#43 – Changing your mindset to “maybe” | Ben Grynol & Mike DiDonato

While your mindset can’t always improve a bad situation, it can change your outlook on life. When Levels’ Head of Success Mike DiDonato had an unexpected—and unnecessary—emergency surgery, it changed his mindset on a lot of things. In this episode, Levels Head of Growth Ben Grynol sat down with Mike to deconstruct some ideas about mindset, and how choosing your mindset relates to some of the situations Mike has faced over the past month.

23:09 – You have to keep going

When you’re faced with a bad situation, you have two choices: give up or keep going. The most important thing you can do is just keep moving forward.

I did have that self-pity and then I was like, you know what? This is just another one of those things. This is just another one of those tests, and the most important thing is that you always keep going. Regardless of the good, the bad, you can’t ever stop. It’s funny because as you know, for me a lot of the outlets tend to be on the physical side. That’s my outlet. When I’m having a bad day or something’s bothering me, or if I’m just not feeling right, I’ll go hit a workout or I’ll go for a run. That was taken from me, but once I could actually get up without worrying about any stitches or anything, you know I was walking in the 15-degree weather.

24:04 – Try to be still

There’s a difference between avoiding your emotions and being still. It’s important to feel your emotions, but you don’t have to react to them.

When it comes to emotions, my approach is always to be still or try to be still. I don’t think I’ve always been still, I think at times we all react, but it’s just always to be still and take in everything. Take in the emotion, feel those things. Feel those things, I’m not saying to avoid them, but then you have to go, it’s like process, and move. And don’t forget, it’s not about forgetting, it’s about remembering.

24:53 – There’s always more to learn

You may think you know all there is to know about health, but there’s always more to learn. And you are ultimately responsible for your own health.

I thought I was the CEO of my own health. I thought I was pretty direct. I thought I knew a lot. And it’s not that I don’t trust doctors, I think doctors are probably some of the most amazing people on this Earth, but it’s your life. And at the end of the day, you’re responsible. I’m definitely now to the maybe. I wouldn’t say that I’m, oh, I’m so happy that this happened, but I am to the maybe. I did learn. I learned more about myself as another reminder for me that life is wild. There’s ups and downs, and it’s just another reminder for me of how important it is to improve 1% every day. It’s silly, and I know people say like, “Oh, 1%,” but it just means every… What is it? Every action we take, you’re casting a vote for the person you want to be, or your future self. So the choice is yours.

29:20 – Resentment is distracting

If you allow it, resentment will occupy your mind and life. Don’t let resentment distract you from achieving your goals.

I’ve seen firsthand what resentment does to you. A, it occupies so much of your mind and it can distract you from your real goal and what you really want to happen. That’s why I made you repeat that, because the resentment is one that really hit home for me personally. I’ve seen what happens when you do that firsthand. It’s quite an unhappy person and things just snowball. So I don’t know if the resentment’s completely gone in this situation, I can say that it’s more of a desire to understand what happened so that A, it doesn’t happen to me again, but also other people.

31:08 – You are what you think about

The content you consume influences who you are. In the same way, if you hold on to resentment, it will shape the person you become.

I think people say, “Show me your friends and I’ll show you who you are.” I also say, “Show me the content you consume and that’s who you’re going to be.” And then what is your mind doing? What are you thinking about? That is what you are going to be. It’s just what it is. That’s hard to get around that, so I’m also really fortunate that I work in an amazing place like Levels, and everyone’s been amazing. But I think at this point, resentment has subsided. It’s more of like, let’s get back. This is going to be the thing that makes me even better. I truly feel that with every bone in my body, and I don’t mean just physically. I mean, mentally. I mean with work, I mean across the board. It’s about, again, I think I said this earlier. It’s like, oftentimes, when bad things happen, we think about what did we lose? We never think about what did we gain. So close the loop, resentment’s gone, it’s more of an understanding. It’s more of the desire to not want this to happen to other people.

35:02 – You’re responsible for your response

Self-pity and resentment don’t exist in a vacuum; they have real-world effects on your life. You are responsible for whether or not you allow those emotions to influence you.

Whether it’s that story of that Chinese farmer or when, I think I said already, the only thing that I, and I believe most people, can control, is your attitude, your effort, your process. It just means it doesn’t matter what happens, it matters how we respond to things. That doesn’t mean that like, ‘Ooh, I’m so happy, this is amazing,’ because it wasn’t. But it is our responsibility and it is up to us in how we respond and how we process these things. That is the pragmatic version of that. To your point about resentment and these… I think, with the resentment, it’s maybe separate, but feelings of self pity and stuff, not only do these things affect stress or physically, but they also can have tangential effects, whether that’s with relationships with people, or whether that’s work. It’s naïve to think that this lives in a vacuum. It’s too powerful for it to not bleed into other places.

38:09 – Be the best version of yourself

Every day, you should try to accomplish things that help you to be the best version of yourself that you can be.

For me, the most important thing when it comes to, whether it’s my physical performance, my eating habits, my work performance and my personal development, the mindset that I have was just making sure that every day I’m doing what I have to do to be the best version of myself. That comes back to attitude, effort, and specifically process. I am at the point now where some would say that it’s a little too much, I don’t want to have that cheat meal or I don’t want to take necessarily the day off from work to go do nothing. And it’s not an unhealthy place, it’s actually from a healthy place. We work so hard and we make these sacrifices throughout the day and it’s like, I know what not indulging or what always going for that run even when it’s three degrees, what it does for how I feel after. I’m not going to say it’s always an amazing feeling, but oftentimes, someone said something recently, I’ve never worked out or went for a run and felt all awful after. It’s never made my day worse.

39:49 – How to keep going

There are many ups in downs in every person’s life, but the most important thing is to not give up, no matter what.

The other thing comes down to just having that perspective of what life is all about, or at least what I’ve learned, what life is and how to keep going. It goes up and down, and straight, and all around, and the most important thing is to keep going. The only way that I know, it’s these things, like habits, you are a sum total of your habits. And we underestimate what can happen in a month, a week, a year. These things compound really quickly, so I think it was either… Who is it? James Clear from Atomic Habits, I think he says, especially when you’re trying to form a new habit, it’s hard. It’s really hard and it’s okay. It’s not okay, but don’t crush yourself for one tiny slip up, just make sure that it’s not two, because really quickly things get out of control. But where I am, it’s this what if thing. What if? Like, what if I don’t do that? Or what if I try to do this? It’s just the… I should say this better. I know personally what it’s like to quit at something, or what it’s like to not try something, or what it’s like to be really low. For me that’s never again. It’s never again, it just won’t happen.

41:43 – Minimize your regrets

Which will you regret more: doing something, or not doing something? You can’t always control the outcome of a situation, but you can control what you choose to do about it.

When you’re 70, 80 years old, you’re not going to be upset about the things that you tried and didn’t work out, but I imagine you’d be pretty upset or have a lot of regrets at the things that you never tried. It’s just having that abundance and that growth mindset. And everyone’s different. Everyone’s different. I identify with certain people or certain styles that are really direct. I am putting it kindly, it’s just who I am, and that’s one of the big things about it, actually. It wasn’t an always this way thing, for me. I know what it’s like to not be disciplined. I know what it’s like to not have self-confidence. I know what those feelings are like. I try to… I don’t try, I cast votes every day and I know that the actions I take every day, it’s casting a vote for who I’m going to be tomorrow and who I’m going to be in the future. I don’t have a perfect plan. I’m self-aware to know the levers to pull on, that make me feel good. And it’s not about making me feel good. It’s a, can I look myself in the mirror regardless of the outcome? The outcome doesn’t really matter that much. I mean, I know it’s easy to say that because outcomes do, but it’s really like, can you be okay with what you did? It’s a really simple question. Are you accountable to know that you did what you wanted to do?

50:24 – Don’t project your expectations onto others

While it’s important to make your own choices, you can’t force those same choices on other people. They have to make decisions for themselves.

You can’t project these things on other people. You can’t make other people feel that way. If anything, a lot of people talk to me about fitness and I always try and celebrate everyone whenever they do, whether you go for a walk, a stretch or whatever, everyone’s different. We’re all different. We know that at Levels, our diets should be different and so our philosophy and how we approach these things are different. It’s not for me to judge what someone else is or isn’t doing, and that’s another thing. I don’t… Shouldn’t say never, but I try never to judge anyone because again, in my opinion, a lot of judgments come from projections of insecurities. Instead, I try to look at a situation and if it’s something that I don’t think’s aligned with my values or my philosophy, I try and diagnose that so that I don’t repeat that behavior.

Mike DiDonato (00:06):

I think what happened and it’s probably another podcast episode of doing an everyone on content piece about actually what happened. We don’t really need to jump in too deep but it was a wild experience in our hospital system. And luckily, I am a healthy person, but it’s been an interesting five weeks, let’s just put it that way. I’m good though.

Ben Grynol (00:39):

I’m Ben Grynol, part of the early startup team here at Levels. We’re building tech that helps people to understand their metabolic health and this is your front row seat to everything we do. This is A Whole New Level.

Ben Grynol (01:04):

Maybe. Maybe is a strong word. Maybe. Was something supposed to happen? Well, maybe. Is something good? Maybe. Is something bad? Maybe. We don’t really know. Well in life, there are all these situations that we face and we can choose what we do with it. It really comes down to this idea of mindset and discipline, the way that we think through things as they surface.

Ben Grynol (01:30):

Well, for Mike DiDonato, one of the earliest team members at Levels, he thinks a lot about mindset and it’s something that we talked about on an earlier episode, back in the summer of 2021. It’s this idea of maintaining a lens of being neutral when needed, so that when faced with challenges, well, you can do what you want with them. In this episode, Mike and I talked a lot about mindset, and something that recently happened to him when he was faced with one of these situations. Was it good? Well, maybe. Was it bad? Maybe. You don’t really know until you face it head on, and so Mike and I deconstructed this and had really a philosophical conversation.

Ben Grynol (02:10):

There wasn’t a lot to do with metabolic health, there wasn’t even a lot to do with being an early team member at Levels, it was a deep conversation and very much a reflection of the way Mike has thought through some of the things that he’s faced over the past month or two. It was a great conversation that was really meaningful and it was one of those situations where you look back on it and go, I’m really glad that we were able to have that conversation. Here’s where we dug in.

Ben Grynol (02:42):

Okay, fill me in. What exactly happened? This is what I know, is Mike D is working hard. Mike D is… And you are going to be Gogginsed? How do we say this? We’re going to apply a Goggins lens to, you’re going to be now referred to in third person. So you were running, you were doing all of your things, like running. I mean, this was also shortly after the marathon so you were still running like 11 to 15 miles a day, from what it seemed like. And you’re working really hard on now and all the other things you’re involved in, and all of a sudden… And we were texting regularly, our daily texts back and forth, and then it just sort of dropped off, but I was like, oh, Mike must be busy or something like that. Then I found out later, hey, I didn’t know Mike had surgery. So walk through, I mean, go as deep as you want to go, but what happened? What’s the whole the synopsis here?

Mike DiDonato (03:46):

Let’s see, trying to clean this version up.

Ben Grynol (03:49):

Take it to where you want to take it. This is not like-

Mike DiDonato (03:51):

Yeah, and I’m very open and transparent with just about everything, or not just about, with everything in my life. I don’t know how far this will go into the discipline realm, although I will say discipline and behavior change, or mindset was definitely tested over the last month. So yeah, things were rolling in the last few months, were really strong, both personally and professionally. A lot of great things happening, a lot of great things happening in my day to day life, but also with Levels from a holistic point of view. But also for me, I was feeling really good. I know you and I had exchanged some messages, some other people on the team, just keep going with the development.

Mike DiDonato (04:45):

Towards the end of last year, I came down with the bad case of COVID. Luckily I’m a relatively healthy male, it was fine. I was out for like a week or so, jumped back in, was jumping into some projects at work. And it was the last weekend in January and ate dinner Saturday evening and I just felt kind off, just wasn’t myself. I had some, I don’t know how… Just a weird feeling in my abdomen and I was like, all right, I’m fine. I’m fine. Then Sunday morning, wake up, go for my long run, eat food, and then I feel more genuinely off, just uncomfortable and I was like, nothing, I’m fine. I’m okay. And Monday morning, wake up and all of my biometric data, my sleep data, my heart rate, everything’s just off and I feel really awful. I think I had even sent out a message in threads to everyone, it’s like, “Hey, not feeling that great. I’m going to be online, but going to be slow to respond.”

Mike DiDonato (06:00):

Then my girlfriend’s like, “You need to go to urgent care. Don’t be dumb. You work at a metabolic health company, let’s just rule out the dumb stuff. You just had COVID and other stuff, and other things,” and I was like, hmm, that reasoning actually makes sense. It does, when I think about it like that. So I ended up going to urgent care and they’re like, “There’s nothing we can do for you, but we really recommend that you go to the ER,” and I’m like, “The ER?” Said, “Yeah.” And I was like, “Okay, for what?” They said, “You could have pancreatitis, you could have…” I forget what the other -itises were. And I was like, I don’t believe that.

Mike DiDonato (06:42):

Levels, I’m very fortunate that I have access to my metabolic health panel and I get my other labs done quite regularly, given my family history, and I think I was just, it would just show up. But after some conversations with people that cared about me, they said, “Can you just go? Can you just go to the ER and just do that? Again, let’s rule out the dumb things, let’s go.” So go to the ER here in Philadelphia, and let’s say it was an interesting experience. It was a little while until I was seen, eventually I was seen. And when I got there, the doctor was like, “Hey, I don’t think this is really anything too serious. The location of your pain doesn’t make sense for your gallbladder or your appendix, or anything like that.” I’m like, “Awesome, great. I want to just get out of here as quickly as possible.” “But let’s just run some tests, let’s run tests,” and I’m like, “That’s fine.”

Mike DiDonato (07:42):

They’re taking a lot of blood, did a chest x-ray. They did an ultrasound of my stomach and it got to… I got there in the afternoon on Monday and then around 11:00 PM, the doctor’s like, “Hey, I don’t think it’s anything, but let’s just do one more thing. Let’s get a CT scan just to be sure. I don’t want you to leave and then something happened,” and I’m like, “Fair point.” Meanwhile, all throughout this experience, I’m interacting with the nurses and talking and they’re doing different tests. They’re testing my troponin levels and I’m like, “Oh, so you’re doing that because you’re concerned about my heart. Maybe some kind of risk of a cardiac disease or heart attack,” like, “Oh, how do you know that?” I’m like, “I work at this amazing company called Levels.”

Mike DiDonato (08:24):

You know, there’s a document in particular that Sam had cited troponin, I forget what it was for. And I was like, huh, I do pay attention, all this documentation is really paying off. So got the CT scan, came back and the doctor’s like, “Hey, radiologist thinks you have acute appendicitis.” I’m like, “What? No, no, I really don’t want to do surgery.” Like, “It’s going to be fine. We’ll send the surgery team.” I’ll spare a lot of the back and forth that happened at the hospital. But resident came, said, “This could be appendicitis.” Then another resident came and said, “It’s not appendicitis, your pain just doesn’t make sense.” Then I was kept at the hospital for a little while.

Mike DiDonato (09:07):

And it got to Tuesday morning and I was trying to leave, but I had asked the nurses and I said, “I spoke with the resident and they said, ‘Hey, it’s probably not appendicitis. We just need to get some more lab work done, probably do this outpatient.’” I said, “What’s the process?” And then he said to me, that’d be against medical advice to leave right now. And I said, “Well, why?” And they said, “Well, we’re waiting to get you a bed, the acute surgeon team’s going to come talk to you.” I was like, “Okay.” I went ahead and listened and when I got to the “room”, it was about noon on Tuesday. A couple hours went by and no one had come to see me, and I’d asked the nurses. I was like, “How do we move this forward? Am I okay to leave or are someone coming to see me?”

Mike DiDonato (09:58):

Then over the next few hours, I saw probably six to seven different doctors, all with different directions. But it ultimately came to the point that they said it would make sense for me to have surgery, there’s a high likelihood that I have appendicitis. I was like, “Okay if we’ve pursued everything else, and as long as this is something that you would do, being the doctors, then I’ll go ahead and move forward.” And luckily I have resources like the amazing Dr. Casey Means to call and text all throughout the way to just give me some feedback. So I ended up going to the OR around midnight, Wednesday evening.

Mike DiDonato (10:40):

Let me summarize this part because it can go very down an interesting path. I get out of surgery, a few hours go by. They had called my girlfriend to let her know that I got out of surgery, there was no complications. Morning, kind of feeling okay, but I’m in a lot of pain and no one had came to see me. I had talked to the nurse and they said there weren’t any complications, it was a success. So my girlfriend got there, she told me that, “Hey, your surgery was… You didn’t have any complications, but the surgeon said that your appendix was completely fine, but they removed it anyway.”

Mike DiDonato (11:18):

I was a little bit confused and I don’t want to go too deep with the back and forth with the hospital system and the interaction that I had, because we could spend a very long time on that. But the TLDR here is that I went to the ER, just to be cautious, right? And checked those boxes, and I thought I was being an advocate for myself and I was speaking intelligently and sharing information about my medical history and things to be aware of. And then out of nowhere, a surgery happened that ended up, it should not have ever happened. I was under the impression that some other tests were ran, prior to surgery, but I found out later that it didn’t.

Mike DiDonato (12:17):

I spoke with a couple doctors, one that was at the hospital, who had told me that I should not have ever had surgery, I should have had more imaging done prior to anybody performing surgery on me because my imaging was inconclusive and my symptoms didn’t add up. So the surgery itself was not… Casey says… And Casey was amazing throughout this experience, and so was Sam and everyone on the team was quite supportive, but Casey always says, “Surgery is surgery.” I’m fortunate that it was laparoscopic, however, it was pretty invasive internally. So the last, what is it, four and a half weeks? They were pretty challenging, both physically and also mentally. I’ll pause because I know we went down a rabbit hole that you didn’t know we were going. So I’ll see, does that make sense so far? Questions? I’m happy to keep going, though.

Ben Grynol (13:19):

Makes sense. Keep going. Walk down the path, keep going and things will unfold as they do.

Mike DiDonato (13:27):

Yeah. I ended up being in the hospital. I went in Monday around 3:00 PM and I didn’t leave until Wednesday… I don’t know, I want to say around 7:00 PM. And we’ll cover this, but it was just, for lack of better words, I felt like I was trapped. As I mentioned, when finally someone did come to talk to me, when a physician did, in a respectful way, I said, “Hey, I’m somebody that I’d imagine I’m probably more informed, or at least as informed as the top 10% of people that you probably see. And this experience…” Especially where we were, the hospital system we were, it prides itself on being a transformative hospital system. It was one of the top hospital systems in the country, and it said one of the biggest things is that we treat our patients like people, not as numbers, and what I had said was I felt like I was a number and I was not heard.

Mike DiDonato (14:44):

I eventually left, like I said, Wednesday evening. And it was a pretty rough, especially the first week or few days. Without getting too graphic, but what they do with the surgery is they actually slice through your abdominal wall and manipulate organs, and I had one removed. And as somebody, like you know, and many people on the team know, I take very, very, very good care of my body. I mean, I don’t just mean from an athletic performance, I mean holistically. I mean, with what I put into my body, what I do to my body, and that’s driven primarily on what I’m optimizing for, right? I’m optimizing for longevity. I personally, given my family history, I don’t want to suffer the same fate as those that have come before me. I want more than another 14 years.

Mike DiDonato (15:36):

And this experience, when I got home, had amazing people around me, but it was just like… I think the word I said to Casey immediately, and Casey and I have talked so many different times and I love every one of our conversations, but I could hear it in our voice. And like I said to her, “I just feel violated, really, truly violated.” I had a lot of trust and when these kinds of situations happen, you probably know me better than a lot of people on the team, but when things happen, whether good or bad… Well let’s just take the bad or things that go wrong, before I look to anyone else, I always look internally. Be accountable, right? And what didn’t I do? Or what did I do, contribute to this situation? There were definitely thoughts like, well, blame. Like what did I do wrong? What could I have done better?

Mike DiDonato (16:39):

But Casey was really amazing, and I should say, Sam as well. But I leave, get home. And again, as somebody, I just mentioned, that takes care of themselves, it was like, these things were taken away from me, even things as simple as getting up and laying down. It sounds crazy, but especially when you have this kind of procedure, you have to be really, really, really careful. And then going forward, you have to be careful for at least a month or so because you’re at risk for a hernia. Over the next few days and week or two, it was both physically and mentally taxing.

Mike DiDonato (17:16):

The other big thing, what I said to everyone on the team, I was like, one of the things I was most upset about was being away from work because of just how fulfilling and how meaningful the things that we do at Levels are, and the particular project that I was on. So it was a lot of the same, the first week or two. About four and a half weeks removed now, I am, I’d say about 80% back to what I would say was pre-surgery, maybe 75. But it was another one of those tests that I think we talked about on the last podcast episode, and one of the reasons of why discipline and perspective are so important.

Mike DiDonato (18:03):

I think a lot of times we think about things and we always think about what did we lose, as opposed to what did we gain from the situation? It’s funny that we’re talking about this right now. Because Josh had checked in with me, it was last week or the week before, just asking how am I feeling? How am I doing with everything? I was like, “I’m fine.” And I told him, I was like, the perspective that I have on these things… Are you familiar with the proverb of the Chinese farmer?

Ben Grynol (18:38):

Don’t know that one.

Mike DiDonato (18:40):

Man, forgive me, I might get all the details wrong. It’s like, there’s a man in a village. He had a horse and it ran away, and all the people in the village came over and said, “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.” And his response was, “Well, maybe.” Next day, the horse returned and it had 10 other wild horses. All the people in the village said, “That’s unbelievable. You should be so happy.” The man’s response, “Well, maybe.” The man had a son, his son broke his leg while taming one of the wild horses. People in the village said, “That’s awful, we are so sorry he broke his leg.” The man’s response, “Well, maybe.”

Mike DiDonato (19:21):

And the next day there was a war or something in this area and they were coming to draft young men. They came to the farmer’s house and his son couldn’t go to battle in the war because he had an injury. People in the village said, “That’s amazing, what a blessing.” The father said, “Well, maybe.” The point of that is like, we don’t ever know if something is going to be good or bad, right? We just don’t have the perspective of what the future holds. So what we think is good right now, maybe it’s good in the future. What we think is bad, it could be bad in the future, but it’s just more of a reminder to be present and always take something.

Ben Grynol (20:02):

Let’s go into the physical component is literal, it’s easy to understand. Anyone has surgery, that’s not going to be physically easy to get over, it’s just the body has to repair itself. But the mental component, there’s the aspect of what you went through and the way that you framed it, as far as feeling violated. Have you got to a point where you’ve overcome that and you’ve turned it into the, maybe? Like the positive? Or is it sort of the devil on your shoulder that still feels that maybe resentment, or gosh, this went off… Have you flipped the lens on it? Because your normal lens, the reason I ask is your normal is maybe. You do, you’ve got the maybe lens, but the real test is when things can go to the extreme that you don’t want to say maybe, but somehow you overcome it and you get to the point where it becomes a maybe. So the question is, has the mental component of it turned into a maybe, or is it still something that you’re working through?

Mike DiDonato (21:13):

We’re all human, right? And that doesn’t mean… And I appreciate that. I do try and take that maybe throughout my life. I believe I have that perspective because of the events that life has thrown my way, whether that’s when I was extremely young, whether that’s when I was an adolescent. We talked about my father passing away when I was young, and then there were more throughout that and we all have those at different times in our lives. This one happens to be the most raw, it just happened so I’m not going to sit here and say that I was like, “Oh, well maybe,” after I got out of that hospital. Definitely wasn’t, I was quite upset and I’m actually glad that we were talking about this.

Mike DiDonato (22:03):

When we said we were going to have a chat, we didn’t really say what it was going to be about. I was kind of hoping it would go down this path, I didn’t think it would go as deep, but there was some self pity. And like, why me? Sort of why did this happen? I remember saying this, “How could this have happened? Why? Why to me? Why to me?” That probably lasted, let’s say a few days, maybe a week. And I was just like, that thing happened, the only thing that has ever been in my control, and in, I think most people’s control, is my attitude, my effort and my process. Can’t change what happened, right? We can’t predict what’s going to happen, but we have the right now, the right here.

Mike DiDonato (22:52):

And it’s definitely, without getting too much into it, even my stomach was like, wait, what is this? Like, is this going to be like this forever? Is it going to be like this forever? I did have that self pity and then I was like, you know what? This is just another one of those things. This is just another one of those tests, and the most important thing is that you always keep going, regardless of the good, the bad, you can’t ever stop. It’s funny because as you know, for me a lot of the outlets tend to be on the physical side. That’s my outlet, right? When I’m having a bad day or something’s bothering me, or if I’m just not feeling right, I’ll go hit a workout or I’ll go for a run. That was taken from me, but once I could actually get up without worrying about any stitches or anything, you know I was walking. You know I was walking in the 15 degree weather.

Mike DiDonato (23:57):

I was like, this is what it is. It doesn’t mean that it’s not upsetting, it doesn’t affect you. When it comes to emotions, my approach is always to be still or try to be still. I don’t think I’ve always been still, I think at times we all react, but it’s just always to be still and take in everything. Take in the emotion, feel those things. Feel those things, I’m not saying to avoid them, but then you have to go, it’s like process, and move. And don’t forget, it’s not about forgetting, it’s about remembering.

Mike DiDonato (24:32):

I was listening to Casey’s recent episode on, I think it was with [Drew Pruitt 00:24:38], and they talked about a topic, you need to be the CEO of your health. That really resonated to me right now. We’ve talked about this in the past, it just happened to be perfect timing for that to come out, and I was like, I thought I was the CEO of my own health. I thought I was pretty direct. I thought I knew a lot. And it’s not that I don’t trust doctors, I think doctors are probably some of the most amazing people on this Earth, but it’s your life. And at the end of the day, you’re responsible.

Mike DiDonato (25:17):

I’m definitely now to the maybe. I wouldn’t say that I’m, oh, I’m so happy that this happened, but I am to the maybe. I did learn. I learned more about myself as another reminder for me that life is wild. There’s ups and downs, and it’s just another reminder for me of how important it is to improve 1% every day. It’s silly, and I know people say like, “Oh, 1%,” but it just means every… What is it? Every action we take, you’re casting a vote for the person you want to be, or your future self. So the choice is yours. Yeah.

Ben Grynol (26:05):

When you turn that maybe, you turn the mental component of it into a maybe, it’s still really easy to hold onto this resentment, right? But when you can strip that away, you’ve turned it in into a maybe, but it’s really easy to carry this baggage around. This baggage piles up as resentment debt, and you can carry that throughout your life, and you never strip away that baggage. It’s one thing to get to the maybe, but it’s another to be wholeheartedly okay with what happened. And that’s having a very pragmatic, or maybe an outlook of stoicism where you become okay. You become almost neutral about what happened.

Ben Grynol (26:57):

So even if it is a maybe, that’s sort of an uncertain thing, but when you get to that point where it becomes neutral and you go, “I don’t have resentment. I forgive.” Have you got to that point where you stripped away… It’s really easy to hold onto the resentment. Be like, “Man, that person, that resident, that somebody that just didn’t listen to me.” Have you got to that point that you’ve overcome that mental component of it? Or is there still a 5% or a N percent that’s there? Because once you get over that hurdle, and if you have, then you’re set. But once you get over the hurdle, that’s where it’s truly okay. That’s where you can move forward and it doesn’t become the resentment baggage that we carry throughout our life.

Mike DiDonato (27:42):

What did you say, resentment debt? Is that what you said, right? There have been times in my life, faced tremendous adversity, and I don’t want to go too deep in this, but yeah.

Ben Grynol (28:02):

Take a deep, take a deep, just take it. And side note, before you take a deep, don’t ever take anything that I say at face value, I just make things up. I make things up as we talk, so resentment, baggage debt, I couldn’t tell you what was [crosstalk 00:28:16].

Mike DiDonato (28:15):

No, but it’s real. The resentment ends up being a distraction, right? It’s a distraction, that’s what resentment is. I’ll first say that in this current situation, when it first happened, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Well, A, I couldn’t really do much, so I had a lot of time and I don’t really enjoy TV so that is where my mind went, and it’s slowly moved further and further, and further away. Am I still upset? Sure, but I know what resentment does. On the last podcast we talked about my father passing away and I don’t want to make this too much down that rabbit hole, but something I didn’t mention was right after that, his family disowned us and I carried a lot of resentment towards them for a while. I’ve seen firsthand what resentment does to you.

Mike DiDonato (29:23):

A, it occupies so much of your mind and it can distract you from your real goal and what you really want to happen. That’s why I made you repeat that because the resentment is one that really hit home for me personally. I’ve seen what happens when you do that firsthand. It’s quite an unhappy person and things just snowball. So I don’t know if the resentment’s completely gone in this situation, I can say that it’s more of a desire to understand what happened so that A, it doesn’t happen to me again, but also other people. I’m thinking, and Sam was talking to me and I was like, “Yeah, Sam, I just like… This happened to me, not that I am Casey Means, MD, but I’ve done a lot. I’ve gone down rabbit holes when it comes to health.” And I was like, “If this happened to me, then what’s happening to other people?”

Mike DiDonato (30:24):

I was like, “I really just don’t want other people to be in this position.” It’s not a fun situation. It leads to a lot of questioning. What did I say? I think earlier I said, I started to question myself and put blame on what else could I have done? I mean, that’s just who I am, but that’s what those, when you’re in… I think when we think of hospitals, right? Or those kinds of things, it’s like, oh, safe, right? And it didn’t turn out to be the case. The only thing we can do is, why letting go of resentment? It just was occupying too much of my mind.

Mike DiDonato (31:08):

I think people say, “Show me your friends and I’ll show you who you are.” I also say, “Show me the content you consume and that’s who you’re going to be.” And then what is your mind doing? What are you thinking about? That is what you are going to be. It’s just what it is. That’s hard to get around that, so I’m also really fortunate that I work in an amazing place like Levels, and everyone’s been amazing. But I think at this point, resentment has subsided. It’s more of like, let’s get back. This is going to be the thing that makes me even better, even better.

Mike DiDonato (31:51):

I truly feel that with every bone in my body, and I don’t mean just physically. I mean, mentally. I mean with work, I mean across the board. It’s about, again, I think I said this earlier. It’s like, oftentimes, when bad things happen, we think about what did we lose? We never think about what did we gain, right? So close the loop, resentment’s gone, it’s more of an understanding. It’s more of the desire to not want this to happen to other people.

Ben Grynol (32:32):

Resentment occupies your mind, rent free, the real estate in your mind, rent free and resentment drains you mentally. This is not scientific, it’s not empirical, but it ages you physically. It has to because when you have a negative mindset, you’re carrying around this weight, it’s mental weight, but it’s physically exhausting to do it. It’s just going to put you into… We know, let’s assume that resentment equals stress. Let’s make a loose correlation between the two. Resentment equals stress, you’re in a heightened state of feeling mentally off, right? You don’t feel quite right because you’re always occupied, your mind is occupied by these other things, you’re in a stressful state. All the downstream health outcomes of being in that heightened state are physically debilitating over time. They compound.

Ben Grynol (33:31):

It’s not acute. It doesn’t happen, oh one day it’s just there. It’s over time that is the thing that can make a big impact on… One of the things, not the thing. It is one of the factors that can make a major impact on people’s physical health. So stripping that away is one of the challenges. As you said, turning that into not being happy, like oh, I’m so happy this happened, but having the lens that it’s okay, that it happened, right? Because sometimes I think turning things into like, I’m really happy that this happened, sure, you can do that.

Ben Grynol (34:10):

But you also don’t want to trick yourself into, sometimes people will try to manufacture the positive emotion associated with something, let’s say a situation where they might be resentful. I’m so happy, I’m so happy this happened. It’s like you’re trying to trick yourself, and that’s not actually the case. What you want to do is to say, “I’m okay that this happened, and here are the things that have changed because of it.” Then you’re looking at it with this optimistic mindset, moving forward. Not I’m so happy that people went in and did surgery when I didn’t need it. It doesn’t mean you’re… Being happy about something versus being content with the outcome of it, are two different things. One of them feels manufactured and artificial and the other one feels, maybe a little bit more pragmatic and rational.

Mike DiDonato (35:01):

Absolutely. Whether it’s that story of that Chinese farmer or when, I think I said already, the only thing that I, and I believe most people, can control, is your attitude, your effort, your process, right? It’s just a means, it doesn’t matter what happens, it matters how we respond to things. That doesn’t mean that like, ooh, I’m so happy, this is amazing, because it wasn’t. But it is our responsibility and it is up to us in how we respond and how we process these things. That is the pragmatic version of that, right? To your point about resentment and these… I think, with the resentment, I kind of… It’s maybe separate, but feelings of self pity and stuff, not only do these things have affect stress or physically, but they also can have tangential effects, whether that’s with relationships with people, or whether that’s work. It’s naive to think that this lives in a vacuum, right? It’s too powerful for it to not bleed into other places. Bleed probably wasn’t the right word to use there.

Ben Grynol (36:15):

Given the context for the conversation.

Mike DiDonato (36:18):

Yes, yes.

Ben Grynol (36:20):

A lot of this has to do with everything that you talk about, your attitude, your effort, your process, that’s all your mindset. We’ve talked about it before. How do you keep yourself on track and not give yourself wiggle room, when the easy thing to do is wiggle room? Wiggle room can be a mental component, reverting back to being agitated or angry about something again. Resurfacing it, right? So it’s like, “No, no, I’m good. I’m not resentful towards the resident or the doctor.” And then you resurface it in your mind that you’re like, “But actually I am,” so that’s not truly letting go.

Ben Grynol (37:00):

But then there’s also the wiggle room as far as mindset goes, and that can have to do with being physically active. That can have to do with maintaining eating habits, the media that you consume. Wiggle room, we can extrapolate this as far as you can go, but what is it that you do to keep yourself on track and not give yourself wiggle room, from a discipline standpoint?

Mike DiDonato (37:27):

I think talking about wiggle room, I think before we get there, it’s important to be self-aware, right? Understanding about self-awareness. If we have, you mentioned food or eating habits, and when you think about sustained behavioral change, it’s really hard, right? We know that at Levels. I think it’s what, almost 80% of new year’s resolutions, by February are no longer new year’s resolutions. And for me, the most important thing when it comes to, whether it’s my physical performance, my eating habits, my work performance and my personal development, the mindset that I have was just making sure that every day I’m doing what I have to do to be the best version of myself. That comes back to attitude, effort and specifically process.

Mike DiDonato (38:47):

I am at the point now where some would say that it’s a little too much, I don’t want to have that cheat meal or I don’t want to take necessarily the day off from work to go do nothing. And it’s not an unhealthy place, it’s actually from a healthy place. We work so hard and we make these sacrifices throughout the day and it’s like, I know what not indulging or what always going for that run even when it’s three degrees, what it does for how I feel after. I’m not going to say it’s always an amazing feeling, but oftentimes, someone said something recently, I’ve never worked out or went for a run and felt all awful after. It’s never made my day worse.

Mike DiDonato (39:49):

The other thing comes down to just having that perspective of what life is all about, or at least what I’ve learned, what life is and how to keep going. It goes up and down, and straight, and all around, and the most important thing is to keep going. The only way that I know, it’s these things, like habits, you are a sum total of your habits, right? And we underestimate what can happen in a month, a week, a year. These things compound really quickly, so I think it was either… Who is it? James Clear from Atomic Habits, I think he says, especially when you’re trying to form a new habit, it’s hard. It’s really hard and it’s okay. It’s not okay, but don’t crush yourself for one tiny slip up, just make sure that it’s not two, because really quickly things get out of control. But where I am, it’s like this what if thing. What if?

Mike DiDonato (40:58):

Like, what if I don’t do that? Or what if I try to do this? It’s just the… I should say this better. I know personally what it’s like to quit at something, or what it’s like to not try something, or what it’s like to be really low. For me that’s never again. It’s never again, it just won’t happen. And when it comes to trying, or… One of the things that I thought I was really good at, but you actually being around you more, has been really helpful. [inaudible 00:41:40] biasing always towards action, right?

Mike DiDonato (41:43):

When you’re 70, 80 years old, you’re not going to be upset about the things that you tried and didn’t work out, but I imagine you’d be pretty upset or have a lot of regrets at the things that you never tried. It’s just having that abundance and that growth mindset. And everyone’s different. Everyone’s different. I identify with certain people or certain styles that are really direct. I am putting it kindly, it’s just who I am, and that’s one of the big things about it, actually. It wasn’t an always this way thing, for me. I know what it’s like to not be disciplined. I know what it’s like to not have self-confidence. I know what those feelings are like.

Mike DiDonato (42:42):

I try to… I don’t try, I cast votes every day and I know that the actions I take every day, it’s casting a vote for who I’m going to be tomorrow and who I’m going to be in the future. I don’t have a perfect plan. I’m self aware to know the levers to pull on, that make me feel good. And it’s not about making me feel good. It’s a, can I look myself in the mirror, and regardless of the outcome… The outcome doesn’t really matter that much. I mean, I know it’s easy to say that because outcomes do, but it’s really like, can you be okay with what you did? It’s a really simple question. Are you accountable to know that you did what you wanted to do? Or are your actions mapping your words, is another way to say that, right?

Mike DiDonato (43:34):

You want to be fit. If someone wants to be a good husband, if someone… I don’t know, there’s a million different things. Are your actions mapping that? When my actions were not mapping my words, I felt like an empty feeling, an unfulfilled feeling. And slip up all the time, I just told you a few weeks ago, I had all this self pity for a few days and I’m lucky that I know, I was able to identify that. It doesn’t mean it was easy to not feel that way, but I was like, “Oh, this is not getting me anywhere.” And again, it’s from a healthy place, it’s not about avoiding those feelings. It’s about meeting them head on and processing them in a productive way, right? Does that make sense?

Ben Grynol (44:20):

It’s being whole with yourself. The accountability mirror that our good friend, Mr. David Goggins, that Goggins talks about. One of the challenges of having this mindset is that it can rub people the wrong way, right? So Goggins is doing Goggins for the sake of Goggins, right? He’s doing him and he’s quite comfortable owning that, knowing that he’s got this extreme mindset. One of the challenges is if you don’t give yourself wiggle room and you’re disciplined, and you’ve always got this hard hitting mindset, if you want to call it that, I got to go for a run, I can’t have a cheat meal. I can’t… You tell yourself this because of casting votes, and you know that that casting votes is not something you’re trying to project onto others. It’s not, “Hey, you have to do this too.”

Ben Grynol (45:22):

And you’re doing it in silence, let’s say that. You’re doing it in silence in the respect of, hey, I’m going for run. You’re not projecting that, you’re just, you walk out the door, you physically pass someone, they say, “Where are you going?” “I’m going for a run.” You’re not saying, “And you should get out there too.” You’re doing you. But the challenge is that this outlook of being extreme, being extreme in mindset, it doesn’t matter what someone’s doing, you could be extreme with collecting Micro Machines, those little toy cars, and that might rub someone the wrong way, right? Because it’s extreme. But sometimes having, yeah, a mindset that leans towards a certain direction, whether it’s health and wellness, it doesn’t matter what it is, it can rub people the wrong way. How do you think about shutting out that noise and saying, “I’m doing me and I’m comfortable doing me?”

Mike DiDonato (46:18):

It’s so true, and I am not trying to emulate anyone, I’m doing what I know that I need to do to be the very best version of myself. I think what you’re talking about is this growth mindset, right? It’s a true… It can and does, I’ve experienced it, rubbing people the wrong way. I’ve experienced this in different ways, right? I’ve experienced its physical components and I’ve experienced it professional as well. Before I came to Levels, I came to Levels in October or November of 2019. Before this, I was very unhappy with the work that I was doing where I just was not being fulfilled. I think we talked about to in the other podcast, but I spent most of my adult career in finance and banking and it got to the point where it’s like, what am I doing? It’s just not aligned with my values.

Mike DiDonato (47:26):

Then I think it is the last day of June in 2019, I no longer was in finance or banking, and it was this very scary and freeing feeling. I remember, I would see people that I knew, former colleagues, people that I knew in my network, I’d see them a month or two, and like, “Oh, we have this job. We’d love for you to come work for us.” And I’m like, “No, I don’t want to do that. It’s really not for me.” They’re like, “are you sure?” Made me feel like I was crazy for… I was for a while, in my career, allowing life to happen to me, and then at this point I was trying to make it happen for me. I was making decisions to not do it.

Mike DiDonato (48:12):

I said, “It just doesn’t feel right.” They’re like, “Oh, are you all right?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I’m actually feeling really good.” It wasn’t like I was laying around, watching TV, but it was, my mind was clear. I felt good. It was a four to six month stretch and it was a lot of these conversations. I could see I’ve made people really feel uncomfortable by saying, “No, thank you. I’m actually pretty good right now.” I want to make sure that I say this the right way. I think I knew a lot of people that were unhappy with what they were doing in their lives. And to close the loop, how I’ve become okay with this or these projections, is I learned that oftentimes where judgment, or maybe… I don’t want to say criticism, because criticism can be good, but it oftentimes comes from people are projecting their own, maybe insecurities in their lives, or things that they’re unhappy about.

Mike DiDonato (49:30):

So not that you should really care about that because you have to be internally, this has to be an internal thing. But if you can, A, if you feel good and you know that something is good for you, and as long as it’s not an unhealthy behavior, if it’s something like… I think it could walk a fine line with people when it comes, let’s come back to physical fitness. It’s like, oh I need to go work out because I’m not good enough. I think that could be some cause for concern, but for me, it’s no, you deserve this. You work so hard, this is going to get you from A to B. This is part of your process. So that’s kind of how I’ve approached these things, and it does make people uncomfortable.

Mike DiDonato (50:24):

That’s the thing, you can’t project these things on other people. You can’t make other people feel that way. If anything, a lot of people talk to me about fitness and I always try and celebrate everyone whenever they do, whether you go for a walk, a stretch or whatever, it just everyone’s different. We’re all different. We know that at Levels, our diets should be different and so our philosophy and how we approach these things are different. It’s not for me to judge what someone else is or isn’t doing, and that’s another thing. I don’t… Shouldn’t say never, but I try never to judge anyone because again, in my opinion, a lot of judgements come from projections of insecurities. Instead I try to look at a situation and if it’s something that I don’t think’s aligned with my values or my philosophy, I try and diagnose that so that I don’t repeat that behavior. I think I went down another rabbit hole.

Ben Grynol (51:21):

They’re great rabbit holes. If we wake up in the morning and we’re trying to prove ourselves to others, then we’re probably doing it wrong. But when you wake up and you cast a vote every day of who you are, you’re not casting a vote to others, you’re casting a vote to yourself because that’s all that you should be doing, is proving yourself to yourself. That’s Goggins. Goggins is not putting on a show. Goggins wakes up in the morning and he proves himself to himself, and he happens to show people his journey and people can subscribe to it as far as inspiration goes, or they can reject it. And that’s where that sense of maybe insecurity might come, where people are maybe projecting, “Goggins, slow down. Goggins, what are you doing? You think you’re so good.” And that is the mindset of saying, it doesn’t matter what Goggins does because Goggins is doing him, and I got to do me.

Mike DiDonato (52:18):

Yeah. He’s definitely one amazing example, but if you go and look at, I won’t say successful, because you can define success very different ways. I tend to identify more with physical stuff, but Elon Musk is a great example. I mean the resolve and the discipline of that man has to do what he does, I wouldn’t put anyone above that. It’s absolutely crazy what he’s been able to change and achieve, and he’s just getting started. And another example, there’s so many different ones, and I think when it comes to discipline, that’s why I do say the content you consume is who you become.

Mike DiDonato (53:01):

But another example for me is, I personally really identify now… I didn’t when I was younger, but now, with Kobe Bryant, late, great Kobe Bryant. So many great speeches, but I think it was his retirement speech or something, he said something along the lines, I’ll paraphrase both of them, those times when you don’t want to get up or those times when you don’t want to work hard, or I mean, you can give many examples, right? You could say those times when you don’t want to have that difficult conversation, those are the dream. It’s the journey, it’s not the destination. He goes on to say, the reason that we’re here, the reason that he’s one of the greatest, it’s not because of God-given talent. He said, “I’m here because of 4:00 AM. I’m here because of six a days.”

Mike DiDonato (53:53):

And to close the loop, I do think that discipline sometimes has this negative connotation. It’s like, oh, this ultra physical, maybe people are being disciplined because they have to, or they feel they have to. But in reality, at least to me, discipline is simply about making a commitment, a commitment to yourself to be that best version of yourself. And through discipline, at least I’ve found or developed self respect, and through self respect, you build confidence.

Ben Grynol (54:29):

We got to close the loop on this whole thing. What did it end up being, if it wasn’t your appendix? Don’t tell me that it was crabs and brown gravy or whatever. What was it that was the stomach, what ended up happening?

Mike DiDonato (54:46):

The answer is there is no answer, that’s the best part. There is no answer. I could give you what I suspect, but I still don’t have an answer. I want to say this in the right way, especially given the conversation we just had. I think I just got lost in the system, man. I don’t really think people were listening to me. I think we have really good sick or acute care and I probably should’ve known better. I should’ve listened to myself, maybe not have gone, or whatever, but I think something needed to happen and that’s kind of where we landed. So the answer is there is no answer, it’s a mystery.

Ben Grynol (55:42):

When in doubt, say it might’ve been a batch of crabs and gravy.

Mike DiDonato (55:47):

I’m here for that.

Ben Grynol (55:55):

You didn’t do the 4x… Did you?

Mike DiDonato (55:57):

That’s a funny story, my friend. I didn’t do it last weekend because of the whole surgery thing. And then I had this stupid injury thing and I was like, “You know what?” I think I sent a text to you and to Josh, and I said, oh man, I have this pod with Ben, and part of it’s going to be about this. But I’m like, “I just want to go out there and just break myself down and just tell and show myself that I can do it.” But I was thinking about, when we talk about discipline, it means so many different things. And oftentimes what it means is delaying instant gratification or delaying the thing that you want right now for the thing that you actually want long term, so let’s just put that on ice. But by the time this gets distributed, I will have done the 4x4x48, which is [crosstalk 00:56:39] going to happen this weekend.