The Jordan Harbinger Show - 289: Akshay Nanavati | Fearvana: Finding Bliss from Suffering

Episode Date: December 12, 2019

Akshay Nanavati (@fearvanalife) is a former Marine who has survived PTSD, depression, alcoholism, and suicidal ideation to build a global business, run ultramarathons, and explore the world's most hostile environments. He is also the author of Fearvana: The Revolutionary Science of How to Turn Fear into Health, Wealth and Happiness. What We Discuss with Akshay Nanavati: What going on a seven-day retreat in total darkness and isolation taught Akshay about himself that transcended rationality and the reality of his senses. Why Akshay believes that the single greatest barrier standing in the way of our well-being is our negative relationship to suffering -- such as the way we demonize fear, stress, and anxiety. What does Akshay mean when he recommends finding "the worthy struggle" that will make our suffering meaningful? Stillness accompanied by consciousness and intention versus doing nothing, and what we risk by being afraid to confront what lurks in the space of our deepest darkness. Why Akshay considers the prevailing idea in the self-help world of "I am enough" to be nonsense, why we are not enough, and -- most important -- why that's not a bad thing. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/289 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with producer Jason DeFilippo. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most brilliant and interesting people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. We want to help you see the matrix when it comes to how these amazing people think and behave and help you become a better thinker. If you're new to the show, we've got episodes with spies and CEOs, athletes and authors, thinkers and performers, as well as toolboxes for negotiation, public speaking, and body language, persuasion, etc. So if you're smart, you like to learn and improve, then you'll be right at home here with us.

Today on the show, Akshay Nanavati, after overcoming drug addiction, PTSD from fighting in the war in Iraq with the Marines, where one of his jobs was to walk in front of our vehicles and find explosives, he dealt with depression and alcoholism that pushed him to the brink of suicide. Akshay Nanavati has since built a global business, run some ultra-marathons, explored some of the most hostile environments on the planet, mountains, caves, polar ice caps. He's been a friend of mine for a while, and I just don't know too many people who like to put themselves through the ringer like Akshay does. He's lived in pitch-black darkness and total isolation for a week at a time. He's run hundreds of miles across Africa. He just loves to punish himself. But of course, he finds meaning in the suffering, and that's what this episode is about.

Today we'll learn how and why Akshay wants us to love our demons and change our relationship to suffering. If you want to know how I managed to book all these great people and manage my relationships using systems and tiny habits, check out our six-minute networking course, which is free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And by the way, most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course and the newsletter. So come join us and you'll be in great company. All right, here we go with Akshay Nanavati. I said before the show, I wanted to start with why do you keep trying to kill yourself in unique ways? But it's also kind of not totally a joke.

So I don't want to make too much light of it. What's going on here? What are you doing lately to punish yourself? I'm still pursuing the ultra running. So I just recently, two days before this, I ran 42 miles. In one day. In a few hours with minimal food and water. Okay.

You'll push myself through suffering and go through that struggle of no food, no water, feeling that kind of that dehydrated. So ultra running is currently it, but I'm actually now the limits that I'm exploring are the mundane, ironically. So the mundane is my struggle. Sitting there working on a computer is what I struggle with. I actually have to temper the darkness because I want to go into, I want to go back into post-conflict zones. I want to go into Yemen and Syria have friends doing humanitarian work out there. Post-conflict is interesting because it's a euphemism for currently in conflict, really. Really, exactly. So I want to go into conflict zones. And I have to temper that darkness. And I, I really actually navigated that when I spent seven days in darkness. Yeah. Which you know about and we'll get into. But yeah, tempering that darkness and figuring out where the line is is is something I'm still kind of exploring. So when you say darkness, what exactly are you talking about? Because I know you're in the Marines, you've had or have PTSD. I don't know exactly if that condition goes away or if it just gets locked up in a box. You learn to work with it. Because I also don't, like I like to say, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, but not that I have it. Because

there's a distinction. Post-traumatic stress is not post-traumatic stress disorder. And in the sense that I struggle with Survivor's guilt to this day. I still am a little bit more jumpy when there's loud noises. I'm still more vigilant than the average person. I still am not a big fan of crowds. I've learned to work with it. We've talked about this before too, too, like with my survivor's guilt, for a long time, I had a picture of my friend that I lost in the war, and it said this should have been you, earn this life. And my guilt drove me, but it started to take me too far. I went too far into that darkness, and I had to find the line. So now I brought it back, and the words are different. for the first time just a few months ago, I went and visited my friend's tombstone. And it was very

powerful for me to be there and see it for the first time since he died. I was actually on his burial detail on the 21 gun, you know, rifle salute carrying his casket. And being there, looking at his tombstone, you know, I just said to him that, I'm sorry I wasn't there with you, but I will earn this life. And so now my words, my reframe is honor his death, earn this life. So it's not that it ever goes away. That kind of stuff doesn't go away. I mean, just a few weeks ago, I lost another junior Marine to suicide. You know, a buddy of mine who was in Iraq with me. I've lost two buddies to suicide, so that stuff doesn't go away. But you learn to use it and you learn to work. And that's what I mean, that finding the light in the darkness, learning to work with that stuff.

You didn't initially start dealing with the darkness by running, going into literally dark rooms and things like that. I mean, you started with what I think a lot of us would start with, which is what drugs and alcohol? Yeah, when I came back, I had overcome drug addiction from I struggled with drugs before you're born in the Marines, got out of the that, join the Marines, but then when I came back from Iraq, it was alcohol. I do everything to the extreme. So when I'm frank, I mean, it was like a liter of vodka. I would drink till I pass out. And you're, how much do you weigh? Like now 135? Yeah, 135. And even if you were like 1-65, 30 pounds heavier, a liter of vodka. It's, I mean, I think the only reason I'm not dead, like the last time I went

through this and finally sobered up after that was because at least between these sober sessions, I was at least eating healthy and training. Yeah. But I went through moments where I was like, I'm surprised I'm not dead. I think a leader of vodka would put me in the hospital. You know, that's not a Saturday night. Oh, it's, I would just drink till, I mean, just downing till I pass out. Oh, as soon as I wake up, drink again and go on for five, seven days till I'm finally throwing up everywhere. I mean, just your mind's in a state of chaos. You're going through withdrawal, sweating. It's horrible. Jeez, that's so, that's horrible. To do that to yourself, that's no longer like, oh, I enjoy drinking. Exactly. You're well beyond.

Way past that point of enjoyment. Exactly. Nothing fun about that. One of your jobs in the service was to walk in front of vehicles and find explosives. That when I read that, I was like, we don't have machines for this. You don't put a goat in front of the car? Like, what the hell, man? Yeah, no, that was because whenever we were in Iraq, we came through danger zones, like, let's say a bridge. Before the vehicle convoy could pass through the bridge, or let's say if there was a lot of sand around us, two Marines would walk through and clear each side. So I would, one Marine take the left, one take the right, and that was my job to go through and clear and make sure there's no wider. How did you get that job? That's like, hey, who do we really not like to this?

That guy. Aksh, he's expendable. I mean, I'm joking, but it's horrible, right? Pete is already mad at me for the goat comment. It's just, why, I don't know. I just assumed we had some technology that was like, scanning for bombs. So once we found it, then we call EOD,

explosive ordinance disposal, and they get the robots to, but somebody had to find first. Jeez, man. I'm going to stop on that thread because I feel like everything else I say is just going to get me in trouble after this. So yeah,

depression, alcoholism. I mean, you were clearly trying to kill yourself subconsciously. And I did. I mean, I got to a point where I actually wanted to kill myself. I literally woke up after one of these binge sessions, thought about walking over to kitchen, picking up a knife and slitting my wrists. And I've been in moments where I just literally thought about picking a knife and just stabbing it because it was so dark. And I thought these patterns of drinking and sobering up would never, never change. So what's the point of going on? Right. Oh, that's interesting. So you didn't see any way out. You weren't like, I can stop or I should stop. You were just like, this is my whole life now. Because I would try to stop and I would try to be like, okay, I'm going to stop now. And then something would hit. Some trigger would hit. And I would go right back into the pit. And again, when I go in it, I go in it hard. So it's not just a little bit. It sends me into a dark spiral. Well, yeah, you send me voice memos. We're being friends for a while. But you send me a voice memo like, hey, hey, man. I'm running across Liberia right now. And I'm like, that's, that. doesn't sound safe at all. I'm on mile number 42. What are you doing? It's like

110 in this shade in Liberia right now. It's July. What are you doing? I've learned to channel the darkness now, yeah. But there's a part of me that's like, well, you went from one way of trying to hurt yourself to a different way of trying to hurt yourself, but what's inside the tunnel that you're running

into sometimes literally, or, you know, when you go into a dark room, tell me about the darkness thing. We never quite covered that. You were like, I'm in Germany and I'm not going to have any light for seven days. So, yeah, so I spent seven days in pitch darkness, like can't see your hand in front of you darkness, complete isolation and complete silence. So I didn't talk for seven days at all. And you're just sitting in a room with just yourself and you have nowhere to go. And unlike the silent retreats, which are much more common to these days, the Epipasnas, where people go into silent meditations.

Unlike that, because you're in darkness, you're shutting off one of the primary senses to which you engage with the world, your visual sense. So by doing that, you can't attach your conscious consciousness onto things. Like I can't see something and have a sort of conscious or subconscious conversation with it. You're shutting all of that off. Is that what happens during silent retreats you go and you see a window and you just stare at the window for eight hours or something? I've never been to a silent retreat, but inevitably when you're looking at things, you're registering that is, okay, that's a mic, that's a tree, whatever you're looking at. That's just gone. You're unplugging your eyes. So you really have nowhere to go but within.

And that was appealing to me. Because actually what drew me to that is when I broke my sobriety, I went through, which you also know about, I went through a fairly challenging divorce last year. Yeah. And when that happened, I broke my sobriety. And I was like, okay, there's some gaps still I need to figure out within myself. And I realized the only way I could do that was no longer by running and doing, even sometimes the positive things we do, like running or climbing mountains or whatever, working hard on my business, writing a book can be a way to run away from ourselves.

Definitely. And today's day and age, it's so easy to run. We're constantly running away from ourselves. I mean, if I added an extra show to this, I would have no life outside of that. Many days, that's really appealing. Yeah, yeah. So I needed to go within. And I obviously, again, like everything I do,

I found the most extreme avenue to do that. So that's what had, that was the draw to it, to shut off every sense to really go deep within. Because in the darkness, I like to say your soul becomes a mirror to itself and you're forced to go deep within. Is someone watching you? Are you just in like a room like this?

No, you're in a room? Yeah, about Yasei, sitting in a tiny room. I mean, there's a switch in there, so you could literally turn the switch back on and sit there watching movies in your laptop the whole time. You know what I mean? nobody's going to know. Well, but somebody's watching you, right? You're not, or you're just not, you're not watching. I mean, there's an emergency switch if you need to and you can kind of, because

what happens is like, for example, when they bring the smoothies, they ring a little bell outside and you hear the bell and then you come out, but the hallway is completely dark too. You can't have any exposure, and you can't. You're not supposed to have any exposure to light. Yeah. It's also what happens neurologically. Like neurologically, your brain starts to release DMT, which is one of the primary ingredients in ayahuasca. So you kind of go on these trippy spiritual journeys, which I did. I mean, Like day six, for example, in the darkness, I saw lights that were brighter than that light there. I mean, I felt like I couldn't sleep. I mean, because I felt like I needed an eye mask to sleep. It was so bright. I was literally going like this. Like my closing my eyes and be like,

it's just a hallucination because of these psychedelic chemicals that your brain is released. That release from being in darkness for extended periods of time. So your brain starts releasing these chemicals? I mean, do you know why that happens at all? That sounds weird. Why would your brain want you to be like, we need you to hallucinate now? I don't know the science of it, but that was actually the value of it, because I'm a big, you know, in my book, Fiorvana, a lot of research, science, psychology. I'm big, pragmatic. Everything can be validated with science and proven. But the darkness I went to actually explore the other side of that duality, the sort of science and spirituality, to push into things that transcend reason and rationality. Like seeing bright lights in pitch darkness,

there's no logical explanation for that. And I mean, if anybody told me, I'm the last guy to believe this kind of stuff, I'm first, everything needs to be proven. But I mean, I just, it wasn't. as that. I saw red lights, green lights, like purple lights that were as real as anything else you could possibly see. We do know that our brain is what makes vision, right? And we've talked about this on the show before. I forget who the guess was. It was one of these neuroscientists, maybe Bo Lotto or something like that. Your eyes are just like a, it's like a keyboard. The letter doesn't go from the keyboard through the little pipe of the USB cord and pop up on the screen. The microprocessor tells the screen to display that based on input from the keyboard, which is just binary. So your eyes aren't seeing things

that are there. Your brain is constructing an image based on like what photons are triggering in your eyes which send electrical signals. I mean, that's probably not surprising to a lot of people. What was surprising to me was that this stuff isn't really there and that what you see is just a shared illusion that our brain is creating. Because we have these guys, and one of them's coming on the show soon, Eric Weinmeyer, he climbed Mount Everest and he's blind, but he has like a tongue grid. Have you heard about this? I've not heard about that. So he can see with his tongue because your brain can learn to see with pretty much any sensory organ. So there's a grid that he wears, it's electrical,

and it does really find static on his tongue, and he can create images in his brain based on that. That's wild. It's crazy. Yeah, I don't know. Which means that pretty soon you're going to be born blind, or you're going to go blind due to some horrible accident, knock on wood, it won't happen to anyone listening to this or watching this.

But you'll be able to get one of those Jordy LaForge-type visors and just walk around like everyone else because we'll be able to just replace defective eyes. Or we'll be able to lay something on top of your eye and it'll just do the job as efficiently or more so than your eye. The mystery is why your brain's releasing DMT and causing you to hallucinate, not how you're seeing things. Your brain's just constructing vision because it's going,

well, I guess our eyes don't work anymore. I would bet you that there's somebody listening or watching right now that went blind due to an accident or some genetic thing and probably in the beginning had those kinds of northern lights experiences all the time. Yeah, it's surreal. It's surreal, but deeply profound. I mean, that experience, as you can imagine, just being still within yourself, where you go, what you discover within.

The experiences in the darkness were profound, but for me, the most powerful fart was coming back into light after seven days. That must have been kind of weirdly painful as well. It was, I mean, I was, I mean, when I first pulled off, obviously, it's just kind of blinding when you first pull off the mask and you're sitting there. It's kind of blinding, but it was emotionally, like, just hit me. I mean, I was tearing up. I remember looking at the world, because I was in Germany, so the beautiful black forest area

and everything. I remember looking at the world and saying, I want to look at the world every day through these eyes. You know, to be able to see through these eyes. And I also felt like that was, that was two things that were going through my mind. One was that. And the second was just a deep sense of gratitude for every bit of pain and suffering I've ever experienced. Because I realize that you cannot really see the light that way unless you've been in the dark. Obviously, in that case, it was very literal. That was quite literal, yeah. Figuratively and metaphorically as well, that you cannot really experience the light unless you go into the dark, which is why, coming back to your first question, why I like to exploring these extremes, is that in order

to experience the extreme of bliss, you've got to go into the extreme of pain and the extreme of suffering and the extreme of darkness. And they're challenging, of course. Yeah. But it allows you to experience life at a different level of intensity. You must have walked out of that room and been like, one, no more smoothies for a while. Two, how long were you in there? Five days. Seven days. Seven days without looking at anything. So you're just thinking about your life. I was journaling in the dark too. So I had a little... How's that look? Thankfully, legible. There was only one page where I wrote completely over myself, and I forgot to kind of mark my pages. But I was like kind of putting a ruler and then writing and then moving the ruler down.

Obviously, it wasn't within the lines. Sure. It's legible. I've actually thought eventually to write another book completely in the dark, to go into the dark. I mean, you could use a voice recorder. I'm just throwing that out there. Right. I thought about using a voice recorder, but the reason I chose not to is because when you talk,

your consciousness is focused. Right. Like I'm hearing myself talk now, right? So it's focused to the thing I'm hearing. But if you don't talk, your mind is more chaotic. And I wanted to be with that chaos. That is interesting. Yeah.

I suppose you could always type, too, just no screen. Yeah. And then you have just one really long. Weird document. Just make sure you know where the home keys are. Yeah, exactly. I guess, though, then if you're off by one key, you have no clue what the hell you're trying to say.

You're done. Yeah. It's going to be a giant mess of gibber. Oh, yeah. Good point. Never mind. Don't rely on me for advice on this one. Jeez.

Okay. You said in Fearvana, or at least in one of our conversations, that the single greatest barrier that stands in the way of our well-being is our negative relationship to suffering. So that essentially means, what, that you enjoy at some level suffering, which is no surprise. I mean, that's like what you're known for is like, whenever I get a message from you, I'm like, what weird-ass thing is he going to do today to cause more pain? Yeah, but you're right.

We do demonize fear, stress, anxiety. I mean, half the books that come out now are like, love every second of your work. And it's nonsense. Yeah, that idea that if you love what you do, it'll never feel like a day of work in your life. That's garbage. I mean, I love what I do. I'm sure you love what you. you do. But Thursday's where it's work. It sucks. Every day. Yeah, pretty much. It sucks sometimes. And

that's okay, though. But like these words, like fear, stress, anxiety, guilt, suffering, pain, adversity, we have such a negative relationship. Nobody hears those words and think of them as positive things or positive experiences. But you cannot transform. You cannot evolve without suffering. You have to put your, like, I mean, it's like working out. You put your body through physical stress in order to grow. Yes, you temper it with recovery, but it's the same thing with the mind in spirit. You put yourself through psychological stress, through spiritual stress in order to evolve. But yet, yeah, so many people are like, love what you do. Everything should be easy. I mean, we live in a world that's feeding the garbage about the easiest, quickest path to getting

what you want. Yeah. I mean, it's like everything that I rail, I mean, even you and I have talked about this before, where I'm like, these people on these influencers, they're selling and get rich quick or they're selling this like business in a box and it's like such BS. Yeah. But people are going for that. And I mean, the first thing I remember learning from my parents was if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I mean, this is like the first slogan. Yeah. I prior heard that when I was eight or seven or younger. And now as adults, it's like so tempting. Somehow half of our friends are doing this. Yeah, and we're conditioned by it too, right? Because our world, like, I mean, we have a little dopamine machines. So we're constantly

taught that every, we can get instant gratification everywhere. Yeah. Watch a movie instantly. Get something on two days, you know, in prime. It'll be there to your door. So we're constantly taught that by our environment. Yeah. And so we're looking for it in every way. And, you know, Like everything is feeding that, but it's kind of missing the point. The value is not the million dollars or the six-pack abs or anything of the result. It's the person you become on that journey. And you're missing the point if you're trying to get there as fast as possible. Because the suffering that you go through to get there, that will be the change that happens.

That will be the thing that transforms you. Yeah. That's a good point. It's kind of like you have to work out in order to get strong. You can't just inject steroids and watch Netflix. Try that. Didn't work out. Like just ended up with a bunch of cholesterol.

and giant biceps. No, but like the idea that you would even try to do that in another area of your life makes no sense. Because my next question, which I accidentally answered for myself, was, well, if life is giving us stress, anxiety and all that, why should I dive head first into it? Because I'm already getting enough from life. But that's kind of like saying, well, when you walk outside and you lift your equipment case into your car, isn't that the same thing as going to the gym and lifting weights? And the answer is no, of course it's not. Yeah, yeah. You want to turn it up to 11 or to 8 so that when you're at a 5, you're fine. Exactly. It conditions you to handle the normal stressors of life. And it's also not about seeking suffering for the sake of suffering. Well, except in your kids apparently.

Fine. Yeah, except my as much as many ways as possible. But you know, like when I mentioned when the drug addiction, I used to cut myself. I have still have scars on my arm. Just from just cutting myself. I have a burn here on my arm from taking a cigar, burning myself back in when I was on drugs. You know? What kind of drugs were you doing? Cocaine. Lots of LSD. I mean, lots of LSD. Lots of cocaine. But I was actually at a point that I would have done any drug that came my way. Like everything I do, I was the one, you know, pushing the line. Thankfully, more did not come my way. And they started to come in by the time I stopped during drugs. But, I mean, I would have done PCP. I would have gone down the special K, you know, I would have done anything. Like, I was looking for it. Thankfully, it did not because it could have, I mean, I have two friends who OD'd and died from that phase of my life I was in, you know? So there was no virtue to this pain. So you got to find the, I mean, I do ultra running. I spend

seven days in darkness. I'm not saying everybody needs to do that. But find your own. I call it the worthy struggle. Like, what's that struggle worthy of who, you are and who you want to be for the world and for yourself. Seek that out. And in that, you'll find a beauty. There's bliss even in pain. Like, I mean, when I'm running 72 miles or spending seven days in darkness, there's without a doubt moments where I'm like, this sucks. Why am I here? This is awful. I don't want to be here. Yeah, I was talking with Dean Carnazas a while ago and he was talking about how when you guys are on these runs. Do you guys know each other? So he actually got me into ultra running. His book, Ultra Marathon Man. I read it when I was in Iraq.

Got it enough. And just we didn't have a lot of time because we were infantry Marines out of wire doing, you know, pretty stuff every day. But whenever I did have time, I would run for like three, four hours around this tiny little base in the middle of Iraq. An ultramarathon man was the trigger that inspired me. And I reached out to him after sharing my story. And thankfully, he wrote a little thing for Fervana. So he's awesome.

I can just see these insurgents looking at you and they're like, don't go. They're crazy. This guy's been running in a circle for seven hours. Like, let's go get the other base. I don't want this guy running after me. He'll never stop. But, yeah, Dean, he was talking about how on some of his. like 100 mile desert runs, he'll shit himself and just keep going. You guys are wired in this weird way

where it's like that's just part of the game. Yeah, it's horrible, you know, like going through that. Like I've had, yeah, bloody shits when I'm gone long. I ran 80 miles around a point two mile loop a few months ago. Point two mile loop. How many laps does that work out to? 400 lap. That's so ridiculous. Nightmarously psychological torture, right? Yeah. Because at least when you're running through Liberia, there's like a village over there and a river down. No, just a track. was this track. And like, I think it was me 60 miles in. I started shitting blood and just was like, all right, suck it up. But there's no part where you're like, uh, red line, literally in this case, I better go to the doctor. So in that case, because I was actually planning a 46 hour run,

because I had work to do the next day, I had a presentation to do. I was like, I can't afford to go to the hospital. No. And you can't afford to shit blood during a presentation. So eventually I tempered it. There's a couple ways to not get invited back to Google. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, you find, the line of temper, but I have been in the hospital before for heat exhaustion and had to get IVs and stuff. That seems pretty standard for the stuff that you're doing. Yeah.

My goodness. You want to fall in love with the demons, fall in love with the darkness and confront them. But is this not just like another way of cutting yourself to just see if you can do it? I mean, because to me it sounds horrible. To you, it sounds horrible also, but then you're like, ooh, but I want to do that. But I'm not like, ooh, I'm going to go get drunk and cut myself. And I'm not making fun of you. I'm just saying like, this seems like, this seems like.

Like, you're searching out pain. It's just that this way is more socially acceptable because people go, what a badass. Whereas if you're cutting your arm, people go, dude, you need psychological help. But I'm looking at you running around a track 400 times shitting blood and not going to the, and being like, maybe you do need also to go to therapy as a result. I have that therapist. Tell me that I'm, one therapist told me that I have a mental disorder or that I'm, something about how I'm psychologically flawed and mental disorder.

He told me that I was pretty messed up, which is arguably. It's like a very masochistic thing, though. Yeah. But I mean, I think that, you know, like now, compared to, let's say, cutting myself, the pain that I earn in long distance running, I earn that pain. Like, I'm running eight, nine hours to earn that pain. There's a virtue to it. There's a spiritual seeking I'm getting out of it.

This is almost a shortcut even to pain, cutting my arm. That's like the steroids of... Exactly. Now it's like I'm seeking. There's a purpose to it. There's a virtue to it. I tell a story around it. It inspires other people.

I've had some people at my talks who were overweight, telling me for the first time that they started hiking and lost all this weight. So there's a virtue. chew to it that allows me to transcend myself and serve others with it as well. Sure. Because we all have different versions of the darkness, right? Some people have, we've all gone through different things in life, but everybody suffered in some way. Their degrees or whatever, you know, is irrelevant. Ultimately, we've all suffered. And so the point is, though, if you don't engage those dark spaces, they're going to hold you back.

You can't really become that highest imagined version of yourself until you confront that deepest darkest version of yourself. You know, there's that saying that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Yeah. It's the same way. We are only as strong as that weakest link within ourselves. But nobody wants to confront that because it's hard. It is terrifying going into those spaces to confront that weakling, to confront that demon. But Carl Jung, one of my favorite quotes of all time, he says that one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest Akshay Nanavati. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. And to learn more

and get links to all the great discounts you just heard from our amazing sponsors, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Don't forget, we have a worksheet for today's episode so you can make sure you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways from Akshay Nanavati. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash subscribe. As always, subscribing to the show is absolutely free. It just means that you get all the latest episodes downloaded automatically to your podcast player so you don't miss a single thing. And now back to our show with Akshay Nanavati. Oh, and by the way, I do see the difference between earning the pain and just giving yourself a burn on the shoulder

because it's sort of like the difference between us going out back here and snorting heroin or whatever versus getting a runner's high. Nobody shames runners for feeling high after they complete a marathon. But we will get arrested and shamed by our friends and family if they catch us out back, you know, shooting up. So it's similar. I see like you're just trying to earn something that most people are, frankly, trying to avoid in a lot of ways. And you're saying the reason we try to avoid that is because we're afraid of what we might feel. find. Because if we're afraid of what we might find, because it's really hard to go into those spaces, it's not fun. It's not enjoyable to confront your demons to be still. I mean, that's another thing. Like, one way to do it is through suffering, another is through stillness. Like, stillness is not

slowing down. Sometimes I tell people that I would spend seven days in darkness, like, oh, you know, don't you have work and you're running? Yeah, but stillness is not slowing me down. It's an accelerating me, actually. There's a difference between stillness and doing nothing. You know what I mean? Stillness out of consciousness and intention is very different. So inviting people to go into those spaces, is because when you go there, you will find something that you had not looked for before. And by confronting it, by making that darkness conscious, then you can do something about it. You can make it work for you. Can you give me an example of what you find when you say, let's say, go into, how about just running?

Like, when you're running through Liberia, when you're not leaving me a voice message, panting. Like, yeah. One of the few that, yeah, the way that leave you then. What are you finding in your self? Like, is there something that you can explain? Absolutely. Yeah. So I'll give you an example.

So when I was in Liberia, it was day four or something like that, I was maybe 17 miles into the run. Every day I was running about a marathon a day for a week. A marathon a day for a week. So just let that sink in because you just kind of like threw that one out. You know, that's a lot of running. And you're not really, of course, you're not recovering. I mean, you're not passing the hell out.

You're not up and doing it. You're staying in these shitty places. And, you know, it's not like hotel. There was no EC. And I'm not trying to, like, complain about like, but the point is it was really hot. And I'm not accustomed to the hot. That was the least of your worries.

Yeah. Oh, man, there's no AC in my... And you're sitting there like... And you're just like, yeah. I mean, one hotel I stayed in the toilet seat had like cracks in it, so every time I sat, it would like cut into my leg. Oh, yeah, that's... That was fun.

I'm gonna need a little Nios porn for... Never mind. Yeah. Good times. But so, yeah, so you're not really recovering. And so it was day four that like this aching pain hit my shin, just aching horrible pain hit. And I tried to stop and put me, you know, massage it,

put some cream, whatever, a massage. It's not going away. But I had to get the miles in for that day. So I started limping, and I'm kind of limping, limping, limping, and then about a mile and a half after that. Did you, you tore something in your shin? I don't know what happened. Oh, you don't know. It wasn't a tear, I don't think, because later on I was fine.

She's a gnarly shins. It was just, I mean, but it was aching. Like, it took me out. I was literally running and just stopped. I mean, I was on the ground trying to massage you, trying to put something on it. And then I was just limping. And the whole time I'm limping for about a mile and half, I'm like, you know, battling not just the physical pain, but the psychological pain that, oh, I got three days left of this. This is going to really suck.

Yeah. I have about 75 plus miles of running left. I mean, got, no, 80 plus, whatever. And so then after about a mile and a half, I'm like, all right, just get in it. Just start jogging. I start jogging. And then within minutes, I'm sprinting. And the whole time while I'm sprinting, I'm saying things to myself, like, remember Neil?

Neil was my friend who died in the war. Okay. I said, that should have been you, earned this life. If you quit now, you deserve a coward's death. People are dying everywhere. Suck it up. You have no right to complain. You know, just going into these spaces that you should have died in the war.

You haven't suffered enough. Earned this life. Stop being a bitch. Like, this is my self-talk, right? And I'm going into these dark spaces and tapping into that darkness. Those five miles I ran in Liberia on that part was the fastest five miles I ran the entire trip. So I learned to make those demons my PTSD. You want like PTSD, like PTSD, like PTSD, like PTSD, my survivors guilt, my feeling like I haven't suffered enough.

One of the things I've struggled with for a long time is guilt for feeling happy. Like I felt like there's too much pain. I've seen so much pain and suffering in my own life and in the world. I felt like who am I to be happy? So I tapped into that space. Instead of trying to avoid it, I used it. And like literally, and I'm not saying I do this in every run. Obviously, some runs are happy.

I'm smiling. But sometimes when you make a conscious, then eventually you get to the point where you can access each at will. So now I have that. Access to each feeling. Being the darkness or the light, being the demons, being the blissful thing. So sometimes I'm smiling, running, enjoying life. This is beautiful. I get to experience, feeling grateful.

Sometimes I'm going into those dark spaces. But the idea is when you do this consciously, you can tap into each at will. And I've helped a lot of other people with this. Like, I'll give you another example of this. So I had a friend, and this is going to sound a little crazy. I'm going to qualify myself, as opposed to everything else I've been saying. Right, right. Yeah.

I had a friend that was helping with a lot of stuff, so we had been talking, a lot of conversations. So when I asked her this question, I'm about to share with you, she was ready to go in those spaces. Now, she had gone through some severe childhood trauma. And I had done a lot of stuff with her to help increase her awareness, to have these conversations. So eventually I asked her, and I said, now stay with me on this, but I said, what if you deserve the trauma you went through? Ooh. And she literally said that. She goes, ooh.

And she was like, horf, I mean, how do you say that to somebody? Yeah, especially like some kid is abused or something. Exactly, right? And so now before you think I'm out of my mind, the reason I asked her that was I knew her at this point. We talked and I said, does some part if you feel like you deserved it? And she said, yes. I said, does some part if you feel guilty for how, like that was your fault that, you know, that you feel guilty about it? She said, yes.

I said, exactly. Confront that part. Most therapists would say, oh, it's not your fault. Obviously, you don't deserve all this kind of stuff. No, obviously. Which is true. Yeah. Which is, yeah.

And it's true. But I'm saying, because you're. subconscious is feeling it, go there. And she did. In fact, that very night, she sent me a text message saying, fuck you, Akshay, word for word. Because she went into some dark, as you might imagine, darks. And I don't recommend everybody do this if you're not ready, because it can send you to some really horrifying spaces. At this point, she was ready to go there. But eventually, after she got out of it, for the first time ever in her life, she'd been married about 20, 25 years, she shared what she went through with her husband. He didn't know. Oh, she was hiding that the whole time.

And I don't even know what it is. She just stole me severe childhood trauma. I mean, an inkling of what, exactly. You have an inkling of what. You can, you have an inkling of what it is, but I said, I don't care. You don't have to tell me. But the point is, you know, go there. And if you did deserve it, what does it mean about you? What does it mean about God? What does it mean about God? What does it mean about the world? Go to those spaces, find the answer, seek out something, and bring that darkness to the surface. And she did. And as a result, she got to the other side in a way in a way she had been. Right, because even if the truth is uncomfortable, I'm trying to wrap my head around this, because, of course, kids who are abused or something don't deserve it. But if you then go,

why do I feel this way? Let me look at that and take a good long look at it. Then your mind can maybe, your consciousness can sort of, with the help of a good therapist, ideally as well, wrap your mind around this and go, okay, I feel this way, it's wrong. I understand that it's wrong. I now see and feel and can understand why that that's not the case. So the next time it bubbles up quietly in the back of your head and you're enjoying sitting with your husband and your child and you're thinking, I don't deserve this. You go, no, no, no, I've already, this is settled in my head. Exactly. I understand I feel that way in that it's wrong. so you can get rid of it. You can sort of overcome it. I can follow that logic.

But yeah, you probably don't just confront all, rip open all your childhood wounds and then go running in Africa. You got to be ready. I mean, I didn't get to the point that I'm not overnight, right? Like, it took me a little while for a long time. I ran away from all that stuff with alcohol, obviously, and, you know, and all that stuff. It took me a while to get to the point. I mean, now what I do is, I think I've shared this with you, what I do is I sometimes intentionally watch scenes from war movies, like Banda Brothers or Hacksaw Ridge, or Black Hawk Down. And knowing they will make me cry. Like, I tear up watching these scenes.

Yeah, yeah. There's nothing inherently fun about them, right? But I do that to consciously enter those spaces that I believe have value, right? Like, because I feel like pain is one of the most valuable drivers of change. Like Michael Jervais, one of leading sports psychologists, said every great change starts with pain. You know, pain is going to lead to change. So I like to remind myself of the pain to remind me why I'm here on this earth. In many ways I should have died.

Not only did I was a guy walking front of bombs in Iraq, I found out 10 years after the war that my vehicle drove over an active bomb when I was in Iraq. It just didn't go off. Wow. God knows whatever reason. How did you find that out? My staff sergeant, I didn't know in the time because I guess we were busy a mission, my staff sergeant and another one of my buddies who was in the same squad and the same vehicles and he had told me.

My staff sergeant was the squad leader in our squad of 12, 13 Marines. He had a 10-year reunion and it was kind of, they were talking about it. I'm like, wait, what? I didn't know this. And it's an interesting thing to think about, obviously, you know? Oh, remember that time. It was your job to find the bomb? Yeah, you missed one, and we almost all died. We almost all, exactly. Nice job.

Yeah, great job. Who invited you again? Right. But it was very humbling to kind of see that and to think. And so, you know, in many ways, I shouldn't, like, I feel like I shouldn't be here. But now that I am, it's like I want to remind myself and go into those spaces to remind myself that, okay, I'm here for a reason and let me do something with it. So whatever it is, anybody, go there. Have you ever seen those final destination movies? I think I've seen one, you know, 20 years ago.

And that sounds like kind of the same thing, right? Like you avoided this thing and you go, well, wait a minute, this should have been me. So now you're chasing some kind of pain slash realization that maybe you deserve to be here. And you're doing that by self-flagellating. It's like Catholicism, circa, I don't know, 300 AD or whatever, those guys, right, with the cat and, like, whipping themselves. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not only that, obviously.

I enjoy life, too, these days. I know you do. I just, most people would, like, if you threw a prisoner into a gulag. and you said, you have to run across Liberia, they'd be like, just shoot me. I'm done. I'm not doing that. Yeah, when I do the seven days in darkness, my friends were like, you know, we do this to torture people, right? Right.

Like, sorry, we only have one room here in Germany and the other one is in Guantanamo Bay. Exactly. Yeah. We're even joking darkly in a way that I'm not used to on this show. It's just like, this is something that happens. It just goes there. It's something that you wrote in your notes here, which I love. The prevailing idea and the song,

Self-help world is I am enough, but that's nonsense. We are not enough, and that's not a bad thing. Wow, man, unpopular opinion. Right? Yeah, but I like that. I agree. Most of us are not enough as we are. We have to work to get something.

Yeah. And that was what I grew up with. But now it's like, I believe in me. Yeah. Love yourself, no matter what. Send me checks. You know, say you're great. Love yourself.

Yeah. I am a hashtag I'm enough and all this garbage. Right. It's such a weak mentality. Greatness requires you to accept and acknowledge that you are never enough, and it's in the pursuit that leads to not only greater growth and striving, the pursuit itself is happiness. I like to say contentment is the death of mastery. You know, the second you get truly content, you stop evolving and growing. And this idea, I am enough that is

so prevalent, right? Like in the self-help world, in personal development now, you're enough, love yourself no matter what. Like as an example, I was at this self-help seminar, and this person there was overweight and he was struggling with his self-image about it. Now, no right, wrong, good, bad about your way, right? Like, cool. Everybody's got their own. There's no judgment about it. But they were trying to make him feel, like, love his body no matter what. And I thought that was garbage. Like, what I would have done with him and said to him, do you really want to be in this way? Like, do you want to? Just go deep. Let's, like, navigate this. Let's first get clear. Do you want to. And if not, don't sit there saying you love your body. Look at the mirror and be like, I hate what I'm seeing.

Let me go do something about it. You know what I mean? When I was much heavier, obviously now I don't have a lot of weight to lose. I would look at the fat I see and be like, you fat piece of shit, go do some. I'm not saying you got to take that far, but we all have different self-taught. Exactly. Yeah. But it got me in the gym. It got me in the gym. It got me out the door. So this idea that I am enough is such a weak mentality. And it cultivates an idea that we've reached. The second you believe you've arrived at anything, you are stopped growing. You're never enough. And that's not a bad thing. That's a beautiful thing. Like I had constantly striving. I heard your interview with Kobe Bryant. And I've read the book by Tim Grover, who Relentless, who was kind of,

Kobe's mindset coach and stuff like that. And he talks about that. He said, people who are at that level of the game, they have a relentless pursuit to know that they're never enough. Kobe was talking about, right? Like how he would go, I mean, he was Kobe, Brian, best in the world. He would still be out there first person ever, you know, training, training hard, training hard, looking for that next 1% of growth, you know? And that's the fine set of mastery. And even if you don't even want to be like a Kobe, it's not even just about attaining the growth. That's what actually leads to a better and more fulfilling life is that idea. So stop looking to be enough and accept that you never enough. And even in like, look, when I trained, got trained as a life coach, there's this idea that, you know, your whole and complete. Treat everybody as your whole and complete. And I, I feel it's much more valuable to approach you from the paradigm that we're all broken and who cares. You know, we're all broken. We all have our stuff. We all have our brokenness. That's great. Accept it. Use it. I totally agree with that. I think the difference between, there is something to be said for people who say, look, I'm enough when they feel like they're so worthless that they can't do it and there's no point losing weight because I'm a big loser and nobody will love me. Like I get,

not wanting to live in that feeling, because then you can't even get off the couch and get to the gym. You just go, what's the point? You eat a bunch of ice cream because it provides dopamine for the next five minutes. You know, I understand that. I'm more in your camp, or I wake up and I was talking with somebody yesterday who's a producer for a really famous talk show host, and I said, oh, do you think that you could get me in touch with them and I'll pay them, I know they're going to be ridiculously expensive, but I want them to critique my interview technique and my show prep and the producer goes, you don't need to work on anything. And I was like, you don't know me. If I can improve 1% and it's going to cost me 10 grand, I'm going to pay you that 10 grand. Have you? And they're like, well, I don't know. I mean,

we could go over this, but it's going to be this expensive and you'd have to fly out here. And I'm like, great, when can we do it? And he's like, but you don't need this. I listen to your show. There's nothing that you can improve upon. And I just went, don't tell me that. I don't want to hear that. That just means you can't help me. Like, I want you to say, well, there's, maybe there's something we could do in this department. Because I don't wake up going, I am such a good at, good at this. I wake up going, where is anyone gaining on me and where can I shore up my weaknesses? If it's showcased a little bit more personality on the show, I'm not going, oh, I'll write that on a post-it. I'm going, great, hire a top-notch presenter who's funny

and has a great personality and have them, like, beat me up by listening to the last 10 episodes of the show and find these little areas where they go, this was too boring, this was boring, this one went on too long, and that thing happened. Like, that's what I'm looking for. And people are constantly like, why are you doing that? Go take a vacation. My worst nightmare is being stuck on a beach with no internet, you know, like, I don't want to do that. I feel you, man.

I know. I absolutely love it. And I do get what you mean about that kind of idea that, like, you know, like if you're on the couch, eating the United Stream so that you have to kind of have this some degree of self-worth. And so I think the distinction of this I am enough versus that point is that you remove your self-identity from the failures, from the things you struggle with, from the weight. So I'm not saying like, for example, when I work with people with mental health issues, like I have people who say, I am depressed or I have depression.

It becomes they're who they are. Right, their identity. As opposed to saying something like my brain goes through a state of depression, right? But I'm not my brain. My brain is not me. So you remove the self-identity from it. And when you do that, and Kobe talked about this too as well, like he, he, used to be berated by his coach saying that, you know, like when they would like perform poorly in

their basketball tapes, but it was not about who they were. It was about the behavior, right? So you're removing the self-identity from it. And that is a value. Don't get me wrong. Totally. So I can say, okay, I'm not this thing, these things. And I am all these other things. I cultivate greatness by attaching myself identity to, okay, I've achieved all these things, right? Like, so again, ego, for example. Ego is not a bad thing. Ego is often demonized. Ego is the enemy. Ego is something demon. Like people say ego should be eliminated. But if you want to believe you're great, you have to own your greatness. And athletes are another perfect example of this. Like, Muhammad Ali used to say, you know, I'm the greatest. I knew that before the world knew I was.

You know, like he keeps kept saying, I'm the greatest. When Tom Brady was selected with the Patriots, he said that I'm the best decision this organization's ever made. They owned their ego, you know, but ego and humility can coexist. They also have the humility to be relentless learners, to constantly find that next 1% for improvement. So you have to own your greatness and be like, look, I've done all these things. And I actually have a little tool I call a spirit armory. I have two elements to it, the legend and legacy. And the legacy is all the things I've accomplished. So when I'm in dark spaces, I'll be like, dude, look at everything you've done in your life.

You've achieved all these things. You're badass. You are amazing. You own that greatness and you use that to transition into. So when I say I am enough, it's like not in the sense of like my present self and attaching contentment to it, but I can own this version of me that is now here is great. I've done all these things. But yet my future self is never enough.

The future self I'm creating. Because I also don't believe there's a self to find. There's only a self to create, right? There's no inherent self. we create a self by choosing who we want to be every moment. And so by attaching. I mean, thank God, that's empowering, right? Because otherwise, what if you find it?

And you don't like what you have. Exactly. Yeah, I'd rather be able to build it than to... Exactly. Created to purposeful action. Yeah. So attaching that, using your ego to then drive you into the next self and stepping into whoever that may be.

It's like getting a gift card versus opening a present. You don't know what's in that box, but if you just get a check, you can get whatever you want. Love it. No doubt, man. I love that. I do agree that it has to coexist. Your ego has to coexist with humility. I think there's so much to that. When you see ego without humility, it's a disaster. That's what we see ruinous, this ruinous ego, egocentric behavior. And then we see humility without ego, and it's hard to really, I don't exactly know where that leads,

but one, it seems inauthentic, first of all. Two, it's sort of this weird spiritual plane where I don't think most of us can function healthily. Yeah, I agree. life. There's an interview with the Dalai Lama where even he says something that was like egotistical about himself. But again, it's not a bad thing. And he's the Dalai Lama. Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of spiritual. Slow down there. Who do you think you are? But you know, so ego's not, yeah, you got to own that like that I'm awesome and, you know, that I'm great in order to take the hard thing. Because whatever worthwhile is going to be hard. So in order to do that, you have to tap into yourself, that warrior spirit, which is what we all have

within us. You've got, speaking of warrior spirit, you've got this practical exercise creating a Spirit Armory. What is this? So this is actually carried this everywhere. So I have this little notebook with me right here. I call my Spirit Armory. It literally says Spirit Armory in pencil on it. So what this is, it's two parts. It's the legend and the legacy.

So the legacy is, and that's, you know, you can call it whatever you want, but legacy is the part where you write down all the things you've accomplished that makes you worthwhile, that you believe the successes you've achieved, the struggles you've overcome, the challenges you've faced, all of that stuff. So when things get dark, you can look back and be, like, hey, look, I've done all these things. So you remember what your potential really is. That's the legacy part. The legend part is who is the future version of view, the ideal version of you, like the perfect version of you? Once again, perfectionism, like many things I'm saying,

is not a bad thing. Perfectionism when exercised usefully is a beautiful thing. So use perfectionism. Like I'm striving for perfection all the time. Like you are, chasing perfection, right? You'll never attain it because nobody's perfect. But in the chase is a beautiful thing. In the chasing a perfection, you'll attain excellence, right? So the legend list is the Christ. criteria and the characteristics of traits of the ideal version of myself. So any time I'm sitting around in my, you know, let's say I'm feeling a little bit lazy one day, right? Or I'm in the gym and I'm struggling with the session, you know, whatever may be. A look at my legend list and I have these characteristics, these traits. So for example, one of mine is, which wouldn't surprise

you, an inhuman ability to endure suffering. Oh, yeah. But I have many others there. So I have like consistent in every area with an iron will, structured and disciplined like a machine. So anytime I'm not being this version, I transcend my present self, I notice, I become aware, except what is, and I transcend this self to step into this future self. So one part of it is these characteristics, the other part, which I actually learned from this Olympic gold medal winning athlete, Lanny Basham, he created these statements where I would say, it is like me to. So you're creating personas and beings that you're saying, it is like me to do X. So for example, one of mine, which I'm, this will actually resonate, one of mine is, it is like me to embrace play, love,

and happiness every single day. Now, why do I have that? Because that's not in my wheelhouse. Okay. Yeah, I was going to say, what? Clearly. So you're writing, it is like me to statements that are not who you are now, but who you want to be. So you're imprinting into your conscience and subconscious that this is who you are. This is my being. This is my beingness to step into that. So I carry this everywhere. I mean, it's why it's with me in my pocket and these two things. Like I have have these traits. I have seven, it is like me to statements. Like one more, for example is, it is like me to relentlessly pursue victory with laser focus, meticulous attention to detail,

uncompromising structure, and steadfast discipline. So I create these different things and self-transcendence to transcend this version of me to step into that future version of me anytime I need to. Yeah, that's great. To accomplish the mission. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Akshay Nanavati. We'll be right back after this. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us on the air.

To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard so you can check out those amazing sponsors, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget the worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at Jordanharbinger.com slash podcast. If you're listening to us in the Overcast player, please click that little star next to the episode. We really appreciate it. And now for the conclusion of our episode with Akshay Nanavati. Because sometimes I find, if I don't have a structure for this, then they come around at the wrong time, these values. It'll be like, oh, I'm going to go enjoy this really good meal. I'm going to have Greek food. Oh, I love Pita. you know, bread, whatever, but I'm going to die-co because I'm feeling good.

And then you go, ooh, I'm supposed to be this, like, health-conscious person. And so it sort of conflicts with your values. And then you don't enjoy the meal, but you also feel like crap because you went there for that meal, right? So, like, you lose both times. Other times, I do need those types of values or I don't know if they're called affirmations. Those are a little different. Those are like, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone of people like me. That's a little different.

But, like, if I'm about to go to work and I'm sort of. of groggy. I want something like that where it's like you're playful, people are counting on you, you bring knowledge to millions of people each month. Every show you do is important. It's like, well, maybe I should like put some pants on, you know? Start there. Exactly. Start there. Or not, but like, you know, pretend like you're, you want to be there at least. Yeah, so you can sort of access this persona at will. But it's different than looking in the mirror and telling yourself a bunch of untrue statements that you wish were true. Exactly. Yeah. I think that's kind of nonsense to say, I'm great, I'm great, I'm great. You have to find

reasons to validate to yourself why you are great, you know? So if you're saying, I'm great because of all these things, and this is who I'm stepping into, this is who I'm choosing to be. And so that's why you create structures and systems for everything. Like you said, you know, like, if you don't have systems and structures, it's easy to go to the easiest course of action. So I even systematize like, I have these, I mean, one of my things was it is like me to be very structured. So I have systems for everything. I have systems for how I shower. I have like systems. You have a system for the shower? Yeah. Interesting. It's like I do everything. I do go with the addictive nature and go all in. So I have, like, I systematize my life to the tea. Morning routine, night routine,

days are structured, system to the T. So this is a system. This is a system that I use to access and transcend myself. Everything is systematized. So I don't have to think. I save my cognitive and physical energy for when I need it most. Yeah. I can only imagine what the shower system is. Yeah, so step one. Basically, I have like five different showers. I have a cold shower, a contrast shower, two different forms of a contrast shower. One, a white space creative thinking shower. And then one like a music shower where I'll be like, oh, you know, listen to music. Playful shower. Yeah. So I choose. So every time I enter the shower, there's also a system for each one of those steps. Like each shower has a step-by-step format to follow. And so again, I take it to a different

ridiculous level, but it works. Yeah. I mean, I understand that. By the way, this darkness retreat, can we link to that in the show notes or was that something you set up that doesn't exist for the common man? No, no. Yeah, totally can link to it in the show notes. Yeah, where is it? Darknessretreat.net. It's in Germany. Okay. Yeah. Cool. That's the place that I did it. And they're awesome.

Great, great experience. I highly recommend it. Yeah. Good smoothies. Highly recommend everybody go try it once. What about this legacy side of things? Is that in the same book or you have another book? So same book.

You can even use like a notepad. I use the same book because it's a tiny little thing. I can just fit in my pocket. And then I have my legacy of like, hey, you know, you were Marine. You did all these things. You overcame PTSD, all this kind of stuff. All the stuff that I've achieved in my life to remind me of my awesome. And when do you read that when you feel down or tired?

So the system that I follow to read it, I read my, it is like me to statements every morning, every evening. Usually in the middle of the day, especially if I have a hard training day, then I'll take a nap. And then I also need it as and when needed then. So if I'm having an off day, I will use this. This is my access point because I also track everything. So I plan and track everything. So at the end of every night, I say, what are my top three to five actions for the next day? And then I plan that out.

So then I track my meals. I track my training. So if I'm like, you know, let's say struggling middle of the day to day, I'm procrastinating, I don't like to do this one thing for my work. Because again, I struggle with being the mundane, right? Sitting on my computer is harder for me than going to war. You know, I think I was sharing with you that I was more terrified of going on a date than I was spending seven days in darkness running ultramaritan.

I remember you telling me that. And I was like, I guarantee you this is going to be easier than seven days of darkness. I was terrified of going on that date. But so when... What kind of... Where are you finding these women? So when I face those kind of challenges, I go into here. Be like, look, dude, you've done these things.

You've been to war. Come on, man. Yeah. Step it up. No kidding. Like, she's probably not going to bring any... Yeah, she's not going to try to kill me. No chemical weapons.

Ideally. In the purse. Jeez. Is it true, you have a sign above your TV that says you will die soon? I do. Why even have the TV then? So it's in my living room. I mean, I have a TV, you know, so...

And movies are my relaxation, but it's basically in my living room, so I see it all the time. Yeah. And it's actually not. just a random side. It's a graveyard, and the graveyard is of the tombstone where my friend was buried. Oh, wow. So it's not just like, it's not just, it's not just random. Yeah, it's like, exactly. It's that graveyard and the words you will die soon under it. So I think the fear of death is a good thing. I think we need to stay present to death because by remembering death, we remember, and not in the sense, like live every day like it's your last. Because if you do that nonsense, who's actually

going to put in the work? I'd rather, you know, let's get hopped up and shit face today. Let's get drunk. Yeah, if it's my last day, like, I'm doing something that's probably going to end up getting me arrested, but it won't matter. Exactly. Yeah. I'm not going to put in the work. So it's not in that sense of live every day like it's your last. It's more like, look, death is coming. Death is coming. And it is coming.

And I know that when I get to my death, man, like I want to look death in the eyes and be like, I've given so much to life that I'm actually exhausted and saying, like I can tell death that's good to see you, you know? Like that's how exhausted I want to be by the end of my journey because I've given so much to life. So I like to remind myself that death is coming. And it's intense, obviously, especially because it's a graveyard.

I mean, my dad was in my house the other day visiting. And he's like, what the hell is that? Like, why do you have that? Lighten up, buddy. Yeah, exactly. So I tend to, I get, you know, mixed reactions to it mostly when people come to visit my home. Yeah. Like, if you bring one of your dates back, put a towel over that thing.

Yeah. Jeez. Like, you will die soon. She's like, you know, I'm tired. I'm going to head out. I'll see you later. Yeah. This is why you're single.

Exactly. Exactly. It keeps me driven. It's what, you know. You've got some other practical ways to suffer well, and I think these are a good place to wrap, right? Like some of these we talked about going in the seven days of silence. That's not dipping your toes in the suffering water, though. What about somebody who goes, this sounds like a good idea for me, but I don't want to run a marathon every day for seven days?

I can't fly to Germany and sit in dark room. I can't starve myself or whatever it is. Yeah. You know, where can people start to practice the idea of suffering well without taking a week off work and coming back, you know, having to go to a therapist? Yeah, Roger that. That's a fair question. So fundamentally, it's to reframe, like, at the very core is reframe your mindset and the relationship to the experience of suffering, right? Like, realizing that fear is not a bad thing, struggle is not a bad thing, adversity, stress, all these things are not bad things. That mindset shift is a starting point because, again, most people demonize it.

So, like, I've worked with somebody who said, I'm just waiting for the fear to go away. I said, quit my job and start my business. I said, that's your problem. You're waiting for the fear to go away. It is scary to quit a job and start a business. So first off, just embrace the experience of struggle. and accept that it's present. Once you do that, like great ways to seek out suffering is when you're in it, ask yourself, what can I be grateful for in this pain? What can I learn in this pain? When you look for learnings in it, you actually start to find value in it. So like when I went through my divorce,

I would never have wanted it. It was brutal. It was extremely hard, hence I broke my sobriety and all that. But I started to feel grateful for it, that I'm grateful because I experienced a new kind of suffering, and with the new kind of suffering comes a new kind of evolution. So finding gratitude and pain, another way is to look for a play mindset. So a play mindset is simply saying, how can I enjoy this. It's like as simple as that. Sometimes when I'm running and I'm like horribly in pain, you know, on these ultra runs, I literally consciously bring a smile to my face. And I'm finding, okay, what's fun about this? Why am I here? I'm finding ways to enjoy it. So adopting a play mindset to the experience of pain when you're in it. Right. That's another way.

Ultimately, the most important way is to experience it. You have to go out. I mean, you can listen to this podcast. You can read another book, this, that, and the other thing. This is generally a pretty painful experience. For most people listening. You're embracing the suffering as you're listening to this. That's right. That's right. suffer well so you know so embracing like seeking it out and putting yourself visualizing yourself in the experience of pain and rising it not just like you walking in the beach with a million dollars like the sort of law of attraction kind of thing but visualize yourself overcoming the suck facing this stuff embracing the suck I always like to say the mindset too that progress is not the elimination of problems progress is the creation of new problems so that's a little mantra that guides me that when I have a problem it's a good thing that's actually it's only in the process of engaging a new problem that you can you find a new ability to And finally, another technique that's really helpful is to turn problems into question, turns barriers into questions. So when you come up against a problem, a challenge, a struggle, turn it into a forward-focused question. So as an example, I was working with this kid who kept saying, I don't have money for college.

And most people do this, right? I don't have money. We become like a victim to our problem. Right. Instead, start asking, how can I make money for college? How can I be worthy of a scholarship? Who do I have to become to be worthy of the scholarship? What scholarships are available?

So I always used to struggle like, there's no way I can be like a billionaire Richard Branson entrepreneur and be an ultra runner. No way. And then I said, okay, how can I do both? How can I do both? How can I do both? So now, by looking for asking questions, I found answers. So one of the things I do now is voice notes while running, which you've experienced. I also schedule, I only schedule phone calls while I run. Unless it's in a podcast interview, I only schedule phone calls while I run. That's a good idea. So I can manage my miles with my work. You know, I do voice notes to my team only while I run. That way, when I'm not running, I can manage my work. I up my recovery game. So by asking questions, I'm looking for answers to answer those questions.

And then finally, one more technique is just approaching it from the growth mindset. So I always like to say there's no such thing as bad or good or strong or weak. There's only trained and untrained. So people often say, I'm bad at this. I'm weak at this. I suck at this, right? But instead, when you reframe the mindset, I'm not bad at anything. I'm just untrained.

And then you get to decide, do I want to train at this? So like, for example, my squats are not necessarily the best. Instead of saying, I'm bad at this or I suck at this or I'm weak at this, I'm untrained. Right. And when you shift that, that mindset is a really, powerful technique to say, okay, I'm untrained at this. So then you approach life from a training perspective. And when you do, life becomes training and then it kind of gamifies the struggle, right? Like, I'm training at this. Yeah, that turns everything into a potential opportunity as

when to put the work into it. Exactly. Right. Like, I'm not going to, I'm not a hilarious person. I'm not that funny. Well, I'm just untrained. I can take comedy classes and literally just solve the problem. Exactly. Exactly. So I can train at this and get better at it. But you also tie on to a good point. What you said is what's the clarity on the thing you want to achieve. A big reason why is, again, you're not suffering for the sake of suffering. There's no virtue of certain kinds of pain, like cutting myself. So like you with you, like comedy club, I want to get funnier. What's the clarity of the outcome?

When you have clarity of the outcome, now you have purpose. You have a why driving you behind the struggle. Like running across Liberia, I was helping to raise funds for a school out there. We raised a lot of money, right? So there was a why behind the struggle, you know? So when you have a compelling force pushing you into the pain, it'll help drive you when the suck inevitably hits. That's really cool.

By the way, when you're running across Liberia, which is that safe? I wasn't 100% sure, but it was. I mean, I got stared at a lot because... Yeah, I'm imagining people coming out of their, like, little houses and being like, what is going on right here? Yeah. I saw him on the horizon, and now he's on the other horizon, like, what is this guy doing?

It was, so it was funny, because I got stared at a lot. One, I look different than everybody in West Africa. Yeah. And two, when people are like... And I'm not unaware of what I do as a first world luxury, but people are suffering for food, like struggling for food and water. Nobody's going running, right? So they would see, like, my support car, because I had a support car.

And people would literally be like, why doesn't he? just get in the car. What's wrong with that idiot? You know? There seems to be room in the car. Right there. Because obviously practically speaking, if you're trying to point A to B, get in the damn car. So it was funny, but I got stared at everywhere, but at first it was a little awkward

and I inevitably I got used to it. It was never hostility. It was just curiosity. Sure. Who is this clown doing this? Yeah. But I had the most beautiful experiences sometimes these kids would run with me. Oh, that's cool. The most powerful moments of human connection. And like just a great story too. Like I got close to my cameraman who was filming it.

He would run with me for parts of it. We got so close that I ended up, like he found out, his five-year-old son needed a life-saving heart surgery. Oh, my God. And so through my foundation, we sponsored him. He came and stayed with me and my family in India for a month, him, his wife and his son. He was a local cameraman. Local Liberian cameraman.

Who, I mean, these number of stories had to sort of align for this. This is just wild a story. And, like, he would run with me. He would, like, we were chatting because he saw moments when I was suffering, so he'd come to try to, like, motivate me, and inspire me or whatever, and chat with me. And so we got close, and he told me about his son. and through my foundation, we brought him to India, him, his wife, and his son, and they stayed with me and my family for a month in India. His son had this life-seating heart surgery, and now he's in Liberia, playing soccer, doing all these things.

Wow. It was just the most, like, beautiful moment of people coming together in different worlds to, like, you know, that transcends. I mean, I get kind of goosebumps thinking about it. It was such a powerful moment of human connection to have that. And that's the value, I think, when you, had I drove across the country or something, in the running, in the suffering, you access different states of human connection. One of my buddies, he says a family that suffers together stays together. Yeah, well, that's, yeah, depending on how much they suffer, I suppose. Until they don't.

Go suffer together now, my friend. What an honor to be able to do that for something. Exactly. It was such a beautiful experience. And because we had that run together, we went into those spaces together. Like, we had a different level of connection. It was really beautiful. It was very profound.

I mean, he's seen you probably kind of one of your worst sort of physical slash emotional states, you know, mile number 400 or something like that. Yeah, true. Yeah. Dude, it suck. Yeah. What's the latest way that you are trying to cause yourself suffering? I'm trying not to say it in a way that sounds really true.

But you're basically torturing yourself. So what other madness have you come up with? So right now, the big struggle is actually building and scaling the fear Vana Empire, the business. It's more mundane, the struggle. And also, I've recently, so the women of dating were kind of taking the next step, so terrify me. Yeah. That's terrifying. So my fears now are more, quote, unquote, normal.

Yeah, yeah. But I get, I can see why for you that sort of like vulnerability is much more terrifying. It's so terrifying. So terrifying. Like, it's easier for me to go into war. Like if somebody said tomorrow, I'd go to war, I'd be like, done. Been there down there. Like, I wouldn't let, you know, not because I'm, again, I'm not trying to say holy than now, or better or braver, but it's just because I'm, that's my wheelhouse. That's my comfort zone. But risking getting your heartbroken again. It's, is terrifying. Terrifying. Exactly. So that's part of it. And then I am going to get back into some adventures, polar exploration, mountaineering, some big ultra runs. I do. want to get into some of these post-conflict zones and do some humanitarian and

co-work kind of there so in fact next year early next year in january i'm doing a hundred mile in india to we're my foundation we're helping these young girls who are victims of sex trafficking oh man i've heard about this maybe i heard about it from you that's incredible oh that's a really that's a really um vulnerable population oh man yeah like what these girls have been through this was an organization to support in bombay i go i see them every time i'm there in india and these girls are just the sweetest young girls man and what they have been through the hell. It's inhuman, the level of, like, it's just awful. So anytime you're around those spaces, it's a very intense experience, but just being around them is also the most beautiful,

because these girls are the sweetest kids. And you just feel like it's heartbreaking what some of them have, like, been through. So we're going there to do some work to help support them, to help potentially rescue some girls, bring some girls out, and raising funds for this nonprofit through my own foundation. I'm going to be doing a hundred-mile because, of course. Yeah, because naturally. What else? What else does one do? To help raise funds as well, so doing some of that stuff. I'm surprised you're not like, I'll sit in a room with strobe lights and death metal for 24 hours or, I don't know, 124 hours to raise money for the, and it's like, I'm on to you. You like this. That's not easy for me. Yeah, yeah. Funny, you do mention that. I

forgot. We've talked about that. Actually, that is something I'm working and experimenting next is of course you are. Is the strobe lights and death metal. So I got a strobe light in my house. They found the song, I forget the name of it, but it's like the song that CIA uses to torture people. It's like the horrible death metal song. It's horrible. I can't remember what it I'll remember and send it to you. Some Ramstein or something like that. So I want to practice sitting in a room of that and practicing being still in the face of external chaos.

So that's why I ran 80 miles around a point two mile. I want to get to the point where it doesn't matter what the external environment is, I'm able to internally control my frame. So whether I'm running across beautiful mountains or running 80 miles around a parking lot, it's for me the internal experience is the same. I'm nowhere near there.

This is the kind of spiritual mastery that takes a lifetime to attain kind of thing, but I figure being in a strobe light with death matter, is a step in the right direction. Only you, Aksh. Well, this has been amazing. Thank you very, very much. Thank you, brother.

Big thank you to Akshay. The book title is Fiervana. And all proceeds from the book, Fear Vana, go to human trafficking, well, a human trafficking, charity to help victims of human trafficking, to be specific, force prostitution, human trafficking,

other horrible crimes. This organization is looking to eradicate that. So go and pick up a copy of Fear Vana. We'll link to that in the show notes as well. There's video of this interview, up on our YouTube channel at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. There are also worksheets for each episode so you can review what you've learned here from Akshaneanavati.

That's at Jordan Harbinger.com in the show notes. We've also got transcripts for each episode, and those can also be found in the show notes. We're teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems and tiny habits over at six-minute networking. That's our free course over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Now, you'll do it later, right, I get it. I've heard it all before, but you've got to dig the well before you get thirsty. Once you need relationships, you are way too late.

These drills take a few minutes a day. I wish I'd started 20 years ago. You can either put it off even further or you can start right now. It's not fluff. It is crucial and it's free. Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And by the way, most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course in the newsletter. So come join us.

You'll be in smart company. In fact, why not reach out to Akshae Nanavati and tell him you enjoyed this episode of the show? Show guests love hearing from you, and you never know what might shake out of that. Speaking of building relationships, you can always reach out or follow me on social. I'm Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. This show is created in association with Podcast One. This episode was produced by Jen Harbinger, Jason DeFilippo, and edited by Jace Sanderson. Show notes and worksheets by Robert Fogarty, music by Evan Viola,

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