1KHO 823: The Radical Power of Sticking With Something | Shawn Johnson and Andrew East, The Courage to Commit

**Ginny Yurich** (0:00)
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Welcome to The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich and the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And what did you know? Olympic gold medalist, Shawn Johnson, and NFL player, Andrew East, are here. Let's go.

**Shawn Johnson** (1:32)
Thank you for having us.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:33)
Welcome to the both of you.

**Andrew East** (1:35)
So good to meet you.

**Ginny Yurich** (1:36)
You wrote a new book called The Courage to Commit. We're going to be talking about that and other things today. It is an incredible book. I liked it from the very beginning. It encouraged me personally. And I feel like these are some of the things that I want to pass on to my kids in this uncertain age. But I want to tell you yesterday, I think our kids were not quite watching TV by the time the Olympics were on. Anyways, I was showing them some of your videos yesterday, Shawn, and they just kept going, well, she is so cute.
Thank you. How is she so cute?
Thank you. That's what they said over and over again. So it is an honor to have this conversation. And I truly, like on a personal level, got so much out of the book because it's a wishy washy time in the world. And it can be scary to stick with with stuff. And people are kind of bouncing from thing to thing. So you both have a history of commitment. And so you wrote this book about having the courage to commit, embracing the radical power of sticking with something. So I want to talk about some of the stuff in here and encourage people to go grab a copy. It's out now.
You talk in this book about the uncertainty in the world, but that the unknown is where all the good stuff lives. And you talk about how commitment has an image problem. You use the phrase commitment phobia. We've been conditioned to think commitment is a drag that is false.
And then you go on to talk about all the wonderful things about commitment. I wanted to hit on a couple of them. The first one being, it helps you to be more calm. So you get two different situations in the book. One, Shawn, you're talking about, okay, if I'm really truly committed, then this answers all my problems. It answers, what am I going to wear? What am I going to eat? Am I going to go to the party? What time am I going to get up? And then, Andrew, you're like, well, I'm wishy-washy with which school am I going to go to? And maybe I also want to play rugby. I want to run this marathon. And so you did an incredible job of showing the two distinct sides. So for parents who are living in a pretty chaotic situation, it's hard to know what to do with kids. Can you talk about how commitment brings calm?

**Shawn Johnson** (3:45)
Well, thank you. Wow, that was quite the intro.

**Andrew East** (3:48)
Also, I need to say you've been such a big encouragement to us. Thank you for entertaining us.

**Shawn Johnson** (3:55)
Okay, to parents who are feeling wishy-washy and like they don't know what to commit to and like there's so many options, we live in a time where there are more voices and more options that we are privy to than any other time in history. We have so much noise and I think because of that, we have so many people preaching that, I mean, we learned firsthand with marriage. They're like, oh, just get ready as soon as you get married, you're getting rid of your social life. Like this is you're about to be tied down, you're going to lose joy, all these things.