If you haven’t noticed, the concept of achievement and even competitiveness has weighed heavily on my mind as of late. A gift of the nontraditional life is the opportunity to step back and see the world around us with a degree of unusual clarity, far from the treadmill. For years I valued athletic and professional progress in ways that weren’t making my life better, but I thought they were. I searched for and implemented solutions to the wrong problems. Meanwhile, what truly mattered—mainly my relationships—withered on the vine. The journey toward rectifying these tendencies continues today.
My guest today, Lincoln Stoller, is a former mountaineer who now specializes in psycho-, hypno-, and neurofeedback therapy, in tandem with numerous other counseling and coaching services. Lincoln holds a PhD in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics from UT Austin, including a post-doc assignment at UC Berkley. Lincoln eventually moved from quantum physics to create a management and automation software platform for businesses, learned to build Norwegian log homes, traveled and lived abroad in far-flung foreign lands, and is even a certified pilot. To say Lincoln lives well outside of the bounds of normalcy is probably a half-truth at best. As he says in the interview, we should “just keep doing out-of-the-box stuff. And if people aren’t calling you a little crazy or a little nutty, then you probably aren’t exploring enough of the boundaries.”
Today’s conversation revolves around the high-risk potential of hard-charging performers and achievers, whether they exist in sports, business, or other areas of life. While these individuals hold our collective attention and admiration, Lincoln outlines how their psychological roots run shallow. They often struggle to stay satisfied with themselves or those around them. Lincoln might even say he holds an anti-hard-man philosophy. I think you’ll see why.
Listen to the Podcast
Topics Discussed with Lincoln Stoller
- Quantum physics to therapist/coach
- Lincoln’s history in mountaineering amongst some of the legends of the sport
- Why almost all climbers are “high-risk”
- “Resilience is not throwing yourself at a climb until you are torn and bloody, it’s exploring your limits and working them gracefully.”
- Why some people crave risk
- Emotions on the rock and exploration and mastering of triggers
- Getting past societal expectations of productivity
- Can satisfied people be high performers?
- How dissatisfaction can lead to pathology: “If you’re not satisfied with yourself, you won’t be satisfied with anyone else, either.”
- Is competition healthy?
- Is personal growth selfish?
- What is productive suffering and why is it important?
- Taking ownership: the dysfunctional mental model that experts can solve our problems
- How high performers can assess mental health concerns that might not be apparent
- Relationships with parents and why these are often commonly fraught
- “You can’t change people directly. You can only change people indirectly by changing yourself.”
- The importance of doing out-of-the-box stuff and why it’s okay to be considered different
- High achievement and the difficulty with love and long-term relationships
Get in Touch with Lincoln Stoller
Stream of Subconsciousness (Substack Newsletter)
Other Resources Mentioned
American Alpine Club Grief Fund
Books (Lincoln’s Words)
Free download: The Learning Project: Rites of Passage (Lincoln Stoller)
This is my bible for the process of self-actualization. Contains 36 interviews, including interviews with Lynn Hill and Fred Beckey. It’s for sale at all online vendors, but available for free at the link above.
Physics and Metaphysics: Theories of Space and Time, (Jennifer Trusted, Amazon Affiliate link for Clipping Chains).
The book I’m currently reading follows the shift in Western culture from finding the purpose for things to finding their mechanism. This has resonance with our search for meaning versus being satisfied with the practical. This might bear on the question of whether we’re climbing to become better climbers or to achieve a higher relationship to ourselves?
Free download: From the Eye of the Beholder: Ezra Stoller & the Context of Modern Architecture (manuscript by Lincoln Stoller)
My as-yet unpublished manuscript chronicles the mid-20th century shift of focus in the design of buildings from practical and static to expressive and aesthetic. Another change that resonates with our rejection of what’s practical and static for what’s expressive and vital.
Free download for website subscribers: Sensations Thoughts and Emotions: Essays on Reality and Mental Health (Lincoln Stoller)
This book contains 60 short essays on the three ways we experience the world.
All of Lincoln’s books on Amazon
Affiliate links are used on this page. You will incur no extra charges if you purchase a linked product, but we will receive a tiny-baby portion of the sale. Those minimal proceeds help us keep the digital lights on around here. We wouldn’t link to a product we wouldn’t buy ourselves.