Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - A Creative’s Crusade Against the Mundane | Chris Burkard

Episode Date: January 26, 2022

This week’s conversation is with Chris Burkard, an accomplished explorer, photographer, creative director, speaker, and author. Chris travels to pursue the farthest expanses of Earth, working to capture stories that inspire humans to consider their relationship with nature, while promoting the preservation of wild places everywhere.Layered by outdoor, travel, adventure, surf, and lifestyle subjects, Chris is known for images that are punctuated by untamed, powerful landscapes. Through social media, Chris strives to share his vision of wild places with millions of people, and to inspire them to explore for themselves.His visionary perspective has earned him opportunities to work on global campaigns with Fortune 500 clients, speak on the TED stage, design product lines, educate, and publish a growing collection of books. In this conversation, Chris shares his desire for discomfort and why he continues to choose the road less traveled._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I don't want that to define me. all right welcome back or welcome to the finding mastery podcast i'm michael gervais and by trade and training i'm a sport and performance psychologist and i'm flat out fortunate to work with some of the most extraordinary thinkers and doers across the planet. And the idea behind these conversations is to learn from people, to pull back the curtain, to explore how the extraordinaries have committed to mastering both their craft and their minds. Our minds are our greatest asset, hands down. We have to develop them though. And if you want to learn more about how you can train your mind, this is just a quick little reminder here to check out our online psychological training course that we built, where we have pulled together the best practices

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And when I'm traveling or in between meals, on a demanding day certainly, I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein Bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put him on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that

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mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Okay. This week's conversation is with Chris Burkhardt. He is an accomplished explorer, a photographer, a creative director, speaker, and author. And he travels the planet to pursue the farthest expanses of earth. And he's working to capture stories that inspire us to consider a better relationship with nature while at the same time promoting the preservation of wild places everywhere. So what he's doing is layered by outdoor travel, adventure, surf, lifestyle subjects. And Chris is known for these beautiful images that are punctuated by the untamed, the powerful landscapes of the world.

And then through social media, he strives to share his vision of wild places with millions of people, literally, fully in return to inspire us to explore those places and ourselves. His visionary perspective has earned him opportunities to work on global campaigns. With Fortune 500 clients, he's been able to speak on the TED stage, design product lines, educate, and then publish a growing collection of books. At the age of 34, he has clearly established himself as a global presence and influence. And with that, let us jump right into this week's conversation with Chris Burkhardt. Chris, how are you? I'm good, my man.

I'm good. Excited to be here. I am too. You come with a reputation. And so I am excited to have this conversation with you because you go places. I'm fascinated by your craft. And in some respects, I wish that I had training in it because I feel like there's something intimidating and magically wonderful about a camera. And the psychologist

in you must be skilled to be able to capture people in moments where, you know, they're risking it all, risking it all, or, you know, they're in a vulnerable moment or, you know, just, so I am excited for lots of reasons to have this conversation with you. So thank you in advance. Yeah. Thank you. You know, I've been a huge fan of the podcast, been a huge fan of your work. And it's so funny because just prior to this, you know, you were explaining how rooted you are in the surf world, which is kind of where I came from.

Not so much that I grew up with aspirations of being a professional surfer. I grew up near the ocean. So it was always a part of my pedigree. It was a canvas that I learned very early to kind of paint on, so to say. And it's interesting because I've always gravitated towards you more from a perspective of like the mental psychology and the mental health within the business world and professional athletes in general. But I love how there's always these kind of like the symbiosis that kind of tends to emerge,

you know, in these conversations. And it sounds like we have a lot of mutual friends. Yeah, it's awesome, man. We definitely do. Okay, so where did you grow up? Let's kind of start at the beginning. Yeah, I mean, straightforward, small town, California, Pismo Beach. It's where I live now, actually. And oddly enough, you know, my departure or my entry into photography wasn't

because I was aspiring to be an artist or I was aspiring to explore the inner reaches of my capabilities as a human. It was just because I wanted to leave this small town. I grew up like many kids listening to kind of the six o'clock news on repeat and the conversations around the dinner table. And I was from a super blue collar family. And, and I just, I wanted to know what was out there. You know, my, my, my world, the, the, the kind of the depth of my world was the national parks that I could drive to from my house and the vacations we would take in the summer. I never left the country, never went anywhere. So when I picked up a camera, it was like, I saw this tool and I saw this thing as a way to maybe get me out into the world. And it was definitely a delusion of grandeur in the beginning. And it didn't happen right away, obviously, but that was kind of my excitement. That was what

drew me to it. So it was more about using photography as a methodology for seeing what else was out there, for teaching me something. And not so much for the art and the creativity of it in some way. But yeah, Central California is where I am today. Pismo Beach. Good surfing, rugged surf, rugged coastline. There's some good surfing up where you are. So did you grow up surfing? Yeah, I grew up just, again, like the ocean was almost like a babysitter.

My mom would just drop me off and she'd be like, hey, I'm picking you up in a couple hours. And I'd be like, all right, great. You know, and so it was always just like being around the ocean, body surfing, boogie boarding, surfing, you know, hanging around the pier, kind of like getting into trouble, you know. And then it was a funny extension to kind of turn this into, I guess, a career path by being a surf photographer for a number of years working for magazines, going on trips, because this thought

of just like being in the parking lot at the beach, and then turning that into like my day job was kind of an odd one, you know, but yeah. Okay. So how old were you when you picked up a camera and said, oh, you know what? Like, this is a ticket. Like I can go places with this. How old were you? I was 19 years old.

I was just finishing up high school. I had done a little bit of art in high school and I liked the creative process. And I kind of told myself, I'm like, you know, it'd be great is to be hired because of your creativity. I had a full ride scholarship to go and work on cars as an auto tech. That was actually like my, my kind of career up until that moment. I, you know, I would, that's what I would do. Just work on vehicles. And I loved getting my hands dirty. I loved the mechanics of it. I loved the understanding of how something worked, but I started spending more and more time on the weekends, just going up the coast of California, big serve these wild places, jumping over fences and trying to, you

know, trying to get into the ocean. And all of a sudden, I think what it was, was I grew up again in a single parent home for a long time and not having like a father figure. It was like, I kind of found this sort of my, my group, my gang. Right. And my place within that group of boys was like to be the documentarian. So it kind of, it fostered a lot of good memories like, Oh yeah, going up there and having these experiences and taking pictures of that. And it was an extension of the art that I was doing. But at 19, high school's over, life begins. I'm going to a junior

college in town here. And I'm like, you know what? This sucks. This is not what I want to be doing. This is not where I feel passionate. And maybe the most mature thought I've ever had in my life for some reason came to me that I was like, I am unprepared for this opportunity. But if I don't take this opportunity now, it will always be just out of reach. It's like that idea of like you're at a train station and your bags aren't packed, but the train is leaving, you have to go. It doesn't matter if you're ready or not. don't really wait for you so I saw this as like I'm going to get too comfortable I'm going to get too comfortable in my life and my career to eventually be willing to suffer this much because I knew that doing this career path was going to require me to suffer so I put my job uh and I quit school and I put everything into being a photographer and it didn't really matter if I was taking pictures of surfers or athletes or whatever. It was like, I just wanted to make a living with a camera. And obviously,

the goal, the end goal was to like, have it take me somewhere. Didn't really care where I just knew it was somewhere. Okay, so you got a lot in here, which is let me, let me play back some of the things I'm hearing, right so laissez-faire parenting so parents were you didn't say this but caring enough to take you somewhere and then kind of in your words dropped you off and then you had a babysitter which was the wild and i really i relate in many forms of that when I think back into definitely my high school years, like the danger that I was in, in the wild, I had no business being in.

And can you relate to that as well? Like way over your head. Okay. Yeah. I mean, especially as a parent now, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. What were they? Yeah. Okay.

So laissez-faire. Did they have their own stuff going on where, because I'm trying to put laissez-faire parenting, the wild, and I want to get out of here mixed with, oh, wait, there's a path to comfort. I don't want the path of comfort. I need to go the path of suffering. So I'm trying to triangulate a couple of these for you. And so can you bridge a couple of those leaps that I just made? Yeah. So I, I, I grew up, you know, my, my mom was, is still my hero. You know, I watched her work multiple jobs. I, again, I was just, I was a single child until my stepdad came into my life and brought my brothers into my life. But for the form of it, so it was, so it was you and mom

and your biological father was not in the picture. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not in the picture. No biological brother sisters. None, none. I have a, I have a two step brothers and a half brother now, but during those formative years that like, you know, zero to 13, 14, it was just me and my mom. And so I think I witnessed her work so, so, so hard.

And all, and obviously like, you know, if I was to go to work with her, it would be like, I'd be in childcare or I'd be doing this. And so I kind of, it was like the moment that I started to gain my freedom, she was like, oh, awesome. Like, you know, I'd rather have you be somewhere you want to be, be out riding bikes with friends, be playing in the street, be at the beach, whatever it is. And it wasn't for, we are so close. She did everything to kind of keep me protected. But she wanted to foster that experience of me being in places that inspired me. And I appreciated that.

When my dad came along, it was hard because I, all of a sudden we have a big family. And so we had to do a lot to make it work and make ends meet. And he, you know, was worked with his hands, still does, you know, really blue collar family. And so I, I understood very clearly the constraints financially that were put upon us and what this my career path was going to where it was going to take me i could just see more of the same and so i think i had a real lust a desire to to see something different to find something new again i was the only person in my family at the time who was going to take the path of going to college so it's funny as you mentioned chris you you you and me both yeah i'm nodding my head like, oh my

God. So different, different kind of makeup of the family structure for sure. But first, first in the family to, to have the opportunity to go to college. And so my, my heart's beating a little bit going, yeah, I know that feeling. And then, and you, and I went to JUCO too. And I was like, listen, it was a totally different experience for me. There was, there was three professors there that ended up being, I didn't know this, but really good friends, Dr. Cusio, Dr. Perkins, and Dr. Zanka. Apologize for me saying them out because it's just, they were so important. They saw me coming and, and I just fell in love with learning. And so you didn't have that. You, you, you had this calling to get into the wild, right. And to go see places. And

so why, so I want to know, how did you make that decision to, because you could have stayed the safe path, but you wanted suffering. So bridge that gap for me. How did you know that suffering was going to be the way for you? Well, it's funny because you don't immediately recognize that it's suffering in the beginning. This is looking back. This is hindsight, insight. It's definitely retrospective. But to be honest, what's more interesting to me is that I've chosen that path multiple Insight. Okay. you know, eating, you know, eating on 50 cents a day, living below poverty level,

sleeping in my truck. You know, I am in no capacity, the most creative, talented person to ever hold a camera. I'm just the person who might be the most stubborn, the most willing to submit themselves to the craft and to put in the hours, the 10,000 hours. Like I knew there was going to be a 10,000 hour rule. And I was like, yeah, let me, let me, let me get those 10,000 hours in the first month. Right. Like, okay. So you, so you, you've got a tenacity about you. You have a vision, correct? Like I want to go somewhere. I don't want to do this thing here. I want to go somewhere. I want, and it has to do with nature and the wild. It has to do with the camera i like surfing okay so now i'm starting to get this but so you had this vision and was it crystal clear or was it just no more like i just

want to be in those places i want to be in those places i wanted to be in those places and you're spot on it wasn't crystal clear it was at first it was like i love landscape photography this is what i grew up on ansel out of michael fatali, and these masters. And so I did a small kind of a tenure under a landscape photographer, learned a bit from him and create images. And I didn't have a platform to sell them. I didn't have a gallery. So I came back from that kind of internship is really broken. And then I. Wait, wait, wait, how old? I was, I was about 20. It's about 20.

This is your first go 19. I found a camera. I'm going somewhere. Delusions of grandeur. Right. And then, Oh, you know, I love nature. I found it. I found a person I'm going to be at right and then oh you know i love nature i found it i found a person i'm gonna be at this person's you know knee and then you came back yeah and then you're like damn well it was it was just it was um it was eye-opening it was my first taste of like the real world and somebody who i am grateful for giving it to me straight and then i came back and i recollected myself and i was like well i, I want to be in these landscapes. I want to be in nature. Surfing is something I grew up. I know the ocean is something I'm not afraid of. This, this could be a path I could, I could try

to shoot surfing for a living. And I set, I set some goals. I made some connections. I interned at a, at a magazine. Cause there was a photo editor who kind of like saw my passion, my, my lust for this and my willingness to suffer. And so I basically drive down five hours on Monday morning, go to Oceanside, sleep in the parking lot, Oceanside pier parking lot for five days, work at the magazine, take showers in the bathroom. And then I would, and then I would basically shower in the marina. Yeah. Like I know that surf break as well. Let's yeah. And so back then, this is like probably, I don't know, 15 years ago for you, something like that. Like, um, it, it, it's different than it is now. And so it was a little more sleepier.

Yeah. A little, a little more homeless vibe. Um. But I, but it's so funny. I look back on all of that and I, I definitely recognize that like, those were the moments that I feel, I feel so grateful for so much gratitude, so much fondness. And in many ways I miss it. I miss it when I have, you know, I have a lot now I have a lot to manage. I have a lot of responsibilities. I have a family, got an office, I've got a studio, I've got employees. It, the simplicity of those experiences. I love this part of our conversation, right? Yeah.

Well, it's the constant, like, it's the constant, like I'm never great. And I've never been great about appreciating the moment. I'm always either looking ahead, kind of look, not so much looking behind, but in the last couple of years, looking back at that moment, being like, wow, like to move towards something with so much, with such little fear is so profound. I can't do that now. I have to take others, people's considerations, payroll, mortgages into consideration. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters.

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Like, wait a minute. Like what you're saying to me sounds absolutely crazy now. Yeah. Which is I look back with romance, the innocence of truly going for it. And at the time, I don't think I appreciated it. And now when I look back, there's a romance about how I did things because I had very little to lose, if anything. Yeah. And it's hard, I think also because I'm doing more of the hard work now. And I think that as a psychologist, you'll appreciate this, that, you know, there's this analogy of the four burners that I heard years ago. I don't know

if you ever heard this, you probably have, but, you know, where your life is like a stovetop and this is like really simplifying things, but, you know, you have these four burners, one represents family and one represents relationships and one is health, you know, your own health and one is business. And in order to be successful, you have to turn one of them off. And in order to be really successful, you have to turn two of them off. And I think that I chose the really successful route. And in order to do that, I made some real sacrifices. And it's only been in the last four to five years, I've had to kind of come to the full reality of what those decisions meant. And I guess there was an innocence to that experience and just being so driven by something

at the ultimate demise of a lot of things, my own health and my own, my certain friendships and relationships. Yet there was a purity to it. You know, there's something pure about that. And I miss it, but I also look at it from like a cautious, more cautious perspective, like it's there, but that was dangerous. And I'm grateful that I ended up where I ended up because it also could have taken me somewhere else. And it's a wild, it's been a really wild journey. You know, nowadays, like obviously life is more complicated yet

there's more to appreciate there's more joy um but you have to look for it a bit more acutely you know you have to be more focused on that and so the part that i was like my antenna popped really quickly on just a moment ago when you were talking about i'm now working from a different place like like fear of letting um others down fear of not making payroll fear of you know all the responsibilities of adulting and so um what happened i grew up well you know it's funny because i i like before answer it, pin that with let me just give some context of why I'm having this this experience. Before this conversation, I called one of our mutual friends, Rebecca Rush. And for those maybe who are not familiar with Rebecca. I mean, how do you describe Rebecca?

I mean, she is like, yeah, she's a heavy. Yeah. Right. I mean, she's a she's a she's a guide for many people you know um she's kind of more than one many levels yeah many levels yeah and call it endurance athlete she was on the podcast but call it uh an endurance athlete but she's also a guide and she was a guide for you in some respects on a mission that you set up to go to iceland and to go bike it at in the winter months right yeah yeah and i don't mean just go for a little bike ride

you guys were you guys went to the volcano you did you circumnavigate or whatever the phrase is we we intersected from the intersected south through like the interior. And obviously she has been an inspiration to me. And I think that I'm, I'm luckily at that place in my life where I really seek out the people that I want to work with people that I want to collaborate with are people that I actually selfishly want to learn from. I want to, to, to glean something from them. I want to gain some knowledge from them because it's so important to me. Like that's the one thing that I hopefully never stopped doing is learning. And so she just had so much to offer. And I just like, I felt like a sponge.

I felt like I was back at an internship learning from that person. And although I brought something to the table, I was so, I felt so privileged to be able to work with her and not only in a professional setting, but as a friend, you know, like as a, as a mutual peer in some ways, because I really, for a big part of my life, you know, being an action sports photographer, you're just constantly trying to keep up with athletes. It's like the 80, you constantly live in the 80% realm where you can only get 80% good at something because I'm being asked to go shoot professional surfing and then go ski touring and then ride a bike with some, you know, it's like, I can never

fully dedicate myself to a certain craft because I need to keep my, my, all these knives fairly sharp. So I really gave myself to that sport so that I could, you know, win that respect in some way, but also like make sure that I was a good and prepared student and a contributor to this expedition. And so I was grateful just on a professional and an athletic setting. Because that's where I was having the tension. I didn't know when that moment happened for you, but I'm thinking about Oceanside and I'm thinking about the Iceland trip where in Iceland, when I was talking to her about it, she said that you, um, you were a student just like you talked about where you weren't the professional you,

I'm sure you brought a camera, but you weren't the one in control of some stuff. And so you were, you were suffering at a different level, not that different, maybe in my mind, the way you're suffering in Oceanside. Okay. So, so those are kind of some interesting bookends. And then I think it allows us to maybe, maybe there's a juxtaposition here to talk about business, but underneath of it for a moment, let's go back to suffering and why suffering, why are you working to move away from comfort? What's happening there for you? I'll say that I was lucky enough to give an entire TED Talk dedicated to that topic, but the kernel of truth really is that anything

that's worth pursuing is going to require us to suffer a little bit. And I think that for me, there was a cognitive choice in the midst of my career, the highlight years of my career, where I was working for the magazine. I had the dream job, literally, like I had the dream job. People that would talk to me, I'd be like, yeah, I'm a surf photographer. They're like, no way. So you're like, you go to tropical locations with like beautiful women everywhere. And, you know, you're like sipping a Mai Tai on the beach. And I'm like, well, not exactly, but kind of, you know, it was the dream job. And it was honestly what I truly dreamt of doing. I wanted to see wild places and go to these locations.

But at a certain point, it dawned on me that what I was actually doing was I was selling this sense of adventure that wasn't really there. It was contrived. It was inauthentic. It was strong Wi-Fi and great dining and just a big hotel on a beach somewhere. And my lens was pointed at the ocean, but it was in a way that wasn't expressing my true experience, which was that I grew up in this wild place, finding myself out in these landscapes. And that's kind of what I wanted to use the camera to do. I mean, this is an evolution for just wanting to travel, right? This is B2, right, of Chris Burkhardt, right? So the goal at first was just to collect stamps in my passport and get a paycheck.

And that eventually evolved to realizing that there's a lot of people at home who don't get to experience these places. And I wanted to bring them back something meaningful. And in order for me to bring back something meaningful, the images had to be meaningful to me and they just weren't. And so I was going to the tropics and I was going to places that truly didn't mean that much. And so I eventually set my sights on places that were colder, harder to get to, required more patience and effort and energy and a lot of things that ultimately the photographs really meant something when you're on a beach in Iceland and it's, you know, negative 20 and you're documenting somebody, you know, a human being, you know,

interacting with nature in such an amazing way. To me, the photograph started to mean something. And so I kind of coined this term that I ended up using in the TED Talk, which was like I wanted to go against on a crusade against the mundane. Because my job for as dreamy as it is in any career path, as dreamy as it may seem, doesn't matter what they tell you, it can become at risk of becoming mundane. And I think that what I've realized is that the requirement, the barrier of entry for that is you need to have personal growth within that career path. And that's what I think I've constantly tried to do over these years is develop personal growth within my career path. It's not always about suffering. I mean, that would be such a masochistic way to look at it. It's honestly about wanting to foster

more meaningful experiences. And if I'm being transparent, like there's an element of suffering. And I think suffering, the fact that you're giving more of yourself for something, you're giving something of yourself that's more meaningful than just clicking the shutter and in doing so um the experience it it it leaves something more with you you know we actually remember those experiences more they're more visceral audible you know smell sight sound everything becomes more ingrained in the psyche so that's important to me how do you answer this this seemingly simple question what does physical questions there are no simple questions yeah yeah so what does physical suffering offer you and in the context of why i want to ask this is because suffering is a loaded word and many people are confused by it because suffering

can be an enduring suffering of psychological suffering and then there's momentary suffering you know like discrete moments of suffering and there's purpose and accidental almost and then there's trauma and then there's physical suffering And then there's physical suffering. Again, there's acute and there's chronic. So what does the moderately time bound suffering offer you? Because you're choosing it. There's a privilege here that I'm going to go choose suffering. And so that's all the context behind this seemingly simple question. Like, what does physical suffering do for you? Yeah, it's actually very simple. It's a requirement for me to feel more connected to the work that I'm creating, right? And as I said before, I actually studied,

there was a work of an Australian psychologist that I studied when I was preparing for this TED talk because I was trying to understand for myself why does suffering force us into the instant? And as I mentioned prior, about 20 minutes ago or whatever I said, I've always had a hard time appreciating the here and now. I'm always looking ahead. I'm always kind of looking behind. I'm always thinking about that next thing that, you know, especially nowadays, I've got my kids and the family and the wife and the, you know, the taxes, blah, blah. So when I when I choose to do something, I need it to thrust me into the moment, I need to feel my feet planted. I mean, again, this is probably because I'm a lower evolved human being. I'm sure that, you know, there are there are many of us who can maybe just do that immediately. But when I'm sure that, you know, there are, there are many of us who can maybe just do that immediately, but when I'm creating artwork, when I'm creating something beautiful or a story or a narrative, I,

I want to feel like I'm in that moment. And that's oftentimes what suffering does for us. And I, I really truly don't enjoy that word. I think that it's important to acknowledge that the suffering I'm talking about is a privileged suffering. You're allowing yourself to feel it. You put yourself there. Nobody forced you to climb Mount Everest. To tell stories that are just purely about the human struggle, it misses the point. There's so much more that drives us to do these things. There's so much more that calls upon us when we're in those moments. And I think for me, yes, it's a privilege. I acknowledge that I'm choosing to be there

because I also think, and I know that to not bring to the table all of my knowledge, my understanding, my skill sets, my awareness is almost to relegate my experience to something more simple, to something more mundane. And I don't want the mundane. This is the thing about suffering is that for a long time, we use our external to call on our internal.

And it's good. You know, you see it in sport, traditional stick and ball sport all the time. It's like at the end of a grueling workout is when you start to learn something about yourself okay and then so you're saying listen when i plant myself in the arctic or alaska you had a cover shot in surfing magazine um where one of my friends was on that trip with you we can talk about in a minute alex gray yeah where it was a beautiful cover shot like like frontier type cover shot of surfing yeah it was that was awesome and so um there's something about going to those places where you learn about yourself great okay i just want to add to the conversation here that you can do that sitting on a cushion too.

True. Right. You can do that. Like some of the great writers, they do that because they're, it's a forcing function to write something that is truthful. So writing is one conversations with people of wisdom. If you're lucky enough to know someone and then mindfulness.

And so out of those three, I know you're taking pictures is your main craft but and then you go into environments that call on you right that require you to dig and use your internal resources to do something in your language that matters do you do you have a mindfulness practice a writing practice or do you have a mindfulness practice, a writing practice, or do you have a tribe that you call on of wisdom? I think for me, conversation is really, it's because I, from what I understand, kind of what we're getting to is like those experiences in the field, they sort of, they don't really serve us unless we take the time to actually think through them, to process them, to digest

them. It reminds me of a talk from the great travel writer, Pico Ayer, who kind of talks, touches on this. Like all of his greatest experiences were sort of really manifest in his bedroom while he was thinking through them, meditating on them. I fully feel like for me, I place so much emphasis on human interaction, storytelling, whether that's in which those experiences are able to come full circle because to not sit and fully process them and leave them all in the field or leave them all in the images, it doesn't do them a full, a full service. So I guess to say that truly life's greatest mysteries have evolved for me by just making sure that I think through them. You know, I mean, I find those moments come to me in the oddest of places. It's not like I have to be sitting on my cushion in my bedroom, staring at a picture of Buddha to do that.

It can be on a plane. It can be in a conversation with somebody where there's an emotional connection. It can be while listening to a podcast where you're actually hearing somebody say what you want to articulate, but you haven't found the words to. Sometimes it can be in a jail cell in Russia. I've also found a lot of mindfulness in those situations as well. Yeah, my jail cell experiences in Russia, those were pretty intense too. You should really spend time there.

It's a great place to align all your chakras. Come on. Tell me that story. I have no idea about this part of your life. I was young. I was 21, 22 maybe. And ultimately, it's the byproduct of, as you can tell, somebody who's really passionate about what they do. And I felt like I had cracked the code. I figured out what I wanted to do with my, with my career, with my life. As I said, I was in the heyday of, of, of my, um, so I was, no, I was maybe about 24, 24, 25. Um, I was in the heyday of kind of like shooting surfing and going to all these places. And my editors were sending me to Bali and India and awesome locations, but places that weren't fulfilling me personally. And so I set my sights, as I said, on colder locations and they required a lot of research, a lot of effort,

a lot of planning. But, and I say that retrospectively because in the beginning, I was like, yeah, yeah, I'm just going to go there. I found a contact online. I'm going to, I'm going to go to this place. This is going to be awesome. We're going to find waves. It's going to be a great story. And I went to Vladivostok, Russia. I got there and I personally dealt with all the visa entry visas for all the people on our team, the athletes, the writer, yada, yada, yada. We get there and the customs. It's honestly, it's a long story that would take this entire podcast, but I'll just summarize this for you that there was a very nonverbal communication at the border at customs where I looked at her and she looked at me and I knew right away that no amount of like boyish smile was going to get me through this,

this gate, regardless of the fact that every other person with us just went through effortlessly. And she pointed at my visa and I was like, yep, that's my visa went through effortlessly. And she pointed at my visa and I was like, yep, that's my visa. We're good. And she's like, it's the wrong entry date. It was two days late or two days early. And so I knew in that moment that it was not good. And so after about a six hour interrogation and they poured through every Pelican case of camera gear, looking at everything I had, wondering why this American journalist is entering the country with guys on surfboards. They've never even seen anybody riding these. It's a little suspicious in general. I was basically thrown into jail for 24 hours until I was deported to Korea.

But as I think back to that moment, I mean, I've never truly been more afraid in my life. Like it's all I can do is laugh now. But in the moment I was, I was terrified. I never had my rights stripped from me like that. I had never felt so, um, so mean, like my life was meaningless. Like, you know, I was like, I was in this, this holding cell. There was a guard at my door. I kid you not, this is going to sound just terrible. Like I'm reciting the script from a James Bond movie, but I had a guard at my door. I kid you not, this is going to sound just terrible. Like I'm reciting the script from a James Bond movie, but I had a guard at my door. He had one eye. His name was Igor. And he sat there all day. And I was, I had all my stuff with me. I was on the phone with my wife at the time. I got married at 21. So my wife losing her mind, she's freaking out. And I'm like, I'm in, I'm in jail. You know, they, they're going to deport me. I don't know what's going on. Yeah. I didn't have a lot of information. I had a

Russian fixer who tried to help me get out of it, but it seemed to only make things worse. And my hope was that they weren't going to like impound and keep all my camera gear. I mean, this was my life at this time. And I was, you know, barely hanging on with not even enough money to pay for the metal lining on my tires, my truck to go away. So it was scary. It was kind of like career ending kind of situation. I remember I had my phone, I called my editors. I'm like, I'm so sorry, this is going on, blah, blah, blah. I'll try to get back into the country to finish this thing. I'm calling my wife, she's calling the US embassy, the US embassy's like, hey, we can get you out of there if they don't feed you and they don't treat you correctly. That's the only way they can get you out of there. And so I'm like, okay, well, so I'm supposed to

just starve myself and then maybe I can get out of here. And then all of a sudden I get a knock on the door and it's Igor. And he's like, come here. And I go with leading down to this place metal metal everything it looks like it was like it was you know some kitchen industrial kitchen meant to feed like a military and i go to this big table it looked like a film set from a wes anderson movie there's just two cups and one cup is like some soup look like lentils it's not like soup in russia the other one was just cucumbers and mayonnaise. And I'm like, and Igor's like food. And I'm like, I'm going to eat every bite, bro. I'm gonna eat every single bite. No complaints. Um, because he got wind that I was

like calling the U S embassy. Um, and so I ate that food and I'll, I'll give you one piece of advice. Just don't eat food in a Russian jail cell. I spent the rest of my time hovering over the small hole in the ground, just having diarrhea. And I've been watching a lot of like Jack Bauer 24. And I kept thinking of like ways to break out of here that would be elaborate, but I eventually basically, and there's one more piece of the story I have to tell you, because I think you'll just appreciate it. It's so funny. Growing up in a small town, you go on these trips as a kid. You're reaching out to friends like, oh, anybody who's been to Russia? Anybody who knows anything?

Yada, yada, yada. One of my mom's friends was like, oh, I did a foreign exchange program there. Here's a couple of words you need to know. You need to know this. You need to know this. You need to know this. How do they thank you? How to say, oh yeah. And how to say, where's the bathroom?

That would be great. And so when I get dropped off to Igor and I'm using the bathroom, it's not flushing after I have like full on diarrhea all night. Sorry. Sure. This is exactly what you want to talk about. And then he comes. This is great. He becomes back to the door it's like five hours later i'm just like famished exhausted you know whatever been in this jail cell and and i'm like i ask him this phrase like

i'm trying to say like the bathroom isn't working you know it's like i i whatever i had been told coach you please move something like that blah blah and. And he looked at me in a way that, you don't have to speak Russian to know that the way he looked at me meant that what I was saying was not what I meant. And I asked him again, and then he like looked at me again, like really cocked his head.

And I was like, I'm going to stop saying this. And I'm just going to like curl back into a ball and like leave. And he luckily left after like some awkward pauses. And I'll just tell you this. It was only months later that I asked that same friend what that meant. And she's like, oh my God. Yeah. Apparently I never envisioned you would be thrown in the Russian jail cell and ask for an enema. But that's basically what, what I asked for. I mean like real deal. Like I was like, I was telling this guy, I'm like, I need an enema. Like, and I'm sure all he's thinking is like, what, what do you have up there? And so it was hilarious because my my wife had actually like

told her what what was going on and and apparently she was like like that that lady was just scrambling like oh my god tell him not to say the word so i got home i eventually was able to go to korea i came back into vladivostok like two later, went through the whole border fiasco, still got interrogated, was able to go into the country. It ended up being a good trip. But I felt so much anger. You know, I felt so much anger while I was in that jail cell. All I could think about was like, why me?

Like, this is ridiculous. Like, I did everything right. I blah, blah, blah. And I wanted to just like point the blame at everybody, point the blame at the Russian, you know, visa place and yada, yada, yada, the passport agency, all these things pointing the finger. And I think that in the end, I just realized that like there was nobody else to blame but myself. And if I truly wanted the magic of travel to change me, you know, we talk romantically about this, like, oh, travel changes you. It makes you a better person, blah, blah. Like I was not a better person from that experience i was a more angry person and all i recognized was if i wanted that to change me that happens before you leave your

front door it happens while you're in the midst of even dreaming up these trips you have to have enough respect for the places you want to go to. You have to have enough reverence for these places to do their due diligence, to do your research, to check your damn visa entry date and make sure that you're going to go there during the right time. And I had plenty of time to fix that clerical error, but I was too rushed. I was too focused on the end goal and I missed that and I paid for it dearly. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down.

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There's a theme there for you. Okay. First of all, what a great story. There's my father-in-law. He came to this country at the age of 16 with $20 in his pocket. And his mom had left him at an earlier age to try to come to America for a better life. And so he shares a really important perspective. And I'll pass that wisdom here, which is in an oversimplified way, either you're a tourist or a traveler. And so the romantic kind of, um, naive view of, of travel is tourism is you're going to go and you're going to eat food that has been sanitized and you're going to stay in places that are sanitized.

And there is a form of traveling that has the six star experience and the five star experience. I'm not sure that changes you. And so traveling, it sounds like you are a traveler, bar none. And so this experience is a nice emblem for the extreme of traveling. And so I love the part where you said, you know, this travel experience wasn't making me better. So can you unlock just that bit?

What is the insight there? Is that you met a hardship, that hardship, your first response was anger. Okay, great. Call that frame one. And then you said, I'm responsible for my experience. So what's the second frame? What's the unlock to get to the second frame? Yeah, you know, the unlock was honestly, I didn't have an escape route.

And I mean that by like, I didn't have this to just sift through endlessly and fill my mind with stuff. I didn't have somebody else to call. You know, I had a phone, but obviously I didn't have somebody else to call. I had a phone, but obviously I didn't have like, it's on the iPhone like today. I wasn't like on some data plan. I think that nowadays for me, I don't know if I would have came to that same conclusion now. And I think the reason being is because it's easier to just distract yourself, right? In that moment, I had no exit. I had no escape plan.

I had to just sit there and ponder and think on this experience and really think down to the root of it. And so I saw my anger. I met all that. I went past that. And beyond that, I realized that, yeah, there was someone to blame or there was something to blame. And after I pointed fingers in all the directions, I think that the only one left standing was the one pointing at me. When you go past anger, what's there? When I go past anger, there's usually a little bit of resentment. Then there's usually some form of clarity, I feel like, because anger is usually... There's not sadness. There's usually some, some form of clarity. I feel like, because anger is usually, there's not sadness. There's not fear. There's not jealousy, shame.

There's relief. I feel like there, cause anger for me usually builds in a form of pressure. It tends to happen quickly and it tends to happen rather, rather fast. Right. So it's usually like there's pressure. And once that pressure releases, once I, I tend to be kind of one of those people, like once I say what I need to say, or I, whatever, it's almost like there's relief. And then that Yeah, inevitably, there's usually maybe a little bit of regret, maybe I could have, I could have more maturely handled the situation, I could have, and the regret is on myself, like I could have more maturely handled the situation, I could have been more effective, I could have been more effective.

I could have been more reverent, more respectful of this location, things like that, or in a relationship, right? Or something along those lines. But it's hard in the beginning. Like, for example, had I been in that jail cell and if I had the ear of somebody, I probably would have given them all my thoughts, you know, and gone through the exercise of just saying all the things. But there wasn't anybody.

There was nobody. And that's why it was such a transformative experience because nowadays in life, you know, there's so many people to hear our complaints. Social media, for example. People just like want to go on there and just tell everybody everything. When you have the moment to sit with it, it's kind of like in that jail cell. I wrote the letter. I put it in the drawer. I let it sit for a day, and I pulled it back out and I read it. And I was like, well, a lot of this stuff, there's a lot of falsehoods in here. I think that I have a better interpretation of why I did excitement, but I tend to, again, like you said, I'll sometimes want to like, I want to hop a little further. I don't want to take that extra step. I want to,

I want to get to that, that goal a little faster. And oftentimes I do get to that goal faster, but I suffer along the way, much like quitting college and just living out of my car for five years. There were probably easier, more joyous ways to start a career path. Not so traumatic, but I chose that path. What are you trying to sort out now? When you were 19, you wanted to go somewhere, leave comfort, see the world through the camera, and have experiences in the wild. What are you trying to sort out now I mean I think like anybody who has two kids you're trying to sort out your relationship with your own parents your own family and how it's translated or translate to how you're

raising your own your own family right so I think the biggest thing that I try to understand now is that what I was dealing with from a self-worth perspective at 19, at 20, is not something that I want to translate to my kids. The thing that I feel so incredibly driven by is the idea that I don't want to pass on some inherent fear of the unknown to my children. I want them to make decisions, to be in these situations that scare them,

that terrify them, and not kind of be forced to not live through them because I had a bad experience with them or some irrational fear that I have. Because I would say that a lot of what drove me was this desire to be accepted, to feel self-worth growing up again as a young kid in a family where everybody worked. Also, I think that as a self-professed workaholic, it's important to at a certain point acknowledge that like, yeah, it's great to a certain point of knowledge that like, yeah, it's great to be busy. It's great to work. But at a certain point, you're saying yes to everything because it's all you know. And when work becomes sort of this badge of honor or all you really know how to do, and you don't know how to say no, it's really dangerous. And I think that as a parent, like that's, that's what I'm working through now. I'm working through accepting the fact that like,

it's easy for me to say yes to work because that's what I'm good at. That's what I've done. That's where I feel the most appreciated. That's where all the paths in the back come, the validation, where the validation doesn't come is when you're working in a more selfless capacity, raising, raising your kids or trying to work on a business. And when I tend to do really well out in nature, I tend to not hold a lot of fear there where I hold more fear is trying to deal with interpersonal relationships because that was the burner that I turned all the way off. So, so it's, it's, it's, it's funny, you know,

it's like, that's, that's kind of what the last five years has been more focused on. You're speaking to me, and I think that you're probably speaking to many in our community. And there's an idea that we've paid a lot of attention to, which is just like this big sign

in front of the extraordinaries. And the sign is early on, I thought I needed to do more to be more. I need to do the extraordinary to be and feel extraordinary. And that sign is now like lost a couple bolts and is flipped upside down. And it's like, and so people are reading it upside down now the extraordinaries and saying no that's right i need to be more

and let the doing flow from there i need to be more present be more creative be more connected yeah be more authentic be more skilled and then let the doing flow from that place. And so does that seem like it is true for you? And please, like, you know, as an applied scientist, I'm not trying to back It's a skill set that I wish I could have applied in the beginning. But more empowered by, I feel equally as empowered. I'm not going to say more because that would be, that would mean that I've like fully dealt with some of these issues. But the truth of the matter is I feel more empowered knowing that like, I can be a good friend. I can be a good son. I can be a good husband and a good boss and a good mentor to others. And I can do that simply by just seeing a person, you know, listening to them, acknowledging what they're going through. And it's hard. I mean, this is probably the hardest thing I've ever had to learn because in the past, I've just been like, well, if I create something good for you,

you'll love me and you'll love me by hiring me or paying me or whatever it is, having me on your podcast. And I think those things are important. The sacrifices I've been willing to make for work have shown people what I'm willing to endure for what I care about for my craft. Yet, I don't want that to define me. And that's the scariest thing is like, you get to a certain point in your career where those things kind of start to define you. And if you don't ever, if you don't ever kind of grow beyond that, you get stuck in a really scary place. And I guess the antidote for me has been, besides self-reflection, therapy, things like that, has been to put the camera down and start telling stories in a different way. Start using my voice. Start using my words, writing. Start directing films.

Because it's so easy, you know, if you're a painter and it's like you have the paintbrush and this represents you and this is your the camera for me was my way of filtering a complicated world and all of a sudden I put the camera down and I'm like trembling I'm this really well-traveled person who's seen stuff that many people should never see and or experience beauty beyond explanation yet there was a moment in my life where I'm like why is it hard for me to just be here without the camera almost like this was my barrier of safety and so putting that down starting to articulate these experiences starting to say what they meant to me what I felt and or just being there without the purpose of shooting is has been really um healing and it's helped me come full circle back

to your point of what you were saying earlier like the self-reflection can happen on a on a couch in your office right so you use your camera as a shield to vulnerability yeah yeah I mean I didn't know it at the time but I definitely did. And so scale of one to 10, just for kind of a reference point, 10 being, no, I know how to be vulnerable. I am skilled at vulnerability and one being, you know, the exact opposite. Where do you rate yourself now? I think I'm about an eight on the vulnerability scale. And I'm about a eight on the vulnerability scale. And I'm about a, you know, I think in the beginning of my life, or beginning of my life,

I'd say at the beginning of my career, I was probably about a two or three. And when you are expressing, because vulnerability requires action, you know, it starts with a state. It starts actually go even further upstream. It starts with a value proposition and then a commitment to that value. And then the courage to be about it, like there's a downstream effect, right? And then, and so there's courage involved with vulnerability, but you have to value it first to be it. And then, so what do you do when you're in those moments where you could be vulnerable or you could choose words that

distance yourself from the intimacy? And let me give you an example really quickly is, can you tell me a time when you were scared out of your mind well you know those times when you see what i just did as opposed to okay my heart was pounding i felt like i i was an absolute disaster i my eyes were swelling i was about to cry and okay so that so I went from the pejorative to the intimate and then more next level down with intimacy is, you, take you like, and, and pull you in to the den or to shred you and leave you at the, you know, at the, at the gate. So, or not the gate, but at the opening. So I say that, can you talk through, how do you do it? How do you practice vulnerability? Yeah, I think that it started with conversations with my wife. I think that I would attribute so much of my willingness to be more raw, more real with her

and working through, I had to work through a couple of very like critical things in my life, which is that all the relationships I had with men in my life i was projecting upon them the fact that i wanted their acceptance because i didn't grow up with a dad so i that and i'm and i know i'm kind of jumping away from no wait wait did you just practice did you just practice vulnerability right now i hope was that what but did you make a conscious decision to take it into the specific emotional, intimate? Did you make a conscious decision right there or was that really natural for you? That was really natural for me. But it doesn't feel good to say.

Where did you feel it? I guess my reference for vulnerability always comes from like how I feel in the moment. And if I know something feels uncomfortable to say, and if I'm slightly scared to say it, then I know that I'm speaking from a place of my truth or a place of my honesty. And I tend to be like a highly emotional person. This is why I have a lot of the fire, a lot of the, you know, the volcano inside. And I've learned to try to see that place as a place of power and not weakness.

And I think that what this gets back to is that I really, I like connecting with people. I used to be scared of that, but I like connecting with people and I really like understanding people. And I genuinely want, even for selfish reasons, to connect with people so that I can better understand myself. And I think that what I've learned over the last couple of years is that in sharing the deeper and more intimate parts of oneself, I can then foster more deep and intimate relationships. And that sounds like

schoolyard relationship stuff, but, but this is, this is sadly what you get when you're talking to like a 35 year old workaholic, you know? So this is, this has been my journey to kind of understand that. And I, and I feel like I've had to like start at the beginning to understand it and how certain relationships in my life manifest in the way that they did, how some of them kind of. And I had to like go through each one, kind of go through each one that was a failure or was success or was it. And look at what happened, why it happened the way it happened and look at how I treat relationships now. But I think, yeah, to get back to your point, when I'm trying to engage with somebody emotionally, I also, I think that the thing that holds me back is I never want to use emotion as a tool to try to, I like to use it as a tool to disarm people. Cause I, cause I think in some way people have a perception of, um, of, of successful people, highly successful people, I guess, as somebody who's not willing to be that emotional,

not willing to be that straightforward, not willing to be that, that honest. And I, and I think that I never want that to come across like, like a competition, you know, because I've met some people in my life who I'm like, huh, they're really laying a lot on me here. And I want to connect with them, but I'm not sure if I'm feeling that. So I, it takes me a minute to still warm up. So I think that I, I progress in that, in that field of, of emotional maturity and or connectivity where I feel the comfort. Like, I don't feel like I'm going to get pulled into the lion's den, ripped apart. And then I feel like it allows me to open up more.

I really appreciate the delicateness of the words and how you choose your words. To me, it's apparent that you understand from an embodied live experience of, you know, what it means to be true and honest and the courage required to be vulnerable. And so it is what we ask. You and I both work with the same folks, the best in the world at what they do. And obviously different skills and different crafts, you know,

you are capturing them and I'm working from there inside out, you know, and so it's not lost on me the work you've done. So you kind of threw in there that you've of it as like listening or're listening to your own body what it needs you're giving it what it needs and sometimes that doesn't always mean to to stay in an engaged flex state sometimes it means like giving yourself the opportunity to heal something i've never been good about that right so trying to listen you know self-therapy and then also actually going to a therapist and from a relationship standpoint, that's been really helpful from a personal standpoint. That's been really helpful from a psychedelic standpoint. That's been really helpful as well. And it's yeah, it's been a really eye-opening experience and it comes with a lot of pulling off bandages, you know, and,

and kind of like sort of letting those, those wounds kind of fester for a minute. That's the hardest part when you're like, wow, I really have a consciousness of how much I hurt this person, how much I hurt myself, how much I didn't allow. I wasn't able to see something that was right in front of me the whole time. And it's, I think nowadays it's like life is therapy or therapy to others, meaning that I want to be a better listener, be a better student of, and it's a beautiful thing because I've been married for 15 years. So, so lucky to have found someone so young, but like our relationship would have never survived without, without therapy. And what's so odd is like, not odd, but what's so interesting is you hear people talking about how, you know, the relationship only seems to get better.

And I can truly acknowledge that like, I love my wife now more than I ever did because I didn't, because I literally didn't know how to love someone at that early stage. So, and also my career, like what I do for a living, the gift that I can maybe offer. I'm more confident about saying that it is even a gift because in the past, all I attributed what I did to was work and purely like putting food on the table, as opposed to now it being more of, of a calling of something more spiritual, of something more important. Do you have a spiritual framework that you're connected? It oscillates for sure, you know, within the place that I'm in or where I'm at or who I'm with as well. I really like to like be a student of that and kind of learn more.

Like that's probably the one space that I just am always working to kind of understand and learn more. But it's been it's ingrained in me, you know, from a young age, growing up from a religious background and whatnot as well. So does that mean like like, is there a specific religion? And I asked about spiritual framework, but is there, is it, did you just answer it in the way that like there's a religion or set of rules and practices that I've had? I've had, I've, yeah, I've been, I've been, um, I've been religious since I was about eight years old. Um, I, I part of the, uh, the church of Jesus Christ. So I, I believe about eight years old. I, I, part of the, the church of Jesus Christ. So I, I believe in Christ and Christianity and, and, but I would say with that, I just don't want

to relegate it to like, this is my religion. These are my rules. Because I feel like in my mind and in my experience, religion is such a bigger thing than a book in a building. To relegate it to that would be such a poor use of, I think, the practices. So it really does. It oscillates between kind of, I think, how and what, you know, we all deem spirituality and how I can in some capacity interpret that for each person, you know? So let me ask a spiritually related question. Yeah. So there's two parts. What happens once your body dies? And what is your purpose as a person right now on the planet? Purpose would be to, I believe, find joy and to share joy.

Man is, but he might have joy. That is what I believe. But also at the same time, my goal is to become more like my father in heaven, right? So a more perfected version of myself. And perfect does not mean without sin. Perfect does not mean perfect. Perfect actually means whole. It means complete.

That's the translation. So I'm striving to become a more complete version of myself so that I can better serve other people. I think that's honestly what it all comes down to is like service. Is it the root of any religion that I subscribe to? Any religion that I really listen to is service is where it's at. So in order to serve others, you have to first be able to serve yourself and feel complete enough to offer something. something. And so I've, that's what I'm striving for. And in the midst of that, if it's not bringing you joy, why, why are you doing it? Right. Which is odd.

Or suffering. Right. It's funny. And then, and then what happens after we die? I believe that we absolutely get a chance to meet our creator. We get a chance to see the divine plan. We get a chance to be with our loved ones. I feel like there's, there's for sure a life after this. I feel like it doesn't, I, you know, this might sound odd, but it doesn't really like make and change the way I,

I feel like I want to live my life right now. Like it doesn't. And this isn't, maybe this might be an odd thing, but I think so many people, sometimes they think, oh, well, yeah, you go to church, you do these things, you pay things like tithing because you want to secure your place, you know, beyond this life. When really it's like, no, those things just bring me joy. Like they actually make me happy. Like I don't, I don't subscribe to a religion because I feel like it, it's meant to like necessarily just serve me. I subscribe to it because I know that it helps other people. And that when I step into church, the few moments that

I get a chance to go, because I'm usually traveling or busy, I think about what I can do for somebody else. I think about somebody else that's in that building that's suffering or struggling. I mean, you know, church should be a, not a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners, right? So I think of who my experience as a human being on this earth and the privilege I've been given could potentially help somebody else with what they're going through and lift them up because that that in the end of it that's that's what's important okay I'm so glad I asked okay it um you've done a lot yeah you've done a lot of work on the inside and let me kind of flip it juxtaposed to the church of social media yeah we used to we used to spend you know let's call it a 50 minute prayer you know once a day prayer before meals and let's i'm being a very

kind of you know glib view of the the christian faith and then an hour you know in on sundays okay we spend way more time now on social media and your business yeah your business is dependent on it so like what is your relationship with social media like and yeah i would i would say that i would say that luckily, my business isn't dependent on it. It's greatly benefited by it. But I've been my the main pillar of income that we subscribe to is commercial work for clients like like an Apple or Toyota or whomever. It's a lot of what we shoot. And over the years, that's really sustained us coming from the editorial world, working for magazines and then transitioning to commercial photography.

And nowadays, commercial photography and directing and whatnot. That being said, I will absolutely say that the word gets spread, but a good word of social media gets spread via that tool, that marketing platform. And I, and I'm all in, I love it. I see what you, I see what you did there. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I mean, I love it. I see what you did there. Yeah, yeah. And it's funny, because I truly feel like it is the ultimate example of how when something is used for good,

it can bring good. When something is used for bad, it can bring bad. And I'll be the first one to raise my hand and say I spend way too much time in that space daily. I can't stand it. Luckily, I also get outside a lot. But I think that what I've had to do in the last five years, I've had to kind of break apart everything in my career and in my life and think about why am I doing what I'm doing. I got onto social media a couple of years after it started. I was always a little bit of a late adopter. I got into it because at first when I was traveling, there were these stories that weren't being told, experiences that I was having, going to Russia, for example.

That didn't end up in the magazine. So I wrote about it on a blog. I wrote about it in Blogspot. And then all of a sudden that transitioned to having maybe something a little more immersive, like a Facebook where it would go to multiple. And then all of a sudden that transition to having maybe something a little more immersive, like a Facebook, where it would go to multiple. And then all of a sudden Instagram came out. But from the beginning, the objective was I had people at home I cared about who cared about what I was experiencing. And I wanted to have a place that was permanent that I could share that.

And that was why I started. It was sharing stories with my mom, my dad, people in my community. Prior to social media, I'd come home and do slideshows for them when I'd get back from a trip to Tahiti or wherever. I placed so much emphasis on going out and doing film screenings and going out and doing slideshows because I enjoy connecting with people. So to me, whenever I've taught social media classes on a global scale or for Fortune 500, I always just tell people the same thing. All this is the glorified communication platform. It's a glorified texting app. And if you like communicating with people, you will often find success in those platforms. If you don't, then it's going to be more challenging

for you. And obviously, you can control the tonality of where you want those conversations to go. And it's tough. It's a tough world to manage. It affects me mentally, emotionally, physically. But I'd be lying if I didn't say that some of the greatest people I've ever met, the most real, honest, emotional relationships I've ever had have come from that platform. So I'm indebted to it. I'm truly indebted to it. The people I work with, people that work in my studio, people I travel with, you know, day in, day out, spend nights in tents and, you know, cooking over campfires and ski touring and the mouth. Like these are people that I've met on these platforms. Yes. I still have friends, people that I grew up with, but I tend to navigate towards groups where we share like-mindedness.

And so I think that just sorry to kind of, I just wanted to set the stage in some way as to like how my relationship with it is now and where it's hopefully going in the future. And it, for many people, it is a social comparison medium, right? And so it's the interpersonal business of comparison to others. And so as a creative, as a creator, how do you navigate the comparison of what other people are doing and the potential fear of what they might think

about your work. Because learning from you right now, I imagine if you're orientating your life towards truth and honesty, and you know, I'm conjuring my aunt right now who's an artist, you know, canvas artist. And she's like, Mike, listen, if I need money, when I was coming up, when I needed money, I would just paint a lighthouse. I don't know why people buy lighthouses. And so that was like the full-on safe bet, but nothing true to her craft. Okay. Yeah. So we've got this medium comparison.

How do you manage other people's opinions as a creative through this world of social technology that we're in right now? Absolutely. It's a great question. I mean, you nailed it on the head. I think that to me, I want to flip that on its head just a little bit. And I want to say that you and I could go to the same vantage point in Yosemite, take the same picture, it's a beautiful photograph. Nothing wrong with it. People have shot it millions and millions of times. What might make your image or my image more successful? I guess you could say in terms of success, meaning more interactions, interactions, meaning more time spent by people because time is the only currency that matters in social media. That's all it is. Likes. None of that matters. It's about how much time did somebody spend?

This is why comments and mostly negative comments, they propel things to the top. It's not some funky algorithm. It's time. People spend more time. They spend more time defending themselves than anything else. But back to my point here, you and I could go shoot the same photograph. What I might be willing to say about that photograph, a part of me personally, what I might be able to describe a part of that photograph. Maybe I don't describe what people can already see in the image. If someone like you or somebody else else you would never do this but if you just said the mountains are calling and i must go you know you're you're gonna you're gonna lose the opportunity to and a very important principle which is that this is the place you make your

own quotes this is the place where you say what's on your heart this is the place where you you tell people what the experience was like of creating this. You created it. And just because you created something that somebody else created, does that make it any less important? No, you stood there. The wind hit the back of your neck. Your hands froze.

Your feet got cold. You ran out of food. Your headlamp turned off. You created something. So tell me what that was like. And this is what I've tried to practice. This is my mindfulness practice is like, I want to give people a sense of that. I want to tell people what that was like. And I try to do that through social media or films or

whatever. But the point being is that I'm less concerned about creating something that somebody else has already done. I kind of want to almost do it so that I can then have the experience of sharing what that place means to me. I almost think that's a better practice because at a certain point, everything's been photographed. Everything's been done. I'm not a denier of the fact that the world has has been photographed 10 times over yet there are still so many untouched beautiful places and i seek after those places i'm a student of those places i yearn for them but i also i really love just the idea of art as joyful experimentation and trying to get comfortable sharing what those experiences meant to me, no matter how, you know, seemingly, I guess, seen repetitively they are, does it affect, has social media affected what I've shot in the past?

At times, for sure, I've been susceptible to that, trying to, you know, go after something that I think might just be like, like your aunt said, like the easy payday. That's like the best example ever. But at the same time, I still always want to, I feel like where I feel the most, like, I guess you could say worthless or meaningless is when I do create something that I have nothing to share. That is the big marker for me that I did something wrong or the, in my experience, I didn't create something that was truly worth the effort and the energy. You, when you speak this way, you create space for me to want to share more,

to want to put words to the experience behind the image. And so what, what a gift, like you've created more space and with that space, you know, to, to add to the experience for others. And I love how you tied that back to joy. Really cool, man. Okay, so how do you practice? Like, how do you sustain the practice of coming from this place? Because it's rare. So what do you do? You know, what do you sustain the practice of coming from this place? Because it's rare. So what do you do? You know, what do you do?

I reflect, you know, I reflect, you know, you could call it meditation, but sometimes meditation for me is like putting in music on a plane that's like a song that really inspires me. You know, you have that music that just conjures up emotion, you know, and I just, I try to oftentimes, like, for example, if I was going to share something on social media, usually the process is I go somewhere, I shoot it. I don't tend to share it immediately because my feelings haven't been processed yet. And I'll be driving somewhere or flying somewhere or sitting on my bed and I'll have music in and I'll just start, you know, usually on my phone in a notes folder, I'll start, I'll write down like what I felt. And usually the, that will be the beginnings of like a caption or something I want to share. And what I try to do is I try to find an image that

correctly portrays that feeling. And this is kind of, and I'm only saying this because I've done the adverse, which is like find something, force yourself to say something about it and then put it out into the world and hope for success. Cause I, cause I guess the thing is, is that when I do it this way, I feel like it's a win no matter what. It doesn't matter if one person sees it or one person likes it, whatever. It's a win because I was vulnerable. Because vulnerability is the key of everything. And that's all I care about now.

If I was vulnerable and I wrote something that kind of felt a little flowery or a little personal or a little whatever, that's a win because I gave something of myself to the world. And if you're not giving something of yourself to the world, you're holding it in. And that eventually creates a really, really firm wall that is hard to lower. And so I guess that's what I look for. And how do I sustain that more of like a real time place? I think that it's critical that when I'm not working, when I don't have a camera, I'm not on a shoot, I'm filling up my

time with the things that matter to me. The things I love riding my bike, I'm going to yoga practice, which I've done for years. I'm, you know, building dirt jumps in my backyard, I'm going skiing, or I'm with my family, I'm showing my kids something new. I'm giving time to my wife for her to learn something new or experiencing something new. That's a really critical thing in our relationship. It's like making sure that both of us on more of like a monthly, weekly, yearly basis are learning something new. Because patternization is like, it's the mind killer, the scariest thing to me. You know, again, if I just continually went to the same countries over and over and over, even if they were cold and freezing at a certain point, that becomes mundane.

So I think I'm constantly still fighting against the mundane. Chris, like what a breath of fresh air, your honesty and the, just what a breath of fresh air in this conversation. So listen, I want to honor your time and say, thank you. I hope we get to meet in person at some point. I'd really appreciate that. I got to say like, it's, it's a different feeling talking to you. You know, I've done a lot of podcasts and it's a really great experience. You're so masterful in your approach. I love going onto a podcast where I'm like almost a little bit nervous. I'm like, man, where's this one going to go? And I appreciate just the tact and that you tend to balance tough subjects.

You know, it really makes it fun. So I appreciate that. Hey, brother. That's subjects. You know, it really, really makes it fun. So I appreciate that. Hey, brother, that's awesome. You went there. And so, you know, I was following. Would you be okay if I played back my first pass of you? Would you be interested in that? Please.

Yeah, for sure. Okay. Yeah. So wave me off if you're like, no, you know, like that part is definitely wrong. But so, so when I, my experience of after listening to you is that you, um, you've got an interesting balance between introversion and extroversion. And I would imagine in your younger years, you donned the extroverted way, but you were actually by default, more introverted as a processor. You feel from the inside and choose to share those now.

And that was a skill that you've developed. You're definitely open to experiences. You're highly conscientious. You are a lover of life, a bit neurotic. You know, you come from an anxious place expressed through anger. There's an agreeableness to you that probably drives you nuts at some time because it's always pushed up against fighting for the truth. But your nature to want to fit in and be in, you'll agree. You'll say yes, you'll compromise relationships and you'll compromise promises that you've

made to others for the adventure to go for it, which is probably the core spot in your relationship with your wife and your kids is that you say yes to the other, as opposed to yes to the family that has caused you great drama. You're now snapped back into like at some place in your life, you're like, no, no, no. That was the young version of me. The 2.0 version is maturing in a way. I think that you're able to have this balance between your attention can go wide. You can drill into the details, but you don't get lost. You don't rabbit hole so deeply that you lose yourself in narrow attention.

I think you've got this nice ability to go broad and narrow, broad and narrow. You've got an interpersonal style that people will really like being around you. You're more positive than negative. I think at an earlier part, you were probably more critical of yourself and your work. And that too has matured. I don't know if you've extinguished that criticalness. I didn't get to that yet with you, but- Still in there somewhere. Still in there. Yeah. And so, yeah, I think that you also have a nice balance between going with the flow and

schedule. You're probably error on the side of no schedule as a preference, but you've come to learn how to be scheduled. But that is a little bit of a hanging chat for me. But overall, I don't know what do you think i love that man i i i really i have i these these are the things like the building blocks of what i i really look for to like try to analyze myself in some way because so much of what you're saying is like spot-on truth and so much of what you're saying i'm like man i gotta i gotta sit with that because there's it's it's still true but it's also

like one of the things where i'm like that is very very um it was very very good analysis and i love it which part which part are you hanging on that you're like uh no like yeah the agreeableness because my wife would be like, yeah, Chris is nothing, nothing, but, you know, unagreeable or whatever. Um, but I, I really enjoyed that the wide and you know, the, the, the narrow and the wide, cause I, cause I try to, I've trained myself to try to look at everything from that perspective and the 30,000 foot view and the really, really acute view. And I noticed that being, being neurotic, you know, caring about the 30,000 foot view, and the really, really acute view. And I noticed that being, being neurotic, you know, caring about the details, if I get too hung up, sometimes,

it can ruin the entirety of an experience. And it's hard for me, it's, it's hard for me to move past little things, sometimes some, a word that kind of like annoys me or something that somebody might, you know, say, sometimes it's hard for me to move past that I've gotten better word that kind of like annoys me or something that somebody might say, sometimes it's hard for me to move past that. I've gotten better at that kind of empathizing. Empathy has become like a big theme in the last two years. And I think the more I've learned to empathize and realize that empathizing with somebody doesn't always mean agreeing with them, it's really helped me to be a better communicator, be a better listener, lead with less kind of emotion, anger, but yeah, it's all those things. Okay. That's awesome. Yeah. Cool, man. All right. Can you pass on one gem that, you know, that you, to folks listening, they're like, listen, I wish that I, this has been so valuable to me. It could be a book, a piece of practice. It could be a philosophy. It could be a phrase. It could be a song, like something that you're like, this has just been meaningful. I want to pass it on.

Two things. Sorry. The book Essentialism by Greg McKeown was an incredible read, something that changed my life in my early 30s. And, you know, I'm kind of in my 30s right now. But when I was 30, it changed my life. I wish I would have read it earlier. It's been an incredible book. It's really taught me to dial in what it is I want, and say yes to that more. And then I think that in terms of a phrase, it's simple. I want the world to tell better stories. And if there's one kind of phrase that helps to direct that, it's that don't describe to people what they can already see. Tell people what it felt like to be there. You are the author of this story. So give me your experience. And if you can make it more visceral, you can tell me about the emotions around it. That's going to really do the world a service to hopefully allow us to experience one another, to put in each other's shoes.

And I think for anybody that aspires to create art or just aspires to live in a creative way, I would really, really apply this practice. I love them both. Chris, thank you for your time, your wisdom. Thank your family for allowing us to spend the time with you. So I appreciate it. Yeah, cheers. All right.

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