, so we said, all right, set a new goal, go through the strive and the achievement, and we got them to diarise how they felt, what emotions they experienced, what were the narratives inside their head. And when they actually did it in the moment, what we found is that the strive was the most fulfilling part. That I don’t really feel like training today, but I motivated myself to do it and I had a really great session. That made them feel really proud. And the moments during the strive that were the most fulfilling, were the parts that had the most amount of struggle. So it sounds so counterintuitive, but throughout that whole process, it was the most difficult parts that made them feel pride, self-esteem. It required them to evolve. If you think about the powerlifting example, okay, I’m managing an injury, I’m training around it. They’re the parts that people go, like, that’s what I’m proud of. I didn’t give up, I pushed through. So, yeah, we think that the outcome is the most fulfilling part, when in fact, it’s the struggle along the journey that made them most fulfilled.
Brett McKay: Yeah, Ernest Hemingway understood this in one of the sections of Green Hills of Africa, he titled it Pursuit as Happiness, kind of a play of Pursuit of Happiness.
Adam Fraser: Yeah, I think that summarizes it perfectly.
Brett McKay: Okay, so finding meaning in completing goals, probably not gonna happen, or finding meaning and making things easy for yourself. In fact, that just might make you miserable. And you actually say, what is it? I think you said, like, when everything’s easy, it turns everyone into an a-hole town, is what you call it, yeah. And it just messes up, kids. You talk about Pass the Parcel.
Adam Fraser: Oh, my gosh, I forgot that that was in the book. Yeah, Pass the Parcel. Do you guys have that in the US?
Brett McKay: They don’t do it in the US The way I discovered about Pass the Parcel was Bluey.
Adam Fraser: Oh, my gosh, I love Bluey. That is the best show ever.
Brett McKay: And it was the same sort of thing. You had this situation where, like, Bluey you’re in charge of Pass the Parcel for your kids, and you didn’t know. I guess when you’re growing up, well, first off, explain Pass the Parcel for our American audience.
Adam Fraser: Pass the Parcel is a toy gets wrapped up in newspaper. So you might wrap it up in 20 different pieces in newspaper. And what happens is all the kids sit in a circle, and it’s handed around the circle. When the music stops, a kid peels off one of the layers, and then they hand it to the next kid, and when the music stops again. So, the excitement is who’s gonna actually get the toy? And no one knows ’cause you don’t know how many layers. That’s the whole piece. So, my wife said to me I think it was my daughter’s fourth or fifth birthday. She said, do Pass the Parcel, and I’m like, awesome. So, I get this really cool toy, I wrap it in newspaper, and I hand it to my wife. And she kind of goes, why is this thing so light? And I said, oh, well the toy is not very heavy. She said, what do you mean the toy? There should be multiple toys in there. And I’m like, what do you mean? And she goes, well, every kid needs to get a toy. And I’m like, what do you mean every kid? She said, well, every time you put a new wrapper on it, it’s gonna have a toy in it. So, every time a kid, it stops, a kid gets a toy. And I’m like, that defeats the whole purpose of Pass the Parcel.
So, anyway, so we had to do it. And she said to me, make sure every kid wins. And I’m like, you are kidding me. So, I’m doing the thing, and I’m making sure I’m stopping the music when it gets to each child. But the kids turn on me halfway through Pass the Parcel of like, one kid’s yelling ’cause he hasn’t won yet. And I’m like, give it a rest, kid. I’m trying to get to you. And my daughter ended up telling me I was crap at Pass the Parcel. And it was just this terrible thing of why does everyone have to win? Why do we all have to get a result? And it really hit me in that moment of you couldn’t just go, yeah, sorry, kid, you missed out, this kid won. You had a chance, but it didn’t work out that way. We’re gonna be okay. And whether it’s like. I’ve had kids come home with a ribbon for 10th, and I’m like, I didn’t even think they made ribbons for 10th. And when they get the 10th ribbon, they just kind of, they go home and just chuck it down and go, I don’t even know why I got this, ’cause I didn’t even get close to winning. So, yeah, I mean, that’s that easy street of everyone has to win. We don’t wanna upset anyone.
Brett McKay: And it turns everyone into a dysfunctional a whole town. We’re gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. And now back to the show. Okay, so we’ve talked about the ideas that keep us from the strive state. We focus on the result instead of the process. We think that if life is easy, we get what we want, we get rid of discomfort. We think that’s gonna bring us happiness, but it’s actually in the striving, embracing risk, effort, discomfort. That’s where we actually find joy. So let’s talk more about this strive state and how to get the benefits of it and get into it. Earlier, you said that there’s two elements to a strive state. It’s courage and evolution. Walk us through those factors.
Adam Fraser: Look, if you weere to ask the average person what they want from life. So if you were to walk out onto the street and ask a hundred people, what do they want from life? In Western societies, the most common answer you’ll get is to be happy. So people go, I don’t know, I just wanna be happy. Now, if you then find the first 100 parents and ask them what they want from life for their kids, the exact same answer, which is, I don’t care. I just want them to be happy. So people looking forward in their life for themselves or for the thing they love the most, the focus is happiness. So I read this research and then my brain goes, well, what about people at the end of their life looking back? Do they go, oh, I wish I’d been happier. And if you think about the top three regrets of the dying, so people on their deathbed, the top three regrets are number one, I wish I’d had the courage to live the life I wanted to live, not what other people expected me to do, that’s number one. Number two is I wish I had the courage to tell people I loved how much they meant to me more often. And number three is I wish I’d had the courage to not let fear hold me back from doing things that challenged me. So if you look at the deathbed research, the top three are about one thing and one thing only, and that is courage. So people looking forward in their life go, I want happiness. People at the end of their life looking back go, forget happiness.
I wish I’d been more courageous. And the thing about when you are courageous, it builds so much self-esteem, so much pride. So when we’re courageous, we have faith in ourselves. We believe in ourselves more. And the other one, evolution, is just where we see ourselves get better at something. So once again, that builds our self-esteem, our pride. I mean, if you look at POS Psych, and POS Psych when it started out, yeah, it had a brilliant impact. And if you think about the principle that underpins it, it’s like humans are most engaged and resilient when they see themselves making progress towards a meaningful goal. So when we see ourselves evolving, getting better, making progress, that’s when we really knuckle down and keep pushing through. So what we’ve discovered in our research is that to witness ourselves be courageous and to see ourselves evolve are two critical things for our well-being and for our mental health. And you need to strive to do those things. And that’s why this easy street and this easy life where there’s no courage or evolution is so devastating for us.
Brett McKay: And in order for you to express courage and to evolve, there’s got to be a struggle.
Adam Fraser: Yeah, exactly.
Brett McKay: And you talk about there’s four different types of struggle. What are those different types of struggle?
Adam Fraser: Yeah, well, first of all, there’s traumatic struggle. And obviously, this is something we wanna avoid. This is abuse in our life, going through war, natural disasters. This is when truly traumatic, awful things happen to us. So that’s traumatic struggle. The next one is sorrowful struggle. And that’s where we experience things that make us sad, put us in a negative state. Like a relationship breaks down. You break up with someone, sorrowful struggle. You experience bullying at work or you fall into financial distress. So it’s not trauma, which is a word we throw around far too easily. But it’s experiences that have an impact on us and put us in a really sorrowful, sad state. Then we have struggle in the dredge. And this is just the stuff in life that frustrates us. It’s traffic. It’s your kid won’t get dressed.
It’s frustrations. It’s systems and process at work. Or it’s just kind of stuff in life that drags you down a little bit. And then the final type of struggle is called growth-centric struggle. And this is what we’ve been talking about. It’s struggle that gives me the opportunity to grow and evolve. So for those leaders that got that negative feedback and then were trying to talk themselves out of having to do it, they were presented growth-centric struggle. So your direct reports don’t think you’re doing a good job. So you’ve got a choice and an opportunity to step up and evolve because of that struggle that’s been presented to you. You think about powerlifting is growth-centric struggle. Like I’m gonna challenge myself physically to evolve, get stronger. Whether it’s parenting, whether if you’re an entrepreneur in a business, how do I grow to get better at selling or marketing or? So it’s just where life gives us a struggle. But if we lean into it, we’re gonna grow and evolve. Now, you could argue that some of those other things like sorrowful struggle and traumatic struggle is an opportunity to evolve. But it’s much more difficult and challenging in those scenarios. So growth-centric struggle is what we want and what we wanna actively engage in our lives.
Brett McKay: Yeah, in the growth-centric struggle, you’re using your agency to select that. You’re shaping your life. The other stuff just kind of happens to you and you have to deal with it.
Adam Fraser: Yeah, I mean, look, there’s obviously some gray areas in this, but that growth-centric struggle is more a situation is presented or I choose, you think about your powerlifting, no one’s making you do that. You’re choosing to do it. Say a growth-centric struggle is if my child is being really difficult and not coping with life, that’s an opportunity for me to step in, improve my parenting to help mold them. Or those leaders who were given negative feedback, they’ve got a choice. They can either dismiss it and keep doing what they’re doing, or they could go, no, this is important. This has meaning attached to it and I’m gonna fully throw myself into this evolution and I’m gonna be courageous as a leader and I’m gonna get better.
Brett McKay: What separates individuals who see struggle as a threat compared to those who see it as opportunity to express courage and to grow and evolve?
Adam Fraser: We don’t really have a very clear answer on this one. But the point you’ve made is a brilliant one because when people are presented with growth-centric struggle, they either look at it as this is an opportunity for me to evolve and develop or this is a threat. And if you think about those leaders I’ve described a couple of times, they’ve gone, okay, we’ve been heavily criticized by this group. They start to fall into that threat state, which is, oh, wow. What if the board hears about this? What if more people criticize us? Okay, how do we shut these people down? How do we find excuses to justify our behavior? If they see it as an opportunity to develop, they start to move into, well, how do I evolve? How do I improve?
What do we need to do? So there’s many factors. If an individual is standing there going, I just can’t become that type of leader. I don’t have the skills to do this. If they truly look at that situation and go, I can’t pull this off, they’ll go into that threat state of, well, how do I get out of this or how do I blame that group? As well as, if you’re not used to discomfort, when that discomfort comes up, your brain goes, how do we get away from this as fast as humanly possible? And they move into that threat state of, and I’ve seen this with staff. You start to challenge them. And if they’re not used to being challenged or they’re not comfortable with growth-centric struggle, they’ll resign, they’ll leave, they’ll just run away from it. So it really comes down to just their experience and their mentality of striving and struggle and challenge. And if you train people to handle this more effectively, when they come up against something difficult, they will have that development path rather than that threat path.
Brett McKay: Yeah, it just comes with practice. You have to experience it and then you develop the skill, the muscle, in order to see challenges or struggles as an opportunity to develop and not a threat.
Adam Fraser: Yeah, and I see this heaps in teams, is when they’re being asked to evolve or use a new process or new technology or, hey, we’re gonna deal with our customers differently. If they are truly scared by that or think we can’t pull that off, they will attack the initiative and kill it. And I see this so much in cultures. Can we evolve and change? And if they think they can’t or if they have that mentality of, this is a bad thing you’re asking us to do, they will go into that threat state and they will find a way to kill the initiative off. Yeah, it’s so common.
Brett McKay: So in your research, you also found different behaviors that good strivers take part in. What are some of these behaviors that you found that they regularly take part in?
Adam Fraser: Yeah, so one of the things we did is we studied groups who had massive levels of struggle in front of them. So either there was a massive disruption in that profession or that organization and we looked at how people responded. And what we found is that people, the really good strivers, have acceptance that struggle sucks. This is not gonna be fun. And, okay, we’ve gone through this disruption or we’re gonna have to embrace this new technology. Yeah, this is gonna suck, this is gonna be really uncomfortable and there’s gonna be many points on the journey where we doubt our ability. And they just had this view of, yeah, this is gonna be part of it, if we’re gonna evolve, we’re gonna have to be uncomfortable. And one group we studied in huge detail was financial advisors. So these people are working with clients to give them financial advice and products and help them with their wealth. Now, in Australia, that has gone through massive regulatory change.
So the way they’ve had to work is constantly changing for the last 15 years. Even the way they get paid has changed. And what we looked at is the groups who were innovating and evolving versus the groups that were kind of being left behind and just working like they did 20 years ago. So one group was evolving, one group wasn’t. And what we initially thought is that the proactive group would see all this change as a good thing like it’s helping us be more professional. What we found, across the board, everyone thought it all sucked, even the most proactive people went, these are terrible decisions, it’s making my life hard. But what they focused on was, yeah, but if I push through this, here is the goal I have for my business or here is the outcome I want. Whereas the group that weren’t being proactive, they were waiting for someone to come to their rescue. That they saw it as a threat. So they were trying to run away from it rather than embracing the new way of working. So that acceptance of, yeah, this is gonna be difficult and I’m not gonna enjoy it, but I’m gonna embrace it anyway.
Look, one of the other behaviors of really good strivers were, they were very connected to meaning and purpose. So the meaning of purpose behind the goal, why my business exists, why I’m doing this as a parent, why am I trying to evolve in this area, constantly tapping into that there is a bigger thing at foot here. And also, one of the other things we found is that they focused on that courage and reflected on, man, today I really embraced this or I really challenged myself and overcame that. What they were constantly looking at is the progress that they were making along that path. Looking at the courage, looking at the evolution that we talked about. So they were very reflective on how they were evolving as individuals. So they were the three, well, actually the three kind of slash four there.
Brett McKay: Yeah. And besides those things, you also found that they did things in order to strive for the long term because when you’re working on hard things, it’s easy to fall into that burnout zone, but the really good strivers, they picked up on tactics to avoid that. What are some of the things that they did?
Adam Fraser: Yeah, this is a really, I’m glad you brought that up because those things I just described there are the proactive things in the moment of struggle. What we found is that people who were great at striving and striving for a long period just had these sort of background behaviors that they did that allowed them to continue to strive and not burn out or not kind of give up on that goal. Yeah, look, I mean, there was varying things from in terms of mental focus, one of the things we’re finding today is we’re so distracted and interrupted by technology. We’re multitasking constantly. So I think we showed around the average worker is interrupted around 70 times a day. Now obviously what that does is we lose our ability to focus and be productive and to strive.
So what we found is really good strivers were just great at improving their focus and not getting distracted removing technology actually training their focus, with some sort of meditative practice, even having hobbies that honed their attention. So what we found is that these strivers were really good at just being able to have a calm mind and be focused. We also saw that they practiced gratitude. There’s so much research out there showing the benefits of gratitude from a mental health perspective as well as a well-being piece, as well as being able to cope with trauma. And studies have been done on 9-11 survivors and people who had been through the Vietnam War and how going through something challenging like that, the regular practice of gratefulness really helped them manage those traumatizing situations. Obviously having really good support network around you that when you’re going through difficulty and when you’re finding things hard, you turn to these people. Another one was also recovery just the ability to take time out to recover.
So many people run just flat out today where they don’t take time for recovery and they just push themselves constantly. So that ability to step away, ’cause we don’t wanna be in strive all the time, we wanna challenge ourselves strive, evolve, but then recover allow ourselves to relax, to sort of put stuff back in. So recovery was a really important one. And also to take time to celebrate victory when they achieve things, when they make progress moving forward. So these were some of the things they just incorporated into their lives to help them deal with struggle and challenge more effectively.
Brett McKay: And I imagine you might have found people, maybe, did you guys do this connection? Your research on microtransitions, I imagine good strivers know how to master microtransitions to improve their life.
Adam Fraser: Yeah, look, one thing we found, that third space of research that we did is that good strivers, high performers were able to transition more effectively. So when they moved into something that was challenging, their ability to really bring the right attitude, the right mental focus was part of that skill set that they had. So yeah, that was definitely part of it as well.
Brett McKay: Okay, so striving is how we find meaning, that’s how we find self-esteem, self-admiration. It’s doing hard things where we have to show courage and we change and get better. And the happiness is in the pursuit of the thing, not necessarily in the thing itself. We kind of mentioned kids, as a parent, I really wanna help my kids be, I want them to strive better. So what have you found in your own life to help kids learn how to strive better?
Adam Fraser: Well, the whole thing about this is just give them situations and put them in situations where they are going to struggle. Just don’t rescue them all the time. Now obviously, if they’re in a dangerous situation or they’re being bullied or something like that, you wanna step in, but with just challenging things in life, we wanna let them deal with it. We wanna give them that responsibility. We wanna avoid rescuing them all the time. Like, my oldest daughter is a gymnast and she got a new coach and the new coach was really hard on the kids and whenever someone mucked up, they had to do burpees and push-ups. So I pick her up from training and she gets in the car, slams the door and I’m like, what’s going on with you? She goes, “oh, my new coach is the worst.”
Whenever someone’s disrespectful or mucks up, we have to do burpees and push-ups. So if one person behaves badly, we all have to do it. And I’m like, yeah, I used to have a coach like that too. And she’s like, it’s not fair and the whole way she’s coming home, she’s complaining about this situation. So she gets home, talks to my wife, complains to my wife, and my wife said, oh, should we like send an email or maybe we should have a conversation with the coach? And I’m like, no, in no way are we gonna get involved in this. And I said, what’s the worst that’s gonna happen? She’s gonna get really good at burpees and push-ups. There’s no downside to this. And we actually reached out to a few of the other parents and said, I don’t think we should get involved in this. I think we should let the kids sort this situation out. And the other parents agreed. And what happened is that there was one kid that was really misbehaving a lot. And after three weeks of doing push-ups and burpees, the rest of the group pulled that kid aside and said, hey, you got to cut that out ’cause we’re tired of doing this.
And what happened is that group sorted out that girl who was misbehaving. Now, they weren’t awful about it. They just said, hey, we’re not gonna tolerate this anymore. And they solved the problem. But also it’s like sometimes in life you get a coach that’s mean. Sometimes in life you have a leader that’s not that nice. I’m not gonna rescue you from this. And I think we’ve got to give our kids those opportunities to solve their problems or to sit with discomfort more rather than constantly solving everything for them.
Brett McKay: So, yeah, just let them sit with the discomfort. I love that. Well, Adam, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
Adam Fraser: Just dradamfraser.com is my website. And you can go there and find out about all our research, our work. And obviously we’re on all the socials, LinkedIn, Instagram. So, yeah, you can reach out through those channels.
Brett McKay: Well, Adam Fraser, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.
Adam Fraser: My pleasure.
Brett McKay: My guest here is Dr. Adam Fraser. He’s the author of the book Strive. You can learn more information about his work at his website dradamfraser.com. Also check out our show notes at awim.is/strive.
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. If you’d like to be part of an organization that will put meaningful striving into your life, consider joining the Strenuous Life, an online-offline program that challenges men to be their best in body, mind, and spirit. A new enrollment of the Strenuous Life will be opening up next month. Go to strenuouslife.co and sign up for our email list to receive an announcement letting you know when enrollment has begun. As always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay, reminding you to not listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you have heard into action.
