The Nick Bare Podcast - ​​030: Chadd Wright - A Lonely, Hopeless Life Is A Painful Death

Episode Date: September 4, 2023

Today, I am honored to speak with Chadd Wright, a retired Navy SEAL turned elite ultra-runner who served his country on multiple deployments for over a decade. Chadd is a man full of wisdom and experience with an unrivaled passion for helping people become the absolute best version of themselves. In this episode, we reveal the antidote to loneliness and hopelessness, break down what a real community looks like, and unpack how courage is the one thing you need to reach your goals. Finally, Chadd shares how the "One Mile Out" mindset helped him finish Cocodona 250 - a 250-mile ultra marathon through the rugged Arizona desert. Enjoy! Save 10% at BPN Supps: https://bit.ly/nickbare10audio Follow for more:  IG: https://www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: https://www.youtube.com/@nickbarefitness Keep up with Chadd here: IG: https://www.instagram.com/chadwright278/ YT: https://youtube.com/@3of7Project Website: https://3of7project.com/ Topics:  00:00 Intro 1:55 Welcome 5:14 Practice what you preach 9:35 Disconnecting from the Navy Seal identity 11:46 Antidote to finding your identity 18:16 Finding transformation and purpose in Christ 30:07 Defining and building community 36:53 The “Lone Wolf” lie 42:30 Courage is the cure 54:39 Competitiveness 1:03:03 Cocodona 250 1:13:04 “One Mile Out” mindset 1:22:27 Trade-offs in life 1:28:08 Resolving hopelessness 1:33:47 The courage to keep showing up

This is the most important thing probably that I'm going to say, you're going to have to walk through these big piles of crap. Through your decisions, your mistakes, you're going to create this massive pile of crap that you're going to have to walk through. And it's painful and it starts to get, you know, right up to your neck. A lot of people will stop and they never make it out the other side, right? And because of that, they never do anything with the rest of their freaking life, man. I've made so many freaking mistakes. And everybody looked at me and said, you are a freaking turd. And I said, yeah, I am a turd.

But guess what? I'm going to keep freaking going, man. Nobody's going to remember your mistakes unless you are successful in spite of your mistakes. Unless you keep going while you're covered in crap. And when you do that, people look around at you and they say, hold on just a minute, man. He can't do that. They want to pull you back down into that crap that you can.

came out of, it freaking pisses them off, dude. You just got to keep going. That's it. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to thank you for tuning in and supporting the brand. Now, I have spent the last decade plus of my life building Bear Performance Nutrition, and we create effective supplements that you can trust to support your wellness, endurance, and performance goals. We offer high-quality, great-tasting weight protein powders, effective pre-workouts, superfoods, sleep support, electrolytes, and much more. So if you want to support the content that we produce and the message that I am sharing through my content and on this podcast, I would greatly appreciate it if you went to bpnsups.com

and you can use code Nick Bear 10 to save 10% off your next order. So thank you guys. I appreciate you. And let's dive into the show. Today on the podcast, we have Chad Wright. And as I was prepping for this episode, I made a title. I don't know if it will stick throughout this episode, but I kind of want to guide the conversation with this title.

And it's a lonely and hopeless life is a slow, painful death. So, Chad, welcome back to the podcast. It's great to have you here. Man, I'm honored to be here, Nick. You know, I think at this point in my journey, There's probably very few people I would fly across the country to come spend a day with. I appreciate that. But you're one of them, man.

You are legit. I mean, to the core, man. I watch you. I see what you do with your body. I see the discipline that you have in so many different aspects of your life. And it inspires me, like me and my whole team watch you. And we look up to you, man. We really do.

So when you invited me back, It was a no-brainer. And our last conversation was great. I feel like it helped a lot of people. You know, there was, there's this viral clip that I still see, like, on a daily basis on Instagram from our last conversation where I'm talking about whatever you're going through in life is forging you into who you were created to be, right? I just think a lot of people needed to hear that message.

And there's a lot more depth to that message than just that single statement. we could get into later, but nonetheless, I'm happy to be here, man. I really am. Well, we had a great conversation last night. You landed in Austin yesterday. We hit 10-mile run last night, starting at 9 p.m., obviously push ourselves, you know, to give the listener some context. I went into this run thinking we were just going to casually, you know, log 10 miles, have a conversation. Which just started that way for the first five, six miles.

We had an amazing conversation. We were logging some miles. And I was like, I think Chad's pushing a little bit. So Pace started picking up a little bit. I was like, well, maybe I should push a little bit. This is how always is when you run with someone. Before you know it, we're like eight miles in. No one's talking.

Oh, I got quiet. Huffing and puffing. The Texas heat is wrapping around our throats. And it was a great run last night. It was a beautiful trail, beautiful course, great conversation. Like, I honestly left last night. jacked up with energy because of what we were talking about. You know, what I loved about our run last night is just having the opportunity to run

with someone who's going to really push me and make me work harder than I would usually work. That was the fastest run I've done in a long, long time just because I like to run long, right? I don't really, you train for these marathons and you do a lot of speed work, and so I don't get that. And the people around me, they don't like to run fast either. So it was just really cool to have you there. And it just goes to show how if you're the person that's going to just train by yourself all the time, if you're the person that thinks you can do it all alone, you're never going to reach your maximum potential alone. You're never going to. And that last

night's run is just another example of that. I pushed way harder because you were there with me. And we didn't need to say anything. We didn't need to look at each other. We could just feel each other's energy, dude. And that's what took us through that. So it was freaking awesome, man. I recently read this article online,

and it talked about the difference between a liar and a bullshitter. This is why it's really important to be intentional with the people that you allow in your life and setting boundaries for people who don't fit into one of these buckets. So there's a type of person who is a liar who is intentionally lying. They know the truth and they also know what is false.

So they are constantly trying to narrate this story but also reminding themselves of what is true so they don't slip up so they can maintain this lie throughout their life or journey or whatever they're trying to achieve.

Then you have the bullshitter who actually doesn't know right from wrong. This is someone who maybe catches a headline in the news and then creates this narrative or story around it and they just start spreading it

and talking about it. They're kind of ignorant to what is correct and incorrect. But then you have the exception to the role. And this is where I kind of put you in this bucket where

you're not a liar, you're not a bullshit or like the things you say and talk about are very intentional and deliberate and strategic. And I know, that if I'm on social media and a chat rate podcast comes up or a YouTube video comes up or an Instagram post comes up, I'm going to stop what I'm doing. I'm going to listen to it because it's not

a lie. It's not bullshit. It's the exception to those roles. So I really respect the content and the message you share because from my perception, it is very real and authentic and genuine and you are truly trying to help people with the use of your platform. Yeah, I truly believe in the things that I teach. I really do. And maybe I believe so strongly in the things that I teach because I've seen the fruits of when you learn to be patient. What happens when you learn to stay present, especially amongst an adverse situation or pain or difficulty? What happens when you decide to be deliberate in your life, in your life about your actions? your words, the conversations you have, what types of media, what input you're allowing into your head. I've practiced these things for so long in really hard situations. Like, I know the things that I teach are real and they work. Like, 100%.

I know they work. And I believe in it, man. I think people are now, especially on social media and YouTube and anywhere, people are so used to being lied to, are so, that people are so used to being fed a line of bull crap. I think the people that I get to train in our training missions at 3-07 Project, they come out and all the time, the most comments I get from our students is, I can't believe you're actually here. doing this with us, Chad. Like, I can't believe you're actually here doing this with us.

I can't believe that you are actually practicing the things that you preach. You're sharing this adversity with us. You're present with us. You're pouring into us. And I'm like, who do crap you think I am, man? Like, of course I'm going to be here with you. Like, this is what I do. If you weren't here with me doing this 24-hour hike,

I would probably be doing something like this on my own time. Like, yeah, I'm here with you. And people are just so used to being lied to and fed a line of bull crap. They're astounded when they're actually like, holy crap, this person actually believes in what they say. I'm glad I'm able to believe in what I teach and what I say and the way I live my life, man. There's a lot of freedom in that. There's a lot of freedom in that. So, but I've put it to practice.

I put it, you know, in a midst adversity, I've applied these things so many times. It's just a, it's a blessing. Would you say this is a way that you were raised? Do you learn from your family and community? Or is this something you learn in the SEAL teams, post-SEAL teams? Like, when did this really, for you, was it confirmed? that this is the way you were going to live your life, these are your values. There's no non-negotiable other than that.

Kind of maybe the foundations were laid during my time in the military, but I've experienced more growth since I've been out of the military than I experienced while I was in the military. I feel like my experiences there were really foundational and then coming out and starting ultra-running, starting a business, really learning how to be a husband, learning how to lead my team within my business, all these things. The things that I've done since I've been out of the SEAL teams, I believe have been more challenging than anything that I did while I was in the military.

And that's been a real blessing, man, because that's really helped me disconnect my identity from who I was as a seal. And a lot of people say, well, why would you do that, Chad? Man, I think it's absolutely necessary. I mean, my identity for my entire adult life was wrapped up in this one thing, being a Navy SEAL. I mean, that was what I did. I thought that that was going to be the crown jewel of my achievements in life.

And I haven't allowed that to be, like, the number one thing. I've continued to push, continue to learn, continue to hone in these skills. And now my identity is in other more sustainable things instead of putting all my eggs in that one basket. So I think the majority of really sharpening these things like being patient, being present, being deliberate, leadership, all that stuff. I've really sharpened those things really over the last four, five years of my life. man. Yeah, I found that when you accomplish a certain thing, say in your case of becoming a Navy seal and serving, when you transition away from that accomplishment, people automatically assume that you're just going to hang your hat on that and then lay on the beach and hang out for the

rest of your life. What are you going to do with all your time? What are you going to do now? You can't retire. Well, no, that's not that's not the plan. Retirement is not the plan. It's a transition. and evolution of your meaningful mission. And we were talking about this last night on the run because this is something that I'm personally going through in my life right now and I'd say struggling with experiencing. And I was doing some research in preparation for this podcast, this conversation today.

And I like following this one author, his name's Arthur Brooks. He has a book called From Strength to Strength, and it's all about life transitions. And in his book, he talks about how we go through big life transitions, like transitioning out of the military or getting married or getting divorced or having a kid. But we also have these micro life transitions every 12 to 18 months. I've heard you talk about that, yeah. And a lot of people will mistake these transitions for a life crisis. And Arthur Brooks had this article that I was reading this morning called A Profession is Not a Personality.

and so many people tie their profession, their job to who they are, their identity. I've done this for the past decade plus of my life. You know,

when me and Steph were going through premarital counseling, we were sitting down with the counselor, the therapist, and we're talking about our issues that we're experiencing

and most of my issues were driven through work and wanting to work nonstop and being addicted to work. And she said, well, Nick, who are you without your business and BPN? And I was offended.

Like I took that as an attack on me. Kind of put myself in the corner and I'm looking around thinking, oh, how's this turning on me now? So I walked down to that meeting, that session, thinking this lady doesn't know what she's talking about. Months later, after reflecting, I've realized, oh, she was right.

any issue that I was experiencing or bringing into my, my relationship, my marriage was because my profession, my work became my personality. It became my identity. And why I say it's something I'm struggling with right now at some sort of level of capacity is, you know,

I stepped down from the CEO role in the business a few months ago, but also having our first child, who just turned one years old a few weeks, weeks ago, that is now becoming a huge priority in my life. And while I always said family was a priority, I was lying to myself. It really wasn't. So I'm now trying to navigate this, this life transition where I need to not necessarily cut ties between my profession and my personality, but I need to realize that there is a Nick Bear without fitness and social media and and business.

And that's a tough thing to navigate. And I'm sure a lot of people are navigating that currently while listening to this episode because it's so easy to fully identify who we are and what we do based off of our work and profession. Yeah. Yeah. I guess the ultimate antidote for that has been through my identity in Christ. My faith, I guess, has been the ultimate antidote.

to identifying as a seal, identifying as an altar runner, identifying as a business owner. It's like above all that, I identify as a slave to Christ. I identify with my faith. And so since I've been able to do that, it's like all the other people. buckets of my life fall underneath that umbrella because then it's like, well, what am I doing? Whatever I'm doing with my business needs to fit within the boundaries of like serving Christ and the mission that he's given me and the gifts that he's given me and the purpose that he's given me, whatever I'm doing with my fitness needs to be all about glorifying Christ in my

physical body and whatever I'm doing at home needs to be about being a good husband, the husband that Christ wanted me to be, wants me to be, that he calls me to be, being the head of my family, the way he's called me to do it. And so everything I do now in business, in fitness, in my personal life, all falls under that umbrella. and I know, man, people listen to this, they say, well, I don't, I don't have that, I don't have that faith, right? I don't, I don't, I haven't accepted Christ. I don't subscribe to that. Well, I can only speak for myself. Like, that has been the antidote. I know that's a, that's a

hard thing for some people to hear. But Christ for me has been the antidote to hopelessness. to identifying with unsustainable things. It's like it's always sustainable for me to identify with my faith because I believe in the promises that Christ has given me, that he will never leave me, that he will never forsake me, that I'm loved, that I've been forgiven, that I have purpose every single day, that he is coming back to establish his kingdom on this earth

and that I will live eternally with him. Like, it's just unbelievable for me to be able to live with the knowledge of those things. You know, there's so much freedom in that. There's so much liberty that I've found in my fate. I know we talked about this in the last episode, so forgive me for not remembering. When is it that you really, you know, started following Christ and reading the Bible and putting more effort into your faith? Was it while you were in the military?

Was it post-military? It was while I was in the military. It was in 2012. I had an experience while I was overseas that was really freaking wild and made me say, okay, I got to look into who this Jesus is. But it's interesting, man,

when you talk about faith, and you see it as like something that you have to put effort into in order to achieve it, I don't know if that's the right way of the right way of thinking about it. I think finding for me when I get the closest in my walk with Christ, it comes through submission. it comes through like this place of absolute submission, like recognizing my own insufficiency, recognizing that I am so weak and fallible and I am not in control. And like being submissive to him and learning to rely on him, to me, that's what draws me

closer to Christ in my faith than actually the effort part. Because it's so easy to think that we can do, we want to have something that we can do as humans, right? We want to be able to earn our relationship, our faith, our relationship with Christ. We want to be able to earn our salvation. We want to have this list of boxes that we can check. in order to get to where we want to go, right? Tell me what to do and I'll do it.

Yeah, but Christ is like, the gospel is the antithesis to that. Like, the gospel is all about telling you, you can't do it, man. You can't do it. Like, that's the whole point. That's the foundational, that's the foundational message of the gospel is you cannot do it. Like, you can't even believe in Jesus without him giving you the ability to believe in him. It's really crazy to think about. But so much of what the gospel and what the Bible says is the opposite of how we want to live as humans,

because we want control, right? And so we can't know Christ until we relinquish control to him. And that's why so many of us find Christ in moments of crisis, in moments of chaos, in those moments where we are forced to relinquish control. Because things are completely out of our control, and we recognize that for the first time. And that's where we get to really know Christ, right? Yeah, I remember being in Ranger School. And while in Ranger School, every Sunday you have. The chaplain comes in and does like an hour of services.

In the beginning, these first couple weeks, no one goes. And if you don't go to services, you end up just pulling details back in the regular school. But if you go to chaplain services, you would get a piece of bread with peanut butter. You would sing some songs with the chaplain and then he would do a sermon. And slowly over the course of the weeks that you're there, more people will start going to these services. One, because they don't want to pull duties. and they want the peanut butter and bread, but also, like,

you would see this emotional and spiritual transformation in people or this first couple weeks, people start going. They're just sitting there, taking a nap, falling asleep, eating the bread, listening to the message. Towards the end, people are tearing up and crying and building this relationship with Christ and their faith. But it's because they're also going through this crisis

in their life at the moment where they need something that is this strong foundation that they can lean on that will support the hardship that they're experiencing. Yeah, and a lot of people will make fun of us. We should have probably had this conversation about faith at the end of the podcast because a lot of people tune out when we talk about this and a lot of people will make fun of me

and say, well, your faith is just a crutch. You're dang right, it's a crutch. As strong as you might think that I am, as capable as you might think that I am like I am not like I'm sorry that you think that about me but Chad in and of his self is this believe it or not extremely wicked awful weak person and I have evidence of that like my evidence of that truth about me when I look back on my entire life before I submitted myself to Christ. When I look back on my military service before I submitted myself to Christ, it's horrific, man. Like, I've never told that, I've never told my full

story, man, like of who, of who I was before I came to know Christ. And now I'm not, even after coming to know Christ, I'm not perfect by any means. But, um, but now I have, this thing that props me up, you know, that I can, I can recover from these, you know, major mistakes or shortcomings or moments of weaknesses. I can recover from these things because Christ has given me grace, man. He's, he's forgiven me. He's given me grace. He's, he's taught me how to live my day-to-day life in a more, in a healthy way. But, man, I used to be a freaking awful, awful person.

And I never forget that. I never forget who I was before I had the Spirit of Christ in me. I never forget that. Would you say back then you were lonely and hopeless? And has that evolved and changed? Do you have experienced feelings of loneliness and hopelessness now?

as your life has evolved? So back then, yes, I was lonely. I was hopeless. I didn't know how to love people. I didn't know how to care for people. I didn't, I was just like a drift in life. Now, with my faith now, there is not a single day that I'm hopeless. Like there's all, it doesn't matter what happens.

Like, I have the eternal hope. that is in Christ, like that I can always, it's, it's a backstop, like, no matter what happens. And, man, it's just, I get so fired up about it, man, because I want, like, I want everybody to be able to experience that. I know it's impossible, but that's what my entire mission and life revolves around now. I was telling you on a run yesterday, I'm at this weird place in my life where I have everything that I could ever imagine having. I have the home I want. I live in the place I want.

I have the truck I want. I have money in my, I have money that like, and I don't even have anything to buy with it. I'm just like, what the crap am I going to do with this? Money is just stupid, right? That's a dangerous place to be in for a servant of Christ and for a man that has a mission like I have, because there's this desire for me right now in my flesh

to like, let's kind of back off. Let's just stay at home and enjoy all this stuff. And, you know, let's just back off a little bit. But I can't do that because I'm not driven by the regular things of business. Like, I'm driven by hopefully leading people to faith in Christ. That's the foundation of why I do everything I do. And I can't stop doing that. I thought about this a few weeks ago, where if you think of someone who requires constant

motivation and discipline injected in their life, they're like a vehicle. We're like, that vehicle will go so far, but then you need to be a way. to go to the gas station and put gas in it. And that gas is for people motivation. They need to go on social media. They need to be motivated to go do their run or go back to work or be a good husband and father. And they can only get so far until they need to go fill back up. But then there's also people like you and I've met many others as well.

I feel like I'm this way that we're self-powered. We're self-driven. where we don't need to continuously go refill up on motivation and discipline. We're going to keep going. And when I said I relate to what you're talking about, you know, I've reached in the way that I define it, success. Like I consider some of the things that I've accomplished and done successful in the way that I define it. And with every win that I continue to achieve, yes, there's law. along the way as well, but it doesn't make me want to work or work any less or go any,

you know, further. Like, I want to keep driving. I want to keep pushing. Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to figure that out in my life right now. Is it because I'm, I'm addicted to the work or is it because, like, my mission is much larger, and I think it's a combination of both. My mission is much larger than any of these materials.

materialistic accomplishments that I could ever get. That's what it is, man. I believe looking at you from just from a 30,000 foot view or from an outside perspective, that's what it is. Like, that's the only sustainable model. You, like me, you're in the business of helping people reach their goals. I see what you're doing with BPN and I see the community that you've built and you're spending real time with real people in these meetups and stuff that you do. And that's what it is,

man. When that's your mission, it's like, yeah, you can't stop. You just can't stop. Because you feel the responsibility. Yeah, you do. This is exactly right. Well, I kind of want to pivot the conversation a little bit. Coming off the heels of what we just talked about and leaning into true community and deep relationships. And it's interesting enough that I pulled this quote that I'm about to read from an article titled Why So Many Americans Have Stopped Going to Church. And the quote reads, contemporary America simply isn't set up to promote care or common life.

Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as designed by professional and financial success. Such a system leaves precious little time or energy for. forms of community that don't contribute to one's own professional life or as one ages the professional prospects of one's children. Workism reigns in America and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn't add up. So community, what I'm taking away from this is, is a lot of communities aren't real and they're driven by the wrong things because they're driven behind some sort of professional or financial game.

Oh, yeah, man. That was an eye opener for me. Yeah. It made me audit what communities I've joined or wanted to be a part of and for what reason. And I think the term community is thrown out all over the place. But for you, I mean, especially coming from the military and the SEAL teams, I mean, that's a brotherhood.

That's a community. what like how do you define community in your life now outside of the military and you think you have one yeah i mean i'm really blessed to have uh the type of business that we have in three or seven project because when i look at when i look at three of seven project i call i call the people who who interact with me i call it like the body of three of seven projects almost, I just took it from the body of Christ, right? We are the body of Christ on this earth. And it's provided such a vast community for me to be a part of. And so although I'm like the face of it and the head of it, like I'm able to get so much from the people that I spend time

with, that I train with, that we do calls with every Sunday night. And that is 3-07 project is my community. It's this, you probably have something similar here at BPN. It's this group, this collection of people scattered across the nation and across the world. I'm in real relationship with a lot of these people. I mean, we've trained, we've probably trained six or 700 people over the last two years. I know every one of these people individually. I see them struggle.

I share adversity and pain with them. I get to pour into them. They pour back into me. Even through their failures, I'm learning something through their failures by being there with them and taking them through these processes and these missions that we run. So 3 of 7 project is my community. It's a really weird business that we have, man.

it's a really weird business. And the money that we make off the things that we do, I just view it as a, it's just a resource that allows us to continue to grow and keep doing what we're doing. I don't even think anything of it. Like, it's the money part is just like a, it's a necessity because we have to be able to make a living while we're doing what we're doing. And so how do I define it?

Well, community to me is individuals that you spend real time with, especially time in adversity, learning from each other, pouring into each other, being open and honest with each other. And that's how I would define it. I was reflecting on this a lot, and I have been recently, community for me has become more important in my life the older I get. And when I was younger, I used to tell myself that the way of life is to go really fast by myself. I don't got time for people. I don't have time for friends. I don't have time for community.

I don't have time for groups and social life. This was like right when I transitioned out of the army, it's when I started building the business. And it was just like bootstrapping a brand from nothing. and I think part of that was necessity it's just what I had to do to get the business up off the ground and running but when you build something a certain way

it's hard to transition into a new way of life so for the longest time I was like I don't have time for anyone else I just need to keep pushing by myself because it's going to get me further and I eventually realized wow that this math equation does not add up

I'm pushing further. I'm working harder. I'm becoming lonelier. I'm not enjoying the process anymore. So I've really put more focused. I've prioritized community in deep meaningful relationships more than I ever have in my life. Like right now at this period of time as we're having this conversation, the things that I know will bring me true fulfillment and happiness is one having a purpose and a mission in my life. my family being fulfilled and happy,

having a community in deep meaningful relationships for people who I can go to when I'm facing the hardest points in my life, we can celebrate wins together. Like, we need that. And I came across an Instagram live that you posted, I think it was a few months ago now at this point, talking about how important it is for you

to have people in your life mentors guides, people that you can trust, deep, real, meaningful relationships as opposed to being this lone wolf because we're told by a lot of people that being this lone wolf is the way of life. That's how you become the alpha. That's how you become successful.

You make all the money. Be a lone wolf. You don't need friends. You don't need family. You don't need community. It's BS. Yeah. Was there a point in time

where you had to learn the difference between the lone wolf life is a lie and deep meaningful relationships, mentors, guide, community, that is how you go much further. I mean, when I look back on the mentors that I have, it's every step of, every step of the way in the process that I've endured in life, I've been able to achieve the things that I have achieved because of the mentors that I've had. Being a seal, I had a seal mentor before I ever even joined the Navy. His name was Frank Cutler.

He believed in me. He was like the first person ever to believe in me that I could actually go and do this thing. Like nobody believed I was going to be able to make it through seal training. That was absolutely ridiculous. Nobody believed it. And they had no evidence to, you know, I didn't give them any evidence to believe that I could go do this thing. I didn't know how to swim. I never really ran before.

I was just this kind of redneck. you know, kid floating around doing stupid stuff in North Georgia. So my seal mentor, Frank Cutler, just the fact that he believed in me got me through a lot of hard days, man, just being accountable to him, you know, as my seal mentor. When I got into SEAL teams, I had a mentor, Jake Hubman. He was my C-Dady. This guy took me under his wing. He taught me the ways of life as a seal. He punished me when I needed to be punished. He built me back up after I made some of the biggest mistakes of my life. He was there for me. I feel like I took Jake for granted a lot. He ended up taking his life. and I guess that would have been around 2011, 2012. Coming out of the Navy, I had a huge mentor that came into my life, Jesse Itchler.

He taught me how to do business. He taught me what a brand was. He taught me what I didn't even know what Instagram was, man. He taught me all this stuff. And that's what, you know, know, his mentorship's what allowed me to even conceptualize 3-7 project and what I'm doing with my life now. So every step of the way, I've had someone come alongside me and selflessly teach me the tools that I needed in order to get through the next phase of my life. And I don't know where I would

be without those people. And there's only been a few of them, right? But that's all it takes is just a few. And that's why I am where I am today. I know there's a lot of people listening to right now probably thinking, because I've listened to interviews and podcasts like this before and people are talking about the power of mentorship. And the question is, where do I find my mentor? Even like myself, I ask myself this question all the time in different chapters and periods of my life, like, where do I find a mentor for my marriage? And where do I find a mentor for my business? And where do I find a mentor for this massive life transition that I'm experiencing right now? How do I find a mentor for my faith in making my faith stronger in? I heard you say this

actually on that Instagram live that you posted. And I'd love to hear more about it. But you said, you've found your mentors by doing hard and epic things without the expectation of finding these people. Can you kind of explain that? Yeah. Yeah. So you have to put yourself in the right environments to find these people that know more than you, that have the knowledge, the skills, and the abilities that you want to have. You have to put yourself in those environments, man. And it takes a lot of courage to do that. Because, like, say if you want, if you want someone to mentor you in, in alter running, let's say you want to start ultra running, well, you're going to have to go sign up for a race and you're going to have to show up in this environment where you don't

know what the crap you're doing. You're probably going to fail. You feel unprepared. You feel like everybody's looking at you because you don't have the right gear, you don't have the right shoes, you don't have the look, but you have to put yourself in that environment to find the person that's going to take you to where you want to go. Like if you don't have the courage to, the military's the same way, man. If I had to have the courage to walk into the recruiting office in a pair of ragged overalls as a redneck who couldn't, run or swim and say, yeah, I want to go be a part of the most elite fighting force on the face of the earth. Like, I had to have the courage to do that to put me in the environment to

where I was going to find the people that were going to tell me how to get there. But most people, most people lack that courage, man. And I'll tell you why most people lack courage. This is the most important thing probably that I'm going to say on this podcast. Every single one of us human beings, you're going to have to walk through these big piles of crap. You're going to have to. They're coming. If you're young and you say, I've got my path laid out for me, I know where I'm going, I know what I'm doing. No, man, you are going to create a massive pile of crap. Through your decisions, your mistakes, you're going to create this massive pile of crap that you're going to have to walk through in life. And there's probably going to be a bunch of them. Right. And so what happens

in life when you do something stupid and you create this pile of crap and you have no other way to go but through it, you're walking through this crap, man, and it's getting deep and it's getting hard and it's painful. And it starts to get, you know, right up to your neck. A lot of people will stop right there in the middle of that pile of crap and they never make it out the other side, right? Well, a lot of people will keep going. So the people that keep going, they finally come out the other side of that pile of crap. But when they come out the other side, everyone around them is looking at them. And they're saying, man, you got crap smeared all over you.

you nasty like you're you're nasty dude you got you know that's shameful right and what 90% of humans do is everybody's looking at them because of this mistake they got crap all over them and their family members and their friends and the people in their workplace and everybody's looking at them saying man you got crap smeared all over you most people go and hide in a corner for the rest of their life. Because they're ashamed, right? They're ashamed. They go hide in a corner.

They never try anything again. They never try to put themselves in these environments that they feel uncomfortable, that they feel insufficient. Because they don't, one, they're ashamed of their past mistakes, and they don't want to get covered in crap again, so they just don't do anything else. they lose the courage to do what has to be done, to continue to progress through life. What you have to learn to do is walk through the crap,

come out the other side, and when everybody's looking at you and laughing at you and thinking that you're just a piece of crap, you have to be able to look back at those people, right dead in the eye, and when they say you got crap smeared all over you, you look down at yourself and you have to say, yeah, I do, but I'm going to keep going. I'm going to keep going. And if you do that and you don't allow the shame and the regret and the just the, you know, the heaviness of what you just went through, if you don't allow that to stop you and you just keep going, all that crap that you're covered in, it starts to fall. off of you. Right. It starts to fall away and eventually you're good again. But you cannot allow that to stop you. And that is what stops most people. It's regret. It's shame. It's the pile of crap they

had to walk through 10 years ago that they created. And because of that, they never do anything with the rest of their freaking life, man. I hate that for people, man. Because let me tell you, man, there's been so many times in my life. I've made so many freaking mistakes. I've gotten covered in so much crap. And everybody looked at me and said, you are a freaking turd. And I said, yeah, I am a turd, but guess what? I'm going to keep freaking going, man. That pisses people off. People attack me all the time. You know what, man, nobody's going to remember your mistakes unless you are successful in spite of your mistakes. unless you keep going while you're covered in crap.

And when you do that, people look around at you and they say, hold on just a minute, man. He can't do that. He can't be successful. Remember all this crap that he was covered in. Hold on. Look at the mistakes this guy's made. Look, they try to reel you back into that, man.

That's what people want to do. What they call it, crabs in a bucket, right? They want to pull you back down into that crap that you came out of. It freaking pisses them off, dude. The stuff that I've done, man, pisses people off so freaking bad. And you know who it pisses off the most? The people who know all of my mistakes,

it makes them so mad. Because I can look back in the eye and say, yeah, man, I'm going to keep going. I love that. I'm going to keep going. Nobody's going to remember your mistakes unless you're successful in spot of your mistakes. And you know why?

because most people make these big mistakes in life and they hide in the corner, man. And nobody remembers you. I don't care what you did freaking 10 years ago, man. I don't care what you did yesterday. You just got to keep going. That's it. That's how you put yourself in these environments to become who you want to be. Period.

There's no secret. It's painful. It freaking hurts, man. and you're going to have people for the rest of your life trying to remind the world about the mistakes you made. That's old news, man. I feel sorry for you.

You know, what I'm taking away from this whole message is I started this discussion talking about loneliness and, which is a feeling. You're feeling lonely and you're feeling hopeless, but it sounds like the cure to all. All of it is courage. Having the courage to keep going will almost over forge. It will overrun these feelings that you're experiencing because these feelings are just

side effects of a, it's a consequence of a lack of courage. This is a foundational truth in every aspect of your life, in your career, in your marriage, in your faith. Because if you look at the context of this conversation in your faith, Nick, if you decide to accept Christ and you decided to follow Christ one day, well, let's say, God forbid, five, six, seven years down, God forbid, you have an affair. You do something totally stupid. You do something you knew was wrong, but you have to have the courage to move on from that. Even in your faith, it's like, you have to have the courage to move on with that. In your business, you make a big freaking mistake, man. You have to have the courage to move on from that.

Yeah, without the courage to move on. And it's not going to feel like courage when you're doing it, when you're moving on from it. It's going to be trudging, laborious steps, and you're going to feel the shame, and you're going to see the people looking at you, but it's not going to feel like this magnificent, like, oh, yeah, I've got courage, man. No, it's just step by step by step. People ask me all the time, man. would you change anything about your life?

People ask me this question all the time. What would you change about your path? Would you change anything? And the answer to that question is, well, I could sit here, and if you gave me five minutes, I could probably come up with a hundred things that I would go back and make different. But if I had the power to do that,

would I actually do it? The answer is no. because every single one of those things that I've done, every single one of those piles of crap that I created for myself that I had to walk through, every single one of those things led me to this conversation. And if I went back and changed any one of those things, I wouldn't be the man who I am today. And guess what?

I love the man who I am today. I heard this quote this past week. It makes me think of this. It said, the quality of life that we experience is the sum of the quality of decisions we've made leading up to that point. Quality being good or bad. Sometimes the bad decisions we make lead us to a higher, greater quality of life because of the mud that we have to dredge through and the courage that we have to experience and to choose that gets us to. to that outcome, to that point. I'm the same way.

If someone gave me the opportunity to go back and change different points and decisions and trajectories of my life, would I do it? There's a million things that I'd want to change and redo, right?

But if I was actually given the decision, there's no way. Thank you, brother. Because who knows where I would end up? Thank you. And I'm glad where I've ended up right now. Thank you for confirming that.

Yeah, I think that's really, really powerful because people live in regret. People live in the regret of their past decisions and their past life, and they are never able to escape it. Shame, man. They don't have the courage to move on from it

and create new. They're living constantly in that old story that they tell themselves. Shame is the number one tool of Satan. Shame is the number one thing that will paralyze you. shame is the number one thing that will keep you from ever achieving anything. And we're all going to have moments where we experience shame because we're human, man.

And that's why it's so important for everyone to grasp this. You need to care less about what other people are saying. That's hard to do, man. Like when you're moving through this shame, when you're moving through the other side of this pile of crap, The things that people are saying about you are still going to hurt. Don't think that it ever stops hurting, man. I've learned that.

It never stops hurting, man. Yeah. So don't think that there's this place where you're just like, you're just totally, like, free from the pain you're going to feel when people remind you of your old mistakes. You'd be dead. You wouldn't be alive. Exactly, dude. Or you just would, maybe if you got in a place where you just,

absolutely didn't care about anything anymore. Maybe you could get, but that's not a good place. If you actually care, you know, things are always going to hurt, you know. But that's okay. Understand that I feel the same thing. If you're struggling with that, understand that me, Chad Wright, I feel the same thing. When people say things about me, bad things about me, hateful things about me, it hurts, man. It's because I care.

Yeah. I'm the same way. People tell me that all the time. Don't read the comments. Don't care what other people think. You know, my dad's a clear example. Don't, don't listen to it. It's not, it's not, it's still hurts.

Yeah. You still feel it. You know, a cut is going to, you're going to feel a cut regardless of how many times you've been cut. Yep. I have a question for you that I'm curious about. Would you consider yourself a competitive person? Do you see yourself competing with other people or are you competing with yourself on a daily basis? I do consider myself a competitive person.

I don't believe that I can compete against myself and actually achieve my maximum potential because there are people who are way better than me. You know what I mean? So I want to seek these people who are way better than me. It goes back to our run that we did yesterday. You're a faster running me, dude. Period.

I couldn't imagine running a sub three-hour marathon. Like, that's like outside of anything I would ever even want to do because I know how painful that would be. I think I can grasp how painful that would be. I don't want to do it, man. And so I got so much pleasure out of running with you because of the competitive nature of it because I knew we were going to push each other.

Like, yeah, we started off chatting and talking, but I knew what we really wanted was to play around a little bit. You had to push each other. Yeah. And so, yes, I am competitive, man. I like to pit myself against people who I believe are better than me. And I like to try to beat them. And that's what, I feel like that's when I learned the most lessons.

that's when I'm I'm most fulfilled, when I'm most satisfied, when I feel most rewarded is when I'm able to do that, or not. You know, or not. So, yeah, I'm highly competitive, man.

I don't, I think, I think the thought process that you can just compete against yourself and reach your maximum potential at the same time is a fallacy. I think it's one of the reasons it's important, like you said, to experience, sign up for, do hard and epic things, it's going to push you, it's going to challenge

you, it's going to put you outside of that comfort zone. But I'm also a really firm believer that like you never want to be the most talented or the smartest person in a room. And I've, I've, I've gone through different periods of my life where when I first heard that, I thought it was BS and then I believed it again and I didn't believe it again. But now at a point where if you are the smartest and most talented person in a room in an organization, you stop growing. If you're the most talented or smartest person in a room, you better be there for the sole purpose of teaching the other people in that room what you know.

Then that's the benefit. The benefit is that you are the guide, you are the teacher. But you have to also, there's a tradeoff of you're realizing that your growth in that capacity is going to either slow down or stop until you are submerged into a place where people are much more competitive or better than you or are pushing you. So I'm constantly balancing that where there's a time and place of being the smartest person in regards to a certain skill or tactic to guide, elevate, and educate. but for your personal and professional development,

you have to keep searching for these hard, epic things that challenge you competitively with other people. That's why I started doing this bike packing stuff, man. I showed up to this bike packing race last February in Florida, first time. I had only rode 20, my longest mountain bike ride was 20 miles. I went and did this race because I had to show back up as the new guy. Like, it's been a long time since I showed up to an end of, event as the new guy. But I'm like, wow, here's these people that are riding 365 miles

through the wilderness on a 60-pound mountain bike in 30 hours. Oh my gosh, dude. I got to show up to this place as the new guy. My gear was all jacked up. My bike weighed way too much. I just got obliterated, man. Like, these guys crushed me. It took me four days to do this race. And there's guys that finishing 30 hours, man. That's the whole reason I did that. It's not because I don't like mountain biking. I did it because it gave me an opportunity to show up as literally the lowest common denominator and be around freaking professionals, dude.

I like to be around professionals. I don't care. I like to be around experts. If you're the expert in restoring cars, basket weaving, if you're the expert in real estate, I don't care. I love to put myself in the environment with experts because, yeah, you got to, you got to feel like the new guy in your personal and professional development. You're exactly right. Well, this kind of goes back to the beginning of this conversation, talking about liars and bullshitters, where there's a lot of people who are afraid to be the new guy because they don't have the humility.

They have a high ego. And it's hard. It's hard and A lot of people Don't want to put themselves in that position You know they're afraid of the way that they're going to be Perceived so what ends up happening is They lie about

Their ability to do the task Oh yeah I've done this before I've done this before Or they're a bullshitter They try to just talk their way through it The experts there sit in the corner I'm thinking They just say right through it

This guy has never done this Or he's in the wrong place or he's lost his complete mind. So you end up looking like an idiot to the people who actually know what they're doing. Oh yeah. So it's, I've always, I've found and I've had to learn this a hard way. When I show up to something and I've never done it before, I'm the new guy, I'm the first person who raised my hand. I've never done this before.

I need help. Please help me guide me as opposed to like trying to fake it until I make it. Yeah. And you know, the, the best. part about it is like we're at a place in our lives you and me both where we don't have to do that like dude i don't even have to work like i'm retired from the military like i live a very simple life i have no debt like i don't even have to work man like but i know that if i stop showing up humbling myself, putting myself in these environments where I'm the freaking new guy,

where I don't know anything, where I'm going to get crushed. Like, I might as well be dead. Might as well just be dead. I'm done. I'll never stop doing that, man. It's like a muscle. For example, a muscle, you build a muscle through strength training. And it'd be great if you could build a muscle to a certain size and you stop training and just stays that way.

Stayed that way, yeah. But it doesn't. It atrophies. It gets smaller. The same thing happens to your skills, to your intelligence, to your ability to think and create. You get to a certain point through this adaptation of a stimulus. But if you stop applying that stimulus and that adaptation, it atrophies. It goes backwards.

You don't maintain just because you build it to a certain point. You actually lose all that progress and process that you attain through the journey. you have to keep doing it, or it atrophies and it dies. And that takes the whole, you know, one of the things I live my life by is growth only comes through tension. And that's in all aspects of life. Growth only comes through tension. Well, you just took it to the next level.

Without the tension, you're actually going in reverse. So you're not even maintaining. And that is the truth, man. That's the God honest truth. Well, it's kind of like leads into Cocoa, 2.50. You know, you've, you've proved yourself. You've gone through seal training. You spent 12 years active duty seal on the Navy. You don't have to keep doing these ultra events. You don't have to keep pushing yourself. You don't have to keep doing these epic efforts. Cocadona 250,

a 250 mile ultra marathon that you did this past May. Talk to me about that. Why? and, well, let's start there. Why a 250? Because I heard about the Kokadona 250 two years ago, and I looked at the race, and it made me scared. Like, I didn't sign, I thought about doing this race for two years before I clicked register.

And one of the big things that stopped me, me was one, it was totally outside the realm of my past experience. And two, I couldn't bring myself to the place where I was willing to commit to the work that I knew I was going to need to put in to get this thing done. So the fact that it made me nervous, the fact that I was hesitant about it told me something about myself, oh man, Chad, you're not, you know, you're not really willing to put in the work that it takes to, that it's going to take to potentially finish this thing. It's telling you something about yourself, where are you at right now, man? Like, are you in a good spot right now? And so it forced me to take, just looking at this and considering this event,

it forced me to take this inventory of myself. And then I realized, man, if I, I, I'm going to continue to do what I do in my life and train people and be a mentor to people and inspire other people. Like, I don't have a choice, man. I've got to lean into this. And this is the perfect thing to lean into because it's making me feel the same way that a lot of people that I train feel about running their first 5K. And so I had got to a point where I don't feel like I could, I couldn't relate to a lot of people who were just getting started anymore.

Because I forgot what it felt like to be nervous. I forgot what it felt like to not want to put in the required, the mandatory amount of work to actually get it done. I forgot what it felt like to think that, holy crap, I might not finish, man. And like, so I was getting to a point where I couldn't relate to these people anymore. Like, I would, when people would come out to train with me and I'm asking them to do something that's hard for them, that's not hard for me anymore, I would get frustrated with them. Like, why don't you just, it's not that hard, man. Like, just do it. I couldn't relate to them.

So this was my opportunity to freaking be able to do something that brought me back to a place where I could relate to people who might just be getting started or who aren't as far along in their journey as I am. And now I'm going to go do this thing so that I can be a real mentor to this man or woman who comes out to do. do the write-of-passage course with me is 24 hours long. And now I can really be in their head, right? And now I can be in their head and I can truly help them move through it. And so it's a biblical concept too. I mean, even Paul in the Bible says, I will discipline my body, less when I preach, I will become disqualified. Like I have to continue to do these things. And Cocodona for me was like the perfect storm for me personally to get back to that feeling. I loved watching the film one mile out.

And what I loved about it the most is, and I say this very respectfully, I loved watching you hurt. Oh, yeah. Because, you know, from an outsider looking in, it's chatter right never hurts. Chad Wright doesn't experience or feel pain and that's just because Chad Wright's doing something

that he knows he can do, right? When you're seeing me do things I know I can do you don't see that part of me. But watching that documentary actually scared me for a 250 mile race because I'm seeing you at I believe it was mile marker 130 so you have 120 miles left

and you can barely get up out into the truck and walk on your feet and body destroyed. And to see you actually experiencing pain made you, it made it real. You know, there was this connection in the film and in the experience that made it feel so different. That was great. And you were telling me last night that was intentional. You did not want to keep that out of the film because you wanted people to see you hurt and experiencing discomfort and pain. and just trauma. I did, man. I did.

I told my videographer, Drake, right off the bat. I was like, dude, you have all access. Like, I want you to show me at my lowest points, man, because I knew it was going to get rough. I knew it was going to get rough. Anytime you do something like this, it shocks your system. It's like the first time you run a marathon.

It shocks your system. The first time you run a hundred-mile or it shocks your system. It obliterates you. And I knew this was going to do the same thing. Now, I could go back and run that race next year, and it'll be a totally different experience, but I knew this one was going to shock my system. And I wanted people to see that, man.

I think I'm dedicated to showing, like, all aspects of what this is like, what this is like, what pushing yourself, what living out your maximum potential is like. I don't just want to show you one side of it. If I would have went and crushed that race, man, and just breeze through it, I would have been pissed. I was so glad. And, you know, I wasn't just hurting physically either. I was hurting mentally.

You could see it, too. Which was odd for me, dude. It was so odd for me. You know, there was a point, there was a point coming down off Aminus Mountain, I don't know, somewhere halfway. It was right about halfway through the race. We're like, my, the foundations of my mindset

is patience, presence, and being deliberate. Patient, present, deliberate. That's the foundations of my mindset. Well, the foundations of my mind were being rattled for the first time in years. I'm running down off of Mingus Mountain with my brother, and I'm like, hey, man, I got to come clean, will you? I'm having a really hard time right now. I've already ran 120, 130 miles, whatever it was. and I've still got over a hundred miles left,

I just can't wrap my mind around that, dude. It's the first time in my life that I, or not in my life, it's the first time in a long time that I had experienced a challenge that I couldn't wrap my mind around. And my little brother laughed at me because he's like, yeah, Chad, now you know how the people that you kind of, you're judgmental, you look down on them.

They're working up their first 5K, their first 10K, maybe they're working up their first marathon, and you think that's piddly crap. Now you know how they feel. He's like, this is good stuff, man. Yeah. And, you know, he just looks at me, and he tells me what I already know is true.

He says, Chad, you're going to have to break this down from aid station to aid station, and when it gets too hard to do that, you're going to have to break it down one mile at a time. He just told me what I already, knew it was true. And so I was struggling mentally to wrap my mind around this freaking thing. I mean, when you've ran 120 miles and you still got 130 miles left to run, and you've never done this before, it was freaking brutal, man. I mean, I could feel it watching it, just even seeing

the way your body was beat down at that mile marker. And I'm thinking, he's got 120 miles left. 120 miles That's a long ways to run Yeah Especially when you're When you're trying to move a body that's That's been destroyed and destructed You know

And it's one thing if you're You know for me having done Leadville I know what it feels like to When you get above say 70 80 90 miles And you're trying to Not just run or walk on flat terrain but you're traversing these like rocks and stones

I'm watching you climbing this mountain after 100 miles and just I could see it in you what every step felt like. And mentally you're thinking, holy shit, I got 100 plus more miles of this. Like it's not just a physical battle. It's a mental battle. It was. And that's rare for me, man. It's rare for me to get, I got so much growth out of that.

It was such a liberating experience, man. Yes, you did 250 miles in five days, 10 hours. asleep, 40,000 feet of elevation. But what I want to know is, you know, I know it because I'd watch the film, but from your explanation,

why one mile out? And you said this at the end that I thought it was so powerful. He said that in that last mile, you are most likely to slip, to settle for less physically and mentally. It's the last mile that counts. You must run that last mile

well. It's in that last mile. that the greatest achievements or failures are made. Now, I heard you say that. I was like, that's so true. Yep. We'll push it to that last mile. It's like watching someone do a track workout. Say you have a 400.

They'll do 385 meters as hard as possible, and there's the last 15 they let up. Yeah. Why? Yeah, I felt that on our run yesterday, Nick. It's so awesome, man. you even said on a run yesterday, one mile out. And I was like, yep, I got to switch into the one mile out mindset.

It is, it's a mindset, man. And I think what that goes back to is the biggest mistakes I've made in my life, a lot of times were due to complacency. And so this one mile out mindset is the, you know, the opposite of complacency. It's when you, I found myself during Kokadona. in between these aid stations, there would be like 20 mile stretches between aid stations, which is a long distance to be out there. That's a long piece of ground to cover before you get any sort of resupply.

Well, when you'd first start out on that 20 mile leg or whatever it was, let's say 20 miles, you first start out and you know you got 20 miles ahead of you. And so you're just locked in. You're like, okay, I know this is going to be hard. you get in this place where you're you just hunker down you're gritting through it uh but you've been going and and you know three quarters of the way through that leg you start to get your mind starts to get to drift you start to you know let these let this you know all these fatigue and and thoughts bad thoughts creep into your mind because you've been out there for a long time and i found over and over

again the hardest part of every one of those legs between aid station was the last mile. We would get to that one mile out from the next resupply. And the aid stations like an oasis, you know? It's where you get your nourishment, right? And that last mile, dude, was the hardest part of every single one of those legs. And it would seem like it just took forever, man. Forever.

And I've covered 19 miles. Why is this freaking last mile getting so hard? And it's because you start overextend yourself mentally. You start to think about the end. You're not present like you were that whole 19 miles. You're like, man, I'm so close. It's right there. But even thinking a mile ahead when you're really, really hurting,

that's way too far ahead to think. Like you get to the point where you have to just think about making it to the next tree or taking the next step. Like, I got there, dude. I got there on that race. Yeah. And in that last mile, when you do start to overextend yourself mentally, also I think complacency plays into that.

Like, you're just like, been out here so long. I can relax a little like, maybe I don't have to eat that gel. Or maybe I don't have to necessarily do the things that I know I need to do because I'm so close. That can be a catastrophe, man. Like, it compounds. Yeah, it compounds. The way, the way professionals operate, you continue to do the things that you know need to be done in spite of the circumstance or where you are in the journey.

You just continue to do them over and over and over again, no matter how monotonous it is, no matter how much you don't want to eat that stinking gel. no matter how much you don't want to take a sip of water. It doesn't matter that you're just a mile out. You've got to do what you've been doing the whole time all the way through until you reach that spot where you can get some reprieve. Like nothing changes. Nothing changes, man. I see it training people all the time.

It's such a hard thing for people to, it's such a hard discipline for people to implement. You know, when we run the, write a passage course, 24 hours, man. You know, we get, we get three, four hours from the end of that mission. And the students, they'll, they'll think they can stop eating. They'll think they can stop communicating. They'll, they'll get real quiet. And it's just, and I have to remind them all the time, nothing freaking changes, man. The most dangerous part is right there at the end, because you are tempted to stop doing the things you've been doing all along

because you're just tired of, the monotony of them. You have to keep doing it. So many people fall victim to that too. Oh, man, yeah. I mean, as you're talking about this, I'm just thinking about different times in my life where I've fallen victim to it, where you get so close to the finish line and you let off.

You think that momentum that you experienced up until the one-yard line is just going to, to carry you across that finish line. But you can get swept away by a current so quickly and taking back another 99 yards to the beginning if you just become complacent and think you're passively going to get there. Sometimes you might get away with it. But sometimes, but more times than not, it's going to cause a catastrophe. And when it does, it blows up.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Did I tell people all the time, especially in a lot. ultra running or when we're doing training events at 3-07 project it's like if we go out so let's say we go out and we want to do 100 miles like the first 98 miles is it's all just a process to get you to the last two miles and that's where you're going to experience the most growth if you will keep doing the things that you know need to be done like you experience the most growth in that last mile. That's just the way you have to endure this long process and to get, because you're experiencing

the most growth when you're doing the things that need to be done when you don't want to be doing them. That's when you're experiencing the most growth. Yeah, I actually said this in my last Ultros, Rocky Raccoon here in Texas. And it was around mile marker 85. and I said this on camera, I talked to the team. Everyone wants to experience what mile 85 feels like. Everyone wants to know what 100 mile or feels like,

but no one wants to go through this first 85, 90 miles together. They just want those last 5 to 10 and across the finish line. But to get to mile 80, 85, 90, 95, you have to had change out your socks and maintained your foot care and ate your fuel, nutrition, stay on top of hydration, drank the water, like take care of necessities to get your body to that point so you could fully excel and get across the finish line. But what happens, and I see it is so many people, you get the mile marker 80, 85, 90, people are falling out, people are DNFing, they're quitting because they decided I didn't need

the fuel. I didn't need the water. I didn't need to change my socks. I didn't need the electrolyte support. Well, you can't get to the finish line. if you don't do the basics, the requirements that help you and sustain you to get to that point. Nobody wants to endure the process, man. So we talked about earlier, the number one thing that, well, one of the big things that stops people,

I'd say close to number one, is shame. Probably the number two is the fact that nobody wants to endure the process. You're exactly right. They want to settle in to some mundane life. they want to settle in to something that's just freaking easy for them that's just you know they can just check the box they don't want to endure the process

and everything in life that forces you to grow is going to require a long and arduous process that's in your your fitness that's in your faith that's in your journey as a husband as a father as a wife, as a mother, in every aspect of your life.

You got to go through it, man. I think this is a good time to bring in tradeoffs, because you talked about this in the documentary. We talked about this last night as well. Throughout that process, there's going to be these decisions you have to make that are tradeoffs. Like in the film, you were talking about,

there was this tradeoff. Do I stop running for a period of time in rest? And through this rest, I'll be a stronger runner when I wake up, where I keep pushing through, hoping that my body just bounces back. Do I allow my legs to have the ability to maybe come back alive?

There's tradeoffs in life. Do I spend more time with my family and slow the growth of the business or do I maximize growth of the business and spend less time with my family? These are decisions that we have to make and there's pros and cons to all of them. What are these tradeoffs for you?

Like how, what made you in this film? during this race, talk about trade-offs? I mean, it became front and center. It became such a reality. And I love how you tie it back into real life. Because in this race, you know, if you lay down for an hour and you got some sleep, you would wake up with a clear mind, but your body would get so dang stiff from just You'd get cold and stiff and you would wake up, and it was just almost, it was horrific to get moving again.

I mean, it would take an hour and a half, two hours for me to get to where I could start running again because my body got so stiff. So it was something that was really highlighted, and you can't, you can't avoid them. I mean, like, you're going to have to make a decision to do one thing or the other. And it's not always going to be the right decision. And sometimes you're going to look back on it and you're going to say, man, maybe I wish I would have done that a little different, but ultimately, you know, they're going to be tradeoffs. Like you said, you just related it back to life.

I think that when every one of us, we like to think that we can find this perfect balance in life, it is not a reality. It's not a reality, man. Like every one of us, we talked about this yesterday. When we lay down to die, which we're all going to die, quicker than we probably think we are, this time is flying by, man. But when that moment comes for us, every one of us, we're going to look back on the tradeoffs that we made,

and we're going to be proud of some things that we were able to accomplish, that we were able to do. And other things, we're going to say, man, I wish that would have looked a little better, right? I wish I would have maybe put more time into relationship than I put into business. But that's the reality for everyone. Now, does that mean you shouldn't still work on trying to achieve. the best balance that you can possibly achieve. No, you should still work on that.

Like, you should still be conscious of that. You should still implement things in your life that's going to make things better, right? You should still consider priorities. You should still do all of that. But we're all created in a very unique way. And we all have the things that we're really good at. and there's going to be a cost.

It's like, it's such a cliche saying to say that your biggest strengths will usually become your greatest weaknesses. That's been the story in my life, dude. Like my ability to stay so locked in and present and focused and just drive hard, I have to have other people in my life that compensate for, for the repercussions of my ability to do that. Like, my ability to do these things and just stay so present, it causes repercussions in other areas.

And I have to bring people in to compensate for that. If we look at it in business, like, man, when I have a group out to train with me, like, I am so, if I can say I'm blessed with one ability, it's the ability to forge a team because I'm so present with these people and I pour myself out so like every ounce of myself I pour out into people when I'm with them but I can do that so well but but I have to have my little brother in business to like take care of the parts of the business that you have to look forward you have to plan for

Right? The bojangles. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You have to plan for. You know, I have to have people that come alongside me that take care of freaking paying the taxes, that take care of paying the invoices that take care of bringing other perspectives, man, because it wouldn't work without that. It just wouldn't work.

When we started this whole conversation leaning into how to fix feelings of lonely and hopelessness, I thought we were going to take the direction of the deep, meaningful relationships and community were the resolution. I think they are, but what I've learned through this conversation is it's courage. And you have to, one, have the courage to go find these deep, meaningful relationships. This is probably by doing something epic and hard and just putting yourself out. there and meeting people. And if you have the courage to do these things and go through the mud and treads through

the crap and walk out the other side with it and say, like, I'm covered in crap, son. I'm a turn. That, you know, from what I'm taking away, that is to solve. That's how we resolve loneliness and hopelessness. And it's probably part of it, having the courage to get off of your phone and go out to the real world and talk to people. not have your screen in front of your face 24 hours a day. So that's the biggest thing I'm taking away from this conversation,

but I thought it was extremely powerful. Yeah, and, dude, I feel that, man, I can relate to you and so many of the things that you're saying, like, when I have people come out to spend time with me and they, they're there for me to train them and to teach them about leadership and communication and pushing themselves to these. I get to share what I love most about what I do is I get to share the experience with people doing what is normally the hardest thing they've ever done.

Like I get to be a part of that on a regular basis. But when these people show up, like, it does take courage, just face-to-face conversation and interaction with real human beings, it takes courage to do that. Like there's this sense of, this sounds crazy, man, but there's like this nervousness or anxiety in me every time I do one of these courses, man, because I'm like, one, okay, this is face to face. This is real. Two, am I going to be able to provide what these people are looking for today? Am I going to be sufficient for them? Am I going to be able to give them what they came here for? Yeah, because we're so used to the virtual interaction, which is easy, man, easy in comparison to real, true face-to-face relationship, especially amongst a really difficult challenge, for sure. Yeah, it's kind of going back to that whole muscle analogy.

I think the more time we spend on our phones, on digital devices, social media, real interactions with people was a muscle that atrophies. Man, it does. I mean, look at like coming off of the pandemic when activations were starting again, people were going back into public.

People didn't know how to interact with like waiters and waitresses and on the line. I know, man. And it was like this awkwardness that we were trying to figure out because this muscle atrophied because we didn't apply a stimulus to it.

When we talk about the word hopelessness, I feel like the whole 2020, 2021, another thing that happened that made people really hopeless is all the things that they thought they could put their hope in, like sporting events, like races, like going to concerts, like things that people enjoyed that brought them fulfillment in life, that they thought that they could really put their hoping, like they got slapped. We all got slapped upside the face, right?

Yeah. Because all that stuff went away. And we realized like, holy crap, all the stuff we've been putting our hope in, we can't really depend on those, like, all of that was taken away. All that was gone. And so people got slapped upside the face and they're like, well, crap, where do I go from here, man? that's why tying hope back into the construct of faith in Christ is so key, man.

Like you have to have something bigger than you, bigger than this world, bigger than your ability, bigger than all this material stuff. You have to have that thing, man. Because without it, when you get slapped, you are not resilient. You can't be. Like, you just have to come to terms with the fact that, dude, you. you are not in control. You are not.

That's hard to come to terms with that until you accept the fact that there is a being that is in control. Right. You know? Well, Chad, honestly, this was, I think this second podcast was better than our first. Well, man, I appreciate you allowing me to share those things. For me, coming into this episode, I felt some anxiety and some tension coming into here. I didn't know necessarily what I thought I needed to say or what we were going to talk about.

But I hope that it provided some value to your listeners and to your community, man, because that's what this is all about. And I think it will. I think it will. Well, if someone's looking for courage to navigate a chapter or a season of life, you obviously offer courses. You have the right of passage. You have other things you do.

Do you want to talk about that briefly before we wrap up to let people know that there are resources for people who need a kick in the butt and those are some things that you offer? Yeah, you just have to show up, man. You just have to put in the rep. And yeah, that's part of a huge part of our business

and our mission. So the ride of passage, for instance, is a mission that I ran. I dreamed it up while I was out on a hike. And I've always said there's three things that every human should do. One is ride a bull. Two is jump out of an airplane. And three is run a hundred mile race.

Because all of those three things like make you feel so powerless, right? I got to ride a bull. Yeah, man. It'll make you feel so powerless. So the 100 mile race thing to me has never been about the distance. It's always been about the time. What makes a 100 mile race so hard? is going through that entire cycle of daylight and darkness without stopping.

So I was like, I want everyone, I say everyone should have this experience. Well, there's a bunch of people out there who maybe they're dealing with old injuries. Maybe they have things, maybe they don't, maybe they have things in their life physically that don't allow them to, or aren't going to allow them to run 100 miles. Maybe they don't, maybe they're not in a place in their life where they have the, it's just not a reality for them to have time to train for something like that. You know, whatever their circumstance is, I thought I can provide that experience the same value by taking someone out for a 24-hour cycle in the wilderness and keep them on their feet the whole time. and the only standard is you have to keep moving. There's no speed standard.

You just have to keep moving. I can provide that experience for these people through this evolution. So I created the rite of passage. And also, that's all about giving people an experience that they can reflect back on for the rest of their lives and draw strength from. What did I, oh, I accomplished this. I can get through whatever it is I'm going through now in life. what did I do during that rite of passage that helped me get through that? What did I learn during that 24-hour time block that helped me actually accomplish that? Okay, let me apply that thing now

in whatever it is I'm going through in this life. So that all of our training is based around the development of the physical body, the mind, which we call the soul and then the spirit. I mean, after these missions, dude, I'm baptized people. I share the gospel with you. people. People come to me and, you know, they, if they, they may not believe the same way as me, but I'll have conversations with them about faith. Like, so we integrate all three aspects of human, the human, into everything that we do. Um, so yeah, it's all at three or seven project.com if you want to check any of that out. And, uh, the hardest part, the heart, I'll tell everybody, the hardest part is just showing up, man. If you want to get better, if you want to grow,

it's going to cost you something. It's going to cost you time. It's going to cost you some pain and discomfort. It's going to cost you money. That's a big reason so many people don't do it. Just showing up is the hardest part. So show up to something, man. It doesn't have to be with me.

But show up to something. Put yourself in that environment around people who are better than you so that you can take your life to the next level. because it matters. What you're doing with your life freaking matters. It matters to the people around you. It matters to God. It matters to your husband or wife.

It matters to your children. It matters, man. Make an investment in yourself. Continue to work on your own personal development. Man, we throw our own personal development to the wayside, especially when we get into our 30s and our 40s and we just throw it. I love when I have someone

that shows up to training and they're in their late 60s, early 70s. I love when I have someone that shows up to the ride of passage that's 300 freaking pounds. I freaking love that, man. It took so much courage for that dude to show up.

I can't imagine. At 300 pounds, knowing we're about to go cover 50, 60 miles through the wilderness. And knowing that they're not going to to be able to be the fastest one on the team. They're not going to probably not going to be able to carry their pack. They're not, but they showed up anyways. That's freaking inspiring, dude.

I don't care if you're the, you know, whatever, you're the ultra runner, you're all in shape and this and that and you show up to train. I mean, good on you. But yeah, those people that are in their late 60s, early 70s, they're overweight, they're, they lack confidence. And they show up. I get to see that, dude. I love that. It inspires me, man, big time. Ladies and gentlemen, Chad Wright, Chad, thanks again. Thanks again, brother.