"The Way of Excellence"
Brad Stulberg on stress, building your "identity house," and "owning your seat"
I think of Brad Stulberg as kind of a psychology-infused modern philosopher — who can deadlift 530 pounds. I mention that last part because his work often stresses the importance of doing difficult and engaging things in the non-virtual world.
Brad has a brand new book out today: The Way of Excellence: A Guide to True Greatness and Deep Satisfaction in a Chaotic World. It brings to bear his characteristic mix of ancient wisdom, modern science, and his own unique stories and insights.
Our conversation about the book is below.
David Epstein: This book is an incredibly broad look at people figuring out how to do things that are worth doing. What prompted you to take on this tremendously important—and tremendously amorphous—topic?
Brad Stulberg: The first is that I think there is a very real risk that people just numb themselves to death. I think this risk is as old as time, but with AI-generated digital slop, it’s kind of like fentanyl for our brain, both to consume and to produce. I think there’s a risk that we wind up in a Brave New World sort of situation. The phrase I use in the book is that we’re on an algorithmic conveyor belt to nowhere.
I think the antidote is reconnecting with our innate humanity—our drive to create and contribute and flourish and explore our potential and to care deeply and give things our all. That’s how I define excellence, not as a destination or a standard, but as a process of caring deeply and giving something your all.
That leads to the second reason I wrote the book. I think there are so many misconceptions about what excellence actually is, especially with all the talk about optimization and hustle culture and taking 47 supplements and waking up at 4 a.m. to cold plunge. All these things masquerade as excellence, but they’re not.
DE: As you know, I like to nerd out about writing, and I think you have some of your best writing here—really sharp turns of phrase. I use purposeful experiments to work on my own writing. Did you have any particular system for improving your writing in this book?
BS: There was nothing that I explicitly aimed for, like, “How can I write better for this book?” But something that I do think helped—which is kind of ironic, given the algorithmic conveyor belt—is that I started an Instagram account.
I decided it was just going to be mini-essays, 150 to 400 words, text-based carousels where I forced myself to take complex ideas and communicate them really clearly in a tight space. I told myself I wasn’t going to write down to the platform or chase pithy “change your life” advice.
I think that constraint helped me write better turns of phrase. The whole book isn’t written like that—it wouldn’t be interesting—but there are moments where I want to drive something home or bridge topics, and that style of writing, where every line has to earn its place, helped.
DE: Well, as a guy with a book coming out on useful constraints, I’ll accept that answer.
BS: I may be the only author in the history of the world who says opening an Instagram account helped my writing.
DE: Which I actually like, because these tools aren’t going away. So the question becomes: Can we figure out how to use them for something useful?
Aliveness, AI, and doing the thing
DE: I want to read a passage I really liked:
“The main reason I write and lift weights is because a technology company can’t design a robot that can make me feel what I feel when I write and lift weights. Maybe the robot can write more elegantly or lift more weight, but it can’t make me feel the aliveness of a great idea. It can’t make me feel the rhythm of a great sentence. It can’t make me feel the heavy ass weight starting to move. That feeling is what makes us human.”
That reminded me of a talk by an artist I love, Titus Kaphar, who said professors kept telling him the kind of painting he wanted to do was old and dead. And he responded, “How could something that’s dead make me feel so alive?” It was the most electric moment I’ve seen in a talk.
Your lines made me feel that way. I could get AI to write at least some of the stuff I do now, but the doing is so much of the point. And I worry, especially for younger people, about using AI before doing their own thinking. These tools are powerful and useful, but if they supplant doing the thing, we lose something that makes us human.
BS: The point isn’t just the end result, it’s the process of getting there and the feeling of aliveness and satisfaction and accomplishment that you get. I think outsourcing that is outsourcing our humanity, in many ways.
I actually wrote that series of sentences in a Publix parking lot while waiting to pick up my son’s birthday cake. I was on the phone with a friend talking about AI, started riffing, and realized I needed to pull into a spot and write it down.
DE: I love that. I’m a fan of uninterrupted blocks of work, but sometimes getting out of your normal work milieu is exactly what stimulates the thought you need. You don’t always need a cabin in the woods and a typewriter. Publix parking lot for the win.
“I wouldn’t say I’m happy”
DE: Let me read another short passage:
“When I’m deep into a book project, or at week nine of a challenging twelve-week training cycle in the gym, or engrossed in coaching my son’s basketball team, I wouldn’t say I’m happy. These endeavors require real work. Yet there are few things I’d rather be doing, and few feelings I’d rather have.”
This really resonated with me. The most meaningful things in my life—writing books, investigative reporting, living on a research vessel in the Pacific, running the 800, parenting—have all been hard. If someone asked me in the middle of it whether I was enjoying myself, I’d say it was torture…at least for books and the 800. But it was all incredibly engaging. So I wonder if you’re saying that “happy” shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all of our aspirations.
BS: Engagement is the first part of my definition of excellence, so I love that word. I’ve been thinking a lot about satisfaction versus happiness.
Satisfaction is the feeling that I’m using my skills in a way that feels meaningful, and that, apart from results, I could fall asleep easy that night. Happiness is more fleeting. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s great, but I think we chase happiness when what actually makes for a good life is satisfaction.
I’m never happy when I’m training hard in the gym, but it’s deeply satisfying. I’d be happier watching Netflix every morning, but my life wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.
Stress, meaning, and the bench press
DE: You also write:
“Stress is in fact contingent on its purpose. Studies show that our response to challenge, all the way down to the hormones and inflammatory proteins we secrete, is directly related to whether or not we view a challenge as worthwhile.”
That’s counterintuitive—that what our hormones and inflammatory proteins are doing isn’t just about the magnitude of the stress, but how we contextualize it.
BS: Yeah, it’s fascinating. There are two components to the stress response: the stimulus itself, and our mindset about it—was it voluntarily chosen, and do we think it’s worthwhile?
If someone forces you to lie down and puts 315 pounds over your chest and says they’re going to let it crush you unless you do something about it, that’s terrifying. That person would go to jail. You’d have a massive stress response. You might need therapy. I also just described a bench press. Same weight, different meaning.
If I walk into the gym and try to bench 315 on my own volition, as part of a training program I find meaningful, I still have stress, but it’s not trauma. I’m actually going to grow from it. Stress is just stimulus. How we respond depends a lot on meaning and choice.
DE: That part of the book reminded me of when I was at Sports Illustrated writing about the science of pain. Since Descartes in the 17th century, the dominant model was called “specificity theory,” that pain worked like a bell and a cord: the cord is your nerves, the bell is your brain, and how hard you pull determines how loud the bell rings. Period.
Later research showed the brain is integrating context and meaning—how dangerous this feels, what it implies for your life—along with the stimulus to the nerve. Catastrophizing turned out to be one of the strongest predictors of pain for a given stimulus.
It’s like the famous case study of the construction worker who gets a bolt through his foot and is writhing in agony, convinced he’ll never run with his son again. At the hospital they cut off his boot and discover the bolt went cleanly between his toes. He’s immediately fine. The meaning of the situation ends up mediating what you actually feel, very similar to how you’re writing about stress leading either to growth or burnout.
BS: Yeah, it’s like the biopsychosocial model. And I think that holds true for a lot of these things we once thought were…Descartian…Decartesist ? How do you say it? Decartesian?
DE: Cartesian.
BS: Thank you. You’re smarter than me. Cartesian dualism.
DE: Wanna bet? I used a word the other day I didn’t know how to pronounce. Fortunately everyone else either also didn’t know or, more likely, they were too polite to say anything. I came home and looked it up. Whoops.
Modern life is stealing your 90 seconds
DE: Here’s another short passage that stuck with me:
“During the process of writing this book, I got lost in thought while filling up my car at the gas station on an otherwise busy day. It was a welcome moment of peace. And then, out of nowhere, a celebrity appeared on a high-definition screen on the pump, telling me that when I’m stressed, I just need to repeat to myself, ‘Everything is figureoutable.’ That experience is emblematic of today’s world, which cares not about our values, goals, or ability to think and live deeply, but rather page views, screen time, and monetization.”
I loved that scene because I’ve had the exact same experience with that exact same gas station video. Any time you get a little open headspace, there are advertising dollars to be made. What were you getting at there?
BS: Those moments are a chance to have a creative idea, or even just be with yourself. And then the screen comes on. That’s alienation. It creates distance. It creates remove.
I remember that happened on a really busy day. I’m doing interviews, running the kids around, and I’m thinking, thank God, I get a minute and a half. The kids are in the car, the door’s shut, I’m filling up the gas tank. And then the screen shows up. There goes my minute and a half.
Build an identity house
DE: I want to jump to identity, because I’ve talked about diversifying identity in this newsletter before. In the book, you draw on what scientists call self-complexity:
“I’ve come to think about identity like a house. If you live in a house that only has one room and it floods, then you have to move out. But if you live in a house with multiple rooms and one room floods, you can seek refuge in the other rooms while you repair the damage. The goal is to build an identity house with at least a few rooms, because you never know when one is going to flood, and you’ll need to find strength and stability in others.”
Can you explain what you mean by that?
BS: You can be all in on something—you just can’t be all in all the time. The other rooms give you outlets and a sense of self beyond just one thing.
So when one thing goes badly, it doesn’t feel like your entire identity is on the line. Maybe I’m a competitive athlete, but I’m also a friend. I also like reading books. I’m also a parent. I’m also a partner or a community member. Even if a workout doesn’t go well, even if you don’t win, you’re still a person who can do other things in the world and who is valued. And it takes some of the pressure off, which actually improves performance.
DE: That really resonates with me. I just did a short video that took off about an Olympian who built a literal house to expand her identity house. And I personally love doing things where I’m a complete beginner. I mean, it’s scary for sure, but none of my baggage is there. I can just show up and be bad at something, or in pure learner mode.
BS: Exactly. I have my athlete room, my husband room, my dad room, my social or community room. And I try not to let any of the rooms get moldy.
Owning your seat
DE: Final question. My favorite concept in the book is “owning your seat.” Can you explain it?
BS: This came from an editor at Lion’s Roar. At the time, I was getting interested in psychology and Buddhist philosophy, and this magazine is like The New Yorker for Western Buddhists. I pitched an article on right striving—“right effort,” as Buddhists would call it. It got accepted, and I wrote the first draft just quoting a bunch of Western Buddhist giants.
The editor wrote back and said, “I didn’t commission this piece so you could quote other people. I want to hear what Brad Stulberg thinks. Own your seat.”
I was insecure. I was a pro writer; I’d written for The New York Times, but I wasn’t a Buddhist writer. That’s Jack Kornfield, or Tara Brach, or Thich Nhat Hanh—not me. What she was really saying was: I wouldn’t have assigned you this if I didn’t think you could do it.
I rewrote it in my own voice, and it became one of the most-read pieces on their site that year. I use that idea all the time now—when I’m counseling high performers facing insecurity, or when I’m facing insecurity myself. If I’m way out over my skis, I probably shouldn’t be doing the thing. But if I’m just a little outside my comfort zone, and I have evidence I can do it, then I need to own my seat and not disqualify myself out of insecurity.
Thanks to Brad for his time, and thank you for reading.
The Way of Excellence is hot off the presses. It has a beautiful cover, so makes for nice shelf art. And yesterday Brad told me that he made bonus material for anyone who orders a copy, including a video class, and a goal-setting exercise he uses with his coaching clients. So if you do order a copy, you can fill out this form to get bonus material.
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Until next time…
David
Your point about sampling widely before specializing feels increasingly radical in a world that demands early commitment. I wonder if we're creating a false dichotomy though. maybe the real insight is that excellence emerges from cycles of expansion and contraction. not choosing one or the other. The pattern I'm seeing is that people who make meaningful contributions often have this accordion rhythm in their development. they stretch wide. then compress deep. then stretch again. How do we build institutions that honor this natural oscillation instead of forcing premature optimization?
This is a terrific piece. I love "own your seat." I used to make a similar analogy about childbirth. If someone put you 100 feet below the summit of Everest and told you to climb it you'd be terrified. If you'd prepared all your life to be in that spot you'd be exhilarated.