The Dr. Hyman Show - How To Conquer Your Mind To Live Your Best Life with Colin O’Brady

Episode Date: August 3, 2022

This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker, BiOptimizers, and Comvita. Several months ago, I took thirty days to be by myself in a secluded Vermont cabin. I had no phone, no podcasts, no music, no TV, no work, and no company—it was just me and my thoughts. And I can’t tell you how refreshed, recharged, and centered I felt after that trip. It can be incredibly hard spending time alone with your inner self, but it’s always rewarding. That’s what today’s conversation with my good friend Colin O’Brady is all about. Colin is a ten-time world record breaking explorer, New York Times bestselling author, entrepreneur, speaker, and expert on mindset. He is focused on sharing his hard-won wisdom to encourage others to step outside of their comfort zone and unlock their best lives. Colin’s highly publicized expeditions have been seen by millions and his work has been featured by The New York Times, The Tonight Show, BBC, Forbes, and Today. His world-renowned feats include the world’s first solo, unsupported, and fully human-powered crossing of Antarctica, speed records for the Explorers Grand Slam and the Seven Summits, as well as the first human-powered row across Drake Passage. He is a regular speaker at Fortune 100 companies like Nike, Google, and Amazon and top Universities including UPenn, Georgetown, and Johns Hopkins.  This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker, BiOptimizers, and Comvita. Right now InsideTracker is offering my community 20% off at insidetracker.com/drhyman. Go to magbreakthrough.com/hyman and use code hyman10 at checkout for 10% off your next order of BiOptimizers Magnesium Breakthrough. Learn more about Comvita at comvita.com, and enter code Hyman25 for 25% off all Manuka honey and bee products. Note: Does not apply to bundles or sale items. Here are more details from our interview (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): Colin’s solo crossing of Antarctica (7:44 / 3:27)   The personalized nutrition food bars Colin ate on his expedition (9:37 / 6:55)  The advice Colin’s wife gave him on the first day of his Antarctica crossing (18:51 / 15:51)  How Colin broke out of a period of anxiety and depression (27:24 / 23:53)  Conquering your own mind (31:18 / 27:14) The experience that led me to become a doctor (41:34 / 37:18) Facing the feeling of not having enough time (43:50 / 39:31)  What Colin fears more than dying (47:35 / 43:22)  Becoming unstuck from the zone of comfortable complacency (49:10 / 46:54) The severe burn injury that served as a major turning point in Colin’s life (54:59 / 52:00)  Learn more about Colin at colinobrady.com and get a copy of his new book, The 12-Hour Walk: Invest One Day, Conquer Your Mind, and Unlock Your Best Life, here. Get a copy of Colin’s book, The Impossible First: From Fire to Ice―Crossing Antarctica Alone, here.

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Magnesium Breakthrough and any other BiOptimizer's product for 10% off. Just go to magbreakthrough.com, that's M-A-G-B-R-E-A-K-T-H-R-O-U-G-H.com slash Hyman and use the code Hyman10 to boost your intake of magnesium and start feeling better today. Welcome to Doctors Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. That's pharmacy with an F, a place for conversations that matter. And if you've ever struggled to figure out how to navigate your life and have courage to do the things you want to do and face the adversities we all have to face, I think you're going to find this conversation very fascinating because it's with an incredible man, a friend of mine, someone who's done something that very few people, maybe nobody on the entire planet has actually done.

And we're going to talk about what that is soon. And this is Colin O'Brady. He's a 10-time world record-breaking explorer. He's a New York Times bestselling author. He's an entrepreneur, a speaker, an expert on mindset, which we all need more of clear mindset because it's such a powerful force in determining the quality of our lives. He's focused on sharing his hard-won wisdom to encourage others to step outside their comfort zone and unlock their best lives. I've had so much fun with this guy. He not only gets to the top of every mountain in the

entire world that's the highest mountain on every continent, but he single-handedly has broken record after record after record. And I don't know how he does it because he's such a cool dude and he just seems so chill. But anyway, Colin's highly publicized expeditions have been seen by millions of people. His work has been featured by the New York Times, The Tonight Show, BBC. He's been on the Joe Rogan Show twice, Forbes and Today. And he did the first solo unsupported, fully human-powered crossing of Antarctica. And I've been down there and it's not a friendly place to go hang out by yourself for a long time. It's fun with your friends for a little bit where you can go to a warm boat. But he didn't do that. He literally crossed the entire Antarctica by himself. He set speed records for the Explorer's

Grand Slam on the seven summits on all the world's continents. And he also completed the first, and this is just nuts. I've seen the slides show of this. The first human powered rowing across the Drake Passage. Now, for those of you who don't know what the Drake Passage is, it's essentially the roughest ocean passage in the world. We had 150 people on this boat together. That's where I met Colin. And like pretty much 80% of the boat was puking the entire time.

And he literally rowed across this entire thing in a cold boat. He's a regular speaker to Fortune 100 companies like Nike, Google, and Amazon, and top universities including UPenn, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins. He's from the Northwest. He lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming with his wife, Jenna, and his dog, Jack. So Colin, welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy. Amazing to be here. That was quite of an intro. So Colin, welcome to the doctor's pharmacy. Amazing to be here. That was quite of an intro. Thank you, my friend. I appreciate that. Yeah, well, we had the great fortune to meet on this expedition boat. Well, not really an

expedition boat. It was kind of a luxury boat. And it was going to Antarctica to raise awareness about climate change. And it was there that I first met you and heard you speak and tell your story. And it was so inspiring. And it really shook me to kind of look at my life in a way and where I was facing things that were challenging for me and how you did it and what the things that you learned on the way to help you overcome those challenges. So I just want to get into it with you because your story is so amazing. And, you know, in Antarctica, it's cold. I mean, we went, it was kind of warm. It was a time of the year that was a little bit more warm. But when you went, it was pretty cold. And it was not really the same environment that we were in, which was kind of a luxury environment. And you literally went down there by yourself with a dog

sled strapped to your back, essentially, went unsupported on a 932-mile expedition that took you 54 days to complete. And I remember those slides of you going across in blizzards and storms and you couldn't see anything. You literally burned, I think, what did you have, 3,000 calories more a day than you got to eat because you couldn't carry that much food. You were literally wasting away as you're crossing Antarctica. So what, what one inspired you to do this and how did you prepare for something that seems to me just the scariest thing in the world? I mean, it was hard enough to just go out in the air for a few hours, nonetheless, 54 days unsupported. Yeah. Well, I will say I have, I've had the good fortune of going to Antarctica four times for

various expeditions. And the last of which was with you on this cruise ship that we went down there with all these climate activists and incredible humans, yourself included. And that was definitely the most comfortable time in Antarctica. I had a bed and a warm meal, didn't have a lot of that. So when I was doing this solo crossing, which you mentioned, I was attempting to be the first person in history to cross the entire continent of Antarctica. So from one coast all the way through the interior via the South Pole, you know, all the way to the other side. So where we were on the edge of the continent, you know, we were at somewhere around 60 degrees,

65 degrees south. You and I were. The South Pole, of course, is 90 degrees south. So that's another 2, miles further south um than that and uh the average temperature when i was pulling my sled was roughly minus 30 minus 40 degrees commonly 50 mile per hour winds uh right in the face so that's uh you know about 9 to 70 minus 80 wind chill and uh you know people have attempted this crossing historically over time no one had completed it Someone had come within 100 miles of completing it and ultimately died attempting after 71 days. Another prolific British explorer made it 50 some days and had to get evacuated after running out of food and fuel.

So it really was very much definitely on the edge of my limits, on the edge of kind of human limits. Because this thing, as you mentioned, unsupported, which was no food or no fuel could be dropped off or resupplied. So that meant I had to start with everything that I needed with me to take with me in that sled. It ultimately weighed 375 pounds to start. I could literally barely pull it. It was very slow going in the early days. But every single gram, every single ounce was carefully curated. And most of which of that was food. But as you mentioned, not enough food. I was burning 10,000 calories a day. And I can only carry about 7,000 calories. So from day one, I'm running a 3,000 calorie deficit.

You know, it was rough. In terms of preparation, you know, a lot went into that, of course, but there's no playbook. You know, no one had ever done this. This is a world first. You know, a lot went into that, of course, but there's no playbook. You know, no one had ever done this. This is a world first. You know, you can't call up some guy and say, oh, hey, how did you do it last time you did this? How did you get to the Whole Foods down the block? Just take a left at the corner, right? Exactly. But one thing that I think you and certainly your audience would be interested to know is I looked at the whole expedition, the history of this expedition and people attempting it and said, what innovation, what have people not thought of? What have people not hacked essentially? And I looked at it closely and what I realized is that I didn't

think anyone had taken a good look at the food. What I mean by that is people have been eating, you know, in the polar, you know, going back to Ernest Shackleton, the early 1900s, early exploration, Captain Scott, names you might recognize from your history textbook, people have been mostly eating pemmican, which you're probably familiar. It's kind of like ground up pig fat and kind of meat and things like that. And go fast forward to the modern era, and people are essentially going out there eating very similar things, salami, cheese, high fatty foods, et cetera. And I thought, okay, that might work, but it hasn't worked for other people on this expedition. And my background, actually, my family is in the natural foods industry. So my dad's an organic farmer on the North shore of Kauai. My parents started a chain of natural foods grocery stores in the Pacific Northwest. And so I kind of grew up in the late

eighties, early nineties, where people were my parents throwing around the words organic, sustainable, long before anyone was, was saying that, you know, a bunch of hippies, basically, the time. And so I looked at it. Well, that explains everything, Colin. So I kind of looked at it through that lens. and I ended up spending about a year in a food science lab with a bunch of doctors and nutritionists saying, test my body, test my blood, figure out what is the best, most optimum food, not only from but they were unique bars, basically curated for my own, my own body. I pulled up the nutrition facts on them, because I thought you'd be interested. I haven't looked at this in a little while. So, each bar, which was about the size of a iPhone, maybe a little thicker, but that kind of you can picture that length, they were 1150 calories. So, we were trying to put as many

calories as dense as possible. And keep in mind, we knew the average temperature 1150 calories. So we were trying to put as many calories as dense as possible. And keep in mind, we knew the average temperature was minus 30. So we could put a lot of oils and fats into this. If I took this bar at basically room temperature, it'd melt on my kitchen table, right? Because there was so much oil in it. But the macros are in one bar and I about four or 5,000 calories of these per day. So I had about four or five of these bars every day, but in one bar, 1,150 calories, total fat, 75 grams, predominantly from organic coconut oil, cashew butter. The let's see the,

the total carbs on it was 91 grams and the protein was 30 grams. So the, the ingredient list again, you know, I wouldn't get this granular, but I feel like this is right in your wheelhouse, this kind of stuff. Um, so the ingredients were organic coconut oil, cashew butter, organic apple powder, Amber honey, organic rolled oats, organic buckwheat flour, organic dried cranberries, roasted sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, uh, pumpkin protein, a pea powder, a pea protein powder, beet powder, organic freeze-dried blueberries, organic chia seeds, organic cocoa power, a vitamin blend, basically. And, you know, basically fully plant-based, you know, nuts, seeds, and a bunch of oil.

But, you know, it was just in the calories, you know, it was because fat is more than twice the amount of calories as protein and carbs. It was more than 50% fat. Yes, correct. And that was essential. Like I said, I was eating 7,000 calories of those per day. That's what I ate every single day, all day long for 54 days straight. And people were like, you know, obviously the emotion of that, right?

Like that's crazy to eat the same thing all day long. But the way I looked at this, I thought, what's the most efficient fuel in the gas tank, right? Like this, you know, you and I both enjoy a nice meal with different tastes of different flavors and things like that. But this was how can we push the body to its absolute limit without it breaking down. And one interesting anecdote, obviously, this isn't scientific, but it's an anecdote, which is I was actually racing another guy out there. So right, right before I was about to take off, right before I'm about to take off, I find out that I'm not just racing history, which is what I thought. There's another guy, a British, really bad-ass British

army. And he's like the guy, right? Like he's a strong, special forces guy, right? Yeah. Special forces, military guy guy and so we end up shoulder to shoulder on the same cargo plane because there's only one plane that can take you to the edge of antarctica one time a year you can do this so we're not just like roughly at the same i'm talking shoulder to shoulder getting dropped off at the same time hey ready go there's gonna be a you know 932 mile race you know across this continent and i told him about the food and he he's just like grizzled, badass British guy. And he's like, oh, that's a fussy American thing to do. I'm going to take

salami and meats and all this kind of stuff. He kicked my ass to be clear in the first little bit. He took off and I couldn't match his pace, but I did catch up to him and ultimately complete the crossing ahead of him. Funny enough, what's interesting is that even though I lost so much weight over time, my body continued to perform really well. Meaning obviously I was broken down. I was beat up. I lost a ton of weight. My ribs, my bones were sticking out, et cetera. But I think there was something about the difference in, you know, you would know more about this than me. I'd love to get your perspective actually. Just the inflammation I think was lower something about the difference in, you know, you would know more about this than me. I'd love to get your perspective, actually. Just the inflammation, I think, was lower than what he was experiencing.

I think I recovered better. And ultimately, funny enough, him and I have maintained a friendship over time. You know, I was proud to win the race and become the first. But of course, at the end, I was left with deep camaraderie for someone else, a worthy competitor. But he called me up last year. He was going back to Antarctica for another expedition. He goes, I know I made fun of you about those bars, but I'm trying to do something down there. Can you send me over that recipe? Because I think I'm

going to switch off what I had before. So anyways, interesting. I don't know if anybody actually kind of is reflecting on that to you about why, but it really is a much more optimized mitochondrial fuel than just a bunch of salami and who knows what he was eating. And mitochondria is what determines your ability to sustain energy over time and to basically run your body. And the way you did it also was anti-inflammatory. So you're right.

I mean, those two things, inflammation and mitochondria are the key to performance, whether you're a weekend warrior or whether you're doing something and no one's ever done in human history. And it's really smart that you did that. And a lot of the compounds in the thing that you just described, like the berries, for example, help optimize your microbiome and help reduce inflammation. And I'm sure what he was eating wasn't doing that. So he was able to maybe get out of the gate faster because he was a special forces badass, but you were smart in the way you did it. A little bit of the tortoise and the hare, but yeah, no, it actually, and it's funny, people have asked me, well, you must, by the end, you must have been so sick of eating those bars,

but it's interesting being so hungry. I mean, I was 3,000 calorie deficit, you can't help but, have a really significant hunger and the fear of being starving out there is immense, but every single bite of that fuel food felt like fuel in the gas tank. I got actually feel every now I had, I kind of had it broken up into a hundred calorie chunks that I carry around in my pocket. So they'd warm up against my body heat. And every 30 minutes or so I'd put another a hundred calories in the gas tank, basically all throughout the entire day. I was pulling my sled every day for 12 hours. Uh, it's the name of the new book, the 12 hour walk, but the, uh, the each, every time I took one of those bites, I could literally feel my body absorbing the nutrients in that. So, um, you know, again, a little bit anecdotal, certainly scientific, a lot of thought

went into it, but it, uh, it was But it was really powerful and it definitely sustained me. It's one thing the first five days, 10 days, 20 days, but you'd get in the day 40, day 50 plus. It seemed to just keep my body sustained and really driving forward. It's pretty amazing. And, you know, I think, you know, we're going to be talking more about it. But the book you just finished writing and that now is available for everybody to read, it's quite an extraordinary book. I think everybody needs to get a copy. It's called The 12-Hour Walk, Invest One Day, Conquer Your Mind, and Unlock Your Best Life. Not all of us are going to get on a cargo plane and go to the middle of nowhere and

spend 54 days starving all day. I mean, 3,000 calories is basically more than most humans eat in a day anyway. So it's like you're literally starving the entire time and doing a 54-day walk, 12 hours a day. But in this book, you really help us kind of focus on what you learned that can inspire us to actually conquer some of the things that are challenges for most of us that are really what's between our ears, that gray matter in there that determines the quality of our life, determines our happiness. And you're one of the happiest people I've ever met. I mean, all we do together is just laugh and laugh and laugh. And it's the best thing ever. And you think you'd be kind of a serious dude. You did all these super heroic

things and you're focused and you can do anything. But, you know, I think your mental attitude determines so much about the quality of your life. And it really, you know, I think for you, I'd like to hear how you sort of got to this place. Because I know when you started out on that journey, particularly Antarctica, you were really worried. You didn't think you could do it. You were scared. You doubted yourself. You didn't think you'd make the first point or the waypoint and doubted you could get across the finish line. So, you know, I know you told the story in an article when we were there together about how you called your wife. And what did your wife, Jenna, what did she say to you? What was the advice she gave and how did she inspire you to not just finish that first day, but finish the 54 days? Yeah, no, absolutely. Those are all great questions. We'll get back to the book, but the book is really framed from some of this wisdom, which is, I don't care who you are, if you've walked across the continent, if you haven't, whatever, rich, poor, young, old, doesn't matter. As human beings, all of us are living this crazy human experiment, right? And we have limiting beliefs, we have doubts, we have fears, like that's part of the human experiment, right? And we have limiting beliefs. We have doubts. We have fears.

Like that's part of the human existence, right? But also understanding how to react to those things. That very first day, as you mentioned, I got out of the plane. Lou got out of the plane. He took off and I couldn't pull my sled. It's 375 pounds. Obviously, I trained my body as best as I could, thought I was ready. And I started pulling my sled. I could pull it like 10 feet at a time. And it was so pathetic that I actually started crying. I started bawling, crying. And if you want to know the most pathetic, crying by yourself is not a great feeling. But it's minus 30 outside, keep in mind, because I'm on the edge of Antarctica.

And so that the tears, they start actually freezing to my face, which is, I thought you'd feel pathetic, but you can't start this race and you've got frozen tears on your face. You're like, wow, this is just going from bad to worse. This is hour one, day one. I thought I might fail and she, of course, was like, you know, she's not just my wife, but she is a co-dreamer, co-conspirator, business partner. She's dreamed up and helped me build all these expeditions and all of our businesses that we've done it all together. So she's really in the weeds with all the details of this. But she's like, why are you calling me so soon? And I was like, well, we called our project The Impossible First. It's the name of my previous book, The Impossible First, name of the project. And she goes, well, I go, I think we may have named our project the right thing. This appears to be impossible.

She's like, what are you talking about? And I said, I can't even pull my sled like the first mile. Forget 932 miles. Lou's gone beyond the horizon. And she kind of said to me in that moment, and there's many other moments where she kind of had to pull me back on track. But she said to me, hey, look, forget about Lou. Forget about the thousand miles. Forget about the race.

Get to the next waypoint. Get to the first waypoint. So I had a GPS that had kind of markings on the path. And she just said, forget about the totality of how hard this ridiculous thing is you're trying. Make some incremental step. Make some incremental process. And I got there the following morning, I wake up, she's like, and then the next morning, see if you can get to the next waypoint. I wake up in my tent the very first morning after crying frozen tears on my cheeks. And I joke because I say, well,

who was in the tent with me? And people are like, wait, did Lou come back? No, no, Lou wasn't there. Who was there with me was all of the negative versions of myself sitting was in the tent with me? And people are like, wait, did Lou come in? No, no, Lou wasn't there. Who was there with me was all of the negative versions of myself sitting around in the tent with me. Colin, you're such an idiot. You're so stupid. You're not strong enough. You're a failure, right? They're beating up on myself, just being very hard on myself. But I also believe that we are the stories that we tell ourselves, right? And so, I actually stood up outside of my tent and I yelled to try to cut through the negative noise in my brain. I started yelling, Colin, you are strong. You are capable. You are strong. You are capable. Really trying to uplift myself. Look, it's not like I just shot to the lead or anything like that, but it gave me enough kind of strength and courage to rewrite some of

this negative self-talk and get out of my tent. And I told Jenna before that 10 hours was my absolute maximum. Like I couldn't possibly go before that 10 hours was my absolute maximum. I couldn't possibly go further than 10 hours in a single day. But I caught up to Lou on the sixth day and we ended up side by side, shoulder to shoulder. And he starts trying to talk to me. He starts trying to chat me up. He's like, Hey... Is he trash talking you or what? Well, he's trying to do it all nice. He's trying to say like, Hey, I got a little advice for you. I got a little this. I'm like, well, what are you talking about? I finally say, Hey Lou, let this be the last time we speak. I got, it's nothing negative. I don't wish you any

ill will, but we're supposed to be out here alone and this is a race. And so he kind of says, suit yourself. And I say like, I'll see you later, but we're both pulling 300 plus pounds behind us. Like, see you later. Like we both are moving like, you know, one step every few seconds. Like you can't just race away from somebody. So I ended up shoulder to shoulder with him for eight hours, nine hours, 10 hours. We're still right next to each other. And 10 hours goes by my absolute,

what I told myself was my maximum and he doesn't stop. So I go, I got to go one more hour further, 11 hours. I finally see him reach for his tent and I pretend like I'm not exhausted, even though I am, but I go for one more hour, 12 hours beyond what I ever thought I could possibly do. And then it resets what I believe I'm capable of. I'm like, wow, if I can go 12 hours once, can I go at twice? Can I go at three times? And then the 12 hours ends up being its own kind of new norm. But it brings you full circle. We've been talking a lot about sort of this feed or this thing that I did. I wrote a book about a couple of years called

The Impossible First, a New York Times bestseller. Proud of that, recounts the whole story. But what I was most excited to do with this new book is take what I had learned and apply it in a way that any single person is passionate about. As passionate as I am about following my own journey, you know, taking on these adventures, what I'm most passionate about is inspiring everyone to what I, the question I like to ask is what's your Everest? What's a fulfilled life look for you? What are you passionate about? How can you live your best life? Because I think we're all capable of that. And look, for most people, it doesn't look like freezing their ass off and walking across an article by themselves, right? Which is totally fine.

I'm not trying to inspire people to do that. So, I found, and it means a lot to me as a friend and someone who I highly regard for you to say that I'm the happiest person you met, one of the happiest people you know. At the end of that story, the end of that first book, the chapter is called Infinite Love. It wasn't called, hey, I'd crossed Antarctica and no one done it. Let me, she beat my chest and I'm so cool or badass. Because what I ended up connected to out there was source, was energy, was the universe. I mean, call it whatever you want, call it God, call it the universe, call it energy. For me, I call it infinite love. But when all the other external was pushed aside, the pressure, the accolades, the feet, whatever, what I just was left with was just pure love. I could feel the love of my wife, the love of my family, the love of the kids I hope to inspire with my work in the schools,

just the love of humanity. And that's how I reflect at the end of that book. And so I found this inner peace. And I should say that I deleted all my music, all my podcasts, all the things. I actually spent those 54 days basically in silence inside my own brain. Wow. That's quite amazing. Hey, everyone. It's Dr. Mark. As with any time of year, supporting our immune systems is key to optimizing our health. But with fall right around the corner and the season's about to shift, it's super important to keep our immune system in top shape. And that's why today I'm excited to share with you an incredibly easy way to protect your immunity, and that's by

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so, things are feeling good. And then COVID hits. We all remember March of 2020, COVID hits. I had some expeditions planned. I was on book tour at the time. Everything's canceled. Future's uncertain. Doom scroll in the news, hundreds and then thousands and hundreds of thousands of people are dying. Just like negative, negative. And I end up sitting in my house. My family has a cabin on the Oregon coast. My wife and my dog, we went out there. I mean, me and my wife basically with our dog, Jack, sitting on the Oregon coast. And I just was depressed, man. I went into a deep anxiety, depression, feeling bad, really feeling adrift. And so, I thought back to myself, what was the last time that I felt really at peace?

When did I feel at peace last? And I thought to myself, you know, this is so weird, but I actually felt at peace starving, but being alone walking across Antarctica 12 hours a day. So, I said to my wife, I said, this might sound ridiculous, but I mean, I hadn't changed out of my pajamas in like three days. I mean, just sitting there like staring staring, you know, staring at the wall, like just feeling down. Um, and I think a lot of people felt that throughout the isolation of that time. Right. Um, and so I said, I'm, I'm going to go for a walk tomorrow all day long.

And she's like, what are you talking about? I said, I'm going for a 12 hour walk, just like I did in Antarctica. But instead I'm going to walk out my front door here on the Oregon coast. And when I came back, I actually walked up the door 20 minutes. And I remember my phone buzzes, my phone buzzes. And I grabbed my phone instinctively to like check who's texting me or whatever. And I stopped myself. I'm like, what the heck am I doing? I've been, you know, zoom calling family, doom scroll on the news, checking social media, like I don't need my phone today. And so I put my phone on airplane mode. I didn't bring podcasts with me. I didn't bring music. And I ended up walking for 12 hours alone on the Oregon coast. And when I

came back through that door, my wife looked at me and she was like, just without, before I even spoke, she's like, I can just tell in your essence, in your presence that something has shifted within you. How was that walk? And I said, I feel better than I have felt definitely since this pandemic started. So forgive the long explanation, but the long story short is I thought, well, this is a great for me. I can tap back into that energy because I put in the work in Antarctica, whatever. But I wonder if this works for other people. And so I started suggesting this to friends and family member, people who are also going through some tough times or feeling stuck during the pandemic.

Try to take this 12 hour walk. And I said, look, people like I can't walk for that long. I said, I don't care if you walk for one mile or 50. You have to train for this. This is not some physical feat. Take as many breaks as you want. Sit down, but stay in silence a day by yourself just to reflect. And it has been resoundingly positive. And so, this book has all sorts of stuff in it. Rich adventure stories from rowing a boat across Drake Passage to Everest with my wife to losing friends on K2 to Antarctica, et cetera, keeps you excited, edge of your seat storytelling, and some prescriptive advice about how to get over limiting beliefs. But at its core, at its true core, to me, this is more than a book.

It's really a global movement. It's a call to action to invite people to take one day, put it on their calendar and take a 12 hour walk. And it's amazing what I've seen. And I'm excited. My next ever has inspired 10 million people to take this walk. And I think that I already know how powerful it can be. It's not to vilify technology or to say, live as a monk the rest of your life. It's saying, hey, take one day, take one day and take this, commit to this. And it will have a massive shift on your mental health, your ability to move forward and the ability to really unlock your best life on the other side. It's so beautiful, Colin. I, you know, I, I, I just want to pause here because, you know, it's not about climbing the tallest peak on every continent, which is a heroic feat. It's not about the external feats of crossing Antarctica and doing things that no one else has done.

It's about the feat of conquering your own mind and figuring out how to connect to what really matters. And I certainly have not climbed Mount Everest. I have not rode across the Drake Passage, nor have I done anything other than slide down a hill with you and giggling a lot. But what I did do, and I kind of did it because I felt the onrush of my life taking me away from what really mattered to me and feeling in some ways disconnected from myself through all the external activities of life that we all do. And I've been on a mission for the last 30 years climbing a little bit of a different mountain, which is transforming medicine based on understanding so much needless suffering and how to heal people

through functional medicine. And I decided to give myself a timeout. And I went to a cabin in Vermont at the base of a mountain, not at the top of the mountain. And I had a bed. It was kind of warm and comfy. But I did exactly the same thing. I didn't walk, but I sat with myself for 30 days. And I had no media, no computer, no phone, no work, no email, no podcast. And I was with myself and my own thoughts and my own experience. And I'm the kind of guy who typically fills up my day morning to night with activities and productivity. And I'm really, you know, I get so much done. And, you know, today I'm embarrassed about it. Like I did, two podcasts, saw tons of patients, you know, cleaned up my whole house, did this and that,

went for a bike ride. It's like my average day. But it was the most transformative thing I've ever done. It wasn't a 12-hour walk, although I did walk every day for hours. It was just sitting with myself and being with myself. And at first, it was scary. And it was threatening. And I was uncomfortable.

And I was restless. And I was looking for some distraction. And then I finally settled into it. And I got to exactly the same place that you did. I got to this place, I didn't really call it that, but of infinite love. I just felt madly in love with everything, with myself, with nature, with creation, with the trees, with the mountain, with the snow, with the cold, with everything. And I realized that I didn't need anything. I didn't need anything to be happy. I just needed to be alive. That being alive was enough. That just being was enough. And everything else was a bonus. And I actually met you a couple of months

after that experience. And it was one of the most transformed things I've ever done. And, and, and, you know, nobody necessarily has a time or the ability to take a month off, but, but everybody has the ability to take a day to do a 12 hour walk. And I think it's such a beautiful frame for how we start to re-meet ourselves and to reconnect with what matters and to re-think our lives. And, and, and what comes out of that will be different for each of us. But it's really a powerful frame for how to think about dealing with some of the really confusing and confronting and difficult and challenging things that we're facing today in the world. That can make us really depressed and sad and hopeless and helpless. And we all felt that during COVID. And that was your sort of way out of it was that 12-hour walk in the Oregon coast. But I can't wait to go to Jackson Hole this summer

and do a 12-hour walk. And maybe we won't talk, but we can just walk and take a 12-hour walk. No, absolutely. I mean, look, you hit the nail on the head. It's so powerful that you went and did that for 30 days. I mean, that's incredible. That's a deep cut. You know, I've obviously my experience in Antarctica and I've done a few 10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreats, which have been really impactful for me. But it was beautiful to experience this 12-hour walk and why I'm so passionate about it. You know, you are unique. You're unique in so many ways. That's why I love you so much. But you are unique in that you've done 30 days like that, that you've had the courage in your life to take that look inward.

You know, I've asked this question to many people, hundreds and hundreds of people at this point, which is in the last 10 years, you know, whatever, this phase of your life, what's the longest you've gone in solitude? Then I define that. I say, sleeping doesn't count. You know, so that doesn't count. So define that. I say, sleeping doesn't count. So that doesn't count. So remove that. Every time you check your phone, the clock resets. Every time someone talks to you, the clock resets. Every time you've got music or podcasts or television or whatever,

the clock resets. Basically, anytime you have external inputs or when you're really focused on a task, like you're doing, right? The the clock resets and I've asked people, what's the longest you've gone? And the average answer to that question is somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour, like ever, literally ever. It's just like, I don't do that. And unless somebody has a pretty deep spiritual practice, Oh, I meditate for a couple hours or I've done this. I mean, it's, it's rare. Um, it's extremely rare. And this 12 hour walk is really meant to meet people anywhere of any age. I mean, I've had my 77 year old mother-in-law has done this 12 hour walk by engaging the silence and solitude. She walked one block, one time around her block, and then she sat for

an hour on her front porch in silence and solitude, then walked another time around her block. So, you don't have to be some crazy endurance athlete. This can meet you wherever you're at, but the exercise is more than the physicality. It's an exercise of the mind. It's actually to say, I need a reset. I need to look inward and interesting what you experienced over those 30 days. Um, and I've seen people experience this in the 12 hours as well, which is those first few hours. Your mind is the monkey mind. Your mind is like, oh my God, this, how am I going to get through this 12 hours? It's so long, you know, thinking about to-do lists or past grievances or fights with a spouse or whatever that, you know, the things that come up on the surface.

But what's interesting is we're patterned to think that that if it's this bad in this moment, it can only get worse. But what actually happens is a slow quieting of this voice and an inner strength starts to build up. And that might come in ebbs and flows. But what I've mostly found is people get back home and they feel incredibly empowered, incredibly strong. One of the core concepts that I talk about in the book, each chapter breaks down a common limiting belief we all face. So, I don't have enough money. I don't have enough time. I'm not strong enough. What if I fail?

What if people criticize me? And each chapter through rich storytelling and some prescriptive advice from my life breaks each one of those down how we can overcome it. But the overall concept is what I call when you take the 12-hour walk, you cultivate what I call a possible mindset, an empowered way of thinking that unlocks a life of limitless possibilities. Because I think we all have that inside of us. But to your point, we get bogged down.

We get bogged down. It's just like you, you needed a reset, right? And this is an offering to anybody, anywhere. You might not have 30 days. You might not have 10 days for Vipassana. But if this is a priority to you, the shift that you can have in one day by being alone in your thoughts, examining what's in there is deeply, deeply empowering. And I'll offer one more thing, which is interesting that I found

through, you know, I'm no doctor, that's for sure. But through prescribing the 12 hour walk, so to speak, is people in this moment. So you're listening to this podcast, let's say, and you're hearing about this 12 hour walk for the very first time, usually where people's mind goes in some capacity starts to think, should I do this? Or shouldn't I do this? A decision tree is kind of coming. Is this interesting to me? Should I, shouldn't do this? The 12 hour walk exercise, the walk itself is obviously the most powerful part of the exercise, but the exercise actually starts right now. And why do I say that? Because right now, as you're considering it, most likely, anybody, this doesn't mean for the strongest person in the world, whatever, there's some limiting belief or series of

limiting beliefs that are popping up right now. You're going, I'm listening to this podcast. This guy's talking about walk around in silence. I don't have enough time for that. I don't have enough, you know, I'm not strong enough to do that. What if I fail? I mean, this is silly. Well, people will criticize me, whatever that is. What's interesting is the 12-hour walk,

even considering doing it, is me holding up a mirror to you. I'm holding up a mirror to your own inner dialogue. And most likely, if you are assigning some strong limiting beliefs to resisting to do the 12-hour walk, it's most likely that those same limiting beliefs to resisting to do the 12 hour walk, it's most likely that those same limiting beliefs are popping up in your mind over and over and over again as all sorts of things cross your path and maybe inhibit you from living your best life. So it's interesting when you do, you acknowledge those limiting beliefs, but you say, I'm still going to do the 12 hour walk. And when you do that, you get to the end and you go, I resisted doing this, but this was positive for me. And so, therefore, you look back on the next time those limiting beliefs pop up in your head because they happened to me. I'm not impervious

to this either. I wrote a book about this, but I'm not impervious to that negative self-talk from time to time and go, oh, I've seen this thought pattern happen in my mind before, but I've shifted it and I took action. Therefore, how many other things can I do like this? And so the 12 hour walk ends up being this stand in or this teacher through your own lives to examine your own inner thoughts, overcome them, and then repeat that pattern as a ripple effect over time. It's true. I mean, it's one of the most powerful exercises I've ever done, which is to really take an honest, transparent look at my own thoughts and to

actually write down that inner, I call it the inner. Yeah, exactly. And what is he saying to me? And, and then call in a higher self, my, my, my higher self. We all have that, you know, that little voice that knows, how do you get in touch with that and have that be the voice that you live through rather than that negative self-talk or those automatic negative thoughts? And we don't have to believe every stupid thought that we have. And we tend to kind of be enmeshed with those and don't have the spaciousness around them to actually see them and then see how they're limiting our lives, keeping us from happiness, from love, connection, from figuring out what we want to actually do with our lives, what's meaningful. And taking that little bit of a space can be so profound.

In fact, I don't know. I don't think I ever shared this story with you, but it's actually how I became a doctor. I didn't do a 12-hour walk. I did a week. And I went into the Shenandoah Valley. I finished college. I majored in Buddhism. I'm like, okay, what am I going to do a 12-hour walk. I did a week. And I went into the Shenandoah Valley. I finished college. I majored in Buddhism. I'm like, okay, what am I going to do with that?

And I mean, it was back in the era where there was no phones. There was no Walkman. There was no podcast. There was nothing. My backpack, me. I had a harmonica, I think, I took with me. And I just walked. i walked every day and i walked a lot and and then i would camp at night and i would just be with myself and through that

process i really got in touch with what really mattered to me which was being of service which is of which was dedicating my life to helping others and to not being focused on just what I wanted, what I needed, but on the Buddhist goal value of compassion as a vehicle for my own development, my own happiness, my own self-expression. And that space, that week was what led to everything in my life, which is happening right now, including having this conversation with you. So, you know, we don't do that very often in our lives. We don't take those pauses.

And in those pauses, magic can happen. And I kind of, I think this 30 days was the first time I'd really done that because, you know, career, kids, marriage, you know, divorce, all the things I've been through, illnesses. And I really, it was a bookend to my life where everything that has come after that has been really different. The quality of it has been really different. My way of thinking about myself has been different. My feeling of needing anything has been different. It's almost like I found the need button and it just turned it off. So I don't really have a need for anything other than just to show up and love people and serve people. And, you know, I, we met on the, on this boat and, you know, I was in that space there and all this incredible magic stuff happened just by my getting out of my own way. And I think that's kind of what you're

talking about. I am a hundred percent. And, and you've certainly, in my experience, show up that so fully with, with so much love and compassion and, and a full heart, which is amazing. And also, it really, I don't know, how would I say this? We think that examining the limiting belief of we don't have enough time, let's just say that for a second. We think that, as you said, years and decades can go by experiencing life in one way. Oh, I need to show up for this, I need to show up for that, this to-do list, that to-do list, whatever. And we think these inflection points, right? You're week long after graduating college or the 30 days or the 12 hour walk is sort of getting in the way like, oh, well, I don't have enough time for that because my to-do list is a mile long or whatever. And maybe, and some of those excuses feel in the right position. Like,

hey, I want to show up for my kids and be there for everything they have. Or I want to be, you know, connected to this or that, the other thing. So, I don't have enough time for that. It's a very common thing that I hear when I talk about this 12-hour walk. And what's interesting, these inflection points, 30 days, even 30 days seems like, well, I mean, people say 12 hours seems long, but 30 days seems, you know, really long in comparison or 54 days crossing Antarctica. The truth of the matter is in just 12 hours or in your case, in just a week or just 30 days, right? But we're talking about 12 hours. In just 12 hours, you can shift your, by taking a look inwards, you can shift your mindset. So not just the next day or week, you're talking about weeks and years. All of a sudden,

you found something out about yourself by looking inward. You show up as a better husband, you show up as a better spouse, you show up as a better parent, you show up better to work because you have taken that examination. Meaning it's actually an incredibly small investment of time if it dictates your purpose and your happiness for years and years into the future. And it sounds like you've had that experience with these inflection points in your life as as have I. So time is this funny relative thing. On one hand, 12-hour walk seems like, oh my God, it's the longest walk I ever possibly think. I'll be alone with myself, be so bored. How many days? Thank God you'll be bored so you'll get to meet yourself.

Totally. And the question is, reflect back on the last year of your life. How many days do you even remember from the past year, literally? How many days do you even remember from the past year? Literally, how many days do you actually remember? That's an interesting thought experiment. And most people start going, well, there's so many in there. There's hundreds of days that you don't remember. Certainly dozens that you don't remember. Meaning this thing that you do, this shift outside of your comfort zone, this 12-hour walk, you'll remember it.

And it will also have a ripple effect going forward. So I always look for opportunities in my life where I can invest. That's why the subtitle is invest one day where I can invest in something and experience a community, a relationship, et cetera, that pays dividends over time. And when you look at it that way, you're like, oh, in just 12 hours, that's the reframe on that. Oh, that's all of a sudden, that's not very long. I can have those benefits in just that. And so I think these inflection points, as you said, to meet yourself, what more powerful exercise could we all do? I mean, it's not just the 12-hour walk. It's a metaphor.

And it's also important that we take the walk as a solitary journey. You know, I think I've been to Tibet and honestly, it kind of freaks me out. These guys go for three years, three months, three days, three hours, three minutes, three seconds in these dark retreats, literally pitch black. Yes, I've heard of this. I've heard of this. It's not the white of Antarctica, but it's like black. Yeah. And they sit with themselves and their minds.

And you put an average person in a dark room for 24 to 48 hours, and they literally can go crazy. Yes. And these monks do this as a practice. And it's so inspiring to me, but it's also terrifying. Of course. And I remember that when I first had the thought, I'm going to go take a month and sit with myself.

I was terrified. Yes, of course. But what's interesting is people ask me, you know, people say to me, wow, you've, you know, you've climbed Everest twice. And, you know, I've lost a friend. I run one of the chapters in the book. I talk about, you know, tragedy where I lost five friends in Pakistan last year. So clearly the things I've taken on risk and people ask me, Colin, you must be tragedy where I lost five friends in Pakistan last year. So clearly the things I've taken on risk and people ask me, Colin, you must be so afraid of dying. You must be so afraid of

dying. And I thought about that because I've been asked it a lot. You don't fear death. And my response that I've actually, you know, it's a thoughtful response. I've really considered it. It's not cavalier at all. And I say, sure, I'm afraid of dying. The last thing I want to do is die. But what I'm more afraid of is not living, of not living. And I've come to think about life in some regard, what I think of as life on a scale of one to 10. So bear with me, it's kind of a silly thought, but of a scale of one to 10. So one being our worst moments, you know, the lowest lows that we experience in life and 10 being the highest highs. I was severely burned in a fire and I spent months in a Thai hospital being told I would never walk again normally when I was 22

years old. That was certainly a one. I've had all sorts of countless setbacks in my life that are ones, right? Tens, the moment I crossed Antarctica, touched that post, that resonance with infinite love that we talked about, those were tense, right? And just epic moments. But what I've come to realize is that those tens, I didn't experience them in spite of the ones. I experienced them because of the ones. Because of the ones, right? The experience of concluding our Antarctica,

my Antarctica expedition or any of the other expeditions or any other moments from my personal life with my wife or family, et cetera, they have come through being willing to accept the feeling of the ones. And I'll go a step further, which is this book, when I really wrote it, I wrote it for people that are feeling in some way, it's not like you're having a terrible life, but stuck a little bit. And what I call the four to six range, right? The middle of that spectrum, stuck between what I call the zone of comfortable complacency.

This is the person who's like, yeah, I have a job. It pays the bills. It's fine, you know, whatever, but it's fine. Or, you know, my marriage, you know, we're not really in love, but we cohabitate and it's fine. We're not like fight with each other. It's not like we're like abusive to one another, but you know, it's fine, right? So many people, so many people are living the totality of their life stuck in that zone of comfortable complacency. And it's funny, we think to ourselves,

oh, well, fine. I don't want to experience the ones, but I want to experience the tens. But it's counterintuitive. The silly metaphor would be to say, okay, you're looking at your house. You've been in living in your house for 20 years. You'd be like, I got to remodel this kitchen. Right. And we'd love to snap our fingers and just have that as a fancy new modern kitchen. But before you do that, you got to rip down the walls. You got to tear some stuff out. They got to turn the water off. It's got to be, it's kind of, it's got to suck for a little while. You have to experience a little bit of that growth. You have to look inward and be willing to have the courage because you can stay in that zone of comfortable complacency, never look inward, distract yourself

with your phone, dopamine hit, dopamine hit, dopamine hit, Netflix binge, et cetera. Eat to your point of the health stuff that you're so passionate, you've changed so many lives of people just eating unhealthy food, dopamine hit off this fat or this sugar, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's no different. Coping in all different ways, right? But the 12-hour walk, it is meant to take you outside of your comfort zone. You might have a one out there. Your feet might get tired. You might even, you know, a two or a three, whatever. But when you get back to your door, you're going to have a seven, an eight, a nine, a 10, because you allowed the pendulum to swing the totality. And so for me, again, forgiveness, it's a little too preachy, but this is a wake up call for those people who are stuck in the four and the six,

the life that's like, eh, it's pretty good. Yeah, it's fine. You know, I'm good. I'm fine. Yes, you're good. It could be worse. It could be worse. But interestingly enough, accepting a little bit of that, to me, that's when I say I'm more afraid of not living. To me, that ends up being in this numbness in the middle. And again, I think there's a lot of power when it's been said a million times, stepping outside of that comfort zone, accepting a little bit of that discomfort to ultimately pay dividends to the upside of those tens and the rewards of the full tapestry of life's experiences. Yeah. Well, I want to ask you a really, I think, an important question, which is what inspired you? Before I let you answer that, I want to share a little bit of what's inspired me. And when I was

a kid, I was a little weird kid. I sat in my room and read a lot of books. And one of the books I read that impacted me more than any other book was on Walden Ponder, Walden by Thoreau. And he was an 1800s, 19th century transcendentalist philosopher. And what you've been talking about reminded me of one of the most inspiring quotes that's really been the foundation of my life. He said, I went to the woods and he basically went to this cabin on this pond and lived there for about two years by himself, just taking note of life around him. And he said, I went to the woods because I wish to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Essentially, Colin, that's what you're talking about.

And I want to know for you, what was it that got you started? What was the thing that inspired you to not just live at four or five or six, but want to have the ones and the tens? You know, I literally am sitting here with goosebumps. I know you and I are such kindred spirits. So, I would be remiss to not quote back to you, which is chapter one of the 12-hour walk. I got it here right here. So, I'm not making this up. Chapter one, pull quote above first line of the entire book is a quote from Henry Thoreau's Walden, which says,

the massive men lead lives of quiet desperation. And most people, interesting enough, misquote the second half of that, which is most men lead lives of quiet desperation and die with their songs still inside of them. Thoreau actually didn't write that second half. But that literally is how I opened the entirety of the book. So Thoreau, Walden, of course, Transcendentalism. So I love that we are deeply inspired. We didn't plan this in advance. No, we did not. We did not. But, you know, what inspired me? It's an interesting thing.

You know, I've had some really incredible influences in my life, particularly my parents, my mother. You know, I didn't grow up with a lot of financial resources, but I definitely grew up with an abundance of love. My parents were super young when they had me. I was, I think I mentioned, born on a hippie commune in Olympia, Washington. They're playing Bob Marley Redemption song on repeat at my home birth, smoking pot around a futon. So there was a lot of that going on. They were in their early- I've been there. I've been there. They were in their early 20s when they had me. And I didn't, like I said, didn't grow up necessarily with a lot of financial resources, but I did grow up with what I now, like I said,

call a possible mindset. I grew up with a mother who said to me, you can achieve, achieve, but more than achievement externally, achieve fulfillment through anything you set your mind to. And just that belief in self. There's certainly a huge turning point for me in my life where that has to do with the ones and the tens for me. I briefly mentioned it before, but I always dreamed of traveling the world. Always. I didn't get to travel a lot when I was a kid, but I said, I want to see the world. I guess you had this adventurous spirit inside of me. I used to study maps and one day want to go to far off places. So what I did is at 16 years old, I started painting houses.

I started painting houses every single summer. Through my swimming, I got an opportunity to go to Yale on a scholarship, but I was painting houses to pay for books and to get by and whatever. But every year I socked away a few thousand bucks to say, when I graduate from college, I'm going to travel. You know, it's probably gonna be on a shoestring because I, you know, a few thousand bucks doesn't get me very far in the world. But as a young 22 year old young man, just out of college, I kind of pushed away the traditional career path at that moment in my life. And I took a backpack and a surfboard and took a one-way trip. And it

was as budget as budget can be. And I hitchhiked through New Zealand for two months. I slept on floors. I ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I slept in youth hostels and shared houses and just kind of scraped by. But it was a great adventure. All until I found myself on this small beach in rural Thailand, kind of in flow, having so much fun. And, you know, 22 years old, no fully formed prefrontal cortex, as you well know. And I saw- That's the adult in the room. Exactly. I see some guys jump in a flaming jump rope.

Some Thai guys, they do it every single night. And I said, hey, can I do that? And I jumped this flaming jump rope. And in an instant, my life changed. You know, that rope, it wrapped around my legs and let my body on fire to my neck. Thankfully, survival mode kind of kicked in. And I jumped into the ocean to extinguish the flames. But not before about 25% of my body was burned, particularly my legs and my feet.

You know, no proper medical facilities over there. I was not just in Thailand, but I was on an island outside in the Gulf of Thailand. So, literally no hospital, but no ambulance, a moped ride down a dirt path, a one-room nursing station. I ended up going under eight surgeries in this makeshift ICU. I would come out of surgery from them scrubbing and debriding my legs to a cat running around my bed and across my chest. I mean, pretty much the worst situation. Yeah, exactly. And as you know, being a doctor that, you know, burns, the physicality is one thing,

but the infection is really what kills people. Yeah, you die of infection, right? You die of infection from burns. And so I'm in this really bad spot. But again, I've had some, I should say, I have five older sisters, an incredible wife, and an incredible mother. So I have had some extraordinarily positive female influences in my life. And this story really is about my mother, the heroine of this story, which is she came and found me about four or five days in this ordeal, finds me in this tiny little shack of a hospital. And I can only imagine being a parent, what it's like to see your kid in this state. You know, I was screaming and writhing in pain, blood seeping, an unsanitary hospital, just a horrible set of circumstances. And the doctor had just told me, and again, there was nothing against him. He was telling me what he thought was the truth. He goes,

based on how badly your ligaments, your ankle joints, et cetera, have been burned, you will probably never walk again normally. Um, and as a young person who I consider myself, you know, an athlete, I've been a collegiate swimmer, you know, really in my body kind of kid, um, my identity completely ripped away from me in an instant based on some stupid thing that I did. You know, I was 100% responsible for this mistake. Right. Um, And I knew that. And so I went to the most negative, dark, horrible place in my mind. You know, again, like, like sitting in that tent, all the negative versions of me. You're such an idiot. You're such a fool. You've ruined your life.

You know, just, I mean, my mom sees my body negative spiraling, but my emotions are downward spiraling. Wow. She somehow, and I still don't know, I got all the credit in the world to her. She's admitted to me now that she was crying in the hallways of this makeshift hospital, pleading with the doctors for good news. But she actually never showed me that fear, ever herself. She walked in every single day with this just air of positivity. This just, just wrapping me in positivity and rapture and love. And she kept saying to me,

what do you want to do when you get out of here? And I was like, what are you talking about? She's like, your life's not over. What do you want to do when you get out of here? And she actually, again, I call it this now. I call it this in the book. I've called this for a long time. I didn't know this words then, but she was giving me this possible mindset. She was saying, hey, this sucks. Life's hard sometimes, but there are still limitless possibilities in your future. So, let's talk about them. And she kind of forces me. I don't want to play along with her silly game at this point. I'm in so much pain. But she says, close your eyes and picture anything without limits. What do you want to be doing when you get out of here? And I closed my eyes and she said, just tell me the first thing that pops in your head. And what popped into my head, I kind of

smiled and then I laughed. I was like, oh, you're going to think this is stupid, but I saw myself crossing the finish line of a triathlon. And she could have easily said, yeah, I said, set a goal. Let's talk about the future, but maybe something a little more realistic. I mean, look at your legs. It's not just triathlon. This is ridiculous. But she didn't do that. She actually said to the doctor, hey, actually, Colin, why don't you start training right now? Hey, doc, bring my son in some weights. And she had the Thai doctor bringing these 10-pound weights. I have this picture of me lifting these weights in the bed. My legs are bandaged from the waist down.

And she goes, she starts telling everyone in the hospital, my son's training for a triathlon. I got this picture of this Thai doctor. He's shaking his head like this stupid American kid's never going to walk again. His mom's crazy. She's out to lunch. And it was a long road to recovery. I will answer with the essence of your question, which is the inspiration of what turning point for me. But interestingly enough, I was in that Thai hospital for a couple months, flew back to Portland, Oregon, where I'm from, carried on and off the plane, placed in a wheelchair when I got home, still couldn't walk. My mom put a wooden chair in front of me and she said, forget about the triathlon. You got to take one step.

Figure out how to get me one step out of my wheelchair. The next day, two steps, three steps. 18 months later, I found myself at the start line of the Chicago triathlon. Wow. I'd learned how to walk. And I learned how to walk. I learned how to jog. I kind of tried to get on with my life. I took a job in Chicago in finance and I jumped into the water.

I swam a mile, got on my bike, rode 25 miles down Lakeshore Drive, and then put my shoes on those recently burned and battered legs and ran 6.2 miles crossing the finish line of the Chicago triathlon. I had completed this goal. And there was a crazy sort of ending of it, which was, I hadn't just actually finished the race, but I actually won. I placed first at the entire Chicago triathlon, 5,000 other people. But I reflect on that moment and I tell that story not to say, oh, what I realized through all this is you can really make dumb mistakes in your life. And I'm just story not to say, oh, what I realized through all this is you can really

make dumb mistakes in your life. And I'm just a badass superhuman athlete. Look at me. You know, like that's the opposite. The moment. No, but the interesting thing about it is it's the ones in the tents, right? I did the stupidest thing a young person could do. I almost disrupted my entire life.

I caused my mom to have to fly to Thailand and cry and plead and go through the trauma of taking care of me. I had to put myself through that, my family through that. I mean, the lowest of the lows, the most scared and afraid I'd ever been at that point in my life, et cetera. But through it, through the ones, my mom taught me one of life's most important lessons, which is life is hard. I don't care who you are, rich, poor, old, young, you are going to confront hardship in your life. But how we choose to react in those moments, that mindset, the limiting beliefs that can either, I go, had my mom not showed up there, I might very well still be in a wheelchair, at the very least hobbling around, never having gained full mobility back in my legs.

But my mom said, no, what can you do? And so that, you know, I didn't have walking across Antarctica in my, you know, another 10 years until that happened and climbing these mountains and all these things. But she unlocked in me this belief that I believe we all have. I believe as humans, every single one of us, we have these reservoirs of untapped potential to achieve extraordinary things. And really, I even hate using the word achieve. So, I'll rewrite that and say, to feel. To feel and experience fulfillment and deep happiness, bliss, peace, connection. We have the ability and a lot of it starts in our minds and understanding that the ones, the challenges, the adversities of life are part of it, but we have the ability to react.

And so, certainly my mother throughout my entire life, but in this one really intense moment in my young life played a significant role. And just like you said, that week backpacking out of college has dictated where you are right now, the fact we're having this conversation. I would say the same thing. The fact that I have 10 world records and New York Times bestselling books and successful entrepreneurial visions, and I'm sitting here looking you eye and eye as a friend and as a peer and as someone I love, that is all a function of my mother looking me in the eye that day and saying, what do you want to do when you get out of here? And me saying, I'm never going to walk again. She goes, you are, and you're going to

thrive and let's figure out how to get you there. And here I am, you know, 15 plus years later living the life that I'm so blessed to feel like I can live. That's so unbelievable, Colin. I think it's such an inspiring story. And, you know, I think many people think, oh, that person's successful. They've had it so easy and everything's been given to them and they haven't really had any obstacles. But the truth is it's not true for most people. In fact, it's probably the opposite. It's certainly true for me. It's been true for you. And I think the hardest moments have taught me the greatest lessons and have inspired me to do things that I never would have done otherwise and to believe things that I never could have believed. And

I think often we're prisoners of our own mind. And the subtitle of your book, The 12-Hour Walk, one of the parts of the subtitle is Conquer Your Mind. Because if you don't know how to do that, if you don't become a master of your mind, you're going to have trouble in life. You're going to struggle. And you won't be able to reach the fulfillment of what it is to be human. And I see how you've done that. And it's just, it's so inspiring. And I meet a lot of people, you know, I meet presidents and kings and CEOs and billionaires. And, you know, I think, you know, some of the most unhappy people are some of the wealthiest people and some of the most quote successful people.

But you kind of redefine success as being an inside job. It's not what you do on the outside, it's what you do on the inside. And that is just such a powerful concept because you don't need anything to conquer your mind on the outside. You don't need to be rich, you don't have a fancy house, a fancy car, a great job. It's really about what happens inside. And I think once we learn that that's our biggest mountain to climb and we start to learn the tools to do it, we start with the first step, right? To that wooden chair. We start with the 12-hour walk, which is why when you told me about your book, I'm like, man, this is the best freaking idea I've heard of. Let's inspire 10 million, a hundred million, a billion people

to do this walk. Imagine how different their world would be. Totally. And I, and I, I literally, like I said, I framed this question of what's your Everest. And I love to ask it to people, young people, old people, people at different ages. And I could have tons of different responses, but I finished the book by saying my, my efforts, my efforts to inspire 10 million people to take this walk. And maybe I, hopefully I'm shooting low and it's a hundred million, like you said, but why, you know, why, like, why is that question? And it's because of what you said, it's not to stroke my ego. It's because I fundamentally believe the more people that are equipped with this possible mindset, the better this planet is, the more people that have taken that look inward. And to your point, it's not billionaires, kings,

rich people, rich guy, this, that, and the other thing. This is the most accessible thing ever. This is a free gift. This is an art piece to the world to say, take the 12-hour walk. It doesn't cost anything. It literally doesn't cost anything. I love for you to buy the book, but if you don't want to buy the book and still go on the walk, I 100% support you. We are actually, we're galvanizing. You can take this walk any single day, pair of shoes in the time. I actually encourage people to take it right out their front door. I say that's going to imprint on your daily life even stronger than, oh, I got to wait to vacation to be on this trail. The solitude is still maintained if there's ambient city noise. If you live in New York City, you can do the 12-hour walk in Manhattan. You're not talking to people on the street,

but you are still alone in your thoughts in that. This can be done anywhere, right? And I have a big, like I said, it can be done any single day. But on September 10th, I'm also galvanizing a mass participation in the 12-hour walk. So if you're struggling to say, well, what day should I put that on my calendar? If you want to put on your calendar any day, do it. Sign up on the 12-hour walk. It costs you nothing. It's just I'll be able to track you and send you some words of wisdom and advice along the way. So you can sign up on the website, 12hourwalk.com. And I even have an app that's built that will allow you to have your Google Maps open

and track yourself so you don't get lost, but your phone's in airplane mode. So, I give you the one excuse that you might have. I got to look at my phone. Fine. I'll give you the one thing. You can look at your map so you don't get lost. Fine. But on September 10th, I, as well as many, many, many others will be participating alone. We'll be walking alone. Everyone will be walking from the front doors, but there's something in the accountability and the power and the uplift of the camaraderie of knowing others are out there doing it. So like I said, it can be done on any day, but I invite people to join on September 10th. I don't know what you're doing on September 10th, Mark, but we'd love to have you join the 12-hour walk either that day or another day.

I actually have just finished my public television show filming on my new book on longevity called young forever, which is also challenging. Some of our limiting beliefs about aging and, and absolutely. I'm going to do that walk. Yes. I want to inspire all the millions of people who follow me to do that walk

too. That's 3 million people right there. Just right there. So we're, like I said, maybe I, maybe I shot to inspire all the millions of people who follow me to do that walk too. That's 3 million people right there. Just right there. So like I said, maybe I shot too low. I think you shot too low. I think we can even go like a billion. A billion. I love it.

My partner Brianna has this great idea when you go to her website. So I want to be a billionaire. I want to positively impact the lives of a billion people. I love that. I love that. It's so beautiful. Heck yeah. Totally. I think Colin, I literally could talk to you about this for hours and I know we will soon on our 12 hour walk, but we might do one when we're talking.

And I just love you so much. I am so inspired by this conversation. I hope those of you listening have been inspired. I hope you go out right now. The book's available wherever you get your book. It's called The 12-Hour Walk. Invest one day, conquer your mind, and unlock your best life. You have nothing to lose but your unhappiness. And you have nothing to gain. Sorry, you have everything to gain, especially love. And thank you, Colin, for being you, for inspiring all of us,

for writing the book, and for living your life. It's just fabulous. I'm just kind of speechless. And if you're listening to this podcast and you loved it and inspired, you share it with everybody, share it with your friends and family, share it wherever you share your stuff. Leave a comment. How have you helped to conquer your own mind? What has been your 12-hour walk in your life? Or maybe why do you need one? And write about that. Let's hear from you. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And we'll see you next week on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey, everybody. It's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and

introducing you to all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health.

It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter I'll only send it you once a week on Fridays nothing else I promise and all you do is go to dr. hyman.com forward slash pics to sign up that's dr. hyman.com forward slash pics P I C K S and sign up for the newsletter and I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger, longer. Hi everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode.

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