The Rich Roll Podcast - Byron Davis: Live Your Epic Life

Episode Date: February 1, 2013

The wildly inspiring Byron Davis joins the program to share his story and tools to Live Your Epic Life. A gifted, highly dynamic, charismatic & articulate conversationalist, his story of humble beginnings, Olympic dreams and service to help other's unleash their inner potential is certain to strip you bare of excuses and motivated to set a new and committed course towards self-discovery and personal transformation. Open your ears, heart and mind and let Byron help lead you there. And if you have a moment, we'd love it if you could toss a quick review up on the iTunes page. It's most appreciated! Thanks for the support and hope you enjoy the show! SHOW NOTES * Byron Davis' “Live Your Epic Life” Website * Byron Davis' “Unleash the Unstoppable You” Website * Annett Davis' “Get Fit With Annett” Website * Byron on Twitter @ByronDavis7 * Byron Davis' Bid to Become the first African American Swimmer to make the US Olympic Team – 1996 100 Fly Olympic Trials Final

the rich roll podcast hey people we're back back in the saddle feels good to be back we had a great episode yesterday with juliana hever that i just got up and i'm backing it up with an amazing interview today with byron davis uh two in a, two days in a row, which feels great after having taken a little bit of a break to be back in the flow of the podcast. Byron joins us today. We had an amazing interview. He's one of the most inspiring people that I know. I've known him for quite some time. He's a good friend.

And I know him back from my swimming days. He was an amazing competitive swimmer, almost the first African-American to make the Olympic team. He ended up falling a little bit short and he tells that story today. But he's a guy who is really a self-made guy. He came from a very humble upbringing and really had to pull himself up from the bootstraps. And he tells a story of how swimming saved his life and set him on the trajectory that has made him a very inspirational figure today. He has a lot to share. He's very passionate. He's very articulate.

And he's inspiring. His message is inspiring and he's helping a lot of people kind of find their inner more authentic self. And that's a big part of my message and this podcast. And although it's technically a health and fitness oriented interview series, the kind of undercurrent or the predominant theme really is self-transformation, self-actualization. How can we be better? What are the tools that we can learn and incorporate into our lives to kind of transcend our circumstances and become the best version of ourselves? And that's the message of my book, Finding Ultra. And that's

really, really, really important message to me personally, and one that I want to share whenever I can. And Byron is an amazing ambassador of that. So we have a great conversation. It's a long interview, so I'm going to keep this introduction short. I think we're setting a record today in length because Byron and I and Julie, who participated in part of it, we talked for a little bit over two hours. And so, I don't need to make this any longer than it has to be. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety.

And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression,

anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com.

We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem,

a problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple.

Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards

recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Without further ado, I want to get right into the interview with Byron. I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I hope you find him as inspiring as I do. Like I say at the end of the interview, I am definitely a better man for having him in my life. He continues to inspire me, and I think that his energy is infectious, and I hope you enjoy it. So check him out. Byron Davis. Talk about whatever you want. What do you want to talk about? Hey, let's just jump right in. Let's talk about life. Let's talk about, you want what do you want to talk about hey let's just jump right in let's talk about life let's talk about you know epic body and that's right so uh you know this podcast is

i guess technically like a health and fitness podcast because you have to pick a category you know for itunes but you know i like to think of it as being much broader you know it's really about i mean why are we interested in health and why are we interested in nutrition and fitness? And it really kind of goes back to transformation, like life transformation. How do you better yourself? And, you know, Byron, I think you're, you have one of the most inspirational stories I've ever heard about personal transformation. I mean, your life is incredible. Your story is incredible. And, you know, I'd like to just kind of, you know, get into that a little bit. Let's hear it. You want to talk about that?

Let's hear it. Well, where do you want to start? We can start at birth. We can start at the beginning. That's great. Start at birth. Start at the beginning. You know, you had to overcome quite a bit to get where you are. And I guess I can start with, you know, when we met, I mean, well, or when I first became aware of you. I mean, I think the first time I knew who you were, and it was many years later before we ever met, but I remember being at a swim meet. It was like national championships or maybe junior nationals. No, I think it was nationals sometime back in the 80s.

And I was there swimming the 200 fly and, you know, I was probably senior in high school or something like that. And you had started to make waves on the national swimming scene in the sprint events and the 100 butterfly. And I think it was at Indianapolis. I don't remember what meet it was, but I remember walking the deck with a couple of my swimming teammates and we had heard of you. And then it was warmups or something and you had just jumped out of the pool and you were walking down the deck.

And my buddy, Brad Jones, and I saw you and we're like, holy shit, look at that dude, man. I don't want to race that guy because you were like chiseled out of granite. I mean, swimmers by by nature are you know they're they're built dudes and they're built like you know inverted pyramids or whatever but you were like a standout on the deck you were so cut and fit and i was it was just terrifying that's hilarious that's awesome that's awesome so um and then you went on to you know

uh be extremely successful as a swimmer and swam at UCLA. And before we get back into the back story, I wanted to just talk a little bit about that. I mean, you made a solid effort to try to make the Olympic team and kind of fell a little bit short. And let's talk about that story a little bit. Yeah, actually, that's a really good jump off point. Well, back in 1996, I made the Olympic trials, made the finals. In fact, went in seated first in the finals. At that point, that was... In the 100 butterfly. In the 100 butterfly, right.

At that point, that was the fastest recorded top eight heat in American history. And who were the other guys that were in that heat we had mark henderson um he was my teammate yeah i swam with mark my club team yeah and i mean he's just phenomenal just a lot of great guys but but every single person in that race um had swum faster than mark spitz world record way back in the day i mean it was the fastest uh top eight guys in America at the point. And this is 1988? Well, this is 1996. Oh, 96, okay.

96 for the Atlanta Games. And in the prelims, the preliminary, of course, you swim prelims first, and basically the top guys from that, the top eight, come back and swim another race, and then the top two make the Olympic team. And I, I swam the race, which by the way, not to interject,

but you know, it's brutal, right? It's like you're, you're first or second, or you go home and, you know, elite swimmers are training four or five hours a day.

You know, it's black line mania, you know, just in the pool all the time or in the weight room, you show up for that. You, you, you, you bust your butt and you taper and you show up at that meet. And if you have an off, you could be number one in the world and undefeated for the last five years. And you show up and you have an off day or you got a sniffle and you're not top two, you're not making the team. Yep. I mean, that's it. The, the U S Olympic trials for swimming.

Um, I hear this all the time. All national team athletes say this. It is a pressure cooker. And the competition is so thick. The United States, we have so much depth in the sport of swimming, so much depth that many people say that, you know what, the Olympic trials was tougher than the actual Olympic games. It usually is.

It is, right. It's more, there's more, it's sort of like you make the team and then you go and you have a good time. You still want to win and you know, whatever, but it's sort of like there's a huge relief. It's all about the trials. Yeah, it's all about the trials. And so that race at the Olympic trials, I made the final and it was a great race. It was a pivot in my life and we can get into this a little bit later.

How far ahead were you at the 50 though? At the 50. He had the fastest first 25, 50 meters of anybody by far. It was that back half for you that was tough. Oh, it was crazy. Basically, at that time, I had clocked the world's fastest 50 meter butterfly time going out on my 100. So basically, I broke the world record in fastest 50 meter butterfly time going out on my, my hundred, you know, so

basically I broke the world record in the 50 meter butterfly. It's like breaking, it's like breaking the a hundred meter track record in the 200 meters in the first hundred. Exactly. So I went out like gangbusters, went out crazy. And, uh, and I came back the second half, big elephant and piano and the whole ceiling. Everything just dropped on my back. The last 15 meters of the race, my shoulders, my lungs, everything just collapsed. I couldn't get my arms out of the water. It was painful.

And in the process, three other guys ended up touching me out. And I missed making the Olympic team by three-tenths of a second. Three-tenths of a second. Oh, my gosh. And it was a heartbreak. But I'm going to jump back a little bit, but then we can move forward. The beauty that actually has come out of that race, Rich, is that what most people don't realize is I wasn't even supposed to be in that race.

Most people don't realize. They think, wow, that's a heartbreak. And to be honest with you, it was. I had post-meat depression and went through dark days of the soul afterward and woke up and realized that my dreams of making the Olympic team and getting on the Wheaties box was done. It wasn't going to happen. But what I had to realize out of that emerged a beautiful story that kind of set the course for the rest of my life. But before that race, 14 months leading up into that race, I was two years into my retirement. I had stopped swimming after college and I was on my way to law school. I had interned at a law

firm in Philadelphia my senior year. And I was preparing to take the LSAT and go and did that. And I was on my way. But you know what? That summer when I interned, I realized I was in a legal library pretty much 12 hours a day. And I had stacks of depositions and a highlighter. I have no idea what that feels like. and a highlighter. I have no idea what that feels like. And all I did was highlight key words, key phrases for two attorneys.

Pretty much that's what I did. And then I would do research and just highlight it. And I was like, this is not what I want to do with the rest of my life. Well, it's amazing. You get this college education and you're sort of prepared for the world and you kind of step forward and think well you know this is the upwardly mobile thing to do right and and then to kind of walk into that and go really like this is this is it this is the

this is the big prize and after being you know at the level you were in swimming and all the excitement and all of that to be you know sitting, sitting in that office sort of, you know, reduced to a highlighter. It was not fun. It's a dark moment of the soul. Oh man, you know what? I became just a brilliant artist with highlighter. I was really, you know, it was... You applied that Olympic prowess just right into that highlighting. I applied excellence to highlighting. You're like that in everything you do. That's great. But so that summer, I realized I didn't want to go to law school.

I didn't want to do anything that way. But at the same time, I realized I wanted to continue to swim. I knew in my heart that I had my best swimming still ahead of me. Yet I had to continue to swim. I knew in my heart that I had my best swimming still ahead of me. Yet I had to tell my mom, I had to tell the rest of the world and my social network and people that I wanted to get back in the water and train. But now here, I'm no longer in college. In the United States, there's really no professional swimming. You had, especially back in 96 and 95 and back in the early 90s, you really had to swim overseas if you wanted to at least survive.

So I definitely, I knew I wanted to swim. So what I ended up doing was becoming a substitute teacher in Compton, California. So I went into the hood and taught English and PE. And then I decided to start training with the crosstown rival, USC. Of course, being from UCLA, went to USC, that was unheard of. But at this point, had UCLA already decimated their program? Yeah. UCLA, my senior year in 93 was the last year we had the men's team. Right. And just for the listener out there, UCLA was a dynasty in swimming, you know, in the 70s and the 80s and just produced,

you know, champion after champion and NCAA championship team, you know, one after another. And it was kind of Title IX that was the death knell for the program, right? Which was a law that was passed that said you had to have equal funding for women's sports and men's sports. And so colleges across the country had to start cutting men's programs or funding more women's programs. And UCLA ended up cutting its swimming program, which was devastating to swimming. And still to this day is unbelievable to me. And it's unbelievable that they have not resuscitated the program. We're trying to work on that right now.

The alumni were really working hard. we're we're trying to work on that right now we have the alumni we're really working hard they just UCLA just built a beautiful new 50 meter pool specifically for the competitive aquatics so for the um volley uh the water polo team and the women's swim team so we're trying to really I've seen it it's incredible yeah I'm like there's no men's swim team to use this facility it's unbelievable in southern California yeah it, it's crazy. But so because of that, I decided to swim, start training at USC. And I had no money. And pretty much living with there about six guys in an apartment, I started substitute teaching and training. And that's it. But in that moment, Rich and Julie, I knew that I was in my sweet spot. I knew that I was

supposed to be there. I couldn't explain it to other people, but I knew that I was supposed to be there. And all I knew was to get up every morning and train. And to make a long story short, I ran into a friend of mine who was a swimmer. And she said, you know what? You need to contact Jonti Skinner because the U.S. national team is creating this new unprecedented program at the Olympic Training Center, the resident national team, and they said people who want to, the top people, the top swimmers in the world are invited to train at the Olympic Training Center. You should apply.

Now, I thought that this was going to be crazy because, again, here I had never been proven in the 100-meter butterfly, so long course was not a strong point for me. Yeah, but you were a name in the sport. I mean, it wasn't like you were a nobody. I mean, everybody knew who you were. Well, yeah, but again, I had no results. All my results were yards and in college, so I'm training, I'm swimming. I write Jonti Skinner a letter. Okay. I don't even qualify. My times aren't even fast enough to be a candidate. And this is where, again, we can get into this, but this is where I really believe

providence moves when we follow our passion, even if we can't explain it. Mm-hmm. So I write Jonti Skinner, the resident national team coach at the time, a letter. It was September. I remember it was September 10th. And I wrote him a letter and just shared it with him, just listed out an argument. This is where the whole political science and law came in. I constructed a great argument as to why I should be a good candidate. With a highlighter.

With a highlighter, exactly. And I wrote him a letter. I sent it off. September 28th, I get a call from Jonti Skinner. And literally, I mean, Jonti is one of those guys really laid back, doesn't speak a lot, doesn't say a lot, says what he means, but pretty monotone. So you don't know whether- He's a South African guy, right?

Yeah, South African guy. He was a great sprinter at the time. He missed going to the Olympics because being part of the whole apartheid thing. Right, I remember that. The whole issue. So he really missed his thing, but became a very accomplished coach at University of Alabama. Became now the, at this time, they picked him to be the national team coach for the resident program. Wrote him the letter.

He calls me September 28th, and he says, Byron, just in a nutshell, in his classic I'm not giving you any emotion kind of voice, if you are honest about what you put in that letter, if you really think you can do what you say you think you can do and you're willing to be coachable, then I'll see you out here October 3rd. Oh, nice. Okay, so that was, you know. He's got goosebumps.

And then he hangs up the phone. I don't even remember him saying goodbye. It was like, click. That was it. And I'm like, okay, did this just happen? You know, is this real? And so I was like, all right. So I ended up giving pretty much 90% of everything that I owned away,

got out of my lease, all in one day, got out of my lease, packed everything else that I had in my 1984 Audi 5000 that I bought for $1,400 and literally drove out, $50 in my pocket, and drove out to Colorado Springs, not knowing what was going to meet me there. not knowing what was going to meet me there. And then in 14 months, training at the Olympic Training Center after a two-year layoff, I went from never being world-ranked in the 100-meter butterfly to being ranked in the top 10 in the world and then coming within three-tenths of a second to make the Olympic team. And so that story, I think, is the power. So although I didn't make the Olympic team, what I draw from that experience was, you know what?

Yeah, I came up a little short, but failure is never final, especially if you know how to use it to fertilize your future success. And so it took me a while to get that, but that's what I learned because leading up to that point, here are all the small wins. There's a new study out in positive psychology over the last 10 years. They stopped studying why all the illness in people's heads. And so they're starting to study, well, great people who go through tough times, what makes them special? Well, in positive psychology, there's the science of small wins. That's the phrase that they use, the science of small wins, which is people who are able to truly look at and own the small wins in their life, what happens is you start to create a momentum.

Absolutely. Even if you're going through tough times and struggles and disappointments, during the times where you're knocked back or knocked down, that momentum still moves you forward. So even though you fall, you fall forward. It's like failing up. Exactly. You fail up. Well, you've had 10 little victories, and so then you have one setback.

You can manage that. It's not devastating to you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and the lesson is that you broke a paradigm or broke someone else's belief system about what could be done in your own. Push those boundaries and went for it, and you're actually a champion many times along that path.

Yeah, definitely. And also, I think implicit in that is this idea that you had an intuitive thought or an emotional kind of drive that might have defied logic or was inexplicable. Like your swimming career was over and it was time to get on with life and you had this nagging feeling. And I think we're kind of preconditioned in our society to repress those feelings. And my story and my book and your story is about kind of saying, no, I'm actually going to listen to that. And I don't know where it's going to lead me. And it might be crazy and people are going to tell me this is the wrong thing to do, but you

have that something inside you that's like pushing you and making that choice to listen to that and follow those breadcrumbs wherever they may lead, I think is really powerful. Yeah, definitely. Because, and here's the thing, I don't want to harp on what society teaches us, but we've got to be honest. We struggle with, in our society, what I call the gravity of control and comfort. There is this gravity that continues to pull us into complacency. It keeps us safe. And when we're safe, all it does, it keeps us perpetuating and moving down the status quo. And if the status quo isn't your passion, isn't something that you're really called to do, you're doing it for logical reasons, but reasons that don't resonate with your heart.

You start living in this state of quiet desperation and you start becoming a drone. And here's the crazy part. People get really good at becoming drones. They become very competent and skilled in their profession. And it then keeps them even more stuck because they get a family. You know, we all go through this, get a family, you have a house, all these different things you now use as logical, responsible excuses not to truly pursue your passion. And one of the things that, although I didn't learn this lesson after the race, it was years later that I look back on that race,

that the lessons really started to emerge for me. But during that time, after 96, I floated for a few weeks. And I just floated. In fact, I got out of Dodge. My girlfriend, who's now my wife, my girlfriend and fiance at the time, was playing overseas in Greece. She was playing pro volleyball, indoor volleyball in Greece. And so I decided to just, you know what, I'm going to head on over to Greece. So I convinced my mom to loan me some money, and I literally hung out in Greece for two or three weeks. Yeah, that's cool. Well, I think that we're also sort of culturally compelled to sort of make a decision immediately.

Like, okay, that chapter ended. What are you doing now? You need to know immediately. And we don't take enough time to kind of breathe and catch our breath and go, you know what? It's okay if I just not make a decision right now for a little bit and, you know, collect myself and figure out what's next. I think ultimately it'll set you on a better trajectory if you allow yourself that space as opposed to, oh my God, this is over. Like I need to get a job right away or go into some kind of tailspin panic over it.

Well, and I wish I could say, Rich, that I knew that and I had the courage at that moment to pursue my passion, my next phase, my next chapter. After I got back from Greece, I was like, I got to get a job. I got to get a job. And so a position opened up to be an assistant coach at UCLA, but for the women's team. And the head coach at the time approached me, Cindy Gallagher, and she said, I'd love for you to come and help me with my sprinters. And it was a job, and it was in something that I was familiar with, so I ended up taking it.

I got to tell you, five months into the job, I realized every day I stepped foot on the pool deck, I wanted to be in the water. I wanted to be, you know, and I was fighting this thing because it was like, no, your time is done. You're finished. Right. But I wanted to be in the pool. And what I didn't realize then is, you know, I didn't necessarily want to, you know, try

to reclaim some glory in the water. But again, that passion for adventure, for expressing myself kinesthetically, for the creative process that you go through when you're preparing for your event, all of those things were still fresh inside of me. Yet I was in a position where my job description was really clear and I couldn't move too much to the left or to the right of that. I had to stay in that box. But yet this spirit of creativity and adventure and wanting to express and use my body and my mind creatively to produce something, an idea, that was what was alive in me. So I struggled.

And pretty soon after a year, I quit. I wasn't a very good assistant coach you know and I wasn't doing my job well uh Cindy would have fired me anyway uh so I ended up I ended up quitting and I got back in the water and started training but at this what year is this now this is now um 19 1998 1998 so here's the thing so now now I'm married. My wife and I are married. And she decides that she wants to play pro beach volleyball. And she partnered with a person who was also new to the game. And at this point, 1998, we're married. And we live in an apartment. And we decide that both of us were going to go for the Olympics again.

And so we go for the Olympics. I start training and swimming. I go back to teaching again. So this is like comeback number two. Comeback number two. Right. Long story short, I didn't make the 2000 Olympic Games. My wife did.

Did you make the trials that year? Yeah, I made the trials. You did? I made the trials. And I injured my shoulder a couple of weeks before. And I got psyched out. I mean, that's a whole other story. But I ended up not making the Olympic team.

But here is the beautiful thing about that moment. In 1998, again, one of those kernels of confirmation that's like, you're on the right path. Stay the course. So in 98, we decide, my wife and I decide that we're going to pursue the Olympics, but we're going to do it full on. So we couldn't really work. So I quit my job as a substitute teacher, because again, that's what I knew. I wasn't a coach, said, I can't substitute teach, I need to focus on swimming. Annette says, I need to focus on pro beach volleyball. teach. I need to focus on swimming. Annette says, I need to focus on pro beach volleyball. Incidentally, she ended up making the Olympic team in 2000. So we got one Olympian in the family.

So that's awesome. Yeah. But again, here's where that providence comes in. No later, maybe it was maybe a month later, we're both into this. We don't have money. And we're wondering what's going to happen. I get a call from a casting agent in L.A. And it was the swimming portion was Mark Spitz. That was the character they were using. And they wanted to do a commercial with Mark Spitz and then a, you know, you know, backdrop or, you know, other swimmers. So I was a, um, an extra, an extra in this commercial. So I get this call. I'm an extra. I got to tell you. They're like, we need a black guy. We need a black guy. We're saying, Byron, he's the only one. Exactly. We need a black swimmer. Who can we find? Yeah, there's only one.

Yeah, exactly. So we go, and literally, I spend the whole day, and all we're doing are 25s. And I happen to be in the lane right next to Mark Spitz, right? And so we're doing are 25s. And I happen to be in the lane right next to Mark Spitz, right? And so we're doing this back and forth. Who, by the way, continues to swim Masters at UCLA. And if you're a Masters swimmer in Southern California, you can be on the UCLA Masters team. And he shows up. And he still shows up and swims.

He still, yeah. And a side note, Mark Spitz is hilarious. And he doesn't mean to be. That's why he's so funny to me. Because he'll be talking. we'll be swimming and all, and all of a sudden he'll tell a story of how he broke the world record in warm-up. And he's not boasting. He's a caricature of himself. He's almost like a cartoon version of his own personality. personality he is and everything is true and you're like this guy is just just a dynamo but all of his over-the-top stories are actually true i mean he did break the the the olympic record in the 200 free as he was warming up it was crazy what year was that it was his comeback remember

that whole thing yeah his comeback was for around the same time it was earlier it's 1992 yeah so in fact we knew each other um other because he started training with UCLA, and he swam in the sprint lane from 1990 all the way up to the 1992 Olympic Games were trials. But going back to this commercial, I get the commercial, book the commercial, it's done. To this day, I've never seen the commercial, never seen it run on air. But between 1998 and 2000, I kept getting these nice little checks.

Residual. Residual checks in the mail that, I mean, again, one day's work, paid for my SAG card, so we got insurance, and we were able to subsist for two years while we trained. It was incredible. It was incredible. It is that crazy, magical, spiritual equation that when your heart is in alignment and you're walking with purpose and faith and you don't know where it's going to lead you, that you get provided for. I talk about that in the book, and it seems weird or whatever, but it's been proven to me so many times in my life.

And then, you know, I hear stories like yours all the time. And it's not often like what, it doesn't often look like what you think it's going to look like. No, it's never. You could never predict it. You don't know what it's going to look like. It's going to be very unconventional and very creative, but it always comes.

And that's what's scary. And if you're human, you get scared by that. Because again, we're conditioned for comfort and control. We gravitate toward comfort and control in our lives, but the creative process is nothing. It's not control. You're releasing. It's open. You have to surrender that. You. It's not control. You have to surrender that. You have to surrender that control. You have to be willing to let go and be willing to receive whatever is going to come your way.

And you can relate to this, Rich, just in training for crazy ultra stuff. There comes a point, and we call it being in the zone. But you reach a point in your race or your event or whatever it is where it's a crossroads. And that crossroads, you have to make a choice. Either I decide to keep control and do this through willpower, or you decide to let go. And you decide to just go into the zone. You decide to say, you know what, I'm going to chase this. And the pain is still there.

The courage you need to fight through stuff is still there. All of that doesn't go away. But at some point, you decide to let yourself be totally captured in the moment. And then that's where, you know, breakthrough happens. Absolutely. And, you know, I talk about that a lot too. And, you know, the power of surrender and the beauty of surrender. And it gets, it's a confusing concept for somebody who's not familiar with it because the immediate kind of knee-jerk reaction is, well, that's giving up. Like, what are you talking about?

I don't understand that. And I'm like, no, that's not what it is at all. You still take the actions. You do all the necessary things, but you're relinquishing your attachment to the results. And you sort of open yourself up to greater possibilities at times. And you have a great story about that. There's one race. You told Julie and I this story about that one race where you were struggling with that.

You had the flu. Yeah. Tell us that. Can you tell that story? Well, I mean, okay, I'll tell you two stories. One, I mean, quickly, the whole idea, I mean, the race where I was just weak and I was sick and I had the flu and didn't want to, you know, compete, didn't want to swim, didn't think, you know, and being a swimmer, you play all these head games with yourself. You wonder, am I going to hit my taper? Am I going to,

You play all these head games with yourself. You wonder, am I going to hit my taper? Am I going to, you know, you train a whole year hoping that you peak at the right moment only to drop two or three-tenths of a second off your time. And that was a successful year. It's kind of insanity when you put it that way. It's like, okay. What were we doing? I know. It's crazy.

It's like the payoff, the return on our investment. I mean, we're being I know. It's crazy. It's like the payoff, the return on our investment. I mean, we're being jipped. Well, anyway, so I'm playing with all these head games and all, and I'm in the middle of the race. And at some point, again, it came to that crossroad where it was, okay, am I just going to give in to this moment or am I going to buy into the logical lies that I told myself? And the answer was no. In that moment, I allowed myself to give into what I call now giving into your greatness. Everyone, we all have three people in fighting for position in our lives. We can either be our average self, we could be our defeated self, or we could be our epic self. be our average self, we could be our defeated self, or we could be our epic self. And our epic self is, the way that we do that is by learning to give into our own greatness. And we do that

in these little moments of decision. And so in that race, I made that decision. It was just a shift to allow, again, not looking at the outcome, not trying to will myself to win, but instead recognizing that, you know what, I have everything that I need in this moment to accomplish what I'm called to do at this time. It was, you know, that was the moment. And, you know, the outcome was great. You know, I ended up winning and getting my best time and everything. But again, that was just one of those small moments.

And I was sick. I didn't, all the excuses that we had leaning into the race, I didn't have a great taper. All these things existed. They were true. But yet, still walked away with my best time and walked away with the victory.

Yeah, and when you first told me the story, I was so delighted because you had talked about having all those facts and the reality of the conditions, and then at that moment, you described it that you just let go. You dissolved into your greatness, and you felt something greater than yourself actually come in, and you won. Right. Against all logic, really.

So for somebody who's listening out there, I mean, how do you do that? You know what I mean? There's a gap between kind of intellectually understanding the story, but what are the tools that you have to employ to kind of free your mind up to allow yourself to be in that headspace? I definitely think that there comes a point, almost like the perfect storm,

that takes place where, and you've heard this, the phrase, when we prepare to do something. So there's a process of ownership and even getting to the opportunity for great things to happen. We all have to pay that price. We all struggle with what I call the pluck and the plop syndrome, which is we want to be plucked out of our current situation and automatically plopped into our ideal situation. And all the while, you know, ignoring and forfeiting the process. Well, we all have to go through that process, the process of training, the process of doing what we know we need to do in order to be invited to the game, you know, in order to actually

be in that position to win or be in that position for great things to happen. So that's one side of it. You definitely do have to prepare. And preparing comes in many different ways. Preparing is knowing what your strengths and your gifts are and knowing how you operate. Some people prepare in a very scheduled, methodical kind of way.

prepare in a very scheduled, methodical kind of way. Other people prepare in a very creative, very random, organic kind of way. Yeah, I'm the former and Julie is the latter. But the key is, so if we're going to put this in a step formula, the first thing is identifying and owning how you like to prepare. And not making apology for it, but owning how you prepare. But then, here's, I think, the second step is recognizing there comes a point where you have to trust that you've done all that you can do. And it's that moment of trust where this collision takes place and providence moves with you, meaning all sorts of things start to happen in your favor that normally wouldn't if you didn't choose to allow yourself to let go. So in swimming, we call it swimming out of our mind. We spend a lot of time trying to train and mentally get prepared, but at some point we realize that now we have to spend the next hour

or however long it takes us to get psyched up for our race. What do we do? We try to get out of our mind. We put headphones on. We do things to distract ourselves because we no longer want, after we've dotted the I's, we've crossed the T's, we no longer want to question how we prepare. And all we want to do is fight to be completely present. And that's the second part is once we've prepared, now the simple key is protecting and guarding your present,

being completely present in that moment, because that's when you invite all of the other energy that takes place, energy from people, the crowd yelling for you, the energy of that fear that comes. Fear is a beautiful thing. Fear and excitement come from the same source. I mean, to just think, I hope I'm making sense. I know I'm going over the place. No, absolutely. It's perfect. But fear and excitement come from the same source. I mean, to just think, I hope I'm making sense. I know I'm going over the top. But fear and excitement comes from the same source. When we're feared, biologically, what happens? Our palm starts to sweat,

heart starts to beat fast, eyes dilate. You get the dryness of mouth, cotton mouth. Well, what happens when we're excited? Our hands start to sweat. Our heart starts to beat fast. Our eyes dilate. The same chemical, physical, biological reaction to fear is the same response to excitement. The key is fear is the anticipation of something bad, whereas excitement is the anticipation of something good. And so in that present, in the moment,

anticipation of something good. And so in that present, in the moment, we must condition ourselves to embrace what's going to be good, as opposed to embrace what could be bad. Nice. Beautifully, beautifully, eloquently put. It's so inspiring to hear you speak and you do such a beautiful... Well, I mean, you's such a, you know, you're such a beautiful soul and you're so connected spiritually and you have, you know, so much beauty and it's just a, it's, it's a delight. Thank you. I want to work with you. How do I work with you? Oh, that's funny. This is great. This is great. This is, this is awesome. It's, um, yeah, in swimming you, you know, in addition to the physical training, there's a lot of visualization that you do. You know, you spend a lot of time kind of, yeah, to meet you're lying on a pool deck and you're like

rehearsing your race, like every, every single detail, every 10th of a second from beginning to end of that 50 freestyle or whatever. So that by the time you get up on the blocks, it's a foregone conclusion. It's almost robotic at that point. Like the race is already done. And Julie used to always say this to me, um, you know, before the Ultraman race, it's like, it's already done. You've already done it. You just have to walk through it now, but it's already complete. And that is exactly what you said. It's about being completely present and showing up for the moment and allowing for, you know, the miracle to happen. Yeah. And you know who's a master at this since we're talking swimming a little bit? And I've followed him ever since he came on my radar is Michael Phelps. A quick story

I like to tell is I beat Michael Phelps. Yes, I beat Michael Phelps. He was 14 at the time. He was a child. He was a child. He just burst on the scene it was the international santa clarita international meet invitational and i remember him he got eighth uh he went in seated or he made the finals he was in lane eight and i was in lane i was in lane six and uh beat him so that's my claim to fame i can say i beat michael fendt but from that point you knew that this kid was special and uh and of course, the rest is history. He's been the most prolific athlete known to man, arguably the best Olympic athlete of all time. But he does something powerful and he dials it in. And again, going

back to that whole science of small wins, in the book, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Duhigg, yeah. Exactly. Talked about this, actually. He talked about Michael Phelps. And basically, he says that Michael Phelps programs into his rhythm, into his daily rhythms, these small wins, where he gets into a lifestyle of winning. And everything, all these little wins lead up to his race. So by the time he gets behind the block, it's just another small win in this whole big momentum. There's so much momentum behind it.

That's so powerful. Exactly, yeah. And it's not just within himself. It's everybody in the world who already, they're all going, he's already won it too. The momentum has spread, you know, across the globe. Exactly. I mean, he's buttressed by all of that. I mean, you know, most people would look at it and go, oh my God, look at all the pressure on him.

You know, he has to carry all that pressure because everyone's expecting him to win, but you're flipping it and saying, no, it's actually everybody. He has this huge monsoon of wind behind him where everyone's sort of already said, okay, you're the guy, like just follow through. Right, and when people show up to beat him, again, whenever he's on the block, everyone wants to beat him. I mean, let's look at the Olympics in Beijing, okay?

And the race, the 100 butterfly that he swam with Michael Kavik, against Michael Kavik, who's also a great guy. He was supposed to lose that race. Right. If you look at how the race, if you look at all the replays, you look at how Michael swam his race, perfect, to a T. Yet that momentum that Michael Phelps had just was undeniable.

And he found a way to put his hand on the wall first. Right. I mean, that's powerful. If it's on YouTube, I'll post a link to the video of that race. Because if you're one of three people on the planet who didn't see it, it was the one race that he almost lost at that Olympics

where he kind of messed up his touch at the end and Kavik almost nailed him. And when you watch the repeats, you really can't tell to the eye who won. What was it? Was it a hundredth or two hundredths of a second or something like that? Yeah, it was something crazy. Right. But of course he won. So yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. So let's step back a little bit though, because I want to get kind of into your backstory. You were not out of the gate. Nobody would have predicted that you were going to be this very bright, articulate, upwardly mobile champion swimmer. I mean,

you grew up in Cleveland, kind of the wrong side of the tracks. And let's hear a little bit about that. Yeah. I grew up in the inner city of Cleveland, East Cleveland, Ohio. I lived a few blocks away from Case Western Reserves. And for people who know where Case Western Reserve is, it's right outside of downtown, not in a very good neighborhood. And the experts said that I would be just another stat. I, again, grew up in the inner city, raised by a single black mom. My dad, unfortunately, chose to sell drugs for a living, but ultimately was found tied to his bedpost, shot six times in the head. How old were you when that happened?

I was six. And I'll never forget the day that my mom brings me upstairs. And by the way, two weeks before, I'm sorry, two months before this happened, my mom told my dad to leave, get out of the house. Because there was just bad elements kept coming around the house. And I've talked to her, of course, as an adult and kind of got the back story on all this. But back then, I just knew that my dad was moving into an apartment two blocks down the street from us. And I didn't understand why, but as a kid, you're like, all right, I'll just roll with it. And you were a single child. Yeah.

And so, no, I have a sister who's six years older than I am. And so that day, I remember I was playing outside with my best friend Lamar. And we were out in the front lawn, and we used to play this, we used to have a tennis ball and then a broomstick, and we would play bat, or we would swing the bat. Basically, I would stand by the stairs, or someone would stand by the stairs, and the other person would throw the tennis ball, and you just bat in practice. So we were having batting

practice. And, uh, and I remember my mom calling me up stairs and she sat down in, I'll, I'll never forget it. We had this orange, um, like kind of love seat, uh, couch that, that, that we had. She sat down in there. I sat next to her, like kind of right between her legs. And she said, She sat down in there. I sat next to her, like kind of right between her legs. And she said, hey, your dad's never coming back. And in that moment, I decided, you know, my first response was, you know, okay, I've become the man of the house. And so my verbal response was, we don't need him. We don't need him.

We'll be fine without a mom. And no, she says, you don't understand. No, he died. The police found him and someone shot him. And all of a sudden, you know, I just froze. I didn't even cry. I just froze. And I didn't actually cry until actually a year later.

But I just froze and I didn't know how to respond. And then throughout that next year, these little mini explosions would happen in my life, and my stuttering increased. Like mini explosions, like acting out or getting in trouble? Yeah, acting out, getting in trouble. Getting into trouble, getting into fights, just not being a very pleasant kid and all. But I just remember that time of being very confused and hating my dad because he left us. And I carried that chip on my shoulder through high school.

That's another thing. Again, the experts thought that I was going to go down another path. Finding swimming was a savior for me. How did that happen? I mean, it saved your life, right? Swimming saved my life. I credit the blessing and the gift of competitive sports and swimming to really changing the angle and the pitch of my life.

Well, one of the things that my mom did right out of the bat, she just became very devoted to getting my sister and I out of the neighborhood and used every excuse to do it. I remember her kidnapping my friends and I on the Saturdays, and we would literally go to the art museum. We would go see the Cleveland Orchestra. We would do all of these things that kids in the hood didn't do. And my mom found every excuse to keep us out of the hood. And I remember a quick story, how I fell into the sport of swimming, because I literally fell into the sport.

quick story, how I fell into the sport of swimming, because I literally fell into the sport. Gray Y, Euclid Y, which was a YMCA that was across town, created this program called Gray Y. And it was an initiative to use sports to bridge the gap between the white poor kids and the black poor kids who used to always fight. And so you would come together in sport and that's why they call it gray. Why? And so we, we, uh, started going to this Saturday and Sunday kind of activities in sports. And there I was introduced to a lot of different sports. Um, the one sport that stuck was swimming, but here's, here's the crazy story real quickly. My friend and I, Lamar, were playing, we were just goofing off. I didn't want to play field hockey. And so we decided to kind of ditch

that and just hang out in the Y area. And we started playing, we started hitting each other. And so he would hit me and start running around and I would hit him. And so basically, I remember hitting Lamar really hard and he gave me that look like, I'm going to, if I catch him, I'm going to kill you kind of look, you know, when you play your kid, you hit somebody too hard. Well, we started running through the, the YMCA. Well, I run onto the pool deck. I run and I run on the pool deck and literally almost slip and fall into the water. At that same time, the coach of the Euclid Y Dragonflies comes over to me. I think I'm in trouble. He starts telling me about how cool and how great swimming is.

And I'm sitting here just wondering when the hammer's going to drop. The guy, when the kid's going to show up and beat your ass. And he's talking, he's talking, and he's telling me, long story short, my mom comes to pick us up. Jeff Armstrong, the coach, ends up talking to my mom about getting me involved in swimming. And that Monday, I was on the Euclid Y Dragonfly swim team and started swimming. And that was at age nine. That was when I was nine. And, I mean, swimming is such an unlikely outlet.

Like, where's football? Where's basketball? Like, why swimming? And, you know, I mean, how does that happen? I mean, were there other black kids on the team? No. It must have been very unusual. I was always a pioneer at the time,

and I could tell you thousands of stories about, very funny stories about being black back in the early 80s in a competitive sports. Yeah, and then going to school and feel like you do what? Yeah, you swim. And believe me, I got it from both sides, from the white kids who didn't see black swimmers. I became the authority of everything black. So I was the, why do black people do this? So I would get it from that side.

Do you know Cullen Jones? You know? And then on the other side, with all my black friends, at this point, being in competitive swimming, I disappeared from the neighborhood. And so all my black friends were like, where are you? What are you doing? And they would call me white boy.

And because at this time, I was going through to a speech specialist, a therapist, because again, I stuttered. And when my dad died, it really came out. That was like a trauma response to that. And also, my mom and the therapist always told me to enunciate and really exaggerate as I pronounced words. So I, all my black friends and people in neighborhood called me white boy. And, and so I had it from, from both ends, but here's the thing.

I knew I loved swimming. I knew it because that was, that was my creative zone at back then. I didn't know how far it would take me, but all I knew at that moment, it was a refuge. When I got in the water, I was in my playground. I was in an element that just was beautiful to me. And I also credit swimming for helping me find what my learning style was. You know, back then, in addition to stuttering, you know, I was misdiagnosed as having ADD because I couldn't stand, you know, stay still. And I'm not the type of learner. I mean, we know now the whole different modalities of learning. We know, you know, if you're auditory

or, you know, kinesthetic or whatever. Back then, I was not, I am to this day, I'm not an auditory learner. If you ask me to sit in a seat and just listen to a professor or a teacher for more than 30 minutes, it's done. I'm not going to do it. It's not going to get in. So as a result, you know, I was kind of disruptive a lot in school. Well, swimming, I recognized, wait a minute, if you were to demonstrate to me how to do something and then gave me an opportunity to actually do it, I could pick it up like that. I could intuitively pick it up. And so swimming, I realized that's how I started to excel.

By the first year, I was picking up all the different strokes, and I made it to the zone, made it on the zone team. And, you know, first it was just, you know, swimming fast enough to swim in different cities and then different states. And then I was invited to all these different meets. And I was like, you know what, I'm going to stick with swimming because swimming is getting me, you know, out of the neighborhood. It's expanding your horizons. Yeah, and I'm going to nationals and all these different places. And so I'm going to stick with it.

And so I credit swimming for finding my ultra sort of thing, kind of discovering that this is my love zone, my safe haven. Well, it's also, I think, my story is a lot different from yours. But I had certain adolescent pains or whatever. And swimming was always my safe place. It was my safe haven. And there's something, you know, about being underwater where, you know, none of that can touch you. You know what I mean?

Like you can't hear anything. No one can talk to you. And you feel safe. can talk to you and you feel safe you know it's almost like this womb-like place where you can go and escape you know whatever unpleasant you know situations sort of you know surround you in your life outside the pool and for you to be able to recognize that and like lean into it i mean it's amazing it really like set you on a completely different trajectory yeah it did i mean do you have friends you know still from those days back there? I mean, are they still living back there? Like, do you keep in touch with any of

those guys? Well, I've lost since my adulthood and since I've been married and since my grandmother died and my mom moved out to Palm Springs, I haven't been back to the hood, to the neighborhood in over 15 years. But I will tell you a story of the last time i was back um i remember walking down the street it was it was uh it was in december it was snow i was smelling the you know just the just the whole cleveland vibe it was beautiful um just kind of walk reminiscing through the hood all of a sudden I feel this thump, you know, this car approaching me. And music was just bumping. The bass.

The bass was happening. And then I'm realizing, wait a minute, I'm in the hood. And I haven't been here. People don't know who I am. So I get a little nervous that this car is creeping. You could tell, I could feel that this car, I mean, they were looking at me. So the car rolls up. And then all of a sudden mean, they were looking at me. So the car rolls up, and then all of a sudden, the car rolls just right past me.

And when you grow up in the hood, you learn that when you're in the city, you don't walk on the sidewalk. You never walk on the sidewalk. You always walk in the street. And the reason why you, it's like instinct, you walk in the street, not because you want to just hold up traffic, but that's the best shot of you running if something breaks out. If you're on the sidewalk, somebody can come and jump you or pull you in an alley or something. You just learn to walk in the street. So instinct kicked in, I'm walking in the street, all of a sudden the car pulls up and then it just of pulls, and it stops right in front of me. Just kind of, I mean, literally, it doesn't go by me. It just turns, and now I have to purposely walk onto the sidewalk to walk around it.

And so I realized, oh, hold on. So I stop, and then the windows roll down, and I'm thinking, I'm in trouble. I am in trouble. Well, it was a good friend of mine. We called him Deke. And I won't give his real name, but he rolls down, and he says, man, why are you crazy? Why are you walking in the hood like this? You could get shot.

And then I'm like, okay. And all of a sudden, now I'm in my 20s now, and we're all grown, and I see Deke for the first time in ages, and I put two and two together. Deke is now the head guy in the neighborhood. He's a drug dealer, and he owns this. And he's like, man. But he's your boy. He's my boy. He's my boy. So I'm safe. He's my boy. He's like, all right. He says, yeah, you almost got shot. And the funny thing, and he says, all right. He says, but don't worry, man. I got your back. And he says, if someone bothers you, tell them you know me. And then he drives off. And so that was my last experience in the hood.

That's heavy. Yeah. And then what about the coach from at YMCA? Oh, Jeff Armstrong. Now, it's so funny, and this is the beauty about, I forget the poem, but basically it's, oh, I wish I had it. The poem, but basically it's, I wish I had it. The poem, basically it talks about, you know,

we all have to manifest our own greatness because when we do, the last part of the last sentence of the poem, when we do, we give other people permission to do the same thing. I just butchered that, but you get it. Well, here's the beautiful thing. All the while, Jeff was one of those voices in my life that just always, always encouraged me. In fact, there were times where my mom, holding down two jobs and going back to school to be a registered nurse, she was like, we can't swim this season. Jeff would step up to the plate, drive all the way to East Cleveland, pick me up, and take me to practice. Phenomenal guy in my life. In any case, he writes me a letter. I'm an adult now. I'm an

adult. Annette and I, we have our first son. This is right after the 2000 Olympic Games. I get a letter from Jeff Armstrong. He writes me this long letter and I ended up calling him and we talk over the phone and he says, Byron, you know, you really inspired me to get my life together. I'm like, what? What are you talking about? He said, yeah, you know, you came into my life at, you know, at just the right time. And then to see, you know, how you progressed, it just really inspired me that I had no excuse. And so I didn't know this at the time, but he was just kind of doing his thing. I forget what job he had, but it didn't pay a lot. But on a whim, he decided to be a volunteer coach at the Y, and our paths crossed.

He followed my career. He encouraged me. He invested a lot in me. But once I graduated and went off to UCLA and after the Olympic trials in 96, that inspired him to go back to school and he got his degree. And at that time when he wrote this letter, he was running for a public office in some town in Pennsylvania. Wow. So he had really just turned his life around. And it humbled me to know that, wow, I didn't set out to do that. I didn't know I had that impact.

He was feeding me. He was the guy I looked to and all. But at the same time, when we decide to live our best self and we decide to live our own epic life, so to speak, you never know how that's going to impact people. And so when he wrote and we talked and he shared that with me, that was just a very special, beautiful, humbling moment in my life. Right. And at the same time, when you're in service to another person in the way that he was to you so selflessly and amazingly, he ends up benefiting from that as well. You know what I mean? Exactly. When you're in that service mode and you're giving, you ultimately end up

reaping the most. That's an amazing story. I mean, just like what does Mark Twain say? He says, how can you hand wash a piece of clothing without cleaning your own hands in the process? Right. It's the same thing. And it's like when we serve and we do it out of a pure heart and we do it because that's the value we bring to the world, our gift.

I mean, all of us have gifts and talents, and when we decide to give it away, that's when our talents and strengths become service to people. That's when not only are we adding value, it naturally comes back on you. It just happens. Absolutely. It's almost universal law.

That's the way it operates. Can you tell us a little bit about how those experiences and your experiences losing your dad as a child and, you know, all of what you've just shared have shaped the way you are as a father. And tell us about your beautiful family and your incredible children. Oh, I definitely feel that I've been blessed and way beyond what I deserve. My wife, of course, Annette Davis, she was NCAA champion in volleyball,

made the Olympic team. I definitely married up. I always say that. I always say that. You got to. Yeah. I feel like a rock star. When she wears heels, she towers over me.

So we'll go to places, and I know people think how did this guy get her you know so that's always cool i don't think i don't think so you but you you guys are pretty much a gorgeous family all four of you yeah and and but she she's just she's been the anchor in in our family and we have two beautiful kids um maya my 11 year old and and i have a daughter uh tori victoria who's uh who's six actually Actually, she'll be turning seven soon. And just beautiful family. And we ended up homeschooling. We homeschool now.

And again, that's very unconventional for the typical African-American family. That's right. Well, Annette's been my inspiration, and she helped us greatly when we took the week. And your kids are amazing. I mean, they're so extraordinary present and you know i mean it's very obvious that uh you know they're in good hands they're remarkable beings we have a lot of fun we have a lot of fun at the

house and um my my son is challenging me now he's very he's very creative, and he has an entrepreneurial spirit. And so it's cool to see how all this stuff is just kind of working its way out in his personality and his perspective, because he's very methodical at that as well. He's not, and it kind of breaks my heart, but I love it. I'm not the kind of dad who's like, ah, he has to be an athlete or has to swim. But secretly, I'm wishing that he would embrace his athletic genes, but he doesn't care. It never works that way. It's not happening at all.

Hold on. I've got to go to the bathroom. Keep talking. Is this happening? Is this allowed on the podcast? I don't know. We're just keeping it real. Rich Roll has left his own podcast.

Yeah, he's left the building. Now we can really talk. But he definitely, my son right now is definitely exploring his creative side. He has already written three books, three novels. He's developing these characters and he loves to sketch and draw, and he has these cartoon characters. The Legend of Zano is a book that he wrote. That's amazing. Actually, the stories are really cool, very, very cool.

He's really exploring that. My daughter also, she's very athletic. She has athletic genes, but she doesn't care about athletics, competitive athletics. She loves dancing. She loves doing things. Again, she's really competitive, meaning one of the little tricks that I play on her all the time, I love it. And it's going to break my heart when she catches on. But we'll be walking just somewhere random. And all I have to do is start running. Yeah. And she could be totally distracted.

And then once she sees me running, she starts running just to beat me. You know, she doesn't know where the finish line is. She doesn't know why we're doing it. She just knows she has to win. So great. So she's that way. But both Maya and Victoria have been huge blessings. And it's really cool. And Julie, you can relate to this.

Victoria have been huge blessings, and it's really cool. And, Julie, you can relate to this. You start to see as our kids start to really discover who they are and start to really demonstrate and express the layers and dimensions of their character, you see these little bursts of genius that take place, and they're teaching you, and they're inspiring you just in how they exist and how they play. And that's what's going on right now in our household. I'm seeing my son and my daughter approach challenges and approach problems and are solving them and it inspires me and and i i take those lessons and weave them into uh stuff that that that i write about or that i use in my coaching sessions you know because but but i'm learning it and i don't tell people that i'm learning it the cat's out of the bag now

you told people but that that i'm i'm learning it through the way that my my daughter approaches creative problem solving and then the way that my son approaches creative problem solving and the way that my son just methodically learns how to translate and kind of reverse engineers how to do things. It's been a cool season right now in our lives, in the Davis household. That's amazing. What did I miss? We were talking about his beautiful family. So you missed the greatest part. No, he's talking about just how intuitive and tuned in

and really connected his children are and children are and how they have their own process. And he's actually learning from their process his own upgrades to his creative coaching program. Yeah, definitely. But we have that same thing with Mathis because, his own, uh, uh, upgrades to his creative coaching program. But we have that same thing with Mathis because, you know, Mathis and Jaya, they actually have Rich's physiology and it's, it's of an athlete, you know, it just is. And Mathis, um, uh, you know, we homeschool and her PE choice, uh,

one of her PE choices last year was, um, to swim with his old monofin. Yeah. And the monofin is like huge. It's like being a mermaid. But it's easily like, it's a big one. It's not like the new, well, it's a big one. It's a big wide finned one.

And so she would strap that thing on her feet. And she's been doing it for a couple of years. But she could actually swim. Our pool is 75 feet long and she could easily do half the pool underwater. Like she's, she's, she could be really good, but she's got the underwater Dave Burkoff dolphin. Yeah. But she will not go to a swim team. She will not go to a swim class. Um, you know, we try every once in a while we think, you know, and she just, she will not do it and actually she went ocean

swimming with my friend Heather who actually also swims with a mermaid fin out at Point Doom at Paradise Cove and she you know she booked it all the way to the you know the kelp bed which is pretty far and she was fine with this fin so anyway

I gotta get her a new one it broke but we've gotta get her a new one and she's all about that but you know i gotta get her a new one it broke but we've got to get her a new one yeah and she's all about that but you know martial arts we gotta get her in martial arts mma i just don't think she's doing any in any you know structured kind of program she's very very free and very creative and always making up her own way and we'll see so um we'll see well just just on that note too you know who inspires me and gives me hope with this thing? If Maya and Victoria aren't going to be the traditional organized sports athlete, Laird Hamilton. You guys had Gabby on the show, but he's one of those guys who totally does not – I mean, he made a conscious choice not to be a competitive surfer.

He was more, he's taken the artistic, you know, adventure explorer, you know, track. That's very interesting. Yeah, and it's like just the sheer expression and the transformation and the personal discovery, I mean, to him, all of that, those are the prizes. And as a result, he continues to push himself and then push the envelope on and reinvent the sport and take it to new levels. And I think that's what happens. I think the creatives in whatever endeavor, in whatever discipline,

whether it be in sports or business or whatever, those who embrace their thirst for creativity and expression, I think are the ones who are the game changers. They're the ones who are going to change the way we do things in life. So I'm thinking, okay, my son and my daughter, they're going to be game changers maybe one day. Yeah. It's like that new Seth Godin book the Icarus effect or whatever have you read that yet or checked that out so it's the same thing it's about

you know sort of transcending you know the traditional business structure and dronedom and all of that and embracing you know the creativity and independent thinking within that construct to push the

envelope and take enterprises to the next level and we need more people i mean what we're missing is creativity and creativity is what is going to um pull us up and you know really allow us to rise to a new level and so you know i think it's becoming more and more aware that the school systems and what's out there and what it's basically perpetuating are, you know, professional educators and educated in what, you know, and it's, and how does that apply to life? And so, you know, I will always support creativity, you know, above anything else, because I trust in the greater design that each being has a genius inside of it, every single one. So if we approach children or all of us with awe and wonder of show me who you are and show me how you were made and what you have to express, then we will all benefit from that to a great degree.

And I have to thank you and Annette for really holding this vibration of excellence in the homeschooling category because when I really wanted to do it and Rich was having a lot of discomfort, you guys were really catalyst and allowing us to feel safe making that step. And Annette really helped me because a lot of people think,

oh, you homeschool, wow, you're so organized. And they immediately flash to a classroom set up in your house with a blackboard and chairs and a pointer. And so, you know, Rich was like, you can't, you can't homeschool. You're not organized or you're, you know, you're too creative. You're too flow, you know? And then, you know, Annette reminded us that, you know, if you're homeschooling, you're going outside of that construct. If your child does well in that, then leave them in school. But if you're homeschooling, it's really sort of an open book. And I'm sort of probably more on the other end of the spectrum

because what I'm really doing is unschooling. So it's even sort of more free. Like our experience, life provided the experience yesterday and that is that we came upon a barn owl that had just died somehow, we don't know how. And we made the decision that we would examine it and measure the wingspan and look at it up close. And then we actually made the decision to remove the wings,

and the girls dug a grave, and they did a prayer and a ceremony, and they offered the body back into the earth. And we have the fans, which are sage fans. In the Native American tradition, that's a very sacred thing. fans, you know, in the Native American tradition, that's a very sacred thing. And of course, you know, so we, that was our experience of unschooling yesterday. And, you know, it was inspiring and meaningful for all of us. Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's beautiful. One of the things that I think society's catching up and Stanford's actually leading the way, they've embraced the homeschooling process.

They have a curriculum. Yay, Stanford. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing how many Stanford courses you can do through iTunes U or whatever that are available online. And it's powerful. They're finding out that we are in, and we all know this, we're in an uncertain world and our economy is constantly changing. Business

is changing with new technology and how we interact and engage each other. Everything's changing. The people who are able to take peace in the pocket, really embrace ambiguity and are confident in how, you know, they're both, their cerebral, you know, executive brain meshes with the amygdala and the primal instinct of us, how all those things really work together to really drive us to new creation. Those are the people who are, again, changing the game. They're the ones that we're looking to now for direction. They're the ones who are solving problems and are coming up with the solutions that are helping us set new courses in today's society. Recognizing that's how we need to really engage our kids. That's how we need to prepare them.

We need to teach them how to think, dream, and create. How to collaborate collectively as a creative unit, but at the same time, not sacrifice your own individuality and the uniqueness you bring to the table. And when we work in environments, dynamic environments like that, that's when beautiful and magical things happen. And we see it all the time. We're seeing it right now in different breakthroughs in technology. And that's what excites me. That's what excites me about the state that we're in at this point. I mean, again, it's a tough economy and we're all struggling and we're all trying to figure it out.

But the hope that I have is that we are figuring it out, and there are people who decide to embrace their ability to combine their creativity with a definiteness of purpose and spirit, this resolve that makes them unstoppable, that we come to new breakthroughs and new solutions. Right. It's all about living your epic life. Yeah. So let's talk about that. So before we get into that, I'm going to have to say goodbye right now. So anyway, it was so beautiful seeing you. Please give my love to your family.

And I want to be a part of the Epic program, and I want to work with you. And so I'm going to be calling with all the other listeners. Awesome. Here, let me give you a hug. Alright, babe. See you in a while. So, Live Your Epic Life, which is Byron's website and his program.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about what that's all about. Like, you know, what is it? How do you get involved? What are you going to get out of it? Well, Live Your Epic Life, liveyourepiclife.com, is an ongoing experiment in the realm of infinite possibility, if I can give any more of a vague response.

Basically, in a nutshell, is i want to empower and challenge people to live their legend and ultimately leave leave a legacy you know where did this desire to try to empower people come from i mean is this as a result uh we didn't even talk about this but you you have a background as a pastor and you obviously have this, you know, this, this past that informed all of this kind of thing. I mean, it's, where is this drive coming from? I think, I think for initially it, it just comes from, um, the, the conviction and belief that, uh, you know, I truly believe that God didn't make a mistake when he made us,

you know, I, uh, and all of us are, are uniquely gifted with a gift mix of stuff that will then allow us to bring and create new, valuable, you know, value-added contributions to this world. I definitely believe that. I truly believe that. And if I look back or when I look back on my life and I see there's a common thread and theme, no matter where life took me and what season I was in or what job I did, the common denominator was always me wanting to get the best out of myself and the most out of my life. Really tinker, kind of be my own. I always say I'm in constant beta. We're all in constant beta mode. I always say I'm in constant beta. We're all in constant beta mode.

So really, really trying to get the best out of myself. And when things didn't work out, really going inward and examining, okay, what was the inner breakdown? So always being a student of human dynamics and just my own performance and trying to get the best out of myself. And then two, even more so, feeling even greater satisfaction when I inspired or empowered or challenged someone else to do it. So, um, I was always a, a better relay swimmer than I was an individual swimmer or an individual races, not, not because, uh, you know, I just, you know, I didn't like to swim individual races. I just, it was something about being a part of that team, that team dynamic that allowed, just made, just got me more excited about doing whatever it is we were doing. So I've always, I've always enjoyed coming alongside people who had a desire to experiment

and transform. And so that was a constant theme in my life. And I reached a season in my life, Rich, where now that's what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to constantly explore and experiment and really embrace this transformation process for myself, but then also work with other people who have and share the same kind of conviction. Right. then also work with other people who have and share the same kind of conviction. Right. And so what, for somebody who is interested in exploring this, you know, what are they in for?

Okay. Well, I, without trying to say that I have this, you know, four-step program. Here's the four steps, dude. But I do. I think there is a methodology behind transformation and growth and how to lean into it and embrace it. Basically, I believe the knack for us when we study great performers, I call them high-impact people. When we study high-impact people, no matter what discipline or industry or sport, we see that they intuitively do three things very well. They see what they want clearly.

They learn to express what they want fully. And here's the third one that most of us miss. They learn how to let their obstacles lead the way. I call it illumination, seeing what you want clearly, animation, expressing what you want fully, and then iteration, allowing to let your obstacles actually lead the way. What does that mean, allowing your obstacles to lead the way? Buckminster Fuller, great mathematician. He keeps coming up on the podcast. Oh, yeah.

It's like the third time that Buckminster Fuller has come up. That's awesome. He says a problem well-defined is a problem well on its way to being solved. A problem well defined is a problem well on its way to being solved. When we allow our obstacles to lead the way, we learn to embrace obstacles and setbacks and roadblocks not in the way of fatalism, meaning that's it, I'm done, but more so recognize that that roadblock is asking for us to respond to the situation in a different way. And when you fully understand it, you can identify, this is exactly what's holding me back, this particular roadblock. As opposed to, I don't know why I can't move forward not knowing, but when you know exactly what it is, then that's the first step towards trying to come up with the solution to attack and overcome it. Yeah, but the roadblock is telling you what to do next. Your immediate next move is to move around the roadblock. It's like this. It's like if we're in a dark room and we wake up and we,

let's say we're in a hotel, I'm making this up. We're in a hotel room, dark and all, but we want to go to the bathroom. Well, we get up out of the bed. Number one, we never question whether or not we're going to get to the bathroom, right? But it's dark. We can't see a thing. What do we do? We stumble our way to the bathroom, right?

We kind of walk and we see where, we kind of feel where the end table is. We kind of notice our hand on the wall. we kind of feel where the end table is. We kind of notice our hand on the wall. All of a sudden, these little obstacles start to actually create, when we weave them together, a reliable roadmap that brings us to our destination. That's what obstacles and challenges do in our life, is that they are not roadblocks, but if we know how to use them right,

they become reliable, very pragmatic roadmaps to really giving us what it is we want, the result that we want. Right. So, all right, so you have these three things, these sort of cornerstone principles to your program, and is this like an online program, or do you do personal coaching? Like, explain to me exactly, you know, what it is that this all entails. Yeah, there are three different kind of road on-ramps to this road. And again, I call these three things rhythms. What I do in a nutshell is I help people practice these three rhythms in their life, practice illumination, animation, and iteration as it relates to their desired outcome. And one, there's a lot of free resources on the blog,

liveyourepiclife.com. That has evolved over the last six months especially, doing a lot of interview with experts, but then also diving deep on each of these things. So that's the first step. The first on-ramp is just hanging out at the blog. There's a life planning guide that I give away. Basically, it's Your Epic Life Plan, and it's a step-by-step guide that I give away. Basically, it's your epic life plan,

and it's a step-by-step guide that helps people get clear about the kind of results they want in each area of their life, and then how do you create a narrative or a story that you can now step into in order to live that life out. Right, interesting. So that's the first step, and then it goes all the way up. People, we just launched, in fact, the doors are closed for this. We just actually launched the Unstoppable You Bootcamp today. We'll open that up in the spring again. But that's where I take a small group of people

through a process of really embedding these rhythms in the context of their life. How do we really start to see what we want clearly? And I'm going to go off on a tangent a little bit. What I mean by that, seeing what it is you want clearly, and we've all experienced this intuitively. All we have to do is really analyze when we've succeeded at something. You can see these components. When we learn to see something clearly, what we've learned to do intuitively or by design

is translate a future desired outcome into its present day equivalent or present day approach to doing life. if I set out to lose 60 pounds in the next 90 days or whatever, um, 90 or 60 pounds loss, you know, three, uh, three months from now looks completely different in the present moment. And it's when you start to, to see,

well, losing weight, 90 pounds lost three months from now looks like, um, you know, uh, you know, a new, uh, you know, type new type of diet, a restrictive calorie,

a high nutrient, low calorie diet, being able to engage in exercise that allows us to, again, expend more energy than we're taking in, and then the proper rest and fluid intake of water, not drinking our calories. And I'm being generic in the whole description. But once we start to map out what the desired outcome looks like in our present-day approach to doing life, that's when we see what it is we want clearly. And then we're able to express what we want fully. Now we have the plan. We have the roadmap. We know what we need to do. Now we can now give ourselves, we can animate, we can express ourselves through engaging in those activities. I always say that discipline, my definition of discipline is demonstrating a clear decision on

a daily basis. Once you see what it is you want clearly now, all you do is demonstrate that decision on a regular basis, on a daily basis. That's expressing fully. And then throughout the way, your plans, our plans, no matter how well thought out they are, they're never perfect. They have to be modified. They have to be adjusted. There are so many variables in life that we can't account for. Many times, we're going to have to make mid-course corrections along the way. And so that's where the ability to iterate on the fly and incorporate that into your rhythm, your lifestyle, that's where the magic happens because that's when you become unstoppable. Right. But essentially what you're saying is you're creating a calculus and a methodology for

transformation and breaking it down into components that are digestible and understandable and rooting somebody in the present and in accordance to a plan to get somebody where they want to go. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Because it's great. Well, I mean, what do you think, what do you think is the, like the primary thing that holds people back? I mean, it's so, I say this all the time, but you know, people, uh, people say, oh, you know, people don't change. They don't change. And it's like, yeah, they do. You can change. You know, it's not easy. And, you know, usually pain is the motivator.

You know, when your back is up against the wall and you have no other choice, then you can change. But how do you, you know, but willfully and voluntarily changing to grow and expand is, you know, it's the big challenge that, you know, everybody wants and people just struggle with the most. And, you know, what do you think is holding people back? Well, of course, you know, the proverbial and the popular answer is fear. You know, we're all afraid at some level. But let's just kind of dissect that a little bit. I don't think it's really the fear that holds us back. I think it's finding out the truth that really holds us back. I think all of us at certain points in our life, we have a romantic vision of how things are to play out. And whenever we want to embark on something, something that we've never done before,

we automatically have this, again, we have a vision or this idea of the way things should be. And whenever we start to now pursue that, we start to recognize and experience the way things are. And when the way things are don't immediately match up to the way things should be, all of a sudden, we get uncomfortable, we get disappointment. That's when doubt, discouragement, distraction, all of these things start to flood into our life. And we end up protecting that idea in our head, and it's safe there. Again, it's safe there. We control it, and we fall in love with the idea of doing something unique,

something great, something exciting, but we're not willing to go through the process of wrestling through the way things are as we manifest or as we start to bring that into volition. So I definitely believe that fear is a factor, but we can use fear as a tool. Like you said, fear is a gift. I said that earlier. Fear is a gift. And so it's not about being afraid of something. Embrace it. Yeah, everyone's going to be afraid the first time and the first few times we try things. Everyone's going to fail the first times, the few times we try things. Failure is a part of the process. So let's retool fear into excitement. Let's start focusing on, instead of anticipating that negative outcome,

oh, you know what? I'm finding evidence that what I think should happen isn't going to happen, so I'm going to stop. No, let's start. You know what? I get a clear picture of what could happen, but I'm not going to own that. I have no control over that. But what I do have control over is doing what I can with what I have right where I am and then allowing the process to unfold, knowing that I will be able to solve the problem as it comes about. And so we embrace the journey and really accept our present state of reality.

When we can get comfortable in embracing the moment, embracing challenges as they come, then we start to build that whole winner's momentum. We start to recognize that, you know what? I can solve that problem. Oh, you know what? Yeah, there's a resource that I've always taken for granted or I've ignored that's right in front of me. Let me use this. And pretty soon, we find ourselves being catapulted into or across the finish line with our desired outcome. Right. But I think sort of getting at the fundamental kind of starting line of the whole thing,

in order to trigger that excitement or to even come up with any kind of trajectory, you need to know what you want. Like, what is it that you want? And I think that a lot of people don't know, you then, and then they're ashamed that they don't know. Like there's a lot of people that, that say, I don't even know what I want to be when I grow up, or I don't even know, like, I know I'm not satisfied, but, but, you know, if I had to pick my ultimate career, I don't even know what that, what that is. And then they feel bad because they, they think they should know. And, and there's a, there's sort of a disassociation

from the self. Well, let's, let's call the big elephant in the room out here. Really, what's wrong with not knowing? Again, I think in our Western culture, we learn and it becomes ingrained in us that we have to have the solution or the answer before we begin. But yet, life doesn't play out that way. And so if you're starting at a point where you really don't know, well, then that's the first obstacle. What can we learn from it? Well, let's explore what the possibilities and the opportunities that are available that then start to resonate with your strengths and your passions. So the first step in most people, the first step that most people have to go through

is stepping into a discovery process. Robert Green, in his book, he just came out with it, Mastery, talks about there is a phase of apprenticeship that every master goes through. And if you ignore this apprenticeship process, then you keep yourself stuck and not really discovering and then therefore honing what your passions are. Because having a passion is not going to pay the bills. Right. But taking it a step backwards, some people don't even know what they're passionate about. And I think a lot of that is because everything is so cheap right now.

It's so easy to buy distractions. So everybody's watching TV and playing video games and staring at their cell phones. And we are almost by design in this constant state of distraction from ourselves. And I think when that's perpetuated, we do get into this disassociated state of being where it's like, I don't even know what I'm passionate about. I mean, there's a lot of people walking around. You say, well, embrace your passion.

Well, how do I even know what I'm passionate about? And that's where the whole apprenticeship process comes in. I call it allowing yourself, giving yourself room to play and experiment. Most of the time, because we pack our lives with all these distractions, as you eloquently pointed out, I think that's so true, that we fool ourselves into thinking we don't have enough time to play and experiment. It's only when we allow ourselves the room, the space to become an apprentice, even as it gets harder as an adult, as we get older and we move into and we operate in this professional zone. The older we get, the more we're supposed to know what's going on. And so the more we like to hide the fact that we really don't know what's going on. So it's easy.

We get into that momentum. We get into that mindset that then keeps us stuck. What we have to do is learn to embrace the apprenticeship mindset. And technology and the resources that are available to us at our fingertips, we can have virtual mentors and create our own apprenticeship instantly. All we have to do, and this is the key, this is how you discover your passion. Even if you don't know what your passion is, here's how you discover your passion. Allow yourself to care more than normal and more than necessary about an activity. And then when you allow yourself to care more than normal about something and more than necessary, you start to move out of the realm

of being your average self. You start to step into that fanatical realm of let me really explore and really chase this rabbit hole to see how far it really goes. And all we have to begin doing is just caring about it more than the average person. And what that does is start to unfold. You'll find out very quickly whether or not something grabs your heart or resonates with you or not. You'll find it.

And if it doesn't, cool. Guess what? You move on to something else. And if that doesn't work, great. You move on to something else. The value in that discovery process is that, again, God doesn't waste time in our lives. Whatever process we go through, we will discover something that leads us to ultimately what it is we really want. But we've got to be willing to move down that process. We've got to be willing to be an

apprentice. And then I would also add to that, many people say, in fact, a guy that I was coaching said something that was just authentic. He asked this question in just very, very pure innocence. He says, Byron, what if you desire to do something that you really don't believe you can do? You really don't have the confidence. You don't believe that you can actually do it. And it was a great question. And the short answer is this. You learn how to, number one, discount your own voice in the process. Okay, that's a step one because you really don't have the authority or the credibility to make that judgment because you failed at it so far. You haven't done it. So you can't make that judgment. So logically, if you wanted to know something about financial investing

and you had an opportunity to learn under Warren Buffett or learn under someone who's tried really hard but hasn't gotten the results you want, who would you choose? Warren Buffett, right? Right. You would want to do that. So in this case, in this scenario, when you really realize that I don't know how to do something and I don't really think I can, you've got to recognize in that moment that you're not the Warren Buffett in the situation. You are the other person. You're not in a place to even objectively judge whether you can or cannot do that. Exactly. Exactly. So why be unfair to yourself in that? And the second step is, so once you acknowledge that, you know what, I've got to discount my own judgment, my own belief in this situation.

The second step then is to submit yourself under, become obedient to a proven process. So now you have to now give your trust and your faith over to a proven process. So that's when you seek out, you know, who's doing this, who's gotten the results that you need to Right, if you think, well, I'm not musically inclined, I have no musical talent, I'll never be able to play the piano or whatever, and then saying, well, I'm going to go to this teacher and I will apprentice to this person who has taught many people how to play the piano. It's a proven procedure and process that I can undertake.

Yeah, yeah. And we know this as athletes. There comes a point where we have to buy into the culture and the methodology of the program we're in. If we don't buy into how the coach is preparing us, then we'll second guess our preparation and then we'll lose all confidence in our ability. Right. There comes a point where you have to give your trust over to the process. You have to fall in love with the process. you have to give your trust over to the process. You have to fall in love with the process. You have to give your heart to the process. Again, you've got to care more than normal and more than necessary. And then what takes place is you suspend your

disbelief long enough that you then invite new experiences that give you better results from which you can then base better and stronger beliefs on. So your beliefs ultimately will catch up to your experience. And that's where confidence comes from. And it all goes back to trying to propel some of this momentum that we were talking about earlier. Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm not an advocate of, you know, just pump yourself up and muster up enough, you know, confidence to do something. No. Well, that's, it rings false. It's not backed up by anything. It's pretending. Yeah. Allow yourself to embrace. It's like this. When

I speak to athletes and I go out and talk, I say, at times you will not be confident. Recognize that. Embrace it. Don't be surprised if and when it happens. Confidence has very little to do with your capability of actually doing it, making it happen. In that moment, don't worry about not being confident. Allow yourself to be curious. Okay. We can all be curious. We can all allow ourselves to go into a moment, into a situation where we don't know the answer, we acknowledge we don't know the answer, but we all can embrace that and be very curious. And when we're curious, it's just like a kid. When you're curious about something, you put on the hat of a professor.

Your awareness and all of your energy, your brain power starts to become acutely aware of scenarios, of patterns, of little answers. All these things start to now come at you when you decide to be curious. You invite enough room to create experiences that then you can start to stack up that will become your confidence. So you don't have to be confident. You don't have to believe you can do something in order to do it. Just allow yourself to be curious enough to move through that moment in that period of ambiguity. And then allow the small incremental results you get to dictate your mid-course corrections so that ultimately you will cross the finish line. Right, and that confidence will come as a result of that.

It's sort of like acting as if, it's like, I don't believe this is going to work, but I'm going to show up and do it anyway. And then over time, the sort of objective feedback becomes undeniable that, actually, I can do do this or, you know, I proved myself wrong. And I always talk about this too. It's sort of understanding that, you know, your mind is not always your friend. And, you know, when it's firing signals off saying you can't or, you know, I stink or I'll never be good or whatever, those are just messages and that you have a choice, like your higher self has a choice to give those credence or to dismiss them and say, hey, that's interesting that my brain is trying to tell me that I can't do that, but I'm just going to shrug that off and not pay attention to that because I know better or I

choose to believe otherwise or act differently. Yeah. I call that our inner child. Our inner child will start acting up and be rebellious, but as the adult in this situation who has better perspective. You've got to smack them down. Yeah, you say, well, no, I'll demonstrate it. I'll show you. Take my hand, and I will lead the way. In those moments when our defeated self or when our average self wants to take the lead in our life,

no, that's when our best self, our epic self or when our average self want to take the lead in our life. No, that's when our, you know, our, our best self, our, our epic self has to say, no, what I'm going to, I'm going to lead the way. And, and we allow ourselves enough room to fail, embrace that because we know that again, that's the whole idea of iteration. We recognize that, uh, you know, my failure in 1996 wasn't the end of my life. But I was able to ultimately use that failure to set up future success in different areas of my life. Likewise, that's the attitude and the inner culture we have to embrace in order to really do things that are meaningful in our life. And I know I'm throwing a lot or going off on tangents here, but it's for the same reason why I'm not an advocate of setting goals the way we've always been taught in school. I'm not an enemy to setting goals,

but I think we limit ourselves a lot when we get trapped in the need to set goals. What I do believe in is, I mean, not setting goals is not a license to not just do anything in life. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about actually learning how to engage vision. So learning to stop setting goals and start engaging vision. What that means is learning how to own a process and a plan in our life. Many of us are afraid to make a choice, make a decision, because we're afraid that decision will be wrong. So we settle into this idea that I don't know what my passion is.

What we're really saying is, is I'm not willing to make a decision to draw a line, a definite line on the sand. I think that's very true. That's interesting. Yeah, and go with this, good, bad, or ugly. But it's only when we decide to make that definitive decision will we find out, and we'll find out quickly

whether or not it was the right or wrong decision. But if it turns out to be the wrong decision, that's okay. Right, to give yourself permission to make the wrong decision. Yeah, yeah. I think that goals are, they have their place in the sense that they create that structure for people who operate well within that kind of a paradigm, like myself. But I think you're correct in that what happens with goals is that um they're they're not only uh are they limiting because you're putting a cap on it and you know are you

the best objective you know decision maker to decide what you're capable or not capable of like probably not you know right yeah and secondarily they tend to be very destination oriented where instead of journey-oriented. So it's sort of like all about the obvious example is always the weight loss example. Like, I want to lose 10 pounds or I want to lose 50 pounds. And it's all about getting to that day or crossing the finish line at that marathon or whatever it is. But then it's sort of the questions never asked, like, well, now what, you know, like you get there and then you have the, the sort of, well, what am I supposed to do now? And then the kind of weird emotions that swirl around, you know, what happens

next? Because it was all about getting to that end point as opposed to being actively engaged in the moment and in the destination and in the journey. And even, you know, I mean, you hear it all the time. People that achieve these goals, whether it's an Olympic gold medal or whatever it is, they'll always tell you, like, well, you know, it was really, you know, thinking back on everything it took for me to get there is where the best memories are and where I really can engage the joy was in that process and in the journey. Yeah, and while I definitely believe that the magic and the beauty and the nectar is in the journey, like you, I am a results guy. I like to see results.

But I also think that let's live a life that's prolific as opposed to goal-oriented. And what I mean by that is being prolific is establishing a rhythm of life where we're accomplishing stuff, meaningful stuff, stuff that matters on a regular basis. When we think of Steven Spielberg or Stephen King, we think these guys are prolific. They keep coming out with great stuff over and over again.

For them, it's not about the goal. For them, their work is just a snapshot of their expression, of their existence. And before they finish one thing, they're off to doing another. And so it's that perpetual journey that produces results is what I'm after. That's living prolifically. That's what we want. And guys will tell you, people will tell you, again, after a big event, after the Super Bowl, why is it hear story and story after story of people doing something great and then immediately a short time afterward you know they blow their brains out or they go off on the deep end or something and we're like how did that happen it's because you know partly they got

themselves so wrapped up in defining who they were in that moment when the moment was gone you know if they didn't immediately have another hill to conquer, they were lost. Well, I say, well, let's not limit ourselves by that. Let's have definite checkpoints. Let's have moments where we can celebrate victory. I'm totally into that. But instead, let's create a lifestyle and a culture within ourselves where we're producing these things on a regular basis. It's basically just a constant manifestation of who you are. So as opposed to, yeah, I want to win the Super Bowl, or if you're Spielberg, it's just, this is what I do. I'm doing it all the time.

I'm on to the next thing. And you're not overly attached to the result of any one thing because that's not your focus. Your focus isn't crossing the finish line at the marathon or what the scale says that day. It's just this is what I do now. This is who I am, and I'm constantly expressing it. Exactly. It's a completely different perspective on the whole thing.

But, yeah, that's very interesting. Very good, yeah. Cool. Live prolifically. Yeah, let's live our prolific life. Live our epic life. And here's the thing, the reason why I say epic, I know that for some, that's kind of over the top, live your epic life. That's birthed out of the conviction that we all have a story to tell in our life. Every epic tale, whether we read it in a book or watch it in a movie, has three main elements. You have a flawed main character who decides to embark on some type of ambition,

who ultimately must come up against an antagonist or conflict in order to do so. And it's in that process that the person's story plays out, that a transformation has to happen, that ultimately allows them to be positioned, to position themselves to actually accomplishing what it was that they once thought was impossible. Right. You know, and what I believe is what makes for a great,

an epic story also makes for an epic life. We all have that story. You know, it's this Joseph Campbell hero's journey, and it's incumbent upon all of us to, you know, be the hero in our own movie. You know what I mean? Stop being an extra or or supporting actor in your own uh biopic will said yeah exactly you know and we all have that power within us you know we all

have that power and it does require a decision and it doesn't mean that it's easy and it's not about buying a book that's going to give you the three steps that where you're not going to have to do anything and your life's going to change and you're going to lose weight and all that kind of stuff. You have to take personal responsibility for it. But if you're willing to do the work and take direction and engage in this apprenticeship,

which is sort of a lost art form in which we all used to kind of grow up within the construct of that's kind of gone away. But I think because technology is becoming so predominant as a part of our economy and so specific that that's really coming back. You know, I mean, if you want to be a film editor, you have to apprentice with a film editor. You know, I mean, you can go to school and learn the software program, but, you know, I think that you're seeing a resurgence of that. And I think that that's a good thing. It's sort of like when I went and worked in a law firm, yeah, I had partners and senior associates that I reported to, but it wasn't an apprenticeship.

There wasn't like one guy who said, I'm going to teach you how to do this, and just you're going to follow me around and do everything I do. You know what I mean? and do everything I do, you know what I mean? And I think that we could all benefit from having more of that in our lives. And we could all benefit from having, you know, a support system, you know, a strong mother who believed in you and a Jeff Armstrong at the YMCA

who went the extra mile to look out for you because he believed in you. And so I think we all need to look at ourselves and at our own lives and say, who is that person for us? And who can I be that person for? Right. You just said something, man, that's, I think, magic, powerful. There are situations and people out there right now who, when they honestly look at their life, they don't have that person. They don't have a mom who was totally sold out to investing in them. They don't have that person who was a champion for

them even if and when they didn't believe in themselves. Yeah, they are, but here's the key, and I go back to what you jarred this in my mind. My eighth grade teacher always said the fastest way to master or learn anything is to turn around and immediately teach it to someone else. Well, you can reverse engineer the whole apprentice process where, all again, you just decide that, you know what? I am going to teach or invest in someone else and show them, demonstrate to them how to get results in this area of your life. And if you just do that, if you just even start there, have the courage to start there, all of a sudden you will start out of the woodwork. Resources and relationships and things you used to take for granted that you look at a different way will then become your teacher,

take for granted that you look at it a different way will then become your teacher, that they will become your source of, of content and information that now starts to funnel through you. And in the process of you just inviting someone else along the process with you, you begin to practice the very thing you, you once thought you couldn't do. So,

so really learning. And if you don't have anybody that you can think of right off the top of your mind that you're a champion and all that, that's no excuse to not immediately turn around and invest yourself. Put yourself on the line. Call yourself to the carpet and say, you know what? I don't quite know how to do this yet, but I am committed to showing and demonstrating someone else the best approach to do it. And just putting yourself in that position immediately, all of a sudden you now become this honing device where all these resources and all of the information you need will start to come

together for you. And in the process of you sharing, you giving yourself, you pouring yourself into someone else, you benefit in the process. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's something I learned a long time ago and is a key cornerstone in recovery. Essentially that, you know, if you're feeling stuck or you're unhappy or you get wrapped up in your story of why your life isn't the way you want it to be or you're getting all sort of, what's the word for it, just sort of self-defeating and running these patterns in your brain, you can't think your way out of that. You've got to act your way out of it. You can't think your way out of that. You've got to act your way out of it. And the best way to act your way out of it is to reach out to somebody and be of service to them, whether it's somebody who's less fortunate than you. Or it doesn't even matter the form in which the service takes.

It's the simple act of doing that that gets you out of yourself and into somebody else. And there's something magical about that that will shift not just your perspective. It will shift your energy. it will shift your life. And suddenly you start to forget about your problems. And there's a joy in that. And you will always end up reaping more than you are giving every time. It's like this weird spiritual equation. Yeah.

And not only that, there's science to back that up as well. Yeah, and not only that, there's science to back that up as well because as we begin to practice, again, express ourselves, animate, do these different things, we now start to engage and call on our nervous system to fire off in new and different ways and create new neural pathways that ingrain new behaviors and new responses to external stimuli or to triggers. So what used to trigger a certain behavioral pattern now triggers a more empowered behavioral pattern. And so all that starts to happen when, again, we allow ourselves to pour into others.

And again, we hear it in different language in business. And Seth Godin's a big proponent of this. When you start to deliver value, when you start to give away your best stuff, all of a sudden, what happens? People start to see you as the trusted authority. And pretty soon, even though they could get the same stuff from someone else, they choose to get it from you. Well, in the process of you doing that, you begin to own being that trusted authority, and everything now starts to become second nature. So what happens in business also can happen in every context in every area of our life. Right. Amazing. Hope that makes sense. No, it does, man. I think that's a great

place to start too. How long? Well, we've been going for two hours. Oh, wow. We got to sew it up. Yeah. I think we did it though. Yeah. Oh, this has been awesome. This is a lot of fun. I feel good. You want to get anything off your chest? Well, you know what? I feel like jumping on the bike and running. I'm pumped right now. Me too. I'm going to go run. Yeah, I got my bike right over there. You want to borrow it?

I might have to. So, yeah, this was fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. It was really great to have you, man. And I'm a better man for having you in my life. Man, I just want to tell you, I know this is a love fest right now, but you and your story inspire me so much. I mean, just your story of finding Ultra inspired me to get off my butt and do my first Ironman. Right, that's right.

You definitely walk the talk, brother, so thank you. All right, thanks, buddy. So for people that want to hook up with Byron, they can find him on Twitter. It's ByronDavis7, right? ByronDavis7. The website is, is it LiveYourEpicLife? Yeah, LiveYourEpicLife.com.

LiveYourEpicLife.com. Or UnstoppableUHQ.com. Oh, I didn't know. I didn't check that one out yet. UnstoppableUHQ. All right, didn't know. I didn't check that one out yet. UnstoppableUHQ. All right, cool. And they can sign up there. They can read the blog.

They can check out upcoming. Do you have any kind of upcoming speaking engagements or any kind of group activities for people that would maybe want to contact you in person? Yeah, well, on the UnstoppableUHQ.com website, although the boot camp is closed right now because we're working um we have a small group of people going through this this this three step three rhythm process um it'll open up again in the spring and the people can again leave their name and their email just to be on the the notification list all right man

cool anywhere else anywhere else anything else you want people to know about? What about Annette's site, the Healthy Moms thing? She got her star on the Walk of Fame in Malibu. So anytime someone goes down there. Oh, she did? I didn't know that. Yeah, so she's queen of the beach. Wow. So she's done there. She's been there, done that.

And now she's moving into a new phase in her life where she's on this mission to empower moms to take back the health and fitness of their kids and their families and themselves. So her website is liveyourepiclife.com. Fit Moms, your life. Yeah. Fit moms, fit kids club.com. She really, she's creating a community of moms who want to take back their own health and fitness and then take back the health and fitness of their family. So fit moms, fit kids club.com. And then, um, her, her, uh, her regular or branding site is, uh, get fit with the net.com. Cool. All right. All right.

All right, man. Thanks so much, dude. Thanks a lot, Rich. Appreciate it, man. So thanks a lot for stopping by. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want to support the show, you can click on the Amazon banner ad on richroll.com in the podcast section. If you're going to buy something on Amazon, click through there first

and it'll throw a couple nickels in our pot and won't cost you anything extra and help support us, keep the bandwidth flowing. I want to buy a new microphone, stuff like that. Or you don't have to. It's okay.

Chai Lifestyle, you can check that out. That's where we have our products and services. We have a digital e-cookbook, Jai Seed, which is 77 pages of awesome plant-based nutrition recipes. My Jai Repair athletic supplement, plant-based protein product. Julie's meditation program, Jai Release, which is pretty awesome. We're getting some great feedback on that. We just came out with a vitamin B12 supplement, which is really important, particularly if you're on a plant-based diet, but a lot of people have trouble with vitamin B12 deficiency. So you can read about that and check that out. I'm at richroll.com, richroll on Twitter. That's it,

man. We're out of here. Thanks so much, Byron. Take it easy. Peace.com, richroll on Twitter. That's it, man. We're out of here. Thanks so much, Byron. Take it easy. Take care. Peace. Plants. Thank you. you you you you you you