Inconceivable! – How The Princess Bride Teaches Us Growth Mindset – Transcript

00:00:00 – Introduction

full episode

Brent:
Two great things to have in this life are a growth mindset and a copy of The Princess Bride. Book or movie, they’re both great. But what if one could help you master the other? How sweet would that be? In this episode with Camille Diggs, we take an in-depth look at The Princess Bride. What it teaches us about growth mindset, which characters have a growth mindset, and the one test that reveals what your mindset actually is. I’m Brent Diggs, and this is Full Metal Bracket, where science and storytelling meet to help you level up and tell a better story with your life.

Brent: Good time period, Bracketeers. Welcome back to another episode of the Full Mental Bracket. Joining me today in the Stunt Host chair is Camille Diggs.

Camille: Woo-hoo-hoo! My partner, my spouse, and today we’re going to talk about The Princess Bride.

Camille: In complete love-o-vision.

Brent: In complete love-o-vision, which we will explain in a few moments. Princess Bride is an amazing story. The book is great. The movie is great. The movie came out in 1987.

Camille: So if you haven’t seen it yet, you may want to push pause. We don’t want to spoil it for anybody, but it has been a myriad of years.

Brent: Uh, 38 years to be exact.

Camille: There you go.

Brent: Usually Camille corrects my numbers, but I can take it. So good. So yes, 38 years to watch this movie, and we’re going to spoil the heck out of it. So if you want to go watch it, go watch it now, because here we go.

Camille: Absolutely.

Brent: All right, so this story was written by William Goldman, and the movie…

Camille: He’s such a good author.

Brent: He really is. And the movie was directed by Carl Reiner.

Camille: Also, very talented.

Brent: Very talented. This came on the heels, I believe, of Spinal Tap. There was Spinal Tap, and then there was Princess Bride, and then this guy was suddenly a legend. Like, you’re a legend! You’re amazing! Which is just true. Anyway, we want to start the story. We’re going to go through the story and explain all the different examples of growth mindset and fixed mindset and the different levels of them in the different characters and see what we can learn from the characters.

Camille: And love-o-vision.

Brent: And love-o-vision. You’re really excited about that.

Camille: Yes.

Brent: Okay. Every movie should be a romance in Camille’s book.

Camille: At least a good portion.

Brent: I have a different book. But we’re going to compare books in this movie. All right, so the film starts with a brief prologue. We’ve got Wesley and Buttercup, and they’re on the farm.

Camille: In?

Brent: In Love-O-Vision.

Camille: Love-O-Vision!

Brent: So this prologue is kind of like a mythical thing, because you look at it, it goes through really fast. There’s Buttercup and Wesley, they fall in love. Wesley leaves to find his fortune. Suddenly, we find out that Wesley’s dead, and Buttercup’s engaged to be the prince, and it all happens in like three minutes.

Camille: Well, she’s not engaged to be the prince. She’s engaged to be the princess.

Brent: She’s engaged to the prince. But together, if you go back and watch it like we did, it’s like, how come these two are the only people on the farm? It’s like, farm boy, it’s Buttercup and Wesley the farm boy. There’s no…who owns the farm? Is Buttercup financing this? Is she paying Wesley?

Camille: Where’s the parents?

Brent: Where’s the parents? Where’s the rest of the farm hands? Who pulls in the harvest at harvest time? Who do they get to see?

Camille: But when you’re in love-o-vision, you can only see each other. And that’s the only people that exist.

Brent: And that’s kind of the take we got away from that is like, this is what happens when you’re fresh in love. You only have eyes for each other. And so that’s kind of how the whole story starts out. They’re in love. They have eyes only for each other. True love will overcome everything. And then Wesley’s dead. Reality hits. Now, if you haven’t heard our episodes on marriage, we talk all about that. It is all super romantic and then reality hits.

Camille: It smacks you.

Brent: It hits hard. But so that’s how the story starts. So the question posed by this, there’s every story has a story question that’s gonna answer by the end. And the end is true love can overcome everything or can it? And that’s the question. How can true love overcome all these conflicts with Wesley dead?

Camille: Yeah, it brings the challenge level very high.

Brent: It’s pretty high. It’s like, usually it’s like, will you love me until death do us part? It’s like, what if death was the first part? And then will you still love me? It’s like, I don’t know. That seems like some extenuating circumstances.

Camille: Oh my goodness gracious.

Brent: All right, so when Wesley dies, or when Buttercup hears that Wesley dies, this is the shift. This is the beginning of the story.

Camille: I will never love again.

Brent: I died that day. We do this in our house.

Camille: It’s very extreme.

Brent: So we should do a back story. We have loved this movie forever.

Camille: Yes.

Brent: I read this book in high school. And while I was courting my beloved, I would ever, I must have bored the tears out of her. Well, and this book, Princess Bride, I feel like you’ve mentioned it five times today. And it’s a new day, five times again. And I loved this book. And I told her about this book. I’d found it in the library. I never found it again. And then in our love-o-vision, we got married. We’re on our honeymoon. We turned on, you know, this was back in the 80s, so we didn’t, there was only three channels, and we couldn’t afford cable or nothing like that, so we turned on this fancy cable TV in this fancy hotel, and what was there on the TV? Princess Bride. I fell out of bed. Like, baby, you gotta watch this! You gotta watch this! This is what I’ve been telling you about! And it was pretty amazing, wasn’t it?

Camille: It was very amazing.

Brent: We came in in the middle, but that was…

Camille: Of course, we were in Love-o-vision at the time.

Brent: We were in Love-o-vision, too. It made perfect sense.

Camille: Everything’s amazing when you’re in Love-o-vision.

Brent: So, as soon as we could afford it, we got that on videotape, and we watched it all the time, and we let our kids watch it, and we quoted to our kids.

Camille: Oh, yeah.

Brent: Everything our kids did was inconceivable and that word didn’t mean what they thought it meant.

Camille: And anytime anybody would rhyme it’s like anybody want a peanut?

Brent: Yes, so this is this story has a special place in our family and so it’s really exciting that we get to talk about it.

Camille: There was a lot of miserable vomitous masses too.

Brent: Also yes, it’s possible.

Camille: It’s possible.

Brent: Kids would ask something like it’s possible and like you’re thinking miserable vomitous mass under your breath like not me. I love you. I would never say that to you. You’re amazing. All right, so when Wesley dies, this is the shift. As we mentioned in our many episodes in the Story Framework that we use to help live a better life, tell a better story with your life, the shift, you learn these patterns, your life works a certain way, and that’s the prologue. And then the shift happens.

Camille: Well, yeah, because you think it’s gonna go.

Brent: It’s gonna keep going like that forever.

Camille: You imagine how it’s gonna go, you think it’s gonna go that way, especially when you’re in Love-o-vision, and you really think it’s gonna go a certain way. And so you have it all mapped out, and it’s gonna go this great direction, and you know what’s gonna happen. You have these expectations. And then reality kicks.

Brent:. Yes. The shift is where the main character, he or she has their model of the world. This is how the world works. If I do this, I get what I need. And then the world shifts underneath them. And suddenly the world doesn’t work that way. There’s a new kid on the block. The thing that you needed is now 600 miles away. Your mom needs a new kidney. The empire is going to blow up your planet. Something shows up and changes everything that you thought defined your life.

Camille: Absolutely.

Brent: And you have to learn to shift with the shift. And that’s part of what it means to have a growth mindset. So as I mentioned, we, in episode 12, Camille and I address the belief of true love and how that affects our relationships. And you should watch that after this, because it doesn’t necessarily have a good effect on real life relationships, but it’s the question that they use in the story, so we’re gonna roll with it. Can true love overcome everything in Wesley and Buttercup’s life?

Camille: Yes, let’s find out.

Brent: Let’s find out. All right, so the story kicks off after the prologue. Buttercup is engaged. Buttercup is kidnapped.

Camille: Yes.

Brent: By a crew of miscreants.

Camille: True.

Brent: There’s three guys on the road and they kidnap her and she’s instantly in a conflict. But what she doesn’t realize, what we realize and she doesn’t realize, is that she’s meeting part of her future tribe. We talk in some of our episodes about adversarial allies. People are ultimately on your side, but they go about it in a very aggressive and confusing fashion. And sometimes even when you meet people, you don’t know that they’re ultimately going to be your ally. They just seem like their enemies at the first.

Camille: That’s true. That’s true. You never know what’s going to happen later on down the road.

Brent: That’s true. We know nothing about what that was like. So part of our story, which I don’t think has made it into any episodes so far, is that Camille and I met in high school, and we really did not like each other. We were adversarial allies. Like, who is this stubborn, uptight girl in my class, and why is she always giving me grief?

Camille: That’s true. He came on kind of strong, though.

Brent: I’m shocked by that implication. Anyway, over the years, we became friends and fell in love, and so we know firsthand that sometimes when you meet someone that seems obnoxious and stubborn and is destined to be an enemy, that’s not a chance. Some of those people are gonna be your closest rocks if you give them a chance.

Camille: True.

Brent: And that’s the same with Buttercup. Buttercup had no idea that two out of the three kidnappers were gonna be part of her tribe and help her as she learns and grows and escapes her problems.

Camille: That’s right.

Brent: All right, so these crew, they have the princess, and they’re moving on, and out of nowhere, who appears?

Camille: The man in black.

Brent: The man in black appears out of nowhere. We don’t know if he’s using the same wind we’re using, because he’s catching up on them.

Camille: He wasn’t using the same wind.

Brent: He wasn’t using the same wind. They go up a cliff. He follows them.

Camille: Everything’s inconceivable.

Brent: Everything’s inconceivable. You know, and then one of the crew, Inigo, the sword master, peels off. He says, I’ll deal with him. You guys run on ahead. And in this sword fight that follows, we get the first inclination of a growth mindset.

Camille: Yes.

Brent: Because Inigo says, you are amazing. And the man in black says, thank you. I’ve worked hard to become so.

Announcer: This is Full Mental Bracket. – 00:09:58

Brent: All right, so let’s explain something to you. All right, so I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about the fixed mindset and the growth mindset, but this is what it means. In a fixed mindset, your belief is, your attitude and your belief is if it doesn’t come naturally, it’s not gonna come. I am born with this amount of talent, this amount of skill, and if it’s hard and if I fail, I’ve reached the limits of who I am. I am not going to grow. I’m not gonna progress. My fate has been decided way ahead of time.

Camille: Don’t listen to those lies. Those are lies. Do not listen to those lies.

Brent: And so you believe that you are where you are today. Where you are today defines where you’re going to be forever. You might improve a little bit, but any serious growth has already been defined by your genes, or what family you grew up, or how much money you had. And it forms just like a little shock caller. Every time you hit a failure, you’re like, ah, that’s as far as you get to go. And then you’ll try something else, fail, ah, that’s as far as you get to go. I speak from experience. I had a fixed mindset for a very long time. And every time I’d fail, I’d be super discouraged and never try again. And so when I speak to you about this, I know I’ve been inside both.

Camille: So was there a person in your life that helped you get past that and encouraged you to keep on going and keep on trying?

Brent: Let me think. Seems like there was somebody that was helpful. Somebody that was a cheerleader for me for 36 years. Her name slips my mind, though. Oh, there you are. It was you. I gotcha. Yes, I had a cheerleader.

Camille: Go Brent! Go Brent! Go Brent! You’re amazing! You’re amazing!

Brent: You know, even with the growth mindset, we all have different strengths and weaknesses. And so, our strengths are far enough that we can encourage each other in our weaknesses and boldly going forward without a lot of second guessing it’s not really my strength it’s kind of yours and so we can I can kind of mellow you out sometimes and you can get me up pry me off the car couch sometimes and we can kind of help each other.

Camille: I believe I can fly.

Brent: About that…

Camille: I can touch the sky.

Brent: Yes, about that. About that. Yes. There is so much of life experience in that song, because that’s… Yes.

Camille: It’s another movie, though.

Brent: Yes. Sometimes I’m underconfident. Sometimes my beloved is overconfident. It’s always an exciting adventure, however it happens. All right, so a growth mindset means that if something doesn’t come naturally, it means you have to work harder. You know, it’s a realization that everything takes growth and that failure is the way forward. And failure is not the boundary fence that keeps you in. Failure is the path that you walk on to grow and get better. It’s like when you go to the gym and you feel the burn and the pain, that’s how you know it’s working. People with a growth mindset, they don’t like failure, no one likes failure, but they don’t get discouraged, they get back up. So we’ll say this over and over again in this episode, but the definition, the dividing line between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset is if you get back up after you fail.

Camille: OK

Brent: All right, so this brings us to Inigo Montoya, the sword master. I don’t mean to pry, but you do not by any chance happen to have six fingers on your right hand, do you? Yeah, right before the fight with the man in black, Inigo spills his tragic backstory about how his father was killed, about how he’s trained his entire life.

Camille: The scars.

Brent: Yeah. Every time he looks in the mirror, he’s got reminded of what he lost.

Camille: That’s right.

Brent: He trained his entire life to get to the point where he was able to revenge his father, avenge his father, but he hasn’t been able to find the six fingered man. So he talks about his whole life in which we infer a growth mindset. I mean, he got to be a master of multiple styles of fencing. It wasn’t easy. He didn’t learn that overnight. He didn’t learn that without failure. Instead of, uh, instead of, you know…

Camille: curling up in a ball and mourning the loss of his father and never getting back up again.

Brent: He got up and started fighting and started learning to fight and just became a master, like a stained glass window. I’d rather break a stained glass window than destroy a master like you.

Camille: That’s right. That’s pretty high praise.

Brent: Now he was driven by revenge, as many of these characters turn out to be, but it was the lever he needed to find a growth mindset.

Camille: But the man in black also recognized that level because he was also at that level. He had studied, and even in real life. The actors in real life actually studied this art of fencing to get to the brilliant level that they were to make it look authentic. And it did. It was phenomenal scenes, phenomenal movie all the way across.

Brent: Yeah, Camille and I read a separate book, As You Wish, I believe. It was written by Cary Elwes, who plays Wesley, Man in Black. Spoiler, Wesley’s the Man in Black. And he talked about all the hours that they spent studying. They spent with an actual fencing master, one of the greatest fencing masters still alive. And they filmed the sword fight, I believe, at the very end of the take, at the very end of the shoot, because they needed all that time to practice. They’re busy doing Smoochie love scenes, and cutaway to practice their sword fighting, and then do these other scenes, and cutaway to practice their sword fighting.

Camille: Yeah, even when he wasn’t shooting, even on set, they were still practicing.

Brent: Every…they would get the sword master wake him up kick him wake up early it’s time for your that’s right come on slackers it’s time for your fencing practice they were practicing every waking moment to be ready to film this fight scene. They had their own growth mindset and Try/Fail cycle learning to fight the fight scene.

Camille: In real life.

Brent: Yeah and so it was just it was like a little meta lesson there of art imitating life, or life imitating art. Even on every level, these guys are having to learn, and try, and adapt, and grow, and fail, and have the growth mindset. So the thing that we learn from Inigo, though, is that sometimes you can lose your grip on your mindset. So he has a growth mindset in many things, but in the future of the story, when he faces discouragement, he kinda loses a grip on that, he takes refuge in alcohol, and his buddy has to wake him up.

Camille: Dunk him.

Brent: Dunk him in the hot and cold water. So the thing we need to learn from this is that a growth mindset is domain specific. You can have a growth mindset in one area of your life and then have a fixed mindset in a different area of your life.

Camille: That’s true. You can get stuck in some parts of your life and then other parts of your life you go along and you seem to be flexible and you seem to be able to grow and learn fairly easily, but then something, it could be emotional, it could be a mental block, it could be a physical block, where you just can’t seem to get past that hurdle, which is another reason again, why you need your tribe.

Brent: Yeah. And you can think that maybe you can learn from failure, maybe in your career, but then you don’t actually translate that to your family life or vice versa. There’s some areas that you’re like, you’re not afraid to fail in and you know, you need to grow and other areas like, Oh, it’s terrifying. I can’t do that. I can’t do it. So back to Inigo, once again, the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset is whether you get back up after failure. That’s the dividing line. As we look at these characters, do they get back up after they fail? And that determines if they have a growth mindset or a fixed one. So people with a fixed mindset, they understand intellectually that mastery and growth takes training and coaching and practice. But they kind of think, in their mind, they imagine it’s going from win to win to win, that it’s going to be kind of a straight line of growth. Yes, a straight line of growth.

Camille: What? It’s not win to win to win? What?

Brent: Not in the real world. The real world, we have this thing that we’ve mentioned on the show many times, the Try/Fail cycle, where you win, and then you fail a little bit, and you partially win, and you fail a little bit, and it’s a jagged line. It trends upward eventually, but not necessarily right away, because the whole point of a story is that you’re not the same person at the end of the story that you are at the beginning of the story. You have to actually learn and grow and learn the skills to solve the story problem.

Camille: And hopefully you grow in each chapter of the story, too.

Brent: Yes. Yes. That’s good. You don’t want to save what you’re growing. Aren’t you growing? Oh, I’m saving it for that last chapter. It’s like you look like you’re…

Camille: That last chapter. It’s going to be great.

Brent: You look like you’re sitting on the couch. Oh, no, no. I’m saving it for that last chapter. No, you should really invest.

Camille: I’m building up my energy. I’m going to get there.

Brent: You’re not doing yourself any favors.

Camille: It takes steps. It’s progression.

Brent: So people with a fixed mindset, like I used to have, their vision of what success looks like is like the man in black early in this film. He just goes from win to win to win. He almost instantly finds the kidnappers. It’s like he was lurking out on the ocean just waiting for them.

Camille: I think he was stalking them. Or maybe he had some cohorts that were keeping an eye on Buttercup there.

Brent: He had pirate helpers maybe. Little pirate helpers. There she is. She’s getting kidnapped. So he finds the kidnappers almost instantly, he scales the cliff right behind him, he wins the sword fight against the fencing master, he defeats another master at wrestling, and then he beats a self-proclaimed genius in a battle of wits. He just goes from win to win to win.

Camille: He’s like a James Bond. He’s so great.

Brent: He’s a very hyper-competent character. When we turn into the James Bond or the Batman, we’re looking for a hyper-competent character. We know that no matter how terrible it gets, he’s already thought it out, he’s already practiced, he already has the skills under his belt, and he’s just going to be awesome. And that’s kind of the limitations of those stories, because they’re not like the rest of us. The rest of us don’t necessarily wake up awesome. I took my awesome oatmeal this morning, and so now I’m ready to face all the challenges.

Camille: Ooh, that could be a good marketing.

Brent: Awesome oatmeal?

Camille: Yeah.

Brent: Yeah, from the Full Metal Bracket, awesome oatmeal. Now in stores near you. So they just make it look easy. But the thing is, the man in black, Wesley, revealed to be the man in black. Surprise, not dead. He reveals his backstory to Buttercup, and he also had a growth mindset, at least the way he describes it. He said he was captured and was almost on the edge of death and trained under the Dread Pirate Roberts for three years. Then he took over.

Camille: Are you sure it wasn’t five?

Brent: No, five years total, I believe. So he was three years under the Dread Pirate Roberts, and then he becomes Dread Pirate Roberts for two years.

Camille: But I just want to say this about Buttercup.

Brent: Yes.

Camille: She waited five years. He was dead for five years.

Brent: Do we know that? How quickly he got engaged? I mean, that was his question. Did you wait? Did you get engaged that same day? Or did you wait an hour out of grief?

Camille: Well, I mean, she still wasn’t married to him.

Brent: That’s true.

Camille: Even five years on.

Brent: That’s true. We don’t know how long. We know that it was five years from the time he disappeared.

Camille: Right.

Brent: And she hadn’t been married yet. So, I mean, how long was the engagement? Was it, you know? I can’t imagine a five-year engagement. So, yeah, she’d been waiting. And that’s, you know, we don’t really mention Buttercup as, like, a character in the story because she’s kind of… I don’t know. Buttercup is an interesting case. She doesn’t seem to have any… a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. She just kind of drifts through the story.

Camille: She’s stuck in her love-o-vision.

Brent: She’s stuck in her love-o-vision, yes.

Camille: She’s stuck in the love-o-vision bubble. She can’t get out of it.

Brent: Yeah. She has moments of protagging and stuff. She’ll, like, push him out the… push him down the hill or run into the prince. It’s like this, I love Wesley. And then it’s like, okay, I did my thing. And then she just kind of goes back to love-o-vision for like hours or something.

Announcer: This is Full Mental Bracket. – 00:21:49

Brent: So it’s implied that Wesley has a growth mindset, but we didn’t get to see much like Inigo. We don’t get to see him train. We don’t get to see how he faces failure. He talks about as if he has a growth mindset, but what happens when he hits the wall? Because once again, when you fail, that’s the real measure.

Camille: Right.

Brent: It’s almost like Wesley’s gonna hit the wall in the near future of this movie. Because he goes from win to win to win to win.

Camille: He’s gonna hit hard.

Brent: So someone that has this unbroken track record of wins, what happens when you hit a big fail? When you get that big L, how are you going to get back up again? And stay tuned, Bracketeers, because we’re going to find out. But now we’re going to talk about Fezzik.

Camille: My favorite. I do love Fezzik.

Brent: Played by Andre the Giant.

Camille: He is just so sweet and he just seems to really have this great, I’m just, I believe the best about people. I want everybody to succeed. I may not be the smartest one in the room, but I’m definitely going to be there and help you. And I don’t like doing bad things.

Brent: That’s true. He’s very friendly and very positive. When I encountered this movie as quite a young man, I was drawn to Wesley and Inigo, amazing sword fighters, hyper-competent people like I wanted to be. But Fezzik has a huge heart.

Camille: Yes, he does.

Brent: You know, his quote is… It’s not my fault, I’m not biggest and strongest. I don’t even work out. You know, and so it kind of, that kind of reveals that he has like a fixed mindset about his physique. I mean, his genes have spoken and there’s nothing he can do about it, but he just keeps on trying in other areas.

Camille: Yeah. He does.

Brent: You know, Vezzini calls him stupid, Inigo is surprised when he gets something right, but Fezzik just keeps on trying. He doesn’t let that get him down. He gets up and tries again. The failure doesn’t keep him down.

Camille: That’s right.

Brent: He may never be the brightest person in the club, but he’s not going to feel sorry for himself. He’s not going to let that stop him. He keeps trying. even when he’s unemployed in Greenland. So, like Inigo, Fezzik shows us that you can have a different mindset in different areas of his life. He had kind of a fixed mindset about his body, but his heart and his mind, he was open for growth.

Camille: Yes.

Brent: And then we meet Vizzini. Have you heard of Plato? Aristotle? Socrates? Yes. Morons! Vizzini considers himself to be the pinnacle of mental prowess.

Camille: He’s the pinnacle of something, all right.

Brent: It’s always a sign of a fixed mindset when you define yourself by your talents and your abilities as they are today. He didn’t even consider that the man in black could outsmart him. It was never a possibility in his mind. Technical term for that is hubris.

Camille: Oh, okay. Big words here on the show, people.

Brent: He paid for that overconfidence.

Camille: He did.

Brent: With his life.

Camille: And we all applaud.

Brent: It’s very satisfying to see an arrogant person get put back down. Maybe not necessarily permanently, but he…

Camille: Well, it was permanently in his case.

Brent: In his case. He was playing for big stakes and he lost.

Camille: That’s right.

Brent: A battle of wits to the death! I’m in!

Brent: He’s like, you probably should have counted the cost a couple times before you jumped in.

Camille: Exactly.

Brent: So with Vizzini, we see how a fixed mindset, the way that you think about your talents and your current level of ability can be made part of your identity. Who I am today, that’s who I am.

Camille: Right.

Brent: And so sometimes you defend that identity from all challenges, even the opportunity for growth. It’s like, hey, why don’t you step out? No, no, no, that’s not who I am. But it’s who you could be.

Camille: Exactly.

Brent: So a point that we bring up in the show a lot is that you need to be able to learn from anyone. And Vizzini thought that he was the smartest and the best and he didn’t want to learn.

Camille: He didn’t want to learn from anyone.

Brent: We need to be curious, not furious.

Camille: That’s right.

Brent: And Vizzini was more on the furious side.

Camille: Exactly.

Brent: You’ve created one of the great blunders of the world. Never go in with a Sicilian when death is on the line. He was really eager.

Camille: Yeah.

Brent: To win.

Camille: Yeah, he was really eager to win, but what happened? He was quickly dead.

Brent: Yeah. Quickly dead. How was your day at work? I was quickly dead. It’s like, oh, this is sounding good.

Camille: Guess he should have been more curious.

Brent: Oh, man. So then we go back to Wesley, our hyper-competent masked man. He quickly defeats all three crew members at their own specialties. Defeats the fencer, defeats the wrestler, defeats the genius.

Camille: We got winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Brent: He reveals his identity to Buttercup, that he is indeed Wesley, back from the dead. Or not really dead.

Camille: Right.

Brent: And they go back to their happily ever after. They kind of go back in their…

Camille: They go back into love-o-vision. Aw, it’s so great. Even the fire swamp looks so… If I have you, I can go through the fire swamp. It’s going to be so great.

Brent: That was kind of a point of contention between them. He’s like, I’m not saying I want to build a summer home here, but some of the trees are quite lovely. It’s like, we’re in the fire swamp, dude. At that point, Wesley starts slipping a little bit. Her dress catches on fire, which is not his fault. Then she falls into the lightning sand. Also not his fault, but he’s not really on guard. The way that he’s defeated all his other adversaries, when he finally gets the girl, she falls into danger almost immediately. Literally falling. Where did she go? She’s in the quicksand.

Camille: Yeah, his brain may have been somewhere else.

Brent: He was twitterpated.

Camille: He was totally twitterpated.

Brent: They were back in love-o-vision. Yes. Having some unexpected feelings, maybe some hormones, we’re not thinking straight, I don’t know. He kind of lost his hyper-competent edge. But even so, when he is attacked by a rodent of unusual size, we are shocked.

Camille: Well, and we’re also shocked because he’s looking right at the rodent when he tells her, oh, I don’t think they exist. Like, really? Because you’re looking… Were you really that blinded by love that you didn’t see the rodent?

Brent: Speaking from experience, I can tell you that sometimes you have to be brave for the one that you love. And sometimes she’s not ready for the whole truth of the situation at that exact moment. Like, yo, nothing going on over here. I’m handling this. Just don’t worry about it.

Camille: Yes.

Brent: Well, so ideally you buy yourself time to handle it and then you reveal what was going on because you don’t want to keep this, you don’t want to live in deceit, like maybe you’re not ready today. He had like 30 seconds. I don’t think you get to finish sentence.

Camille: Yeah, I know.

Brent: I don’t believe they exist. He’s like mauled by this rat.

Camille: Yeah, it happened pretty quick.

Brent: Pretty quick.

Camille: Yeah.

Brent: He didn’t have time to really fix the story. And then, just that fast, we’re shocked. We’re like little Fred Savage in the bed. Like, what kind of story is this? I thought he was hyper-competent and untouchable. And that rat is touching him very severely.

Camille: Very.

Brent: He’s like, and the rat is like, he’s like really gnawing on him. That scene really goes on. It’s like, we got the point, he bit you. Like, no, I’m gonna bite him a bunch.

Camille: Yeah.

Brent: I’m gonna take a chunk of Wesley with me.

Camille: Digest slowly over a thousand years.

Brent: So we thought we knew what kind of story this was. This was this James Bond thing where he’s gonna be super awesome, and now we have to question everything. Like, what kind of story am I in?

Camille: Yeah. We got a little more curious.

Brent: We got a little more curious, but it’s also a point that happens in our life. You know, we get hit by this shift. You know, we’re on a roll, we have a plan, we understand how the world works and how to get what we want, and then something shifts.

Camille: What shift? What happened?

Brent: You know, we could lose our job, our health is threatened, a key relationship falls apart, and suddenly we discover we’re in a different kind of story than what we thought we were.

Camille: And if you’ve lived long enough, you’ve probably had all of those things happen at least once.

Brent: You think you’re going well, you think your career is going well, you think you’re in the happy middle of the story, and you find out that you’re at the beginning of a whole new story.

Camille: It’s a new chapter. Hope you learned a lot from the last one because now it’s a new chapter.

Brent: But in a way, it feels like a new story because you have a new shift.

Camille: Right.

Brent: You know, and as we like to point out, it’s the theme, the overall concept of this show is learning how to live a better life by telling a better story with your life and applying story structures and psychology to our lives. And the story structure, as we continue to point out, is cyclical. Something shifts, you launch out in a hero’s journey, you overcome your obstacles, and you learn and you transform, and you come back with wealth and wisdom for your community, and then you have some time and comfort, and you play the mentor era for a while, and then something shifts again, and you go back out, which is something I was kind of slow to learn. I’ve kind of mentioned that before after I got out of the military. I was like, that was a six-year adventure, baby. I ain’t leaving this couch again except to punch a clock. And life caught up with me. That was not a very satisfying way to live. Eventually, we had to do an adventure.

Camille: Several times over.

Brent: I hope it was the only one.

Camille: We didn’t get to sail on the laurels for long, that’s for sure.

Brent: It could be like a serial adventure, a dominoes of adventures. Falling over at once. Sometimes it feels like that.

Camille: It feels a little overwhelming at times, for sure.

Announcer: This the full mental bracket? What! – 00:31:23

Brent: So we go back to Wesley. So after this very unnerving and shocking encounter with the giant rat, you know, he’s captured, he’s tortured, and he’s killed. And once again, we’re like, what the what? What kind of story is this in?

Camille: Yeah, like, okay, he pulls the lever and it takes one year off his life, right?

Brent: Yeah.

Camille: And then he says, he says, well, now tell me, how did that make you feel? And remember, this is for posterity. And you’re like, what? What the world? And then he whimpers and cries like a baby. And it’s not at all what you, after this, after he does all these great things. What?

Brent: Well, because with these hyper-competent heroes, you’re not looking for vulnerability. They’re like the opposite side of the coin of vulnerability. Like, I’ve learned so much, I’ve mastered so much, I’m so competent, I never have to be vulnerable.

Camille: But that was reality. I mean, you’re being tortured, you’re going to whimper.

Brent: And then he’s gone. And we’re like, wait a minute. That’s like the ultimate failure. It’s like, well, I’ve dealt with some failures before, but have you died? It’s like, well, no, that’s a little extreme. It’s like, how are you gonna bounce back from that? And that was the story at question. Once again, the story at question was, can true love survive even though Wesley’s dead? But then Wesley wasn’t dead, but now Wesley is dead. The guy spends more time dead in this movie than most anybody else. Always laying down on the job.

Camille: He spends a good many years dead.

Brent: It’s like, get up. Live.

Camille: Exactly.

Brent: Live!

Camille: You can do it!

Brent: But the thing is, even with this major failure of death, none of his newfound friends give up on him. Buttercup still believes that he’s going to come and rescue her.

Camille: I think she was still stuck in love-o-vision at that point.

Brent: Inigo and Fezzik come and take his body and take him to Max and Valerie to try to get him jump-started again. No, failure was not going to stop any of them. They’re like, yeah, this looks like a serious failure, but we’re, we’re, we’re not going to give up.

Camille: That’s right. We’re on a roll. Let’s keep going.

Brent: So this brings us to Miracle Max and Valerie.

Camille: We love Miracle Max and Valerie. They are, I mean, seriously, like this movie, they have, they hired some amazing actors and actresses for this. Top notch all the way.

00:33:51 – Miracle Max and Valerie – Your Mindset Can Slip

Brent: Billy Crystal’s always good, but Carol Kane is amazing. I’m not a witch, I’m in a wife! She’s like on the Enterprise now, being an engineer. She’s amazing. Yeah, you know Billy Crystal. Yeah at the Miracle Max line Why would you want to hire someone the King’s thinking son fired? I might kill whoever you wanted miracle. He’s already dead. Okay, let me take a look. So when we find Max he is in a fixed mindset. If we had any doubts his wife Valerie tells us. Ever since he got fired by Prince Humperdinck, don’t say that word, he won’t take any risks. He won’t take any chances. He’s just pouting and on the floor. Life has dealt him a shift and he refuses to deal with it.

Camille: It’s kind of a fun word. Humperdinck.

Brent: But like other dramatic heroes, he has a wife that continues to try to encourage him.

Camille: That’s right, baby.

Brent: So, Valerie was really pushing to try to help him, but the crew had something that she didn’t have. The opportunity for revenge. So if I help him, Humperdinck is humiliated? Humiliations galore! So once again, the motivation of revenge is like a little lever to get these guys into a better mindset. I think you could find a better level than that, but that’s how the story rolls. And that’s the thing is like, sometimes what we learned from this is that sometimes your mindset isn’t permanent. You can slip out of it. When things get discouraging, you can slide out and you need your friends to help you.

Camille: You need that tribe coming back and encouraging you and telling you, no, You can do this. You started down this road. It’s not time to quit. You gotta keep going.

Brent: Sometimes we forget who we are and we need our friends to remind us. So when it comes to getting back up, even Wesley, metaphorically, gets back up on his feet again. He’s been dead, mostly dead, all day.

Camille: Mostly dead, all day.

Brent: He gets back up, and he can’t stand, he can’t fight, but he can still think. And so he has, while he was unconscious, a tribe has assembled around him, and they’re taking him into battle, and he’s like, yeah, let’s do this. I mean, honestly, if you’ve been tortured or died, you might be entitled to six months or a couple years off to nurse your wounds.

Camille: Nope, not for you.

Brent: Get some therapy, bounce back. Like 15 minutes, he’s back on the case.

Camille: Yep, not for you. It’s that man in the black. Come on, Wesley, get up, get your stuff.

Brent: Eventually thereafter, they encounter Prince Humperdinck. What’s his line? Unless I’m wrong, and I’m never wrong. Humperdinck portrays himself as like this powerful man, this skilled hunter.

Camille: But he’s not, and he’s just been coddled, and he’s been, nobody’s told him no, and nobody’s resisted, and everybody just does everything he says, so you just think that the world revolves around him, so he doesn’t have to grow. He doesn’t have to do anything different, because he has a whim, somebody else takes care of it.

Brent: He never has the opportunity to learn any real courage.

Camille: That’s right.

Brent: No one insults him. I think that’s the first time anyone’s dared insult me. No one challenges him. I would not say such things if I were you.

Camille: Exactly.

Brent: He is perfectly protected by his wealth and power. And when Wesley shows up and actually gets through his psychological armor, he drops his sword and sits down in the chair. He doesn’t know how to handle anything. He’s never had to deal with any adversity, so he’s never developed any real strength.

Camille: That’s right. And he didn’t have anybody around him to do his bidding, so he just failed.

Brent: Yep. So when we look at Wesley and Inigo, they bounced back from their hardships. You know, even when we were looking at Max and Valerie, they were on an upswing. They were kind of bouncing back. But Humperdinck has never had any hardships to bounce back from.

Camille: That’s right.

Brent: This is part of the story framework. It’s like you have to face your struggles, you have to face your adversities, because that’s what builds the strength in your life.

Camille: Exactly. It’s like, you got to put more weight on that weight bar. If you want your bones to become more dense.

Brent: Yeah. As we’re getting older, we want to maintain, maintain our skeletals and muscles and things and stuff.

Camille: That’s right. And things and stuff.

Brent: So from, from Humperdinck, we learn the dangers of the comfort zone and the fixed mindset that would kind of keep you there. Cause if you’re afraid, If you’re afraid to face the discomfort and the failure required of growth, then you just never leave. And the thing, the word comfort zone might be misleading because they’re not necessarily always comfortable. Sometimes you can be in this traumatic, abusive situation and you won’t leave because all the other…

Camille: The fear holds you there. It’s like the fear of something else could be worse than what I’m already in. And it can hold you in that place. And then you’re really not able to move forward. It’s like, it just locks you down.

Brent: Yeah, it sure does. So this brings us to what we’ve been hinting at this whole episode about the tribe, the importance of having a tribe.

Camille: So important.

Brent: And just think back of how many people were needed, how many people in this movie needed their friends to help them snap back and to find a useful mindset.

Camille: Quite a few. Just think of how many people it took to make this movie. That’s a big tribe.

Brent: That’s also true. But in the characters, you know, so Inigo encourages Fezzik after he gets browbeaten by Vizzini. Fezzik comes and sobers up Inigo after they fail. And that’s interesting because they both fail to the Man in Black. One of them got all drunk and the other one stayed happy and chipper and helped him get sober again.

Camille: Got another job. Kept on going.

Brent: Right along the Brute Squad. I’m working for the Brute Squad. You are the Brute Squad! And then Inigo and Valerie convince Max to change his mindset. And Wesley stops Buttercup from getting all stabby. All these people are getting in a weird mind space, but they need their friends to help them snap out of it.

Camille: Yes. You need each other. Desperately.

Brent: You need a tribe. You need your tribe. And for a lot of reasons, and not the least of which is to help you get a handle on your mindset.

Camille: And to have people in your life who, I mean, a lot of times we’re in such tunnel vision, we don’t see, we’re in love-o-vision, we’re in tunnel vision, and we can’t see things around us or outside of us, so we need other people to kind of say, oh, this blind spot over there, you didn’t see that, but that’s there, or this is about to come at you, you know, watch out.

Brent: Yeah, we need our tribe to give us comfort and reassurance, but also to question us if we’re going in the wrong direction. Like, have you considered this other direction?

Camille: Yes.

Brent: I’ve noticed that the direction you’re on has failed 27 times. Have you considered plan B? And that’s, you know, sometimes we don’t appreciate that from our friends, but if they’re our friends…

Camille: They’re doing that for us.

Brent: They’re doing that for us. So as we like to say here, if you’re serious about your mission, you don’t go alone. We have a whole episode, episode number four, where we go into that in great depth about how no real serious hero ever travels alone. Are you a serious hero?

Camille: I am serious about not traveling alone.

Brent: Well, you’re here with me.

Camille: Well, and you’re stuck with me, so there’s that.

Brent: We’re heroically stuck.

Camille: Yes, we’re heroically stuck with each other. There are so many times in life when you and other people have said, wow, this is not great. This thinking that you have, this direction you’re going, and listening to those people helps you grow, become a better person, have more friends, have a bigger tribe, and really being vulnerable with people too is really important. You have to be able to tell people, I’m stuck. I don’t have it going right now. I think I need some insight. I think I need some help. Move forward.

Brent: I don’t think everybody wants all your dirty laundry every day, but you have people that you can be vulnerable with when you need to be.

Camille: That’s right. So let’s talk about some takeaways.

Brent: Let’s do, as we come to the takeaways.

Camille: And think about other areas in your life, your family, your job, your hopes and dreams. What mindset do you bring to each of them?

Brent: It’s true. And how much are you braving failure in each area?

Camille: Yes, be brave. Please be brave. In which areas is your need to grow and improve more powerful than your fear of failure? Fear of failure is a big one to overcome.

Brent: I know. And are there areas where that fear is keeping you back from trying to grow? How can you take some of the examples that we’ve looked at here and apply them in your own life? Think about these questions. We want you to really take some meaning out of this. We want your mindset to grow.

Camille: Absolutely.

Brent: Because to not grow after all this would be inconceivable.

Camille: Inconceivable.

Brent: Thank you, this is Full Metal Bracket. We’ll catch you next episode.

Announcer: Full Mental Bracket podcast hosted by Brent Diggs. Logo by Colby Osborne. Music by Steven Atkinson. Learn more at FullMentalBracket.com. This is the Full Mental Bracket.

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