A Bit of Optimism - The Climb Out of Pain is Taller Than Everest with National Geographic photographer Cory Richards (PART 1)

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

What happens when we reach the top? There’s only one place to go.Cory Richards has scaled the world’s highest peaks and fallen to life’s lowest lows. An acclaimed mountain climber, photographer, and filmmaker, Cory has literally reached the top of the world. He climbed Mount Everest with no supplemental oxygen, became the first American to summit an 8,000-meter mountain, and narrowly survived an avalanche, after which he skyrocketed to fame when his photos graced the cover of National Geographic.And yet, after all that success, Cory felt like an emotional wreck. As his mental health deteriorated, his volatile behavior damaged his career and his relationships. Without the identity of “climber” to give him validation, Cory was forced to confront who he really is.In Part 1 of this conversation, Cory shares with me head-spinning stories from climbing the Himalayas, his struggles with mental health as a teen, and the difference between survival and resilience.This…is A Bit of Optimism.For more on Cory Richards and his work, check out:coryrichards.com

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So you are officially the first guest who when I said, would you like a drink, you said I'd love a Scotch. Yeah. And so you're preparing yourself what this conversation might be, and you are actually drinking. But let's be clear, you know, you didn't pour it here. No, I didn't pour a tumbler of it. It wasn't like drunk history.

No, it's not drunk history. Let's do the drunk history of your life. What happens after you reach the top? There's only one place to go. Corey Richards has literally reached the top of the world. As a National Geographic photographer and filmmaker, he climbed Mount Everest without oxygen. He's also the first American to climb an 8,000-meter or 26,000-foot peak during the winter. You may know him from the iconic cover of National Geographic,

the one with the selfie he took after he survived an avalanche. But there's a twist. After all that success, Corey did not find peace. Instead, he found chaos. Corey's journey is about more than conquering mountains. It was raw, vulnerable, and deeply moving in ways I did not expect. In fact, we talked for so long that we decided to cut his episode into two. It's about conquering

mental health, identity, and what happens when we mistake our biggest goals for our true purpose. This is a bit of optimism. Speaking of whiskey, you put in a tobacco thing. Yeah. You got a glass of whiskey. Yeah. I've got all the pathologies, all the crutches. All the crutches, all the pathologies.

People think that like, oh, he's just totally, you know, he's gotten rid of all this. I mean, I think that's one of the points of this is the crutches aren't necessarily bad so long as you see them as for what they are. Like I'm self-soothing. My nervous system is a wreck right now, you know? And like, so long as it doesn't go down this like highly destructive path, I think giving yourself some grace around that is actually probably far more beneficial. We're jumping right in. Yeah, of course. I think you're 100% right.

And I think the crutches are not the unhealthy thing. It's that some of the crutches are unhealthy. Yeah. Right? Because maybe you smoked, but now you just chew gum. Right. Okay. So, or maybe you did X, you know, you did something very unhealthy.

Yeah. And now you just go to the gym every day. Right. You know, you go for a run every day. Like they're all forms. They can all be forms of crutches. Right. And so I think you're right. I think we confuse.

Crutches are good. Yeah. Not all crutches are good. Not all crutches are good, but also like, to be fair, substances in moderate doses are also not terrible. Yeah, totally enjoyable. Yeah, they're totally enjoyable. It's just having your value system or barometer set to be like, okay, well, am I in a storm

now or am I just riding the edge of the weather? Okay, so that's a perfect preview now. So let's go backwards. Yeah, let's go back. Why do you have crutches? Why is your nervous system shot? Didn't you like survive an avalanche? Oh my God, I love it.

It's so funny. I did survive an avalanche. So I can tell the story. I mean, it's great. Sure, let's go for it. Yeah, let's hear it. Everybody wants that story, so let's do it. It's like, unfortunately, you're like Aretha Franklin,

like you have to sing respect. You gotta play the hits. You gotta sing respect. Right, like, so, well, and it's a very important, it's like a very interesting point of the story because I, so I went to climb this mountain called Gashabroom 2, which is a mountain, it's the 13th highest mountain in the world. It's in Pakistan. And just to give people some

context, I've, you know, I, I can run through this because people need to know there are 14 mountains in the world that are higher than 8,000 meters. That is roughly 26,240 feet or something like that. One is in India, eight are on the border of Nepal and Tibet, and then five are in Pakistan. After they were all climbed in the early eighties, the Polish who are some of the best climbers in the world were just like, all right, so those were hard. Now let's just make it harder. Let's go climb all of them in the winter. And so all of the nine south of Pakistan had been climbed by 2000, the winter of 2010, 11. And I got invited by... Which is surprisingly late.

Yeah. Like only the past sort of, you know, 10, 15 years. Yeah, exactly. None of the ones in Pakistan had been climbed. Wow. And so I got invited by a guy named Simone Moro, who's an Italian climber, and another guy, Dennis Arupko. Dennis didn't invite me, but Dennis became a very good, he's Russian. And we just sit there and be like, but Simone, why we bring stupid American boy? Bro, I'm standing right next to you. He's like, yes,

Corey, be quiet, men talking. And I was 29 at the time. And by the way, Simone has this voice that is just epic. He's, and I'm not exaggerating, he talk like this the whole time. He's very, very funny man. I tell this story of sitting in the tent with him and he's like, I mean, I've told this story a lot, but it's hysterical, it's worth repeating.

He's like, Corey, you must come to Italy, most beautiful beaches in the world. And I'm like, bro, what? And he's like, most beautiful beaches ever seen. And I'm like, what, what? And he's like, most beautiful beaches ever seen. And I'm like, what are you? And he's like, and I was like, oh, he's talking about beaches. Like, beaches.

All right, yeah, yeah, okay, cool. The beaches, I'll come see the beaches, you know, I'll come to the Amalfi or whatever. Most beautiful beaches in the world. So anyway, we're in the middle of Pakistan in winter, 26 years, 16 expeditions have tried and failed to climb one of these mountains in the winter. People have died, whatever. I didn't really know that.

These were just like my heroes. So I was like, yeah, of course I'll go. And I wasn't even planning on going to the summit necessarily. They just wanted sort of camp. I was on the North Face team at the time. And so we end up climbing it. Like we get this very, very narrow weather window. We leave the tent, it's minus 51 centigrade in the tent in the morning, or I guess at

night, 11 o'clock. We climb through the night on February 2nd and we get to the top. And up there it's about minus 80. The weather window. Centigrade. Centigrade. So it's colder than that Fahrenheit at that point. Much. Yeah. So you're like, and there's really no way to calculate it other than like it's colder

than it was a lot and there's a lot more wind. So we get to the top, the weather window starts to close and we get hit by this incredible storm on the way down and we make it back to our tent that night, just barely. We make it down to Camp 1 the next day and you're in this huge glacial valley, big, big glacial with huge crevasses. And on either side, there are these big mountains. Now they have three feet of snow on them and the wind's been blowing. So it's created a very hazardous situation. And we're just left the tent and you have to go sort of in this flat area and very low cloud ceiling. And I hear this like crack and I'm just, I'm like,

I know what that is. And it's an avalanche. And I look over my shoulder, I see it coming. I say, run, but there's no way to run. I mean, you're in waist deep snow and with heavy backpacks on and the avalanche just hit us and pushed us. We were mostly taken by the air blast because we were on very flat ground, which is also very, very powerful.

And the air blast is the wind that the snow is pushing. Yeah, yeah. So it just picks us up and throws us 500 feet. And of course, in my mind, I'm like, okay, I'm dying. Everything's like I'm dying. And long story short, we all ended up on top. I would say miraculously, we got thrown over these big crevasses

and there's ice chunks everywhere around it. And I immediately after, as soon as I could get my camera out, I turned it on and I took this video of me crying, just like sobbing, because I think there was this sort of dissociation where I was trying to get away from the experience, so I put a camera between me and it. So, you know, there's always been this barrier.

It's very interesting about photography is that there's always literally a barrier between you and what's happening. You're not present, you're witnessing. And then about an hour later, I took this other photo of me because I could just feel my face and it's just me looking at the camera. And I've got all this ice all over my beard and just, I look shell shocked, very confused. And that photo became arguably my most famous photo ever.

The cover of National Geographic. Got put on the cover of National Geographic. This whole trip opened the door to National Geographic. It opened the door to the sort of the skyrocketing of my career. And at the same time, because of complex post-traumatic stress, all of the stuff that happened in childhood, I experienced a profound and prolonged episode of PTSD.

And that was really the beginning of starting to dive in really deep to the mental health journey. But it took, you know, really up until I was about 41. So just two years ago, you know, it took over a decade for me to start to learn the language. Then I could talk about it. Then I was hiding behind it. Then I was sort of using it as a foe shield of vulnerability, but I hadn't really internalized it. And then, and then finally the embodiment came, right? But it was also,

so I look at the photo, it's also kind of what fractured my life in that it, it elevated me to a place where I could hide behind the external. And there was this talk about no values, right? Because now I'm in survival mode, which is what PTSD is. So I'm constantly just trying to survive and sustain while living this high-stimulation external life and being eaten inside in my internal life and using all of these coping mechanisms to try to calm that down. So that's where, you know, the problem drinking comes in. That's where the sex addiction comes in. And then you start hiding these secrets and you're harboring all this deep shame. Secrets are

the termites of intimacy and love. The more secrets you hold, the more it will erode and fall apart. And eventually, the tension between what you're projecting and who you are will become so great that you collapse. What kind of kid were you? I was volatile, meaning that I was a moody kid. And just as a piece of the backstory, my mom took me to see a psychologist when I was one. Right? So there's this very deep story of mental health

that comes on the scene pretty much immediately. Were you the first kid? I was the second. So my brother who factors very heavily into this story, also he was just more self-assured and more sturdy, but that also kind of made him an island. We had a really marvelous early childhood. Like my parents were, they were awesome.

And where'd you grow up? Salt Lake City. Okay. Where'd you grow up? All over the place, but my formative years were in New Jersey outside of New York City. I don't get what exit. Two off of 9W.

Okay. Yeah, so I mean, we started skiing I don't get what exit. Two off of Nine Ovea. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, we started skiing when we were two, we started climbing when we were five, and the whole early childhood development piece, at least externally, was really beautiful. And we spent a lot of time outdoors. Both my parents were in education. And yet there were some things going on that laid the groundwork very much for what I encountered later, which was very tumultuous adolescence, which we'll get to in just a second.

But my mom had postpartum depression with both of us, which if you look at the sort of the psychological machinations of early childhood development, has a profound impact, specifically in attachment styles and how we relate to our parents and getting our emotional needs met and finding coping mechanisms to navigate that disconnect. And my mom also worked full-time, so my dad was kind of our primary caregiver because he was a school teacher. So we formed this very tight bond with dad early on, and my mother did nothing wrong. There's no blame here at all.

It's just the way it was. And then as we got into our adolescence, and both of us were smart kids, right? So we were accelerated learners. Both of us went to high school two years early and both of us were kind of smashing, getting good grades. And then there was this development of violence. It was very rageful. And you were in the family?

Between my brother and I. Okay. And mostly aimed at me, which for the longest time I was like, oh, poor me. Look, my brother kicked the shit out of me. No, brother's fight. It's normal. But this was different.

It was very rage fueled. And so to the point of like child protective services being called, right? Like it was, it was dark, right? More than just, it was more than brothers fighting. And so that had a deep impact on me as it did on him. But, but I, you know, I was like, Oh, he beat me up. And that was the story for a long time. And then really in reflection, looking back on it, I was like, well, yes, and I learned that if he beat me up, I got a lot of attention. So then I started feeding into the my own cycle of violence or abuse, if you want to call it that. And again, there's no,

I don't blame my brother in any way, shape or form. It was just the dynamic that was there. And so my grades went from straight A's to dropping out basically. I got put on medication. I got hospitalized. How old are you at this time? I was like 13 when I got hospitalized the first time. What was the diagnosis? Well, it became bipolar too. Okay. I got put in this long-term inpatient outpatient care facility. I was there for eight months. I ran away three times. That's where I got put on my bipolar medication, which sort of sedated me. Impacted your personality? I mean, I was just dull, glassy-eyed and sort of sleeping all day. When we had school time at this facility, I'd like go under the table and just, they'd be like, do your schoolwork.

And I was kind of like, no. You know, and there's nothing they can do. They can keep extracting privileges, but ultimately when you learn that rules are arbitrary. And have no teeth. And have no teeth, right? Like you just do whatever you want. That was part of it.

So I ran away three times. Every time come back. The second time was I was out for quite a while before they found me. And there was a really dark experience that happened where I ended up staying at this guy's house squatting. I was 15 at the time, and he was 19 and he was gay. And some people would qualify what happened as rape, mothers would just say sexual abuse. And I write about it in more of a like, it was complicated. It was complicated because there was my own curiosity and yet there was this profound power dynamic where I was staying in a stranger's

home. And so it was as if I was trying to find something there. It was also sort of a some sense of artificial safety, right? For sure. You left, you're in a home, you're lonely, you're with a person. I mean, you're projecting a lot of need on somebody or something. Exactly. And we know like, yes, we think of a 19-year-old as an adult and a 15-year-old as a child, but really we're both children. And so I think it was a search for belonging on my part too, because I really didn't feel

like I belonged anywhere. They didn't want me at home. So that almost definitely had a profound psychological impact on me, especially as it relates to sex and sexuality, which I'm sure we'll get to later. I can pour you another drink. Yeah. When do I start crying? And then the third time I ran away,

my dad, who was very big on agency, was like, all right, but you can't be at home. And so... This is when you're 15. I was 15. It's like, all right, but you can't be at home. And so- This is when you're 15. I was 15. Did your parents just not know what to do? They tried everything, man.

Yeah. They tried everything. And then that's why there's no blame. I mean, like, what do you do? At some point, there is a threshold that gets crossed. Yeah. And- This is outside the borders of, you know, normal child rearing.

Right, right. And so I ran away and then I ended up being on the street, mostly kept off the street, but I'd stay with friends. But I do say I was homeless because I didn't have a home. And there were times where I was squatting or in the park or whatever. And then finally I got taken in by some family friends in Idaho and I stayed there for eight months. I got my GED when I was 16. I was like, was this all I was supposed to learn in high school?

You know, it's just like, this is ridiculous how surface that tested. But anyway, I'm happy we have that system to provide people with a good enough diploma, which is what GED stands for. So, and then I ended up in the hospital again. I came home, my brother got in, and I got in a huge blowout. I mean, it took three minutes and we were on the front lawn and I, that sense of my mind being out of control when these violent eruptions would happen, my brain would speed up to a place where there was

like energy in me that had to move. I didn't know what to do and I remember I stood up and I just kicked out the windows in the car that I was driving at the time. I drove up to my mom's office and I said, I need to go back to the hospital. It was at that time finally where my parents were like, Corey, what do you need? It actually gave me a sense of agency. I ended up living with my aunt and uncle in Seattle. So now I was 17, got three jobs because that's what bipolar people do. It's all or nothing, right? And then that's where I felt-

It's all and nothing. Yeah, all and nothing, which is, yeah, wow. Great point. But that's where I kind of rediscovered climbing. I mean, we had been so indoctrinated with it. Like that's what my dad read to us as children, his climbing books. And so I had always kept an identity of being an outdoors person. And my uncle took half of every paycheck,

it's like rent. And then at the end he was like, look, I'm gonna give you all this money back if you choose an experience to spend it on. And I chose to go climbing. And right before I went on that trip, I asked my mom if I could borrow her old camera. So she that was that. And that was sort of the entree. And that's not resolution by any means. But that's the very abridged version. And so where did you go climbing? Where did you go for your adventure?

It's really interesting because through all that time, my parents were still very supportive. It wasn't as if they checked out. They just, it was like the guiding arm from a distance. So actually I think their system ended up really working. Because you didn't feel alone. I felt alone. I felt very isolated, but I didn't feel outside of, totally outside of the bounds of safety. It still brought up questions of belonging and it still brought up questions of value

and do I matter, but it wasn't like, there was a container for me. And um... So what did that climb do for you? Well, we, I, so all that to say, I called a whole bunch of my dad's old climbing partners, like old guys, they're like in their 60s at that point. And then I was like, do you guys want to go climbing and go to this place called the Ruth Gorge in the Alaska range? And they're like, yeah.

So we just did very, very easy stuff, but it just changed. It was as if photography was a way to tether myself to this world that I felt like I could see but never touch. And climbing was in some ways an expression of what was happening inside of me. And so marrying those two, being an artistic kid, always gravitating towards art, that was the only place that my brain shut the fuck up. It was like a perfect match. And it also gave me some level of motivation

to keep a job, take care of myself. So what was your job? Did you become a photographer? Eventually, yeah. Eventually. I mean, I started calling myself a photographer at 18, but like, I don't think I made money until I was like 24. I mean, did you always know you were gonna write? No, I was never a writer.

Yeah. I was never a writer. I knew I could write because I did well on essays in college, but I'd never written anything long form. I think the longest thing I ever wrote was probably like, I mean, I purposely didn't wanna do a thesis because I didn't wanna to write a hundred pages. Right.

It just sounded like too much work. So what was the first long form? The book that I wrote, Start With Why. Start With Why, huh. Because I had to. Yeah. Because I had a contract that said I had to. Isn't it scary?

Nobody knew that I could, I didn't know that I could. That's actually interesting. A lot of the men's work I do is actually, this guy Kenny Kane, who lives here, started our men's group based on a lot of the men's work I do is actually, this guy Kenny Kane who lives here, started our men's group based on a lot of the start with why principles and just cause, right? Whereas like- Oh, very cool. Yeah.

So it actually works. It's really interesting that I'm here with you because it's so much of like the idea that like the just cause part of it would be, there's an assumption that the internal emotional lives of men is incredibly challenging and the space for that expression is incredibly limited. Right? And the why would be to, you know, basically create a safe space where men can be seen

and heard in a context that is both gentle and hard where it creates accountability. So you can see it was all modeled after that in some ways. It's really cool. That's neat. Yeah. I love finding out, you know, work goes off and it does its own thing once you put it in the world and you never know where it's going to go.

Yeah. It's lovely to hear it. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing. So at what point did you... I'm very curious when you decided you were going to be quote-unquote a climber. Yeah. Like, A, is that a career?

It's like I'm a professional climber. Does that mean sponsors and things? Yeah, yeah. So as I started climbing more and more and certainly taking pictures more and more, Yeah. then you could go to bigger and bigger places, bigger mountain ranges, and the climbs get harder, they get more severe.

And by virtue of that, obviously you get better and then you get sponsorship dollars. And so- And how do they, what is, I'm just- No, no, no. And I'll tell you why I have a strange point of view about climbing in a moment, but which is, like how do, what is the value to them of giving you sponsorship dollars? Like they need to get some value from that as companies is like photographs of you standing on peaks in their gear kind of thing. Basically, I mean, it's marketing value, right? You're basically a glorified raincoat salesman. Okay. So you're okay. Yeah. And so you wear their stuff, you take a picture of yourself,

you give them the pictures, that's what they want. So they want you to be a successful climber. They want you to be a successful climber, and they also want you to do the harder and bigger and more extreme, and by virtue of that, the more dangerous, the more- Colder, more rugged, because obviously it's good for their clothes. Right, exactly.

So you naturally push that envelope further and further and further. And then, you know, they get more sort of like cool cred. Like look what our athletes did. You know, whose athletes are out there. Big logos. Yeah, yeah. We called it LPSI, logos per square inch.

You wanted to maximize your LPSI. You know, I've got a bank logo here, a camera logo here. Like a race car driver. Yeah, exactly, exactly. In a space suit, in a down space suit. Yeah, that's really. So you'reuit, in a down spacesuit. Yeah, it's really... So you're now a legit professional climber. Yeah.

So what did you get out of it, other than money? I mean, money fuels the sport, right? Because it's an expensive sport. It requires time and tickets and gear and, you know... Infrastructure. Infrastructure and planning and all of this stuff where if you had a day job, you could only do less technical, less difficult things. In general.

It's a hobbyist versus a professional. I understand that as a job, but what did you get out of it? What was the reason you wanted to go climb the mountain? Is it like Edmund Hillary because it was there? I've always hated that answer. I think it's so lazy, but like, look, I love Ed Hillary, right? Like Climbed Everest.

And Tenzin Norgay. And Tenzin. We'll have to go through both. I think Tenzin technically probably did it first. He probably did it a few times. Yeah, yeah. So, what I got out of climbing was a sense of purpose, a sense of fulfillment, and a sense of expression. I also got a deep sense of validation, where the more notoriety I got,

the more I could mistake external validation for love. Because it felt good. It feels good. It feels good. Just like getting attention when you were a kid. Of course. And the other thing that's so interesting about it is that so often people with chaotic childhoods, violent childhoods, traumatic childhoods gravitate towards very high risk

endeavors because their minds are uniquely adapted to it. We don't have any future forecasting. So it's like, hold my beer, I'm gonna try something. You know? And, hey man, watch this. Terrible for life, fantastic for extreme sports. Exactly, and so you can see there is some maladaptation there for sure.

It very like, it works. It works, it works. No future forecasting, which means it limits the fear, because you limit the ability to even conceive of what could go wrong. Well, yeah, because if you raise like, I don't know what's coming next, well, okay, so I don't know what's coming next. This is where I have... So I went on a trek with a bunch of people in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco.

Okay, yeah. One of my boots got some water in it. As we got higher, it got a little colder. And I was like... And I could see the... it wasn't that high, it was right over there. And I was like, I'm going to, I'm just going to wait here for you guys. You know? They're like, don't you want to make it to the top? I'm like, I'm good.

They're like, but don't you want the picture? Don't you want the view? I'm like, I'm pretty sure it's the same view. Yeah. It's just a little bit higher. Yeah. I'm going to sit here. I'm good.

Yeah. It's just a little bit higher. Yeah. I'm going to sit here. I'm good. Yeah. And while I was sitting waiting for them to come back down, sort of thought about it's such a strange thing that the reason they wanted to go to the peak was to tell other people that they made it to the peak. Yeah. Or they wanted the photograph to show that they made it to the peak. Right.

And it's a very selfish pursuit because no one derives any value whatsoever other than you getting to say, I did, or show somebody else, I did. Right? Maybe this is my asshole-ish point of view. And you're an asshole, but I don't think that's an asshole. I mean, one must make the distinction. And like Olympic athletes, not team sports, but individual sports. When you talk to Olympic athletes, the medal contenders,

and you ask them, why did you do it? They're like, well, I want to inspire the children. It's like not a single vision board has pictures of inspired children. All the vision boards are them standing on podiums with gold medals around their necks. And it's one of the reasons I think that when their careers come to an end,

you know, like Michael Phelps becomes the most medal Olympian in history, immediately, depression. Andre Agassi becomes the most celebrated tennis player in history, immediately, depression. Because they confuse purpose with a goal. The thrill is the dopamine hit. And it's an extreme dopamine hit because it's difficult to climb a difficult mountain that if you actually make it to the peak, that surge of dopamine is, I'm sure, overwhelmingly wonderful, magical, intoxicating, beautiful. But it goes away, which is why you have to climb another mountain. And it's not like love that sustains. And this is why I have sort of a cynical view of these things

and find them relatively selfish because no one derives any benefit from that dopamine other than you. And if you are inspiring children, it was a lucky strike extra. I could not agree more with you. I've always said climbing is inherently selfish. I don't think that that means its sidecar impacts aren't positive for people. Sure. Absolutely.

And so there's a- But they're not the intention. They're not the intention. Nobody's- It's not a service oriented activity. Not at all, you're not in service. And it's so funny, it always bugged me that sort of the Everest expeditions that will go and be like, I'm climbing Everest to raise money for cancer.

I think that's great, but that's not why you're climbing Everest. You wanna climb Everest. And it's a way in some ways to make yourself feel better about the selfishness that you know climbing Everest. You want to climb Everest and it's a way in some ways to make yourself feel better about the selfishness that you know is there. Or if I'm gonna do this might as well raise some money for charity. For sure. Again, it's a yes and. It's a yes and. It's always a yes and. So again, I think there's this really beautiful component that it does have this extended impact and at the same time, I'll just speak for myself, it was never,

and even my career with National Geographic, it was never about policy change. It was never about necessarily telling other people's stories. And it's kind of embarrassing to say that. It was always about me because I felt like, look at what I can do and validate me. I'm very proud of the policy change that came out of some of those stories.

I'm very proud of the conservation that came out of some of those stories, but that's not what it was. And so I 100% agree with you. And later in this sort of trajectory of life, I had the same realization that you did. I often say that my rock bottom was the summit of Everest because I realized there's literally no place else I can go.

There's nowhere higher. There's nowhere higher. There's nowhere else I can go to get away from myself. Did you climb with it without oxygen? The first time without. Second time I put it on right below the summit. Why would you go to, what is it, 27,000 feet? 29,35.

29,35, I mean, that's like a, that's a cruising altitude for an aircraft. Yeah. Why the hell would you do, like I don't want them to turn off the oxygen in flight. No. Why, what motivates you to? There's all the poetic reasons which are, you know,

seeing how far you can go. Man versus self. Yeah, man versus self, climb the mountain seeing how far you can go. Man versus self. Yeah, man versus self, climb the mountain without to climb the mountain within. You know, there's all of that, which by the way, doesn't work. Then there's the reality that like,

you know that in doing it that way, there's way more cred, there's way more visibility. I climbed Everest, amazing. I climbed it without oxygen. Wow. And I think it is a triumph of human physiology. And on the other side of that, there's the reality that you're just doing it to see how hard you can go. Again, nothing wrong with that, but just call it what it is.

So let's now be less cynical, right? So did it help you? Yes, and? Right? Because struggling with things and then you did something that is objectively very difficult, that objectively, I mean, there's dead bodies still on the... All over. All over the place and they can't go get them. Yeah

What does that do for you? Do you come down saying I'm a better person? I'm a stronger person I I think I have the skills. I'll give a silly analogy, right? Yeah, so a friend of mine was a runner I wasn't a runner, but I started running because it was fun to run with my friend Yeah, yeah start running longer and longer distances and eventually I ran my first marathon I would not have been able to write a book if I hadn't run a marathon. Because I am one of those people who likes to be an instant expert,

and you can't just run a marathon tomorrow. You have no choice, you have to train. And that experience gave me the mental foundation to write a book, because I couldn't just sit down and write a book. It would take months and you work your way up to it like a marathon. And I'm grateful to the marathon for giving me the strength to write a book. And I'm curious if climbing Everest without oxygen the first time

gave you the strength to dot, dot, dot. It's such a good question because I never thought of it in those terms. Right? Like that would, for me to go back and paint it that way would be sort of a revisionist history. Doesn't mean it's not true. But you do know I was only aware of that after I wrote in the writing of the book. Right, right.

So you may have only learned the lesson years later. Yeah. I wouldn't be doing this now. Yeah. If I hadn't done that. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, that's how I felt. Even just by the way, conquering life.

Yeah, life is... You know, boy, this is difficult, but I did that, so this is easy. So I can do it, you know? Life is savage, dude. Life is so metal. You know, I think, yes, there was some of that where doing these things allowed me a certain degree of endurance where doing these things allowed me a certain degree of endurance to withstand other things.

Primarily, I would say, some of the mental health challenges. So physical pain, your body destroying itself, eating itself, because that's, I think people forget that, that yes, your body can adapt to altitude, but it's still eating itself. It's dying.

Yeah. It's actively dying, so you're on the clock. You're literally racing time. Pushing through that level of fear or apprehension to then accomplish that goal, of course, gives you some new level of what you're capable of. Yeah. And it expands your degree of tolerance for discomfort, in a way. At least physical, physical discomfort, which can be transmuted into emotional, mental,

whatever. For better and for worse. For better and for worse. Because you can stay in a bad relationship for too long because you can, because you have the skills. Right. Or you can muscle through difficult situations to find resolution in a relationship because you have the skills of not abandoning. Self-abandonment, right? Like, wow, let's get into that. But I think also, it was such an expression

of trying to outrun myself at the same time. Because, look, I'm utilizing all the skill sets that I learned in my childhood development, which is hypervigilance, managing chaos. It's a healthy expression of that. And at the same time, it is a complete avoidance of what's driving it. It's such an interesting paradox, right? Which is the thing that is a healthy expression of whatever pain trauma is also the thing that's...

Can kill you. Is also amplifying the pain and trauma. Yeah. I find that beautiful and horrible at the same time, which makes perfect sense. Yeah. The thing you're trying to get away from is the very thing that's allowing you to do the thing that's also giving you the sense of, I want to keep doing this, I want to keep living,

even at its most basic form, right? Our wounds become our weapons. Yeah. In both positive and negative ways. You see that all the time in relationships. The way somebody is wounded is generally how they end up showing up for their partner. So if there's an extreme sense of abandonment in somebody's life and that's their primary trauma, it's not uncommon for that person to abandon the other person or choke it out

by, you know, sort of anxious attachment. So I'm gonna ask this question multiple times. Please. Are you a better version of yourself because of climbing Mount Everest for the first time without oxygen? No, I'm a more knowledgeable person. Doesn't make me better. Tell me the difference. I think that a better person would be somebody who is capable of embodying and assimilating to the lessons that they learned on that journey, right? A more knowledgeable person takes the lessons, contextualizes them, lives upstairs in their

head and just keeps doing the same shit. So ultimately, yes, right? Because now I can reflect on it. But at the time, no, not at all. But I'll go with yes. Yeah. Yeah. Cause yeah, because of now, because of now, fair enough. All right.

Shit. You got me. You got me back. I have to acknowledge myself. Shit. I don't like that. It's uncomfortable. I need to leave.

Um, do you have more whiskey? No. I mean, it's, it's interesting though. Like when you... I guess I could ask the same question. Two questions. Did you write the book for other people? Or did you start writing it for yourself just because it had to come out?

The answer is yes. Yeah. I had this idea. I was sharing it with friends. Friends asked me to share it with their friends. People would then invite me to share it with audiences. And somebody said, you really need to write this down. And so I realized that because I had something that was so powerful for me and had a positive and powerful impact in my life and was having a positive and powerful impact in my friends'

lives, was having a positive and powerful impact on other people's lives, it became a responsibility. So whether I wanted to write the book or not, I learned this lesson more powerfully with the second book, believe it or not, because that one I quit in the middle. I couldn't do it. Why? So Leaders Eat Last was the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life. It took two years of my life and cost me two relationships.

I was not fun. I wasn't happy, it was stressful. I was like a beautiful mind. I would write with dry erase in my bathroom on all the tiles. So if I had an idea in the shower, I'd quickly jump out and write it on the tile. I'd brush my teeth and I'd stand there and read all. And literally, you'd walk into my bathroom and the tiles were filled with these crazy ideas.

And I couldn't understand why all the social scientists, because all I did was take the biology of the chemicals, dopamine, endorphins, serotonin, oxytocin, cortisol, and overlay them on corporate culture and said, let's see what happens. And I was calling scientists to understand oxytocin, dopamine, like asking them. And I couldn't understand why none of them had written, not written this book. It seemed so obvious. They're the experts. Right. Because it was organizationally a nightmare because every chapter could have been a book. And start with why was about something like 68,000 words.

And when I was writing Lead Who's It Last, I was just getting started and I wrote 150,000 words. It just kept going and going and it was organizationally a nightmare. And I was sitting at my desk, it was probably at least a year, maybe over a year in, probably last at least one relationship by now. And I couldn't do it. I gave up. And so I got up from my desk.

It was about eight o'clock at night and I went for a walk. I was in New York City and just went for a walk and I went to plan my quitting. I literally would go through the checklist of quitting and I would have to tell my publisher I am unable to do this. I'll have to give them back the advance because technically I'm in breach of contract, right? So I'm going through that checklist and like, okay, I'm going to lose money, right? I'm going to be humiliated because I already had some notoriety from the first book and everybody was looking forward to the second book and I have to publicly announce

after telling everybody I'm writing another book that I'm not gonna write another book so I'm gonna be publicly humiliated. I have to tell my friend, like just going through the checklist and preparing myself for the burden of quitting. Right. And for whatever reason,

I picked up the phone and called a friend of mine who happened to be in the Air Force Special Forces at the time, call sign Johnny Quest. Johnny Quest. Johnny Quest. Johnny Quest. Dude. Awesome call sign. Yeah, he's a good guy. He looks like Johnny Quest. He's a pilot for United now. And I don't even think I said hello. He picked up the phone and I said, what do you do when you can't complete the mission? I just asked him.

And as is his nature, he started telling me a story. And he told me a story of how he was in Afghanistan. He was a helicopter pilot at the time. And they had a mission that all the intelligence said it was a suicide mission. Like the ground to air defenses were so extreme that, and it wasn't like a kill Hitler mission. Like you're going to kill Hitler, we're all going to die, but you're going to kill Hitler. It's not one of those. It's like you're all going to die and we won't accomplish the mission. It was a pointless suicide mission. It was obvious to everybody who was a part of it, but they were ordered to go do this mission. They were prepping their helicopter and his wingman says to him,

what do we do? We've got wives, we've got kids. Do we refuse to go? Like, what do we do? And my friend turned to me and said, this is what we signed up for. We go. Clearly, the mission was scrubbed at the last minute. And so he said to me, he told me this story and then he says to me, is this book more or less powerful than Start With Why? I said, the lessons that I'm learning in the research are impacting me as much if not powerful than Start With Why? I said the lessons that I'm learning in the research are impacting me as much if not more than Start With Why.

He says, okay, I'm gonna tell you a funny story. He says, before I met you, I was disillusioned with the Air Force and I wanted to quit. I found this kooky little book called Start With Why and it re-inspired me to take myself on as a leader and I am who I am today in part because of your book. And if you're telling me that you're learning things

that are more powerful, and he said, this is what you signed up for, you have no choice. Now, the underlying message was, and I will be here with you. And that's the most important part. It wasn't like, do you have to do, it wasn't like this stupid grit thing. There's also knowing when to quit, right?

It wasn't a grit message. It was a, you are not alone message. This is what we do. This is what we signed up for, he told his wingman. Not what you signed up for. And this is what my friend was telling me. Which is, go and I will be with you. And I went back and finished the book. Do you think just... I've been playing with this idea recently about the difference between... Because I'm writing a children's book now. Which is harder than people think.

Much, much harder. What's the difference between giving up and letting go? And do you think that you actually let go, which allowed you to continue? So I... Because there's schools of thought that says you never quit, and there's schools of thought that says you have to know when to quit. And who's right.

And so... And your dichotomy of letting go versus quitting, I think, is a good one. quit and the schools of thought that says you have to know when to quit. Right, right, right. And who's right. Right. And so, and your dichotomy of letting go versus quitting I think is a good one. In my mind, it's a very simple test. Is the sacrifice worth it? And if the answer is yes, you keep going. If the answer is no, you stop. And so I'm doing some, I've done many things that I hate, that play to all of my weaknesses

that cause me stress and sleepless nights and broken relationships and all of those things. But if I'm really honest with myself and I look at what I'm trying to accomplish and what I'm trying to do in the world, and if I ask myself, is the sacrifice worth it? And the answer is yes, just keep going. But there are also things that I've done

that become excruciating and the sacrifice no longer feels worth it and I'm happy to walk away. Yeah. And so to me, is the sacrifice worth it? That's an interesting... And it's a very simple test. Does it feel right? You know?

But a lot of times... And it helps you get away with like, people are expecting it and there's like, all of that is noise. Right. Is the sacrifice worth what you're trying to accomplish? Whether it's selfish or selfless is up to you. Right, right, right. I'm trying to become a millionaire, the sacrifice is worth it.'s selfish or selfless is up to you. Right, right, right.

I'm trying to become a millionaire, the sacrifice is worth it. Whatever your standard is, I don't care. Right, right. But that to me is the reason to keep going or not keep going, which is why I like letting go versus quitting. Yeah. Well, because I think, I actually honestly think

resilience is not about holding on. Resilience is about letting go. Say more. When we hold on, that is usually a place of survival, right? Oh, like gritting your teeth. Gritting your teeth. We're in survival mode. I gotta hold on.

I gotta hold on. This is interesting. And survival is interesting because it's reaction-based and reaction is not value-based, right? When people are in survival mode, values are out the window. Look what people do. Right. More to the window. Look what people do. Right, more to the flies. Right, exactly.

So resilience is about letting go in that you have to step into discomfort. You have to step into discovery through discomfort. You have to let go of your certainty because certainty kills curiosity, right? And you have to be willing to adapt to something that is foreign. And so it's all about letting go. Letting go is a tool of resilience. It underwrites it, right? And because resilience

is response-based versus reaction-based, it's endurance-based, it's curiosity-based, it's underwritten by values. So it guides you to a net positive evolution as a response to challenging circumstances. That's very interesting. And it also now puts a very high burden on all of us that you have to know your values. Right. Without values, your capacity for resilience goes down. It goes, well, I mean, think about our culture

in terms of mental health, which I really do believe is a crisis, right? Yeah. Part of that is because we are living in our sympathetic nervous systems, which is fight, flight, or freeze, which is survival-based. So our whole culture is not acting out of a resilience mindset or response mindset or values. It's a reaction mindset. It's a reaction mindset, so we have no values.

So we cannibalize each other in the pursuit of survival because that's our most base instinct. And in doing so, our act for survival and the lack of values drives us deeper into conflict, which keeps us further from survival. Coming up on part two. 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. And 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. 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. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. 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 Ruderschen.