Know Thyself - E102 - Rich Roll: Transform Your Life At Any Age & Awaken Your Hidden Potential

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

Rich Roll is a podcast host, author, and ultra-marathon athlete who has lived a life of true inner strength, ambition, and purpose. Today, he sits down with André to discuss the foundations for living in harmony with your goals: facing off with adversity, the inner critic, and learning to surrender. He shares his story of overcoming alcoholism, becoming an athlete at age 40, and becoming a world-renowned podcast host. He reveals the power of mastering the mind: whether it be in endurance sports or facing online criticism, the mind can be an incredible tool if we learn how to sharpen it.This is a deeply inspiring conversation to remind you that you can change your life at ANY age, and the greatness you are destined for is always within you.André's Book Recommendations: https://www.knowthyself.one/books___________Timecodes:0:00 Intro 1:41 Balancing Success & Self Worth7:53 Self Will vs Surrender11:53 Solitude and Stillness Changes You18:52 Mid-Life Crisis, Ultra-Endurance, Podcasting33:37 5 Most Defining Moments of His Life40:09 Transforming Pain Into Growth45:40 Facing the Inner Critic & Cultivating Self Love54:45 Reality of Addiction & The Subtle Hold It Has On Many Of Us1:03:25 Mastering the Mind & Achieving Greatness1:08:22 Maximizing the Body's Capabilities Through Ultra-Marathons1:13:49 Plant Based Living & Preventing Dogma1:24:29 The Power of Podcasting1:27:44 Navigating Fame & The Ego1:34:53 Thoughts on Plant Medicine1:39:35 Transformative Power of Vulnerability1:44:31 Self-Discovery Through Podcasting1:47:25 Rich's Vision for His Future1:49:02 Conclusion___________A graduate of Stanford University and Cornell Law School, Rich is a 50-year old, accomplished vegan ultra-endurance athlete and former entertainment attorney turned full-time wellness & plant-based nutrition advocate, popular public speaker, husband, father of 4 and inspiration to people worldwide as a transformative example of courageous and healthy living.Website: https://www.richroll.comPodcast: https://www.youtube.com/@richrollInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/richroll/___________Know ThyselfInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/Website: https://www.knowthyself.oneClips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4wglCWTJeWQC0exBalgKgListen to all episodes on Audio: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4FSiemtvZrWesGtO2MqTZ4?si=d389c8dee8fa4026Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-thyself/id1633725927André DuqumInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/

The longer these races are and the greater the distances, it's all about the mind. On the cusp of turning 40, I couldn't walk up a full flight of stairs without having to pause, winded, out of breath. That moment was the beginning of a new journey in which I was trying to understand who I was. My vehicle for doing that was ultra-endurance sports. It was much more of a spiritual journey that it was an athletic journey. Your relationship with your own mind is perhaps the most amazing. important one because it's our wounds that we misinterpret as superpowers. What do you think is the biggest wound you're mislapling as a superpower right now?

We now live in a world in which it takes almost a superhuman effort to even engage with our interior selves. It's about the tiny little things that you're doing every single day that are easy to blow off that move the needle the most. All the success is a product of that philosophy. And that's how over time you're redirecting your sense of who you are and rewiring that story to be one that is self-honoring. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to know they self. Our guest today is a globally renowned ultra-distance endurance athlete, host of the wildly popular Rich Roll podcast. He is a plant-based badass and somebody who I think is really a walking inspiration about the power of transformation, our ability to reinvent our lives at any stage, and to live in alignment. find a life of purpose. Ritual, thank you for being here. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. The honor is mine. Let's dive right in.

Sure. At this stage of your life, how successfully do you feel like you detach your internal feeling of enoughness with the external measures and outcomes of your endeavors? That's a very good question. Yeah, this is a daily struggle. On the one hand, I'm successful by every kind of Western metric beyond anything that I ever thought. I would be able to accomplish. And so I'm really present and engaged in gratitude for this privileged position that I find myself in where I get to have what I think you would agree

like is perhaps the best job in the world, which is to engage with really brilliant people that you're curious about. In this structured forum where you get to explore ideas that lead to personal growth, and then you get to share it with lots of people and it impacts those people in positive ways and there's a ripple effect to that. And I just think it's a beautiful thing. And I never lose sight of just how privileged I am to,

you know, be able to be in this space. At the same time, we live in a material world. And, and, you know, now I have disposable income. And so, you know, I'll fall prey as much as anybody else. to, oh, you know, my happiness would be enhanced if I got this thing or that thing or I could grow my show to this or what, you know, what other areas can I push myself in where, you know, I can expand my capacity to consume more and, you know, kind of elevate my status. So I wouldn't say that I'm, I've transcended any of those things. I'm not an enlightened human being. But as Arthur Brooks is, you know, very quick to say, no amount of power, property, or prestige is going to land you to that sacred place where you are free from struggle and difficulty and obstacles. And it certainly isn't a

path to happiness. So those two things, you know, obviously are in conflict with each other. But I would say overall, like, because I didn't get into this for any kind of material purpose, like on some level, It's all this mystical spiritual journey that I've been on that I had nothing to do with. I've been a passenger, which allows me to approach what I do with a level of humility and appreciation because, yes, I've worked hard

and I've been consistent and I've done all the things, but it wasn't, it's not the product of some goal that I set for myself or some whiteboard agenda. Like it's unfolded very gradually over a long period of time. So it's not like I got smacked in the face with, you know, all kinds of success immediately. Like I've matured into it. And so I'm able to have an arm's length kind of healthy relationship with it.

Yeah. I know alongside that you've been on a journey the past couple of years, renegotiating how you enact yourself while you do what you do for trying to find more ease and joy in this great gift that we have during podcasting and everything else. you do in the world and kind of relinquishing the conditioning of making things hard and controlling things to a T. And I'm just curious in conjunction with that feeling of enoughness and cultivating ease within everything that you're doing in life. Where do you feel like you're out within that process? I think I'm improving, but I still have work to do. It's again a conflict between self-will and surrender. On the one hand, I'm very good at self-will. I can be a very willful person. And many of the successes that I've had are due in some part to the fact that I know how to work really hard.

I have a, you know, a profound relationship with suffering. You know, I'm, you know, not one to quit early or go home, you know, before the work is done. And I have control freak issues and I care about the details and all of those things. And on some level, that's a motor that I can leverage to advance. myself. The flip side of that is what I was just talking about a minute ago, which is you have to let go. You have to surrender and understand that you're really not the pilot here. And that's where the cultivation of ease can come in to kind of say, hey, listen, there's more going on. This is not about me. I'm not the center of the universe. And my ego is actually more of an impediment to

the mission that I'm on than an ally. And so, again, and it's another kind of battlefield that's going on. But I think I'm pretty good. I've gotten a lot better at letting go. I'm in the process of writing a book right now. And so this is kind of flaring up in me, you know, where I think if I'm not bleeding on the page, it's not good. But often, you know, when I'm in that mindset,

what's on the page, you know, becomes degraded. The more I, you know, apply myself well. And the more I can get into that headspace and mindset of ease and flow. and allow myself to be a channel for the highest good and to kind of get out of the way. Ultimately, that is not only a better, healthier, and more sustainable path and a more spiritual path

and a more humble path, it's also the better path in terms of the quality of the work that I'm trying to put out. So again, you do have to put the work in, but on some level you also have to get out of the way. So much of our path is like, we use the evidence of our history of how we got success in the first place, which oftentimes in the society is through that force will control to inform how it's

only possible to create more of that success or even to greater degrees or really redefining what success means in the first place. And, you know, when you're in the throes of unawareness, by definition, you're not paying attention to the process in which our ego is playing out in that identity structure. And so what's been like the actual biggest thing, to help you regain that consciousness and choice and not compulsively going back to that kind of old paradigm of how you have operated. If you look at through your behaviors,

there's obviously the perspective ship that you just shared, but what do you think is the biggest thing that actually moves that needle? To inhabit that better headspace, prayer, meditation, and service are the biggest ones. And these are things that I learned initially when I came into sobriety back in 1998. And that was really the first time

that I had to confront how myself will was moving me away from a more authentic, actualized human being. Because prior to that point, for sure, every success that I had had as a young person, I would credit to my work ethic and my ability to apply myself and my attention to detail

and my control issue. So whether it was in the classroom or in the swimming pool, all of those successes that I had as a young person becoming this world running swimmer and getting into all these fancy schools and getting good grades and the like and getting the jobs. In my mind, I was the protagonist in all of that and the sole person responsible for that trajectory, which is, of course, an illusion until alcohol entered the equation. and my life first slowly and then quickly spiraled out of control until I was just an agent of chaos, reaping destruction in my path, and confused and bewildered about my inability to master this dysfunction. Like, I'm somebody who knows how to apply.

I can get up at 4 in the morning and train and do, you know, all these things, the more I applied that sense of myself, that capacity, that self-will to this problem of alcohol, the deeper my whole God. And it wasn't until I was in so much pain and willing to entertain a different way to raise my hand, ask for help, and actually receive help, that I was able to change that relationship.

And truly, that is through surrender. I had to, instead of force myself to figure out how I was gonna solve this problem with my mind, I had to surrender and begin to appreciate and inhabit a more spiritual relationship to myself. And that was the genesis of this growth trajectory that I've been on ever since. And with that, again, comes the subjugation of the ego,

the celebration of humility. And those are things, again, to your point and to your question, are cultivated through meditation, not active meditation when you're like, you know, out on a trail running and you think you're meditating, but a formal meditation practice, prayer, which can mean any number of things to any number of individuals, it's of your design.

You know, just basically a relationship with the beyond, call it your higher power, the universe, whatever you wanna call it God. And then the practice of subjugating the ego comes through selfless service to others. It allows me to get out of my way and disabuse myself of the idea that I am the center of the universe and this protagonist

and appreciate and understand that making yourself available for other people and lending a helping hand without asking anything in return is the way to kind of get out of your own head and all of the problems that swirl around in your mind that you can become otherwise obsessed with. Yeah, that clarity of mind that one can cultivate, through prayer and service to others, but mainly meditation,

I'd be curious to hear a little bit more of your practice of solitude. And, you know, it's just such a, I noticed this again this morning. I've like shared this before, but, you know, I was just in the sauna and there was like an AC unit nearby. And then it turned off randomly. And you don't, you weren't aware that it was on prior to it turning off. But the contrast of that experience realizes, makes you realize how noisy your environment was.

And I feel like this is analogous to our internal reality where we have so much noise and endless rumination and to a degree we're not fully aware of. And until we have the contrast of that settling down, we don't realize how dysregulated it makes our nervous system. And I know that you've consciously made an effort with your daily practices, but then also yearly to take an extended amount of time and silence and solitude off grid. And I'm just curious what your thoughts are on how that's really impacted your journey to cultivate clarity of mind.

Yeah, I mean, what you're referring to is the micro and the macro. Like in the micro sense, when you engage with meditation and you develop some acumen around that, you begin to understand and appreciate the extent to which your unconscious mind is driving thoughts, behaviors, and decisions in ways you were previously unaware. And that's to say that for the most part, and to a degree larger than I think most of us are willing to appreciate or admit,

we're living our lives reactively based upon those unconscious loops and signals and the stories that we repeat in our mind about who we are and what we're capable of and who did this to us and this is the way we are and all of these things. Like this tape that is running incessantly in our mind is actually driving outcomes in the real world. It becomes the operating system for how we interact with other people, how we make decisions big and small. And we can't overestimate just how profound that impact is. And when you develop the ability to be still and to notice that, that opens the door to a path towards better mastering what those stories are and the signals of the unconscious mind. so that you can, at a minimum,

develop the capacity to pause when agitated, to respond rather than to react, to put the lie to the looping stories and cultivate better ones that are more in service to the authentic self within. And that in turn creates better outcomes in the real world. So I think that is fundamental towards living a self-actualized life

or being on the path towards greater self-actualization. And in terms of the macro, yes, every year I take a month off and I go someplace and it's not like I'm a hermit or a monk, but the point is to shut everything down, to put space and time in between what I do for a living and who I am as a human being so that I can delve deeper into the meditation and the silence and really embrace a solo experience

so that I can gain perspective on like, what am I doing? Like, just because I've been doing this a certain way, should I be doing, you know, like what is the best, what is the best channel for my limited time, energy, emotion, intellect, et cetera, so that when I return from that experience, I have a greater degree of clarity.

And the first time I, I did this, I was incredibly resistant to it because I'd been operating for, I think, seven years at that point without taking any time off. And, you know, the podcast was really born out of a period of time, an extended period of time in which myself and my family were going through a very difficult period of financial dismantlement. It was incredibly hard to just get the bills paid. We almost had our house repossessed. We have a very difficult period of financial dismantlement. or foreclosed on, we had cars reposite, like it was hard and it was emasculating

and extremely challenging. And I'm happy to go into more details about that if you want. But the point is that when the podcast and the other things that I was doing started to click in finally after many years and I was starting to be able to pay the bills and put a little bit of money away and develop a solid foundation financially, economically, where I could support my family,

I was persisting on like this PTSD for many years where I thought I have to, you know, finally it's working. I have to push, push, push, push, push, push, because if I take my foot off the gas, it's all going to fall apart and we're going to go back to that place that I never want to return to until I was tiptoeing up against the precipice of burnout. Like I just had not given myself a break in so long. I was I was just propelled by that fuel and that fuel source was running out. And so out of necessity, I took that month off, and it was revelatory.

And now I have a healthier relationship with my work, and I've disabused myself of some of that trauma, I guess. And now I do it prophylactically. Like, I don't necessarily need the break, but I build it into the year, and I prepare, like, months and months in advance, so that everything is kind of taken care of when I take that time off. And it's been really profound. And, you know, obviously, not everybody has the ability to do that.

Like, I recognize privilege in that as well. And I don't take it lightly, but it's been fundamental to not only keeping me fresh with the things that I do for a career, but also, again, it just refines and sharpens my perspective and the clarity around purpose and meaning and the things that, you know, I'm. invested in. I could only imagine how really necessary it is for you to stay connected to your why of what you're doing because it's so easy to get in the motions with podcast after podcast, after business meeting, after thing after thing, and unless you have that space, which, you know, yeah, it's a privilege to have a month off, but we can all create pockets of that in our life and a more microscale to, you know, see as a ship's taking off from harbor, you know, of one degree change over the course of year lands you in a completely different destination. And so I can

imagine over time these little pivots that you make, you know, afforded to you by these periods of solitude really land you in a different place in life internally and externally. For sure. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I want to dive a little bit more into what you were talking about with that period of life where the podcast was really born out of, which was this immense period of strife and struggle, the emasculation and not being able to provide in the way that you dream to for your family.

There's kind of two things that kind of come to mind. One is your internal journey of, you know, not the emasculation not really showing up in the way that you wanted to. And then the inner voice of the podcast coming to you, like in the decision to create that, which of course you had no idea could turn into what it is now. But I'm curious if you can share a little bit about the texture of how that came in to be what your thought process was around it when it came in. With respect to the podcast specifically. Yeah, and then coming, you know, kind of out of that period of time. Sure. So backing up a little bit, I had been a corporate lawyer for many years. I'm somebody who is a product of an achievement-oriented household and was raised in a home in which education was very important and upward mobility was the priority.

And my parents were great. Like all my needs were met. like I don't come from a broken home or anything like that. It was just sort of expected like this is the path for, this is the ladder you're going to climb, right? And I got into all the nice schools and went to law school and I very dutifully followed that blueprint on the implied promise, I suppose, even if on an unconscious level,

that this would be the path towards not only respectability and financial stability, but also, of course, happiness. I had fits and starts because despite the fact that I graduated from Stanford and Cornell law, I was harboring this progressive relationship with alcoholism, that on some level was a percolating existential crisis, like it was sort of something inside me telling me that my discomfort had to be medicated and that discomfort could be tracked back to being on the wrong track or never cultivating enough introspection to ask myself, like, well, what is it that you want to do? Like, you're running this program for life that was embedded upon you, but you've never

stopped for a moment to think maybe there's another path for you, or what is it, what is it about, you know, what is it, what is it that speaks to you? What, what, what, what, what are you curious about? How would you like to show up in the world and express yourself? All of those things were kind of repressed and muted as I, you know, ascended each rung of this. ladder. And, you know, that ultimately, you know, met its match when alcoholism got the upper hand and I got sober. But then I spent the next 10 years building its foundation of sobriety, but also very much intent on rebuilding all of the goodwill and respectability that I'd squandered as a result of my drinking and using. And my goal was really to just become that person that I was

at 18 when I had so much promise and the world was truly my oyster. So again, even being introduced to spiritual tools and meditation and a better program for living that the 12 steps gifted me and continue to gift me, I was still missing the bigger picture of spiritual and personal growth. And so I had another crisis on the cusp of turning 40 when this existential crisis of being this lawyer kind of caught up to a health scare because for that 10-year period, I wasn't really taking care of my physical body. I'd gained a bunch of weight and was pretty depressed about this career choice that I'd made but felt very trapped and couldn't find a way out. And so that moment, which culminated in a staircase episode where, you know, I couldn't walk up a full flight

of stairs without having to pause, winded, out of breath and the like was this moment of clarity, not unlike the day that I decided to finally get sober, where I realized I was blessed with a certain willingness. There was like this portal that opened. And it felt very similar to that previous day, 10 years earlier, and I knew I needed to take action on that. And that was the impetus in the beginning of a new journey in which I was trying to understand who I was.

My vehicle for doing that was ultra-endurance sports. It was never a goal to become a competitive ultra-endurance athlete in my mid-40s. And the success that I've experienced in that world aside, what gets missed, I think, often when people ask me about it, is the fact that it was much more of a spiritual journey that it was an athletic journey. Like all that time alone with my breath and my heartbeat in a solitary state, out in nature was almost a survival mechanism of me trying to figure out who I was. And I needed that capaciousness, like all of that time alone in nature by myself in that, you know, kind of

active state of low grade exertion to kind of create that connection. And it took a long time. But during that period of time when I was training a lot and, you know, like 25 hours a week and doing these races, I did need something to keep me company, and that's when I discovered podcasts long before most people. Like I was listening to podcasts in 2006, 2007, 2008, before you could just click an app on your iPhone. Like you had to go to your desktop, open iTunes, find the podcast there, download them,

create like a playlist, and then bounce that to an iPod. Like, you had to do work. If you want to listen to a podcast, it wasn't a seamless affair by any stretch of the imagination. And it was early days, so it wasn't like it is today. But there was still some good stuff. And I was starting to learn all these things. And people were telling stories about how they created their careers and how they think about themselves and the world. And I just, like, it was like a whole world opened up to me.

But I didn't know anybody else who listened to pot. I would say, oh, my God, you got to listen to this. And like nobody was interested, you know. So the point being that by the time 2012 rolled around and I had a book that had come out and I kind of did all the promotional stuff to push it out into the world and was contemplating, well, what am I going to do now? That's when the impetus to start a podcast started. Like I had been a consumer of this format for many, many years, listen to thousands and thousands

of hours. And I noticed that nobody was really doing anything all that compelling in health, well-being, or fitness categories. And so I just thought, I know some interesting people. I have some experience. I have a sense of how this medium works based upon how much I had consumed.

And our family at the time, we were living on the North Shore of Kauai in Yerz on an organic farm. That's a whole other story. I was just there like six days ago. Oh, you were? So do you know common ground in Kilauea? I don't know.

It's a, we could talk about that more, maybe off-micly. but the owner of that property had read my book and he was trying to figure out what to do with this incredible piece of property that he had. And for some reason he thought like I could be of assistance and I was broke. You know, I was, I needed like somebody

to hire me to do anything at this point. Like I was waiting for the phone to ring. And this was like a lifeline, you know, and even though it seemed weird, like why would we go to this place, our whole family picked up, we moved, we weren't, we weren't able to be able to be able pay or mortgage at the time. We thought we were gonna lose our house

and we thought, well, maybe we're just gonna live in Kauai now. And we'd been there a number of months and I was trying to help this guy out. God bless him. And at the same time, starting to feel a little island fever like I had written this book and I was trying to get things going on. And here I was in this island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and I felt very detached and I just needed to do something creative.

And that's where the idea of starting a podcast, kind of cropped up. And I remember very specifically going online and trying to figure out like, well, what equipment do I need and how do you actually do this? And there was a guy called Pat Flynn, you know, Pat Flynn?

Smart passive income. And he had made like a series of videos, like five or six videos where each one took you through every single thing that you needed to do. Here's the equipment you need and here's the high-end version of it and the low-end version.

Here's how you get your, MP3 onto iTunes and here's what you need, here are the things you need to fill out. Like he literally took, it was like an instruction booklet. And I just followed that exactly. And then I got my wife to sit down with me and we recorded a podcast. And it wasn't like today where we're launching a podcast. It was very humble. Like we just thought, well, that was fun. We had a great conversation. Do you want to do it again tomorrow? And that's really how it started. And I ever since, like, I think it was November of 2012, like we've never missed a week and it's just built slowly over time. But the thing that was different then was that because it was so early,

there was no competition. Like people were not clamoring to start podcasts. At the time, if you told somebody about a podcast, they looked at you sideways and a little bit weird because podcasting for the most part, unless you were a comedian or you were doing politics or sports or something like that was considered this weird kind of hobbyist pursuit that people who like to hang out at Radio Shack

might be interested in. And so as a result, even though I think those early episodes might have only done, I don't know, a thousand downloads or something like that, we went right to number one in the health category because there was nobody else doing anything. So if you opened up iTunes and went to podcasts,

you would see our show there. And that was enough kind of external validation, like an affirmation, like, oh, like there's something here. It's going to be a long road. towards this being anything other than what it is right now, but it gave me the energy to continue to pursue it. But I never thought it would be a vocation or something that would pay the bills.

Like I did it for probably five, five or six years before it generated any kind of revenue. I did it just for the passion of doing it. I love doing it. I still love doing it. Yeah, I want to dive deeper to the podcasting journey for sure in this conversation. So at that time, as I was starting to berth through you,

you're still at this, you know, really crucial point in your life where, like, financially you were, you were struggling and how did you start to make, was the podcast the saving grace from that or were the other things? It wasn't the saving grace financially. Ultimately, it became that, but it, as I said, it didn't become that for a long time. Like, it was a long road, like many, many years of, you know, basically looking for loose change. you know, in the boot of the car, you know. And it just came together very, very slowly. One speaking engagement here, a little opportunity there. I'm still amazed when I look back,

like that our house wasn't taken away from us and that we were able to kind of patch things together. It was just living in the moment, honestly. And what was really instructive about that period of time was that it compelled my wife and I to live purely in the moment, as I said, to be totally present with our circumstances and to get clarity on who we are, who we are, what we're doing, and not get caught up in the fear, the judgment of others,

the self-judgment, and to be really committed to this path. I would tell you that if not for my wife's faith and conviction, I would have high-tailed it back to some law firm job. Like, you know, it was very difficult. But it was her vision and her ability to provide me strength in my weak moments to say, the only way out of this is through. There's no going back. We've come too far.

And she had seen me change and grow and knew that this was right, even though we couldn't really see, our way through the weeds to the other side. And it was a different time. Like now there's sort of a blueprint if you want to make a presence on social media or build a career on the internet.

There's a lot of examples out there, but it wasn't quite the case back at that time. So it was very confusing. And we did reap the judgment of a lot of people who thought we were insane and what are we doing. And it was difficult because, you know, I have kids and, you know, what does that mean if you're,

pursuing this thing without any kind of certainty. Like you're entertaining. I grew up very risk averse, like very security and stability focus. So I was way over my skis in terms of the risk that I was bringing in or entertaining into my life. And my wife, who's an artist and who is deeply devotional, like she was my sense, like she was really my mentor

and helping us navigate these challenges with incredible equanimity and neutrality. And it taught me the superpower of facing challenges and obstacles with that level of neutrality. The idea that no matter how bad it is, it's not a referendum on who you are as a human being. And nobody can strip you of your dignity. And it's all a game. And if you can be neutral and you can be really present with yourself and clear and have cultivated enough meditative capacities to not put,

be reactive, that you're in a place to make better decisions and that your guide and your compass should really be that higher purpose that's calling you. So, I mean, this theme of transformation runs so deep in your history. And, you know, there's this infamous tweet that I feel like a lot of podcasters have maybe referred to when interviewing you. But I just want to read it because I think it frames this well nicely, which is what you said. I didn't reach my athletic peak until I was 43. I didn't write my first book until I was 44.

I didn't start my podcast until I was 45. At 30, I thought my life was over. At 52, I know it's just beginning. Keep running, never give up, and watch your kite soar. And so when you look with the wisdom of being able to connect the dots looking back at these pivotal points in your life, first, I'd like for you to kind of like, what are the five most defining moments when you look back from addiction to the

endurance athlete to like, what were, if you had to just like categorize, like, bullet point, the five most defining moments, I'd like for you to share like those real quick. Moments or ideas? I would say moments in your life, which probably led to the ideas. Yeah, moments. I mean, certainly, let's see, moments are a little bit harder. I mean, certainly getting sober at 31 is the greatest accomplishment of my life and created the foundation for everything I'm able to do today. I wouldn't be here without that. So that was

the most important and key pivotal moment. The second pivotal moment was probably that staircase incident because that represented a shift in my perspective around how I was relating to myself and kind of set in motion a deeper spiritual journey of self-connection and self-honoring. Like, instead of making decisions and creating a life based on social expectations and external pressures to put that aside and say, I'm going to invest in myself and whatever voice, my intuition is, you know, the way that my intuition was guiding me about how I should show up in the world. That was the next biggest thing. I think the decision to step into competitive ultra-endurance sports,

which happened in 2008, was a big moment because it made this internal spiritual journey that I was on more of an external story that the broader world became interesting. interested in because I was somewhat successful in that pursuit that created intrigue in this journey that I was on. And that forced me to really think about how the power of my own personal experience

could be of service to other people. So I think that was a big moment. Starting the podcast was a big moment. was a big moment. But I don't really, the reason I'm challenged to answer this question is I don't think of

my life in that reductive way as a series of really important moments as much as I think of it as a more organic, progressive, unfolding

of greater self-action. Of greater self-action. And I think that speaks to the tweet in the sense that everything that I've done that I've succeeded at has taken a very long time. Like I'm a late bloomer and the success that I'm having as a podcaster, I'm now coming up on 12 years. Like it took a long time to get to this point where someone like you would be interested in hearing what I have to say. It took me, you know, many, many years to become successful as an athlete.

I've been an athlete my entire life, but nobody really cared until I was like 45 years old. And ultra endurance by definition is a sport in which going fast is less important than how far you go. And I think there's great lessons for life that are built into that sport from which you can extract greater wisdom. So, for example, you know, consistency,

never slowing down, like just showing up day after day after day. It's not about the inflection point big workout. It's about the workout you did the day before and the workout you did the day after. It's not about that one podcast that you did that went viral. It's about the one you do the next day and how you're showing up time and time and time again. It's about the tiny little things that you're doing every single day that are easy lifts, that are easy to blow off, that no one's paying attention to. that have always been the things that I try to focus on

that move the needle the most. And all the success is a product of that philosophy. Everything builds gradually and organically. I never had big viral moments with the podcast. My athletic journey has been marked similarly, like it's just been this incremental thing where everything builds upon all the experience and the effort that you put in in the past.

And I think in this day and age, we're all in such a hurry, you know. And my message is always like, be kind to yourself and be patient and put in the work and set your expectations aside. Like if you're falling in love with the process and the journey, those external rewards and those big inflection points will happen as a byproduct of that. But instead of chasing them, like, just pay attention to yourself and how you're comporting herself in the minute to minute, you know, kind of cadence of our everyday lives. I agree. It does feel reductive to, like, you know, boil our life down to a series of points,

but those points are moments of reinvention that usually had five plus years of pain leading to a certain point. And there's, you know, that saying of pain pushes until vision pulls. And, you know, I'm reflecting on your own life path. I'm curious what you think. Do you think desperation or inspiration has been more of a catalyst historically for you? Desperation, for sure. Pain has been my greatest teacher. And perhaps it's stubbornness or some internal resistance that I have. But all of the big moments, if we want to get reductive,

or big changes or shifts in how I approach life, have been driven by pain. In other words, when the pain of my circumstance exceeds the fear of change or doing something different. Despite the fact that a different decision or a different way of doing things is something that's always available to all of us in every moment, for some reason,

at least speaking for myself, the facility to make that choice rarely comes through inspiration inspiration, but more reliably arrives through desperation. So I have to be in a lot of pain. In other words, I have to bang my head against the wall a million times and people will say, you should stop banging your head against the wall,

but it's not until I have a serious concussion that I'm like, maybe I shouldn't bang my head against the wall. Like that's always been the case for me. I wish it was different. I wish I could just read an inspirational quote and then make the change, but, and maybe I think I'm getting a little bit better, at this, I'm not sure.

Because I've learned enough through that process of being in pain and being compelled to change when you feel like you're backed into a corner. But what would it be like if you just volunteered for it? And growth is not anything that we graduate from. Like there's plenty of areas of my life that I still want to master, and grow and I don't want to get stuck in any area like,

oh, you're an endurance athlete or you're a podcaster or whatever. Like I think the more we grow, the easier it is to put blinders on to the growth that still awaits. And I'm trying to remove those blinders and continue to be in that process of self-examination so that I can avail myself of that opportunity that is waiting for me out there. And that requires presence of mind and a level of self-honesty and accountability.

And it never gets easier. It's always, by definition, something that requires you to get out of your comfort zone. It certainly seems the more affluent we become and cushy or surroundings are the more that we need to consciously choose discomfort. Otherwise, discomfort will unconsciously choose us in many ways. And so I'm just curious as you've grown and become more successful and had more options, how important do you feel like it is to continually choose discomfort and seek that out actively in your life? And how do you do so? It is really important. And I think you're correct. Like it's easy now to pretend that you don't

need to anymore. Like everything's going great. Like can I just like take a breath? And so that's the kind of battle. It goes to the very first question of, you know, of the podcast that you opened up with, I would say that it would be very easy for me to coast right now. Everything's cool. Everything's going good. Like, I don't really need to be in that uncomfortable place of self-examination. I get all this external validation.

The podcast is doing great. You know, my relationship with my kids is good and my relationship with my wife is good. But I know when my head hits the pillow, where my blinders are still on and where I need to grow. And so I'm actively in the process of volunteering for that. Like I have, you know, unhealed childhood trauma

and I have challenges around like avoidance tendencies that I have with respect to intimacy. And I can get lost in workaholism in ways that impair my ability to have, really solid friendships and the level of connection and community that I know is important to living a happy, fulfilling life. I can isolate myself. Like I can hide behind things and no one's the wiser, but I know like, yeah, I shouldn't be doing that. There's other things that I should be doing. And I'm trying to make those choices consciously before they start to,

create a level of pain that makes them mandatory. Yeah, it's like the prophylactic move of you taking solitude, you know? Same with discomfort. On the same token, it really seems that no amount of self-improvement will make up for a lack of self-acceptance. And so it's like this balance and dance

between accepting us where we are in our current path because we'll always have things that we can improve upon. And so how do you balance that? How do you walk that dance between accepting your current reality and appreciating how far you've come

and this still inherent desire that we all have for continual expansion. Yeah, that's a hard one. That's a hard one. Hardwired into me is this idea, this false idea that my value and my deservedness to be loved is inextricably linked to my ability to produce or achieve, right?

And I will be my own harshest critic. Like I have a drive to do better and do more and all of these things, but what's behind that? What is the wound that lives underneath that, that's creating that propulsion? And I think it's a lack of self-acceptance and this false idol, which is that the opinions of strangers

and the external validations, get mistaken for love, and there's a sense of of inherent unloavability for who I am just as a human being that is overcome only through achievement and accomplishment. And that delusion can be a powerful motor that can get you to achieve things in the world,

but ultimately at some point, you realize that that is separating you, not only from other people, but from a compassionate relationship with yourself. So I'm very active in trying to cultivate self-love and it feels indulgent, it feels undeserved. It's like the only way that you overcome that is through actions on behalf of yourself to honor that, right?

So as uncomfortable, as it is to say, like, I'm really proud of the fact that I have amazing relationships with my kids and that I've been in a loving marriage for, we've been together for coming up on like 24 years at this point. Like, I'm really proud of that. And it was a lot of work. But I deserve it because I worked hard for it

and I am deserving of receiving their love as well. Which I probably couldn't say out loud, like not that long ago. Because it felt indulgent or unearned, you know. Yeah, and you sharing that, it both feels like an acknowledgement and also a reminder to yourself. Yeah.

It's a practice. Because you have to overcome that default setting or that wiring through contrary action. Especially in a society and culture that often celebrates the most high achievers being fueled by that not enoughness that we were talking to. And so it's like...

And anything, and the self-love is an antagonist to that. Like, what would happen if I love myself and I muted that motor, then my whole life would collapse. So it's very threatening and confronting. Because it's our wounds that we misinterpreted as superpowers and a distrust of the greater superpowers. that resides on the other side

of overcoming those character defects or those wounds or those traumas. What do you think is the biggest wound you're mislapeling as a superpower right now? Would it be that? Yeah, it's the same thing. It's, it's, and I say this as someone who's, who's, I've come a long way, like I'm further down the line on this,

but control issues. control issues. I'm the only one who can do it. You know, I can't rely on anyone else. You know, if it's going to be done right, like, I have to do it, that the quality of the work is contingent upon how much I suffer to birth it into the world. And that I'm inherently unlovable. And with that comes an imposter syndrome. Like, they're going to figure out that I don't really know what I'm doing. All this is going to go away and I'm going to be alone. desperate and alone. All of those things are lies, but there are wounds that crop up,

you know, that I'm always in the active process of trying to unravel and dismantle. So do you feel like those wounds are not much like a weed you can just pluck out, but they're a thing that needs continual assurance and repatterning throughout your life? it's just like a muscle.

The more that you are in the contrary action, the more those new healthier neural pathways take root and become the primary mode of kind of neural transportation as opposed to the old setting. But in your weaker moments, like they crop up. You know, when you're under duress or you're underslept,

then suddenly I will, you know, behave in a way that I used to behave. I wouldn't say that I've overcome them. I think it's a diligent practice that you're always trying to emphasize and double down on the better strategy. If somebody is sitting in front of you right now and while they might not consciously assert they don't think they're unlovable, they have the subconscious operating mechanism that really they do believe they're unlovable, what advice would you give us to somebody to repattern that and to be able to shift that?

Well, you can't truly love another unless you love yourself and as indulgent as it feels or as undeserved as it feels to love yourself. I think taking actions that demonstrate compassion for self is the path forward. In A, they say self-esteem is the product of performing esteemable acts. Love that. And that's generally in the context of how you show up for other people in service. Like if you suffer from low self-esteem or a sense of undeservedness, get out of your obsession of your mind because that's a form of ego just as much as the narcissist, right?

Like, I'm so terrible. You have no idea how awful I am. You can't imagine how much I hate myself. That is an indulgence of the ego. Covert narcissism. Right. It's the flip side of, it's a different. form of narcissism, a victimhood narcissism. And when you perform acts of service for another

people, for other people, you're getting out of yourself. And that's an esteemable act that in turn will help you cultivate internal self-esteem. At the same time, if you perform an esteemable act on behalf of yourself, that also builds self-esteem. And all you have to do is look at a very simple example. Like instead of going to McDonald's, you're going to go get the healthy salad for lunch instead. Like that is something that is honoring of yourself, even if it seems small and somewhat insignificant. And the next day you have a weak moment and you eat French fries, it doesn't matter. You still did something on behalf of yourself that says, I'm worth it and I'm going to honor myself and value myself by, you know, treating myself with healthy

nutrition. And you can scale it up to more profound acts of self-love. But if you're somebody who really struggles with honoring yourself, you can start with those tiny little things. But I think I would say, you know, to supplement that idea, identity is the construct of your actions. And when you string together many, many actions and more and more of them are honoring of the self, you're crafting the identity of somebody who says, I am a worthy person and I am the kind of person who honors myself by treating myself with kindness and compassion. But it may begin with the salad,

but then you just build on that. And I think with consistency, you create momentum until you have a self-perpetuating machine. And then it gets easy to do those honoring things on behalf of the self. And that's how over time you're redirecting your sense of who you are and the story you tell yourself about who you are, which is the most powerful story

there is in the world, like the inner monologue about who you are and what you're capable of and what you're not capable of and rewiring that story to be one that is self-honoring. This is under the bigger umbrella of awakening and going from reactivity to responding, from compulsiveness to consciousness. And as we see it from low-grade distract,

to more dense, gross forms of addiction, there's a problem that is being solved in addiction. And I would love for you to share what solution does addiction in any form in our life solve for us? Well, the thing that gets confused about addiction is the fact that the substance is the problem or the behavior is the problem, when in fact the substance or the behavior is the solution to the problem. Alcohol is the solution to alcoholism. Gambling is the solution to a gambling addiction. Because the person has a sense of dis-ease about themselves. They have an emotional discomfort that's so profound,

they will literally find anything to take them out of that state. Sometimes it's alcohol, drugs, sometimes it's relationships. It doesn't really matter the drug of choice or the behavior of choice, what is important is understanding that that choice, that drug of choice or that behavior of choice is the medication for the underlying condition. So abstinence is not the solution to addiction,

because once you take away, for example, in my case, the alcohol or the drugs, you're still left with that profound emotional discomfort, and you then in turn, need tools and a modality for how you treat that underlying condition of emotional discomfort in order to create and sustain emotional sobriety. And that's the much taller mountain decline. People can get off drugs and alcohol, but the real work is then what do you do with yourself,

who continues to remain incredibly uncomfortable for a variety of reasons that are fueled on some level by a genetic predisposition to addiction, but also childhood trauma and whatever your life experiences are that created this situation where you will literally do anything to change your state. You now need a spiritual solution to that, and that comes through in the 12-step, a series of 12 steps that actually teach you

how to approach this so that you can show up in the world differently and be comfortable in your own skin. That is the journey for every recovering addict, and it's a journey with no end, which is why people maintain their connection with these programs many years and decades after they've achieved abstinence. Because no matter how long you have liberated yourself from your substance of choice or your behavior of choice, you still have your internal wiring. And no matter how much internal work you've done to achieve and maintain emotional sobriety, there are always things that can throw you off your game, right? and you find yourself back in that state, and that's where the craving comes in for that best friend that you broke up with however long ago.

How do you think it changes or does it at all when relating to these smaller kind of addictive tendencies to our phone, to social media, to adoration, to so many different things, Carl Jung is quoted saying that pleasure is tension reduction, and you're speaking to the tension that we have of self and this feeling internally, whether it's unmetabolized childhood trauma,

emotional dysregulation, all these different things that give us the sense of not being okay, just sitting where we are in a way. And, you know, in some ways, it's a little bit more insidious to feel into the low-grade tension we all carry throughout our life that don't allow us to really reveal the true vibrancy that we have within. And so what do you think about that in those more subtle forms of addiction? There's a plus and a minus to it. On the plus side, I think the fact that on some level, we all are connected to our own obsessive,

compulsive tendencies and our inclination towards distraction in a way that we weren't prior to the introduction of, you know, these mobile devices. And I think that creates an awareness around all of our propensity towards addiction that perhaps didn't exist prior to this era of technology. It wasn't that long ago that addiction was thought of as a binary thing. You're an alcoholic or you're a heroin addict who can't pull the needle out of his arm, you know, or you're a normal person. You're one or the other. But in truth, and the longer I've kind of been around this world, I am convinced that addiction lives on a very, very broad spectrum. On the one hand, you have the repropriate, you know, drunk who just is living in the gutter or on Skid Row.

But there's also millions, if not billions of people who encounter some form of addiction every single day when they can't, they're scrolling through Instagram or Tinder or whatever it is, doesn't matter. And they're like, I should stop. Like, I don't like this. I don't like one more, one more, one more. And so we all know, we all have a sense of what that's like. And I think that allows space for greater understanding and compassion around the people who suffer addiction in more severe cases. And I think that's a good thing. Of course, the downside, the dark side, the negative side to this is that we now live in a world in which we're no longer bored. Distraction is reflexive and immediately convenient.

And as a result, we no longer have to ever sit with ourselves alone in some form of discomfort. And so what is that doing to us as sentient spiritual beings having a human experience when every single time an opportunity to reflect upon ourselves and whatever sense of discontentment we have, a restlessness, instead of inventorying that and trying to find a way to either overcome it or be comfortable with ourselves in spite of it, we simply distract ourselves. We're playing out this massive social experiment and we don't know where it's going to go. But I would contend that that is not a good thing because whatever discomfort you have or insistence that you must be distracted at all times is an impediment to spiritual growth and personal growth and progression.

And I think we're here to grow. We're here to confront ourselves. And that takes courage. And now more than ever, it takes a level of discipline that, you know, that we didn't need, you know, even a few years ago. So now it takes almost a superhuman effort to even engage on a base level. with our interior selves. You have to be almost a revolutionary to put the phone away. And listen, I'm not a Luddite, you know what I mean? Like I struggle with this just as much as anyone else,

and it's easy to say, use it as a tool and don't let it use you. But you and I both are people who make our living based upon these platforms, and it's hard to untether yourself from them and to call yourself out and create boundaries around, these devices that are much more powerful than even as much information as we know about them.

I think they're still more powerful than we think they are, and they're manipulating us in ways that are very uncomfortable to admit to ourselves. Yeah, it's such an incredible perspective around it all. And, you know, it's really important. I think in the Ayurvedic system, they have kind of Satva, Thomas, and Rajas, you know, and you can kind of bucket it into like things that bring more life to you or bring more death. to you in the way that you eat and the way that you move in the world and you know i just want to reflect deeper on this in this relationship we have with our internal reality which we're speaking

to this tension that we carry um but then also a very unique aspect of your personal path is your endurance athlete side where you have to come into this really unique relationship with the nature of your mind because you're of course exerting yourself in these incredible physical feats but alongside that is the relationship you have to your mind that often wants to give up or stop or quit much earlier than your body will. And so how, I'm just curious, in specific to those ultra-distance,

you know, things that you have done, what have you learned about the nature of the mind and how that insight carries into your day-to-day life? It's all about the mind. The longer these races are and the greater the distances, the more it is about your relationship with your mind than it is about your physical capabilities. The mind gives up long before the body.

That's one thing you learn as an ultra-endurance athlete. And the power of the mind to propel the body beyond the limits of your perceived capabilities is an incredible lesson that you learn, time and time again, the more time you spend in that world. And I think that's incredibly empowering. And it allows you to understand that your relationship with your own mind is perhaps the most important one and the biggest driver of how you're going to show up in the world.

But I think we're all victims of our own mind to a lesser or greater degree. And so what it's taught me is that the more you're going to be, you can become a master of your thoughts, the more that you're gonna be able to, not just in a practical sense, like actualize your goals, but grow into this self-actualized version of yourself, not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

And so we all know that if we wanna get strong, we go to the gym, or we have a movement practice, We understand the relationship between exertion and progression in the physical sense, but we really don't appreciate that that same equation applies in how we relate to our own minds. And so meditation is just one tool of engaging in that process. Participating in endurance sports is another form of that, where you're confronted with yourself in a very honest way,

and you have to make decisions about whether you're going to take another step forward or not. But I think there's many ways in which we can engage with that. And the call to action really is to understand that we need to appreciate that relationship in the same way we appreciate it with our bodies. Like we look at our bellies or we look at our muscles and we know like, hey, I need to do some work or we see the progress when we do do the work. But the problem with the mind is it's invisible. like we don't know.

And we're only now learning about the power of these tools and the kinds of tools that we can use. And it requires a diligence and a determination and a consistency, you know, to get to a level of mastery before you see any kind of outward progress in terms of like your behavior or the trajectory of your life.

So it's a much more ephemeral, obviously, thing. And for a lot of people, the way in is neuroscience. Like, I'm a science guy. Like, show me how this, what's going on in my brain when I do these things. And then for the more spiritually inclined, like there's many traditions, as you know, where you can learn more about how leveraging your own mind and opening your awareness up to greater possibilities with a sense of humility around. the way that the universe operates is,

you know, is a path that's appealing for other people, but other people, then the science mind's kind of like chaff at that, right? So it's like, what is the on-ramp for receptivity, you know, I think is very contingent on like what kind of person you are. But either way, the call to action is like, this has to be paramount in your life. Just this has some context so people can really appreciate the scale to which you've done, you know, these ultra, because ultra endurance,

distance, you know, athletic events, it's just kind of like a bucket term in which I would like to share a little bit more about what are some of the more tough things that you've done in that space. Would you say the Iron Man's on Hawaii? You're like, what would you say is like the hardest physical thing that you've done and we can break down what they're actually composed of? I mean, hard's a relative term. But I would say, I mean, the race that I, that I perform the best at is a race It's called Ultraman, which is a double Ironman distance triathlon on the big island of Hawaii. It's a three-day stage race. Over the course of those three days, day one, you swim 6.2 miles, and then you climb on a bike,

and you ride your bike 90 miles, and you go up to Volcano National Parks, so like tons of elevation gain. The second day, you race your bike 171 miles around the other side of the island. and the third day, you run from the town of Havi, which is a turnaround point in the Iron Man bike course, to the town of Kona where you began, which is a 52-mile run. So you literally circumnavigate that entire island over three days. So that's a race I've done a couple times. My friend Jason Lester and I did a thing in 2010,

where we did five Iron Man's on the five Hawaiian Islands consecutive, It took us like six day, a little over six days to do that. That was a whole saga and that wasn't a race. It was just an adventure and like a goal that we set out for ourselves to accomplish. So that was hard. And Iron Man, for those who don't know, is a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike and then a marathon, 26.2 miles. But the hardest one day thing I've ever done was the Otillo swim run world championships and sports.

Sweden, which is this, I think it's 75 kilometers. So, 75 kilometer race that takes place in the archipelago of islands off the coast of Stockholm, where over the course of the day, you, you run across these little islands and then you jump in, you jump in the sea, and you swim, you traverse to the next island, and you climb up the next island, and you run across it. So I think there's something like 52 transitions over 34 islands, and you do the whole thing in a modified wetsuit with your running shoes on. So you're swimming with your shoes on

and then you just climb out and then you're running across these islands in your wetsuit. And that's a really cool, beautiful race that I had the opportunity to do in two, I think I did it in 2017 maybe. I can't remember what year. It's tough to fathom to see what you even put yourself through.

I just had a friend Eli who did a 250 mile race. And like it's just so interesting to see what first drive, What do you think uniquely drives you to like desire to even explore those things? Is it just seeing what's late and potential within you? I think there's a truth and a purity and suffering. And that matched with an inclination or a disposition towards extremes, which is a disposition that any recovering addict or alcoholic can relate to.

Like there's a lot of people in recovery and endurance sports. There's a reason for that. the disposition towards extremes lends itself well to prowess in those sports. But I think what's beneath that, if I'm being charitable, is a disposition towards searching. And I think for a lot of addicts and a lot of alcoholics and people who suffer from that affliction, they are searching. They're searching for answers. They're searching for a higher state of consciousness.

they're pursuing it in an unhealthy way, but I think endurance sports provides a healthier version of that same search. Because when you're out there and you've got all this distance to cover and you're suffering and you're at the limit of your own capacity, there's no running away from yourself. There's nothing but honesty and the relationship between you and you and what you're going to do and what you're not going to do. and you become very conscious and present

with the power of the mind, its relationship with the body. And I think that intensity allows you to be hyper-present in what you're doing. And in that, you discover who you are in a broad sense, what you're capable of, and what you're not capable of. Like your weaknesses will come out.

Your tendency towards unhealthy emotions and resentment, like all of it, it's like a purging thing, right? everything comes to the surface and there's no running away from any of it. And so with that, it becomes this incredible teacher, if you'll allow it to be a teacher, that can illuminate those weaknesses,

celebrate those strengths, and provide compass points towards becoming a better version of yourself. So it's why I say like, for me, this has all been spiritual, it's like all been, all been way stations, on route to trying to be a better human, a more connected human, a more a human who kind of understands himself better as a means of trying to show up in the world better and in a way that's more authentic to who I am.

Another thing that's been like for you, the authentic discovery of who you are, what you value, living in alignment has been being such a big proponent. of being plant-based for so long. What was the, from my understanding, is your health that really put you on the path to explore going plant-based. I'm just curious as you've been somebody who's been so revolutionary on the physical front

in combination with your plant-based lifestyle, but then also an advocate for the ethical side of things. I'm just curious for you to reflect on your initial impetus for trying plant-based diet to where now it lives in alignment with your values and why you feel like it's a powerful reality to explore to live that way. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely evolved. I'm the first to say that when I first cottoned on to eating a plant-based diet, it was for health and vanity reasons.

Like, I was fat and overweight, and I didn't like how I felt and I was depressed. I was trying to find a way of eating that would allow me to feel good and energetic and I tried a bunch of diets unsuccessfully and very reluctantly, you know, decided to experiment with a plant-based diet only because it was the last thing on the list and, you know, that I had to cross off before I could go back to eating cheeseburgers and just say, well, I guess at my age,

you're just supposed to feel like shit all the time. So I wasn't enthusiastic in that experiment, but it was undeniable that within seven to 10 days of eating nothing, but plants and plants close to their natural state that I felt tremendously better than I had. I had a resurgence in energy and vitality and I just felt fantastic. And it's really just built from there.

And I've now been plant-based like 17 years and I credit it with restoring my energy to the point where I could perform these ultra-endurance feats. And I think it was, very beneficial in that regard. I feel like it nourished me completely while also being very anti-inflammatory and like enhancing my ability to recover

from my workouts day to day. And so it went from vanity and health, like I just wanna lose weight to being this lever for performance. But as the years tick by, it's become much more about living a more sustainable lifestyle and a more compassionate lifestyle.

I like the fact that eating this way is a vote for a better world, a more compassionate world, and that I'm opting out of the cycle of suffering that I think many years from now will look back on the conditions of factory farming that are perpetuating just a vile level of inhuman suffering that, that nobody is in favor of.

Like we're all compassionate human beings and for every omnivore, we all like, none of us wanna be perpetrating harm. You know, I think we're all inherently compassionate, but there's so many blinders up in society to prevent us from understanding the full extent of the harms that are perpetrated on these CAFOs

and these farms and the way that these animals are treated. And my hope, And my expectation is that, you know, some decades from now that this will be eradicated and will look back on it as this colossal embarrassment for the human race. In the meantime, like, I don't wanna participate in that. And it feels good and spiritually aligned to not be affiliated with that.

And that's not to say that simply by living, I'm not perpetrating harm, like I'm not under any delusion that, you know, just by dint of existing, that I'm creating my own harm in the decisions that I'm making and I'm hardly perfect and I'm not saying these things from any kind of pious place. I'm just saying for me personally, it resonates. And I think as we inch towards greater ecological collapse,

that it's incumbent upon all of us to think more deeply about the consumer choices that we make every single day and the extent to which our food choices are either moving us in a better direction, for the planet and for the animals and humanity or a regressive direction towards the continued loss of diversity and soil depletion and species extinction and suffering.

Have there been moments where you need to renegotiate, I guess, your belief around it? I'm just curious as you started out with the health side of things and then you start to grow into the ethical understanding of the implications it has in the world, which are just horrendous. to say the very least. And yeah, at times, how have you continued to stay true

to your decision for switching to plant base and not it becoming dogmatic in a way? Yeah, I mean, I made a promise to myself when I began that journey that I would not be dogmatic about it. And then if I felt like my health was starting to fail, that I would reassess it. That has not been the case,

and I get my blood work done all the time and my blood works great and I feel good. I feel vital. I'm 57 now and I'm still working out and doing, you know, like I'm not training for these races in the way that I was before. My life's very different now, but I'm still out there, you know, killing it and working hard.

So I haven't suffered any kind of personal issues with eating this way. In terms of my relationship with dogmatism, I've always strained to not be dogmatic about it in the way that I, I carry myself and my specific strain of advocacy. Like, you're not gonna find me at like a protest and you're never gonna find me taking someone else's

inventory of their own food habits and telling them what they should or they shouldn't do. One thing I learned early and often in recovery is that we don't give advice, we share our experience. So I'm happy to share my experience. This is what happened to me. This is why I made these decisions for myself. and I allow other people to draw their own inferences from it.

So I'm not out to tell anyone they're living their lives wrong or to shame anybody or to act like, you know, I have anything any more figured out than anybody else. I'm just trying to live my life to the best of my ability and to the extent that people want to know more about how that works, I'm happy to share it. I guess that's how I think about it. Yeah, I love that.

I think activists of all stripes can be their own worst enemy towards the advancement of the cause that they feel so passionate about. Because that passion doesn't always land with the other person in the way it's intended and often ends up being off-putting and kind of distancing other people from being excited about what that person cares about so much. I find like new converts often have such a self-righteous attitude that can be counterproductive to their ultimate goal. And I think we have a mutual friend, Nimai, who says activism or attractivism is the best form of activism. Yeah, I call it being a lighthouse. Like, I'm not a preacher and I'm not a politician. I'm sort of standing in my strength and I'm emitting a beam. And, you know, for some people, that beam is interesting and they'll come towards me. But I'm not trying to recruit anybody. I think when a person discovers a new idea and they find it positively transformative in their life, they want to evangelize it. And I think that's good because they've had this experience and they can't wait to tell everyone about it.

But oftentimes that comes with a lot of judgment of others and an insistence that this is the only way. And in turn, it becomes an identity. and I'm always resistant to forming an identity around anything, whether it's like how I move my body as an athlete or what I put in my mouth every single day. I'm a human being having a spiritual experience. These are things that I do and behaviors that I think are important and have helped me, but they are not my identity.

Yeah, it's that rigidity that is, I too feel like a lot of resistance to having and like and being on the path of truth means holding any beliefs that you have loosely with an open palm and being willing to change your mind or paradigm or on any given thing. And I too have felt on my own journey with being plant-based that as long as I could feel physically vital and health, like my health is vibrant and I get my blood work done and everything for the past eight years now, it's like It's a thing that made most sense to me to reduce as much suffering as physically possible. And that also includes myself.

Like it's not compassionate if a certain lifestyle is beneficial to others, but it's making myself suffer in many cases. Or if you lack compassion for other people. Right. Exactly. So veganism, for example, is grounded in compassion. But if you struggle to find compassion for your brothers and your sisters, are you truly living a compassionate life? And I think that's a conundrum that's built into that specific, you know, a strain of being in the world. But I think it applies, you know, more broadly to how we craft identities and how we think about other people who have different ideas about what's right. Everybody is right from their own perspective.

Of course. You know, and so we have to, we have to analyze our own strongly held beliefs as rigorously as our antagonists would. Amazing. I want to ask you a little bit more about your podcast because it's been an incredible journey. Impact so many people. It's been a big source of inspiration for me and I'm stoked you're here today to dive on, dive in on mine. And, you know, one of the beauties obviously of the gig is that you get to talk to so many countless brilliant minds repeatedly in many different topics and experts in their field. Have you fell into the lull of just listening to the information that you hear repeatedly? without it letting it transform you. Have there been periods

where you've kind of just got into the motions of it and the magic of it kind of has faded away? It's always a hard thing because people will say, what is the biggest thing that you learn from this guest or that guest or somebody will roll up on me on the street and like, oh, I couldn't believe

when so-and-so said that and it like changed my life. And for me, like as soon as the podcast is over, like it goes into some soup in my brain, but it's not like I immediately break out a journal and I write down these notes and I make changes in my life. Like, of course, the sum total of all of these conversations have improved my life in ways I, you know, couldn't even begin to estimate. But it's not a direct equation where I hear this thing and then

that opens a portal and then I make this change of my life gets better in this way. It's never really work for me. But I remain enthusiastic about it and that's why I take these breaks. Like, I've been doing it so long. And when I start to get even the slightest inkling of like, I could, you know, I have to do it. Because it is a job too. Like, it's a lot of work. If I start to sense that, like, I'll back off on the scheduling. I'll take a break.

I never want to go into a podcast with anything but unbridled enthusiasm and excitement for this person who's giving me their time. And often, like, is traveling a great distance to do it. it's not fair to them, it's not fair to the audience, and it's not the experience that I want to have, and it's not in the spirit of what I'm trying to transmit. So protecting that I think is really important, and that's why it's key to creating a schedule that's sustainable that has built in periods

for breaks and reflection, et cetera, so that you can maintain that kind of relationship with it. And also at the same time, I've learned, to only invite people on the show that I'm super enthusiastic to meet. And what you discover is that the longer you do it, people will say,

oh, you got to talk to this person. They're incredible, blah, blah, you know, like you do it. But if you're not feeling it yourself and I've made this mistake and you host them, you're going to end up with a flat conversation. Not because that person,

that guest isn't amazing. It just might be that you're not the right person to have that conversation or the optimal conversation with them. So I try to use that. That's really kind of my heuristic for who I'm inviting on the show. Like I have to have that internal excitement and enthusiasm. I feel like podcasters have this very unique niche of notoriety where it's not like celebrity,

but people that know you really are connected and probably listen to hundreds of hours of your voice and conversation with other people more than they maybe have with, you know, certain, loved ones at different points in their life. In the beginning of this podcast, you shared about how prayer, meditation and selfless service is like really important value for you to, like, live from your heart. I feel like there is inherent such a beautiful service in the podcast space, like you're doing a service for people.

And yet at the same time, it's so foreign and strange and unnatural to the human psyche to have this reflection of all these numbers of like your impact in the world. and I'm just curious your thoughts on like has that ever inflated your ego? Has that how is your relationship to also like not just seeing that as a selfless form of service because it is a form of serving you also obviously with everything it brings in? Yeah, it's tricky. I think I'm pretty good about that.

I don't spend a lot of time looking at metrics and analytics maybe to a fault. I've just been doing it long enough that I know that that's not good for me. Although I see the, it's not like I don't know, you know, a general sense of what the numbers are, but it's all very abstract. Like, you see this number. What does that really mean? Like, I don't know what it means. It looks big. But basically, I, you know, I am at my home with my family and I go to my studio and I have these conversations and then I go home.

Like, I live a pretty simple life for the most part. So it's not until or unless I'm traveling, I'm in an airport, or I'm in a different city or, you know, I'm out at a restaurant or something like that where I have those experiences where people come up to me. And it is different from the way somebody would approach somebody they saw in a movie or a television show because of that, that like parasycial relationship that exists with a podcast host. for the most part, most of my audience still enjoys the show and audio. I mean, video is a newer thing for us and it's growing and whatever. But having like your voice in their earbud when they're at the gym or shopping or, you know, going about their day creates a unique relationship that when I meet these people, it's not like, oh my God. I love the show. It's more like, oh, hey man.

Like, I just saw you the other day. Like, we're already friends. You know, the sense that you're, that there is a relationship that exists that I think makes it unique. But also, cool, like, I've never had weird experiences. It's always, like, very pleasant. And yes, it is an act of service, but it's also self-serving. And, you know, in my weaker moments, my ego will flare up or I'll be competitive.

Like, why is that person getting that? and oh man they got that guest, I should have booked that guest or how come that person's videos are going crazy and mine like are doing no view. Like I will do, I will indulge that petty stuff, you know, more than I care to admit.

But I know that it doesn't serve me and it's really not, it has nothing to do with like why I'm doing what I'm doing. And I've been doing it long enough that it's sort of self-perpetuating now. Like I'm not in a hypergrowth mode and I'm not out. looking to focus on growth. And I think a lot of newer people in this space who are very savvy about how YouTube works, et cetera, make a lot of important decisions around their show

based upon leveraging growth. And I never want that to be part of my decision-making in terms of the people that I invite on the show and the type of conversations that I'm trying to have. And that means that I'm probably working across purposes with growth at times, but growth isn't my priority. My priority is to serve the audience that I already have and to provide them with the highest caliber conversation and content that I possibly can. And I trust, again, it's like being an ultra endurance athlete. I do believe that over time, quality wins out.

And that means that I'm very reluctant to play all the games around, you know, hijacking the YouTube algorithm to get a bunch of eyeballs on. Because fundamentally, even if you have X number of people watching your show, if you got there because of all those tricks, who are those people? And are they really engaged with what you're doing? Or did you just dupe them into subscribing to your show? I want to cultivate an audience of really savvy, smart, growth-oriented people who are genuinely interested in having nuanced, challenging, thought-provoking, and confrontational conversations around this very messy thing of what it means to be a human being. And that's not something that can be reduced down to some kind of log line that's going to get

people to click, you know, their, they're like lizard brain to click. but ultimately, like, I don't care. You know what I mean? I don't care because I have to put my head on the pillow at night and feel like I conducted myself with integrity. It's really great. Also, just for me to hear, it's helpful because I think the more that you start to find success in this space,

you want to do more of what brings in those numbers, but like you're speaking to, growth without that alignment is not truly success, at least how it would feel to you or to me, and where you can know you maybe can get certain guests that will do really big numbers, but aren't in full alignment with what you want to be bringing forth in the world and the conversations and what you want to be building is just, it's an interesting thing to reflect on, for sure. Yeah, I just, I refuse to do it. Yeah. Yeah, man. And I just, the sheer consistency of 12 years of have you gone in different upload frequencies throughout that time we've always we've always from

day one uploaded every Monday um and then i tried to go to two a week and it almost broke me and so we pivoted back to doing uh six a month so we we upload every Monday morning and then every Thursday morning every other Thursday morning got it okay interesting yeah I can't handle any more than that um with the amount of prep that goes in, it just became, it becomes overwhelming. Okay, cool. Yeah, maybe I'll ask you more about that offline because I'm in that exploration right now. Yeah. I feel like six would probably be a nice start before going to eight month. Eight is tough. Eight is tough. Unless you're just showing up and just letting it like roll, however, you know, but if you go, if you really want to prepare and, you know, it becomes quite a lot.

Amazing. All right. A couple other random questions. I just want to to see what comes up. Have you done plant medicine? I have not. Do you have any curiosity to? Definitely curious. And I've changed my mind on this a fair amount. As somebody who is steeped in and indoctrinated in 12-step, I have a lot of built-in resistance to this. Yeah. Because the idea that the answers that elude me can be found in a mind-altering substance, is a lie that I have worked very hard to disabuse myself of. So to then revisit it and think,

well, maybe there is something, it's very dangerous. It's like, ooh, there's a drug I haven't done. Like it lights up all of the parts of my attic brain that I worked so hard to keep in check. And so for that reason, it scares me. At the same time, I can't help but acknowledge and respect all of the interesting

science that's coming out regarding the efficacy of these plant medicines in terms of treating everything from depression to PTSD, et cetera. And I personally know people who have benefited in very interesting ways from the use of these compounds. So I by no means dismiss it and I flirted with the idea of trying it, but there still is something inside me that resists it. And perhaps It's just not for me. But lingering in the back of my mind, I think, well, that growth that awaits might be catalyzed by experimenting with one of these

to open up a portal that I'm just not capable of accessing on my own. And I think that idea is what keeps me intrigued, but I do have resistance around it. And so, yeah, I haven't, I have never done it myself. And I don't know whether I will. Maybe I will, though.

Cool. We'll see. I'm curious to see what maybe comes of that. But I also agree it's, it's like so important, like how we engage with those things to and the place we're coming at it from. And if we're going for experience hunting, which you find continual plant medicine users often can, or if it's for genuine medicinal purposes to gain awareness for you then to

integrate because, you know, buckets of awareness are really, are nothing unless you have the integration practices. Yeah, I mean, I would say that I bristle at the idea that these compounds are something that should be just part of our wellness routine. I think there's a real cavalier attitude around them that is harmful in the way that now there's marijuana dispensaries everywhere and people just think it's a benign substance when it's in fact a quite powerful substance, this notion that these plant medicines are for everybody, I think is delusional, and the denial that comes into play around characterizing it as the work or as medicine, when in truth, there might be something else at play.

Because like yourself, I know a lot of people who have done a lot of voyages, you know, and they're not enlightened, you know, like it's not like they're still the same, perhaps they're better people than they were prior to that. But if you find yourself going back and back and back and back and back, like I know people that do it like every other week, they'll do ayahuasca. I think that's a problem. And so I'm very cautious around how I communicate around this because I think that it's really important to appreciate and understand just how

powerful and significant these compounds are, and that they shouldn't be taken lightly, that they should be administered by, you know, people who really know what they're doing in the proper setting, et cetera, because you don't know what you're gonna unlock and not everybody is a healthy candidate for this. Like it could, you know, I know people

who have become very destabilized from experiencing these drugs. So, cause, I would say. Yeah. It is a tool like that we have access to many. And, you know, one theme that I feel like has been really powerful to like witness on your own journey is your increasing willingness to explore vulnerabilities and share them and express them. What that does for other men that hear, but then also people from all walks of life.

And I'm just curious for you to share your thoughts on the power of sharing vulnerably your experience. and where you've gone wrong, and what that does for the male's heart and psyche in particular and just in general. Yeah, I think vulnerability is a superpower when it's deployed in the right context, in the right amount. I think we're in a moment right now,

especially with respect to social media, where there's a lot of performative vulnerability. It can fall into the signaling really quickly. Yeah, there's like, there's like vulnerability for likes, you know what I mean? And that's not real vulnerability. Vulnerability is the thing you actually really don't want to say that you're ashamed of, that you feel guilty of, that's so profoundly embarrassed that you would be horrified if anybody knew.

And vulnerability isn't also, is not something that you should irresponsibly just go out and vomit on other people. Like, you know, like contain yourself, you know what I mean? Time and a place. But I think when it is shared in the right context, in the right amount, it can be this incredibly powerful connective tissue that makes you feel closer to another human being.

And this is something I first came across and began to understand the power of in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, where somebody will get up in front of a group of people and tell the craziest fucking story you ever heard where they just share with a giggle, like the most embarrassing stuff, like stuff you just can't believe they're saying out loud. And instead of that person being judged or shunned,

they're applauded and embraced and loved. Because there's something about that that makes us understand that we're all human and we're all frail and we all make mistakes. And that the way we grow and heal is by overcoming our fear and our shame and our guilt such that our past doesn't haunt us and that we can learn from it

and that it can be a salve for the growth and improvement of other human beings. And I just find that experience of seeing people do that and I myself doing it in that context to be so healing that when I started the podcast, I wanted to model that appropriately and responsibly in a public setting to demonstrate, particularly to men who tend to repress their emotions

and are very resistant to sharing any kind of weaknesses that it's okay and that actually if you could overcome that resistance and that fear to open yourself up and let people in, that that is the path towards the intimacy and the connectivity that we all wanna have and yet are lacking. So it's important to me to like, you know, model that consistently. And when I wrote my book Finding Ultra, look, I got this opportunity to write this memoir

and it's supposed to be this like sports autobiography, you know, kind of, it's sort of a hybrid of a different, you know, it's an addiction recovery memoir. But I've never won any big race. I didn't go to the Olympics. I never broke a world record. Like, why would anyone want to hear about my athletic journey? Like, what is important about my story that would make people care? And I realized that the value of the book was going to be inextricably connected to the extent to which I was willing to be vulnerable

and share things about myself that were scary to share, that are embarrassing. Because in the doing of that, I would create an opportunity for a reader to see some aspect of themselves in that story, even though the facts of my story and circumstances are different from that of the reader, there's an emotional truth that perhaps would resonate. And that indeed turned out to be the case. And so I do that in the podcast as a model, but also because I can't expect a guest to open up and be honest and vulnerable if I'm not doing that myself.

So I try to create that safe space by opening with some, level of vulnerability to create an environment that's conducive to the level of honesty that I'm, you know, aspiring to communicate. It seems like the, I mean, the podcasting journey is such a self-reveglatory process too. Like we just refine who we are as we are the host evoking, you know, certain insightful dialogue with our guests, but it's also like discovering who we are and what we truly value. And I'm just curious how you feel like you've discovered more of your own voice in the process of being a host for these conversations. And as you reflected on what your own true values are, I think you're an incredible

communicator, the way that you're able to weave the thread between many different ideas in a way that is very simply understood, but still doesn't lack its profundity. So I know that comes often as a byproduct of just doing it for so long, but how do you see the podcasting journey as a vehicle for self-discovery and sharing yourself? Yeah, it's a great question. I don't know that I have a concise answer to that. It is in the doing. I think in the doing, you discover who you are

because the guests are a reflection of your own choices and decisions and avenues for your curiosity. So that will be a reflective of a reflection of the self. And I think in terms of how I host, that is something that's just evolved in doing it. Like you find out who you are and what works for you and what you're comfortable with in the process of just the day in and the day out

of hosting many, many conversations. So I'm sure if I went back and listened to the first 10 episodes that I did, which I will never do, I would cringe, because I have developed a greater mastery over language and how to express myself because of the thousands of hours of doing it.

Beyond that, I don't know how much I reflect upon it as a modus for self-discovery other than that it is and remains the greatest sort of bespoke graduate level education you could ever construct. Like you're basically creating a curriculum and a syllabus for answering all the questions that you have. And that can take many forms depending upon

on the host, right? So the catalog of every host podcast is essentially a syllabus of the knowledge they're trying to master for themselves and in turn sharing it. Unless of course you're just getting guests on because they have a certain number of views or followers or so-and-so had them so I need to have them on.

But to the extent that the guest selection and the way that you engage with the guest is coming from a pure place of curiosity and the thirst for knowledge. I think looking back upon that catalog is a pretty accurate, forensic way of trying to understand what's driving you

and what you're trying to develop a greater understanding of for yourself and with respect to your relationship to the world. For this next chapter of your life, what do you feel like is driving you? What is this next kind of season of life have in store for you? It has a lot to do with what we were talking about at the beginning of the conversation.

Like, I'm much more introspective about my relationship to myself and this thing that I do. And I'm trying to overcome my workaholism tendencies to hold on to it a little bit more loosely and allow space to actually enjoy my life, you know, more than I have. given myself permission to, by saying yes to experiences, by making the effort to invest more in my friendships and to not just make it all about work, which is something I have a history of doing. So I'm holding myself to account for that because I'm also writing this book right now

that is sort of taking me to task on some of these things as well, and creating some accountability for that. Because what is, is the point of being successful if you're actually not enjoying your life to the full extent of your capacity. And so the question I ask myself is, what is my life still missing? And what it's not missing is more subscribers. What it's missing is more intimate relationships with people I care about and meaningful

experiences with those people. Man, thank you so much for this conversation. It was super insightful. And I'm just excited to see how this is uniquely impactful for our audience and viewers here and community that's building. And yeah, just any last words with things that you have going on where people can find you or just general thoughts? I mean, the first thing I would say is simply, you know, thank you for having me.

And as I said to you before the podcast started, like I don't say yes to guesting on very many podcasts. But I think what you're doing is not only of an exceedingly high caliber, but also with a deeper intentionality around raising consciousness. And it's a tribute to you. And I think the growth that you're experiencing and the quality of conversations that you're having are noteworthy and important.

And so I'm proud to be here and I salute you in that regard. We need more consciousness elevating content and less clickbait bullshit. So I'm at your service and was proud to be here today and appreciate the questions you asked me. And in terms of how to find out more about me, richroll.com is where all my stuff is,

the Richroll podcast you can find. And I'm at Rich Roll on all the social media platforms. But I'm not here to really promote anything other than just to have a cool conversation with you, which I feel like we accomplished. I think we did too, man. First of all, just thank you fully received, all the kind words.

It really does mean a lot, as you've been inspiration since even starting this podcast. it's cool. You never know, I guess, who's like tuning in or seeing what you're doing. And just to hear you share that, man. It's, it's truly an honor to have you here today. So the conversation was indeed cool. I loved it. I really appreciate it. And yeah, thank you. All right. Cheers. Thanks, great. Thanks, everybody for tuning in to this episode of the No Lyself podcast. Please let us know, as always, how this episode was uniquely impactful for you. And until next time, be well.