emotional reslience

38: Scott McGee – Acta Non Verba

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This is a special episode of The Sisu Way. The format is different because on this episode, I was a guest on Marcus Aurelius Anderson’s podcast, Acta Non Verba. This episode includes many topics I have not yet discussed on The Sisu Way, so we agreed to release it on both platforms.  There is something special about having a conversation with someone who can be in the moment without judgement, committed to seeking understanding, and that is something that happened on this episode.

We spoke about how serving as a law enforcement officer has provided an opportunity to learn empathy and to be aware of perceptions of those who need help. We explored how that responsibility impacts the job, as well as the physical, mental, and emotional impact of those who serve. We discuss coping strategies, stigma, and culture that surrounds reaching out for help and the kind of strength it takes to break that silence. 

We also spoke about the origins of The Sisu Way, life, philosophy, culture, and more topics I hope you find worthwhile of your time and attention. If you find any of these topics interesting, want to hear more, have questions, or just want to chat, you can always reach me on Instagram: @scottmcgee. 

Websites: TheSisuWay.com MarcusAureliusAnderson.com

Social Media: @TheSisuWay @MarcusAureliusAnderson @ScottMcGee

32: Finding Strength in Struggle – A Warrior’s Perspective with Dr. Theresa Larson

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Beautiful things don’t come without some suffering. -Dalai Lama

What happens after an injury, loss, or major change? How do you adapt to this new normal state? How do you find strength in the face of adversity? How do you accept this new change without always wishing to be like before?  My guest, Dr. Theresa Larson, helps me answer these questions. She says our minds are a war zone and adaptation will occur no matter what, but there is a choice to to optimally adapt or maladapt.  

Dr. Larson (DPT) is a mom, wife, sister, friend, and TEDx Speaker who happens to be a former Marine Corps Engineer Officer, combat veteran, and professional softball player.  While that sounds like a resume of a strong person, it was the other moments where she developed her strength. Dr. T made it through the death of her mother at the age of 10, the loss of her father, and learned to suffer skillfully while battling an internal war with bulimia in the middle of an actual war.  It’s here she learned strength, positive adaption, and her call to help others.

You see, her greatest strength isn’t in which she has done. Her greatest strength was in asking for help.  Our stories are unique, but the struggle is universal.  The mission of this episode is to deliver info to people who need it.  To those who have gone through loss, trauma, or a major change in their life and needs to find their new normal again, this episode is dedicated to you.

Get Up Strong,

Scott

SHOW NOTES:

Intro: The Butterfly

4:40  Where does your weakness come from?

Can you measure strength? Cellular level and the mind.

12:30  Knowing yourself as a person vs athlete

13:50  Early lessons in strength.  A lesson from mom when she knew she was not going to go on:  

Life is unfair Theresa, and life has to go on.  I’m going to die, but your life has to go on and blossom.

27:20  Is strength teachable?

29:30  Battling an internal battle (bulimia) in the middle of an actual war.

Forgiveness doesn’t change your past, but it opens up your future. 

On the convoy, when am I going to next throw up.

46:54  No one is going to hold your hand. Life goes on.  I need to make those choices and stick up for myself, against myself.  My mind is a war zone.

47:20  TED Talk:  What is a Warrior?  What made me a warrior was not that fact that I was at war, or a professional athlete. It was the fact that I asked for help.

55:36  Ownership and healing yourself 

59:40  What is your why?  Physics of the why.

1:06:13  Your first step in regulating your emotions is stabilizing your attention. You can stabilize your attention by bringing it right into your breath and stilling your mind. -SM

1:15:30 The Mind Trigger

1:17:30  Adaptive Athletes – Fitness, Breath work, Community – Ways to recover your strength

1:18:50  LOVE Principles: Lead yourself first, Oxygen (breathe), Vulnerability, Elasticity (you can change)

What are you doing for the world?  A practice in gratitude through service reflection. 

1:42:58  State and Liberty: Code “STRENGTH” for 15%

Dr. Theresa Larson’s Podcast:

My New Normal

WEBSITES:

DrTheresaLarson.com movement-rx.com TheSisuWay.com

SOCIAL MEDIA:

@movementrx  @drtheresalarson @1scottmcgee @TheSisuWay

31: Dr. Jen Esquer – It Starts Within – Building Strength through Infidelity

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Pain x Resistance = Suffering

In life, things happen around us, and things happen to us. The only thing that truly matters is your choice of how you respond to it.  You can learn, adapt, and choose to make the best of each experience. Pain is inevitable  and inescapable, but suffering is optional. 

Emotional progress is made through confronting grief, pain, and calamity. Instead of avoiding the painful events of life, face them squarely and lean into them. By facing the realities of death, loss, and disappointment, you free yourself of illusions and false hopes and learn your truth.  

Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our inner strength. An opportunity to practice your growth.  Like core stability, it starts from within.  Regardless of our trials, we all possess incredible strength. We have strength we don’t even realize we have. Its not other people that heal us…its you. Happiness does not depend on external sources.  You are your own souls doctor. This episode will help guide you.

My special guest is Dr. Jen Esquer. She is a Doctor of Physical Therapy, creator of The Mobility Method and The Optimal Body. Recently, Jen announced via her Instagram that she walked away from manipulation, infidelity, and an unfaithful relationship.  This emotional violation prompted her to have the courage to share her truth. To be a voice in this space for others who feel like they don’t have one.  To fight/heal for herself and others. To recognize that Vulnerability is Strength.  

This episode is not about what happened to her.  It’s about her inner strength and decision to inspire in the face of emotional adversity.

I’m proud to be part of her journey,

Scott

Thank you for your precious commodity… your attention. If you like the show, please rate and review us on iTunes and share on social media!

SHOW NOTES:

Intro: Potatoes, Eggs, and Coffee Beans

4:45 Jen’s Mission: To HEAL the world the best way she can, and that is through empowering you to learn how to heal yourself!

9:20  Core Stability – The first step towards regulating your emotions is stabilizing your emotions.

11:08  Awareness of the body helps detect where you have been neglecting.  

12:45  You cannot change the past, but by choosing to forgive you open up your possibilities for the future. -SM

14:30  What you resists, persists.        Pain x Resistance = Suffering

18:00  The only cure for grief is grieving. 

20:00  Revisiting infidelity – Owning the high road

30:41  I am just choosing to align myself with the values and the morals that I appreciate and I admire and the people that are going to uphold those same kind of values.

31:00  The Instagram announcement 

31:24-32:03*  I am so determined to be a voice in this space for people who don’t feel they have a voice and that is my want, my drive, my power behind this is truly coming from this place of wanting to help… and rise as one.

37:17  The hindsight of the relationship – Clues and Signs

49:00  The 7 wonders of the world – Gratitude 

53:30  What is it about you that you are not listening to.  Ownership.

55:00  The 5 Stages of Grief.  Dr. Kübler-Ross

58:08  Denial (and shock)

1:01:10  Anger (pain/guilt)

1:14:00  Bargaining 

1:17:19  Depression (reflection)

1:24:20  Acceptance (upward turn/hope)

1:38:20  A promise about ads – State and Liberty

Links:

DocJenFit.com  TheSisuWay.com 

@docjenfit   @themobilitymethod  @1scottmcgee   @thesisuway

27: Julien Pineau – Discovering StrongFit

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Burn the questions, burn your doubts, burn who you were, burn everything. See if you can make your soul bleed.

Julien Pineau is a Humanist, Movement Specialist, and Founder of StrongFit, an intellectual and physical gym that has transcended the actual workout into an education. It’s a culture and a tribe of people who seek to apply force better. Julien is trained to visualize and correct proper human movement patterns.  He has a fascinating ability to diagnose imbalances, find the root of problems, and provide knowledge so you can become stronger, more fit, and a more resilient human.  To me, Julien is scientific philosopher who has chosen human movement as his art.  But he is also more than that.  He is the master of his fate and the captain of his ship.   When he is not busy traveling, podcasting or changing the world he is raising his daughter in an environment of love and curiosity. He is a man on a journey inward as much as he is outward. 

This is a beautiful conversation I get to have with my friend. We discussed the life and death moments that forced Julien (through stress/pain/intensity) to discover his strength.  It was here where he decided who he was going to become.  Like life, it’s not about technique, it’s about how you handle yourself in difficult situations. It’s in those moments where you are introduced to yourself.  Lucky for us, Julien decided to build StrongFit and become one of the smartest people I know. Now he is teaching how to build better humans, but it’s up to us.

Thank you for choosing to listen!

Strength is a Choice,

Scott

SHOW NOTES:

Intro: Drowning is not for Me

9:15  A conversation about Julien’s late brother, Jerome. 

17:36  Do you have to go through pain to grow?

Comfortable is the opposite of safe. To grow you need to be in a safe place. When you are comfortable you are unsafe. 

21:30  Main influences in life, the moments, and how Julien has used them to develop who he is. 

Are you going to relay on talent your whole life? Or are you going to build something? The thought of this changed the shape of his life.

27:30  What did Brazilian Brazilian Jiu Jitsu teach Julien about life? 

To face the world. Navigating with autism. 

28:50  Facing intensity, pain, and stress.  Needed for growth.

I think therefore I am…. or should it be I am therefore I think?

36:40  The study of human beings by putting them in stress.

It’s not about technique. It’s about how you handle yourself in front of difficult situations.

40:00  The greatest battle field is in our mind. 

Task Negative Network and Talk Positive Network. (where flow state is)

46:12  The Vagus Nerve and how to use to be in control of your nervous system.

How to shift yourself to the flow state.

51:37  Does Julien struggle with people?

55:04-55:47*  The price to pay for entry.

55:06  How much is going into Julien vs StrongFit Julien?

1:00:00  How does Julien learn?

1:04:05  What is the intent of the StrongFit Seminars?

1:07:40  How does Julien package information in a way that is satisfactory for him?

1:10:00  The eye of the Storm – Suicide – A defining moment on a Bridge – What his brother didn’t do.  Burning his sense of self.

1:13:42  There is something to scaring the crap out of yourself that introduces you to yourself.

1:15:40  Other moments that changed his life.  

1:16:30  Can you apply the lessons of internal/external torque to your thinking and dealing with emotional stress?

1:20:45  The nervous system as it relates to behavior.  Being able to apply force in a healthy manner.  What are the signs?

1:27:18   3 ways to stimulate vagus nerve to bring us back to parasympathetic state:  Movement, Breathing, Nutrition

How to train your soul.

1:39:30  Regulation in ice. Physical stress to mental relaxation. 

1:41:51 Self-Control – Auto regulation and self correction – self awareness and self regulation

You are not a passive victim of your system.

1:44:10  The Arch Theory 

1:49:50  Training Method WES: Weight bearing, Eccentric (lowering the weight), lower Skill

The quality of stress matters. Not quantity.

2:02:02 Chris Moore – Barbell Buddha 

SOCIAL MEDIA AND WEBSITES:

@strongfit1   @1scottmcgee   @TheSisuWay

StrongFit.com     TheSisuWay.com   

StrongFit youtube channel

BOOKS:

What is Life – Erwin Schrödinger

12 Rules for Life – Jordan Peterson 

Brain’s Way of Healing – Norman Doidge, M.D.

23: Author Ryan Munsey – Awareness Creates Choice

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How do you create an unbeatable mind that provides the fortitude, grit, sisu, invictus, and mental toughness to overcome adversity? How do you positively alter your mental state? This is the episode that answers those questions. 

The goal of this episode is to bring awareness on how we make decisions and how we take action and responsibility for our lives in an intentional way.  Self-awareness is something we can develop.  This awareness is what creates choice.

My guest is Ryan Munsey, author of the book, F*ck Your Feelings.  Ryan is an artful scientist who has the drive, curiosity, and compassion to explore the  reason of why some people succeed and others do not.  He is also a high performance consultant, speaker, and host of the podcast, The Better Human Project.  We discuss how to master your mind, accomplish your goals, and become a better human while being rooted in gratitude and lifted by awareness.

Show Notes:

Invictus

Moments – You are writing you’re own eulogy. When you’re gone, People will think and speak of you in the way that you live your life. We have the ability to shape how that conversation goes by the way that we move through the world.  Those moments are a choice.

7:16  Line in the sand – What are you going to do?

15:20  Who are you and what does it mean to be a good human?

18:34  You can control your Attitude and Effort.

19:50  Your life is perfectly designed for the results that you are getting.

23:15  How do you measure success? Hint: It shouldn’t be extrinsic.

Chris Dancy – We don’t know how to measure what we value so we begin to value what we measure.

The Rocking Chair Test – Health, Happiness, Performance

28:00   Can you measure happiness?  Heart Rate Variability

31:18  The 85 year-old Challenge.  Memento Mori

Appreciation not Expectation.

36:00  How do we positively affect our mental states? How the brain makes a decision.

44:20 95% of our decisions are based on how we feel in any given moment.

Feelings – a mental experience of a physiological state.  If we change our physiology we can change our feelings.

46:30  Limbic System – emotional ego driven teenager – feelings – the now

Prefrontal Cortex – the sage. – awareness

58:50  What is the vagus nerve and how does it affect you?

Emotional Resiliency – Bandwith

1:10:35  How to stay relaxed in traffic.

1:12:00  Wim Hof Method

Breathwork – how to stimulate your vagus nerve and why its important to exhale longer than inhale.

Cold Exposure – Stay parasympathetic in an environment that normally makes you sympathetic.

1:19:00 What you can do right now to improve mental resilience and toughness.

Developing grit though: Cold showers – look towards the sky and focus on the breath.

Be kind, be rooted in gratitude turn off defense mechanisms, etc.

Posture – Don’t sit or stand like a victim.

1:39:05 Playing – Don’t be the reason you stop playing.

2:03:08  The 360 sphere – Do not be out of round

Links:

F*ck Your Feelings – By Ryan Munsey

RyanMunsey.com for signed copy

Check out Ryan’s podcast: The Better Human Project

Instagram: @ryanmunsey_  @1scottmcgee  @thesisuway

TheSisuWay.com

The Sisu Way Team for Whole Life Challenge