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Picture a bear. But instead of fur and flesh, make that bear out of a velvety pool float. And make it slightly tubby. Good.
Now picture a face—roundish—whose primary feature is a nozzle positioned dead center.
Next, imagine little toe-claws made from old radio antennae.
Color? Almost anything goes. Your bear can be beige. It can be clear. Choose a classy neutral you like—there's probably one like that creeping around your backyard.
And now, congratulations my friends: you’ve just built a tardigrade.
It's the sort of animal you would cobble together if you were given 30 minutes and told to craft a creature using only materials from an HVAC warehouse. And it's completely amazing.
The tardigrade (or "water bear") is minuscule—the size of a freshly sharpened pencil tip. It is so slow that it would take 6 months to move just 2.2 km. It eats by sucking sustenance from plant cells, lichen, algae, and bacteria through its sharp little needle-straws called "stylets." It is also ubiquitous: pick your preferred damp environment (deep sea sediments to mountaintops and moss) and you'll find some style of tardigrade nestled in.
I realize that none of that makes it sound very glamorous, but who needs glamour when you are the most resilient creature on earth?
Tardigrades have been around for more than 500 million years and it's quite possible they'll be here 500 million more thanks to their secret weapon: cryptobiosis. As soon as their environment becomes unfavorable, they slow down their metabolism. They can go years without eating or drinking. The water in their cells is replaced with glass-like proteins. Essentially, they go freeze dried. Curled into a desiccated little peppercorn, they can withstand the tremendous pressure of deep space and the deepest sea. They're cool with radiation, vacuum, dehydration, and even temperatures near absolute zero.
And they can stay like this for decades, reanimating only when conditions improve.
With their one go-to play, cryptobiosis, tardigrades can take on virtually anything. But if you're reading this, you're not a tardigrade.
So then, human: what do you do when things get tough?
Today's guest, psychologist Amy Morin, specializes in how to tackle hard times, and she's got 50 cryptobiosis-level plays for people like us.
Amy's written the 6-volume suite of books 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do, which you may have seen on bookshelves…well… everywhere. When I asked her why she felt like it was time to write a playbook for mental strength, here's what she told me.
"A lot of my work is on more preventative care, which has a place. You need to go see your primary care doctor to get lab work done to make sure that you are taking care of yourself. But people were asking a lot about more urgent care. It just seemed like a ripe opportunity to say, how do I give you strategies that are more like a pain reliever? We're not talking about a vitamin that will make you healthier, but how do you relieve the pain in the moment?"
Amy cracks this question in her new book, The Mental Strength Playbook, and in this episode of Simplify, she walks us through a handful of them.
You'll hear what to do in the 10 minutes before a meeting that's making your stomach flip. You'll learn why your brain is actually still working on a problem after you've given up and gone to make a sandwich. There's a play for when you've been handed a task that feels completely pointless and you need a way to not let it corrode your whole afternoon. And there's one that involves gargling—yes, gargling—that can calm your nervous system in about thirty seconds.
We also talk about why positive thinking can leave you less prepared than no thinking at all, and what mental strength actually is.
Toward the end Amy shares the story of how she came to this work, and it's not the story you'd expect. What she's teaching isn't theoretical. It's hard-won, and you can feel it.
Listen, learn, and find the play that lets you become as resilient as the tardigrade—without freeze-drying your insides.
More soon,
Caitlin
P.S. Please share with a friend you think will enjoy this episode. It’s the best way you can help Simplify stick around! Also, let me know what you thought by replying here or writing to me and Ben at [email protected].
You can also follow the show on instagram at @simplifypod.
P.P.S. The tardigrade is also sometimes called the “moss piglet.” I just thought you should know because it’s cute, and knowing things is nice.
