Infants on Thrones

Episode 956: Pushing Back on Free Will and the Power of Choice

(Voice memo / Pre-show message)
Tom Perry: Um, quick question. So, Glenn and Jake, please, if you have an opinion on this, I'd love to hear it. But why do you continue, you Glenn, to say that there are so many other factors into decision-making, you continue to pull the focus there, but it's—it's really interesting to me, I guess mildly irritating, the focus is on that so much. I exercise will, like I feel like there's a struggle, Glenn, and I don't understand, but I am also acknowledging like there's so many external forces at play, but it doesn't eliminate even the small percentage of choice that I have. I'm so confused why the pushback. Is it you just being a contrarian? Like I feel like why is Glenn continuing trying to minimize the ability to choose? Because at this point, like the amount of pushback you've been given, I'm like, "Okay, so—so I should—I really should just kind of give in to whatever autistic inertia I'm experiencing because actual choice and awareness doesn't really matter. Where it's so little, it's not as relevant. Does that make sense?" Anyway, and maybe we can just talk about this tonight. I don't know. But like after I just got done—

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Clearing the Air: Choice vs. Determinism

Glenn Ostlund: What's up, Glenn? Yeah. I just relistened to your message just to like be ready for it. Like, okay. No, I'm so glad you sent that because just like feeling the emotion in your voice with it, like it just kind of I think it put me in a good place to just have the conversation with you. Yeah. So, where do you want to start with that?

Tom Perry: Where do I want to start? Yeah. Um, so let's see. Well, my question—and yeah, and then I saw that you sent the Sam Harris clip or whatever and I did listen to some of that, but it definitely sounds like, um, what is it? Very on point with where I know Sam Harris is in relation to the self and free will and all that stuff. Um, but I didn't know if you had a point on that as well, but yeah, I wanted—I wanted to hear your thought as to the pushback that you give in relations to choice and, uh, and how—how it feels like you're saying a lot that there are all these factors involved, Tom, and so choice is an illusion. Is that where you stand? Like give me some thoughts. Go ahead.

Glenn Ostlund: Uh, well, first of all, I—I want, like, what I want to smooth over like the—the misunderstanding and the miscommunication, because I am certainly not saying that at all. And really the opposite. I mean, I—I think we're actually saying the same thing.

Tom Perry: Okay.

Glenn Ostlund: Like, so like on the—on, if I can go to David Goggins—

Tom Perry: Please.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah.

(Audio Clip: David Goggins)
"So if you wake up in the morning and you don't want to do something, you don't care enough about yourself, and that's what you need to really research is: man, why am I not doing this for myself? Because that is—that is the number one purpose in life is to better oneself."

Glenn Ostlund: Like being able to develop that ability to—to like assert your will, you know, like your body might send you these pain signals and that might make you stop. And maybe sometimes you should, but like just to have the ability to go, "I'm going to go just a little bit more," you know, like that—that's a really important skill. And so like if we call that choice, like I'm all about—yeah, let's focus on that and let's develop that completely.

Tom Perry: What do you—so if—if you don't call that choice, what do you call it? Or how do you—

Glenn Ostlund: I do call it choice.

Tom Perry: Oh, you do call it choice.

Glenn Ostlund: Uh, yeah. And—and the—like what I do with clients is try to find that—that moment, like help develop that skill of—of like noticing, okay, like right now I'm feeling this. I'm thinking this. Pause. Is that really what you're going to do or not? Like that's that moment of choice.

Tom Perry: So do you—because that's interesting, but I want to—I want to go a little bit deeper on that, because in the conversations we've had, especially recently, like you bring up all the time that there are all these factors involved in our bodies that we're not in control of, that we—that we're unaware of.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah.

Tom Perry: That they're all pretty much just pulling and pushing us in a certain direction. So, when you bring those factors up as often as you do, I definitely feel like you're minimizing the choice aspect and saying, "Tom, I need to highlight all these, you know, neurological factors in choice-making, in thinking, because if you're not aware of like the autistic inertia and all these other things, if you're not aware that there are other factors, then I don't know, it feels like you're not eliminating choice, but you're minimizing it in so much that I'm like, okay, so is he saying that choice is so minimal that it's not important in some—in some choices or some areas, like—like getting up in the morning, you know?"

Psychological Flexibility and Humility

Glenn Ostlund: Well, I—I'm going to address your question with a question. Sorry. Yes, I just have to. Um, does—does having more options limit choice or increase choice?

Tom Perry: I would probably say limit.

Glenn Ostlund: So, if you have more options, then you have your—your ability to choose has been weakened or diminished?

Tom Perry: I mean, if we're going to get—like I'm just speaking for myself only, because I do struggle with decision-making. So, like if—if I have a choice of like two or three, I can probably make a readily choice quickly. But if I have 10 to 15, it's going to take me longer because I, you know, I got to think through the options.

Glenn Ostlund: Okay. Am I confusing?

Tom Perry: No, no, I—I can see exactly what you're saying.

Glenn Ostlund: Um, so what—what I'm—what I'm trying to do when I bring in like, hey, it is kind of like to develop psychological flexibility so that you like recognize, okay, I'm thinking this thought right now.

Tom Perry: Mhm.

Glenn Ostlund: Um, I don't want to be so fused to it that I think that it's 100% true and I'm not able to like step back and question it, you know? So, it's like I want to—I want to create that flexibility to be able to like question the things that I feel so certain about.

Tom Perry: Okay. So, are you just trying to raise awareness to the other factors in decision-making, or what—or what do you think?

Glenn Ostlund: Not—not, I don't think like specific factors, just really humility.

Tom Perry: Humility.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah. Like—like a personal humility about, okay, this—this is the thought that I'm thinking. This is the feeling that I'm feeling. There's a reason for it. There's a legitimate reason for it. But it might be telling, you know, so like your—your example at work the other day where you were like ready for a fight.

Tom Perry: Mhm.

Glenn Ostlund: And you had good reason to be ready for a fight, and then she made this offer to you that just like went, "Wait, what the what?"

Tom Perry: Yeah.

Glenn Ostlund: You didn't expect that at all.

Tom Perry: Nope.

Glenn Ostlund: And in that moment, you were able to be psychologically flexible instead of being like, "Uh, I'm not trusting her, I'm going to go for, you know, like I'm going balls out." You—you had the psychological flexibility to—to read that and pivot, and—and like turn that into like a really, really good, uh, mutually beneficial situation. Unless something's happened since you told that story, I don't know.

Tom Perry: Nope, nothing's happened. So, yeah.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah. So—so and like because of David Goggins and people like—like your—your desire to, uh, have a strong will, I think allowed you in that moment to have that psychological flexibility to be able to shift states and like shift approaches. So instead of like attacking, attacking, defending, defending, you're like, "Okay, I'll open up. I'll give you some concessions, you give me some concessions, and—and, okay, wow, we're learning to trust each other. I don't know how much I can trust that," you know, but it's still a little bit like, "Okay, I got some—I got some flexibility there." It's kind of like shock absorbers for life when like really weird things happen to be able to have that kind of psychological flexibility.

So, when—when I—and probably I beat the drum too much on it because I'm talking about this like over and over and over again with clients, and so like I probably just—I'm spun up and it goes there.

Tom Perry: That makes sense.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah. But—but I—I've certainly, uh, we are allies on like developing that ability to choose. And so I don't know the situation at all, you know, and so like I'm just bringing to this all the stuff that I've been experiencing and carrying. Um, and when—when I heard about the thing that I edited out, I felt genuine like inside, it was—it was like I went from green to brown just like, you know, like whoa. And the first thought that came into my mind was—

Tom Perry: Oh, really?

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah. You know, or I—I'm thinking about this from the perspective of a therapist, I can't help.

Tom Perry: Yeah, sure.

Glenn Ostlund: And I've had some clients in—in kind of similar situations that have had parents that have been like, "Why aren't you getting my kid to just like be better? Like, why—why can't he just be better?"

Tom Perry: Like find the switch and flip it. Yeah.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah, you know, like, and I—and I worked with this—this kid for a year and a half—

Tom Perry: Oh, wow.

Glenn Ostlund: —and like developed a really good, like therapeutic relationship with him, and he was like—for him, it—it was hard for him to notice when he was getting angry. Like he—he wouldn't become aware of it until after he had yelled at the people and—and like punched the kids.

Tom Perry: Yeah.

Glenn Ostlund: And—and I couldn't get that across to his mom. And so I think you're the recipient of that—that war that I never won, you know? Like I started seeing that pattern and I'm like, "Oh, how can I inoculate Tom?" And—and so I'm not saying like I don't know what your situation is. That's just like what I was bringing to it. So it created that—that emotional state. And then like when—when I've heard you talking about like this dread and just kind of like what you're carrying, like I want to give you shock absorbers for that. And so I'm probably pushing on like psychological flexibility maybe stronger just because of my affection for you and comfortability giving you shit.

The Batman Armor and the Backpack of Rocks

Tom Perry: No, I appreciate that. And that—that makes sense. I mean, the thing is, is like, yeah, I—I like—I like the connection that we have and the banter, and yeah, like I have very soft feelings for you as well. But yeah, I—for me, I do like—I don't know. I don't know what to do about the feeling of dread, dude. I—I don't know. The only thing, cuz I try not to ruminate about it. I try not to, and my therapist works with me all the time, like let's not ruminate. Let's—let's find things that break that cycle of rumination. So, you know, I'll journal. I'll take notes and whatever, but like I just can't escape the fact that when there are other people that are affecting my life and I can't control that. I can't control them. I can't control their choices and their behaviors. But, cuz yeah, then I have like when I'm ruminating and then it like spins, then I start having fantasies of like how nice it would be if that person would just not exist in my life anymore, you know, like if—if I could just move away or they could move away, or—

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah. And, uh, especially when it's somebody that you've had like really deep relationships—

Tom Perry: Like a family member. Yeah.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I—I remember, uh, Matt told the story on the podcast once about a scorpion riding on the back of a—

Tom Perry: Oh, yeah.

Glenn Ostlund: —turtle across a river, and then, you know, they get to the end, scorpion stings the turtle. He's like, "What did you do that for?" "I'm a scorpion. You knew what I was when you picked me up." Right, right, right. Yeah. But see, humans have the ability to override those scorpion-like instincts if they choose to. But that—but that takes practice, right, like to develop that? And I—I think like you, in your case, because you practice, practice, practice, practice, it's easier for you than other people. And it's kind of like I was thinking about a—a Batman parallel.

Tom Perry: Okay.

Glenn Ostlund: Like because—because, you know, like you like Batman and you like Bruce Wayne, but they're like both kind of different sides of the same guy. And Batman, especially in the movies, like this full armor suit, you know, which like is badass, but it's kind of cumbersome, you know, like—you know, when—when he's dancing, it's better as Bruce Wayne, uh, to be nimble in certain situations.

So—so the psychological flexibility isn't like you have to put away the batsuit. It's just you know when to put it on and when to take it off, and—and the batsuit are all of these like—like what—whatever defense mechanisms we developed just to like survive. Like when Jake comes on, if we talk about, uh, like trauma, the history of like Mormon generational trauma, like that's some interesting stuff.

Tom Perry: It is, yes.

Glenn Ostlund: So that's armor we inherit.

Tom Perry: Yeah.

Glenn Ostlund: But we don't always have to put it on if we can learn that. And then that's less suffering for us, less suffering for others. And sometimes I wonder if dread is part of the weight of carrying that armor.

Tom Perry: Well, yeah. Cuz like sometimes I—when you were talking about armor, sometimes I feel like it's just a backpack full of rocks that you're carrying, you know? It's because, you know, and sometimes it feels like you can address it, because I hadn't thought about the abuse stuff at all until Jake brought that up and then you brought it up and then I brought mine up. Um, and I hadn't thought about it for two or three years. But when you had said, you know, there are probably things from that that you're not aware of that you're probably still dealing with or carrying or it's affecting you, I—I hadn't thought about that at all.

Yeah, it's—it's I think it's totally true. Like I haven't talked to my therapist about any of that stuff. Like, you know, yeah, my previous therapists we talked about a little bit, but that was more other stuff as well. It seems like there's so many layers that you can talk to a therapist about. It's like what should we—where should we go? Should we go present, past? What should we do?

But, um, yeah, cuz I—I don't know. I—I like to think that none of that—none of that stuff bothers me. But I have to acknowledge, like I was with my parents last night and, uh, and I was just talking to my dad a little bit, and if I hadn't thought that, I just kind of looked at him and I had that moment. I was like, I wonder what he's thinking or what—because he was abused when he was a kid. And you know, he—he went through that cycle. But I'm just looking at him, I'm thinking, boy, I would love to pick his brain, see what's—what's going on in there. Um, what's affected him, what's not, why he wanted to deny all those behaviors? Was that just out of self-protection? I mean, I don't know, you know.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah. And—and does he even remember it? Because, you know, we can—we can almost like take on different personalities when we're really angry. And there—there are cases where people kind of like black out, you know, there's like the extreme cases of dissociative identity disorder where people like create alternate personalities, but, you know, like that—that, especially in times of abuse, like situations that somebody like a defense mechanism, like if you're getting beat on, one of the ways that you'll defend yourself is by dissociating, like just like, "La, I'm not here, I'm not here," you know, and—and then when that's a repeated thing, like those are—those are brain functions that—those are neural pathways that in times of crisis will continue to flex underneath the surface of our awareness. And so we feel the impulse that those are creating in us. And maybe—and maybe it shifts our attention or, you know, like does something like that.

But there's—there's a lot of different ways that those kinds of past traumas influence us, and like you said, it doesn't bother you. I—I think what you mean by that is you don't think about it, and so you just kind of put it out of your mind and because if you do think about it, it's uncomfortable, and what—what's the good in that, you know, so just put it out of your mind and go about your day. Hey, you know, and that—that works for you. But then there's the times where you're wondering, well, do I sometimes, uh, unconsciously flinch for things that aren't really happening right now, but remind me of something that happened back then?

Tom Perry: Yeah. See, and I—I have no way to know consciously. Yeah, you know, it's like, yeah, maybe. And I don't know.

Glenn Ostlund: But—but that's like especially with that like willpower that you've developed over the years. You—I mean you could develop like an—an awareness where you're like you start noticing, like when you go to work next time and you're around this person, just start paying attention to how you feel in your body, you know, like start noticing that, and like the more you notice that, then you'll get to that like choice point of like, okay, is what my body is telling me right now really what's in front of me, or is this just how my nervous system is creating my perception of reality in such a visceral way that I could get swept away in it if I didn't know that there might be some options?

The Work Confrontation and Learned Helplessness

Tom Perry: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that. Yeah. But one of the things that I do, especially whether it's her or other people, if I'm anticipating an uncomfortable or an awkward or confrontation or whatever, I'll tell myself that I have the power and the ability to diffuse it. Because if it's a two-person thing, if it's just two people, that means I've got 50% of say and I can—I can not deflect, but I can either absorb things, diffuse things, and I can respond in kind instead—instead of elevate things, like if she's trying to elevate. And I'll be—because, I mean, you know me, like I will make just off-cuff jokes, little side comments here and there to just kind of, I don't know, level the—the room a little bit with her especially.

Um, like I will just say, "Hey, how are—how are you doing? Like that's—that's a nice jacket that you're wearing," or whatever. I mean, it's polite banter, but it always catches her off guard cuz she's so defensive coming in to that setting. And so when I sit in the setting, like I make it extremely—like I prepare my—I psych my—myself up and I prepare for it, and I was like, "All right, how am I going to make her feel like a human being? How am I going to bring her to a place where there's—that she'll have no other choice but to compromise and negotiate with me?" You know, that's what—that's my goal. And I would say maybe 20, 25% of the time it's semi-successful.

Glenn Ostlund: Good. Wow. So, this wasn't like a one-off that you—

Tom Perry: No. Okay, yeah. I mean, like I said, so that what I told you about that compromising thing that just blew me away, that was on Friday. Wednesday was the one where it was just no-go, middle fingers up, you know, "Go kick rocks, Tom." And it was after that meeting that I talked to some of my team and I said, "All right, we're going to have to re-strategize and p—pivot here." And so I had a whole plan in place. It was mildly extreme. But it was like, you know, I felt like it was necessary in order to figure out how to move forward, because if—if you're dealing with someone that is just unworkable, untenable, you know, what are your options? You know, are you really going to keep going into that setting and allowing yourself to bang your head up against the wall, or are you going to be like, you know what, I think this—I think this, uh, relationship or this communication's got to change or I've got to start seeing somebody else.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah.

Tom Perry: I mean, and that's what I was ready for. I was ready to say, "Hey, this isn't—this isn't feasible. This isn't working." Cuz like I said, 75% of the time it's I walk out of there and just I'm like, "What? What is this? This is so stupid." And then when I've been in that same setting, take someone else, uh, there's this other guy in Vegas that I have, um, uh, I have similar meetings with and like it is so productive, so fruitful, and like I can't help but just kind of wash his balls a little bit, like, "Man, I wish I could talk to you all the time, man, you're so amazing," cuz, you know, my barometer is out of whack because of her and I'm like, geez man.

Anyway, but I mean I don't know, where's your thoughts going back to like choice? So—so you're a proponent for the ability and the skill to be able to—for people to choose, right? So like for people—and I don't know if you've got clients that struggle with like ritual, daily rituals and mundane things, like, "I can't get out in the morning, Glenn. I'm in bed and I just can't get up. I don't have the willpower to do it." I mean, do you say, "Hey, well, you know, your neural pathways are set. Uh, find a job where you can work late at night, I guess?"

Glenn Ostlund: I—I say, "Let me know when you are."

Tom Perry: Oh, really?

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah.

Tom Perry: So, you just like throw everything at them and just say, "Hey, man?"

Glenn Ostlund: That—that's why when we were talking about your daughter, I asked you like, "What would be the natural consequences of just allowing her to stay in bed and see what happens?" Just like let her own it. You know, like she might be miserable or maybe she's—she's overwhelmed, and just giving her the freedom to choose instead of like always being under mom and dad's thumb, well like maybe she'll have to repeat senior year, you know, like—but—but you know, it's her.

Tom Perry: Yeah, yeah. It's—and this was another thing that I was going to mention, and I think this is part of the problem and this is why like learned helplessness became so, uh, an—an obsession for me, is because it was family members that I started seeing that their behavior and their actions and their words even start to affect me, but I feel a little more justified in projecting my ability on a family member. And you—you might disagree on this, like let's take a sibling, right? If I have a sibling, hey, we were raised by the same parents. We're in the same household. Yes, we're going to have different experiences. Sure. But for the vast differences between my sibling's approach to my approach, and then I'm like, dude, like if I've been able to get to a certain place where I'm thinking through things, I'm being a little more self-aware, I'm doing inner work, and you're just like purposefully not at all, that's—that's harder for me to tolerate because like I can take someone like yourself or anyone, random stranger on the street, and say, "Hey, I don't know what their life is like and I don't know what they've dealt with. I don't know what their history is like." So, I have a lot more grace, a lot more slack for that. But like a freaking sibling, man.

Glenn Ostlund: Mhm.

Tom Perry: Because then they can't come to me and say, "Hey, well, you know, I had a tough childhood." Like, no shit.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah, you did.

Tom Perry: Yeah. I was there. So, it's—it's I don't know. I don't know if you have thoughts on that, because like even—and I'll even just throw this out there with like with my daughter. I see her thinking patterns and I see similarities, and so I'll talk to her like, "Hey, I understand you ruminate on things and you're self-critical and, you know, uh, ADHD sort of stuff." Yeah, I get it, right? And I'm here for you. Let's work through it together. Let's make a plan. Let's—let's—let's write some things out and let's try it out. See if this works, that doesn't work, or let's try something new. Um, I do that on the regular with her.

So, um, yeah, but see, I—I'm falling in these traps where I'm projecting my expectations or things that I've worked on for myself onto them, and I feel normally I don't do that with anybody. I try not to, anyways. I know I do sometimes, but—but like with family members, I feel obligated. It's like, dude, we get each other. We're—we're so similar. Am I boring you?

Glenn Ostlund: No, not at all.

Tom Perry: So, yeah, because like—and I don't—I don't know your relationship with your siblings or whatever, but you know, if—if you have difference of opinions or if you have conflict and then they bring up like, "Well, you know, I had a tough childhood," and you're like, "What the fuck, dude? You had a tough childhood? You remember—you remember when Dad was beating my ass? You remember when I took hits that you didn't get? No, you don't remember that." Okay.

Emotional Manipulation and Family Roles

Glenn Ostlund: So, you said two things I want to ask you about.

Tom Perry: Okay.

Glenn Ostlund: One, you said you can't tolerate, you know, that they're not trying because you guys came from the same place.

Tom Perry: Yeah. I think an exaggeration there, yeah.

Glenn Ostlund: Well, I mean, you were expressing emotional, yeah. Yeah, uh, and then also you said that you—you—it's this trap of, uh, projecting onto them. And so I—I'm curious to hear more about two of those—those two things. And with the—the first one, I don't know. I mean, what—what—what do you think about like what I just shared with you, Tom? Do you feel like you're not getting paid for this?

Tom Perry: No. Do—do you take Venmo? All right. Um, yeah, I—when I say I do not tolerate, yeah, that was—that was an emotionally-fueled word and I don't actually feel that way.

Glenn Ostlund: Well, yeah, cuz I—I'm like, would you like to tolerate? Because I—I mean, I feel you—I feel that you do not.

Tom Perry: Yeah.

Glenn Ostlund: I feel—I feel that there is this part in you that is really angry about them, and like I don't want to minimize that part of you at all.

Tom Perry: Yeah. Well, because it feels like there's a—there has been a war where there's like an us versus them in my family where people are taking sides.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah.

Tom Perry: And that just kills me cuz I've never felt that before. I've never felt like, you know, whose side are you picking?

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah.

Tom Perry: And so, yeah, when—when things got real rough this year, like, yeah, I was—it was super weird. I've never—I've never had like my sisters call me, my parents calling me on the regular and just trying to persuade me to do things, coerce me into like trying to, I don't know, smooth things out. And it was—it was the closest thing to just full-on emotional manipulation that I've—I mean, they were laying it on so thick. And I—I was talking to my therapist one time and she just straight up said, "That's emotional manipulation, Tom. You need to—you need to call them out on that and say—or you just make the decision on your own and just distance yourself when they—when they put that on you. Like if they start laying out ultimatums and stuff."

Glenn Ostlund: What—what—what happened? I mean, like when—what happened to you when they made those requests? Like how—how—what was your emotional state in that moment?

Tom Perry: Yeah, brutal. I—I—I ended up conceding some of it. I ended up going through with it. Then I started having flashbacks of when I was a kid being the peacemaker, being the—the one that smoothed things over, the one that sets the example, the one that tries to make everything right for the family.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah.

Tom Perry: Like when—cuz yeah, my mom like she said, "Tom, you know how much we all rely on you. You know, you're in so—so many ways you're the point for this family and—and if we lose—like if you—if you can't help smooth certain things over or whatever," and I was like, "Jesus, that's—it's a lot of weight." And you know, but that's how it's been since I'm the oldest. It's—it's always been like, "Tom, you got to set this example. You got to do this thing."

Hey Jake, sorry you're just jumping right in.

Jake Joins: Metacognition as the Apex of Evolution

Brother Jake: I'm—I'm sorry to be jumping in late.

Tom Perry: No, you're good. You're right on time.

Glenn Ostlund: What? Yeah, you're right on time.

Brother Jake: Well, I'm right on time. The original time. Right on the original.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah.

Brother Jake: I have a new—I'm sorry. You—Tom, you're talking about something serious. Some serious shit. Am I okay?

Tom Perry: No, no, no.

Brother Jake: Sorry. Just, I mean, so you're saying your family like relies on you to fix this?

Tom Perry: Yeah. I—I mean, because we were talking about, um, emotional manipulation and some of the stuff that's been going on, and yeah, my—my family started picking sides this year. And yeah, the emotional manipulation on me was brutal. And the—and the harder part for me, because Glenn asked a question like, you know, what has this done to me or where—what do I think about this? And that's the thing is like it exploited—like it brought up things where I was like, okay, I'm not—I'm not where I want to be. I'm not as strong as I'd like to be cuz I gave in. I—I was—I was subject to that emotional manipulation. And I just—I did what I always did. I—I tried—I gave my mom what she wanted. I gave my dad what he wanted just to give the peace.

You know, in a weird, funny way, it kind of reminds me back to, was it 2011, 2012, when I went back to church after I stopped believing, and I was just giving other people my power, my autonomy because I was trying to keep peace. They had expectations on me. They—they're like, "Tom, you can't do this to us. You can't just stop going to church. Like people looked up to you. People revered you. You know, you were an anchor and a rudder for people." And—

Glenn Ostlund: Were you wearing your Batman armor when you were doing that stuff?

Tom Perry: No. Cuz I—no, cuz I—I gave in. I did it and I just—

Glenn Ostlund: So Batman armor for you would be what?

Tom Perry: Being—making the choices that protect my autonomy. You know, where—where I stood up and said, "Whoa!" Like if I could go back then, I would—where they're just throwing all this emotional manipulation, guilt, and all that stuff on me, if I could have stood up and said, "Okay, whoa, I—I understand that's how you feel, but what about my choice?"

Glenn Ostlund: Hell yeah!

Tom Perry: What about—what about what's right for me?

Glenn Ostlund: Hell yeah!

Tom Perry: And why—why do you think that my choices somehow are going to affect you? Like you can still go to church. I'm not preventing you from—you know, now that's—it's a little bit different like my wife and kids, you know, there is an impact there. But like if I can work out that environment, then I'm like, okay, Mom and Dad, like why—when I don't go to your ward and I'm not your leader or whatever, it's like what—what tangible effect of me not going is having on you? You just go home and you try to go to sleep at night and you're like, "One of my kids is going astray. How do I deal with this?" I mean—

Glenn Ostlund: You just nailed it, though. You—you just answered your own question.

Tom Perry: Well, I know, but like I—but I want to tell them like, you need to fight that part of your freaking—

Glenn Ostlund: Exactly! Exactly! Hell yeah! Hell yeah!

(Singing / Quoting): "You're the best around! Nothing's going to ever keep you down!" You are the Karate Kid, man.

Tom Perry: Anyway, all right.

Brother Jake: Well, it's—it seems like, Tom, you're—you're uncomfortable, and I—I completely agree with this discomfort. I struggle with the same kind of discomfort, too, of like the kind of core—I mean, just the core question of like, do we have free will? And is it, you know, are we just like fancy, you know, Rube Goldberg machines, like contraptions where everything is like predetermined, but it's just so complex that we can't comprehend it? Um, or do we have any ability to have, you know, influence over our—our behavior? And—and I find it hard to—to—to buy into the idea that we don't have free will. And I—I mean in some ways, actually, the thing is like scientifically the more—the deeper and more we understand in science, it seems like the trajectory is in the direction of there not being free will, of like—

Glenn Ostlund: Could you pause and define free will for a moment, what you mean by free will?

Brother Jake: Yeah. What I mean by free will, um, I guess the—the ability to—well, I got the ability to like, um, influence through willpower your behavior through like, you know, determined, focused, you know, inspection, self-inspection, like introspection, and um, effort. You can change your behavior and that you can have some sort of like, uh, have—have some sort of like desire or, um, motivation to do that that isn't like deterministically defined. Like that is under your ability to influence.

Glenn Ostlund: Would—would you maybe consider it a metacognitive ability to choose in the moment?

Brother Jake: Yes. Well, I guess—I guess when you say metacognitive, you mean like just a—something that exists?

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah, yeah. You're aware that you're aware that you're aware.

Brother Jake: Mhm.

Glenn Ostlund: So you're—you're aware that you're thinking a certain thought. You're aware that you're feeling a certain feeling. You're aware that your body is giving you the impulse to do something. But you've got this choice point to either do it or not, or to lean this way or lean that way, you know. You can influence it somehow. And that's what you're calling free will in there.

Brother Jake: Yes, right, yeah. That—that gap between like—

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah. That—that's the kind of free will that I think is like a pearl that's grown out of the planet, like that emerges through our human consciousness that we've evolved this—like our prefrontal cortex plays such a key role in this metacognitive ability. Tom and I were kind of talking about this earlier, the—like the ability to choose in a moment, but there are—we are surrounded by all these deterministic forces. But the real magic—I hate using that word because it's not magic, but—

Brother Jake: Yeah, all right.

Glenn Ostlund: But—but—but the real cool thing is we've got that little teeny-tiny bit of space, and we can—we can strengthen it. We can increase our ability over it. And that's—that's where I brought in Goggins and Tom.

(Audio Clip: David Goggins)
"Some of you motherfuckers pissed me the fuck off... knees are bad... see how he runs... What were you doing for the last 65 hours? I know what I was doing, I was running all up and down!"

Brother Jake: So, um, yeah, I guess, Tom, like I—I—I understand like your difficulty around that, and I—and I'm on—like I'm inclined to agree with you. I'm—I think I do agree with you with like there has to be some—we have to at least acknowledge the possibility that someone could change.

Glenn Ostlund: Oh, yeah. I think we're—I think all three of us are in agreement on that.

Brother Jake: Um, but see, but—but, um, I think that like I guess the way that you—the pushback, the—the like consistent pushback that you've given to like Tom, I guess to—to Tom's like depiction of stuff is, um, I think it makes—I don't—I don't know. I—I—I don't want to—

Glenn Ostlund: Could you give me an example of particular pushback that you can—

Brother Jake: No, I mean it's not that I—it's just, um, because is that what you—I guess that's the question I want to ask Tom, is like, is that what you meant in like the voice message that you meant—that you left, um, recently, where you were like, it seems like you're always pushing, like, "I understand, I get your point, but like you don't give an inch on..." Right? That's—that's how I interpreted what you were saying.

Tom Perry: Yeah. So this—yeah. Because Glenn and I started off talking about this, uh, what would you call it? A misunderstanding or not seeing eye to eye, but I—I definitely think that at least the way I see it now is I think we are on the same page. But for me, highlighting the—the external factors or the—the neurons that push us in a certain direction, the—the things, all the factors that cause us to be who we are, what—how we think and our behaviors and all that stuff that we just don't see, we're just—we're just blind to it because it's always running in the background, right? I mean, just like what you said, Glenn, like we—we have such a small window of actual choice, but it feels huge. Feels like, oh yeah, I could—I could go out and, you know, sell my house right now, you know? And I—I could do all these crazy—I could quit my job. No one's stopping me from making these big choices. I could do it right now if I wanted to, you know, and—and like what Sam Harris says, we don't have the ability to control what thoughts come into our head, but we can control how long they stay or we can move things around.

So the ability to like choose feels wide for us. So when Glenn, like—when—when you kept saying like, "Well, it's—it's, you know, there's all these factors I don't think you're taking into consideration, Tom," like choice is—that's why I said it feels like for me that Glenn had been saying choice is an illusion, Tom, you know, like getting up in the morning, yeah, you know, there's too many factors at play here, so you know, your ability to choose, and to like—even that AI puppet show or whatever, I—I was just getting the sense like, yes, there are a lot of factors that influence our behavior and our decisions. Yes. And our thoughts. Yes. But there's—but it's not zero. We still have choice in some things.

That's what I was saying. So like the—the pushback of like if we're going to minimize the choices that we have or the choices that we can make, you know, am I going to turn left here? Am I going to turn right here? And you're at a—you're at a fork in the road and there's no good or wrong way to go. Which one are you going to take? I mean, are we going to say, "Well, you know, you—you were beaten as a kid, and you know, your left side took more of a beating than your right, so you're probably going to take the left side," or whatever? Like, I mean, and you don't know that that's—that's actually where you're going to go before you make that decision. And I'm like, yeah, okay. But like highlighting that fact, highlighting all of the external factors just makes me feel less powerful, like the—the—I'm losing my ability to make the choices that I can make.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah. It's like stripping away your autonomy, you know?

Tom Perry: That's what it feels like, yeah.

Brother Jake: Yeah, and you're not giving him anything to work with there, Glenn. I mean, you're just stripping away like anything else, man. You're just tearing his shit down. So, like, what's your problem?

Glenn Ostlund: Wow, uh, what's your problem? I'm—I—what do you think it is, Jake?

Brother Jake: Um, I—I—I don't—I don't—the thing is, I don't—I like scientifically I can't—I don't disagree with you. I like I have no grounds on which to disagree with you, but I feel like deeply, on a deeply intuitive level, I'm like there—I'm—it's that that notion of there being some like ability to like—that we have some influence over our behavior is—I mean, it—it's become kind of a religious belief to me.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah. To me, it's—to me, it's the apex of evolution. I agree with you. It's sacred.

Brother Jake: And—and so that's what I—um, yeah. So that's—that's why I kind of feel implicitly threatened by—by you like con—I guess—I guess, yeah, like there—there's like an implicit threat that is felt. And I don't know, and it's not valid obviously, because you're saying to me like that we're on the same page and we have the same—we have the same belief about this. So this is like my—my interpretation, right, my algorithm is digesting this in a way that is making it kind of defensive. That is making me feel like threatened by it. So—

The Neurobiology of Fight-or-Flight and the Choice Point

Glenn Ostlund: Um, can I share a story with you? I—I'll share a story with you, and pay attention to what your algorithm's telling you as—as you hear this. I—I shared this with Tom earlier, but I had a—a client that I worked with for a while, uh, who was autistic. He had conflicts with his parents, and his parents had like some specific goals that they wanted me to kind of fix him and cure him. And some of it had to do with, uh, emotional regulation, anger management.

And so I would talk with him when he'd get into a fight with somebody, he'd tell me what was going on, and we'd practice like, "Okay, so when did you start feeling angry?" And he—he—he usually didn't know until after. Like he—he—he couldn't figure out—he couldn't recognize his emotional state before he acted on it. There was just like this impulsivity that he didn't have that ability to really regulate in certain cases. We started working on it over time. He started learning how to kind of calm himself down. He started getting a little bit better at it, but never quite to the point that his parents wanted. Like there were some things that they just wanted him to stop. They just wanted to be normal. They just wanted to be different.

And so I like—I had—that was a really, um, emotionally, uh, significant experience for me. And so when we were talking with Tom about his daughter, I—I kind of went, "Oh, maybe she's like this kid that was my client, and maybe Tom's like the parent that doesn't really understand the kid and is bringing more suffering on the kid." So that was like part of my algorithm that I brought to that that Tom was picking up on, of like, "Why do you keep trying to like tell me to give my daughter a break, you know? Maybe—maybe there's legitimate reasons for her being lazy. Why do you keep pushing this on me, Glenn?"

And I'm like, well, I'm trying to drive a wedge into your psychological rigidity to create a little bit more, uh, compassion, you know, and—and like that's not necessarily what Tom's doing, but that's where I was coming from in my like approach with it. And so, and I think that's where Tom was feeling a lot of that pushback. So, I'm going to pause now, Jake, and ask you to check in with your algorithm.

Brother Jake: Um, yes, it—it makes a lot of—it makes a lot of sense. I mean, the—the context, like you had relevant context. You had the—a context that was more relevant than any context that I had that would—that would be relevant to it. So, I can see how that would like influence the way that you, uh, behaved, um, or just reaction to it.

Glenn Ostlund: And—and now I want to add a little piece to it. Cuz I—cuz I have other clients that I work with that one of the things that I help them do is start to recognize more their own emotional states and their own choices. And—and a lot of times what we do in therapy is kind of like Monday-morning quarterbacking experiences that they had and like, "Oh, where was your choice point? Where was your decision point?" And we kind of locate it, and then we're like, "Okay, so next time you're in this situation, what are you going to do?"

And you know, they—because when you're calm, you've got all these resources available to you, but once you go into fight or flight, like all the best-laid plans might go out the window, and—and so it's important to know that so you can give yourself grace as you're developing your ability to choose and, you know, like navigate things. So—so a lot of what I do is help them develop this thing that's so sacred to you, Jake, and sacred to me too: this ability to choose, and especially the importance of being regulated as a nervous system so that you have the maximum abil—your maximum ability, your maximum cognitive ability in that prefrontal cortex to be able to like weigh different options and—and check in with your values. What's important for you? What's going to be the best thing for everybody involved? And do that intentionally rather than just like bulldozing with your emotions that sometimes they're good, sometimes they're not, you know. So, developing that choice point is, uh—it's what I do, man.

Brother Jake: All about the choice point.

Glenn Ostlund: It's what I do.

Tom Perry: Well, I—I think, you know, and I—that's why I appreciate, you know, just the clarification of it, because what I bring to the table, like I—I know this, right? So, like when I'm expressing a frustration or I'm expressing something vulnerable, whether it's intentionally or not or consciously or not, I'm actually seeking validation. Like, "Yeah, Tom. Yeah, I hear you. That—that's so shitty what you're dealing with."

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah.

Tom Perry: You know, cuz everybody, like, you know, in all the support groups that—that I've ever been in, that's what people are primarily looking for is some empathy connections, some support, people saying, "Hey, yeah, what you're dealing with, what you're going through, like, let me validate that. Let me—let me encourage you to—to know that what you're going through is—is not fair, not right, blah, blah." And so I know that that's where I'm coming from. So like when you, or—

Glenn Ostlund: I told you that I'm more gentle with my clients.

Tom Perry: Yeah, you did, yeah. And I—and I like—but I like the shit-talking, right?

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah, I know you do.

Tom Perry: But like, so for me, like when I—when I come across people, and it's not just you, like I also have other friends that they'll challenge me on things, and it feels like they're invalidating my perspective and what I'm bringing, and then they—they're also trying to minimize, uh, whatever suggestions that I'm bringing to the table. Like with my daughter, I'm like, "So, are you saying that I should just let her sleep in and just fail out of school?" Because that's not what you're saying, but that's—that's part of what I'm interpreting.

Glenn Ostlund: And—and that's where your own metacognitive ability goes, "Oh, my thought right now is, is he saying this?" Well, let's—let's pause for a minute and look at that. And what are our options here? And—and this is where, like, the more—the more psychological flexibility you have, the—the more you could go, "Oh, it—it might be like I might be upset over just an echo from the past which informed the way that my nervous system created this thought and this feeling. Maybe that's not what's going on in the moment right now at all." And it's having that metacognitive choice point strong that allows you to do that.

Tom Perry: But like, I—I—I want to—in your story that you were telling, um, there was something that has—that brushed up against my algorithm.

Glenn Ostlund: Good.

Tom Perry: When—when you said that that client that you were working with didn't have that ability—

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah.

Tom Perry: —to see or to whatever, whether it's that me—what do you call it?

Glenn Ostlund: His nervous system would shift.

Tom Perry: Metacognition. Mega-metacognition, yeah.

Glenn Ostlund: He would go into fight or flight so quickly that his—his—his ability to do anything different in that moment would go offline, just based on what he was telling me, right? You know, based on what he was telling me and based on repeated behavior, and based on—I believe him because I—I could—I knew what he wanted. And—and he would get so frustrated in himself that he couldn't, you know, get ahead, get in front of this. And that the last thing that you want to do with somebody like that is—is give them more reason to feel bad about themselves.

Tom Perry: Sure, yeah, no, yeah. But I mean I just—the—the words "can't" or "impossibilities" or, you know—

Glenn Ostlund: Oh yeah. Those are triggering to you.

Tom Perry: They're very triggering.

Glenn Ostlund: Those are your triggers, some of your triggers.

Tom Perry: Yeah. Cuz I—I mean that's why I highlighted with my daughter when she says, "I literally cannot," and—and I was like, "You're literally misusing that word 'literal'."

Glenn Ostlund: That's like nails on a chalkboard to you, isn't it?

Tom Perry: I hate it! I do, cuz—cuz like what you said, Jake, like, well, if there was a fire in the house, she couldn't get up? It's funny because there have been mornings where it's super important for her to get up, and so I'll get like a glass of cold water, splash it on her, and it's—it's like, you know, Christ rising from the tomb. She got up. It's—it's a miracle.

I was like, "Okay, so literally, you were misusing that word 'literal' again. You could actually get up. Maybe it just took ice water to do it, but that's where that—" Yeah, cuz those are—those are trigger words for me, because I—I hate when—and again, this is coming from me. I don't like to put, "I just can't do this." I don't like to put that phrase in front of me: "I can't do this thing." I don't like seeing anybody use that phrase, "I—I can't do a thing," when it's like why—why are you cutting yourself short? Why are you not giving your—yourself the chance to see if you can do it first? If you try it and then you fail, okay, but if you try it three times and fail all three times, maybe you—I feel like you have more reason to say, "Okay, maybe I can't do this thing." You know, if you try it 10 times and you fail seven times, but you're successful three times, I was like, "Well, there you go." I mean, don't—don't—don't just resign. That's why that learned helplessness, it's like you're—you're telling yourself when you use that phraseology, "I can't do this thing," you're already teaching yourself, you're giving yourself a learned helplessness. "I—I can't get up in the morning. I can't do it, so I'm not going to because I can't, there. I literally can't get up in the morning." So, now you're—you're teaching yourself helplessness.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah, yeah. Repeating—repeating that over and over again, reinforcing those pathways. Sure.

Tom Perry: Yep. That's why I'm like, don't do that, because you already are struggling to get up in the morning. You're just adding another obstacle to it. Yeah.

Biological Limits vs. Pushing Boundaries

Glenn Ostlund: All right. Do we hit the—do we hit the lull?

Tom Perry: No. Okay. I'm waiting on Jake.

Brother Jake: Yeah, like it's—I don't know. I—I—I don't want to always, you know, be making—making it about me, but, um, yeah. Like I—there have been things where I don't know, just like am struggling with, uh, I don't know, just whether or not to like me—me not doing certain things is giving up on it, I guess. I don't know. I—I don't know. I don't—I just—it's—it's the thing with like, oh, you know, maybe you could do that thing. You could—you could reteach yourself how to, you know, you could relearn how to like run or something, um, if you just tried more at it and like spent more time, uh, kind of specifically, uh, trying that, like—like, you know, attempting that and the training for it, um, and I think that's—I mean, it kind of is like one of those—it feels a little bit like the free will thing where it's like it's something that's like a religious belief that I have to like believe that I—well, I don't know, that maybe I—maybe I could if I like tried, but I don't know. I mean, there's the—

Glenn Ostlund: Are you motivated to try some of those things you're thinking about or not?

Brother Jake: Yeah, no, I mean, not necessarily. I guess I—no, I—I think I—I found a better kind of metaphor for it. Not metaphor, but like I don't know, a touch point for it is like neuropsych testing, um, like my neuropsych testing was like I scored poorly like initially, uh, like when I—when I left my—when I left the Shepherd Center for rehab and stuff. And I retested when I was at WakeMed, um, a couple months later, and that test was like better than the first test. The—that test results were better than the first test results, but then I—I took it again a few years later and like those test results were basically the same as like the WakeMed, where like it's—it really was seemed to be like my cognitive abilities had kind of settled into those—into those like those levels and that was—that was kind of the as much as they would ascend.

Um, and like that does feel like a real—like I—I—I don't think I think I can't do better at that—at that like specific stuff. Like I think there is a real limit, yeah. Like I—lit—I—um, but also at the same time I don't want to believe that that's true, that that is, you know, like I—I want to believe like, no, it's not—that can't be true, like I could just try a little harder, you know, but then there's the—the struggle of like, well, if you could do it, then why aren't you doing it, or I don't know.

So anyway, it's just—it's—it's I—I get where you're coming from, Tom, because I—you're absolutely right that like people vastly underestimate their capabilities and their ability to do hard things, and like also, um, like even—even the hard things that you've gone through, any of us have gone through, like when I think back to those times, I'm like, how did I do that?

Tom Perry: Yeah.

Brother Jake: I really—it just—it feels like—so, you know, that I like—I know I've done this, like all these like really hard things before, but I'm like, I don't even know how I did it, how I got through that. You know, when he asks me like, think—think back, it's like I don't—I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how I did it, but I did do it. I just did it because it had to be done. But like how did you have the willpower to do it? I don't know, cuz like if I came across that challenge today, I probably would be like totally discouraged, like, "Fuck this. I can't do this shit." But I would—I would just because I would have to, and so I would, but it would be—I don't know. I don't know. So that's—that's kind of what I've been—those are kind of the thoughts I've been like mulling around in my head as I've been thinking about this.

Tom Perry: That's interesting. I mean, I don't know if you remember, but it was—it was a little—when you came out to Utah, you and Erica, and we went to Topgolf for one of the first times after—

Brother Jake: Yeah.

Tom Perry: I remember we were sitting there and you—you told me like, "Yeah, I don't know. I—I—I haven't swung a golf club, so I—I don't know if I can do this or whatever." Like, or maybe you said, "I'd swung it, but I hadn't practiced very well." And so, you were really like saying that you were insecure, like, "I don't know how I'm going to do." I—I kind of felt like you were psyching me out, like, "You're going to be so much better than me, Tom. Like, you know, I've got all these, you know, physical incapabilities that blah, blah, blah." And then you got up there and you did either fine or good, you know, and I was like, that—this fucking guy, he's—he's over here saying he's got these limitations, he gets up there and just whacks the ball!

Glenn Ostlund: Like he's trying to psych me out, like I'm not that good.

Brother Jake: Shark. I'm a Topgolf shark. Hand over the money. We made the bet, yeah.

Tom Perry: But like—yeah. And I—I don't know if, you know, there were times like whether it's golfing or anything like that where you're like, "All right, I—I need to try to get myself to this level," or whatever, or if, like you said, you just show up and you're like, "Okay, I guess I got to swing a golf club now. I don't know if I can do this or not. Let's see how it goes." I don't know.

Coach Tom and the Shadow Side of Goggins

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah, it's kind of finding the balance, right, between what you—what you really can do, but you don't think that you can do, and what you really can't do and shouldn't really even ever try. Because like what Tom was saying is that he has this—his algorithm responds in a certain way when he hears people say "can't," and you know, like, "I'm going to try something once, twice, three times." But if I said, "Can you fly if you jump off the top of this building?" "No, I can't." "Oh yeah, try! You know, don't be—come on, man." But you don't jump off the building.

There's a certain reason why you like—it just bothers you if people are making fucking excuses for things, you know, like it's almost like there's this hidden optimist in you that like is like, "You can do so much more than you think you can. I don't want to hear you put limitations on yourself." But then at the same time—

Brother Jake: Tom, Coach Tom is everyone's coach. Like he's trying to motivate everyone.

Glenn Ostlund: "Fuck you, you can do it! Come on, I know this! I know we're down by 30, but we can do this!" Like you believe so much in people. It's like you see—and you—but that you believe in—in the version that you see of them, and you see the best version of them, I think. It just bothers you deeply when you're like, "I see this beautiful person, but you won't fucking let them out! You will not let this incredible person I see hidden underneath all this bullshit out!"

Tom Perry: Well, and I mean, to me—I mean, everybody can talk about what—what makes life rewarding or whatever, but when I see people overcome challenges and things and obstacles or whatever, like dude, there—there's nothing like—I will ride that—I—I will ride that high for a long time. I drink the—

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah, he got the girl at the end.

Tom Perry: Yeah, I—I—I just eat that stuff up so much. I mean, yeah. I—I don't know, because there's a lot of—there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of failure out there. So when—and I—I drink the David Goggins Kool-Aid. I do.

(Audio snippet: David Goggins)
"Some of you motherfuckers pissed me the fuck off..."

Tom Perry: You know, I—I don't know. I just feel like—

Glenn Ostlund: Did you listen to his Huberman interview?

Tom Perry: I think I did. I think it was out—it must have been a while. Unless he's done one recently, I haven't listened to Huberman for a while.

Glenn Ostlund: The word "haunted" is ringing in my head.

Tom Perry: Yep.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah, I—I—I want to listen to it, I haven't. But in doing my research, I came up with something that he said on that interview where he talked about his motivation all his life was he—he had to succeed because he couldn't deal with the shame of failure.

(Audio Clip: David Goggins on Huberman Lab)
"Let me teach you real life, how it really is. The reason why you're a loser, and the reason why you're not fucking making it, and the reason why you're trying to go through all these—I go to all these fucking conventions, speak all the fucking time. I look in the fucking audience, and these people sign up, sign up, sign up fucking every year to go to convention thinking they're going to learn something fucking different. No. You're lazy."

Glenn Ostlund: So like, he's just been driven by shame.

David Goggins (audio): "You're lazy."

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah. And his—I don't know if you've ever—

Brother Jake: But never escaped it. Never escapes it. Like relying on the shame, you build these neural pathways that you rely on shame. You're always in this like dance with your own shame.

Tom Perry: That sounds like—that sounds like living with dread.

Glenn Ostlund: Well, it kind of is.

Tom Perry: And—and go—and go—I don't—I don't know if you guys have seen this, but I follow him pretty extensively. But like there will be fans of his that will see him out running and they'll be driving and they're like, "Goggins, yeah, stay hard!" And he's like, "Get out of the car and come run with me, you pussy!" You know, and that's how he is. He's like, "What are you doing driving? You should be out working out with me." He's like, "Get—get your ass out here!" Like when he's running on races or whatever, if anybody says anything, he's like, "Get your ass out here with me, let's go!"

Glenn Ostlund: Is he happy? Is he a happy guy? Does he enjoy life?

Tom Perry: You're going to have—yeah, you'd have to ask him that. I mean, I don't know. I don't know.

Glenn Ostlund: What do you think? You know him, I don't know him.

Tom Perry: I think he is. I—well—

(Audio Clip: David Goggins)
"Am I happy? I don't know, never really thought about it. Don't really care about it, because all I really cared about was when I looked in that fucking mirror, I saw a piece of shit."

Tom Perry: I don't know. I—I think he—he really gets a thrill out of whatever that process of just making himself suffer, but it's all about what you get at the end of the suffering. And so when he gets to that relief, gets to the finish line, or he gets that pull-up challenge finished or whatever, and that—

Brother Jake: Doesn't it have like diminishing returns, just like any—

Tom Perry: Well, I mean, in his second book, Never Finished, like he talks—he talks extensively about these, uh, I think knee problems that he's had for a long time and lots of physical problems, and some of it is, you know, just worsened by his inability to let himself heal, and I don't—and on some of his social media, he'll take pictures of his feet. Yeah, like his toenails just missing.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah.

Tom Perry: You know, toes are all mangled up or whatever. And I was like, this guy is—it's—it's amazing, though. I mean, he looks at it like—

Glenn Ostlund: I think—I think he's in—incredibly effective, but it's the cost that I'm looking at, going, I am not sure I understand this or that I even really—

Tom Perry: Well, that's why—that's why I—I use him, like I don't think anyone should emulate him point by point. I think there are so many good messages that he sends where it's like, yeah, strike a balance.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah.

Tom Perry: So, but I—but I don't want anybody making Jake feel bad about himself. That bugs me. That—that—

Brother Jake: Oh yeah, that hits my algorithm.

Tom Perry: Yeah. But, I mean, I don't know. I use a little motivation even times when I do it, you know.

Brother Jake: Yeah, right, yes. Well, of course you've got to carve out a little bit for yourself, you know.

Tom Perry: I mean, but I mean you're—you're a true inspirational story though, Jake. You really, really truly are, like you—data scientist and all that stuff. I mean, it's—I don't know. You're giving humanity an option and a—a view into your life of like, hey, look at the—look at the transformation I'm going through.

Brother Jake: Yeah. I mean, it's—it's I'm—I'm definitely getting a lot of catharsis out of like documenting it and writing about it and stuff. So, yeah, I appreciate that, Tom. Thank you. Um, but I also try and keep myself, you know, motivated, keep myself striving for something, you know, like just always self-improvement to be made, and I don't know, the better I can understand the—this algorithm, the better I can—it'll just be a more pleasant experience all around.

Tom Perry: Well, I—I get the—I get the feeling, Glenn, and you can correct me if you're—if—if I'm misspeaking for you, but raising the awareness of all these other factors that go into our behaviors and our decisions can only help us realize our ability of when we can make that decision, or at least acknowledging like, "Oh, you know, if our body is fatigued, maybe we should listen to that more, or maybe there your ability to choose that moment is going to be greatly influenced by it," or something like that.

Theta Binaural Beats and the 28-Day Reset

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah, it's—it's how I've tried to intentionally brainwash myself into humility. It's a mixed bag, guys. It's a mixed bag.

Tom Perry: Have you really been trying to brainwash yourself into humility?

Glenn Ostlund: Did you ever listen to my Arcturian Playground podcast where I channeled Arcturans?

(Audio excerpt: Arcturian Playground)
"Welcome to the Arcturian playground, a place to play in the realm of imagination, all done in the service of compassionate expansion of consciousness. Yes, it sounds—we know we would not have it any other way."

Glenn Ostlund: You had so much of an influence on my whole approach to that, Tom, because I—like if you listen to them, I say the whole time like, this is a fiction that I'm creating to like rewire my own brain. So like I created this—this compassionate perspective, and then I imagined reality through that perspective so often I feel like it—it started changing my ability to empathize with other people and it gave me greater flexible—like, you know, psychological flexibility. Uh, so yeah, I started doing that in 2022. Yeah, I mean I still do it every once in a while, I get like a little—

Tom Perry: Do you? Okay, yeah.

Glenn Ostlund: Just like a little fun creative thing.

Tom Perry: Yeah, I did listen to a few of those, yeah.

Glenn Ostlund: They're just stream—like I didn't plan anything. I would just sit there with the phone and just like—just start—start talking about whatever was on my mind, whatever was going through this perspective. Like there were times I would talk to myself about stuff, you know, like I'd moved out with Cami and I was like going through all this stuff, like changes in my life. And so I'm talking about things. It's a public journaling that I veiled, kind of like I talked about—I did that before. I've done this before. I do—I—I do public journaling, you might have noticed.

Tom Perry: You might have been part of it! Yeah, okay, that—yeah. I mean, I—I—I didn't mean to brush up on your, uh, on the binaural beats, though. I laughed out loud, though, when you're like—you actually put the binaural beats on your rant or whatever and you're like, "I'm really pissed. Okay, I'm not really pissed." I was like, "Son of a bitch." Cuz dude, and the thing—the thing is—

Glenn Ostlund: I know, I saw your face.

Tom Perry: I—I had—I tried so hard like—like even trying to get myself into a calm, meditative state to listen to that stuff, and I'm like, what? Okay, I don't know if this is subjective or what, but it is—it is not comforting at all. It's just frustrating the hell out of me!

Glenn Ostlund: What is your experience when you listen to those?

Tom Perry: It's just annoying as hell, yeah, super annoying.

Glenn Ostlund: Mosquito like just hovering around your head?

Tom Perry: Yeah, that's—yeah. It's just like, okay, because I can't—I can't listen to the words because I'm like, "Oh, okay, is there like a rhythm? Is this vibration supposed to be like, I don't know, clearing my senses or whatever?"

Glenn Ostlund: Oh, it's—it's aligning your chakras.

Tom Perry: I know, but—

Glenn Ostlund: It's pouring the tiger's blood down your spinal cord when they come together! The power fills you!

Tom Perry: Well, and I—but I—I do think that there—I mean, I'm not going to say I do think, because I know there is science to it, Glenn, I really do. But like I don't know if those harmonies are just not syncing up with my subjective whatever.

Glenn Ostlund: I—I—I might—I might not be doing them right. I might be doing them too loud. Maybe they should—

Tom Perry: Or maybe they—but they work if they work for you.

Glenn Ostlund: But I—yeah, I do them for me. I—I—I do them for me, and then offer them to anybody else who might enjoy them.

But there—there was this study that was done in 2023 where they took two groups and they put them through this, uh, stress test where—where they have to stand—they have to like memorize a five-minute speech and then go deliver it in front of like four people in white lab coats who just sit there very stoically and they don't give any feedback whatsoever. And then after they do that, they have to count backwards from 1,080 by factors of 13 as quickly as they can, and if they make a mistake they have to go back and start over again. Okay, it's just like recreating this absolutely stressful, stressful environment. One group is wearing theta binaural beats, uh, the other group is wearing just like, you know, they're the control group.

After the experience, both groups reported consciously it was fucking awful. It was terrible, like they hated it. Both groups hated it equally. When they read the physiological data, the ones that had the binaural beats, they had greater heart rate variability.

Tom Perry: Oh, so they're measuring heart rates and—

Glenn Ostlund: They're measuring the autonomic nervous system. And—and the ones that were wearing the binaural beats had a more regulated autonomic nervous system than the others. Like the conscious experience wasn't any different, but actually what the body was capable of doing was different.

And—and so my experi—like I stumbled ass-backwards into binaural beats. I just—I liked the sound and I liked like because I was doing the Arcturian stuff, I thought, "Oh, this sounds woo-weird," and you know, I like playing with the ideas. And then I'd been doing it for about four months, and I was in this argument, and I just like, all of a sudden, it's like I felt like Neo that saw my algorithm in front of me, and instead of being like saying the sarcastic thing that was coming up to me, it was like I was able to pull the bullet down, just drop it, you know? It's like, and I'm like, this is weird. I'm not on anything right now. I've never experienced anything like this before. And then I went and I researched. I'm like, "Oh, I've been doing these binaural beats. I've heard that they could probably do something. Maybe I should research that." And I found all these studies, and so I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to keep doing it then. It works for me, I like it."

Tom Perry: Cool. Oh, wow, cool. That's kind of an interesting story. I didn't know—I—I had assumed that you had done the research that these vibrations or whatever got to your vagus sympathetic nerve or whatever. Yeah, oh cool.

Glenn Ostlund: No. No, I had listened—like, uh, the Monroe Institute has been doing binaural stuff, I think, since the '60s, and there—there was this Hemi-Sync Gateway Experience meditation that I listened to that then I—I had a client who told me that he really liked them, and I remembered that I had listened to them before, and I'm like, I wonder if I could make them and I could like give him messages, you know, like things that we're talking about in therapy that he could listen to in the binaural beats, um, and just kind of like reflect on. And so I learned how to make them and I started doing them, and then I started doing like storytelling things with them.

But I wasn't doing it because I—I didn't really know anything about the vagus nerve or polyvagal stuff, then I found out about that after—after I experienced it. But yeah, so I would love to—I would love to challenge you, Tom and Jake, if you wanted to, to do the 28-Day Nervous System Reset, which I just completed today. The—like I launched it like a year and a half ago, but I redid the first 28 days so that they tell the story of how the nervous system formed and developed on the planet starting with the RNA.

Brother Jake: I want that! That sounds—

Glenn Ostlund: I'll email you the link.

Brother Jake: Awesome, I—that sounds really cool.

Tom Perry: Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I'm down.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah, okay, yeah. And you'll return and report.

Brother Jake: What, they listen to one every day?

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah, one a day, 28 days, and then do it—do it three times. You do—you do that three times, you get three months' worth of that stuff. See if it makes an impact on your dread. See if it gives you—see if it helps you with some shock absorbers. We'll do that with some Infants on Thrones talk therapy, and we'll check back in three months and see.

Tom Perry: Three months! Three months, that's—that's kind of—I can do—I can do 20 days.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah, we'll do 28. I—I'm just saying if we ever got to that, that would be fun, and that's what my thoughts are saying right now. But yeah, there's all these—there's all these other factors.

Tom Perry: We'll start with 28 days. We can just count them. Yeah, let's start with that, yeah. Do you think that 28 days would—would be enough to—

Glenn Ostlund: Well, let's—let's revisit—two weeks. Two weeks would be enough for you to know if it's something that—that you find any value in or not.

Tom Perry: Yeah. Oh, really?

Glenn Ostlund: I mean, even yeah. I mean, because—because I offer it to clients. I don't—I mean, I've got some clients that listen to it, other clients are like, "Yeah, it doesn't really work for me," and yeah, that's fine. But yeah, the—the ones that do have it, like, um, a lot of times they'll fall asleep. It'll help them as a sleep aid, uh, or it'll just be like this really relaxing thing. Uh, my favorite—I like creating empty space so that you can pay attention to your own like thoughts that kind of come up as like different words kind of trigger things, and you know, it's all about—it's all about learning how to notice. It's all—it's, Jake, it's all about developing that ability to choose.

Brother Jake: Yes. That—that ability to choose, that app—

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah, that's—that's what it's all about.

The Rider and the Elephant

Brother Jake: Oh, wow. All right, I want to expand that—I want to expand that fucking gap, because I actually had a good—I had a good experience in the gap.

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah, you did.

Brother Jake: Like I—I did, where like I—it wasn't—I was reacting in a way, and then I could see that I was reacting in a way, I was like, I don't want to react in this way. I don't want to do this. Like this—this is not the good path. So I'm like—and I—so—so I was going out to bre—to breakfast, like to brunch basically with like a neighbor friend and his kids, and then Bridget's kids and my kids. So it was like a big group, and, um, I don't know, I was getting in some sort of argument or, you know, I was getting in some sort of like potential conflict with some of—a couple of Bridget's kids when they're like ordering—ordering lunch and stuff.

Um, and I was like, "No, I—" Well, I was like, "Look, I'm—I'm sorry. I don't want to be like this. Order whatever you want." Like, I was like, "Order—" I don't know, I was being like really opinionated about like what they could order or not order, or whatever. Anyway, uh, you know, I just kind of—I kind of realized like, shit, this is not the thing you got to do. Um, and so—

Glenn Ostlund: This is not—like this is not the hill to die on.

Brother Jake: This is not the hill to die on. No, it doesn't matter. Like you're—you're picking a fight for no reason, and like you're just putting yourself in this like really awkward, continuously escalating kind of situation, yeah. So just like, just disengage, disengage. So I was able to do that, which was great. So like that—that expanding that gap between like the kind of the—the—the, I guess it's like the—the length of the—it's like your refractory in the, whatever, like the—to navigate the elephant.

Glenn Ostlund: Mhm, yeah.

Brother Jake: Like we—it's like a more secure and increasingly secure like strap with which to navigate the elephant, or whatever, I don't know. I don't know.

Tom Perry: I—I think that's awesome. I mean—

Glenn Ostlund: I think the elephant doesn't like straps.

Brother Jake: Well, okay, so what—whatever, I don't know what—

Glenn Ostlund: I think he doesn't like spurs. Maybe—maybe some—my elephant doesn't like spurs. My elephant shuts down if you stick a spur in it. It goes, "I am not moving."

Tom Perry: I am not moving.

Glenn Ostlund: And the rider could be on top going, "Move, you fucking bitch!"

(Audio snippet: David Goggins)
"What were you doing for the last—I was running all up and down!"

Glenn Ostlund: Like, "Sorry buddy, not moving. Tell me to move more, I'll not move more."

Tom Perry: A stubborn elephant.

Brother Jake: Stubborn elephant.

Tom Perry: Yeah. Well, I—I just want to highlight, because what you were just talking about, Jake, I actually think that's one of the coolest life experiences, is when you're in those moments and you can actually side—take a side path to what you—like you're being pulled in a certain direction, you're like, "Hold up, let me—I don't like where this is going." And then you—you pivot a little bit, or you pivot a lot, or whatever. I mean, because I still—and I know I don't want to go into this cuz we've talked about this too many times, but I still vividly remember when I was thinking that the church wasn't true, and like just taking that path instead of this prescripted path and what that was feeling like. It's like, am I really going to pull my elephant this direction? Is this where we're going to go now? Like everything was—everything was scheduled, everything was going this direction, we were—we were chill, we were happy going this way.

Glenn Ostlund: But—but the rider wasn't really steering it, was it? Like the elephant was kind of like—

Tom Perry: Yeah, that is an interesting question. What role did—what role does the, uh, rider play? What role does the elephant play in that?

Glenn Ostlund: Yeah.

Outro

(Singing / Music: Player – "Baby Come Back")
"Baby come back! Any kind of fool could truly see there was something in everything about you. Baby come back, you can blame it all on me. I was wrong, wrong..."

Glenn Ostlund: Thank you for listening to Infants on Things on Thrones.