(light music)
- In Navy SEAL training
there is something called drownproofing,
where they bind your hands behind your back,
tie your feet together, and drop you into a nine-foot pool.
(quirky music)
Your job is to survive for five minutes.
Now, like Navy SEAL training,
in general, most people
who attempt drownproofing fail at it,
but some people make it,
and they do so
because they understand two counterintuitive lessons.
The first lesson of drownproofing is paradoxical.
The more you struggle to keep your head above water,
the more likely you are to sink and drown.
See, the trick to drownproofing
is to actually let yourself sink.
You let yourself sink to the bottom of the pool
and then you push yourself off the bottom
to come back to the top where you gain another breath
and you repeat the cycle over again.
So in a strange way,
drownproofing doesn't require you
to have superhuman strength or an insane endurance.
In fact, you don't even have to know how to swim.
On the contrary, drownproofing actually requires
that you know how to not swim.
The second lesson of drownproofing is the more you panic,
the more likely you are to burn oxygen and energy,
and the more likely you are to fall unconscious.
In a sick and twisted way,
the exercise turns your survival mechanisms against you.
And if you think about it,
the skill that drownproofing demands,
the ability to give yourself up to some higher cause,
the ability to relinquish control in the face of death,
the ability to let go under the most stressful
and trying circumstances,
it makes sense why this is part of Navy SEAL training.
And in this video, I wanna argue
that this is not only an important skill for the Navy SEALs.
I wanna argue that it's an important skill for life.
(quirky music)
(film reel clicking)
Most people assume that the relationship
between effort and reward is one to one.
We think that working twice as long,
we will get twice as much done.
We think that we spend twice as much time with somebody,
they will feel twice as loved.
But here's the thing,
most things in life actually don't exist on a linear curve.
In fact, linear curves only exist
for mindless rote, repetitive tasks
like filling out paperwork or driving a car,
or making widgets in a factory.
In all these cases, somebody who does it for two hours
is going to likely double the output
of somebody who does it for one hour.
The linear curve doesn't work for life
because most of life's activities aren't simple.
They're not rote or repetitive or mindless.
They are actually complex
and emotionally or psychologically demanding.
You adapt and evolve,
and circumstances change,
and this is what makes life so complicated.
Therefore, most activities in life actually exist
on something called a diminishing returns curve.
Diminishing returns means
that the more you experience something,
the less rewarding it becomes.
The classic example here is productivity.
Working for two hours is probably going to be twice
as productive as working for one.
Working for four might be twice as productive as two.
Working for eight, probably not.
And working for 16 hours
is definitely not twice as productive as working for eight.
The concept of diminishing returns applies
for experiences that are complex and novel.
Think of the number of showers you take in a day,
the number of chicken wings you eat for lunch,
the number of times you have sex in a week,
the number of countries you've visited in your lifetime.
Friendships also operate on a diminishing returns curve.
If you only have one friend,
having two is probably life-changing.
If you have two friends,
having four or five is probably a little bit better,
but having 10 probably starts to get annoying.
As I said, sex has diminishing returns, as does eating,
as does drinking, as does partying, as does traveling,
as does reading books, hiring employees,
scheduling business meetings,
studying for an exam, masturbating,
staying up late to play video games.
The examples are endless
because the amount of complex
and novel experiences we can have are also endless.
(film reel clicking)
But there's another curve to human experience
and it's probably a curve you've never seen
or thought of before.
That's because I come up with this shit.
Let's call it the inverted curve.
The inverted curve is the bizarre twilight zone
of effort-reward curves
where every increasing amount of effort
towards an experience actually makes it worse.
That is the more effort you put into doing something,
the more you will fail to do it.
Now, this might sound insane and completely irrational,
but drownproofing, I would argue,
is one of the few activities that exists
on an inverted curve.
Now, if you sit and think really hard,
you could probably come up with a handful
of other human activities:
meditation, dancing, trying to impress people.
But for all intents and purposes, most things in life,
the more you try at 'em, the better you get.
So what's the big deal?
Well, I would argue that the importance
of the inverted curve is when it comes
to experiences that only exist within our own minds.
And because everything else we experience in life
is interpreted through the experiences we have
in our own minds,
I would argue that understanding inverted curves
is extremely fucking important.
So let's review really quick.
For simple, mindless, repetitive tasks,
effort and reward tend to have a linear relationship.
The more time you spend in the car, the further you get.
For complex, novel experiences
that involve social relationships,
creativity, new experiences,
they tend to have a diminishing relationship
between effort and reward.
That is a diminishing curve.
And then for emotional and psychological experiences
that only exist inside our own minds,
that is where the inverted curve kicks in.
The more you pursue happiness,
the further away from it you get.
The more you try to feel confident,
the more you question yourself and feel insecure.
The more you wish to be loved,
the more your neediness repels people around you.
The constant desire to be free
from constraints is itself a constraint.
Aldous Huxley once wrote,
"The harder we try with the conscious will to do something,
the less we shall succeed.
Proficiency and results come only
to those who have learned the paradoxical art
of doing and not doing,
or combining relaxation with activity."
The most fundamental components
of our psychology operate in this way.
This is because when we consciously desire
a particular state of mind,
we inadvertently create the opposite state of mind.
So it's by wanting to be happy
that we remind ourselves that we are not happy.
It's wanting to be confident
that we remind ourselves we are not confident.
It's by wanting to be loved
that we remind ourselves that we don't feel love.
The inverted curve, at its core,
is the backwards law that I describe
in chapter one of "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck."
"Desiring a positive experience
is itself a negative experience,
and the acceptance of a negative experience
is itself a positive experience."
But this extends to most,
if not, all of our mental health and relationships.
Whether it's our desire to feel more happiness,
confidence, control, satisfaction, security, novelty,
all of these things,
by wanting them,
we simply move ourselves further away from them.
It's by wanting to stay on the surface of our satisfaction
that we only cause ourselves to plunge deep into the water.
These internal psychological experiences exist
on an inverted curve because they are both the cause
and effect of the same thing: the mind.
When you desire happiness,
your mind is both the thing that desires
and the thing that is desired.
When it comes to these lofty, abstract goals,
our mind is like a dog that,
after successfully chasing and catching all sorts
of other things in its life,
has decided to turn on its own tail
and try to catch its tail.
I mean, why not?
Chasing things has worked for everything else in life.
Why wouldn't it work for happiness
or confidence or security?
But a dog can never catch her own tail.
The more she chases, the more the tail seems to run away.
That's because the dog lacks the perspective to understand
that she and the tail are the same thing.
The goal is to take your mind,
a wonderful tool
that has spent its life chasing many, many things,
and teach it to stop chasing its own tail;
to teach it to achieve what it desires
by giving up what it desires;
to show it that the only way to reach the surface
is to let itself sink.
And how do we do this?
You do this by relinquishing control,
not because you feel powerless,
but because you are powerful,
because you have decided to let go of things
that are beyond your control.
You decide to accept
that sometimes people will not like you
but you engage with them anyway;
that sometimes you will not feel confident,
but you do the thing anyway;
that sometimes you will not be happy,
but you'll get out of bed anyway.
You decide to accept that most of the things you do
in your life will result in failure.
And not only is that okay, it's the only way
to get back to the surface to breathe to do it again.
(water sloshing)
(swimmer panting)
(waves lapping)