The Rich Roll Podcast - Growth Is Our Mandate

Episode Date: May 18, 2017

Twenty years ago I was a hope to die alcoholic — lost and alone. Despite achieving sobriety, ten years ago I remained lost — overweight, depressed and utterly rudderless. Five years ago this week, I published a book about how I found my way out. A spiritual journey that entailed extreme faith and relentless persistence called Finding Ultra.  Today I celebrate the journey of my rebirth — and pause to honor this five year landmark — by taking a look back. Because the growth I have been blessed to experience isn't mine to covet. It's a choice available to all. So today, Julie asks the questions. And I answer them. I sincerely hope you enjoy the exchange. Peace + Plants, Rich

At no moment did it ever occur to me that I was laying the foundation for what I would be doing later professionally. I just thought, I'm still going to be a lawyer. I don't know how I'm going to ever be able to stop doing that. And it was just one thing after another of the universe showing up in very interesting ways that slowly kind of shifted that trajectory for me and has provided the opportunity for us to do what we do now. But it wasn't a result of a business plan or a vision board. Here's what we're going to be doing. What's the five-year plan? You know, it wasn't any of that. It was about being fully present in your life, paying attention and responding mindfully to the signals that you're being provided and always trying to make decisions in alignment with your highest self and getting clarity on who and what

that highest self is. That guy that you just heard, that's me today on a very special midweek edition of the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody, welcome to the show. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host and thanks for tuning in to this special midweek edition of the podcast. And we're doing this because it is indeed a very special week. It is the week that marks the five-year anniversary of Finding Ultra, which is my book, my memoir.

It is the book, the thing that changed my life. It made possible everything that I get to do today. And I wanted to celebrate it. today and I wanted to celebrate it. I think it's important to take moments like these to honor milestones, to reflect, to look back a bit and share a little gratitude. And so to do that, I thought it would be fun and cool to flip the mics and have Julie interview me today, interview me about the book, about my life, about my perspective on certain things and how I've been able to go from where I was to where I am today. And it's a really great conversation. All right, you guys, thanks for bearing with me through all of that. And I hope you enjoy this conversation in which the roles are reversed, the mics are flipped, and Julie interviews me.

It's been a little while since my lovely spouse, Julie Pyatt, a.k.a. Just call me your spouse. My spouse. That's such a good word. Where does that word come from? It sounds like it has something to do with a bird, but I don't know why I make that. But anyway. A.K.A.

Srimati. But we're going to- The love of your life would be a better description. Okay. I'll do that from now on. Okay, good. Thank you. We're going to flip the equation here a little bit, though.

And Julie is going to be interviewing me today about a couple certain subject matters. It's been a while since I've been on the receiving end, at least on my own podcast. I had Mishka interviewed me, right? Mishka and then Osher. And somebody else did. Oh yeah, Osher did. Yeah, Osher did a great interview of me on the show. And we're going to cover some interesting and hopefully new terrain. But the reason that we're doing this today is what maybe, Julie, you can explain. It is the five-year anniversary of the release of your amazing, extraordinary, life-changing memoir, Finding Ultra. That's right.

My head just exploded. Yeah, five years. Let's see's see today is what's the day today's today the 11th the 11th so actually we're one day shy it came out as if memory serves me i believe it was may 12th 2012 yes is when it came out so we're basically exactly five years since that book came out and we thought it would be nice to just, you know, hit the pause button a little bit and reflect on the journey of not just what transpired to create that book, but everything that has occurred in the wake of that book and use that as kind of a foundation to talk about perhaps some life principles and tools and things that

you guys might find helpful. Exactly. But I'm doing the interview here. I know, right? So you don't really know what I'll turn. Well, let me just I just want to say that I'm incredibly grateful for this journey that we are both on. And it's quite remarkable because when I reflect back on not just what transpired to create that book, all the events that led up to and what I chronicle in the book, but everything that has happened since, everything that has transpired since. It's just been amazing. And I could have never imagined it in my wildest imagination to be living the life that we're living now. So grateful for all of you out there, the audience that has made this possible. And yeah, so let's get into it. I'll turn the microphone over to Julie. So Rich is sitting in front of me and he has his arms kind of crossed.

I just uncrossed them. He looks slightly, little slightly constricted and uncomfortable and nervous. And actually it's kind of a lot on me because let me just start off by saying that you are one of the best interviewers around, especially in the podcast scene and even anywhere in media. I already told you that I would call you the love of my life. You don't have to- I don't have to like say these things. Butter me up for this.

Well, I'm buttering you up now. The rest is coming later. No, kidding. Are you going to hit me with some hard-hitting questions? No, I don't think so. We'll see. We'll see where it goes. I tried to prepare because I know you wanted me to prepare.

I didn't ask you to prepare. But you didn't. I've never seen you with a notepad in front of you at a podcast. Which is really cool. Brand new, new thing. Because this is real transformation. Because this is really true, you guys. This is the first time that we have agreed to do a podcast.

That we don't get in like a little mini spat right before we go on the air. Because Rich wants me to over prepare or prepare at all. And I want to prepare not at all. So this time, there was none of that. You said nothing, we had no interaction. I was in the garden eating my plant based cheese brie sandwich with roasted peppers when you arrived home and you just said meet me in the container and here i came with my notes and my pad and my paper quite remarkable what's actually going on i'm getting uncomfortable this is polarity integration this is the true true coming together harmonization of opposing energies does this mean that i'm

going to now go into my interviews without preparing? Like we're going to switch roles? It just might. So we'll see how that is. But anyway, I wanted to start just by saying that, yeah, this, which is what you said, this has been an absolutely extraordinary journey. I mean, obviously, neither one of us ever dreamed that we would be living our life as it is right now. Most of what we're doing now that was never on a bucket list or a vision list or anything of the

sort. And these points in the timeline are really, really important. They really are. And I'm really glad that you asked me to interview you and that we're taking this hour and a half together to take a moment and reflect on, you know, what is the path that we, you know, that we walked, that we ran, that we cried on, that we danced on to lead us to this point in time. And so I want to just go back to your youth, where you really discovered your love of training and your experience in the water. Can you talk a little bit about when you found swimming and when you found out that your body was an athletic body and that this was something that was kind of your thing? That's a good question. You know,

I think that it wasn't like a switch was flicked and I just immediately knew. But I would preface my answer by saying that I was a pretty awkward, insecure kid. I was, you know, I've said it many times before, but I was the kind of kid who was picked last for kickball on the playground. I didn't demonstrate any kind of athletic prowess as a young person. I was sort of skinny and uncoordinated and anything that involved eye-hand coordination, you know, I just was not good at. I had a patch on my eye, you know, my eyesight is compromised. And so, it didn't look like the path forward for me was going to be in sports. And I started, I joined a swimming team when I was like six years old, I think at the local swimming pool in our neighborhood. Um, and I wasn't immediately

good, but it was fun. And I got to, you know, learn how to swim with a bunch of kids. And I did that, you know, six, seven, eight, nine. It wasn't until I was like 10 years old that I had won my first race. And that was in a butterfly race. And I realized I was good at that stroke. Um, and it was the first time that I'd ever succeeded at anything really in my life across the board. Like I wasn't like a good student. Um, I was falling behind in public school and my parents pulled me out and put me in a private school because I was having difficulty keeping up with my classmates. Uh, but swimming was the one place where I showed any kind of potential whatsoever. But I think more than that, the reason that I gravitated towards it was that it was like a safe place. Like I was a kid, you know, the word bullying gets thrown

around. Like, you know, I don't know that I was super bullied as a kid, but, you know, I didn't make friends easily. And I was kind of a loner. And I was on a kid, but, you know, I didn't make friends easily and I was kind of a loner and, um, I was on the receiving end of, you know, joking and stuff that goes on with kids. And when I went to the pool and my head was underwater, it just felt safe. Like I was home. So, um, so there was that, you know, so I had a natural, natural magnetism to that environment. Um, and then as I went into junior high and high school, I started to develop as a swimmer and I kind of made a decision. Well, actually, to really answer your question, I think the moment where I really realized that I had potential as an athlete was when I think I was 11 or 12 years old. I went away for a one week swim camp, summer swim camp at the University

of Virginia. And it was run by this coach, Mark Bernardino, who is the head coach of the University of Virginia swimming team. And it was just a kid's camp to really learn technique and develop your stroke as a swimmer. And he showed a real interest in me. And he told me, like, listen, you have a future in this sport. Like, you're naturally flexible. You have a touch and a feel for the water. And he worked with me over the course of that week. And it was the first time that I had experienced what it felt like to have somebody like a mentor,

somebody who had expressed interest in my development. And I think that was incredibly meaningful for me as a young person. And that got me excited and enthusiastic to continue to grow and develop. And then it was swimming in the wintertime in the YMCA and then going to the club level and being, you know, in over my head many, many times around swimmers who are much better than me and learning over time that my development and my prowess as an athlete was directly proportional to the amount of work and the level of dedication that I was willing to put into it. And I made a very concrete, specific decision to double down on that. And I realized that my talent wasn't necessarily

in swimming because by the time I was 15, I was swimming with kids who were way faster, super talented, surrounded by kids who had national age group records, were in the top five or 10 swimmers in their category, in their events across the country. And I was nowhere near that. But I realized that by putting in the extra time, by never missing a workout, by doing sets that other swimmers weren't willing to do, that I could bridge that talent deficit gap and catch up. And so by the time I was 16, I was on par with those kids. And that's when I knew this was it for me. So you saw the fruits of applying that hard work consistently over the years, you were able to see

like an effect, a result over a time period with those other kids. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, look, when I was a little kid, my mom used to read me this children's book called the, I forget what the name of the book is, but essentially it's the early bird gets the worm, you know, like the early bird or whatever. And I was like, I'm the early bird, you know, I'm going to get the worm because I'm the early bird. I'm the guy who's never going to miss morning practice. And, and I, and again, you know, to, to reiterate that I think to this day is, is both my greatest talent and my Achilles heel. Like I know how to focus. I know how to sit down and like work really

hard, work longer, work more diligently than anybody else around me. And that applies in the sort of ultra endurance realm, in terms of my sort of ability to suffer longer than the average person to tolerate levels of discomfort for the longer term goal that I'm trying to achieve. Mm-hmm. And so let's jump fast forward then to your decision to, when you had entry into every Ivy League school, you could have gone to any Princeton, Harvard, was it Yale as well? No, I didn't apply to Yale. I got into Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, Amherst, University of Virginia, University of Michigan, a bunch

of good schools. Okay, so you could have gone to any of those. Yeah, I went. You went eight for eight. And for background on that, when I realized that I had this talent for working hard in the pool and how that was paying off, I learned how to apply that academically. So I was able to kind of transform from this kid who couldn't keep up in school to, you know, becoming pretty academically inclined.

So by the time I graduated high school, I was, I didn't graduate first in my class, but I went to a private school. There was only 60 kids in my class and I was in the top, I don't know, five kids or whatever to graduate that year. And so why did you choose Stanford? why did you choose Stanford? It was a refreshing breath of fresh air that was very different from the environment in which I grew up. It was sunny California. I grew up on the East Coast. I was swimming in a dungeon-like pool all throughout junior high school and high school. The ceiling of this pool would drip with this gross black tar. And the whole thing was completely

unsanitary. And I just can't believe that I spent as many hours as I tar. And the whole thing was completely unsanitary. And I just can't believe that I spent as many hours as I did. And I went to visit Stanford. I didn't think that I was a good enough swimmer and I didn't think I would get in, but I received some interest from the coaches there. And I went out like on a lark after I already had committed to going to Harvard. I thought, well, let me just go check out Stanford

just to make sure. And the minute that I saw the campus, I thought, well, let me just go check out Stanford just to make sure. And the minute that I saw the campus, I fell in love with it. And when I realized that they would make a home for me there on the swim team, which I thought would never happen because they were the best swim team in the country. And I still, although I was good and I was an 18-year-old, I was one of the top high school swimming recruits, I still wasn't of the caliber that could compete at the level at which the Stanford program was operating. So, I didn't know that that was going to work out for me. But when they were like, yeah, we'd love to have you, I had to then tell

the coach at Harvard that I had changed my mind and I was going to Stanford. And I remember when I visited Stanford, what struck me, what stood out for me, and that was so unique and interesting in contrast to all the other universities that I visited was that the students seemed super happy. They were all going out of their way to like share with me like how much they loved going to school there. And it seemed like this amazing environment

in which the collective interest was in trying to maximize the potential of every student. And the idea was not just that you had to put your nose into the books and grind as hard as you could, which is very much the ethos of an Ivy League program, but that you could have a life outside of that. So for example, at an Ivy league school, it's like, well, are you going to be a student or are you going to be an athlete? Like you got to pick one. You can't be both. Stanford was an environment in which they said, would say, we want you to be the best version of yourself across the board. What is it that you want to express? And let's support that. And it didn't hurt that it was super sunny. And I saw students

like throwing Frisbees and, you know, laying out in the sun with their books and sort of enjoying themselves while they were on this, you know, journey, this adventure. And, you know, at the time, this is pre-internet. So it's not like Stanford. I mean, Stanford was, you know, is, was, always has been this amazing academic institution, but it didn't have this halo around it that I think it does now as the sort of birthplace of, you know, the startup revolution, because I predated that a little bit. But it just seemed like an incredible environment in which to, you know, blossom and really kind of find myself, you know what I mean? Like break out of this mold, this environment in which I grew up and

really kind of spread my wings a little bit. I'm really surprised that you even lasted in all of the other environments because you're so affected by cloudy weather, rain, darkness, dreariness. Like have you reflected back on because you suffer from SAD, from seasonal affect disorder? How do you think all of that affected your childhood of being in that kind of environment? Well, I didn't know anything different. You know what I mean? I'd never been to California. I mean, we'd go to Florida to visit my grandparents. And, you know, I always enjoyed that. But I didn't grow up in a, you know, in a favorable climate. Like Washington, D.C.,

the summer is just depressively hot and the winter's freezing cold. So I just didn't know anything differently. But, yeah, I'm very affected by the seasons and increasingly more sensitive the longer I live in California. That's true. So I guess the sunlight just brought you out of your shell and into this sort of new vibration of life and being connected and being social, which was something that was very kind of new to you. So walk us through that, that experience in the end, you know, really kind of short trajectory in college, when alcohol entered your life, and you made a big shift in your path. Yeah, I can remember, you know, being a freshman

at Stanford and just being so thrilled to be in this environment and to be a member of this incredible swim team. And I recall very vividly that I would go to the library at night and study. And then on my way home, I had like a beach cruiser bike. I would make a point of stopping at one of the dormitories where one of the other swimmers lived just to visit and say hi. And I would pick a different person every night and try to cultivate friendships. And I just felt like a sense of connection and a sense of belonging. And I really was blossoming in a social way that I'd never had experienced as a young person being kind of an isolated, you know, loner type individual. And I love that, you know, and, and to this day, like being a member of that team is one of the greatest experiences of my life. Um, but I think at the same time, that's

really where alcohol started to enter the equation. And, and that really was, you know, the fuel and the lubricant that allowed me to continue to step out of my shell and become more of a social animal in a good way like i look back on it and i'm like i don't you know in many ways it served me because it allowed me to um you know navigate the social scene of college in a way that maybe i wouldn't have without alcohol but like anything uh you know, navigate the social scene of college in a way that maybe I wouldn't have without alcohol. But like anything, you know, that's addictive when you talk to people that are in recovery, like it works until it doesn't, you know, it didn't take long before it started to turn on me. But initially, you know, I would say that it really helped me kind of get out of my shell.

And so how long was that trajectory? And how did you find yourself no longer on this coveted team that had really been your dream, and something that you highly, highly held as as an amazing accomplishment? Well, it was it was a it was a it was a factor of it, there was a number of factors. I mean, one of the things was that, you know, the more I started to party, the more I became interested in partying and less interested in swimming. And meanwhile, my swimming, my swimming career, although I did fairly well my freshman year and showed some, some prowess. And I remember the coach was interested in me one day being a captain of the team, uh,

with John Hodge. I remember a meeting with him in which he said, you know, we're going to groom you to be captain. After my freshman year, I never swam fast again. And that was a function of A, like I said earlier, just becoming more interested in the social scene than I was in my athletic career. And then that sort of seeping into a degradation of my academic inclinations. And also, you know, I was a benchwarmer on the Stanford team. And as much as I love my teammates and being part of that organization, I'm not so sure that the training regimen was optimally tailored to what I needed to develop as a swimmer. Like I was swimming with world

record holders and people that were much more talented and advanced in the sport than I was. And I was just trying to keep up. And so I was exhausting myself trying to do that. And, you know, you can't have a custom training program for every single swimmer on the team. So I was swimming workouts that were really written for Pablo Morales, who was the greatest swimmer in collegiate history. And, you know, I was training in his lane every day, just doing my best to keep up. And, and over time, you know, that started to catch up to me. And, and so I don't think it was the best program for me. And so each successive year, I started to swim slower and slower and slower until after my junior year, I was like, I just, I can't do this anymore. I'm less and less interested in it.

I'm tired of walking around exhausted all the time. I'm more interested in being a social animal in college and trying to have that experience. And I made the decision to, you know, end my swimming career. That's deep. Is it? I think it is. I think it is it is okay so let's just travel forward then um i want to i want you to enter into your quickly into your professional life becoming a lawyer um finding yourself on fast track to partner at a law firm and talk about your alcoholism coming to

a head and and that being a catalyst uh for a huge shift in your life when it did become a problem. So I think that in college, I never put too much thought into what it was that I wanted to do with my life. You know, it was always about like swimming, really. You know, it's like, how am I going to be best prepared for this swim meet? And I never looked too much past that. You know, I had been pre-med my first year and a half, two years in college. I was a human biology major. Then I lost interest in that. I became an American studies major, just a general liberal arts, like, you know, history, political science, and English degree. And I enjoyed that, but I never really thought about career path that much. And so, law school

just seemed like, well, that's, you know, sort of, it almost like delays the decision, you know, sort of responsible thing that you can do that nobody is going to, you know, nobody's going to question. But it wasn't a decision that I made because I fell in love with the law or really felt like I had, you know, some sort of passion for being a trial lawyer or something like that. It just seemed like a cool thing to do. Like, oh, I get to work. Your father's a lawyer. Well, my father's a lawyer. But, you know, to be fair, it's never like he said, I want you to be a lawyer. He never put pressure on me to do that. But, you know,

he seemed to enjoy his life and do well. And I thought I can wear a nice suit and get to go to nice lunches. You know, like I was thinking of it like that. That's law. Yeah. And so, you know, after college, I moved to New York City. I remember specifically, like I got a job at this law firm called Skadden Arps, big law firm. And I was going to work in the Washington, called Skadden Arps, big law firm. And I was going to work in the Washington DC office, go back home. But then I thought, oh, their main office is New York. Like that would be cool. I can go to New York. And I remember thinking like New York would be a great place to like party and drink. You know, that sounds like a lot of fun. And so I made the decision to go to New York city and I was a paralegal in this big law firm. I was the world's worst paralegal.

All I cared about was what was going to happen after I got to leave the office and where we were going to go out that night. And I had a pack of friends, many of whom are to this day still good friends of mine. And I had a great time. But that's really where my alcoholism kind of kicked into a different gear. I think I say it in Finding Ultra, but, you know, New York City is like Disneyland for alcoholics. You can walk around on the street with a beer and a brown paper bag. It's legal. And it's a culture that's very much about, you know, the nightlife and what you're going to do, you know, during those evening hours. And so,

I really love that. You know, I loved exploring this, loved exploring this really exciting new city. And that's what my life became about. And we called ourselves the kings of the low-budget social scene because we weren't making any money. I would always run out of money before the next paycheck. But I also knew where all the happy hours were and all the places where you could drink for free know, drink for free or, you know, get dollar beers or what have you. And so we were out or I should say I was out, you know, I don't know, four or five nights a week, you know, partying. And that's really where I think the claws of alcoholism really started to get their grips on me. And things started to get a little bit dark. You know, it started out with just being the last guy to leave the party or the last guy to leave

the bar. I was always blacking out. I remember waking up all the time not knowing exactly what had happened the night before. And for me, that was also part of the allure. And I think it's important to point that out. For me, it was about when I start drinking and I'm in New York City, there's going to be an adventure. Who knows what's going to happen? Yeah. Who knows what's going to happen?

Yeah, who knows what's going to happen? And it's going to take me on this ride. And the mystery of that, the intrigue of that, I think, was very alluring to me at the time. And I had fun times too, but I also woke up in strange places and would lose my wallet. You know, the cracks in the firmament were starting to get a little bit more pronounced. So let's go ahead and fast forward to your

experience in rehab. All right. But we didn't get through the whole lawyer thing. I mean, ultimately I end up being, I go to law school in upstate New York. I continue to drink my way through law school. I don't know how I graduate. I somehow land a job at a law firm in San Francisco where I worked for two years before moving down to Los Angeles. There's the whole marriage thing that exploded. There was a lot that went on. Essentially, in a nutshell, my alcoholism got really out of control, you know, really out of control.

I started getting DUIs. I got two DUIs in a period of like two months, blowing ridiculous numbers, 0.29, 0.27. I was in a car accident where I rear-ended an elderly woman. I went to jail. I almost got fired from my law firm job. It was a disaster. And at the very end, and that's not even talking about the whole wedding thing, because that's a whole podcast in and of itself. But at the end, and that's not even talking about the whole wedding thing, because that's a whole podcast in and of itself. But at the end, I had really become on many days an around-the-clock drinker. And it was not unusual for me to start the day with a drink in the shower, like a vodka tonic in the shower, and figuring out how I was going to continue to drink all day long. It was dark. It was lonely. I was progressively alienating myself from all the people around me, cutting myself off from friends and dad in which he said, look, you have

to sort your shit out. And until you're ready to get sober, we don't want anything to do with you. Call us when you're ready. And we're here for you because we love you. But we can't participate in this anymore. And it was dire. And it was not sexy. And there's nothing romantic about it.

It was just sad and pathetic and lonely. And so how did you end up finding your way to rehab for three months? So in the wake of those DUIs and terrified that I was going to go to jail and having my driver's license revoked and kind of the covers getting pulled on this secret double life that I was going to go to jail and having my driver's license revoked and, and kind of the, the covers getting pulled on this secret double life that I was leading. Um, you know, I realized of course that I was an alcoholic. I'd known it for a long time, but you know, it had reached the point at which I understood that I needed to do something about it. Uh, uh, coupled with the fact that I was court-ordered to go to AA. So, I had a card that the judge needed me to sign. I had to start going to AA meetings.

And so, I started exploring AA, but I did it very much in a tourist kind of way. Like, I would find AA meetings. I would arrive late. I would sit in the back. I would avoid eye contact. I would try not to talk to anybody. I'd leave early. I'd get my court card signed, and I would arrive late. I would sit in the back. I would avoid eye contact. I would try not to talk to anybody. I'd leave early. I get my court card signed and I would duck out and, and, and try to not have conversations with anybody. And I thought, okay, I'm getting sober. I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. Intellectually. I'm a smart guy. I kind of understand what they're talking about. I don't really need to read this book though, or like do any of these steps or any of the things they're talking about. Cause I get it, you know, and I'm going to figure this out.

And I think that's very much rooted in what they call in recovery self-will run riot. You know, like I'm very, very attached to my capacity to exercise my self-will. in my mind, I had decided that everything that I had accomplished in my life, everything good that had happened to me was a direct result of my self-will, that capacity to work hard, to focus, to double down, to suffer. All of those qualities I felt were my secret weapons that allowed me to be the guy who, you know, could progress as a swimmer and could get into these colleges and could get into law school and could get the coveted law firm job and all of that. Right.

So the idea that is proposed in recovery is that you have to relinquish yourself. Well, that you have to surrender. And to me, that was anathema. That's like saying you're giving up. You have to let go of this quality that is the one thing that has propelled you through life, you know, that has allowed you to succeed. And now you're being asked to relinquish that, to let go of that. Like, that's not going to happen. Right. the idea of faith or the idea that anything could, that there was a power that could exist beyond that to buoy me, to help me resolve these problems, to help me, you know, confront myself in a more profound spiritual way. I didn't want any part of that. And I wasn't ready to hear that. So AA played itself out for me over the course of a year and a half. I was in, I was out, I'd relapse, I'd get 30 days, I'd drink again. At one point,

I got six months and then I went out again and I wasn't able to make it work. And it was becoming more and more evident to me that my way, this way of trying to sort of use myself well to resolve this problem was not going to work, right? And it was baffling because I couldn't understand why this capacity for self well that had served me so well in other areas of my life could not solve this problem. And it was around this time that my parents hooked me up with a addiction medicine psychiatrist named Garrett O'Connor. And I started to see him and he made it very clear to me that he thought that I needed to go to treatment. I didn't want to go to treatment. And we made this deal that if I relapsed again,

that I would go to treatment. And he knew that I would. I was convinced that I wouldn't, that I was going to figure this out. And sure enough, I relapsed again. And because I was a man of my word, you know, a man of such high moral fiber and values, I said, I have to honor this deal, you know, and then that's how you tricked yourself. Yeah. So saying it would be okay for you to go right. So Garrett hooked me up with this. Of course, then once once once I told him, okay, I'm ready to go. Then I started like sort of researching treatment facilities. And I thought, I'm going to like find the place that's in Arizona. That's really sunny. By the pool. Yeah, by the pool and all that. Exactly. I was like, where's the, what kind of food do they have? Like, you know, I'm like, I don't know if I'm, you know, like in my ego, you know what I mean? Like my life is a complete disaster. It's in shambles. And I'm like, and I'm thinking like, well, that place isn't good enough for me. It'sles. And I'm like, and I'm thinking like, well, that place isn't good enough for me. It's ridiculous. And Garrett's like, no, you're going to go to this

place. It's in Oregon. I've got a bed for you, book a flight, you know, and, and, and show up tomorrow, you know? And I said, okay. And I did it. And, uh, so tell me what you did on the flight up there though, first. So, of course, I've made this decision. I'm going to go up. I'm going to fly to Portland and go to this rehab that's like an hour south of Portland. It was called Springbrook Northwest. It's since been acquired by Hazleton. So, it's a Hazleton facility now.

It wasn't then. But I thought, well, this is my last opportunity to drink, right? So I drank all night and woke up in the morning and had a drink in the shower and caught a cab to the airport and got there early so I could drink at the airport bar, drank as much as I could at the airport and then on the plane and got picked up at the airport. It gets foggy, but I think a guy picked me up at the airport in a van. And I just remember being delivered to that rehab. It was dark out by the time I got there. And just, like, passing out. I don't really remember the intake procedure.

But I remember coming to the next morning, stuck to these sort of, you know, plastic sheets in this tiny little room. At first, unsure of where I was and coming to to realize that, you know, I had found myself in this institution, you know, quite frankly, a mental institution, like my best thinking landed me in a mental institution rehab, because that's what it is, right? My best thinking, all the great ideas that I had, right, ended me up in this place at age 31. And it was quite shocking because I always, even up to that point, I still considered myself this functional, intelligent person. You had your shit together.

Yeah. It couldn't have been further from the truth, right? And it was terrifying. How was it? Because it was terrifying in juxtaposition to the person that I was when I was 18, when I really had the world, you know, by the tail. Like I had gotten into all these colleges. I was this, you know, I was a world-ranked swimmer. I had all this opportunity at my feet, right? And I really squandered a lot of it. You know, I squandered a lot of it.

I screwed up. I made terrible decisions and made choices that were fueled by this disease that I would learn is called alcoholism. And, uh, and so, you know, I remember making this decision as I was coming to and rehab that I was going to do whatever they said, and I wasn't going to try to self-will it. And I was going to, I was going to stop asking, stop challenging all of these ideas and just accept them and really surrender to, uh, the help that was being offered to me and to try to make the most of it because I didn't want to, I didn't want to have to end up in a place like that ever again. It's extraordinary. So you were in there for three months.

Yep. A hundred days. And then you got out and you went back to your law job. I did. So yeah, I, I went back to my law job. Um, it was a funny thing that happened. This is, this is not in finding ultra, but right before I went to rehab, I interviewed at another law firm. I was working at a law firm in Century City in Los Angeles called Christensen Miller, working predominantly for a very successful attorney named Skip Miller, who's a hard ass, but had taught me a lot. But I wasn't sure that this was ultimately the right place for me. And I got a job at a law firm across the street called Akin Gump, and they really wanted me.

And they gave me a job offer for more money. And then I go to rehab, right? And then while I'm in rehab, I have to call up the guy at Akin Gump at this law firm and go, yeah, you know that job that you offered me? Like, well, I'm in rehab right now. I guess I wasn't. And I was like, I had to have a counselor help me make that call. I was so scared to make that call because I was thinking they're going to just, well, they'll retract the offer. Right. And meanwhile, Skip Miller had been super cool when i went to him and said i gotta go to

rehab like that's a whole other story but like you know he knew what was going on with me and he had really tried to help me he got me a lawyer yeah he helped me get a lawyer for my duis and you know he the the beverly hills police officer that arrested me for my second dui was somebody that skip knew because he represented the Beverly Hills Police Department. So he knew exactly what was going on with me. And, you know, we went through it, but ultimately Skip had my back and he, you know, he was supportive of me going to rehab. So I had this sort of crisis because I'm like, Skip is supporting me, but I have this other offer and what I'm going to do, all the anxiety with that. And, you know, I made that call to Akincom thinking,

well, this will resolve the problem because they'll just retract the offer. But then they said, uh, they were like, okay, you're in rehab. They're like, we're going to have to get back to you. You know, I was like, okay. And then they did get back to me and they said, you still have a job here if you want it. We have a partner here who is a longtime sober guy. So amazing. And they put him on the phone and he was like, it's cool. Do what you have to do. And let us know. And I was pretty sure I was going to take that job. And then like a month later, six weeks later, that sober partner in that law firm said, listen, you've been in rehab kind of long enough. Like

we really need you. We got this case, you know, can we at least send you the case file so you can get up to speed on what's going on? Like he wanted to put me to work while I was in rehab. And the counselors were like, no, you're not doing that. And so I had to call them and say, thanks, but no thanks. I'm not going to be able to work there. So yeah, when, when rehab was over, I went back to Christensen Miller and worked with Skip Miller. And, uh, I felt like even though at that point I had been injected with enough spirituality or at least foundations of spiritual principles, and I was starting to wake up to, um, the idea that I might have some agency over crafting my life or putting it on a new trajectory, that I owed them at least to go back and work there as long as I was in rehab.

And I ended up working there for a year. And I did some cool stuff when I was there. And it was interesting to be a lawyer sober. I got to work with Bob Shapiro, the OJ lawyer on a sexual harassment case and, you know, did some cool stuff. But ultimately I was like, this is, I have to do something different. And I remember the day that I decided I was going to leave. And it was the scariest decision of my life because my entire life had been about being on this sort of track. You know, you study hard, you get into the best college, you go to the best law school or graduate school

or what have you, try to get the best job, you work hard, stay late, you know, all that kind of stuff. And I had been, despite my alcoholism, I was still pretty good at playing that game. And I couldn't see, it was like I had blinders on. I was like, that's the only way to live. There is no way to live outside of that. If I step off this track that I've been on since I, as long as I can remember, since I was nine years old, what does that look like? And it was absolutely terrifying because there was no clear trajectory or path. And yet I knew that this law firm existence was not for me and that in order to survive, I was going to have to leave. So I was in this conundrum, right? This terrifying conundrum.

And so I had, but there was no way around it right so i remember i had to go into skip's office and to say i'm i gotta go man like i can't it got to the point where i was so burned out and so unable to do the job that i couldn't even type like a confirming letter like a one paragraph letter like i just my fingers wouldn't move and i knew that i had to leave so yeah i told him like i i'm i'm not going across the street. I'm not looking for more money. I don't even have another job lined up. I don't know what I'm going to do. You're like, skip.

I'm going to Steve Ross Yoga. Yeah, I had started going to yoga at that point. And I would duck out. I would leave the office and leave my suit jacket on the chair. So it looked like I was still at work and maybe down the hall. And I would go to yoga. And then sometimes I'd come back to the office and sometimes I wouldn't, but I started playing hooky a lot. I just couldn't be there. And yeah, I finally told him, I was like, I got to go.

And, and he was amazingly cool about it. He's like, listen, the work's too hard unless you're enjoying it. He's like, I'm having fun. And I remember when he said that, I was like, you're having fun. I was like, anybody have fun doing this i couldn't imagine having you know it was so torturous and painful for me to do that job and you know it was in that moment that i realized like i didn't have to be a square peg trying to jam into a round hole which is what i've been doing my whole life so didn't he end up reading fighting finding ultra and didn't you have like another uh no i sent it to him yeah so so when finding ultra came, I sent it to him. Yeah. So when Finding Ultra came out, I sent it to him. I never heard back from him. And part of the reason I sent it to him is, A, I talk about him in the book.

I talk about him in a nice way, though. I talk about the certain ways in which he mentored me and taught me a lot. he mentored me and taught me a lot um but also the uh i think it was like the law los angeles uh law journal or one of the los angeles bar you know the bar journal like one of the newspapers for lawyers was gonna was running an article about the book yeah well it's like there's newspapers that you get like trade newspapers that all lawyers get and and they were ready they were going to write a review in an article about the book. And so I knew he was going to find out about it anyway. So I was like, I got to send him the book

before that hits the press. And he just finds out about it through the cracks. I didn't hear back from him. But I did hear many years later from another partner in the law firm who had read the book. This was maybe three years ago. So, you know, a couple of years after the book came out, he read the book. He was a partner in the firm that I hadn't worked with directly. I mean, we knew each other casually, but not

really that well. And he was halfway through the book before he put two and two together. Because when I get to the part about working in the law firm and then he looked at the name of the author on the title and he realized, oh my God, that guy worked here. I know that guy, you know, he'd read half the book before he realized that the book was written by somebody who had been under his employ. Um, and, and then what was really cool and kind of relates to, you know, one of the reasons, you know, sort of the main topics of doing this podcast, this journey that we've been on, he asked me to come back to the law firm and share my story. And so I was able to go back to this law firm that I had walked away from, this career that I'd walked away from, and share my story in a conference room in front of, I don't

know, 60 or I don't know how many lawyers were there, maybe not that many, you know, but it was like a lunchtime thing. And it was amazing. You know, it was amazing. It was like a really like I get up and give talks all the time. I travel all over the place. I've gotten up in front of huge crowds and given keynotes. But to just go to that place where I used to work and share my story with, it was probably only 20 or 30 lawyers there, was really like an emotional thing because it brought the whole thing full circle. And then to walk the halls afterwards and reconnect with so many lawyers that I used to work with and be in such a different place and be welcomed there, you know, because I

was like, you know, I was a deadbeat by the time that I left there. I couldn't do the job, you know, before I went to rehab. It was really emotional and powerful and an amazing experience that I could have never scripted or imagined. It's beautiful. That's amazing. That's a story in and of itself, another amazing story. So you start going to yoga. You're cultivating your spiritual connection,

and you're starting to connect with something outside of yourself. I think you had a counselor that asked you this question, Rich, are you a human being having a spiritual experience? Or are you a spiritual being having a human experience? And at the time, you didn't really know. But I think at this time in your life, you actually were starting to expand starting to, um, I mean, you've practiced yoga quite a lot. I was in that room with you, you know, three, four times a week. It wasn't just once a week. So I would say you were pretty much into it. Um, how much do you credit yoga as to being the catalyst of shifting your life in, in various ways? I think it, i think it shifted my life in in a number of ways and in kind of a tiered way like i think that it helped me embrace and continue this journey of expansion that rehab had started you know for me sobriety is about you, an evolution of consciousness as much as it is about treating, uh, you know, a disease that wants to kill me. You know, it's an opportunity to transcend your limitations and to, uh, develop a broader perspective on yourself and the world.

And I get a lot of that through the 12 steps, but yoga is a physical and emotional and spiritual way of connecting with that in a different kind of way. And so in early sobriety, I gravitated towards yoga for a number of reasons. I think in a subconscious level, it's what I just mentioned. But also, I needed new friends. You know, it's like I couldn't – everybody that I knew in Los Angeles were people that I partied with. And I needed a new crowd. And I wanted to raise the vibration of the crowd that I was hanging out with. And I wanted to move my body.

Right. And so yoga seemed to serve all of those purposes. And there was a lot of beautiful girls in the class of which you stood out. Yes. So it was like the baser intention of like, this is where the chicks are to, you know, on the other end of the spectrum, like this is an opportunity to continue to expand myself. Yeah. And I mean, I just wanted to sort of punctuate that for you. Cause I think sometimes that gets lost in the view, you know, when really we met in a yoga class

and that was sort of like the pivotal point of this whole next trajectory of your life. So, and you're actually an amazing yoga and yogi and, you know, quite, the practice is quite suited for you. You're suited for the practice and it does really well by you. You're more flexible than I am, and I think it's really good for your system as an adjunct to everything else that you do. I would also say, I just want to throw in there, that one of the things that was made sort of very clear to me as I was beginning the process of leaving rehab and kind of entering,

um, the sober environment in Los Angeles, the counselors were like, listen, man, your, your relationships with women are very interwoven with your disease. Like women are a big trigger for you. You're you're, you've got to find a way to, uh, develop healthy habits around your interactions with women and to learn how to, uh, you know, do that sober. And so it was suggested to me that for my first year of sobriety, that I not date, that I essentially live a celibate life. And I had the willingness to do that. Like I said, I was so willing. And that willingness, which I think in some level is propelled by that self-will instinct that I have. That willingness, I think, allowed me

to really grab onto sobriety and just do whatever. If they said to do that. I was going to do it. I was going to do it to the best of my ability. So if they said don't date and you know, be a celibate person for your first year, I was going to do that. And I can tell you that that was an extremely profound and powerful experience for me. And I didn't do it perfectly. I didn't, I, I went on a couple of dates over the course of the year. So I wasn't like completely on the program 100%, but I would say I was like 94% on it.

And that was extraordinary because it gave me not only the bandwidth to focus on creating a real foundation of sobriety, a solid foundation of sobriety, but it allowed me to connect with myself and to really learn about myself over the course of that year without that distraction. And I think that that served me very well. And then, so then by the time that I met you, I was in a place where I could actually have a healthy relationship with a female member of the species. Well, and then you have to look at like all the events, just how it's just such a perfect storm and a perfect explosion of life, you know, like life circumstance, because had you not taken that year of celibacy,

you may have been in a relationship with someone else. And then by the time my marriage ended, because I was married when you were in that class with Tyler and Trapper, we're only three and four years old. And so, you know, you really look at all the elements. Like I think when you and I met each other, you were looking for a girl in her 20s who didn't want to get married because you had just had like a catastrophe wedding that turned into be really not a marriage. And then I had I was just coming out of a 10 year relationship. And I was wanting to meet, you know, just date a bunch of different people and had no, no desire to get into a serious relationship with anyone. And it's just kind of funny that we both had these ideas of what we wanted. And then we met each other and there it was.

right you know love you know love chooses for you right because i i was very much of the mindset that i wanted to if i was going to date anybody she was going to be younger than me she wasn't going to have any baggage i was in no rush to get into anything serious let alone marriage like i was like i'm never getting married again ever you know like and then in you walk with, you know, two little boys getting divorced. Like, it just wasn't part of the plan at all. You know what I mean? And here we are 18 years later. I mean, how long? 18 years.

Yeah, 18 years. Yeah, it was crazy. And I think during that time also, you know, I had, I think it was your mom or something like that. It was like something came up, you know, about my kids and, you know, that this was my baggage or whatever. And in my outspoken way, I was like, excuse me, I was like, he's an alcoholic, like, who's got the baggage. But I mean, for me, and I say that I say this lovingly to you, it's not, you know, I can say that and laugh, because for me, I never gave it a second thought, I literally never gave it a second thought. There was not anything in my entire being that was concerned, that was judgmental, that felt

uncomfortable about the fact that you were a recovering alcoholic. And for me, as I said, is like, all I saw was your divinity was was who you are at the core. And so I've always said, you're not an alcoholic, you're a beautiful child of God, that's who you are to me. And I have to say at this juncture in this interview, that AA has been a miraculous and beautiful gift in our marriage. And I find it a huge advantage and a huge blessing that you have those tools and that those tools exist in our relationship because we have an amazing ability between the two of us to resolve conflict and to communicate and to, I think, truly evolve together. And I don't know if you didn't have those tools.

And they're really spiritual tools so i'm not saying that they have spiritual tools and they're also very practical you know they're very practical i mean i would you know to kind of uh comment on what you just said i mean first of all i would say that your uh your acumen your ability to kind of see the best version of me that I can't see for myself has been the source of strength that has allowed me to do what I've been able to do. Because from the beginning, you've always held that for me. And we've gone through our struggles and I've had many low moments over these 18 years. And you always held that place for me. You were always able to say, look, you're going to be able to do this. You're going to be able to do that. Like

you have to just keep going. And that faith and that belief really is the wind in, in my sails. That's allowed me to, you know, blaze this path. So I would say that. And the second, the second thing I would say is, you know, people ask me all the time, like, oh, oh, you're still like part of 12 step. Like I thought you got, you went to rehab, you got, like that's done, right? Like you're not, you're not part of that. And I was like, no, you know, I'm very much a part of the 12 step community here in Los Angeles. And I, you And I work with sponsees. I do all that stuff. It's very much not just a part of my life.

It is like the priority in my life. My primary purpose is to stay sober and to help another alcoholic achieve sobriety. That is my primary purpose. And when I lose sight of that is when I start to gravitate away from the best version of myself. And you do it beautifully. I don't do it perfectly by any stretch of the imagination. And I don't want anybody to be under the impression that I'm some kind of beacon of ideal sobriety. I have my struggles and good days and bad days, and I do the best that I can.

Definitely. I mean, the disease is part of your life. It is part of our relationship. sobriety. Like I have my struggles and good days and bad days and I do the best that I can. Definitely. I mean, the, the disease is part of your life. It is part of our relationship and something that we live with as a family, um, as a couple. And, but what I would say is your dedication to the program is unwavering. That's what I meant by that. Yeah. I would agree with that. Yeah. It's beautiful. So, wow. That's really's really really beautiful all of that that you shared so now let's move to uh finding ultra tell me about writing the book and how was that experience for you and then we have some really exciting news and and that is that you're writing a re-edition. I have a deal to revise Finding Ultra and write a second edition. I have to deliver that in August.

That clock is ticking. I should probably get on that. We have to get off the air now so he can write. Yeah, and I'll get to the first part of your question, the air now so he can write. Yeah. And, and, you know, I'll get to the first part of your question, but I'm very excited to revise the book. I'm super excited about it and I'm excited to have the support and enthusiasm of Random House to do it. And I think of the, you know, there's many things about the book that, that I'm super proud of. There's also many things I'd like to change. I look back on it now and I was like, I can't believe I wrote that. So I know that there's a much better book in there that I'd

like to express and I'm excited about that opportunity. So you have an opportunity to completely reconfigure anything that you didn't like. It's going to be about 30% different. I'm going to add a new chapter and I'm going to sort of revise stuff throughout and there's going to be plenty of cool new stuff in it to make it you know interesting enough for people to check it out um and i'm i'm i think you know i'm most proud of the fact that the book remains relevant five years later like it's been five years and every year it sells more than it did the year before you know so when the book first came out i was nobody you know i had had a little bit of

media attention, but it wasn't like anybody knew who I was. And, you know, when I wrote it, it's like, I didn't even win a race. Like I'm not a world champion in anything. Is anybody going to read this thing? And, you know, so it's not like it wasn't a New York, it was the furthest thing from a New York times bestseller. Uh, and it kind of just slowly over time, due to word of mouth, as much as anything else, you know, became a thing, you know, it's continued to sell. And I'm really, I'm really proud of the fact that, that, you know, it's still continues to sell and it's still is reaching new people and new audiences. And, you know, there's still new foreign translations, like every couple of months, there's a new foreign translation. I don't know how many there are now.

How many languages now? I don't know, like maybe like 10 or something like that. That's crazy. Which is cool. But back to your first question. So the process of writing the book, so, you know, we can skirt over all the Ultraman races and the epic, I mean, that's, I don't even know if we want to talk about that. We can, I guess, if you want, but you're doing the interview.

No, I guess what I would like to say is just to sort of focus the way that you share is first of all, I just want to say that you have over 780 reviews on Amazon for your book, primarily five star reviews. Your book has reached many, many, many places far and wide. And I think what I noticed when I'm out on the road with you when you're speaking is really the diversity of people that your story has affected and that Finding Ultra has affected. It's quite amazing when people are in line to meet you and they're, you know, the athlete, the family, the housewife, the yoga teacher. It just literally scans many, many different backgrounds. And,

and I think one of the key moments for you and me, when we were in Hawaii, it was the first year that the book came out, you received like a six page handwritten letter from someone who was in prison who had read your book. And, and that was a very defining moment as to the power and the reach of finding ultra. But I do want to talk about your races a little bit. I want to talk about, you know, looking at first Ultraman as a, as a, as a collection, I guess, of all the races that you raced that race. And then also, um, Epic five, your five Ironmans on five Hawaiian islands in under a week with Jason. Talk about, you know, what is your defining moment or what is your one takeaway or your one lesson from those two races?

If you wanted to share that with anybody who is training or racing. Yeah, I think, you know, there's sort of the pithy response and then there's the more erudite response. You know, the pithy response is we're all capable of so much more than we allow ourselves to believe. Right. We're all sitting on top of vast reservoirs of untapped potential. And we just sort of walk on top of that, unaware that we could be doing so much more, that we're capable of so much more than we think. I think most people are their own worst enemy in terms of how we perceive our capabilities. And so my experience of doing those races was a way of tapping into that for myself. But I think more than that, you know, I look back on them now not as athletic achievements as much as, you know, a spiritual adventure in trying to discover myself.

You know, that's really what it's about. The training and, you know, the training that I put in to prepare for those races and the performance of those races are just my version of, you know, what could look very different from somebody else. Somebody else, you know, goes to Machu Picchu or, you know, does some other sort of seeking in some other way that's completely unrelated to like, you know, triathlons is just their version of what I experienced. is just their version of what I experienced. Because for me, it was a process of trying to really figure out, you know, who I was going to be and what I wanted to express in this short time that we're here on Earth.

And it seems unrelated, like riding your bike and running. What does that have to do with that? But for me, it was all an active meditation. And it was all a journey of self-exploration that allowed me to get clarity on all of those things for me. And I remember, you know, throughout that entire process at no moment did it ever occur to me that I was laying the foundation for what I would be doing later professionally. You know, I just thought I'm still going to be a lawyer. Like I don't know how I'm going to ever have to be able to stop doing that. And it was just one thing after another of the universe showing up in very interesting ways that slowly kind of shifted that trajectory for me and has provided the opportunity for us to do what we do now. But again, to go back to something you said at the very beginning, it wasn't a result of a business plan or a vision board. Here's what we're going to be doing. What's the five-year plan? You know,

it wasn't any of that. It was about being fully present in your life, paying attention, and responding mindfully to the signals that you're being provided and always trying to make decisions in alignment with your highest self and getting clarity on who and what that highest self is. Yeah, but I feel like that's very true. I feel like the way that it was revealed to us, at least in that moment, is I was in a very, very deep sort of expanded place where I was able to see that the way through your suffering or the way through your quest of finding yourself was to do what you loved. I knew that. And I'd always been like this entrepreneur that was talking about, you know, you got to live your heart and you got to really, you know, really do what you love.

And I really believed in that. And then here I was in a marriage where I was kicking you out the door to do what you loved while knowing we had no financial income. It was like a complete, it was completely insane on today's, you know, the system of society or the money system or what we agree happens in marriages. But I, and I can't explain why, but I had this huge knowing or, or drive or just awareness to know that you had to do what was in your heart. And one of the most beautiful things for me as your beloved as your partner as your wife and lover and mother of your children, is to know that you were that very beaten up boy with the patch on his

eye with the Coke bottle glasses, uncoordinated, kind of discarded, left to the side. And I look at your life as a trajectory of a great triumph of your journey from that individual into now being, you know, the sexy vegan. It's a very long sort of, you know, journey. It's a very long sort of journey. But what I want to call attention to is in the early days when this was starting to catch, I want to remind you of the joy that you experienced in connecting with some of these athletes that are all different kinds of athletics, but people who you looked up to and you truly admired and cherished who ended up contacting you on Twitter or coming by the house, you know, to have a meal with us. Can you talk a little bit about how that

experience was for you to finally be in accepted by these people that you love and admired so much really throughout your whole life? Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. I think that roots all the way back to my experience at Stanford. For me, being part of the Stanford swim team that won two NCAA championships when I was there, I didn't even really care that much how well I did. I was just so thrilled to be on this team with these amazing athletes that I, that I got to train with every day and that I could call friends, you know, that was like the meaning for me was the community and the relationships and, and feeling like I was part of something that was bigger than myself that gave my life meaning. It was beautiful, you know, and I loved everything about that.

And, and I'm still in awe of like those world-class amazing athletes, you know. And now I get to be part of that community in an amazing way. Like I've gotten to ride bikes with Dave Zabriskie and train with Chris McCormick when he comes to town. And, you know, just the other day, I didn't even tell you this, you know, Connor Dwyer is doing an altitude camp. He's like, you should come. You should come. Like he invited me to come, you know, train Colorado Springs at altitude camp with him for three weeks. He's there now.

I was like, I can't do it. I got too many things going on. But like, you know, my whole life I would have killed as an athlete to be invited to go train at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. And Connor's like, yeah, come on out and do it. And it's like, you know, if I was living a different life, I probably would jump on that. But we just have too many things with your book and all that kind of stuff. Like at 50 years old, I'm being, you know, basically extended an invitation to go, you know, train with an Olympic gold medalist. You know, it's like, it's insane. It makes no sense whatsoever. And to kind of go back to your question about the process of writing the book,

you know, at the time I'm thinking, like I said before, like, I haven't won a race. I'm not a world champion. I'm like, I'm okay. You know, I'm pretty good. I'm like, I was able to, it was like, I know how to suffer, but sort of on a pure athletic resume basis, like, am I really somebody who should be writing a memoir about my athletic pursuits? You know, it's like, who wants to read that book? You know, so I realized that the marching order for my book and the only way that it would work was directly related to the extent to which I was willing to be vulnerable and tell the emotional

story. Because if the only people who would be interested in reading this book were runners and triathletes, I would have failed. Like I wanted to write a book that was going to be able to connect with anybody and everybody. And to do that, you have to show up for it and be as emotionally honest as possible. And that is uncomfortable. And most people aren't willing to do that. And it was uncomfortable for me. But I think ultimately that decision is why the book connects. Because I do do that.

And so everybody can kind of find some aspect of themselves or their journey in the context of the story that I tell. Definitely. And I remember when you turned in the final manuscript, and you were just terrified. You were like, Oh, my God, like, I just, I just revealed all this stuff about myself, because you have to remember, like, even back five years ago, or even 10 years ago, when we were going through this entire dismantling and becoming into this moment, you know, there was still the energy of that you didn't want to, you know, you didn't want to tell people that you were having trouble, because that would make them attack you, you know, or it would make you worse off than, than you were, there was kind of that understanding in the field that it wasn't safe, it wasn't safe to admit, if that you were even an alcoholic. I mean, you know,

there's a lot of people that just keep that private. And that's the environment that they're in. So it was a very vulnerable place to be extremely vulnerable. And also with nothing else around us, like, you know, no, no other sign that that making this decision was going to be, you know, a positive thing for you or for your family, except for that you're an amazing writer, and I think we knew that. I knew that you certainly put a lot of hours into that book to write it at the level that you did, and it's a great book. Yeah, at the time that I was writing it, I was training for Ultraman 2011. I was still practicing law.

We were barely making any money because my law practice was, I was so disinterested in practicing law. And I went, you know. You had totally jumped. I mean, I had been working in interior design and then I had Jaya, which was our fourth baby. And then I went through my own spiritual transformation. So neither one of us could work, put it that way.

We were, it was a very bizarre and interesting time. And I remember that I would put in these huge training sessions. And there's too much craziness at home for me to write at home. I didn't have an office or any kind of private space in our house to work. So I would basically go to Starbucks, or my favorite writing spot was, it's no longer there. And I've told this story before, but there was a FedEx Kinko's near the Westfield mall in Canoga Park. It was the only place that was open all night. It was a 24 hour FedEx Kinko's because a lot of those places close at 10. So I would go there in the evening, like I'd have dinner with you and then I'd come home and have dinner with the family. And then I'm like, okay, I'm going to go right.

And I would go to this FedEx Kinkos. And it was like inside what used to be like an old bank building that they had turned into a Kinkos. And it had an upstairs. And upstairs at night, generally you would find like community college students in there studying and they had wi-fi and all that but then around midnight like those students would start to clear out and there was a group of like i don't know four or five homeless guys that would come every night and they'd come upstairs and the night manager of the Kinko's was like a cool guy and he would let those guys kind of like sleep up there. So these guys would like crash out on the,

on the, um, desks up there with their heads on the table and, and try to sleep up there. So it would just be me and like four homeless dudes up there. I wrote the book. So that's the visual of like my writing environment. So sexy, the whole thing. So amazing. So anyway, okay, so, so let's fast forward then. So you're training and, and let's get into food. Now, let's get into to your journey into becoming a vegan endurance athlete. And, and then our journey into creating our first cookbook and, and that whole trajectory and how we've, we've come to where we are today. Yeah. So, you know, the story's well told and well documented, so I don't want to belabor it, you know, and it's certainly fleshed out in the

book, but, you know, essentially I was 50 pounds overweight at 39 years old and had this moment on the staircase late one evening where I thought I was having an incident with my heart. I had to pause halfway up a simple flight of stairs, winded out of breath, tightness of my chest and the whole thing and really scared that something was very, very wrong. And that was kind of the catalyst to me taking responsibility for my health and my nutrition. Leading up to that point, you know, although I had been this collegiate swimmer, I hadn't been taking care of myself for a very long time. And although I was sober, that hadn't translated into healthy sort of lifestyle habits. I was a workaholic.

I was gorging myself on fast food three times a day, just, you know, not exercising, just not living a very healthy life. And it all caught up to me. And, you know, I got clarity in that moment. And it was very similar to the basically the moment that I decided to go to rehab. You know, it's like I need to make a decision that is going to change how I'm living, you know, and that decision needs to be concrete, needs to be specific, needs to be immediate. Because I had, you know, and that decision needs to be concrete, needs to be specific, it needs to be immediate. Because I had, you know, I was very well aware of just how profoundly my life had changed by making the simple decision to like go to rehab and like how different my life was as a result of that decision. I was like, I need to make a similar decision about these other things that I'm overlooking in my life. So, you know, it wasn't an overnight thing,

but ultimately that led me towards plant-based nutrition, eating vegan diet. And, you know, that journey and that experiment really revitalized my health. And I lost a bunch of weight and that got me enthusiastic about fitness again. And that's what sort of catapulted me into the whole ultra endurance world. But I would say that at the beginning, at the outset of that adventure, it was very much about personal health. It was like, I don't want to be fat. I'm tired of feeling tired, sick and tired of being sick and tired. I want to feel good. I want to have good energy. I want to live long. It was all very self-involved. And and and that's good i don't

mean that in a pejorative way but like i was like i wanted to take care of myself and the inquiry really ended there and the interesting thing about this journey is that it has morphed and changed and evolved and grown in many different ways and i think my adventures through diet and nutrition are very much a spiritual adventure as well, akin to the athletic adventure, akin to the sober adventure. Because now I realize that that shift in diet and nutrition wasn't just about personal health. It's much more about expanding your consciousness, you know, and now the, the, and now the things that interest me the most about it are the environmental implications of our food choices, the ethical implications of our food choices. And it's not a self-involved decision or calculus as much as it is a decision to live, you know,

more in alignment, not just with my values, but to live a life of or to approximate a life of ahimsa, to tread more lightly on the planet. Which is nonviolence. Yeah, and to be kind of like an example or a beacon to others that not only can you do this, but this is like an amazing way to live. So there's a sort of responsibility that comes with that. But it's really about a commitment to continual consciousness expansion.

Mm hmm. And so for those listening, what, you know, just in a in a succinct way, what are the reasons that you feel and that you have chosen to live a plant-based lifestyle? It is the lifestyle that basically fires on all cylinders and checks all the boxes. You know, right now, you know, it's no surprise to anybody that we're in the midst of this insane healthcare debacle epidemic. Obesity rates are through the roof. 70% of Americans are overweight or obese. One out of every three Americans will die of heart disease. One out of every two will contract

some form of heart disease. 40% or now is it 30? Yeah, 30% of Americans are diabetic or pre-diabetic right now. Like it's crazy making. Chronic lifestyle illness is the sort of epidemic of our era. And when you adopt a whole food plant-based diet, you can prevent yourself from being one of these statistics. And if you've already contracted one of these ailments, you're in a good position to actually reverse it. And that's incredibly profound. So in a health context check the box eating plant-based you don't have to become chronically ill and become a ward of the state and become

You know sort of Somebody who has to take multiple medications, you know become You know a ward of the pharmaceutical industry, the medical, pharmaceutical, industrial complex, so to speak. And then environmentally, you know, when you opt out of putting animal products on your plate, you're saving a tremendous amount of resources. Right now, most people don't realize this, and I talk about this all the time, but animal agriculture is the number one cause of almost every single man-made environmental ill on the planet. Everything from species extinction to ocean dead zones.

It's polluting our water table and our lakes and our rivers through the runoff. It's decimating the Amazon, you know, the planet's lungs at the rate of one to two football fields every single second, clearing all that ground for not just grazing, but growing crops for feed. There's more carbon emissions as a result of animal agriculture than all of transportation combined. Like it goes on and on and on. And this is a conversation that we're not having enough of. You know, we sort of talk about reducing our carbon footprint by, you know, getting an electric car or, you know, sort of doing the things that we do, recycling and the like. But there's this glaring elephant in the

room when it comes to what we choose to put on our plate. So by adopting a plant-based lifestyle, you can exempt yourself from that sort of, you know, karmic debt and live more sustainably and more responsibly, more, you know more ecologically responsibly on the planet. And then ethically, to be able to karmically remove yourself from the equation of suffering and torture that is endemic to factory farming and the way that we treat these animals in terms of how we create the foods that feed the planet is a beautiful thing. And to realize that you can do it and thrive and be an athlete and be whoever you want to be and not be deprived of anything is like an epiphany.

So for me, when you look at those three primary categories, there's no reason not to become plant-based. And I've been doing it for 10 years. I've never had any problem building lean muscle mass and getting stronger and faster. And I just turned 50 and I'm preparing for this crazy Otillo swim run race in Sweden in September. And my training's really ramped up. And I haven't raced since 2011.

It's been five years. And there's been moments where I thought, well, maybe I'm not going to be able to be that fit again. Or maybe I just can't be competitive. But I'm now in a place where I'm starting to feel the way that I did back in 2009, 2010, 2011. And I realized that I can still go out there and kill it. I've been vegan for 10 years, you know, and I feel amazing. So to me, it's just, there's no stone, there's no stone that goes unturned. And I think, and I say this when I give talks all the time, that it's very easy as citizens and consumers to feel disempowered, like your vote doesn't count. And what can you possibly do to

make a difference? And who cares what you think. But if you make this switch and you remove the animal products from your plate, you are making a conscious decision that has very real world positive implications, right? It's a profound act. It's a political act. And it's empowering. And I encourage anybody who's listening, who's sort of tiptoeing around the edges of this, contemplating it, but thinking maybe I can, maybe I can't, like jump in and try it, you know, do it for 30 days. If after 30 days, you don't feel different,

you don't feel better or whatever, then go back to doing whatever you're doing. But I can tell you from my own personal experience, it's anecdotal, of course, and it's based on the hundreds and thousands of emails that I get that, you know, I can assure you that you're going to feel better. You're going to, you know, optimize your weight. You're going to prevent yourself from getting these diseases. And there is something intangible, but also very real about the feeling that you get when it comes to living more sustainably and more responsibly. You are relieved of that burden because I think we're all conscious creatures as human beings. None of us like the idea that animals get tortured to put that hamburger on your plate, but we do it anyway. And we make this sort of semi-conscious or often unconscious decision

to not look at that or not pay attention to that, but it exists. That dissonance between your value system and your behaviors creates, you know, sort of agitation in your soul, right? And if you can rectify that, then there's a lightness that comes with that that I think will expand your consciousness and really make you feel good about yourself. Definitely. That's beautifully said. I think that the word that kept coming to me when you were speaking was the word freedom and the concept of freedom.

And people talk about adopting a plant-based diet like, well, I couldn't give up this or I couldn't give up that. And if anything, your life and your journey is living proof of the absolute alignment, harmony, freedom, and expansion that is realized from adopting a plant-based diet. And in your keynote speak, you always say, transform your plate or change your plate, transform your life. And it really is the first step to unlocking your best, most authentic self, the version of you that was created in divinity, that is in harmony with nature and harmony with your surroundings, and truly being connected with to the unique design in which you were created, because none of us are the same. Everybody's journey is going to be completely different.

But I would say that, you know, this entire play, looking back on it over five years and seeing the trajectory and the changes and the momentum and what has occurred as truly a miraculous event and not separate at all, but intricately connected to plant-based living and being very mindful of what we are ingesting in our bodies. So food has been big for you and for me. Again, it wasn't on the top of our list, what we thought we were going to be doing. But I just want to mention back when Rich started to train was when I started to cook and I did it. It was sort of one day we had small kids and our agreement was he was going to do these long training sessions and then I was going to get to go do my music.

So when he just opened the door and left and then eight hours later, the door opened up and he came back in and I would give him a child and leave. And one time Rich kind of stopped me in the kitchen on my way out. And he said, you know, babe, do you just understand that I just ran a marathon? And I kind of stopped mid stride. And I looked at him and I and I was like, No, I actually had no idea. That's what you just did. Because all I did was saw the door open and shut and then open and shut again. just did, because all I did was saw the door open and shut and then open and shut again. So it was at that point that I made the decision that I could go in the kitchen and start creating food to really feed you. And you were really trying to do something extraordinary. And so I put my heart and my soul into it. And that later is what became our first e-cookbook, Jai Seed Cookbook, which so many of you have bought and supported. And in the early days, it literally fed our family. Literally the first week, it was like $100. And the next week,

it was maybe 200 and went from there. So that was really an extraordinary thing. And we were later able to, you know, parlay that and expand that into the plant power way, which Rich and I released a couple years ago now. And it's been an extraordinary experience to share our family life, our family table with all of you guys and these easy, modern, creative, artistic, tasty, whole food recipes that are applicable. They're real food, they're warm, they're hearty. And so we're at a very exciting time right now. Rich and I actually have two new things that we're going to be sharing with everybody. And so why don't you talk a little bit about the meal plan? Right. So we just launched a new service on the website at richroll.com.

And it is our plant power meal planner, which is very cool. It's very cool. So rather than going to richroll.com to listen to the podcast or to buy a t-shirt or read a blog post. Now we actually have this incredibly powerful, robust service that will allow you to sign up and get access to literally thousands of whole food plant-based recipes. And incorporated into this is grocery lists and in some areas even grocery delivery through Instacart. lists and in some areas, even grocery delivery through Instacart.

And all of this is created in partnership and powered by lighter. So many of you, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, will remember my conversation with Alexis Fox and Micah Risk, who were on the podcast a while ago. They are the two badass, powerful women behind Lighter. Superpowers. They're super awesome and cool. And so essentially what they've done is created a model whereby we can sort of use their engine and customize it for the best interests of the demographic of people

that are visiting the richroll.com website. So basically, you can sign up for it. It's pretty cheap. I actually should know what it is offhand. You go to the website. I should have made notes about the details of this. I mean, it literally went live on the website today. What day is today?

Today is the 11th. It went live on the website last night or this morning. And we're sort of beta testing it and not making any announcements about it until the 16th, which is when I think that's the date this podcast goes up. So we want to make sure that it's all working super functionally and all that kind of stuff. But essentially, for only $1.90 a week, basically the price of a cup of coffee, something like that. You get access to all of these amazing recipes, some of which are our own. Julie provided, I think you provided 10 recipes. It's going to ebb and flow.

We're going to be featuring some recipes from the Plant Power Way and different original content that I produce over the years are from various books. But all of the recipes are approved by us. And Mike and Alexis are incredible individuals who have just put so much work into this. So you can customize this program for yourself, you can go on the platform and enter in you know, any food allergies, how many people are in your family, if you're a single person, all the recipes are geared for single serving. So you can really customize it to the kind of food that you need. And it really becomes a custom support system. And the kind of lifestyle that you live.

Like, are you active? Like, are you doing this for performance goals or weight loss or what have you? You can super customize the whole experience for you. And like you said, like you can say, the whole experience for you. And like, and like you said, like you can say, I don't want the, I don't like these foods or these ingredients, or I'm allergic to this, or I don't want, you know, I want it to be gluten-free, whatever. You can super dial in all of that. And then you get the, you get the recipes and then you get the actual grocery list so that you can go to your grocery store and specifically get everything

that you need. And like I said, in some urban areas, they have Instacart, which means you can actually just get those groceries delivered right to your home through the service. It's pretty amazing. It's really cool. So what we wanted to do in this partnership, which is an amazing alignment, is to be able to take the guesswork out of adopting a plant-based lifestyle, to really make it as simple and easy as possible for everybody to have the recipes that suit their lifestyle and be able to really step

into this and become a part of lasting change, transformational change for yourself first and foremost, and ultimately for the planet and for all of us at large. So it's extremely exciting. Yeah. And it's really awesome to be able to provide such an amazing service on the website, right? Like as opposed to it, just literally being a blog and a place to host the podcast, like now it's actually functioning in, you know, providing like an incredible amount of content for people. So I don't know, I'm super excited about it. Um, the, the work that Alexis and Micah and their team, they have an incredible team, put into building this is really remarkable.

And our team as well. Everybody worked really hard. And we're super proud of it. And we're just excited that it's launched and excited for you guys to check it out. So if you want to take a peek at it, if that sounds interesting to you, just go to richroll.com and click on Meal Planner. You'll see it in the top menu on the homepage. Plant Power Meal Planner. It's called the Plant Power Meal Planner.

It's there for you now. Awesome. It's really cool. And so, yeah. And then secondarily to that, and I just posted this. You posted it on Instagram yesterday. How's it going? Julie's new book, This Cheese is Nuts, is coming out June. I posted it on Instagram yesterday. How's it going?

Julie's new book, This Cheese is Nuts, is coming out June. What's the date again? June 13th. My lucky number. It's available for pre-order now. It's just it came. We got our first copy in the mail yesterday. No, two days ago. Two days ago.

It's beautiful. The book came out really, really well. Super proud of you. This is Julie's first book without my name being on it. Her book, and it's your creation pillar to post, like top to bottom for the last. Well, I should preface it, and I'll let you talk about it. You're supposed to be interviewing me. But anyway, I'm going to say this part.

One of the biggest things that I always hear and that Julie always hears and probably a lot of you guys can relate. People say, you know what? Totally cool. You're doing the plant-based thing. You're doing the vegan thing. That's awesome. It's clearly working for you.

You know, I would love to do that, but I just, there's no way that I can get rid of cheese. I just love cheese. Like I just, I can't do without cheese. And it's super interesting. Like cheese really has a hold on people. You know, it really does. And there's a lot of reasons for that. I just did a podcast the other day with Neil Bernard that I'm going to put out soon.

And he talks about the actual biological addiction mechanism that creates that craving with dairy products. Very fascinating. But yeah, this really is a hard thing for a lot of people. And so, I don't know, a year and a half ago, Julie decided she was going to take this on and try to figure out how to create plant-based versions of your favorite cheeses. Not just one cheese or two cheeses. How many recipes did you come up with? I have over 75 recipes. They're not all cheese recipes. There's about half that are cheese and

then half companion recipes. So it's delicious vegan cheese at home. It's the actual cheeses, and then it's ways to use the cheese. But I have to say that this was truly an example and a life experience for me to understand that where there's a will, there's a way. Because, you know, I was, I was confident that I would come up with some great tasting stuff. I was not worried about that. I had a basic cheese section in the Plant Power way. And as soon as I had gotten into that, I was, I was thinking, Oh, there's a whole world here that I could delve into and explore and experiment in. But what I discovered is that what is available there is literally mind blowing. I mean, some of the cheeses in this book, especially like the the mozzarella's and the, you know, the milky kind of fresh, soft cheeses,

and the milky kind of fresh, soft cheeses that I missed from Italian salads or fresh with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and cracked pepper. I created them using sprouted almonds and cashews. And you will, I think, fall down on the floor actually in delight when you eat them. And I can attest to that because I was the number one taste tester over the last year and a half. And Julie, she's come up with some really amazing stuff. I mean, everything from, you know, nacho cheeses to brie and camembert and like all these, you know, all these really sort of delicacies that you just can't believe there's no dairy in them.

Like, it's just shocking. It's shocking. It is shocking. And it just shows you then you're then you're thinking like, well, what did make that cheese taste like cheese? You know, and, you know, the world of dairy cheese is such a world and it's very complex. It's extremely complex. Thousands of years of, you know,

industry and technique and stuff. And so what I would say is this cheese is nuts. That's the name of my book. This cheese is nuts. Um, uh, this cheese is nuts is providing recipes that is really, it's really the next level in cheese. It's actually better than dairy cheese because not only is it compassionate, not only is it environmentally sustainable, and help in, you know, loving for our planet. But ultimately, it's loving for you, it's good for your body, I never had a breakout on my face or had problem digesting the food, it's shocking, actually, how, how it digests so beautifully and your body really consumes it like a, like a nutrient, literally like a nutrient. And I was always the one that wanted to order, you know,

my eye would go to the, you know, fettuccine with Alfredo sauce. And I was, that looked good to me. And by the third bite, I was sick, you know, be sick to my stomach. It was just so heavy. You'd be like, Oh, this sounded good, but it's kind of gross. And now to make, you know, be sick to my stomach, it's just so heavy, you'd be like, Oh, this sounded good, but it's kind of gross. And now to make, you know, fettuccine with almond Alfredo, it's delightful, you get all the creamy and all the deliciousness without the fallout from the health from the abuse of our beautiful sacred cows. From you know, the environmental, you know, constraint, you know, it takes 1000 gallons to produce one gallon of milk 1000 gallons. I mean, that's just insane. So it's fun. I'm very, very, very pleased with this book. I feel very blessed to have been able

to bring it to light. And everybody's going to hear a lot more from me in the coming weeks and months on this. But we do have kind of something exciting that we're going to announce on this podcast today and that's that rich and i are going to ireland as you know to ballyvelane we have a trip of plant power transformation scheduled there from the 24th of july to the 31st and we worked really hard to secure a free spot as a giveaway for a pre order, you know, prize or gift. So anyway, we're very excited to announce that we'll be taking one blessed person with us on this trip. You got to take care of your own airfare. So it's just the spot the place and it's a actually a four thousand

dollar value um and uh anyway we're super honored and so how does somebody how does somebody enter that so they would go to um our plantpowerworld.com backslash uh giveaway um also just plantpowerworld.com also works either one of those our plant power world is the main one though our plant power direct to the same place but yeah and there's a there's a tab on there it says giveaway yeah there is and there's no there's really no required purchase necessary to enter you can enter i'm just asking for you guys to buy three copies but it's not required so it's an ask and if you guys feel in alignment with that and you want to enter then copies, but it's not required. So it's an ask. And if you guys feel in alignment with that and you want to enter, then that's fantastic. And if you just want to

enter, that's okay too. So anyway, yeah. Yeah. It's super cool. And the book I should say is just, it's, it's also an art book. Like I think, you know, if people are listening, they're like, oh, it's going to be this like instructional manual about how to make cheese. But it's really like a beautiful art book. Like the photography of these cheeses is mind blowing. And it's not what you would expect at all. Like it's incredibly artfully put together. You did an amazing job. And I'm super proud of you and Leah for all the amazing photographs. Yeah, I've worked with my, she's like my niece almost, or my spiritual daughter. And I've known her my entire life and saw in her a great ability behind the camera. And so simultaneously to creating this book, I mentored her into becoming a photographer. And let me just

say she rose like a star. And she has her first book cover. And it makes it just more fun for me. I love doing all these projects that are aligned, that are blessing and helping everybody around. So rather than go and hire a very established food photographer, I really knew she could do it. And I knew that together we would make a great team. And it's been a really beautiful blessing. And Lea Vita Marasovic is her name, and she's well on her way to a great career in photography. Yeah, it's been beautiful to watch you guys work together.

So we've got to wrap this up, but I think I want to kind of end this by saying that, you know, this subject is sort of about celebrating the five-year anniversary of Finding Ultra. And I think it wouldn't be a complete conversation without, you know, acknowledging that in the wake of the book coming out and trying to conceptualize what would come next, that's where I had the idea for this podcast. The podcast for me, at the outset, has always been a vehicle for trying to continue the conversation that I began with Finding Ultra. And I could have never imagined in my wildest dreams that it would have matured and grown into what it's become.

It's been an extraordinary opportunity to continue to expand my consciousness by convening with some of these amazing minds and brilliant personalities that I've had the good fortune of sitting down with and the opportunity, of course, to share with everybody that listens to this podcast. And it's something that I'm continually committed to trying to improve and expand upon. And I'm looking at doing video and the journey continues. But it's been a crazy, amazing, wild journey

that I don't think either of us could have ever imagined for ourselves to be able to be sitting here, getting to do what we love and, and, and sharing, you know, and sharing that with the world and being able to provide value to people out there that, uh, that are seeking. Definitely. It's a gift. Well, the podcast, your podcast has been extraordinary, just an amazing force in so many people's lives. And I know because I, people come up to me on the street and when we travel and I hear their stories and how your podcast has transformed their life and

changed their life. And, you know, it really, you really deserve and you know, it needs to be said that you've done an extraordinary job with this medium. And I would even go one beyond that and say the Divine Mother or consciousness or that force that is working through you has. Yes, it's not my self-will. Well, exactly. Has masterfully. Beyond that. You got it.

Yeah. Has masterfully put this together. And when I look at you as a being and a soul and that trajectory, you know, that I described of that, you know, kid with a patch over his eye that was just awkward and uncoordinated coming through this entire journey of finding yourself. You know, part of that is that hook. And this reason that I asked you about your experience of getting to commune with these amazing athletes that you were in awe of. And, you know, you're also quite an extraordinary photographer, Rich Roll. And you have within your makeup, your divine design, you have a voyeurism about you, you're a watcher,

you're an observer, and you're very interested, and you have a lot of questions, and you're a big thinker. And all of these qualities wrap so beautifully into the perfect host of, you know, of the interview of interviewing somebody to get into their deepest, darkest places or their most intimate places to be able to share. These are all qualities that are masterfully, you know, teed up to produce this event. And so again, in your life, I'm thrilled that you're doing Otillo, I happen to say, I just want to say that I love you when you're training, I love it, I will, I will take, you know, less time with you, for you to be embodied in your full form, the way that you were created, your body thrives with this kind of expression. And so it's beautiful

to see you coming back into that blossom now. And again, it's not about being the fastest or it's not about better than anybody else. It's about being the best version of yourself. And I would say at this five year juncture, when you have a podcast now with over 20 million downloads. It's extraordinary. I mean, we go to Paris and we think we're in private and somebody just turns their head and they're like, Rich, you know, we're in Florence. And, you know, so it's really kind of takes our breath away and we can't believe how far this podcast is really reaching.

But what I would say to you and what I think that consciousness has in store for you and what the world needs from you is the continued evolution of this podcast. You are perfectly designed and created to do this thing. So somehow through your training, your love of AA, your willingness to be of service in that platform, in that healing modality, and your ability to care about people's stories to really be the observer, really be the person that is really watching to bring to light all this amazing inspiration for all of us. to bring to light all this amazing inspiration for all of us. That is my prayer for you.

That is the world's prayer for you. And it's been an amazing five years, and congratulations. I can't wait to read the new edition of Finding Ultra. You're going to have to wait a while. And anyway, thank you for your courage and your willingness to show up for your own life. Because when you show up for your life, you bless everyone around you. That's the truth for everybody listening, too. That's beautiful. Thank you, babe.

Thank you, sweetie. Love you, babe. All right. Did we do it? We did it. All right. Did we do it? We did it.

If you're digging on Srimati, Julie Pyatt, you can find her on the interwebs at Srimati, S-R-I-M-A-T-I, on Twitter and Instagram. Check out This Cheese is Nuts. You can pick it up on Amazon and enter the giveaway for the Ballyvalane Ireland trip, which is July 24th through 31st. You can do that at ourplantpowerway.com. Please check out the new meal planner. Super excited about that. Richroll.com. Click on meal planner in the menu. You'll find it right there.

And what else? I think that's it. That's it for now. You know what? More people listen to the podcast than have read Finding Ultra. So maybe someone should read Finding Ultra. To celebrate the five-year anniversary of this book, if you're listening to this podcast-

Read Finding Ultra. And you haven't read the book, pick it up. It's paperback, it's cheap. It's like nine bucks on Amazon or something like that. It's a great story. Yeah. And I just want to thank everybody for listening. I think it's been a very interesting two years

in the podcast world because podcasts have really blown up. You know what I mean? Like when I started this podcast in 2012, I was by no means an early adopter to the medium. Like, you know, the medium really started around 2006, 2007. Uh, but at that time in 2012, it was not a crowded marketplace. And now it is, you know, everybody's got a podcast, more and more people are moving into this space and there's a lot more competition for people's attention. And so I really appreciate you guys tuning in to listen to me

because there's a lot of great stuff out there and it means a lot to me. So I love you guys. I appreciate you. And like I said earlier, I will continue to try to make the show better and better for you guys. So until next week or the next couple of days in the next podcast, have a great week, everybody. And I'll talk to you soon.

Peace. Plants. Namaste. Thank you.