How To Be Comfortable Being Uncomfortable - Ben Aldridge | Modern Wisdom Podcast 352

1. 0:00 – 0:28

   Intro

   1. BABen Aldridge0:00

      The idea that when things go wrong, it's not a problem. You embrace failure and you look for the lesson. And you're always trying to take from the experience. It doesn't matter what happens to you, it's, it's what lesson you can take from it. (wind blows)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:16

      Benjamin, welcome to the show.

   3. BABen Aldridge0:19

      Hi, Chris. Great to be here. Thanks for having me on.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:21

      It's an uncomfortable day, right? We're both sweltering. We're both too hot.

   5. BABen Aldridge0:25

      Yeah, absolutely. But we've got to embrace it.

2. 0:28 – 7:47

   Year of Adversity

   1. BABen Aldridge0:28

   2. CWChris Williamson0:28

      Well, that's the lesson, the lesson that we're gonna learn today. So, you decided to spend a year doing a bunch of challenges, physical stuff and mental stuff and social stuff. What was the impetus? Why bother putting yourself through hell for a year?

   3. BABen Aldridge0:40

      (laughs) So, all of this came off the back of anxiety actually. So that was the, the trigger for me to get into, uh, challenging myself. I was hit with this severe anxiety, and I started reading about all of these things that I could do to handle that, how I could manage it. And I came across a lot of different philosophy and psychology, and one of the things that really caught my attention was the idea of deliberately stepping outside of your comfort zone. It felt very counterintuitive at the time to be doing something like that. Um, but by doing that, it helped me to gain confidence and to actually understand myself better and to, to build a bit of resilience, which is something that I was lacking, because I had no sense of how to deal with this, uh, this anxiety.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:22

      What's a panic attack feel like?

   5. BABen Aldridge1:25

      It was very... Uh, well, if you don't know what one is, it feels like you're dying, to be honest. The first time that I had that panic attack, it was, uh, it was just insane. I had, I had no sense of, uh, that my mental health could cause such physical symptoms. So, I imagine... Let me compare it to if we were to go skydiving together. Uh, we would probably have very physical symptoms within our bodies, (laughs) like shaky hands, you'd probably feel a bit sick, you'd feel scared. Um, you know, you would feel this nausea and this sense of fear. But that's pretty normal because that's something, you know, there's a reason for that. Now, imagine not having a trigger or a reason and you just have those, those sensations all the time, 24/7. It's hard to sleep, it's hard to eat. Uh, and that's basically what an anxiety disorder becomes. Uh, so it's very hard to, to function as a normal human being. So this was a trigger that started this, this whole journey and got me into writing, got me into Stoicism, Buddhism, and all these different philosophies, and actually encouraged me to start challenging myself.

   6. CWChris Williamson2:26

      Have you got any idea what caused you to get into this spiral of anxiety and panic attacks and stuff in the first instance? Uh, was there some sort of a trigger or is it like a compounding effect of just a general ambient anxiety and malaise?

   7. BABen Aldridge2:42

      I think there wasn't actually a trigger as such. It was, I think, uh, it was more of a compounding thing. I think it was not being able to understand my mind very well. Um, I didn't understand mental health and it just, it was just the cumulative stress, and it was just the not being able to handle difficulty. And I just had this internal dialogue that wasn't really helping me (laughs) and would just make things a lot worse by, um, spiraling things out of control.

   8. CWChris Williamson3:08

      Uh-

   9. BABen Aldridge3:09

      So there wasn't a clear trigger. There wasn't like an event that caused it to happen. It was just, uh, it, it just came out of the blue.

   10. CWChris Williamson3:16

       Which I guess is even more brutal, right? When you don't know, you can't draw the line from cause and effect. You're actually like, "Oh, hang on." Like, "Am, am I dying? I actually might be dying."

   11. BABen Aldridge3:26

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson3:27

       Um-

   13. BABen Aldridge3:27

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson3:27

       So, I had James Nestor on the podcast yesterday-

   15. BABen Aldridge3:30

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CWChris Williamson3:31

       ... the guy that wrote Breath. And, um, he's talking about the two main functions that you do with breath work, right? So one of them is an extreme activation of the sympathetic nervous system. It's the Wim Hof, it's a (breathes rapidly) , it's that shit. And then the other is-

   17. BABen Aldridge3:45

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson3:45

       ... an extreme activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. It's dialing yourself down to, you know, three breaths a minute, two breaths a minute, uh, it's extreme holds at the end, it's free diving, holding your breath for a long time, stuff like that.

   19. BABen Aldridge3:56

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CWChris Williamson3:57

       And, um, what I had in my head while he was talking about it, and this will, that episode will be out so everyone will know what I'm talking about, even though you don't.

   21. BABen Aldridge4:03

       (laughs)

   22. CWChris Williamson4:05

       Um, you know the, the concept of an Overton window, right? Like which is, um, a, a bound of acceptable speech within... So you can imagine that you've got all of the speech that you could do on a little spectrum from 0 to 100, and then you have the Overton window with, which is what's acceptable in normal society and people won't look at you like you're a weirdo or some sort of like crazy person if you say it. And that's maybe, let's say, from 25 to 75. So you can still say things that are out on the ends, but those things are likely to get you into trouble and to cause you problems. And what James was talking about was that a lot of the time we exist in an increasingly narrower and narrower band of this sympathetic to parasympathetic situation. We're going from perhaps 40 to 60 or from, you know, like 30 to 70, something like that. And when you do get knocked out into one of those, you have to give a presentation at work or you have to have an awkward conversation with your spouse or you're sat on your own in a room for, you know, the other end of the scale, you're just sat bored and your phone's died at a train station and you're driving yourself crazy because you can't bear to live with how much relaxation you're going through, um, that's where the issues arise for people. And breath was his focus. So he was saying, "Look, by doing this extreme sympathetic and parasympathetic activation, you're actually starting to pull that window back out." Like, "Look, it's okay to be in this situation," because our ancestors would have run for ages and chased something down and then they'd have sat around for ages and done absolutely nothing. And we kind of just exist slap bang in the middle, not going to either of the extremes.

   23. BABen Aldridge5:37

       Well, I think the thing is, we're not taught this kind of stuff. It, it's, uh, I certainly wasn't taught this at school. It wasn't something that I was aware of. And, um, I think it's, it's something that is incredibly important, this education. How do you deal with something when it comes along? How do you deal with anxiety or how do you, how do you change? How do you create change in your life? And I, I think that educating yourself and getting into that is extremely important. Um, and that's the great thing about what so many people are doing with their podcasts and what you're doing with your podcast as well. You're helping people to be exposed to these ideas that can ultimately change their lives. And that's something... I, I loved his book. I loved Breath. I thought that was fantastic. Um, and...... I think it would've been (laughs) really helpful actually, for me, to have, uh, to put two and two together, to have got the, the sense of what you can do just from the power of breathing as well. I think, um, it would've been helpful at the time.

   24. CWChris Williamson6:33

       Think about talking about the learning thing, like, that's the same as well. You have this band of people that you typically see who all have relatively similar worldviews, and even if they have different worldviews, after enough time, you've heard all of their worldviews. Like, it is, without exposing yourself to books and podcasts and YouTube and whatever else it might be, traveling, you are stuck hearing the same rhetoric and the same narrative over and over. You, you're not going to learn that many things. But you're totally right. The ability for people to consume as much as they want, from wherever they want, and, you know, I, I think the job of a podcaster, as, at least the type of podcast that I try to create, is to be more like a museum cr- uh, curator than-

   25. BABen Aldridge7:12

       Mm-hmm.

   26. CWChris Williamson7:12

       ... anything else. So, what you hope when you go into a museum or an art gallery or something, you know that maybe not every single piece of art is gonna be like, "Wow, I'm in, I'm in love with that." But you have faith that the curator has been able to put together an experience which overall, you're going to see new things and get exposed to stuff that you hadn't seen before, and then maybe get exposed to stuff that you already love, but you see it in a new way or whatever it is. And that's how it kind of feels to me. But again, pulling people outside of that Overton window, like speaking to a porn star and a philosopher-

   27. BABen Aldridge7:41

       (laughs)

   28. CWChris Williamson7:41

       ... in the space of a week, or doing something like that. So-

   29. BABen Aldridge7:43

       (laughs)

   30. CWChris Williamson7:43

       ... yeah, that's the, uh, get your ears comfortable at being uncomfortable perhaps.

3. 7:47 – 18:15

   Applying Philosophy to Life

   1. CWChris Williamson7:47

      That, that might be the equivalent. All right, so you, so you go through this stuff, you're struggling mental health, what do you start to resonate with first? What's the first thing that you read where you're like, "Right, okay, there's something to this"?

   2. BABen Aldridge7:58

      So, I started reading a lot of different things and ca- became a bit of a quest to try and figure out what I can do. And actually, I, I really w- like, connected to a load of different ideas. But I have to say, the one that made the biggest difference in my life was Stoicism. And I kind of, I got into that because it caught me with this concept, voluntary discomfort, and I love how the Stoics were so creative in the ways that they would push themselves out of their comfort zone. So, they would sleep on the floor, uh, they would expose themselves to the cold and the heat, they would fast from food and water, and there was a Stoic, uh, called Cato who would deliberately wear things to feel shame so he could practice feeling like an idiot.

   3. CWChris Williamson8:36

      What like?

   4. BABen Aldridge8:37

      And ... So, he w- I mean, back in the day, it would've just been a different colored cloak or something like that and we can play with that today. But I, I just love that idea, that it's so counterintuitive, this, this concept of someone deliberately seeking out, um, attention like that. And not in a way, it's not attention-seeking, but it's to, to get that feeling of self-consciousness and being able to work with it and understand it and, and not be worried about how people are judging you. And this, this just caught my attention. I fell in love with this idea. And this is really why I started challenging myself, and I started off with very small challenges. Um, the first one was actually walking to the local bench, which was, it was only about 100 meters away, but that should give you an idea of how, like, what a dark mental space I was in. Um, but over time, it compounded and I started to get more confident and ended up doing bigger and bolder things and, and some of them were very Stoic. So, things like sleeping on the floor, that's a great one, and that's something that everyone can try. It's not easy. No mattress, nothing, just sleep next to your bed. Uh, and that's, that's very, very hard to do, but it's a mindset thing. So, I love this concept from Stoicism and that got me into it, and then I just, you know, explored the philosophy more and now it's just something that helps me every day.

   5. CWChris Williamson9:55

      I think Cato practiced walking backward through a crowd that was leaving a theater.

   6. BABen Aldridge10:00

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson10:00

      Did you see this one?

   8. BABen Aldridge10:02

      Yeah. I've heard, uh, uh, I've, I've heard the cynics as well. The cynic philosophers inspired the Stoics and, um, this kind of ... Uh, someone described them as the trolls of ancient Greece, which (laughs) I think is a great way, a great way to discuss, uh, this, this type of philosophy, but they're just delirium.

   9. CWChris Williamson10:18

      Diogenes was absolutely a troll, man. That, wasn't it-

   10. BABen Aldridge10:21

       (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson10:21

       So, Alexander the Great, for anyone that doesn't know this sort of the Diogenes story, Diogenes is this guy in ancient Greece, I want to say, and he lives in a pot, which is literally the thing that you piss and shit in. And he lives in that, he wears a, like an old rice sack rag thing, that's his clothing. And but he's walking around and telling people good philosophy insights and stuff like that. So, Alexander the Great hears of him and he arrives in Greece and he finds him just bathing in the sun and he walks up to him and he says, "Diogenes, I've heard that you're an, an incredible man. Uh, tell me what you would wish for and if it is within my power, I will give it to you." And Diogenes said, "I would wish for you to get out of my sunlight." And-

   12. BABen Aldridge11:03

       (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson11:03

       ... just shifted (laughs) Alexander the Great otherwise-

   14. BABen Aldridge11:05

       (laughs)

   15. CWChris Williamson11:05

       ... and that kind of tells you, tells you all that you really need to know. Yeah, the ... He absolutely was, he was like the Loki, the Loki of ancient Greece, I suppose. But, um, yeah, it's fascinating, man. I mean, wearing itchy clothing, they used to do, walking around barefoot purposefully, dropping things. Wasn't it ... didn't Zeno use to push his disciples when they were carrying food and drinks and stuff so that they'd accidentally drop va- vases of wine and everyone would turn around and look at them? Or he'd spill, he'd spill stuff on them so they'd have to walk around with, like, wine stains on them. So, all of this, what people are trying to do is learn that the level of discomfort that you go through isn't a mortal threat. That's what you're trying to do because it feels so overwhelming, right? It feels so, oh my god, the phenomenology of this crazy set of hormones rushing through my body is terrifying and my heart rate's high and I'm sweating and I've got clammy hands and, uh, my vision's all blurred. But it's fine. It's just okay. And that voluntary exposure, I think, is, is what you're trying to get at there.

   16. BABen Aldridge12:02

       Yeah. Absolutely. It's such a beautiful concept. And I think it's, what I find so appealing about it is it's, it's like a combination of fear and play, which are two things that don't really go hand-in-hand. And, uh, I, I, I love this concept. So, there's something that I would love to contribute to Stoicism and it's, it's kind of an extension of this and it's, it's called the anti-bucket list. And it's basically...... this thing, it's like fear exposure. So we know what a bucket list is, it's a list of things we want to do before we die. The anti-bucket list is things that we don't want to do before we die, and we can easily avoid them being adults, we don't have to push ourselves out of our comfort zone. So I love this idea, you collect things that scare you and you create your list, your anti-bucket list, and then you deliberately go out and you do that, and that is a very stoic thing. I'll give you an example. Um, for me, I had a massive fear of needles. I mean, I had a fear of a lot of things, but needles was one of the things that just really, really got me. So, that was on my anti-bucket list. So I turned that into a challenge and went and had acupuncture, which is the most extreme version of having to deal with needles when you get them in your face and you're, you're, like, all over your body. So that, it feels counterintuitive and it's, it's scary, but actually the growth that you experience when you push yourself out of your comfort zone like that, when you use fear as something to play around with, it's, it's an amazing, amazing thing that can happen to you, and it can help build confidence and, and ultimately resilience as well. So I love this concept and I think the stoics just, you know, really started off something wonderful with, with this idea.

   17. CWChris Williamson13:36

       What's on the anti-bucket list that you haven't done yet?

   18. BABen Aldridge13:39

       Oh, it's, uh, I'm giving blood. That's, that's the next one. Um-

   19. CWChris Williamson13:43

       Oh, that's needles.

   20. BABen Aldridge13:43

       ... hopefu-

   21. CWChris Williamson13:44

       That's serious needles.

   22. BABen Aldridge13:45

       (sighs) Yeah. And for some people that's no- that's no, no bother for them. You know, a lot of people will, will listen to this and say, "Oh, that, that's, that's ridiculous. Like, it's very easy." But if you've got, uh... It's blood as well, it's not just the needle, it's the needle and the blood. So, um, that's, that's the next big one. Uh, I'm lo- I'm looking forward to it actually. It's gonna be one of those, uh, those things that I kind of don't want to do it, but that's the point. So I'm looking forward to the growth that I'll experience in probably very sweaty palms as well. But it's, uh-

   23. CWChris Williamson14:13

       I think it would be... For me, it would be spiders, snakes-

   24. BABen Aldridge14:16

       Mm-hmm.

   25. CWChris Williamson14:16

       ... and stuff like... I'm not... um, just not, not my bag. And you're totally right as well with the anti-bucket list, I could spend the entire... easily, easily spend the rest of my life never exposing myself to snakes and spiders other than on the other side of some glass somewhere.

   26. BABen Aldridge14:30

       Hmm.

   27. CWChris Williamson14:30

       Uh, uh, and I've got something very wrong if I accidentally have to pick up a snake or a spider. It's something very s-... I mean, in fact, I've probably got more to worry about than the snake or the spider if I need to do that. All right, so you started off with, with stoicism, what else did you study that you thought gave you a good impact?

   28. BABen Aldridge14:44

       Um, so I loved Buddhism as well. Buddhism was very helpful. Um, there's lots of ideas. Interestingly, stoicism and Buddhism, there's a real crossover. Um, there's a lot of ideas that balance, um, in a very, very... kind of similar, even though they were created thousands of miles apart. So I think that's quite interesting that they came to a-

   29. CWChris Williamson15:01

       What are the similarities?

   30. BABen Aldridge15:02

       ... similar conclusion. So there's a focus on being present, um, and actually living in the moment, which is something that both the stoics and the Buddhists talk a lot about. Um, and gratitude, building a sense of gratitude into everything that you do. And they came about it from different ways. So in Buddhism, there's this thing called the loving-kindness meditation where you think well of someone and you, uh, e- even people that you struggle with, challenging people, you wish them well, which can feel, again, counterintuitive, but this is to help you, I guess, develop empathy and to help you to, to explore compassion in an interesting way. The stoic way of doing, um, this was through negative visualization. So they would picture things, um, being taken away from them, so they would contemplate loss as a way to, um, increase their gratitude. So although they're two different approaches, there's a similarity there, there's a developing gratitude and a deeper sense of gratitude. Um, so yeah, there's lots of crossovers. But I, I really liked some of the ideas in Buddhism, m- mainly the philosophical Buddhism rather than the religious side of things, the... 'cause obviously, um, Buddhism has developed into lots of different types of, um... they've got loads of different schools and different branches, and I think some of them are very ritual-heavy and they're very, um... Well, there's certain ideas and certain rituals that aren't necessarily gonna help me. But I like going back to the actual core philosophy and some of the ideas that, uh, that's behind Buddhism is, is very, very helpful. The idea of, um, impermanence is a great one as well.
4. 18:15 – 24:17

   Growth Mindset & CBT

   1. CWChris Williamson18:15

      one. You looked at Carol Dweck's Mindset as well, right? And you did some CBT stuff too.

   2. BABen Aldridge18:20

      Yeah. Yes, yes. Uh, Mindset is one of my favorite books of all time. I think it's an unbelievably...... useful concept, the idea that there's a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. Uh, and I could see, (laughs) when I was in peak anxiety, I was very, very fixed mindset on so many things. And the growth mindset is this openness to new ideas and the ability to step outside your comfort zone, I guess. You, you could s- think of it like that. The idea that you, when things go wrong, it's not a problem. You embrace failure and you look for the lesson and always trying to take from the experience. It doesn't matter what happens to you, it's, it's what lesson you can take from it. So, I think that's a, that's again, a very powerful thing. And throughout all of these challenges that I started doing, um, having this in the back of my mind, this growth mindset, the ability to look for the lesson, to always look for the lesson, was, uh, something that I kept coming back to. And it's very, very helpful.

   3. CWChris Williamson19:21

      Well, it reminds you as well, the, "This won't last forever. That's impermanent," right?

   4. BABen Aldridge19:25

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson19:25

      "Here's a lesson. It's, I'm not in a fixed mindset." It also helps you to dissolve the ego away. "Look, I, I failed, but that's not really a comment on me as a human. It doesn't change the person that I am or, uh, all of the things that I've done. It's just, just a failure. Like, what's the lesson from it? Move on." So yeah, again, mindset, I think, coalesces nicely with the Buddhism and the Stoicism. And then what about CBT? 'Cause I know CBT, like, some of the principles and stuff come out, come out of Stoicism. What was there specifically from CBT that you hadn't got from anything else?

   6. BABen Aldridge20:00

      So, I think it was mainly just being conscious of my internal dialogue. This is the great thing about CBT, it really gets you to question the way that you're talking to yourself internally. Uh, and during peak anxiety, again, negative, like, frame of mind, very fixed mindset, and the way that I would talk to myself in my head was (laughs) unhelpful. Very, very unhelpful. So, I think being conscious of that is the first step to, to be able to change it. When you're aware of something, you can then act, and you can try and change it. So, the, so the CBT kind of golden rule is that you blast your negative thoughts with logic, and you use logic to destroy the, uh, the negative dialogue. And you might have to work really hard, and it's not always gonna be natural to start off with, but the more you do it, the more natural it becomes, and then you kind of automatically start doing that in your head. I mean, I'm not perfect, but I'm getting better at it, and it, it has certainly helped me to manage that anxiety.

   7. CWChris Williamson20:59

      What was the best CBT book that you read, or some of them?

   8. BABen Aldridge21:03

      Um, the best one I read, it was, it was actually, like, the, um, the CBD, C, um, CBT for Dummies. That, that kind of, uh, really base level-

   9. CWChris Williamson21:16

      My First CBT lesson.

   10. BABen Aldridge21:17

       ... introductory one. Yeah, yeah, one of those. I can't even remember the exact title and I can't remember the author, so I don't wanna, um, I don't wanna say because I, obviously, I like to be able to say what the author's name is because I feel that it would do the, the book justice. But, um, yeah, I think it was, it was just, uh, one of those sort of introductory books. Um, it wasn't, it wasn't a particular, uh, one. That was, it was-

   11. CWChris Williamson21:40

       It feels to me like, 'cause at the moment, we've had, like, pop psychology's been kicking off, and Stoicism's kicking off, and Buddhism's kicking off and stuff at the moment in the, the, uh, intellectual, uh, awakening world. But I haven't really seen someone popularize CBT. I don't know whether maybe Stoicism and, and Buddhism and pop psychology are, are taking so many chunks out of the insights that you would get from CBT that someone doesn't think it's worthwhile to put a CBT book out there.

   12. BABen Aldridge22:06

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson22:06

       But certainly, the, the, uh, relationship that we have with our inner monologue, the blasting our thoughts with logic, some of the insights from CBT, I, personally, I think haven't been popularized as well as they should have been yet. There hasn't been a scientific communicator or a research communicator or just a, you know, anyone, an author that's come out and really be like, "Look, here's the too long didn't read of 35 years of CBT research."

   14. BABen Aldridge22:34

       Hmm. You know, it's so interesting, and it, I definitely think it should be taught in schools as well. It's something that would make a huge difference to the next generation. I think so many mental health problems would be alleviated, uh, almost preemptively solved if, uh, we were teaching things like that in school, teaching children how to have a, uh, that narrative inside their head and how to manage these things when they crop up. So yeah, I'd love to see, I'd love to see more of that.

   15. CWChris Williamson22:59

       I think a buddy is an American and his kids go to a school, and he was telling me that the teacher, um, teaches them to name their emotions and, and give them different colors. Like, it's like the, the pirate is, is angry, and there's something, like, the hippo is happy and s... I can't remember. I'm butchering it again.

   16. BABen Aldridge23:20

       (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson23:20

       But, um, yet, uh, they are, they're trying to step into your own programming and to just notice, "Look, there is something that's captured you. There is a, a, a sensation that's inside of you. Just sit and name it." And obviously, they've had to kidify it up and make it about-

   18. BABen Aldridge23:34

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson23:34

       ... like, whatever, hippos and pirates and stuff like that. But yeah, you're, you're right. I mean, think about m- most of the people that are listening to this. The adults that have been adults for a significantly longer time than they've been intellectually awakened and on this path of trying to become better humans. Now, imagine if you didn't have to undo... I- imagine if you were starting, even if you're just starting from zero, not like minus 1,300. Like, it would be (laughs) so much, it would be so much easier.

   20. BABen Aldridge24:02

       Yeah, absolutely, of course. An- and that's why I think getting these ideas into schools would be just, just brilliant. Um, things like meditation as well. I think that's, that's so important. That's been very helpful for me, uh, and that ties in with

5. 24:17 – 29:13

   Ben’s Small Challenges

   1. BABen Aldridge24:17

      a lot of these other ideas.

   2. CWChris Williamson24:18

      All right, so you do these, you did hundreds and hundreds of challenges and then you sort of listed 43 in the book. What was the second one after going to the bench? Can you remember?

   3. BABen Aldridge24:28

      ... second one was going, um, catching a bus, so it's a little bit of an upgrade from walking to the bench-

   4. CWChris Williamson24:34

      Moving then.

   5. BABen Aldridge24:34

      ... but then... Yeah. (laughs) And then it, then it compounded and then, then it just started getting, you know, more confident and bigger and bolder things followed.

   6. CWChris Williamson24:44

      What about that Welsh train station? You learned the name of the, the longest word in the world?

   7. BABen Aldridge24:49

      It's the longest train station in the world, yes. Uh, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Now, I've probably done a terrible job of that, and if anyone Welsh is listening, they're gonna say that was, that was a horrible rendition of it. But it was a very small challenge, but I just loved the fact that it's something new, it's something novel, and challenges can be found in many different places, and they don't always have to be epic. So, some of my challenges were very big, running a marathon and climbing mountains, learning Japanese, but some were small. Like that one is the perfect example of a small challenge, and it's a great one as well. It's fun. It's, uh, it's a good one to learn.

   8. CWChris Williamson25:31

      All right, and then-

   9. BABen Aldridge25:31

      You should learn it.

   10. CWChris Williamson25:32

       ... yeah, I, uh, well, I'll replay that.

   11. BABen Aldridge25:34

       (laughs)

   12. CWChris Williamson25:34

       I'll just re- I'll just, uh, go to sleep listening to you going, "Boo-dee-ba-dee-dee-dee-boo-dee-ba-dee gug-gug-gug." Um-

   13. BABen Aldridge25:38

       (laughs)

   14. CWChris Williamson25:39

       Talking to a stranger on the street. So I think, um, most people tend to have capacities, uh, within certain domains that all line up. So someone might be very good physically at putting themselves into, you know, like a zone four or zone five heart rate, but then if you were to tell them to do something socially, they might struggle, or someone that's social might really struggle to make themselves go into the discomfort of learning and memorization or something like that.

   15. BABen Aldridge26:02

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CWChris Williamson26:03

       Out of the sort of broad buckets of challenges, was there one that you were like, "Look, this continues to come up. I, I, I find social situations significantly more difficult. I find physical situations significantly more difficult." Was there something that you discovered there?

   17. BABen Aldridge26:18

       Um, I think the, all of the challenges present unique insights into how my mind works. Um, I certainly find that, well, I'm an introvert, so for me, putting a stupid hat on and (laughs) walking down a busy high street is, it feels-

   18. CWChris Williamson26:33

       How stupid are we talking?

   19. BABen Aldridge26:34

       ... may- maybe even be harder. Um, I, I don't have it to hand actually. I wish I could show you, but, um, I've got this crab hat. I bought it in Japan, and it is literally a crab that goes around your face like this, and it's got little claws, and it's, it's very, very ridiculous. Um, so if you wear s- something like that, it's, people will look at you, uh, and that's fine, but it's, it's just dealing with that. Um, as an extrovert, you probably... I've got a friend who I, I, I've seen him dance naked on a table in front of thousands of people at a festival. He's not supposed to be on the table. (laughs) This is just, it's just a festival, and he loved the attention. He loved having people look at him. So, for him, putting a crab hat on and walking down a busy street, he's gonna love that.

   20. CWChris Williamson27:16

       He just wear... He wears the crab hat for fun.

   21. BABen Aldridge27:18

       He's gonna love that. Yeah, exactly. (laughs) So, it's, it's playing around with the things that you personally find challenging. So, for an extrovert, maybe it would be the opposite, so going on a silent retreat or cutting yourself off from that, um, and just exploring the introverted side, 'cause we've all got a mix of introversion and extroversion. Um, but I think it, it's nice to explore how that relates to us as individuals and, and to play around with both sides of it.

   22. CWChris Williamson27:46

       Weren't you getting naked at some point as well? Didn't you do a, like a naked challenge?

   23. BABen Aldridge27:49

       (laughs) That was one of the worst that like, as in, I didn't really do a great job of that. I talk about it in the book, but yeah, that was a, um, a nudist beach for a very short amount of time. (laughs) It was a lot of-

   24. CWChris Williamson28:01

       What... No, what, how do you not do a good job of being naked?

   25. BABen Aldridge28:04

       Um, because... (laughs) You feel so paranoid. Um, and I think I, and it's just the internal dialogue wasn't great, and I was just, uh, very self-conscious and, um, I didn't spend a long time naked. So, that's, that's how I did a bad job of it.

   26. CWChris Williamson28:17

       Got you.

   27. BABen Aldridge28:17

       But-

   28. CWChris Williamson28:17

       Are you familiar with the 100 Days of Rejection Therapy Challenge? Did you look at this?

   29. BABen Aldridge28:24

       Um, I've heard about rejection therapy, um, which is... I, I like that, where you deliberately, um, do things that people are gonna say no to. Or you might, if they say yes, you might end up with a very funny story, like trying to order a square pizza or trying to do that kind of stuff. Uh, uh, yeah, I love that idea.

   30. CWChris Williamson28:40

       People should go and check that out. If you're bored and, and on your phone at the moment, just Google 100 Days of Rejection Therapy Challenge, and it's, uh, it's, it's exactly what it says. It's 100 days of rejection. Like, you go up to a stranger and ask them for 100 pounds.
6. 29:13 – 36:34

   Summoning Adrenaline

   1. CWChris Williamson29:13

      adrenaline as well. Obviously, a lot of the things that you did gave you adrenaline.

   2. BABen Aldridge29:17

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson29:17

      But I suppose, as someone that was suffering with panic attacks and a little bit of social anxiety as well, actually working on getting that adrenaline, pushing that parasympathetic system, as we were talking about, how did you do that? How do you summon adrenaline?

   4. BABen Aldridge29:31

      So, you basically do stuff that scares the living daylights out of you, and that's gonna be different for everyone. Um, for me, I did a lot of climbing and pushed myself with climbing, uh, and that's very, very physical and mental at the same time. So if you're climbing a scary route, you're gonna have a lot of adrenaline in your body, uh, and just learning how to manage that, learning how to be okay with having adrenaline in your body, because actually, that feeling is very similar to a panic attack. So, learning how to be okay with having adrenaline is l- essentially learning how to manage almost anxiety as well. Um, so I did lots of things cli- I really pushed my climbing and ended up doing some fun-

   5. CWChris Williamson30:11

      What was the, what was the scariest route that you climbed or the scariest mountain that you went up?

   6. BABen Aldridge30:17

      So, I mean, it's hard to say because there was a lot of stuff. I did a route in winter in Wales with, um... that was just so intense. Uh, it was completely frozen and it was, it was like a technical rock climb, um, but very icy (laughs) and it was very scary. Uh, so managing that with my friend as well, we, we maybe threw ourselves in a little too deep. And other, other things, uh, deep water soloing is a great example of this, where you climb above the water, and if you fall off, you fall into the sea-So, I mean, you can imagine, you've got the waves, like, bellowing around, and it's very atmospheric, and it's, uh, you can feel it, the adrenaline in your chest, and you really don't want to fall off, and you're just desperately making sure that you don't. And then you fall off, and it's fine, and you have this release of endorphins, and you prove to yourself that you can, you can do something very scary. And, and the growth as well that comes with that, uh, is, is addictive.

   7. CWChris Williamson31:09

      I went to the United States outdoor white water training facility a couple of years ago, and they have-

   8. BABen Aldridge31:21

      (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson31:21

      ... um, a huge climbing wall over a 10-meter pool. Uh-

   10. BABen Aldridge31:24

       Oh, amazing.

   11. CWChris Williamson31:24

       ... so this is the artificial climbing, and there's-

   12. BABen Aldridge31:26

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson31:27

       ... some that are easy and some that have got overhangs and you have special shoes on. And that's, it's just, you just do endless rounds, just constantly climbing up.

   14. BABen Aldridge31:35

       Mm-hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson31:35

       And there is, there's a point where you get to, it's a battle between trying to keep your focus on what you're doing and not think about how high you are away from the water. And then, obviously, as you get higher up, the difficulty increases, but so does the anxiety and the distraction-

   16. BABen Aldridge31:52

       Mm-hmm.

   17. CWChris Williamson31:52

       ... of you thinking about being below. If anybody has the opportunity, it was in, uh, Charlotte, it was near Lake Norman in Charlotte, so if anyone's in America listening to this, you should go, totally go and do it. It's insane. Um, but yeah, it was, it was so weird being, you can get up to 10 meters high-

   18. BABen Aldridge32:09

       Mm-hmm.

   19. CWChris Williamson32:09

       ... and that you're on an overhang, and you can be hanging on with, like, one hand and one foot, and you're thinking, "Right, okay, so where, where's the next handhold? Where am I gonna go from here?" And be completely unstrapped and fall, and it'd be fine. It was mad experience.

   20. BABen Aldridge32:24

       Oh, it's, uh, it's all about the head, head game there, really, when you're, you're, you're right, as soon as you're above a certain height, you really don't want to fall. Um-

   21. CWChris Williamson32:31

       There's an invisible line.

   22. BABen Aldridge32:32

       There-

   23. CWChris Williamson32:32

       There's a line that you get to, and then you're like, "Right, okay, like, my, my bum hole is puckering hard now."

   24. BABen Aldridge32:37

       (laughs)

   25. CWChris Williamson32:38

       (laughs)

   26. BABen Aldridge32:39

       I think 10 meters is probably the, uh, that point, if you start going over 10 meters. I mean, you should watch, I don't know if, um, you've seen, there's, there's some amazing climbers out there. There's a guy, um, who does a, a lot of this deep water soloing called Chris Sharma, and he's a pioneer in, in this, uh, this kind of niche type of climbing. And some of the routes he does is, they're, they're just insane. You look at them, and you just think, "This is, this is, uh, unbelievable mental control." Um, not, not only is it technical climbing, but he's, like, 20 meters up. And you've got to be very careful how you land in the water because you can really, really hurt yourself. Um, so, uh, I, I, yeah, I like it. It's an interesting sport. You don't have to be extreme. You can just dip your toe in a little bit and you can get a lot out of it.

   27. CWChris Williamson33:25

       Well, it's pretty scary at three meters away from the water.

   28. BABen Aldridge33:27

       Yeah. Oh, yeah. (laughs)

   29. CWChris Williamson33:28

       You don't need to be, you don't need to be that high up. So you did, um, you waited in a queue that you didn't need to do, and I'm a club promoter.

   30. BABen Aldridge33:35

       (laughs)
7. 36:34 – 42:03

   Most Challenging Task

   1. CWChris Williamson36:34

      of cognitively?

   2. BABen Aldridge36:37

      Mm. In terms of fear-based or in terms of, like, skill-based and like...

   3. CWChris Williamson36:42

      Skill-based, yeah.

   4. BABen Aldridge36:44

      Uh, this is still ongoing. It's, uh, learning Japanese, hands down. It's a ridiculous challenge.Um, it's such a hard language and it's relentless, uh, when you think you've, uh... Well, I mean, you do make progress and, but then when, when you get to that level, then suddenly it just unlocks a whole nother world of pain. (laughs) And, uh, it's a, it's a great experience because I've never been able to speak another language, and now all my Japanese lessons are entirely in Japanese. Which, that is a huge confidence booster for me to lean into something difficult and to see that I can do that when my... Initially, I didn't think for one minute I'll be able to do it. So it's that dialogue that I, I really love the challenge by pushing myself. Because when you think you can't do something and you prove to yourself that you can, that is, uh, a very powerful thing. Um, so that's what Japanese has been, been able to communicate. Uh, and just before the pandemic, I found myself in Japan in this bar and this geisha and these two businessmen came in, and the guy who was behind the bar started playing, uh, the oboe, and he started playing Moon River on the oboe, and it was just this very bizarre experience. But because we were all communicating in Japanese, I was like, just had to sort of take a, a step back and think, "What is, what has happened to my life?" Right? (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson38:05

      Am I in a fucking dream here or something? Yeah, exactly.

   6. BABen Aldridge38:08

      What's going on? But I think that as soon as we start seeking out challenges, as soon as we start doing stuff like this, we invite that kind of novelty into our lives and we bring color into, into everyday life. And that's exciting.

   7. CWChris Williamson38:25

      It's a really good word to use. So novelty and intensity are the two main drivers of memory formation. So when people say that life is getting quicker, they don't mean that life is, uh, time is moving more quickly. Like it's... Time's relativistic. It will always move at the same pace. It's the same ticking clock that it was when you were two, or that when you were 40, or that when you were dying. And it's the same one that Elon Musk's got, like you have the same number of hours in the day as Beyoncé or whatever.

   8. BABen Aldridge38:52

      (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson38:52

      Um, but what people mean when they actually say time is moving faster is my impression of time is moving quicker. And again, because you only ever experience time in the moment, so when you're talking about look at how fast time is moving, you actually mean look at how fast time moved. So it's always a retrospective. You're always talking about, "I can't remember where the time went." There is a month or a year or a couple of years, and to me it doesn't feel like that much time elapsed. So I was really interested in this. I wanted to find out what the function is that's causing people to feel this way. And there's a bunch of different theories, and one of them has to do with, um, uh, the, like, proportionality theory, which I, I think is total bollocks. It's that basically when you've been around for 40 years, each day is only this amount of 40 years. But, like, you, you don't think about your whole life in one go, you can focus in on months. So I didn't think it was to do with that. And then I had this woman on the show called Laura Vanderkam, and she wrote... She's a time management expert, and she'd learned that one of the key drivers of memory formation to create memory blocks is novelty and intensity, and it's one of the reasons why when you go away on holiday, you can remember insane stuff. So I remember I went away to Africa and I can recall the type of shoes and the sound of the shoes and the book and the way that the man held the book that walked us from reception to the boat, like the day that I arrived, and yet I couldn't tell you what I had for dinner last night.

   10. BABen Aldridge40:17

       (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson40:17

       Like, if you held a gun to my head right now, I have no idea what I had for dinner last night or what side of the bed I woke up on this morning. But I can tell you-

   12. BABen Aldridge40:25

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson40:25

       ... I can tell you Reese... It wasn't, wasn't his actual name, but I think he, he'd adopted Reese.

   14. BABen Aldridge40:29

       (laughs)

   15. CWChris Williamson40:30

       Um, I can tell you Reese's shoes and the way that he walked and the sound of it and the smell and everything, novelty and intensity. So you must... Looking back, do you see that within this year? Does it feel like a very expanded sensation of time, the, the period that you were doing these challenges in?

   16. BABen Aldridge40:48

       I think so. The, the thing is that I've carried on doing it. I've carried on seeking out novelty. And initially this was a, I, I called it a year of adversity because it was like, "I'm gonna test this idea out of deliberately seeking discomfort, stepping outside of my comfort zone. I'll try it for a year. Why not?" Uh, and I guess I tried it for a couple of months and because I could see that it was actually really helping me, I carried on. And, and after a year I kind of... I achieved a lot and it had really changed my outlook on life. But it's now something that I continue to do, and there are some challenges that are ongoing and I'm always seeking out new things. But the novelty factor is, is something that I think it does make it more memorable, but for me it just brings in that, that element of color. Like when I was in my very anxious space, life was very black and white and everything is scary. But when you have this introduction of novelty and all of these kind of things, it brings color and it just makes life exciting, and it seems more of an adventure than something that's out there to be, you know, scary. The scary world. It's, it's the adventure that could happen. So I think it's just a shift in mindset.

   17. CWChris Williamson42:02

       What's

8. 42:03 – 47:14

   Climbing Everest at Home

   1. CWChris Williamson42:03

      the thing that you did with Everest and the, and the marathon last year?

   2. BABen Aldridge42:07

      (laughs) So that was, uh, that was really fun. That was to continue pushing myself. That was during lockdown. Um, I decided that I would climb Mount Everest on my stairs. So I basically did 2,137 reps up and down, and that's the equivalent height of Mount Everest. And it was... (laughs) My wife was working on the, the table and I'm just, like, next to her just going up and down the stairs constantly. And it was hard, it was a hard challenge. It's very boring. Um, but it was... The novelty of it is something that I will look back on in lockdown and I will think, "Well, that was, that was a bizarre experience." And I wrote about it for the British Mountaineering Council, and on the last day I dressed up in all my mountaineering kit and just had a lot of fun doing it. And it's been-

   3. CWChris Williamson42:53

      Do you know your stairs inside out now as well?

   4. BABen Aldridge42:55

      ... oh, yeah, th- little bit more creaky than before, but... (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson42:57

      I was gonna say, yeah, you, (laughs) like, that's a lot of repetitions. That's more than you'll have done in the house previously.

   6. BABen Aldridge43:02

      It... Do you know what? I worked it out. It's probably about a year's worth of, um, like, stair usage- (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson43:08

      Well, I guess you've got-

   8. BABen Aldridge43:09

      ... that I haven't done.

   9. CWChris Williamson43:09

      ... you've got a lot of time to do dumb mental arithmetic when you're spending two-

   10. BABen Aldridge43:12

       No. Yeah, yeah. (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson43:12

       ... 2,000 flights of stairs-

   12. BABen Aldridge43:13

       Exactly.

   13. CWChris Williamson43:14

       ... to go up and down. How many days or how long did this take you?

   14. BABen Aldridge43:17

       So, it was about 21 hours in total, and I think I did it over s- eight days maybe. Um, so I broke it, broke it down into chunks, and (laughs) it was just the monotony of it. It was very interesting. I ended up with some virtual climbing partners as well, some peop- different people, 'cause I, I was talking about it on Instagram, and loads of other people started joining in as well, which is, which is something that... It just brought a little bit of fun and novelty to that actually very difficult time, when everyone was in lockdown and you couldn't do anything, and there were lots of restrictions. Um, so, so that was really fun. Another variation was, well, it's not, not a variation, but, um, I ran a marathon in my garden. And my garden is tiny, seven meters. Um, it, it was like seven or eight meters. Um, so I had to do like 4,000 lengths to actually hit the marathon length, uh, distance. So again, th- that's just bizarre.

   15. CWChris Williamson44:08

       What was your time?

   16. BABen Aldridge44:08

       But I, I remember... I was like at eight hours. It was so... Because you can't actually run. You run, you just run, and then you have to turn, and my neighbors just, uh, they think I'm insane. (laughs) They, they... We had, there was, uh, they've got kids next door, and they were just holding, like, signs over the fence, um, to encourage me, which is lovely, but they, they just think I'm mad. They just see me, like, repping the garden. It's, uh, very bizarre. But it, it was fun. Again, it just brings this novelty to, to that experience. And I, I'll always look back at lockdown, and there's these two things, climbing Everest and running a marathon in my garden, that I would never have done before if it wasn't for the restrictions. So sometimes a restriction can actually, um, give us creativity. The limits can actually enable us to have more creativity because we have to work around certain things.

   17. CWChris Williamson44:58

       Yeah, that's a really, really good insight. I learned this from a guy called Jack Butcher, who is a graphic designer. He does Visualise Value, and the paradox of choice is that when there's too many variables for you to play around with, you actually don't end up doing any genuine creativity because you just get lost in the choice-making from other bits and pieces. So one of the things that he chose to do, all of his images are a black background with white geometric shapes on them and a very simple font. So he never has to choose colors or style or font or any of that stuff. So that's a forcing function that means, "Okay, if I want this image to look different to the last image, it needs to creatively, at its fundamental essence, it needs to be different." And this is what everybody gets caught up in, right? Like, people will spend six weeks debating over what shade of blue their company logo should be, but they've only spent two weeks actually developing and researching the product and testing it out with their friends or whatever. So yeah, restricting the choices on a thing that you know doesn't matter. I use the same intro music every single time for this podcast. I haven't updated the, the, uh, main album artwork, like the, the image from three and a half years ago, even though it's... if anyone actually wants to go and look, it's slightly off center, so it doesn't actually look the same. But I'm like, "Look, like, no one's coming for the fucking album artwork." (laughs)

   18. NANarrator46:12

       (laughs)

   19. BABen Aldridge46:12

       (laughs)

   20. CWChris Williamson46:12

       "They're coming for the experience of listening to the podcast." Like, Rogan's got, like, all sorts of different quirks and stuff on his show that it's just like, "Well, look, it doesn't..." Like, is it fundamental to the way that the show runs? No. The same thing with this. Like, reduce down the choices, reduce the restriction, uh, increase the restrictions that you have, and actually, okay, these are the parameters that you're working with. Now what can you do?

   21. BABen Aldridge46:34

       Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's a nice way of, um, thinking about things, and you can definitely use that when you're coming up with challenges. And one of the things I always like to encourage people to do is figure out how they could challenge themselves and how they could leave their comfort zones, because obviously the things that I do are not going to challenge everyone, and they... for some people, they might be too ridiculous. For other people, they're too easy. Um, so I think it's, it's trying to be creative, trying to come up with fun ideas and, and not having, you know, not having those self-imposed limits that stop us from, you know, discovering something interesting and, um, yeah,

9. 47:14 – 51:30

   Lessons Learned from Discomfort

   1. BABen Aldridge47:14

      exciting.

   2. CWChris Williamson47:14

      How much spillover have you seen from these acute periods of discomfort exposure to the more general ambient, uh, sensation that you have day to day?

   3. BABen Aldridge47:29

      Oh, yeah, completely. It completely changes that. Firstly, it makes me aware of it, um, when I'm feeling uncomfortable for, or when life makes you uncomfortable for whatever challenge you have to face. You know, there's, there's two types of challenges. There's the ones that you choose and the ones that are forced onto you. So I think by practicing ones and selecting different challenges, it helps me to figure out what I can use when life throws curveballs, and life constantly throws curveballs. So I can feel that my mindset has definitely changed. So for instance, about three months ago, I fell off a climb and really badly injured my ankle, and it's still not properly healed. It was a bad strain or sprain, um, m- and it's just, it's, it's a very simple kind of level of discomfort. When I put my foot down, it hurts. But I think my attitude towards it is completely different from how it would have been in the past. Uh, I, I can look for the lesson, and I, I can kind of see it as something that... Well, there's no point in me complaining about it. I need to focus on the solution, and there's lots of lessons that I've taken from all of these different concepts that I've been studying that I can directly apply to, uh, problems that crop up in life.

   4. CWChris Williamson48:49

      That's when-

   5. BABen Aldridge48:49

      I mean, I'm not perfect at it, I have to say. Like, I do, I, I'm not gonna... (laughs) I'll put my hands up. I'm, I'm not-

   6. CWChris Williamson48:54

      Not Jocko Willink, not yet.

   7. BABen Aldridge48:55

      Oh, no, not yet. (laughs) But it's-

   8. CWChris Williamson48:59

      I, I, it's, it just, it's so interesting 'cause, uh, get comfortable being uncomfortable is a term that's used a lot in CrossFit, and that's my, one of my sports of choice over the last few years. But I have a real problem with people in CrossFit that use that term, because what they mean is, "Get comfortable being uncomfortable," and then in brackets afterwards, "within a domain that I get to choose."

   9. BABen Aldridge49:21

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CWChris Williamson49:22

       So, the difference, I'm so glad that you brought it up to say the difference between a, the elected and the unelected or the, the ones that you choose and the ones that are forced upon you. Like, that's so important because if all that you're doing i- i- let's say that in some world you were able to control all of the different, um, actions that occurred, and all that you were doing was getting yourself better at being uncomfortable in situations in future that you were going to choose to be uncomfortable in, it's kind of pointless. It's like, look, I'm, I'm not making myself more robust for anything other than challenges that I want to do. The whole point is to prepare yourself for when the catastrophe occurs, for when the family member passes away and it's chaos and you need to give the eulogy and you're terrified of public speaking, for when... Pick your piece of chaos in life. But the weird thing with this is that by its very nature, by definition, the forced upon you challenges are the ones that you can't choose. Like, I mean, you could have chosen to throw yourself off the, the cliff or whatever, but I think that's probably-

   11. BABen Aldridge50:24

       (laughs)

   12. CWChris Williamson50:24

       ... probably a little bit rich.

   13. BABen Aldridge50:25

       Could be a bad idea.

   14. CWChris Williamson50:25

       Yeah, you've taken it too far, like if you're throwing yourself off cliffs, you've taken it too far.

   15. BABen Aldridge50:28

       (laughs)

   16. CWChris Williamson50:28

       Um, but do you, do you know what I mean? Like it's, it's, you need to do the stuff, work within your, um, domains of choice to be ready-

   17. BABen Aldridge50:38

       Mm-hmm.

   18. CWChris Williamson50:38

       ... for the times when you're ripped out of that.

   19. BABen Aldridge50:41

       Yeah, and that, that's really been the whole point of this whole project for me, is training for life. Uh, and that's why I think the variety is important because for people who are very athletic, just seeking out athletic challenges isn't necessarily going to give you that, that kind of broad... that, the broadness that you need because a lot of these things are mental. So, it's, it's trying to really get into your psyche and figure out what's going to push you and, and just exploring it, because it can be little things and it's, it's just looking for all these different places. And the more you do it, the more you feel prepared for whatever chaos is around the corner because that's the one thing we can guarantee, that life is going to keep throwing challenges at us. So, it makes sense to prepare. In fact, it, it's, it's crazy not to.

   20. CWChris Williamson51:29

       Benjamin,

10. 51:30 – 52:13

    Where to Find Ben

    1. CWChris Williamson51:30

       thank you so much for coming on. People who want to check out your stuff, where should they go?

    2. BABen Aldridge51:34

       I'm so very active on Instagram. Um, the handle is @dothingsthatchallengeyou. Um, I'm on Twitter @iambenaldridge. Website, benaldridge.com and there's a newsletter there, and yeah, that's probably... that's it. That's a good place to come and, come and say hi.

    3. CWChris Williamson51:50

       I love it. Cheers, man.

    4. BABen Aldridge51:52

       Thanks so much. Great to chat.

    5. CWChris Williamson51:54

       Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few months. And don't forget to subscribe. It makes me very happy indeed. Peace.

Episode duration: 52:13