Episode Highlights

• Dr. Shrime’s origin story and the three ethics he had to unlearn
• What is moral injury and how it affects our life
• Dr. Shrime’s epiphany of what he really wanted to do after 15 years of doing a job he hated
• The importance of knowing your why and how it changes your perspective of the path you are on
• The three-step process to solving your why
• The ‘Gary Parker Rule’ and how it can help you in your decision-making
• Dr. Shrime’s American Ninja Warrior story: Lessons about failure and how you perceive yourself
• The four questions to answer to understand your path in life
• How to live in alignment with your why
• What to do if you fail to build your life around your purpose
• BIG MYTH: The next decision must be the right one

Useful Links

• Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes – William Bridges
• Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life – Richard Rohr
• Start With Why – Simon Sinek
• Ikigai – Wikipedia
• [CASE STUDY] Why I Said No to a Job (A Great One)…During a Pandemic

About Guest

Dr. Mark G. Shrime is the International Chief Medical Officer at Mercy Ships and a Lecturer in Global Health and Social Medicine at the Harvard Medical School. He is the author of Solving for Why: A Surgeon’s Journey to Discover the Transformative Power of Purpose (Hachette 2022).

He previously served as the O’Brien Chair of Global Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, as the founder and Director of the Center for Global Surgery Evaluation at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and as Research Director for the Program in Global Surgery and Social Change at Harvard.

He has spoken at the United Nations, WHO, Harvard, Princeton, and around the world addressing issues of healthcare inequity, moral injury in the healthcare workforce, and the non-health outcomes of health policies. In 2018, he was awarded the Arnold P. Gold Humanism in Medicine Award by the American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery.

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Transcript

Mark Shrime: The reason that I wrote the book, and I think what I'm about to say got even worse during the pandemic, but hasn't really improved all that much is that people hate their jobs, right? 70% of Americans 80% of people worldwide do not like their jobs. And yet we are kind of stuck on this path, we feel we feel rather stuck on a path that we have to continue to be on. And so really, that's what I, I speak to audiences about this, I coach people about this, like, this is something I'm super passionate about. Taking the… when we talk more about this, but sort of taking an intentional approach to how you construct your life. That that is what I'd love to talk about.

Zack Arnold: I don't think there's any better way to start the conversation with that. So then on that, on that note, for anybody that's wondering, I'm here today with Dr. Mark Shrime, and he is the International Chief Medical Officer of Mercy Ships. You're a lecturer in global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School, and you're also a PhD in decision sciences. I don't know what that is. But it sounds fascinating. You're the author of Solving for Why, which is A Surgeon's Journey to Discover the Transformative Power of Purpose. You're also a very sought after speaker that's helping others find meaningful career paths. Now, if I wanted to, I could go through your list of medical accolades and awards and achievements. But we only have 90 minutes and I want to make sure that you have a chance to talk. But what I find so interesting about such a decorated medical professional, is how much of your book you write about how much it sucks to be a doctor. It's true. So let's let's start there and talking about what led you to the path of writing this book because boy, it was not a matter of this was my destined path. I knew I wanted to help people in medicine. And I've got life all figured out.

Mark Shrime: Yeah, no, absolutely. I say this a bit in the book. I what led me to medicine to begin with, is very simply, I am the firstborn son of an immigrant family. Growing up, I wanted to deeply wanted to be a linguist, I also deeply wanted to be a rock star, because a little boy doesn't want to be a rock star or a linguist. But as many immigrants know, and many immigrants share the same experience, we really, we have three choices, doctor, lawyer or failure. Now that's a bit reductionistic my dad was an engineer. So I had four choices doctor, lawyer, engineer or failure. But I, you know, I enjoyed and still enjoy the biological sciences. I liked it in high school, like did in college. When it became like, you know, like any college student, I kept pushing against this, this, this regulation that was placed on me by my parents, but eventually became clear that I needed to go into into something and have a harder discipline than by heart. I don't mean more difficult, but like harder science than say, linguistics. So when that became clear, I did and I enjoyed my my biology degree. But then coming out of it, I didn't really want to be a biologist and 95% of the people that were graduating from my, my class in this in this major went on to medical school. So I kind of I don't know, stumbled into medicine, because that was just the next step on the path that I happened to find my own blog. And I did, I absolutely hated it. I never wanted to be there in the first place. And so early on, I got early on within the first couple of months of my first year of medical school, I was in the Dean's office, trying to find ways to get out of it or do something. And I'll abbreviate the story. But as I as I sort of continued in medicine, it just it became, again part of this path that I was on the moving sidewalk as the image I use in the book that's moving sidewalks that I was on, that I couldn't really see my way out of. And there's there's positives to moving sidewalk, we can talk about them. But I went on that moving sidewalk, I picked a specialty picked a specialty for the wrong reasons picked a specialty because I wanted to do as little medicine as possible so I could have time for the other things in my life. Turns out that's not the right way to pick a specialty. Because I got into that didn't like it either. Anyway, I can go on like this. It was 15 years of post secondary education, medical school residency fellowship. Before I really had an epiphany moment of oh my gosh, this is what I want. I've now figured out what I want to do in my life. And it was that that started this transformation for me, started moving me off this moving sidewalks. And really that's what that was the reason I wanted to write this book, because so many people in medicine and otherwise are on similar moving sidewalks I don't want it to give my readers a home almost where they could question. It was safe to question the path that they were on safe to question their assumptions, maybe even safe to dip your toe into. Maybe I'll try something else. Well, that's why I wrote it.

Zack Arnold: I love that. And we're I've got at least 10 different threads that we can pull on. So even if you didn't share anything else, I'm a little concerned rolling, it'd be done in the next 80 minutes. So many good things that we can talk about here. The two that I want to point out, and I want to put a pin in for a second, this concept of the moving sidewalk is one I want to dig into a lot deeper, because I think it's such a great analogy for being stuck on the wrong path, but it just kind of effortlessly keeps moving forwards outside of your control. And the other thing, and I'm gonna hold this specifically because I don't want to give it away too early. But you yatta yatta the best part when you said I had this epiphany, which begs the question, what was the epiphany? How did it come about? Right? That's where I actually want to start is going to be a little bit earlier. I love the way that you frame this as I basically had four choices, doctor, lawyer, engineer or failure. Right, right, right. So one of the things that I found so interesting about your upbringing was not so much the upbringing itself, but the identity that you associated with it, which is a big part of your transformation. Talk to me a little bit more about your upbringing and how you say in the book, that I saw myself as white until I became the other because this is a core part of your identity and solving for your why.

Mark Shrime: Yes, absolutely. So I'm Lebanese by descent. I was born in Lebanon to Lebanese parents, we moved out there, three of us in the family, three kids in the family and myself, my younger sister, my younger brothers, myself, my younger sister were both born in Lebanon, my brother was born here in the US, because the tween the time that I was born, and my sister was born, a civil war started in Lebanon. And I know that there had been, like, you know, flare ups of hostilities in Lebanon, for as basically as long as my parents had been alive. And so initially, when this flare up happened, there was there was potentially this feeling like, okay, we can ride this out, it'll be a year, we can ride this out. And then it became very clear. And there's a there's an episode in the book that was sort of made that clarity, personal for my families. But it became very clear that this was not going to be short things. My dad had done his PhD in the US. And I had worked in Texas for a few years before moving back to Lebanon to start a branch was the company that he was working for there. So basically, the short story of this crucial event was that my family was my mom was pregnant with my sister, I was a year old if that. And they were stopped at a checkpoint. And basically, my dad was forced out of the car because they held a gun to my my, in my mother's head, and told him to get out of the car, get out of the car, through a series of fortuitous events, was able to get back into the car and turn back around and drive back home. And all of the men and they were only men, all the men that had been sort of rounded up at that checkpoint were executed later that day. So this is how this happens. My family's like this is not happening. This is not ending anytime soon. So they were kind of stuck on where to go. Right? There's my dad's like, I have contacts in Dallas. So we ended up in Dallas. And that's where my family has grown ups. That's where my family still lives. Growing up in Dallas as a, as a as an Arab. Early on in the 70s and 80s. Lebanese folks, as some as some other minorities are, are sort of viewed as a model minority. In fact, side notes every 10 years, when the US Census comes out, we don't actually merit a box. Middle Eastern people of Middle Eastern descent are explicitly instructed to check white on the census. So So the US government, although they've almost all the time doesn't actually view us as difference. So anyway, so there's, there's that that's going on, and my family was very into assimilation. So they didn't my parents didn't want us to seem different. They wanted us to fit in. So much so that we, we were instructed that we had to sound like Dan Rather Peter Jennings the, the, the, the newscasters of the day, we just have this sort of generic North American accent, because they didn't want us to stand out. I bite like, you know, I'm, I'm, I look fairly White. I'm fairly white passing. And all of this came to a head in the early 90s. When the first Gulf War happened, the there was a fateful night we're all watching our TVs and the shock and awe sort of initiative happens start bombing. And the next morning, I came, I drove into school. And as I'm coming out of the parking lot, one of my classmates, scribes, and also, and is loudly blaring, the song by The Cure called killing and Arabs. And that was the first time that I was like, Oh, my God, like this is he's not ironically, he's sort of celebrating the might of the US. And Nan, ironically, celebrating the death of people who look like me and sound like my cousins and stay on top, like my uncle's sleep on their roof, like my aunts did. And that was the first time that I was like, Oh, wow, okay, you know, this simulation that I learned growing up is actually not true. A lot

Zack Arnold: of that to say that you grow up with all those experiences, I bet there's a lot of weight on you to meet certain expectations. And there's a phrase that you said that I found really interesting that you can correct me if I'm wrong, because you didn't say it explicitly. But I bet it had a lot to do with your career path. You said my dad didn't escape death at a Lebanese checkpoint for his son to be mediocre. Yeah, man has had a lot of weight to carry your whole life.

Mark Shrime: Yeah, yeah, it is. I don't want to say like, I mean, my parents, I love my parents, this was this was not a harsh childhood, there wasn't one that you'd look back on and be like, Oh, my gosh, I was whatever it was subjected to all sorts of terrible things. It was simply just the expectation. It was what they grew up with. He worked really hard. He is the son of his family comes from a farming village up in the north of Lebanon. And so he worked really hard to get where he was since wanted us to do the same. This wasn't he wasn't tyranny, it wasn't a tyrant as much as this is just the expectation of the model minority immigrants to this country. And it was the same expectation I had. So

Zack Arnold: what I'm basically what I'm trying to do is dissect or break down all the motivations, all of the influence on you to make it so clear. This is the path that was predetermined for me that led you to the moving sidewalk, and we're gonna get there in a second. And you mentioned that there were three different ethos that you had to unlearn. There was the ethos of the other the fact that I thought I was white than I realized any other than you talk about faith and you talk about work. Faith is probably one that we can leave for a different conversation on another podcast, because that's definitely not my area of expertise. But boy, do I want to talk about the ethos of work ethic. So talk a little bit more about what you learned about the value of not only work, but completely being about work?

Mark Shrime: Yeah. So exactly, those are the three the three ethics that I had to unlearn, and just sort of been on learn to have a better relationship to we, we, as the three of us kids, were held to a very high academic standard. I mean, again, these are these are tropes at this point. But this was our growing up, you come home with a 97 on a test and you literally are asked where the other three points went. Come home with an A minus on your report card, why is it not an A, and so there was that external pressure from from my parents, but that external pressure, internalizes itself. And it without even sort of me intending it, this has is put into me, this idea that if you're not working, if you're not being productive, and productive in the way that sort of society defines productivity, then there's something inherently flawed in you. Your existence, when your existence is, is to be productive, your existence is to, to do stuff. And then I say this in the book. I'm also a fairly shy person. I'm very introverted. I was not the sort of classic, you know, Texas, fun loving person, as I was growing up, I was the kid that sat in the back of the bus and read Choose Your Own Adventure books, and hopes that nobody paid attention. So work, that's something else for me also, that became my social OneCard my social spread, you know, I could, I could write study notes for physics class and pass it out to the entire class, or class, there were 20 kids in my class, so it wasn't like it was huge, but I could do that I could do these things that were beneficial to at least I hope was beneficial to the rest of the folks in my class. So I knew how to do that. But then it also became my identity work, work saved me in that sort of way. Disabled from my own shyness from my own introversion. Yeah,

Zack Arnold: the the fallacy of assuming that what we do is who we are and how we attach our So as to our identities, like that's something that I talk about ad nauseam, because I've fallen into the exact same trap. So despite the fact that we might have different Heritage's and backgrounds, there's a lot about our identities and how we see ourselves that I can relate to so much of what you just shared.

Mark Shrime: Oh, and it's sort of that, that that, that approach to people's goes beyond work. And this may be getting a little bit a little bit tangential. But we, there's a difference. And I talked about this in in sort of other settings, there's a difference, if somebody does something wrong to you, somebody wrongs you, there are two different approaches that you can take to that, you can either take the approach of, oh, Zack just wronged me. Or you can take the approach that Zack is the kind of person who wrongs people, two very different approaches, one allows for remediation and grace and all of that, and the other one really does talk.

Zack Arnold: And that's something that I want to actually dig into later as you apply specifically to failure. Because there's a big difference between I failed, and I'm a failure. But that's one of the many pins that I'm going to put towards later that we're going to get to. But what I wanted to really emphasize is that again, even though you have a very different upbringing than I do, and a very different origin story, if you take those differences out of it, so much of what you share them like that was literally my life, right? The difference being I grew up whiter than white, I literally couldn't be more white, in red America in the Bible Belt, but still very shy, very introverted. Literally the kid in the back of the bus reading Choose Your Own Adventure books when you said that I'm like, it's like you're crawling inside my brain. But here's the bigger thing that I resonated with were even though different cultures, different places, you know, that would come from in the world. I lived in a household where when you got to 97, the question was, what happened to the other three ones? Right? And you only got an A minus? What can you do better next time? And boy, does that just dig into your psyche? It does. And again, that it led to a lot of success. But it also led to a lot of really major mental health challenges and issues as I grew up and became an adult. So there's even though our backgrounds are technically very different, we have very similar upbringings.

Mark Shrime: Can I push you on that though? Yeah, for sure. Similar upbringings. I mean, we we clearly we do. But I want to push on the the sentence that you just said there, that led to a lot of success. But it also led to mental health issues. And same like same I struggle with anxiety. I'm nearly 50 it I still deal with anxiety, I think because of some of that, that pressure. But and we, we may this may be one of the pins that you have in your mind. That sentence is try it led to a lot of success. Did it though, if it also led to this much mental health struggle? And

Zack Arnold: I would argue that it did. I don't think that because there were success, and there was mental health associated with it. It's therefore no longer deemed a success. And it's instead of failure. I think that both can coexist. I don't think they're mutually exclusive. But I think that one of the qualifiers is that a lot of the success that led to is what the world would externally define as success versus internally. And that's another topic I talk about a lot. So it led to I was valedictorian, a high school graduate, graduated, summa cum laude from the University of Michigan, got employed right out of college made good money. So I checked all the boxes. So in that sense, it led to a lot of success. But it also led to the existential crisis of I'm not really connected with the work that I feel I should be doing.

Mark Shrime: Yep, you just you just summarize it exactly. The success, the way we define success in in, especially American culture is very monolithic. It looks the same for everybody. What you just described is a successful career. But it's not necessarily the career that everybody is supposed to have.

Zack Arnold: So having said that, I think this is going to be the perfect segue to one of the first pins and I use segway kind of pun intended, not intended, from segway to moving sidewalk. Love it. This idea of the moving sidewalk was such an apt analogy for me where I thought about this idea, and I've written about it and I've talked about it extensively. But this to me was a new metaphor and image in my mind, I'm like, Yes, that's it. So I want you to dig deeper into where the idea for the moving sidewalk came from and what it represents to you.

Mark Shrime: I wish I could tell you where it came from, to be honest, I I had a couple of different metaphors that I was using throughout the book, where we were moving sidewalk ended up moving sidewalk was one of them. To be frank, my editor hated the other one. So he cut it.

Zack Arnold: So just by default, it became

Mark Shrime: but it really like it it you know, the more that book developed, the more this image developed, the more it made sense. It's to some degree what you said it's a if you step onto it, and then it was just kind of go down just takes you to the next phase. But also, the part that that really started to speak to me was the fact that moving sidewalks have barriers, you can't step off them really easily, you've got to do some parkour or to get off of a moving sidewalk. And so it's both it is and we can talk about this, it is the ease of being on them. And I think that's one of the most insidious temptations of a moving sidewalk is how easy it is. And then it's the difficulty for the the the neocon comet and difficulty of getting off of them. That keeps us on that. So it's both it's a carrot and a stick. It's hard to get off and it's easy to stay on.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. And the reason that I loved it so much was first because it's similar to analogies of you're on the hamster wheel of life, or you're on the treadmill of work, like a lot of these analogies existed and been out there for years. The reason the moving sidewalk really worked for me it number one, it kind of gives that same sense of easy, perpetual motion, but in a singular direction. It's like the reason that it really hit me was the barriers. Because I'm the person that at the airport, I see the moving sidewalk, and then I see that giant amount of space where nobody's walking. And I generally choose that one. Yeah, knowing the moving sidewalk might move faster. But because anxiety is a friend of mine, just as it is of yours, right? There's nothing that drives me more crazy. If I'm on the moving sidewalk, and I'm moving forwards. There's just somebody that sounds like, speed, I was moving, I have a destination, I don't want to be an asshole. So I'm just going to stand here, but it literally creates physical anxiety for me. And that's the exact same anxiety that I feel when I'm doing the wrong work with the wrong people telling the wrong stories. It physically feels exactly the same as being stuck behind a herd of people that don't understand that it's a moving sidewalk.

Mark Shrime: Right, right. Oh, so I mean, I also I'm, I'm from New York, so we get very angry at slow walkers anyway.

Zack Arnold: So now this brings us to one of the other pins, which is you talk a lot in the book about and if there's a story or two you want to share, that's fine. But I alluded to it kind of being a joke, but not a joke, you spent almost half your book talking about how awful it is being a doctor how broken the medical system is, of which I've talked about in several past podcasts, about the medical system and all the challenges inherent therein. If you're trying to take control of your health, rather than I just don't want to be sick. There's a big difference between the two. But I want to talk a little bit more about how you were led to the Epiphany so that people understand what the ingredients are. So they could potentially create that epiphany for themselves. Yeah.

Mark Shrime: Great, great question. We could spend 90 minutes just on this. So I've been writing a little bit more regularly recently, about a concept that first started in the military called moral injury. moral injury is this concept that having to make a decision that goes against your morals goes against your ethic of what's right, and what's wrong, actually creates a psychic injury and injury to your morals. And that injury manifests itself in things like PTSD, depression, feelings of meaninglessness, anxiety, etc. Right? It comes from the military where, where folks are asked to make some very drastic decisions, but it really took off in the medical literature, in the sort of early 2010s. And then, and then add, you know, became a part of our conversation during the COVID pandemic, most of us will go into medicine, you go into medicine, because we feel this calling to be a healer, to be with people in times of success. And I understand, I understand exactly like, I understand that my same that also talks about how our medical system is designed for a second, that's not for health. Well, let's run with it for a second. You know, that's why I went into medicine. I kind of had this, you know, this, this instruction, that's the word from my my father that I only a couple of things that I could go into. And I kind of made this bargain with myself with the universe, that fun, like I'll do medicine, I'll do medicine, it lets me do some of the same things that I wanted to do in linguistics or in the case. So that was my bargain. I will I will do this because it'll open doors that I wanted to open anyway to, to be with a marginalized to to help those that don't have access to health. And then you get into medicine, especially in the US and you realize that that is not that is not how our system is designed. Our system is designed to benefit neither the patient or the physician. Our system is designed to benefit the insurance company and the profit makers. So you as the patient and I as the provider. We are cogs in a machine we are I smile imperative is to focus on throughput. Your imperative is to try to navigate the seven minutes that I have with you to try to get some care, you know, 90% of the time it works. But honestly, there's it's misaligned incentives all over the place. So like many, many, many people going into medicine, you get into it, and you go through all of your training, you go through everything and throughout your training. You keep getting told, yes, right now sucks. Yes, medical school, sorry, yes, residency sucks. And objectively, they do long hours hard work, but just stick it out because it gets better. So if you're credulous like I am, you stick it out, and then you make it to the end of it, you get to the better, you get to being a, you know, full time physician, and you look around here, and you're like, Well, this is not what I signed up for. I am having to make decisions, I cannot spend the 30 minutes that this patient needs, I have to see him for seven minutes. And so you're having to make these decisions that lead to this death by 1000. paper cuts moral injury over and over and over again. Anyway, that's we could talk a lot about about that. I'm in the middle of this, and I'm going through my training, I go into Ear, Nose and Throat. I told you as a specialty didn't like your nose and throat. But then one of the sub specialties of e and t is head neck tumors. And I actually kind of liked that I thought the surgeries were beautiful. The I did like I'm really the sort of like the biology of cancer really liked the patients. So went on to do a fellowship and head and neck cancer. And it was right after that first fellowship that I took a year off. And I spent six months of that year just traveling just as a sort of consumer of find yourself sort of trips that people take. And then I spent six months of that year working as a head and neck cancer surgeons on a hospital ship docked off the coast of Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. And the epiphany moment that you that you mentioned happened the first time I walked down to the hospital deck of that ship, and walked into the ward where all the patients with the head neck tumors were. And there were about a dozen patients in that ward at various stages of recovery from their head neck surgery. And it that's when it hit me, it was like oh my gosh, I had been training for 15 years for this. And I didn't even know that it existed. And that, listen, I hate the phrase life changing. But it was like it drastically altered the direction of my career. It was then was 2008. It was then that I decided that this is what I wanted to do. This is why this is what I was going to spend my surgical training. Doing. Now it took me 10 more years to finally make that decision. But that's when I knew that that's what I wanted to do.

Zack Arnold: And that decision was completely based on intuition in the moment, there are something about you that just knew it. Like you said it took another 10 years to put the pieces together, right. But it started with that feeling that moment that intuition. And I want to talk more about the ingredients that really went into figuring that out. But one of the thing that I find fascinating about this is that a lot of times when people say that a moment was life changing. And I knew you almost kind of apologized for which I don't think you need to do at all. But a lot of times when somebody says that was the moment it's a complete and total life transformation. Where are you if let's say that we didn't know how the story ended up. And you said, I grew up wanting to get into linguistics and be a musician, I would expect the epiphany moment was I went to a rock concert. And I realized, this is what I was meant to do and go from being a doctor to being a rock star, right? Like that's a huge major life transformation. And what I love about your story is that you're still going from a doctor to being a doctor. But it's what you're doing on a daily basis. But more importantly, it's who you're helping and why. So you still can set your identity is still I'm a doctor, that's what I do for a living. But one is I'm miserable, being identified as a doctor for a living versus this is my life's calling, being a doctor for a living. And I think people they miss that nuance when they hate what they do. And they think I need to throw everything out. And I need to start over and I need to be a poet or be a writer, it's like, maybe you just need to find a few of the dials and levers that you need to tweak so that you're doing a different work but doing the same type of work. And I think you're the you're an example of how that can be tremendously beneficial.

Mark Shrime: I love that you brought that up, because the day to day of being in the operating room seeing patients, you know, operating itself is really no different. Now the tumors in Africa, because of a lack of access are bigger than the tumors that I saw when I was I've seen the states, but other than that there's no difference. The pathology of the tumors is exactly the same. It's not like there's some mean crazy, weird diseases that are happening on the continent of Africa? No, it's the same tumors that you and I would get here. So my day to day as a surgeon going on rounds, you know, operating, seeing patients in clinic is exactly the same as it was when I was miserable, then that's the reason that the book is called solving for y, because it's the why, behind why I'm doing it. That changed my approach to it. And that's exactly it. I went from a y of being a cog in a machine to make money for what's the word insurance companies and administrators to actually using these skills that are kind of cool for others, which is what I wanted to do from the beginning, which comes back to that ethos of the other. That's, that's what I wanted to be doing from the beginning. And now I finally get to do it. Because it has nothing to do. There are there are days that still are hard. Mondays are still Mondays like Sunday, scaries happen, everyone. It's just that now I get to when I'm when I am operating, when I am on the ship operating, I get to live into that, why in a way that I never got to

Zack Arnold: before. And this is something you talked quite a bit about in the book that I thought was so important, just to re emphasize what you said is that you still have a case of the Mondays you're like, Oh, yes, right. It's gonna be the same thing all over again. But when when the why is in place, and you understand it, it makes it so much easier. And I know the one of the quotes that comes from one of the most seminal books I've ever read Victor Frankel's work, where a man can endure just about any how if he knows his why, and I know I butchered that. So it's not word for word. But to paraphrase, is that when you know your why you can endure just about anyhow. And you couldn't endure the how, because he doesn't know the why. Exactly,

Mark Shrime: exactly. And I was misaligned with the I didn't know my why. And it turned out that I was misaligned with the Y that I was working for. To begin with. There is I love that quote. Also, anybody who talks about purpose knows that quote, and there is a there's an implicit hierarchy in that quote, that we miss in the way we construct our lives often, He who has a why to live for can bear almost anyhow. So the why is the hierarchy The why is the one that has to come first, and then whatever the how is can happen. What we tend to do, is we invert that hierarchy, we preference, our cow over our y, we preference, the path that we're already on, and then that moving sidewalk, we first start staying on that path, rather than trying to figure out what our purpose is, and then creating a path to fit that purpose.

Zack Arnold: I'm very, very glad that you pointed that out. Because again, the moving sidewalk is all about the house. Right? It says a lot that extra, exactly. So what I want to do now is I want to actually get a better understanding of what your why is, and then how we solved for it. Now you have it in a singular, very succinct and tight sentence. You can either literally, you know, steal it from yourself verbatim in the book. But if somebody were to say, well, this is all great. What's your why? How do you answer that question?

Mark Shrime: Yeah. That's a great question. I mean, my my why? So there is a singular, I don't know if this is the sentence that you're referring to. But this is, this is the way that I say it. And I've stolen this sentence from one of my mentors. He says, No, I am a religious person. So there's going to be a religious bent to this. He says, so long as you keep your eyes on God, and your heart toward the marginalized, you can't go wrong. If I had to ask you to pick one sentence, but what I do, why I do what I do, it's that it's,

Zack Arnold: that's amazing. And it's completely different. The one that I picked out, and I think the two go hand in hand. So maybe I just picked out the wrong sentence. But the one that really struck me because I feel like there were pages and pages of your why. But if I were to extract it, and somebody asked me on a podcast, what is Mark Shrime's? Why? My answer would have been that My why is about restoring justice and breaking the ethos of the other. Oh, it's to me, it's very similar to what you just said. Right? So it seems so simple. It's so succinct. It's one nice, neat little sentence or two nice, neat little sentences. Right? But if anything, but simple to get there, correct?

Mark Shrime: Yes. I'm glad you I'm glad you picked out that sentence. The because I don't know if we're going to get to more about this ethos of the other. But implicit in that sentence is the fact that injustice comes from this ethos of othering people. That's building justice means being able to look at everybody whether or not you understand whether or not you've ever experienced what they're going through and say No, I, I hear you. I'm with you. I'm walking with you.

Zack Arnold: So one of the things that I've learned and this will be a little bit of a tangent, but it's not really so much of a tangent is that I've been learning a lot more about the cycles of generations the cycles of history because I really believe that the more we learn about the past, the more we can predict the future. And one of the things that I've learned is that as as our lives go forwards, they go forward in cycles. And it's essentially, it's not universal, especially not in Hollywood. But that's another conversation. But essentially, you start you, you grow up, and you look at it has four seasons, right? So you start with spring, where there's growth, and there's watering, and there's nurturing. And then you go out into the world, whether it's in your early to mid 20s, and that's your summer, that's your time to go run around and learn new things and try and find yourself, et cetera, et cetera, make it all about you and my success. But then there's this generational term that has nothing to do with society, or ethnic or anything else, where you make this turn and you start to turn into autumn, which is right around the midlife crisis, where you realize this is all this is about more than just me now, isn't it? And you almost if we look at your calendar, you basically on that very similar cycle, you're like, Oh, this isn't just about me, and this is about the other and then you attach that to your why. And I find that so interesting, the way that that goes across generations, across countries across ethnicities across upbringings, that we just kind of inherently have this in this word, there's like this trigger that says, No, it's not about you anymore, it's about others. And it's just a matter of how quickly we're able to find this or be aware of it.

Mark Shrime: There's, I don't know, if you're referring to either these two books, there are two really good books about that. One is called transitions. And I cannot remember the author's name, fairly old book, at least, at least 25, maybe maybe even older than that. Really, really good both to think about transitions in life. And then there's one by an author named Richard Rohr called Falling upwards. Pamela book floor is a is a Catholic priest. So there's, again, there's, there's some religion in it. But he talks, he divides it just into two seasons, he divides it into the season of sort of building yourself. And then yeah, there's this something happens inside us, where we're like, wait a second, wait a second, I want to I want to get back we just like I want to, I want to become a teacher. Now I want to become, we have this shift into the second season of our lives, right around that midlife crisis, where we realize everything I've been building right now. Cool, great. I'm glad I built it. Maybe there's something else I want to be doing.

Zack Arnold: Already got those books on my list. I hadn't known about either of them. Especially that one about transitions. That's exactly where my mind is right now. So I appreciate that. Alright, so now we're gonna start doing a little math because now we have to solve for Y Yes. And actually, I want to we're gonna get into the the nitty gritty of this. But I have one question that kind of helps us ease into it. Immediately, when I saw the email that said, Hey, here's this book, you should talk to this person, my first thought was solving for y. That's interesting. Because if we take copyright issues out of it, it would make more sense for it to be find your why or start with why or what is your why. Right. And my my very first question before I even knew who you were open the book and like, why solving what does that mean? So bright booth? Because I my guess is that was a very deliberate choice.

Mark Shrime: It was it was a deliberate choice. I mean, first of all, it's a nice little math on which, which I liked. But it's a deliberate choice, because, and again, I say this in the book, we can have all the epiphanies in the world, we actually never even talked about how to sort of prepare yourself for epiphany. But we can have all the epiphanies in the world, we can do all the steps that I think you and I are about to talk about, and still stagnant. Like, I had that epiphany in 2008, on, you know, on the red stairs of that ship. But if I didn't do anything with it, if I went back to the moving sidewalk, I would look back on that epiphany wistfully and wonder, gosh, what would have happened, but I would never have actually made the decisions that are necessary to follow that. And so that's where I wanted to go. I mean, Simon Sinek books start with why. Awesome, you should always start with why. But the person that I was writing to in this book was the person that found themselves on the moving sidewalk. And was too like I was too young to have ever started with why to begin with. And now halfway through is like, wait a second, how do you how does that person move elsewhere?

Zack Arnold: Mm hmm. So the there's two things may take us another podcast just actually get to this because every time you say something, there's another four directions I want to go. But you first of all mentioned it's a whole thing just to prepare yourself for the epiphany. So we might, we might want to get into that a little bit. But I don't necessarily want to disagree or even challenge. Something else that you said. But I want to dig into it a little bit deeper about the importance of you have the epiphany but you don't do anything with it. Right? I would argue that once you have the Epiphany, you can't an epiphany yet, and it's actually going to drag you down. And I think it would be hard to look back wistfully as opposed to now there's a guilt now there's a burden of I had the epiphany but I've done nothing with fit. And I think that that probably has a fair amount to do with people's mental health issues and anxiety. It's now I've realized it but I'm not doing anything with it.

Mark Shrime: I listen that please challenge me. And I think you're absolutely right. That's That's true. It's not, it may not just be wistful, it may be like, I don't know this, this feeling of regret this feeling of a missed opportunity, this feeling of I, again, I subjugated my why to the path that I was on, I put my house above my wife, even though I now knew what my why was. So

Zack Arnold: having said that, now I want to start to break this down. And it sounds to me like the way that you write in the way you think is broken down into formulas and math equations, which is why I think you and I communicate well, yeah, because I am seeing this as part one, we prepare for the epiphany. Then we have the epiphany. Now we need to solve for the Epiphany, so we don't look back on it with regret. Because if there's one decision, that or one emotion that drives me more than any other to do crazy shit, ie American Ninja Warrior, which you and I are going to talk about before we're done. It's the regret of not doing it. That scares me so much that I'm willing to be terrified of falling in water swinging from this rope to that platform. Because there's nothing scarier than thinking I should have. But I didn't. Yes, right. So well, we'll get to that a little bit later. But let's talk about preparing for the epiphany. Then we talk about what do we do with it? Yeah,

Mark Shrime: so the way and you're right, I break, I break everything down into like a couple of steps two or three steps. I tell my team, that's because I only have three brain cells, and they fight against each other. So they each have to be assigned. One thing, I think the very first thing that all of us need to do. And this, this may be a segue into Ninja Warrior, the very first thing that all of us need to do is his fall in love with failure. And I use that phrasing really specifically, there's a gajillion Instagram posts about how you should become comfortable with failure. The road to success is paved with failures or whatever meditate your way through failure. But I actually think we need to go one step further than that we need to actually fall in love it, we need to fall in love with what it feels like to suck at something to be a beginner again. And that's because as we were saying before, the movement, one of the one of the siren calls of the moving sidewalk is that we're good at. It's easy, we know how to meet its demands. And if we ever want to make any decision that's going to take us off that path, we are going to suck at the next step, we are not going to be good at it. And so free of this before anything even happens, like if somebody is listening to this and wants to start preparing themselves. Pick something that you are not good at. If you've never done a crossword before, do a crossword do that whatever never done cross stitching cross stitch, bake your first loaf loaf of bread, because it's going to be terrible. The first class was going to take you two hours, you're gonna be bad at and we need to, we need to more than just sort of stop being afraid of that. We need to learn to rejoice in this feeling of my horizons just being broad. And right now I am doing something I didn't know how to do before. I'd say that's the very first thing that you can do before you even have an epiphany to sort of prepare yourself to till the soil. So that when the epiphany or epiphanies happen, you're prepared to move you know what it feels like to fail. And you like it, that really helps. The second step really, I think is is to is to prepare yourself for epiphanies. I have this in the book. Listen, I have a I have a PhD in the science of decision making. And I love it. It's one of my favorite things ever. At the same time, epiphanies aren't built with math, they aren't you don't data yourself into an epiphany. You don't like those. That doesn't happen. epiphanies happen in those quiet, those those numinous moments. We don't even expect them. But they're each one of our lives, if we are willing to listen to them. And we are so bad at that we are so bad at giving ourselves the space to be uncomfortable to be bored to be silence so that that epiphany can happen. There's, again, there's a theologian named Marcus Borg who talks about the thin places, and in these places, sort of a veil between us as humans and the divine, whatever the Divine is, is a little bit thinner. And for some people, that's a church but for some people, that's a hike for some people that's a Mongolian throat singing concert. Like Put yourself in those places where you can feel that sort of fineness where you can hear the epiphany. And then the third step is the actual action. And yeah, like I, if you look, let me ramble a little bit more. I'm the same way, in my decision making and most of us are, that we are driven by regrets. And we are driven by cushion. So what I mean by that is, if I'm, if I'm sitting at a crossroads, and I'm just deciding do I want to, I don't know, devote my life to global surgery? Or do I want to become a continue to be a surgeon and you know, in a high income country, the majority of people look down that road and figure out, what's the worst that can happen. And then we pick the option with the least worst, we pick the safer option we don't, because we don't want to fall we don't want to fail. This is why falling in love with failure is the first thing that I say. But again, to jump over a moving sidewalk requires a different decision making framework. And this came to me this is a conversation I had with that same mentor that I mentioned earlier, I asked him, you know, how does he make big decisions in his life. And he said, when he is facing a crossroads, he lost 30 years down the line. That's the best possible outcome of each of his choices. And if one of the best possible outcomes makes him just shrug his shoulders, then that is not the right choice for him, as he'll build for 30 years. And the best possible outcome is just a shoulder shrug. Not the right choice for him. So he goes, instead of us going for the best worst case, he goes for the best best case. And that's what we need. So we need to do three things. We need to like be ready to fail on love with it. We need to have space in our lives for those numinous moments. And then we need to make scary, intentional decisions to pursue that best of the best.

Zack Arnold: And this is what you call the Gary Parker rule.

Mark Shrime: That's That's his name. Yes. Yes. So go ahead.

Zack Arnold: I was gonna say that as soon as I read that, the first thing I thought about and you may be familiar with her already was Annie Duke. Are you familiar with Annie Duke and her book quiz time? So I this is as a PhD in decision making, I think you'll find this book fascinating. Annie Duke is a former professional poker player that won millions of dollars on the Poker Tour and broke down decisions into probability and math. And I think it meshes perfectly with what you're talking about. And I have a whole episode with her, I can put a link in the show notes for everybody. But she has this thing that's called the expected value equation. Yes. So I think it's similar to this where if you're, you're you're at this crossroads a simple one being I hate my job, should I stay at my job? Or should I leave? Right? And you ask the question, whether it's a year, it's not 30 years, I love the fact that we're pushing it 30 years, but it would be if you go three years into the future, zero to 100. What are the odds assign a number to it, the you're going to be happier than you are now. And if staying, it's like, wow, I don't know, maybe but I've been here a while. So maybe a five, maybe a 10? All right. So what's the probability that if you leave and pursue something else, that you're going to be happier? Well, that's really scary. But if I succeed, it's like a 50. Why would you live your life for the next three years with a 5% probability of being happier, rather than a 50% probability of being happier. So it's very, very similar, I think you'd really appreciate that book.

Mark Shrime: So expected value is a it's, it's, it's sort of the crucible of decision analysis. A lot of trying really hard not to get super, super wonky and nerdy here, but a lot of kind

Zack Arnold: of populate you have courage to be very wonky and very nerdy, to perfect your permission go right ahead.

Mark Shrime: But a lot of sort of population level decisions are made on this expected value. If you know 50% chance of winning $100 and 50% chance of not winning anything, well, that expected value is $50. Whereas a different coin toss 50% chance of winning $100 50% chance of losing $100. that expected value is zero, you obviously choose the first game. But what the Gary Parker rule does is slightly more than that, it doesn't incorporate the probability at all. Now I think people should, I don't think people should be completely reckless. It does incorporate the probability at all. It literally says best case scenario for game A is I win $1,000 I might lose 4000. Best case scenario of game B is I win $1. But I might only lose four. You go for the one you go for broke, you go for the one where you might win more, even if you might lose more in the process. Because we are we are risk averse. We are averse to risk. And that's why we stay on. These are these eyeballs. That's why we don't sign up for Ninja Warrior. That's why we don't change our careers. And we just it's easier to stay. Well

Zack Arnold: I want to talk a little bit more about this whole life Do you have why we don't sign up for American Ninja Warrior except for the two idiots that are on this call right now that decided I am going to sign up for Ninja Warrior. So when I read your your kind of ninja origin story, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it was basically I saw this clip on YouTube and I said that looks cool. And a few weeks later there you are a ninja warrior is that basically the how it worked?

Mark Shrime: It was so I had been and still am a climber. I've been a climber for about six years at that point. And yeah, this was one of those, you know, all wise decisions happen about two in the morning. I couldn't sleep by watching YouTube videos of Ninja Warrior. And yeah, I thought, I'm a climber like, this looks. This is all upper body. I can I can do this. And so completely on a lark, like literally completely on a lark looked up, Googled, you know, how do you sign up for Ninja Warrior and submitted my video and did that eight page application that you know very well. And yeah, it was a few weeks later, that they called me. And I hadn't trained for Ninja Warrior at all. At that point. I didn't I mean, I was 41. I was like, I'm a nerdy, introverted doctor from Boston, they're not gonna they're not going to take me. So I just kind of forgot about that application. They called me they said, We would like you on the show. You've got three weeks. And that was when I was like, well, I should figure out how to do this. So I googled Ninja Warrior gyms and Boston found one which was a gym that I went to for my entire ninja career and a door that people there. And got there again, a little bit of the hubris of like, I've been a climber for six years, my upper body is good, I should be fine on these obstacles, could not do a single thing. But then trained as much as I could. And yeah, went on the show for the first time in 2016. Not

Zack Arnold: only that, but with only a few weeks notice having never trained before you made it to the third obstacle

Mark Shrime: made it to the third obstacle. I made it to the balance obstacle and then fell on that. So let

Zack Arnold: me tell you why I hate your story so much. Here's why I hate your Ninja Warrior story. Because I too discovered Ninja Warrior when it blew up on YouTube, those whole Kacy Catanzaro thing where she was the first female to to make it through the city finals course. And it was just mesmerizing. Like, oh my god, that's amazing. I had been doing Spartan Races and tough motors for years. And everybody said, You should do Ninja Warrior. And like, that's crazy. I would never do that. But then my kids started to get obsessed with it. And I would watch it with them in one day. Again, it was one of those, like, in a quiet moment. It wasn't I was thinking about it deliberately. I wasn't doing the math. I was just sitting there watching with my kids on a weekend. I'm like, I could do that. Yeah, it wasn't I can't do it yet. But I could do that. That's what started it. But here's the reason I hate your story so much. Because I trained for three years apply for three seasons before I got on. I didn't have any climbing experience way to learn climbing and learn parkour, I was literally blank slate start from scratch. So three full years of training finally got the call and I fell on the first obstacle.

Mark Shrime: Oh, listen, my third I think I read about this book. My third time on the show, I fell on the first obstacle. And it wasn't even I am so like, I will relive this moment for the rest of my life you do. I didn't even fall on the first obstacle. I might have my body froze. And I literally stepped off the side. Like and that was it. That was the last time was the last time I ever competed on that show. It's it's weird what our brains and our bodies do. Yeah. Do for us. Yeah,

Zack Arnold: I've learned more about myself and the way that my brain and my body interact. In the 10 seconds. I've been on the ninja course than in my entire life. Because I figured that, you know, yeah, it's gonna be nerves and anxiety. And this is a big deal. And the first season that I did it, it wasn't one of the nighttime shoots. It was in like the big Superdome in New York. Well, nice except for the fact that I wasn't even remotely prepared for it. And I didn't understand how the adrenal system worked. Yeah, so I have a very distinct memory of having an I had done the Floating Steps, which is the same one that you fell on. I had been doing testing. So I'd even been on the course and past seasons as a tester. I gotten through the Floating Steps in testing, I knew I could do it. But all of a sudden, they call your name from the on deck circle, you come up the steps, the lights are on your face, you're literally on the Jumbotron. And I'll never forget looking down at my feet and saying which one is my right foot shaft. And I completely froze and I have no memory of going through it until all of a sudden I'm like I'm wet. When did that happen? And I went down this deep rabbit hole to understand the adrenal system. How the prefrontal cortex just says, Nope, we're going to turn off and you're going to kind of go to your basal instincts that taught me how important habit formation was and for the moves that you make to be instinctual. Yeah, so then I spent another entire year unlearning all the things that I had learned better managing my nervous system, year two, I did the exact same thing. No, two years in a row. If I showed it if I showed you the video back to back minus wearing a different shirt, you think it was the same clip? No. Oh, that hurt your your responses the way that everybody feels is the first year. It's like, oh, you know that happens. But you get back on the horse. Right? Right. It's the exact same thing the second year. Oh, that hurts my heart so much. And so that's that's the current vision that I have in my mind. So the difference for me is that I'm giving it one more shot whether or not they'll have me, I don't know. Right. But actually, it was it's I just realized this. Now it was a year ago today that I was testing for obstacles because I didn't get the call last season. And I tore the tendon in my shoulder. So a year ago today is when I've had the entire year off from training ninja, and I've been dealing with other, you know, circumstances in life and otherwise, and it's eerie that it's today, that's the one year anniversary, but I've decided one more shot because it's one of those where it goes back to this idea of when you when you know what your why is you can endure almost anyhow, right. And my why when I really get down to it is inspiring others to step outside their comfort zone because they can achieve their true potential, I want people to be able to find that true potential. And if I don't give it one more shot, even though the training sucks, and I've been embarrassed twice, and it costs money, and it costs time. 30 years from now, I'm going to be like, I could have tried one more time and I didn't but that's again goes back to this, you can endure almost anyhow.

Mark Shrime: And the Ninja is such an interesting like, as I was saying before, you need to fall in love with failure, you know, that take up take ups or whatever, something you haven't done before. I have never done anything like Ninja that brings you, as you said brings you like right up in the face of every weakness you have. It is a sport of failing. Like, I mean, it's just it's designed like there's no second chances you'd fall you're done. You fall on my both of us, we fall on the first obstacle, you find the first obstacle you've been on that course for 9.2 seconds. And that is it, you are done. It forces you to at least it forces you to try to get over some of that anxiety, but it also forces you in a way that nothing else ever has in my life to take joy in every step. So find the joy, it doesn't matter do 15 times before you can figure out how to do a che, which for the listeners is just flying from one bar to the other 15 times where you can figure out how to do that. But the joy of like getting an inch closer and the joy of feeling your body fly through the air. Even if when you're on the show itself. You're on the horse for nine seconds. And that's that's really that's that's where that idea of falling in love with failure came from. It's because ninja force forces us forced me to fail over and over and over and over again, until I started to realize that. Yeah, there's something good about this.

Zack Arnold: Where this brings us back to for me is one of the conversations we had earlier, which we talked a little bit about, but I want to hit even harder is the idea that any given Monday is still going to be the same mundane thing over and over. And for me, that was a really important lesson I learned from ninja was making the mindset transition from it's all about this goal, there's an outcome that I'm working towards. And it doesn't matter what it takes to get there. Versus I actually enjoy the process. Because if I look at the five plus year journey of American Ninja Warrior, I am a complete and total failure. Literally, I'm statistically a total failure. I haven't finished one obstacle, right. So I have a 0% success rate. But if I had a time machine first of all, I want to go back to like Season Five when it was made for real people. Yes, because we're starting in season 13. I started about four years years too early because I look at the season for obstacles I'm like, That's easier than what I do on any given Thursday night right? Now it's impossible. But short of that if I could go back to the beginning of 2018, when I started knowing exactly how it's going to add up, oh, I would do it 10 times out of 10 because of the relationships that I build with people, some of the closest relationships I have, were endured from all of us failing together, right, all the things, all the things that I've learned about life, learn about myself learned about my shortcomings, the confidence that I built from failing it Allah che 99 times, right, then you get it the 100th It changes how you perceive yourself and the words that you use to describe yourself far beyond. I'm an editor for a living, I'm a podcaster for a living, right that it becomes a part of who you are, but the identity that you are able to strengthen based on your character traits gives you it gives you it's this idea that I talked about with Christina Wallace where you're kind of diversifying your life portfolio. I'm not putting all my stock into I'm a successful surgeon. It's like yeah, I am a successful surgeon. But I've also got this thing I'm doing with an angel We're here and if the surgeon thing isn't going so all right now, I've got my ninja community and vice versa. Right? So I would I would do it all the same way again, knowing that at least so far, I'm still at a 0% success rate,

Mark Shrime: right? I mean, I 100% agree with you. And, for me at least, and we talked about this, it's maybe similar for you, right? I, I still am inside that introverted kid that sits in the back of the bus reading, choose your own adventure books, I was not athletic. As a kid, at all side notes, small story of my we had, we had homeroom teachers and the school that I went to, but since I went with you for the entire eight years of schools, they called them for masters. And my foreign minister was also a football coach. And one year, he decided that he wanted every single kid in his class to be on the football team. So we all tried out, we all got a position, I got a position to as The Waterboy. That's, that's my athletic. That was my athletic level growing up. So also what ninja did for me. And again, one of the reasons to try the thing, try the thing that you're interested in, is because it also, like It surprised me, it proved to me that and broke down some of those that that internal self talk of, I am just a shy kid, no, I am a shy kid. And also I can do this, like also I can slide 12 feet in the air, like, That's it, it opens up an unlocked for me, a side of me that I didn't even think was there. And gave me the courage to try to unlock other sides of me now. To do I want to write, I've never wanted to write a book, oh, my gosh, I can actually write a book now, like these sorts of things, I credit to the psychological work that you have to do to do to do ninja. Yeah,

Zack Arnold: and I agree with all of that. And it made me think of how there are so many, so many circumstances that have come up in the last two or three years where the former version of me would have said, Oh, this is too scary, or I can't do it. And like I failed in a Superdome on the Jumbotron in front of 25 cameras. And everybody saw this is nothing compared to that, right. So it's kind of it's changed the way that my nervous system reacts to stress. And I found that I just, I get less stressed out and anxious about everyday stuff, because I felt that adrenaline rush. So I really, really know what that feels like. But what I want to dig into a little bit deeper now is we've we've pointed out something that for both of us has brought not only tremendous amount of joy, but a tremendous amount of growth that feeds into our identity. So it's not just why I lost some weight and learn how to lose Shea like it really helps form that identity, which I think is also part in alignment with your why because I would guess that your why is a surgeon versus your why is a partner versus your why is a Ninja Warrior. They're probably all very similar. Are they not?

Mark Shrime: Yeah, I'd say so. I'd say so. Yeah.

Zack Arnold: So given that I want to talk a little bit more about some of the the intersection or the ingredients of some of the some of the pieces that go into finding your why. So you have these these four, four questions that you talk about, right? And basically your fulfillment and life comes at the intersection of these four questions. Is this kind of the continuation of this solving for y? And getting back to the math equation? What are those four questions? Yeah,

Mark Shrime: this is a this is a Japanese concept called the Ikigai. Any Japanese speakers will probably tell me that I say I'm saying it wrong. But that that your your purpose? It comes at the intersection of what am I good at? What does the world need? What do I love? And what can I get paid for? And it's the reason that I like those four is because any three of them is insufficient. So when I was a surgeon, working in the US healthcare system, I'm good at it. I'm decent at being a surgeon, I'm good at being a surgeon. The world needs cancer surgeons. And I was getting paid for it. But I didn't love it. And so many people would say, oh, but you're so good at as if that was the reason to keep doing. And it wasn't until for me I added that fourth one of of what do I love? What is my heart moving towards that it all made sense? And so you take any one of those you take out something you're not good at something? Well, probably not your why? Maybe it is if you get better at it. I can't get paid for it. I don't love it. The world doesn't need it. It's where you put all four of those together. That you really find that that intersection is where your why is.

Zack Arnold: So if we take those four ingredients we go back to American Ninja Warrior if I'm asking myself that question, what do I love? I love doing ninja sports. Great. What am I good at? Definitely not Ninja Warrior. What can I get paid for? Definitely not Ninja Warrior, although I did get paid $200 I don't know if you're aware of this, but they now pay their athletes. It's like 100 bucks flat. Yes. So I know the former athletes are like, you gotta be kidding me. But yeah, I made 200 whole dollars being a ninja warrior. I haven't kept the checkout. So proud of it. Right. But then the the other question, does the world need it? There's a maybe, you know, it's an arrogant part of me. But I feel the world needs to see somebody going after really crazy stupid goals to convince them that they're capable of doing it too. So I feel like with Ninja at least I crossed off two of them. Or technically, I did get paid for it. But it's definitely not something that I'm good at. Therefore, I don't want to spend my life doing it. Right. Could I could I be okay at it if I gave it, you know, 810 12 hours a day, maybe. But I definitely don't have the aptitude or the desire to get that good. So it's become a part of the equation, but it's not a part of the whole equation. Right. But having said that, it just seems to me that for two people that have maybe not found their way through ninja, but have found that as a way to embrace or even fall in love with failure. What if I'm listening to this, and I want to create the proper conditions for the Epiphany, but I'm like, it ain't gonna be ninja like is that the only possible way that I can discover my why and then solve for it? So what about those that are like II? I don't think I'm gonna be doing the whole ninja thing.

Mark Shrime: Well, I'm gonna say two things there. I'm gonna answer your question. Second, but the first thing I'm gonna say, and this is something that I, you know, when I, when I take people, when I ask people, they want to come climbing, or they used to ask people, they wanted to go to ninja. That was a common reaction, it was like, I'm not gonna do this for I can't do this bind. Let me strengthen my upper body first, and then then come back to me. And of course, that never actually ends up happening. And the reason I'm bringing that up is because it is in the act of doing it, that you build the strength to do it. Good night. And this is true of ninja. And I mean, but I think it's true in general, I could not do a single ninja obstacle three weeks before I went on the show for the first time, despite having decent upper body strength. I didn't become a ninja before becoming an injured. Finally, you can't, you just got to do the thing. So I would I would encourage whatever crazy thing that you're thinking about that you think you need to prepare yourself enough before you even try it. It is in the training that you prepare yourself, though, I will say that first whether it's ninja or something else, but then what? You know, what should other people look at? Listen, I would say do the crazy thing. Like, honestly, there's something in your mind that you're like, Man, if I had all the time in the world, I would definitely do this, then do it. Like yes, just like you and me Zack work, you're probably not going to be the world's best, whatever it is like you and I are never going to be the world's best ninjas. But we still gained a lot from doing it. So to anybody who's like I'd never do ninja or Spartans or whatever. There is something that you would there's something crazy that you would write, do it.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I've got a laundry list of at least five of those that I'm hoping to cross off by by the end of my life. And ninja was one of them. And there are certainly a multitude of others. What I want to point out now that I think is so important that people miss is one of the barriers is oh, I can't do it, or it's scary. But you said Well, I'm not going to be the world's best at it. And this is what I try to find people help us to the intersection of all of their skills, their abilities, their experience, their knowledge, their expertise, where they do become the world's best at something. So I'm going to go through this exercise with you really quickly and see if if we if this will work with you as well. So if we just kind of go with basic criteria, are you the world's best surgeon? No. You're not the world's best surgeon. Are you the world's best reconstructive surgeon e and t with tumors etc. Horrible, horrible explaining what you do. But you get the point. Yeah, good point. Right. Yeah. So if we take those two, you're still not the world's best right. Now, how many of those surgeons that do specifically what you do are better than you at American Ninja Warrior? Right? That's exactly zero, probably none, right? Like you're the world's best at that one unique intersection. So when it comes to the person that's uniquely positioned to talk about and write about what you do and share your experience, there aren't a lot of other people have any at the intersection of all of the above that are better suited to express what you've expressed.

Mark Shrime: That's, that's amazing. That's a great exercise. And also, I am not the world's best, whatever. I'm not the world's best end head neck surgeon. Some of my faculty were so much better than I am. But I'm good at it. And and not being the best shouldn't stop. Right? Like, I can continue to improve my craft and will continue as long as my body lets me continue to improve my craft. Because the goal isn't to be the best. And that is something that ninja really taught me. We talked about this before, before we got started that the people who do well in India right now are 15. And you and I are not. So, yeah, like I, my body cannot compete with the body of a 15 year old as they throw themselves across, you know, 12 kilos of open air. But that doesn't mean that I shouldn't do it doesn't mean I shouldn't enjoy it, we we are bound. Again, this is probably our upbringing bound by the fact that if I don't come home with a test with 100 on it, the focus is going to be on the three points that I miss, not the 97 points that I got. Again,

Zack Arnold: you're just you're you're drilling into all the epicenters of all of my core memories and thinking about, you know, the Pixar movie Inside Out all my core memories of does, it doesn't matter what you achieve, there's always room for improvement, right? And have really had, like you said, to have had to unlearn so much of that. So there, I could easily go for another three or four hours, I definitely want to be conscious of your time because I know you've got a heart out. But there's one other area that I think most people miss when they talk about the concept of y. And as I mentioned before, it's not just finding your why it's not just starting with Y for you, it's solving for y. But it's another thing to not only solve for it and know what it is, but then live in alignment with it. You can walk around all day saying I found my why, but then your your behaviors like if I were observing you and I weren't inside your head, do your behaviors and your actions match that way? And are you living in alignment with it? This is the hardest part of all.

Mark Shrime: Agreed? Oh, absolutely. Because that's where to use a really trite phrase, that's where the rubber hits the road. That's where, again, I mean, it's also it's also where you where the rubber hits the road in terms of actually moving yourself towards the why it's also where the rubber hits the road in terms of not looking back 30 years later, and saying, oh, shoot, I really should have done that. But that's the scariest part. That's that's the anxiety inducing part. That's the failure inducing part. And it's why most of us don't do it is because of all these things that we see. Because we tell ourselves that we won't be good at it, that we're not ready for it, that it's too scary that whatever whatever. It's, if your wife, if my why is the way I described it is you know, keep your eyes on God and keep your heart toward the marginalized. If that's my why then I need to start constructing a life that that centers that. Otherwise, it's just a whole bunch of words that I'm saying.

Zack Arnold: And I would argue that the vast majority of people that are out there living their lives, it's they don't even have the awareness of the why. And part of the reason that their actions are in alignment with it is because their actions aren't being guided by whatever that compasses. And again, this isn't about religion, but this is about having a belief in something. But if you distill most organized religion down to its essence, they all say almost exactly the same thing and believe the same things, which is why just all the global conflicts that we've had for 1000s of years, confound me because we're all saying the same thing. Yes, we all we all have the same beliefs. I don't know, I just turned into Seinfeld, that happens when I get excited. But the reason that I wanted to bring up this idea of living in alignment with it is that from all the students that I work with, in my program, once they get this sense of I think I found my why. But now there's this tremendous pressure. Now I've got to choose this one thing, and I have to dedicate the rest of my life to this one thing, and what if I'm wrong, I'm making this decision for life. And you and I are very much on the same page that there's a perspective shift that needs to happen. So talk to me a little bit more about this perspective shift that comes with these career trade changes and transitions. I

Mark Shrime: am so glad you said that this is I'm glad we get to spend a little bit of time on this. I you know, I grew up in medicine. So I can speak most most eloquently towards medicine. But I know this is true in a lot of other careers as well. What's medicine is constructed is actually constructed such that the decision does feel like it's for the rest of your life. Like when I chose my specialties, I could go back and retrain to do a different specialty but that's five more years of residency and nobody wants to do that. And so, we get this ingrained idea that the decisions that we are making are for the rest of our lives, they are not my why may change as we talked about in earlier on in this in this episode, that the two phases of life, my why may change. As I move into the second phase of life my why may change because of experiences that I have Have another epiphany that I have, the only decision that I am making is the decision that I am making more now. I may love it and be in it for the rest of my life, or I may not I may make a mistake, and that is perfectly okay. One of the hardest things to break. Hardest thing for me to break in my career. And the hardest thing for some of my clients to break is exactly that is this idea that the next decision must be the right one must be the one that I stick with for the rest of my life. It isn't, it doesn't have to be. And in fact, thinking that way is going to paralyze you from actually making a decision.

Zack Arnold: One of the things you said in there, all of which I agree with, but that I want to dig into a little bit further before we wrap up is the idea of your why changing. And I would actually argue that when you find it, it almost that's the one rock and everything changes around it. So let me let me give you an example of an idea that I just had based on your why there's two components to it. There's this component of belief and religion or spirituality, and this idea of helping others. So if we maintain that why, with this argument, if you decided that instead of being a surgeon, I could be a forklift operator at a soup kitchen from my local church. Are you not still in alignment with your why?

Mark Shrime: That's such a that's very true. It's such a good way of saying it. I think what the reason I set it the way I did is because I want to leave room. Listen, my, my Christian friends will probably lynched me for this. What if I decide one day that I don't believe in any of this? Does that mean that the time that I've spent believing in this is time wasted? Not at all, it has brought me to, to where I would be at that point. To make this a little bit more concrete? People ask me often because right, I'm not I'm not taking the classic medical past these last me often. Do you regret your medical training, you're hated so much do you regret it? And the answer is no. Like, what I want to go back and redo 15 years of stuff that I hated, absolutely not. But I am where I am, because I did that stuff. So even if your why changes, they tell you the next direction you're going is because of what you've built before that. And

Zack Arnold: this goes into another argument or another conversation I have so many people in transitions is the fear of, well, I don't want to pursue this new thing, because then I have to start over. And when you decided to make that change, you have 15 years of experience and skills that you could put towards this new thing. And I felt exactly the same way where I had a massive existential crisis. From age nine to age. I don't know in my late 30s, I spent my entire life learning how to edit film and television. And now I don't want to make film and television and win Oscars and Emmys Who the hell am I I have to start over and I was terrified. And then I had the realization one day that I learned all the skills to tell good stories to elicit emotion for people to to to structure storytelling. And then the Epiphany, this was one of those huge epiphanies that I had is that instead of spending all day long and editing software, I do the exact same job I just do it was zoom Now, once I realized that an entire lifetime of all this experience became relevant, just through a mindset shift.

Mark Shrime: That was totally agree. Totally agree. Well,

Zack Arnold: having said that, we could easily go on for hours and hours and hours. But given that one of the skills that I teach is time management, I want to make sure that I'm respectful of your time because I know that you've got a heart out. So if anybody listening today, and I hope everybody today was inspired by your story inspired by your work, I highly recommend they read your book, there's probably a lot of places to send people to but where's the one place they should get started? If they want to connect with you and your work?

Mark Shrime: Well, the one place then would would be my website, it's www.moocchile.com. You can find links to the book, you can find links to social media, you can find links to my other writing there besides start there.

Zack Arnold: I'm gonna make sure to send everybody there and I don't really I don't think you realize how much you dated yourself by starting with WWE. I realized that as I do the same thing all the time. I'm like, oh my god, I'm so old because everybody under 30 is like W What? What is he talking about? It's right. So as soon as I started like, yeah, you and I are of the same generation where the www generations. This has been a tremendous pleasure. I can't believe that you fell out of the sky into my inbox because I'm so happy that you did. This is so much fun. Such a pleasure to chat and I cannot wait to share your work with my audience. So thank you so much for being here.

Mark Shrime: Thank you so much. It's really been a pleasure.

Episode Credits

This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, and the show notes were prepared by Debby Germino and published by Glen McNiel.

The original music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Joe Trapanese (who is quite possibly one of the most talented composers on the face of the planet).