How to Grow From Doing Hard Things | Michael Easter
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My guest is Michael Easter, a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and best-selling author. We discuss how particular daily life choices undermine our level of joy, our sense of purpose, our physical and our mental health and the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly steps we can all take to vastly increase our level of motivation, gratitude and overall life satisfaction. We discuss how effortful foraging for information, undistracted reflection and physical exercise are ways to ‘invest’ and therefore grow our levels of dopamine, energy and motivation, whereas low-friction activities are specifically designed to hijack or diminish them. We also discuss dopamine reward circuitry in the context of how to build and reset one’s energy levels and create a deeper sense of purpose in work, creative pursuits and relationships.
Articles
- Eye-Movement Intervention Enhances Extinction via Amygdala Deactivation (The Journal of Neuroscience)
- Prevalence-induced concept change in human judgment (Science)
- Entrainment of the human circadian clock to the natural light-dark cycle (Current Biology)
- Creativity in the Wild: Improving Creative Reasoning through Immersion in Natural Settings (PLOS ONE)
- Endurance running and the evolution of Homo (Nature)
- Alaska backcountry expeditionary hunting promotes rapid improvements in metabolic biomarkers in healthy males and females (Physiological Reports)
Books
- The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort To Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self
- Little Chapel on the River: A Pub, a Town and the Search for What Matters Most
- Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
Other Resources
- The Power of Taking the Stairs
- The 2% Manifesto
- What’s Your Misogi?
- Peak Performance Project
- Clearspace
- The health benefits of gathering
- Don’t Die Retreat
- Big 100 Bar
- My Badass Mom
- PubMed
- Man vs Lions. Maasai Men Stealing Lion’s Food without a Fight
- Meet The Real-Life Friends Playing A 30-Year Game Of Tag
- Tom Petty Somewhere You Feel Free
- Mad Men
Huberman Lab Episodes Mentioned
- Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave
- Dr. Bernardo Huberman: How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life
- Dr. Anna Lembke: Understanding & Treating Addiction
- What Alcohol Does to Your Body, Brain & Health
People Mentioned
- Francine Shapiro: psychologist, developer of EMDR
- Marc Andreessen: American businessman, software engineer
- Joe Strummer: British Musician
- Henry David Thoreau: American naturalist, essayist
- David Anderson: Professor of Biology, California Institute of Technology
- Marcus Elliott: physician, founder of P3
- Joseph Campbell: American author
- David Goggins: American motivational speaker, author, ultra-marathoner
- Mike Moreno: former CIA, survival expert
- Hunter S. Thompson: American journalist, author
- Herman Pontzer: Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology & Global Health, Duke University
- Edward Abbey: American author, environmentalist
- William “Si” Redd: American businessmen, known for video poker
About this Guest
Michael Easter
Michael Easter is a professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas and best-selling author.
This transcript is currently under human review and may contain errors. The fully reviewed version will be posted as soon as it is available.
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