The Mental Frame & Specific Daily Actions to Succeed | Andy Stumpf

Choose the slightly harder option as often as you can; the tiny, unseen reps add up, and that’s the real fuel. Welcome to the podcast.

Welcome to the Huberman Lab where we talk science and practical tools; today I’m with Andy Stumpf, former SEAL and world-record wingsuit pilot, whose book Drownproof surprised me with simple, powerful exercises, including one I now do weekly to separate what I can affect from what just hijacks my attention.

We’ll also touch on the hardest passages of Andy’s life, and have a serious, personal exchange about suicide and mental health; Andy, thanks for being here—I loved your book, and I’d love you to walk us through that influence versus concern exercise.

It’s not mine, but it’s been huge: draw a line down a page, list concerns on one side and what you can truly influence on the other, which for me keeps collapsing to one thing—myself, including how I plan, talk to myself, and spend time.

Seeing almost everything land in concern helps me let go and double down on my responses, which restores agency when sticky thoughts start running the show.

I’ve been doing it weekly and it keeps me from diving into news rabbit holes; once you see the manipulation, the responsibility is to stop feeding it.

The algorithm is real, but it’s still a choice to engage; I try to meet it on my terms.

I’ll do the exercise on planes instead of zoning out, though I admit a guilty pleasure of watching ‘sovereign citizen’ clips; the broader point is to treat most of the internet with heavy skepticism.

Social media makes us aware of far too many people and problems, which expands concern and crushes attention; does it make the exercise harder?

Chad Wright and I ran a screen-time experiment to get under an hour a day; moving social to my laptop made it less sticky and my mental health improved, but even we drifted back, which says everything about how engineered these platforms are.

When you scroll, do you know you’re wasting time while doing it, like you can’t stop even as you watch yourself do it?

I’m fully aware and even tell myself out loud to knock it off; fifteen minutes is seducing, I avoid being cruel online, and I fight the urge to fixate on one negative comment among a hundred kind ones.

I think it’s the perfect low-resolution addiction because it’s shallow enough to run in the background while you half-function, which is why I worry more about it than I do about many other crises, especially for young people.

My kids give me hope: one deletes the apps weekly, one barely uses them, and my daughter is glued but can see the upside when we force a disconnect; I’m also seeing their generation push back on alcohol and lean into sleep and health.

Could they miss something by not drinking at all, given how it can loosen social friction?

Alcohol helped me get out of my own way sometimes and it also led to mistakes that taught me a lot, so I can’t say the path is obvious.

Camera phones raise the social cost of drinking, and while I’m not anti-cannabis, the psychosis risk for some young men is real, so for many people a couple drinks here and there might carry less danger than regular high-potency weed.

I won’t tell people how to live; weigh risks against rewards, accept consequences, and know that confidence without alcohol tends to come with time.

On stress training, cold exposure is a safe way to practice working with high arousal and earn a long, clean dopamine tail—just don’t do it right after strength work.

I’ll design an elite protocol at eighty degrees and a sauna at ninety-seven; easy day.

Jocko once put me through a ‘factory reset’ of unknown heat and cold times; you don’t have to love the cold to benefit, but most people do gain from it.

Why wingsuits—what are they, how do you learn, and where’s the safety margin?

A wingsuit turns your body into pressurized nylon wings; learn with lots of skydives and wind-tunnel time, use gear with automatic reserve triggers, and understand base jumping is one parachute and often illegal off many objects.

The why wasn’t danger; it was the mental reset where everyday noise vanishes and you’re fully present for a few seconds, then calmer and clearer for months afterward, until risk began to outweigh reward and I stepped back.

Physiologically, were you flat or amped up?

Terrified and precise at the edge, then screaming over terrain—sometimes six feet off the ground—around a hundred-twenty miles an hour, which feels like riding live electricity.

Who’s at greater risk—the new or the seasoned jumper pushing limits?

Dunning–Kruger kills; early confidence on limited reps is deadly, conditions change subtly, and too many think they nailed it when they simply got away with it—I’ve lost friends, including Alex, and I’d prepare my kids with the hard truths if they chose it.

Your book also shares that the hardest thing you faced wasn’t combat or flying.

A long, contentious divorce nearly broke me; I keep details private out of respect, but I used every tool in the book—control what I can, shorten time horizons, and manage self-talk—to get through it.

Why include something so raw?

Because people think certain jobs make you bulletproof and they don’t; I want listeners to know they’re not alone, I won’t sell quick fixes, and honesty helps more than a polished image ever could.

I lost contact with my oldest son for eighteen months and kept reaching out until we rebuilt an even stronger bond; that tested my sense of worth more than anything the teams demanded.

Seeing parents as humans doing their best reframes a lot; gratitude and reconciliation are real work but worth it.

Most of us realize late that our parents were improvising under stress, just like we are.

Back to the wingsuit state, this doesn’t sound like an adrenaline high so much as a cleaner mind; I suspect it recalibrates time perception and restores the ability to make insightful connections.

It felt like turning down static and seeing choices clearly for a few months, then slowly losing that edge until the next deep-focus endeavor.

Everyday discipline matters too, which brings us—oddly—to toilet paper.

It always takes longer to do it wrong; swap the empty roll, fold laundry and put it away, make your bed, stack small hard choices, and life runs smoother than chasing messes later.

The people who seem most squared away tend to be tidy by will, and yet there’s social pressure to ‘loosen up’ instead of doing the slightly harder thing.

I grew up with a dad who saw sloppy public norms as a slippery slope, and it stuck with me because those small slips in how we show up can snowball into what we tolerate in ourselves.

It’s not about toilet paper, it’s about whether I keep my word to myself in the tiny things no one sees, because the habit of cutting corners spreads everywhere and procedures save lives when it counts.

The times I’m exhausted or in a hurry used to feel like add‑ons; I’m reframing them as the foundation, which is exactly when it’s hardest to hold the line.

Those are the reps that matter most, because showing up when you don’t want to is the win that compounds over years.

There’s solid science here: doing things you do not want to do strengthens the anterior mid‑cingulate cortex, a brain area tied to perseverance, successful dieting, and even super‑agers.

Same principle at home—put the dish straight in the dishwasher instead of the sink, because the everyday frictions are training too.

You’ve mentioned Jiu‑Jitsu; is there a part you resist, or do you love all of it?

I love that you can’t finish it, because feeling like a beginner again and again keeps my mind young.

You wrote about the worst pain of your life, worse than being shot; does talking about pain make it heavier or lighter?

I tried to tough out an intestinal blockage, hid it from my wife, and learned the hard way that silence doesn’t help; the moment I opened up, she got me care, and even though opiates barely work on me, the team found a way through and the lesson was clear—share real pain.

When it’s real pain, speak up, and hats off to your wife for taking the wheel.

I’m naturally wary of people because of what I’ve seen downrange, but I try not to judge on sight; like dogs, some folks mask hurt until it’s too late, so attention and time matter.

Let’s go to the hard one—suicide; your community loses too many, and I wonder what patterns you’ve seen that might help people step out of the tunnel where they think it will always feel this way.

We’ve lost more teammates to their own hand than to combat, and while every case differs, isolation, alcohol, and a brutal gap between self‑image and others’ respect show up a lot; Dave was the standard, sought help including psychedelics, and still died alone because he couldn’t live with not meeting his own bar.

I see it as a brain problem with many causes, made worse by loneliness at the top and the need to protect an image; data on what pulls people back from the edge is scarce, but hard problems can be solved.

The quiet ones worry me most; Dave crushed clandestine work and later trained others, yet behind the curtain he was unraveling—trouble with alcohol, solo ops, writing that degraded near the end.

Treatments like ibogaine and ayahuasca help many but not everyone, and we need open conversations, not just protocols.

Appealing to the pain left behind hasn’t stopped it, and many bring childhood trauma into service; add identity loss, distance from the tribe, and numbing habits after they hang up the uniform, and the load can crush you.

Daily check‑ins can be lifelines, and I think dark forces can ride through shame and secrecy; to heal, we may need a view bigger than science while still using every good tool science offers.

I’m glad you’re open to more than lab answers, because we don’t know everything, and closing doors costs lives.

We’re great at tech but terrible at fully understanding ourselves, so solutions will be human to implement but may require wisdom outside strict psychology.

I’ll always choose flexible over dogmatic, because rigid certainty doesn’t save people.

One practical tactic I’ve seen work is telling a brother, your goggles are foggy, so trust only a short list of people for a while; it builds a fighting stance against the pull to believe distorted thoughts.

It’s a deep, painful topic, and there’s no quick fix.

Bring it back to daily life; what’s the morning playbook for discipline without hacks?

Start with a small hard choice like a big glass of water before coffee, prep a real breakfast the night before, get a sweat once a day, and pick the slightly harder option consistently instead of trying to crush everything at once.

That works anywhere, anytime, and in the lazy moments it’s the path forward.

Put the mug in the dishwasher instead of the sink, and when you stack a hundred choices like that, your life tilts in a better direction.

Those reps grow grit wiring in the brain, and on a different note, what’s lighting you up right now?

I’m honestly excited about not knowing what’s next; I’ve flown jets, coached, jumped, opened a shop, wrote a book, learned to say no, and moved from survival and Craigslist hustles to trusting my tools and choosing opportunities without white‑knuckling.

I can hear that your process is solid even when the destination is unclear.

It took years to get out of panic mode, and anyone chasing the overnight leap should know outliers don’t scale.

There’s always a price to big goals; how do you gauge it without scaring people off ambition?

Use today’s tools to learn faster—my son built small businesses from scratch online—but aim to be fulfilled rather than hollow at the summit; I’d rather land a little shy of a massive goal and keep my life intact than hit it and lose everything that matters.

If the top one percent showed their real holidays and Friday nights, many would rethink their targets.

I’ve met people who seem to have it all, but the cost looks brutal up close.

Define winning so you can eventually step off the field, and be careful with chasing more for its own sake.

If more never ends, you may end up with less; experiences beat stuff you can’t take with you.

Money can’t buy happiness, but it can reduce certain stresses and fund solutions, while never fixing the pains it can’t touch.

At high levels, money can strain trust because motives get murky, so knowing your enough matters.

I loved this conversation and the book; for links to Andy’s work, the book, and everything we discussed, check the show notes, and if you’re learning from the podcast, please subscribe on YouTube, follow on Apple and Spotify, leave a review, and sign up for the free newsletter with protocols and summaries at our website—thanks for listening and for your interest in science.