Early in the movie, he is given some of the greatest wisdom a young man could hope to hear: “Don’t let the little head do the thinking for the big head”. I wasn’t even a teenager when I caught this film on TV late one night, and despite my best attempts to absorb this valuable guidance, it vanished the moment they cut to a scene with exotic dancers on the hoods of the cars as a sales promotion.

I know I’m not alone in having sexual thoughts or sexual urges crowd out what I was actually trying to do with my day. I wasted a lot of time and energy following similar thoughts and urges to fruition. When I did so by myself, the only person losing out was me. As an adult in a long-term relationship there’s really nothing like fulfilling those urges with someone who I really care about, and who cares a lot about me.

As a single man, however, I sometimes found myself following those urges into situations where there was a lot less care from both people, and the length of those relationships was significantly shorter.

At first, I believed I was assuming my final form, that of a goddamn sexual tyrannosaurus. But it wasn’t long before the wisdom of which head was doing the thinking started to make sense.

It started while trying to solve the equation as to why I felt so hurt when a woman didn’t text me back after asking her on a third date. I discovered that it was because my big head had negotiated the initial situation. If I found myself in crisis management fielding a stream of upset texts from a woman who had different ideas to me about the status of our relationship, that was usually because the little head had been project lead on that scenario.

Things carried on like this until a good friend of mine sat me down and gave me a stern talking to regarding what kind of calamity I was getting myself into by having such an unsustainable sexual energy policy.

He wasn’t only warning me of the kind of personal trouble I was inviting, but also of the spiritual trouble I was so obviously trapped in: constantly searching for something that was missing within me and expecting to find what I needed in another, not knowing that I could keep looking until the end of my days and never find it. That’s not to mention that I just wasn’t getting anything done.

At one point I would be walking back to my home in Bondi with my groceries, and I’d pass a beautiful woman in her togs on her way to the beach. Of course, I didn’t say or do anything, but if the feeling in my body from witnessing her stunning, undulating womanhood walk past me lingered like the coconut-scented air that wafted in her wake, the moment I was inside my apartment and the tofu was in the fridge, I’d lose a whole afternoon manually working that feeling out of my body on my own.

It took a while before I finally accepted that my mate was right, and when a ‘big head’ relationship showed up it was clear that I needed to find a way to stop the ‘little head’ from deciding how things would go this time. So, I got to work learning how to redirect those feelings to places that were far healthier and more productive.

By learning to see such moments as a gift given to us by these women and knowing that the energy released from that moment can be used to our benefit in ways far more constructive than mere pleasure, we are instantly freed from our choices being derailed by our more basic instincts.

There’s a physical side to this as well, a technique I learned that is not unlike breathing through a stretch to find more flexibility. Being present to that explosive rush in your body, then taking a few deep belly breaths, it’s possible to move that powerful ball of energy out of your hips and up into your heart. When I moved that energy there, the sky looked a little bluer, things sounded a little crisper, even food tasted more sumptuous.

When we’re teenagers, it’s almost impossible to harness that sexual energy. Learning how to harness it is an important part of growing into a man. Just as we learn how to control our physical power, so we don’t accidentally hurt someone, or learn how to handle surges in emotion or desire, part of being a man is knowing when and how to use the power we all have in ways that provide for or protect the people around us if needed.

If we keep losing energy to anger or desire, we won’t have anything left when it comes to achieving our goals or helping those we care about.

Little boys get ‘stiffies’ on the beach when a pretty lady walks by and unleashes a cascading hormonal response within them that they can barely control. Men, gratefully and respectfully take that very same energy as a free power-up, using that beautiful boost to help them be a better partner, a better provider and a better friend.

When I first started working in the reality TV dating space, I was a single man. Journalists at the time would ask me to my face if as a single man I was a ‘cat in the henhouse’, sometimes even on live television. While I was disappointed that’s the first place they went, completely ignoring not only the professionalism I’m proud of but also the agency of every woman involved, I understand why they did it.

Because as men (and only men asked me this question) they had probably never considered that you could choose what to do with the sexual urges that can sometimes come over you (sorry). For a long time, I was the same, and I’m grateful I get to live now as a different man.

Like anything new we learn, at first, it’s deliberate but soon enough it’s automatic.

Now, any such thoughts immediately repurpose themselves to thoughts about me and my wife, which is a delightful bonus that can sometimes bring a cheeky smile because I’m now thinking about what might happen when I get home, were it not for the 5-year- old kicking-machine sleeping between us.

Learning how to redirect this energy can allow us to reap the benefits of what it means to wholly and completely commit to a loving relationship, even to be more productive at work, be a better father, even to be more helpful to others, because that’s what can happen when we’re using our big brain to do the thinking.

Related: 

Osher Günsberg on the male rite of passage we don’t talk about

Osher Günsberg on saunas and the power of self-talk

The post Osher Günsberg on how to redirect distracting sexual energy appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.

DIGITAL ISSUE

Osher Günsberg on the male rite of passage we don’t talk about

If you’re holding on to the memory of former flames while you’re supposedly in a committed relationship, you could be doing yourself and your partner a disservice

by OSHER GÜNSBERG

THERE ARE TWO monumental moments when it comes to committing to a relationship. Yet we only publicly celebrate one of them.

Pictures of you and your partner building some flatpack, adopting a dog, or even a close-up of an engagement ring are all moments we proudly display to the world, and then watch as the comments section fills with congratulations, dated ball-and-chain jokes, or hopefully – affirmations of how much you nailed the ring design.

If you’ve chosen your partner well, there’s another moment that usually occurs in private. A moment that sets you up to access a whole new level of who you can become yet can only be unlocked through a healthy and committed relationship.

I’ve done this twice in my life, and both times it was a wonderful experience.

Usually, it’s well before you move in together. If you wait until after you’ve put away the Allen keys and recycled the cardboard moving boxes, you’ve likely left it too late to perform this sacred rite of passage.

It’s the moment where the man-child becomes a man. The moment that you sit alone, and in deep contemplation, gratefully and methodically go through your phone and purge every single number that you will never text nor pick up a call from again.

This spiritual journey continues to an advanced stage, where you travel through your social media accounts, discretely unfollowing people you have absolutely no business being in further contact with.

This may be confronting to consider, especially if you’re used to a life of plenty when it comes to dating. I’d encourage you to think about what you’re saying ‘yes’ to by saying “no” to late-night DMs from flames that still flicker.

In this modern era, where endless rivers of potential partners are just a swipe away at all times, an abundance of choice can scuttle our chances of actually finding someone that unlocks the best in us.

When difficult moments inevitably show up in a relationship, in the back of our mind if we always know we have other options – our willingness to work through those moments goes out the window.

 

Let’s face it, sometimes when you first click with someone, it’s pants ahoy. You don’t talk a lot because both of your mouths are always full.

Yet after a few weeks, sometimes a few months, eventually you’ll stop “connecting” in a purely physical sense and then comes a moment where you find yourselves actually wanting to talk with each other.

In my experience it’s during this critical point in a relationship arc where it’s pointed out to you that there’s some aspects to your personality that actually aren’t serving what the two of you are trying to build together.

It starts in a playful way at first, however, it isn’t long before the tone turns. Perhaps you get told you’re a bit selfish, or you’re a ’topper’ (you’ve always got a better story than someone else), or even that you are low on eye contact with their friends.

Whatever it is, something about you is making the bits of their body that need to get involved to make the naked fun times happen, very much want to not get involved. 

Too often though, instead of seeing these conversations as legitimate chances to improve the way we move through life, the prospect of accepting that we might not actually be perfect is too much for us. Doing work on ourselves to become a better man and to reconnect with this person is all too much for us, so we put it down to our partner having a problem and break it off.

Then as we walk home in the blazing light of day still in the crumpled clothes we wore last night, we crack out the phone and start chasing the thrill of those first few weeks all over again.

We like to think we’re on the hunt for “the one” but I’m here to tell you, there’s no such thing as “the one”. There’s only the one who’s willing to work on it with you.

If your current relationship situation resembles less of a short list and more of a multicoloured, overlapping Venn diagram, it might be time to consider that you’re the reason you haven’t found the right partner yet.

It’s counterintuitive because when it comes to other things in life, like money and muscle mass, more is more, right?

While we keep going from one short and shallow relationship to the next, we might start to believe that we’re winning the game, but the fact we don’t want to face, is that we’re only playing the first level, over and over again.

We know the game so well; we even do speed runs to see how quickly we can get the loot.

With the group chat cheering our success rate, it might feel like we’re elite players, but the truth is very different. As soon as we hear that music signals, we’re nearing the boss level, we ‘int and respawn’ (for non-gamers that’s deliberately die) right back to the select screen.

This behaviour can cause long-lasting issues, not just in us, but in the partners we drag through this immature charade. I’ve started to meet more and more men who are in their late 20s yet have never once introduced a partner to their parents. They all walk with the same swagger, believing that they are achieving peak manhood because their stats are off the charts.

What they don’t understand is that soon enough, a day will come when they are now the old guy in the club. Standing there alone with the dreaded old face/young hair combo, a clear signal of a life spent avoiding growing up.

To do that, we have to be willing to face the parts of ourselves that are getting in the way of finding the kind of happiness and progress that can only be unlocked when we’re in a committed relationship.

Yet if facing that feels like a battle you’re not willing to fight, ancient military history offers a vital tactic.

In 207 BCE a Chinese general by the name of Xiang Yu was leading his soldiers against the mighty army of the Qin dynasty in what became known as the Battle of Julu. To strengthen the resolve of his men, the warlord famously ordered his soldiers to “smash the pots and sink the boats”. 

By eliminating any possibility of retreat, his men had no option but to fight with immense courage and tenacity, because victory was their only option if they were to survive. The plan worked, and they emerged victorious.

If you’ve met someone you are really into, and there are still dormant numbers in your phone waiting to be awakened like a Manchurian Candidate when they hear the trigger phrase “…what are we?” spoken by  your current partner; if your fling from last summer is still sliding by your feed looking way more fun than the partner who’s annoyed that you forgot to take the bins out, then you’re choosing retreat rather than victory every time.

And it’s not just you who will suffer defeat. Your partner volunteered to join you on this long-term mission, so if you’re turning tail and heading back to boot camp the moment things get difficult, you’re not only disrespecting yourself, you’re disrespecting them, too.

Removing options works to help you focus in other ways, too. It’s been 14 years since I last had a drink, and while I’m not about to risk the life I’ve built since getting clean, when I check into a hotel room, I still get them to take all the alcohol out of there. Not that I’ll touch it, however, if it’s in the room, it takes up valuable processing power that I’d rather use to work more effectively or connect with my family.

If you’ve still got mental tabs open with people from your past occasionally popping in your DMs to do a welfare check (“I’m back in Bali, remember our weekend in Ubud?”) then your head is not in the game, and you’re selling yourself and your partner short.

It’s not a ritual circumcision or wearing a glove filled with bullet ants, but it is an important rite of passage if you want to see what kind of man you can become.

Don’t think I’m above wanting to resist this myself, far from it. When I did this, it was in response to a clear message along the lines of “I get you might need a little longer to commit to this, however, if keeping that level of communication open with others is important to you, I’ll be on my way”.

Comparing what I was about to lose with what I was trying to hold on to made it a simple choice, and one that brought way more relief and a far more secure relationship than I could have imagined. 

Here’s what worked for me. Make some time in your calendar, and one by one, go through your phone and your feed deleting and defriending people from your past.

You’ll notice your brain will do a thing called “hedonic recall”, which is where we only remember the good parts of a situation (we remember the lovely holiday, yet we forget about the lost luggage).

As those memories arrive, allow them to happen and say “thank you” like you’re Marie Kondo.

Then deliberately remember why it is that this person isn’t the one you just committed to. It could be you weren’t ready and they protected themselves by moving on, or it could be there was something about their age, their unhealthy habits, or how they seemed to know an awful lot about the internal hierarchies of outlaw motorcycle gangs, that meant they were an inappropriate choice of partner for you. 

The first time I did this it was before smart phones, so as I laboriously thumbed my way through the Nokia menu, I had plenty of button clicking time to remember with a smile why “Emma Blue Dress Rooftop Party” was in my phone, and then deliberately remind myself why that never grew into anything else.

Once you’re done, you might be surprised at the freedom it brings.

There is something so powerful about deliberately ignoring texts or calls from numbers you don’t recognise, even pictures or videos that previously would have been a like setting off a homing signal in your brain. Removing the power those things previously had to make choices for us means we can reclaim that power and focus it toward a relationship that brings us something far more valuable.

Smash the pots. Burn the boats. Fearlessly wade into battle with your man-child and emerge on the other side to taste the spoils of victory. 

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Yet I can say without question that the most effective and profoundly beneficial thing I’ve ever paid for that improves my mental health, my sleep, my mood and my recovery after training, is investing in a sauna.

After a significant consultation period with my CFO (my wife Audrey), and with a bit of assistance from my builder mate Jared, who helped us pour the slab, we recently installed a sauna in the backyard.

The science behind the benefits of deliberate heat exposure is robust, but that doesn’t mean taking a sauna is easy, although sometimes it’s less arduous that others.

When I’m in there with mates and having a chat, the fifteen minute hourglass slips by before we’ve even noticed. It’s hot, it’s uncomfortable, and yet it’s almost easy. But when I’m in there by myself, it’s a whole different story. I’m locked in an intense man on man battle between me and my dynorphins.

Dynorphins are the opposite neurotransmitter to endorphins, which we know get released during enjoyable activities like exercise or laughing. Endorphins not only feel good, they also reduce pain. Dynorphins, on the other hand, are released during periods of high stress or discomfort and can create a powerful sense of unease to signal that something is wrong.

So why would I deliberately put myself into a state of pain and dysphoria when I could be upstairs on the couch catching up on an entire weekend of football? Because there’s clear research that repeated, deliberate heat exposure causes an adaptation response where the sensitivity of our brain’s dynorphin receptors decreases over time. Essentially, your body learns to handle stress better, making you more resilient to both physical and mental challenges.

This is all well and good in theory, but it only works if you do it for a certain amount of time, and it’s hard to remember all this when you’ve got four unbearable minutes to go in your giant backyard yum-cha steamer (I do look a little like a dumpling sitting there in my DT’s). But last night, as I tried to get through a particularly intense timed session, I tried something new. Deliberately feeling the full experience of the discomfort I said out loud,

“This is uncomfortable”.

Taking a breath in and really focussing on the sensations of discomfort, I breathed out saying

“Lucky I can withstand discomfort”.

As soon as I said this, an uncomfortable environment, which just a moment ago had me almost launching out the door, gasping for breath, standing under a cold shower and then immersing myself in the cold plunge for five minutes – suddenly and quite noticeably became bearable. A few seconds later I wanted to escape again, so I kept repeating the pattern.

Before I knew it the hourglass had ran out and that was my 15 minutes. Sitting in the blissful relief of the cold plunge, staring up at the stars, I became very curious.

How can something that my body is telling me is impossible to endure almost instantly become endurable? Isn’t the same brain giving me both experiences? Turns out that self-talk is one of the most powerful ways that we can influence not only our ability to handle emotional and physical discomfort, but also to enhance our performance.

The core message from everyone from the Stoics to eminent psychologists like Carl Jung, is that if you can change how you think about something, and then you change how you feel about it. But what does this mean for physical performance?

The research shows that what you say to yourself while exercising can profoundly affect how your body and mind handle a workout. If you’ve ever done a Time-To-Exhaustion (TTE) test on a bicycle, you’ll know that they are one of the most brutal tests of fitness that you can do (easily as horrible a beep test).

Towards the end you’re absolutely anerobic, completely cooked, and cursing the fact you ever took your training wheels off. I assume this is why some possibly sadistic researchers in the US tested 24 cyclists by having them pedal at 80 per cent of their maximum heart rate until they just couldn’t pedal anymore.

Split into two groups where one group practised motivational self-talk for two weeks, and the other group didn’t, after two weeks, they repeated the cycling test and the results were startling. The self-talk group lasted significantly longer during the cycling test, being able to handle the pain for a whopping two extra minutes of heroic effort. While the control group showed no improvement, the time to exhaustion for the self-talk group increased up to 12 minutes from a baseline of 10 minutes.

What’s equally impactful is that the self-talk group reported that the exercise felt easier at the halfway point, while the control group didn’t notice any change in how difficult the exercise felt. It’s nice to see some science behind the kids’ book The Little Engine That Could. 

But what about something that isn’t just pumping your pistons on a bike? Whenever I take my son to the basketball, I’m always impressed by athletes that within the same minute are sprinting up and down the parquetry, then being completely still and utterly focused as they take the lead by nailing a free throw while 10,000 people (including me and our five-year-old) scream “airball” at them.

The data on self-talk improving basketball shooting accuracy is absolutely wild. Researchers in Greece split 41 male basketball players into two groups: one used self-talk, and the control group didn’t. Both groups practised as normal, practising the same amount of free throws for three weeks. The self-talk group used specific phrases like “I can do this” or “focus on the target” and worked towards personalised phrases that gave them their own specific performance cues. At the final test both groups did shuttle runs to simulate game conditions, and then took free throws while fatigued.

The self-talk group scored significantly higher than the control group, which could easily be the difference between making the playoffs and having a very, very early mad Monday. When we use positive self-talk, we’re adding an extra success factor on top of our accumulated conditioning, practice and teamwork.

But what about negative self-talk? Often, we’ll say the most reprehensible things about ourselves when we mess up. Things that nobody would ever dare say to us. Watching the footy on the weekend, I saw a strapping young lad miss a crucial kick to convert a try, and then slap himself in the head about six times. Hard.

As it turns out, if we slap ourselves around like that, we significantly reduce our chances of making the next conversion successfully. Spanish researchers working with a group of gymnasts found that just as positive performance could be predicted by positive situational self-talk, negative performance could be predicted by negative situational self-talk.

So be careful what you say to yourself when you’re under the pump. Whether you’re running a triathlon, sitting in the sauna with me being human pork buns, or dealing with your furious teenager who’s grinding your gears about not being allowed to go to a party with kids four years older than her at a house where the parents are away and “oh my god you guys are horrible come on literally everyone else is going, you’re going to ruin my life”, remember that no self-talk is actually better than negative self-talk.

The research is clear that if you can use self-talk that is in alignment with the outcomes you want to achieve, it will improve your chances of achieving those outcomes.

Even if it’s taking a breath and saying to yourself “I’m a kind parent with great boundaries, if it’s a choice between keeping her safe and keeping her happy, I’ll choose safe every time, I can handle unhappy”.

Positive self-talk is a way that can help you not only endure things that are hard, but achieve goals you might not have otherwise achieved. I’d urge you to give it a try, think of it as a power-up that amplifies your existing training and preparation. For me, I’m off to crank up the thermostat on our sauna and do some of my own research into this.

Not in a weird, flat earth/lizard people way, research with a stopwatch and a notebook. You know, science.

Related:

Osher Günsberg on coming to grips with what you can actually control in life

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The post Osher Günsberg on saunas and the power of self-talk appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.

But now the Games are over, even the upcoming footy finals aren’t enough to keep me from being overwhelmed by the news.

When I consider that we’re still months away from a US election, with our own election right around the corner, I can easily let that feeling of being overwhelmed either shut me down or worse – start to make reactive choices for me.

So, in the interests of being able to cope for the next little while and making sure that I’m not getting played like a useful idiot (a naive or credulous person who can be manipulated or exploited to advance a cause or political agenda, something I have been in the past, much to my regret), I’d like to share a basic plan for keeping your head level and thinking straight when we’re in tumultuous times.

It’s all about control.

Take the US election for example. The saying goes, ‘If the USA sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold’.  The US election is really important to us. There’s so much at stake for our country economically, culturally, and from a national security standpoint.

Yet we have absolutely zero impact when it comes to influencing the outcome of that election. Most of America is in the same boat as us. Is it fair that a few hundred thousand people in places like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin get to decide the national security and economic outcomes for the rest of the world for the next four years? No.

Can I do anything about that? No. And this is what I want to talk about.

After I got divorced, I was in complete upheaval, totally stuck in an emotional mire. My ideas of how to handle things weren’t enough, so I needed ideas that weren’t mine to get me moving. I reached out to a mate, the elite-level executive coach Siimon Reynolds. I must have sounded desperate because he swiftly gifted me three incredibly expensive sessions of his time.

Siimon taught me the concept of having an internal locus of control vs an external locus of control (locus is just a fancy word for location). An internal locus of control is the belief that our actions and our choices directly influence what happens. With a strong internal locus of control, we tend to feel more empowered and more responsible for our lives. An external locus of control is when we believe life happens to us and we have absolutely no power over it.

We believe the reason things happen to us is because of external factors like luck, fate, or what other people choose.

When I called Siimon, I was helpless, passive, and truly believed I had zero influence over what was going on. I had a very strong external locus of control. So, how do we change that? How do we take the power back?

Simply put; if we focus on what we can control and accept what we can’t control, we replace fear and powerlessness with stability and resilience. Given the political polarisation we’re experiencing, economic instability, horrible international conflicts, it’s understandable to feel anxious or powerless sometimes.

But those feelings get in the way of you actually enjoying this day today. They get in the way of connecting with people you care about and who care about you. Your kid who’s asking you to look at this cool thing they made with Lego doesn’t care what some politician is saying about nuclear power. Yet because the politician said that, your kid gets the message that they don’t matter to you as much as your phone, where you’re reading that story.

Managing these feelings is about more than you.  Here’s a way to figure out what’s in your control. It’s pretty simple, all you need is a piece of paper and a pen.

Draw the outline of a soccer ball that takes up the whole page, and in the middle of that, the outline of tennis ball. Inside the tennis ball (the internal locus of control), write down all the things in your life that you can actually influence. Your personal health, your relationships, your work, your daily routines, and crucially – how you think about things. Because you might not be able to control the outcome of elections or wars or whether that nice lady will text you back; but you can control how you respond to the news, how you engage with people around you, and how you take care of your mental and physical heath.

Then in the soccer ball circle, write out all the things you can’t control. Climate change, power prices, traffic, how the sun is in your eyes when you drive home, who wins the AFL grand final, Ryan Papenhuyzen’s ankle, the tone of voice your partner uses when they remind you to take out the bins – whatever it is, if you can’t actually control it, put it in the big circle.

Then take a long hard look at it. Look for what’s missing. What is your ego insisting is in the outer circle but might have more to do with what you think about or what you make it mean? What choices belong in the inner circle that create things in the outer circle? (For example, choosing to stay in a relationship or a job, or choosing to not go and see a psychologist.)

Once you’ve had a few minutes contemplating your lists just go about your day, while still holding these balls in your mind. (I didn’t want you to forget it, so I deliberately made this whole thing into a dick joke.) Every time you get worked up about stuff in the outer circle get in the habit of reminding yourself that you have zero control over it, but you have 100 per cent control over how you think about it.

This is not to say that we have to accept things that are shitty and just suck it up. Things actually start to feel heaps better when we begin to change the things we can change. To do that – set achievable, measurable, realistic goals for things within your control and then make them scheduled daily habits.

With me, if it doesn’t go in the calendar, it doesn’t happen. So, everything goes in the calendar.

I find it quite motivating to remember that we can’t change the world, but we can change the world around us. By focusing on bringing positive change to our home, our work, and our community, soon we can feel like our whole world has changed – mainly because it has.

Like anything, it’s important to treat the cause once the symptoms are under control. It goes without saying that our simple brains can’t ever beat the algorithm – it will hook us every time.

Constant exposure to negative news can increase anxiety and a sense of helplessness. We can take control by limiting how long we’re exposed to it. Actively manage your media consumption. Set boundaries for how much news you consume and seek out positive or neutral sources of information.

If some of the stuff I’m talking about sounds impossible, a psychologist can offer another perspective or help with navigating rigid thinking. Since I’ve learned how to focus on what I can control, actively reframing my thinking, practicing radical acceptance, and getting into action in a problem-solving direction, things feel heaps better. I also get a lot more done because I’m not wasting time and energy lamenting at the state of the political left or Ryan Papenhuyzen’s tibia.

So, as we bob around on our esky in the stormy seas of the news cycle, if we can remember to hold onto our balls, we can accept we can’t control the weather or the waves, but we can build a sail out of our boardshorts and Kon-Tiki that thing all the way to Tahiti.

Related:

Osher Günsberg on why you need a mental map

Osher Günsberg on why vulnerability and resilience are connected

The post Osher Günsberg on coming to grips with what you can actually control in life appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.

It’s not always going to be bad, and it’s not always going to be good. And recently, it hasn’t been good. Honestly, it got pretty bad – and I got lost in the wilderness without realising that I had tools to get myself back to mental safety.

You’d think I’d notice it coming with all the familiar warning signs piling up. I was becoming unusually quiet around people and then breaking out in a cracking great cold sore, but I still didn’t notice.

I didn’t want to be unable to cope, so I just kept pushing on, reframing my increasingly uncomfortable reality to fit the narrative that I’m okay despite, in the words of Pulp Fiction’s Marsellus Wallace, being “pretty far from okay”.

One of my favourite books, Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales, describes something called “bending the map”. It’s a term taken from the world of orienteering, where runners refuse to update their mental map despite overwhelming evidence that they are lost in the woods.

Rather than stop and figure out where they actually are, they stick to their planned course and just keep running, convinced that it’s the surroundings which must be wrong and not them. It’s a kind of unconscious hubris that can be deadly.

Gonzales tells the story of a very experienced hiker who was found barely alive, five kilos lighter than he was three days prior, clinging to a tree and nearly dead from hypothermia because he refused to open his backpack full of survival gear, as admitting he was lost would mean admitting that he needed help.

I’m not awaiting the mountain rescue chopper, but I absolutely relate to that. I didn’t want to accept that I was getting strung out again.

I’ve been going through a career transition, and as often happens, financial uncertainty comes with such a moment. Uncertainty that almost tells the universe “Hey, if you want a free shot, now’s the time”.

If you’ve ever owned a pre-1980 car, you’ll know that the vehicle waits until payday to blow up the alternator. Similarly, our 100-plus-year-old house waited until now to transform our basement into the underground canals of Antwerp.

As the plumber sharply inhaled through his teeth looking at our new subterranean river system and then started describing the size of the digger we would need to redirect the groundwater around our foundations, my brain jumped into self-protection mode and just shut down my ability to understand English.

On top of that, after getting some blood tests done, I got a call from the specialist’s office, bumping my appointment up from a month away to this Thursday without saying why.

As the stresses increased, I didn’t recognise the signs. I got quieter around the house, which worried my wife, Audrey, because she knows somethings up. I, however, just kept ploughing on.

This included pushing my body at the gym, in an effort to gain some respite from the uncomfortable feelings in my body. The last straw was going as hard as I could at mat Pilates. My stepdaugher Georgia is an excellent teacher, and I try to go once a week to balance out the barbells. I don’t care what your 1RM is, mat Pilates is pure brutality.

Pushing forward with no regard for my own health, I was futilely hoping that doubling down on everything would make it all feel better soon. Instead, things just got worse, and then, boom – I got a cold sore. A pet corn flake of my very own, so large that I’ll need to introduce it when I have my next video call, making its home under my right nostril.

I’d been bending the map, not wanting to accept that I am struggling, taking numerous wrong turns, in an attempt to deal with rising levels of stress.

I wasn’t paying attention to my rising anxiety levels and rather than stopping and noticing my brain catastrophising, I allowed those thoughts to get away from me and start to run the show.

There was a time when I had a strict daily regimen that helped me avoid all these things, a practice that included journalling, tracking anxiety levels, and having realistic expectations around what my work schedule and training might look like.

As I got better, I used these structures less and less. It’s all working well, why bother? Like most things, everything was just fine until it wasn’t.

While I wasn’t clinging to a tree on the side of a freezing mountain with a backpack full of warm clothes and gear to make a fire, I was on the way to a perilous mental state. Not only unable to notice I was in trouble, but also not utilising any of the tools that I have to deal with such a situation.

The only move then is to find acceptance and get into action.

So, I marched up to the pharmacy to grab some over-the-counter Famciclovir for the face-herpes. As the only cure for the over-training was rest, I sat myself down to deal with the catastrophising I was experiencing around the suburban submarine base and whatever the doctor had to see me about so quickly.

I find catastrophising a by-product of having a creative job. I make things up for a living. I write books, screenplays, TV scripts, podcasts, live comedy shows, songs – I even draw.

My mental reward system for amplified ideas and unpredictable connections is very trigger-happy, which is good because that’s what I need for work.

Yet my brain can be just as creative with the negative stuff. I have to understand that I can’t have one without the other, so staying on top of the creative catastrophising allows the positively creative side of it to flourish.

That looks like grabbing a pen and paper, and taking whatever it is that I’m catastrophising about (money, for example) and then writing out in detail, the absolute best, best, best-case scenario. The full, over the top, everything goes in our favour, dream version of how things might turn out.

Then I write the absolute, worst-case scenario. The darkest, most grim, most unintended consequence domino effect horror-show scenario, like Dean Koontz and Stephen King were in a pissing contest trying to describe how horrible things are, graphically describing every flow-on effect as ridiculously as I can, as far into the future as I can, going into great detail about how, 25 years from now, there’s no question that something awful will absolutely happen because of this thing now.

The final step is to write the more probable outcome in between the two of those things, in similar detail.

Trying to do this when I’m in an already heightened state is impossible because my brain can refuse to see how things could be any other way, so it’s important to consider this situation with a brain that’s not mine. So, I asked Audrey what she thought was going on. Her take was tangential, yet far more optimistic than any of mine.

This is where things get interesting. There’s something about writing out those three scenarios, by hand – not typed into my phone – but written in my barely-legible, son of two doctors cave scrawling, that makes the working bits of my brain say to the ruminating bits of my brain: “Wait up…hang on fellas, we can see it all written out in front of us. Looks like he finally understands that we’ve been thinking about it over and over and that we can’t stop thinking about it over and over, but it’s clear now that he got the message. Good job amygdala. Pack it up hypothalamus. We’re done here.”

In a few short minutes, without changing my circumstances at all, still with a potentially massive plumbing bill and possibly enormous news coming from the specialist – I feel heaps, heaps better.

So, I’m back on the daily five-star rating to track my anxiety to remind myself that no mental state is a permanent state, and with my full daily routine back in operation, hopefully it will help me from getting lost in the wilderness and refusing to accept it.

Osher Günsberg on why vulnerability and resilience are connected

Osher Günsberg on reframing your reaction to bad news

The post Osher Günsberg on why you need a mental map appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.

There’s got to be more to it. This question floated around the back of my head for years, until the other day taking out the compost an idea popped out of my subconscious like a computer punch card from a ’50s sci-fi film. Vulnerability and resilience are two halves of the same whole. They can only exist if both are present. Think about it. Without Big Boi, André 3000 is just making an instrumental flute album. And while it’s a great record, it’s not OutKast. Vulnerability and resilience are two sides of the same piece of toast. There’s a sweet spot where it’s just right.

Too high on the dial and your bread hardens so much that it is at the same time impenetrable to melting butter yet so fragile if you pick it up incorrectly it will disintegrate. (Side note: that is the best toast-related mental health metaphor you’ll read today.)

Vulnerability is how susceptible you are to danger, harm, stress, and damage. Resilience is the capacity to recover from or deal with that harm, danger, stress or damage. They can only exist together.

One without the other leaves you with a suit of brittle armour masquerading as a false sense of safety. It’s almost like you become a plate-glass window. You’re so hard that the nastiest weather can’t touch you, yet when life sends a Mitchell Starc bouncer hurtling towards you at 160km/h, it’s inevitable that the whole facade will shatter and now a thousand razor-sharp slivers are raining down on you.

So many of us go through life far too fragile. In perilous danger of financial or emotional calamity at any moment because we have no resilience. Things might feel secure, but it we aren’t able to form relationships, express our personality, our creativity, or engage with others without thinking everyone’s trying to steal our stuff. From there it’s a slippery slope that can lead to hours of YouTube rabbit-holing, which starts out looking for footage of ’70s piano bars on the upper deck of a 747, yet ends at 3am texting all your friends about the terrible dangers of contrails.

We need to be vulnerable to feel anything worth feeling. We need to be resilient to deal with the full scope of feelings that show up, so we can keep going for ourselves and for others. Usually, we don’t get to choose when vulnerability comes for us. Resilience, however, is something that we can develop. To build within us the knowledge that we will be able to handle whatever comes.

And that’s really, important. How much are we limiting ourselves because our choices are coming from a place that fears negative outcomes? If we actively work on our resilience, that allows us to be vulnerable when needed. We contribute to a super fund so we’ll have financial resilience. We train so we’ll have physical resilience. Yet what about emotional resilience? Without it we can’t be emotionally vulnerable.

How can we enjoy the full spectrum of what it means to be a human if we aren’t emotionally vulnerable? When our youngest child was born, I cradled him to my bare chest for the first time with two equal ideas in my head – “My wife has harnessed the power of the universe to create this pure and perfect manifestation of love in human form. I no longer matter. Everything is now about you” and “HOLY SHIT YOU COULD DIE AT ANY MOMENT, HOW CAN I LIVE ANOTHER SECOND KNOWING THIS?”

We feel the first thing because of the second thing. We can deal with the second thing because of the first thing. That’s the deal. That’s what it means to be equally vulnerable and resilient.

It’s the same with falling in love. It takes vulnerability to fully be in love with someone. If you’re worried about what will happen to you if they ever leave you, are you ever going to fully commit?

In my experience the other person starts to pick up on this, resentments start to creep in, and soon enough that relationship falls apart quicker than a flatpack cupboard on a rainy hard rubbish day. You know, the one you built together when you moved in?

If you’re prepared to be vulnerable, all the joy and growth and experiences that you can only have when you fully put your heart into someone else’s hands, all of those things can be yours.

Yet to do that, you need the resilience to deal with whatever that vulnerability might bring into your life. Including that relationship ending. If you’re vulnerable enough to tell another person that you’re really into them and they say, “Yeah, nah, I don’t feel the same way.” You need resilience to handle that, to be with the hurt and the heartbreak and yet also know you’ll be okay. It might take a little time, you might need to figure out your part of what happened so it doesn’t happen again, but it’ll be okay.

Yet what if someone has no emotional resilience and hears, “It’s been lovely yet, this isn’t for me. Thanks for the pancakes, good night.” We all know what it can look like. You could head off on a week-long drinking binge, set about writing horrible things from fake accounts 72 weeks deep into a new partner’s Instagram, spreading lies, acting out, possibly hurting themselves or hurting someone else, showing up outside their work . . . Those are not the actions of an emotionally resilient person, and none of us want to be in a situation where any of those things feel like a really good idea.

The long-term consequences of making choices like that can cause way bigger problems than someone you’re sweet on not being into you. Vulnerability is imperative in having a deep and loving relationship with another human being, and being okay if it ends. So, what’s the couch to 5K equivalent of emotional resilience? How do you build emotional resilience like a muscle? It’s the simple stuff. It starts with getting decent sleep, eating a well-balanced diet, moving your body, having something to do that’s not about you, and having a small but strong circle of relationships.

If you’re alone, your problems are yours alone to hold. If there’s someone to talk to, it’s immediately half as bad.

Don’t worry we aren’t trying to recreate an Iron Age village here. Yet if you try to cultivate and nurture just two close relationships in your life that aren’t your partner, you’re golden.

How close? Close enough that if you couldn’t make school pick-up in an emergency, this person would drop everything, make sure your kids got home safely, got fed and got to bed okay.

You can never have too many people to call on a bad day, and to make sure that happens, put the work in to start having great days with those same people.

Because that’s the stuff that builds resilience.

Related:

Osher Günsberg on reframing your reaction to bad news

Osher Günsberg on the mental burpee everyone needs to do

The post Osher Günsberg on why vulnerability and resilience are connected appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.

I certainly know what it used to feel like.

When I lost Australian Idol, it felt like the world didn’t want me, like my life was over, and I’d be moving into a caravan park eating tinned spaghetti and Weetbix for the rest of my days, a washed up ex-TV guy shouting “I used to be someone ya little shits!” at the groms who are knock and running the tri-axle Viscount I now call home. However, between then and now, two important things happened;

1) I got sober, and 2) I lost two jobs in the same day (which is why this week is hilarious because it’s not the first time this has happened.)

I am incredibly grateful for my television career. I’ve worked hard to be the undeniable choice to keep the gig if the shows roll over.

At one point, I hosted four prime time television shows in the same year. To say that the last decade has been successful would be an understatement, and the cherry on top was getting nominated for a Gold Logie Award last year, a career defining moment if ever there was one.

So, to go from that workload, (and without being crass – that income, as those four prime time TV shows were on the mortgage application form when we bought this house) to nothing, well that could be tough.

The fact is, when the news broke publicly this week, it was just another Tuesday and the only remarkable thing about today is that it’s bin night.

This was not how it used to be.

My mentor David, who has guided me as I learned how to deal with uncomfortable feelings without needing to reach for a drink (or drugs or porn or sex or gambling or all of the above) held my hand the last time I got double-fired back in 2012.

I can still recall his voice on the phone as I told him “David I’ve just lost the last two jobs I had in the space of 18 hours”.

Without missing a beat he said, “I’m excited for you pal, this means that there’s bigger plans for you”.

Shocked that he did not want a front row seat to the pity party I was throwing, I repeated myself. “I don’t think you heard me correctly – I am now unemployed, divorced and paying rent out of my savings in a foreign country.”

“And I don’t think you heard me correctly – I’m excited for you. This means there’s bigger things ahead for you”.

Thankfully I’d been working with him for a while, so I knew enough to take a deep breath, reset on my exhale and by the time I breathed back in I had been able to let go of that old self-pity and experiment with the new way of being he was describing.

That reframe changed everything.

Instead of focusing on what I’d lost, I was able to put my energy into what was possible. The terrifying first-date question, “So, what are you working on?” now had a new answer. “I’m not working on anything”, became “I’m not working on anything, which means the next thing I work on can be anything”.

I am very grateful for David. I am equally grateful for my accountant, who had helped me save up a few vital months of runway. I used that money to pay myself a wage. My job? To invent the next job that I was going to do.

One of the shows I created was a dating show, and after pitching it around LA, a network in Australia bought it in the room. Not long after, the same network called to say they’d just acquired another dating show, would I like to host that one instead?

That was May 2013, and the show was The Bachelor Australia. I’d gone from unemployment to booking a massive network show once again, but I knew to not approach it the same as I had last time.

My former manager in LA, the late John Ferriter was an absolute mogul of the television industry. With the perfect combination of wisdom and strength, listening to him was like sitting at the foot of a showbiz oracle, his every sentence could be the title of the next massive business book. His wisdom guided me then, and still guides me now.

Two of his best have been with me these last few days. “Unless you host the 6 O’clock news, one day the big show you just booked is going to get cancelled. The moment you get that big show, you need to allocate time every week to planning for the day that happens.” Now I know when it happens, it’s not personal. It’s show business, not show friends.

You can be super tight with everyone on your production team, the network, even be driving a fancy free car the sponsors loaned you (thank you Mazda for that Turbo MX5 – I promise it was only sideways a few times). Yet the moment the show no longer makes a good business case, it’s over.

This is a little contrary to another hard truth of my game – it’s a fast yes or a slow no.

I’ve become better at spotting a slow no coming. When I was in breakfast radio in Brisbane, I saw a slow no appear on the horizon and before it arrived and made the choice for me. I was able to orchestrate a dignified exit.

Thankfully I spotted the current slow no a while back, but you wouldn’t have known from looking at me. I learned through my own mental health journey that the antidote to panic is a plan. Similar to how the ABC that has a folder full of clear action steps for when a reigning monarch dies sitting in the corner of every radio studio, I had a contingency plan and it slowly became my main mode of operation even though I was still shooting television and outwardly things looked like they’d keep going.

Importantly, my wife and I discussed this distant possibility well before it became a close possibility, and after seeking the advice of a business mentor I began to put everything in place about a year ago.

I changed the structured of my business, streamlined processes, hired people to help where I had blind spots.

While I was still actively shooting big shiny-floor TV shows, in the background projects I had been allocating time to develop were put on the top of the Trello board, and by the time there was confirmation that what we expected was going to happen (that these two jobs weren’t continuing on the network) it was a mostly seamless transition from one mode of operation to another.

There might have been a slight flicker as the UPS handed over to the emergency generator but other than that you wouldn’t notice anything was different, except that Dad’s around the house a bit more.

I won’t lie to you, I’ve had to do a heap of work around the self-worth and entitlement piece – but that’s all a part of it.

To make sure I was ready for the eventuality, I’ve been living as if this was going to happen since late last year. In that time, I’ve woken up with resentment, anger, or entitlement (sometimes all at once).

And rather than make any choices from that reactive space (like sending a verbose email to someone I really shouldn’t if I ever want to work again), I have been doing something different.

I’d try to notice those feelings, and then say to myself How fascinating! There’s a part of me that’s angry at (nice TV person) for getting the gig on (TV show I believed I should do). Well, that’s interesting isn’t it? I’m going to make a cup of coffee, sit down and write out all the things I’m angry at on the right side of my notebook. Things like ‘that guy gets all the gigs, ‘his podcast is HUGE, or ‘he’s got a massive deal with the Good Year blimp’ and then on the left side of the page, line by line I will write “of course” at the start of every one of those complaints, and then say them out loud.

If you’ve never tried this, you’ll be amazed at how effective it can be. A version of this happened at least once a week at first, then every fortnight or so, with perhaps a spate of three days in a row here and there. As uncomfortable as it was, the work was worth it.

By the time I was given the news face to face, I was able to smile and say something like “Of course. I totally get it. It’s tough to commission anything in this market. I love working with you, the whole team are great, I love the formats and if they ever get a chance to get up again, I’ll be first in line to show you I’m still the undeniable choice to host them.”

Because all of that is the truth.

The hurt and anger and resentment? That’s just me as a reactive petulant child, but sometimes he can take the wheel. The wreckage that kid has caused my life, the lives of others, my health and my career is immense – so it’s worth the work required to keep him in the back seat.

There’s one more powerful reframe I use if the childish resentment Demogorgon starts to reach for the steering wheel – it’s a moment between Michael Corleone and Hyman Roth in the film The Godfather Part 2. Speaking about his mate who got whacked to Corleone who ordered the whacking, Roth says, “I never complained, because it was business. And this is the business we have chosen”.

And this is the business I have chosen. I chose this life. I can un-choose it any time I want. So as Butch Coolidge said to Marcellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction, “What now”?

I’ll tell you what now. It’s got to do with one other thing that John taught me. Leaning forward in his chair under a photo of him jamming with Paul McCartney he says, “Someone’s going to be the next hit songwriter. Why shouldn’t it be you?”

Giving myself permission to think big and to execute big has changed my life.

Changing my mind from thinking, That sort of thing is for other people with connections and capital and lower body fat, I won’t even start, to That is exactly the sort of thing I would do. Pass me the post-it notes.

What a gift. What a wonderful present to get for my 50^th birthday. An opportunity to reinvent what I get to do.

That’s what now.

Related:

Osher Günsberg on the mental burpee everyone needs to do

Osher Günsberg on what healthy masculinity actually looks like

The post Osher Günsberg on reframing your reaction to bad news appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.

That’s not to say that recent local and global events haven’t put a strain on that. When it comes to mental fitness, the recent weeks living in my city of Sydney has been like trying to play first grade footy with no preseason warm-up. I’m sure you feel the same way. There’s been a lot going on and it’s a lot for anybody.

My mental fitness had been pretty good, however, just like when I find myself puffed at the top of a flight of stairs or my “good t-shirt” is a little too tight, I came to understand that I wasn’t where I wanted to be. I needed a bit of mental strength and conditioning work to get into better shape.

If you’ve ever done a 10-week challenge at your gym you’d be familiar with the most bastardly of all exercises, the burpee. I hate them, you hate them, we all hate them. Why? Because the burpee is possibly the best total-body strength and conditioning exercise you can do in a confined space. It doesn’t do everything, but it does a lot in a short amount of time.

There’s no doubt if you were to do 100 burpees a day for 30 days, it would transform your aerobic fitness, strength and flexibility. It would change your physical fitness. Luckily there’s an exercise I can use to improve my mental fitness just as profoundly. Mental fitness being the ability to make healthy choices that are not influenced by strong reactive emotions. If I’m mentally fit I’m able to feel all those powerful feelings and pause long enough to think, is this the right thing to say or do? More often than not, it isn’t.

So, what’s a really powerful, really efficient technique that if you can perform on a daily basis would transform your ability to be less reactive and more deliberate about your day? What’s the burpee of mental fitness?

Before we get there, it’s important to know what it is we’re hoping to improve. The Zen Buddhists say we all have two minds.

The “thinking mind” and the “observing mind”. Our thinking mind is an excited Labrador chasing a frisbee. Our observing mind is sitting on a park bench watching that frothing Labrador about to run straight onto a busy freeway. Yet if the Labrador runs onto the freeway, the observing mind also feels the consequences.

When we’re flooded with emotion, we can get stuck in “thinking mind” and it’s almost impossible to see that the frisbee isn’t the best thing to be focusing on. So, how do we build up the strength of the “observing mind”? For me, it’s noticing.

You can get into it in a couple of ways. Try putting the words “I’m noticing” in front of a physical feeling. For example, right now I’m noticing that my left ‘sit bone’ feels a little heavier on the chair than my right sit bone. Just that is enough to get me out of my thinking mind and into my observing mind. Set a timer on your phone and try just noticing sensations in your body for one minute.

Another way to use ‘noticing’ is to enquire about the emotions we’re feeling. Right now, I’m a little nervous I won’t make the deadline to write this column. If I notice a bit more, I discover that nervousness comes from wanting to do a good job for the people at Men’s Health, and that I don’t want to come across too sincere when you’re reading this. And once I’m aware of the fact that I’m feeling a bit nervous, a bit tense in my stomach, and my body’s feeling a bit stiff and sore, I know that when I’m like that, I tend to not make great choices. But now I’m aware of it, I can carry on typing this alongside those sensations and emotions, instead of letting that fear change what I write here.

“Noticing“ really helps my observing mind get used to jumping into emotionally intense moments and taking a look over things. Noticing can also be used as meditation. When I meditate, I can get extraordinarily frustrated that I can’t not think of stuff. So instead I just close my eyes and notice the things I’m thinking about, watching the thoughts go by me. Sometimes the thoughts are like slow boats on a river, usually the thoughts are a waterfall. What kind of SUV is Blaze from the Monster Machines? What did that bloke who paddled a Pumpkin down the Tumut River like it was a canoe cook with stuff he scooped out? Does my dog remember songs? I try to just watch these thoughts go by, and not get trapped under the weight of the thought waterfall.

Other times I’ll put a five-minute timer on my phone, and just notice the different parts of my body as I breathe in and out. Going clockwise from my left big toe all the way around my body down to my right big toe, spending a breath on each part. So – left big toe up through my foot, ankle, shin, knee, thigh, hip, all up my torso, back down the other side. All I’m doing is training my observing mind to get used to getting involved automatically.

You can even do it walking. When you walk, just walk and notice things. Notice the different hubcaps on the cars. Notice the different species of grass on different people’s lawns. Notice the different kinds of trees. Name them. It’s not a tree, it’s a eucalypt. It’s a Melaleuca. It’s bottlebrush. It’s not a bird. It’s a magpie. It’s a currawong. It’s a Channel Bill Cuckoo, if you’re unlucky enough to live next to one of those noisy bastards. You’d be amazed at what just ten minutes of that can do.

If you haven’t got time for any of these, try a tactic that is way harder than it sounds. See if you can notice just three times today when you go from sitting to standing. What you’re doing is you’re getting your observing mind involved in these otherwise subconscious or automatic behaviours. You’re getting your observant mind used to just being there in those spaces where sometimes you’re just on auto-pilot, or worse automatically reactive. The more sets and reps you do, the more you’re building up that neural pathway to that observing mind, getting in the habit of noticing your thoughts.

And when those peak moments come, for example, I’m noticing that I’m getting really frustrated at what’s my partner is doing here. I know that sometimes when I get really frustrated, I say things I regret. When I’m mentally fit, that tiny moment helps me take a breath and perhaps make a better choice, which serves me and my partner, than I otherwise would have.

If you’ve never done it before, just try it yourself for a couple of minutes. Just try noticing. Noticing how your body’s feeling. Try to notice when you feel happy or sad or anxious or bored or joyous or excited or horny or dull. Just notice. Soon enough, that observant mind starts to show up a bit more and help you make better choices that are aligned with the kind of person that you want to be in the world, and the kind of person you want to be to the people you love and the people who love you.

Related:

Osher Günsberg on what healthy masculinity actually looks like

Osher Günsberg: how I found freedom from fear of death

The post Osher Günsberg on the mental burpee everyone needs to do appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.