The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 299: Kyle Maynard - "The World Will Not Be Tailored To Your Every Need" (Scaling Kilimanjaro)

Episode Date: February 25, 2019

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode #299: Kyle Maynard Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com Kyle Maynard is a motivational speaker, bestselling author, entrepreneur, and ESPY award-winning mixed martial arts athlete, known for becoming the first quadruple amputee to reach the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Aconcagua without the aid of prosthetics. Oprah Winfrey called Kyle "one of the most inspiring young men you will ever hear about." Arnold Schwarzenegger described him as "the real deal," "a champion human," and "one of the most inspiring people" he's ever met. Even the great Wayne Gretzky has spoken of Kyle's "greatness." Show Notes: Commonalities of sustaining excellence: Consistent action... Plotting Life is a marathon "I've struggled with this." "We live in a society that we think we have to reach the summit" "Climb as hard as you can but relinquish the fact that you've ever arrived."  It will never be enough to fulfill you. "You've never arrived, you're always becoming." "I question what we're driven towards." Losing the first 35 matches... His dad told him that no wrestlers win in their first year and convinced him to go back for his second year "What you're looking for, you're going to find." A self-efficacy belief.  It's in your deeper nervous system... It becomes automatic.  His dad planted the seed. "We have this illusion in our head, but it doesn't happen overnight." "The world will not be tailored for your every need." "We are softening the edges, we need to learn how to mentally deal with things." "We need to choose conscious suffering." "Voluntary hardship" The power of meeting veterans in an airport on a way to giving motivational speeches "It shifted, it wasn't about me."  The message helped veterans not commit suicide. "It's B.S. to think anyone is self-made.  We all need help."  The ripple effect. Why climb? "I want to experience the world.  Just did scuba dive at the Great Barrier reef." Crawling 19,340 feet in just ten days... Climbing Mount Kilmanjaro "Focus on that next three feet in front of you..." Just the next step.  Before you know it, you put your head up and you're at your destination Reminds me of Alison Levine -- "Just put one foot in front of the other and take that next step. Just keep going." "I don't know if I have enough in the tank, but I'm going to keep going." "The 3 feet in front of you is the only thing that matters" "Anything is possible is a lie... Tell the truth, know how to test your limits" "What gets measured gets done" How long can you enjoy accomplishments? "It's a weird dance." "What I'm learning to do now is plotting the essence of it..." Favorite book: Empire Of The Summer Moon Fasting: "When you fast (don't eat), your body picks the weakest cells and eats them."  There is a lot of science to support fasting Advice to others: Value money but not too much Have a small number of possessions Namaste = "Light inside of me.  Recognize light inside of you." Take calculated risk, go on adventures "Follow your bliss"

Try to do what's right. Try to do what you can do that others can't. And if you think that there are things that that's not the case, like you miss the point. You have in you, like a deeper core essence of your being that the world needs, whether or not you believe it. And if you don't believe it, you're missing it. Everyone loves payday, but loving a payroll provider, that's a little weird.

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slash leader. That's gusto.com slash leader. Welcome to the learning leader show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Text learners to 44222.

In order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world, text learners to 4422. Now on to tonight's featured leader. Wow. The inspirational Kyle Maynard. He's a motivational speaker, best-selling author, entrepreneur, and SB award-winning mixed martial arts athlete, known for becoming the first quadruple amputee to reach the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro without the age of prosthetics.

Oprah Winfrey called Kyle one of the most inspiring young men you will ever hear about. Arnold Schwarzenegger described him as the real deal and a champion human and one of the most inspiring people he's ever met. Incredible. A few of the topics that Kyle and I got into. Why? Kyle kept going after losing his first 35 wrestling matches in the sixth grade. Then his purpose behind climbing some of the biggest mountains in the world and how that applies to you. Then why the quote, anything is possible is not true. And Kyle shares a better message. Ladies and gentlemen, wow. It's Kyle. All right, Kyle Maiderns, I am honored to have you here on The Learning Leaders Show. Welcome, man. Hey, thanks, man. I appreciate you having me on and hello to your audience. Thank you. Thank you. I am curious to get us going immediately, man. So you have spent a great portion of your life surrounded by people who sustain excellence, teams, whether it's in athletics or climbing mountains or everything in between and you're constantly helping people. I'm curious from your perspective,

Kyle, what have you found to be the commonalities among people who sustain excellence? Probably the thing that comes to mine first is probably the thing that I'm also weakest at. I would say it would just be consistent plotting along. I've lived in like just short, intense spreads, which I think my body is built for that. But I mean physically and mentally, I don't know, it's kind of like my dad would always say, Life is like more of a marathon than it is a sprint. And I think I'm learning the truth of that more and more all the time. It's I think the consistency is such an underrated aspect of success.

So Kyle, normally when I ask that question, the guest starts listing off qualities about themselves. I believe you may be the first to list qualities that are not about yourself, or at least which you don't feel like they are. That is a fascinating response to me. I love consistency. That's a cool. No, I mean, it's just kind of, yeah, I think it speaks to your, I guess I would say, humility about it and awareness to say this is something I'm working on.

What has, and there's probably a lot here, but what is it that makes you feel like consistency is both something you don't possess enough of yet, as well as why it's so important? Yeah, we live in a society where there's an illusion that gets propagated that we're going to reach a summit. at some point in our lives that we will have gotten to this point and we will have felt like we've made it. And I have never met someone that's made it. So I've met a lot of people and I've never ever met someone who's just done this thing and then arrived at where they were. And we're talking some of my best friends are former seals,

astronauts, billionaires, whole different people. I think the weird dichotomy that I try to live in right now is both making it and surrender to the fact that I never will. But the interesting aspect of that is you actually have reached some summits. And for those who don't know your story, how do you, when you think about those moments when you've reached the summits of big mountains in the world, Kilimanjaro, Akana Kaga, I'm pronouncing that wrong. That's okay.

Okay, Kaka, yeah, yeah. Sorry about that. A for effort. when you think about that though you've reached those summits and we'll talk about why that's even more impressive in a second so so there have been moments when you have are you saying that you've gotten there and realized or or i guess i should say what have you realized once you've reached some of these summits oh yeah no yeah for sure i don't want to be like confuse your audience and think that i'm saying don't don't climb don't work for something like that's the exact opposite i'm saying climb as hard as you can

in the direction that you feel most suited that's going to make the lives of people around you better in your own, but also relinquish the fact that you're ever going to feel like if you get this raise, if you get this promotion, if you get this new sale, new opportunity, if you get this, you know, this speech or something or you get this mountain summit, that that's ever going to be enough to fulfill you for the rest of your days. It's like it's an illusion, that aspect of it. So it's weird. It's like I'm trying to learn to climb as high as I can personally. figuratively and literally, but also learning to, you know, realize the fact that every time I come down off of a mountain, there will be that emptiness until I go and pick up something else again. And like just to be okay with that ebb and flow. Wow. Okay. It reminds me a little bit of I talked to JJ Redick and JJ Reddick, a basketball player currently for the 76ers. And he's having a great season. He's had a great career. And he told me that one of the things that annoyed him at

times, or I don't know if I should use the word annoyed, but one of the things that was interesting to him was he'd go back and speak to these high school, All-Americans or college players that were really good players. And sometimes he'd look in the crowd and see, uh, tattooed on their body, the word arrived. And it always bugged him because he'd say, what are you talking about? You've never arrived. You're always, you're always becoming. And that's been kind of his mantra for himself, as well as teaching others to say, regardless of what you do or the summits you reach, we've never arrived, we're always becoming.

Yeah, no, I think that's, he kind of hit the nail on the head. It's a weird, it's a weird thing, though, but to accept the fact that what are you becoming? Like, what are you working towards? What is this possession, like your audience, I'm guessing as a very driven audience. What I kind of question all the time is just to take a step back

and to figure out what we're driven towards is really like an important aspect of it. And wherever you're guiding that ship of your life is going to have consequences no matter what, right? So what are they? And just to have like deeper reflection on that. It's a weird mix of climb hard, but surrender to the fact that we're just like a speck. Yeah. Well, I think another part of your story, which for those who don't know, you were born with a rare condition known as congeneral amputation.

which essentially means it left you with arms that end at your elbows and legs that end near your knees. And so I think for a second people should picture that and then think about what you've gone on to do. Starting in, I believe it was sixth grade where you went out for the wrestling team. Is that correct? Yeah, football and wrestling. We're kind of in the middle school thing. And then I stuck with wrestling in the high school and then got more into jiu-jitsu and MMA. So did I read this right that you,

lost the first 35 matches as a wrestler. Yeah. So can you walk me through what's going through your mind because you're born, obviously, as we've talked about with this rare condition as congenital amputation, where it leaves your arms where they are and legs where they are, that would certainly be a challenge for anyone. And then you go out for the wrestling team, you start wrestling, and you lose 35 in a row to start.

I would say just about every human on earth would say, you know what, this is just not for me. It's time to quit and move on. Yet, you chose to do the opposite. Can you take us back to that moment and what you were thinking and then how you went on to become not only a decent wrestler, but a champion wrestler? It was, I wish I could pretend like I could take credit for it, but I can't necessarily. it was basically my dad tricked me in to sticking around. He said, look, very few people ever went a match their first year in wrestling,

but everybody who signs up their second year will win a match because you'll find somebody who is their first year, so he'll beat them. And that's kind of what got to sign up in the second season. And he told me this whole big story about how he didn't win a match this whole first year that literally like I'd built my life on this. And then later found out when I was writing my book when I was 19 and all that, like interviewing my dad's dad, my grandpa,

I found out that that whole story was a complete lie. So an initial kind of thing, okay, I planted that seed of like I will win and match my second year and I started looking for that first opponent who was a first year wrestler. And literally, you know, I think there's a lot of evidence that supports this now too. But what you're looking for you're going to find basically, right? Like if your brain is wired to look for all the reasons why you're going to fail at whatever it is that you're doing, then self-efficacy is the, the, the, the, the definition for this, but it's like a self-efficacy belief. Dr. Albert Bandura did a ton of research

in this. So if you're looking for all those reasons why you're going to fail, you're going to find those. If you're looking for the reasons why you're going to succeed, you're going to find those, but it's almost like at a deeper nervous system autonomic level. It's like hardwired and are subconscious what those things are. And, you know, your conscious mind, you can kind of direct it and guide it. But he had literally planted this seed in me. You know, I will beat a first-year wrestler and sure enough that was the kid that I beat was because I was looking for that first year wrestler and beat that kid and then just changed everything from there and I ended up you know then yeah like you said you know many years later and many thousands of hours of drills and weight room and

all of that stuff and matches and tournaments and sitting there all weekend but then yeah by the time I was a senior in high school the discussion had flipped completely and now I'd beat the state champion from Alabama and Louisiana went to double overtime at the Tennessee state champ it was just a wild, wild gear. And there's this discussion as to whether or not I was unfairly advantaged at that point. What? How? Well, you know, I mean, there was merit to the argument because I had the torso of someone who was larger than at that point in time. I weigh like 150 pounds right now. And I was like 103 pounds at the time and wrestling at 103 and had the torso of someone who was larger. So I don't have that pesky extra arm and leg weights, so am I just too strong?

The weight class is kind of there. What did you think when that became an argument, this guy who's born with this rare congenital amputation, that that could be an advantage? I think I was frustrated by the debate because I think a lot of people didn't necessarily take into consideration the fact that there was a tremendous amount of time that I was losing all of these matches. I don't want to make it sound to be a bigger thing than it was. It wasn't really a ton of people that were making these claims. It was mostly the parents and some of the kids that I beat. So a lot of people didn't see having a fight and struggle to make this happen, right? We just had this illusion in her head that somehow this person just like arrived and was plopped into where they were.

For instance, like there's, I don't know, F-18s flying by the window right now. If you can hear that in the background, I hope it's not too distracting. But, you know, imagine being a F-18 pilot that doesn't happen overnight. It's a tremendous amount of time to go and get to that point where then you would be in that pilot seat doing that thing. And that's maybe again, tying back to what we talked about earlier with the consistency. It's like what I'm trying to learn more is literally just that consistent plot towards a goal is more important, maybe than the manic moments of intensity followed by like a crash

and burnout after that. I found a great family. It's obvious, but having that support and that backing and even in a way to trick you a bit to help you out is so vital. And one of the things I believe I read your dad said was, Kyle, the world will not be tailored for your every need. And so in a way that they probably deserve some credit as far as not treating you as a special, needs person and just treating like a regular person saying, hey, hey, man, the world's not tailored to you. You've got to figure it out.

What impact did that message have on you growing up? It's huge. And I'm glad that he had that foresight to see that. And I think that my mother's instinct was to coddle naturally. She was a mom. She wanted to help and take things away and make it easier, even like picking up a spoon. and swinging it around and using a normal spoon or fork like I do now

and don't even really think about it in the day to day. That was a period of time where she wanted to jump in and feed me and help me with that. And he said, no, he's got to figure out how to do this on his own. And I had that kind of concern for to some degree where we're heading

globally is, you know, like the world now is becoming with technology, with things like that, we're softening the edges with things in ways that we never have before. And while on one level, that's amazing and good. And it's probably like the best time to be alive.

For some, it can also become the worst. And without learning how to mentally deal with things and how to like wrestle and dance mentally, we can turn what could otherwise be heaven into hell. So I see that happening more and more. And I think that our use of tools and technology inextricably linked to our evolution arriving at us at this point now where technology is just taken off through the roof and we have to apply a bit more conscious suffering. We have to choose the things that we're going to suffer with.

Otherwise, it'll be chosen for us if that makes any sense. I can go into more what I mean by that, but it's like we have 24-hour access to food. Then all of it's not that great in your hardwired and your biology to go and seek out stuff that's going to be delicious and not necessarily the best stuff for you. So if you don't choose to like do something, whether it's fasting or training or healthy eating diet protocol, whatever, then you'll suffer in other ways. All right. I love for you to take me inside a story here.

I'm going to set it up. Then maybe you can take it from from where I set up. So I believe you had left school to become a speaker. You were speaking motivational type of stuff and you were in the airport. And I think I read that you met a couple of soldiers in that airport. And for what happened during that conversation, it left an impact on you. Can you take it from there and tell me what happened next at that point? Yeah, I was having, I just started speaking and traveling.

And I was doing a lot of this on my own. I was 19 speaking for Fortune 500 companies. And I had no idea what I was talking about. and I didn't know anything about the business world or economics. Even if I'm speaking for a mortgage company, I had some vague idea of what a mortgage is that somebody gives you money to buy a house. So like no idea. And I was just telling my story of mostly wrestling at that point,

it had not done really anything else. And traveling by myself and as anybody knows, it's spent a lot of time in hotel rooms by themselves, then it can be lonely at times, right? And so I was delivering this no excuses message, but I was not necessarily applying those things to myself and gained weight and was in a funk and it was, you know, like a depressed motivational speaker, not a great combo. So I had a conversation with my mom where I was thinking, okay, do I go back to school full-time

or do I continue to go down this path and do this? And it was weird. Like we got off the phone. I went through security in the airport and, you know, I met these two guys that had gone through really hard things and been veterans that had been. injured in an ambush and you know went through extraordinarily painful things and came back home and happened to see my story on HBO and said like that helped him and we ended up sharing this fight together and it was just like in this moment where I'm thinking you know all about myself all

about I was not connected to the deeper purpose or meaning of what it was that I was doing and I met these two guys that I never would have met otherwise had it not been for just this random moment in time where we have this interaction and they go and tell me that my story had impacted them and it just completely made me shift and made me realize

that like it was just it wasn't about it wasn't about me there was a bigger deeper thing with a message that like hopefully a handful of people even if I didn't know it

would be able to take something away you know and one of the amazing things that happened to with the gentleman that I'm still friends with he was a banker at one of those events

and basically quit his job and became a multi-millionaire. It probably wouldn't have had it not been for leaving that job that he was in. And I didn't know this until like a decade later. So I just, I challenge people that are listening to this. Like the takeaway necessarily would be try to do what's, what's right, try to do what you can do that others can't.

And if you think that there are things that that's not the case, like you miss the point. Like you have in you, like a deeper core essence of your being that the world needs, whether or not you believe it. And if you don't believe it, you're missing it. If you're hearing this and saying like, oh, Kyle and Ryan can go and impact the world, whatever, because, you know, there's speakers or whatever podcasting. Then it can be an ego thing, too, to think you got to go and, like, change the world or

whatever. No, like, you got to go and treat somebody nice at Starbucks. Like, you got to go, like, my football coach especially is a perfect example. who is just a blue-collar construction working manager, you know, for a construction company, who if it weren't for him lobbying to go and fight for me to go into play, and then there would be no Kyle Mayer. So it's complete BS to think that anybody is, like, entirely self-made. We all have mentors. We all have people that have guided us and directed us and propelled us to this.

Be that for someone else. You know, it could be as simple as you go in and volunteering and having, like, a kid that you're mentoring. It doesn't necessarily always have to be some, like, bigger things. point. Like, and the ripple effect of that occurring can be so profound that we can't even fathom it. Then you decide to climb mountains, which there are most people that don't have any type of condition that they were born with. They have all fully functioning arms and legs that do not decide to climb the mountains that you've climbed. Why did you do that? Or why do you currently do this? I've asked myself that question many times while I'm there. Like,

the why would be the simplest answer. I think as a kid, the why was like, because my friends would run off into the woods and I wasn't able to follow him. I desperately wanted to. My wheelchair would get stuck in tall grass or thick mulch, you know. And I would want to go and experience the world and nature. And now that's kind of like the deeper drive.

It's like I just did some scuba dives in the Great Beery Reef. And it was unreal. So cool. actually significantly easier and just is beautiful, if not more, than any climb I've ever done. And I don't know, like it kind of makes me sad sometimes to go and see how collectively, you know, seven billion of us are treating the planet. But while it's here, I want to like appreciate as many different experiences as nature as I can. So that's, you know, really like, I think it started as kind of like going into places that were restricted. Now it's like I want to go

one of those places that were previously restricted and appreciate the beauty that's there. What's the process to actually make this happen? The training, the team. How dependent on others are you or not? I'm curious just what that's like. Like you said, you're climbing these huge mountains that perfectly healthy people don't do or die trying. So what is all that like? Yeah, the team is an enormous aspect of it.

Like when I'm physically there, they're crawling to the summit than I'm doing it unassisted as far as any climber goes, right? So I'm on a rope. We're all connected or whatever. You know, there's kind of the whole team. And I'm not, you know, my friends are carrying a pack. So, you know, I feel like that that helps. And there's big reliance on each other when you're climbing, right? It's also the process to get there.

When I first started climbing, my friends, Joey and Dan and other friends, we were, you know, going to, like, a Home Depot or Lowe's and trying to figure out, you know, or like a Walmart or whatever, trying to grab bath towels to, like, duct tape on and like oven mitts and pot holders or welding sleeves or different things to be kind of custom shoes. And thankfully, some amazing people in Arizona helped make these custom carbon fiber orthotic and prosthetic, or like not prosthetics, but it's like an orthotic, basically. It's like a shoe socket that kind of goes around my arms and my feet and custom climbing crampons and things like that to go. So it's hugely helpful to have people that are more knowledgeable about us and stuff like this and help out. It's pretty amazing. So you make it to the climb. And I think one of the things that reminding me a little bit of Allison Levine who's climbed to Mount Everest. And she told me that that her focus had to be as she's climbing this mountain, not really looking up very much, but just focusing on the next step.

And I've heard you talk a little bit about this of just having a focus on simply the three feet in front of you and just getting that three feet and then the next three and the next three. And it reminded me a lot of Allison just saying, I'm not really focusing on climbing the mountain. I'm just focusing on taking the next step. And I'm curious, how would you relate that then to just everyday life with leaders in general, how your focus and hers of, essentially, which is just taking care of what's directly in front of you and not necessarily worrying about anything past that? Yeah. Look at that. It's 333 right when you're asking that question, too. That's really weird.

The whole three feet concept, basically, like it came down to Summit Day on Akink. Cagua, which was the physically like hardest physical test had ever been through. You know, so it's, the summit is 22,800 feet. And we were at about 22,000 feet. My body was just in like full shutdown mode. We'd been on this mountain for over two weeks at this point. And another one training for a little bit to kind of acclimatize. And then I've been sleeping in an altitude tent for about two months up to that point.

So there's just a lot that had gone into this. this, I'm sitting 10 feet away from where an American climber had just fallen over and died the day before. And I was trying to put out as hard as I thought that I could. And yet, like, my gear was breaking, too. There was a lot of things going wrong. I was stopping, too. I would go a couple feet, and I would just sit and stop for a second.

I wasn't moving fast enough, and so my friends had to split off him to the summit without me, and they didn't want to leave. It was just the decision that our Argentinian guys. came up with and the two Argentinian guides stayed back with me and my my my friends joey kevin and David went with another guide to the summit and i'm watching my friends around the corner and hit the summit and it was just like this heartbreaking moment and thinking like this sucks you know and kind of having this pity party for myself and from like a like an energy in energy out perspective of like thermodynamics i'm like i don't know calorically if i have enough physically left in the tank to go in to make it but

yet I'm going to try and I realized like okay if I'm going to try no matter what's going wrong no matter how far I am from the summit I can't spare a single caloric thought towards the you know positive or negative you know like if I'm going to make it if I'm not going to make it you know I'm not there yet so it's kind of like when you're in the car you're in a road trip and you know whatever your kid you ask your parents are you there yet we're there yet we're there yet no you're not freaking there yet so just shut up and keep going. And I realize that, when I'm climbing to get people a visual

and bear crawling down on all fours. And so I'm looking just at the three feet that's in front of me. And it just, that's a big aspect of what dawned on me was like, okay, this is the only three feet that matters. Like I'm going to pretend as if no other three feet

in the world exists because if I'm looking at this three feet in front of me, then I don't even know if it does. I'm only going to go and do this three feet and turn it into a game. I wouldn't allow myself to sit down. I just turn it into a game or I deal with this three feet. And then boom, I do that three feet.

And then there's another three feet. And then there's another three feet. And I'd bring it back. Nope. This three feet. Like, you know, that's it. And then I would go again. And did this for about an hour, but it was strange because I didn't really have

any concept of how much time had passed. And my guy grabbed my waist belt an hour later and told me to look up where it was. And I was literally just 10 or 15 minutes away. the summit. And a couple minutes later, I rounded the corner and hit the summit and it was just wild. I, for one, had way more left in the tank, as it were, than I thought. And I also, you know, realized that, like, this moment of intense suffering, you know, and physical limits and all those things, like, by literally just looking at that three feet and pretending as if that's the only three feet in the world that exists, then it turned into a game. And it could be fun.

So, you know, now I, to my best of my ability, at least try to, like more and more every day, I'm trying to turn that into like a practice and a game of just this three feet. And, you know, like what could that look like? Well, it looks like the next three hours. Okay. So that leads me to like, it's, you know, 338. And it leads me to 638. Like what are those next three hours? What do I need to go and do there to, like, achieve to, like, be as good as it could be and live deeper and further, but also surrender to the fact that I'm never going to get to where it is that I've arrived, like we talked about earlier.

So it's just kind of, yeah, like I guess that plotting, you know, I've heard it said, maybe this is helpful, maybe not, but one of my mentors in the speaking world, he said that speakers speak about the message that they most need to hear. and maybe that's why I'm telling you this is that like maybe this is the message that I most need to hear right now. Know your limits but never stop trying to break them. One of your messages as well as the fact that there are people who espouse this message that anything is possible. And when you see your story and watch the videos of you, I think, That would be natural to say, wow, look at Kyle, anything is possible. However, you disagree. Why is that?

Well, I would say that I disagree just because I think it's a, it's a little bit too simple to just, just to say anything is possible. And it kind of misses the true point of anything that's possible with the right tools, with the right team, with the right amount of time. Then, you know, it's like Archimedia said, you know, give me a lever long enough. and I'll lift the world. Like a relationship to like the tools and the team to the time, like all of those things like is amazing. And we can do amazing stuff. And maybe anything is possible in that context.

Yet I believe a better way to go and say it is to actually know your limits to tell the truth to yourself about what those limits are. And limits are interesting. Limits are relative. They're relative to all of us. Like all of us have different limits in terms of our physical nature and terms of our, you know, the vast majority of people listening to this are probably better at, like, arithmetic calculations and I would be, I'm not really good at that. Like, it's hard, I don't

know. It's not really something I value right now to necessarily push the limits of. So it's, it's like, know your limits is to test. And in order to test, you have to test and test honestly and tell the truth to yourself about that test. You know, in the early days of CrossFit, I became close with, like, Greg Glassman, the founder of that and moved. on and other things now, but I love the aspect of what he presented to the fitness world, where it was just, you know, what gets measured gets done. And, you know, when you apply things to like tell the truth to yourself about a fitness goal, to like track it, to measure it, to be able to see where it's at, then you know, okay, I can move from A to B. And I think that's a beautiful

aspect of life. That's how we grow. It's how we climb our own individual evolutionary ladder, to become the most evolved version of ourselves is tell the truth to ourselves about all things, even the things that we're afraid to tell the truth to ourselves about. You've reached a couple of summits, literal mountain summits. Can you walk me through

the emotion you're going through when you've reached the peak of these mountains? Yeah, you know, I think especially in Acoma, the one that we were just talking about there was very different. You know, it was like I, there was a lot of emotional reasons for me that I was there.

In particular, my grandma, who was everything to me, had just passed earlier that year. And I felt, for one, closer to her there than I had in a while. And I felt, incidentally, my guide had brought a snack for me, like two or three days before the summit, like specifically made a big deal about the snack and one that she would carry in her purse all the time. So it was a really special kind of thing there. Yeah, Nana Summit there. I just try to realize, you know, I'm probably, odds are never going to be here again. So I just want to like look around and really just take it in and appreciate it and see as much as I could see and have those memories.

And memories are pretty good now. They're a little fuzzy in there, you know, but like most people have those kind of, I was possible. There's like pictures in mind that like some mental snapshots that I've tried to like take with me and those kind of things to me matter way more than anything else, way more than any, you know, medal or achievement or anything like that ever could or plaque or whatever award. How long until your mind gets back to tackling another challenge? Is it, is it quickly? Or are you able to soak it in,

appreciate that, spend a moment to be gentle on yourself, or are you thinking about the next thing? That's been a weird dance in my life. I'm sure you and many of your listeners have kind of had the same thing. I, you know, at moments and time and past things that I'd done, then I'd come back and, you know, I would go through like a period of depression almost afterwards after this big event it was over and then like, oh, okay, now what? You know, and it, I think that that's kind of like that weird dance of where I'm at now. Like I said, this is, you know, I'm saying this maybe to remind myself of this and maybe hopefully other people can go and take something away from it.

What I'm learning to do now is to, you know, I can do great things by continually plotting towards what is my core essence and bringing more of that out into the world. but also like surrender to the fact that I'm not necessarily trying to get anywhere. And when I say that, it's a dream force like, okay, I am not trying to like get anywhere that I already am. Like I'm already there. I'm in it right now. I'm living.

I've had times where I've been in hell, you know, when I was younger especially. And even later on as an adult where I was wrestling against existence itself. But now, like I'm already wherever I wanted to be. and there's still things that I want to do and become and work towards. But yet at the same time, I'm more just open to the idea of being surprised as to what that next three feet will look like than anything else. Like the three feet has gotten really beautiful and really weird. And it's like I'm more intrigued by like the beauty and the strangishness of what's going to unfold next than I am trying to figure out. what that is. And even in saying that, it's still, it's a reminder to myself to actually live that.

Seems like you spent a great deal of time and reflection. I sense these thoughtful responses and almost self-talk. That's really interesting to me. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm very influenced by a lot of existentialists. I'm very influenced by a lot of like, that's a very kind compliment. Thank you. I mean, I think that can also, like, be one of my greatest strengths and weaknesses, too. You know, sometimes if it's only reflection, then you don't necessarily go out and live, you know, and do. And I do want to live and do, you know, I'm my favorite book in the world. I was just talking to someone about this a little bit ago earlier today, but it's called Empire of the Summer Moon. And it's the history of the Comanchee Indians.

basically and like my personal heroes, Plana Parker, like the last cheat of the Comanches. Partly because they were like a worst to first kind of story. They were like the weakest of the Indians that became the strongest and put up a hell of a fight against the Americans 10, 20 years post-Civil wars when the bulk of the fighting occurred. But they lived an amazing life, the fulfilled life, and culturally connected.

The way that they lived, you know, and in tune and connected with each other with nature. And it was a hard life, but it was like they got it. And I don't know, I'm attempting to live more and more like that every day. So like a loving Comanche is kind of my name. I love it. I'm curious, man. What's your day to day like?

I don't know if you have typical days based on travel and speaking and everything that you do. But what is it like a day in the life like for you? it's been different now the last little bit like i took a while off kind of arriving out of what ultimately i hope was like one of my like last deep deep trips and like reflection where it stumbled me uh you know for the like six months of the second half of 2018 i was basically just trying to make sense of a lot of these things and and try to understand shit at a deeper level and i realized okay like i finally gave up and some of my best friends came out and basically were like, we need you back and, you know, like, let's do some stuff together.

And now that's kind of what we're doing together. So as it stands right now, I'm sitting in Virginia Beach with some of my best friends and business partners here. Joey's, you know, been my childhood best friend and has kind of helped me with building the speaking business and all that. And then one of my other best friends, like a brother who is in the garage, former C. and a pro-MMA fighter now in launching a supplement company. I'm a partner with him and that's like apparel in supplements,

but the message of it is mindset is everything. We've had over 100 people and more at this point to like a 10-day fast using the smashing greens is the main product. Mitch created it to help with like his weight cuts. And now we turn it into a product that people have been able to use

to go and have great. results in terms of weight loss and gain more disciplined by doing something that is hard. And fasting, it's one of those things that, like, I wholeheartedly believe in the utility of the 2016 Nobel Prize winner in medicine was a Japanese scientist who did a study on autophagy. So basically, like, the idea that it's called autophagy is like self-eating. So when you are in a fasted state, your body's going to basically pay. the weakest cells first and you know you constantly have cells in your body that are jacked up

from uh transcription and all that like you know it's so that's a big aspect that's kind of like having you know just getting people back to that state you know our ancestors they knew what it was like to go through extended periods of starvation they knew what it was like to go through periods of extreme heat and cold and everywhere in between we've kind of lost that i think that our body is like a collective feedback mechanism loop that being kind of more in tune with our evolutionary history is a big aspect of what I'm trying to get across to people. Wow. That's fascinating.

That six months, it sounds like was it challenging or what did you do? It was interesting. I read a lot. Really? I read a lot. I thought a lot. Were you out on the road speaking or no? You stopped doing it?

No, no, not really. I just kind of like I did a couple things, small things, but like I was mostly just like reading and thinking and yeah, kind of learned a lot, but also. Was there a specific reason that happened at that time? A number of things. And there were so many like good things too and but like hard things. But it was just like it was a lot that I was trying to make sense of the world and life. And, you know, I mean, just so many things. and, you know, just deeper existential things.

I think that's kind of like a big aspect of what this struggle is in the world today is people. Like there's more than ever like an epidemic for personal meaning. And even though I'd found these moments of meaning in my life, I wanted to go and help other people find moments of meaning in theirs. And I determined, though, that like the meaning was never going to be found in any of these books that I had. It was going to be found literally in trying to like search for the soul in the eyes of another. That's where I try to drive my meaning. I don't know.

I think existence is almost like hide and seek and like I want to look for, even though I can't see you in your eyes now. Like I want to hear in your voice. Like where is it that I can hear your soul? Where is it that I can feel it? You know, what is it that you are? And the more I do that, just the more interesting the game becomes. One last question, Kyle.

So let's say right now there was a young professional. who has not quite figured out life yet and they're sitting across from you and they'd say, Kyle, I, I'm looking for some advice on how to build a good career and live a fulfilled life. What are, what are a few things that you've learned that, that you could share with me as I'm trying to figure some things out? Young professional, I would say, uh, value money, but not too much. You know, value a small, like, number of possessions deeply and discard most of them. And, you know, value a handful of people deeply, yet seek looking for that, like, divine spark, so to speak, whatever.

Like, you know, they say namaste at the end of a yoga class, but I think that the word itself is actually way more powerful than just to, like, to close down, you know, a yoga class. the meaning of it means the light inside of me recognizes that light inside of you, like turn that into a game that even if you are dealing with us, you know, superior at work that you have nothing in common with. It's just, you know, complete asshole. Find that divine spark inside of them that good or someone that's an opposing political party or, you know, just different radical ideology that's not your own. Seek out, you know, what it is.

Like, where is that like soul hiding in them even if they don't. I don't know. That would be a big aspect. And then I would say take calculated risk that allows you to just cross the threshold and go on the adventure. I wholeheartedly believe what Joseph Campbell said and follow your bliss. What gives you bliss? It's not necessarily just what gives you happiness. What gives you bliss might be extraordinarily fearful and painful to pursue deeply and fully. But yet that is your call to adventure. in your life and to pay attention to those like sign along the way that are going to guide you to where like the universe opens for you that it would not for anybody else. And just trust that it will and trust that like the dots connect together. But act as if you are an agent to like provide great change and great hope and surrender to the fact that like simultaneously maybe we are just like on a speck of a spec of a spec and this, you know, very large, uh, plane of existence. I don't know. So to boil it down and say like

there is that like spark inside everybody, but your game, your, your mission is to go out and to find it and to help other people even see it more in themselves than they would have otherwise without interacting with you. And in order to do that, the best way to do it is to figure out what gives you bliss to know deeply what you value to let go. of all the other things that you don't, and to pursue that thing as ferociously and lovingly as you can. Man, this is powerful, Kyle. I know your story is inspirational,

but I didn't fully respect the level and the depth of thought that you put into everything, and I think that is awesome. I think spending moments and reflection is very helpful, especially for those who are like us who get out there and do things. I should say like you, I'm not in that same caliber when it comes to the type of actions you take. And I think that's fantastic, man. I really appreciate you saying that.

And there's one other thought with that too is like, you know, as human beings, we are inescapably going to compare ourselves in certain ways. Right. That's another aspect of it where it's like several of my favorite authors, but one in particular that I'm thinking of David Foster Wallace. He committed suicide because he was never the writer that he thought that he could be because he compared himself and he was like a Pulitzer Prize winning author and one of the greatest authors of all time yet he was haunted by this like idea of comparison so except the fact too that like you're going to compare yourself right but like all i care about is that like you we both compare ourselves to who we were yesterday who we were three hours ago and and not to

anybody else other than like than that i'm working on being better than the guy i was three hours ago that's that's kind of the goal love that only comparing yourself to your previous self. Focus on those incremental gains, those aggregation of marginal gains get better and better and better instead of focusing on the Instagram pictures of somebody else of just focusing on yourself, man. This is really helpful, Kyle,

and I appreciate your willingness to think deeply along with me, man. And it's inspiring. It really is. I know you've been told that many times, but I really appreciate you investing your time with me here today on the Learning Leaders Show, man. Yeah, of course, man. Thank you. I mean, if you hadn't worked your ass off to build this audience and like no one would be listening to us have this conversation. So thank you for that. I appreciate that. I appreciate it, man. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? I'm, you know, like not super active online right now, but like Instagram is probably where you can find me best. So when you can find me, that's where I'll be. Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, I, there's other stuff on YouTube too and stuff. Yeah, there's some really good, really good video of, of, you know, of. of you on whether it's shows that have been built upon what you've done or you speaking.

I highly recommend people to go check those out. Thanks, man. Easily searchable on YouTube. But this is awesome, Kyle. I absolutely would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Yeah, likewise. No, thank you. And keep learning everybody.

Love it. All right. Thanks, man. Thanks, man. Wow, that one went much deeper than I had anticipated. I really value talking with someone as thoughtful as Kyle and as well read as reflective. I think that's very useful in our lives to spend moments doing that. I really enjoyed getting to know Kyle and excited to continue that dialogue with him.

I meant it as certainly as we both progress. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. If so, I would love if you would share this message and episode with a friend, perhaps somebody who has never listened to this podcast before and share with them why it impacted you in a positive way and how it could help them. That word of mouth marketing is the best form of marketing in the world and continues to give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will be forever grateful. Thank you so much. Talk with you next week. Can't wait. This episode is once again brought you by Gusto.

Gusto offers modern, easy payroll, benefits, and HR to small businesses across the country. They were even named Best Online Payroll by PCMag. And as a listener of The Learning Leader Show, you'll get three months free when you run your first payroll. Sign up and give it a try at gusto.com slash leader. That's G-U-S-T-O.com slash leader. Okay. Thank you. That was awesome.

I really, like I said, I never fully know what to expect, but just your level of, your depth of thought is, is, to me, I love that. I think that's what I've found to be a commonality of people that are at the highest levels of performance is that they, they really are thoughtful about life and are certainly well read like, like you are. So that's, that's really cool, man. I appreciate you kind of offering that up. No, for sure. I love the direction that this went. To me, like, I don't know, I'm kind of out of that mode of like just doing things that like, you know, or the bullet point, whatever, kind of whatever, you know, like this was a beautiful different spin. So that's kind of the only stuff that really interests me these days. And I love the route that it went. So I hope it's useful to some of your people. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I know, I know it will be. So I appreciate it. I'll certainly be in touch with, with you and Joey to let you know when everything's, uh, Going live, man. Awesome. Thanks, man. Thanks, Kyle. Yeah, you too.

All right. Bye.