Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Rich Roll: Change

Episode Date: January 20, 2016

If you've ever thought, “If I would have known then, what I know now, I’d shift gears in a heartbeat” — or — If you've ever wanted to shift gears and blaze a new path, but quickly stepped on the excitement by saying," It's just too late now, I've got too many responsibilities” -- or — if you've ever wanted to make a radical shift in your business, but were afraid of what others might think -- you're going to flat out love Rich, and I hope this conversation. Rich set out to figure out his place in the world, and ultra-endurance sport was a way for him to do just that. In this episode: -Using sport as a means to discover true purpose -How work ethic helped bridge the talent gap -The effect of growing up in an achievement oriented household -Coping with social awkwardness and low self-esteem -Fighting an addiction to alcohol & drugs -Living a double life -Becoming vulnerable -Quitting a corporate job and listening to the voices inside -Pushing boundaries -Righteousness and its relation to mastery -Finding one's authentic self -Being in touch with one's character defects -Seeing a journey through_________________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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let's call it inner dialogue that get in the way of the vision setting or the feeling that comes from the spark inside of you about what could be when you dream about how you'd like to experience life. Or if you've ever wanted to, you know, shift your business course, but afraid of what others might think if you're running a division or an entrepreneur, you know, those are some of the trappings that get in the way of us being able to pursue our best is that in the quiet recesses of our mind's creativity, we explore what's possible, but then somehow we downgrade what is possible because of the inner dialogue that we have with ourselves. And, you know, if, and that even goes

the other direction, like if you've thought about habits that you have that are debilitating your freedom, like if you're drinking too much or eating the wrong way or not sleeping enough or doing something that is getting in the way of you being able to be all of who you want to be. I think you're going to flat out love this conversation. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success. And building those relationships, it takes more than effort. It takes a real caring about your people. It takes the right tools, the right information at the right time. And that's where LinkedIn Sales Navigator can come in.

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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 them 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.

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listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. And I was fortunate enough to sit down with Rich Roll. And many of you know who Rich is, but in essence, he's just a living beacon for change. And he's a living beacon for health. And at one time, he was voted as the fittest man in the world or one of the fittest men

in the world by Men's Fitness Magazine. He's a father of four. He's a husband. He came flying out of the gates early in his career path, if you will, by swimming for Stanford. And so let alone getting into Stanford, then let alone swimming for Stanford, they're exceptional. And I think, so if you think the age where somebody is accepted into one of the premier schools in the world, that would, at that point in time, you know, the question that I would have is, was he or she on the path of mastery? And I asked him that because certainly that's a pinnacle type experience and his answer I think is really important to pay attention to.

And then after Stanford, he went and got his law degree at Cornell. And likely if he would have never come to explore this new version of himself, his potential would never have been revealed if he stayed the course of law. And as a professional now, he's an accomplished vegan ultra endurance athlete. And we could drop the word vegan and say he's, and the sentence still holds true, is that he's an accomplished ultra endurance athlete. And he does it as a vegan is probably a more accurate way of saying it. He's also number one bestselling author.

And the title of his book is Finding Ultra. And the subtitle is Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World's Fittest Men and Discovering Myself. It's really cool. It's very fitting, obviously, for the conversations that we're having on this podcast. And then he created something called the Epic Five Challenge. And when he describes it in the podcast, I think you'll just go, wow, that's unbelievable. But it's completing five Ironman distance triathlons on five islands in Hawaii and doing

it under a week, five days. And so he actually set out to do five, five and five, but he did it over the course of six days. Rich also was a top finisher in 2008 and 2009 in ultra world championships in Hawaii. And people consider that to be one of the just the most grueling endurance races on on the planet then we talk a little bit about that um what goes into that and how he approaches that and you know he came to ultra late in life and ultra endurance and ultra events late in life only after he was sick and tired of just being sick and tired and he was working to figure out who he was sick and tired of just being sick and tired. And he was working to figure out who he was and his place in the world. And he used sport to do that as so many people do. They use their performance aspects, whether it's sport or the arts or creativity or whatever it is that they

do to figure out their place in life. And I love that. And at the same time, there's a cost to that, which is if we become what we do, then we're who we are is at risk when we go to challenge or test. And so that's the trap that he has not fallen into. And he's undone that by going deeper. And it's, it's awesome. This conversation is, um, it was just fun for me. So, um, we talk about answering the questions, you know, are you human and having a spiritual experience or are you, um, or vice versa? Are you spiritual having a human experience? And we talk about the risk of vulnerability in the process of developing courage. And yes, courage is a skill. Um, it can be developed. And the way that we develop courage is by doing things that is very important, it's also important to understand the other side of grit.

And, you know, grit can be mixed with some naive optimism can be something that really keeps people stuck. And we talk about grit for him as well, which is, you know, he would he knew how to work hard. That's how he got into Stanford. He knew how to work hard. That's how he swam, you know, really well. He knew how to work hard at partying. He knew how to work hard and stay the course. But if he was going to stay the course, it was likely he was not going to be able to pursue who he was at his center and to explore all the boundaries that were, um, that he needed to push to be able to really be on the path of mastery and shift what's possible for other people. And that's, I mean, that last statement is no statement to be left to be pithy by any means, like to shape what's possible for other people is an incredible gift to give the world. So, you know, I think that he sums up this concept of mastery really well by saying it's not for the weak of heart, that it's a warrior's path. And I

want to talk about this warrior journey for just a moment. I have such regard for people that are true warriors and that go to war and play a zero-sum game and that zero-sum game for a noble cause to be able to do what's right for the human race conceptually at least and you know we can get caught in this conversation about the tactics and strategies and intent of modern day war or even ancient war. But I just want to put a placeholder in the spirit of being a true warrior where athletes and combat athletes in particular that talk about being a warrior and coaches that talk about going to battle. You can go to battle within yourself.

That makes sense to me. But a game is a game and sport is as a celebration of straining and striving and learning more about who you are and the challenges if you are daring enough to face them and to do it with other people. But it's not truly a zero-sum game in the sense that if you lose war, you're likely, um, your wife or girlfriends or family members are taken and your children are, uh, the most horrible things are taken from them, life and experience. So let's just, you know, maybe put a placeholder in this idea that how grateful and wonderful it is to be us in modern times, to be able to celebrate the exploration of potential.

And these conversations, what a luxury they are. And so anyways, I don't want to digress too much on that thought. But my regard for people that sacrifice all for our freedom is high. And I don't want to just miss the opportunity to share that. And so my hope for this conversation, and it's for all of us to identify not only how world-leading thinkers and doers, what is their psychological framework, and again, that's how they see themselves and how they understand how the world works, but also identify their sturdy and robust practices that allow them to explore their potential with the hope that maybe we impact the world so much by expanding what others think is possible.

And the essence is to hope to provide all of us with ways that we can train our mind and our craft in a similar fashion to the exceptional leaders or exceptional performers, but not exactly how they do it, but the spirit behind that. And the ultimate goal is not to follow what these men and women have done, but rather to work to understand what they're searching for and to seek the same. And I hope you enjoy this conversation. Rich Roll was one of the important people in my wanting to start a podcast. And so we talk a little bit about that. So I hope you have a great time and enjoy this conversation. And thank you for all the support and everything that's been

going on surrounding these conversations to date. So enjoy the conversation with Rich Roll. Rich, thanks for coming on the show. Oh, man, my pleasure. I'm so psyched to be here. I'm having flashbacks of when we sat here. When was that? Like a year and a half ago or something like that? I think it was. And do you remember the episode on your podcast that that was, what the number was? I don't remember the number. Because I just checked recently and you're up to somewhere around 200. Yeah. I just posted 199. I think you're down around maybe in the 70s perhaps?

Yes. Oh, it was 76. Is that what it is? Yeah. I can see the image that you posted. Yeah. Okay. So that was like probably about a year and a half ago. And it was the reason.

So that experience was so rewarding for me. And I enjoyed it so much. I had done other podcasts, but I hadn't enjoyed it. It felt mechanical. And when you and I engaged in the conversation, it felt real and it felt meaningful and there was purpose to it. And I appreciated it so much that I wanted more and for me. Right. And so I felt like during that conversation, it was like this mutual win for both of us. And I wanted to create that for me and other people that I'm friends with.

Yeah. That's, that's beautiful, man. I love it. I really enjoyed talking to you, and that was a great episode. It's still one of my most popular episodes, and I'm hoping we can reprise it again soon. Yeah, 100%. But when you reached out to me, I don't know how long ago it was after that, but you're like,

oh, I'm thinking about doing a podcast. I was psyched, man, because I think this is a great medium for for you to communicate you know the work that you do and i think it could be so helpful to so many people so i was stoked and i was like whatever you need man like you know ask me any questions about gear whatever so i'm so pleased to see it up on its feet and uh and rocking out man totally appreciate the support and it was great trying to navigate like where do i get a microphone what kind of recorder do i get what's the right setup for computer or not computer and you guided me through that thing and so um and it's not easy

no it's not it's it's a weird thing because there's no barrier to entry you know it's it's and it's not that complicated but you do kind of have to set aside a day and go all right how do you do this and there are more steps than i think there should be like it's it that complicated, but you do kind of have to set aside a day and go, all right, how do you do this? And there are more steps than I think there should be. Like it's, it's, it should be a little bit simpler, I think, than it is. There's a couple of hoops you got to jump through, but once you figure it out, um, it's no big deal, but I do, you know, like we were talking a little bit before the podcast, I think people, uh, don't appreciate or fully understand how much work it is, especially when you want to do it well. And it's quite a time commitment. So when you embark on this journey,

I think maybe, I've looked back on it and go, if I knew how much work it was going to be, I don't know. It really is a lot of work. But it's been incredibly gratifying and has improved my life in so many ways. And I hope that you're having the same experience. I am. I am enjoying, I'm enjoying sitting down with people that I respect and have regard for and asking them questions that I'm curious about. And it feels like it's a mutual win

with most of my conversations. So let's see what happens today. It's also the greatest scam in the world because you can call anybody up and hoodwink them into sitting down with you and answering all your questions just because they're holding a microphone. It's silly, isn't it? Yeah. It's a great way to accelerate learning, though, and for people listening and the two of us as well. My hope for today after this conversation is that you and I will maybe see the world just a little differently. And that is always my hope with most conversations. And I sent a text to my wife today.

The romantic in me will be revealed right now. And I sent her a text and I said, because I've been on the road for, I think it's been about nine days. And I said, I can't wait to see you. If thoughts, experiences, and people fundamentally shape who we are, I've had lots of thoughts. I've had lots of thoughts.

I've met lots of people. I've had some great experiences. I can't wait to know yours. And I can't wait to meet you again is basically was the thought. And you want to know how she responded? Uh-huh. Wow. Stop your bullshit, Mike.

I was just going to say, like, your romanticism. I hope my wife doesn't listen to this. I'm going to look like a schlub for not sending some kind of text like that. Oh, God. Yeah. And so she holds me so honest. It's great. And so, okay.

I don't think – I want to do justice to the activities that you do, but more importantly, who you are that precedes the activity that you do. And let me take a quick run at this. And then, of course, correct me if I'm too shallow or I don't give you enough credit for particular parts of your life. So you've done some amazing feats and you've created some amazing feats. And there's two in particular, the Ultraman and the Epic Five. And so the Epic Five is the doing of the thing is five ultra marathons or five ultra. Five Ironmans.

Thank you. Five Ironmans across five islands on the islands. And is that in five days? The goal is to do it in five days. We fell a little bit short due to some technical unforeseen difficulties. We got it done in about six and a half days. Okay. Now, there's two parts to that.

And we'll get to the second activity that grabbed my attention as well. But there's two parts. There's one, the idea that you can do something like that. And the second is to create something that is so challenging that it's purposely going to test you. And the doing of it is one thing and the creating of it is a second. But then the man before both of those

is what I'm more interested in. And so, okay. We're going to go deep. Yeah, maybe by default. I'm not sure. Your concern that your question might be too shallow is not to be worried about. Okay, good. Because I know, you know, and on that note, you've gone to dark places.

You understand the depth of what it means to be human. And you face down difficult parts of your life, which hopefully we'll be able to reveal or unpack and understand. So you understand depth. And this is one of the reasons I'm excited to see where unpack and understand. So you understand depth. And this is one of the reasons I'm excited to see where this conversation goes. Cause oftentimes what I'll do is make a promise to people. And sometimes it's a silent promise. It's just to myself that I promise I'll be able to go as deep or deeper

than you go. And that's my work as, as a practitioner, as a, maybe, maybe yeah as we'll use that word as a practitioner that if somebody's going to go deeper than i am i've done them incredible disservice at the same time i have to know how to stay on the surface and have fun and talk about a b and c surface things to get us to a place of dancing that we can have meaningful conversations and i don't feel like you and I need to do the surface piece. Like we're just going to get there quickly.

We're just going to go right into it. Okay. So what is it that allowed you to push yourself to such a level that you thought you could do five consecutive Ironmans across five different islands? What is it that led me to believe that it was possible? That's right. That's a great question. I have no glib, pithy answer to that.

I think that, you know, first and foremost, just sort of backing up a little bit, I would say that for me, you know, this sort of athletic tableau is really, you know, an expression of a spiritual journey, what's always been a spiritual journey for me. And at the sort of center of that is trying to discover greater truths about myself or to develop a deeper, more meaningful relationship with myself. That's what motivated me to get into ultra-end endurance sports in the first place. It wasn't about seeing if I could make a podium or, you know, how many people I could beat. I really got into it to grapple with, wrestle with questions I was having about my place in the world, quite frankly. And the training, the sort of day-to-day training of that was like a good sort of crucible for asking and answering

those questions for myself and the the athletic events themselves the races are really kind of an expression of that journey of getting there so by the time i lined up for for epic five i'd already done the ultraman race twice which is a double iron man distance. Invite only, right? Yeah, it's this amazing race, just to kind of encapsulate it quickly, that has been held on the Big Island of Hawaii. It's going on like 30 years now. It's a double Ironman distance, three-day stage race that circumnavigates the Big Island of Hawaii. It's an incredible event that really captured my imagination initially

because it was sort of like what Ironman was like back in 1979 when it first began. Like there's no media, there's no prize money, they don't even close the roads for the cycling or the running or anything like that. And it's just 35 people that are, it's an invitation based event, as you mentioned. And it really is this perfect kind of event to test the limits of the outside envelope of your athletic capabilities, but really to have this kind of life transformative experience, which is what drew me to it initially. Is the transformative experience the training or is it the testing on game day? I think it's both. I mean, the training that I had to endure, you know, to get ready for that, because I didn't even begin training until I was, you know, 41 years old. 40, 41 is when I started

to get into it. The training was incredibly demanding, and I learned so much about myself just in that phase alone. The race itself, though, then tested me to a whole different level. And there's something about the energy of the big island that's quite special, I think, that really kind of brings out the best and the worst of you and really connects you with who you really are. And I was met with challenges there that, you know, forced me to make decisions that I think really revealed character, you know. And that's what I was seeking out of it.

And that's what I received out of that. So by the time I got to Epic Five, I knew I was capable of doing some crazy stuff. But, you know, Epic Five was kind of next level. And I wasn't sure if I could do it. I wasn't sure, and that's what's exciting about it. No one had ever even tried to do it before. So my buddy Jason Lester and I set out to – it wasn't like we're going to make this pronouncement about redefining the limits of human endurance. We were just two dudes who were on our own with a couple

friends helping us out to just see if it was possible. So in that sense, I didn't feel any giant external pressure like the world was watching or anything like that. But that experience, which was much more like an adventure because it wasn't a race, really, I think, took things to the next level in terms of revealing inner capabilities that I think that we all have. And one of the people that originally inspired me to believe that I could even entertain the possibility of taking on these events in the first place was a guy called David Goggins, who's an amazing Navy SEAL for your listeners. You're nodding as if, so it sounds

like you know who he is. He's a friend of the Seattle Seahawks. Okay. So incredible guy, as you know, right? Like one of the most taciturn, intense individuals to ever walk planet earth. And he's a guy who has done some amazing things as a Navy SEAL, but in the wake of losing some friends of his in a helicopter crash, set about honoring their death and raising money for charity by tackling the 10 most difficult endurance challenges on the planet. And Ultraman was one of the races that he had done. And I read about him participating in this event. He had done done quite well despite the fact that he weighs like 260 pounds had never

really been a runner I think he rode the bicycle leg of Ultraman with tennis shoes duct tape to the pedal of a loner bike like it's this crazy story right but one thing that he said yours is not that different though it's it's it's you didn't own a bike a couple of years. Yeah. I mean, I had like, when I read about David Goggins and I was like, if that guy can do it, you know, maybe I can do it too. And I, I did, my wife bought me a bike for my 40th birthday and that was the beginning of the journey towards, towards that race.

Okay. So then I want to hear what you're about to, I know I cut you off about what he was going to say, but there was this thought that I wanted to grab, which is, uh, your, your wife bought you a bike at 40 and at 41, you're running an invite only, or you're, you're racing in an invite only, um, endurance, uh, you know, so how does, how does that happen? Well, yeah, what happened was it was actually 42. So it was about a two-year kind of transition period. But when I was like shortly before I turned 40, when I was 39, I was your classic couch potato, you know, hurtling into middle age on a crash course with an existential crisis about my life as well as a health crisis because I was about 50 pounds overweight, junk food junkie. I'm in recovery for a long time for drugs and alcohol, but I think food has probably always been my first drug of choice. I had been a swimmer in college

in my youth, but when swimming was over, that was over and I was a corporate lawyer and just not really tending to my health and wellness in a very proactive way. Okay, hold on now. Hold on now. So you run over that you're a swimmer. It was a small little school? It was a tiny little program known as the Stanford University Swimming Program. Yeah, small.

But let me clarify. I had the good fortune of swimming at Stanford University in the late 1980s. We won NCAAs a couple of years when I was there. And I got to train with the best guys in the world, like Pablo Morales, John Moffitt, Jeff Kostoff, Dave Bottom. These guys were like legends back then. But I was a bench warmer. I was a walk-on. I could have gone to another school and been a scholarship athlete, but I really wanted to take a crack at being a small fish in a big pond. Did you get into the university on athletics primarily, or was it academics?

Obviously, at Stanford, you need the merger of both, but what was the beginning entry point? Yeah. I mean, I did, I did well in school and I went to a, you know, a really good school, high school in Washington, DC, where I grew up. Um, so I think it was a mix of both. Uh, but swimming, you know, I was a good swimmer in high school and I was definitely recruited at colleges and, you know, I had my choice of a bunch of different places to go to. Why did you do well in high school, in school? I did well. I didn't, you know, I actually struggled in school when I was a kid. I had a real difficult time learning. I was kind of a loner kid, much to myself, had difficulty making friends. And I remember being in like third or fourth grade and falling way behind. You know, like I had, I wasn't learning disabled, but I definitely had difficulty.

And it wasn't until swimming came into the picture around the time I was about 12 or 13, and it was really the first thing that I was naturally good at, and I started to kind of double down in that arena. And I was never the most talented swimmer, but I learned very early on that I could bridge the talent deficit gap by virtue of work ethic. And so I started to solve that equation of what happens when you put the work in and you start to see results. And I was seeing that in the pool, and it was happening rapidly for me around age 15 and 16. Is that because you wanted to get better at swimming?

I did. It was, it was the one thing that I felt like I could, I could do to distinguish myself. Yeah. Okay. So there's even at that young age, there was some need for identity, um, recognition. Definitely. Yeah. And then can I keep going? Yeah, go ahead. Okay. So then why did at age 13, 14, 15, did you have that need, that compelling need to be noticed? That's the $64 question, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know Dr. Gabor Mate? No.

Oh, he's an amazing mind in the field of addiction medicine. And I had him on my podcast, and he flipped the switch on me and started asking me similar questions. You know, I, I grew up in a, in a, I grew up with two parents who love me very much, who are still married and all my needs were met. We grew up like upper middle class. Um, you know, I, I never, is that upper middle or middle upper, upper middle class. Yeah. My dad is a government lawyer turned private practice, lawyer in Washington, D.C. And I went to a private high school with the coat and tie and the whole thing. And like I said, always never felt like I fit in or had difficulty socially. Do you think you were wired that way or your environment didn't quite support you in the

ways that recognized who you were at your center? Yeah, the environment played a big part in that. You know, I definitely grew up in a very achievement-oriented household. Education was a very, you know, potent priority. Okay. And I struggled with that initially. Did you have ADD? No, I was never diagnosed as having ADD. I found that swimmers in particular, it's a great kind of training for ADD. Because if you have some sort of- Because it exhausts you so thoroughly.

Yeah. And you're staring at a black line. Yeah. And it's repetitive. And it's an over and over and over again experience. And if there's some kind of soothingness that could come from that agony, that it would, one of those would be that the mind doesn't bounce all over the place. It's just going to get centered.

It's almost meditative, but you have to go through some physical pain to get to that space. Yeah. I think even taking that a step further, you know, for me, it was a safe place. Like I was bullied in high school and, you know, I just, high school is a very difficult time for me. And so when I was in ninth grade, like the pool was like the place that I could go when my head was underwater, you know, all that noise quieted and I just felt like I was home, you know, and I loved it. And it was loving me back, you know, the harder I worked, the more it gave me. And really, that's what my life became about. I became very focused on just, you know, swimming. That became my thing. So when I was in high school, I was up every morning at 445, morning practice, 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. And that's why I trust Momentous. their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this was not your average supplement company.

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And that there was that, the natural glow that would happen in particular families, probably your family, of when somebody does something well, there was a natural glow or buzz that would take place around it. And you said, okay, well, I can get that glow and buzz through swimming. And it was also an escape from being bullied.

Exactly. Yeah. And that bullying is, it's awful. You know, I'm looking at you. I'm not, I don't know if you want to go into that space or not, but bullying is such a, um, as an, let me say it this way. As an adult, I think, um, many people are bullied and we don't talk about it, but people are bullied often by the perception of what others might think of us.

We're bullied by lights. We're bullied by the need for recognition. We're bullied by the need to not the thought that we're not good enough. And so there is, there is some adult bullying that takes place and it happens in hallways in corporate America and entrepreneurship as well, very similar to high school experiences. But we have more complicated ways of thinking about it as adults than we do as young children. And, I mean, do you want to go into any of the bullying stuff at all? Yeah. I mean, thank God the Internet didn't exist back then. I feel like it's all very heightened now.

I think it's a lot more difficult for young people now because of the way the internet operates. But to take it back, I mean, I think that I was always a sensitive kid. When I was in like fifth and sixth grade, I was in a different school that kind of fostered that sort of creative, artistic kind of child. And I flourished in that environment. I was in the school plays, and I loved it, and I had friends. And then I went into a very kind of macho-oriented school that in many ways is kind of a throwback, like it's stuck in a different time. Like I said, coat and tie, it's all about football and lacrosse. You know, I can't throw a ball or, you know, shoot a basket to save my life.

I tried to play basketball. I made the team, but I was the bench warmer and I just, I just was no good, you know, and I was made fun of and I was kind of a social pariah, um, in a, in a school that, that is, you know, kind of, uh, how, how do I say it, prioritized like the sort of machismo, macho, type A, traditional sports. What was the greatest cost to being bullied? I think it… Looking back now.

Yeah, I think it brutalized my self-esteem. And it made me withdraw. It made me withdraw. And then I thought, well, I can't count on anyone else. I can only count on myself. And so I've always gravitated towards pursuits where the bottom line is a direct relation to yourself. Like swimming is that in many ways. It's just, there's no, it's, yeah, you're on a swim team,

but you know, how fast you swim in an event is really comes down to you. There you go. And earlier in our conversation, you said that you were using sport as a way to figure out who you were, how you fit in the world, the spiritual journey, if you will. And I'm curious now with the context of where you came from, have you found it?

Have you found what you're looking for? Yeah, I think that I have. I really think that I have. Yeah. It only took me until age 48 to figure it out. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, it's funny just to kind of backstep a little bit. I loved being on the Stanford swim team. I loved it so much that I didn't really care if I was the bench warmer. Like my own personal performance became very secondary to just being part of that team

because it gave me a sense of belonging. Because when I got to Stanford, suddenly the swim team, they're like, you know, like they're like the dudes, you know, on campus at that time. And I felt like I was part of something that I, that, that I was very connected to that was bigger than myself. And I think that's all I was searching for all along. Right. I think that was much more important to me I thought I think that like my personal performances in the pool were a vehicle towards just trying to connect with other people in a more meaningful way I think that's the entire even in the most alpha competitor predator environments that is it and but we somehow we lose our way and because early on when we're good at something,

we get such recognition. I use the word glow before, but we get such recognition for the achievement that we've demonstrated or the hype of the potential achievement that the people's identity becomes fused with the need for achievement. And that becomes this unbelievable, unbelievably large trap that we step into. And sometimes people can't get themselves out of it. At the same time, it might be the greatest gift that some people can experience because this achievement allows them to say, okay, there's something I have to offer to other people. And it ends up circumventing itself in a really wonderful way that it's about giving to other people, that sport is about giving. And so often I think many people look at sport and say these selfish, narcissistic, obsessive, compulsive, which these are all true traits of some of the best in the world.

However, at a deeper level for many, not all, that there is an incredible give to others along the path. And that's the only way that I understand that we can truly become great is the relationships that we build with other people. Yeah. And that's what it's become for me now. I haven't competed since 2011, but as a result of the things that I have been able to achieve athletically, now for me, what gets me excited, like all the motivation that I poured into training between the years of 2008 and 2011, that is now channeled into being of service to other people. And what gets me excited and out of bed in the morning

is the challenge of trying to help other people improve their lives, live healthier lives, live more fulfilling lives. Because sort of built into my athletic journey is this kind of life transformative aspect to it of changing careers and all these other things. And by way of the books that I've written and the podcasts that I do, there's a lot of people trapped in lives that they feel trapped in. They feel imprisoned by life that they feel like they didn't even choose. And so to the extent that my story and the work that I do can help unlock that for people and help them find another path or another way, like that's the gift for me.

And that's what sport has given me. When you ask me, you know, do you feel like you've answered that question for yourself? You know, yeah, I have. And what I've realized is that the power of owning my story and sharing my story in a vulnerable, authentic, and as honest as possible way can provide, you know, hopefully some tools and that key for people to unlock their own, you know, their own door. What's allowed you to have the courage to speak what is truthful for you? Sobriety.

My journey through recovery. The journey through it. Yeah. So the process of building the courage to be honest. For sure. I mean, when I talked about loving being on the Stanford swim team, the flip side of that is that drugs and alcohol destroyed my swimming career,

you know, and I, or you're using while at Stanford. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And after my freshman year, it was just a disaster. So, and it was many, many years before I got sober. Um, but my kind of reintroduction to athleticism in my 40s in some ways was also an attempt to kind of capture the potential that I feel like I never really realized as a college athlete. But I went to rehab when I was 31. Did you have addiction in your family? It's funny. No, my parents are not alcoholic. I mean if you trace it back far enough, yeah, there's always somebody.

But it wasn't like in my everyday experience, you know. And so when it happened to me, it was very frightening for my parents. They didn't have a lot of experience with being around that. And it was dark, man. It was, you know, at the end, look, it was, it works. In the beginning, it works, right? Like I said, I was a very isolated, lonely kid. I had trouble socially connecting with other people. You go to college, you go to parties, you start drinking. Suddenly you're talking to girls and you're flirting and you're having a good time. Like it was a miracle drug. It was you know, I always own skin was like a new sensation for me. And it was amazing. And I think it did unpack some social skills that, you know, needed developing. So in that sense, I can credit it, but, you know, it works until it stops working. And it wasn't long before it stopped working and started to, you know, denigrate every aspect of my life and, you know and undermine my goals and kind of strip me of everything aspirational.

I mean, when I was a senior in high school, I got into every college I applied to. I got into Harvard. I got into Princeton. I got into Stanford. I was a top student. Like I had, you know, it was the life of Riley. Like I had, you know, the world at my feet and I destroyed all that. But your self-esteem.

Right. That's true. Okay. Beneath all of that. Right. Yeah. And there's this idea that I play with is that it's hard to outperform your self-concept. Right.

And that catches up to you. Yeah. And so you might get one or two glimpses when you do outperform your self-concept, and it can change the way you think about yourself. But when your esteem, and let's define esteem, the global idea of how you feel about yourself, um, when that becomes, uh, just like Swiss cheese and it's just, it's a mess. The truth will be revealed. Yeah.

Eventually. Yeah. So you, you had the external forward facing life of Riley life of Riley, the aspirational, what every parent would hope their kid would experience. But inside, there was pain. And in that pain, the lubrication of alcohol, drugs, whatever it might be for people, what it does, I think what it does is it strips us from feeling awkward. And when we don't do the work of being awkward and being social at the same time, we end up not knowing how to be social.

But for you, what it did, it sounds like, is it stripped your, that awkwardness, and it gave you freedom to have fun, to not be pensive about being abused by other people, because that's what bullies do, right? Socially abuse you, or us. And so, but then that spiraled so quickly for you that you lost grips of the main mission. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. I mean, I think, you know, for me, very poor self-esteem, you know, runs very deep and had to be reconciled with eventually. And so what starts out as a good time morphs into dependence and turns into a really dark need. So at the end, by the time I was 31, it was not unusual for me to have a vodka tonic in the shower in the morning and put a suit on and drive to my corporate law job with a tall boy between my legs and sneak drinks during the day and hide my empties and do all that crazy stuff that alcoholics do. And started collecting DUIs and all that kind of stuff. It all came crashing down on me, including a failed marriage. That's a whole sordid affair. And ended up in a rehab where I stayed for 100 days, which is, that's a long time

to go for a rehab. I was up in rural Oregon. And I remember very early on in that experience, one of the counselors posing a question to me when he said, are you a human being having a spiritual experience? Are you a human having a spiritual experience or are you a spiritual being having a human experience? And I was like, what? I don't understand the question, let alone know how to answer that question. And that orientation is radically opposing.

Yeah. And that was a place where for the very first time I learned how to be honest. I learned how to be vulnerable. I learned the power of what happens when you have the courage to share your deepest, darkest truths about yourself and release them. What is the insight that you developed from that? That vulnerability is not cowardice, but courage. And packed into that is the ability to heal when you have that courage to do that. And the risk, though, is that when you're vulnerable, it won't be met or understood or

valued by somebody else. And so when we're, especially for somebody who's been beat up socially, bullying, right? Is the courage to do so, to be vulnerable with another person is what we're talking about, right? Like this type of vulnerability doesn't happen by ourselves, unless we're writing. And then one day we put it out into the world, but still someone will comment on it at some point. Right. So that vulnerability, the risk is that we'll be exposed and it won't be met. And can you share a couple insights on how you did the work to develop the courage in small? So we elephants one bite at a time.

You know, I don't think I'm going to say that ever again because I just watched a documentary on what's happening to elephants. I don't think I'll ever say that phrase again. Yeah. So I'm self-editing. Who eats elephants anyway? Yeah. Well, I guess some people do. I don't know, but it's awful what's happening to our elephant population. 400,000 elephants left killing off 10,000 a year. No, it's which, which documentary was it? I, you know, I can't remember. Yeah. I got a whole bunch of other documentaries. I can give you a list. Yeah. That's awful. So, um, okay. So what was I saying? So we start small and then we build tolerance. This is a normal arc, but some people just go for it and they jump off the high dive and they know that they, uh, after they've hit, you know, the water at a speed that they're afraid of feeling that pain, that they realize that they can swim again.

And so for you, did you start small or did you just go big on vulnerability? Well, I started small in the sense that it was a daily practice of being around other drunks and drug addicts and learning how to share openly about how I was actually living my life. Got it. Because it had been such a secret. Look, from the outside looking in, everybody knew I was a disaster. They knew what was going on, but I would lie to myself and think that I was getting away with things. But I thought prior to that experience that no one would understand me.

Like there is not a single person on planet Earth who could possibly understand why I would behave this way. That's a very lonely alienating place to be. And then you go to rehab and you realize like, Oh, wait, wait, what was the one thing that you didn't think people would understand? What was the statement or the thing that would bang around inside you?

Just the daily insanity of the choices that I was making. Like what would possess somebody to wake up in the morning and like drink vodka immediately upon waking? You know, it's like, like that's not how I was raised. And, you know, here I am, I've got this Stanford degree. Somehow I managed to graduate from Cornell Law School. Like, you know, like I did crazy stuff through law school that I thought no one knew that I was doing.

And if anybody knew, they would have never let me graduate. You the stakes were very high. How did you get over? How did you get a degree from Stanford, then get into Cornell Law, no less, and be able to be successful at both of those outwardly, not inwardly, but outwardly? How did you do that? And then the second part of the question I want to ask was, at that point, you're at the pinnacle of the academic experience in America. And were you at that point on a path of mastery? I know I asked you two questions. Yeah. All right. So let's figure this out. So the first part of the question- How did you do it? Yeah. How did I do it? Well, I think I, I relied on, on a quality that I have that I think has, has done well for me and also

been my ruin, which is a great capacity for self-will, um, in, in recovery parlance, self-will in recovery parlance, they call it self-will run riot. So my whole life, like we were talking about how i was able to bridge the talent gap like again i was not the most talented swimmer i certainly was not the most talented student but i knew how to really work hard i knew how to like work harder than everybody else and i would do crazy stuff in the pool that no one would else no one else would do i do 20 times 200 butterfly on some ridiculous interval like just crazy stuff that you know this is when i was 15 16 years old and i was learning like oh when i do this stuff that no one else does like

i actually get better and then applying that in the classroom of just studying you know harder than anybody else all that kind of stuff so this is like grit gone awry yeah like like crazy grit but i'm being rewarded for it so in my my mental math skills, I'm thinking, well, this is how I'm getting ahead in the world, right? This is my secret weapon. So that's how I got to Stanford. That's how I got into Harvard. That's how I was able to hoodwink my way onto the Stanford swimming team by working harder than everybody else. Um, and I think that when I applied that kind of level of focus and, and things that I'd learned in the pool to my life, I was able to sort of

bifurcate my life and get away with things that maybe I shouldn't have been able to get away with. Did you apply that same mask? What I could mask that double life. If I just worked hard enough in the pool or worked hard enough in the classroom, then I don't have an alcohol problem. Because if I get a good grade, then I can rationalize my drinking and say, well, it's not that bad. There you go. Okay. So that was a big part of it. So you actually applied the grit in the classroom, at school, and the same type of grit in drinking?

For sure. Yeah. Everything 1,. For sure. Yeah. Everything, everything a thousand percent. Yeah. Okay. So, and that, that, so you know how to go for it. It's another, right. You went big in swimming school and, and partying.

Yeah. And this is one of the reasons, um, we don't talk about this enough. We don't talk about the cost of going for it big and what, what some of the, the, the pitfalls are of that, especially for those that we celebrate being the best in the world because we think it's so glossy.

And when we strip back and have these conversations, it's just not that. Yeah. It's not as clean and glossy as, as people would imagine. So, okay. So you go for it. that's how you did it

and then you could tell yourself this story well if i'm going for it and getting the grades i'm not i don't have this grit isn't a real problem on the alcohol and partying side of things correct yeah and then okay beautiful were you on the path of mastery at that point no no so well let's define mastery let's do it of all let's go you know so should i ask you how you define it you're looking at me like you want me to define it this is your term right yes so no it's no it's a it's an ancient term i think you know well i get yeah like how would i define it though without without knowing how it's properly defined i mean i would say that mastery is when you have sort of full command of all of your faculties and that everything in your life, you know, emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual

is firing on all cylinders and is properly calibrated and balanced so that you're tapped into who you authentically are. You're fully in your power in terms of moving in the trajectory that you're meant to move in. Wow. Okay. Is that all right? No, no, no. Okay. So what if your authentic self, you are selfish?

Or, and you might say, what are you talking about? But what if, what if like you really are a jerk? That's your true authentic self. Yeah. I don't know. What do you think about that? I think that, that selfishness or, you know, asshole array or whatever you want to call it. Those are, those are, those are, uh, I would say that you're not, if you're, if you're manifesting those behavior qualities, that you're not in mastery. Because usually those are a mask for something else, whether it's a fear or some pain that you're harboring that you compensate for outwardly by perpetrating negative personality patterns. Okay. I love it if there's three if we've followed pulling this thread of from a philosophical standpoint there's three basic ways that people talk about human nature i'm going to oversimplify it but there's people are born

good and beautiful just right people are born not that evil or greedy or selfish or just not good. We'll make it really simple. And then tabula rasa, that they're born a blank slate. So good, not good, and then blank slate. And I'm curious if you thought about those three frames in reference to your definition, which is it's fitting for you to be able to let in reference to your definition, which is, it's fitting for you to be able to let that roll off your tongue, your definition of mastery, the way you just did. Would you ascribe to one of those three definitions of human nature?

I don't know that I would. I mean, you know, maybe I'm a crazy new age hippie, but I think that if you, if you look at it from the perspective of that, everybody has like a higher consciousness packed inside of them. And our job is to access that and express that, that there is, there is a good and worthy, you know, soul yearning to be expressed within all of us. So, well, to me, that sounds like the, that sounds like the first category, like you're born, and worthy soul yearning to be expressed within all of us. And that is informed. To me, that sounds like the first category. Like you're born, you said, did you say higher consciousness? Yeah.

I mean, you can use whatever phraseology you want to characterize that. Yeah. Whether that's born in the likeness of a deity, God, or whatnot, meaning a more kind of hippie approach to it, the spiritual consciousness. And I'm not weighing in on the conversation. I'm just wanting to understand that you would say that people are basically born right and they have access packed in to that whatever rightness is. And I think Buddhism would call it righteousness.

And there's a right way of thinking. There's a right way of doing. And if you can string those together in a present way, you will eventually reach even living nirvana or post. So you would ascribe to the first part. Yeah, I would. And I think to be clear, it doesn't mean that anybody can be LeBron James, but I think we all have some innate talent or uniqueness within us that's perfectly created. And our job is to figure out what that is and express that to the best of our abilities.

I love it. That's exactly what I want to do for my son. That's exactly what I hope I'm helping people do that are wanting some sort of relationship to, to, for them to grow. It's, okay, so what are your strengths? What are your natural gifts? What are the things that are calling inside of you? And what are the things that are getting in the way of that?

It's a beautiful form of advocacy to do that because I think that in our culture, mainstream society does not foster that, you know, we have lanes that we're supposed to be in. And if you're, if your authentic self is not resonating with one of those lanes, then you're living a life of dissonance. And unless there's someone like yourself there, who's kind of teasing on that and saying, well, forget about the lane, you know, what is it that's pulling on you? What, you know, what are the, what are the messages that you're getting inside of yourself that you feel are not expressed or that you would like to express more fully? It's not encouraged to the extent that it should be.

And again, with me, it took me until I was 40 years old to start listening to those voices inside of me. And they're very simple. They're very like, you know, I just like the way the sun feels on my shoulder on a trail run. You know, I like what it feels like when I jump in a swimming pool. It's not like, oh, I need to have this career or, you know, my bank account needs to look like it's none of that. It's like really primal, basic stuff for me. And when you increase the frequency of that, you would also increase your attunement to being present. To being present.

And also, I think, recalibrating your compass and your trajectory. Like the more you listen to that, then suddenly you're moving in a little bit of a different direction. And then the universe shows up with different clues about decisions you can make and directions that you can go. And it becomes more of a faith-based path where you're listening to your internal hard drive as opposed to what society is telling you you should or you shouldn't do. And it's a scary thing to do, you know, but my experience is, you know, in my experience, it's been the most rewarding thing that I've ever done. And that doesn't mean that it's been easy. It's been the hardest thing I've ever done. I mean, it's not for the weak of heart, you know, it's definitely a warrior's path. It really is difficult to do to have. And again, there goes this idea of courage

to listen, to get connected, to listen, and then to carve that path. That's it. Um, I don't think I've ever said my, my philosophy out loud, uh, to philosophy out loud to you or in this medium, but I'll share it with you if you're interested. And so I have this desire to want to unpack before, but I'm just going to say it. To be guided by my inner spirit, to have the courage to carve that path with grace, excellence, and right fucking now.

I like that. Yeah. And the idea is like can can you have that can I have the courage to first be connected and then to carve the path according to what I've been connected to which is oftentimes it feels like I'm zigging when most people are zagging when that part that part's hard mm-hmm yeah yeah for sure yeah on that note do you have do you have a working philosophy or a way that you have a phrase or something that guides your life?

Nothing that is completely overarching. I tend to default to a lot of the principles that I learned in recovery. And, and some of those have been very helpful to me. I mean, one is, you know, mood follows action. That sort of gets me out of bed in the morning and gets me out of my own, you know,

the chatter of my idle thinking mind. That's not always my friend. You know, it's stuff like one day at a time. I mean like really cheesy recovery stuff, but actually, you know, kind of profound and fundamental.

I think AA and the recovery community is one of the more powerful movements. And I don't I think I know what I mean when I say that word that that's under celebrated, misunderstood, and is maybe one of the most powerful things that has happened for just an entire generation of people. It's truly an extraordinary thing. I mean, not only did it save my life, it saved the lives of so many of my friends. And it was two people, Dr. Bob. It was just Dr. Bob and Bill. Bill. Bill W., these two dudes who were just trying to not drink and trying to figure it out. And between the two of them, they were able to come up with this set of principles and put this book together that has literally saved millions and millions of lives.

And when you kind of crack the book and read it, it's very folksy and it's very colloquial in its language and somewhat dated, but the truisms and the principles beneath the stories told and the kind of guiding mechanism that helped them get sober is really profound and has its root in a variety of spiritual traditions. And the fact that the organization didn't implode in the way that they structured it to prevent that is really a marvel, I think, of the 20th century. Right, because there's no grandstanding that you're in it, that you're not in it. There's no representation. It's unbelievable how this has worked.

I can't wait for someone to figure out a way to highlight this in a way that's going to capture a critical mass of people. Because to me, like this is a very simple statement. It's principle based and it helps people that want to be in a tribe to fit into a tribe. There's no boss. There's nobody in control. And, you know, the only requirement is that you have a desire to stop drinking. That's it. And, you know, frankly, I think everybody would be well served by, you know, doing the nonsense. And now I have the new solution for recovery or some medical based or pharmaceutical approach to solving the problem of addiction. And, you know, even if that was perfectly figured out, I wouldn't take it because for me, it's a, it's a spiritual disease, you know, and the, and the, and the solution, um, is spiritual in nature too. And by, by embarking on that journey, a journey that doesn't have a destination, it's improved my life in miraculous ways well beyond just – for me, it's not about – not that I don't have the occasional craving and I certainly don't do recovery perfectly.

I've had my bumps in the road. But on a daily basis, it's not about avoiding a trank. It's about, it's about being in touch with your character defects and having tools and resources to grapple with those and hopefully, you know, slowly overcome them. Yeah. Awesome. 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. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that.

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C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. Okay. Have there been one or two people or who comes to mind when you think about the people that have shaped your life or let me say it better that have deeply influenced the shape of your life hmm character like sort of common character traits no just like are there one or two people that come to mind that have uh that help you believe in the path that you're on was possible yeah i mean i think the first, first and foremost is my wife, Julie. I mean, she's, none of this would have happened without her. And for all the kind of spiritual work that I do, I'm a complete amateur compared to her level

of commitment. I mean, she's somebody who's constantly, you know, trying to expand her horizons with, you know, reading tons of books and she books. And she's been an avid meditation practitioner well before I ever met her. And just a wealth of understanding and knowledge, but most of all, courage. And I think in our relationship, when we got together, I had a year of sobriety, but I was working as a lawyer still, and I wasn't taking care of myself and she was always able to see like a better me behind the like literal and figurative density that I was walking around in. And she kind of held that space, you know, not in a like here, you need to do this or try, you know, she was just always kind of like this rock and, and kind of had this understanding

that I could be living in a, in a, in a totally different way. And so when I started to wrestle with that in a very messy way by, you know, going out, going and riding my bike and, you know, doing all these things, like I was connecting with myself physically as a way to grapple with and answer these questions for myself, like I was mentioning earlier, you know, at the same time, we were having a lot of financial problems and, you know, there was a lot we were having a lot of financial problems and, you know, there was a lot of like sort of everything was not cool, you know, in terms of like just the bottom line. And I think a lesser partner would have just been like, what are you

doing? Like you need to go back to work and you need to like solve this problem. And she, she did the opposite. She's like, what you're doing is important i know it's important and you need to not worry about anything else and you need to do this because i can tell that this is how you're going to answer these questions for yourself and become that guy that i know that you can become and that like level of commitment to me and her ability to kind of see in a long-term way that this was the correct path, I think is remarkable because I don't know anybody else who would have done that. Is there one idea that you would hope she would understand about your experience with her? Yeah, it's funny.

Because in the wake of kind of accomplishing these athletic goals and getting some media attention for it, like, you know, I was just doing this for myself. And then suddenly people were paying attention. And, you know, Sanjay Gupta came to my house and did a story for CNN and Men's Fitness and you know sanjay gupta came to my house and did a story for cnn and men's fitness you know names me one of the 25 fittest men in the world which is like preposterous because you know i'm not even anywhere close to that nor have i ever been

but the fact that like this media attention was happening was all very focused on like what i had done and it and it was in this narrative of weight loss because I'd lost 50 pounds. I'm like, that's kind of like the click-baity story that grabs eyeballs. And it's ludicrous because the weight loss was such a nominal aspect of what was really going on. Like I said, it's always been this spiritual journey, and it was fortified and fueled completely by her strength and confidence in me. And so as the saying goes, like, oh, there's a, you know, there's a, there's a great woman behind every great man or however that goes. Like she was never behind me.

Like she was out in front of me, like the tip of the spear, like clearing the brush so that I could do this. And so if there's anything that I want her to really understand is that I honor that. And I'm very aware of that. And I think more people need to understand that aspect of it. It wasn't like she was at home, you know, cooking and making sure that I was well fed. Like she was the one who was doing the harder work, which was to make it okay for me to blaze this path. And maybe even to see what was possible. Correct.

Which is like, I think one of the greatest gifts of love is to think deeply and to express those ideas that is what's possible for another human being. Yeah. And so have you told her? I have told her. Yeah, I have told her. What's that like? It's beautiful.

I mean, there's really that experience of being in this crucible of emotional and spiritual pain as we were grappling with this. At the same time, having to weather financial devastation. Oh, you're having cars repossessed. I mean, it was like, I mean, talk about like vulnerability and like, you know, like, like, you know, keeping up with the Joneses and not know, like there was a lot of stuff that was getting pulled right out from underneath us and friends and family were like, you're crazy. What are you doing? Like we became like pariahs, you know, and for her to hold that strength and say, I don't care. Like it doesn't matter. None of that matters the only thing that matters is that we see this journey through and i think that we're on the

right journey which was amazing how'd you guys meet in a yoga class did you that's too funny i know no i was like uh it's funny because i get out of rehab. And the one thing that they kind of left me with as I, you know, made my way back into the world, they were like, you know what? You shouldn't date anyone for like a year. Like you need to like sort your stuff out and really get to know yourself. Because women were always a big trigger. Like being like sort of uneasy and navigating dating and all that kind of stuff is very complicated for me. So I did. I took that advice.

And nearing the end of the year, I started going to yoga, and that was really helping me. But she was in the class. But my year wasn't up yet. It's like I waited almost to the very end of the year before I asked her out. And then she's the only woman that I've been with since I've been sober. All very new. Yeah. Yeah. Are you a rule taker or risk taker? I'm sorry, rule follower or risk taker? I've always been a rule follower to my fault, I think, and my wife has always been

a risk taker. So, I was always like kind of fundamental to this whole thing for me is this idea of chasing the American dream my whole life. Like I grew up, study hard, get the good grades, get into the best college, get into the best law school, get the best corporate – like all the – like I'm very good at following those rules. Even when I was a crazy alcoholic, like i knew how to like work within the system and you know implicit in that for me was always the promise not only of you know sort of prosperity and social acceptability and financial security but happiness this is the way that you have a happy life and i played that game, you know, imperfectly and with all my left turns and, you know, like destroying it all with drugs and alcohol and then having to rebuild it and get it all back only to arrive at this place at 39 of going,

this is not making me happy. Why didn't I ask myself these questions earlier? You know, so that was the existential crisis part of the equation that was really starting to blossom. Okay, so there's two, I got another double kind of prong or two-step question, which is, so there's difficultness that you've experienced by this, I don't know, maybe facade of the American dream leading to happiness

through achievement. And the two-pronged question is, what is the most difficult moment you've faced in your life? And more important to me about that is as a reference point to the second part of the question, which is, what do you do when you're on an ultra event and you run into a place where you want to stop and you've got pain and deep uncomfortableness as part of your experience? And so I'm wondering, because if we just ask the second part,

like what do you do with your mind, and you say, oh, I do this, this, and this, that it doesn't have any context for people because it is in relationship to the first part of the question which is what is the most difficult moment in your life or time in your life if you want to but you know more concretely is there a specific time that comes to mind that's been one of the most difficult for you yeah i would say in terms of the most difficult decisions i ever to make there's really two I mean the first one was the decision to go to rehab.

Was that the most difficult moment in your life, whether to abandon drinking? Was that the moment? It was frightening to abandon drinking, but I think even scarier for me was the fact that people were going to know that I had a problem. It wasn't my own – like I knew I was an alcoholic. Like I had been dabbling in AA to no avail because I was relying on my self-will to solve a problem, solve this problem that couldn't be solved that way. And I had to get to that point of surrender. But the scariest part was that as somebody who had premised their entire life on this, you know, facade of the American dream, this was not a lateral move, you know, to like

go to rehab, right? So it was frightening from the perspective of derailing like this trajectory that I thought I was on that, you know, was leading me to this place that I thought I wanted to go. And what was that moment like for you? Terrifying. Do you remember where you were or what you were wearing to that level? Yeah. It was so terrifying that I had to get drunk in order to manage it, you know, and I showed up at rehab, like loaded because just the idea that I was doing it was so frightening to me that I had to medicate myself just to get there. Yeah. And so did you have that, that if

go right back to that moment, what allowed you to actually make the decision to go, even though you went drunk, but what was, what allowed you to make that decision? And then I want to get to the second part of the question, which is what do you do with your mind when it's in your, in your sport, when it's difficult? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what got me to that point was I had started seeing a psychiatrist, an addiction medicine specialist, who's an amazing guy. And, you know, he could see right through my BS. Like the whole, you know, it's like the, you know, the deal, right? But he's patiently, you know, tolerating my nonsense for, you know, weeks at a time. And I'd stay sober for a little while and then I'd relapse. And he's like, you really ought to think about for, you know, weeks at a time. And I'd stay sober for a little while, and then I'd relapse.

And he's like, you really ought to think about treatment. You know, and I was like, no, not, you know, I just couldn't go there. And he knew I had to get there on my own in order for it to work. And so he made a deal with me. I said, listen, I'm going to try this one more time, but if I relapse again, I will go. I made that deal with him, and of course I relapsed. And so I did it like I felt like I was honoring this deal that I had made with him by fulfilling that promise. So that's really what kind of catalyzed it for me.

But it was the beginning of the process of opening up to another person. But, you know, I wasn't being completely honest with him. It wasn't until I got to rehab that I got really stripped down and was ready to do that. But the second part of that, because I said there was a second decision, was after I had maybe a year and a half or coming up on two years of sobriety, I made the decision to quit my corporate law job and walk out on that. And that was the other most frightening thing for me, because everything in my life had been programmed. I always knew where everything was going. And when you have a job, you're like on a track, right? And I'd never been without a track. And then to quit, I had no, I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't have another job. I didn't, I had maybe enough money to live for two months, three months at the outset and just

knew I couldn't continue to show up at that place anymore. And left without a plan. That was terrifying. Because that was the first. But I'd learned in sobriety, like, you can jump, you know, if you can be in that place of faith. And I knew in my heart of hearts that this career was not right for me. And I had to trust that if I had the courage to leave, that something would show up. There's a lot of risk in that because it doesn't, I don't think it always works for people. No, it doesn't. It doesn't. I think, I think it works for you when you've done enough inside work

to really know where you're supposed to go. Yeah. haven't and you cavalierly jump, but you haven't done that work, then it's less likely that the solution is going to show up or that you're going to be attuned enough to see the right path when it does show up. Brilliant. And then what do you do with your mind when you're in pain and you still haven't crossed? Yeah, you have to break it down into, into really small increments. You know,

I think, you know, if you're running an ultra marathon and you're only halfway done and you feel like you're torqued, like you got to just break it down to the next street lamp. You know, I just got to make it like the, the more you can remove your mind from the equation and,

and turn off that mental chatter and chatter and stay focused and be present. Then the more likely you are to be able to tap into something a little bit more deeply. David Goggins, that guy we were talking about earlier, said something that always stuck with me that I think about a lot, which is when you think you're done, you've actually only accomplished about 40% of what you're truly capable of. He's a living example of that, and it's really true. I've proved that out in my own life. And so I've taken it in training. I've taken it to the limit and surpassed that enough times to know that we all have this deeper reservoir of potential

and capability within us. So it's there. And what do you do at that nexus? Do you associate with your heart rate, with the breathing, with the slapping of your feet, the slapping of the water? If you're swimming, the rotation of hips, of your hips, like what do you associate or do you disassociate and get connected to the external world around you? Sometimes it's breath. You know, in running, it can be breath, like focusing on your breath, counting your breaths, anything to focus the mind and distract it from the pain is good, but sometimes it is completely dissociative,

you know, to just completely, sometimes just completely checking out and tuning out completely and kind of. How do you know when to do which one? I don't know that I do. Okay. I don't know what I do. Yeah. I don't want to ask you to solve something I don't understand yet, but I was

hoping that you would say that, you know, there's certain times that I try association, which is in tune with yourself. And there's certain times that doesn't work. And I quickly get out of, and just look at like, you know, try to find a bird or try to find us shades of green around me that are interesting. You know, I mean, sometimes visualization, you know, even in the moment can be, can be really powerful. Like if you've put the training in, like I knew going into Ultraman that I was going to be able to do it because I'd done ridiculous training sessions. Like I'd run 45 miles in training. So I knew that my body was capable of running 52 miles.

So thinking back on that training day when you were so tired and you're still, were able to get through it. Like, I think those are confidence builders. Got it. Okay. So if you, you know, if you've put the work in, you can tap into that. If you haven't put the work in and you're trying to fake it, then good luck. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. However, when in training, so going from, did you say 40 something to 52, 45 miles to 52? If you haven't done 40 mile 46 or 51, how would you, that's the threshold I'm talking about. And even if you feel that inner struggle at mile 22, but I'm talking about that place in time as well when you haven't been there yet. Yeah.

So I can give you a specific example. I remember being at my first Ultraman race in 2008. Where were you? In Hawaii. So the way Ultraman works is the first day is a 6.2-mile swim on a 90-mile bike. The second day is 170 miles on the bike. And the third day is a 52 mile run double marathon run and uh i had done like i said you know i'd done a four i'd done these crazy training weekends where i would assimilate i would i would simulate the ultraman distance over the course of

a weekend i would do it like 70 of it and then a month later i'd do 80 of the ultraman over like a friday saturday sunday and then like you know six or eight eight weeks before the race i did 70% of it. And then a month later I do 80% of the Ultraman over like a Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And then like, you know, six or eight, eight weeks before the race, I did like 90% of it. So I knew I could handle, like I could approximate the distance and manage it. And that was just in training. But then again, you know, 52 miles isn't 45 and you're not in the race and you're not pushing as hard. So I can remember being in the last, you know, 10 K of that 52 mile run on the third day of Ultraman and the wheels are coming off the wagon. And I remember very specifically tapping into all of the sacrifice, like stepping back that, that, that I had undergone to get to that point from quitting the law firm job to

taking a flyer and, you know and getting a bike and riding it, like all these crazy experiences that seemed to make no sense at the time that had led to that moment and all the decisions I'd made and all the sacrifices that my family had made, frankly, to help me get to that place. That makes it so much more emotionally potent and the stakes seem so much higher. And that emotional energy was what carried me through that. How long did it fuel you for, the full 10K? Or did you just need a jolt?

No, it got me through maybe until the last half mile. It's not a sustainable energy source, I think but uh it's better than a red bull if you can really connect with that uh can you teach about the central governor that that concept that we have a limiter to um how hard we can go or how hot it will allow our body to to feel so that we don't die. So, I'm trying to wrap my head around how to approach this. Science is wanting here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The concept is wanting. The theory is beautiful, and I love it. I'm going to nod my head to say we're on to something. Noakes in particular, the scientist. But I'm just wondering

how as a as a n of one who's faced down his own central governor and move beyond the threshold of this mechanism inside our body that says hey listen shut her down stop you're about to blow up how you've changed that governor i think it i don't over complicate that really you know what i mean i think you if your body really needs to shut down it'll shut down well in advance of you know you like getting into too much trouble so so but this is the why lactic acid and brain brandy kinase is released is to begin to create agitation in our muscular system to slow down. And somehow you've changed the point in which lactic acid and brain to kinase is released

for you. Yeah, but that's just, that's muscle memory from training. I mean, you have to take yourself to that place in training time and time again. And the more that you do that, your body acclimates to that. You know, your body can acclimate to way more that you do that, your body acclimates to that. Your body can acclimate to way more than I think that we allow ourselves to believe. And a perfect example would be someone like Dean Karnazes, the great ultra marathon runner. I mean, that guy can go out and run a marathon before breakfast every single day at a four-hour pace, three and a half hours. And it's just not that taxing to him. At one point in his life, that was a very taxing thing to do.

But he has done it so much that for him, it requires the amount of mental and emotional and physical energy that it might require somebody else to go out and run two miles. So it's about pushing your own boundaries of your own capabilities, what you think you can do, what you physically can do, and what you believe that you can do. And when you train yourself up to that point time and time again, that threshold gets pushed up. Got it. calm, confidence, the ability to focus in the present moment, to trust ourselves, the pre-performance routines, goal setting, imagery, all of that stuff that a typical performance psychology program would highlight. Which are the most important?

You might say all of them, or you might say above all. I think for me, the one that's most powerful is mindfulness and trying to anchor yourself into the present. And I think that when you can do that, for me, I've had that experience where you tap into a strength that doesn't seem like it's coming from you. Like it feels like you're tapping into some universal umbilical cord that can fuel you beyond your own personal perception of your capabilities. But it requires you to really have command over your thinking mind to really disassociate the mental chatter from the higher consciousness and learning how to rely on the higher consciousness and tap into that sort of heart-based approach that I think that can fuel you, you know, beyond your perceived

limiters. Awesome. Is there a word that cuts to the center of what you understand most? I think, you know, I really think faith, you know, I think faith, not in a religious way whatsoever, but a deep belief of being guided. You know, I think that that has been a predominant theme in everything that's happened to me. And it's that thing where if I look backwards on my life, everything seems like it lined up perfectly to bring me to this point where I'm sitting here having this conversation with you. But it's actually insane. It's completely ludicrous that this is what I would be doing because my life was on a completely different path. The only reason that I'm here sitting talking to you is because I made a decision to stop living my life according to a set of rules that seemed inconsistent with how I wanted to live my life. But it wasn't logical. There was no logical – there was no rational explanation for it.

And I instead made this decision to start living more like based on on my instincts and my heart where my heart was leading to me and having that trust having the faith that if i did that that somehow things would work out in a way that would lead to a better way of living for myself and that has indeed been the case and like i said it has been a warrior's path. It's been incredibly difficult. But that's really why it happened. Yeah, and I keep wanting to go unwind. And I don't know how many – I'm still wanting to understand what allowed you to do that. And I know you've said it. Well, I think pain.

Okay. You know, I think I was in enough pain. Like for me, the only thing that's ever gotten me to change is pain. Like when I was in enough pain from drinking and, the only thing that's ever gotten me to change is pain. When I was in enough pain from drinking and using, I had the willingness to get sober. When I was in enough pain from being a lawyer and living this life that I didn't want to live, I had the courage to make a change. Have we ever talked about that? I don't know.

I don't think so. Yeah, because that's exactly what I – that's a truth that I've come to understand as well is that the reason we change is because of pain. And when we can get honest enough or be beat over the head enough that we'll say, I'm done with this. And some people die before they get to that place. And, you know, unfortunately, in the most tragic tragic ways that takes place where people are not able. And I have family members that have gone down this path. They weren't able to change. And if I think one of the greatest gifts we can give people, it sounds like maybe your wife did this for you, is to help you in two ways. One is see what's possible.

And the second is be honest about the pain. And try to take someone else's pain away is like a sure way to keep them on track towards, you know, also if pain wasn't required, then, you know, nobody would overeat or nobody would, you know, like everybody would be living very differently. The truth is, is that, you know, if your elevator's going down, it doesn't have to go all the way down. You can get off at any time. It's just a lot more difficult to get off the elevator when you've still got many floors to go. And so for people that are on a path, it's working okay for them. They have a house, two cars, two and a half kids, a golden retriever, that American kind of iconic image that we put forward.

But it's just okay for them. That's the hardest place to be, I think. Yeah, it's not horrible. Yeah, that makes it far more difficult, I think, to change. And this is why people... It's just tiring and dull. This is why you hear people in recovery say that they're a grateful alcoholic. And I remember when I was newly sober thinking, why would you say that?

What a bizarre thing to say. alcoholic. And I remember when I was newly sober thinking, why would you say that? Like, what a bizarre thing to say. But the reason that they say it and why I now embrace that same perspective is that being a drug addict or an alcoholic took them to such a dark place that they had to finally look at themselves in the mirror, grapple with who they are, ask themselves those hard questions, and reconfigure their life and live differently. And that's what basically allowed them to then flourish and become happy, productive human beings. So without that painful experience or that history, they never would have gotten there.

This is why I think I've shared with you some of my most favorite people in the world are people that have done just that. And they tend to be people that have gone through the community of AA or otherwise, and they faced down and asked and answered some very serious questions. And is there one question that you would say has been really important to you that maybe you could say, I hope people wrestle and grapple with this one question for themselves. Yeah. I mean, the, the ultimate question is who are you? Right. I was, I was wondering if you're going to say that. Yeah. Who are, I mean, who are you? Who am I? Is the question. Who am I? Yeah. And, and you know, when you're in pain, you're really ready to, to really have a wrestling match with that. But when you've got two cars in the garage and everything's pretty good, maybe you don't like your boss or whatever, it's a lot harder to really deal with that, I think. Not that it's impossible. It's certainly possible for everybody.

But you're lacking that extra turbocharged push, a little emotional pain is going to give you. Okay. Um, gosh, I'm doing it again over an hour. I keep wanting to make, yeah, I know. It's a podcast. You can go as long as you want, man. There's no rules. Yeah. Well, you should teach me how can, um, what are some traps I'm walking into or some ways that I can get better at podcasting? And cause knowing that you've been doing this for three years and have a uberly successful podcast. I don't know, man.

I'm a, I'm pretty impressed. Like you're, you're getting stuff out of me. No one's ever gotten out of me before. So I think you're, I think you just should just keep doing what you're doing. What was the hardest thing we've talked about today? Uh, the hardest thing, the hardest thing for me is to not, for me, it's, it's to not fall into the trap of just repeating an answer that I've repeated before and actually think about the questions, but you're great because you're asking me questions. People aren't, don't generally

ask me, you know, it's like if I get the same question that I, I kind of can default into the stock answer that I always give. And then I go, is that really true? Or do I just keep saying that? Is that the story I created at one time? Yeah. So for me, the work in an interview context like this is to really try to, like I said, be as authentic and as honest as possible and to not just default to a stock answer. What do most people ask you?

What was it? Why did you adopt a plant-based diet like what happened when you were you know tell walk me through that episode before you turned 40 when you decided to change what made you decide to change it's like standard stuff you know and and to pull on the thread a little bit differently or different what what was different about our questions because i feel like we're talking about that same. We are, but you're not approaching, you're approaching it indirectly. Okay. Yeah, no, I'm definitely, you know, I'm definitely on the couch. Yeah. I feel like I am too. I'm getting free session once again.

Well, I wonder if that is by accident. I think that anytime we're in conversations where we're trying to be honest, that we're going to say things that maybe we haven't articulated or that are truthful. Either way, that's part of the inner wrestle. Okay, so can I ask another question about the inner experience? What's the most critical thing you say to yourself that you're ready to drop but haven't figured out how to do it interesting i mean you know i i'm a i'm teeming with you know all kinds of character defects thank god it's only you and not me yeah I know right I'm aspiring to your level of character defect lack of character defect right

then we have that model broken because I'm doing the same wrestling dance within myself yeah I think that I tend to I get all up in my head and I tend to I still tend to isolate and I, and I still want to control everything.

And I have difficulty letting people in and letting people help me. So it's that vulnerability of allowing people to assist me and understanding that if I want to take the work that I'm doing, the advocacy work that I'm doing, to the work that I'm doing to the next level, I can't do it all on my own. I can't be the guy who's doing the interviews and editing the audio and writing the blog post and trying to edit videos and write a book. I just can't do it all. So delegation is a new frontier for me and something I struggle with. And look, I get really, you know, a good barometer of my spiritual fitness is how irritable I get.

I just get really irritable when I'm not taking care of myself and judgmental and selfish and self-serving. And there's no room for that in my life. I got four kids. I have people that depend on me. And it's a weird thing now because I'm like this semi, you know, I'm this person who's decided to live their life very kind of publicly and vulnerably. Like, you know, I'm very transparent. But it's a bizarre feeling to live that way, right? To feel like that perhaps my life's being examined more than

others who are cagier about that or just choose to live more privately. And that's a bargain that I've willingly made. And it's one that I feel like connects with people and allows them to feel okay with whatever they're going through and hopefully can help them navigate that for themselves. So I'm happy to do that, but it, it, it sometimes can create a little discomfort. Do you ever notice that, um, when you're talking about things where you are struggling with the need to feel in control or be in control that, um, your body temperature heats up and there's, uh, like unpredictable tension. Yeah, am I flush right now? No, no, no, no, no. No, I'm just saying.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And when was the last time you faced, I'll tell you a good story, but the last time you faced that moment where your body temperature heated up as a signal that you're on the edge of being or feeling out of control? Not everyone feels it in their body, but I think so many of us do. Yeah. Oh, I definitely feel it in my body. I think I feel that when I feel like I'm misunderstood, like somebody leaves a weird comment on iTunes or on Amazon, one of my books, and they didn't quite get out of my book or my show what I'm intending.

And I feel like it's unfair. Then I get defensive and I feel that emotional flare up. So one of my mentors, he and I were having a conversation. We were in a restaurant and he asked me a question. And all of a sudden my body just, I just felt it. It was on. And he said, and he said, pay attention, you know, because there's that, this is the moment that you can make some decisions

about yourself. So I've never forgotten that. Like, that's a really wonderful insight. What did he say? Yeah. I can't remember at the time because it wasn't the question that now looking back, it wasn't the question that he asked. It was the experience that I pulled from that to listen deeply to myself so that I could make some decisions and guide accordingly and it had to be the conversation that we were having was about being there for other people and letting other people down was which has been a like every day I go to bed and I've got this struggle that I've let at least seven people down and he and so comment to me around this, I can't remember exactly how he said it, but it was like, yeah, you're letting other people down, but you're forgetting that you're letting

yourself down in the process because you're not there for other people and other people can't be there for you as well. Right. Because I was caught in the busyness of being productive. And so it was somewhere around that conversation that I felt it. And he said, listen, I said, oh my God. So that's really important to me. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So I look for those moments where that happens and it's a gift, but it's difficult. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So on the next kind of idea, if we want to get into some of the mindset stuff that I wanted to ask you about is can you capture your ideal mindset of what it's like for you to be at your best

my ideal mindset when I'm at my best would mean that I have control over my mental and emotional faculties and I'm able to channel them into a positive direction. In other words, I've been consistently meditating. I've been eating well. I've been physically training my body. And so it's a balance of sort of mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being that is all kind of like the cogs are all well-oiled and working in synchronicity that's a very tricky you know sort of recipe to brew up because is there a thought

this is for me it's so fragile that i can have all that stuff working nutrition's right spiritual groundedness is right mindset is right my physical and technical trainings are right i've got a great strategy going forward and one little thought can undo it. If I, if I water that thought too much. Oh yeah. Do you, do you have, do you have awareness? Do you have awareness of what that thought is for you? Yeah. I mean, it, it, it, it pulls on the, the heartstrings of my underlying low self-esteem. Like who are you kidding, man? Come on. You could tell all these people, you know what I mean? But we know. We know what's really going on here. And they're going to find out, man. And when they do, it's all going to come tumbling down. Imposters. When they figure out

that you're just faking it. Right. Yeah. That exposure, that fear of exposure, which it's interesting. Your approach has been, well, let me just be as real as I can. And so it's almost like a purposefully designed inoculation to the exposure of being found out. Cause you're saying I'm trying. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And that's, that's the power of being vulnerable, I think too. And I, and I'm always mindful, you know, look, I do this podcast. I get crazy emails every day. Uh, you're, you know, you're so inspiring. Your stories inspired me. I went and did this inspiration, inspiration, inspiration, inspiration. And that like freaks me out. Cause

I'm like, I don't think of myself in those terms. And I get very nervous when somebody's perceiving me as somebody who stands in a position of authority. Like I'm like, I'm just trying to share openly and honestly, you know? So I get uncomfortable with that moniker. And I think part of that fear is if I actually start to believe that, then that's going to change how I do what I do. Because I don't want to be the person who is speaking down to people as somebody who has the answers and now I'm divulging them to you. I'm just somebody who's on this journey like everybody else.

I'm sharing what's working for me, what doesn't, where I'm going wrong, and how I'm trying to improve. Very cool, man. is the more that you can align your actions with your personal truth, not your aspirational truth, but who you really are. Like you narrow that gap between how you live your life behind closed doors and how you hold yourself out to the world, you find peace in that because then you're acquitting yourself in an honest way. Acquitting.

That's a lawyer term. Yeah. You're, you're, you're holding yourself out to the world the way that you actually are. What does acquitting mean? I know what acquitting like you're, you're, you're displaying yourself in that way. What's an acquittal? An acquittal is, well, there's acquitting and acquittal. Acquittal is when you've been released, right?

Yeah. He's been acquitted. Okay. He's been found free and clear. And so say that statement again to me, that when you align your inner and outer world in public and private ways, there's an acquittal?

No, when you acquit yourself, when you hold yourself out to the world in the same way that you conduct yourself behind closed doors, then you're like bulletproof. Right? I think. I like it. So that's the power in vulnerability.

Yeah. What do you hope the next generation... It's your secrets, I think, that when you're holding onto those secrets, that's the fertile ground for all that negative stuff to come up. Is that born out of the idea that we're as sick as our secrets? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah.

Makes you wonder about all the secrets, what the cost of those are. Yeah. Internally, as well as the lie. Makes you wonder about all the secrets, what the cost of those are. Internally, as well as the lie. Especially now with, I was talking to somebody of the now generation, whatever they call that now, and their parents were saying that, I'm sorry, I was talking to the parents of somebody that's in the current generation, and they said, you know what, I have all these baby pictures of myself and they're awful but this was before digital and so now this this probably the now generation and probably maybe the teenagers of the you know the last generation um all of their photos are going to be wonderful because they edit them right and they can press the trash button or the delete button and so this public facing highlight reel there's going to be a

weird cost to it yeah it remains to be seen the the psychological cost of having your entire life document i mean it's like you look like yeah there's a couple baby like maybe one every couple months or you know a couple a year when you look back at your parents' photo albums, but imagine being photographed every single day, your entire life and having it in the cloud forever. It's crazy because I get confused. I don't know if I'm showing my age, but I get confused about some of the things I've seen in photographs, um, about the story around it that I created that might be different than the actual thing I experienced. And I think that's a true phenomena for humans that, you know, the recapturing of the memory or the actual memory are two different things.

Yeah, well, memory is very unreliable. Yeah. That's something when we were talking earlier about how like I answer questions, you know, a lot of it goes back to, well, what happened when you were, you know, on that staircase and you were 39 and And I recount the story. And then I go, is that really how it happened? Like that's how I remember it happened, but I've told it so many times. And when you tell a story, a story is a living, breathing thing that's constantly evolving.

It changes every time you tell it. And its relationship to objective fact can become strained. You know what I mean? So what did happen? You know what I mean? Fact is different than memory yeah okay last question about early on it's just a reference point for me what was your first memory that you ever had wow i think i remember when my younger sister was born she's like two years younger than me so you're two and a half to something

like that yeah and I remember my parents buying me like a little toy toy car garage thing to play with because they knew that the attention was gonna be redirected yeah well you like do you remember being in your crib no no so there's a little you're crawling yeah i think so i mean it's just a it's just a snapshot i don't remember that much about it cool okay flow on some of these ideas really quickly right so uh the concept of um you know not overthinking it but just letting it go when i say orange orange, you say, go ahead. Orange.

Black. I don't know. Is that from the TV show? Yeah. Orange is the new black. It's probably why I said that. So there we go. Stream of consciousness,

right? So just let this thing flow, whatever, whatever happens. Okay. Um, pressure comes from inside. It all comes down to you.

The crossroad was? Yourself. If I had a chance to do it over again? I wouldn't. Success is? Finding your authentic self. Love? Always.

Flow? Whenever possible. Spirit. The most important thing. My vision is unlimited. I am that. Okay. You know what that is?

No, I am that there's a spiritual book called. I am that. There's a spiritual book called I Am That. Yeah. Tell me more. I'm trying to remember who wrote it. Now I'm going to seem like an idiot because I can't remember who wrote it. I Am That. Is it Ramayana?

I can't remember. remember but it's the idea that that um that the ultimate the ultimate question it goes back to like who am i right okay who am i i am i am that which is everything and nothing there you go very cool okay too fun thank you thank you man that was awesome is is there um is there anything maybe that you wanted to ask me that that you're hoping that we would talk about that we didn't talk about yeah if i was your patient where would you focus your energy and where where do you think that i need help i'm gonna take advantage of the time there we go. So first – Tell me what to do. Yeah, right. I'd say first order of business is that I'm not sure what a patient is. Client, whatever.

Yeah, like people that I spend time with is how I think about it. And it feels so medical to have patients. So I think I burned or abandoned that word a long time ago. But the question that you had was like if we were doing some work together, you said, where should I focus?

Is that what you said? And I would say, okay, like what do you want to, what change would you like to have happen? Like what is our agreement that we're going to work on yeah yeah yeah i think that um

that's a great question it's a it's a it's something that i feel like i should have total clarity on before i would come to you so then maybe i don't know that i do have clarity yeah we would just start there probably like the focus then would be, what is the next year to three years to five years? What's the thing that you're working towards becoming and the thing that you're working towards doing? And it's the being and the doing and the blending of those two that really shape our day-to-day endeavors if we have great alignment. And so I'd start with that and say, you know, what's it look like? And if you want, we can tease that out a little bit. Yeah.

I mean, I think for me, you know, the thing that I want to focus on really is how to – I mean, it's really – you know, it extends beyond athletics. It's really how do I take – It always does. Yeah, this message that I have and this audience that I have and the advocacy that I have to the next level to positively impact the most number of people possible. Okay. And built into that are what are my personality limiters that are holding me back from accessing my full potential and realizing that, I think. What are the personality limiters?

Okay. And then what's holding you back from the potential? Do you know what you stand for? Are you really clear about that? I'm pretty clear. Yeah. And if there's one, two, three things that you stand for, what are those? The primary thing would be helping people break free from their own prisons, their own internal prisons, professionally, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

And the second part would be helping people develop better habits around food and exercise to live healthier, more fulfilling lives. And then those are – the first one's personal. The second one's mechanical. And the first one, like that's about, um, I feel like that would probably be people outside of your family, but I don't think that to be true for you. I think that that would also include people in your family. Yeah, it would, but it's really outward facing. You know what I mean? Like, like if somebody is listening to my podcast, how can I, how can I use, how can I use these various, um, distribution channels for my voice, for film, for speaking, whatever it is to really impact people in a meaningful way, in a meaningful, positive way.

And then, so I'd ask you a really simple question, is, like, what is getting in your way? And I know that that's the question you want me to answer for you, but, like, what are the things that are getting in your way? I think it goes back to some of the things we talked about before, like trying to be a control freak

about everything that I'm doing and not being as, not, I need, there's a lot more that I can learn about team building, I think doing and, and, and not being as not, I need, there's a lot more that I can learn about team building, I think, and empowering people. Um, and I think that I could use development in becoming more efficient with how I use my time. Yeah. I drill right into that control idea, you know, and we, we would go right into that and begin to have conversations about what would be very concrete ways that you could demonstrate letting go. And what that would require is an increased trust.

You're right. That's the problem. Yeah. And trust has two vectors on it, trusting self and trusting others. And the ultimate piece about trust is that, listen, no matter what happens, I'm going to adjust, right? If the worst stuff happens, I'm going to figure out how to adjust. And that's when we can say that we have a deep sense of our ability to trust. And so control and trust are on the opposite sides of the same coin. And so I begin to explore that with you a little bit and then maybe do something really concrete, like a fun little exercise is go to a restaurant.

This would be really hard for you because of how important food is for you. But go to a restaurant and allow the waitress or waiter to bring you food. That's it. And then eat that? And eat that. No matter what it is? Well, that would be really hard for you if you're plant-based. But you probably go to restaurants

that are plant-based. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that's it. So that's like this little, mini, tiny, mini little experience of letting go

and then building on that in other kind of parts of your life. And that sounds like almost too trite. Try it out. No, I get it. Yeah, I like it. Yeah.

Try that and play with that a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, your openness and your courage that you've demonstrated are your strengths and assets and your ability to have the will and the fortitude to go the distance even when there's pain is certainly going to be the accelerant to exploring your potential yeah man i gotta i want to continue to grow yeah you know as it as it was said to me and impressed upon me back in rehab, cause it all goes back to that. Uh, I remember this guy, he said, look, man, every single

thought that you entertain, every decision you make, every action that you take is either making you more sober or leading you closer to a drink. And I think that's very appropriate to life. Like you're either with everything that you're doing, you're either growing or you're regressing in one way or another. But we have this idea that we're walking around relatively static, like I'm cool. It's good. You know, whether it's your relationship or your profession or your athletic career, there is no stasis boils down to every little micro thought that enters your mind and every little tiny decision that you make that adds up into which direction you're moving. And I think about that a lot. Yeah. There's a coach that shared this insight with me. He said, the most dangerous words in all of elite sport is I got it. Yeah. I got this. I got it is what he said. And then he added the man,

I got this man. And so that, that was the, those are the most dangerous words in all the sport because it's the antithesis of, of being open. Yeah. Yeah. And so, well, it's a weird thing as an athlete, like you, you, you know, the, the sort of coach mentor athlete relationship is so, is so important and so special. But on the one hand, you have an athlete that needs to be sort of resilient and self guided and built into that kind of like confidence is this idea that you got it. Like you don't need help, but you have to ask for help. Like it's that asking for help, but also having the confidence that you can take care of business.

That you can trust. I use the confidence and trust are two different things for me. I can trust that whatever happens, I can adjust. And then confidence is I'm pretty sure that thing over there that I'm setting my sights on, I got a good shot of making that thing work. Right. Which is maybe a fancier way of saying, I got this. But the I got this man is maybe has what he was conjuring up is that I'm good. I'm good.

I got this. I got this. Like, I don't need to keep trying to figure out and explore and, you know, which at some cost that too much exploring slows us down. Right. It's a weird thought because there is this balance between being and doing that's really important for all of us. And too much doing, right, is a problem. And too much being, if it could be, you know, is a problem because we're not actually moving it outside of ourselves. Interesting. Yeah.

So I know we didn't answer your question. I don't know. What was the question? What could I do more or better of? Okay. So let's, I appreciate you spending the time. Yeah, man. This has been great.

Yeah. And I want to thank you for sending me on this trajectory. And I want to also thank you for, in this conversation, the way that you bring thoughtfulness and the way that you bring your heart, the way that you bring vulnerability and deep thinking, all wrapped into a conversation that is about pushing limits and going beyond and stretching and straining and letting go and loving. And the appreciation that you have for both your wife and your family unit, as well as the career path that you're on that was tremendously different than what you first started out to be. So I appreciate the entire conversation.

But more importantly, I appreciate the way that you show up. And it has a way of creating ease with others. And so I don't know if this was easy for you, but I've appreciated it. Thanks, man. I appreciate that. And I appreciate you and all the work that you're doing to carry your message to a broader demographic of people, beyond the people that you work with more intimately on a daily basis. But your work is important, and it's empowering, and I think it's very impactful to your audience. And I would just encourage you to continue with this podcast journey that you're on,

man. It's really exciting. And I think you have a really unique voice and you have an aptitude for, you know, putting, or I should just say myself, putting myself at ease and providing that space so that we can be open and talk about stuff that matters. Yeah. I appreciate it. I feel like I'm running into a trap with these podcasts, which is I love it. And I'm not sure how to continue finding the time and the space to do it. And so I've got this dance, like to try to meet this need, uh, that I somehow artificially created to have one a week. And maybe that's ridiculous, but, um, and I feel like to have one a week and maybe that's ridiculous but um and i feel like to have some

consistency the momentum is important for consistency and um i don't know i i feel like there's a trap waiting on the other side of this where uh but you know i'll i'll certainly ring you up when i get to that place there's no trap man but i will tell you this i am a ready willing and able advocate for everything that you're doing and always available as a resource. So cool to call. So great to have like a community and a tribe. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah. So I appreciate that. Yeah, I will. I will call you now for sure. OK, so where can people find out more about what you're doing and what's what's on your heart next? Yeah, sure. So, I mean, the easiest way to track me down is richroll.com, my website. Uh, you can find my podcast there or on iTunes, the rich roll podcast.

And my memoir is called finding ultra. Um, and I've got a cookbook that came out this spring called the plant power way. You can find those on Amazon and I'm just at rich roll on Twitter and Instagram. I'm a pretty easy guy to find online. Yeah, you are. That's great. And then for folks, and we were talking about this earlier, like I have no idea how ranking and all that stuff works on iTunes. I don't know if anyone does, but you did share a nugget, which I was on the path of, that when people write reviews, it helps. Absolutely. So everybody should stop what they're doing right now, go to iTunes and give Michael a review of this podcast immediately. It'll only take you a second. And it doesn't even matter what the review is. Just leave a review. Of course, you're going to

leave a five-star review, but you know what I'm saying, right? So on Finding Master. That does help. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the iTunes algorithm for how they rank podcasts. Listen, if you want visibility for the show, you've got to play this game, but they're very cryptic about how it works. But I do know that reviews do help. So if you guys have been enjoying all this amazing content that Michael is bringing to you guys for free

on a weekly basis, at least so far, right, with all these amazing people, come on. Do them a favor. Leave a review. Love it. Thanks, brother. Okay, so until next time. Peace.

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