How to Deal With Any Life Problem

Summary

In the Resilience Course, the speaker addresses the inevitability of pain and hardship in life, emphasizing that life is a process of managing problems. The course aims to equip participants with strategies to deal with pain, grief, and loss, and to become more resilient. Two key metaphors are introduced: the Buddhist arrow, distinguishing between physical (Type 1) and psychological (Type 2) pain, and the muscle metaphor, illustrating the importance of a 'Goldilocks zone' of stress for mental health. The course focuses on managing Type 2 pain, which is controllable, and aims to strengthen mental resilience through regular life challenges, setting it apart from trauma-focused therapies.

Takeaways

• 🌟 Life is inherently filled with problems, and avoiding them is not a viable strategy.
• 🎯 The course aims to enhance resilience by teaching how to manage and upgrade from bad problems to better ones.
• 🏹 Two types of pain are identified: Type 1 (physical or unavoidable pain) and Type 2 (psychological or self-imposed pain).
• 🤔 The course will focus more on managing Type 2 pain, as it's more controllable and often more impactful on our well-being.
• 💪 Pain can be beneficial when it's within a 'Goldilocks zone', promoting mental strength and resilience.
• 🚫 Extreme pain or stress can lead to a breaking point, causing more harm than good, similar to overexertion leading to injury.
• 🏥 Trauma, likened to a 'broken back', requires specialized treatment and is beyond the scope of the course.
• 🧠 The way we perceive and narrate our experiences greatly influences the intensity of our psychological pain.
• 📝 The course encourages participants to identify and differentiate between Type 1 and Type 2 pains in their lives.
• 🔆 The goal is to transform overwhelming problems into manageable challenges, fostering personal growth and a sense of purpose.

Q & A

What is the main theme of the Resilience Course?

The main theme of the Resilience Course is teaching strategies, techniques, and concepts to help individuals deal with various amounts of pain in their lives, including how to get through problems, grief, and loss, with a focus on becoming more resilient.

What are the two types of pain discussed in the course?

The two types of pain discussed are Type 1 pain, which is the physical or actual pain experienced from an event, and Type 2 pain, which is the psychological pain that comes from the narratives and meanings we create around the initial painful event.

How does the course differentiate between Type 1 and Type 2 pain?

Type 1 pain is described as the initial, inherent pain from an event, like the physical sensation of an arrow piercing the skin. Type 2 pain is the additional, self-created psychological pain that arises from our reactions and thoughts about the event, such as feelings of injustice or self-blame.

What is the purpose of using the metaphor of an arrow in the course?

The metaphor of an arrow is used to illustrate the dual nature of pain: the immediate physical pain (Type 1) and the subsequent psychological pain (Type 2) that we impose on ourselves through our interpretations and reactions to the event.

What is the 'Goldilocks zone' of pain mentioned in the course?

The 'Goldilocks zone' of pain refers to the optimal level of stress and discomfort that is healthy and beneficial for personal growth, as opposed to too little, which can lead to complacency, or too much, which can lead to breakdown and trauma.

How does the course suggest we should approach pain in our lives?

The course suggests that instead of trying to eliminate pain entirely, we should aim to maintain a manageable level of stress and pain to promote resilience, personal growth, and a sense of meaning and purpose in life.

What is the role of Type 2 pain in the course's teachings?

Type 2 pain is a significant focus of the course because it is the type of pain over which we have more control. The course aims to provide tools to manage and reduce the suffering caused by the narratives and meanings we attach to events.

Why does the course emphasize the importance of managing Type 2 pain?

The course emphasizes managing Type 2 pain because it is often the more significant source of suffering in our lives and is something we can influence through changing our thoughts and perceptions, unlike Type 1 pain, which is more immediate and less controllable.

What is the course's stance on dealing with trauma?

The course acknowledges that trauma is a complex issue that may require professional help and is not the primary focus of the course. While the concepts may be useful, it advises those experiencing trauma or PTSD to seek one-on-one professional support.

How does the course plan to help participants deal with their problems?

The course plans to help participants by providing exercises and lessons that encourage self-reflection, identification of Type 1 and Type 2 pain in their lives, and the development of strategies to manage and reduce the impact of these pains.

Outlines

00:00

🎯 Introduction to Resilience and Pain Management

The speaker introduces the Resilience Course, emphasizing that life is inevitably filled with problems and hardships. He argues that the key to a good life is not the absence of problems but the ability to manage them effectively. The course aims to teach strategies for dealing with pain, grief, and loss, and becoming more resilient. Two metaphors are introduced: the Buddhist arrow metaphor, which differentiates between Type 1 pain (physical pain) and Type 2 pain (psychological pain), and the concept of pain as a muscle that needs stress to grow but can be damaged by excessive strain.

05:02

🏋️‍♂️ The Goldilocks Zone of Pain and Stress

The speaker discusses the importance of maintaining a balanced level of stress and pain for mental health and personal growth. He uses the metaphor of exercising muscles to explain that a certain amount of pain is beneficial, but too much can lead to breakdown. The speaker warns against defining minor issues as traumatic, as this can lead to an exaggerated psychological response. He differentiates between the course's focus on Type 2 pain and the need for professional help in cases of severe trauma or PTSD.

10:03

📝 Starting the Resilience Journey with Self-Assessment

The speaker guides the audience to begin their resilience journey with a self-assessment exercise. He instructs them to write down a current struggle or pain in their lives, identify whether it's Type 1 or Type 2 pain, and assess its manageability. The exercise aims to help participants understand their current challenges and track their progress throughout the course. The speaker clarifies that the course is designed for everyday problems and stresses rather than severe trauma.

Keywords

💡Resilience

Resilience refers to the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, being strong in the face of adversity or stress. In the context of the video, resilience is the main theme and the ultimate goal of the course being discussed. The speaker aims to teach strategies to help individuals deal with pain and hardship, thereby becoming more resilient. The script mentions that life is full of problems and the ability to manage these problems is crucial to the quality of our lives.

💡Pain

Pain, as used in the script, encompasses both physical and emotional suffering. The speaker introduces a Buddhist metaphor comparing pain to being struck by an arrow, where the first strike is the physical pain, and the second is the psychological pain that we create around the event. The video discusses the importance of distinguishing between these two types of pain and managing them to improve one's resilience.

💡Type 1 Pain

Type 1 Pain is a term introduced in the script to describe the initial, unavoidable physical or intrinsic pain that occurs from an event, such as the death of a loved one. The speaker uses the example of a family member dying of cancer to illustrate Type 1 pain, which is considered unavoidable and universally painful.

💡Type 2 Pain

Type 2 Pain refers to the psychological pain that arises from our interpretations and reactions to an event that has already caused Type 1 Pain. The speaker explains that this pain is often self-inflicted, as we create narratives around the event, leading to further suffering. This type of pain is the focus of the course, as it is something over which individuals have more control and can learn to manage.

💡Metaphor

Metaphors are used throughout the script to help explain complex ideas in a more relatable and understandable way. The speaker uses two primary metaphors: the arrow strike for pain and the muscle for understanding the nature of pain. These metaphors are used to illustrate how we can manage and even benefit from a certain amount of pain in our lives.

💡Problems

Problems are presented in the script as an inevitable part of life. The speaker argues that instead of trying to avoid problems, we should focus on developing the ability to deal with them effectively. Problems, both big and small, are seen as opportunities for growth and learning, which are essential for building resilience.

💡Grief and Loss

Grief and loss are mentioned as specific types of pain that the course aims to help individuals manage. The speaker uses the example of losing a family member to cancer to illustrate the profound Type 1 pain associated with such events. The course seeks to provide strategies for dealing with the emotional turmoil that accompanies such losses.

💡Narratives

Narratives are the stories or interpretations we create around events in our lives. In the script, the speaker discusses how these narratives can exacerbate our pain, especially Type 2 pain. By focusing on the narratives we construct, the course aims to help individuals change their perspectives and reduce unnecessary suffering.

💡Stress

Stress is discussed in the script as a necessary part of life that can be both beneficial and harmful, depending on the amount and how it is managed. The speaker uses the metaphor of a muscle to explain that a certain level of stress can be healthy, promoting growth and resilience, but too much stress can lead to breakdowns, both physical and mental.

💡Trauma

Trauma is mentioned as a distinct type of extreme stress or pain that can lead to long-lasting mental and emotional damage. The speaker differentiates trauma from the more common, manageable problems and stresses that the course focuses on. While the course is not designed specifically for trauma, the speaker acknowledges that some of the concepts may be helpful for those dealing with PTSD or similar conditions.

💡Exercise

Exercise, particularly in the form of weightlifting, is used as a metaphor in the script to illustrate how we can build resilience through facing and managing challenges. The speaker explains that just as physical exercise can strengthen our bodies, facing problems and pain can strengthen our mental and emotional resilience.

Highlights

Life is a process of dealing with problems, not avoiding them.

The quality of our lives depends on our ability to manage problems.

Pain is like being struck by two arrows: physical and psychological.

Type 1 pain is the physical pain, while Type 2 pain is the psychological pain we create around the event.

Our minds often create more Type 2 pain in response to intense Type 1 pain.

The course focuses on managing both Type 1 and Type 2 pain, with an emphasis on the latter.

Pain can be beneficial like exercising muscles, but too much can lead to harm.

The goal is to maintain a manageable level of stress and pain for mental health.

Challenges and overcoming them provide a sense of meaning and purpose.

Trauma is compared to breaking one's back in the gym, requiring professional help.

The course is designed for dealing with everyday problems and not for trauma or PTSD.

The metaphor of lifting weights is used to illustrate the process of getting stronger mentally.

The course aims to help with first-world problems and day-to-day stresses.

The first exercise is to identify a current struggle and assess its Type 1 and Type 2 pain components.

Participants are encouraged to be honest with themselves when assessing their problems.

The course will revisit the initial assessment to track progress and changes in pain management.

Transcripts

Hey, everyone.

Welcome to the Resilience Course.

Look, we all have to deal with pain, hardship loss

and just, you know,

day-to-day bullshit throughout our lives.

And while our first impulse

is to avoid all the bullshit,

to get away from our problems.

The fact of the matter is,

there is no such thing

as a life without problems.

There is no such thing as just being happy

and go lucky,

and everything working out for the best,

all the fucking time.

If you're going to make it through this life,

you have to deal with problems.

In fact, I would say,

life itself is a process

of dealing with problems

or upgrading our problems

from really bad problems

to slightly better problems.

Therefore, you could say that

the quality of our lives,

very much hinges on our ability to manage problems.

This course is all about,

teaching you strategies, techniques, ideas, concepts

that will help you deal with,

various amounts of pain in your life,

how to get through problems,

how to deal with grief and loss.

Basically, how to be a more resilient person.

Now, I would like to start the course off

by teaching you two different metaphors

that I think are gonna be useful,

and that we're going to return to again and again,

throughout the course.

The first metaphor comes from Buddhism

and I talk about it in my book,

Everything Is Fucked.

A book about hope.

Now the Buddha had this beautiful metaphor about pain.

He said that pain is like being struck by an arrow.

It actually strikes you twice.

The first strike, is the actual physical strike,

the pain of the arrow,

piercing your skin

and causing you to bleed and everything.

But the second pain,

is the meaning that we create

around the arrow strike.

It's the person who got hit by the arrow saying,

"why me,

Why did I deserve this? I'm a good person."

That guy's an asshole.

Fuck him.

I shouldn't have to be dealing with this.

It's the psychological pain

that comes along with being struck

by the physical pain.

Now throughout the course,

I'd like to refer to these types of pain

as Type 1 pain,

the physical pain.

And Type 2 pain,

the psychological pain.

For example,

let's say a family member gets cancer and passes away.

Obviously the loss of that family member,

it's just fundamentally painful.

That is a Type 1-type of pain.

If your mother dies of cancer,

that is excrutiatingly painful,

no matter who you are or what you do,

Type 1 pain.

But what tends to happen with most of us,

is we sit there and say,

"Oh my God, what could I have done differently,

Why does she deserve this?

I could have been a better son.

I could have done this.

This isn't fair.

The doctors are terrible.

I bet they fucked something up.

That's the Type 2 pain.

It's the narratives and the meaning

that we construct around

that initial inherently painful event.

Now what's interesting about human psychology

is that the more intense the Type 1 pain,

the more crazy our mind goes with narratives,

creating Type 2 pains.

It's very proportional.

If you stub your toe against the a table,

you don't sit there and be like, oh, why me,

Why do I stub my toe,

what did I do to deserve this God?

You don't do that.

You're just like, fuck you table.

And you like move on with your life.

But if like an earthquake happens

and you lose your home

and thousands of your neighbors die

and your dog gets lost.

Then you start coming up

with all these different narratives of meaning

of where you are in the world,

and what is the cosmic significance?

And fuck, my dog didn't deserve this.

He deserved better come back Phyto.

I miss you.

It's this constant running of the brain

that often causes us to suffer more.

And this was ultimately the Buddhist point.

Often long after the physical pain of the arrow is passed.

We still suffer from the Type 2 pain.

We hold on to the Type 2 pain

for years and years and years.

We create these narratives of injustice

and suffering and victimhood

and all these horrible things,

that often come to define ourselves

or define our identity for a long time.

So this course is going to deal with both types of pain.

We're going to be talking about

how you can better bear Type 1 pain.

But this is not going to surprise you,

most of the course is gonna be dedicated to Type 2 pain.

Because ultimately

that is the more significant amount

of pain that we feel in our lives.

And it's also the thing that we have more control of.

You can never prevent yourself

from ever stubbing your toe again.

But you can sure as shit,

permit yourself from creating stupid narratives

that make you suffer more.

Now, the second metaphor

I wanna use throughout this course is

just to help us kind of understand

the nature of pain in our lives.

I'm gonna use the metaphor of a muscle,

which is essentially that

a certain amount of pain is actually good for us,

the same way, like,

if you never exercise your muscles,

if you never stress your muscles,

if you never like get out and run

or pick up something heavy,

your body deteriorates, and it begins to fall apart.

But at the same time,

if you like go try to pick up 500 pounds,

on your first day in the gym,

you are gonna completely destroyed yourself.

There's kind of like a Goldilocks zone

of pain that is actually healthy for us.

If we're just a couch potato

and everything's always comfortable,

we actually deteriorate.

We become lazy and compulsive

and demanding and delusional

and all these horrible things.

It's a certain amount of stress in our lives

actually keeps us grounded in reality

and improves mental health outcomes.

But, if you kind of go along that curve of pain,

there eventually comes a tipping point,

where adding more pain or stress starts to harm our health.

And it harms our ability to function well,

both physically and mentally.

And so ultimately our goal here,

in our life is not to get rid of pain.

It's simply to maintain

a manageable level of stress

and pain in our lives.

We wanna be challenged regularly.

We wanna have invigorating problems

that we're working on.

It's that sense of sacrifice

or that sense of overcoming

that grants us a sense of meaning

and purpose in our lives.

If you have nothing to overcome,

if you have no challenges,

if you nothing pushing up against you,

your mind starts freaking out

and looking for tiny little things

to become neurotic and compulsive about.

Now, if you go overboard and you go too far,

your body starts to break down.

Again, it's like,

if you go into the gym

and you're picking up moderate amount of weights

and gradually pushing yourself each time you go,

you're going to get stronger.

You're going to get healthier.

You're going to be able to

do more and more each time you go.

But if you go to the gym,

and you'd try to like squat 500 pounds,

you're gonna break your back.

And that breaking of your back,

is essentially what trauma is.

There's a certain breaking point,

with pain and stress,

where your mind just kind of gives out

and like loses it and is like checks out.

And it's like, fuck this shit.

I'm going off the reservation .

To extend the metaphor even further,

let's say you go to the gym

and you have a good workout

and you feel sore the next day.

Well, there are ways

to treat that soreness, you know,

you get a little bit of extra rest,

maybe you put an ice pack on,

do a sauna, drink a protein shake.

Like these things will all help your body recover,

but a protein shake and a sauna

is not gonnahelp a broken back.

A broken back needs, a whole another level

of treatment and therapy, you know,

you need to go to the hospital basically.

And spend months and months and months,

going through intense recuperation

and physical therapy.

And so the same is true with trauma, right?

If I'm just having a very stressful year in my career,

that's like hitting the gym like five times a week

and being sore and exhausted all the time.

Like you can handle it,

you can recover from it,

at some point you're gonna need to rest a lot,

to recover from that amount of stress and strain,

but you're gonna be okay.

And actually you're gonna come out

the other side, much much stronger for it.

But let's say you get in a car accident.

You're in like a van

with a bunch of like five of your coworkers

and you were driving

and it kills everybody, but you,

yeah, you're going to need a long time

to get over that.

Like that's a whole another process.

And so, I wanna bring this metaphor up

for a couple of reasons.

The first one is,

is that this course is less about handling trauma.

Trauma is a whole topic unto itself,

and there are many aspects of it that honestly,

me or pretty much anybody else

on the internet that you would buy a course from

is not really qualified to deal with.

Like if you're experiencing trauma or symptoms of PTSD,

yes, a lot of these concepts can help

and they can be useful as tools,

but you need to be working

with a professional one-on-one in person regularly.

The other reason I bring this up, though,

I'm gonna mix my metaphors here a little bit,

most pain we experience is psychological.

And so a lot of what determines

whether we're trying to squat 500 pounds or not,

is also mental.

It's the Type 2 pain.

We've started to see this

a lot more often lately,

where, if you define for yourself

something that's traumatic,

like if you decide that Amazon losing

your iPhone delivery is a traumatic experience,

your brain will actually believe that.

Your brain will actually be like,

yeah, that's trauma.

Let's have a traumatic reaction to that.

And so, you'll need to be very careful,

in terms of the definitions of pain

and the significance that you subscribe to,

in terms of the different pain

that you're experiencing,

because an event in your life can happen.

That is, in reality, it's like a 30 pound dumbbell,

but in your mind, it's a 500 pound squat.

You're gonna fucking break your back.

Still, It's important to be careful

with the narratives that you construct

around your experiences,

the significance you ascribed

to the two different events that happen.

Ultimately, a lot of this stuff

is very personal too, right?

Like something that could feel

like a 30 pound dumbbell to me,

could feel like a 500 pound squat to you

and vice versa.

Just to use an example from my own life,

as I wrote my,

in subtle art,

my first girlfriend cheated on me and left me.

And obviously that's a horrible experience.

It fucking sucked.

But, millions and millions and millions

of people have had that experience.

Like that is not a particularly unusual experience

in the human condition.

But because I had come from a background

of like such an emotionally dysfunctional family.

And I'd come from an environment,

where I'd largely been deprived

of intimacy and trust

throughout most of my young life,

I was particularly sensitive to that event.

So, you know, it might not have broken

most people's backs,

certainly would hurt,

but it really fucked mine up pretty good.

And it took me years and years

to kind of work through that

and overcome that,

you know, obviously different pain

throughout our lives.

It can compound on one another.

Like you can,

to keep this fucking gym metaphor

going on even further.

You can hurt your back,

squatting too much weight

when you're like nine years old, you know,

'cause your let's say your dad

did something really fucked up.

And then when you're 25,

a very similar thing happens

and it breaks your back.

And you have a traumatic response to it.

There's a lot of complexity involved

with what is actually experienced.

That's just kind of running the mill pain or loss or grief

and what is actually experienced this trauma.

But the point of all this is,

this course is focused on Type 2 pain,

because that's the type of pain

that we have the most control over.

Although we will talk about,

sustaining Type 1 pain as well.

And this course is very much focused

on that process of lifting weights

to get stronger mentally.

Dealing with regular life challenges

that should improve our resilience,

improve our sense of self,

improve our ability to manage ourselves

in the face of adversity.

And we're going to be focusing less on trauma.

And again, a lot of the tools

and concepts in this course

can be helpful for people experiencing PTSD

or traumatic reactions,

but that is not what this course is designed for.

So that's just a disclaimer.

You might get something from it.

A lot of people with PTSD and stuff,

they read my work and they say it was very helpful,

but it's not designed for that.

So I just wanna make that clear

and just get very very particular about

what we're going to work on here.

So I often joke that I'm an expert

in dealing with like first world problems.

If you have like a degenerative condition

and you're never going to walk again,

I don't know how good I am for that.

But like if your fucking boyfriend left you

and you dropped out of school

and don't know what to do with your life,

like I'm your guy.

Those life challenges

that we all have to deal with

from time to time

or even just kind of the day-to-day stresses,

of, you know, being overworked

or having a shitty boss

or being stuck in a toxic relationship

or having a parent that treats you like shit.

Like these are the things that,

that we're here for

and the tools and techniques

in this course are designed to help.

So with that,

let's start off with our first exercise.

There's a workbook available to download.

You can print it out if you like,

you can also just create a word document

and write this stuff yourself.

To start off.

I want you to write down a particular struggle

or problem or source of pain

in your life at the moment.

You feel like you need a little bit of help

dealing with, you know,

this course is gonna work a lot better.

If you come into it with a specific problem in mind

that you would like to improve upon.

To begin with,

simply write down that problem

or that source of struggle

that you're experiencing.

And then after that,

I want you to ask yourself two things.

One, is this a Type 1-type pain,

or Type 2-type pain

or chances are it's probably both.

But write down what aspects of it

are Type 1, you know,

I have a boss that is a total Dick.

Obviously that sucks.

There's nothing you can do to control that,

that's a Type 1-type pain.

But I've decided that, you know,

this is a horrible workplace

and I'm never going to make it in this career.

And, fuck I'm gonna have to like lose my job

or be miserable for the rest of my life.

These are all Type 2 types of pains.

So write out like what aspects

of the problem you're experiencing are a Type 1 pain.

And then what aspects of the problem

you're experiencing are Type 2.

And then finally,

just write down how manageable

does this problem feel to you, at the moment?

Does it feel like a 22 pound dumbbell

that is just gonna get you

a nice little bicep pump to the gun show?

Or does it feel like a 500 pound squat

That's gonna break your back.

Write that down now,

because, hopefully over the course of this course,

we're gonna revisit that assessment.

And hopefully by the end of it,

it feels quite a bit lighter to you.

So write those things down,

take your time with it.

Be completely honest and open with yourself.

And I'll see you in the next lesson.

(upbeat music)