How to stay calm in every situation | Attia & Huberman

one of the one of the Hallmarks of my existence has always been you know just a a an insane amount of anger and rage it it's it's been there as long as I've known so I don't have a conscious memory of not having rage right so earliest memories of life when I'm 5 years old I have rage like you can't believe and it's it's a problem all my life so as a teenager if I go more than two weeks without punching a hole in the wall of our house it's a miracle I mean I am

so good at drywall you can't believe how good I am for all the stuff I have to repair around our house like I'm breaking Windows I'm breaking it just doesn't like I just and so in a way and and of course I rationalized how much boxing saved my life because I had this amazing outlet for my rage right if you I got to basically exercise 6 hours a day I'm hitting punching bags in people all day long and it's just a beautiful outlet that keeps me out of jail um and a big part of that

rage was inward right so it's it's not rocket science to understand that a person who has that much hatred for everyone has an enormous amount for themselves and so one of the things I didn't realize was happening was what my inner monologue was because as you can appreciate your inner monologue is so frequent and ubiquitous and present that it's easy to almost forget that it's there I mean that's the that's the that's the sort of uh dangerous part about it right is kind of the you know the David Foster Wallace this is water thing the

fish are swimming through water the water's everywhere they don't even realize they're in water you don't unreal you don't realize the subconscious stream of thoughts that constantly flow but if eventually I became aware of just what that selft talk was and it is it was no longer the case it was the angriest the most violent selft talk you can imagine I mean it was like there is no mistake that I could make that was anything other than my perfect perfect standard that didn't result in what I would call my inner Bobby Knight going ballistic so

it just didn't matter like it it sounds silly under it didn't matter if I didn't perfectly cook a steak if I didn't perfectly nail something I was doing if if if I didn't do anything that was perfect at what I described as match grade perfect I mean I would want to beat myself to a pulp and I would scream at myself I mean it just it's it's again it's hard to describe and I I hope that most people listening to this don't understand what that feels like well it became very clear that that had to

change because when you are when you are that when you hate yourself that much by definition you are going to be an insufferable prick to everybody else like because you're you're just that's going to spill into how you interact with the world so I you know was working with a therapist who was one of the people who was sending me to this place in Arizona and basically it became clear that you know they they they they they they proposed that I could shed this trait if I was willing to do certain amount of work and

I was like there's no chance like I'm 47 years old this is the only way I've ever interacted with myself how in the world could this be undone it would take another 40 years to undo this and they're like no no no here's this exercise you're going to do so the exercise was every single time I did something where I would have that selft talk I would have to immediately stop myself and pretend that it wasn't me that just did that but it was one of my closest friends and instead I would audibly speak to

that person there's nobody else there but speak to that person as the though they are the one that made the mistake and I were I was to record that on my phone so if I'm out there shooting my bow and arrow and I don't get a bullseye instead of screaming at myself I have to say oh imagine it's my buddy Jr who just missed that shot what would I say to him pick up the phone or you know pull out the phone and say of course something different and of course what I would say in

that situation was much Kinder I mean infinitely Kinder it's like if I'm saying it to my closest friend I'm going to say it in a very kind way and I had to take uh a copy of that audio and text it to my therapist oh wow yeah talk about vulnerabil I was all on board this practice until you mentioned that at which point and I and I trust my therapist uh um to a very deep level but I thought wow that that's a that's a mountain well this you know this poor person got a lot

of text messages a lot of lot of audio files but here's the part that just blows my mind it only took I don't know I I can't remember exactly I'd have to go back to look at my journals only took about four months to get rid of Bobby Knight like you know again we we had kind of a mental model for what this looked like which was Bobby Knight was the chairman of the board he sat in the boardroom and nobody else got to talk and for those that don't know Bobby Knight had a terrible

temper yeah yeah the worst right this is the guy that was throwing chairs across the basketball court level 11 yep out of 10 and and all of a sudden like we got to the point where Bobby Knight is not even in the boardroom anymore in fact I as I say this today like I don't really remember what he sounded like I mean it's it's amazing to me and and I've had some really amazing opportunities to bring him back like it's not like I'm making fewer mistakes right it's not like I'm better today than I was

3 years ago at all the things that I do I'm not I'm actually probably worse in many regards uh but the difference is you know I can communicate with myself I think I can say this I think I can say lovingly right and and maybe not as lovingly as some people can I I still think I'm probably maybe just a little higher standard with myself than maybe I need to be at times but but I'm just not beating myself up like I used to and I think by extension I'm beating other people up a lot

less well I don't know the extent to which your internal narrative reflects the uh narrative that others have about you but first of all I want to thank you for sharing um what you just shared I think as a practical step it it um first of all it's one I've never heard of before um but certainly represents this incredible phenomenon of neuroplasticity because 4 months sounds like a bit of time and yet you're you were 4 years old that's 47 years of accumulated um just absolutely berading selft talk is what it sounds like um so

it's something that people can can think about for their own for their own purposes