Transcript
Introduction
Patrick
This week's conversation is about performance. More specifically, it is about the ins and outs of steady progress and growth. My guest is Brad Stulberg, who co-authored the book, Peak Performance, which combines research from many fields into a description of how athletes, creatives, and others continue to push boundaries in their respective crafts. As someone who is intermittently lazy, the growth equation framework that Brad and I explore has impacted me often since I first read the book several months ago. I hope you enjoy this conversation, which isn't about investing, but which is at its heart still about the power of compounding.
Finding Your Why
Brad
Vic Strecher, he's a professor affiliated with The University of Michigan. When I was studying public health there in graduate school, pretty much everyone I came across told me that I should enroll in Vic's class. I think he was teaching a class on health communication and behavior change. I went to enroll in the class and I saw that Vic was no longer teaching that class. I went to my advisor and I said, "I want to take this class. Vic's not teaching it." It turned out that Vic wasn't teaching that class, because his daughter, who was in nursing school, so a young woman, I think she was either 19 or 20, had passed away. His daughter, her name was Julia. She was born with congenital heart issues and actually ended up requiring a heart transplant at age nine. It was the youngest heart transplant ever. At that point, Vic thought that he was going to lose his daughter, and she made a miraculous recovery. As far as they knew, she was in good health. Then she suddenly passed away at age 19. This put Vic in a completely dark hole. He told me that he just retreated into himself and really wanted nothing to do with the world. That's why he wasn't teaching that semester. He went to a lake house in Northern Michigan alone and just tried to cope, and manage, and deal with his grief. He had this revelation one morning, out as the sun was coming up. He was out on either a canoe or a kayak on the water. He claims that it was as if his daughter, Julia, was talking to him and saying like, "Dad, you've totally lost your way. You've got to find a why." For the longest time, Vic's why had been his daughter, his girl. He says it was if she was telling him that, "This can't be your why anymore, because I'm not here, and you need to find your why. You can't just live your life like this."