Resilience Is a Lifestyle. Give Yourself 10,000 Chances.

Good morning, team!

I spent a good part of this fall talking about resilience on other people's podcasts. Two of those conversations came out within a day of each other.

When I listened back, I was saying almost the same thing in both. So I pulled it into one place for you: three insights that have stuck with me, one book, and a summary of each episode with the link if you want to listen to the whole episode.

Steal, share, or save any of it. Liberally.

Charlie Munger gave the commencement address at the USC Gould School of Law in 2007. This is how he started talking about hard luck:

He didn't say the blows would make you stronger. He said some people recover and some don't. Then he pointed to Epictetus, the Stoic, who believed every piece of bad luck, no matter how bad, gave you a chance to behave well.

The job wasn't to feel sorry for yourself. The job was to do something useful with the hit.

You can't pick the blow. You can pick the next action you take. The next attitude you have. You get to decide what you do next.

James Clear wrote Atomic Habits, and this is the line of his I've repeated the most lately:

You don’t build resilience in the middle of a crisis. By then you're just finding out how tough you actually are.

The easy weeks matter more than they look like they do. They're the only weeks you get to practice. To prepare.

While it’s quiet, you get the opportunity to prepare for the chaos.

And Mark Manson, who wrote The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck😀

I like that it doesn't promise anything about how the next one will go. It just points at your record.

You have been through a long list of things you were sure would break you, and you're still here reading this. You made it.

And you have the ability to make it through the next big “unsolvable” thing that comes your way next.

Curt Menefee is the Fox NFL sportscaster, and in this book, Losing Isn't Everything: The Untold Stories and Hidden Lessons Behind the Toughest Losses in Sports History, he goes back to athletes who became known for one terrible moment. Bill Buckner and the ball that went through his legs. Craig Ehlo, the guy guarding Michael Jordan on The Shot.

Then he follows them for years afterward, well past the replay and into the rest of their lives.

What stayed with me is how different the recoveries look. Some of these men built walls and lost people because of it. Ehlo hit bottom with addiction before he got help.

The ones who came out of it best stopped letting one moment define them and put their attention on something bigger, like coaching kids or helping other people get through their own recovery.

One line from the book I keep thinking about: “A loss doesn't turn into a lesson unless you work hard to make it one.” The learning isn't automatic. You have to choose it.

Both of these interview appearances ended up with the same idea at the center. Resilience isn't a mood you wake up with. It's something you set up on purpose. A lifestyle.

JV Crum III has more than 3,300 episodes behind him, and we talked for about 36 minutes. Resilience is more than grit. If your method isn't working, change the setup (running shoes by the front door, not in the closet) and add a safeguard, the way you put a stand under a jacked-up car. I also shared the 10-pushup morning challenge and the evening habit that softened me most: forgiving myself for the day.

Listen to the episode on Spotify →

Rick DellaRatta, the jazz pianist who hosts this one, opens with a story about a painting from a cave in Nepal. We talked for about an hour. My answer was to give yourself 10,000 chances, because if you only get one shot everything has to go right. Resilience is a lifestyle built on five things you control: how you start the day, how you end it, what you eat, how you move, and how you handle conflict. Rick closed by playing "After the Gold Rush."

Listen to the episode on Spotify →

So here's a challenge for this week.

Pick the change you keep starting over on. The early workout. The drink you said you'd skip. The conversation you keep putting off.

Then schedule one action to take before Friday. Something that's still there when the motivation wears off. A sticky note on the bathroom mirror. A friend who texts you Thursday night to ask. Your shoes by the door.

And if you miss a day, count it as one chance out of 10,000. You get another one tomorrow.

Reply and tell me what your one action is. It comes straight to me. I dare you.

Love you all. 🖤