Tom Rowland Podcast episode 1031 is a conversation with Dane Sanders, co-founder of Men and Women of Discomfort, a community that treats voluntary discomfort as a way to organize your whole life. Dane explains why MWoD is an operating system and not a challenge, what he calls the drift and the storms, how his friend Tim Kruger's cancer revealed what they had built, and the CREDO framework behind it.
You can watch the full conversation in the player above, or press play in the player at the top of this page to listen.
Men and Women of Discomfort, often called MWoD, is a community built around voluntary discomfort. Dane Sanders describes it as an operating system for how to organize your life, not a challenge with a finish line. Members run in 12-week rounds, four times a year, with daily video check-ins, a new uncomfortable habit every Monday, and a Saturday challenge each week. Many members have stayed in it for four to six years.
Dane Sanders is the co-founder and leader of Men and Women of Discomfort, which he started with his friend Tim Kruger as Men of Discomfort before his friend Megan helped open it to women. He has completed 34 consecutive rounds of the program and has done ultramarathons and a 50-mile walk. He also works with the UC Irvine men's volleyball team on the longer game of who the players are becoming beyond the sport.
The drift is the name MWoD gives to the way energy and momentum leave us when we stop doing the hard thing. Dane compares it to a hot cup of coffee that will be cold in 10 minutes, which is entropy, the second law of thermodynamics. He pairs it with the storms, the predictable hard events in life that we do not choose. His point is that both are coming, so it makes sense to prepare for them instead of being surprised.
For the first three months, the program decides what members eat and drink, when they eat, how much they sleep and drink water, and how they exercise. Each week follows a cadence: a new uncomfortable habit on Monday, a tip on Tuesday, a short teaching called an anchor on Wednesday, Thursday Truth, Friday Fess Up, a Saturday Challenge, and Sunday off. The round ends with a long anchor challenge and a graduation call, then a week off before the next round begins.
CREDO is the framework Dane Sanders uses to describe how transformation works. It stands for commit, release, embrace, define, and own it. Commit, release, and embrace are the everyday stages of growth, where you push through the point of wanting to quit until you start to embrace the hard thing. Define and own it happen each quarter, when you zoom out to decide who you want to become and then restart the cycle. Dane explains each stage in his own words in the episode.
Dane says the first step is simply to apply at mwod.io/apply, or at itsprobablynotforyou.com, which goes to the same place. He encourages people to fill out the application even if they are not ready, because answering the questions brings some clarity. New rounds start every quarter, including one each October. He says the right fit is anyone who is dissatisfied enough with some area of their life to actually do something about it.
I have done a lot of these programs over the years, and some of them have stuck with me for good. Two of my friends are in the middle of a round of MWoD right now, so before I sat down with Dane, I asked each of them for one sentence about it. One sent a sentence. The other sent a paragraph about faith, his business, and losing weight. When two people I know talk like that, I want to meet the guy who built it. Press play at the top of the page to hear how Dane responded when I read them to him.
I expected Dane to describe a 12-week program. The first thing he did was tell me it is not a challenge at all, because a challenge has a finish line and MWoD does not. That hit home for me. When I was guiding, rowing and then poling a boat for eight hours a day, fitness was a necessity. I learned how fast momentum disappears when you miss a few days. Dane has a name for that, and he explains it with a cup of coffee. It is worth hearing him lay out the difference between the drift and the storms.
MWoD started with two middle-aged dads walking around Back Bay in Newport Beach, wondering if this was all there was. Dane and his friend Tim Kruger started trying things like cold water, breath holds, and eating nothing but burgers for a day. It was all for fun, until Tim was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Something Tim said during that time changed how Dane understood what they had been doing. I would rather you hear that line from Dane than read it from me. He tells Tim's story with a lot of love.
Dane walked me through how a round works, from the daily video check-ins to Friday Fess Up. Then he told me about one of his favorite Saturday challenges, called Ghostbusters. You run a mile with nothing in your ears, think about someone you have unfinished business with, and then you stop and call them. Then you do it three more times. I think the stories that come out of it are the reason Dane does this work. He says he cries listening to them, and I understand why.
If you only listen to one part of this episode, make it Tim's story and the Ghostbusters challenge. Press play in the player above, or scroll back up to watch.
I have watched a lot of friends finish 75 Hard and tell me it was the best they have ever felt. Then on day 76, many of them stop. I asked Dane why, and he has a clear answer about trophies and what he calls the infinite game. He also told me about our mutual friend Brandon Clift, who quit MWoD after a week, came back years later, and nearly made the same mistake near the end of his round. The conversation Dane had with Brandon is something I think anyone who has finished a program and stalled should hear.
I have done enough hard workouts that a physical challenge is almost in my comfort zone now. I told Dane that taking a Japanese class at the community college would scare me more than a thousand push-ups. He agreed, and then he went somewhere I did not expect. He said walking 50 miles is not the hardest thing for him, because he gets credit for it. His examples of the hard things that nobody notices are simple, and they made me think about my own house. You have to hear him tell it.
When I went to the SEALFIT Kokoro camp, the coaches used an idea every boater knows. Two boats leave the same harbor one degree apart, and an hour later they cannot see each other. They also taught me that getting 1% better every day means becoming a better person, not adding 1% to your deadlift. I shared that with Dane, and he connected it to his friend Bill, to staying on course through grief, and to how he thinks about the choices we make. Listen to how he ties it all together.
Yesterday's conversation with Dane reminded me that the hard part is not the big event. It is the small choice you make on the day you do not want to make it, and then making it again the next day.
I think anyone who has felt the drift after finishing a program, or who keeps waiting for a better time to start, will find something in this one. Dane's answer to who MWoD is for surprised me, and so did his website.
Press play in the player at the top of this page to hear the whole conversation, and if you are curious, take a look at itsprobablynotforyou.com.
Dane Sanders, Men and Women of Discomfort (MWoD), mwod.io, itsprobablynotforyou.com, Tim Kruger, Megan, Brandon Clift, the Mankind Podcast, Pat Barber, CrossFit, 75 Hard, Whole30, paleo, M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled, Nassim Taleb, Michael Easter, The Comfort Crisis, Wim Hof, Andrew Huberman, Jerzy Gregorek, James Clear, Atomic Habits, the Stoics, the Western States 100, Auburn, California, Back Bay in Newport Beach, UC Irvine men's volleyball, SEALFIT Kokoro, and the 10,000 push-up challenge.
Dane Sanders is the co-founder and leader of Men and Women of Discomfort, a community built on the practice of voluntary discomfort. He started it with his late friend Tim Kruger as Men of Discomfort, and it later opened to women when his friend Megan stepped in to lead them. Dane has completed 34 consecutive 12-week rounds, has run ultramarathons, and once walked 50 miles from Sacramento to his home in Auburn, California. He also works with the UC Irvine men's volleyball team on who the players are becoming beyond the sport.
Transcript
Tom Rowland Podcast — Episode 1031: Dane Sanders
In this episode: why Men and Women of Discomfort is an operating system and not a challenge, the drift and the storms, how Tim Kruger's cancer revealed the power of voluntary discomfort, the weekly cadence and the Ghostbusters challenge, why finite challenges fade on day 76, the CREDO framework, and how to apply.
Tom Rowland: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Tom Rowland Podcast brought to you by Star brite. We're brought to you by Star brite today, as always. Star brite is the maker of an awesome line of products to take care of your boat. That's where I use it most. Whether it's the Salt Off product or any of the boat cleaning products, Star brite has you covered. Definitely check them out. They're not only a great company for the products that they have, but they also do a tremendous amount in conservation, and that is certainly important to us all.
Dane Sanders: I'm Dane Sanders from Men and Women of Discomfort, and this is the Tom Rowland Podcast.
Tom Rowland: Dane, what's up? It's nice to meet you.
Dane Sanders: You too, Tom. Kind of amazing to me that I'm here. I'm really grateful for all that you do and how you lead and the space that you make for people. It's incredible. So thanks for having me on.
Tom Rowland: Right on. Thank you, and thank you for what you're doing. MWoD, I have two friends doing your challenge right now, and I thought I'd lead off with two quotes. I asked them both for a quote. I asked them for one sentence. One of them gave me one sentence, and one of them gave me a paragraph. So anyway, the first one says, "It has rewired my mind, body, and relationship to discomfort. I feel unstoppable." And the second one is, "The MWoD challenge gave me a space to slow down, be honest with myself, and reconnect with God in areas of my life where I had been operating on autopilot. Through the daily disciplines and accountability, I became more aware of the fears, distractions, and old patterns that were keeping me from fully trusting Him, and I experienced real growth in faith, humility, and purpose." He also says, "I also lost a good amount of weight and feel like I'm in the best shape I've been in since I was in my mid-20s. It's also helped me manage my way emotionally through some tough times with my business and business partner. I was very open and honest about what was going on and the trials that we have been through this year, so it was great to have the support from other members of MWoD." I keep calling it MWoD, do Men and Women of Discomfort. So...
Dane Sanders: People call it MWoD all the time. That's great.
Tom Rowland: Okay. So obviously, your challenge has been incredibly impactful to the two people that I know who have done it, and so that probably generates some curiosity from the people that are listening of what in the world is this challenge? What could make that kind of a change in someone's life? So could you kind of explain what it is?
Dane Sanders: Yeah. Well, first of all, it's very humbling to hear those words. When I hear folks say stuff like that, it certainly mirrors my own experience, but it's very motivating and encouraging to hear that stuff. So super cool that you shared that. The first thing I would probably say would be that it actually isn't a challenge in the sense that most people see a challenge. So when people sign up for a marathon, or they take on a big New Year's resolution or they do a boot camp or they sign up for 75 Hard or whatever they do, their thing out there, paleo, Whole30, could be diet, could be food, it could be discipline, like I'm gonna go to school... All these things are in a sense gauntlets, things that you run through to get to the other side. But the reason I resist calling it a challenge is because there's no other side. There's no kind of finish line when you're done. And this is really important. In fact, there's folks in our community, especially early on, that even though we're kind of blue in the face talking about it, they don't really believe us that we mean it, that it's not just meant to be a reset or a new year, new me. It's actually meant to be an operating system for how to navigate the gnarly reality of being a human being. We live in a rugged, rugged world. And M. Scott Peck opens his famous book, "The Road Less Traveled," with the simple line, "Life is difficult." And nobody pushes back on that. Anyone who's lived any amount of life knows life is hard. And then the question becomes, if I want something in my life, how do I organize my existence in such a way that I might actually have a chance of getting the thing that I say I want? And Men and Women of Discomfort is a way to organize your life. And that's it. And we have a particular bias around how we think the world is, the nature of what it means to be a human being. And when people understand that and they get serious about how they're gonna arrange their existence, they say things like those kind remarks that you made at the beginning. They start getting super clear. They wake up, and then beyond that, they start getting stronger in their capacity. And in the best case scenarios, they actually stop doing it just for themselves. They move beyond just becoming strong and awake for my sake. They start becoming strong and awake for love's sake and something bigger than themselves, and that's actually when it gets very, very exciting.
Tom Rowland: Wow. That's really cool. You know, I've done so many of these different things, all the ones that you mentioned before.
Dane Sanders: Totally. Me too.
Tom Rowland: And often wonder, you know, and some of them stick with me, and I've just continued to do them.
Dane Sanders: Well, you're clearly a fit dude. You've been after it for a long time, clearly.
Tom Rowland: Well, yeah, and in a lot of ways, it was out of necessity. My fitness, well, it began as a childhood athlete, but then I got out of shape. And I was a fishing guide, which is a very physical job. In the beginning, I was rowing a boat. And later, I was pushing a boat with a pole in the wind, you know, for eight hours at a time. It's like being a professional athlete. People kind of laugh like that, but when you're doing it, you might do it 100 days in a row, 200 days in a row. The more days that you can do it, the more money you can make, the more successful you can be. So it became a necessity, but somewhere along the line, I really started enjoying it again. And it became something that was just a non-negotiable in my life, and it still is that way. But it's a funny thing with fitness is that when you're doing it regularly, like when you're organizing your life through your program, if you think about, like, you're in the middle of it and everything's going great and you feel like, "I could not miss tomorrow. There's no way I could miss tomorrow." And if you were to miss tomorrow for some family obligation or something and you weren't able to do it, you would be so disappointed and so down, and you would do whatever it took to get back to it. But if you miss two days, the feeling kind of dampens. And then if you miss four or five days, it's like you never even started.
Dane Sanders: It goes away quickly.
Tom Rowland: And I noticed in here, one of the things about what you call the drift. And that's what that is, I think, is that it goes away so fast. I'm always fascinated with that because, especially when you're running. I've been a runner before where I'm training for marathons, and you're running today and tomorrow and you have this whole plan, and for one day you miss or maybe you get injured or something happens and you cannot imagine going a day without it. But if you go four, it's like you never even started.
Dane Sanders: Yeah, 100%. Well, here's what we know for sure. This cup of hot coffee, what do we all know is gonna be true about this hot coffee in 10 minutes?
Tom Rowland: Probably be cold.
Dane Sanders: It's gonna be cold coffee. And it's a law. It's called entropy. It's the second law of thermodynamics. It's actually the way the world actually works. Energy dissipates. And if that's true with my coffee, why would that not be true with me? And more interestingly, why would I not anticipate it? Like, why wouldn't I think, "Oh, wait a minute, the stakes are much higher than I think when I hit the snooze bar," or I skip the thing that I said was really important, or the thing that I would've given my... Like, I remember years ago, I tore my Achilles tendon, and that whole year of recovery post-surgery was like I would give anything to go suffer in a workout. 'Cause it was taken from me. And this is where I think there's some nuances that are really interesting. The drift is what we call it at MWoD, that energy going away. And again, it's built into the human condition, and it happens to you. We're victimized by the drift. It's just kind of built in.
Dane Sanders: But there's another thing that hits us all the time in life that victimizes us, and I'd call that the storm or the whirlwind of being a human being. And so the drift is kind of subterranean, like below the surface of the water, but the storms are above the surface, and those are those realities. They could be as light as, you know, you stub your toe, or I tweaked my back last night, so I'm trying to sit up in my seat right now before I go to a workout. But there's also the heavier ones, like my friend Bill, whose wife died the day before yesterday. Or the cancer diagnosis that you get from the doctor, or when you go to work and you think it's a great job, but it's your last day at the job. These dynamics are also highly predictable. You live enough life, and you get through your naive teens and 20s, assuming you survive your terrible choices, or good choices, depending what you do, you start coming face to face with the reality of storms too. So it's not just the drift and how things leave us, but it's also the storms that hit us. And again, we don't choose them. They choose us. They're coming whether we like it or not. The Norwegians have this amazing saying, though, and this I think is the pivot: there is no bad weather, there's only terrible clothes. And if you don't get ready for the weather, for the storms, if you don't get ready for the drift, it will take you whether you like it or not. It's not my opinion, that's just the nature of what it means to be a human being. So when I say kind of organize your life, and we're not just a challenge or a program... And I don't mind what you call it, you can call it whatever you want, but for us, it's an operating system. It literally is like, okay, if this is the nature of the world we live in, how will I anticipate the very predictable things that are coming our way and position so that I actually get what I say I want?
Dane Sanders: I love Nassim Taleb. He talks a lot about anti-fragility, this idea of, you know, the opposite of fragile is not resilient, like I'll be able to persist in a storm. The opposite of fragile is anti-fragile. It's actually, I'm gonna get stronger in the storm. I'm actually gonna get stronger because of the drift, but not by accident. You're not gonna drift your way to awesome, ever. There is no champion fisherman, champion athlete, champion academic, champion mom who drifts their way to awesome. And we just take that seriously, and we have a good time doing it.
Tom Rowland: We just had... I just had Pat Barber on.
Dane Sanders: Pat is my guy. I love Pat Barber. Really, really great.
Tom Rowland: He was my L1 coach for CrossFit when I first got certified, yeah. We talked about a lot of the old days of CrossFit when I had him on, but he did a very good job of explaining anti-fragile and what that means, and he did it in a way that was very similar to if they were presenting that concept at a CrossFit Level 1. He does a great job of taking any concept and boiling it down into very simple things that are very easy to understand. If you understand the body, then he'll use a body kind of example. If you understand business, then maybe he'll use a business example. He'll use whatever. But he did a very good job of talking about that term, anti-fragile, and he talked about the body and how you break the body down, it gets stronger, and it was really a great conversation.
Tom Rowland: So I like what you're doing so much, and you have hit on so many things that I think are really, really important. The community, I think, is really, really important for people that are undergoing change, because sometimes when you do a challenge like this, you're undergoing this change, and it feels like you're going through this change, but you don't have anyone around you to say... You know, maybe no one in your family, maybe none of your friends have done something like this. So you're feeling like you're making this major change, but there's no one really to talk to about it. I think the way that you have the community involved in this is really, really incredible. But I also just kind of wonder how it started. You can't have gotten to this point with, you know, "I'm gonna create a program that has all of this." It seems like, and I don't know, but it seems like this has kind of evolved into what it is today by noticing, "Oh, well, there's a community aspect that might be missing," or, "There's this that might be missing." Can you tell me how it got started?
Dane Sanders: Yeah. Thank you for asking. So the short version of it, and it's pretty exciting, was I actually didn't start this on my own. I started this with a buddy named Tim, and his name's Tim Kruger. And Tim and I were basically just middle-aged dad bod guys who used to be athletes and thought we still were athletes 'cause we used to be athletes. We're both married, we both have kids. They seemed to be doing all right. We're part of a faith community. Kinda had a way of grounding in our life. But we'd walk around Back Bay in Newport Beach, California, with a sense of malaise. Like, "Is this it? Really? This is all we got? We're gonna just get old and fat together?" And so we started doing these experiments, like these larks. And candidly, this was a long time before I ever heard who Wim Hof was, and we were holding our breath or getting in cold water. I didn't know that was a thing. And it's kinda cool, all the novelties that have come along over the years. But we were trying all those things. We were doing carnivore diets and going to In-N-Out Burger and getting eight stacks of burgers, and that's all we'd eat that day. It was just knucklehead moves to feel a little bit more alive. That's what we were doing. And it was awesome. And we thought we hung the moon. We were getting in great shape. Invited a buddy. His life changed. He was a former pro baseball player, and he was grumpy with us the whole time, and all we told him was like, "This is not about getting fit, bro. This is about doing the hard thing, doing the hard thing." And we would do it over and over again. And we thought it was awesome.
Dane Sanders: But then Tim got stomach cancer. And we had a small group. At the time, it was just dudes. It was Men of Discomfort. And then eventually my friend Megan came along, and she was like, "This is kinda weird that it's just guys. Don't you think women could benefit from voluntary discomfort?" And I got those notes all... Every time we'd start a new round, I'd get these notes from women who were kinda mad at me. And I was like, "I have no authority over the woman's body. I can say nothing. I'm not gonna be the discomforter of women. That's not gonna be my vibe." And I said, "If you lead it, that's great." So Megan joined on, and now it's Men and Women of Discomfort, and we got a great crew of people. But when Tim got cancer, and he began to go through the process, and, like, you know, there's waves of hope and terrible news and up and down and all the things. And there's no question, if you looked at Tim's life, the center of his existence was his God. That was really clear. That wasn't always true, but it certainly was clear in this window of time. But the thing that got me, that really woke me up to what we had been doing, was he said, "I'm really glad that I practiced voluntary discomfort before involuntary discomfort chose me." And that's when I realized we had stumbled onto something. It wasn't... We didn't make it. We discovered it. And we just named it and found language that seemed to really resonate with people and invited people into it. And Tim ended up... he passed away January 1st of 2022, and I miss him so much. And he was a curmudgeon knucklehead. He didn't want anybody to join. He was like, "We don't need... This is just us, dude. Let's just do this thing. If people aren't breaking the door down, we don't want them. This probably is not for them." And he wasn't wrong. Everyone I tried to convince to go do this thing, they all quit. But anytime someone actually feels that sense of like, "I am so sick and tired of being sick and tired," that's when it's like, "Well, come on, let's go." And we don't do anything to them or for them. We don't hold anyone accountable. All we do is create space for them to account for their actual lives in the nature of the world we live in.
Tom Rowland: How do you do that?
Dane Sanders: Well, let me just finish the story on Timmy real quick.
Tom Rowland: Okay. All right.
Dane Sanders: Timmy's married to Jess, and Holt and Henry are their two boys. And again, Tim passed away, but the last thing I wanna say about Tim is his best year of life was his last year of life. He was more alive than I'd ever seen him in that last year.
Tom Rowland: Wow.
Dane Sanders: And again, that was the wake-up call to me of like, everyone's gonna have a last year of life, and they might have a tragic end, but I actually would argue that in Tim's case it was pretty triumphant despite the terrible that they navigated. And I'm watching his boys grow up, and the investments he made, and how Jess is leading them, and it's incredible. But death is coming for all of us, man. What are we doing when we're still living? That's the question, and then we just kind of build from there.
Dane Sanders: But how do we do it? The question about accountability. Here's what I know for sure: I can't make anybody do anything. People do what they're gonna do, whether they say it or not. I don't really believe people when they tell me what they say they are gonna go do. I believe it when I see them on the day they don't wanna do it and they do it anyways. Those are the folks that I believe. And the way we do that is we have, in our community, a little check-in app. It's asynchronous video communication, and every single day, except for Sundays, people get a rest day, we check in. We say, "Where did we hit the mark? Where did we miss the mark?" And it's not about perfect. It's about wholehearted, and we invite people to account for their life. And not their whole life, 'cause that's a little overwhelming. Just account for the last 24 hours. That's a lot. If people just told the truth about what they said they were gonna do in 24 hours and what they actually did in 24 hours, at least they're getting a baseline of where they actually are at today.
Tom Rowland: And so these videos are public to the whole community?
Dane Sanders: The whole community, yeah.
Tom Rowland: And then these things that you're holding yourself accountable to in these videos, are they physical and related to this challenge? I keep calling it a challenge, and it's not...
Dane Sanders: I don't mind. People get it.
Tom Rowland: But I'm gonna just call it a challenge anyway, 'cause it keeps coming off my tongue that way. But are they always physical and related to this, or could it be extra things?
Dane Sanders: Yeah. It's much more dynamic, 'cause we know some things discomfort people differently than others. Like, I suspect in your case, giving you a hard physical challenge would not be really that difficult. In that context, you've crushed it. But I bet you if you spent 90 days with us, Tom, we'd find some things that make you uncomfortable.
Tom Rowland: For sure.
Dane Sanders: And it might be things that surprise you. It does for a lot of people. Even checking in for some people is the hard thing. For others, it's not putting creamer in their coffee. For others, it's not having a cocktail when it's an open bar and you're at a wedding. For others, it's having the conversation that they've been putting off for years. We have a weekly cadence I can talk about if you want to, but every Saturday we have a challenge.
Tom Rowland: I wanna see how the whole thing works, because we're talking about many aspects of it, but I'm sure that there are people that are going to be interested in participating in it. So they need to understand the organization of it and how you become involved and what it takes. So go for it. Tell me all about it. I'm interested in it.
Dane Sanders: So when people apply, they say they wanna do it, and we say, "Great. We're gonna get started. Here's how it's gonna work. We're gonna tell you everything that's gonna happen over the first three months." 'Cause it's not one and done. People stick with us for years. But when people start, we say, "Look, for the first three months, we're gonna remove the cognitive load and give you a really supportive community. But you're not gonna decide much. We're actually gonna decide everything for you in your life for the next three months comprehensively." And people say, "Well, what do you mean?" I mean everything. We're gonna tell you what you get to eat and what you don't get to eat, what you get to drink and what you don't get to drink, when you get to eat. We get to tell you how many hours of sleep you're gonna get, how much water you're gonna drink every single day, how often you're gonna exercise, and what you're gonna do during that exercise. And we're actually gonna roll in additional habits every Monday, where we're gonna give you another uncomfortable habit, and they're in different categories. Sometimes the new habit is you're going to get to have a conversation with somebody who's different than you for the sake of understanding. And the more different, the more uncomfortable, the better. It could be socioeconomic difference. It could be political difference. Like, come up to an election and talk to someone on the other side, and you get to listen and not correct them. See what that feels like. And it's other stuff, too. We do cold water, we hold our breath. All we're doing is surveying the land to try to figure out where can we find the spot, because we know nothing has started until we find the thing they don't wanna do, and they do it anyways. So that's the whole exercise in the front. So every Monday, they get a new habit. Every Tuesday, we give them a tip on how to navigate their miserable lives. Every Wednesday, we give them an anchor, a little teaching, like five, 10 minutes, a perspective shifter for them when they don't wanna do the thing. Thursday is our Thursday Truth, where the community gets to reflect back: what are they learning? What are they experiencing? Friday Fess Up is a confessional booth where people come on and say, "This week, I missed it here. This is what I learned. This is what I'm gonna do different next time so I can keep my word." And then Saturday is Saturday Challenge, and then Sundays are off. And we just do that for 12 weeks. We're actually in our 12th week right now at the time of this recording. At the end of 12 weeks, we have an anchor challenge, a ridiculous workout, a three-hour thing, but it's actually not ridiculous anymore because they've been practicing for weeks.
Tom Rowland: Right.
Dane Sanders: And they're great. But then we debrief, and then we take a week off, and then we go again. And this coming round will be my 34th round in a row. So it's totally sustainable.
Tom Rowland: Wow.
Dane Sanders: But some of the challenges... This is the thing I wanted to tell you. One of my favorite challenges is a challenge we do called Ghostbusters. So here's how Ghostbusters works. Picture you've been at this now for a few weeks, and you're able to run a little bit, or at least walk. Move your body, because this works for anybody, any size, any shape. Very CrossFitty, the prescribed and the adjusted workout shifts. But in this case, Saturday Challenge was called Ghostbusters. So you don't put anything in your ears. You just go for a run by yourself, and you go for one mile, and your job in that one mile is to simply ask yourself the question, "What are the ghosts that I need to address? I wanna bust 'em out. Who do I have unfinished business with?" And at the end of the mile, you stop, you pull out your phone, and you call 'em. And then you go for another mile, and you find a second ghost, and you call them. And you go a third mile, and you call them, and a fourth. So you go four miles, four ghosts. And in most cases, depending on when they run, they're leaving voicemail messages or whatever. But in some cases, and we've heard these stories over the years, it's unbelievable. People are like, "I forgave my mom. I called my brother for the first time in seven years." Like, these things start opening up. I ask for forgiveness for something that they didn't even know I had betrayed them. And dude, I'm sitting here going, this is a knucklehead challenge. But when people go after the hard thing, life opens up. And it's always uncomfortable. That's the tell. It's always uncomfortable, and they chose it. But on the other side of it, dude... I cry listening to these stories. It's tempting to be like, "Why did you wait so long?" But who cares? They're doing it that morning. And things open up. And that's how it feels. That's the weekly cadence, and these are the kinds of things that we do together.
Tom Rowland: So many of those things that you just mentioned... I did a podcast one time and it was called Stacking W's. And it was about little wins. Everything's a win, right? Like, you don't hit the snooze, and as soon as you get up, you make your bed. That's two W's, right? So the next thing that you're going to win for the day is going to be easier. So then, I don't know, you're trying to incorporate stretching before your workout. So you've now not hit snooze, you made your bed, you drank the water you're supposed to drink, you do the workout. Now you've incorporated the stretching. Then you do your workout, and then there'll be something else. It seems like as you start to stack these W's, it becomes easier and easier for it to become a harder one or a more challenging one later in the day. And you've already done all these things, and that's why I think, like, "I forgave my mom." Well, maybe the first three phone calls were something very simple, and then...
Dane Sanders: That's right.
Tom Rowland: ...it becomes easier just to take on the one that's been hanging on for a long time. And to let go of that is incredible. But I believe in that momentum very much so. That once you are doing well, you wanna continue to do well. And I think that these type of challenges, these type of commitments have been really, really powerful for me, and that's why I continue to have people like yourself on here that do things like this.
Tom Rowland: I think that yours is one of the most well put together programs that I've seen, and I like that you're saying that it's really not a one and done. Because I know so many people that have done 75 Hard, and they have done it, and throughout the whole thing, maybe not the first three weeks, but after that, they're like, "I've never felt so good. I have never felt so good. I have lost weight. I've got more energy. I'm doing better in my marriage. I'm doing better at work. I'm doing better with my friends. I'm doing better as a parent." And then it's like, okay, well, on day 76, why did you stop? Why did you stop doing that on day 76? Because you had such momentum, and you were killing it. And I think that that's one of the things about that program that could be worked on. And I know other people that have done 75 Hard and then they start over again. Day 76 is actually day one.
Dane Sanders: That's right. That's how we frame it in many ways. But I think 75 Hard, first of all, it's powerful. I've done it. I see the results. I see what people have done. And some people, if they're wired a certain kind of way, in the specific lane of health and wellness, they might take ground. I think in many ways CrossFit can be like this. That's what CrossFit has been for me, where you find a community. You know how to suffer with other friends. It's the best hour of your day, you know, all those things. But what about the rest of your life, man? And I also think there's a design flaw in 75 Hard in that it really is oriented towards how do I get to another finish line. Picture it like you get a trophy. Any trophy game is built for atrophy. It's built to get to the end of it, and unless you have a system to keep the train rolling, it is over. The game is done. And you have to take a lot of energy to get the game started again. Back when I was in college, I ran my first marathon, and the day after the marathon, I didn't run again for two years. Not a jog. It was so dumb, 'cause it was a trophy, and I got to tell my buddies, and it was great. And dude, this is the science of motivation. Short-term motivation's easy. Create an extrinsic driver. Give someone a raise. Give someone status. Something to talk about when you're jiving with your buddies. And it'll get you going. That's what January 1st is all about. But if you play the infinite game, you have to go intrinsic. You have to actually find different motivators like agency, that I choose the thing that's hard every day. How about mastery? I get better at this thing every day, and I like getting better. Or I think the bigger one, and you've pointed this out a few times now, is belonging. When you're a part of something that's bigger than you, it transforms you. And it puts you in the long game. You're an endurance athlete now. And I think that's the thing that gets skipped in a lot of these finite processes. And that's why people do yo-yo diets, right? They try the thing. They lose the weight. They really do, but then they put it back on three months later. Well, why? Because the design of the system was it actually had a finish line. You get to weigh yourself and say, "Look," and you take a picture of it, like, "Proof, I did it." But once it's in your rear view mirror, it's not real. It's gotta be true again today, and again today, and again today.
Tom Rowland: So how did the program get to the point that it is today? Because I'm sure that somewhere along the line, that's what you were seeing, is people are just doing this with us for a little while, and they're doing great, and then they move off. So when did you make the conscious decision that this is not a challenge, this is an operating system?
Dane Sanders: Yeah, that came pretty early. It doesn't mean that people don't come and go. It's funny, you and I have a common friend in Brandon Clift, and his story's a really good one, from Mankind Podcast. Brandon, first time he tried it... He used to be a big athlete dude and all the things.
Tom Rowland: He's so handsome.
Dane Sanders: And he showed up on day one, and these are all problems. All the good-looking people, they all quit early. And that's what he did. He was in it for about a week, and then he told me all these great reasons why he needed to get out. And he was gone, and I was like, "Okay." And it just so happened he and I had enough common life, friends, and stuff, we kept seeing each other over the years. And at first it was a little awkward, but then, you know, it's like, "I get it, man. You didn't want it. No problem." And then he had me back on his show a couple years later, and I was just describing it, and he had just gone through a couple of events that were very scary and meaningful with his wife and kid. And he was like, "I think I need to try again." And I was like, "Well, I don't know if you need to. You probably don't wanna do it. It's probably not for you, man." And he's Australian. Like, "I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it." So he gets in, his dad joins him, and they start doing it this last round. He's in it right now. And literally about 10 days ago, he and I are in a conversation, and he's like, "Ah, I'm losing my motivation. We're near the end zone. I wanna be done." And I'm like, "Okay, so what's happening is you fundamentally still don't get what we're doing. You think the goal is to get to week 12, and consciously or unconsciously, that's how you're relating with it. And I just gotta tell you up front, all the gains you've made, you're gonna lose them. I guarantee. You've begun the process of the drift, and you don't know it. You're drunk. You think because you're fit again, you're good. And I just wanna tell you, I want you to remember these words. I don't expect you to shift, but I want you to remember these words. It's going away. You've already started to die and you don't know it." And he kinda woke up. And to his credit, I didn't try to convince him. He comes back and he's like, "Actually, I guess Saturday is not my last day." And at first, he was like, "I'm gonna start again in January." And I was like, "Great. Do that, and you're just gonna give away your gains for three months, then we'll start again. That's what most people do." And he's like, "What? Ah, dude." And that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for that I-wanna-barf feeling. If you aren't feeling that, you don't get what we're doing. It is actually uncomfortable. The momentum thing you're describing, that's bliss, man. But it's gonna come to an end. You're gonna get an injury. You're gonna get the flu. Something bad's gonna happen around you that takes you out. Work's gonna get crazy. Your kids will keep waking up in the middle of the night. Then what? 'Cause if you can't figure that out, you haven't figured out life, man. What you've done is you've gone from trophy to trophy to trophy with these big valleys in between. But the only way you continue this kind of steady climb, you have to see yourself as an endurance athlete. And there can be ebb and flow, and that's true every day, every week, every month, every quarter, every year. Absolutely. But if you step back and zoom out and look at the progression of your life, what you're gonna see is a very jagged line going up and to the right, but only if you design your life that way. And that's what we've done. And it's so fun when guys get it, 'cause my assumption is people aren't gonna get it. Probably 20% get it the first round. But if they stick around, by around round three, round four, they get it. And that's why we have people in this for four years, five years, six years in a row. And it's not like we're begging. Our price point's so cheap. We do the price point low so that people can... it's gonna be a long time that they're gonna be a part of this thing if they get it, and that's great. But the point is that it actually is sustainable, that you actually can do this, even if you ebb and flow. We have some people that come in just the first quarter. We do it four times a year, every quarter, and they come in just for January every year. Or they come in just for quarter four, the one we start in October, 'cause if you're in the Northern Hemisphere, that's the coldest, the most holiday parties, the most uncomfortable is quarter four. And I love it. It's the best quarter, because the more discomfort, the more opportunity there is to grow.
Tom Rowland: That's pretty awesome. So many questions, but before we get there, I wanna ask you, you say you've done this 34 consecutive times. And I also have this Saturday challenge that was shared with me that I don't know if you want me to share with our audience.
Dane Sanders: Yeah, share it away. No problem.
Tom Rowland: Okay. We'll share it in a minute. But I wanna know, in these 34 consecutive... let's call it a 12 weeks...
Dane Sanders: We call them rounds.
Tom Rowland: Okay, 34 rounds, what's the most difficult challenge that you have done, and what did you learn from it?
Dane Sanders: We've done a lot. You hear folks talk about Misogis. I think Michael Easter's book, The Comfort Crisis, is fantastic in terms of kind of framing...
Tom Rowland: So if anybody doesn't know, explain what a Misogi is.
Dane Sanders: Yeah, so Misogi's basically an old idea that Michael Easter, the author, has kind of popularized in recent years, and it's the idea of doing something that you have a 50% chance or greater of failing at, and you don't die. That's the goal. So don't take unnecessary risk, but make it so that it's a very high likelihood you won't see the other side of it. And yeah, I've done a lot of them. I've done ultramarathons, and I lived up in Auburn, California for a while. Auburn is the home of the Western States 100 Mile race, and it's the first 100 mile foot race that was organized and a very iconic endurance event. And I realized as soon as I moved there that I would have no friends unless I either joined CrossFit or started running. So those were my two things I started doing that season, and it was cool. But one round that came to mind as you were saying this, I've had a lot of them, but one was I walked 50 miles. Running 50 miles I actually think would've been easier than walking 50 miles. So it took about 17 hours. My wife drove me down to Sacramento, and I walked home. And I did it with two other buddies. One of them dropped out at mile 36, and me and this other young buck finished together. And we started in the dark, we ended in the dark. And again, in Auburn, that's not that big of a deal. I mean, people run 100 miles for fun regularly. But for us in that moment, that was a lot. And just going through the waves... Anyone can go and walk. As long as you just keep putting one foot in front of the other, it's accessible. But it's uncommon. And I think that's the biggest challenge at this stage of the game, is continually finding the thing that makes me uncomfortable.
Dane Sanders: Or as listeners are thinking through, it sounds like a big... again, sounds like a trophy. I think for some people it literally is getting in a cold shower. Like 30 seconds of a little bit of discomfort. That actually feels euphoric when you're on the other side of 30 seconds. But just hearing those words, I know there are listeners who are literally saying to themselves, "I could never do that. I could never go in the shower for 30 seconds," if it's not hot first or hot at the end. No, just get in, turn it on, cold as you can get it, middle of winter, and then breathe. And then 30 seconds later, turn it off and dry off and get out. It doesn't matter the thing, it's just that you don't wanna do it.
Tom Rowland: Right.
Dane Sanders: That's the point. And the science is fun on this. You've heard about Huberman and the anterior midcingulate cortex, this neuroscientific discovery that this substructure in our brains only grows... it's huge and present with people who have thrived their whole life and in professional athletes, but it only grows when you're doing the thing you don't wanna do. So if all of a sudden I fall in love with cold showers, I can keep doing them 'cause I like them, but I need another thing. I need another thing I don't wanna go do. And our community's pretty great at inviting people to do things they don't wanna do, with a big smile on your face while you do it.
Tom Rowland: One of the questions I was gonna ask you is if it always has to be physical, because so many of the things that we talk about are physical. You can certainly find pain. You can find pain in cold. You can find pain sitting in the sauna for some people. They don't like that.
Dane Sanders: I hate sauna. Saunas are the worst. I love-hate sauna.
Tom Rowland: You can do 1,000 push-ups. You can run 50 miles, you know? There's all of these different things. But at some point, like you, I've done enough of these things now to where I almost feel like a physical challenge is actually in my comfort zone now.
Dane Sanders: Bingo. That's right.
Tom Rowland: That's not the thing, right? It would almost be way more uncomfortable to go to the community college and take a class on how to speak Japanese, something like that.
Dane Sanders: Totally.
Tom Rowland: Oof, I wouldn't wanna do that, right? It doesn't fit with my schedule. You don't know anyone there. There's a million things about that that are not very attractive.
Dane Sanders: Well, how about this? How about when you're a new dad and you're tired from working all day, that you decide you're gonna be the guy that gets up with the crying baby? Or how about you become the diaper guy? Or how about when you wake up in the morning and the dishwasher's full of clean dishes, you quietly empty the dishwasher and don't get credit for it? I'm describing all these things 'cause these were my things. Go walk 50 miles, that's actually not that crazy. I'm gonna get social credit for it. I get to talk about it on fancy podcasts like with Tom. But you know what I'm not gonna get credit for? Emptying the dishwasher.
Tom Rowland: Right.
Dane Sanders: But I want a trophy for that. I want my wife to notice I did that, and then I get offended later that she doesn't notice. Dude, that's the tell. That's the goldmine for me. And if I can find those nooks and crannies, you don't have to go very far to find discomfort.
Tom Rowland: So in your program, when you have people that have been in there four or five years, are these the type of things that are uncovered?
Dane Sanders: 100%. 100%. And this is the magic. 'Cause Jerzy Gregorek famously said, "Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life." What he's describing is how you actually flourish in the world we live in. And I don't care if the choice is tiny or massive. What I care about is did you do it when you didn't wanna do it? If that's the case, and you keep stacking those W's like you're describing, you're gonna have a good day. If you have enough good days in a row, you're gonna have a good week. If you have enough good weeks in a row, you're gonna have a good year. And you keep building. And this is how that old notion of the 10-year overnight success works. The idea that I'm gonna get washboard abs in eight weeks, you can do it, and have at it. But I'm more interested in what you're like eight years from now. Tell me what that life is like.
Dane Sanders: 'Cause I think... like, right now, I'm wearing this jacket. I get a chance to work with these elite athletes over at the University of Irvine men's volleyball. They contend for national championships every single year. And the reason coach has invited me to engage with his team is because he recognizes that these boys are gonna have a lot of years on the other side of being elite athletes. And who are they gonna be then? 'Cause they know how to do the hard thing in sport, but what about the hard thing in all the other categories? And it's such a privileged position to be in a conversation where we start that now so that they might actually have a chance to... well, they would have a chance regardless. I don't wanna make myself self-important. We just wanna jumpstart that process.
Tom Rowland: Are you doing things like what we're talking about here with the athletes?
Dane Sanders: Yeah.
Tom Rowland: And do they recognize what's going on?
Dane Sanders: Yeah, we're pretty overt about it. And it's in complement to what the coach wants to do. The coach has a job. He has to win a championship every year. So he's brought me on to say, "Can you help with the longer game that's gonna go beyond just this campaign?" So that's why I'm involved. But it's the same exercise that we're describing. It's just, what do you want? So they'll say, "I wanna win this year." I'm like, "Great. Okay, check that box. We're gonna do everything we can. But what do you actually want beyond that? Who do you wanna become? What kind of a dad do you wanna be someday, or husband, or what kind of a citizen do you wanna be? What kind of a worker do you wanna be? How do you wanna relate with work? How do you wanna relate with school right now?" And we just begin to pick little uncomfortable habits that they will choose to put themselves on the hook with, and just try to stack our days with the uncomfortable. And then at the end of it, if we can have our cake and eat it too, I love that I chose cake of all things, what we wanna do is we wanna win the championship, but we care a lot more about who they're becoming. And if we can pull both those things off, we've had a championship year. We wanna build champions whether or not they win the game.
Tom Rowland: Wow. That's incredibly powerful. It's been explained to me a number of different times, I'm sure you've heard this a lot of times, but in a fishing or boating world, you have two boats that leave the same harbor. And you're on almost exactly the same heading, one degree apart from one another. For so long, you are side by side. But over time, you won't even be able to see each other anymore. And then it becomes exponentially more and more with this one small degree. And when I went to the SEALFIT Kokoro camp, that was one of the things that they told us. And they didn't say, "You're competing with this other person over here, and you're gonna make these choices, and you will be so far ahead of this other guy that doesn't make those choices." They did it where, "This is you. You're on one side, and you're on the other. And the one that makes these hard choices and is taking these challenges, that's the one that's over here. And this is you in your regular life." Before you do that, you're taking the easier road, you're making the easier choices, you're not doing the things that you know you should do, you're not working out, you're not eating well, and you can take it in any aspect of your entire life. If it's a health aspect, you're not making the good choices on what you're eating and drinking and sleeping, all of the above, and that will put you way over here. One degree of separation over time will put you in such a different place, and I think about that all the time. And I also think about their kind of motto. You have a credo. They have a thing that they say: you try to get 1% better every day. And that was also explained to me, 'cause when I went there, I'm like, "Okay, if I'm gonna try to get 1% better in what I'm trying to do, maybe that's a snatch or a deadlift or something like that. Well, in 60 days, I'm gonna be 60% better." They're like, "No, no. It's not that. You're trying to be a 1% better person. So you can be 1% better in any aspect of your life than you were yesterday. And if you do that, you will experience this vast difference between where your life was and where it could be." And that was super powerful. I think about it all the time, especially when I leave a harbor and there's a boat right next to me and you're like, "Wow, look at this. We're headed in the same direction, but in an hour I'm not even gonna be able to see that boat and they're not gonna be able to see me."
Dane Sanders: I love that. I'm so glad you shared that with me. Thank you. I'm gonna steal that. That's so good.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, do. Take it.
Dane Sanders: That idea of the 1% better, but it's not about outcomes, it's about identity, or becoming, the substance of the person, is exactly right, man. I think about my friend Bill, who lost his wife a couple days ago, and what he's navigating right now. What I make up about it is he's experiencing the fruit of all the choices he made before this moment, in this moment. And we would never talk about this, of course, right? I'm talking about it in isolation. I'll never mention Bill's last name or anything like that. But what's actually happening for all of us is whatever we're in the middle of, we're experiencing the fruit of all the choices we made up until now, right? And then on top of that, the choices we make in the moment we're in, what he does right now in his grief and all he's navigating with his family, is also determining his trajectory for what's next. And guys like Bowie and others have talked about it, like we're always off course. We're always missing. We're like a boat or a plane. If we're not constantly recalibrating, where are we at and where are we going? Where are we at and where are we going? The drift kicks in. And to be a leader that is intentional, not accidental, not like you got lucky, you can't control the outcome, but you can control the process. And the Stoics have taught us this for centuries. I think it's time for us to actually take it seriously and organize our world that way. But even as I say that, I'm sounding a little too preachy and on a soapbox. I also recognize some people are just under a bus right now, and I'm not asking them to go take on a practice there. Bill is doing his own thing. He doesn't need to join MWoD right now. He's fine. He has his own MWoD built into his life. But that said, if you don't, the storms are coming and the drift is coming, guaranteed.
Tom Rowland: And then how does that play into your credo?
Dane Sanders: Yeah. So Credo is basically just a helpful frame for how transformation actually works. So it's really simple. You start off, you commit. And commit everyone gets, right? I'm gonna sign up for the big thing. Think of a New Year's resolution, probably the easiest one. I think New Year's resolutions get a bad rap. I think it's really critical to put yourself on the hook for something, 'cause some people get cynical and they're like, "I'm gonna quit in three weeks, so why bother?" That first step is pretty important, so get after it. Second, recognize the second stage, which is release. And you're a fisherman, so you get this, release. You release on your preferences. Until you've gone from commitment to the place where you don't wanna keep that commitment anymore and you release on that preference to quit, and you keep going anyways, that's the beginning line. So like stages of grief, stage one is commit, stage two is release. To get to stage three, which is embrace, you hug the cactus. You don't necessarily hug the cactus on day one, but you might on day 38 or day 380. Who knows? You don't know what day that's gonna be. Just keep logging your clicks, and then eventually you'll find a place where you're like, "I love this CrossFit workout. I love this. I love meeting with my mother-in-law." Whatever your uncomfortable thing is, have at it. And that's great. So the first part of Credo, commit, release, embrace, commit, release, embrace, that's most of life. CRE, CRE, CRE, CRE. But once in a while, and we like to do this every quarter, we like to zoom out and go, "Okay, so let's define things. Who do I wanna become? Who do I actually wanna become?" Then I'm gonna define that. That's C-R-E-D. And then O is own it with your life. Own it by starting the CRE process again over and over and over again. So commit, release, embrace are the stages of growth, and then define is kinda zooming out and getting the broad stroke map, and then own it with your life is how you get back into the process of CRE. So that's Credo. And we do Credo so that we can become strong and awake, and usually it's awake first and then strong, but it doesn't rhyme as nicely. Strong and awake, not for my sake, but for love's sake. And if I can become strong and awake for love's sake by putting Credo into action every day, CRE every day, DO every quarter, you stack the quarters, you're gonna have a great life.
Tom Rowland: Wow. There'll be a lot of people that hear this, and if they've made it this far, they're probably pretty interested. There were a lot of people that turned it off almost immediately, I'm sure, because it's just not for them. And that's fine. But maybe it is exactly for them, but they're not willing to accept it right now. That's entirely possible. So who is it for? If you were to describe your ideal community member.
Dane Sanders: I love it. It's a broad stroke, just because there's so many categories this can be true in. But wherever you have enough dissatisfaction in your life that you actually wanna do something about it. There's something in your world that you're undone about. You think of the classic category of money, right? So if you find yourself every single month saying to yourself, "If I only had $10,000 more. If I only had 10,000." And for some people it's 100 bucks, for other people it's 100 grand. The number's not the thing. If you just find yourself daydreaming about, "Why am I not getting the outcome I say I want, and I'm really frustrated," dial up that frustration. You want more dissatisfaction, not less. And that's a good indicator. And if it's not money, maybe it's like you're tired of how you look when you get out of the shower and look in the mirror. If that's you, you have a little dissatisfaction. You used to be in shape and now you're not. Or maybe you've always felt like your body has betrayed you, and you've never felt like you've been in shape, and you've given up the dream that you ever would be. You've tried a million things. I get it. That dissatisfaction in the category... Or it could be relationally. Like, "Man, I wanna get married and I'm not married. I would actually just like the girl to say yes," like on a date.
Tom Rowland: Right. So that's a good one to start with, because I was gonna go to money. When you talk about one of these challenges, any of the ones that we've talked about, paleo or 75 Hard or whatever, there is a very easy to understand physical transformation that goes on. There's a less visible mental transformation that goes on that people will explain to you, but you can't really outwardly see it unless you're around the person all the time. But let's go to something like the relationship. You wanna get married, or the money. Let's do the relationship one. By participating in this, how can you get closer to that?
Dane Sanders: Yeah, I mean, it can be as lightweight as, how can I get a date on a Friday night? All the way up to, I think, on the grand scale of things, we've had a lot of conversations over the years with people who are like, "I just need to get this God thing sorted out. I'm really angry at God, but I say I don't even believe in God." Or, "There's something more to life and I don't know what it is and I want access to it." So it could be on the grand level of relationship, or it could be on the micro of relationship, like, "I just don't wanna go to the lunchroom and eat by myself anymore." All of those things are great. And in the full spectrum of those things, the question to ask yourself is, what is the least burdensome but with a little bit of discomfort thing I can do to move myself in that direction? So this is where James Clear is so helpful with his Atomic Habits, right? If you wanna become a marathon runner, don't start by running. Just buy a pair of shoes and put them in front of your door, and you gotta trip over them every day. And make it your goal that you put them on and walk outside and come back in and take them off every day, and don't miss a day for 30 days, and eventually you'll be pretty bored with putting your shoes on without running. You actually wanna increase your dissatisfaction. So eventually you'll walk around the block. Maybe you'll trot around the block, you know? Give yourself a year of that and you'll be crushing marathons. So now we're back to marathons. The reason we keep going to the physical is 'cause everyone gets it. It's embodied. And I like that it's embodied. But the same can be true for the date. So what would it be? Maybe it's comb your hair. Maybe it's wash your face. You were mentioning this earlier, make your bed. There's a reason why the military make their bed every morning. My nephew is Special Forces, and it's like going through boot camp. There's like seven guys making your bed till you learn how to make your bed, 'cause it counts on them too, right? Everyone cares. And you come out of that, you make your bed for the rest of your life, right? So how does making your bed translate to her saying yes about a date on Friday night? It's just a series of thresholds. Eventually you'll move from, you know, I comb my hair, I wash my face, I made my bed. I landed differently when I showed up at work, when I was at the water cooler, if they still exist at work. And then it's like, I learned a joke and I said it out loud, and I said the same joke every day in seven different contexts, seven straight days. And then I came up with another joke, so now I'm a little more winsome. Or maybe if jokes are too much, I learned how to listen and make an observation. I learned how to listen and buy a little gift that stood out from the crowd, especially when comfort feels like hiding in the crowd. And you see how this goes, right? I'm just riffing. But everyone has a path to discomfort, and you know you've hit it when you feel gross about it. Like, oh, that sounds hard. Yes. If it feels like you really don't wanna do it but it's somehow doable, just a little, not crazy, just a little, go do that and then keep doing it every day and see if something doesn't open up. Even that conversation thing we said earlier about having a conversation with somebody that's politically charged, don't start with that on day one. Start with an anonymous good deed. Don't get credit for it. Put the shopping carts away at Trader Joe's. Pick up some trash. Eventually buy a coffee for the guy behind you in line and don't get credit for it and drive away. And eventually you might start thinking about things beyond yourself long enough that you start caring about this person that you disagree with.
Dane Sanders: And now we're onto... I actually think discomfort could lead to world peace. That's how bold I am on this. But people just quit on the discomfort too early.
Tom Rowland: So how can it lead to world peace?
Dane Sanders: Well, I'll just say for myself, I'm a follower of Jesus. I think Jesus was the ultimate man of discomfort, and it got him killed. But it also introduced the whole world to a kingdom with love at the center of it, a kingdom of other-centeredness, a kingdom where you forgive your enemy, you look out for your neighbor. When people get beyond the trappings of organized religion and they realize who this Jesus actually was and what he did every single day to the point of discomfort that killed him, but gave you and me hope for eternity and for life to live in the kingdom of love now, not even have to wait till you're dead to live now. For my buddy Tim, who's living in that kingdom right now, dude, I could weep. I could weep. But Tim didn't have to wait. He got access to it here. And I want access to it. At least I say I do. And the proof that I really mean it is I'm willing to make my bed. I'm willing to listen to my neighbor when he irritates me. I'm willing to empty the dishwasher, change the diaper. You put those things together, and not only do you happen to have a life, but you're actually contributing to a world that desperately needs it. How do you get world peace? You bring peace to the world. It's very uncomfortable to do that.
Tom Rowland: It is very uncomfortable to do that, and there's only so many people that are even willing to do that. Even if it was comfortable, there's only so many people that seem to be willing to do that at all.
Tom Rowland: So, okay, I'm sure that you have piqued the interest of many people. We do this 10,000 push-up challenge every February. We have a bunch of people that get into that, and over the years I've seen them do half of it. I've seen them, okay, this year I did it all. Next year I did it in 20 days. The next year I did it in 15 days. There's some people out there that are definitely going to gravitate towards something like this. And then there are other people that may have never considered committing to something that they don't think that they could do, that seems really hard and really uncomfortable. And I'm sure that we've piqued their interest as well. And I would say that if you haven't ever done something like this, this seems like a really good one to do, 'cause there's community around it. Dane, you seem like you're giving your time to people that are signing up for this. Do you do that for everybody or just sometimes?
Dane Sanders: Oh, yeah. No, dude, 'cause it's asynchronous communication, it doesn't require getting on my calendar. We're just leaving walkie-talkie messages to each other. So it actually doesn't take a lot of committed time. I'm asking for way more. I'm inviting people to commit their whole life. But it's never a convenient time. There's always a reason why people can't do it. I get it. And even though people's interests are piqued, it might take a little bit for people to get after it. But I tell people all the time, just apply. Just fill out the application even if you're not gonna do it. 'Cause at least if you fill out the application, you're answering the questions and you're getting a little bit more clear. And for some people, that's the biggest discomfort they can come up with right now: go to MWoD, Men and Women of Discomfort, mwod.io/apply. Or if that's too hard to remember, just go to itsprobablynotforyou.com. That actually gets you to the same place.
Tom Rowland: Okay. And all the links will be in the show notes too.
Tom Rowland: So what it can do for you, I'm gonna close with this, and I've seen it with two of my friends that are doing it right now. I don't think either one of them 12 weeks ago could have done this. So this is the final anchor challenge as it was shared with me. Number one, you get to run as many miles as possible in 40 minutes. Each mile split should be faster than the previous mile. Number two, you choose your role. Five minutes rest, 15 minutes of continuous walking lunges. You can go as slow as you need to, but don't stop. This is all at once and continuous, by the way. Number three, 15 minutes of cool down and stretching, 15 minutes of meditation. Number four, you're gonna fill a backpack or put on a weight vest with the amount of weight you lost during the round. So in the last 12 weeks, if you lost 30 pounds, you're gonna put 30 pounds in there.
Dane Sanders: That's right. It's like 30 to 50 pounds usually.
Tom Rowland: Okay. You're gonna walk one mile carrying all that extra weight, 20 pound minimum, 15-minute time cap. Then number five, this is after you've done all of these other things, you're going to do five rounds for time of 10 burpees, 10 reverse lunges, 10 diamond sit-ups, 10 air squats, run 200 meters. Do that round five times. Then number six, you're gonna journal for 15 minutes about one specific course correction you could make in the next three months. What is the first step you can take to that right now? Number seven, you're gonna finish the anchor challenge with 15 minutes of yoga. Eat, drink, and replenish before the graduation call. And number eight is the graduation call. So this is what you do after 12 weeks of this program. And I can tell you right now that the two people that I know would not have been able to do this 12 weeks ago. And they're gonna be able to breeze through it on Saturday.
Dane Sanders: That's right. They will. They will breeze through it on Saturday.
Tom Rowland: Yes, sir. It's quite incredible what your body is capable of, but also even more incredible to me what your mind is capable of. And you're training both, and you're training lots of other things here. I really like the way that you've put it together, and it's fantastic. So if you're at all interested, I would encourage you to take a look. Maybe it's not for you right now. Maybe it's in a few months. Maybe it's not for you at all. itsprobablynotforyou.com. I love that. That's the greatest website I've ever heard.
Tom Rowland: You got anything you wanna leave us with?
Dane Sanders: Well, I wanna thank you. I wanna thank you for making space like this, for this kind of conversation. I didn't anticipate it hitting me in my heart, even thinking of Tim and thinking of Jesus and the difference he's made in my life and is making in my life today, in real time. And it's very humbling. I've wanted a lot of things in my life, and I'm just shocked to be in a moment where this lark of walking around with dad bods led to not even really caring about what my body looks like compared to how my soul feels as a result of living like this. It's pretty meaningful. And to have spaces like this to reflect on it, for you to lead the way you do, for you to have jokers like me on the show, I just can't thank you enough. Just please keep leading.
Tom Rowland: It's really incredible, man. I've seen it in my own life many times. The most profound changes that I've made have been through things like this in my own life. They've changed me completely, as an individual, as a leader, as a husband, as a father, as a businessman, as a fishing guide. It was incredible. And so I love to see them. I love to see how people incorporate different things into these programs, challenges, whatever you wanna call them. And I love to see it when people actually commit to it, really, honestly, whatever it is. Because you see these amazing changes in people. And it could be yours, it could be somebody else's, it could be a marathon, it could be something that someone commits to, and for the first time in their life, they make this commitment, they do the work that it takes, and they do something that they didn't think that they could do, and it forever changes their life. It's wild to see, and I love it. So I think that what you have here is really, really nice. It's very, very well put together, and I encourage anybody to check it out.
Dane Sanders: Thank you, Tom.
Tom Rowland: You're welcome. Thank you. Okay. That's MWoD. Thank you, Dane. We'll be back with another guest next week, so check it out. See ya.
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