The Rich Roll Podcast - Julie Piatt: Ruminations on Ultraman, Unlocking The Authentic Self & Navigating Relationships

Episode Date: December 4, 2012

Today Julie and I discuss the perils of cycling on Kauai, a few adventures from our experience at Ultraman 2009 and some strategies for unlocking your more authentic self, followed by some incredible insight from Julie on self-sovereignty and navigating relationships. The show closes with a live performance of Julie's song “In the Sun” with our son Tyler on guitar. We hope you enjoy the program. As of today, we are the #1 podcast on iTunes in the Health category (first 3 episodes all in the top 10) and the #22 podcast overall for all of iTunes. Showing up on a list that includes such tremendous talent — names like Ira Glass, Adam Carolla, Joe Rogan and Alec Baldwin — is beyond an honor. Even more astounding given that we just started this little show last week. So THANK YOU for your support. We will do our best to live up to the early hype and continue to provide helpful, informative, enlightening and entertaining content. If you haven't yet, you can subscribe on iTunes HERE. SHOW NOTES * The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron * Compton Rom Videos on YouTube * Ascended Health * “6 Ways to Experience Deeper Love & Intimacy in Your Relationship” by Julie Piatt on MindBodyGreen * Ultraman 2009 From the Spiritual perspective of Julie * SriMatiMusic on iTunes * Ultraman Website Peace + Plants, Rich

episode four the podcast we're in our second week i think how many days ago did we start this i don't know like what do you think five four ago. Six? November 30th or something like that, I think. Something like that. What's the day today? That's Julie Piot over there. That's the fourth. She's quickly solidifying herself as my permanent co-host. I'm so happy about that.

Thank you so much. I don't know if that was the original idea, but... It was not your original idea, for sure. No, it wasn't. Winning them over. I think, well, it's interesting um you know i've been talking about doing a podcast for so long but i never really did anything about it and then we we come out to a relatively deserted island and start and decide that we're going to start it here

that's a good thing because that was your only guess and uh yeah like if we were in la like we could book guests every single day. I could book solid through, you know, fascinating people every single day, but out here, it's a little bit trickier. Yeah, but this is the divine plan coming into play. You think so? Setting the stage.

I know so. It's not my will. I actually know so. Not my will. I keep thinking about all the people that I would have on if we were at home. Yeah. So I have you. It is a ritual

podcast, but it's actually not your show. It's God's show. That's true, I suppose. That's what I meant by that. Yeah. Well, my self-will is never a good plan, right? Sometimes. Only when it's in proper alignment. Yeah, only when it's in alignment. Right.

So anyway, here we are. We're at episode four and I'm back with Julie. We do have some interesting guests that live out here in Kauai. We're broadcasting from a warehouse on an organic farm on the North shore of Kauai in a little town called Kilauea. It's on the grounds of a, uh, of a place called common ground, uh, which is where we're living in a

little, uh, village of yurts out behind the guard, out behind the garden in the fields. Um, and we're living here through January and it's an experiment in a sustainable lifestyle. We're working on some interesting things with Chris Jabe, who is a guest in our second episode of the podcast. So if you haven't listened to that and you're just tuning in now for the first time to the podcast, check it out and you'll get a better idea

of why we are here in Hawaii as opposed to Los Angeles, which has been our permanent residence for the last two decades or whatever. And like I said, we do have some interesting guests coming up that are people that live around here that are all going to be coming in and speaking on relevant themes that are pertinent to the issues that I want to talk about here, issues of increasing the sustainability of your lifestyle, improving your diet, nutrition, fitness, all that good stuff. But today we have Julie Pyatt back again. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you here. Thank you, sweetie. This podcast

is brought to you by Jai Lifestyle. What is Jai Lifestyle? What does the word Jai mean? is brought to you by Jai Lifestyle. What is Jai Lifestyle? What does the word Jai mean? Jai means victory or hail in Sanskrit, loose translation. It's a very upbeat sort of celebratory saying. It's a term of high praise and reverence, right? Yes.

So Jai Lifestyle is our company. It's our lifestyle company. We offer products and services. We have a plant-based protein product called Jai Repair. We have a downloadable e-cookbook called Jai Seed, 77 pages of awesomeness. We have a meditation program that Julie conceived and recorded called Jai Release, which is a 30-minute humming meditation. And we have some new stuff coming up. We have a B12 supplement product.

B12 is a very important supplement to take if you're on a plant-based diet. It's really, really important. So it's not live yet. The product is packaged, labeled, ready to ship, but we got to get it configured with the website and our shopping cart and all that kind of stuff. So that should be coming up in the next week or so.

But you can find all this good stuff at jilifestyle.com, J-A-I lifestyle.com. I think actually richroll.com also is configured for the product, so you can check that out as well. And if you go to jylifestyle.com and subscribe to the email newsletter, you will get a free seven recipe download recipes from the cookbook. So a little free incentive to check out the website. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe

everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal

designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders,

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

treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well

just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care

tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is Thank you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. So that's that. Let's launch into what we're going to talk about today. What are we going

to talk about today? I think we're going to talk about crashing and relationships. I don't know. What are we talking about? That's a scary subject matter. Both very perilous. Yeah. Before we get into that, I just want to say, I wanted to thank everybody out there. Julie and I started this podcast last week. As we said, this is only our fourth episode. We honestly do not know really what we're doing. The only one who really knows what they're doing is Tyler,

my stepson, who's 17 years old. He's sitting right here. He is the podcast producer. And he understands audio as a musician. So he's the only one with any level of expertise whatsoever. And yet we were just listed as number 22 on iTunes of all podcasts. Unbelievable. Like in the rankings of iTunes podcasts.

That's crazy. So that includes like This American Life, all the NPR programs, Alec Baldwin's podcast, Adam Carolla, Joe Rogan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, like all these amazing, incredible people, these professional broadcasters and world-renowned pontificators, I suppose. So it's almost embarrassing, really. I'm like, what are we doing amongst all these people? We just started this last week. We're just finding our legs. We're not even sure what this show is or what it's going to be. And to see it as number 22 on all of iTunes and also to be the number one health podcast right out of the gate is ridiculous. It's ridiculous. podcast like right out of the gate is ridiculous. It's ridiculous. So what does that say? Thank you.

We're going to keep talking. So I really, yeah, we really, really appreciate your support. And the pressure is on now, I suppose. I mean, we got to, I think for us, you know, we want to keep the quality level very high, the content and quality level very high, but we also want to treat this professionally, you know, give it the respect that it deserves and treat it not so much as a hobby or something we do on the side, but to really, you know, take that initial early positive feedback and understand that there's a desire, there's a need, there's a want for health information, for the kind of information that we've just started to provide and hopefully, you know, we'll continue to provide. So again, thank you. And we will do our best to honor that early praise and feedback and all the great response that we've gotten by trying to bring you the best program that we can. And it's incumbent upon us to learn more about how to do this and do it right so that we can live up to the early hype and not just explode. Right? Absolutely.

So speaking about explosions, crashing, you want to talk about crashing. Today I crashed on my bike. That was not fun. How are you feeling now? Well, I took a good amount of time off from real training this past year to travel around with the book. And initially I was going to try to train for Ultraman this past year, which just transpired over Thanksgiving weekend. I was gonna try to do that

and do everything that is involved with promoting the book and the travel and all that kind of stuff. And I quickly realized late spring that that was a preposterous idea that there was no way I was gonna be able to do both of the, I mean, I could try, but I think I would ultimately have ended up, um, probably doing poorly at both. Uh, so I let go of the idea of trying to compete this past year and just

focused on, uh, traveling around with the book and kind of giving that my all. I mean, I had this amazing experience and honor of, of, of writing this book, Finding Ultra. Um, if you're new to us and don't know, it's, it's a, it's a memoir that I wrote this past year. You can find it on Amazon. We'll put up links and there's links on, on both of our websites and, and you can go to Amazon and check it out. But, but there was a lot of travel, traveling around with the book, book signings and, and speaking at, you know, conferences and the like. And, you know, I remained relatively fit. I would, you know, try to go do something every day. You know, when I was traveling, I would try to run every day and I didn't do very much swimming,

but, you know, I was hardly race fit. You know, I just was trying to stay in touch with being fit. And so now that that's kind of that, that chapter isn't exactly closed. It's kind of ongoing, but things have mellowed out or whatever life is normalized. Well, not really normalized, we're living in a yurt. So how normal is that?

But there's a little bit more free time. I've started to kind of get back to basics and get back into my training. And it's been great to be here in Hawaii with the warm weather and being able to get up and get out on my bike, you know, with it being warm out and not having to bundle up and all that kind of stuff, which is what would be happening if we were in LA. So I've really been enjoying

that and I'm starting to already realize some good fitness gains and I'm intent on trying to find something to compete in, in 2013. And this morning I went out on my bike and, and if you're familiar with Kauai, you know, it rains a lot. It's a, it's a very damp, it's a very damp, wet island. And, and also not exactly as cycling friendly as Los Angeles, which Los Angeles isn't exactly the most cycling friendly place, but, but you really have to watch your P's and Q's on the bike out here. The cars come real close to you. The shoulders are not as wide. There's a lot of debris on the road. And there's really only one main road that goes around the island. There's a

couple offshoot roads that I try to take to get off the main road that circumnavigates the island. But for the most part, you spend most of your time riding on this one road and uh this morning i was riding and i was kind of coming into the main town here of lahui and it was it was a light drizzle but the pavement was wet and you know i don't even know what happened it wasn't nothing dramatic happened uh the bike just slipped out from underneath me like my tire just you know didn't catch its groove or whatever and i just hit hit the pavement hard and interestingly landed on my left side, which is the same side that I crashed on when I crashed at Ultraman in 2009. I talk about that story in the book.

That's kind of how the book opens in the preface, actually. And I haven't crashed my bike or fallen off my bike since then, I don't think. I don't think you have. I've been pretty lucky, yeah. You crashed before then. I'm not the most coordinated guy, believe me. Like I can't play baseball. I can't shoot a basketball or anything.

Can't catch a ball. And so, you know, it's actually amazing that I haven't crashed my bike in the last couple of years. But I think I've kept the rubber side down pretty consistently until today. And I pretty much landed in the exact same places that I landed. Like I have road rash all over me and it's in the same places where I have the scars from when I crashed in 2009.

No coincidence. On Hawaii. No, it has to be like another layer of whatever healing you were doing the first time. Thank God it was like one-tenth as bad as that other crash. It wasn't nearly as bad, but I've got a big raspberry on my hip, and my ankle's all shredded up, and my elbow, and all that kind of stuff. And you go down, and you have this amazing surge of adrenaline.

I didn't want to get hit by a car, and I'm trying to get my bike off the road and get to the side. And my heart rate must've been like 180. Like it just, I wasn't even riding that hard and it just shoots up. And it took me a while to catch my breath and, and collect myself. And then realizing like, you know, oh my God, I'm really hurt. And I just immediately reflected on Ultraman 2009 and going, how did I get back on the bike and ride? Like I didn't, you know, I literally just walked my bike and, you know, and got back on it and gingerly rode it down to Starbucks and called Julie to come and pick me up. I mean, I technically, I suppose I could have gotten on my bike and ridden back to common ground, but you know, that wouldn't have

been a good idea, but, but you know, it hurt a lot. And I was like, wow, I actually raised that injured. Wow, that was a grueling day. Anyway, further irony is the fact that I just got a great care package the other day, yesterday, from Road ID. If you don't know what road ID is, they're bracelets and ID tags that contain your name and a bunch of biological information about you with a website. So if you wear them around your wrist or you can wear it around your neck and if you crash or in a cycling accident or something happens to you, whoever discovers you can quickly identify you and find out know, find out all your information, your insurance information, who your doctor is, if you have any medical conditions and all this kind of stuff. And I'm a huge advocate of making sure that, you know, you always wear your road ID and they're not, they don't sponsor me. They don't sponsor this show. I just think it's a, it's a great product.

I recommend everybody who lives in an active lifestyle or kind of, you know, even if you're, you got on a trail run, you know, maybe somebody doesn't know where you are, there aren't that many people around, if something should happen to you, you know, it's always just a great thing to have your road ID on you in the event of an emergency. In any event, Edward from Road ID sent me a box with a bunch of schwag it was a cycling kit and some t-shirts and baseball hat super nice um and he included uh three the three go magazine i was profiled in three go magazine which is a triathlon magazine there's some pictures of me in there and i was wearing my road id so he wanted me to sign it and send it back to him for the office which i was

great he asked me a while ago so of course i didn't expect that he'd send me all these goodies He asked me a while ago. I said, of course. I didn't expect that he'd send me all these goodies. But today was the first day that I put the road ID kit on, the cycling jersey to ride. And that's the same day. My first ride in this new kit and it's all torn up now.

Because I crashed in it. Just wanted to make sure it worked. Right, right. It's all about like caution and all that kind of stuff. And there it is. I crashed for the first time in three years or whatever. So anyway, I'm fine. I'm glad you're all right. I've got some bruised ribs.

I'm going to be benched for a little bit here. But anyway, why are we talking about crashing? Just because it's a reality. I think if you're a cyclist and you're out on the road a lot, it's a real opportunity that's there for you. Yeah. I mean, look, if you ride a bike a lot, you're going to crash. That's just the fact of the matter. And even if you are the most conscientious, responsible rider, you only have control over so many things. You can't control the other drivers, et cetera, et cetera.

you only have control over so many things. You can't control the other drivers, et cetera, et cetera. It's going to happen. And, you know, people die all the time. And since I've been on Kauai, people have been warning me, like, are you sure you want to ride your bike here? And I'm like, yeah, I'm fine. But, you know, enough people said it that I was like, well, what's the deal? And I think that there's, you know, it goes back to there's some argument to be made

that it's not the most cycling-friendly place. I don't know if that's true. I haven't experienced anything bad. Trapper and I actually saw a cyclist get punched in the face a couple days ago. Yeah, what happened? Well, he was not a cyclist. I mean, he was on a bike, but he was not a cyclist. Like, he was just a local guy,

and we were just, you know, driving down a small street in the neighborhood, and all of a sudden, the car in front of me, you know, just stopped, and a young local kid jumped out of the car and just walked back five paces and just cocked this guy right in the face. It was on a bike. What did the guy do to anger him?

I didn't really see. I mean, the guy sped off, and I stopped the car and just sort of held presence. I asked the guy if he was okay. I held his bike and just was with him, and he was breathing and trying to calm his heart rate down, and he said that he had made some hand signal to the driver, like you were getting close to me,

like with his two hands extended, you know, up like karate chop style. And apparently the islander, the island boy, thought that he had flipped him off, or that seemed to be the communication. He provoked him somehow. Yeah, so he punched him in the face, and it was all kind of

intense yeah but uh i don't know what to do with that information though am i supposed to just not ride my bike that's not you i mean no i don't i mean i think that um i mean listen the watching you race that second day when we crewed for you for Ultraman was probably the, one of the hardest days of my life, as well as Tyler's and running elk as well. I mean, to, to watch you suffer at that level with your, you know, skin sheared off. And it was such a hard day. The winds were so strong and it was raining and it was long. It was so long. But, you know, as you and I know, this is what you love to do. It's what speaks to your heart.

And, you know, we can't live our life in fear and you can't live your life, you know, locked in a room because something may happen, you know. So. Yeah. But there's something about that adage of, well, he died doing what he loved. You know, and I'm like, really? You know, yeah, but he's dead, you know? Yeah, but.

I don't want to die. Yeah, but let's go to, what about your, you wrote about it in your book after the big crash, you know, when you crash on your face in Ojai. And I got you home from the hospital you were in bad shape there's photos in the book if anybody hasn't seen it it was not a pretty sight and that was really scary and that was really really scary but when you got home and you were in the tub you know you could barely recognize you that's how swollen and cut you were in the tub, you know, I could barely recognize you. That's how swollen and cut you were.

Yeah, all the skin was sheared off my nose and my upper lip. It was all messed up. Yeah, it was intense. But, you know, I asked you that question. So if this is it, is this what you want to be doing? I mean, to me, that's a big question. Yeah, it is. And the answer was that it was and it is.

And it is. That's why you're writing. Just be careful. Be careful. That's all, I guess. That's right. But I think that begs the question of kind of getting into something that I think has wide applicability and is of interest to the people that are tuning into this,

which is, and I've gotten a lot of questions and comments and inquiries about this, which is how do you train the way that you're training for these crazy races and you're married and you have kids and are you an absentee dad? And how do you stay married? And what does your wife think when you're gone all the time? And there's a lot of projection and transference that goes with that and assumptions and judgments like oh I must be being selfish uh because you know you are so selfish I am now I get to say it yeah no to No. To everybody. Yeah, I know.

I mean, I got a lot of that in the beginning, like people sticking up for me online, like, you know, like I was getting the short end of the stick or something. Yeah, they call it like the triathlon widow or something like that. Yeah, I've had people say that to me. Well, I'm not going to be that kind of widow

and it doesn't connect to me at all that way. So what do you say to that? Well, I mean, you know, I mean, you know that I'm an extremely independent individual and I like my space. And, you know, I don't like telling you where I'm going or what I'm doing all the time. She'll be like leaving, getting into the car. And I'm like, where are you going?

And she'll say, let me go see some people. Out. I'm going out. I'm going out. I'm like, oh, that out. I'm going out. I'm like, oh, that's great. See some folks. It's a healthy relationship. I'll let you know later. I hope that works out for you. No, I just have this thing. It's just, I don't know, maybe because I'm just sort of a free spirit and it's, and you know, I mean, the relationship has to be based in self-sustainability first

before you can really dance with somebody and really share that level of intimacy. And, you know, the truth of the matter is I love the man and the spirit that you are when you're training. It's completely my gift that I get to be close to you when you're in that space and for me it's never been about quantity I'm never a person or a wife or a mother

that needs you to be home every night at 5 to sit next to me or next to the kids I would rather have a quality of connection than a quantity. As a matter of fact, I find the quantity to be sort of boring sometimes. Or maybe annoying. Annoying, boring, confining.

Well, I think that when, I mean, there's no getting around the fact that when I was, there's a difference between the kind of training that I'm doing right now, which is pretty light and modest and isn't really, doesn't really interfere that much with the daily flow of life. Ultraman where it gets super intense. I think that's not a long-term sustainable way of living when you're one person in a family unit married with kids and all that kind of stuff. It was a situation where I sucked it up for a short period of time and sacrificed a lot of other things in my life that I like to do just for the purpose of this goal. Well, we were following that guiding light. We both felt that this was the truth of what we should be doing together, you know? But it gets to this idea of organizing your life around a purpose and a goal or a dream and what you're willing to sacrifice or not sacrifice for that.

And the concessions that you make. I mean, I talk about this in the book too. Like in order for me as a working entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles and a happily married person and a father, for me to go out and take on this commitment of trying to prepare as best I could for Ultraman. And for those of you who kind of are stumbling on the podcast and don't know really that much about us

or whatever, Ultraman was a race that I've done a couple of times and I talk about it in my book, but it's double the distance of an Ironman. It's a race that circumnavigates the entire big island of Hawaii. It's a three-day race. The first day is a 6.2-mile swim and a 90-mile bike. The second day is a 170-mile bike.

And the third day is a 52.4-mile run. And I remember preparing for this race in 2009 and really doing an inventory of my life and my lifestyle and actually doing an accounting, going through my day, how A, train, of course, because this is the goal that i was working towards but also you know still be a present husband and father you know i wasn't going to sacrifice this relationship that i'd worked so hard to achieve in this family life that i had you know that goal wouldn't have meant anything if that if it came at the cost of that so it was about how to balance those things and still you know be able to kind of make my way in the world and be a functional, responsible adult. And I realized that I waste a lot of time. You know, I would have lunch meetings that are technically business meetings. And then I would look at, I would think about them or I would evaluate, all right, well, what did that lead to? Like, what, did that generate any business or was, you know, and in- Was it meaningful? Look, in Los Angeles, in Hollywood, in the entertainment business, breakfast and lunches and drinks and all that kind of stuff is just, is, that's how people do

business. It's a way of life, but it's actually an incredibly inefficient way of doing business. And so what I did was I eliminated all of those lunches and I eliminated almost all of my business meetings and tried to push them to conference calls. And a lot of the conference calls got pushed to email or whatever, any way that I could like free up 10 minutes here, free up a half an hour there. And that stuff starts to accumulate. And so when people say to me, I'm too busy to go to the gym or I don't have time and I've got to be at work, like I'm empathetic, I'm sympathetic. I created a lifestyle where I was self-employed that gave me and continues to give me and us choices and more latitude in how we

spend our day, how we allocate our time, because I don't have to show up at 7.30 for a boss and sit in a cubicle. And for people that do have to do that, my heart goes out to you. I realize it's much more difficult, but I also know that no matter who you are, there's still wasted time during the day. So if there's something that you're trying to, there's something that you would like to do with your life, or there's some passion, some dream deferred that you've set aside and just written off as being something that you don't have time to do, there's always a way. There's always a way.

And it starts with really being honest with yourself about how you're spending your time and being willing to sacrifice or let go of some pastimes that don't serve that goal. Or if they or let go of some pastimes that don't serve that goal. Or, you know, if they're let go of, will free up some time for you to pursue something else. That's right. Well, and I also feel like, you know, if I would say like the constraints of the time that you had and the things that you were trying to accomplish sort of informed an increased creativity and intensity

for the time you did have with us. So I would say that, first of all, your ability to come in from training and still be energized so that you could, you know, do something with the girls or, you know, be present for the boys or whatever. I mean, it was really, really, really remarkable. And it showed that this was a goal that was in alignment with our hearts as a family. We sort of agreed as a family that we were going to support you through this endeavor.

And yeah, it wouldn't have worked otherwise. No, it wouldn't have worked. But I mean, you know, we did, we did crew for the race, but it was actually way before then that we became your crew because everything was focused around supporting you to achieve this sort of shift in your life and this expression. And we all knew that, you know, our time was coming. It wasn't like I've entered into a relationship where everything is about you and what you want to do. Although it may have been for, largely for a specific period of time. There was an imbalance during that period of time

where that focus was shifted in my direction. But there wasn't an imbalance. It was an agreement. It was fine. Yeah. And then the pendulum would swing the other way when you were recording your album and I was supporting you throughout that. And there was, you know, it's all about with our family, the kind of marching orders are, you know, identify what you love. And as a team, let's together figure out a way to pursue that and realize that and that's a really it's a gift

to be with you and with the kids who we're all kind of sharing that together which has been amazing and it goes if you're an athlete and you participate in an individual sport like triathlon or running, marathon running or cycling or whatever, there's this idea that

it's just you and you alone that's doing it. But if you are achieving anything in that regard, in terms of performance, you're not doing it alone. You have a team behind you that supports you, whether that's your family or a group of like-minded individuals or even all the people that, I mean, think of all the people that were instrumental in helping me raise Ultraman in 2009. I mean, you can't, or 2011 too.

I mean, you can't count on two hands the number of people that really, you know, gave of themselves to help make that happen. And I think it's important as an athlete to be in touch with that and to realize that. That's right. It's beautiful. So, balance though. Well, balance, I mean, I think, you know, that's something that we're constantly adjusting. And, you know, time management for you is, I think, maybe your biggest challenge to figure out how to allocate the time and how to get in and out of things quickly. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, well, first of all, balance is like, you know, the thing that I'm worst at.

Like I'm prone to, you know, I'm prone to extremes, you know, whether it's working or training or whatever it is. I want to go all the way in and like lose myself in that completely. That is my MO. That's like my default setting. That's right. And so all the, you know, all the interpersonal work that I do is oriented around trying to not be like that. And it's challenging because I look at certain things that I've focused on and done well at, and I go, well, that's because I immersed myself in that. And I wasn't balanced for a period of time in order to move forward in this category or whatever.

So when somebody says, yeah, but you need to be balanced or whatever, when I'm balanced, I don't feel like I'm moving the ball forward with anything. But I also recognize that if things are out of balance in my life, it doesn't function well in the long term. Like if I'm training too much, I may realize some performance goal athletically, but if my family life or my marriage or my professional life is out of balance, that will not serve me. And that will catch up to me and ultimately undermine everything that I'm trying to do. So my job, like every day I'm like, okay, how can I keep things in better balance? What's out of balance today? Where is the pendulum swinging and how can I bring it back a little bit more towards neutral?

And I think that's a common thing. I mean, and it's hard. It's like I'm always moving these puzzle pieces around or I'm making this mixture, you know, and I'm always trying to get the ingredients right. And there's always too much of one ingredient and not enough of another. And yeah, I like to be very efficient in how I use my time. Like I'm not big on like hanging around and chit-chatting. And it's interesting because we're here at Common Ground and when we're at home, we do whatever we want. It's our house. We spend our time the way we want

to, but here we're living as part of a community. There are a lot of other people that work here and are around here. And so we're interacting in our living space and our eating space and in our professional space, much more so than we would be at home. And so I have to kind of socially navigate that. Whereas like sometimes I want to just go into a cave and get my work done or, hey, I want to get this podcast up. Like I want to get it up before it's too late tonight so people can download it and listen to it tomorrow. But, you know, I walk in the office and then, you know, there are other people there. There are other people who, you know, I need to convene with

and converse with and interact with or whatever. And I'm not used to that. That's a new thing for me. You're definitely a soul rider in a lot of ways. I like to go lone wolf style. It's kind of like living on a permanent yoga retreat. It's a good thing we have all that experience from traveling in groups. It is kind of like that. Look, it's been amazing. It's been a really cool experience. but getting back to balance, um, you know, I think a lot of triathletes email me and they say, you know, Oh, I'd love to, you know,

train for a marathon, but you know, I have, I just, you know, I get up at five in the morning and I worked till eight at night and my wife wants me to go to Home Depot. Yeah. Right. I mean, real life stuff. Right. So like, what do I do? Like, what's the answer to that? Like, how do I try to start doing, you know, working towards this thing that is, you know,

important to me without disrupting my life? Like, how can I find the means to do that? And, you know, is there a, you know, it's, and my response is like, I'm compassionate and I don't know you. I don't know your exact circumstances. I can't give you this perfect answer that you want, but what are some of the tools that you think that people can incorporate in their lives too? I'm not talking just about triathletes.

I'm talking about anybody who feels stuck in life and has something that they want to do or they want to uncover or they're feeling unfulfilled and they want to express themselves more authentically, whether it's triathlon or ultraman or running or cycling. These are just examples. They're just metaphors for whatever it may be in that individual's case. It could be something completely different, non-athletic, whatever.

may be in that individual's case. Could be something completely different, non-athletic, whatever. Well, I would say first rule is never go to Home Depot as a couple. Split up those activities that need to happen. We never go to Home Depot. That's my joke with Rich because he gets really violently upset

if he ever has to go to any kind of... Well, first of all, I never go to Home Depot because that would be a pointless adventure because I don't know how to build anything or do anything. But I mean, any errands or chores for the house cannot be happening as a couple on the weekends. That just doesn't happen with us. Well, it's inefficient. It's very inefficient. You have to divide the labor. Exactly. Just send one. One goes in, gets it done. The other one's doing

whatever the creative endeavor is. And then it switches. We divide it up. That's right. And then when I'm seeing you, I want like a really amazing date. Like that's what I want. So I don't want to be walking next to you in Home Depot arguing about what size screw we're going to buy or broom or ladder or something. So that's kind of like the death for us. It's one of our little pet things. I think also in terms of really addressing this question, you have to bifurcate it into the kind of external real-life problems like the job and the commute and the relationship and the financial constraints or what have you.

And then there's the internal side of things. And I think that if you're trying to make something happen externally before you've really kind of done the internal side of things. And I think that if you're trying to make something happen externally before you've really kind of done the internal work, it's a little bit backwards. Explain more about that. Well, if somebody's feeling stuck in their life, right, and they're feeling underexpressed or they don't even know why they're not feeling as connected as they could be.

Or who they are. Or who, or, well, yeah, who they are. I mean, that's sort of a trite catchphrase, but let's just say, you know what, here I am. I'm and I don't know what to do. And I don't, I don't know where to turn. What would be a way of beginning to kind of unlock yourself a little bit to do, to be able to kind of discover a little bit more about yourself and where your energy should be directed? Well, it's two things for me right off that are very, very simple. And the first thing is start eating plants. Increase your uptake of organic plant and living whole foods. And the best way to get that immediately in your system is in any number of versions of blends

that include lots of dark leafy greens and superfoods and whole foods, that would be the first step that I would say. And then... And why do you think that that's important? Well, I think that in my experience, it's what I've experienced in my life, I feel like, as we were talking about in the last podcast, you know, the body is a perfect divine organism that has perfect intelligence. And I think it gets sort of sidetracked or derailed by all the processed foods, different energies, toxins in the environment, all the processed foods. all the processed foods. So in a way, you're carrying a lot of density that's blocking your sight from feeling your body, feeling yourself operating at your optimum frequency. So like, for instance, when you were using cheeseburgers and fries and just shoveling any food into your mouth, I could always see you in

there, but there was a big layer of density around you. And that's the stuff that just started to come off as you started to incorporate plants and you went through your detox and you started to touch and feel yourself in a different way than you have had ever before yeah it's a weird thing it's the there is something to that um something about uh you know well it goes back to the very simple statement that food is medicine you know and you are what you eat and all that kind of dumb stuff. But it really is true. And when you start to treat your body properly and you respect it, you know, for the temple, the body temple or whatever, but you really take that to heart and you say, I am going to give my body the best nutrition that I can possibly give it. And that starts with eating organic, you know, organic plants, that there is something that

occurs with that. I think it really is true. It's physical, it's mental, it's emotional, it's spiritual, and you do sort of start to unlock, you know, and there is, I mean, look, there has never been, it's an incredible time right now in terms of this plant-based nutrition movement. I mean, five years ago, a couple of years ago, still, you know, still such a very marginal kind of thing to do. It was still, you know, stuck in kind of the world of hippies and all of that. And that's all changed because of books like the Engine 2 Diet, because of movies like forks over knives because of the work of t con campbell and the china study and you know the and mainstream authors like kathy fresten and even you know the the amazing food critic mark bitman uh talking about it i mean it is in the

zeitgeist like never before this idea of using plants to heal yourself and eating a plant-based diet to not only preserve your health, but to actually prevent congenital disease and in many cases, reverse it. If you read Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn's book, Reverse and Prevent Heart Disease, he shows these amazing before and after angiograms of heart patients. This guy's a surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic.

He's been treating cardiac patients since the 1970s with a plant-based diet, like decades and decades before anybody was interested in listening to what he had to say and realizing amazing results by changing the diet of his patients before cutting them open and operating on their hearts. But it's taken him 30 years of preaching this, of screaming down from the mountaintop

that this is a good thing to do before anybody's listening. And now you have Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN doing the last heart attack special and interviewing President Clinton and how Clinton has really embraced this plant-based diet and believes that it has saved his life. So my point being that what was formerly quite a marginal concept is really now very much mainstream. And yet at the same time, it's couched in disease prevention and it's couched in weight loss, right? When in reality, I think there's a lot more going on.

I really think that when I get emails from people saying, you changed my life. I've adopted a plant-based diet. I cannot believe how much better I feel. They'll talk about how much weight they lost. They'll talk about how much energy they have. They'll talk about how much energy they have. But really what's coming through between the lines is an awakening, is an emotional and a spiritual awakening.

And alongside with that is a connecting with the heart, like a deeper understanding of that person by that person of who they are. It is. It's like the first membrane to just sort of unlock that door or, you know, unlock the, it's the key to unlock the heart and to, you know, to reveal what's really underneath there. And the one line that I always, that stands out for me

in all the emails is the line, you saved my life. I mean, that gets said a lot. And it's kind of like, you're like, wow, that's amazing. That's profound. But what they're saying is that it's almost like I found myself, like I found myself finally. That's what it really is. It's not like I lost 20 pounds or I ran a 5K. It's I know who I am now, or I'm on a path towards better understanding who I am or embracing who I am or having reverence for myself, self-esteem, self-respect. And what a beautiful thing.

What a beautiful, simple thing. And also, it's not always completely easy, you know, and, and there's a lot of emotions that are, that are being suppressed by all the toxins and by all those foods that you eat. And so, you know, a lot of people have trauma or they have things that they haven't dealt with in their life that are basically being held into place by all that toxic energy. And, you know, very similarly in my, in the last podcast that we did together, when we talked about, you know, the Ayurvedic program that I was on to heal the cyst in my neck. And I was taking these herbs and eating this specific plant-based diet. And I had, you know,

three months of an extraordinary amount of pus and whiteheads coming out of my face. I mean, it's, and you know, it's just a, I mean, it's just on your face. But that's a physical thing. I mean, we're talking about emotional things. And I think that brings up an interesting point, which is this suppression of emotions and using food to medicate.

And, you know, I always analogize our relationships with food to the addiction paradigm because that's what I come from. That's what I have experience with. And what you see in addiction and recovery and what I've been told and what I've seen time and time again is that when somebody, an addict starts using drugs,

which is usually at a very young age when they're emotionally still developing, let's say you start using drugs when you're 13, 14 years old, and you do that consistently for the next 20, 25 years, and then you find yourself in recovery all of a sudden, you take all the drugs away and you're sort of cleaning up physically. But emotionally, you haven't developed much beyond where you were when you were 13 years old because you've been repressing all of those emotions. You've been medicating yourself to deal with whatever trauma, you know, was going on in your life that led you to start using in that way to begin with. And so, you know, people that are newly sober are like live wires, you know,

like they have all these crazy emotions coming up that they don't know how to handle and manage. And I experienced this myself. I still experience this. But then you have to, and there are the tools of how to manage this and how to then mature through that so that you're not interacting with the world as a 13-year-old when you're 40 years old. Well, exactly.

And I think extrapolating on that to the food dialogue, it's not dissimilar, really. I mean, if you've been eating the standard American diet or you've been eating fast food consistently, regularly for a protracted period of time, there is an emotional link between food and how we sort of interact with the world, right? So what am I trying to say? I'm not articulating it very well. But we use food to manage our emotions.

And I think that that's a spectrum. Some people do it a lot. Some people do it very well but but we use food to manage our emotions and i think that that's a spectrum some people do it a lot some people do it very little but but if you're really conscious about you know how you know your eating patterns if you or if you do an inventory of that you know you will see like oh wow when i'm feeling like this i gravitate towards eating this kind of food and there really is a it's a deeply ingrained connection that's very human, right? I mean, I do it. We all do it. I mean, it's using food as suppression

to suppress the emotion because you don't, the person doesn't want to feel what they're feeling. So they're taking food, you know, to sort of keep it all locked down and not let it out. And so changing that is threatening and scary.

Well, it's scary, yeah, because if you haven't looked under there, if you've had a whole lifetime of eating in this imbalance, maybe you don't want to look. But as you start to have courage and you start to step on the path and you start to embrace some of these living concepts and living foods. You know, that's why meditation and yoga is so key to this whole thing. That's why it goes right hand in hand. It helps you navigate that transition.

And I mean, you know, in the beginning, you and I both knew the experience that we've been through and, you know, uh, all of the, you know, all of the focus was just on that you were middle-aged and you, you know, you were overweight and you lost some weight. And I used to laugh because it was just, it was just the beginning slice. It's just the tip of the iceberg. That's not really what it's about. And yeah, I was overweight, but I wasn't even that over, I mean, I was overweight, but I think people are like, they open up the book and they're like, he looks fine. Let me tell you as your wife, you had a lot of dense, gnarly energy on you and you did not, you were not well. You were not a vibrant being like the beautiful man that you are today that

I'm sitting here looking at. So whether somebody thinks 300 pounds is really overweight or 250 or whatever the number is, I can just tell you from our relationship, you were severely out of balance in a bad way. It's more about that than the actual weight. I mean, yeah, I was heavy, you know, but I mean, people who think that I wasn't that heavy, it's more a statement about, you know, what we perceive as normal now. You know, it's weird. You go to airports and all the traveling, I did this last year, I see it all the time. You go into, you know, airports across the country and the number of people that are riding around in those carts, you know, like young, able-bodied people.

Sometimes I'd like a ride in the cart. And you look around and there's nothing but fast food. There's no option. I mean, if you're in the San Francisco airport, they have a yoga room. Did you know that? No. Yeah. Like there are some airports that are great.

That's awesome. Yeah, I know. But most of them, not so good. So, you know, you really get to see, you know, I can't remember what airport I was in, but there was one healthy place to get some food. And then next to it was McDonald's and there was no one in line at the healthy place. And there was a huge line at McDonald's. So, you know, it's also easy to say, well, there's no options. You know, if there was a healthy option, I would do that. But sometimes there is a healthy option

and people are still, they'd rather go to McDonald's. That's right. So, and I guess that goes back to what you were saying about, you know, being stuck in a pattern or not being ready or whatever. Yeah, are you just, yeah, patterns or not wanting to look at what's under there. And so if you have tools and you have, you know,

that's one of the reasons why I offered and developed this meditation program is honestly that meditation program transformed my life. It put me in touch with myself in such a deep way. And the humming part of it, it's actually more than just the humming, but the humming part of it is just a wonderful mechanism to clear fear and clear any residue in your system. So if you haven't tried it and you don't know how to meditate, it's just a perfect program. It really is. The one thing about it though, you actually have to do it.

Oh yeah, you have to do it. You have to actually want to do it. It's not hard, but you actually have to do it. Oh, yeah. You have to do it. You have to actually want to do it. It's not hard, but you actually have to do it. Yeah. That's the thing. You can't just look at it or think about it. Yeah, I can't. It's true.

I can't do that. No, I can't do that. No, I can't do that. No, it's really good. And also, I mean, regarding the weight thing, because, you know, it's different for each person. You know, conceivably, there could be a being that was a frame that would be very healthy at, you know, 300 pounds. I don't know.

I mean, I haven't met everybody. There's ectomorphs and endomorphs and mesomorphs. Yeah. And the different, through Ayurveda, the different types that you were talking about. Doshas. Yeah, the vata and the pitta. Different types. Mm-hmm.

So, the thing is, too, is. But I think the thing, too, is, you know thing too is you know with this excuse oh i'm sorry the thing is too is i pushed your butt see how see how he is he just butts in i thought you were done talking no it's okay i'm just kidding obviously now um the i think the key is is is you you yourself are the only person that can say whether you're completely in alignment and operating at your highest capacity. How do you know that though? How do you know if you are or you're not? And if you're disconnected from yourself, how do you have any barometer at all? How can you trust your instincts or have any objective?

You know what? That is actually a really good point that you're making. And it's one that we, you know, we've, we've spoken about in yoga over the years and we've sort of explored, um, is that, yeah, when, you know, cause some people go, well, I'm craving bacon, so I must need bacon, you know, or I'm craving milkshakes. So my body's telling me that I need milkshakes. And actually you're right, because if you're out of balance, you can't know what you need. It's the, what would Rom say? Compton Rom would say it's the microbe.

Well, it's your emotional pathways that have been operating in a certain way forever and have been reinforced for so long that they are your default. That's on a sort of mental level. And I think on a very physical level, and this is another subject that I talk about in the book, which is fascinating. And I talked about this on Joe Rogan too, but this idea of the microbial ecology that exists in your body. In other words, microbial ecology that exists in your body. In other words, we believe we're sentient human beings, that we are ourselves and that the cells of our body make up our organs and the organs make

up the systems and all of that together makes us who we are and that we kind of have control over our thoughts and our emotions and our behaviors and actions, et cetera. But an interesting little factoid is that we're much more microbe than human. If you look at the number of human cells versus the number of microbial microorganisms that exist and thrive symbiotically within our bodies, it's like 10 to 1. So I think there's like 10 trillion microbial entities in our GI tract alone. That's crazy. Right.

And they're important for health, right? Like it's a symbiotic relationship. You need these microbes in order to be a healthy person. But there are healthy microbial ecologies and not so healthy microbial ecologies. And when you're eating a nutrient-poor diet or you're eating a fast food diet or you're eating a standard American diet, you're putting certain foods into your body that also have microorganisms in them. And then they take root and start to proliferate in your GI tract and then sort of take over as the predominant ecology.

of take over as the predominant ecology. And there are some very, very interesting studies to suggest that the constitution of your microbial ecology has some sway over your nervous system and the impulses that are being sent to your brain that create the cravings for certain kinds of foods, right? So they did studies with chocolate and that were very similar to the way addicts crave cocaine. And they found a link between the microbial ecologies and the guts of people that were like chocolate addicts, right? And so, but, and to illustrate this example, I always tell this story. And if you've heard this before, I apologize.

But if you saw the documentary, Supersize Me, where Morgan Spurlock decides he's going to eat McDonald's every day for 30 days straight and see what happens. If you haven't seen it, it's fantastic. You've got to check it out but basically uh he goes from essentially a plant a completely plant-based diet because his girlfriend was a vegan chef and decided he's going to start eating mcdonald's so for the first couple days day one fine and then a couple days into it he's starting to get sick like he just can't believe he's got to go back to mcdonald's and eat and there's one scene where he actually like vomits out of his car like it's it's so not agreeing with his system, right? His system

is revolting against this. But then if you fast forward a couple of days later, he actually starts to crave McDonald's. He wakes up with headaches. He doesn't feel good until he goes to McDonald's and starts eating McDonald's food. And so how can you explain that? Well, you know, there's probably, if you ask a scientist or a biologist, maybe there's a couple explanations. But one very interesting explanation, and Compton Rahm, our nutrition guru, would support this, is that he effectively replaced his microbial ecology in his gut

with the healthy microbial ecology that sort of thrives on a plant-based diet and helps your body operate optimally to a microbial ecology that exists on McDonald's food. And so that microbial ecology, when it starts to get hungry or whatever, because those organisms need to feed, they feed on the food that you eat, triggers your nervous system and sends these impulses to your brain and say, go get more send you to the drive so you're in other words what i'm saying is your cravings are not you know you you saying this is what i need or like what is telling you what you need like is your body saying i need bacon or are the is the microbial ecology somehow speaking to you to tell you you know please go get that food because that's what we need to live inside your gut.

Wow, that's profound. Anyway, it's interesting. So that's Compton Rom from Ascended Health, by the way. He's definitely gonna be a guest on the podcast. We'll track him down. And also as far as having guests on, from the beginning, I was sort of like, people said, well, you should just Skype people in

and do these Skype interviews, like essentially phone interviews on the podcast. And initially I was not, you know, I'm not into that because there's something about sitting across from someone. The chemistry. Relaxing into a chair. You should feel it. And taking this conversation wherever it wants to go.

And I think a lot of that gets lost, you know, when the person's not there. But if we run out of things to say, I'm going to start bringing people in by Skype. I know tons of people we could get. We'll have some fascinating guests. I just prefer to be sitting with them. But maybe I'll start with people

that don't live in Los Angeles that I know that would be interesting. Maybe somebody wants to come. I probably wouldn't be. You're going to fly them out? Maybe. All right, we'll see. We'll look into that.

Maybe we'll go to LA and do like a Jai House marathon podcast like our version of a TED talk but it'll be Jai Talk some Jai Talk

yeah that would be good actually I like that that would be great we're also looking into talking to Chris about looking into

doing a TED Kawai TED Talk Kawhi and getting something going out. It's going to be amazing. Yeah. But more on that later. Anyway, getting back to kind of food and unlocking your heart and becoming more acquainted with yourself. And one of the things, one tool that I wanted to talk about, you know, beyond eating right and the meditation practice, which I think is critical and exercise, you know, just moving your body and getting to know yourself physically is the idea of journaling. And one of the things that I did, you know, a lot of you people have probably heard of this or may

have done it yourself, but I've done it a couple of times, which is this program called the artist way. It's based on a book by this woman, Julia Cameron, who's an amazing woman. She used to be married to James Cameron a long time ago. I think, I think I got divorced a long time ago, but she's written this amazing book called artist way. And essentially it is a program, uh, to help you unlock. It's, it's, it's sort of positioned or marketed as a way of unlocking your creativity, but really what it is, is it's a way of finding out more about yourself. And this sort of crucial tool that provides the foundation for doing this Artist's Way program is what's called the morning pages.

So what you do is when you wake up in the morning, every single day, it should be essentially first thing in the morning. But if you're gonna do a meditation or whatever, I would suggest doing the meditation first is writing three pages out. You get one of those little notebooks and you just write three pages. And it doesn't matter what you write as long as you do it. So you just start writing.

Like, for example, you wake up, you sit down, I'm tired. I don't want to write anything. I don't have anything going on right now. I don't have anything interesting to say. I really don't feel like doing the morning pages. I need to get to work. Whatever it is, just write it out and get those three pages done. And don't do it on the computer.

You don't use a laptop. You actually use a pen and a paper. And there is something that takes place with that because I've done it a couple times. When you do it consistently and you do it every day, stuff will start to be revealed to you. You'll start writing about yourself in a different way. Ide ideas and things you want to pursue will start to come out and you'll develop a relationship with yourself that you didn't know existed when you began. So any of you out there who feel stuck or, you know, maybe you're working on a creative project and you're not getting any traction with it, or you just don't know what to do next, or, you know, where's life leading me or whatever, super, super helpful tool. So I would recommend that. That's great. You've had great success with that. You've enjoyed it a lot. You've done it a few

times, haven't you? I've done it a few times, yeah. And actually, I think she's got a couple companion books now and there are little groups that spring up in different areas, like support groups for people that are doing the artist way where they get together once a week. And there are other things associated with the program that you kind of do throughout the week, um, to help you kind of, you know, unlock this or whatever. But, but it's really, for me at least it was, it's all about the morning pages. And I know people that, you know, just, they've just done it ever since they did the artist way. They never stopped like 10 years. They've been doing the morning pages every day. And these are, you know, successful creative people,

like very well-known screenwriters, you know, creative professionals in Los Angeles that are, you know, you would look at them and say, that's an unbelievably actualized person, a very creative person who's very successful. So anyway, check it out. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. Cool.

Yeah. So what else? Balancing. Are we still talking about balancing family life, training? Balancing, harmonizing. Harmonizing. I'll be humming. How do you do it?

I'll be humming while you're doing the morning pages. How do you do it? I remember in training for Ultraman on Saturdays, those would be the days that I do my really long ride. So I'd leave really early in the morning and that like Saturday ride would kind of get longer and longer and longer as we go throughout the season and the closer we got to Ultraman until, you know, in the last like two, three months before Ultraman, I mean, that Saturday ride would be, you know, an eight, nine hour ride or something like that. Twelve hours. Did I do a 12 hour? I don't remember. Very long. I don't think I ever went like that.

All day. But then I would kind of walk in the door completely depleted, you know, in my bib shorts. Julie would be like, all right, see you later. Yeah, I'm out of here. It's my turn now. Julie'd be like, all right, see you later. Yeah, I'm out of here. It's my turn now.

And then I would, you know, be with the kids or, you know, Jaya was, she was three then or something like that. You just hand me Jaya. And then I would be with the kids. And then I remember like, I wouldn't even, I'd be in my, you'd come home several hours later and I'd still would not have showered. I'm still in like my bib shorts.

Not recommended if you're trying to avoid. Well, I don't think I ever really realized exactly what you were doing until I crewed for you, which was really extraordinary because, you know, we're a couple and, you know, I know that you're. But explain what crewing, like if somebody's listening to this and they don't know what Ultraman is or whatever. Yeah. So, um, so anyway, so, uh, I had the privilege and the honor and blessing to

crew for rich for, uh, Ultraman. What year was it? In 2009. So in this race that I described earlier in the show, it's a three day race. You go all the way around the big Island of Hawaii. There's only 35 people that are invited to do it every year. Um, and you, you know, if you've seen Ironman on TV, you see 2,000 athletes and they have aid stations set up like every mile and all these volunteers and everybody is kind of helping these athletes get through the course in the day. Ultraman is the exact opposite. There are 35 athletes. They have to circumnavigate this landmass that's the size of Connecticut. They have to circumnavigate this landmass that's the size of Connecticut.

And there is zero aid stations. There's zero support. You have to bring your own support. So each athlete has their own crew. They bring their own crew. The crew is in a van and each athlete has their own van with a crew in it. And that van is packed with all this food and gear and replacement parts and nutrition, et cetera. And as you go around this island over three days, you stay somewhere different every night. So you have to have all your stuff with you. And the people in that van

are responsible for making sure that their athlete is getting the nutrition they need, the hydration that they need, is there to assist in the event anything goes wrong on the bike and to be a cheerleader and basically a comprehensive support system for that athlete. And you cannot do this Ultraman race without a very good crew. And it seems like a simple thing, like, oh, you just ride in the van behind them, like no big deal, right? I think you thought that and I had done the race in 2008. I thought I was going to listen to some new music.

I had done the race in 2008 and I knew how intense this was going to be. And I was like, babe, you know, I don't think you have any idea what you're getting involved in here. She's like, how hard could it be? We're going to drive around the island. We made a movie together. Like we've done all kinds of things together. I was like, it's going to be fine.

It's going to be great. She's like, relax. It was literally the hardest thing I've ever done. It was two days of manic energy. I was so wrung out after that experience. It was so incredible in every way. And so what I was saying is I didn't realize what you were doing, even though you were training that entire year

and we had this whole thing as part of our life, because I just see you as you leave the door. So it's like, okay, I'm going out to train. So you'd leave on your bike or go out running or whatever it was. And all I knew is when you walk back in the door, what was on my schedule after that time, after that time had passed. So because I wasn't out with you on the bike

for a real time experience, I didn't have any of those, any of that awareness really. And I, it was impossible for me because I'm not an athlete and I've never done anything like that. So I remember one time, I think you came home and I had you, Jaya, and I was on my way out to some meditation thing or something. And, you know, you reminded me that you would just rent a marathon. Right. But it was kind of just like in a day. It was just sort of in a course of the day. I was like, yeah, cool, marathon, awesome.

Okay, see you later. and another sort of just uh amazing um you know uh thumbs up to the plant-based diet to your credit you were not passed out on the couch after doing all that stuff you somehow you were still energized to show up you know at a level where you could be with the kids when you got home or you could show up for me. I mean, I remember us going out on our weekly date or sometimes it would lapse to two weeks would go by. Bi-weekly. Bi-weekly date. And you would come. I mean, it was literally part of the deal.

Of course. Like at what you could not have said and you would not and you never tried. You know what? I'm just too tired. I can't go. Like you really were amazing. I think that's attributable to a couple of things. I mean, yes, the diet, I believe wholeheartedly was instrumental in my ability to kind of absorb that training and bounce back, recover and not be completely dragged out

so that I could function beyond, off the bike and out of the running shoes. Eating that type of diet, which is very alkaline forming and in future podcasts, we can get into the science of that or whatever. But essentially eating this way, I found that my body would bounce

back more quickly than it had in the past eating differently in terms of recovering from workouts, which gave me a sort of a high level, even keeled energy throughout the day, no matter what my training had been earlier that day so that I could do other things in my life. And I think the second thing is learning how to train smart. And I think this is a big issue with a lot of, you know, sort of athletes out there. You know, a lot of middle-aged triathletes or, you know, kind of weekend warriors or whatever who want to get fit. Maybe they want to do a 5k race, 10k race, or maybe they're training for a marathon or their first sprint triathlon or whatever. And I talk, this is another thing I talk about in the book, but it's this idea of learning how to not train in your gray zone and to understand what each workout is about. What is

the purpose of this workout and what am I trying to achieve and what am I teaching my body to do? And also being very aware of not overtraining, you know, like what zone is this, is my effort going to be in for this workout? And each workout is a very specific target, you know, for what I'm trying to achieve. And when you're following that and you're paying attention to your body and you're kind of writing it all down and monitoring it, then you should never be super exhausted. I mean, certainly you're going to have those key workouts that are going to completely wipe you out. But if you're walking around exhausted all the time, then there's something wrong with your training. You're probably overtraining. And that's the way

that I trained as a swimmer, like my whole career as a high school and collegiate swimmer. I believe that I was overtrained the whole time because I remember all we would do is go to the pool. I would go as hard as I could every single day in every single set. I'd lay it all out there, you know, twice a day, every day, just completely fry myself. No recovery.

I would walk around like a zombie for six months and then hang it all on a two-week taper and see how I did at the big meet. And sometimes it worked and sometimes I didn't. But this idea of building recovery days and recovery weeks and some days are aerobic days, some days are strength days, some days are speed days. how to rotate that and be smart about what you're doing and allow your body the time it needs to recover and bounce back and get stronger so that you can realize those performance gains and then take it to the next level. I mean, I never understood any of that until I started working with Chris Howth and getting ready for Ultraman. So Chris Howth is my coach. He is my coach, although I'm not training with him right now, but I plan on re-upping with

him pretty soon. Really taught that. He really taught me and helped me understand how that works. So I think that's another reason why, you know, I wasn't tired all the time, despite all this training. And without that, it probably wouldn't have worked. It probably would have been very stressful. If I'd been training wrong and I was just tired all the time, it would have been a disaster. We would have altered the course. Yeah, we wouldn't be getting along. I would have been a terrible mate, a terrible father. I wouldn't have done well at Ultraman and I'd probably be too tired to work and all that kind of stuff.

I mean, your life doesn't function if you're not doing that properly. It was incredible, incredible how it worked out. It was incredible, incredible how it worked out. And so it wasn't until I got to Ultraman, some of you know the story, but we, so no crew showed up. We kept waiting for a crew and nothing was materialized. Well, I had a bunch of friends that, you know,

sort of expressed interest in being my crew. And these are guys who kind of, you know, they understand cycling, they understand endurance sports and all this sort of stuff that I could rely on. Like if I got a flat tire or something went wrong with my bike, like they would know how to fix it. But the problem is Ultraman takes place over Thanksgiving weekend every year. And you know, people have plans. They have lives. They can't just like come and help out their buddy over Thanksgiving weekend. So all those guys that I thought I had lined up, like that all went away. And so I was up like four or five days before the race or was it about that?

About a week before the race. And I called Julie because I'd gone to Hawaii early to get ready for the race. And I said, I don't know how anyone needs crew. Like, I don't know what to do. And you were like, we'll do it. And I'm like, no, you don't understand. You can't do it.

You did not want me to accrue for you at all. And a big, well, A, because I knew you didn't know what it involved. That's the big A. Yeah. And well, and B, you know, you wouldn't, like if something happened to the bike, you wouldn't be able to help me fix it or anything like that. Another large point. Right.

And C. You didn't want to yell at me on the course. Well, yeah, it could damage our relationship because it gets intense. And especially when you get exhausted and you want things to be a certain way or whatever, they say in endurance sports or in ultras, never have anyone crew for you that you care about.

Because when people get beyond exhausted, they start behaving badly. And I've done that. That happened to me during Epic Five. I know what that's like. And I didn't want to expose you to that. Yes. Because I didn't want, you know.

But then. Because you were like, it'll be fine. But then I'm who showed up. I was it. I was your crew captain along with- And you would say, and I would agree, that that was how it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be, yeah, absolutely.

It was incredible. It was really incredible. And I had actually two friends that I had known for about two minutes each. And I'm not exaggerating. I met them- If she calls me, she's like, I got these two people out here that I met

that I think they're ready to come out and help. And I was like, well, who are they? And you know, oh, this guy, Alan and Nicole, she seemed really nice. And I'm like, this is a disaster. Well, I had met them at a spiritual meeting and I literally had only talked to them for, we met kind of at the end on the way out the door.

And just, it was one of those coincidental things. We had no crew and suddenly they called to check in, you know, as maybe the second or third phone call that I'd ever had with them. And they said, we want to come, we want to come and we want to help and we want to serve. And they actually did show up, almost complete strangers in a complete energy of service, which was something that you and I had not really experienced before. I mean, they never asked,

wait, so where am I staying? Or how many hours am I gonna have to work? Or they didn't ask anything. They just said, where do you need me? What do you need me to do? It was incredible. That was magnificent. An amazing experience.

Yeah, it was a gift. And it's like, it goes back to that sort of spiritual precept of, you know, you will be, you know, if you're sort of walking the path that you're supposed to be, like the universe will provide. And it was like, I always use this example of uh the old popeye cartoons so i don't know if anybody out there you really watch those it's a stretch now but you remember sweet pea the little baby yeah i do popeye so there's one right right there's this one awesome popeye cartoon where where uh somehow they're like at a construction site and Sweet Pea gets like loose in the construction site and climbs up some girder

and like a crane hauls the girder up high in the scaffold of this skyscraper that they're building and just starts crawling, you know, without a care in the world, is crawling along these I-beams, these gir, these girders that have, you know, incredibly high up. And just as, as the baby's about to, you know, crawl off the end of a girder, another one swings around on a crane and, and the baby just goes right onto the next girder. And this keeps happening and they're, they're panicked thinking the baby's going to fall, you know, to its death. And, but it's just kind of like right at the exact, like not before, like it looks like it's going to be a disaster. the exact, like not beforehand. Not before you need it. It looks like it's going to be a disaster like that beam shows up

and it all works out. And in my life, in our life, I cannot tell you how many times that's happened. I mean, even being here at Common Ground is an example of that.

Absolutely. You know, I mean, sort of, well, we don't know what we're doing or how this problem is going to get solved or, you know, we have this crisis and we need a resolution to it at this time. We don't know how we're doing or how this problem is gonna get solved or we have this crisis and we need a resolution to it at this time.

We don't know how it's gonna get worked out. And then right when it looks like the whole thing is gonna explode and it's over, like this solution just shows up. Absolutely. And we've been okay. But that's living in the mystery of the moment and living in the present moment.

It sounds irresponsible. Yeah, to the old paradigm it does. But, you know, you have history. It's not for lack of trying to make things work out in a real 3D world kind of way and be responsible. It's just we've had some challenges. Like the crew thing is a perfect example. Like I tried.

Of course. I did everything I could to try to make this thing happen and it didn't work out and I go well what are we going to do we have no solution and then the last second like the solution you know shows up and we arrived and you were not happy and you were very

I still I don't think I've ever seen you so intense ever it was absolutely off I wasn't unhappy I've ever seen you so intense ever. It was absolutely off the charts. I wasn't unhappy, but I was intense. You were focused. I was focused and concerned. Because you, like literally, the crews for the other competitors

had arrived on the island several days before the race. They drive the course. They go shopping. They get all the stuff they need for the van. They understand where all the turns are. There's a big meeting two days before the race where there's a slideshow and they take you through all the things to look out for on the course and it's all for the crews to understand what they're getting involved in. But you guys showed up the night before the race.

We missed the meeting. Yeah. No, you showed up at 4 p.m. and the race was the next morning. That's right. So you didn't know anything. Nothing. There was zero preparation. So I was rightfully very concerned. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it was at that moment when you had that meeting and we came in the night before and you were so intense, like I couldn't even physically go close to you or anything. It was clear this was business. You were an athlete and it was like, we needed to show up in a certain way. And so we came into the meeting and you had

literally prepared maps and directions and charts, and you had done all this amazing preparation so that we would have more tools that would help us to, you know, be a, be a good crew for you. And it was, it was very, very, very intense. It was, it all worked out well. And what happened the first day? I don't think you ever even looked at those maps though. Oh no, we did, but we were, they, you know, everybody was telling us it's okay. You know, if you need anything, let us know, we'll see you out on the course. And so, you know, you took off on the swim and then we knew we had some time to like get some ice and, you know, eat a little breakfast or whatever. And then, you know, it was so surreal because you were first out of the water and we were,

we were out of our minds. We were just like on fire. The adrenaline was rushing. And, and then, uh, you went for that, the first incline up that, up that hill. I don't know what road it is, but we had to do our first bottle handoff and Alan didn't even have normal tennis shoes. He had some kind of black street shoes or something. And then he would get in a sprint position and start running, but he would be running faster than a bike.

Yeah, I remember his first bottle handoff. The way it works is these crews, they can't hand you the water bottles out the window while they're driving. They have to pull up ahead and get out. And then you ride by and they hand you your hydration or whatever in this race. And Alan, it was hilarious because the first couple bottle handoffs, and you always park at the top of the hill because you want to do the handoff when the when the when the cyclist is climbing because they're going slower and there's a lot you know you don't want to do it at the bottom of the hill when they're racing by 40 miles an hour right so so i i told you that and you understood that and so i'm riding up the first hill and alan starts

running you know to do the handoff but he's running he's actually running a lot faster than I'm riding. And so he's getting further, further away from me up ahead. I was like, we're off to a great start here. It's gonna be amazing. So we turn the corner and we set out and you're rocking it and we start to kind of get the flow and we understand all of a sudden that there's no way that there's gonna be time for anything else,

but just watching you and seeing what you need and leapfrogging and preparing the nutrition and everything that we have to do. And then, uh, I think we, we pulled off to get gas and like grab a sandwich just to go. But then we got stuck behind some Island traffic. And by the time we caught you, you were really mad and you were like, you were like, where were you? I needed you. I need that nutrition, like get on it. And so after that, after that point, we never, we never left you ever for one second. And then all of a sudden, you know, the day keeps going and the day keeps going. I'm not seeing any other riders and I haven't seen any other crew vans and we don't really know the Island and Tyler's looking at the map, trying to figure out where we are. And, and, um, we get a call from the, from the race director or the, whoever's, you know, the officials that are monitoring the race. And, and they're asking me, you know, where are you? And, and I, and I have

no idea where we are. So we're trying to find landmarks to kind of say where we are and they, and they're shocked that we're this far ahead. They can't believe that we're where we say we are. And then you're riding by and you're saying something like, what's my gap? Like that as I just kind of hear it. And I'm like, so I asked the guy, I say, what's a cap? I asked the guy on the phone and he says, the gap. You were asking what your gap was. Well, I kept riding. Every time I rode by the van I was like what's my gap because I was in the lead I didn't know if somebody was 30 seconds behind me or 10 minutes behind me I was like what's my what's the gap what's the gap but nobody knew

you know and then the photographer cars were driving by and I kept getting they're like oh you have you know oh you're way ahead you know know, it's 15 minutes. And then it was, and then the next car said, oh, it's, you know, there's a guy about a minute back. Like I never got a straight story. So the whole time I'm panicked looking behind my, you know, behind me going, who's gonna be catching me? That was crazy.

But you know what? This is turning into like a race report from a race four years ago. Let's talk about something else. All right. So I wanna talk about things that, you know, takeaways for people that can be helpful to them. You know, we were talking about balance. We were talking about how to, you know, kind of navigate priorities to unlock things, you know, creative pursuits or

get to know yourself internally a little bit better, you know, through meditation, artist's way, all these sorts of things. And then it begs the question of the relationship issue and interacting with your mate and finding a way to communicate to do this together. I mean, what do you think? Like we've had our struggles with that. We have.

Nothing else to offer on that. No, well, I think for you and i i mean i would we've you know we've had some experience in some relationships you know uh other relationships besides you and me so uh i've been married actually twice before this is my third marriage. And Jason from MindBodyGreen called me a relationship expert. So I guess that does qualify me as a relationship expert. Yeah, Julie wrote a great article for MindBodyGreen called, what was it, Seven Ways to Experience Deeper Intimacy in Your Relationship.

That's pretty good. Something like that. Yeah, I think it was six ways. Six ways. You didn't have seven in you. I could come up with a seven. You didn't have seven at the time. I just threw six out. I'll put a link up in the show notes, but yeah, it was really well received. A lot of people really got a lot out of that. And I think that you are very wise about relationships and you have a very different approach than, you know, the sort of more mainstream, maybe, you know, relationship people. Well, I think it's, you know, the sort of more mainstream, maybe, you know, relationship

people. Well, I think it's, you know, I think it starts again, it starts again with being in touch with yourself. And it's like, you know, this kind of romantic fairy tale, you know, relationship paradigm where, you know, somebody goes, you complete me, you know, that's just so out of balance, you know, I mean, everyone, each being is complete within themselves. They come into the life. They're created by the great force with enough energy to sustain itself complete, right? So, I mean, that's in a divine way. And we're getting more to that reality.

But I think that it starts with knowing yourself. And I think that, uh, in my experience, when you're depending on a relationship to fulfill you, um, you're already, you've already set it up where it's not, it's not going to, it's not going to provide because, um, it's not about getting something that's outside of yourself. It's about tapping into yourself, your heart, your soul. And if you, a lot of times in relationships, I think maybe why a lot of people projected onto us that, you know, there had to be this imbalance and I had to be suffering if you were training so much or, you know, even the fact that you've had a lot of, uh, a lot of the spotlight, really a lot of energy directed at you in the last years. It's just recently that I started speaking out, but.

And taking over my podcast inch by inch. Tomorrow it'll be the Julie podcast. I know. That's the boys said we get like, uh, team Julie, team rich. And we're only on the fourth episode. You're already dominating. No, I just, I mean, I love it. I love the medium. I just love being able to speak. And I, and you know, I've been silent for a lot of years.

I've got a lot of stuff to say. You've never been silent. That's ridiculous. No, but the thing is, is that I don't know. I mean, I think we're secure within ourselves and I, and it was my honor and privilege to support you in your unfoldment and as you found yourself. And that to me, you know, to see you touch those parts of yourself, it gives me just tremendous joy and it really does. And that's your experience. This is, you know, your journey.

But I think that people, you know, I think the common thing is for people to project onto another person some sort of recipe for happiness. So they're approaching a relationship from this place of, I'm not feeling good about myself or I feel incomplete or whatever. And if I can just get with this person, then everything is going to be fine or my life will be better or what have you. And so there's this, a lot of energy put out towards trying to get somebody or whatever, or try to be in a relationship.

And I think that water rises to its own level. Like when I've been in a not so good place in my life, the people that I attract into my life are of that caliber. You know what I mean? And when you've maybe done a little bit more work or whatever, and you're a different person, then you're emitting a different signal and you attract a different caliber of person into your life. And so instead of trying to chase that other person to, like you said, complete me or whatever, if you do the uncomfortable inner work to get happy and content with who you are, irrespective of your relationship status,

then it's almost like the dimmer on your light switch gets turned up, you know, and it starts to shine brighter and brighter and brighter. And that, you know, when you stand in the light, then you attract, you know, the level of the water in your glass rises, and then you are like a beacon, like a magnet attracting those people who are on that frequency or on that wavelength into your life. That's absolutely true. Very powerful, very, very powerful. And after you're in a relationship with somebody, then there comes all the, this is one of the things that I wrote about in the article. It's actually very honest account of my own experience with you. And,

you know, it was, it's basically the, the experience of being a woman who, you know, I was a business person, a fashion designer, had my,

you know, built a couple houses. Like, you know, I'm very able person. And yet when I was in a relationship with you, I wanted you to be contributing at a certain level financially. And I kept going around and around and around with that. And that is looking to you to be my source, okay? Or to be the source of the family.

And so, this was a huge key for us. It was actually the catalyst that changed everything in our life and all the dynamics in our relationship. And not that, I mean, we loved each other right from the beginning and we had this extraordinary wedding and we've always been very well suited with each other.

But there was this kind of expectation. You know, I saw who you were, I could see who you were in the density. And I was reaching my hand out to you saying, take my hand, I can help you. Like I know what you need. And somehow by my reaching, you became more paralyzed. So it was after a lot of years, it took me probably seven years, I think, to actually get this awareness. And it came through studying with this Indian master that I studied with named Nityananda. And I was sitting with him and he was talking about divine love and how does the divine love and, you know, the divine love simply for your presence, simply as you are in this moment without having achieved or done anything.

And so, I was looking at how I was loving you and I was loving you with an expectation. If only you could bring in, you know, six figures. If only you could, you know, figures if only you could you know eat vegetarian if only you could meditate if only you could be different than who you are now then what then drinking if this then what exactly so but what am i what so on the other end of that that uh expectation equation what is the result like if i would have done that then what in your mind at that time in my mind then uh then i would have had this this whole man as a partner that i knew existed inside and that would make you feel like in that in a sense that's saying well then then my life will be better yeah exactly then then our relationship will be better then i, exactly. Then, then our relationship will be better. Then I'll feel better about myself. Then we'll be more in love than, you know, all of those things. So the point

is, is that it's, it's the energy and it's very sneaky because it's very hard to see because I could find a lot of people to validate my argument. Like, well, yeah, absolutely. You have every right to expect that. You have every right to expect all those things um and then I just realized I guess I I guess we had one moment um I think we like broke up for a day or something and you left the house and and uh you know it was really sort of that moment where Mathis was very young and and I had to really look at who you were and I had to make the decision it's kind of like you I had to decide I had who you were and I had to make the decision. It's kind of like you, I had to decide. I had to just decide and you had to decide too in that moment, are we going to be together? Are we going to do this together? And I really realized in our case that

I did want to be with you and I did want to have a family with you and have you in my life. And I made the decision to start loving you as the divine loves. And I made this energetic shift. And it was really remarkable because you could feel it. that I stopped needing you to be other than you were, all of a sudden there was this relief and this- A relief on my end or on your end? I think all over, really on the planet. If you wanna look at the, it's an energy, right? It's an energy that was pulling. It was putting- Well, it's that same thing.

Like you said the other day, you're like, I don't like to be told what to do. And if you tell me what to do, I'm going to do the opposite or whatever. And so I remember that time and, and it's like, you were wanting me to do this and wanting me to do that. And it's like the reaction, the human reaction to that is like, back off, man. Like, you know, just leave me alone. Like, you know, like I'm no different than I was when you married, when you married me or, you know, whatever, like, what is that, where is this coming from? And, and that's, you know, just leave me alone. Like, you know, like I'm no different than I was when you married me or, you know, whatever. Like, what is that? Where is this coming from? And that's, you know, and it's also a human thing, like whatever.

But so I think my reaction was like, I just, you know, leave me alone. But it literally. But then, so then when you make this switch, right, and you say, all right, you backed off. And it was a weird like disorienting thing like what do you mean like you just really became incredibly neutral with me on all these different matters that used to be emotionally charged for you yes and so what that did and where the power and that energy shift was was that suddenly there's no, you know, pressure on me to do this or the other. It's all on me. Like what, so it made me look inside myself and say, well, well, you know,

maybe I do want to do all that or whatever, you know, like I never really, it was always me just trying to push the pressure off. But then when the pressure's gone, then you're left with yourself and you have to go, well, who do I want to be? Or, you know, what's not working right now? And, and it's that same thing with, with, you know, addiction and recovery. It's like, you only get better if you want to get better. You're not going to create any kind of sustainable recovery unless you want it inside of you. Not because somebody's telling you, you need to do this, you need to do this, you need to do this. Well, and I think it's the allowing of the energy that allows your life process to unfold organically the way it's supposed to, you know, without someone else putting anything or meddling, really. And it's like, goes back to, that's why I say, keep your hands to yourself, keep your energy to yourself. You know, it's very simple.

back to, that's why I say, keep your hands to yourself, keep your energy to yourself. You know, it's very simple. If you just realize that, you know, I had to look at it and I had to go, okay, I believe we're all divine. I believe this whole play, this whole creation, light and dark, the whole thing, the whole thing emanates from this amazing consciousness. So if I believe I'm God, you're God too. You're God drinking your venti Starbucks with three ad shots, shoving hamburgers down your throat. You're God too. God has a plan for you.

And I don't mean a man with a wand. I mean the force. Just to back up for a second, when you say I'm God, you're God, like that's a, for a lot of people, I think they're gonna say, what does that mean? I know, but so just, you know. What do you mean, you're saying you're God? say, what does that mean? I know, but so just, you know.

What do you mean, you're saying you're God? Yeah, and you are too. All right, well, explain, like elaborate on that a little bit, because I think that's going to be confusing. Well. I understand, I know where you're coming from with that statement, but that's a loaded thing to say without explaining. All right. So would you like me to explain? Sure.

Okay. I believe that we are all creations emanating from this divine force. But that that exists within us. Within us, yeah. As much as it exists outside of us. Within. Right? So it's not like the divine force is outside of us looking over us. It's inside of us.

It's within us. It's within all of us. That's essentially what you're saying. Exactly. Right. Okay. So within everything. So, and a lot of people have a supercharge with the word God.

So, you know, I use creation a lot or I'll say force or whatever, but, you know, that's what I mean. It's not a dogmatic. It's not. No, it's not a religious thing. It's not a dogmatic thing. not no it's not a religious thing it's not a dogmatic thing it's an energy thing right and so so and that was that awareness is what allowed me to release this energy that I was projecting to you as my partner to be one way or another and so I just let go I totally let go and you could feel it. And I think you-

And that provided the space for me to do what I needed to do, to do what I was gonna do, right? Exactly. Essentially, right? Exactly. And in our case, I mean, there's no, you don't know the outcome.

You don't get to have the outcome. But I mean, in my experience, the divine always creates something much more beautiful than you could ever have imagined for yourself. Yeah. And extrapolating on that, it goes back to what you said about, you know, keep your hands to yourself. And when you look at that, I mean, really what you're saying is don't get involved in other people's drama, even if it's for the right reasons, right? Like when you get caught up in somebody else's drama, you're almost interfering with their trajectory in a way. It's that meddling that may, even if it's well-intended,

may not be for the better good of that individual's path that they're walking. Yeah. And in my experience, I mean, the most powerful thing you can provide in any sort of situation is neutral, loving compassion. Neutral, loving compassion and just an awareness. that you don't understand or, you know, any kind of challenges, any kind of dark night of the soul or, you know, just really anything that is out of the ordinary, that is out of the norm of society or expectations of family or whatever it is. The most powerful thing in my experience that one can offer is I believe in you to find your way. I believe in you as a divine being that you know your path and that the path will unfold from you, from within you.

It sounds like such a simple thing, but if you actually try to practice that with other people, it's really, it's hard. Well, it took me, it took. That is a practice. you know what I mean? It's a practice, that's right. And so, and I came to this awareness and I really was there.

And I think you called me a couple of times to try to say, are you sure? And you told me, you said, I can feel the difference. And I said, no, no, no, I don't care anymore. I love you exactly as you are. And it wasn't just lip service. Like I really was there. I really was in that place.

But it almost sounds like giving up. Like, well, I gave up, so. No, because it's neutral. I'm gonna leave you alone now. Okay, no, no, no. But see, you have to be careful and that's a good thing that you brought up is it's not a distinction of going, okay, well then I'm just not gonna you alone now. Okay, no, no, no. But see, you have to be careful and that's a good thing that you brought up is it's not a distinction of going,

okay, well then I'm just not going to talk to him anymore. You know, or I'm just not going to say anything anymore. See, that's different. You're still, you still have the energy. It's still charged. The emotion is still there. You're just choosing not to articulate it, but it's written all over your body and your face, right?

If you're in that place. Yeah, or in the air and you can feel it. Yeah. So the real thing is, is I really just made a decision to love you as God loves. How did you get from, how did you traverse that?

You know what I mean? Well, I mean, I had a hard time. Because it's sort of like, act as if until you actually believe it. But like, how did you go from a place of, you know, wanting me to be different to actually really letting go i was like feeling that in your heart well i was uh i was in a meditation practice i was doing a humming meditation um and i also was listening to uh you know spiritual discourse and this one divine being that I had a connection with that I,

that had a great impact on me. And, and really when I look at the whole trajectory, when I look at back at our last five years, I mean, that, that's a key, key shift. And then all of a sudden, you know, I mean, you're vibrating or in your living as an emanation of like my perfect mate right now. And I, you know. Grab that drop, Tyler. Grab that drop. I'm gonna play that back to her later. No, you are, you know.

And the amazing thing is, is I've always liked kind of like from all from a lot of different details but I wanted you to be vibrant and connected and and whole and you know eating healthy and spiritually connected and also just physically your body type is much you know like I like the you know more thin framed you framed, you know, not like the picture, not like the before picture. That was not my ultimate. But anyway, this is a key, key thing. And really, if you, I really, really believe that if one can drop this expectation, If one can drop this expectation,

this energy of expectation that's between two people, a lot of marital problems will just go away. They just don't exist. Because then you're really autonomous. Yeah, you're self-sovereign. Yeah, I'm my own being. And you're not reliant on the other person for your sense of well-being or sense of self. No.

And at the same time, you can have a very intimate, beautiful dance with another individual, which I share with you. I share an amazing, amazing relationship with you that I never thought I would experience. And it's on every level. And I consider myself extremely blessed. And I know you feel the same.

No, it's been great. It's been good. That's it. No, it's been great. That's what you're gonna say. Now I'm in trouble. Come on, give me a little more than that. No, I was reflecting on what you were saying,

like when we kind of had that fight when we were married. On the air, last podcast? No, not that. Oh, okay. Yeah, had that fight when we were married. On the air, last podcast? No, not that. Oh, okay. Yeah, not that fight. No, like we had a big kind of like fallout before that shift. And I remember I did leave for a day and that was like the darkest time in our marriage.

And just to see, you know, kind of where we are now versus then. It only lasted a day. I mean, we were very clear know, we were very clear. We wanted to be together. But anyway, no, that's great. I mean, you know, if somebody's trying to, if somebody's listening to this

and they're trying to hold onto this idea and, you know, take those first couple steps towards this, I mean, what are some of the things you could tell them that might be helpful? Well, I would say, you know, of course the plant that, you know, start with the plants, of course, I would definitely start meditating some, some form of meditation. You know, if you, if you like mine, great. If you don't, there's a lot of meditation practices, but meditate on this idea, you know, that the sun, just take the sun. So the sun is

shining and the sun is always shining. It's even shining when it's night here, right? It's always shining and it doesn't discriminate. You know, it doesn't say I'm going to shine more on this tree than this squirrel or, you know, it doesn't differentiate it is just emanating so that's really sort of like a metaphor for divine consciousness how it loves and and also there's no value difference um consciousness isn't more pleased with me because I chose a life of spiritual inquiry. You know what I mean? Like it's, there's no value difference. It doesn't matter what it is, what your love is or what you were designed to do. You're not, you're no better and you're no worse than anyone else. And that neutrality, that neutral loving compassion, if you really start to get there,

because in a lot of couples, when we're in relationships, we can get attached to stories about, and also keep them alive, you know, things that have happened, you know, whatever it is, you know, affairs or, or any kind of hurt that has happened between two people. He said, can you believe that he did this? And you tell a bunch of people and then you tell it again and you tell it again. You tell it again. It starts to take on this life and this energy that maybe it didn't even have to begin with. Exactly.

And it becomes a thing and it's like a shiv that, you know, starts to divide. Right. And this is why, you know, I mean, I have experience in couples therapy, not with you, but I have experience with other relationships and couples therapy. And I always, I find it hilarious because we always left matter and in worse shape than when we went in. Cause, and I know, you know, some therapists are going to get mad at me or whatever, but I'm sorry. I really think it's a solo job. Not that therapy can't be helpful.

It definitely can. But I really think you have to turn the magnifying glass on yourself. That's the only place you can affect change. Because if you're going to go in a room with a third person and then tattle, like if I went in and was like well he did this and then she did this and it just in my experience it just has not been helpful was not trying to magnifying glass on yourself is is really kind of the the first step towards a solution and basically everything everything right yeah you know really it. It's huge, but you'd be surprised.

I mean, you wouldn't be surprised. It's very easy for human beings to create an entire history. And then the person is more, you know, we're more interested in being right. Even if being right is a really horrible outcome. Right. Yeah. The question is, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? Or you want to be happy. Exactly. And that's true. And then, you know, you can also go sort

of a different, you know, if you want to talk about holding a high consciousness for somebody or holding a healing energy for somebody, you know, you can in fact raise somebody up by seeing their best, seeing the best in them always. Like instead of letting the negativity or the darkness of some situation, you might see it, okay? You know, you might see it. Like I might look at you and I might see the, you know, the big wound on your leg

from the crash today. Or I can look at your eyes and I can choose to focus on that. And by focusing on the light in your eyes, I can in fact assist the energy in lifting you higher. So if you want someone to rise up and to be more than who they are, then see them in that light

and speak of them as if they are, as if that's all that you see. Another profound statement to wrap up this episode of the Rich Roll Podcast, episode four. Julie always gets the last word in. She knows how to nail it. So again, I can't do better than that. I think what we're going to do is we're going to end today with a song. Yeah. You want to play and sing a song? Okay. I think I'll... Can you handle that? I think I might be able to.

I'm going to do my best. All right, cool. But before that, just a couple of show notes. So let me tell them a little bit about the song, should I? Why don't I do the show notes first and then we'll segue into the song and then you can play. All right. So again, thank you so much for supporting the show. We're over the moon with the early response and support. We'd love to hear your comments and your feedback,

what you'd like to hear on the show, what's working for you, what's not. You can do that. Please leave the comments at richroll.com underneath this podcast episode in the comments section there so I know where to look so they're not spread out over Facebook or what have you. And I'll take a look at that. what have you. And I'll take a look at that. Again, you want to learn more about what we're doing, go to Jai Lifestyle. And again, you can get that seven recipe download there if you just subscribe with your email. And richroll.com. Julie's website is Srimati Music, S-R-I-M-A-T-I music.com. That's where she has all her music stuff. And where can we find you on Twitter? At Jai Seed, J-A-I-S-E-E-D. Okay, she's got mad wisdom, obviously.

She needs more followers. I'm way under him. Let's expand her podium, people, all right? On Twitter, I'm at Rich Roll on Twitter. And we're both on Facebook. You can find it. But my personal page is filled up. I can't do that anymore.

So there's a fan page there. If you want to follow me on Facebook, you can do that. And I'm loving Instagram right now. I'm super into the photos. And I've been loving taking pictures around Kauai. So if you're into that kind of thing, you can follow me on Instagram. It's the same name, atrichroll. All right, so show notes,

not show notes, music notes. You wanna tell us a little bit about what you're gonna do here? So the song that I'm gonna sing on this podcast is a song called In the Sun. It's been a song that's been multidimensional in the ways and the meaning and the connections to our life. It's a song that I was writing when Rich was training for the second Ultraman race.

very very uh torn about um not making money and about uh a lot of hardship that we went through as a result of this decision that we embarked on and uh it started writing in the house uh before i was leaving to come to kawaii actually to come to secret beach i was gifted uh a trip along with my two youngest daughters by uh dear friend Deborah Garland, who is a healer. And she just called me one day and said, I want to take you to Secret Beach because I feel like you need to go there. And at the time, I was so incredibly grateful and so longing to be here. So I actually came on that trip and In the Sun wrote during that time and I wrote it for Rich and so I'm gonna give it a shot here tonight. So I hope you enjoy it. All right, here we go.

It's been a long, hard road down the line I've lost the truest part of who I am Who I am How much can one man take Nothing seems to stick I've got to find my way to be the man for you. You in the sun, in the morning You are more than you know Be still, my love

I believe in you Your heart will find a way To bring you home Have faith, my love I know it's hard But the truth of who you are Cannot be torn from you You in the sun

In the morning You are more than you know You You in the sun In the morning You are more than you know, than you know. Sometimes you gotta lay it down to get inside. inside Even when it's coming down

the way Still knows the way Fly Daddy fly Fly, daddy, fly, daddy, fly. You in the sun In the morning, you are more than you know. You in the sun. In the morning You are more

So much more Than you know know Ladies and gentlemen, the amazing Julie Pyatt and Tyler Pyatt. Thanks so much, you guys. That was rockin'. That was awesome. Alright, cool. We're outta here. That's the end of episode four. Peace.

Plants. We'll make time. Thank you.