Jay Jackson is the subject of Joe’s ultimate wrestling story, but you’ll have to wait to the very end of the episode to hear it. Jackson,assistant principal and wrestler, recognizes a need to nudge students into uncomfortable situations that will develop their grit, but that are often absent in an increasingly bubble wrapped society. He got his grit from his parents. His father, as a wrestling coach, would push his physical boundaries and his mom had clever strategies to develop his social skills. Jackson shares some valuable advice about how to advance towards your goals with a smile on your face.

Lessons:
    1.    To raise your children to be resilient, practice pushing them out of their comfort zone gradually through time, but not without building a solid foundation of security and love when they’re young.
    2.    Since a majority of your life is spent getting to a destination it is vital to find a way to enjoy the process.
    3.    If you can persist in every area of your life, physically, mentally, morally, you’ll succeed.

In world renowned ultra runner Dean Karnazes, Joe tracked down a real Spartan by both disposition and bloodline. Does he eat gruel for breakfast, take cold showers, and run wearing a hundred pounds of armor? Maybe. He’s run marathons in every state and is now setting out to do the same in every country. Certainly that falls within the same spirit. So you might be taken aback to hear that Karnazes tells us that we should set out not only to fail, but to fail big. His advice is backed up by a life changing experience that he will describe in this episode.

Lessons:

    1.    To achieve great things take small steps and ask yourself at every step if you’re conducting yourself with discipline.
    2.    Never stop exploring: don’t be afraid to try new things and eventually you’ll discover your passion/s.
    3.    Fail boldly: the most useful lessons are learned from the most dramatic failures.

According to writer Andrew Marantz, if you want to have a fulfilling life, take the largely accepted wisdom “live each day as if it were your last” with a large grain of salt. On the road to success, merely satisfying every desire as it appears will get you nowhere. In a philosophical conversation on the Spartan Cruise Joe and Andrew discuss the the crossover between perseverance and success in artists and athletes, the importance of future memory, the strong drive towards innovation and a variety of other topics. They also attempt to answer whether human achievement is driven by chemical releases in the brain or something more complex.

Lessons:

    1.    “Live each day as if it were your last” may be a misleading aphorism: There are clearly many things you must do to achieve long term fulfillment that don’t involve instant gratification.
    2.    The thing that often gives you the most satisfaction, your life’s passion, is paradoxically the thing you frequently don’t enjoy doing at all, but after all is said and done, love regardless.
    3.    On one extreme are virtuosos, those who strive for mastery, on the other are innovators, those who create change. We need both equally, and often we ARE both.

Growing up as the child of holocaust survivors, Broadway director Jerry Zaks, often found himself overprotected with his family wanting him to enter a “real” profession. At the moment he found his true passion and was happiest his family felt sorriest for him and that he had thrown his life away. But he had inherited from them a ferocious will to live that enabled him to take nothing for granted and propelled him in a vocation in which the odds are stacked up against you. Though not apparent on the surface, performers and directors are Spartans and in this episode Zaks will describe why.


Lessons

    1.    Seek out the roles in which you best fit and then make fulfilling them a matter of life or death.
    2.    Getting the part, whether it be the leading actor or position in a dream job, involves translating your talent into behavior that’s unforgettable.
    3.    Protect the possibility of a happy ending for as long as possible.

Xand Van Tulleken, a doctor who practices in hostile regions, had a taste of the easy life growing up, but it did not sate his appetite for adventure. He has worked in such places as Sudan, Uganda and Peru and the excitement of the challenge has made it difficult to go back to a conventional existence. He and his brother have even started a TV show in which they immerse themselves in traditional indigenous medicine with no other recourse. The takeaway? Western medicine has a lot to learn.

Lessons:
1. When things go badly wrong it's because of indecisiveness and uncertainty, therefore, be prepared.
2. People can live quite well without western medicine. It has little to offer to the indigenous way of life, for example.
3. Some of life's happiest moments are in the midst of doing difficult things.