Lincoln Stoller: Out of the Boxes and Into Your Adventure | Episode 180Lincoln Stoller: Out of the Boxes and Into Your Adventure | Episode 180
Brain Shaman
Michael Waite talks with Lincoln Stoller about comfort as a subtle addiction and why real growth calls for courage, commitment and honesty. The conversation ranges through education, dreams, hypnosis, psychedelics and playful exploration as ways to face pain and create a more adventurous life.
1:16:10•29 Jul 2026
Lincoln Stoller on Comfort, Courage and Creating Your Own Adventure
Episode Overview
- View comfort as addictive and recognise how it can quietly block growth and change.
- Cultivate courage, commitment and honesty instead of chasing externally defined success.
- Treat problems and pain as clues to broader human struggles, and use them as starting points for action.
- Give yourself calm space to get lost through practices like dream work, hypnosis or mindful reflection.
- Engage in playful, creative acts with no concern for outcome or approval to strengthen intuition and self-trust.
“"Comfort is addicting... I can't deny the fact that comfort is comfortable but it's sort of antithetical to growth and change."”
What remarkable journeys have people faced head-on against addiction? This conversation between host Michael Waite and psychotherapist–physicist–author Lincoln Stoller comes at it from an unusual angle: comfort, courage, and the messy art of actually doing something.
Lincoln talks about his life across mountaineering, quantum physics, hypnotherapy, dreams, psychedelics and neurofeedback, all threaded by one goal: helping people "get off their ass." He argues that comfort can feel like a drug – "there's a reason why people like alcohol and pot and vacations" – yet it quietly blocks real growth. If you're stuck in addiction or stuck in life, he suggests your problems aren't just burdens; they're windows into how many others are suffering too.
You’ll hear him break down his core triad for change: courage, commitment and honesty. School, he says, rarely teaches any of these, rewarding performance over integrity and conformity over risk. Instead, he champions exploration for its own sake – letting yourself hit dead ends, make mistakes and learn from the process rather than chasing tidy success.
For those wrestling with pain, addiction or repeated relationship patterns, Lincoln proposes following the pain rather than dodging it, and creating space to get lost in a calm way. That can mean hypnosis, dream work, psychedelics, or simply quiet mindfulness – letting deeper material rise without demanding quick answers. There’s plenty of humour too, as he describes blowing up plastic models as a kid, painting "shitty" pictures in the garage, or playing music badly purely for fun.
These playful acts, he suggests, are training grounds for intuition and self-trust. If you’re tired of being spoon-fed “successful paths” and are ready to question comfort, rewards and the stories you tell yourself, this episode might nudge you towards a braver, more honest adventure. What small, slightly uncomfortable step could you take today that’s just for your own growth?
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