Modern Wisdom - #940 - Cameron Hanes - The Harsh Price Of Extreme Performance

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

Cameron Hanes is a bowhunter, ultramarathon runner, podcaster, and an author. How should we deal with suffering? Most people do everything they can to avoid it, but a rare few seek it out. What if pain isn't just something to survive, but something that deepens our gratitude for the moments that truly matter? Expect to learn what drives Cam to do what he does and what being “undeniable” means to him, what the biggest lesson most people learn when they first go hunting is, the hardest thing Cam has ever done physically, if hard work beats genetics and pedigree, how Cam raised his sons and and what he would do differently, how the average people can train themselves to deal better with suffering, how Cam would feel if he felt truly worth of his acheivements, and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D, and more from AG1 at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I can't believe it's been two years. I can't believe it was two years since I was with you. I know. We got a lot of good material out of that discussion, that time, that day. I still see clips everywhere. Did anything stick with you from the few days that we spent together?

I like, you know, you've kind of repurposed some stuff. Like, so I love seeing that, but I think it's just that footage going up the mountain with the rock and you chose talking about chosen and unchosen suffering that that's going to last forever for me. I mean, it's such a good, good point, you know, and just that setting to have that message delivered at that time was just so powerful. So yeah. Yeah. I really appreciate how complimentary you were about me in the book.

It feels like most of the first chapter is some bullshit that I've stolen or said, well, but look, if we need to take a 72 pound rock up a hill, you carrying the rock and me spouting nonsense, that feels like we're specializing in where our skill sets lie. You know what I mean? I see. Yeah.

But you carried the rock. Also, what did we do, 11 miles? Too much, too many. At least 10 too many. So that was it. I mean, that's the furthest I've run maybe ever, was that with you. And that was trail running.

Yeah, it was great. I actually felt great the next day. Sometimes, I mean, you'll know this, or maybe you won't because you're always running, but the non-runners will know this. You've always got one body part. If you've taken a big break from running and you're not conditioned, there's one body part that always hurts like fucking for me, it's my ankles and my calves. It's like just, it is always on fire.

And maybe it's because we were trail running. Maybe it's because the pace was right, maybe whatever, but I felt fine the next day. What I was concerned about was whether or not you would have wrecked me so much physically on day one that when it came to like my bit, which was the sit down and spout nonsense stuff, that I would be sat there, it's so much fucking pain. I can't even focus.

You're great. Yeah, and I'm thankful we were able to go sat there, it's so much fucking pain. I can't even focus. You're great. Yeah. And that I, uh, I'm thankful we were able to go out to, you know, where I grew up and I could share that part with you too. Cause I just wanted, and I've heard you mention like on a few of your podcasts, you've mentioned, you know, the poser on the rock and the gym and like the stuff that I do and kind of reference to that lifestyle or how I grew up. Because I wanted to share with you

because it's so much different than, well, in some ways different, but in some ways I felt alone too, just like you did. But I think when people, they hear like little nuggets from somebody else and then they always latch on to whatever they can identify with. So there's a few things that you mentioned that really resonated with me,

but I was just thankful to share everything, my little slice of the world with you and it was awesome. Eugene, Oregon's a fun, cool place. I loved it. There is a lot of differences growing up in the Northeast of the UK, growing up in Oregon, but I think the principles end up being the same, this sort of question about what do I deserve from life? That was a great analogy.

And I can't, maybe it's in the book also, but that Puritan work ethic, we talked about where you're supposed to work. And I think you mentioned, I can't, but like the work, I can't remember how you, how you told the story, but was it about the priests that used to work out in the sun? In the fields? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So this belief that suffering was in service to God, right? That that's it. Um, the hoeing the fields and the sun's beating down on their back. And, uh, you know, this is kind of the same as like, you know, like whipping yourself, um, to

the, the actual suffering itself was a tribute. And, uh, it's in some ways it's noble because you're building up your resilience to difficult things, but in other ways it's fucking pointless because the suffering is not in service of a thing. Now, obviously if you're theologically minded, then you're like, the tribute is there. But yeah, I think even though very different places, a lot of

similarities, I was very surprised with that. And then probably in retrospect, totally shouldn't have been working class, you know, limited opportunity towns probably end up producing similar sorts of mindsets that way. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Yeah, even though it's other side of the world,

similar in some ways. But yeah, I think people, I think people love the discussion, but you're so good at articulating thoughts, ideas, sharing things you've read, just really giving context that people can really take home. You just get these sound bites that are so powerful. So that's your skill set. You're great at it.

Yeah. I've collected the best of what other people have already figured out and repurposed it onto the internet. So I guess, like I say, I get to turn the tables today and we missed each other on the first book on Endure and then you've got Undeniable, which is the new one, which is fucking awesome by the way. Thank you.

I wanted to ask this when we nearly spoke the first time. I'm interested in what drives you because you've done some pretty stupid, pretty extreme things to yourself across a variety of domains. I'm just intrigued into where that sort of relentlessness comes from. Man, what, yeah, I don't know. What's crazy is I don't, I don't remember ever being asked this before. So what, um, man, I don't know now, now it's like, what's the point of doing this, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't, I don't remember ever being asked this before. So what, um, man, I don't know now, now it's like when you go through life and there probably was decision making at some point, but now it's kind of just what I do sort of, and you know, I'm just going to get up, I'm going to get my, whatever work I have, I'm going to get it in, whether that's 20 miles or whatever it is, shooting the bow, you know, content creation, that's a never ending process. But now just the hard stuff, I think you're talking about like the challenging and the mounds, that's just what I do.

Before it was what I do, I don't know. I think that was where that was uncertainty. It's like, where do I fit in this world? What do I? And it's not even like, I never even asked myself, what do I have to offer? Because I didn't think I had anything to offer. So you never even got to that part. But it was just like, is this it?

Is this just going to work and trying to pay bills. And it's like, I remember like even a tactic I had, I haven't even done a checkbook in a long time, but my wife's in charge of that, but like even just writing out checks and I would just, I was never, I never thought it was going to, anything that I did was going to last. So I'd be like, if I, if I had a check for like $17, I'd just make, make it for $20, put in anything. And I'm like, well, at the end of the day, I should have more in here.

Instead of being exact, I just wanted this cushion like, I just want to have a little bit more than what I think. And then I can just get through a challenging time. That's as far into the future as I ever thought. It's just like, let's round up in the checkbook. Just so I got a little buffer. And that there is no future. If that was thinking about the future, that's all I did right there. I know the difficulty of trying to put yourself

in the mindset of somebody before a trait became a habit, or before sort of an effort became a habit. Yeah. In my experience, I think, when most people get stuck, and this is why consistency is such an unsexy topic. What people are looking for, for the most part, is getting from zero to one. So I'm not, a lot of the habits or a lot of the ways that I show up in life and a lot of the things that I'm doing aren't going well. Please explain to me the first few steps to get to a place that I

want to be. And that's great and pretty doable. You can go and explain to somebody how to effectively run a 5k warm up, pre-race preparation, here's some good shoes that aren't too expensive. And here's a cool down process. And, but what's really difficult to explain to somebody is how you do a 5k three times a week for five years. Like you kind of can't explain how to do that 5k three times a week for five years. You kind of can't explain how to do that.

The same thing with going to the gym. Mike Isretel, who you should have on the show, I think he'd be a great guest. I'd fucking love to see you two together, actually. He can explain how to do the perfect tricep pushdown, the maximum muscle hypertrophy, and all of those things. But he can't explain how you do that with progressive overload once a week on that cycle and two other muscle groups on other cycles for a decade, you know, to get the physique that you want.

Right. And, um, when you look at someone like you, who is very consistent, who is disciplined in that way, uh, you almost, it's such a part of your being, the habit is what's kept you going. And whatever the fuck it was that got you started, this fear of insufficiency, this desire to not be nothing, this need for validation or to prove yourself, this desire for control over your environment, you know, this sense that things are maybe a bit destitute or a little bit hopeless, but fuck like in the gym.

I remember this dude, when I first started training, I started lifting weights when I was 18, when I went to university, the center for sporting excellence in Newcastle University. Yeah. And I remember I had this idea in the back of my mind, which was everything in my day can have gone to shit, like everything. And I've woken up and just face planted from attempt to attempt. Uni went badly and girlfriend and me had an argument

and this thing went wrong and that thing went wrong. But I went to the gym and it just felt like this area that I had complete control over. And that was absolutely in the first instance what got me there and a desire to be stronger and feel a little bit less weak and vulnerable and, you know, be more attractive and gain confidence in myself. And then now it's just, why do you go to the gym in the morning? I don't know. It's 7.40 AM. That's where I am at 7.40 AM. I'm in the gym. That's what happens. Yeah. So yeah, something gets you started and then I guess habit keeps you going.

Yeah. That's I mean, and that's the secret because most people, like you said, you started to get a little muscle, started to feel a little bit better about yourself. But how many people get there and then slide back and then have to start back over to get there again, you know? So they get a lot of times they get a little of that dopamine is whatever, but a little of that positive reinforcement hit. And that feels great. But then they still can't can't make that consistent, you know, because life gets in the way or I don't know, they get distracted or they

they lose enthusiasm, whatever. The key is that consistency decade after decade after decade. And that's why I got to even think like me back in high school. Yes, I was an athlete, but there was better athletes. Now I've been doing it for 40 years. There's nobody that was better than me. That's better than me now. Right.

So is that the, but who can think no one that's still even running, who can think better than me now, right? So is that the, but who can think- Probably no one that's still even running. Who can think 40 years in advance, right? So all you're thinking is about, well, this is what I do and I just gotta keep doing it, but it sounds really easy. Isn't it interesting? I don't know of any books that have been written about consistency.

I know about books that have been written to do with discipline and motivation and overcoming hard things and resilience and becoming undeniable and stuff like that. I actually think that consistency would be such an unsexy book. It'd be a pretty short book. Yeah, keep doing the thing, don't stop. Yeah, just yeah. Keep doing the thing, don't stop. And you know I think that you asked that question you know why, why or how or whatever, but I wonder if like, everybody goes back to their childhood.

I mean, childhood trauma does kind of affect us forever, right? But like, my childhood was pretty, a lot of upheaval, a lot of ups and downs. So maybe the one thing I could control was what I was doing, you know, like even in the first book I talked about as a five year old, I was in first grade and I would go before school and run a mile by myself. And I would do is 31 times from the fence to the fence. You had to do that 31 times back and forth for a mile. And I would, I started school early. I do that as a five year old.

So maybe nothing was, I wasn't in control of anything, but I was in control of that. So maybe that hasn't changed. Maybe like, no matter what happens, I know I'm getting my run in. I know I'm going to, even if the whole day goes to shit, I think you kind of mentioned this, you at least got one win. There's a win in there somewhere. Yeah. I think this is one of the reasons why injuries for people just feel

like such an unfortunate curse. You know, it's this weird fucking irony that all of the people who sit on the couch and don't have a health and fitness routine have perfect spines. And it's all of the people that have tried to do CrossFit and yoga and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu that are all bulging, hemorrhaging, degenerated disc, he lost half an inch in my heart, blah, blah. Um, and this was something toward the end of my twenties that I had to deal with where I had, you know, five year period where I was pretty much always

injured in one form or another, so annoying bulging disc, second bulging disc, ruptured achilles, hurt shoulder. My entire identity, a lot of my identity was wrapped up in being the big muscular guy in his 20s around other big dudes giving me confidence and making me attractive. Then I had to be in the corner doing bird dog rehab in the

CrossFit gym while everybody else was sending it and getting after it. And I was watching myself get fatter, slower and skinnier all at the same time. Yeah, that's rough. And an interesting thing there is, okay, so where do you take your sense of self-worth and wellbeing from when you're coping mechanism? Because let's, you know, it is a coping mechanism. Training is yeah. Yeah. For a lot of people, if you wanted to be really, you know, uh, Rx plus super

difficulty level resilience, it's okay. How good can your mindset be when you're not allowed to train? Because to you, the thing that's easiest is going out and going for the run, right? The hardest thing would be, okay, for the next two weeks, you got to sit on the couch in the morning. Yeah. Like what? No, you can't meditate either.

You can't use it to do something else productive. Right. It would tear people up inside. Yeah. It's a, I've been, I've been injured and I have a big race coming up Monday and, uh, I've been injured at STEM for my foot, but now it's up to the hamstring where every time I tried to run hard, it would tweak my hamstring.

So I was supposed to do Boston with Truett, my son. I was supposed to do Eugene. We're gonna do that as a family and race and do all that. I couldn't do either one of them, right? So, but I knew I had this big 250 mile race coming up on Monday. And I'm like, well, I can't just not train. So I just had been walking around Eugene. And I was, one day I walked 27 miles.

Took me like six hours. Yeah. Quite quick walking, I think as well. Yeah. It's so, you know, and that's kind of like these long races, like 250 miles. You are walking because you can't run all the uphill. You can't run for three days with no sleep, right? So you have to, there's strategic walking.

So I'm like, okay, fuck it. I guess I'm just going to hone my walking game. And I've just been trying to get 15 minute miles, which is a pretty good walk. You know, if you try to get four miles an hour and I was just doing that. So that I think was last week, I walked 150 miles. Yeah. And so I would, instead of sitting and rehabbing like I should, I'm not, I'm not running, I'll just fucking walk all day.

So that's what I did. Right. That sounds like a very sort of litigious way to get around. I've been told that I can't run, but they didn't say anything about walking. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Get very specific in there.

You are probably not eating enough fruit and vegetables and you know it and this is going to help. Good news for those of you thinking about using AG1 or those already using it. They've just released their next gen formula, which is a more advanced clinically backed version of the product that I've been drinking every single day for years. The same one scoop ritual now with an even more comprehensive formulation and four clinical trials behind it. AG1 NextGen has been shown to help fill common nutrient gaps and support gut health, even in people who already eat well. In one study it boosted healthy bacteria in the gut by 10 times. They've added more bioavailable nutrients,

enhanced probiotics and invested in real science, which is very rare in the supplement world. AG1 NextGen is also NSF certified for sport, which means it's tested for over 280 banned substances and trusted by elite performers who can't afford to guess. Clinically backed with an advanced formula, this is the perfect time to try AG1's next gen if you haven't already. Plus, if you're still unsure, they've got a 90-day money back guarantee, so you can buy it and try it every single day for three months. If you don't like it, they will give you your money back for the entire lot. And right now, you can get a year's free supply of vitamin D3 K2 and five free AG1 travel packs. Plus that 90-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom that's

drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. Yeah dudes I we need to have a chat about Truett what the fuck is what is he built of? He's yeah he's a machine right now. You know, it's, it's weird because I, I'd get credit for my kids, you know, and they're like, Oh, you must have done such a good job. I didn't. I mean, I pushed those boys way too hard. I mean, I was just, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I was young. I was in my twenties.

So I didn't know how to be a dad. My dad was never around. I hated my stepdad. So I was, I knew I definitely didn't want to be like him, but I didn't know what a dad was supposed to be. And I'm like, well, okay, I'm just going to prepare these kids. I know how life is. I know life will fucking kick you in the nuts.

So they're going to be ready for anything. Life is competition. They're going to be ready to compete. So I had, I pushed them really hard and it was not great all the time. Because what did you do? Um, you know, it was just always a battle. It's just like, you know, it's, we're running every day. You guys got home from school, okay, get your stuff on.

We're gonna go do Piska. No kid wants to go run a mountain. And I'm like, no, this is, cause the way I thought of it was, I had a terrible childhood, but it made me tough. So I'm like, you guys have everything. You have everything I ever wanted. Your dad's around.

Your mom is here. She loves you. You have every shoe you want, every basketball camp you want to go to, you go to. I said, so the way this is going, you're going to grow up to be a couple of big pussies, we're going to make you tough. So I would just make them do hard things. And, and, uh, I made it, they both did half marathons when they were seven and eight years old, true.

It just put up a picture. He looks like he's this tall. He was tiny at eight years, eight years old, but he ran a one 54 half like this tall, which is eight something minute miles. And all that to say that, yeah, I had the kids do really hard things for many years to prepare them for what I said was life's challenges. And it made it, you know, if I was, it reminded me, did you ever see

the movie tree of life? No. So Brad, Brad Pitt's in it and great movie, but he was super hard dad there. When he would leave, it was like fucking playtime, right? Mom, kids jumping on the beds, and then dad would come home and be like, Oh God. So I said, this reminds me of me when I was, when we go out of town is just playtime, come back. It's like, Oh God. So I said, this reminds me of me when I was, when you go out of town, it's just play time, come back. It's like, Oh shit.

So that's not great when you're the bad guy all the time. You know, dads are usually the disciplinary and that's whatever. But I was also like, you know, making them do these really hard things. So they see now and they see all the success, but it wasn't great. And anybody from the outside in would look and say, what's wrong with that? That dad is pushing those kids too hard. It's like any basketball game. I'm just like a loose ball. You better be on that floor. And I said, I want to see floor burns on your knees. I want you diving on. I want you playing harder than any kid out there. So that's a hard thing to live up to.

Kids just want to have fun. They want to play. They're not looking to compete every day, but I made them compete. So it was a challenge. Now you see what that results in. And Tanner, he was a ranger. He's fricking badass. It's probably tougher than Truett and then Truett's, you

know, doing these crazy things and getting all this attention. And yeah, I mean, it's great. I'm, I'm glad to see it, but, um, I didn't, I wasn't perfect raising. Do you regret it? Yeah, I regret. Um, I regret. I regret, I remember when Tanner went to the army, he's a deputy back home, very proud of him. Such an important job. He, you know, a corrections officer just worked at the jail, but still it's, you know, a good job.

It's like paid, paid the bills. I was proud of him. We need people who need men to do that. So, he said he was going to join the army and he wanted to be a ranger. And I'm just like, you know, you get deployed. And I'm thinking, what if, you know, he, I think it was because I would tell them that average is failing. If you look around, you see the average person, that's not us. That's not what we want to be. So we're not, yes, I know people need to work at gas stations and do things, whatever. That's fine. That's, but that's not what we're settled for. So he, he said he wanted to quit.

He didn't want to be a deputy more. He wanted to be a Ranger because he had more to offer this world. And I was thinking, was that me who fucked up and, and said this at being, just having a regular job was somehow failing. And I just had so many regrets and I was just like, I told him he's getting ready to go to basic training and I'm like, I said, Tanner, I'm like, there's nothing wrong with, with having a regular job, being a family man. And I said, there's nothing I was wrong.

I was wrong to say what I said, raising you kids. And, um, cause I was thinking about what if he got deployed and was killed. And it's just like, because of shit I said, trying to make my boys tough. And this is the result. So yeah, I was like, yeah, I definitely have had regrets over how hard I pushed them. Yeah. I think it's such a delicate balance to give your kids the life that you never had and the life that you worked so hard to be able to afford them with. just also knowing where most of the important realizations that made you into the sort of person who could provide came about due to restriction and difficulty and tough times and toil and a little bit of maybe a bit of resentment and a little bit of unfairness in childhood that galvanized you to sort of do something great with your life.

Every single, I mean, look, dude, every single parent that I know, and even more, I tell you what, be fucking grateful that you had your kids in your 20s, because if you'd had them now, imagine how much of a differential your lifestyle is materially in terms of resources, in terms of status and notoriety and opportunity and all of this stuff, you would be like floating out in space. You would have no idea, the total frame of reference would be out of the window. There's not a single dad that I know

who has sort of crawled out from the place that they were as a kid and made something of themselves who doesn't have that exact concern about their children. I think it is one of the most common worries. Ben Francis, he's the guy that founded Gymshark. Gymshark's completely bootstrapped, he still owns 70 percent of it. Gymshark's worth over, it's nearly

three billion dollar and three billion pound company. This guy's like worth like two billion pounds, like three billion dollars and he's 31. He's got twin, he's got twin boys. But he grew up like as rough as they come in Birmingham with a granddad that made him go and work in like a clay mine, or so like a pottery barn or something like that. And I've asked him this question, like, how do you intend on navigating this one? How do you intend on teaching your kids the lessons that you learned from a very working class grandfather, their great grandfather, whilst also not throwing away

the entire reason for working as hard as you did, which was to be able to afford your fucking family the life that you never had. So, you know, first off, I think you did the best that you could, so you need to give yourself some grace with that. And look, if this was, if 50% was like the middle of the bell curve of how much toughness versus the easiness you could give kids, I would guess that most kids and most parents are too far on the easy side. I think snowplow parenting, helicopter parenting, gentle parenting,

whilst noble in its intentions is usually kind of over pattern matched and results in soft entitled adults. Right. Narcissistic soft entitled adults when they grow up. Given the choice between the two, sort of being pushed a little bit further on the other side, is a very strange kind of gift. I think what would be interesting would be to know how much of that is actually because of the way that you raised them and how much of that is just your genes.

The more that I learn about behavioral genetics, heritability of different traits and so on and so forth, like this should be comforting. As far as I can see, there is no such thing as really getting parenting right. There is only getting it wrong and getting it wrong. Kids are pretty fucking resilient. Like they're really, really tough. And you see perfectly balanced adults that grew up in horrendous childhood environments. And I think as long as there's no really extreme, well, maybe you would say some of the climbs with the rock were slightly extreme. My point is, I

get the sense that if they're made out of the same stuff that you're made out of, they didn't really have a choice whether you made them go up the mountain or not. I think that there is a lot more built into you. You know, you're talking about consistently running for four decades and thinking about framing that up against what that meant in your childhood and this sort of relentlessness that you approach. Like even the pod, when you started that, I think I was episode three, two, three, four, something like that. It's now like, what, three, four, something like that. It's now like what 160 some shit. Uh, like even with that, that's, that's not, that's a level of a work

rate that most people don't hold up. It's just a minor little area then in the hunting and then in the lifting and then in the both stuff and then in the running and then in the. So, you know, maybe there is, maybe it's contributed, but what I would, if I could sort of bet a couple of chips on the roulette wheel of a couple of other universes in which you'd approached your kids differently, I think they'd be probably 90%, 80 or 90% of the way there, just with less experience about how to deal with it. And one of the best things you can less experience about how to deal with it.

And one of the best things you can do for your kids, I think, as a fucking, look at me, spouting nonsense as a non-father, the internet loves when I do this. One of the best things that you can do is set a good example. You can read all of the books about healthy attachment and child education and socialization and all the rest of it, but they will learn more from the way that you and your wife show up for each other around the dinner table than every lesson that you try and force into them. Like you can top down, try and tell them how they're supposed to behave. This is how you're supposed to treat girls. You don't hit girls and you don't do this and you must

tell the door and you got to be this way and be blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, all right, but then when you're around the dinner table, you're a prick. You look at your phone instead of looking at your wife. Yeah. Or you ignore her or you don't laugh at her jokes or you guys don't relate well or they All right, but then when you're around the dinner table, you're a prick. You look at your phone instead of looking at your wife. Or you ignore her or you don't laugh at her jokes or you guys don't relate well or they never see you be physically affectionate to each other or whatever it is.

That's not for me to say that you need to like force a relationship, but the point is I think that kids learn by seeing a lot more than they get learned by being told. And that's what you're doing. Even if you hadn't made them go up the mountain, you were like, I'm off to go up the mountain. They'd be like, well, dad's going up the mountain.

Like, can I come up the mountain? So. Yeah, and I was thinking also too, it's not just like what you do, but when you have that mindset about life is competition, hard work is the key, whatever, that is impacting how you talk and how you carry yourself. Cause everybody says, says right there.

And they, they tell their kids what you're supposed to tell your kids. It's like, as you said, no, you hold the door for women. You, you know, be respectful. Everybody says the right stuff, but how you carry yourself and then how you, how you talk, not when you're delivering some ultimatum or some direction, but just how you, what's your mindset. And that's when it's not controlled, when it's not, you're not thinking about it. So my mindset was always let's do more, perform more, push harder.

Like, I guess to your point that even if I wasn't, they were seeing that. let's do more, perform more, push harder. I guess to your point that even if I wasn't, they were seeing that. It's, yeah, it's, you know, you talked about Truett, you know, originally, but even for him, it reminded, your story sort of reminded me of his, like people see him now and they're like, I mean, he's easy to,

he gets hate too, cause he's easy to hate. Definitely. Um, he's got a lot going for him and that's, that will build some resentment over with some guys, but for him, he lost for years. He, he didn't miss a day lifting weights for like 14 years. Still hasn't. I started them lifting when they were 14, both him and Tanner. And since that time, he hasn't missed more than a day.

So it was loss after loss after loss. He's like tiny, not getting big. He, and he mentioned this, we did this, we're doing this video on his pull-ups, you know, he broke the world record. And he's just like, he goes, I don't think, he goes, I didn't realize that Tanner was kicking my ass every day as his older brother. Anytime we'd compete, me against him,

I would never let the kids win. It was always like, it was always a battle, always crying. I mean, kicking the basketball down the street because they're so mad. Go get it. Tanner, uh, I was throwing like football as hard as I could, making him catch it cause he's a receiver drops it, punches the ground, breaks his hand. So there's like all these losses essentially. So Truett said, I didn't know that, yeah,

I was getting beat by my older brother. I was getting beat by you every day. He goes, I didn't realize Tanner was the biggest beast, one of the biggest beasts he's ever met. And he goes, and I didn't know you were who you were. I thought, he said, I just thought I was weak and a loser. I didn't know that I was going against these, these people that were making me.

So people see him now. And I'm like, if you could see him back when 14 years old, and you know, when he's in high school, he get, he was five foot, like 90 pounds got cut from the basketball team, even though he was really good and most skilled because he was too small. They don't see all that they see now. And they're just like, Oh, what is he on steroids? And it's just like, no, this is, this is a kid who hasn't missed a day in the gym

for 14 years and trains for hours every day and doesn't drink, doesn't do anything but get enough rest to perform every single day. This is what you get when you're that dedicated. But people, they want to ignore that part. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Momentous. If your sleep's not dialed, taking ages to nod off, you're waking up at random times and feeling groggy in the morning, Momentus' sleep packs...

How did I miss both of those? Are here to help. They're not your typical knock you out supplement overloaded with melatonin, just the most evidence-based ingredients at perfect doses to help you fall asleep more quickly, stay asleep throughout the night, and wake up feeling more rested and revitalized in the morning. Which is why I take these things every single night and why I trust Momentus with my life or at least with my sleep because they make the highest quality supplements on the planet. What you read on the label is what's in the product and absolutely nothing else. And if you're still unsure,

they've got a 30 day money back guarantee so you can buy it completely risk-free, use it and if you do not like it for any reason, they will give you your money back. Plus they ship internationally. Right now you can get 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com slash modern wisdom using the code modern wisdom. A check out that's L I V E M O M E N T O U S dot com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom. A checkout. There's a very special type of distaste and envy that the internet has towards, uh, certain types of successful men.

Uh, I still haven't kind of fully worked out what it is. Um, it's kind of like the inverse of pretty privilege that, uh, girls have, yeah, the girls get, but dude, chicks do not have it easy around other women. If you're an attractive woman, you better watch your back because holy fuck, they're coming for you. They are coming for you hard. But in the same way,

men, masculine men, guys that guys that certainly seem like competent, especially if you're young, if you're a bit older, uh, I think guys are a tiny little bit less threatened. I think a lot of this, you know, from both sides just comes down to mating that, uh, if you're a hot woman, then you with your hand in your boyfriend's hand thinks you better not be fucking your boyfriend's hand thinks, you better not be fucking looking at her. What's she wearing a skirt that short for?

Yeah. And the same thing in reverse. And the, here's an interesting stat. The only, uh, one of the most predictive, um, traits around enhancing attractiveness is masculinity measured by muscularity. So if you're a guy and you are a five out of ten and you get yourself in the gym for a decade you're probably gonna be like a six or a seven, you know, assuming that you don't fuck your face up in the process by dropping weights on it.

Basically there was this fascinating study done by a guy called David Putz and he got women to rate the attractiveness of men, these images of men, and he got men to rate the same men as how likely do you think it is that you would beat this man in a fight? Okay. So you have a female rating of attractiveness and male rating of formidability, right? And then 12 months later they brought the men that were the photos into the study and they said how many sexual partners have you had over

the last 12 months? The female rating of attractiveness had zero predictive power. The male rating of formidability almost exactly predicted their most, the level of like sexual partners. Really? So what it seems is formidability, especially as sort of shown by that typically masculine. And this isn't the only way to, you know, get into a woman's pants or whatever. It's not the only thing, you know, cool arts, heroin-looking fucking guitar player it can be hot to.

But... There's exceptions. Typically, this seems to be one of those things. And I wonder whether if you look at someone like a Truett, who is a young kid, who's full of energy, kind of doesn't give a fuck, who is only going to get better. Like in some ways it's inspiring, but it's only inspiring if you're remotely close to his level. Right. Because if you're looking at someone who doesn't have anything special about them,

not in the same way that Usain Bolt has something special about like he's godly right. Right. And he's in a sport that feels a bit untouchable. Yeah. Everybody's tried to do a pull feels a bit untouchable. Yeah. Everybody's tried to do a pull-up, right? Everybody's thought about running a marathon slowly in jeans. Maybe, maybe not.

Um, I wonder whether the, the closeness that people feel and the fact that there's nothing ostensibly special there, it throws into very harsh contrast. Well, why is that not me? Why can he do that and not me? And the easiest place to go to would be privileged upbringing, silver spoon, uh, unfair assistance, enhanced genetics, enhanced hormones, uh, cheating with form, whatever. I don't know what the criticisms are, but it helps people to close the gap between

somebody they would want to be like and themselves. Yeah. They reckon with it. Yeah. It's a, you know, that's, it's kind of a double or short because you, nobody can identify or relate to Usain Bolt because he's got that God given talent. But it's kind of been what I've used also is like, you can come from nothing, a regular job and had success. So then it kind of,

it puts a pressure on other regular guys. You've got no excuse. Yeah. And so both Truett and I have benefited from that. It's just like, he looks like a regular guy running in jeans, but he's doing these incredible things. It was like, and then, so it does allow him. Cause if you look at his followers, it resonates more with regular people cause it gives them hope that, Oh, maybe I can be better, Um, then like an elite Olympic athlete doesn't have near the followers. Truett, who is like a run fluencers, what, you know, they, some of these elites say this new craze of marathon excitement and these run groups and all

this, it's just like, they don't deserve it because they're not, they're not elite like I am, but because they can relate to the average person, that's where they get the power. So yes, you get criticized by the regular people who feel threatened, like, okay, now I'm expected to do shit like this too, but you also benefit from it because... Well, just to sit on that for a little bit longer, I think it's a really, really good point that, um, this sort of narcissism

of small differences, the fact that you don't, you haven't come from a different place, you're not in a sport that's untouchable or unreachable. Uh, and there's two ways to respond to that. One is, holy fuck, this normal person did something extraordinary. That means I can too. The other one is this normal person did something extraordinary. That means that I am expected can too. The other one is this normal person did something extraordinary. That means that I am expected to too. And the expected to thing shows you all of the places that you're falling behind because you know that if not for my

discipline and my consistency, there could have gone I, right? That could have been me in principle, but it's not. Why? And when you get to the why question, you have to face facts that, well, because I didn't not miss a training session for more than two days in a row. You're not going to like the why. Yeah. It's an ugly realization because the realization is boring. Yeah.

And the realization points the finger at you. And I see this in myself, dude. I see, you know, especially when I was a bit younger, this fucking bitterness that used to come out in me. And it still does now. Sometimes in my more juvenile, less equanimous moments, if I've not been fucking meditating enough, I'm like, fuck that guy.

Like he had this thing or this was unfair. That's not it. And it's just ego. It's just you trying to protect yourself from this weird status game. Because previously we knew we were in 30 people pods in 150 person tribe, and you knew the best hunter and the best everything else are,

and you were probably not that bad at a couple of things, which meant that you had some value. Compared to the small little group. Exactly. Whereas now, even though we know that we're not friends with Truett Haynes, we don't know that we're not supposed to compare ourselves to him. So our like status mapping ability has just spread out across the entire planet, which is why so

many people feel inferior. Yeah. And you can take it as inspiration or you can take it as a threat. And I see why, I see why people take it as a threat. And then if you've got fuck you energy and you're doing it in glasses, like, you know what I mean? If you're going to twist the knife a little bit,

people are going to say, go fuck yourself. Yeah, it's been crazy to see. I mean, and it's not like nobody's immune to being criticized or nobody's immune to the effect of being criticized. You know, nobody likes to read the shit people say. So, and he's no different, but I just would, I would just encourage people to take a look and think about it.

It's like, I mean, cause I can think when I first started training and I was bow hunting and having success and I was running marathons. And I remember the old guard or the gatekeepers would say, oh, yeah, so now you have to run a marathon to kill an elk. And I'm like, nobody ever said that. I'm just showing you what I do. You can do whatever you want, but it like put this expectation there. And now when people look at Truett,

I just wanna remind people that there was a time when he, I could help him up on the pull-up bar. He was not getting a pull-up done. He had new, skinny fat, you've heard that term. You couldn't get any more skinny fat than my boys were. They were just skinny, regular young boys, skinny arms, two bodies. It's just like nothing special, but that's where it starts.

That's where everybody starts. I've just realized that the world's marathon record for wearing crocs just got broken this weekend. Fourth time's a charm. That was the UK's Tommy Trees mindset as he made his fourth attempt to put his name in the Guinness Book of World Records. And finally he came out successful.

Sunday's London Marathon Trees put his Crocs into sport mode and clocked a 2.4848. Pretty fast. Surpassing the previous record for the fastest marathon wearing foam Crocs. 41 new world records. Over the past year, the record for the fastest marathon in Crocs was broken four times. This is really heating up. So the London race Mark treats 12th marathon and followed three failed attempts to break the fastest marathon dressed as Santa Claus, which stands at 233, 23 and he's also got to 29, 41 when he's not in Crocs.

So he pivoted from addressing a Santa to doing it in, in Crocs. So I think Crocs and jeans is, that's the perfect blend. What's happening with his, what's happening with his jeans, the marathon thing? What's he doing next? Um, next, uh, oh, he's doing a last man standing race here in Austin. Okay. That's the next place. Next race.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. So that's, that's a 4.2 mile loop every hour for as long as you can do it. So that's, but Guinness won't approve a jeans marathon. Why? I have no idea. Cause Truett tried to do that too.

And I tried to do like, I was going to run a marathon with a bow. Okay. Like just run with it. They wouldn't approve that either. And so I don't know why, but they'll approve dressed as Santa wearing Crocs. Uh, a guy just, uh, I saw the guy in Boston, uh, Jordan Maddox, he ran in dressed as a banana, set the world record as a fruit. So, but they want to prove-

Oh, he broke the banana and the fruit world records. Like if you could be the quickest banana But an orange beat you I don't know actually I don't know I break this down by Fruit type. I don't know if it's banana fruit or I think the banana is as far as fruits go The banana is probably pretty aerodynamic. Yeah, you know, you want to be yeah pretty, you know, it's slicing through the choice Don't be a pair. This is real slowing you down Or a watermelon. No, also bad.

Yeah. I don't know. It's fascinating, dude, watching this thing unfold. And obviously after getting to hang with you and kids at your house and get to meet everybody and sort of watching the last two years, it's been kind of unsurprising, you know, to be honest. It's unsurprising or surprising?

Unsurprising. Oh. Totally unsurprising. It's like the least surprising thing that could have happened. Yeah. I love to see it. I mean, um, yeah, true. It's doing good as far as like he's selling his sponsorships and he's doing

like road to sub two 30 or diatrine. So, you know, this like a weekly video series. So yeah, he's, I love to see it. Um, what was watching him do that the most recent pullup record like? Yeah, I mean, it's, I just remember it's a big, it's a big ask. 10,000 pullups. You got two contact points, basically your hands. That's a lot of pressure, a lot of reps, a lot of little stuff that can go wrong,

ligaments, tendons, you know, Goggins tried it a few times before he got it. And one time I think live on Good Morning American got injured. So did it live some other time and got injured. So there's no guarantee you're going to make it unscathed through a challenge, 24 hours of pull-ups. But for Truett, I mean, he's so dedicated and obsessed. He had trained so hard. It's like, and when he got it, I just, you know, that night, I just remember saying,

you know, good job, not surprised. This is, this is what you're supposed to do. This is, if you weren't doing shit like this, then I'd be like, what the fuck's going on? So this is what I expected. This is the expectation that's always been there. I told the boys and my daughter too for that matter, but you guys aren't normal.

I'm not, normal isn't okay. Average isn't okay. You're supposed to be doing stuff like this. That's why we're here. So it's like, I said good job, but yeah, not surprised. Expected job. Yeah, that was it. He did what he's supposed to do.

It's like I said, dude, it was not, it was like the least surprising thing that happened. I think it's cool that it's something that no human has ever done. He did 10,000, no humans ever been to 10,000 in 24 hours on pull-ups. So it's, as you mentioned earlier, anybody who's tried to do a pull-up. Fucking five pull-ups is hard. Yeah. Five pull-ups is hard for me. It's like 10,000. Crazy.

A quick aside. If you often feel tired, you might not need more sleep. You might not need more caffeine. You might just be dehydrated and proper hydration isn't just about drinking sufficient water. It's about having enough electrolytes to allow your body to properly absorb those fluids. Element contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium and magnesium with no sugar, no gluten, no artificial ingredients or any other BS.

It plays a huge role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue while optimizing your brain health, regulating your appetite and curbing cravings. That's why it's used by everyone from Dr. Andrew Huberman to Dr. Mike Isretel, Olympic athletes, FBI sniper teams, and me. This orange flavor in a cold glass of water is a beautiful, salty, sweet, orangey nectar. And I'm in love with it. and I'm going to keep talking about it until you use it because it makes a massive difference. Also they've got a no questions asked refund policy so if you don't like it for any reason

they'll give you your money back. You don't even need to return the box and you can drink it all. Plus they offer free shipping in the US. Right now you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box by going to the link in the description below or heading to drink LMNT.com slash modern wisdom. That's drink LMNT.com slash modern wisdom. You said, I've seen you say that you think love is the most powerful form of motivation. What's the role of love and passion in this?

A lot of what we're talking about so far is, it's like aggression, it's gripping, some resentment in there, there's, you know, sort of wanting to prove people wrong. And then you talk about love and passion. Where does that come from? Yeah, I don't, I think I might say passion, love. Sometimes the saying I have with love is like, love makes me strong, hate makes me unstoppable.

So I still lean for whatever reason, I am motivated by hate, by people talking shit, by people not believing in me. If somebody supports you, I mean, that's great. I don't wanna say I don't give a fuck, but hate is what's great. I don't want to say I don't give a fuck, but hate is what pushes me hate and people discounting what I've done or my effort or my goals that that's what drives me.

I don't know why, but love is great support. I appreciate support. Um, but I just think that, you know know, I will, you said love and passion. So passion, yes, because in my book, I talk about outliers and you're one of them. But what makes somebody an outlier in my mind is this passion for this thing. What's this thing? What's this thing they do? For you, it's just, you know, thought provoking intellectual discussions,

like peeling back the onions, figuring out, you know, modern wisdom. And you're the best at it, right? So whatever, you had this passion to learn, to learn more about human behavior and the brain and the body and sexual attractiveness and different things like that. Passion drove that, right? So I think passion is what sets people apart. Love and hate, that can go either way.

It's interesting thinking about how hate is a better motivator or a bigger motivator for you because it puts anybody that wants to bring you down in a very awkward position, that they have to compliment you in order to not drive you further. They have to say something nice if they want to slow you down. Yeah, I mean, but when somebody says,

you know how many people say, yeah, you know, love you. It's just like, is that real? But hate, hate's- That's usually pretty real. It's real. Yeah. That's a good point. That's a good point. People are flippant with their love,

but they're not that flippant with their hate. If they hate you, that means something. That's deep. That's why it's like, I think that's why that drives me. That's fascinating. Yeah. I've never considered that maybe because it's sort of socially desirable to sort of say that you love something, typically, you don't want to be seen as a hater all that

much. Yeah. That there is maybe more emotional activation in someone's hatred than there is in someone's love. And you're like, holy fuck, like I got to this person. Yeah. I did got to this person. Yeah. So that's where I get, I'm more fueled by that. Well, this is one of the things that I,

one of many things that I learned spending a couple of days with you. Having must be nice written in the gym and poser written on the rock. And I've mentioned this on the show a bunch of times. Like, huh. Like, why Posa? I asked you about this and you explained that 72 pounds is 72 pounds and there's nothing

you can do about it. And you can say what you want, but come and carry this rock up the hill and see if you think that it's all for show after that. Um, I didn't realize until now that that's because you were. Fueled way more by people's distaste than people's support. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It's a, that it was somebody's telling you how good you are all the time. For one, you can start to believe it.

And then you, to me, if I'm hearing that I'm losing my edge. I'm like, I don't want to hear that shit. That's, I appreciate it, but I want an edge. I want to know why you don't think I'm, so that's what Poser, that's why it's so powerful to me. I like when people say, oh yeah, fucking Cam, Poser. Yeah. I've been thinking about this for a while. I haven't written it out yet,

so I'm gonna try and play with this idea live with you. There's a quote from Victor Frankl that says, "'When a man can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.'" Right, and his point is, I think, that if your life is bereft of a higher purpose, you look at hedonism and short-term gratification and stuff like that. I think there's an inverse and I think that you and maybe me as well,

are good examples of the inverse, that when a man can't find a deep sense of pleasure, they distract themselves with meaning. And that if your day-to-day experience of pleasure, they distract themselves with meaning. And that if your day to day experience of life, I don't know, just sort of joy and like play and ease and fun and lightness, if that's just not what you grew up being taught or that's not sort of your psychological set point or disposition, or it just doesn't come as easily to you as it does maybe to other people. I think I've seen a lot of the people that are like overachievers

in the winning the marshmallow test of life, just permanently delaying gratification. I think I see that as quite a common archetype that, how easily do you switch off smoke weed and play Xbox? It's like fucking impossibly. Like it doesn't happen. And how much sort of play and ease and grace and

joy, you know, how easy does sort of enjoyment and lightness come? It's like, oh, sometimes things are kind of heavy and I apply pressure to myself for it, even when it's not needed. And sometimes I struggle to give myself a break and so on and so forth. So I think that, yeah, that when a man can't find

a deep sense of pleasure, they distract themselves with meaning, you know, instead of just having a fun Saturday morning with the kids. It's like we're taking a big rock and a couple of small rocks and we're going up that fucking hill again. Yeah, yeah. It's, yeah, when you were saying that, I was thinking about, yeah, yeah. It's a, yeah, when you, when you were saying that, I was thinking about, um, yeah, I don't know.

It's a, I'm, I'm happiest when I'm suffering. So I've heard people say like, they said this mostly about Goggins. I don't know. You've talked to him too, but it's just like asking him, it's like, are you ever happy? It's just like for him, he's happy when he's miserable. So it's like, well, whose definition of happy you're talking about is you're happy eating fucking donuts, watching TV. That sounds miserable to me.

So it's like the people that get these words and they're like, are you happy? Are you enjoying yourself? Do you ever have fun? It's like running up that mountain is fun. That's what I like. So yeah, it's a, when you talk about pleasure and passion, I was trying to, to weigh that out there on, on what is, what is happiness for people, you know? And also another thing, um, I see you put up like three million subscribers.

So it's like, is that what type of, does that do anything for you? Is that, I mean, cause you'll never let off. You're like, okay, I made it. I'm good. I got three million. That was my goal. But you put that up. Like sometimes people will put up things like, like I made it.

Like this is my, I'm here, but I've arrived to you. That's just, what is that? Just a benchmark, just another little destination, I suppose. I, I, what, what is the goal? Do you have a goal? Uh, not in terms of sort of, uh, money or follow

account or anything like that. Uh, I think I did originally, even though I didn't have a number in mind. Um, I, I think I wanted originally, even though I didn't have a number in mind, I think I wanted to be, I wanted to become really proficient at something. I wanted to be able to say that I was, like, I'd reached something close to mastery or competence. Like I was competent at this thing, and people respected that and recognized that, especially people that I respected. So how do you, is that a measurable that and recognized that, especially people that I respected and that I admired.

How do you, is that a measurable that tells you that? Nope. So, cause some people like look at, I haven't looked at where your podcast is on the charts today, you know, so I'm, I like measurables. Like I like, I need to do this many miles this fast at this pace. I want, you know, this many downloads to the pod. It's like, I love measurables. And I think my boys have kind of taken on that.

I love that too. I think it's a good way to bring some control into a messy world. Um, I, I have just tried to sort of put a bit of a speed limiter on how much I rely on it, because I because at least for me, it is not the most important metric. The most important metric is something that's pretty intangible, which is how much did I connect with the guests? How much did it impact the people that were listening?

A lot of the time, sometimes the episodes that do the most plays are the ones that are the most impactful. And they certainly reach the most people, right? But then how, you know, deeply that really changes people. And I'm at the stage now, at least with this particular art form, where I'm trying to really, really connect with the person I'm sitting opposite.

And I'm really, really trying to understand why they are the way they are or what it is that people should understand or learn about them and none of that is going to appear on a YouTube analytics spreadsheet. It simply doesn't. The measurement stuff is good and it ensures that you're at least keeping an eye on one or a few things. I'm the sort of person I think that would become very obsessed by it and I need to be aware of that and I need to account for that because it's not all that matters. You know, it would be something else.

A lot of people trade intensity. In the very beginning, they use intensity, but the thing that keeps you going is your longevity, right? That's what we said, the consistency thing. And they trade longevity for intensity. And if you're just chasing the numbers, you're able to see the immediate effect of your work. This is the same with powerl lifters, let's say. So you're a power lifter in the gym and you're pushing yourself

RPE 9, RPE 9.5, RPE 10 over and over again. You're not periodizing, you're not taking weeks off. You're going, dude, my numbers are going up. I'm fucking crushing it. I'm crushing it. I'm crushing it. Snap. Yeah. You're okay. Well, what was the goal? What really what was the goal?

The goal was to get the numbers to go up, but the goal is to get the numbers to go up steadily over 10 years. And all that you can see is such a short amount of time in front of you. And I think that you should be careful about trading longevity for intensity. Because, and at least with the show for me, the more fired up I am when I wake up on a morning, and I think this is just the best judgment of sort of where your life's at at the moment and how much joy you're getting out of life.

When you wake up, when your alarm goes off on a morning, how excited are you to get out of bed? I think that's a pretty good rubric for, how's life going right now? It's not gonna be like that forever. You know, it's gonna be better and worse, and sometimes really worse, and sometimes even better. And if I wake up on a morning and I go, fuck yeah, like I get to speak to Cam today.

Like that's really exciting. Tomorrow I've got Will Storr, like science of storytelling, fucking awesome author. He did this day. I'm fucking fired. I can't wait. And then, you know, there was periods in the show where I wake up and I'm like, oh, who am I talking to today? Oh yeah, that'll be all right.

You know, maybe the episode would be great. Maybe it would even be a really great performance, but if it did speak to me. So very much in that sort of, I don't know, post growth thing, where I've already got, at least with regards to the show, so much further than I ever thought I was going to fucking move continents and came over to this, this new country and made all of these friends and, you know, have lifted myself out of a area of the UK that's, it was literally only famous for having the highest teen pregnancy rating in the UK and then it lost that. So it didn't even have that anymore.

I, I've already won. I've already won. So trying to find ease, grace, joy, and just seeing how that works for a little bit, because I've very much applied the sort of Kam Haines, Goggins mindset for a while, and I can totally see me turning around in six months or two years or whatever and being like, all right, time to really fucking grip the bar again. I'm just seeing, okay, what happens if I try and have a little bit more play with this and then what happens if I go back in the other direction? Yeah.

I was curious about that just because we're so inundated with these measurables every day with the follower account, the likes, the, you know, when you start getting into podcasts and it is a downloads because then that affects what you can ask for advertisers. And that's all they give a fuck about. They don't care about what type of connection you had with your guests. They're like, okay, cool. How many downloads was it? You know, so it's like we get kind of roped into this,

to this trap of everything is measurable. And it's like, you're not successful unless you're here. And then when you're here, you better be here. So I was just kind of curious how you navigated that just because it is, it's life now. It is, and it's easy. It's an easy, like everybody loves, like, how do I compare? So it's an easy comparison.

That's why you look at the list on like, whose podcast is highest rated, right? But I think Joe's done a really good job of this too. It's like, and I wanna kind of adopt, well, your mindset is very similar now. That's why he can have on somebody like me, who when I first went on there, nobody knew who I was. But Joe doesn't care. He's just like, am I interested in this person?

Most podcasts are like, let's go with the biggest guess that's going to give me the biggest. I really think that you can look back on a body of work that was disembodied, disconnected successes. Or you can look back on something and be like, yeah, that was me. Like that was really me. I put myself out there and there's some people, let's say that you're in a sport, right? Let's say that you're a powerlifter or something like that.

You want to be the best in the world. You want to be the best in the world. It's not about manifesting your fucking artistic expression on the lifting platform. Pick the fucking weight up. Okay. You know what I mean? Can you pick it up or not? Can you pick it up or not? And the goal is to pick the fucking weight up.

And however you get there is how you do it. Now you may feel transcendent. You may feel like this is you really sort of actualizing your potential and doing it in the world. But my goal is to look back on this period of life and look back on the library of work that I do and go, yeah, like that was really me. That was exactly where I was.

I really tried to be open and honest with myself. It's a selfish project and I think that the best ones are and not everyone can do this. Not everyone can be selfish with what it is that they get to do for art. Because if you're a trader, oh, please tell me about how your artistic fucking expression helped you lose money on that USD JPY trade.

Yeah. No, you have a very, very tightly defined outcome. But in some other writing books and stuff like that, you could write a book. It would sell tons and tons of copies, but you weren't connected to, and you'd get loads of success. How do you feel after that? And for some people, they may take a ton of wellbeing and satisfaction and joy and all the rest of this stuff, meaning from it just being successful.

They just wanted the success. And I get the sense that maybe the first few books or the first few projects or the first few businesses or the first few years of the podcast or whatever, might be playing that game. But then after a while you go, okay, well, kind of satiated my desire for status and maybe money or being recognized by all of these people. I had this, I made this joke with regards to the show that I kind of had the five infinity stones

from Manos's glove. I had Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, Alain de Botton from the school of life, Naval Ravikant and Joe Rogan as like the five people that I wanted and I've got four of them. And Joe texted after the last episode and was like, don't forget, we need to do an episode on Modern Wizard.

Oh. So I'm like, right. Okay. Well, once I do that, if all it was, was about when you're done being, I've got gold medalist syndrome, why'd you go from that? And that's a genuine question. And that's still something every time that you complete a new goal,

you have to ask yourself, okay, well, what is my life now that I've completed this thing that I was working toward for a long time? And that's the danger of goals, right? You know, James Clear got this right in Atomic Habits where he said, you don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. So you just need to iterate and keep going and keep going. And it, it helps with longevity, but there is no growth without goals

because you need a goal to give you a fucking direction to move in. Or else you're just like growing outwardly, but not moving toward a particular thing. It's not great for the way that motivation works, dopamine, positive reinforcement, all that stuff. So again, it's this tension. It's this balance between the two. But I get the sense and it'll be dopamine, positive reinforcement, all that stuff. So again, it's this tension, it's this balance between the two. But I get the sense, and it'll be interesting,

you know, in a year's time, couple of years time when we chat and you're at episode 300, for me to go, okay, and what's driving you now? Like, how do you feel about the show? And I would guess that you're gonna say, you know what it is, like, actually I'm kind of taking my eye off the ball with regards to the metrics a little bit.

Mm-hmm. I'm really interested in having conversations with underground, I'm really platforming people that, you know, no one knows about, or I've really enjoyed delving into this area of whatever. And I think that is a realization that lots of people come to. I think they come to it maybe with even raising kids. Mm-hmm. That you think, can I get the kid into the Harvard, Ivy League University? that is a realization that lots of people come to. I think they come to it maybe with even raising kids. That you think, I'm going to get the kid into the Harvard,

Ivy League university, I'm going to get them to be the captain of this team, are they going to be the top in this particular pursuit or whatever. And then after a while you go, I just kind of want them to have fun. I just want them to be happy. Yeah. And I thought that I could get them there through that, but you kind of need to. And I thought that I could get them there through that, but you kind of need to. It's far easier to achieve it than it is to get rid of it.

Yeah. Uh, because if you haven't achieved it, it's always in the back of your mind is, you know, that might've been the answer. Right. So you need to do it to see that it isn't it. Like Navarro says, uh, the reason to win the game is to be rid of the game. Yeah. Uh, yeah. That makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. It, makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a tough one. It's like, uh, you know, you want to be successful. You want, I like, I think when I was, you were kind of explaining that the best feedback is when somebody says they really enjoyed whatever discussion you had or, um, and they're not talking about how many people listen to it, you know, it's just how it impacted them.

And it's like, I'm not, I'm not great at quote podcasting, which is why I do the lift run shoot with my guests to make, to, cause I can connect on that. And then that hopefully helps the conversation. Um, but yeah, it But yeah, it's tough. It's tough sitting down and really, yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe it's not tough. Maybe it's just we don't do this. Maybe we just, how often do you sit down and just talk to somebody?

I never do it. Like, not like this. So maybe it's like, maybe you can learn a lot just by having a discussion and maybe a podcast is an excuse that we know we wouldn't, we wouldn't do this normally because I'm not going to be like, call up one of my buddies and say, Hey, you want to go talk for a couple hours? I was like, nobody would say, sure. It sounds like you're saying that you find sort of doing the podcast is one of the more

or most difficult things that it is that you do. Before we continue, if you've been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem. They play a huge role in your energy, your focus and your performance, but most people have no idea what there's are or what to do if something's off, which is why I partnered with Function because I wanted a smarter and more comprehensive way to understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year, they run lab tests

that monitor over a hundred biomarkers, and their team of expert physicians will analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health and lifespan. Seeing your testosterone levels and dozens of other biomarkers charted over the course of a year with actionable insights to actually improve them gives you a clear path to making your life better.

And right now you can get the exact same blood panels that I get by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. That's functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. So what what are the most difficult things that you've done physically? You've got this long illustrious career of doing fucking stupid things to yourself. Yeah. Um, what rank in the, the, the top few? Oh, it's a, the long race.

You know, the, well, this race I've coming up is 250 miles. I've done 240 miles. I've been 200 miles, a hundred miles is hard. Um, marathons are hard when you're pushing a lot of hard hunts where you're just miserable, you know, in the snow, long hunt Kodiak Island for 12 days. So it's, um, though, but those are, um, those they're not predictable, but you know what you're getting into. You know what I mean?

It's like, yeah, you know, it's going to be terrible and it's going to, you're going to be miserable probably for a while, but that's part of the deal. That's just like, that's why you sign up is that test. I'm trying to test myself. I want to see if I'm tough enough to do this. So those, when I think of hard, it's those. Are there any in particular that come to mind from the hunts or the races perspective? Um, yeah, I mean, yeah, I've been on, uh, I don't know, a lot of hard

hunts in the mountains, just being soaking, soaking wet. I mean, one time me and Roy were sheep hunting. Roy's my friend who fell, but before, obviously before he fell, we were sheep hunting. Um, miserable weather conditions, super steep. Uh, we were blood trail in this Ram and it wasn't a good shot. So it's like, uh, it was going to be a long, hard blood trail to kind of decipher and get this animal. And it got dark and then a grizzly was kind of circling the tents. And, uh, I was just like, I don't give a fuck. I'm going to bed.

I'm not, I'm, I'm not even, I don't care about this bear. I don't know what's going to. Whatever went so tired, just went to bed. That's that's being miserable. Um, on Kodiak, you know, you get dropped off and I remember in my book, Backcountry Bow Hunting, the pilot like wrote down the day he was supposed to come back and pick us up on his jeans with a pen. So it's like, hopefully he doesn't wash those jeans. He's going to come back in what, 12 days, two weeks to get us. And this is his first first week in November so it's pouring down rain every day,

Kodiak is just south of the mainland there and it's just miserable. Every day you're wet, it's just miserable. So yeah, then if you talk about the races, you're going the long races. races, you're going the long races. So in Moab 240, I think I slept for about, I don't know, I can't remember now. It's been a few years, but two to four hours and it took me 79 hours to finish a race. So over three days and slept, you know, maybe four hours total. So that when, you know what it feels like to get a good night's rest. So it's like, nothing feels better if it seems like.

So on the opposite of that, when all you want to do is sleep, but you have to keep pushing for 240 miles, it's that seems overwhelming. So to just, to build a muster up the strength to still take another step where every step is an effort. up the strength to still take another step where every step is an effort. And so if you think when I go running every mile is 2000 steps. So if I'm doing 200, you know, so it's 500,000 steps, 500,000 steps, roughly in every one is an effort. It's tough.

That hurts. So those, those experiences stand out. The first guy I ever had on the podcast episode one, and the people should not go back and listen to, uh, but it's interesting episode. It's a guy called Stu Morton. It was a training to row the Atlantic solo. So this is a, the Talisca whiskey race. It's pretty common thing, but it's very extreme.

You go from, I think, the coast of Portugal to kind of the Caribbean. And the interesting thing with that is that people that do it in groups of two or three or four are really no quicker than the person that does it on their own. Because for every additional person, you need a bigger boat and more supplies and another person, which is more drag. So everybody kind of nets out at the same pace.

You can go at, now obviously I guess physically it must be a little easier. Now I remember speaking to him and I can't, he's like something like 14 million or strokes or something he needed to do to get him. So it's just 14 million. Yeah. You go across that thing. It's so funny when you break down races,

like 200 miles into five, like it's 500,000 steps. Yeah. You got to take 500,000 steps. Yeah. And it's so hilarious when that happens. I- You know, cause most people are like, their goal is 10,000 steps a day. And that's a good day.

Okay. 500,000. Yeah. I love the, I love the idea of these backyard ultras. It was the dude from the Barclay marathon that invented it. Right? Yeah. Laz. Yeah. And, uh, just his insight that he hated the fact that sometimes people won.

Yeah. He wanted a race when no one won. Yeah. Like everybody loses. Everybody loses at this race. There's just some people that lose less than others. Yeah. Barclay, there's no finisher sometimes, but the backyards, there's always going to be one person who outlasts the other.

So it's also called last man standing is kind of what they're called. But yeah, it's, they still don't beat the race though. No, I mean, the race is still there. It's just, you needed somebody else to go with you to go to the next level. Yeah. So the race never loses. You never, never really win the race. You just outlast. Lost less than the last to the next level. Yeah. So the race never loses. You never, never really win the race. You just outlast the next guy.

You outlast the other man or woman, but, uh, yeah, those fascinating, isn't it? That how long can you run four miles an hour? It's crazy. Is now there's guys who have went 400 miles. Do you know this? No. 450 miles. So that's the who have went 400 miles. Do you know this? No, 450 miles. So that's the current record for this thing. Wow.

Yeah. So God, what would that, so that'd have to be a hundred and some hours. How many days is that? That's over four, over four days with never getting more than, so if you finish and say 50 minutes, you get 10 minutes before you have to be on the start line. So never getting more than 10 minutes of rest. What's the sort of pace that people are doing?

Cause you could do eight miles an hour, right? You could move at eight miles an hour and get done in half an hour. Yeah, you could, but for how long, you know, so the thing with these is the more you break your body down, the less distance you're going to be able to go. If you run fast, you're stretching, your muscles out, which stretching muscles out is essentially breaking them down over time. So yeah, it's like finding that sweet spot. I think Courtney, she's won one of those before. And I think she was doing her laps in about 50 or 52 minutes.

So just got, if you get eight minutes, get a little food in, sit down for a sec to back on the line. And true. It's going to do one of these. Yeah. Yeah. Jeans. And true. It's going to do one of these jeans. Oh shit. I don't know. I told him, I'm like, I mean, he needs a win.

Like if, if you had, he hasn't won a race. So it's like he's yes. He's went viral in Boston and Austin marathon, Eugene. He just, you know, a lot of news stories. And he does have the world record in the pull ups. That's all great. I said, but you need a win. You need to be come across, break that tape because I, you haven't had a win yet.

So you show me a win. That's the goal. What's your perspective on genetics, pedigree, talent and hard work and how all of these things fit together? Yeah, I mean, we always joke that, Truett always joke he got shitty genetics. That's why he had to overcome his genetics because really, I mean, I don't have, I've never thought I've, I've had great genetics. If I had great genetics, I would have been able to play college football for a while.

And so I've, I always said, you know, I've just either you're average or obsessed has kind of been my thing. It's just like I had, if I didn't want to be average, I had to be obsessed. So I just put it, tied it all into hard work. Um, when I see the boys, I do see they have some genetic advantage for sure. Um, but what do genetic advantages give you if you don't capitalize on them? Not much, right? So they've just both done a good job of capitalizing

on whatever gifts they've had. And then Truett is definitely maximizing them. Yeah, it's weird with, I guess, talent, something like motivation or enthusiasm and consistency or discipline. Because at the very beginning, no matter how talented you are, you haven't spent enough time and attention to unlock that talent.

Now, sure, you begin the race a little bit further ahead than the other guy that's also starting. But the most virtuoso keyboard pianist ever. The first time that they sat down at piano, they fucking sucked. But you know, the most virtuoso keyboard pianist ever, right? The first time that they sat down at a piano, they fucking sucked. So even if they had all of the raw materials to learn very, very quickly, this insight that you kind of unlock your own potential, you unlock your own talent through the only thing that matters,

which is the consistency. Now, I will say, do you know who Craig Jones is? Yeah. Yeah. He's a, uh, Craig may be the most, he may be the biggest outlier, I think in the entire world. And sort of elite sports, uh, in that he doesn't train consistently, he doesn't have a strength and conditioning routine. He doesn't care about his body or what he puts in it.

He sometimes cares about what he puts his body in. And he, as far as I can see, is a professional partier who still is probably top five grapplers on the planet. Yeah. And, you know, Nicky Rod, who's trained here at B team in Austin, will eat, sleep, lift, train, recover, give study tape, do all of the things. And Craig will roll back in from a session with a cigarette in his hand and still give him a, like as good of a run for his money as anyone and oftentimes win.

Yeah. And that in some ways is just like really fucking cool, but in other ways must just be so disheartening if you're in that. Yeah. No, for sure. When I hear that story, what I think about is how great could he be being dedicated. Put the cocaine down. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because he's comparing himself to, yes, they're elites, but could he be a legend? Yeah, could he be the best?

Yeah. He's a legend in certain disciplines that just not, but could he be the best ever? You know what I mean? Like, I mean, I don't know, cause Gordon Ryan, does he live pretty, I think he, does he live pretty clean? I think, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Pretty, pretty, pretty much, apart from when he's injured, but even with that, like there's a degree of commitment during your injury, right? If your stomach's upset and you kind of got to focus on yourself. But yeah, I think for a lot of people, what they end up realizing is

it doesn't really matter how talented I am. The consistency and the hard work really is the only solution. It's the only pathway I have to sort of capitalize on this stuff. And I think that's one of the reasons again, why somebody who largely is pretty untalented is such a trigger for a lot of people because there's two ways you could look at it and you could say, holy fuck, like there's nothing special about them. Why did they get that? Holy fuck, there's nothing special about them.

There's nothing special about me either. That means that I too can do it. I could make it, yeah. Because what people want, I think a lot of the time, is what is the super secret squirrel technique or what was the unique combination cocktail of upbringing and genetics and whatever it was that this person had in order

to be able to get them to this place. And the more boring the answer, the less satisfactory it is. And I think part of the reason that it's not very satisfactory is that it actually, it doesn't take it further away from you. Right. It brings it closer to you.

Because if you say, well, what's the reason that you send bots the fastest man on the planet and someone explains about how his fast Twitch type, a muscle fibers have a particular like ATP output and his lactate threshold and his limb length and the way that his body biomechanics and spinal flexion and all of this stuff. And you go, well, that's beautiful. Like what a romantic, what a gorgeous distillation of the fastest man on the planet ever.

How the fuck am I supposed to replicate that? You said, well, I just sort of, I just trained for a decade and a half and I didn't stop. You go, yeah, that's fucking lame. Like that's, but it's also enlivening. Right. Because you say it's at your feet too. Yeah. It's a, yeah, cause when I think about,

you know, if I think, I don't know, if you think Truett, you're like, I hear people say all the time, well, if I was in this situation or if, or they've even said like, if, if I, you know, if they were raised like Truett was raised type thing, or, you know, people- The privilege of being made it was raised type thing or, you know, people privilege of being made to suffer as a seven year old. Yeah.

God. Yeah. They did. Well, oh, that's another thing that I get worried about is some of the dads watching what he's doing and then thinking like, I'm going to have a child that does a 10,001 plus and I feel bad for those kids because it was like the perfect storm for my boys and they were built for it. So, you know, people say I'm built for this, whatever, I don't, whatever the case,

but they did eventually flourish. A lot of kids aren't going to, it's going to be a disaster. It's going to be a disaster. And the dad is probably not going to be like living that example every day like I was. So it's like, then it's just like, you don't do this. Why am I doing it? It's going to be tough.

But it comes back to authenticity. Yeah, for sure. It was a natural outgrowth. And I think this is where you can hopefully give yourself a break, even though I know you're terrible at doing that as a. You did probably what comes most naturally to you, which was your way of showing love, which is world's tough. You need to be tougher than it is at least, and ideally about between five and 10 times tougher than it is.

And this is the way that I'm going to show you that I love you because I'm going to prepare you for the world and I'm going to make sure that nothing can hurt you and that you're going to be resilient and that you're going to have, you know, this is my, this is my showing of love. And if that is not how you actually want to show up, sooner or later, there's going to be cracks in things. You can't force stuff long enough. It's, you know, the trite old thing about the man who loves to walk will walk further than the man who has to. Because eventually over a long enough time horizon, people end up just regressing to

the mean. They just go back to what their patterns are. And now maybe you can change your patterns over a very, very, very long time. But how many people do you know that have really made changes in their life? It's so few. People lose five pounds, you know, they'll go from one company to another. They'll, you know, read a book about arguments and

change their communication style. But how many people do you know that have lost a hundred pounds or moved, changed their career at 40? Right. Or gone to a new country, right? Or got out of that abusive relationship and entered a new one that was flourishing and taken all of the things that they learned. Like that's alchemy.

It's like taking something that was awful and useless and pointless in your life and turning it into something that's beautiful and valuable. And it's so fucking rare. Just doesn't happen all that much. And again, to kind of bring this back down, one of my favorite realizations and one I think that you share as well is,

well, in some ways that's kind of terrifying because oh my God, look at how many people don't end up actualizing everything that they could and it's not that the only thing to do in life that's great is to actualize your potential. A lot of it can just be flourishing and living it fully, fully and and and maximizing your time on this planet in experience and presence and all that sort of stuff. But most people don't get that. Fuck, that's terrifying.

Or most people don't get that. Holy shit, how low is the bar? The average American is obese, divorced, and with less than one K in the bank. That's the average American. That's nuts. American. That nuts. How low is the bar? And with more opportunity than anywhere else in the world. And that's, that's average American. That's what's crazy.

I was, I'm, I was curious about what you think about this. Cause I've heard people say that, you know, I couldn't have done it without whatever their wife or their whatever. It's like, and as you know, my wife has been supportive, Truett's wife is very supportive, but to me, it's just like, so I'm curious, that's why I want to hear what you think because yes, I think, so if say Truett was saying, oh, I'm going to go, I need to go train. And his wife was saying again, but so I could see where that would be an issue. But to me, it's just like, maybe it goes back to the point you've started to make

this whole time about like parenting or whatever. It's like, I don't know. I don't want to say if it's fate, but to me it's like, yeah, support is nice. I fucking don't need anything. I'd do the same shit. Whether you love me, hate me, support me or don't, nothing's going to stop me.

I wonder if, so can people say, well, I didn't have that environment or the support you had. That's why I didn't achieve this. Or are there people who, who are like, and I think of Goggins, I think he, I don't care who the fuck was in his life. He was going to be who he is no matter what. There's a difference between doing something because and doing something in spite, right?

I achieved this in spite of the way that my wife hates that I go out for a run at five 30 and one, right? I did this because my wife encourages me to go and do it. And I think this is, it's a good point to talk about that. I do worry about the romanticization of suffering too much on men, especially that, um, there is a certain type of personality. I certainly have this. Maybe you do too.

I definitely get the sense that Goggins has this. That is someone who like the priest's hoeing seeks out suffering beyond its utility. Right. It's like I've taken everything that I can from this and I'm making it harder than it needs to be. So a great cue that one of my friends gives in the gym is what would this be like if it was easier? So you're carrying the rock, right?

This perfect example, you've got to carry a 72 pound pose of rock up a hill. There are a variety of different ways. I learned all of them with you. And you can have it in bear hugging, the shoulders, you can have it in the center of the back and have it there. Why not carry it on the top of your head? Genuine question. Why not carry it on the top of your head? Cause that would be harder. That would make the 72 pound rock harder. Well, you know, I'm calcifying the top of my skull and attempt to, like, this is real

suffering and you go, well, you don't do that. So we the top of my skull and attempt to like, this is real suffering. You go, well, you don't do that. So we're always making a kind of value judgment around how hard should the hard thing be. Right. Yep. And I just get the sense that a supportive wife or, you know, if you really want your kids to know what suffering is, break up with your wife

when they're one year old. You know what I mean? Leave them, don't pay the alimony, leave them in a broken home. See if you can leave some needles around like, you know. This is for you. Yeah, exactly. A nice systemic infection will really toughen them up.

So we understand, but we just make value judgments. Like all of this is like, I feel like this is about the right amount. You didn't make the kids do the mountain three times. Right. Okay. So why one? Why not one in a bit?

Why not three? Why not five? So with that, I just get the sense that if you have the choice of flying with the wind behind you, giving you a little bit of a push, being like, huh, the thing that I want to do that's really fucking hard is made easier by my partner. So I can run, let's say you can run a hundred miles on a day. If I have part of that's total arsehole, I can get to like 95. If I've part of that's total hero, I can get to 105.

I want the partner that gets me to 105. That doesn't mean that the thing is less virtuous or any easier, but that my capacity gets unlocked because I'm not wasting it carrying a rock on my head. I'm carrying a rock on my shoulder. Right. That makes sense. Yeah. I knew there's a reason I brought it up because you could distill it down perfectly.

But yeah, I was just curious about it. I've never really thought about it past, like just the basics like that. So thank you for I mean, if it was in a relationship and his wife was permanently saying, fuck, I wish that you could do any exercise, but polyps, like I just hate them. Like I'm mortally offended by polyps. You'd be like, Hey, darling, come here. Let me have a, let's, let's have a little chat about this. Like, can we just fucking ikne with the, with the polyp, the polyp? Yeah, exactly. He's trying to, he's trying to break a world record here. Let's have a little chat about this. Like, can we just fucking Ickney with the, with the pull up, the pull up talk? Yeah, exactly.

He's trying to, he's trying to break a world record here. Um, so I do think that's important. Uh, and I, as well, the learning when to actually just go, I'm going to enjoy this. I'm going to fucking enjoy the end of the race, right? Like you've run the marathon, you, you've run the, the ultra, you've run the 250. And it's like, well, if you went 3% faster at the very, very end, then you'd shave four seconds off your time.

It's like, okay, but why did you do this? Did you do this to get the fastest time possible? You didn't win, someone else fucking won, right? You didn't win. Or did you do it so that you can take a tiny little bit off the top and be like, yes, I crossed the finish line.

I fucking felt that that's positive reinforcement. That's why I'm here. I'm here to experience it. And maybe this is why I'll never be a turbo billionaire or, you know, like the absolute world champion at some super difficult pursuit, uh, because I, I just sort of value other things and this is not natural. So it's very much me, like dictating it to me, not expressing it out of me, if that makes sense.

I'm like saying what I want to be true and how I want to show up, not how I show up. Cause it's still very much just like a fucking Japanese torture chamber inside of my head, me telling me that I'm not good enough and that could have been better and I shouldn't have done that thing and so on and so forth.

Is that like, is that mostly a man thing? Like, uh, being, being judged on performance and worth and, um, do you think it's like more certainly contributes? I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's like, I heard somebody say the other day, cause I, and now I'm thinking

thinking about like what it means to be a man and a provider type thing. Yeah, I think that, I don't know, it's hard. It's hard. I just know the pressure I felt as being a dad and a husband and like making sure everybody was taken care of, the bills were paid and all this. I just know. Yeah, I don't know. I think, I think men get roped into this trap of. Worth sometimes. And it's just, that's fine because that's how it works. That, you know, not many women are out there saying I need to work harder

because I need to get my husband a bigger house in a nicer car. I mean. Yeah, that's funny. I don't. Yeah. You ever hear that? No, no, no, I don't know that much. The biggest house in Austin that was ever sold actually is owned by a friend

and that was built by the founder of Bumble. It was a woman and I do, I don't know what her partner does or whatever, but like you didn't build a fucking $40 million house. I know that. Unless you were also like a total freak business person, but there is a little bit of me that goes like, uh, I wonder what it's like to be with someone who, uh, outwardly is that high achieving, you know, and that's not to say that's the only way to achieve. There's many, many other things that are more valuable

than how much money you bring, but the dynamic typically is, you know, protect a provider and then helping. And even if that's not the way that the dynamic needs to be or even like structurally quite is, even if you've got two breadwinners in the household, there's still this sort of expectation that the guy's going to show up in that way. But one of the saddest things to me is to see somebody who's won the game and is still playing it.

Like what's an example? A 70s year old businessman who is now a grandfather, high powered, you know, CEO of a company founded a bunch built and sold and still going to the expos and still walking around hustling and grinding and giving out their card and you know, staying up late and scrutinizing all the stuff. It's like, dude, you've got a legacy that is so fucking far beyond this business thing that you did. Now, maybe in a minority of cases, it's your passion. It's like you just adore printer ink or whatever, turnip farming, whatever the fuck it is that you're great at. For the most part, what I see is people that just want to be validated by the world around them and they just need that, that. And I would say I've got a lot more grace for the people who haven't yet achieved it and are still chasing it. You know, if it's, I want to become, but this is the problem with not having

milestones and with the game being infinite, that you can get to a situation where you never feel like you've arrived. I think this is exactly what these people are struggling with. They're like, no, no, no, no, no. It's when I get to 10 million subscribers on YouTube, but no, no, no, no, it's when the business hits, I sell it for three billion because the first one that was at one billion, that just wasn't quite in, I need to repeat it.

It's not just doing it once because that could have been a fluke. I need to do it twice. Well, no, three times because I timed the market because of COVID. Like, there's always an excuse, excuse, excuse. Yeah. Then after a while, you need to kind of admit to yourself that this is just an addiction to wanting to be validated by the world and it's never going to be enough and you're trying to fill a hole internally with accolades and love

externally and that's for the most part, not the way that it works, but in slight part is if you never run a fucking hundred mile race, you'd be like, come on. I've got to do it. I've got to do this thing. Yeah. You look, you did 240. What's the next one? Yeah.

It'd be 250. I know it has to. Where is that? Arizona. Okay. What's the, we're in, it's going to be the first of May soon. So it's like the fifth of May or something you're running it? Yeah.

Yeah. It's from Jackson. Is it May or something you're running it? Yeah. Yeah. It's a from Jackson or is it, is it Jackson? Or no, no. What? Uh, shit. Now I can't remember. Oh no. Black, fuck.

Now I can't remember. Black Canyon city. I don't know. Two, two, uh, Flagstaff. What's the temperature like in Arizona at this time of the year? Uh, it'll, I mean, it'll be hot during the day, of course, but it's, it's kind of high desert, so it'll be, could be cold at night. Brilliant.

Yeah. Like when, when I did Moab, for example, it was maybe 90 during the day. And then one night he got down to nine in the mountains. Quite a swing. Holy fuck. Yeah. So it's a, it's a tough one, but yeah, it'll be good. But yeah, it's just it's always like finding that limit essentially, because you know, when you're saying that I was thinking back to like, I mean, when I grew up, I didn't even know people actually paid off cars. I thought you just had a car payment like, you know, it's like, I didn't know, or I thought like that little mobile home I showed you, I thought I'd lived there.

And I didn't actually know people paid off their houses. I thought you just paid rent or your house payment forever. And I was just like, so now, now it's just like, I have to readjust, you know, my house was paid off. And I'm just like, okay. Now I don't really know what to do. Don't really know what the goal is supposed to be. Yeah.

I mean, that's gold medalist syndrome. Yeah. Right. In a small, small regard. I know my mom and dad felt the same. My dad, one of my dad's proudest things is, you know, I was a mortgage free. Yeah.

And, uh, I didn't know that happened. Yeah. You just, I, well, I remember you showing me when we were driving around Eugene. It wasn't like a trailer park. It was like a barn, like a mobile, like a single small thing. And you were saying, you know, when I grew up,

I thought, wow, that would, you know, one of those in a truck, like, holy shit. Yeah, that was awesome. That was a dream. Yeah, those are called manufactured homes. Do they not have those here? Yeah, they will do. I just don't know what the name would have been.

It's like an old trailer. They used to have a trailer park where it was like, they're made out of metal. And now they look more like houses, but they're still sort of, they still come in on wheels. Internally, it's still the same. It gets set down. Still the same, yeah.

But for, you know, for out there, like where I showed you where we drove, it was just like, shit, that's awesome. You remember we went over that bridge that your sons used to jump off and there was a logger that was pulled up by the side of the road. We had a little chat with him.

Yeah, yeah. It was so cool. I know, truck driver. I'm interested in how you've navigated success or your relationship with success, warping sort of the original mission and not getting a set of velvet handcuffs or you know sort of champagne problem prison or whatever where you want to keep

your foot on the gas you want to keep pushing hard and also you know materially have a very different life to the one that you were used to and that you expected and that you grew up with and that even your kids grew up with, you know, you've sort of arched this across time. Yeah. How does success warp your relationship with the original mission in that way?

How have you found navigating that? Yeah, I mean, I just, well, I lean into the hate. So I'm always, any negative about me is being reinforced. So I never feel like a success, so to speak, because I'm, I'm reading this, these hateful things people say about me. It's hard to feel successful when you're reading what a piece of shit you are. Right. So I get reminded of that daily, but also it's like, you know, even when I had my regular job, I was a superintendent at the water and power company.

I felt like I never deserved that job. I'm like, no, they're going to figure out. I'm not, even though I was good at it, I was good, but I always felt like. I'm supposed to just be a worker. I'm, I'm a worker. That's, that's my talent level. That's my ability. That's my intelligence is we need workers.

That's me. And so I've never, that's all, even though I, I retired from that job and now I'm doing the other thing, it's just like, I, I'm a worker. That's, that's what I do. So whether it's running miles, lifting weights, doing the podcast, 160 episodes or whatever it is, it's just like, yeah, it's just a different form of being in the ditch. I thought that I was just going to be in a ditch, you know, putting water line in the ground when I work for the utility till I retired.

So it's just, it's the same. It's just work. It's just in a different form. I got a question and I don't quite know how to phrase it, but I want you to try and think about it quite deeply if you can. What do you think, how do you think you would feel if you believed that you were worthy of the things that you've achieved or if you believed that you were good enough? that you were worthy of the things that you've achieved, or if you believed that you were good enough?

If I felt like I deserved this, because this is part of it. Man, I don't even, I've never felt that way. I've never, how would I feel? Seems like it'd feel good. Wouldn't it? I'm guessing. I mean, wouldn't it feel good to feel like your success?

I think that'd feel good. I've never felt that. So I don't, um, cause even, even if somebody told me that, or if you, if you, if somebody says that right now, like, I would just be like, I would just discount it and be like, no, no, they're fucking full of shit. They're just saying that's what you're supposed to say to people. I mean, I wouldn't believe it. So I don't know.

I'm not, I don't know. I'm not sure. What if, let me give you another one. What if the next mountain that you need to climb is to be able to feel resonance and connection with the things that you've achieved in life? Man, I don't, it's like take a step back and say, wow, I made it.

Look at what I did. Yeah. I am good enough. I raised some fucking kids. I raised kids that are world record breakers and protect our country. Um, I felt like that's that I did what I was supposed to do. So if I didn't raise the kids to be that way, I failed because they had it. Obviously they have it. So you have made it.

So you were a success. No. You're like a, you're like the Gordon Ryan of taking compliments. I just, I just, I'm not saying I just did what I was supposed to do. I understand. So you can only fail. Right. Oh, okay.

So it was an obligation. Yes. Right. In some ways it was a minimum accepted level of. To them, because what if I, what if I, what if they weren't achieving these things, then I failed because they had it in them. So as a parent, aren't you supposed to get the most, have your kids believe that they can achieve incredible things and get them to do it.

But I mean, you know, you could argue, well, why is it not two world records? Why wasn't he a seal and a ranger? Cause you're not carrying it on your head. Yeah, you got to carry it on your head. It's very important. No, I look, I, um, I really, I'm very, very impressed with everything that the fucking Haynes household does. And I just wonder what, I wonder what, I wonder whether you could fly with a

little bit more breeze behind you, like internally with this stuff. Go fuck yeah. Like, you know, just little glimmers, not all the time, right? I don't think it's going to kill your edge, but I'd love, and this is again, me very much speaking to me, which is why, again, I'm saying it how I want it to be, not how it is for me. Yeah. I just love for you and for Goggins as well.

You know, these, these guys that are really, really driven, you know, hatred and a chip on your shoulder and this bitterness and the resentment and stuff like that. Great fuel, but I just wonder if there's, you know, can this be a hybrid car as opposed to just a diesel one? And maybe that's an interesting mountain for you to, or an interesting race for you to assess the difficulty of. Because in the same way that spending a day on the couch

would be incredibly uncomfortable in a manner that running 250 miles isn't for you, I wonder, okay, well, let's look inward. What is there that I can do here with regards to this? Like, how can I, oh, fuck, congratulating myself? No, dude, give me 200 kilos to deadlift a few hundred times. You know, like that's what I want to do. I understand that. That is really hard.

Because when I think about even this race coming up, I broke my foot, I've had all these injuries, and it's like, of course, my wife, people that care about me is like, we can't do the race. I'm like, I have to do the race. Well, what, well, because Speedland has these shoes coming out, it's a big promotion about me doing this race

with the Coco Dona 250 shoes. got a road shoe and a what, and like this, what I have expectations. The race let me in, um, you know, to drive awareness and to drive interest. It's like, I got people. Relying on me, relying on me. I not doing it is not an option. Well, you're hurt. Doesn't matter. So it's like,

yeah, I'm not quite there. I'm not quite there yet to where I can be like, because normally it'd be like most people would probably be like, I'm injured. I was going to do it, but I broke my foot. And anybody would say, Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Good reason. That's a good reason, but I can't do it. So I can't. I wonder, have you got grandkids yet? I'm going to have one here on the 12th.

Tanner. Congratulations. Yeah. I wonder what granddad life is going to be like for you. I mean, if kids don't change it, do, do, do Brent. Run it back. We'll do it again. Do Brent kids.

Fuck him one generation down. I looked at, uh, that's one of the things that you would typically hear about the maniacal solo ranger guy that, you know, keeps working on, ah, but he's softened by kids. And it's like, no, no, no, no, his kids were a vehicle for it. Like, you know, it went even harder. Um, but I don't know, you, you, it'll be fascinating. Like you're a fascinating guy and I, I'm going to be really, really interested to watch what happens over the next few years is presumably more the Haynes

household grows more and more and, and, and the grandkids thing. And you go, fuck, like I'm revisiting this babying child. the Haynes household grows more and more and the grandkids thing. And you go, fuck, like I'm revisiting this babying childhood thing and running this back. Where was I at the last time this was the case? And how do I want to show up this time for grandkids Haynes? Yeah. You know.

I think it would be different because as you said, like, even if I had kids now with where I am socially, economically, you know, when they were born, we didn't have anything, you know, so it was just like, it was a grind. Different now. So yeah, I don't know. Maybe, maybe we'll be different. Cam Haynes, ladies and gentlemen, Cam, you're awesome, man. I'm so glad that you got to come on. Thank you. And your drink is amazing. Well, fantastic. Tell people about your book. Most importantly, kept me dialed in.

Good, good, good, good. That's what we need. Undeniable. Chris Williamson is featured modern wisdom because he's chapter and on the back. Outlier. Yeah. Undeniable. It's available everywhere.

It's a ships on May 6th. The goal was last time. So you're in the middle of this fucking run when your book releases. I know that your publisher wants to, will be chasing you down. That's why I'm doing this now to run away from the book. Yeah. Right. Well, I just said that the book, you know, a book release is

usually pretty predictable. You go and you do these appearances and that I said, mine's going to be a little different. I'm going to be doing a 250 mile race and the book comes out. And that's, to me that means undeniable. You are undeniable. If that's- You're living the philosophy. Yeah. So it's like last time they had Endure, they got it up to number seven on New York times. So I got screwed.

I was the best seller of those, but it's an editorial. So just give me what I deserve. I just want number one this time. All right. Okay. Well, uh, I love it, dude. Uh, not just because I'm plastered throughout it. It's fucking awesome. And I appreciate the fuck out of you.

Oh, thank you, Chris. It's a, I mean, it's, it's been getting to know you has been amazing. Getting to watch your growth and success is incredible. Um, you put the pressure on me to, to thank and to be smart. You take me for 11 miles, go fuck yourself. So yeah, I guess it's reciprocal, but thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. Big fan of you and modern wisdom, so thank you. Appreciate you too, dude. All right.