How To Survive The Hardest Time Of Your Life - Dr Andrew Huberman

What would be your advice to somebody who's going through an emotionally intense period? It seems to me like if I was to try and deconstruct the not to make protocols out of a nightmare scenario but, social cohesion groups around you, not being on your own too much. Yeah, and if you, you know, I'm blessed to have a huge network but I'll say this: I have that Network because I put work into that Network.

Yeah, some of these people I work with. But you know, Jim Theo didn't show up at my house because I'm a podcaster. He showed up there the same way he did two years before when I got slammed to the concrete in life.

He showed up when I was 14 and I was a depressed kid sitting at the embarked arrow with a busted foot because I couldn't skateboard. And he just sat with me and gave me a book to read and encouraged me to write. You know, you know, I took what Jim did for me and did it for other people.

So, I like to think perhaps it was God kind returning the energy, returning the favor. You know, I people, you build your support system in good times. And when they're down, you support them.

And you don't do it because you might hit bad times, you will hit bad times. And that's one reason to do it. You just do it.

And so there's that. So if you're up, build your support network. Doesn't have to be huge, but make it strong.

Make it strong by doing the right thing, setting examples. And you know, if it's medium, fine. If it's huge, fine.

Definitely, I definitely use tools, right? The physiological side works to limit stress, get sleep. I didn't rely on pharmacology to get sleep.

I know some people need to. I just didn't want to go that route. Once, months earlier, I took a little, it was prescribed to me.

I took a half Xanax to try and sleep. And the sleep I got felt like crap. I woke up, I was like, I'm not doing that again.

I use breathing tools, I use NSDR, I use some supplementation to sleep. But sleep is key. You win by sleeping.

That was one of our mottos during that time and all times when we're out on the road doing lives. It's like we're going from one city to the next and we're podcasting and we're doing AMAs and we're busy and we're talking all day, go, go, go. Like we're like, we're sleeping and we don't drink, and we're serious.

We're like professional athletes, right? So there's that, training, hot, cold. Definitely did some hot, cold in really stressful times.

I'll pare back on training a bit. I train as preparation, so for me, lifting three times a week. I love training, yeah.

I do my legs, I do my torso, I do my arms and calves and neck, okay, sure. I do my long run, I do my medium run, I do my sprint day, I do the cold and heat. But I do that not as a means, I do that in part as a means to an end, so that when it's time to sprint for the airplane, when it's time to take a week and just lean all your physical and mental energy into a crisis, you can do that, and then I go back to training.

I think I would have struggled, I think I would have struggled to regulate without training each day, listen, taking a walk, getting a good shower, getting your haircut, you know, these things make a difference. The other thing is, I learned to be able to call on people, to pick up the phone, you know, and say, "Hey listen, like I'm spinning here, I can't make sense of this strategy or that strategy, what do you think? " And then writing down what that person said, taking a few things, and then just going inward, right, you, there is this tendency, especially with texts, to constantly be, you know, increasing the size of your committee, I'll say.

This was interesting, some people came to me immediately and said, "You should do blank," and I was like, really, and they're like, "Absolutely, do blank. " And then I didn't do blank, and then a week later they're like, "Oh, you absolutely did the right thing, you should do exactly the opposite of blank. " And then I realized, I was like, "Oh goodness," you know, like, not that I'm never going to listen to advice from that person again, but they were just saying stuff so you need to be a selective filter and it can be very hard.

And I will say, anyone going through a crisis of any kind, any kind, you need a committee, however big or small, and if you don't have people, you need people in books, you need people in podcasts, and, you know, I'm not a recruiter, but you might give prayer a try, because there's real peace at the center there, and from that peace, you can see the right decision, and from that right decision, you can make the right decision for that circumstance. And there's just too many circumstances to say you should always say this or you should never say anything at this kind of thing. What I do know is that, God forbid, if they come for you, Chris, or anyone like, we got you.

I don't know what the best advice will be in those circumstances, but we got you. And we got you because you're a truly good person with your heart out there being you. Right up until now, you've just been being you, and that's why you're successful.

Yeah, I mean, I got calls from, you know, people can guess the names, and there were some names also I couldn't believe. It was like these are people with enormous stature that I thought would probably fall on the opposite end of the spectrum calling me to yell at me, and in fact, we're like you're doing all the right things. Don't let it get to you, keep going, think about X, Y, and Z.

I was like, whoa! So what you will find in hard times like those, God willing they won't happen to you, is that you'll find your inner resolve. The world will come to you and show you who your real friends are, who your real supporters are.

I wasn't counting off who stuck their neck out for me and who wasn't. It was beautiful to see people who did and the ones who didn't. I get it, like they have their own incentives, they needed to do whatever it is they needed to do.

I think, uh, I regretted not messaging you that day, and the reason that I didn't was it's kind of like when it's somebody's birthday and you think, "Does he really need an additional thing? " So I texted Rob instead, like Rob can be the filter, and he passed it to me. Thank you, and listen, it's also a felt thing, and you raise a very important point that goes, and I hope people hearing this can understand that the reason we have this discussion is not about me, it's that we all are going to go through these sorts of things at different scales and in different contexts.

It's like when somebody dies, everyone's like, "My condolences, so sorry, so sorry. " The time to reach out to them is also afterwards, and you know, again, call me non-scientific, fine, I have enough science under my belt and to be totally confident in what I'm about to say, which is like last night in my prayers, I prayed for somebody who had posted something about losing their mom. I actually didn't know his mom, but it just came to me, I was like, you know, like we all flooded in there condolences, thoughts, and prayers, but like he's probably hurting like crazy right now.

So you pray for that person, now you say, "Well, how does that prayer impact them? I don't know, but I believe in that. " And you reach out to somebody by text, just checking in, and this is the beauty of what you do, and it's the beauty of what podcasters do in general, which is you're creating things in perpetuity.

The AI is going to be trained on these conversations, you know, your great-grandchildren will be able to glean knowledge from things that you've shared. And I think that putting that out into the world in a way that other people can benefit from is nothing short of spectacular. You know, when I was a junior professor, I'd listen to the Tim Ferriss podcast, at that time it was just that, and like, I remember thinking, "He, this podcast is like my friend in a city where I don't know anyone.

" Now I'm fortunate to call Tim a friend, right? I could actually call on Tim. But I think that the loneliness and isolation that people feel, especially people that are striving and don't have a big network, can sometimes feel so overwhelming.

But I was that guy, I was that kid who didn't have anyone to call, or I was confused about something that was happening, and I didn't have the network of people to call. You build that over time, but podcasts, and what people being themselves out there in the world, mainly podcasts, it's like, I really care. I hope that if bullet, Buster, Cancer takes me out tomorrow, that some of the things that I've shared, hopefully many of the things that I've shared, could help people now and going forward.

That's a real thing. It's not about selling an advertisement or a supplement, like that's incidental. It's about the material so I'm kind of spooling now, but within me, I feel immense gratitude.

I wouldn't change the experience of the last year for anything. I don't want to experience it, you know, for its own sake, but what it brought me was huge gifts, and yeah, it grew us like crazy. But I mean, if I could have done it a different way, I would, but you know, God served up this meal just the way he did.

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com/slodwisdom. Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that clip, you will love the full-length episode with Dr Hubman right there.