The Rich Roll Podcast - Pause, Breathe, Reflect: How A Brush With Death Changed Michael O’Brien’s Life

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

This week, I’m joined by Michael O’Brien, a former executive, and father of two who experienced a profound transformation after a life-altering cycling accident. Previously consumed by 65-hour work weeks, his perspective shifted when an SUV collided with him head-on. While being airlifted to medical care, he vowed to relinquish his pursuit of happiness, propelling him toward personal growth. Michael shares his resilience journey post-accident, labeling the day of the incident as “My Last Bad Day.” He discusses the pivotal role of perception in confronting life’s adversities, narrating his 11-year journey towards forgiveness for the driver accountable, inspired by the power of forgiveness. Embracing uncertainty, he reflects on physical limitations, debunking the illusion of control. Michael advocates for mindfulness, emphasizing gradual habit formation and lifestyle development. Michael imparts universal lessons on resilience, self-discovery, and growth. Please enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up  Today’s Sponsors: Camelbak: Use my code RICHROLL for 20% OFF drinkware & more 👉CamelBak.com LMNT: Get a FREE sample pack of science-backed electrolytes with any purchase  👉 drinkLMNT.com/RICHROLL AG1: Get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs 👉drinkAG1.com/richroll Faherty: 20% OFF your first order when you use the promo code RR20 👉FahertyBrand.com/RICHROLL  Plunge: Use code RICHROLL for $150 OFF cold plunges + saunas 👉Plunge.com  Squarespace: Use code RichRoll to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain 👉Squarespace.com/RichRoll This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp: Listeners get 10% OFF their first month 👉BetterHelp.com/RICHROLL

I came around the bend on my fourth lap, and a Ford Explorer was coming right at me. What if playing your life safe is actually more dangerous than taking risks? I was like, he sees me, right? And boom, he hits me. Today's guest is Michael O'Brien. Michael ended up surviving, and today he calls it his last bad day. Our world just got tipped upside down. Everything's neutral until you label it. We all get to wake up every day and be very intentional

about how we're showing up in the world. What are you putting out there? You're just a little dot on this big blue marble traveling through space. And the world's always going to be uncertain. And so how do we want to dance with it? Well, I'm really happy to have you here. Been looking forward to this for a long time.

We met in Italy. You were one of the people who showed up at Isolana for our retreat. And as is our tradition at those events, when everyone arrives at the first evening meal, we kind of go around and everybody introduces themselves. And when it came to you, you got up and kind of delivered a keynote. Like you just told this unbelievable story. Like I didn't know you and I wasn't familiar with your story. And I was so moved by not only what you shared and the hardships that you've endured and kind of what you've gone through and how you've leveraged that to transition your life. But on top of that,

how you've leveraged that to transition your life. But on top of that, your facility for telling that story and kind of understanding what's salient about it and impactful for people that hear it. I thought, well, this guy not only has a great story, he knows how to tell it well. He knows what's important about it and how it can impact other people. And that was what planted the seed that I thought you might be a good guest on the show. So I'm really happy to have you here today. Well, thanks for having me. That's really kind of you to say, and clearly very generous for you to have me here. Cause I know what about 60 people sit in this chair each year. And so there's been some really wonderful people as I've listened over the years sitting in this chair. And I feel, yeah, I feel a lot of honor and gratitude for being here. So thank you. I feel honored to have your attention here today as well.

Yeah, it's going to be fun. We're going to have a good conversation. Yeah. And I think, look, you know, it's fun to sit down and talk to really fancy people that everybody knows, but I think everybody has a story and certain people know how to tell their story well. And you're one of those people. Perhaps it's not entirely fair, but I would put you more into the everyman camp of guests that have appeared on the show. And I think there's something about that that is important to hold on to as a tradition because we've always had from time to time certain people nobody's ever heard of, but who actually have a lot of important things to share. And I think there's something more inherently relatable about that. Like when you hear somebody who's achieved so much, it can be inspirational, but it's hard to emotionally connect with that and, you know,

find a way to translate whatever they're sharing into your own life. And I think there is a lot of relatability in your story. And to the point of you being an everyman, you've also done extraordinary things. So I wouldn't, you know, it's like, I'm not trying to malign you in that regard either. Well, Rich, I will ease any worry. I fully own the everyman part of my journey. I also acknowledge that we've been able to do some really cool things, but I love the every man's story. I do believe that your story is in my story and my story is in your story and we're all in everyone else's story. I think that even the people that are really have made it to the tip of the spear, I think there's still some things that are really relatable about their story before they really hit it big, like the grind before they hit it big. And so I love sharing this story because I think it can be really relatable to a whole bunch of

people who are just trying to figure it out. They want to be a good partner, a good parent, if they happen to be parents. And they're trying to figure out this thing, this beautiful thing that we all have called life, this great gift. And they're trying to find meaning to it and become who they want to become and also sort of unbecome what they were taught they had to be when they were younger. Well, your story pivots around a particular event that you call your last bad day. So let's paint the picture of what your life was like prior to your last bad day before we kind of dive deep into that. Sure thing. So I grew up in Rochester, New York. So beautiful upstate. One of two kids. My parents never went to college. So school wasn't really emphasized.

Sports was. So I thought the way to my dad's heart was through sports. Whatever sport I was playing, I was going to be the next pro. When I was growing up, I wanted to be shortstop for the Toronto Blue Jays. So right from there, the story gets a little wonky because what kid in America grows up to be shortstop for a Canadian's baseball team? We never really paid any attention to college, except my older cousin went off to college, being the first one. So my parents never really saved for college, but I was determined to find my way. And I really didn't know what that was.

Again, my dad and my mom loved them dearly, but they never really stressed school. And I was a student that teachers could easily forget about because I wasn't getting straight A's. I wasn't going to an Ivy League or a pseudo Ivy League. I wasn't that smart from an academic perspective as far as grades. But I wasn't getting in trouble. So I wasn't that D student or F student getting detention. You're just in the middle.

I'm in the middle. The invisible kid. I'm not really speaking up in class. I'm getting Bs and Cs. And that was life. And I would dream about playing Major League Baseball or really the big sport. The big sport in our house was bowling.

Really? Oh, yeah. I'm a huge, like rich. When we were kids, there was the Pro Bowling League on TV and all of that. Every Saturday, I would watch that. When I got my Commodore 64 computer, my first basic program was to compute my bowling average. Wow. That's how geeky we're going to get today. So, but my dad was a big bowler. I was really good. I was 16. I had like 190 average. I thought like, this is something, right? It's Rochester, right? So you go bowling, right? Most people go out Friday night and go disco bowling

now and all that jazz, but I was really serious. I had my own shirts, my own shoes. I had three bowling balls. It was big time. For real? It was legit. Yeah, totally legit. And I quit that at 16. That was probably my first act of defiance because I was a rule follower. I wanted to be the good kid. Why'd you quit? Because I came home, my grandmother passed away from lung cancer. And when I was younger, my parents smoked.

It was like the worst habit. I would hold my breath in the car. I came home one Saturday from doing our league tournament stuff, and I reeked of cigarettes. My whole body smelled like an ashtray. And I was about 16, and I was like, this can't be good. Breathing in this air, it can't be healthy. And I told my dad I was quitting. I was like, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm done with bowling.

At that time too, I started to watch the Tour de France on CBS Sports. They had like a 10, 15 minute clip and I thought, wow, this sport, because I also love riding my bike. I still remember the day I came off of training wheels for the first time. I thought, oh wow, I can go anywhere on this bike. So I started watching the tour and the John Tesh music and the whole thing.

And I was like, this is really romantic. Like here, hardcore Europeans doing this fringy sport. And I started to fall in love with that. And I fell out of love for bowling. And you started riding your bike. I mean, there weren't our kind of age group growing up. There wasn't a lot of people doing that at the time. No. There was Breaking Away, the movie. Breaking.

Maybe that was even like pre-Greg LeMond or, yeah. So Breaking Away came out. A few years later, Greg came onto the scene. Then there was the 80 Olympics in LA. So those two big things, Greg coming up into the pro ranks and really, in a lot of ways, revolutionizing how cycling looked as far as contracts and sponsorships and all that jazz. I really think he doesn't get as much credit as he deserves.

And the Olympics hit. And so we did fairly well, the US did in the Olympics, or actually the 84 games, not the 80 games. I was already in it. I was riding my bike. I was training. I was starting to race. I graduated high school in 85. And then came the whole idea of college. So my parents wanted me to stay local, like my older cousin. And it took me a year, Rich, to convince them, this is my other act of expressing my voice for the first time. I told them, I have to get out of Rochester. I don't care where I go, but I have to get out of this place. And I went to school in Virginia, James Madison. And that was the beginning of me expressing my voice and trying to find out who I was and that exploration. And I got into cycling there and helped establish the cycling team down there. And that was the early days of collegiate cycling.

established the cycling team down there. And that was the early days of collegiate cycling. Now collegiate cycling looks pretty professional. Back then, it was a ragtag bunch of guys and gals trying to figure it out. But that was the start. And I started riding and racing and spending my summers riding and racing up and down the East Coast. And we got to my graduation. I moved to DC because that's what you do because I had student loans to pay off. Obviously not as big as some of the student loans that kids have to pay off today. And I got my first gig. And then I took a break from cycling and fell into love with running. And I did the Marine Corps Marathon and eventually the Boston Marathon. And along the way, while we were in D.C., I met my wife in the Washington City paper, which you probably are aware of, in a personal ad.

And we had our first daughter who, as we sit here today, turns 26 today. Right. Yeah. So life begins really in Washington, D.C. And it's a sales career, right? Sales career. My mom was a nurse. She worked 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. So she could be with us during the day. And my dad was in sales. And I really didn't know what I wanted to do. But I was like, okay, that seemed like a good gig. That's what dad did. He seemed to be able to provide for us. We were pretty hardcore middle class.

You know, I was wearing pony sneakers while all the other fancy kids had Nikes and Adidas. So we would shop at the outlet stores while other kids would have name brand merchandise and the whole thing. So I started as a sales rep and that first in copiers and then eventually into healthcare. So it sounds like beneath the surface, there's a little bit of

daddy issues kind of at play here, like wanting to impress your dad or this idea that love was transactional and related very much to what you could achieve in the world, whether it was through sports or through career, but you kind of peering up at your dad seeking approval in that way. Is that a fair estimate? I think it's a very, yeah, very fair estimate. I'll give you a little bit more of the timeline. My parents will celebrate. My mom has passed, but if she was around, come next year, next April, they'll celebrate 57 years of marriage. In September of next year, I will turn 57. So obviously you do the math.

Mom was pregnant with me when they got married. So there was a big part of me growing up wondering, did they want me? Were they forced into getting married? And I grew up in a very Catholic family. So choice wasn't a choice back then. Very Catholic, like we're going to figure this out. The underbelly of who I was and doubt or that self-narrative was was I really wanted? That whole thing. And I thought- And then you had to prove your worth. Then I have to prove my worth, right? That is a thread that's part of my life that I've been working through and we'll get to the actual accident and the whole thing, that allowed me to

work on that even deeper. But a big part of life was, was I wanted? And how can I prove that I mattered, that I was worth keeping, if you will? And I thought, well, if I did really well in sports, which was the foundation of my conversations with my dad, then that's the ticket. That's how I'm going to establish my worth. It wasn't academically because dad didn't really care too much, but he could talk about the New York Yankees until the cows came home. And short of you becoming a professional shortstop, the next best thing was to find yourself in a situation where there's an upward trajectory career-wise, right?

Where you could climb a certain ladder and really engage with that hedonic treadmill. Absolutely. To kind of prove, you know. I am gonna prove myself, Rich. This is something I relate to deeply. Like I'm asking you all this because this is my own therapeutic session. Yeah, this is, you know, I got caught into the nightlife of DC that you know fairly well,

like the same bars that you used to hit, I hit. And I thought, okay, this is it. Like, I really thought, here's the script. You go to college, you graduate, you get a gig, you meet someone, you marry someone, you have a couple of kids, and you work your way up the corporate ladder. You buy a Subaru and maybe you trade that Subaru in

for something nicer and you get a really nice title. And on the surface, if LinkedIn was a thing back then, things looked pretty good. I had a pretty great career and we had a happy family. But deep down inside, as I like to say, I was shoving a whole bunch of rocks in my backpack. Like, oh, that thing, that stressor, that worry, that insecurity, that was just a pebble, a rock. I just put it in the backpack and I would just like put it on and I would walk through life with my backpack. And it felt normal, right?

It was like, well, that's life, right? They pay you money, your salary, because the job's stressful and get over yourself and just suck it up and just put another rock in your backpack. And that's how I was living. I would privately compare myself to everyone else. Like, you know, this is what we do. Like, well, what do I have? And this was before, again, social media. So like, well, what's their title? How'd they get promoted? How much money are they making? What size is their house? Like all that stuff I was processing very privately because I didn't want anyone to know that that was going

on up in the head because that just seemed crazy. But that's what's going on in all of our heads. And we're like exactly the same age. So I relate to that deeply. I mean, there was no tools or priority around any kind of internal excavation. It's like, this is what you do. And the inquiry ends there, right? And whatever happiness you lack is always gonna be found through the next purchase or the next promotion or when you're up leveling. Like it's always on the horizon, like just out of reach, but always seemingly within grasp

if you just continue to apply yourself. Well, the thing is sometimes you catch it, right? You catch the promotion. You buy the new car. The good thing happens. You're like, see, all right. You just got to catch it again. So you get promoted,

but then you learn three days into the job, oh, this is a harder job. Like someone told me- I have less free time now. Yeah. This adage, next level, like new devils, right? So it's like, yes, I got promoted. And there's the big email that goes out and everyone's like, awesome job. That's fantastic. And you're like, yes, look at me. Look how great I am. I just got promoted at such a young age. And then you're like, oh, snap. This job sucks. I'm not happy. And then you start looking for another job because you're like, well, it's all the people around me. It's the environment. It's not me. It's this company. So we got to find a new job.

But you're still not unpacking any of the rocks in your backpack. And you're just carrying that around with you. And there's no questioning of the game itself. There's no option of like getting off the treadmill and trying to figure out a new game. Oh, no. I tried a couple of times to say, what are we doing here, folks? And everyone looked at me like, what are you talking about? This is blasphemy. You do not. This is the system. And I'm like, but the system doesn't seem all that great for really any of us because we're all going through this, right? Or am I just

the crazy one? And people would just, you know, bow their heads and no one would want to say anything. And I'm like, what is going on? Like, this script stinks. But here's what I thought, like, well, this is the script you got, Michael. Like, keep in mind, maybe they didn't want you anyway. Right.

There's like a light dusting of imposter syndrome at play here, of course. Oh, definitely. Like someone's going to find out. Like they're going to find out that. You just have to be out running it all the time. Yep. I just have to go faster. I have to be 10 minutes in front of you. What's that saying? Like you don't have to be the fastest antelope. You just have to be faster than the slowest one. Like that was it. Like, just don't be the last one on the sales quota leaderboard. Just be in front of someone, try to go faster, do something physically that makes you feel alive. For me, that's what sport was. It was like, okay, I feel alive. I feel comfortable.

It was also a moment of quiet and silence. I didn't realize how contemplative it was back then, but I was like, all right, this is my happy place. I can be here. And we're also trying to juggle then moving from D.C. up to New Jersey, young family, balancing everything, like relocation is not an easy feat for really most people. So now we're trying to figure this all out. And it was wickedly stressful, but it was stressful for all of us. So my feeling was,

let me see what I can do to relieve the stress of everyone around me. And I'll just put this rock in my backpack and I'll deal with it later. So that speaks to also proclivity for people pleasing. Oh yes, yes, yeah. I would like, you know, I like to say who doesn't love to make people feel happy, but it was

coming at a cost that I, I really didn't know how to offer myself self-compassion. We weren't taught that, you know, I can only imagine you weren't taught that as a young boy, like, cause we are of the same age. We weren't taught that it was all right. Dust yourself off. Like, you know, put your big boy pants on and go out and do it. Sure. Right. So it wasn't, we weren't talking about openness. We weren't talking about owning your scars and your blemishes. We hadn't yet to meet Brene Brown. Like, we were like, put your mask on, put your body armor on and go out there

and get it done. Yeah, and shut the fuck up. What do you have to complain about? You have a good job. You got a nice family. You can pay your bills. Everything's taken care of. Everything's fine.

Life is good. And, you know, if you're going to gripe about it, you're being sort of indulgent. Yeah, you're being ungr indulgent and ungrateful. You're being a whiny little baby. Just get out there and do your job. Provide for your family. Yeah, I had no knowledge of really any tools, except when I was in my early days as a sales rep,

I would put Zig Ziglar cassette tapes in the car and ride around and listen to Zig. He planted a bunch of seeds, I believe, that I pulled through when I went through my recovery. And maybe there was some Tony Robbins cassette tapes, because that's all we had back then were cassette tapes. And that was really it that I knew of in terms of personal growth and I hate this term self-help, that whole genre. That was it. I was listening to Jim Rome, Tony Robbins, and Zig Ziglar. Zig Ziglar, you know, obviously was, you know, sort of the precursor to Seth Godin, very influential on Seth and sort of a Tony Robbins for people who are in sales and marketing.

Yeah, he had all these little Southern mannerisms and sayings and he was a meme before there was a meme. Like you could take a quote of Zig's and put it on a LinkedIn post or tweet it out if it was the thing back then. It was like, oh yeah, okay, I have the solution. Here's the ticket. Here's the way you can alter your script.

But then reality set in. It was like, oh, it's not so easy. You know, life can't be boiled down to just a little soundbite. It's not that simple. It's not that binary. It's complicated. We're messy.

You know, that's not that binary. It's complicated. We're messy. That's what life is. And I really just wanted the good parts of life. Like most people, I really didn't want to deal with all the garbage. So again, I would try to push that away and just focus in on the happy stuff. But I was really denying the fullness of this thing called life. Right. So you relocate to Tenafly. You're in this new job. You are on an upwardly mobile trajectory and you find yourself in New Mexico on a business trip.

You're 33 years old. You're back on the bike. Cycling's a big thing. So you bring your bike with you. Yeah, I actually bring my buddy's bike. So Derek McGinty, who was a guy I met down in DC, he had a bike Friday. And I was like, can I borrow your bike? Because I'm going to go out to New Mexico. And I have this goal, I still have it, of riding my bike in all the 50 states. And so New Mexico was not conquered yet. So it was one of those week-long retreats that are so common in corporate life.

You fly out on Monday, you fly back on Friday, they give you a half a day to go golfing. And I was like, screw golfing. Like cycling is the new golf. Doesn't anyone know that? So I'm going to bring my bike out. And it was a new property out in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico, in between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Subsequently, they built a casino there and all that jazz and a golf course. So I brought my bike out and I was like, all right,

I'm going to get some miles in because I had a bike race in the next town over that Sunday. And it was going to be my first race back after we had our second daughter. I was like, all right, this is, we're going to do this. We're going to get back into competitive cycling. I wasn't really in great shape. I probably would have gotten dropped early on if I did the race. And I mapped out this really cool loop. It was out the main part of the hotel and up the main drag, two miles. I was going to do 10 laps, 20 miles, and then go into the team building. All the PowerPoint and trust falls and flip charting and all that bullshit that we do. And we think it's actually

building the team, but it's really not. Maybe we'll put a pin in that for later. And I came around the bend on my fourth lap and a Ford Explorer was coming right at me. And I just looked up and I really, I was like, this does not compute. Like, what is he doing here? Why is he in my lane? He must see me. He sees me, right? He's going to move. He's going to move. He sees me. And then as you can imagine, everything slows down and boom, he hits me. and boom, he hits me. Police estimate he was going about 40. I didn't have any time to really move out of the way.

And to this day, I still remember the sound I made when I hit his front grill. And then that flipped me around and into his windshield and blew a hole through the windshield. And then I remember hearing the screech of his brakes. And then I made a thud. And I came to the asphalt below. When he finally came to a stop, he was basically still in my lane. So I often wonder if he even realized he had hit me.

I think he did, because the glass from the windshield flew into his face. Well, he had to have realized he had hit me. I think he did because the glass from the windshield flew into his face. Well, he had to have realized after he hit you. Yeah, but he didn't really... How he was not seeing you and how he ended up in your lane to begin with, is that a mystery that's been solved? No, it's a mystery that will probably never be solved. He said he was avoiding a coyote, but being a suburban kid, if there was a coyote out there in the middle of New Mexico, I would have hightailed it back into the hotel pretty quickly. So I didn't see any wildlife. He just, he was coming into work. He worked at the hotel. He probably wasn't expecting a cyclist on the road. It was relatively, again,

new property. I probably was the first cyclist riding that stretch of road at that hour. The sun was coming up and he probably in a million years never thought there would be a cyclist there. So let me just cut the apex as I go into work because I'm running late and I'm there. at the apex as I go into work because I'm running late and I'm there, right? It's like, boom, timing. I wake up five minutes later. Heck, if I wake up a minute later or go a minute earlier, almost like the movie Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow, it doesn't happen then. So, but it happens. I regain consciousness. I'm surrounded by EMT, police, fire, ambulance. They brought the state trooper in to pronounce me dead at the scene of the accident because they didn't think I was going to make it. And I was trying to get my bearings. I didn't have any ID on me at the time. So I was trauma patient

mango until my wife ID'd me. And they just kept on saying like, who are you? Like, you know, I kept on telling them who I was. At least I thought it was clear, but it probably wasn't. I did crack a joke because I learned growing up the way to cut tension when it gets uncomfortable is do a little humor. So I was like, hey, how's my bike? Like any good cyclist. Like any good cyclist, right? It's the question that every cyclist knows.

They're like, your bike's fine. Just try to breathe. And there I was, Rich. I was surrounded by people, but I felt incredibly lonely. I was like, this can't be happening. This isn't the script. Bad things happen to other people. I'm the person that gives their thoughts and prayers to other people when bad things happen to other people, but nothing bad had ever happened to me. And there I was lying on the asphalt. They called the

helicopter to bring me to Albuquerque. I tried to convince them that I didn't need to go in the helicopter because I was scared of flying back then. I was like, do we really need to go in the helicopter? Because that seems like really dangerous. I still had some of my bearings straight and they're like, yeah, we need to get you to Albuquerque right away. And when they put me on the medevac, I just, I made a commitment. I was like, all right, whoever's listening. It was a complete bargain that I had no idea how to actually pull through. But I goes, if anyone's listening, I promise if I live, because that was definitely in question

based on the energy of the scene, I will live better. I'll stop chasing happiness. Cause that was my chase, like the hamster wheel. I was like, I'll do better. Like, thanks for the warning, but like, I will do better. And I remember every minute of the 19 minutes that it took to get to Albuquerque, I landed on the roof. They brought me down into the trauma center. There were about 20 people in the trauma room. I met my surgeon and I was like, pleasure to meet you under the circumstances. And then the next thing I know, I was out. And I was out for about four days and change. And my wife flew out with our youngest. And when they told her that things were bad, but you got to up and just fly him home? He's crashed before. But they're like, no, you really have to come out. And so she landed. And as she's flying out, every time she would check in with the hospital, I was still in the trauma center.

And she was like, well, this is weird. Well, at first she thought, well, probably someone else who's been injured worse than Michael got bumped in front of him. So this is no big deal. But when she landed and got to the hospital, I was still in the trauma room. And at that point in time, things got really real. And she said, I don't care who comes out of that room next, but I need to know what's happening with my husband. And the vascular surgeon came out and said, your husband's been in a very bad accident.

We're doing the best we can. The next 72 hours are going to be critical. And that's when it really, yeah, became real for her. She was like, oh, like we might lose him. Yeah. And I think at some point, didn't the surgeon tell your wife, listen, had he been a couple of years older or not in as good of shape, he most certainly would have died. Yeah. They told her later, if your husband had been 10 years older or not in shape,

he would never made it to the hospital because I lost so much blood. When the left femur shattered, it lacerated the femoral artery. So I was bleeding out and we didn't really know it until we got there and they started trying to fix me up. And they didn't really complete all my fractures in that first surgery. They really just tried to fix the left femur and fix the femoral tear. So I have a fem pop bypass in my left leg. And then the right leg and everything else they waited for later to address. So here we are, married seven years. Our oldest is three and a half our youngest is seven months old and our world just got tipped upside down and it's a story that a lot of families deal with every day and it's what

happens when the unexpected comes and now you're faced with all right how do you want to show up life's pretty easy you can follow the script fairly well when things are groovy, when things are simple. But now it was, all right, now what? Now what do you do? This question or this bargain that you made with God, if I survive this, I will no longer chase happiness, is a very interesting bargain.

It's unique. Because I think most people would say, if I live, I promise I'll be a good person, or I will stop doing whatever bad thing I've been doing. You know what I mean? But there's something very specific about the prompt of, I will no longer chase happiness. Like, how did you have the awareness to hone in on that of all things that you could be thinking about in that

liminal space between life and death? Well, first off, I'm not sure if I was talking to God. I was just talking to whoever was listening. The higher power. The higher power, sure. A lot of people after the accident shared with me, man, God was looking out for you. And I was like, really? Like, where was she, they, he?

Right before impact? Because I was pretty angry at the higher power for letting this happen to begin with. Going back to Zig Ziglar, he would talk about living like a be, have, do life or do, have, be. Like, basically, we're doing all this work to have stuff. And then once you have this stuff, you can actually be who you want to be. So that phrase from Zieg was a seed that was planted. So I knew, I think deep down inside, I was living life that way. I was working really hard, putting in the hours so I could have stuff. I could have status. My big chase was, I want a voice that matters. Because again, going back to childhood,

I'm not sure if my voice matters. I'm not sure if I'm really wanted. Again, grew up in a loving family. My parents were really kind, but still had that doubt. And so I knew I was chasing after it because once I got something, I felt good for a bit and then vanished. So there was something in that whole chasing. And I do think the tapes I was listening to from Zig was a seed that was planted on that specific thing. So I was calling out like, whoever has power around here, anyone? Like if I stop chasing

happiness, if I live, I'll stop. I'll do better. I'll try to be in the moment. And I had no idea how I was going to do that. Because the only thing I knew was the chase for more stuff and the whole do more, be more type of thing. For a lot of people who suffer some kind of hardship or reach a pain point or some kind of acute extreme experience like that, it's of course not uncommon for some version of, you know, that kind of bargain making, you know, to occur. But there's a half-life on that. The human brain has a way of snapping back and just going back to what's normal once the severity of the situation passes. But you've held that promise.

And we're human. I'm sure you haven't done it perfectly or whatever. But this, to this day, has persisted as your raison d'etre. This is what drives you. Absolutely. as your raison d'etre, like this is what drives you. Absolutely. And initially, and this is a bit of the thread from childhood,

initially in my recovery, what I wanted to do was to prove that my life was worth saving that day. So I was like, I'm going to make good on this promise. Because I have so much gratitude for everyone who showed up that day. They didn't ask me who I voted for. They didn't ask me what type of people I love. They didn't ask me anything about where I lived or how much money I made. Granted, I'm a white dude and that gave me some privilege right from the rip because we all have bias. But they showed up and they were on their game. And if they weren't, I don't survive or maybe I come away with injuries that don't allow me to

recover in the way that I have. So it was like, wow, like, man, they showed up. They really showed up. And the early phases of my recovery was like, all right, now I'm going to prove that like my life was worth saving. It was a transactional thing. I've come to realize that my life was worth saving, period, full stop, because all of our lives are worth saving. But in the early days, the real fuel for this was, I'm going to prove that I matter. You did a good thing, and I'm going to show you that you did a good thing. And I haven't been perfect. There have been times where I get caught in the chase. When I left my corporate life and I started my life as an entrepreneur, it's easy to get caught into this whole new world. Like, oh, this is what you need to do. And this,

you should do this and not that. And you got to get back on it. And you start comparing yourself to other people who are out there. And then I would check myself and I'd come back. Right. Why isn't it pause, breathe, reflect, like on par with calm or like, you know, like all of that kind of comparison. I deserve a seat at the table. Like, what's that about? Like, and it's just like, that doesn't seem fair.

And like all that, I am human. I have moments where I go back to that groove from when I was younger. I have moments where I go back to that groove from when I was younger. I'm better at knowing when I feel it generally in my body. Be like, okay, that's what's happening. You come back home, you come back to your center. But yeah, I've had all that. Or when I got to the executive suite in my career and I'm like, all right, now what?

Because I had blown past my aspirational job in my corporate life. And I really didn't go after the executive role until people said, you need to do this role. I'm like, really? I'm happy. I got the job that I wanted to get coming out of college. This is good. I made it. They're like, no, no, I had to get coming out of college. This is good. Like I made it. They're like, no, no, you got to go to the next one. I'm like, oh, okay. We'll make people happy. Yeah. You got to do it for our culture. You got to go after this job. I'm like, but I don't want to. And they were like, you really need to. And I was like, okay. And I'm glad I did it. I learned a whole bunch about executive leadership and it's put me in a beautiful position today. But yeah, I've had my moments. I still have my moments where I get caught up in all the things that make us human. now, I sit with it. I reflect on it. I deal with it in a healthier way than when I did it before. So my backpack is really light today because I don't have so many rocks in it.

In the aftermath of the accident, just paint the picture of the state of the union. Like, what were your injuries and what was that recovery like for you? It was a mess. That was, I felt rich, every type of pain you can feel. Chronic pain, sharp, acute pain, a stinging pain. Like you can name a sensation related to pain. And I think I've felt it through this whole thing. And when I came out of the ICU, they started telling me about, all right, here's what happened. Driver had a revoked license. I'm like, oh, great. So he shouldn't have been driving that day. Yep. He shouldn't have been driving. I'm like, well, this is a fine hello. How do you do? So here I am.

I'm all laid up. In the hospital, when it gets dark, it gets really lonely. It's just you and beeping machines. And I'm like, why did this happen to me? I would cry a ton. My parents came out, and I knew I was a mess when my parents came out because my mom did not want to me. I would cry a ton. My parents came out and I knew I was a mess when my parents came out because my mom did not want to fly. But the early days of the recovery, I felt like my whole sense of dignity was stripped away because here you are. So I'm in the ICU for four days and

change. I'm on a whole bunch of different meds. They got pain meds dripping through me in an IV and my body's shutting down. So the big thing they want you to do is, all right, have you had a bowel movement? So here I am, a 33-year-old man, naked on top of a bedpan. I can't move around. My leg's in traction. I can't really deal with my right shoulder because that's broken because my right leg was broken in multiple spots. The right shoulder was fractured. The left femur was blown apart. I have a fem pop bypass. I have nerve damage throughout my left leg. I can't really feel my toes. I have a toe drop in my left foot. So there is a lot going on. And the bottom of my

foot though would feel like fireworks going off because all the nerve pain that was flaring up. And I just remember just like being on this bedpan and everyone's around me and there's just like a little curtain and everyone's like, did you poop yet, Michael? Did you poop yet? And I'm like, is this it? Like, is this my life now? Like everyone's giving me advice on how to move my bowels. And I go, this is probably the lowest we can go. And I just felt sorry for myself. But at the same time, my front was, all right, we're going to make it happen. But deep down inside, I was like, My front was, all right, we're going to make it happen. But deep down inside, I was like, who am I going to become now? Like my identity was that of a professional, of a leader, a dad, a husband, someone who is active.

And the doctors basically said, listen, you're probably going to walk with difficulty. And you're most likely, based on your injuries, never going to get back on the bike again. And I'm like, you got to be kidding me. This should not have happened. And I spent 10 days in New Mexico. They're going to fly me back on a medical jet, which I thought, oh, we're flying on a Lear jet.

Like this is going to be like- High status recovery. This is going to be a Lear jet. Like this is going to be like- High status recovery. This is going to be like Van Halen. Like this is going to be cool. So they put me on the air ambulance back to New Jersey for my first visit to a hospital in New Jersey. I throw a blood clot during that trip. So now I'm on Coumadin and no one wants to take me.

So, cause I don't really have any medical providers back in New Jersey, cause I'm relatively healthy. So I would never go to the doctor. And I'm 33, things are fine. I don't need to go to the doctor. The doctor is something that old people go to who are sick. So you don't have like a primary care physician? I have no primary care.

So we are trying to figure out how to get to the closest Trauma One hospital near where we live. And luckily, one of our neighbors at the time was a plastic surgeon at Hackensack, the Trauma One center that everyone wanted me to go to. that everyone wanted me to go to. And she made the admissions possible. So my story is a team story. We'll get into this, but it's a whole Peloton story. So here, she's so kind, she makes this happen.

And her and her team do my surgery there, which was skin grafts to close up all my fasciotomies. Because I lost so much blood, they had to cut fasciotomies in my left leg, basically incisions to let my leg expand and swell up. So the medical team there in New Mexico, they looked at me and they're like, wow, you look a lot different than your earlier photos because I was all fluid up. I was really swelling like Michelin man. So that surgery, I did skin graft, my skin graft operations. Then I healed up and then they sent me to West Orange, New Jersey, the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation, where they took my Superman, Christopher Reeves, after his equestrian event. And I spent several months there. And when I was there, that's when

I was like, okay, perspective is valuable. Because up until that point, I was the worst off in the orthopedic wing of any hospital I was at. And then I went to Kessler, and my first three roommates were all quadriplegic. And I was like, oh, okay, this could have been a lot worse. And so then I started getting into, okay, how can I make this recovery happen? And then a mentor shared some advice with me. He said, listen, everything is neutral until you label it. Because I was having a pity party. I would have good moments and I'd have some really dark moments. And he said, everything's neutral until you label it. This is an event and you get to choose how you want to look at it. And at first, Rich,

I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. Like, is this some Jedi mindset trick? And he went on, he said, listen, there's some neutrality. And I think it ties back to what Viktor Frankl wrote, you know, in between stimulus and response, there's a space. And in that space is your ability to choose and your freedom to grow. So he's like, let's just give it some space. You get to decide how you want to look at this. And I was like, okay. And eventually after that moment, I saw, okay, well, I can have some neutrality in all my moments. I can choose my labels wisely. And then subsequently I labeled the day of the accident my last bad day because I started to look at that as like one really bad moment.

But if I have people in my life when I fall asleep at night who I love and love me back, how can I call the whole day a bad one? So I was like, all right, I'm going to draw a line in the sand. This is going to be my last bad day. And I'm going to take an attitude that life is a series of moments throughout the day. Some are really good. Some are really challenging. But when we get to the end of the day, I'm not going to use binary labels to sum up how the day went.

So I'm going to just try to live fully into that experience of all the different moments. Making a conscious decision to apply this frame, this way of perceiving what occurred to you and locking in on that creates like this rubric for you to understand your life and move forward. And I assume that this person, was it David? Yeah, David. Well, David was a mentor of mine that I write about. He's in the ICU. So here I'm in the ICU. I don't remember anything about the ICU.

I told my wife to buy Amazon stock. So I'm all drugged up. Like I'm strapped down because I'm- Good advice at the time. It was $11. I don't know if we really- She should have done that. I told people like, I don't think we bought it,

but we might've bought it through a mutual fund or something like that. Imagine if she sold your house and just bought an Amazon stock. We could have had a yacht next to Jeff Bezos. Yeah, it would have been really fantastic. Except that I don't want a yacht. But here I am in the ICU.

I have tubes coming out of me left, right, and center. They're strapping me down because I'm really agitated. I'm pulling at everything. And so I went to her and I said, Amazon, it's going to be a hot company. We should buy some stock. This is 2001. 2001, right? So I also interview her for a job on my team. 45 minutes. I go through the whole interview guide,

Rich. Those are some good meds. Well, I've lived a very clean life. Low tolerance. Yeah. I took nothing at all growing up. Here I am, like a lot of meds all at once. And so she, you know, she was patient with me. She went through the whole interview and I get to the end of the interview and I said, listen, it's going to take me a while to get back to you. I've had a little accident. So I don't know when we're going to actually hire her. So she's writing down all these notes. But I also said to her, hey, go find David.

He will show us the way. And David is a friend, a mentor. He was also a coach that my company had hired to help us with a co-promote relationship with another health care company. And I didn't know back then that executive coaching was a thing. Again, there's now a zillion executive coaches out there in the world. But back then, it was rare. And his sensibility, his energy, his approach was like, oh, wow. So you don't have to be some bro and be successful. So that was really the first opening. And we had been working with him for about six months. So here I am in the ICU and I'm telling her to go find David. And I came out of the ICU

and Lynn asked, she's like, well, who's David? And I'm the type of guy that would never talk about work at home. I'm like, what are you talking about? She goes, you just kept on telling me to go find David, that he's going to find the way for us. You know, we'll follow the way from David. And I was like, whoa, that's a matzo ball. But she doesn't even know who David is because you never brought work home. Yeah.

But the other ripple there is that that is some level of awareness that you had at this time. Like you were able to connect the dots later to that kind of instinct, like reach out for David and perhaps walking in David's footsteps provided this new future for how your life might unfold. Yeah. So as I talked about, you know, I shared just a minute ago, like where I am today is due to so many people planting seeds along the way. And I think this is true for all of our lives. Like people are planting seeds and showing up in

our lives in so many incredible ways. We're just not mindful of all of it happening. But that moment when I came out of the ICU and she said that, I was like, oh, that's something. I'm holding onto that one. Again, I didn't know what to do with it, but I was like, there's something there. And through other mentors, it's like this whole notion that, hey, everything's neutral until you label it. And then I came to this Buddhist parable about first arrow, second arrow.

And then my last bad day label made a lot of sense. And so that story is about a warrior goes into the woods and she gets struck by an arrow or he or they, and doesn't really see where the arrow comes from, but it's hit by this first arrow. It's quite painful. They fall down. They wonder how they're going to get back up. And this first arrow is like the arrows that we get hit with from outside of who we are, the external arrows in life, the things that are happening all around us. But as they feel the pain of this first arrow, they start to ruminate. They start to fester around the pain that this is causing. Why did this happen? I have to get back at the person who shot this arrow at me

and goes on and on. It creates this big tail and a whole bunch of energy and it adds to the pain of the first arrow. That's the second arrow. And so what I've done since learning about that story, again, just to reinforce the whole last bad day notion, is that I'm going to have first arrows in my life. We all do. They're going to suck. They're going to be painful.

We won't want them to happen. But I've made a determination that I was going to try my best not to shoot any more second arrows at me. Because before my accident, I was really good at shooting second arrows at myself, as we all do. We beat ourselves up all the time. So this whole first arrow, second arrow parable has stayed with me as a way to reinforce the notion of my last bad day. Because when people first hear that, they're like, oh, this is like a unicorn and rainbow, you know, positivity thing. Right, Paul and Anna.

Yeah, it has nothing to do with that. It's about the acknowledgement that our life is a series of moments. And we're going to feel a whole bunch of different feelings and have different experiences from the moment we get up to the moment we go to bed at night. And I'm not going to label the whole day in such binary fashion like I used to before my accident. It's very human, of course, to feel angry at the driver that hit you

and to, on some level, desire revenge and all of that. I mean, that is the second arrow, right? So on a very practical level, how did you transcend, you know, that need to get back at this person who had done you so wrong? Oh, I had so many schemes, Rich. I mean, was there a criminal case or a civil suit or anything like that? Like, what was the aftermath of that with that guy? Really nothing. So what had happened is that the property was built on indigenous land. So in a lot of ways, I was not hit in New Mexico. So there was a court case, you know, in the Pueblo's court that we went back for, but there was no jail.

Like he was driving with a revoked license. He had, I think, five DUIs on his record. Wow. Yeah. And those are the ones that we knew of. there was really no punishment because to go to jail, you would have to go to a county jail, which the Pueblo would have to finance. And they didn't have money to do that. So the judge gave him a big scolding and community service, but nothing ever happened to that. And that would just serve to deepen your anger and resentment.

So how is it possible that this guy could do this to me and literally walk away from it? That's what happened. So in the early days, I had a lot of time on my hands. You know, I couldn't read. You know, I basically had the attention span for Us Magazine, but not People, because the only thing I could really handle was like who wore it best. That's a very specific nuance. People were bringing me stuff to read. I'm like, I don't have the brain capacity to do any heavy reading.

People Magazine long reads versus Us Magazine photo captions. Absolutely. And I can handle Us, but I couldn't handle People. That's where I was. So I would plot. I was like, okay, how can I get back at this guy? Because I grew up believing like an eye for an eye. Like you harm me, I'm going to harm you. If you hit me, I'm going to hit you back harder. I was coming up with schemes in the middle of the night. None of them made sense. But over time, as I eventually left the hospital system because insurance kicked us out, plus I wanted to get home. I was tired of being in the hospital.

I was tired of that life. And I just wanted to come back home. I wanted to smell our house. I wanted to hear the neighborhood. And so I was eager to come home and insurance wanted me to get home. And as I continued my progress a little bit each day, so I had a little mantra, work hard today to create a better tomorrow, work hard today to create a better tomorrow. And that was like my mantra every morning.

And over time, as my functionality got better, my revenge orientation toward the driver eased. But I still had a great deal of that, especially in the moments where I would re-injure myself or things got complicated or I was feeling the effects of my injuries in my accident. I was like, that driver, man. He got off scot-free. That accident took a moment and now I have a chronic life condition that is so unfair. I just wanted to get back at him. We took a family vacation in 2012 to Europe. We went to Normandy. We went to Paris. We visited some friends who live in Basel. And we also had a private tour, along with 50 other people, of Auschwitz from a Holocaust survivor, Eva Kaur, who passed away in 2019 at 96. But she came from Europe. Her and her twin sister survived. The rest of her family didn't. And she gave us a tour of her life at Auschwitz. And for me, this was stuff that

I was supposed to learn in high school, in history class. But since I wasn't a really great student, I sort of just paid attention enough. My wife is Jewish. We raised our girls Jewish. So my wife knew Eva because she donated to her Holocaust Museum in Terre Haute. So we had this opportunity to go to Krakow, Poland, take the train and do this tour.

And Eva's known because she did a forgiveness project, which is controversial, as you can imagine. But she decided that she was going to forgive the Germans and the Nazis, not because they deserve forgiveness, but because she did. She thought if she held on to the hatred that she had for them, she couldn't live the life that she wanted to live. She couldn't be the light she wanted to be. Here we are. It's the middle of July.

It feels like death there. Sun's beating down and she's sharing the story. And I'm like, man, if she can forgive them, like what's stopping me for forgiving him? And on the train ride back, I was like, all right, let me figure out how I can actually forgive him to take another rock out of my backpack. And that was it.

Like she- But that was 11 years. 11 years. Hey, I've been carrying that backpack around, like, you know, as we all do, like my whole life. Now it's pretty empty. It's not completely empty. We still have some stuff because, you know,

we still are living. But yeah, I carried that around with me for 11 years. Now the rock that was in my backpack in the very beginning felt like a boulder. Like every time I had a pain or a hurt or I couldn't do something or I was struggling with rehab, man, I went back to that guy like, God damn him. Why did he do that? Why did this happen to me? It took a while to get to why did this happen for me?

it took a while to get to why did this happen for me? You know, because a lot of people will be quick to be like, well, let's move, Michael, from, you know, this happening to you to this happening for you. And sometimes those questions are really brilliant. And I've shared them with other people myself. But there's a timing to that question. Sure. No one wants to hear, you know, about why it's happening for them.

Yeah, in the moment. Like, I'm in'm in this like muddy, gross, difficult moment. And I'm like, I do not need that right now. I just want you to understand that I'm in pain and just be okay with that. But that first rock about him was really heavy. And then over time, it got smaller and smaller and smaller, but it was still there until we took that trip in 2012. And so when I rode my bike across the country in 2022,

we went through Terre Haute, and Lynn was able to go to the museum. She had been passed for three years, but we still wanted to go to Candles there and pay our respects. On the physical side of things, you undergo, you know, countless procedures. I don't know how many surgeries. About 13. 13 surgeries.

Lucky 13, like Taylor Swift. Months and months before you were able to go home. And then how long before you got back on the bike? Because I know that's its own kind of challenge and story. Yeah. So I started to fall in love with going to rehab. And so a really funny story. When my oldest was in a preschool, she said something to one of the preschool teachers about daddy being in rehab. And the teacher was like, that's really good. That's really good, honey.

Like, that's good that your dad's getting help. She didn't know about the whole accident. She was a new teacher. And I was like, well, what are you talking about? But so physical rehab for me, it felt great. It was structured. I felt supported. And I was getting ready for another surgery. And then we finally had that surgery. I had that surgery at the hospital for special surgery in New York, which took a while to get to. My trauma surgeon had to send a few letters to the surgeon at HSS because again, here I am, I'm unknown. I'm a trauma patient now. And not everyone wants to handle a trauma patient because we're complicated. But eventually we have the surgery because what was happening was my left leg wasn't flexing enough. And I wanted to see if I could get back on the

bike. So the leg was shorter. It was behaving shorter than my right, and it wasn't flexing enough. And so this surgery we had, and it was a success. Although when I went into it, the surgeon said, listen, this is really complicated. What happened when the bone started to heal, I had a whole bunch of heterotrophic ossification. So the body went crazy laying down bone. So I had all this extra bone around my knee joint. And so they had to chip some of that away,

but they were worried if they chipped that away, they could damage the fem pop bypass. And if that bypass gets damaged, then I might lose a leg. So here I am getting ready for the surgery. He said, listen, this is complicated. If something happens while you're under anesthesia, we're not going to bring you back. We're just going to do what we need to do to save your life. So I woke up, I saw my toes. I was like, okay, good surgery. And I was making progress. And then my physical therapist said, listen, it's time to get back on the bike. And I'm like, well, I don't want to get back on the bike. I like coming here. Like, this is good. Like this is contained. It felt safe.

And she said, you can't come back to rehab until you try to get back on the bike. And I was like, well, that's not right. Like, I'm the patient. Like, you can't do this. I have insurance. Like, you need to see me. And she said, no, really. Like, you're not going to get treated again until you try. So this was someone in my life now who is pushing my buttons and we need people like that in our lives.

And I drove home that day and I went to my wife and I was like, I can't believe her. She said, I can't come back until I get back on the bike. And I was venting and I was all pissed off and I was the patient and I have rights and whole shebang. And then the next day I went for a bike ride. We went to the industrial park where we do Thursday night bike races. The kids came and we were all in our van and I got on the bike and I was all wobbly and my dynamics on the bike, as far as position on the bike, was all a mess. And I just started riding. I was like, OK, all right. I didn't have really great balance.

My pedal stroke wasn't fluid. But man, Rich, it felt so good. I was like, OK, all right. And I would just do laps. It was a mile loop at this industrial park. And I was like, OK, cool. The girls and my wife went to go get hot chocolate or something, even though it was August. I'm not sure why they went for hot chocolate,

but that's the story and we're sticking to it. And while they're away, I was like, all right, let's go on the road. So this is a road that I ride on to this day, you know, thousand, 2,000, 3,000 times. So I get on the road. I start heading towards New York because I live right in the corner of New Jersey, New York. And I could feel something coming up behind me. And I'm like, I look over and it's an SUV coming right at me, white. It was a Ford Expedition,

the bigger version of the Explorer. And I was like, you got to be kidding me. Like right now, like I'm not ready for this. And I held my breath and I gripped my handlebars and the whole shebang, I stopped pedaling and it flew past me. It was speeding like most cars do. And once it went past me, I was like, oh, okay, I think I can do this. Was the Explorer that hit you also white? Yeah. Same color.

Same color, everything, but just bigger. And here's the thing. A lot of people wonder, like, what was your hesitancy, you know, around getting back on the bike? Was it traffic? And it really wasn't traffic. What it was was I didn't want to see how far I had to go to feel quote unquote normal again. How I share this is when we're on a diet, right, we're trying to lose a few pounds and you don't want to get on the, because you know the scale is not going to lie, but you put on your jeans that you haven't washed in about three weeks and they feel looser. You're like, no, these jeans feel really good. Like, and they're loose because you haven't washed them in a while. And you don't want to get on the scale because you know the scale is going to be really truthful with you. I knew getting on the bike was

going to be truth serum. Like I was going to find out really quickly how far I had to go to get back to normal outside on a bike. Up until that moment, I was doing the exercise bike in the rehab facility. And I thought I was making progress. So that first ride was, okay, I dealt with the traffic thing that was something, but it wasn't the main barrier. dealt with the traffic thing that was something, but it wasn't the main barrier. And then I was like, oh, okay, you got a ways to go to get back to quote unquote normal. But that's when I basically used my method of like, okay, small steps consistently over time. So I would ride just a little bit further and then a little bit further and then maybe a little bit faster. And I would just do that. And that's what I did since that moment. So that was August 2002. And I just kept on laying down longer rides and longer rides. A charity ride from the Twin Towers to Washington, D.C. in 2003. And then I just kept on doing like small rides and small incremental improvements and getting faster and riding with the big fast ride, the rocket ride.

And I'd get dropped at one town and the next week I'd be dropped in the next town. And that's how I built up my fitness again. And then in 2008, I had my first bike race back right where I had that first ride. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned trying to get back to normal, but like, what is, what is normal even, right? Like, and why are you even establishing that as like the goal? Like it's a new world now. And like, I've seen your left leg, like it looks different. Like, I don't know whether that's the skin grafts, but it almost looks like you're missing, you know, certain swaths of muscle in there. Oh, I am. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's, Oh, I am. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's so much scar tissue in my left leg that there's spaces where it should be muscle. That muscle can't grow there. It's like trying to plant something in rocky soil.

Yeah. It looks like somebody took a ice cream scooper and just scooped out. Still to this day, when I ride, every now and again, another cyclist will glance down at it. And some people will say something and other people will just like, look. And if someone asks, they're like, what happened? And I'm like, shark, shark bite. They're like, really? I go, no, no, like SUV.

And then I tell them, listen, you should be really so much far in front of me you know because I'm riding like with 1.8 legs that was sort of my story for the longest time until I had my total knee replacement and I guess it's still part of my story but the way I looked at my left leg it was like 0.8 of a leg so the way I would celebrate my little wins with these big rides would be like, I'm keeping up with these guys and I have 1.8 legs and they have two. Like, all right, Michael, you're doing a good job. Like keep it, keep at it, keep at it, like keep moving. And back to the question, what's normal? Back then, that was my fascination, right? As I was continuing to unpack

and sort of the unbecoming of who I was. So I still had some old scripts of like, oh, let's get back to normal. In society today, we still have that. And we went through this incredible shared experience known as the pandemic. And the big push is, so are we back to normal? And normal is not a thing.

Like, what's normal? Normal is just what we're acclimated to or feel comfortable with, right? And it's a way of being in the world that makes other people comfortable. Yeah, it feels safe. It feels certain. It feels secure. The great lie, of course, beneath all of it is this sense of agency and control that is an illusion. Yeah.

Yeah. Like we feel like we're completely in control. But when you get outside and you look up, you realize like you're just a little dot on this big blue marble traveling through space. like you're just a little dot on this big blue marble traveling through space and we don't have as much control as we we desire and the world's always going to be uncertain there will always be a bit of insecurity in it and so how do we want to dance with it? Right. That can be very fear-producing, or you can put a different frame on that perspective being like kind of what you talk about so much and look at it as sort of a liberation. Yeah, yeah, a lightness. Within which there is great opportunity to reimagine what you want your life to look

like. And just to kind of put a button on the cycling aspect of this, you've rode across the country, 4,300 miles from Oregon to Virginia. You've done all these cycling adventures and kind of ultra endurance things in that world. But more importantly, all of these things that you've learned through this very extreme experience then begin to translate into all the other areas of your life, not the least of which is your professional life. Yeah, my professional life and really just how I show up today as a person. We've done some pretty cool ultra endurance things since the accident. And for me, I try to do these big things around the anniversary of my accident as a way to celebrate life and really get into it.

And also show that we can overcome some of our most challenging moments that we face. So during the pandemic, I rode 19 hours. This is 2020. I rode 19 hours inside on Zwift, which was crazy. I tried to raise money for 19 charities supporting COVID-19. So it also happened to be the 19th anniversary of my accident date. And as you mentioned, I rode my bike across the country on a newly minted total

knee replacement. And that total knee replacement was a result of the initial trauma. And then a couple months ago, I rode across New York State. And next year, I'll do something else that's pretty big. Those are awesome and fun and great achievements. And I don't do those alone. are awesome and fun and great achievements, and I don't do those alone. But what I'm most proud of is just how I'm showing up as a person, as a friend, as a husband, as a dad, and what this moment that happened 22 years ago, how it's rippled into the current version of who I am. how it's rippled into the current version of who I am. I'm so fortunate, along with my wife, we've raised two really good humans, you know, and our daughters, who are 23 and 26.

And for me, I'm like, job well done. Like, all this other stuff is really fulfilling and awesome, but in a lot of ways, it's gravy, it's whipped cream, because my primary job is to be a dad, like to put good humans in the world that will put beautiful ripples into it. So we can keep, you know, bending the curve towards a world that I think most people seek, where there's more love and peace in it. There's more understanding. There's more belonging. We hear and see and love each other more deeply today than we did yesterday. To me, that's the job. And we've been able together, along with their efforts as our daughters, to become really cool humans, really cool adults. And it's that work that I'm most proud of.

What is really important? Yeah. That's it. My feeling is that we all get to wake up every day and be very intentional about how we're showing up in the world. My language is what kind of ripple you're rippling into the world. What are you putting out there? Because at the end of the day,

we're all in these big meat sacks that look good for a few years, and then we have a few scars and blemishes and gray hairs and wrinkles and we get shorter and all that jazz. And all that stuff, that part of our aging is so beautiful. But ultimately,

it's what kind of energy you're putting out into the world. And we are living in a time right now that is calling us to put strong positive ripples into the world because I believe we live at an inflection point. I do believe that a lot of the things that have happened are happening for us in such a way where we get to make decisions about how we want to move forward. I came through my accident, a lot of people would tell me like, well, this happened for a reason. And I don't necessarily think things happen for a reason. I think things happen. And then we give

it meaning, we give it reason. So all that we've lived through over the last four years, over the last 10 years, all these different moments, I think we can put a lot of meaning towards it that can propel us or motivate us to putting more goodness and peace in the world. And that's how I look at it. Well, we certainly have more access and tools available to us to facilitate that. But it also feels like a very strange time in which what really travels most is acrimony and controversy and negativity and violence. These are the things that, you know, our internet is kind of wired for, our information systems, whether it's the news or, you know, whatever appears when you scroll through your social media. And it makes me feel like to put a message of hope and positivity out there is almost like an act of rebellion because it's counter-programming against what the algorithms know people actually want to see or what they engage with the most. Yeah, and it takes

so many more people to override the algorithm. We need a whole bunch of tiny ripples out there to overpower the divisiveness. And I also think we need just simple connection. You know, when I rode across the country, I rode through states that see the world not the way I see it. Like their lived experience, where they live, is quite different than mine. But what was common is this. I think we all go through moments of pain. They're suffering, right? They're suffering in life as Buddha said. And for different reasons, we just have this pain that we're all dealing with. And I think COVID is this huge experience that accelerated a bit of the breaking apart. Like for me, my accident broke me apart, right?

I was this form broke me apart. And then I went through a process of coming back together, in some ways becoming a different version of who I was by letting go of some of the stuff that I thought I was. I think we're struggling, and this is more global, you know, global and here in the U.S., that COVID did a number on us and broke us apart. And now we're trying to figure out, okay, how do we come back together? How do we make sense of this? How can we turn this into something that can create something that has a different type of beauty? And I think we're living in that moment. It takes a lot of courage and empathy and compassion and love and kindness and all these other great attributes to bring us together. So as I rode across the country, I met a whole bunch of different people.

And if we were online, we'd probably, you know, could throw arrows at each other politically or how we saw the world. But when I sat down with people, we have so much in common. But when I sat down with people, we have so much in common. There was a connection and just we saw our humanness. And I went into Rushville, Indiana, the Mocha Moose Cafe and Antiques. So here I'm coming through. Rushville celebrated their 250th anniversary in 2022. So it's small town America, farm country, a pretty red part of Indiana, as Indiana's red anyway. And I walk in for a latte and a blueberry muffin. It was like mid-morning.

And there was a table of 12 elders. They all had their coffee, clutching their coffee. And I could only imagine they were talking about whatever they were talking about, world events, town dynamics, you name it. And as I waited for my latte, one woman said, hey, biker, come over here. And we got into like a 25-minute conversation about what I was doing. And we laughed and we chuckled and we had like just this great conversation. And as I left, again, they didn't really ask me anything about like who I voted for, who I prayed to, any of that. They all said, you know, bless you.

And it was a little bit of like the whole cafe was listening in and there was just this whole notion of like, you know, like, may you be well. And I think if we can take a little bit more of that posture of like, may you be well, as I come in contact with you, it's a way for us to build connection and hopefully more belonging so we can heal what needs to be healed. Because I think we have some healing to do. I think we have a lot of healing to do. Yeah.

But yeah, on a macro level, how can we create a fabric, a culture that is this Kintsugi effect? Yes. That is the name of your podcast, right? Yes. That's come up on the podcast before, but explain what that is because it's such a beautiful metaphor for, you know, how our wounds can actually make us not just stronger, but more beautiful when we wear them proudly. most of my corporate career, I worked for a Japanese global company and had the privilege of going to Japan numerous times and really fell in love with a lot of the concepts and culture. So Kintsugi is really embracing our imperfections. So the way the art works, you have a piece of pottery that breaks. Think know, think of a bowl.

It's often a bowl or a plate, or it can be a mug. So this bowl breaks, and then the artist brings the pottery back together. There's something called a yurishi, which is made from a tree, and that becomes the lacquer. When it dries, it dries super hard. And they mix it with gold and sometimes silver and sometimes platinum, but it's commonly known as the golden repair. So the pottery all breaks in a unique way and it comes back together and the gold,

this urishi, it has a scar-like appearance. And so when I was earlier in my recovery, my youngest was just tracing my scars on my leg. She might have been like eight years old. She's just playing with them, you know, playing with my skin grafts. And I was like, hey, what do you think of dad's scars? Because there was a point, Rich, where I did my best to cover them all up. Because I thought people were looking at them and thinking like, what happened to that guy? And what's wrong with that guy? So I would wear long pants when it was 95 out. I was doing all I could to cover it up. And she's just like mindlessly just scrolling. She was like, I think they're cool, dad. I'm like, okay.

She was like, I think they're cool, Dad. I'm like, okay. And right around that time, I also started to learn about kintsugi. And so the beauty of it, and there's also a Japanese term called wabi-sabi. And together, they talk about really embracing imperfection. So wabi-sabi is about the beauty as things age. When I wrote across the country, I loved looking at old barns. So there were a lot of great barns that are new and fancy, but that old barn that has lived through something, the wood has turned gray and cracked, and there might be a panel that's fallen off. There's a story there. And what Wabi Sabi does is embraces that. It embraces the impermanence

of life that we're all moving. And as you've mentioned multiple times in the podcast, we all cross the same finish line. None of us are getting out of this alive, but embraces the fact that these moments go from moment to moment to moment, and we're going to have blemishes. We're going to have gray hairs and wrinkles and all that, and that should be celebrated. And Kintsugi is about embracing our imperfections. So it takes something that's beautiful, the piece of pottery, that bowl before it was broken, beautiful, and then it breaks, and then it comes back together in a different way of demonstrating beauty. It doesn't have to be more beautiful, because a lot of people have said, well,

it was broken, and now it's more beautiful. It's like, well, all right. And I've said that myself plenty of times. The pottery was beautiful to begin with. That's why you probably bought it, and it breaks. And then now it comes back together in just a different way of being beautiful. Scars and imperfections and all that. And so for me, Kintsugi is about connection. It's about how do we come back together? How do we connect with ourselves? How do we connect with each other? How do we connect with our nature? Because we're part of nature. How do we do that? And everyone has their own formula of how to do that.

But reconnecting, there's plenty of parties out there and people that want to break us apart, like break our pottery. And it's up to us. I think I mentioned this at the retreat, finding like-hearted humans. We often talk about finding like-minded people. I think that's a problem. Because what we're doing is we're finding people who think like us.

What I want to do in my pursuit is I want to find people who are like-hearted, that are coming from the same place in their heart of compassion and kindness and love, because I believe that's what helps us come back together. And in this like-heartedness, you can be open-minded to different thoughts, to challenge your thinking, to learn something new, to unlearn what you learned in your past, and be comfortable with not knowing. And so, yeah, Kintsugi to me is all about connection. And it's all about belonging. And so how do we do that?

You know, like, what's the makeup of your yurishi, that strength? And I think it's a wonderful concept. And as I've gotten older, I've tried to embrace it even more, especially the wabi-sabi part. Because, you know, we wrinkle. We gray. And in our society, we want to cover it up. You know, I happened yesterday to go to a very bougie market near the studio here. And there was a lot of covering up the natural wabi-sabi. Yeah. Which is a very LA thing.

Welcome to Los Angeles. But my feeling, and I will acknowledge there's a double standard. Like you and I can go gray, but women in society, it's more difficult to do that. Hopefully it changes quickly over time that we can all embrace that. But the definition of beauty is different for different people. But my hope is that through this whole Kintsugi spirit, we can embrace our imperfections and have a different relationship with perfection and just our flaws and really love on them. Well, that cultural shift begins with our own attitudes and behaviors around these sorts of things, of course. And I love that idea so beautifully put, by the way, around seeking out and congregating with like-hearted people as opposed to like-minded people. I was talking to

Julie the other day and I was finding myself sort of somewhat depressed and bereft after a scroll session on social media. And I said, I don't think we're hardwired or meant to know what everybody's opinions are on everything all the time. You know what I mean? Like when you walked into that cafe and you meet people as they are. And regardless of having some dissonance in whatever your worldviews are, you can connect on a heart level with people. And I think that's what we're meant to do. But when you scroll and you see people's avatars and their bios, and then you get their hot takes and their opinions on everything, you immediately, the brain just immediately goes to how that person is different or wrong and how I'm right or better or, you know, the brain just immediately goes to how that person is different or wrong and how

I'm right or better or, you know, whatever that rubric is or whatever that math equation that runs in the brain. And it's not really a healthy exercise. Like, I just don't think we're supposed to like interface with people in that way. No. Our biology was like, we we're part of a tribe. We felt safety and belonging. We weren't exposed to millions of people online with a highlight reel. Like we haven't evolved to handle that. Now, the really cool thing is humans, we have this beautiful prefrontal cortex that we can tap into when we keep it OK, well, how do I want to process all the stuff that's coming at me? But, yeah, part of our biology, we're not used to having all these different points of view coming at us and also on the extreme so quickly with just the swipe of a finger.

the extreme so quickly with just the swipe of a finger. We went from being part of a community, maybe getting a telegraph, to then getting a newspaper, to then getting a TV, to then getting radio, or radio then TV. And now we have all these social platforms and everyone has a voice and everyone wants to share it, which is great that we're embracing our voice, but it's a lot. And I don't think we have evolved to the point where we can really process it in a healthy way. In your case, you have this accident which breaks you apart and then you come back together, this Kintsugi effect where you become this more whole integrated person as a result of that, I think as a society, we're still in the broken phase.

We have yet to find the tree sap that's gonna meld us together. And we're under this sense that, well, when something kind of happens that we can all unite around that will bring us back together. But every time something like that happens, it seems to further divide us rather than have that effect. And so I find it at times difficult to hold on to the hopefulness, which is the work, I guess, right? Yeah. The work is to hold on to the optimism and the hope. At the same time, holding space for, we'll call it the pain that we see in the world. Because we see the pain, we feel the pain, whether it's in our communities here in the States or worldwide and what's happening on the world stage, that the common

denominator is that people are experiencing some level of dissatisfaction or pain or suffering. And I think a lot of what social media is about is like, do you see me? Do you feel my pain? Like starting there with a compassionate or empathetic exchange of like, do you see me? Do you hear me? passionate or empathetic exchange of like, do you see me? Do you hear me? Do you appreciate me for all my differences? Even though that I may not be like you, like we can start there, but we're going so damn quickly. We're missing each other. And I think it's happening in corporate life. It's happening in our communities. You know, the interesting thing when I rode across the country, I could take in so much more when I was on a flat road going 19 miles an hour. I could hear the birds better. I could see the

mountains better. I could see the cracks in the pavement. But when I was going 45 miles downhill in the Rockies, my vision was like this. And for a lot of society, we're rushing towards I don't know what. We're moving from this part of our morning routine in a transactional way to this part of the day in a transactional way. We're just going from one thing, like it's one transaction after another, and we're blowing past each other. We're not taking the time to say, you know what, Rich, I see you. I hear you. I appreciate you. I love you. All that's going on with you. I think it takes us to slow down in order to start healing. Look what happened to the planet when we stopped in the early part of the pandemic. Look what mother earth did. Like we stopped, we weren't moving. And she started to heal herself. And it didn't really take all that long.

And I get it, capitalism and the engine of the economy, we have to find a way to cohabitate with that. But if we can slow down and pause just enough, stop and see each other. I think that's the way we can begin. And we just keep on showing up and doing that. Because if we go from one big event, like when George Floyd was murdered in 2020, at least for me, that felt different. And maybe it was because of the pandemic or because of the video imagery that we now can see. It becomes real in a different way. And there was this big burst of energy, right? In a pandemic, people came out into the streets to protest.

And it felt different. And now we're three years removed plus, and it feels like we didn't make much progress at all. We can't fall back on big moments. So my accident was a big moment, but I don't get to this point unless I'm showing up every day, making incremental steps towards what I want to see in the world and in my world. And I think that's the work. It's the work that has no end. In our lifetimes, we will not get this job done.

We will pass on to wherever we pass on to, knowing that the job's not done. It's not finished. We don't cross the finish line. We don't get to go hooray. But we get the opportunity to show up and make progress towards it. And hopefully, we pass the baton to younger generations and they carry on that ripple and their work has no end. And that's how we can get to a point where we can look back and be like, okay, we've made progress. Because I do

believe society as a whole, we've made progress. Like I can look at the US today and say, wow, we've made a lot of progress since 1793. But each day doesn't feel like we're making progress at all. Or sometimes we're regressing. And it depends on what your definition of progress is and how you're evaluating that. But I think, yeah, the job or the legacy to leave behind is the positive ripple effect that on some level, there's like a little bit of immortality in that, right? Like what can we leave behind that becomes an anonymous vibration

that percolates through many people that leaves the world maybe just a little bit better. Just a little bit better. And that's really it. And, you know, in your own case, you not only practice this, you work with other people. Like you've departed the corporate world, you're an executive coach. So you counsel all different kinds of people on these things that we've been talking about today. Not the least of which is meditation, mindfulness practices, and breath work. And you've got this app, Pause, Breathe, Reflect. So I want to spend, of course, a couple minutes talking about what that looks like. So you've had these experiences, you've learned, you practice them, you show up every day

and you do a variety of things to, you know, create that ripple effect. Sure. Make your life a little bit better. How do you work with other people to, you know, access some version of that in their own lives? Well, as you mentioned, I do it through my executive coaching and also speaking at companies. And through my meditation teaching and the app. So I came into mindfulness while I was in the hospital. So I had a moment while I was at Kessler where I was completely overwhelmed. I was not making progress. So again, keep in mind, going back, type A personality,

got to make things happen. Go, go, go. I got to get better. I got to get out of this place. I got to get back to work. Even though I wasn't sure if I really wanted to go back to work, but it felt like that's the thing you do. And I was plateauing. And I had a moment with my physical therapist where I just broke down. She was trying to help me move from my wheelchair onto the exercise mat, and I was having so much difficulty doing it. I couldn't do it. And I just started to cry, which was something I would do a lot of back then. And she was like, why don't you just take a moment? And then I looked around at all the other patients doing rehab at that moment in time. And

I was like, man, why are some people getting better and some people aren't? And again, comparison, why am I not making more progress? I think I'm working hard. And what I remembered, and this goes back to my youth in sports, that any time the game got overwhelming, when it was going too fast, a coach would say, slow things down, take a breath. If you get hurt on the pitch or on the field, you fall down, you're hurt,

and what does everyone tell you to do? Stay down. You crash on your bike, stay down, breathe. And I was like, all right, I need to breathe. I need to find a way to slow the game down because everything felt huge, overwhelming and going way too fast. And I had everyone with great intentions telling me what I needed to do. Well, you should do this, Michael. You should do this, Michael. And I'm like, I don't know what to do. I want to get better

and I don't know what to do. And so the next day I was like, all right, new day, new you. And I got out of my hospital bed into my wheelchair and I wheeled myself to a quiet place in the hospital. And I did a box breathing pattern for the very first time. You know, just a simple four by four by four by four. very first time. You know, just a simple four by four by four by four. And I just used it. That was the beginning of my morning routine of like, okay, how do you want to show up? Now that you've calmed yourself down, you get your head on straight. I was doing some stretches and neck rolls and stuff like that. But it was the beginning part of my, how do I want to show up? beginning part of my, how do I want to show up? Where do I want to place my attention? What's my intention for the day? So I did it once. And then that day I had another big moment that went poorly. I was like, okay, great. But the next day I went back to it and then I just started adding to it.

And again, I didn't know much about mindfulness back then, except I thought it was something a serious business person would not do. I thought it was like a San Francisco grape nuts, granola type of thing to do, which is common among a lot of people. Some would say woo woo, but I didn't have that language back then. I just thought no business leader does this. I'm not going to do this, but it felt good. No business leader does this. I'm not going to do this, but it felt good. So I just kept on doing it. And then eventually I labeled them as my pause, breathe, reflect breaks.

And the reflect part of it was the key. So through meditation and through meditation apps, we can sit, we can pause, we can breathe. But the reflect piece was about how I wanted to show up. It was space to practice gratitude, which I wasn't practicing up until my accident. It was a chance to set intentions. It was a chance to understand where I wanted to place my attention. So that moment of reflection, some would consider it journaling now, but I couldn't really write because of my shoulder. It was all chicken scratch. But that point of reflection was just the space to say, okay, all right, now what? The classic mindfulness question, what now? And that was a big difference to my practice.

So I just started this practice on my own. I wasn't really telling anyone. I found Jon Kabat-Zinn's work around mindfulness-based stress reduction and I thought that was cool because I was coming from a very scientific world where there was clinical data on things. You had to prove yourself

and what Jon did was brought an Eastern practice to the West and brought it into UMass's medical department. I was like, okay, I think this can fit in my world, but I still wasn't telling anyone. Certainly wasn't going to tell anyone at work because the vice president of sales is not going to get up in front of his a thousand person team in 2006 and say, hey folks, we're all going to meditate. Like no way. It was too soft. Like we had to talk about hard numbers. We had to drive the P&L. And I actually had an acronym called profit before royalty that I was judged against, PBR. And I was like, oh, I can really play with this whole pause, breathe, reflect. And it could be my version of PBR.

Now, a lot of people think of a different PBR here in the States when they think of that, you know, yeah, I've had people, I've had people email me. They're like, I can't believe you are associating yourself with such a beverage. And this is like, they'll text me like throw up emojis. And I'm like, hey, we're on the same page. Like it's not my preferred drink. So we're good. But it has nothing to do with that. But that profit before royalty, that PBR privately, I was like, oh, this is sort of funny. This can be my, it's a different version of, you know, pause, breathe, reflect for me. And I just kept at the practice, studying other teachers, learning about loving kindness from Sharon

Salzberg, listening to Tara Brock, you know, just furthering my studies in a very quiet way. When I came out of my corporate life, I started sharing more about my pause, breathe, reflect moments. I went on to get my qualification as an MBSR teacher, but that practice is 45 minutes a day. And who I'm trying to reach are people that don't have 45 minutes in their day. And what I also found through my experience was a lot of people have these beautiful morning routines that have gotten a little crazy over the years. And it's all transactional. You know, you might have a yoga practice in the morning, a meditation sit in the morning, but we're not bringing that practice and weaving it throughout our day. And for me, mindfulness is not an individual thing. And I think here in the States, we look at mindfulness now as an individual thing. Meaning it's something you do and then you go

about your day as opposed to a sensibility or an energy that you bring to every aspect of your day from when you wake up until you go to sleep at night. Yes, and a sense of community. So we will check off, oh, I had a practice this morning, yoga, journaling, what have you. You might get a badge because we've gamified everything. And we can feel good about it, but we're not, yeah, embodying it. We're not weaving it throughout our day. So that's one part of the transactional nature. Mindfulness really is a way of living. It's remembering to remember. It's remembering to come back to our breath, come back to our center. But there's also an element of mindfulness that's about community. So here in the States, we look at mindfulness as, well, here's a way for me to reduce my stress. This is a way for me to

get better sleep. It's a way for me to be happier. But ultimately, if you go way back, it's about how do we show up with awareness so we value the we over the me, which is a difference between Western culture and Eastern culture. So going back to this whole concept of who are you spending time with, who's in your Peloton, for me, mindfulness is about community. It's about the sangha. So it's that element of it. So it's more than transactional. It can be, as cliche as this is, transformational, but a way of living. And it's a way of living that can help us connect with each other better because it helps us slow down. So now we can see, hear, and love each other a bit more than we have in the past. On the reflect piece, what does that look like practically?

You mentioned journaling, but is that writing a gratitude list? Is that writing down your goals? Is that just reflecting on what happened yesterday and your ambitions for the day? Is it up to the individual or is there a specific approach is there a prompt or something that can really drive home like how you want people to practice that reflection aspect of it there's an element of choosing your own adventure with it like so whatever gets you going to help you into a contemplative moment so it could be a list, but I don't do a gratitude list. I practice gratitude every night before my head hits the pillow, but I don't write things down.

I'll do some writing in the morning, much like we did in Italy with morning pages. So it could be a writing exercise. It can be a prompt. It could be, hey, what's happening in my body right now? Because mindfulness can be mindfulness of the mind. It can be mindfulness of the body, of feelings, also of dharma, like, you know, sense of purpose. So for me, like, I love to reflect on what's my body trying to say to me right now? Because I get a lot of cues from my body. I believe the body whispers to us before it really starts to scream. And with all my scar tissue, I have a whole bunch of nooks and crannies where bad juju can get trapped. And so I'm just listening to like, okay, what's happening with the body? What does the body need right now? What might my heart need right now? So for me, reflect can be about that.

It can be, hey, this is popping up. Why is that popping up? Like, what's that story about? It can be about a future orientation about, all right, I have this meeting coming up. I love talking to corporate people about doing a simple two-minute practice before the meeting. So, okay,

come into the meeting because you're probably just, you're rushing from another meeting, another Microsoft Teams or Zoom. So come in, let's hit pause. Let's just take two minutes. We're just going to connect with the breath. And then we're going to leave 30 seconds for you to reflect on how do you want to show up in this meeting? How can you be focused? How do you want to communicate? How do you want to collaborate? How can you bring out the best of the people who are on this Zoom with you? So it could be about that. So my practice is have a morning practice, which is great,

but take moments throughout the day where you keep on coming back home. You keep on coming back to your center. You're coming back to your breath. You're coming back to your soundscape. You're coming back to what you feel in the body multiple times during the day. So it becomes, hey, this is just the way I live.

So I feel something and I'm like, okay, time to slow down and less make sure I'm showing up in a way that's consistent with my first principles, consistent with my values, so I can live an aligned life. And I think that can help people put out a more beautiful ripple. I think most people would be able to identify some aspect of their life that could be better or the little kind of scratch at the back of your brain. Like, is this it? Is this really what I'm meant to be doing with my life? Is there something more? Am I on this hedonic treadmill in a way that I shouldn't be, but this is my life, maybe next time. And yes, we can bring meditation and mindfulness practices, breathwork practices,

reflective practices into our daily life. In your case, and on some level in my case, it took a pretty extreme set of circumstances to shake us out of that and set us on a path towards like rewiring our lives. So I guess the question I'm asking is, do you think that that's necessary? I mean, obviously pain is like the great motivator, right? Like if you meet your maker, then you're going to be more receptive to making changes. But what about the person who doesn't get hit by the SUV, who's just kind of going along their way and they're in a little bit of a gray zone? Like, it's not so bad.

Actually, it's pretty good, but maybe there's a more colorful, rich living experience out there for me, but short of somebody coming in and just turning my life upside down, I'm probably not going to reach for that. Like, how do you connect with that person so they can get a little taste of what might be? Well, here's where our beauty is.

Because I don't think you need to have a big moment like you went through or what I went through. I think the telling of your story, Rich, to all your listeners, now I'm going to speak as a listener. And I promise I won't gush too much on you because I know that makes you uncomfortable. But I know there are millions of people that listen to this show each week, listen to your guests, and they haven't gone through a big moment like you went through or what I went through or some of your other guests have gone through, but they're listening. And when the moment's right, they implement maybe one or two things.

They maybe were an animal eater, and now they slowly moved over to being a vegetarian, to them being a vegan. Now they like slowly moved over to being a vegetarian, to them being a vegan. They knew nothing about mindfulness, but they hear you week in and week out talk about the value of a contemplative practice or they listen to some other guests. So they haven't gone through this big, huge, the unexpected knocks on their door,

but they're paying attention and they're making incremental change happen. They're developing healthy habits. And when I share my story and when I look at the people in our community, like with Pause, Breathe, Reflect, a lot of folks are said, I didn't realize I could be a meditator. Because a lot of folks think, well, you know, I got to be sort of monk-like and I got to have this long practice. And I didn't realize I could start a practice this way.

And they didn't go through something catastrophic. They didn't have a big moment. But they're like, okay, well, there's something here. The door's open just a crack. And I'm going to look in. And is it safe? Do I feel like I belong? And I'm going to open the door a little bit more, take another step.

And then six months down the road, they're like, yeah, I'm different. little bit more, take another step. And then six months down the road, they're like, yeah, I'm different. And that's what's powerful about the book you wrote. And there's a funny story, we can get to it later about your book when I first read it. But more importantly, each week, and sometimes multiple times a week, as you are sharing your story and other people's stories, people are listening and they're making these incremental changes. And I think that's a really powerful ripple. Hopefully they don't have to go through something like you went through or I went through. And so I see it happening every day. Now, for some people, in order for them to get the message, for me to get the message,

my mug, my grand barista, so my mug is an acronym, stands for Mother Earth, the universe God. I have a better relationship with God today than I did back then. So whoever fills up my latte mug, today than I did back then. So whoever fills up my latte mug, right? So they were like, hey, you, hey, O'Brien, we've been giving you some hints. You haven't been paying attention. So we're going to give you something that you cannot deny. We're going to stop you in your tracks. We see you and we see how you're doing it. And we just think you can do a little bit better. And so I think for some people, they need to get that big stark moment, that last bad day moment, in order to have that change happen. But there are plenty of people that went through what you went through, that went through what I went through.

You took one path and I took one path. And a whole bunch of other people take a different path. You took one path and I took one path and a whole bunch of other people take a different path. And so I think it's a combination of listening to our moments and then being very intentional about how we want to go forward and what kind of life we want to have. And I think that's the opportunity for all of us. for all of us, after the pandemic, we all had a moment where we broke apart. And now, collectively, hopefully, I have faith that we can come back together. You mentioned barreling down the Rockies and how that puts blinders on, and you can't really see with any expansiveness when your life is moving so quickly. And I think there's a lot of truth in this idea that when you're living sort of out of alignment with a higher version of yourself, that the universe does knock. But you have to be paying attention. And if your life is moving very

quickly and you have those blinders on, it's very difficult to hear or see those knocks and to just engage with the denial of like, well, whatever, and like push that aside and the knocks get louder. And, you know, there's a little more chaos in your life and things start to, you know, get a little hectic or whatever. Like the intensity of that knock will increase. And ultimately, if left unheeded, you will face some type of crisis of some version or another because the universe will not allow you to continue down that path without consequences, right? In recovery, it's like they say the elevator's going down. It doesn't have to hit the bottom. Like you can actually get off before the cataclysm. It's just harder,

you know, it's like, it's harder to like, you know, just hit that pause button on your life and say, I need a reset when everything is just sort of kind of okay, but not as good as it could be. But when the whole thing explodes, you have no other choice. And the question really becomes like, what is your pain tolerance tolerance and do you really have to suffer in that way in order to make these changes because those changes are available to your point when you're paying attention and you're in the moment anything is possible and you have that facility to respond rather than to react and you know each one of those decisions is like a little branch on a decision tree that can move your life in a different direction.

And it's not about giant leaps and broad proclamations. It's really what you're doing in the small moments every single day that's dictating what that life is going to look like. Absolutely. And all those little moments, they're not easily shared on Instagram. No. Because. And they shouldn't be. That's between you and you and your mud or your higher power or whatever it is you want to call it. Your mug.

Yeah. That's the work. That's the work. Those moments between all the big moments that we happen to share. And that is a private affair. And hopefully the people nearest to you that love you are along for that journey. And sometimes when we're feeling pain, but we don't recognize that we're in pain or some level of discomfort, hopefully we have people in our lives that can help put up a mirror to what we're experiencing. And sometimes that's what we need. But how we all go through like little moments, we don't have to get to the big one, but like those little moments of discomfort or dissatisfaction or pain or suffering, again, we can phrase it in a lot of different ways. And those moments are moments

where we can open up our awareness and be like, okay, what's here? Who's around me? Who can support me? How do I step forward? And yeah, do the work. Do the work when no one else is watching and try to be consistent with it.

Because you can look back after six months, after a year and say, yeah, you made a lot of progress. And that's the really cool thing about doing this work. You get to look back in reflection and say, all right, yeah. And it gives you fuel, hopefully to continue moving forward moment by moment, pedal stroke by pedal stroke.

So if somebody is listening to this and they're thinking, I don't have a Peloton. How do I even create my own Peloton? Which is just a way of saying a board of advisors or people around you who can help guide your decision making. Or maybe I've never done breath work or meditated. I'm just now beginning to try to do an inventory of my life and realizing it's missing in certain ways. Like, what's the first step? How do I begin this journey, Michael?

Well, you can download the Pause, Breathe, Reflect app, which we'll get to. Yeah, we can get to that. Which you should certainly do, but what's the wisdom that you impart around people who are at the beginning stages of kind of reckoning with this type of thing? For me, what I recommend is begin to pay attention to what's happening in your body. I think that's the starting point. I think that's the starting point. I believe we all have, regardless of how fast we're going,

we know where we feel stressed the most. And so we just, we start to build that awareness. Like what's happening? Where do you feel it? Do you feel it in your jaw? Does it get tight? Do you feel it in your belly? Is it butterflies?

Is it in your chest? Is there something else going on? And so that is the first indication, hey, there might be something here. And then you take that moment to pause. And in that moment of pausing, you can reflect, okay, there's a lot of options. Who might I ask? So you mentioned the Peloton. So when I was in the hospital at Kessler, my medical team came in, doctors, interns, fellows, nurses.

They were going over my case and studying me because that was an interesting case. And when they left, I was like, oh, I went to my wife. They're like my medical Peloton. So they're helping me get down the road. They're trying to help me heal. And so for those that don't know, but I think most of your listeners will know what a peloton is. It's a group of cyclists in a bike race, like the Tour de France. They're competing against each other, those cyclists, but they need each other. You know, they're drafting off of one another. They're

pointing out road hazards. There is efficiency in the peloton. The notion that together we go farther and we go faster when we're riding together. There also needs to be trust and communication and all that. And for me, it's an analogy for how are you riding through life? Who's in your peloton? Are you in a trusting peloton that has connection and belonging? And are you bringing out the people that are around you in a trusting peloton that has connection and belonging? And are you bringing out the people that are around you in the best way? And are they bringing out the best in you? So that whole concept of who's in your peloton. And I always love to get to the person when I'm stuck

that can ask me that beautiful question. So when I'm feeling something and I feel stuck, question. So when I'm feeling something and I feel stuck, then the person in my Peloton I go to is a person that is a really curious person that can ask a really beautiful question. Because we're really quick to try to find the answer in today's society. But I would rather try to sit with the questions just a little bit of a beat longer. And so I think a strong Peloton has people that can clarify things when we get stuck asking a really good question. They can push us outside our comfort zone like my physical therapist did when she told me I had to get back on the bike. They can be there when we're celebrating something and they put all their energy into our celebration and they're not trying to steal our

celebration. We also have people that can comfort us when we need comfort and are there in a crisis. Those are just five different roles. So listen to the body and then get with someone in your Peloton that can help you figure out the best plan forward. And then start really small. Just begin with one thing. So if it's journaling, just begin with a paragraph. If it's breath work, begin with a minute and then do another minute tomorrow. Start as small as possible, like the smallest viable dose, right? That sets you up for success. And that's how I would recommend people begin. If it's exercise, you do five minutes, you do a minute. If it's walking, maybe walk around the block. So I'm a big fan of like, start where you're at, start where your feet are at and start

really small. So small, it doesn't even feel like you're starting. And that was my first breathwork pattern. I was like, I started small and I was like, okay, that felt good. I can do this. And I just built it over time. Or when I came back to the bike, I'm going to get to this town line. Now I'm going to get to this town line. And that's how we create success. That's how we create habits that develop into the way we live. So then it becomes automatic. It's just like, no, this is just what I do. Like I started doing water first thing in the morning 25 years ago. And now every time I wake up, I get water first thing in the morning. It's just what I do. I don't even have to think about

it. It's like putting on your seatbelt when you get into the car before you pull out of your driveway. You don't even think about it. So what I try to do is help people find those really small steps that they can replicate over time. And what is it that someone's going to find when they open up the app? What is the intentionality and the architecture of how you've designed these practices in the form of a digital product that can, you know, move the needle for people in terms of everything you just shared? Well, I hope people find when they open the app is a moment of tranquility when they open the app and they can start to... It's very relaxing. It is. I can attest to that. Yeah.

It's like all of a sudden it's like... Yeah. Before they even do a practice. And maybe that's the practice, opening the app and just... And then how I've designed the app is that there's a daily practice. And again, these are practices that are shorter. It's like five to seven minutes long. And then throughout the day, I have short practices in a breathwork pattern and it rotates

throughout the day. So if you pop in in the morning, it looks one way. If you pop in during the day, it looks another way. And in the evening, we're looking to shut it down so you can have a gentle night's rest. So what I'm trying to encourage is, hey, come back and just do a short practice. A minute, two minutes. If you feel like you need to do a longer practice, cool. If you feel like you need to do a walking meditation, because that's what the body is saying to you right now, cool. We have those.

But my feeling is, come back home. It's going back to when I was in the hospital. I just feeling is come back home. It's going back to when I was in the hospital, I just wanted to come back home. So the app is designed in that way to come back home and meet you in whatever moment you happen to be in. So I try to keep it fun and relatable. So if you're in line at a fancy grocery store, instead of scrolling your Instagram, you could just take a moment and just spend a minute connecting with your breath

because you're gonna be shocked when you get the bill. So it's probably a good practice to do. But it's like those moments before meetings, waiting for a doctor's appointment, stuck in traffic, when you are shooting all over yourself, when you wanna have fun storming the castle, which is, you know, like I try to do practices that are not traditional,

like in the sense of how people think of meditation and mindfulness, it's secular. Our community, everyone belongs. I don't care where you come from. I don't care where you come from. I don't care who you voted for. If you have like-heartedness, I want to invite people into your space and we're going to figure out

how to become better humans together. And that's what the practice is all about. To kind of close this down, can we do a short breath work practice? Sure, yeah. Can you take me work practice? Sure. Yeah. Take me through that. All right, cool. We'll do one that's three simple inhales and exhales. All right. So in meditation, the first barrier we have is like, well, how should I sit? Right. So should I lie down? Should I sit? Should I stand? So my recommendation is just find a comfortable

posture. So you can- You have to have your fingers exactly like this or it doesn't count. You can have your fingers like this or like this. You can have them open, you can have them closed. Well, let's just say we keep them open and we're just gonna bring a sense of dignity through the posture.

And just start to settle into it, getting comfortable comfortable and then you can close your eyes as i do you can also have them open you may even wish to have a soft gaze so as we sit here in this comfortable posture a little drop in. And I always love to begin with a few healthy inhales and slow releasing exhales. Breathing in as full as you can through your nose if possible. And then a nice slow breath out. And as you do, you might notice that you start sinking a little bit deeper into your cushion or chair. Now we're going to take the next 30 seconds and we're just going to do three slow inhales and releasing exhales.

We're going to breathe in for a count of five and then release with a count of five. So as we breathe in, breathing in, two, three, four, five, and breathing out, two, three, four, five. And breathing in, allow you to count on your own. And breathing out. And breathing in one last time. And now breathing out. And then open your eyes and wiggle those beautiful fingers and toes. Maybe give your body a little stretch.

And there you have it. Just a simple 90-second practice. Just as a reset. And now something may have come up during the practice that you might have noticed. And you can journal about it. You can be reflective. You can set your intentions. Maybe something popped up that was a moment of gratitude.

And okay, that only took 90 seconds. And now I can get on with the next part of my day. And my recommendation is just keep on coming back to that. Keep on coming back to that. Beautiful. I do feel better. I was sitting here thinking we should have done this at so well you know it's like beginning during middle but it's so simple to do like our breath it never forgets about us like we don't have to direct it we take our breath for granted and you know my life prior to my accident i took my health for granted i sorry i took my life for granted i didn't know anything about my breath. I was like, whatever, except maybe from sports. But the breath is there, and it's our body's regulator. So if we come back to it, okay. And certainly, there's a lot of studies on the benefits of

mindfulness. And that's great. There's rich data that shows that it has an impact. But for me, studies aside, do practices that make you feel good. If it's cold plunging, get your cold plunge on. If it's journaling, journal. So do these practices that feel good. Make up your own yurishi, your own lacquer to help yourself heal. So then you can come into a different form of beauty. And then when you're healed, maybe you can ripple that into other people. and now we can start connecting as a community, as corporations, hopefully as a planet. So, and we can look back and say, okay, we did some good work. Well, I think you're doing good work. I think you are a living example

of everything that you talked about and the ripple that you're putting out into the world is a worthy one. And I appreciate you coming here to talk to me. And I'm honored to know you. You're a really beautiful guy. And the fact that you took this experience that you had and really transformed it into something truly meaningful, not just for yourself, but for so many other people, is a beautiful act of compassion on behalf of yourself and the world. So thank you, Michael.

Thank you, Rich. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it. You've changed my life in so many ways that you'll probably never know, but I so appreciate what you've put into the world. And when you and Julie started way back when, I guess in Hawaii, and see it come to this is really special. And I'll speak on behalf of all listeners,

like all the average guys and gals out there, to see you putting in the work and just showing up as you do each week, every day, and seeing what you've created, it's motivating to all of us to do the type of work we can do in our own way and be able to look back in 10, 12 years and say, wow, we've really created a beautiful ripple. So on behalf of all the listeners out there, if they allow me to do so, thank you for the ripple that you're putting into the world. Thanks, man. I appreciate that. That means a lot. If you want to learn more about Michael's world, pick up his books, My Last Bad Day Shift.

Also, Shift Creating Better Tomorrow. That's your first book. It's more like a memoir. It's a memoir, yeah. The podcast, the Kintsugi Effect, of course, and the app, Pause, Breathe, Reflect, available. Is it in Android also or iOS in both? You can get it in the App Store.

Apple and Google, and people can start their first year. We have a pay-what-you-can model. So you can pay as little as a dollar for the first full year and come into our community and we can hold each other's hand and learn how to do this thing called life together. Cool. Yeah. And the coaching, if people want to learn more about how that works, where do they go? To the soulless platform known as LinkedIn.

Wow. You're the first person to push LinkedIn. So, well, that's... But you have a website too, Michael O'Brien Shift, right? Yeah, Michael O'Brien Shift is my corporate website. PauseBreatheReflect.com is where you can find all the PauseBreatheReflect merch. But for my corporate life and my executive coaching and my speaking... LinkedIn is the shift. It's LinkedIn, yeah. from my corporate life and my executive coaching and my speaking. LinkedIn.

It's LinkedIn. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, that's where corporate people hang out and, you know, I wish I didn't have to do any of it, to be honest.

But as you know, you have to put, we all have to make our way in the world. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. So people aren't going to just find me by chance. So yeah, LinkedIn, my websites, the app,

there are plenty of ways to find this Michael O'Brien in the world. Cool. Well, thank you, my friend. I appreciate it. Enjoy the rest of your time in LA. Thank you. Peace. Peace, Lance.

That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. 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, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated, and sharing the show or your

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Plants. Namaste. Thank you.