The Comfort Crisis Embrace Discomfort To Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self

The first two books I optioned for my production company were Gone Girl and Wild.

There's a guy named Michael Easter, he's been on my podcast before. He wrote a book called The Comfort Crisis. Great book.

We had a guest on this podcast, Michael Easter. He wrote the book, The Comfort Crisis. It's an incredible book really about how to navigate life generally and doing really hard things voluntarily. He'd go do really hard expeditions and then come back from them with a renewed sense of gratitude.

One of the reasons Michael Easter is on this podcast is that his book, The Comfort Crisis, changed my daily life. The Comfort Crisis made me realize that every activity available to us, easy or challenging, destructive or constructive, can and should be viewed through the lens of whether it spends our dopamine reserves or invests them in a worthwhile way.

For the comfort crisis, I go and I spend 30 days in the Arctic, a little more than 30 days. ... If I want to drink anything, I got to hike down to a stream, and I got to carry the heavy water bags back up to camp. I am freezing cold the entire freaking time.

In the comfort crisis, I write about the value of silence, for example. We have increased the world's loudness fourfold as human beings. And yet silence is actually pretty good for us in this context of noise.

Michael Easter's book, Comfort Crisis, is great.

Michael Easter is at a university out in Las Vegas and he got access to one of these - he wrote The Comfort Crisis about getting outdoors, getting away from things and basically carrying weight on your back and walking as a therapy of sorts.

There's a book called The Comfort Crisis, I believe.

And Michael Easter wrote a great book called The Comfort Crisis.

And I think that's what America's come to. You hear these calls, you're like, how did this person make these crazy decisions? Well, they wanted what felt good in the now.

They wanted to be comfortable now. They wanted the lifestyle now instead of delayed gratification, which has now become a virtue that if you can get there, you're going to have the most wonderful life of abundance and joy and peace.

My son sitting over there reading The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter, right?

I read the comfort crisis, great book.

I read the comfort crisis, great book.

two different people gave me the book comfort crisis if two people give you a book even if it's on weight loss you should take it seriously and comfort crisis is a serious book it is a great read and I got to know Michael through that and had him on with Mike row and I and a couple other guys as we're talking about the status of work ethic the state or the I don't know the condition of lack of work ethic in America today we did an event on that a few months ago that was highly successful so when we heard Michael was going to be in town we put him on a bunch of our podcast and asking to stop in here on his new book scarcity brain welcome my friend thanks for having me

Yeah like a good horse man breaks late I guess yeah I've surprised as surprised as you are I'm not surprised I'm just I love a book that breaks late like that because that means it's got legs it'll be with us for a while because the contents is so so strong okay so yeah so we're going to have a good time and then versus obviously abundance brain I guess yeah exactly the both sides of it but the

break the cycle Michael Easter the way we discovered him was through comfort crisis the new book fix your craving mindset rewire your habits to thrive with enough it's called scarcity brain highly recommend it I will be absorbing this this weekend I have not gotten to it until now and I will immediately good stuff

I think we, you know, Michael Easter's book, The Comfort Crisis, which I think is a masterpiece.

The overarching narrative of that book is I spent 33 days in the Arctic.

As people experience fewer and fewer problems, we don't become more satisfied. We simply start searching for the next problem.

In chapter 13 of your book, I think it's chapter 13 where you start to talk about how that is both bad for people's anxiety, depression, and productivity.

The human body is good at two things. One of them is running long distances relatively slowly. The other thing that we are good at is carrying things for distance.

Humans evolved to be good at two things. One of them is running long distances relatively slowly...But the other thing that we are good at is carrying things for distance.

I saw on your bookshelf at home, there's a book called The Comfort Crisis. Oh, yeah. And that just flashed in front of me as you were saying that. Yeah, shout out. Michael, it's a great book.

As humans experience fewer and fewer problems, we don't actually become more satisfied. We basically just lower our threshold for what we consider a problem.

So we end up with the same exact number of troubles, right? But our problems become more hollow over time as the world has improved over time.

And I think we can all agree that today in by most measurements, the world is way better than it was a hundred years ago, even 50 years ago, 200 years ago.

But we don't often stop and appreciate that.

But when you ask the average American, is the world improving? Only 6% of people say that the world is improving.

I thought The Comfort Crisis was a really, really good.

I love I'm telling you, I found a lot of stuff in my comfort crisis. There's a concept called problem creep.

So I think that both of your books, like they dovetail nicely.

I have a friend that wrote a book called The Comfort Crisis.

And he has this book called The Comfort Crisis and he basically argues that a lot of our convenience in modern life is really hurting our health and our happiness because we just live so much differently than our ancestors did, who they had to work in the fields.

He's also a professor at UNLV and he's the best-selling author of The Comfort Crisis and Scarcity Brain.

I probably brought up The Comfort Crisis in 50 keynote speeches since that one came out because I love it.

You had Michael Easter ... I love the comfort crisis and all of his work

And it's one of those rare books that you pick up and read. And it was like such an aha.

And I knew that the only way to get stronger over time is to add more weight to the bar.

And I knew the only way to get a promotion in your job was to go get more training or to stay late and to get up early and do excellent, excellent, excellent work, which in my world takes lots of revisions and lots of looking up case law and et cetera.

And I know in mental health, the only way like to heal from anxiety is right through it.

And then here came Michael Easter with this masterpiece of a book, The Comfort Crisis and laid it out like, oh, we've created a whole culture that avoids anything uncomfortable.

And we've demonized everything that's uncomfortable.

I better go pick up that book, The Comfort Crisis. What a masterpiece.

And so whenever he's one of the few people and he says read this book, I read that book. And I read the book. It's called The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter.

I finished the book. I immediately walked into my 12 year old son's room and I handed him the book.

And it has opened up some incredible conversations that a year later, it's become part of the fabric of our life.

I finished The Comfort Crisis and I immediately walked into my son who was 12 at the time. I was like, you have to read this book.

So you've written, and I've told you this personally, I think I reached out to you, which I almost never do. This is in the top five most important books ever in the last decade.

Read my buddy, Michael Easter's book, The Comfort Crisis. It's a masterpiece.

I don't know if you've read Michael Easter's book, The Comfort Crisis.

He's a writer and a professor of journalism at UNLV. And he wrote this book, The Comfort Crisis, Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self.

And I thought it was an incredible book, but the reason I thought of it when you were describing your students, one of the things he talks about in the book is annually he tries to do what's called a Masogi.

And he doesn't just talk about exercise or physically, he also talks about that we are too emotionally comfortable or we don't get bored anymore. And boredom is actually like a sign to go do some things, right, pay attention to these emotions.

But I thought it was an amazing book because I wonder if your students have this comfort crisis where they're afraid to actually fail.

I fell in love with her in Wild okay.

I cried my fucking eyes out in the Fault in Our Stars the book and the movie.

Spoiler alert in Wild.

Reese Witherspoon has just come into the hospital bed and see that her eyes were taken out.

I wrote this book on happiness, great, which was happy.

It'll be linked to the show notes, thank you.

It's a lot of it's about Stoicism and an approach to happiness there's very different from the sort of normal self-help book approach.

So I'm suddenly going to get my head around a second book around those sort of questions if you know what it is to flourish and uh be human really.

I wrote this book on happiness, great, which was Happy. It'll be linked to the show notes, thank you.

...it's a lot of it's about Stoicism and an approach to happiness, there's very different from the sort of normal self-help book approach...

I think a lot of what Michael Easter talks about in the comfort crisis really resonates.