The Rich Roll Podcast - Mastering The Mind: A Mental Health Deep Dive

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

For too long, talking about mental health has been a social taboo. Shame prevents confronting our struggles. The pressure of our daily lives exacerbates the problem. Compound that with society’s lack of mental health education and you create an epidemic of mental health disorders ranging from chronic stress and anxiety to loneliness and depression. PTSD. And of course, suicide. The solution to these problems is complicated. But it always begins with talking about them. Today we do just that. Introducing a masterclass on all things mental health, my second in a new ongoing series of compilation-based deep dives. The conversations excerpted for this episode feature some of the best, most inspiring exchanges I’ve had on the topic of mental health, with practical takeaways and bite-size chunks of advice that you can apply in your life today. The full episodes for guests featured in this episode can be enjoyed here: RRP 464: Lori Gottlieb: Stories From A Therapist In Therapy RRP 416: Johann Hari: On Lost Connections RRP 579: Alexi Pappas Is Bravey RRP 468: Quelling Stress With Rangan Chatterjee, MD RRP 565: Caroline Burckle On The Power Of Vulnerability RRP 584: Steven Pressfield On The War of Art RRP 330: Drs. Dean & Ayesha Sherzai RRP 393: Guru Singh On Disrupting Depression RRP 424: Sarah Lee On The War Inside RRP 557: Hakim Tafari On Reinvention FULL BLOG & SHOW NOTES: bit.ly/richroll613 YouTube: bit.ly/mentalhealth613 Note: If you missed our first deep dive, a masterclass on all things microbiome, click here. Final Note: This conversation traverses difficult emotional terrain. If you are struggling, please raise your hand and reach out for help. For a catalog of resources, you can visit the National Alliance on Mental Illness and if you are experiencing suicidal ideation, know you’re not alone. I encourage you to call the Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1(800) 273 – TALK. I sincerely hope you find this experiment helpful, instructive, and inspiring. Peace + Plants, Rich Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Rich Roll Podcast. Struggle to motivate myself sometimes. That maybe I have to go because I don't know what else there is. How the fuck did I end up in this situation? Depression. I can't concentrate at work. And grief. Screaming at the top of my lungs. And sadness. Screw you, I don't want any help, I'm going to kill myself. After eight plus years and over 600 conversations,

I've compiled a fairly massive library of practical information and timeless wisdom that due to the nature of the internet, often gets lost in the seemingly endless feed of new content released every single day. And so I felt compelled to experiment with a new episode format, one that features a compilation of some of the best guests I've had on the show in the past and centers around a single theme or subject matter. This is the second deep dive, second masterclass episode we've done. Part one about the microbiome was released back in January. And if you missed it, you can find a link to that in

the show notes. But today we're continuing the experiment with an extremely important subject, mental health. All of the guests featured in this episode are either experts in one of the various mental health fields or are individuals who have gleaned wisdom about mental health through struggle. These are truly some of the best, most inspiring conversations I've had on this topic. And you can find the full episodes for each guest in the show notes. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety.

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

eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. 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

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. For too long, talking about mental health has been a social taboo. Many people have historically been too ashamed to admit they need help and seek it out, or our society's lack of mental health awareness and education has led to an epidemic of chronic stress

and severe loneliness, as well as a rise in things like suicide, anxiety, depression, and Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. And it is vital that we talk about it. So to better understand mental health, we begin today's show by talking about therapy with Lori Gottlieb.

Lori is a Los Angeles based psychotherapist, a journalist, and author of the book, "'Maybe You Should Talk to Someone." Our conversation was about what happens when a therapist experiences her own personal crisis and seeks help. But it's also a broader conversation about mental wellbeing in general, which makes it the perfect place to start.

Do you think everybody should be in therapy? Since the book came out, everybody asked me that. Do they? They do. And I think it's interesting. I'm not, you know, I think everybody can benefit from therapy. I don't think everybody needs to be in therapy, but I do think this, I think that so many times people come to therapy later than they should,

meaning that, you know, we, we think about our physical wellbeing different from our emotional wellbeing. So if somebody feels like something is wrong with their body, like you're having chest pain, you'll probably go to the cardiologist before you have a massive heart attack. But if somebody feels like, Oh, something doesn't feel right emotionally, we tend to ignore it or minimize it. You know, well, I have a roof over my head and food on the table, so I don't really need help. And what happens is they think that they can just make the feelings go away or not pay attention to them. But when you don't pay attention to feelings, they become stronger. And they come out, you know, in a behavior, in an irritability,

or in a short-temperedness, or in a self-defeating, self-sabotaging way of being in the world, whatever it is, or an inability to sleep, whatever. And so people then don't come to therapy until they're having some kind of crisis. And it's like they're having an emotional heart attack. I mean, there's no downside. and it's like they're having an emotional heart attack. I mean, there's no downside. Well, time, money, the biggest downside I think for people, even though there are logistical problems that are very real,

is that a lot of people kind of unconsciously know that if they go to therapy, they might need to make changes. Right, yeah. You know, it's like, if I go to therapy- Who wants that? Like I might need to do something different in my life. I might need to be uncomfortable and in my life. I might need to be uncomfortable and I don't want to be uncomfortable. So I'd rather just keep things the way they are, status quo. In the book, I say insight is the booby prize of therapy because you can have all

the insight in the world. Like, oh, now I understand why I keep picking those guys. But if you don't make changes out in the world, i.e. pick other guys, the insight is useless. So many times people in couples therapy will say like, oh, now I understand why I get really triggered by that when you do that and why I react that way. But then they don't change anything. Well, you're wasting your time if you're not going to change anything. So I think in therapy, you have to be both vulnerable and accountable. So you have to be vulnerable, but you also have to be accountable for what are you going to do with the work that we're doing? How are you going to make some tangible changes in your behavior when you leave here?

The change part is so hard. Right. And people don't realize that. They think, oh, it's positive change. So it should be easy because people want something better to happen. But with every change comes loss. Yeah. The revelation feels like progress, but it's actually not doing anything.

I mean, I've been sober a long time. And the adage in 12 Step is self-knowledge will avail you nothing. Right. And when people say to me, like, well, why do you think you were an alcoholic? Like, what happened when you're... And I've learned, like, it's interesting to explore that, but I could spend all of my time trying to deconstruct that. And it actually doesn't help.

You know, it doesn't inform how I'm going to make decisions going forward. I have this toolbox now, and I apply these tools to how I make decisions and how I run things by other people that have allowed me to maintain my sobriety and become a more productive member of society. So for me, it's about like the actionable tools. And I think it is like, it's so difficult for people to change. And in my own personal experience, like I didn't change until I was in, the pain of continuing on the path that I was on

exceeded the fear of, you know, the unknown, should I change? Right. of, you know, the unknown, should I change? Right. So, you know, what is that like? Like, how do you get people short of having to have some, you know, cataclysm in their life to make those adjustments and actually put your information and your insight into forward motion? There was something that my therapist said to me that I write about in the book where he said, you know, where I was like, just feeling trapped by all of these sort of external circumstances. And I wasn't willing to make changes. I wasn't willing to look at what

I could do differently. And he said, you remind me of this cartoon. And it's of this prisoner shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out. But on the right and the left, the bars are open. shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out. But on the right and the left, the bars are open. And it was like, you know, at first I thought, oh, that's really cheesy. But then I thought, wait a minute, he's right. Because so many of us would rather be the prisoner shaking the bar saying, I can't do anything about this. We don't want to look that it's open on the right or the left. Because then if we walk out and we go into the sunlight and there are no bars and we're free, with freedom comes responsibility. And now we have to take responsibility for our lives. We can't say,

oh, the problem is, you know, that I'm trapped here. Now it's like anything that happens is I'm responsible for that. And so change is hard for that reason. You know, it's, it's easier to feel trapped in the, whatever childhood drama, you know, that childhood drama that you're reenacting than to actually do something different where you might have to be responsible for your choices. Responsibility is key. It can be a hard pill to swallow for the first time, but it's ultimately the only way forward

if you wanna make positive change in your life. But what do we do when we just can't find the strength within ourselves to work past our fear, take responsibility for our failures and seek that help? I mean, mental health disorders can literally impede our decision-making processes just by nature of what they are. They deal with the mind.

How do you solve a problem of the mind when that same mind created the problem in the first place? Well, this next clip, a section from my conversation with author and journalist, Johan Hari, addresses that very question. Johan has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and many other outlets.

He is also the author of two quite profound books, "'Chasing the Scream' and his more recent book, "'Lost Connections' which is a compelling deep dive "'into the nature of depression and its underlying causes. "'My original conversation with Johan "'was a super interesting exploration into the causes, the reasons, the cultural drivers behind addiction and depression

and mental health in general, what contributes to their malignancy, what compels so many in this unhealthy direction and why they are so difficult to overcome. I'm excited to share this clip with you because it moves the way we think about our mental health journey away from being self-focused and instead places it within the context of community. As Johan shares the stories of a woman in pain, a boy with ADHD, a man in custody, and the neighbors who saved their lives.

In the summer of 2011, on a big anonymous housing project in Berlin, a woman called Nuria Cengiz climbed out of her wheelchair and she put a sign in her window. She lived in a ground floor apartment. And the sign said said something like I got a notice saying I'm going to be evicted from my apartment next Friday so next Thursday night I'm going to kill myself. No one knew this woman. People start to knock on her door and they're like do you need any help? She said screw you I don't want any help I'm going to kill myself. And outside the apartment some of the people who lived there didn't know each other started chatting and one of them had this idea. There's a big thoroughfare that goes into the centre of And outside the apartment, some of the people who lived there didn't know each other, started chatting.

And one of them had this idea. There's a big thoroughfare that goes into the centre of Berlin that runs through this project. It's called Kotti. But I had the idea, if we just block the street for a day, on a Saturday, there'll probably be a fuss, the media will probably come, they'll probably let Nuria stay in her apartment, maybe there'll be some pressure for us to, you know um our rents to be kept down too in this disaster to stop so decided to do it they went and built a barricade in the middle of the road

and nuria was like well i'm going to kill myself anyway i may as well let them wheel me out there they wheel her out there and the media did come and they interviewed nuria and the other residents a bit of fuss and it gets to the end of the day and the other residents. A bit of a fuss. And it gets to the end of the day and the police say, okay, you've had your fun, take it down. But the people who lived in Kotti said, well, hang on a minute. You haven't told Nuria she gets to stay. And actually we want to rent freeze for our entire block, this whole housing project. So when you give us that, we'll take it down. But of course they knew the minute they left the barricade, the police would just tear it down. So people start to the minute they left the barricade the police would just tear it down so people start to sign up to man the barricade right don't know each other um

tanya in her tiny little mini skirt was paired with nuria in her full hijab right and uh these kind of pairings were happening all over koti and first i think they had i think they had the thursday night shift tanya and nuria are, we've got nothing to talk about, right? What are we going to talk about? It couldn't be more unlikely. So they sit there through the night, barely speaking, first few times. As the night just went on, they started to talk. They realized they had something incredibly powerful in common.

Nuria told Tanya something she'd never told anyone. So she had come to Berlin when she was 16 from a village in Turkey with her two young children. And she was sent to raise enough money to send back for her husband to come and join her. After she'd been in Berlin for a year, she got word from home that her husband had died. And she told Tanya that she'd always told people that he died of a heart attack. Actually, he died of tuberculosis, which was seen as like a disease of poverty. They realized they had both been kind of children

with children themselves in this place where they'd been very frightened. They realized they had something really powerful in common. These kind of pairings were happening all over Cottey. There was a young lad called Mehmet who kept being, they kept nearly throwing him out of school. They said he had ADHD. He was paired with this grumpy old white guy

who said he didn't believe in direct action because he loved Stalin, but in this case he'd make an exception. They did a shift together. The old white guy started helping Mehmet with his homework. Mehmet started doing a lot better. As one of the Muslim women there said to me, we all realised we had to take these small steps to understand each other. After the protest had been going on for about a year,

one day a man arrived at koti he was in his early 50s he was called he's called tung kai and it's um clear when you meet tung kai he's got some kind of cognitive difficulties he'd been living homeless but he also has an amazing energy about him everyone immediately liked him and after he was there for two or three days that by this time they'd actually turned their barricade into a permanent structure in the street and they saw the roof and everything and they said you know you should start living here we don't want you to be homeless he started living there he became a much-loved part of the koti protest nine months later one day the police came to inspect they become an inspector every now and then and tung kai doesn't like it when

people argue he thought the police were arguing so he went to try to hug one of the officers they thought he was attacking them so they arrested him. That was when it was discovered that Tung Kai had been shut away in a psychiatric hospital often in a padded cell for 20 years. He'd escaped one day, lived on the streets for a few months and then he found his way to Kotti.

So the police took him back to the psychiatric hospital and he's put back in his cell. At which point the entire Kotti housing project turned into a kind of free Tonkai movement, right? They descend on this psychiatric hospital. But I remember Uli Kaltenborn, one of the protesters, saying to them, you know, you don't love him. He doesn't belong with you.

We love him. He belongs with us. I remember thinking, you know, how many of us, if someone carted us away, would have hundreds of people descending saying no we love this person that the bosnian writer alexander hayman said home is where people notice when you're not there right lots of people are homeless in that sense um and i remember thinking so clearly in koti think about how distressed these people were nuria was about to kill herself. Mehmet kept being nearly thrown out of school. They said he had ADHD. Tunkai was shut away in a padded cell. Loads of them were depressed and anxious. These people did not need to be drugged, most of them. They needed to be together. They needed to have a sense of meaning and purpose.

They needed a home. Those two needed to be together. I love that. Once again, you can find the links to these full conversations in the description below if you're watching on YouTube or in the show notes in the episode page at richroll.com. Next up in this mental health deep dive is Alexi Pappas. I adore this woman.

She is truly extraordinary. Not only is Alexi an Olympic athlete, she's also a poet, a writer, a filmmaker, and an author. Her book is called Bravey, and it is a beautiful, lovely read. I highly suggest everybody check it out. I think most of us consider mental health to be chiefly an emotional issue or a chemical issue. We know mental disorders have

to do with something in our brains, but we think of them as thoughts and feelings gone awry as opposed to something physically broken, a malady more akin to a scratch or a sprained ankle. But in this next clip, Alexi shares her experience of focusing on the physical side of mental health and the way that subtle shift in perspective changed her life and put her on the path towards healing. So I was in total denial that I was sick because I didn't understand that your brain can get injured just like your knee. I just, I didn't understand that. And so I was of the mindset, as I had always been in my life, that I needed to keep pressing forward and fix all on my own, whatever it was that I was feeling, to the point where I wasn't sleeping, but I tried to force myself to sleep. And, you know, it's called falling asleep for a reason you have to let it, right. Let it happen.

And being a good type A athlete, you're trying to will everything into existence. And then I started to have these even darker thoughts. And that's when I felt like I understood my mom in a way that I never wanted to understand her. Like I it's, you have these thoughts that like you want to die and I don't think you really want to want to die, but the thoughts say otherwise. And that's when you're sick. Um, and it was terrifying because I always, I've always

been afraid my whole life for the moment that um that that might happen to me and and and then when it did but before I understood that there was a way to get better I thought that that was just my fate that like that was it now happened to me and because the narrative I was told about her was she just had to go like she just she was so sick that she had to go. And I was like, well, I guess I'm so sick that maybe I have to go. Cause what, I don't know what else there is. Wow. That's so embarrassing, honestly, to share because I don't feel that way anymore, but I didn't understand. And I think it's sad that even someone who was susceptible to these things, you know, my family history was public, right? There was no prehab, if you will,

if you want to call, like, if we want to use this body comparison of the brain is a body part, I had no prehab. I had no preparation to deal with this. And it wasn't until my dad, because of his experience with my mom, made me get help that I met a doctor, Dr. Arpaia, who told me very simply that I was sick and that my brain had a scratch on it and that it could get injured like any other body part, but it could also heal like any other body part. And suddenly everything, like it could also heal like any other body part. And suddenly everything, like it literally turned around in a day. Not, I wasn't happy, but I believed that I could be on a path to healing and that I could commit to it just like I would an Olympic dream. We are in a place

where we can accept, I think as a, as a world that elite athletes and high achievers can have these mental injuries, these mental illnesses. But I think the most important thing now is like, what do we do about them? And that was something that I found. I find that sometimes, you know, we point fingers at the like, the pinnacle institutions that we're chasing, but actually I truly think that this kind of education or shift has to happen much younger and on a more universal level, not just at those pinnacles. So what would that look like if you were in charge

and could put those things in place? Well, let's look at body, the way we've approached the body things in place? Well, let's look at body, the way we've approached the body and like how that's progressed over the last, let's say 10 years, like 10 years ago, I don't think my dad or my friend's little sister would have seen a PT for their body without having an injury,

meaning like regularly take care of their body and so just looking at that world we've come a long way to accepting that our body is something not only elite athletes should take care of but everybody should take care of and that we should take care of it before it's a problem ideally if you are able to have that kind of support and it's not, there's just like systems and you can always, you can get that kind of help if you can and need it. Right. And I think with mental health, the comparing it to healing and injury is so simple to me and makes so much sense. So what it would look like to me is sense. So what it would look like to me is accepting, honestly, that our brain is a body part and it can get injured. And when it gets injured, just like when we break our leg or feel something strange in our leg, we have no shame about sharing that something is off and we get

help and we know where to get help. And it's either built into the system that we're in, like a team might have a physio, they might have a psychologist too. Or someone can refer you to their favorite physio or their favorite psychologist. Like there's just more accessibility just like there is in like the PT world. And then we get that help and we are as kind to ourselves

as we are hard on ourselves knowing that it's not gonna resolve overnight. Like nobody is demanding that somebody's broken leg heal tomorrow. And so why are we demanding that somebody's depression heal tomorrow? Because it's uncomfortable for us to talk about, right? We wanna pretend that it doesn't exist

or there's shame or- Right, because it's invisible. But if we like think about it more like an injury, like no one can see your torn hamstring either, but they know that it's there if you say it and they believe it's there. So if we just see it as more of a physical injury, which it is, then I think it becomes a little less

subjective and a little more objective. And in the meantime, just being told like, you're gonna feel this way allows you to be in acceptance rather than beating yourself up because you woke up again and didn't feel good. You're less, you don't have the secondary emotion of being offended by the sadness as much. You almost are like, you wake up with the sadness.

Like it's, you know, I don't have a child, but I think about like if a baby's crying and you're at the grocery store, the baby's crying, but you still gotta get the milk, you know? So I think about it in that way sometimes where you almost have a sense of humor about it, or at least some levity to understand that it's there. It will be there for a while.

And you're in the process of making it go away. Actions change first, then thoughts, then feelings and in that order. And that was another life-saving rule basically because what I've observed from my mom was that her caretakers were trying to force the feelings and she was trying to force the feelings to change. And we can't, they follow our thoughts,

which follow our actions. Right. Actions, then thoughts, then feelings. Pretty practical advice from somebody who has learned that lesson firsthand. But what kind of action should we take? Should we sign up for therapy? What about physical therapy?

Should we reach out to our neighbors? And how do we know if those actions are the right ones? Well, those questions lead directly to the heart of this next conversation with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. For those unfamiliar, Dr. Chatterjee is a pioneer in the field of progressive functional medicine, widely regarded as one of the most influential doctors

in the UK, Rangan is double board certified in internal medicine and family medicine and holds an honors degree in immunology. He also hosts the popular Feel Better Live More podcast, which I've appeared on twice and has been widely featured on a wide array of prominent media outlets like the New York Times, the BBC, Forbes, The Guardian, Financial Times, and many others.

In his practice, Dr. Chatterjee has found himself increasingly treating patients on the daily who suffer from the downstream implications of living with chronic stress and other mental health disorders. This has given him the opportunity to treat his patients in unconventional ways, including a surprising approach you'll hear more about right now. One of the prescriptions I give people, and I don't particularly like the term prescription,

but one of the recommendations I make is to have a daily dose of pleasure. You can live just for five minutes. Now, again, just to bring this to life, I had a patient, 52-year-old chap, or maybe 53, you know, early 50s chap, CFO of a local plastics company, right? Again, comes in to see me. He's worried, doctor, do I have depression? What's going on? I struggle to motivate myself sometimes. I can't concentrate at work. I feel quite indifferent about my relationships. You know, what is going on? So as always, I try and unpack different aspects of their life. So do you like your job? Yeah, not really. You know, it's so, so I have to do it. I've got a family I need to provide for them. I said, okay you like your job? Yeah, not really. You know, it's so-so. I have to do it. I've got a family. I need to provide for them. I said, okay, fine. How's your relationship with your wife? You know what? So-so. You know, I don't really see her that much. It's fine.

Do you have any hobbies? Dog, I don't have time for hobbies. I'm busy. I get back late. I said, okay, what about weekends? Weekends, I've got to do the household chores. I've got to take the kids to their classes. I don't have time for hobbies. So the prescription I gave him, the recommendation I made to him at the end of doing this, and again, so that I don't get, not that it matters if I get criticized, but just so people understand, I did do the safety nesting that is required of me. I didn't feel he was an active suicide risk. I didn't do all these sort of various things that I have to do as a doctor. I did do the safety nesting that is required of me. I didn't feel he was an active suicide risk. I didn't do all these sort of various things that I have to do as a doctor. I did check.

But ultimately what I felt was he didn't have any passion in his life, right? And I said, look, I know you don't do any hobbies now. Did you ever have a hobby? Well, yeah, I guess, you know, when I was a kid, when I was a teenager, I loved playing with train sets. I said, okay, great. Do you have a train set at home? I've got one at home. It's in my attic.

I'm not seeing it for years. I said, okay, look, what I would love you to do when you go home tonight is to get your train set out. And you've got a smirk on your face, right? Yeah, I get it. Hey, I have no judgment on people's hobbies. I had a train set when I was a kid. Well, I thought you were smoking on the fact that he came in to see me with a problem he was concerned about and my prescription was to get out his train set. Oh no, I'm with you on that. Okay, you're with me on that. Okay, so he, again, he agrees to go and do this.

So he goes away. I don't see him then. It is not uncommon in general practice in the UK for you not to be able to follow up every single patient. You just simply cannot do that. So I got on with my job. I was, you know, doing my thing. Three months later, I finished my morning clinic. And then we have something called home visits in the UK where, you know, normally after your morning clinic, you will then have a list from reception of people who are maybe elderly, infirm, who can't

get out to the practice and you go and visit them at home to look after them. So I was, I went to the car park to go do my home visits and I bumped into his wife and I said, hey, hey, look, you know, how's your husband getting on? He said, not just yet. I feel like I've got the guy I married back again. He comes home from work. He's straight onto his train set He's on ebay all the time trying to buy collector's items and he's And he's subscribed to this monthly collector's magazine now, right? So she's happy wearing his conductor hat in the house, but she's happy but I still hadn't seen him, right? again roughly three months later I'm, just going through my clinic as usual and I see his name pop up

And he has had some blood tests at I see his name pop up and he has had some blood tests, had a well-manned check, and he's coming in to see me to go through them. Welcoming in. And before we go into the blood results, I say, hey, look, how are you getting on? He says, doc, I feel like a different person. Life is great. I said, my mood's better. I've got energy. I said, okay, cool. You know, how's your job? Job, I love it. Really getting a lot out of my job now. How's your relationship with your wife? Really, really good. I feel really close to her. So just like that case, I don't know how long we've been chatting for, maybe an hour ago, just like that story about the kids who was feeling low and who had a friendship deficiency,

did this guy have a mental health problem? Sure, I think he had symptoms that would be consistent. I could have made, I could have labeled him and given him a diagnosis, right? Or did this chap really have a deficiency of passion in his life? And the remarkable thing for me is when that passion deficiency gets corrected,

not only does he feel better in himself, but everything else in his life starts to come back online. The job that he couldn't stand before, now he enjoys. The relationship that was a bit tired and he felt a bit indifferent about, now he's feeling closer to his wife. What generally happens is that individual that came into your office would go into,

would either not seek help or in the event that that person has the wherewithal to seek help, would go to a practitioner. And at least in the United States, the system is set up wherein that doctor would only have 15 minutes with that person. And it's a setup rigged to diagnose and prescribe. And that person would leave

with some kind of antidepressant medication most likely, and would then consider themselves depressed or clinically having some kind of mental malady without that tactile kind of real world practical solution that you would implement because you had the opportunity to provide that person with a little bit more bandwidth. I'm so passionate about this, Rich, because it's not as hard as we think it is. Take small, small steps. Find one thing you heard us talk about today

that resonates with you, that you think you want to do. Don't pick something that you don't want to do. Pick something you do want to do. Figure out how you can introduce a very small change in that area consistently for the next few days and then reassess. And I bet you more often than not, you're going to feel good about yourself. Your identity is going to change because suddenly what happens then, oh, I'm the kind of person who can make behavior change, right? Oh, I've done that for the last five days. That is the approach I have seen over and over again work for people. Please, if you are struggling, take something from that. Put that into your practice, not next Monday, right?

Maybe put it into practice tomorrow. I love that advice. Put it into practice tomorrow. How about today? Start small. Yes, start today. Does taking action with your mental health always have to be so literal?

Is it possible that there are circumstances where the best action you can take is to simply rest? That's the perspective of my next guest, Caroline Burkle. Caroline is a 2012 Olympian. She's a 23-time All-American swimmer, an NCAA champion, and an NCAA record holder. One of my very favorite people. I absolutely adore her.

And today she speaks about accepting our emotions, vulnerability, mentorship, honest communication, and the potency latent in rest. She has an amazing and powerful perspective and I can't wait for you to hear it. Your feelings are valid. They're not right or wrong. They're not measured, but learning how to use them constructively, whether it's through sharing or understanding it, communicating and being able to use those and move forward with whatever that is, is the key. So I think we get

wrapped up in not saying anything because we're afraid to upset somebody. But if there's somebody that you can share how you feel with, and that feels like a safe space for you, feels safe to validate your feelings, say, it's okay, you feel that way. Let's get a little more information about that. What is it that's really showing up there? And really understanding the human's heart first,

they're gonna be able to perform better. They're going to be able to take that and use whatever that is and turn it into something constructive. Because I think we get stuck in our feelings and we get stuck just thinking they don't matter, brushing them away, pushing them away. Really, there's so much power in that. There's so much information to be had in that that's beautiful, regardless of if they're positive or negative. You can take that, remold it, and turn it into an amazing performance, grade on a test, relationship with somebody,

with your family members, extracurricular, whatever it is that that person's wanting to do. So that's something I like to say because I think we're shameful of our feelings. We're shameful of what that means. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just information. And I wish I would have known that.

I wish I would have been okay knowing that however I felt was okay. And that it wasn't, there was nothing wrong with it. It was just information. Yeah, that's beautiful. I think it's super important. I feel like at least in the context of sport, there has been a lot of progress

and movement in the right direction in terms of better understanding that aspect of it. I mean, I'm two generations older than you, but when I see the way that young athletes are being coached and mentored now compared to what it was like when I was a kid, I mean, that was a long time ago. But of course, there's much more to be gleaned and learned.

Totally, mental health is at the forefront right now. People are caring about how people feel. And this is an important thing to note is that you can be struggling and also be okay with your performances. You can admit that you're having a hard time and also you'll still be okay. You can still be and do great things. I think there's a misunderstanding there that if I, again, back to that, if I share that I'm depressed or having a hard time

or going through something, then that means I'm not gonna be well. It's gonna impinge on your performance, right? I mean, that's the whole message of the weight of gold, right? It's like kind of a call to action to embrace that aspect of what it means to be vulnerable and to have the courage to raise your hand and ask for help. Absolutely.

The shrouding of it, the hiding of it, because you're supposed to be this bulletproof individual is not in service to anybody and certainly not yourself. And it's not complaining, it's owning, it's self ownership. I think there's a difference between complaining. I have some athletes say, well, I don't wanna complain. If we can shift it to its self-ownership, then we can take that and use it.

Just because you're having a hard time, have asked for help, et cetera, doesn't mean you're all of a sudden gonna perform poorly. It doesn't mean that you're not focusing on your swimming or your baseball or whatever. It means that you're doing something for your mental health, which will then help that. So it's a perspective shift.

It does require some level of mind-body integration though, because you have to know when you are copping out, like, am I just wimping out here? Or am I really in jeopardy just wimping out here or am I really in jeopardy where I need some outside help? Like there is a difference. And if you don't have that kind of intuition, then, you know, you might be just, you know, indulging in your laziness, you know, instead of really being in peril. But that's where great coaches and mentors come in. Because if somebody is vulnerable enough

to share whatever it is, then they can catch that and be able to change that and turn that into something. Otherwise, they will just sit in their shit, so to speak, and let it go to shit and, well, whatever, I'm just copping out. So if they can articulate that, communicate that information to shit and whatever, I'm just copping out. So if they can articulate that, communicate that information to whomever,

coach, mentor, and this is where coaches and mentors can hear that taking that information and being able to help somebody, being able to identify it without shame and turn it into something better, call them out on what it is in a nice way, in a beautiful way, like, hey, you're tough. Let's make something out of this. Like, we're not going to let this happen to you here.

That's where things can shift for the positive. This is applicable outside of sport in the workplace, like a boss-employee relationship or how management is structured so that the work staff feels like they can raise certain issues and the manager is creating an environment that's conducive to that, I think, ultimately leads to a much more effective, healthy place to work or, environment to excel as an athlete. Absolutely.

And that is one of the most important things that I think any organization can hold, coaches, teams, USA Swimming, is that if the standard is held there and if people are all believing in whatever leadership there is and the leaders are able to develop these people, athletes, employees, whatever it is, into a space of vulnerability, openness,

and action on what it is that we're doing, not just talking about it and sitting around. It's like actually acting on it. Whether that action is, let's sit with this for a minute, or that action is, let's take action and do something right now. Both of those things are beautiful. That's how things develop.

And yeah, those are my greatest learnings from Mike DeBoer. He was just very much either like, okay, now that we have that information, let's either go this way and act on it immediately or I'm gonna let you sit with that for a second. I'm right here next to you, but I'm gonna let you sit with that for a second. And like knowing that I was like held in that space,

I think reflecting back, that makes all the difference because either way is an action. You're empowering them either way. They gotta figure it out on their own either way, but it's the person that's gonna hold steady and sturdy there that's holding the leadership standard. Yeah. This next clip is from one of the most influential people

in my life, perhaps more than any other single person beyond my wife and my kids. He has had, without knowing it, an unbelievably profound impact on my journey, on my career and how I think about and pursue self-expression. His name is Steven Pressfield. He's a novelist, he's a screenwriter

and the guy behind some of the most important non-fiction books on creativity that I've ever read, including of course, The War of Art, which you've likely heard me talk about quite frequently on the podcast because it impacted me so deeply. But chief among his many messages on creativity is a concept he calls resistance. Negative self-talk is such a prevalent part

of our mental lives and can often lead to shame spirals of anxiety, depression, self-sabotage, and ultimately self-harm or suicidal ideation. And Stephen shares his experience of how to suit up and win this war against the negative force of resistance. I hold this man and his work in the absolute highest regard. I can't thank him enough for the gift of his many contributions. His books changed my life and I can't thank him enough for the gift of his many contributions.

His books changed my life, and I can't wait to share his wisdom with all of you right now. Resistance is this negative force of self-sabotage that will work against us anytime we try to move from a lower level to a higher level, ethically, morally, creatively. If you have an idea for a book, if you have an idea for a podcast, if you have an idea for this studio or something that you want to do, and I want to ask you about

this, Rich, a voice will come into your head immediately that will say, who are you to put this thing together? This has been done a million times and it's been done better than you ever could do or ever would do. You're too old, you're too young, you're too fat, you're too skinny, you don't have enough education, you have too much education, et cetera, et cetera. And that negative force is universal. I can tell you from the thousands of emails I've got, and not only is it universal, but it's the same voice in all of our heads. It may be tailored a little bit to you or to me,

but it's the same voice. And I was never aware of that. And once I could sort of give a name to it, then I could say, okay, now I have something I can deal with. How can I overcome this? Can I develop habits that will help me overcome it? Can I organize my day in such a way? Can I change my mindset in such a way?

And so anyway, that's kind of my definition of resistance. Well, the first step seems to be disassociating your identity from the resistance itself, because I think what we all kind of do is self-identify with that. That is part of who we are. That's a great way of putting it, Richard. I've never heard that before.

That's exactly it. Well, you have talked about this idea that exists outside of yourself, right? If you're just thinking, well, I can't do it, this is me telling myself this, as opposed to this external force that we can define as this pernicious entity working at odds with our effort

to climb to that elevated place. What you just said, Rich, is exactly right. Of disassociating this concept of resistance, this fact of resistance from your own identity. Like when we hear this voice in our head that says you're not good enough, it's all been done, et cetera, et cetera. What makes that so powerful against us

is we think it's our own thoughts. We think, oh, that's me assessing the situation objectively, but it's not. It's this other siren voice, this force that's just out there, that's a fact of nature. And once we can say, oh, that's not me, that kind of is the key to the whole thing. And then again, there is this force of resistance

that when we try to ask that question of ourselves, you know, who am I? What do I love? What is my gift? This force of resistance will try to stop us from examining it. It'll try to distract us. It'll try to push us off into shadow careers

or shadow activities or something that's not in that way. That's the war, going and fighting that. And you're fighting it against your own self, against your own self-sabotage that's trying to stop you. So that is, to me, that's kind of the, coming into who you were already. You already were that, but you just didn't know it.

And through these actions, you realize and you go, wow, I had no idea I was gonna have a podcast. I had no idea I was gonna be talking to 587 people and writing, finding ultra and finding ultra part two. I had no, or whatever else is out there. Right, but it's in the doing, right? The waging of the war is action-based, right? Whereas I think a lot of people are,

maybe they're pursuing some self inquiry, but it's an intellectual exercise and they're sort of awaiting the epiphany. Exactly, and I think for me, I can tell you that I spent many years in that world inside my head, wasting my time. It's like therapy. It's like going there, you know,

and, you know, I think I've written like 20 books now, which is kind of amazing to me since my first book came out when I was 55, right? That's so crazy. It's absolutely true that before I wrote any one of those books, I had no clue that I was gonna write that book. You know, not like, It wasn't like I was

sitting, oh, I've got this whole magazine of books, like bullets in a magazine waiting to go. I had no idea at all. But the point of that is that we find out who we are by the works that we produce. But until you actually start to, once you start to act, like I'm sure it's the same in ultra fitness or anything like that, once you actually start, then you start to discover things. Right, the path unfolds in front of you. It does.

Slowly, not, you know, Not easily. Yeah, the idea being that what paralyzes many is they wanna see what that path looks like, or at least be able to forecast pretty far down the line before they take the first step. And it just doesn't work that way. You have to take those steps not knowing

and trust that the brick will get laid right, one step in front of you as you go. Yeah, and it is scary. I mean, it is the unknown that we're going through, going into, and it's scary. There's no doubt about it. Right. We transition now to another kind of self-sabotage.

What happens when we lose complete control over our ability to reason, to register our surroundings, to recognize our loved ones, or even to comprehend the distinction between memory and reality. I'm of course talking about dementia and more specifically Alzheimer's disease. No deep dive into mental health would be complete

without discussing one of the most prevalent and devastating mental health disorders, a disease that currently afflicts over 47 million people worldwide and is predicted to triple by 2050. But it's especially important to talk about Alzheimer's in light of the work of my next guests, Aisha and Dean Scherze.

Aisha and Dean together are a husband and wife neurology team. Together they co-direct the Alzheimer's Prevention Program at Loma Linda University, where they study all things brain health with a very specific focus on lifestyle interventions that can prevent cognitive decline and neurodegeneration. Their work is proving that Alzheimer's is preventable and even reversible in 90% of cases. This clip is absolutely mind blowing. And I hope that it can serve

as life-changing information for you, if you or someone you love is affected by this horrible disease. I mean, we're talking about every other disease in decline, pretty much every other disease or death from every other disease in decline. Yet mortality and death from Alzheimer's in just the last 10 years has grown more than 80%. Part of that is because we're aging society. We're doing better with the, yeah, we have more diabetes.

We have more obesity. We have more of all these other diseases, but we're surviving them with machines, with surgeries, with these catheters, all these things. We're living past what we would have lived before. We can survive diseases that used to kill us. Exactly. But when it comes to what's left behind is our brain. At the end of the day, we're left with our brain. And it's the cumulative problems over 50, 60 years that actually end up in being Alzheimer's at the end, or dementia in general Alzheimer's. And that's where we bring the new kind of conversation.

So when you begin this journey 15 some odd years ago, I would imagine, like you kind of alluded to earlier, your colleagues are like, this is queer suicide. What are you doing? You're going to start looking at, you know, lifestyle medicine for this. And so I think it would make sense to kind of explain or at least talk through some of the myths and the misconceptions about this disease, particularly this notion that it's a purely genetic situation. Like if you have the gene, this is what's going to happen and there's nothing you can do about it.

Right. That has been the misunderstanding for such a long time. And there are a few genes in Alzheimer's disease, maybe less than 5% of the genes that completely determine whether somebody gets Alzheimer's or not. As a matter of fact, if you have those genes, you're definitely going to get it. But even for those, you can push it off for a very long time. For the rest of them, for the 95 plus percent of the genotypes, it's quite clear that what you do in your life, the type of food that you eat, whether you exercise or not, or the level of stress that you have,

determine whether you're going to get the disease in your early 60s or in your late 90s. Right. So the magnitude of how these genes are expressed is contingent upon what you're eating and how you're moving and how you're living your life. Completely. Right? Completely. If you take care of your brain, you've taken care of all the body.

Because now this thing that we're trying to create living mankind it's about the mind mindful living and uh so this affects the totality of your body for brain it's something more than that because you here you have emotions as well you have motivation you have all this so one of the elements of our book is not just saying this is bad and this is good, but where we have failed people is we just throw it at them without giving them the tools of how to apply it to their life. So mindful living is the unique thing about our book, more than even the science. And it's a vicious cycle. If you feel good, more than even the science. And it's a vicious cycle. If you feel good, you know, based on the good neurochemicals being produced appropriately, if you take care of your brain and if you have a

healthy mind, that owning that mindfulness in your life and applying it on a regular basis can help you take better care of yourself. So there you go. You have a healthy brain, you have the tools to take care of your heart and the rest of your body. Right. And everything follows from that. Depression. Recently, papers came, several. I mean, whenever, as a science, we don't say paper came. Paper means nothing. It has to be multiple and validated. Lots of papers say that one of the major causes of depression inflammation yeah so it keeps coming back yet we keep slipping i call it logic slip and a lot of times when you have debates you keep building these logical sequence and you work past the the fallacies and i mean and then it

slips again that's what's happening in nutrition and lifestyle and and you make the case i mean the case for diet has been made over and over again and then all of a sudden slip again. Now we know inflammation and all these things actually even affect the depression, anxiety, everything, all of these diseases. Right, you can't extract one thing from the other, right? And it seems like the advent of functional medicine, lifestyle medicine is

growing and people are starting to embrace this idea that it's not just one treatment protocol, that we have to kind of look at a person in a holistic way and treat them all the way down to how they interact with their family members and at work and what's their relationship with their boss. And all of that stuff is crucial, right? To kind of solving this problem. We have to look at a person in a holistic way, but can we also look at the totality of our emotions, the joys, as well as the sorrows in a holistic way?

Is there anything we can learn from negative emotions and mental health struggles? Is there a way to find healing through reframing our perspective on depression, committing to total honesty about our feelings and exercising vulnerability? Well, Kundalini Yoga Master and dear friend Guru Singh addresses all of those questions in the following clip.

I encourage you to spend time with this next one and really absorb what he has to say. It's a simple perspective shift, but it is by no means easy to do. Please enjoy and take in the wisdom of Guru Singh. The pace, the accelerated pace with which culture, society is advancing, is changing, is evolving, is so outpacing our evolutionary ability to adapt. We're still, evolutionarily built into our GNA, into our genetic code is a life that looks like whatever's going on in the indigenous tribes of Africa. And if you go to those places, you always hear these stories. Oh, I went to India, I went to Peru,

I went wherever it is. And people who spend time with cultures that are relatively immunized from the way that we live, realize how much happier they are, how much more connected they are, how much more communal they are and content. They have all of these things that we're trying so desperately to build into our own lives, but which continue to elude us because the very things that contribute to that which we seek, we've decided are either optional or not important.

Think about these. Depression has a value because when you're depressed, you can go into some pretty deep places some pretty dark places and when you go into those places with the sense of let me explore rather than you know let me feel horrible those deep places can can find character, can find parts of your being that are able to come forward that would never be noticed if you were just giddy and happy all the time. And the same thing with good grief, right? Grieving, sadness, grief. You know, these are also valuable moments. So depression and grief and sadness

are all things that when they come upon us, we should go into fully, but giving ourselves the space. I'm going to take a sick day because I'm feeling really sad. And let me go into this sadness. Let me process this sadness. Let me gain the messaging from this sadness, just as if I was to take a sick day because I've got the flu. These are things that need to be viewed within the individual life. But the fact is, is that diving into that, that depression, diving into that sadness and taking off the mask and admitting it and saying, you know, I'm not looking for anything from you, but I just got to say, you know, what's happening in the world today or what's happening in my world today or what just happened, you know, in my home or whatever, you know, you know,

I'm not feeling good. Or you could even say, if it's chronic, you know what? I haven't felt good for 10 years. And then all of a sudden, let's go. The cocktail party goes silent. But you know, to heck with the cocktail party. You know, let's be honest. This is the thing. I mean, I think it's terrifying for people.

If I admit that I'm not feeling good, you good, what are people going to think of me? And I think that goes right back into this discussion around shame and around vulnerability. We're taught to comport ourself in a certain way, to navigate social circles in a manner that will allow us to maintain that trajectory of upward mobility. And to act in contravention of that is to put at risk everything that you've staked your life upon, which provokes fear. And that sense of shame is the ultimate prophylactic against behaving in a way that actually would contribute to greater health. If we're ashamed about something, the most terrifying thing would be to shed light on it, to expose that in a vulnerable way to another human being. The stakes can be very high for people, but ultimately placing that into a social setting in which it can be discussed in a mature way is the path to healing.

But it requires us to be vulnerable and we're not raised to be vulnerable. But I think that vulnerability, that willingness to be vulnerable is the ultimate courage. And when you can expose that which you're ashamed of from a place of wanting to heal it, asking for help, allowing yourself to be vulnerable requires a tremendous amount of courage. So far in this deep dive, we've covered many facets of mental health, but I would be remiss if we fail to cover PTSD,

a very serious affliction that impacts somewhere between 11 and 20% of all Iraq war veterans and 30% of Vietnam vets. Something like 22 veterans take their own lives every single day, which is just horrifically insane. War, of course, takes its toll, but I think it's incumbent upon all of us to better address the undeniably significant

psychological effects that we ask our brave men and women to endure. But there is a path to healing. Our steward for this exchange is Iraq War combat veteran, Sarah Lee. Sarah is a former army sergeant who served eight years in the military, including a 14-month deployment to Iraq in 2004

for Operation Iraqi Freedom 2. Her story is heartbreaking. Upon returning home from deployment, Sarah basically endured one thing after another until she found herself 100 pounds overweight and descending into this very dark depression that became so bleak that in April, 2017, she very nearly took her own life.

And the absolutely bone chilling part about our conversation is this, the very same day. In fact, at the exact same time that Sarah and I recorded this conversation, which was a fair while ago, just 13 miles away from us, another young military veteran in a fit of depression and despair pulled out a 45 caliber semi-automatic pistol

with a laser sight and opened fire on a crowd of mostly 20 somethings and ultimately killed 12 people before fatally shooting himself. And I think the confluence of these two events really underscores and emphasizes the severe gravity of our mental health epidemic. Sarah thankfully found a way towards healing,

which as you'll hear in a moment, all began with a bicycle. So what was the lowest moment? It was the day right before I bought my bicycle, right before I bought the bicycle. And I just, I knew after the surgery I'd be limited. My neck had gotten bad, my knees. I felt like I'd after the surgery I'd be limited. My neck had gotten bad. My knees, I felt like I'd have to start all over. I had no muscle base anymore for, because that's when I'm not really in pain is when I have the muscle in place. And I just felt like I just didn't even, I'm just not capable of anything anymore.

Yeah. Was it depression? Was there suicidal ideation? What was the mindset? Yes, I definitely was. I guess I can say that I was fantasizing about it. And that evening was probably the closest I'd ever come in my head to an attempt. I hadn't attempted suicide prior. And I just decided that I can't do that to my... I lucked out with a very loving family and I couldn't do that to my parents. So...

But even in that moment, you didn't have friends or family around that had a sense that you were going sideways? No, no one really knew I was going through any of this until I made a Facebook post about it. And basically, I said a lot of the military, it feels like I've kind of lived a whole lifetime and there's really nothing left to do. That's kind of where I'd arrived in my mind. I said that I've had these nagging, gnawing thoughts that I'm really only living life to fulfill some sort of obligation to the people that love me and nothing more. And I felt so guilty about saying that because everybody that cares for me is probably like, you know, I thought she has a great time with me. I could have done or said something differently.

And usually people end up thinking that after it's too late. That's why I decided I need to get this post out there. And the reason I waited is because the bike trip was already in motion. I was like, here's what I'm doing about it. Because I didn't want to just come out and say all the negatives. Gotcha. So you went public with it after you were already kind of well into the solution. I made that post and then I described the plan for the journey. And the support was unbelievable.

It wasn't like I expected it would be, like private messages, you know, you're in my thoughts and if there's anything I can do, you know, stuff like that. People were like, this is amazing. I'm sharing this and maybe other veterans will kind of decide to do something about it or just try to take back some of that purpose for themselves, try to take on a challenge. Well, so when you're in that moment, you were in that darkest moment, what was it that clicked inside of you to do something about it? clicked inside of you to do something about it. Like take me from that moment to the moment of deciding that you're going to get a bike and ride a bike and how this whole ride came together. Yes. I'd been planning the trip with a friend I met through a mutual friend, a Marine, and we talked about, but I hadn't purchased my bicycle yet. And I was still really struggling and on the fence about actually going through with it. And I had an evening where I just tend to stare at the wall

sometimes for a while and think about big stuff or just anything really. And I get kind of lost in some of that. And I think I just convinced myself that I think people would be okay. And that basically it goes back to coming home without my friend. Just, I don't know if I deserve to be here. And I'm not even taking advantage of the life that has been gifted to me because of someone else's sacrifice. And it just really gnaws at me. It still does. But I had kind of a game plan for if I'd gone through with taking my life and everything. And it was a bit elaborate, but it was kind of like the least, one of the, maybe the least shocking kind of ways. I just didn't want to hurt anyone or scar anybody.

Yeah. You know, so that night I was, I was, I was right there. I'll say I was like right there And I ended up just falling asleep. And so the next day I was like, that's it. I can't do one more night like that. I'm not going to get through it. I'm not going to get through it. So I literally just woke up and went and purchased my bicycle the next day. Went right to the bike store. Yes. And you had had had so the plan was the the plan was already in motion to do a ride prior to that you just hadn't taken any action

on it yet right i purchasing the bicycle was like the the decision like that is a decision maker and had you been a cyclist like he had you ridden a bike before? No. Well, not since ninth grade. Like, other than just being a kid around the neighborhood. No. Grade school was the last time I'd ridden a bicycle. So, but it comes right back. It really does. I took the bicycle.

The adage is true. Once you learn how to ride a bike. Like riding a bike. And everyone would say it. And I'd be like, and then I got on it. And I'm like, okay, that's why that exists. It really does come right back. So when you think back on this bike ride, is it the adventure aspect of it?

Is it the challenge aspect of doing something that was very difficult and maybe you thought you couldn't do? Was it the connecting with the veterans and just Americans in general? What aspect of that do you think has been the most impactful on your healing process? Or is it just all of those things together? Well, the easy answer would be all of it. And the truest answer would be all of it. But I really feel that I wasn't okay. And I'm really no good to anyone unless I'm good to go. And this, the reconnecting, like you said, with your body, with nature, and with people, I think it just really takes all three of those things.

That's why I want to do this next step. And I felt like my life was changed forever in a really good way from east to west. I like to relive some of the days randomly throughout my day. And I just, I want to facilitate like smaller versions of what I, like, you know, experience firsthand, this healing. I want to help other veterans get a sense of that or at least introduce them to it. Okay, well, here we are, the final clip. And I cannot think of a better way to close out this deep dive

than with the story of Hakim Tafari. Hakim is quite an extraordinary human. He's an ambassador of running culture and mindfulness. He's a master of many a martial art from Kung Fu to Tai Chi. He's also an herbalist, massage therapist, a vegan, a father, and a practitioner of many a spiritual path from Buddhism to Taoism and essentially everything in between.

He speaks in this final clip about the light at the end of the darkness. And my desire is that if you're listening to this because you're struggling with anxiety or depression or any other mental health malady, that you find comfort, healing, and hope in Hakim's story. You need something. Come to the temple.

At the time, I didn't know what the temple was. She said, come to the temple. I was like, okay. So I drive up there and I've got this big Springfield 45 next to me. And at the time I had just got off the phone with my ex. We had just got into a major argument. I'm literally just like shaking uncontrollably and I'm like, do I just do it right now? I'm looking at the gun.

I'm in front of the temple. I'm looking at the gun. And then I'm like, all right, fuck it. I'm going to go do whatever this fucking thing is. I don't know what I'm going to get into, but I'm going to do it. That could have been my last day on the earth. whatever this fucking thing is. I don't know what I'm gonna get into, but I'm gonna do it. That could have been my last day on the earth. And instead I chose to sit in front of a wall in silence

for an hour and a half. When I was literally crawling on the bottom, like, I don't know if I can make it. That was kind of like the latter. That was like, yes, you can. There's so much beauty in suffering. There's so much beauty in suffering. And I know it sounds so, it's not cliche,

but it's people are like scratching their head. How can you suffer? How can there be beauty in suffering when you go through the suffering that a lot of us have that have been on the show that have become successful is because when you go through that suffering you go through such a darkness, you go through such a bottom feeder kind of exposure that you learn to have gratitude for the smallest thing, the smallest thing. thing. And when I think about the times when I didn't think that I was going to really make it out of that space, there were times, Rich, when I would be in the car park of Whole Foods, like crying, crying my heart out,

screaming at the top of my lungs, looking around like, how the fuck did I end up in this situation? Because mental health and suicide is so big. And I know in this day and age, it's being amplified and people are talking about it. But when you hit a certain level of suffering and you think there is nothing else, you can look back at these times in that darkness and be like, man, if I didn't know the depths and the levels of darkness,

I wouldn't be able to enjoy this moment right now. This concludes today's deep dive into mental health. I hope you not only enjoyed it, but found it helpful. In closing, if you find yourself struggling, please, I implore you, raise your hand and reach out for help. For a catalog of helpline resources, you can visit the National Alliance on Mental Illness website

at nami.org. And if you're experiencing suicidal ideation, I encourage you to call the Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-TALK. I will, of course, include links to these resources and more in the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. And if you'd like to support the podcast,

the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube, and leave a review or a comment. Sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and always appreciated. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books,

the meal planner, and other subjects, subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Dan Drake and Blake Curtis.

Graphic elements, courtesy of Jessica Miranda. Copywriting again by Dan Drake, as well as Georgia Whaley. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace, plants. Namaste. Thank you.