A Bit of Optimism - (PART 2) The Climb Out of Pain is Taller Than Everest with National Geographic photographer Cory Richards

Episode Date: April 29, 2025

*Please note: At 9:01, Simon and Cory have a discussion about suicide.What happens after we attain success and glory? Where do you go when there's nowhere left to run from yourself?In Part 2 of my conversation with Cory Richards, Cory explains why reaching the summit of Everest marked the beginning of a long, painful fall from grace. After his tumultuous decision to retire from climbing, Cory found himself lost and confused about his true identity. At the same time, he was forced to grapple with multiple life-shattering events at once -- some of his own making.In this episode, we discuss the difference between identity and purpose, the skills Cory learned to cope with multiple tragedies, and why the more we ignore life’s harshest lessons, the louder they become.Listen to Part 1 here or watch it on YouTube.This…is A Bit of Optimism.For more on Cory Richards and his work, check out:coryrichards.com 

Please be aware that in this episode, Simon and Corey have a discussion about suicide. Check the show notes below for the time code. I was sitting there and I ended up just sobbing and screaming into my sleeping bag at the top of my lungs because I didn't want the camp staff to hear what was happening. I walked into the cook tent and I was like, I'm done. And they're like, with the expedition. And I was like, no, I'm like done climbing and taking pictures. In the last episode of A Bit of Optimism, I sat down with Corey Richards.

He's the climber and photographer whose selfie after he survived an avalanche made it to the cover of National Geographic. His journey is nothing short of extraordinary. And as powerful as our first episode was, our conversation went even deeper. Cory's story is not just about surviving the mountains. It's about confronting the personal battles that follow, the moments of clarity and chaos that shape who we all are. This is a bit of optimism. Our minds do this thing called splitting. When we feel under threat, we get more binary, which you see proliferating in extreme ways across American.

And for good reason, by the way, there's no time for nuance when there's a threat. Am I going to get eaten or am I not going to get eaten? But there is time for critical thinking. To be able to slow yourself down and move into a response mindset. And this is something I actually speak about is, this whole system is something I came up with, largely because I was so heartbroken that I was like, how the fuck do I get through this? You know, and basically, if you can master the skill of slowing yourself down, which comes down to learning how to self-regulate,

you can make that shift really quickly. From binary to critical. From binary to critical, out of sympathetic into parasympathetic. It reminds me of pilots. Yeah. I mean, if you've ever heard air traffic control tapes Right. of a really bad emergency on an aircraft.

Yeah. To me, the most extreme one is a very famous plane crash back in Sioux Falls. Sioux Falls or Sioux City, I can't remember. But basically, the plane's full on on fire. The engines are on fire. The plane's on fire. They've lost hydraulics, which is like literally the worst thing that can happen. And they're controlling the plane with the engines, like left and right with thrust, right? And there's video footage of it, of the plane coming in for landing on fire. And it hits, it crash lands, it somersaults, and miraculously, half the people survived,

including the pilot. But when you go listen to the air traffic control chatter, it's like, we're on fire right now. We're going to make an emergency landing, you know? And you can hear the tension in their voice, but they're calm and they're thinking and they save the lives of many because they could think critically. And it's everything you're saying, which is in time of tension, they go calm, they self-regulate, they think about the problem, and they have options as opposed to black and white and panic.

Right, right. The key component, I think, of resilience is the jumping off point, and it goes back to my dad, is agency. Because if you're looking at why did this happen, this happened to me, if you're in a place of victimhood or if you're in a place of blame, you are quite literally backwards looking.

There's no forward focus there. You're, you're, I mean, this happened to me. This happened to me, not this is the current situation. I can figure out, I can go to my therapist and figure out there's a time and place for that. But in those critical moments, it's about taking agency of the situation. I mean, we saw it with the fires, nine of my friends, overnight, homeless. I mean, they're my whole core men's community. They all lived in the palisades. And it's a natural response. When we are in threat, when we are in pain,

we naturally look for places to put blame. Of course. It helps us feel better. It helps us feel better. It's an outsourcing of pain. The friends who did that, they didn't recover as well as the ones who basically said, It happened. My house burned down. Now what do I do?

I can figure out the fire hydrants and the reservoirs later. Right now, I need to slow it down to speed up. Slow is fast. And that is a resilience mindset. There is an element of survival mode, but you're not outsourcing it. So go back to your model. It starts with self-regulation.

It starts with agency. I mean, yes, self-regulation. But basically, the sort of four key components are agency is everything. So taking ownership over the situation. Which is the opposite of victimization. 100%. Agency is everything. So taking ownership over the situation, which is the opposite of victimization, a hundred percent agency is everything. Discovery demands discomfort, meaning you have to lean in to the discomfort of the situation and not try to escape it. The third is certainty kills curiosity, meaning as soon as you're certain about something growth growth is done, right? And then adaptation leads to evolution, which is about not trying to remake something, but

trying to reimagine something from the ground up. You can take pieces from the past so long as you're not married to it, but you can't remake the past. You just can't functionally. JS Can you give me a specific story that you have gone through where you were able to apply those four elements and manage through something that you may have not been able to in the past? It's a beautiful question because it leads to this moment right here. In 2021, height of COVID, I had been training for a new route on Everest to climb something

that had never been climbed before by anybody, do it without oxygen. And we had tried in 2019 and failed or not gotten to the top. We can get back to failure because I don't believe in it. In the history of the universe, not one single thing has ever failed. Yeah. We'll get back to that. Yeah, we'll get back to that. So it's 2021 and we, the Everest season from the north side, which is where we were climbing

from the Tibetan side gets canceled. And we were climbing from the Tibetan side, gets canceled. We have all this money saved. We're making a film about my dying father and this climb and mental health. We decide to go to a mountain called Dalagiri, which is the seventh highest mountain in the world. It's sort of like a dry run. We ended up at base camp and I had not been sleeping well. I had not been eating a lot.

I was very emotional. I was teary. We flew to base camp in a helicopter. So we jumped elevations really quick and then we exerted ourselves for three days trying to build a base camp. Because there's no infrastructure. There's no infrastructure there, especially that time of year, those seasons. Again, we were trying a new route. so there's this hyper stress going on.

And the team went out to sort of recon a way onto the face because nobody had ever climbed it. I stayed in my tent and my brain started to speed up and I started to cry uncontrollably. I was trying to read, but I really couldn't make sense of the words. I was reading, I think, autobiography of a yogi or something like that. And all I kept coming back to was this word love, love, love. But then it was countered by this idea

of like sort of grandiosity and dying. I couldn't make sense of it. Later on, it would be, I think, reasonably diagnosed as a very extreme mixed bipolar episode, which is where you're experiencing crushing depression and hypomania, in my case, all at the same time. So it's incredibly hard. Anyway, I was sitting there and I ended up just sobbing and screaming into my sleeping bag at the top of my lungs because I didn't want the camp staff to hear what was happening. Team came back and I walked into the cook tent and I was like, I'm done.

And they're like, what do you mean you're done? And I was like, I'm done. And they're like, with the expedition? I mean, dude, hundreds of thousands of dollars, sponsors, like all of it. And I was like, no, I'm like done climbing and taking pictures. And their jaws dropped. I'm crying, sobbing at the time. They're like, what are you going to do? And I'm like, move to LA and make movies. You know, so there was like, there was this amplified grandiosity going on.

Next day I get up, I leave, I walk down the valley, I get on a helicopter, I fly back to Kathmandu, I get on a plane, I fly home. And now I'm getting really depressed. There's a sense of freedom in it. I'm like, oh, I freed myself from this, whatever it was. But I get home and then I get this email. My mom texted me really early in the morning and she said, did you get the

email from, from Tommy, who was part of the team? And it was just this scathing interpretation of what had happened. You know, vast manipulation, hiding behind mental health, like all of these things. And I was so depressed at the time. I was like, well, fuck it. I'll just kill myself. Like I'm done. Peace out.

Like, and it wasn't the first time I had had that thought in my life. And so I prepared myself and did all the, you know, I like took a shower and pulled out a climbing rope and tied a noose and hung it from the ceiling and got up on the stool. And I almost accidentally did it. And anyway, I ended up obviously not dying and reaching out for help and really dove in very deep into the mental health world. I knew all the words. I knew all the ideas by that point, but I didn't, I had contextualized it. People who think a lot do that.

And they think that the knowledge is the healing and the healing isn't the knowledge at all. It's like wisdom can't be taught, but knowledge can. Wisdom is the embodiment. And I, and then I didn't know what I was gonna do. I had built this identity as a photographer and as a climber and national geographic this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And now none of those things existed.

And there was this stark reality and a very deep probing of who am I as a human being? If I don't have these anchors, and my value can no longer be tied to an external expression, what does that mean for my humanity? So now you see like taking agency over the situation. What is the truth? The truth is not... Who am I not? Who do others think I am?

Exactly, like, and here's the reality. I now am stepping into an unknown future. Then you get into this, like, I don't, I'm not climbing anymore. I'm not taking photographs. I'm not working for National Geographic. I am not, none of these things. So now here I am. These are the hurdles that are impacting me,

that are from my past. I need to take care of those. I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't have limitless money. How am I going to sort this out? Boom, you've got agency. Then you move into discovery demands endurance. That is a very uncomfortable place to be.

You've got financial stresses. You've got long-term life path stresses. You've got identity stresses. And I'm sitting there going, this is the most uncomfortable I've ever been. During that time, I went through a very, very toxic and also formative beautiful relationship where I was dating this gal. And again, if you really look at it, I had anchored myself to her beauty.

I just thought she was the most beautiful thing in the world and maybe if I'm standing next to her, that can make up for all the other things that I've let go. And then we moved to Thailand and then I come to find out that she had actually been, and I write about it in the book, so I feel square talking about this with, she knows, she approved the chapter, but come to find out that she had been escorting during our relationship. So now there's this heartbreak involved in this now too, and that is a deeply uncomfortable place. So there's loss, there's heartbreak, and I just had to sit in it, and I just had to

sit in it and explore it. Then you get to, well, let's heartbreak, and I just had to sit in it and I just had to sit in it and explore it. Then you get to, well, let's get curious about this. What are the stories that I'm telling? Where's my certainty in this? And are those certainties true? And what stories are those certainties driving that are anchoring me in beliefs? Is that story true? Exactly.

Is that story really true? Is that story really true? And if it's not true, what does that mean? So now you're in curiosity versus certainty. And out of that came the book because it was the mining of all of this that led me to writing what became the first book. And that starts to be an adaptation, right? What's interesting is, and I've said this before,

I did not start writing that book from a place of service at all. I actually started writing from a place of victimhood. Look at all the things that happened to me. And that went back to the curiosity part where I'm like, wait a minute, you know, like the story with my brother, he did all these things. Well, wait a minute, you know, like the story with my brother. He did all these things.

Well, wait a minute, was it just him or were you getting something from this? And as soon as I started asking those questions and being willing to write them out, despite all the discomfort, I started discovering that there was a deeper truth to all of this that allowed me to take more and more and more agency, which allowed me to expand the discomfort, which allowed me to be more curious, and then the words start coming out. And it transformed the book from a sob story

into an act of service that says, this is my life, you've seen it from this side, now let me tell you what's going on underneath. And I hope the lessons I've learned are valuable to you so you don't have to go through what I've gone through. Even if we don let me tell you what's going on underneath. And I hope the lessons I've learned are valuable to you so you don't have to go through what I've gone through. Even if we don't know each other, you are not alone. You're not the first person to go through this.

You're not the first person. It doesn't mean it's not unique and special to you. It feels like it's the only thing. But I just want you to know. It turns a vicious cycle into a virtuous one. Exactly. And so just really recently, all of this solidified where I was like, oh, it was really about the discovery of values, which came through my men's work because it

was like, people are like, oh, you've had, you've been so resilient in your life. And I'm like, I was living in survival, which is why I was doing all of the things that were so dark behind the surface. I was just grabbing for candy, you know? Okay, so that's where you learned it. Yeah, that's where I learned it. Tell me an experience where you were able to apply it consciously. You're like, ah, okay, I've got these four things.

I'm gonna do it. Or is it not like that? No, no, no, no. Because it sounds prescriptive. This is where it gets back to us right now. It's 2025. I was in Hawaii with now my ex-partner for the holidays. We get a call from my mom, she says, dad has an internal bleed. He's been sick for five years. You need to come home. It's happening.

So we get on a plane and we land on New Year's Eve. I go see my dad. He bounces back, but it's like, okay, this is coming. We come home on the sixth. The fires happen on the seventh. My entire community gets thrust into triage mode, which amplifies everybody's nervous system. My ex and I break up. She's my best friend at the time. This is very recent, by the way.

This is why I'm's like give me some whiskey My ex and I break up and she's been my best friend for over a year. So the the thing goes away Not by design it was not in any way overlapping but there was a woman that came into my life at basically at that exact same moment and It was the first time in my life that I had a deep internal knowing. I was like, this is, oh, oh, this is like, this is, this is the thing that people talk about. It was like, I felt something in my gut, in my body that knew. body that knew. It was like I had found my mirror. I'd found the person. Mom calls again. Now you really got to come home. I get on a plane. She calls on Saturday morning. I get on a plane. I arrive and dad is definitely dying. My brother, who I hadn't seen, I think, four years, shows up.

It's totally amicable. We're here in this together. We sit on my dad's bed that night with my cousin and his wife, and we were giving my dad, like, little... drawing the syringe, the little syringe, little shots of Jameson, sort of in between his moments of lucidity,

and we're all just laughing and telling stories. And the next day we had a conversation just about, hey, you know, like, how long is this going to last? And the hospice people just said, hey, just make him comfortable, you know, make him comfortable. And that night it was clear that he was dying, and we were all exhausted. I went to lie down for a little bit, and my mom went to take out the recycling or something, and when everybody was out of the room, he died.

And I mean, I'm still very much processing that. And then this gal that I was so deeply falling in love with, truly falling in love in a way that I've never imagined is even possible. And she said, she was like, look, I'm still talking to some other people. And I said, okay, like I can handle that. All I need is communication. And she was going out of town and I knew she was going to go on a date. And I said, just look, this is going to be hard for me, but please just communicate. And she didn't text

or communicate for nine or 10 days. And then when we finally communicated again, it was, I'm gonna pursue this other thing. And then the totality of everything kind of crashed into me. The fires is a backdrop. Even though the relationship needed to end, she was still my best friend. It wasn't like, it wasn't bad. Dad dies. The rocket ship of love and the fall to earth of heartbreak. And I was sitting there on an airplane going, any one of these events is life altering. And a jug of four at the same time. Every day I wake up now and I try to take agency. What

do I really know? I know my dad's dead. I know it hurts. I know I tasted something so sweet, but that's not here anymore for now. Maybe it comes back, maybe it doesn't. It doesn't even matter. So I take agency and I sit in the place of discomfort every day. Today's been a terrible one. Terrible. Sometimes I sit in my car and I scream as loud as I fucking can and just cry because it just hurts so fucking much. So I'm in the place of just profound discomfort. Every day as I start to make up new stories about my lack of value or why she left or what the other guy has or whatever it is or what my ex is doing now or how I've whatever. Anytime I start to come up with a story, it's like there's an elbow block of something so deep in me that says, uh-uh, you're trying to create certainty,

which is a grasp for comfort, which you know is not what you need because it will erase your agency. You're giving all the power away. And so there's the deep curiosity of, well, now what? Now what? And I don't know what the adaptation is, but I know that if I stick to my values, I stay in my integrity, I watch the crutches, I know that what's on the other side of this is profound.

And this conversation, in some small or large way, is the adaptation or a piece of it that will lead to the evolution. Anyway. Thanks for sharing. Jesus. It's just so, man, it hurts. The whiskey's good. Who's sitting with you in this, through this?

Well, right now you are. And this is, I think, obviously this is a more curated environment, but when people sit and don't try to change it, and they just allow you to be sad without silver lining it without at least this way, at least they just sit and they say, that's got to hurt. Those people are the most valuable. They're not trying to change it. When you try to change somebody's pain, you are rejecting it. And so I have this group of men here that I have great female friends too, but this

group of men, Treehouse, we talk every day and- You have that. I have that, yeah. It doesn't mean it hurts less. Yeah. It's just I know that I have a foundational group of people that will always show up. The part that needs to be underlined here is that group. Totally.

As I said about the story from Johnny Quest, which is he said, I'm with you. And then I had the strength to keep going. Because it's definitely not internal fortitude. I'd already decided I was quitting. You're not looking for anybody to fix anything. You said it's agency. You're not looking for anybody to convince you that everything's fine. Everything's not fine.

And what you're going through is awful. And this is where I think agency is so fascinating or the ability to be okay with discomfort and all your four things. The question I would raise is, does any of us have the internal fortitude to do any of those four things alone? Or the only reason you can do those four things is because you have a person or a network that when you say, this is what's happening to me, they simply say to you, yeah, that sucks and validate the way you feel so that you have the strength of feeling not alone in taking agency, sitting in

discomfort, being curious. I wonder if the foundation of all those four things is the love that people have of you. When you almost ended it, who did you call? At that moment, I called my then therapist, now friend, dear friend, and I just said, help, just help, I don't know what to do. And then my friend Lori came over and I remember I was in my underwear,

I was just laying on the floor and she just laid down on top of me and put her head on the small of my back. I remember very distinctly first feeling her hair first feeling her hair, and then feeling that kind of like stickiness, because I knew she was crying. Yeah, yeah, with the salt on salt. Yeah.

And I remember she just said, don't go. And you know, in this situation now, it's never been, I haven't gotten to that place because I have this incredible group of people that exemplifies and amplifies love and support. They can't do anything. They can't do functionally anything aside from- They can't bring your dad back.

They can't bring the girl back. They can't. There's nothing to back, there's nothing to solve. There's nothing to solve. And so I think your question is, that is something that I would say I am certain of, is that we can do fantastic things alone, and ultimately the road that you take is your own. You have to do the work, you have to do the steps,

but those steps are made possible by the community we keep. There's an irony in all of your story. There's a deep irony in all of it, which is the glory, the individual glory that comes with climbing a mountain and taking a picture from the top. And yet, somebody else took the picture of you, or somebody else prepped your climbing gear, or somebody else helped get you the sponsor, or, or, or, and, and, and this team of people so that one person can have glory.

And it's the same with those Olympic medalists, which is they stand on the podium with the gold medal and say, look what I did. And yet the scores of relationships and friends and family and coaches and nutritionists who devoted their lives so that this one person could achieve their dream. And I think the selfishness, what I'm learning, the selfishness is not the desire to climb the mountain or win the gold medal. That's not the selfishness. The selfishness is standing on the top of the mountain or standing

on the podium with the gold medal and not saying thank you. Yeah. Yeah. It's the lack of acknowledgement. It's the lack of gratitude is the selfishness. It's not the drive or the accomplishment or the desire to conquer. All of that I'm realizing is fine. It's that you stupidly thought you did it alone. Well, it's easy to erase it at that time. Look what I did. Look what I did.

Look who I am. Yeah. Validate me. Validate me. Tell me how beautiful I did. Look who I am. Yeah. You know? Validate me. Validate me. Tell me how beautiful I am. And your friend came over and laid on top of you and did the most beautiful thing any human being could do for another human being, make them feel not alone.

Yeah. And it literally saved your life. And it saved my life. You know, these multiple things exist at once, right? Like my mom puts me in the hospital. At a very formative age. At a very formative age and I feel abandoned, right? That's so I implant this story of abandonment in my mind.

In her mind, the story is I love this child so much, I want him to be safe. And both those stories are existing concurrently and... And both are true. And both are true. And your point about curiosity is such a valuable one, which is as opposed to you did this to me, can you tell me why you chose to do that?

Not to me, like why did you do that? Honey, I love you so desperately, it was the most excruciating thing I've ever done in my life. You think I wanna have a hospital take you away from me? Of course I didn't, but I thought it was the only way to help you. To hear the other side. Yeah. But that's the thing.

I think that like we look at our culture, right? And if we're curious enough about how the stories that people inherited or have told throughout their lives based on the circumstances of their upbringing and their environment, there's deep humanity and compassion there. We don't have to agree with the beliefs that they've arrived at. But by being curious about their stories, we invite them into dialogue and it makes us all human. And so in that you start to, you can form bridges between people that have profoundly polar ideas. But in that conversation, we can find each other.

Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. I think, like I've thought a lot about purpose because I think people confuse it. We touched on it earlier. With accomplishment. People confuse purpose with doing. And purpose is something so much more elemental. So for me, the way I would define my purpose is simply that my purpose is to connect people with a more authentic understanding of themselves. And in doing so, when we come into confrontation with our own paradoxes, our own contradictions, our own hypocrisies, our own messiness,

and we start to extend some level of compassion to ourselves, we're almost necessarily forced into the understanding that everybody comes with those same complications. And when we arrive at that point, we're then thrust into compassion by way of empathy. And so if you were to boil purpose down to a single word for me, it would be compassion. I do that through storytelling.

Yeah. You live a very balanced life. Kind of. No, no, I don't mean glibly. I think of it like entrepreneurial experience versus like a corporate experience, right? Which is if you live a corporate life, your lows are not going to be that low, but your highs are not going to be that high. It's very balanced. There's nothing wrong with it. It's good. If you choose an entrepreneurial path, your highs are so high, but my God, your lows are so low. But my point is you is nature pours in balance, nature pours a vacuum, you always seek equilibrium. Yeah. And so it's gonna find balance. Yeah. And so if you want to climb Mount Everest, literally there is

nowhere higher you can go. Yeah. Then you have to accept that the balance of that is going to a place where there's probably nowhere lower you can go. Right. Right. And so you you live a very balanced life. I like that. Yeah. And it's not a good thing or a bad thing. It's just an is thing. Yeah. And one of the things that happens on the extremes

is the lessons are louder. Yeah. The lessons are available... Throughout the spectrum. Throughout the spectrum. But when you go out to the edges, the lessons are shouted at you rather than explained to you. Yeah, that's great.

That's awesome. Yeah, it's so true. Beaten into you, you know, as opposed to like sitting down and studying for the test. Oh yeah, I can read through the lines. I can see there. Exactly. Okay, yeah, yeah. Have you not learned this yet?

Yeah, and so often it's like, no, I haven't. I can see there. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Have you not learned this yet? And so often it's like, no, I haven't. Okay, let's go again. You know, like, serve up another. And I think as a result, your embodiment of those lessons, your clarity of those lessons, your four things I think are absolutely brilliant. And I will be writing them down at the end of this and keeping them- And writing a book about it. No, no, by keeping them on a card next to me because I think they are so profoundly right. And I think the value people like you offer people like us, whether you did it by choice or by accident, to live your life at the top of Everest and just one level above hell,

you know? Because it's not bottom, but it's pretty close to it. Or one step before the end. I mean, it's probably more accurate. Because the lessons are so loud and so exaggerated and so clear to you and for you, it gives us a clarity that most of us will never have. But the lessons are valuable to all of us.

And we will go through trauma and we will go through difficulty and we will go through discomfort, most of us, most people not close to what you've gone through. And so the lessons are there, they're just fuzzier and harder to see. Which is why we go through them over and over again and repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Because it takes many times before we have an epiphany where we're like, oh shit, but because it's so loud, we can hear yours and say thank you. I really appreciate that because even still, there's days,

there's a lot of times where I'm like, I don't know if any of this really... The selfishness. I'll tell you what the selfishness is. If there's a selfishness that goes with your life, it's your choice not to share what you've learned because it would be unbelievably selfish to keep it to yourself so that you can get over your shit. Oh, good for you.

Yeah. Good for you. Great job, buddy. Well done. I'm so happy for you, but that would be selfish. I think the service element is, I learned this, let me tell you about it. This is so, so beautifully put. And I believe that true purpose, like, you know, we all have our unique why and our purpose

and all that, but the universal truth, true purpose in life is the opportunity to serve those who serve others. I cannot agree more. There is a sort of a list of things that I try to do every day, right? That are sort of foundational to sort of health and wellbeing and one of them is service. And that can be as simple,

it's reframing our ideas around what service looks like, which is it doesn't have to be volunteering at the homeless shelter, right? Like that's great. But service can be, to your point earlier, calling a friend and listening without trying to change anything. You're a men's group who just hold space for you as service. Your friend who came and lay on you and cried on top of you is an act of extreme service.

And she didn't try to fix you or change you or solve any problem that was going through your mind. She simply did the most beautiful thing of make you feel not alone. And your willingness to come here and share things that most people would probably keep to themselves. And some of the things that you've shared, people would keep to themselves. Yeah, for sure. Shame, embarrassment, whatever the reason. Totally, yeah. And the courage you have to share the lessons is the most selfless thing I think you can ever do.

And the paradox is I had to go do all the things to get at all the selfish things. I mean. Or I didn't have to. No, you chose to. I chose to. You chose to for good reason. I look back now and I go, wow, you know, the shift in my mind, first and foremost, the

realization that I, like we talked briefly hit on, is like, I don't think failure really exists. Yeah, say more about that. Well, just like, you said in the history of the world has never been a failure. In the history of the universe, there's never been a failure. There's been transitions, there's been change. A company doesn't fail. A company ceases to be profitable or viable in whatever market or economy they're

in. All of the learning from the building of that business and the disintegration of that business simply splinters into new building and disintegration. It is literally the Ouroboros, I don't know if I'm saying that right, but it's life eating itself. It's the snake eating its tail. The buy-in to this is that- Or it's the thing that dies and disintegrates and then gives life and then that dies and disintegrates and gives life and it's the circle of life stuff. Exactly. It's the circle of life. So there is not, and once you, people say, well, that's a semantic argument, and I don't agree. It's a consciousness shift. You can't fail.

It's not, I don't think it's a semantic argument. I think it's finite and infinite game. Yeah. You know, I think it's, as you said, it's not the end, it's the transition. And the transition is deeply uncomfortable. It's not the end of the relationship, it's the transition into something different.

Into something different, into a new understanding. And better or worse is, you know, who knows? Well better and worse again, that's so interesting like I'm not saying I'm not I'm not yet. They're all temporary states Anyway, well, it's did that and their value applications and their stories, right? So there are no good or bad decisions There are decisions and results and then depending on the level of comfort that we have in the result Yeah, we apply the label or the story good or bad.

And both are temporary. I love when people say, you know, we're the number one, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, for now. For now. You know, it's like, I'm happy for now. Yeah. I'm sad for now. The point is not to escape pain.

No. What would life be without pain? And I think that yours more extreme than mine and ours more extreme or less extreme than others, which is the experiences that I had that led me to start with why, for example, I never want to go through those things ever again, but I'm glad they happened. And I'm sure like the experiences that you've shared today and I know there's others, I don't think you want to relive any of them. No. But are you glad that happened? I love my brother so much. And I remember when I woke up, it was a day.

Like I remember waking up and going, oh my God, he's my greatest guide. The biggest gift I've ever been given in my entire life is that relationship, that man in my heart lay down at his feet and thank him every day. Because had the tapestry of our relationship not been so knotted and intertwined in the way that it was, I wouldn't be the person that I am. And so it's extending that gratitude to all the circumstances of life and being able to see it in its totality and settle into the fact that it's making you who you are and that is an ever-changing, ever-evolving

process that frees you from the bondage of blame and victimhood and prolonged suffering. Mm-hmm. I could talk to you for hours. Yeah. Troy, thanks so much for coming. Thanks for having me. This was awesome. Really, really great. I have no desire to climb Mount Everest. I'd like to go to base camp and just sit and look at the beautiful mountain. Yeah. But that's about it. Let's go. Let's walk to Kalapatar. In fact, you don't even need to go to base camp. Kalapatar is this area where you go up and there's a view. It's the classic view where you get of the three mountains.

If you go to base camp, it's dirty, it's crowded, people are sick and you can't even see Everest. Yeah, so then I'll go to wherever you said, Calipitar. I've always wanted to go to Calipitar. Yeah, yeah. We'll listen to some Yak bells and spin some prayer wheels and drink tea. That sounds good.

Yeah, it's great. It's perfect. And I can get a sponsorship. Yeah, we can get a sponsorship. Who wants to sponsor us right now? Sponsorship to go to the bottom of the mountain. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Let's see your high performance clothing do with the bottom. We can raise some money for cancer research along the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And inspire children all over the world. And inspire children all over the world. And inspire children all over the world. It'll be fabulous. And if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website, simonsenic.com, for classes, videos, and more. Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company. It's produced and edited by Lindsay Garbenius, David Jha, and Devin Johnson.

Our executive producers are Henrietta Conrad and Greg Rudershan.