See if you can spot the pattern:
1. On Feb 8 2006, a woman in a village at the northern reaches of Canada was watching her son and his friends play hockey.
This being close to the polar circle, a polar bear appeared, which was later found to weigh 320kg aka 507lbs.
The woman jumped in front of the bear to allow the kids to get away. She tried scaring the beast but that didn’t do much, and so the two of them got into a life-and-death wrestling match.
The bear seemed to be getting the upper hand, but the woman was holding her own.
Meanwhile the kids ran and got help from a local hunter. The hunter got his shotgun and “neutralized” the bear.
The woman got away with only light injuries. She was later awarded Canada’s Medal For Bravery and got a Gold Star for her bear-handling skills.
2. In 2012, a 22-year-old woman lifted a BMW off her father, who had been working under the car when the jack collapsed. The BMW weighed over 1500kg.
3. Back in the 1990s, a man pulled over on the highway when he saw a wrecked car with a man trapped inside. He ripped off the metal doors off with his bare hands to get the other guy out.
These a just a few examples of what is known as “hysterical strength.”
Hysterical strength can’t be reproduced in the lab, and doesn’t happen all that often in the wild either. But it does happen.
Michael Regnier, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington, was the door-ripping Hulk in anecdote 3 above.
Based on his own experiences (the door ripping, and as a competitive weight lifter, and as professor of bioengineering) Regnier claims that most people can lift six or seven times their body weight, though most of us struggle to deadlift even a small fraction of that at the gym.
What changes in situations of hysterical strength?
It’s not adrenaline pumping through the body. Adrenaline supports better muscle use, yes, but it doesn’t increase the tetanic force, meaning how much a muscle can contract.
Rather, it’s believed hysterical strength is all down to the brain.
Our brains normally restrict maximum muscle exertion to maybe 60% of actual muscle capacity. Elite athletes can through training get that to around 80%. Hysterical Hulks apparently get pretty close to 100% of what their body is capable of for a few dramatic moments.
The brain hinders us like this to keep us safe.
The brain has many ways to keep us from going down dangerous and uncertain paths, even ones that we could survive or in theory even thrive in.
In my own brain, this connected to something I read long ago, which has had a big impact on me over the years. Cal Newport, the author of books like Deep Work and So Good They Can’t Ignore You, once had an interesting theory about procrastination. He wrote:
“The evolutionary perspective on procrastination, by contrast, says we delay because our frontal lobe doesn’t see a convincing plan behind our aspiration. The solution, therefore, is not to muster the courage to blindly charge ahead, but to instead accept what our brain is telling us: our plans need more hard work invested before they’re ready.”
Yes, there are tactical ways to beat small-scale procrastination, to “blindly charge ahead,” and I will be talking about those in the coming days and teasing what’s worked for me personally.
But what Newport is advising above has been my best way of dealing with serious, long-term procrastination on any sizeable project that I knew needed doing.
And it’s my advice to you tonight.
If you find yourself procrastinating… get yourself a new plan you can believe in.
How do you do that? I will have more on that tomorrow.