116 Physiological Toughness: Conquer Your Inner Weakness

Toughness is the ability to endure and thrive in stressful conditions. We often think of 'Toughness' as a purely mental ability. But it can actually be measured. AND toughness can be trained. In this episode, I'll share some key points from the book The Hour Between Wolf and Dog (John Coates) on how you can physically condition your body to be better at handling mental and emotional stress.

Transcript

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Enjoy the show.

Hello,

Friends.

Today we are speaking about physiological toughness.

This is a topic I've mentioned in a few recent podcasts,

The hormonal and nervous system aspect of toughness.

It's been really fascinating to me,

This kind of research,

Because most of us think of toughness as a purely mental experience.

It's a purely internal ethics,

Not something that's measurable,

But actually the truth is it is something that's measurable.

People's physiologies can determine how well they can deal with stress.

We're going to speak about various science things.

If you notice,

If you're watching the live stream or the video of this later,

You'll see that I have a PowerPoint.

Went full nerd on this one.

I actually wasn't really planning on doing a full PowerPoint.

I figured I would make a couple slides with all the definitions and stuff.

But anyway,

Before I knew it,

I had completed a PowerPoint.

So that's that.

If you are watching the live stream,

I think we have a few minute delay.

I'm going to try to come keep checking back.

But I have a few windows open.

So we'll see how this goes.

I'm going to try to get my puppies to stop chewing on my desk.

All right.

Okay.

Before we jump in,

A couple announcements.

We have a men's group this Sunday.

We've done a couple of these in the last month.

They've gone really well.

On this Sunday,

It's free.

It'll be 9 p.

M.

Sunday,

Eastern Time,

US Eastern Time,

New York Time.

They've been great.

It's a great place to connect with like-minded guys to grow,

To get feedback on things.

And I think especially in the COVID era,

A lot of people are,

I don't want to say starving for connection.

I don't like the way that sounds.

But it's important to connect with like-minded men to normalize the traits that you want to develop.

So if you want to check that out,

It's in the Mask and Underground Facebook group.

Info is in there.

If you are watching this later,

And obviously if the date has passed,

Which would be June 13th,

2021,

I will put information on future men's groups on maskandunderground.

Com.

All right.

So jumping in.

So one of the things that brought up this topic for me and why I became interested in it was that if you do follow my stuff,

I was in a cult a number of years ago.

This cult more recently,

About seven or eight months ago,

Was featured in a BBC documentary called The Orgasm Cult.

If you're watching the video,

You can see there's a kind of embarrassing picture of me from when I was,

I think,

24.

I have big hippie hair,

Hipster hippie hair.

I'm wearing a shirt.

This is power bite orgasm,

Sitting zazen in an orgasm nest.

I won't explain that in this video,

It's beyond the scope of this video.

But I was featured in the documentary.

I'm one of the more outspoken people who've come out of cults.

I don't really have shame about it.

I think it's a really interesting story.

But because I was one of the few people to use my real name and use my real voice,

Which I didn't realize was not an option.

A lot of the other people who spoke used voice actors,

Which I thought was really weird.

I shouldn't even listen to the episode,

But it doesn't matter.

Because of this,

A lot of the ex One Tasters,

Ex cult members who I knew,

Reached out to me.

These are people who,

A lot of whom I haven't spoken with in years.

It was nice to reconnect.

We all have our worst stories.

But what was really interesting to me is that a lot of these people are still super traumatized in a way that I wasn't expecting.

If you caught my episodes on when I was in the matriarchal cults,

I definitely was brainwashed to a degree.

I definitely lost myself to a degree.

I definitely had a hard time for a year or two after leaving the cult.

Definitely had a hard time at points.

But this was like six years ago now or more than that.

I was really shocked that some of my friends were still in the muck of things.

And it's not to compare trauma or anything like that,

Everyone.

But it made me think,

There's some people who definitely experienced worse things than me as far as my perception can go.

And I can understand what had a harder time leaving or a harder time afterwards.

Then there's some people also who,

In my opinion,

Obviously it's my opinion,

It's not a judgment,

But they didn't really go through that difficult stuff.

In my opinion,

They didn't get as brainwashed as much,

They didn't do things that I would think would cause trauma so much,

But they were just as traumatized.

And from one level,

I was like,

Okay,

This is a person holding onto a victim mentality.

Also try not to judge,

But there's a reality to things of if something happened seven years ago that many other people experienced that they didn't get traumatized by,

There's something here.

And I think like,

What is it that has one person be fucked up from an experience and has another person not be fucked up?

Compared to some of these people I spoke to,

I was okay.

I dealt with some stuff and I ended up being okay.

But then I also thought about the flip side because I've had friends who,

I've met people who are just harder than me.

In the David Goggins sense of the word,

A lot of my friends who have had businesses similar to mine or things like that,

I don't even need to compare life situations,

But they just can deal with stuff.

And when I would say,

Share my emotional turmoil,

They'd be like,

Why is that a problem?

Just do this or do that.

They didn't understand.

They couldn't even,

They couldn't empathize,

Not because they were being dicks,

But they just couldn't understand why I was being such a little bitch to some stressor.

And it made me think,

So there is a scale of toughness,

Right?

There's some people who can deal with huge amounts of stress and be totally fine.

And there's some people who deal with a small amount of stress and it messes them up for years.

And I was curious,

What is this?

And I think mostly from a subjective psychological perspective,

Right?

Like,

Oh,

Is this person holding onto a victim mentality?

Is this person in an environment?

Where it's being normalized to be weak,

That kind of stuff,

Master slave morality.

But I also started reading this book that I mentioned a few recent podcasts,

The Hour Between Dog and Wolf by John Coates,

Where he goes through the nervous system and endocrine system experiences of dealing with stress.

And basically throughout his book,

He shows in different ways how toughness or the ability to endure stress is physiological.

And I've been finding this so fascinating,

Kind of starting with my study of strength training into this book and hormones and stress,

How so many of our,

What would seem like subjective experiences,

Mental and emotional experiences can actually be measured with real physical markers.

Like you could actually,

There actually is a measure for thriving in quotes,

Which is becoming a biological term.

You can actually check how good you are at thriving based on certain physical markers,

Which I thought was fascinating.

So I just want to say I'm referencing his book throughout this episode,

But all the conclusions here are my own.

So toughness,

The definition we can use is the ability to endure and thrive under hardship,

Right?

A tough person can deal with stress,

Can deal with an event that some would consider traumatic,

And then not only deal with it,

But laugh through it.

Like when we think of,

Speaking about humor in a few recent episodes,

Indiana Jones is a great example.

He can laugh while a boulder is chasing him or whatever,

Or when a Nazi is trying to cut his head off,

Right?

Being able to thrive and feel good under stress.

And if we go back looking at,

Let's say the episode I did on getting off on every stroke,

There's something different about being able to relish in a stressor.

And one of the definitions of toughness is that a tougher person when dealing with a stressor will welcome it as a challenge,

Will welcome it as an opportunity to advance themselves.

Whereas an untough person will see a stressor as a threat to their survival,

Or they'll assume it's going to harm them.

And obviously there's a continuum to things like even the toughest person would probably register a threat if like a lion was like biting on their leg or something.

And obviously there's a continuum to things,

But the more tough you are,

The more you can welcome a certain stressor than contract against it,

Referencing Sedona method a bit.

Another definition,

And the one that I think is most interesting for our purposes of creating a fulfilling and quality life is that a tough person can deal with threats pre or semi-consciously,

Meaning you're not really thinking about it without having the emotional distress.

And we'll explain how this happens through the body.

So for example,

Whether it's a physical threat or a perceived physical threat,

I mean,

John Coates throughout his book is comparing the stock market to threats that hunter-gatherers would experience because our nervous system reacts the same way.

A guy will see his stock portfolio plummet.

He has the same panic response as if he's being chased by some physical threat.

But a tough person,

Their body,

Your body can deal with the threat without having to get to your emotions.

And we're actually going to show the separation between reflexes,

Emotions,

And conscious thought.

So I'm going to read this quote by John Coates because it's very,

You know,

Just describes what we're talking about.

A toughened individual welcomes novelty as a challenge,

Sees it as an opportunity for gain.

An untoughened individual dreads it as a threat and sees it as nothing but potential harm.

In there,

There's a little,

We're also re-referenced the winner effect.

Whereas there's something about a tough person relishing in challenge as like,

Oh,

Here's an opportunity to advance my position.

If you saw the master and slave episode,

A master morality,

Slave morality episode,

I need you nobility,

Lambs and eagles,

The master or the person in the predator archetype sees every new event as an opportunity to gain,

Grow,

To eat things as opposed to fearing anything that's novel.

The important thing here is that there is certainly a genetic component to toughness.

And certainly early childhood conditioning affects that,

Right?

If you grew up in a traumatic childhood environment,

You may overreact to things.

In fact,

You know,

Don't really,

Yeah,

I'll just say like,

You know,

Someone who is prone to addiction with substances or activities.

It could be a self-soothing mechanism for a lack of safety in their childhood life.

Right?

And all of this has happened way before now.

And it's,

You know,

You can't go back and change the past necessarily.

However,

No matter where you are,

No matter what age you are,

If you have the consciousness to watch an episode or listen to an episode like this,

Then you can actually train toughness in yourself because if you can condition on toughness,

You can also condition toughness.

First we want to understand the stress response.

So there's three parts of the stress response.

I found this really fascinating,

Especially just from a perspective of understanding how instincts work.

So there's first the reflex reaction.

So I didn't actually know this until the book,

But when you perceive a threat,

Your body,

Your amygdala can send a signal to your muscles to react long before you have an emotional response or certainly by a conscious response,

The reflex reaction happens in milliseconds and it's preconscious.

So obviously reflex reaction would say you're driving.

There's a pothole that you didn't consciously see,

But in the last second you see it and you swerve and you're like,

Oh shit,

There's a pothole.

Wow.

I missed that.

Or probably maybe more,

More commonly someone jumps out in front of you.

There wasn't enough time to consciously perceive it and consciously react,

But somehow you swerved and only afterwards like,

Oh shit.

Like,

Wow,

I'm glad I missed that guy.

Good reflexes.

This is the reflex reaction,

Reflex reaction.

Obviously if you can have an effective reflex reaction very often,

You don't even need to have an emotional response or stress response beyond this,

Right?

If a caveman is walking around and he almost falls in a hole,

But his body like,

You know,

Flinches and moves in away from the hole.

He doesn't need to fear falling,

Right?

He completely avoided the stress.

He doesn't have to worry about that,

But not all,

And it doesn't require any conscious thought,

Right?

It's a,

It's a reflex that happens within milliseconds.

In sports,

We see this all the time.

This is where people can like in baseball,

The shortstop can dive for a catch,

You know,

In,

In,

At a speed where there's no way he could have consciously seen the line drive or batting is actually a better example.

There's no way for the conscious mind to process a 90 mile per hour fastball in time to hit it,

But a well-trained batter can have the reflexes to process it and make an educated guess of where the ball is,

Even though he can't consciously process it.

When it comes to a lot of threats that quick reflex isn't enough.

And actually the quick reflex takes a lot of energy and it can only really be done.

It needs a support from the organs in order to do it again.

So this is where we have what we call the visceral reaction.

This is where your organs support your muscular effort with certain chemicals,

Such as amines.

Adrenaline would be a one that you I'm sure I've heard of.

It gives you that boost,

Right?

So like you flinched because you you're in the jungle and you saw a lion,

You avoided it snapping at you right there.

Or,

You know,

Maybe you were ambushed by enemy barbarians and you flinched and missed the poison and the poison dart missed you.

But now you're like,

Oh shit,

There's still a threat here.

Like I didn't,

I missed one arrow,

But there's still a threat here.

You need that adrenaline for that huge boost of energy.

The adrenaline breaks down your glucose stores.

You have a lot of energy,

So you could do something.

You have extra strength.

This happens at a much higher timeframe.

It's still faster than we could consciously perceive.

This happens from one second,

A little less than one seconds,

One second to minutes.

That's about as long as this like adrenaline dump can last.

And for instance,

If if you've had a close call driving,

You've experienced this before your reflexes keep you in safety,

But then maybe a second,

A couple seconds later,

Your heart starts racing and you know,

You're feeling this adrenaline dump of like,

Oh shit,

I just had a close call.

At this point,

You've already passed the threat.

The threat isn't there,

But now your emotions are essentially catching up to the threat that just happened just in case,

Right?

Cause your body wasn't sure if you were going to hit the person or not,

Or if you're gonna be in a car accident,

Your emotions catch up.

This initial emotional reaction,

This is the part that I found so super fascinating.

Your initial emotional reaction then is what signals your conscious interpretation.

So if you're a conscious mind,

It's all happening at once,

Right?

Because your conscious mind is the slowest of these reactions.

You're having the reflex reaction.

You have an emotional reaction to support the reflex reaction.

And then your conscious mind gets the signal from your emotions of interpreting what happens.

And that's where we interpret our feelings.

And you know,

There is a subjective aspect to this of like how you frame a situation.

You know a lot of like NLP or common cliche self-help is based around like reframing situations,

Reframing stressors as,

You know,

I get to do this thing rather than I have to do this thing.

That's one way we do it.

And also,

You know,

This is through various studies he mentions in,

John Coates mentions in his book,

How a lot of times our conscious mind makes an educated guess based on the signals we're getting from our emotions,

From our body,

But it's often not correct.

And he had one example or a couple of examples,

I think of stockbrokers who their hormone levels were very accurately reflecting the volatility of the market,

Right?

Like if the market was super volatile,

They had tons of stress hormones and it was like one-to-one like almost perfect correlation.

Their stress hormones could read the volatility of the market,

But their interpretation of whether or not they were stressed or happy was completely all over the board,

Right?

It kind of depended on a lot of things because the conscious mind,

It actually isn't very good at accurately determining why the body feels a certain way.

Maybe a positive thinker is like,

Oh yeah,

I feel great.

This is excitement.

I'm a negative thinker having the same exact stress response.

It's like,

Oh my God,

You know,

The stock market's going to crash.

Things are terrible.

I thought this was interesting to note,

But as far as dealing with threats,

This visceral reaction can only last so long and adrenaline only lasts up to minutes at most.

And if you're still under threat,

So using the caveman example or the,

You know,

I don't know,

Tribal person example,

A poison dart,

You just miss it.

That's the reflex reaction.

Adrenaline,

You have to run away from this enemy tribe,

But they're still chasing you beyond your adrenaline dump.

This is where your body has to go into its emergency reserves with the cortisol response preparing for the long siege.

Now,

We're speaking about cortisol quite a bit,

But cortisol,

So actually I just want to say the first two reactions,

The reflex reaction,

The visceral reaction,

No matter who you are in the situation,

Let's say a predator and prey or attacker and victim,

Let's say those two first experiences are basically the same.

The lion and the gazelle have a very similar visceral reaction.

Not exactly.

I mean,

Predators have more noradrenaline compared to adrenaline.

We spoke about that in the predator prey episode.

But basically the difference between a predator prey is who's in control and the visceral reaction is the same regardless,

For the most part,

I should say.

But the difference is only the prey has this extended cortisol response because the prey is not in control of their situation.

Predators are in control.

So like if the lion has that adrenaline boost,

But misses the gazelle,

It's like,

Okay,

Well,

I'll just chill.

It may be at worst the lion is hungry,

But the lion is in control of the environment.

The lion is in control of the stressor.

The lion is not going to keep chasing a gazelle when it absolutely feels like shit.

Maybe if it was starving,

It's a little different,

But like it has control.

It can take its foot off the gas.

It can take its finger off the situation if it has to.

The gazelle doesn't have that option.

The rabbit doesn't have that option.

The traveler who's being attacked by marauders doesn't have that option.

They do not control the stressor.

They have to have a cortisol response if that stress is still coming at them.

The cortisol response can last minutes to days,

And it is the most expensive of all of the responses.

So the idea is like burning the furniture in your house to keep warm.

The extended cortisol response happens when your body's like,

Oh shit,

We are going to die.

Our first,

Our reflexes and our adrenaline boost didn't help.

It's worth it to tear down our structure,

Tear down our being to survive.

Because if you are a prey animal and you have a threat to your survival,

You no longer have to think about longevity.

There's no benefit to having a reserve so that you can procreate or that you can have a thriving life tomorrow if an animal,

A bigger animal is going to eat you today.

So our cortisol response,

Extended cortisol response,

I should say,

Once it gets to a certain point is basically tearing down our body for immediate survival,

Which feels shitty.

So this list is in order of expensiveness.

Reflex reaction is not expensive.

The visceral reaction has some expense to our body.

The extended cortisol response is very expensive to our body.

Tougher people can rely less on the expensive response system.

And Raj is going to speak the most about this middle situation,

The visceral reaction.

But first,

Let's understand the last reaction,

Cortisol.

So cortisol is a catabolic steroid,

Which we'll explain in a second.

Of course,

It's not a bad thing.

We often speak about it in terms of it being a stress hormone.

It's true,

But even stress isn't a bad thing.

Cortisol allows for focus.

It increases in response to new situations.

This means good new situations or things you perceive as good or negative situations.

It's actually been noted,

Certainly as we would expect after an event like divorce or family member dying,

Cortisol levels increase.

But also cortisol levels increase when a baby is born and marriage.

These are positive experiences for most people.

But cortisol also increases,

But we don't experience that typically as a negative thing.

Because especially when it's within a reasonable range,

A moderate range,

And combined with dopamine,

Which we get from seeking rewards that would benefit our future survival,

It leads to a high.

And in fact,

I'm drinking some coffee right now.

Coffee increases your cortisol levels a little bit.

That's why a certain amount of coffee feels really good.

Too much coffee makes you anxious,

Which is you having too much cortisol in your body for it to feel good.

In high doses,

As we mentioned,

Cortisol damages the body.

So let's speak about what steroids are.

Steroids because cortisol is a steroid.

Steroids are hormones that activate the entire body for archetypal moments.

Archetypal moments is a term that Coates uses in his book.

I really loved it because obviously I like speaking about archetypes,

But I love the connection here.

In his definition,

Archetypal moments are these moments where everything in your being has to deal with this situation.

It's the reason for life.

So fighting,

Fucking,

And reading the news.

That's an anchorman joke,

Whatever.

These are moments where your body has to have everything on the same page because survival and replication is the reason why our bodies have developed the way they are.

This is obviously not the medical definition or the biological definition of steroids.

This is what we need to understand.

Steroids can permeate cell walls in ways that other hormones can't.

And what's most specific about steroids is that they can affect gene expression.

If you think about steroids,

We're usually thinking about anabolic steroids,

Steroids that athletes will use as a performance enhancing drug.

If you follow,

Say the trans women competing with cis women in,

Let's say the Olympics or any sport,

One of the arguments against it is that a trans woman who's gone through puberty as a man has had a huge amount of testosterone during their developmental years,

Has developed a bone structure and amount of muscle mass that no cis woman can possibly develop.

And that's why it's unfair.

Steroids can affect your gene expression.

Steroids include testosterone and anabolic steroid.

I'll define what that means.

Cortisol is a catabolic steroid.

Estrogen is also a steroid.

These are things that when there's a high presence of them over a long enough period of time will affect the structure of your body.

So what does anabolic and catabolic mean?

Catabolic means it builds up reserves for future effort.

Anabolic hormones can include steroids like testosterone.

Human growth hormone is also an anabolic hormone.

Catabolic hormones deplete reserves for immediate survival.

Adrenaline is a catabolic hormone.

Cortisol is a catabolic steroid hormone.

As we mentioned,

The reason for a catabolic hormone is that you have some immediate need.

Even drinking a cup of coffee,

There's a small immediate need for focus,

Right?

That's the effect that we get out of it.

It's breaking down our reserves a little bit.

And actually in Chinese medicine,

There's a saying coffee takes tomorrow's energy for today,

Which is one of the arguments against coffee.

But subjectively,

We know this experience,

Right?

If you drink a lot of coffee or a long period of time,

There's certainly negative effects,

But it gives you that great feeling and focus right now.

It's a catabolic effect via cortisol.

So we want to look at this idea of thriving.

So thriving,

This is the definition created by Bruce McEwen.

Thriving is when you have more anabolic hormones than catabolic hormones.

This means that your body can quickly rebuild.

And if your body has more anabolic hormones than catabolic hormones,

You don't necessarily need these prolonged stress responses for the reason we're going to describe in a second.

Basically your body can rebuild after stress in a way that it wouldn't if you had more catabolic hormones.

One of the reasons why anabolic steroids are taken as performance enhancing drugs is that it allows one to build muscle mass and builds and recover at a level that is beyond natural,

Right?

I mean,

It just,

It adds to your recovery ability,

It adds to your ability to gain muscle mass and strength and force output by building up those reserves.

So we go back to the stress response here.

That's the extended,

That's cortisol we just spoke about,

But really what determines toughness is the second piece,

The visceral reaction,

Organ supporting that initial reflex response.

So amines,

This is just a layman's definition or amines are a class of chemical and the ones that we care about are dopamine,

Adrenaline,

And noradrenaline.

Serotonin is also produced by amine producing cells.

It's not something that's relevant exactly to our topic on stress.

So the amines that we care about deal with threats.

So you have your reflex reaction,

Amine producing cells produce amines to give you that boost,

Right?

So there's adrenaline gives you the boost of energy.

Dopamine spoken about a lot.

I did that episode with a camcipa and dopamine fasting.

It's a pleasure from reward seeking.

You know,

Addictive behaviors are basically behaviors that are linked to this reward seeking part of our brain.

Noradrenaline is responsible for various things,

But one that we care about is aggression,

Which is why I spoke about noradrenaline quite a bit in the predator versus prey episode.

But you only have a limited supply of amines or a limited supply of amines that your body can produce at a given time.

And when dopamine is depleted we have this experience of anhedonia where nothing feels interesting or good.

It's hard to feel motivated by anything when you're out of dopamine and when your dopamine receptors are trashed.

Adrenaline when you run out of adrenaline and there's too much adrenaline you experience extreme fatigue.

This is something that in sports is sometimes called the adrenaline dump.

I was watching this video recently.

I watched a few videos on jiu-jitsu tournaments because I did my first one back in December and they're speaking about how if it's,

Especially if it's your first tournament,

You should do a very long warmup,

Like do a way longer warmup than you think because a lot of guys will try to,

You know,

They'll try to not waste too much energy in their warmup.

What happens is you get the adrenaline dump and by the time you get on the mat,

You feel super exhausted.

And I actually felt,

I noticed this,

I had four matches in that tournament.

My first match I was super weak,

Like my muscles felt super exhausted.

I felt super crappy,

But then my later three matches,

Which I should have been more tired for,

I actually felt a lot better because I got past that phase.

I don't exactly know what happened in my body,

But something with replenishing of hormones perhaps.

And noradrenaline,

When your noradrenaline is depleted,

That's where we experienced learned helplessness.

So I'm sure you've heard of the idea of learned helplessness before when you're in a situation where you just,

I mean,

Despite multiple efforts,

You're getting no results.

Eventually one gives up.

In psychology,

This is mentioned often with the example of training fleas or in self-help circles,

They speak about,

It's like the training fleas,

You put fleas in a jar with the lid on it.

They can't jump past the jar.

Eventually you can take the lid off and they won't even try to jump past the jar.

Another example would be like with baby elephants.

If you train a baby elephant or you have a baby elephant tied with a rope to a tree,

When it's a baby,

You can't break out of the rope.

When it's an adult,

It definitely can break out of the rope,

But it has learned that,

Oh,

I can't break rope.

So it doesn't even try to break out of the rope.

You can put a thin rope around the neck of a giant elephants and it'll just stay there.

Learned helplessness and this occurs when we run out of noradrenaline.

We no longer have that aggression.

And noradrenaline,

As we mentioned,

Is tied to the predator nature.

The idea of feeling in control,

It gives you the feeling of being in control.

When you're being aggressive,

You are initiating the stressor,

Which is why when I spoke about,

I'm going to speak about this more in this episode of Psychogenic Libido.

But when I'm advising a guy who say has a psychogenic sexual dysfunction,

He gets a in his head in bed,

Can't get it up.

One of the things I often recommend is that make sure you're still initiating based on your desire.

Because once a guy gets in his head,

In the bedroom,

Sometimes he becomes super passive and that puts him into prey mode.

And then no matter what,

He's not going to,

He's not going to feel arousal.

Whereas if you,

If you initiate,

If you step into tension,

If you're the one who knocks,

So to speak,

It signals to your body that you're the predator that you can,

And then your hormones kind of catch up,

Our bodies and our actions are often covariates.

So tough people have more powerful,

Amy and producing cells,

Meaning their immune response is a lot more effective and a lot more powerful.

Like they can produce more amines so they can deal with a threat before going to the cortisol response.

So just going back to these three parts,

If your second,

If your second part of your stress response is really effective,

It's really good at dealing with.

The threat.

You know,

Let's say your adrenaline boost is so powerful that,

You know,

You get attacked by Marauders,

But you just whip out your,

Your nunchucks.

So you're throwing knives and you throw them and you destroy them all in a few minutes.

Then you could go back to relaxation and you don't need to cortisol response.

Or if you're a super good at getting away from the line,

You run up a tree or something.

Cause if you're really effective adrenaline response,

You don't need to have the cortisol response.

Oh,

The,

One of the examples that's maybe more relevant to real life or modern life in the book is,

Cote speaks about,

About a fictional veteran trader who during,

What is a fictional situation,

But I think he was kind of alluding to the 2008 crash.

This veteran trader,

He has a very effective aiming response.

So he can basically maintain a cool head while watching the stock market crash,

Right?

He doesn't have to go into that extended cortisol response because his Amy and producing cells are so effective.

So what I thought of with this is kind of like,

I just learned about this with Israel's iron dome,

Like their anti-missile force.

It's such a powerful defensive threat that as soon as like in a rocket shot into Israel,

This iron dome can like blast it out of the air.

So it never actually affects the land,

Right?

I don't care about the political side of Israel,

Palestine,

Or not that I don't care,

But not what I'm talking about here.

Just as an image,

This is essentially what a powerful aiming response is.

It can deal with the threat so effectively that it never actually affects your home turf.

And as I mentioned in Cote's book,

Some of the really powerful aiming response doesn't need to have an emotional response.

And he spoke about other veteran Wall Street traders where their hormones will react to bad news in the stock market or volatility in the stock market very accurately.

He was actually tracking the hormone levels of different traders during different actual financial events.

And the veteran traders,

Their hormones would be going crazy in response to the market,

But their emotions would actually be,

It's like their bodies were so effective at dealing with bad news that their emotions never had to register it,

Which brought this really interesting quote that I had to share because it's interesting.

Cote's wrote,

Physiological coping and emotional stress seem to be alternatives.

If your body is coping,

Why get upset?

Which is really fascinating,

Right?

Like if your body can handle the bad news or the threat,

The physical threat or the mental threat,

Whatever it is,

There's no reason to get emotionally distressed.

Emotional distress is actually a reaction for when your body can't handle the news,

Right?

Where your body can't handle the stress.

So to bring it to maybe a more common example,

We think of stress,

I'll just use approaching women as an example.

The natural or the guy who's very comfortable with women,

His body has a reaction,

Right?

Like or it occurs in public speaking too.

Like if a man goes up to a woman and he's attracted to her and there's a chance of rejection,

Even if he's the most confident guy in the world,

He'll probably have some visceral reaction.

His heart rate will increase,

Blood vessels will dilate.

He might have a little bit of adrenaline,

But he perceives it as feeling good because he has enough of a response or he's comfortable enough that he never has to go into that cortisol response,

Which is what causes the emotional distress.

The guy who's really bogged down by approach anxiety does the same thing,

But he depletes his adrenal,

His adrenaline,

His amine producing cells can only go so far.

They become depleted.

So his adrenaline is gone,

His dopamine is gone.

He feels he loses motivation.

Maybe he becomes apathetic or anhedonic because of that.

And he goes into a stress response where now he's fearing his survival.

If the rejection comes or even before the rejection comes,

He's already so contracted fearing this negative experience that now he's in emotional distress,

Obviously,

Whereas the tough person doesn't need that emotional stress.

So anyway,

This is the last bit of science before we go into practical application.

I think it's the last bit.

We might have one more slide,

Which is something called the vagus nerve.

The vagus nerve is part of the parasympathetic nervous system,

Which we speak about actually in all my courses that we speak about.

We strive for parasympathetic dominance,

Which is the feed and breed,

Autonomic nervous system as opposed to fight or flight.

Vagus nerve parasympathetically controls the heart,

The lungs and digestive tract is essentially the nerve of soothing.

So actually the vagus nerve has evolved to have different functions throughout the course of the evolution of life.

First is the freeze state.

And this is something that I believe I have to actually fact check this.

I put this on the slide,

But I believe all vertebrates have this freeze state via their vagus nerve.

I know reptiles do.

The freeze state slows metabolism.

I just saw this recently.

Every time it rains,

These big toads or frogs,

I think they're toads,

Show up in my yard.

My puppies often will try to rush to them to attack them,

But then the frog or the toad will immediately become absolutely still.

And I've even poked at the frog to see if it would move and like,

No,

It's absolutely still.

It's basically,

It's vagus nerve,

I believe,

Is going to a freeze state.

It's a defense mechanism of being as still as possible so the predator doesn't see you.

There's other applications in like,

Let's say seals.

Their vagus nerve activates so they can dive really deep into the freezing ocean,

Conserving oxygen and obviously withstanding the colds.

And it basically slows down your metabolism,

Which is a soothing experience.

And even in prey animals,

This freeze state allows animals to have an analgesic effect where they don't feel pain.

If they do get eaten while they're frozen,

They don't feel pain.

And sometimes it can actually cause the metabolism to slow down so much that it causes death.

This is something that occurs in bunny rabbits often.

Bunny rabbits can be frightened to death.

And I mentioned this with my beloved rabbit,

King Bowie died a couple months ago.

We're not sure how he died,

But I'm pretty sure he saw a predator,

Probably a street dog and got scared to death.

Like bunnies very rarely die feeling pain.

They usually go into shock and then they basically kill themselves out of fright.

This is all to avoid negative experiences.

But there's also the experience of voodoo death,

Which is a phenomenon that's been noted where people,

I mean,

It's a curse with people typically who really believe in something like voodoo,

A spell is cast on them that's really convincing.

It really convinces the person that they're about to die and their body experiences the news with so much stress,

Their vagus nerve actually causes them to freeze to death,

Essentially.

Their body functions shut down out of fear of this experience and it actually causes the experience.

The second stage or the second function or the ability,

Let's say of the vagus nerve is only available to mammals,

Which is known as the vagal break.

This in the same way slows the heart,

But slows the heart in a way that is preparing for the fight or flight experience.

So the freeze experience is that first experience that reptiles have.

The vagal break is like prior to a stressful event,

It'll actually slow things down in preparation of speeding up.

So it's like revving up an engine before releasing the clutch and it's to prepare for a strong fight or flight.

John Coates mentioned that with the tough trader in seeing the early indicators of the 2008 stock market crash,

The toughened traders,

Their heart rate actually slowed down in preparation of having to deal with the threat.

And actually this made sense of a lot of my,

Or some of my sports experiences.

Excuse me,

I got the hiccups.

I spoke about,

I mean,

Sorry,

As a boxer,

I had four fights,

Four amateur bouts.

First two,

I spoke about other episodes that are not really relevant,

But my third and fourth fight,

I really remember my experience before the fight.

It was really interesting.

It was my third fight.

By this time I'd kind of given up on my fantasy of being a pro boxer.

So it was very low pressure.

I also happened to do,

I mean,

I was less hardcore about my training.

So I actually let myself rest,

Which I didn't do during my first two fights.

But I remember in the pre-fight checkup,

They,

You know,

They check your,

They check your vinyls and stuff.

My heart rate was the lowest it's ever been.

Now at this point in my life,

I was doing a lot of cardio and stuff,

But my heart rate never really got lower than 55 on the best day.

I was kind of compulsively checking my pulse all the time.

So I knew,

But this day,

Right before the fight,

Which should be a stressful event,

My heart rate was in the high forties.

It was like 49,

I think.

And I remember the doctor was like,

Oh,

Your heart rate's really low.

You must be really calm.

And I was like,

Wow,

I can't believe that right before a fight on the calmest I've ever been.

And I remember like,

I wasn't sleepy,

But I,

In the,

In the dressing room,

I was like,

I could,

I could just like,

I'm so relaxed.

I could sleep right now,

Even though I was also nervous at the same time.

It was like an interesting experience.

And in that fight,

That was like the best fight I ever had.

When the fight started,

I came out like a bat out of hell and I,

And I TKO'd him in the second round.

It was very satisfying and awesome.

And I just remember feeling like a level of power that I had really maybe never felt in my life.

It's maybe a silly example,

A silly anecdote thing,

But my,

My boxing trainer,

You know,

The,

The ring girl comes out and gives you a trophy,

Gives the winner a trophy.

And my boxing trainer yelled out,

Kiss the ring girl.

And I actually reached over and kissed her,

Which was whatever.

It doesn't really mean anything.

But at that period of my life,

I was so,

I was so anxious.

I was so socially anxious that that was so out of character for me,

But I had such a high perhaps from the winter effect,

From a surge of testosterone or an effective vagal break effective,

Uh,

Amy and response that I was able to do it.

And it's funny because the next,

The next morning I was like,

Man,

I can't believe I did that in front of all those people.

Cause it was a big crowd anyway.

Um,

Whereas with my fourth fight,

Very opposite,

I did not train very well for that fight.

This is actually right after I did,

Um,

My first summer at OCS for the Marines.

So I kind of just took this fight on a few days notice thinking,

I'm a tough guy.

Let me,

Let me just like have a fight.

I don't need to train.

And somehow,

Even though my mind was very hopped up on hubris,

My body knew that I was going to get my ass kicked.

Cause I remember like in the,

In the many,

In the,

All the days before the fight,

I took on a very few days notice,

My heart was pounding so hard.

And even like,

I was trying to do all the positive thinking and like,

You know,

Psyching myself up,

But it's like my,

My heart,

It actually felt just like what happens when I drink too much coffee.

And I actually think my,

My body knew that I was fucked.

My amines were depleted and I was already in a cortisol response days before the fight.

And I ended up getting my,

Not only did I get my ass kicked,

I couldn't ever get it going.

It was like,

It's like I had no energy for the entire fight,

Which I think was a something of my amies to being depleted as already in a cortisol prey response prior to the fight starting.

So anyway the third part of the vehicle,

The third vagal stage,

If you will,

Is a particularly human thing,

Which is diplomacy.

When our vagal Vegas nerve is activated,

Initially,

What it tries to do is it slows down a speech.

It makes better eye contact in an attempt to avoid the need to fight.

Now,

Obviously someone who's really not tougher,

Someone who scares easily,

This stage is very slow and very small rather like this stage,

Like their diplomacy ability.

If someone's really intimidated by people in a certain situation,

Their diplomacy ability dies off.

So going back to like,

Like the approaching women example a really on tough person,

A person with poor vagal tone,

Which we'll define in a second they lose the ability to slow down their speech and have good eye contact.

And as I say this,

I recall how I always speak too fast.

I don't know if that has something to do with my Vegas nerve.

I was an excitable person.

I don't know.

But certainly,

You know,

In a socially tense situation,

The more confident people can maintain eye contact better.

Whereas the person who's going through a stress response loses the ability to make eye contact,

They lose the ability to speak at a normal pace and they go into these lower levels because our bodies attempt to use the higher,

The more evolved abilities first.

So diplomacy fails because if your diplomacy efforts work,

You don't need to fight,

Right?

If you can,

You know,

Sue the situation,

Get the barbarians to like take a couple of trinkets and not kill you.

No reason to fight or flight,

Fight or flee.

If not,

Then you have to go into fight or flight,

Obviously.

And if that doesn't even work,

You might as well freeze and go into a voodoo death so you don't feel pain when the barbarians hack you to bits,

For instance.

So as mentioned,

Poor vagal tone.

This is a term created by Stephen Porges which is essentially your Vegas nerve is not very toned.

It's not very effective.

So you overreact to stressors and this drains your energy reserves too quickly.

So you can see whether we're speaking about the endocrine system or the nervous system,

There's this common theme of like a tough person,

Their early efforts,

Deal with stresses,

Deal with threats quickly so that you don't have to tap into your reserves.

An untough person taps into the reserves way too soon,

And they end up feeling shitty and it ends up wearing them down because the extended cortisol response,

That extended catabolic steroid eventually wears the body down and weakens the body and it makes you feel shitty.

So that was a lot of science.

Here's the practical application.

How do you actually train toughness?

And I'm checking the live stream.

I know we have a few minutes of,

Or maybe it's like a minute of delay.

If anyone has any comments,

I will keep checking or any questions I'll keep checking to answer them.

So how do you actually train toughness?

The first thing,

And a lot of these things might actually seem,

Or actually maybe stuff you've heard before,

But I'm going to say them all because they're true and effective and perhaps you haven't thought of them as something that actually physiologically makes you a tougher person.

This first one being social stability.

So a lot of people speak about the importance of connection,

But actually this has been shown that it actually affects your ability to thrive physiologically.

Remember thriving is defined as having more anabolic hormones in your body than catabolic hormones,

Meaning your body is more able to build up even after a stressful immediate response.

So you may have heard this before,

Or perhaps intuited that an extended stress response is correlated with mortality.

People who are under long periods of stress die earlier,

And that makes a lot of sense.

Your body is breaking down earlier.

People who are under stress,

People who are in prey mode,

People who are low status,

They tend to die earlier.

Nature kills you off faster,

Which is maybe a harsh way to put it,

But it's true.

However,

This was found to not be true for people with stable support systems,

People with a family they can rely on,

Really close friends they can rely on.

Even when under stress,

It did not increase their rate of mortality and their likelihood of mortality.

Because as we mentioned,

Uncertainty and novelty increased cortisol,

Whether it's positive or negative,

It increases cortisol.

And as we've been pointing out,

Extended presence of cortisol breaks down the body because it thinks you're about to die.

Familiarity decreases cortisol.

And as social animals,

Having social familiarity is a huge part of feeling herd security.

I spoke about this a few episodes in the social constructions of reality episode,

And I really explained it in the Prometheus Rising episode that this is the second circuit,

The emotional territorial circuit,

Which is primary goal is herd inclusion.

As pack animals,

We are safer when we're with a group and our physiology reflects that.

The second part of that circuit is it tries to achieve higher status because the higher status you are in a group,

The even more safe you are typically.

Which brings us to this third piece,

Which is status affects your testosterone cortisol levels.

Our steroid hormones,

Testosterone cortisol and estrogen all have the same precursor chemical known as DHEA.

I mostly speak about this in terms of testosterone and cortisol since they use the same raw material,

This chemical,

This molecule DHEA,

If your body's producing a lot of cortisol,

It's using up all the raw material for testosterone.

So we can just conceptually see that testosterone is the hormone of dominance,

Of masculinity,

Of aggression,

Of competitiveness,

Both physically and emotionally.

Cortisol is the loser response,

Is the prey response.

It's that of stress,

Of getting away,

Of fear.

And John Coates gives various examples of this in the book of that when traders testosterone is high,

They're irrationally exuberant.

A lot of bubbles are caused by,

One of his arguments is that there's too many young men on wall street,

Their testosterone spike too high.

They make these irrational moves,

Which causes an unnatural level of market growth.

And then of course there's a crash.

Whereas cortisol in his words is the hormone of irrational pessimism.

When our cortisol levels are high,

Because we perceive a loss,

We think everything is worse than it is,

Which is the experience most of us are trying to avoid.

So one way to train a better amine response so that you don't need to go into cortisol and to your cortisol response,

You can preserve your DHEA for testosterone,

Is cycling tension relaxation.

Essentially,

This is the do hard things thing that Joe Rogan and many other people speak about all the time.

And it's not just about experiencing stress,

It's about choosing to experience stress.

Mention this in the master slave episode,

People in their master archetype are choosing,

What they do for fun is initiate stress.

They go hunting,

They go attacking,

They invade another civilization.

Whereas people in prey mode,

They're always reacting.

The stress comes to them and they don't have any choice in it.

So it's a powerful signal to your body that you initiate tension because you're in predator mode.

Like the lion chooses when he wants to go after the gazelle and therefore he also chooses when he wants to relax.

Predators control stressors.

They control the initiation and the relaxation.

So some simple ones,

And you see this in every life hacking list of things to do,

Physical ways to initiate tension and then therefore relaxation is something like cold water exposure or cold temperature exposure.

This stimulates the vagus nerve.

And actually Richard Dean-Spear,

I hope I got his name right,

Who is a researcher,

Who's researched toughness quite a bit.

And a lot of our current understands of toughness come from him.

He says that the ability to thermal regulate directly correlates with emotional stability.

So there's another reason to be taking cold showers and doing the Wim Hof thing or whatever ice baths.

It actually is training your nervous system to be more emotionally stable,

To have a better aiming response to stress.

So you don't have to go into cortisol.

However,

This means that you stop before depletion.

Same thing with strength training.

And I'll say this,

I don't think I made a slide for this.

I'll actually speak about this next slide,

But strength training,

If you really want to develop strength training,

You actually don't want to train until failure.

I'll explain why on the next slide.

And then there's the emotional side of things.

Most of our threats in modern life in the first world are not physical,

But they are initiating things that still trigger that stress response in our body,

The hard conversations,

Escalating in a way or putting your desire out there,

I should say,

In a way that you can be rejected.

These are things that cause emotional tension.

I'm just going to check the other screen.

These are the things that cause emotional tension.

And if you are initiating that as a positive signal to your nervous system and your endocrine system,

But you have to stop before depletion,

Because if you deplete your amines,

You go into the cortisol response,

Which brings us to the winter effects,

Which I've spoken about in many episodes.

When you initiate a challenge,

It actually doesn't matter if you initiate,

But if you perceive a challenge and you succeeded the challenge,

Your testosterone spikes.

There's the flip side of a loser effect.

Whereas if you lose a challenge,

Your cortisol spikes,

Your testosterone depletes.

Also your dopamine spikes with the winter effects.

And this combination is what makes winning feel so good.

And the long-term presence of testosterone in your bloodstream,

Stimulates your body to produce more engine receptors so that you can have a bigger behavioral effects for future testosterone,

Which is this quote that I love by Dr.

Charles Ryan,

Success breeds success on the molecular level.

If you practice winning,

You become better at winning.

And if you look at people who are saying naturals when it comes to sports or to socializing or anything,

There could be a genetic component.

Maybe they're born with a lot more engine receptors,

But they're also,

They had to be in an environment where they had the ability to experience real challenges and have the opportunity to succeed.

This is very different than participation trophy culture,

Which gives a person a reward,

But your physiology,

Even if you feel good mentally or emotionally,

Your physiology knows it didn't actually experience stress and it actually reduces engine receptors,

Which is why people who were raised in a participation trophy culture,

Usually suck at dealing with stress because they've never actually had to deal with it as children,

Which brings us to the strength training principle that I I've wanted to talk about,

But I mean,

I'm not a strength training guy.

So I didn't,

I didn't really know where to put it.

I follow,

I follow Pavel Salzullin and Strong First and their philosophies quite closely.

And they recommend for strength training.

You don't want to train until failure.

If you want to be a bodybuilder,

Then yes,

You want to train until failure,

But if you're strength training,

You want to train your nervous system to successfully complete the movement,

Whether it's a snatch or a press or whatever.

Instead you want to experience,

You want to train high volume rather than max intensity where you obviously have to fail.

You don't want to train your body to fail because that's putting you into into your later systems of breaking down.

It basically a catabolic experiences of breaking down in reserves,

Which is my mini nerd thing on strength training.

There are three ways that our,

Our cells replenish energy.

Our cells are able to produce energy through something called ATP androgen triphosphate very briefly when it shoots off one phosphate and becomes androgen diphosphate,

There's a release of energy,

But to replenish it so that we could do it again,

There's three systems that allow it.

There's the creatine phosphate system,

Which is a clean burning system.

Whereas say,

Let's say you could do 50 pushups,

You can max out of 50 pushups.

Your first 10 probably feel really easy because you're just running on creatine phosphate.

There's no,

There's no burn.

The third system,

The slowest systems,

The aerobic system.

So if you max effort on pushups,

Let's say,

Then you'll try to catch your breath through.

I mean,

Your heart rate will increase,

But it's very slow.

Like the aerobic system doesn't help you in the moment,

Right?

When we think of aerobics,

We're thinking about slow,

Long cardio type things.

In between our clean burning creatine phosphate system and our very slow aerobic system is our lactic acid system,

Which bridges the gap.

And that's where if you're say doing pushups after maybe 10 or so,

Or whatever your creatine phosphate system can handle,

Your muscles start to burn.

That burning is not good,

Right?

And one of Pavel's arguments against something that's called metabolic conditioning,

Which I'm blanking on the word.

What's the people,

CrossFit.

What CrossFit people do is that the metabolic conditioning,

The Metcon idea is that you want to train yourself to deal with failure better.

But he's saying that actually increases the area where your lactic acid is producing,

Which is all to say that it's damaging your body.

Lactic acid burns and it feels bad because it's actually damaging your soft tissue.

It's acid,

It's burning.

It's literally burning stuff in your body.

Instead,

The strength principle is to train your body right up to the point of burning so that it becomes more effective with that initial clean burning system,

Which is creatine phosphate,

Which I'm bringing all of this up because maybe you find the strength training principle interesting,

But also this is exactly the same idea as we're talking about with dealing with stress is that if you can train your clean,

Your less expensive systems to deal with threats immediately,

And you can practice being good at that,

They can handle more stress.

Your amine producing cells can produce more amines to deal with the stress immediately,

Just like the Israeli iron dome,

So that you don't have to go into damaging the country,

So to speak,

It's extended cortisol response,

Which makes you feel shitty.

I just read this quote,

Success breeds success on the molecular level.

You want to practice winning.

Pick doable challenges and do them.

It's okay to fail sometimes,

But you want to pick things that don't,

It shouldn't feel like you're pushing against the wall.

It should feel like you're pushing a way that you can feel satisfied after completion and give yourself as many opportunities to complete.

A practical thing here is picking process goals,

Which is a bit of a challenge you can do.

Four to five days a week,

I write two to three hours a day,

Which is actually maybe not a lot compared to someone who considers themselves to be a professional writer,

But to a lot of people,

It seems like a lot.

I've spoken to people who want to be writers and they're like,

And they want to do.

.

.

Anyway,

I'm not going to go into this whole thing,

But I got to that point where it's actually fun for me to write three hours a day.

It's more fun than doing most other work activities,

But I started with 30 minutes and I moved up to four to five minutes and then an hour and now I don't even really get into the groove until after an hour.

It's actually fun because I practiced winning and my ability to win without having to tap into my reserves got better and better,

Which brings us to his next principle of changing activities before fatigue.

Fatigue,

We can interpret,

Is a sign of depleting amines.

Even with boredom,

Same thing.

I speak about the importance of cultivating a high attention span.

I think everything is better in your life if you have a high attention span,

But if your attention span sucks,

Maybe you probably didn't actually make it to this point in the episode,

If your attention span sucks,

It doesn't mean you shouldn't challenge your attention span,

But it's okay to stop when you start to get bored and we can't concentrate anymore,

But you want to keep,

Just like with strength training,

You want to keep increasing the volume.

You want to keep practicing paying attention up to that point of boredom.

It's up until the point of lactic acid production where your body is starting to feel strong.

You don't want to push through that too much.

There's times you maybe you want to do that,

But you don't want to push yourself through that too much because that puts you into your emergency reserves.

You want to practice making your initial defense systems better.

Another analogy would be you don't want to get to the point where you have to conscript the citizens of your land.

That's emergency mode.

You want your standing defense force,

Your standing army to be very good at dealing with threats so you never have to conscript the populace because that would damage the economy.

Anyway,

Which brings us to,

I think this is our final principle,

To deal with threats immediately and quote unquote violently.

This is the whole idea of eating the frog,

Killing the invader.

If you feel an impulse where you know there's tension,

You're best off doing it right away.

Answer the email right away.

Don't let yourself think about it for days because enduring those long drawn out worries signal to yourself that you're a prey.

I know I'm guilty of this too.

I sometimes like there's something on the computer I really don't want to deal with,

But I know I have to do it and I put it off for a day,

But for that entire day,

It's still in the back of my mind and I don't know if it's really producing cortisol in me,

But it feels shitty certainly.

Whereas if you have that immediate response,

You deal with the threat immediately,

You're encouraging a more effective amine response to do a threats so you never have to go into cortisol mode.

Deal with the threat before you need to prepare for a long siege.

To use that actual analogy,

If invaders are coming to your walls and you sally out and destroy them the way that Bruce Bolton did to Stannis Baratheon when he was preparing for the siege,

If you watch Game of Thrones,

There's the line from freedom of the names of the people,

But the guy Stannis Baratheon's advisor is like,

I don't think there's going to be a siege,

Sir,

Because they see all the horses of the enemies coming in and they basically wipe them out.

So there's no need to prepare for a long siege because they went out and attacked the threat.

Same thing with anything in your life.

If you have something that you know is causing you stress,

Attack it,

Deal with it so you don't have to think about it again because your hormones will thank you.

So to recap,

I know there's a lot of science here.

I actually kind of,

I don't know if I'm going to make a PowerPoint for every episode,

But this was fun.

Recap.

Oh,

Actually I want to say,

If you are listening to this,

I should have said this in the beginning.

If you're listening to the audio version being off your screen,

Like good boys and girls,

I will post the slideshow of this in the Mask and Underground group.

If you're a woman listening and you can't access the Mask and Underground group,

You can email me and I will send it to you.

I think that's a reasonable thing.

Actually,

I might actually send it out to my email list with the length of this episode.

So to recap,

Toughness is determined physiologically by your nervous and endocrine systems.

It's actually something that can be measured to a degree.

If you get your body to deal with threats more efficiently,

Instead of tapping into reserves,

That's essentially the definition of toughness.

And the more you can do that,

The less you have to go into distress.

Essentially,

I mean,

All the tips that I mentioned can kind of be summarized by,

Well,

One have stable systems,

But also if you voluntarily do hard things and voluntarily rest before you're depleted,

You're training your nervous system,

You're training your endocrine system to be better and better at dealing with stress.

So you can be the giga chad who has some shit happen and keeps a cool head.

Your hormones will respond to deal with the threat without your emotions having to suffer essentially because you are the one who knocks.

So thanks for watching the slideshow to this.

I will email out to my list if you are on my list already.

I'll also have it in the Mask and Underground Facebook group at forum.

Maskandunderground.

Com.

We have a men's group on Sunday,

And I think we're going to do it probably every other Sunday or maybe twice a month.

And you can check that out in the Mask and Underground Facebook group.

We have one this coming Sunday.

If you're watching this in the recording or listening to the recording and that Sunday has passed,

I will eventually put it up on maskandunderground.

Com slash group.

That's not an active URL yet,

But it will be very shortly.

All right.

Well,

Thanks for watching.

If you're watching on YouTube,

I'd appreciate the subscribe.

If you're listening on some podcasting app,

I also appreciate the subscribe.

And of course,

If you've been on your phone for a long period of time,

Please get off.

All right.

I'll see you next time.