It’s 5 o’clock in the morning. I’m sitting in a van with twenty other teenagers, and none of us know where we’re going.
The instructors haven’t said a word for the last hour. When the van finally stops in the middle of nowhere and the door slides open, we hear: “You have a map. You have a compass. Your destination is marked. You need to be there by tomorrow morning. Good luck.”
And then they’re gone.
I was 14 years old, standing in the dark with no food, no real supplies, and 36 hours of hiking ahead of me. I had no idea this experience would give me a framework for understanding challenge and growth that I’d carry for decades.
What I didn’t know then was that I was experiencing something called Misogi - and in this episode, I’m exploring why we all need this practice in our lives.
What You’ll Discover in This Episode:
The Story That Started Everything
* My detailed account of being dropped in the middle of nowhere at 14
* The misery, the arguments, the midnight shift that changed everything
* What that experience taught me about my actual limits (versus what I thought they were)
What Misogi Really Means
* The Japanese Shinto purification ritual and its core principle: do something very difficult
* How the West has evolved it into a transformative annual challenge
* Michael Easter’s framework: Make it really hard. Don’t die.
The Three Zones Framework
* Your comfort zone and why staying there shrinks your capacity
* The eustress zone - where positive stress creates growth
* The distress zone - where challenge becomes destructive
* How spending time in eustress expands what becomes comfortable
Why Modern Life Is Failing Us
* The hedonic adaptation trap: how excitement becomes normal and comfort becomes baseline
* Why we’ve eliminated genuine testing of ourselves along with danger
* What we’re craving when we sign up for ultramarathons and ice baths
The Two Gifts of Misogi
* Pride of Accomplishment - the quiet pride that can’t be faked or bought, only earned
* Perspective - your most powerful tool for stress resilience (with concrete examples)
Macro vs Micro Misogi
* Macro Misogi: Your annual impossible challenge that shifts everything
* Micro Misogi: Daily practice of stepping into discomfort (one more rep, one scary conversation, one vulnerable post)
* How the daily practice trains you for the annual test
* Applying “don’t die” to both levels
Real Examples You Can Use
* Physical challenges: multi-day hikes, marathons, learning to swim then doing a triathlon
* Creative challenges: writing a book, recording music, showing your art publicly
* Social challenges: public speaking, standup comedy, teaching workshops
* Personal challenges: difficult conversations, confronting fears, traveling alone
The Core Insight
We spend our lives running away from stress. Seeking comfort. Escaping to the beach. But we’ve lost something by only moving away from stress and never toward it.
When you voluntarily put yourself through something extremely difficult - when you push yourself to a place where you genuinely don’t know if you’ll make it - everything else in your life becomes contextual.
That difficult conversation? You’ve been through worse. That presentation making you anxious? You’ve faced bigger challenges. That conflict stressing you out? You know what real hardship feels like.
You’re not minimizing these things. You’re seeing them in proportion. And that perspective is incredibly valuable for building stress resilience.
The Question That Matters
What’s your Misogi going to be this year?
Not someday. Not eventually. This year.
What’s one challenge that would be hard enough that you’re not certain you’ll succeed? Because if you know you can do it, it’s not a Misogi - it’s just a goal. Misogi lives in that space of “I think I can do this, but I’m not sure.”
That uncertainty is what makes it transformative.
And while you’re planning your annual Macro Misogi, what’s your daily Micro Misogi practice? What’s one thing you can do today that puts you in that eustress zone? That stretches you just beyond comfortable?
Listen to the full episode to hear:
* The complete story of my 36-hour ordeal at age 14
* Detailed exploration of the eustress zone and how to use it
* Specific examples of both Macro and Micro Misogi practices
* How this practice counters hedonic adaptation and expands your capacity
* Why this isn’t about Instagram or proving anything to anyone else
Reflection Questions:
* What’s a Misogi you’ve done recently, or are thinking of doing?
* When was the last time you voluntarily chose discomfort when you didn’t have to?
* What’s one daily practice that could become your Micro Misogi?
* What’s the big challenge that scares and excites you in equal measure?
Drop your answers in the comments - I’d love to hear what your Misogi practice looks like.
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