The Mental Frame & Specific Daily Actions to Succeed | Andy Stumpf

Andy Stumpf is a retired Navy SEAL, world-record-holding wingsuit BASE jumper, martial artist, and author. We discuss the mental framework and moment-to-moment decision-making process that can allow anyone to build discipline and resilience and better navigate both everyday life and life’s most chal

Pick the choice as often as possible that is slightly more difficult. To me, it’s the small stuff that nobody sees that makes the biggest difference in the world. Everybody knows the harder choice versus the easier choice. Everybody, to include myself, will look externally and say, “What do I need to do? ” I know what I need to do, and so do they.

They need to do the thing that even if it’s microscopic, that they want to do less more often than they do the thing that they want to do more. Over time is the juice. >> Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science [music] and science-based tools for everyday life. I’m Andrew Huberman, and I’m a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Andy Stumpf, a retired Navy SEAL and subsequently a member of the Red Bull High-Performance Team, where he was a wingsuiter, where they literally get into what some people call squirrel suits and fly.

He set two world records wingsuiting, but today’s discussion is not really prompted by his career in the military, nor his wingsuiting, although it does impact the discussion. Today’s discussion was prompted by my reading of Andy’s recent book called Drownproof. Now, there are a lot of books out there by former Navy SEALs, but upon reading it, I realized that this was a special book, and that Andy’s experience and the lessons he shares, and most importantly the tools he shares, are both unique and indeed important for everyone to hear. For instance, he describes a tool in there that I now use every single week, which has allowed me and many other people, and I’m certain you, to separate out issues of concern versus issues of impact, meaning to allow you to actually be able to impact, perhaps not control, but certainly have an impact on certain things while ignoring the issues in life that distract you, that pull you into drama, and that can numb you out, and that essentially waste your life. Today, you’ll learn what that exercise is and how to implement it in your life.

You’ll also learn a lot of other simple tools about how to take the slightly harder road in certain moments versus the easier road. You’ll also learn from Andy about the most difficult things that he encountered in life and how he navigated them. And no, those weren’t in the military nor wing suiting. It actually comes from his personal life, which he shares very candidly. And finally, we have a very serious and in many ways somewhat emotional discussion about suicide and mental health more generally.

I do hope that that discussion will benefit all of you. I’m certainly we are certainly, I should say, very open to your input. That discussion, of course, raises more questions than it provides answers, but I think we can all agree that this is an extremely important and timely topic. The frequency of suicide is increasing significantly in all communities. So, for reasons related to the range and the nature of the specific topics that we discussed today, you’re in for a very special episode.

Thank you, Andy Stumpf. Before we begin, I’d like to emphasize podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today’s episode does include sponsors. All right, my book is finally ready for release.

Protocols, an operating manual for the human body, is coming out in 3 months. It’s my first book and I’ve been working on it for many years now and it’s really a reflection of decades of research and experience that came even prior to starting the book. My goal for this book is that it serves as an easy-to-use manual for dealing with any number of different pain points or performance goals that you might have in terms of mental health, physical health, and performance. It covers the science and most effective protocols for sleep, nutrition, exercise, focus learning and neuroplasticity, stress management, and much more. I’m super excited to share it with all of you.

The launch date is September 15th. You can learn more about it or pre-order by going to protocolsbook. com. It’s also available on amazon. com and I’m super excited that protocols is finally ready for release.

And as always, thank you for your interest in science. And now for my discussion with Andy Stumpf. Andy Stumpf, welcome. >> Thank you for having me. >> I read your book, “Drownproof”, recently.

me nervous, by the way. Telling you that before we started. I’ve read it. >> [laughter] >> A lot of books including a lot of the quote-unquote seal books. It’s awesome.

I’ll mention a few of the reasons why it’s awesome, but I’ll let people read it for themselves, but just to really get right to it, one of the practices that you describe in the book is something that I decided to do right away and I’ve been doing every week since I listened to it. Now granted, I just listened to the book a few weeks ago, so that means twice, but I found it to be tremendously useful not just during the exercise, but in the days that follow and it’s really remapped a lot of what I would call my unhealthy tendencies and given me much more sense of agency and my days are are just going so much better. In fact, I was on time today for the first time in my life. >> Influence versus concern? >> Yes.

So, could you describe this simple exercise because I’ll tell you having having done it, it is immensely powerful. I only wish I had learned about it like in junior high school. >> Story of my life. >> Yeah. So, first off, not my creation.

This is something I don’t remember and I think I said this multiple times in the book because I want to be very clear that of basically taking ownership over nothing in that book because they’re not my unique ideas. They were things that were taught to me that I’m trying to pass forward. So, I don’t remember exactly where I first saw this, but the way it was first positioned to me was your circle or sphere of influence, which is very small, and your sphere of concern, which for most people to include myself is very large. So, if it was the size of this table, that would be your concern, the influence would be the size of a pin drop on the table. And the exercise is actually really simple.

Take a standard piece of paper, draw a line down the middle, concern on one side, influence on the other, and you just take the time to write down the things that are occupying your waking hours. So, I don’t know if you’re anything like me, I try not to set an alarm unless I have something really pressing that day, but if I do wake up and my brain does revolution, I have to get out of bed because otherwise I’m staring at the ceiling in the bedroom. And if I have really sticky things in the morning, I’ll I’ll usually do this about once a month or once every 6 months now, but almost every time that thought will be on the left-hand side of the column. It’s just a concern. But why is it preventing me from going back to sleep?

Why can’t I let go of it? And it’s social media, the world that we all live in. It’s things you can’t control. It’s just all the stuff that you spend your energy and effort focusing on. And then you go to the other side of that paper, and I’m still yet to find more than one thing that you can write down, and that’s the direct influence that you have.

And all you really can write on that is yourself. Now, you can you can trunch that out and say your thought process, the way you speak to yourself, the way you plan your