The Rich Roll Podcast - The Best of 2014 (Part 2)

Episode Date: January 1, 2015

Welcome to Part 2 of our second annual Best of the RRP Anthology series. If you haven't already, I suggest listening to The Best of 2014 Part 1 first. Once again, this is a compendium of some of my favorite conversations of 2014. Our way of saying thanks. Our way of giving back. Our way of trying to catapult you into the new year armed with the information and inspiration required to make it your best year yet. Once again, it's worth reflecting upon the incredible year that was 2014. My blessings are many. My gratitude is overflowing. This is my way way of saying thank you. I appreciate you. Here's to an extraordinary 2015 — the year we manifest our greatest dreams into reality. Join me, and let's do this thing together. Peace + Plants, Rich

Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, episode 122 of the Rich Roll Podcast. Creativity using what's on hand is the magic. Asking myself, what would love do now? Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, episode 122, the best of 2014, part two. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody, my name is Rich Roll Podcast. Thank you for listening. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for spreading the word on social media. Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter. And thank you for clicking through the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases, especially all you guys that made a bunch of holiday purchases using the banner ad. Thank you so much. That was huge.

And I really appreciate it. And happy new year. Chances are you might be dialing up this podcast on New Year's Day, given that I posted it late on New Year's Eve, Pacific Standard Time. And my hope is that you woke up this morning, you extended your arms and you welcomed 2015 with everything that you are, with an excitement about the possibilities that this new year can bring into your life. So what's going on at this time of year? What is it about? It's about gratitude. It's about giving back. It's about service. It's about family. It's about celebration.

And maybe most importantly, it's about reflection. It's about reflecting back on 2014, what didn't work for you, what did work for you, what you need to double down on, what you need to let go of. And it's about projecting forward. It's about what do you want 2015 to be? What do you want it to look like? What do you want to bring into your life over the next 12 months? And so to set the stage for that, that's kind of what this little best of anthology is all about. Well, first of all, it's about giving thanks to you guys. It's about expressing our gratitude for you guys taking this leap with us, for going on this journey with us.

And it's about reflecting back on the journey that we took over the course of this show over 2014. And when we went back and kind of sampled all the interviews that we did, the idea was that we were looking for little nuggets, chunks that we could pull out here and there that would help me and all of us, that would help me and all of us hopefully reflect on the year and kind of put in the forefront of our minds, our consciousness, ideas that I think will be helpful and beneficial as we start to contemplate what we want 2015 to look like. So once again, over the course of this past year, we conversed on a wide range of topics. And as a lifestyle and wellness podcast, I really pride myself on trying to embrace and contemplate a wide variety of perspectives and opinions and attitudes. And I really feel like we accomplished that. I mean,

we had extraordinary guests who just were so giving of their time and really brought so much to my life and hopefully to yours in such an interesting way. Just unique people and perspectives that we've entertained. And going back and kind of listening to these interviews once again, I just get so excited and energized for doubling down on my effort in this podcast over the course of 2015. I'm really excited with some of the guests that are gonna be coming up and it's gonna be awesome. So in this part two, we're just gonna pick up where we left off in part one. If you've been with me all along, once again,

then hopefully listening to these guests will help bring into the forefront of your consciousness some of these ideas and insights that will help you kind of project into 2015, contemplate your trajectory, your hopes, your dreams heading into the new year. And again, if you're new, then these clips should hopefully inspire you to go back and listen to some of the guests in full. And once again, I'm going to put the show notes up in the blog so you can click through those and listen to those episodes directly. Anyway, without further ado,

let's just get into it and I'll leave you with this. Thank you guys. I appreciate you. Happy New Year and together, let's make all our dreams come true. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and

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I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, episode 86, with world champion, free champion free runner and parkour artist Timothy Sheaf. Explain what free running is, like what parkour is. Free running is kind of that thing everyone did when they were a kid and they balanced on a wall and their mother held their hand. And it's kind of like you're climbing around your environment and exploring

and and it kind of evolved it came out of paris it was called parkour which means obstacle coursing but with a c and they spelt it with a k p-a-r-k-o-u-r about 20 years ago a guy called david bell invented it it came from his father who trained firefighters how to get around environments efficiently and then it came to england maybe 10 years ago and i saw a documentary there called jump britain and it just blew my mind because it was like this evolution of kids in a playground to adults with big muscles climbing around buildings their environment using it in such a unique way and i mean a lot of people see that and they think that's dangerous and they see kind of this negative side of it straight away and they're kind of the you know the older generation the more fear they kind of put their

own perception of if that was me climbing on that wall that could be dangerous but for me as a kid i just saw you know this beautiful movement and it yeah it's just moving through your environment be it walls or through nature i like to climb trees in a creative way it initially it was about efficiency it was going from a to b as fast as possible um they say be strong to be useful so you know if you if you lock yourself out your house or there's a fire you can get away from it or go save someone it's being able to be in any environment and know the limits of what your body can achieve a lot of the things we do sometimes people say oh i reckon i could do that but i'm just scared to try it and we're we get to that level where we know what we can do you know there's no gray areas it's black or white i

can do this or i can't do this and it's having that confidence in any situation to know your environment a big part of your story is trying to get people to understand or embrace this inner child within right so tell me a little bit about yeah i think parkour gives too much of a label to what i do like people say oh there's skateboarding there's parkour there's bmxing it's not like any of them there's no variable there's no alter thing that you have to do it with it's just play like parkour is too sometimes i say we're just playing you know let's go out and play we often call it training and i've started not using that word because it makes it sound like work yeah and it shouldn't be work it should be i don't feel like i've worked

a day in my life i play and i've got you know good physique good good muscles good strength and i just play and climb around like i did on your house you know that's 10 minutes on this house imagine what i can do you give me a whole city and you just get stronger and you get better and whatever you practice you get better at and that's that's all we do and right and it is just looking at your environment like a kid looks at a playground like you give a playground some swings and a slide they're not always going to swing and slide down the slide they're going to start climbing on the frames you know kids don't do that and that's what we have to do as adults is look at the world in this perspective of here's a walkway okay but people just zone out

i've got to get to work so i'm going to walk to work this same route but they don't take in anything around them and it makes you observe and it puts you in the moment because wherever i walk i'm always looking for things to do and so i always know my environment wherever i'm at yeah it grounds you in the present and that's the key right and that's what everyone tries to teach but we kind of have that in us we just lose it as we become an adult and they say you know you need to go grow up stop doing that stop being childish i remember i used to walk on my hands as 10 11 years old from my kitchen to my living room get a tape measure out how far can i walk try and beat that distance be that eventually i got in and i walked around the table and i was like yes i went to high school you call it here when i was like is that high school 12 years old

uh middle school yeah and then we call it secondary school and i did it there and the teachers told me off they said you can't do that what if the kids copy you and hurt themselves so i stopped for a few years and then you know i realized when i was like 15 and i wanted to break dancing why did i stop like what who are are they to tell me what I should do with my own body? This is my expression. And that was a real realization that we're really in a society. And those people don't mean to be like crushing what we do. They're just raised that way.

You know, they think that it's out of the ordinary. Don't do that. And we just need to change that. And we're starting that change now. the ordinary don't do that and we just need to change that and we're starting that change now have you seen uh damien manders ted talk no he's the guy the big south african yeah the south african amazing that's good for like jock men like yeah well he's like the most alpha male dude of all time right like this guy and he was he was a South African or a British soldier in Afghanistan. I'm trying to remember.

It's been a while since I watched it. He's the one that was on about conserving animals in Africa, right? Right, but originally he was like this major hardcore sniper dude. He was SAS or something. Yeah, it was like Special Forces guy who was in the muck big time and just saw more than his fair share of you know killing it you know in warfare and uh oh he was australian right yeah have you watched that ted talk it's insane i'll put a warrior what's it called something warrior i'll put a link up in the show notes incredible

but then he uh yeah like then he he bought he bought land in south africa right and he started to see how the poachers were treating the big game. And it just enraged him. And he decided he was going to take a stand against this. I think he actually was off, like, hunting these guys, you know, like. And he gives this incredibly eloquent TED Talk about his position on animal welfare, especially big game animals. It's beautiful. And it's very potent because he is such a force of masculinity he is but and then that shows his transformation was his mind realized why are these elephants more important than the cows like he'd be saving these elephants

and then going back and making barbecues and he posted a question there he says does a cow value its life more do i value this barbecue more than a cow values its life and no one can ever there's only one answer for that right obviously the cow values its life more and um and now you're getting people on facebook i see so many people these these a lot of girls i guess posting about these animal problems like these dolphins slaughter or they fed a giraffe to some lions in a zoo and you know again about dogs in china and they're all these things and then i asked them i say are you vegetarian you know you care about these dolphins here you care about this giraffe but yet you're making a choice

that causes death to other animals and it's not as humans it's not our choice to say what animal is more important than another how about we just don't fuck with any of them you know can i swear on this podcast you can say whatever you want and so how did the dietary shift kind of yeah you know change that or what was the impact of that on that so i tore my meniscus a few years ago but probably six or seven years ago and i had surgery on them and that took a while to heal and so every winter i'd feel kind of aches in my knees and i had achilles tendonitis and since being vegan the aches in my knees went away in the winter achilles tendonitis went away not come back at all and these these little changes because you know your digestive system

gets a chance to rest when you're eating heavy meats that's a lot of energy gone to there and as soon as you're eating lighter foods it frees up all the energy and your body's like right let's take the chance to go heal this bit that we've been waiting so long for to go heal and and so all these things these little things cleared up and it's right it's been amazing and how did the the sort of parkour community where you live yeah uh what was their reaction i mean i would assume that sort of the paleo diet is probably the predominant diet in the in the parkour community well in the american parkour community is a bit but i've since i've spoke out openly on it because i am in a position where some of the community listen to me of course some of them make jokes about you know the younger kids i don't quite

understand it yet they just want to remain in the in their ignorance and i would have done the same thing i remember saying to vegetarians years ago how about if for every animal you don't eat i eat three would you eat animals then absolute ignorant what an idiot like but there's a lot of them have taken to it i've spoke out openly and the kids have gone yep you know that's right well all we what we do is about not leaving a trace behind and if you're leaving a trail of animal carcasses every meal that you eat that's you're leaving a trace you know being strong strength should build up you know it shouldn't take from anyone it shouldn't take a life especially shouldn't take a life. Especially it shouldn't take a life. And when you can be just as strong, if not healthier, fitter, you can thrive on a vegan diet.

That's the ethos of parkour. It's about flight over fight. It's already about not damaging your environment. And the environment goes as far as animals because that's really the big environmental issue. Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, episode 87, with Buddhist monk and tea master, Wuda. By way of background, he was born Aaron Fisher in the United States, but he was a guy who was drawn to the East from a very early age. And after studying philosophy in college, he traveled the world and ultimately settled down in Taiwan where he currently lives and where he has since become a Buddhist monk, steeped in the sutras and wisdom of that tradition, as well as a tea master. And that's

a weird thing, like what is a tea master? And we get into that in the podcast, I won't spoil it, but he's a master of not just the living tradition of harvesting tea, but the living tradition of what tea means in a sort of meta sense, like why it's important and why we should care about it. Tea is medicine. Tea is healing. Tea is life. Tea practice as Zen. Tea is life. Tea practice as Zen. The easiest way to put it is that he comes from this idea that tea is a universal living, breathing thing, the tree of life, you could call it, that unifies us all. And as a concept, it's something that works as a foundational idea, a metaphor basis, if you will, for a set of ancient teachings, principles, knowledge, and wisdom to glean a broader truth about health, about healing, community, the environment, life, life's meaning, and the unifying oneness or undeniable interconnectedness of everything. In Taiwan, he founded and runs an organization called Global

Tea Hut, which is a school and a center that harvests tea. And it educates all comers on the tradition surrounding tea and welcomes people from all over the world to come and study and practice tea preparation and meditation and tea history, tea crafting, the sutras of tea and its relevance in society and how to cultivate this Tao of tea, if you will, as a method of spiritual cultivation. What is it? It's a very specific thing with a heritage and a culture and a teaching and a lifestyle and principles around it that you've oriented your life through and and that you express through how you live and the the teachings that you share through these kinds of events these tea ceremonies that we'll get into in a little bit but

you know what what is what if you could encapsulate what that means is there a way to articulate that yeah for sure it's a it's a dialogue about kind of i think medicine and healing and what that means and um you know as individuals i think there's not any any more pertinent topic than health and because um this is the most valuable the most valuable thing in the world is life, and especially human life. And by world, I mean this earth and this planet, you know, and what it means to be alive. I had the good fortune last year, I went and served tea to some Hopi elders.

And at the end, the shaman gave me this gift, and he said to me that it was the greatest gift that he had to give, that the Hopi had to give that hope he had to give and these these uh people they don't they don't use superlatives very often their language is taciturn and kind of really clear and integral and for him to use that great est that's a really strong word for him you know and what it turned out to be was they have five they have five uh types of corn you know colors red purple yellow white and what it turned out to be was they have five types of corn. Colors, red, purple, yellow, white. And what it turned out to be was white corn, which to them is beginnings.

And I went and I held this thing, this cobble corn. It was a dried cobble corn. And I realized that's what he had given me was life. Like infinite future life because this cobble corn, I could plant it and then I could grow corn and then I could grow more corn. So this one cup of corn could feed a whole city of my people indefinitely into the future and also past because the Hopi DNA was all like built up in it as well.

They had cared for this corn for so many thousands of years and it, and it really, uh, highlighted and emphasize that aspect that, that is in, in Zen Buddhism. It's one of the preliminaries to practice, which is the recognition that human life is so precious, so short, so precious.

And for that reason, health, this dialogue about what health means is so relevant to all of us. And then as a species, as a planet, it's so relevant because of the crisis that we're facing because of our influence on this planet and on all the other species that live here. So health isn't just about us as individuals, it's about us as a species. And I think in the Western world, especially we have really confused notions about what health means and what that is about. Yeah. And you know, how many, you know, out of 10 people, I think that if I grabbed on the street and asked them to define, you know, what does health mean to

you? Um, I think you get back really, you know know either no definition or confused definitions you know and I think if I ask the average health practitioner in America they're going to say that health is the absence of disease but that's really foolish for two reasons one is you can't define a thing by what it's not so if you ask me you know

if somebody asks me who is rich and I say well he's not George that doesn't tell them anything about rich. And more fundamental problem with this definition is that if your definition of health is freedom from illness, then no human being that has ever lived has ever been healthy. We're defining health in supernatural terms then. We're defining health in a way that is unachievable for us. What's the point in that? or to finding health in a way that is unachievable for us. What's the point in that? One of T's most ancient names is the Great Connector.

And to me, connection is just a synonym for harmony. And there are myriad ways in which T connects us, but I like to focus on three. We can talk about them individually, and you guys can share some insights maybe. The first to me is connection to nature. And this one's the trickiest one because it implies a disconnection, and there never was a disconnection.

We are not disconnected from nature and therefore cannot be connected. A lot of times I do workshops around the world and I start them with a question, which is a trick question. I ask people, I want you to get up and I want you to touch the nearest earth. And people get up and they like touch plants and they touch the ground. And I tell them that this workshop is about reestablishing the feeling that will allow you when someone asks you to touch the nearest earth to touch your own face, because I'm earth. And so

what has been lost is not the connection to nature. What has been lost is the feeling of connection to nature. They're, they're different. Yeah. Conscious awareness of, of that. Exactly. You know, and that's because our ancestors, they grew all their own food and, uh, they, they, you know, so their food came from plants and their houses were made of plants, and their clothes were made of plants, and in those days, no hospitals. So when you're sick, you've got two choices, magic or plants. And so their dependence on nature was tacit, and it was there in every day. And we now live in mine-made cities and take chemical medicine

and process food and synthetic clothes, et cetera, et cetera. And so the feeling of connection to nature is not there. And what tea does is, you know, when you're drinking tea, that tacitness returns, that feeling of connection returns because in this liquor, in this brew, is earth and minerals and water and mountain. You're drinking the weather. The tea from season to season is completely different

so you're literally drinking the weather and you know the thing these trees aren't just connected to what's to the earth to what's down there they're also connected to what's out there because they're pulling in sunshine and moonshine and starshine and through photosynthesis converting that into energies that we can synthesize. So through them, we communicate to the sun. And this is a very real connection, and we can connect in this way. And so connect doesn't really mean disconnect and reconnect. We are nature. Welcome to episode 91 of the Rich Roll Podcast

with Keegan Kuhon and Kip Anderson. The inconvenient and uncomfortable truth is that whether we're talking about global warming, the deforestation of the rainforest, the overconsumption of water, the depletion of our soils, the destruction and pollution of the oceans, or the obliteration of natural wildlife habitats, there is one single industry that is destroying the planet more than any other. And it's one we really don't talk about that much. It is the elephant in the room. It is animal agriculture. Animal agriculture is by far the biggest offender in every single category that I just mentioned. Point blank, our industrialized system of factory livestock

harvesting is just unsustainable. It's killing us and it's killing the planet and it is time to embrace this reality and redirect before it's too late. This is the subject of a new documentary. It's called Cowspiracy, the Sustainability Secret. And this documentary takes a look at just why the issue of animal agriculture and its impact just doesn't get the airtime that other environmental cause celebs do like fracking. And today I have the filmmakers here to tell us all about it, Keegan Kuhn and Kip Anderson. Yeah, so the film is a journey, first and foremost. It's about Kip, my co-director's journey of finding out

about the most destructive industry facing the planet today, which is animal agriculture. And if animal agriculture is responsible for, you know, number one cause of rainforest destruction, ocean dead zones, water pollution, topsoil erosion, climate change, you would expect the world's largest environmental organizations to talk about it. But when you go to these organizations' websites, it's nowhere. You don't see animal agriculture.

They're going to be talking about fracking or transportation or dirty coal. So the story is the journey of finding out about this and going to these organizations and trying to find the answer. How do we live sustainably on the planet with 7 billion people? Well, it's a journey that's really personal to me where it started with, I thought I was doing everything I could for the environment and then saw a post with the United Nations long shadow report that animal agriculture is the leading cause of greenhouse gases, 18% versus 13% of all transportation put together. And that's when I was like, wait, there's something going on here. So 18% for animal agriculture, 13% in that the umbrella over 13% includes all transportation, trains, planes, cars, everything.

Every single thing all put together. And these are global numbers. Global numbers. And animal agriculture was 18%. And here I was riding my bike everywhere. So that's kind of where the journey starts. journey starts. And then, so I take it once, do some more investigating and then find the Worldwatch report in 2009, their calculations, animal agriculture accounts to around 51%. We watch Kip kind of come into this realization that we're never going to be able to really begin

to address all of these environmental concerns until we really take a hard look at what's going on with animal agriculture. And then we start to watch you as you try to contact these organizations to talk to these people about how come nobody's talking about this. We talk a lot about our fossil fuel consumption. We talk about our water consumption. But nobody's talking about the elephant in the room, which is how wasteful this system is that we've erected around how we raise animals for food. And then you go in and you visit these places from Sierra Club to Greenpeace, and you basically get nowhere

with these people. You can't get any kind of answers from them about why they're not talking about this issue, which clearly is the biggest issue when it comes to waste. Yeah. And when you, you know, it's not only is it the biggest issue of, say, deforestation, it's the biggest issue of all of them. There's virtually no environmental ill facing the planet today that the leading cause is in animal agriculture. I mean, literally, no matter what your passion is, you care about the rainforest. Well, hey, you know, upwards of 91% of all the deforestation in the Amazon was caused by animal agriculture, whether for clearing land to graze cows or to grow the feed crop, the soy, genetically engineered, you know, corn and soybean. That's fantastic.

Yeah, you have this graphic where you use like a football field analogy and you show how much, how it's getting eaten away on a daily basis. The numbers are ridiculous. Do you remember what they are? It's about an acre per second of rainforests destroyed. You know, and the vast majority of that is for animal agriculture. It's just astonishing. But again, you know, it goes way beyond just rainforest. You know, what do you care about? You care about the oceans. Well, you know, leading cause of dead zones in the oceans is from land-based animal agriculture. Right. Explain that a little bit because I didn't really know how that whole, how those two things kind of worked together. And the film did a really good job of explaining that. You know, I think that was one of the more surprising aspects for Kip and I both while

working on this film is that, you know, I felt like I was pretty well informed on this issue. And then when we did more research and you saw that, so you have these massive fields of, again, genetically engineered corn and soybean that's been raised just to feed to livestock. They use chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and those all run off the fields. They run into the streams and rivers that lead out to the oceans. You have all this massive amount of manure and waste from factory farms and from feedlots and from lagoon pits. Those spill into rivers and streams that make their way to the ocean. This huge bloom of algae happens when you have high levels of nitrogen in the water, and that algae deprives the entire ecosystem of oxygen. So you have these massive areas, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico or anywhere you have large—

Like the Mississippi Delta, right? Exactly. It's got to be probably the worst. It's one of the worst in the world. And we were talking about hundreds of square miles of areas completely devoid of life. What is going on legislatively, like on Capitol Hill currently, with respect to trying to address some of these animal agriculture issues that are coming up. I mean, are you versed in that? Yeah. I mean, what we're facing right now, you know, there's a series of laws throughout, you know, a number of states in the country.

They're called ag-gag laws, which basically they criminalize exposing what farms are doing, whether that's the atrocities they're committing against the environment or against the animals themselves. And this is, you know, First Amendment protected activities, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, repression, because this industry is very threatened by undercover investigations. They're threatened by films like ours that expose the the truth. Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, episode 94, with Slow Mo. It goes to this, I mean, you know, a lot of what your life is about is dichotomies and more specifically the dichotomy of the zone versus the non-zone. I read your manifesto and, and, and sort of the use of this word zone as being expansive, you know, really encompassing what, you know, maybe in

more mainstream circles would be just known as God or the universe or whatever word you want to place upon it, higher power, and the idea of the subjectivity that goes hand in hand with being in the zone or being merged with the zone versus the objectivity of the non-zone state of sort of being in the world. That's right. Right? Exactly. So, in the most simplistic terms, if you could sort of expand on that idea, explain explain really what you're getting at with that.

OK, well, in all the activities of life, this particular dualism exists where a person can observe something in the zone or experience the zone. And it's quite different than the non-zone. If you look at all those activities, they all have a set of intelligent and wise people who discover the zone within that activity. Now, the one I like, I like to see people experience the zone is in the spectacular sports that we get to observe on television. Well, that's where it's most readily kind of apparent to the eye, right? Yeah. It first occurred to me what was happening when I watched that movie with Chariots of Fire.

One of my favorites. Yeah. You remember when the runner fell during, I think it was an 880 run, and his friends were in the audience. He fell, and then he got up and began to try to catch up with the other runners. And Van Gallis, who was doing the music, switches him into slow motion. He's going in slow motion, though he's gaining on these other runners. And the cameraman switches it to the crowd and his friends are standing up

and one of the women says, do you see it? Or something to that effect. And what they were seeing really interests me because I think that's what we saw when we watched Michael Jordan perform in the zone. We were seeing something in the way that Amazing Grace uses the word vision.

We were experiencing something attached to a vision, which was in another world. That is, we were watching someone in a pure state of worship. And that's impressive. And matter of fact, that's one reason I think some of the people line the streets of Rome when the Pope goes up and down. I think he's supposed to be, and I say supposed to be, relatively close, at least a representation of a state of worship. But the athlete, when he's hitting three-pointers, say in basketball, say four or five three-pointers in a row, he is almost by definition in what he calls the zone. It's the dichotomy of the nine zone and

the zone. When you're in the zone, you never, and you can correct me if you agree with this or disagree, you never question whether there's a higher power or whether there's a God. It doesn't occur to you to question it. It doesn't occur to you to question that you exist as an entity of some kind of subjective, something that could be called a soul. Those questions and doubts only exist

when the mind is in the non-zone. But then I was thinking like, whoa, if I just did exactly what I wanted to, what I really wanted to, really wanted to, and maybe it would guide me down a road where at the end I would be healthier and happier than I would have been if I had tried to travel down the road that I heard that you should eat this and you should do this and maybe you shouldn't do that and you shouldn't think this kind of thought and blah blah blah it just goes forever. Right. So having all that knowledge of here's how you eat and live to be healthy and happy, inside you're not happy. I mean, in the documentary, you're a self-described asshole, right? Right.

And is that just in your ego and in your arrogance and driving your Ferrari around and disdain for your patients? Right. Yeah, kind of. Really just... Yeah, it was kind of a Faustian thing. I can remember... I think I experienced the same thing that Faust did.

But Faust didn't get a way out. You know, I've been meaning to check on that. Yeah, it's been a while. I don't understand. Am I speaking out of school on that? Did he? No. But I think, you know, when you talk about Faust, you talk about literature.

When I look at the arc of your life, it really is, you could not, a great writer couldn't script these dichotomies and these, these, you know, sort of the character arc better. It's almost too good to be real because you have, you're starting to lose your eyesight, but that gives you the ability to see. You're a neurologist and then you suffer from this neurological disorder that you would think imprisons you as a result of your many years of being a doctor, and yet that's what sets you free. And you're this loner who enjoys his time alone, and it develops this condition which you would think would isolate you further,

and that's what's created greater community for yourself. And this idea that you were staring at the end of your career, but that's really where your life began. It's beautiful. And you couldn't dream that up. If you wrote it down, somebody would say, well, that's fiction. Well, you put it together mighty beautifully i appreciate you saying it that way i where i'm at now um i live here a half a block from the boardwalk

it's a two mile stretch of perfect skating the feeling that i get when I skate, I know is the zone. I can get in the zone very easily that way and sustain it. My thoughts when I'm skating, the type that people naturally have when they're in the zone, the way I relate to the people and what they see up and down the boardwalk. So it really is about as close to paradise. I live next to the zone, in a way. Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, episode 95, with John Joseph and Mishka Shubali. and Mishka Shubali.

Well, I mean, we were talking about this before we started recording, the idea of the difference between preaching to the choir and reaching the masses, right? And so when you told that story of all the other women who are mediators who are watching the video saying, this guy's great, your ability to tap into and connect with an audience that isn't necessarily on board with your message that's how you change lives right it's not about like patting people on the back who already agree with your perspective on it's like first of all it's like i don't like you said preaching to the choir it's like i don't care about the people that's already

vegan or plant-based or whatever i mean i do care but the reality is over the 10 000 books that we sold independently on our own a majority of those books were women who bought that book for their men who refused to change and then they were like yo i love the way this dude talks and does things like yo this and they actually i corresponded with a lot of them and they i mean thousands of emails and it was like dude you're the first fucking person that ever talked this shit that i'll fucking listen to that got through to me we had one dude joe to fireman. I gave him a copy. Big fucking Jersey fireman, college football player, linebacker, 260 pounds. He's like, I haven't read a fucking book since 1978. Let me tell you something.

After I read your book, I realized one thing. He sent me this email. He's like, I'm the biggest fucking pussy on the planet. And he fucking started changing his whole thing over so now you got all these politically correct you know people attacking me for the title of the book and i really don't give a fuck because they have not been able to reach the masses they have not been able to reach that demographic of men and whatever that well to them the vegan and the whole shit is like that's why i put the five-letter curse word in the book that vegan

is the five-letter curse word as soon as you say that shit dudes cringe because of the way that these people have presented the message and i'm like i come from the street this is where i come from this is who i am yeah i eat fucking vegetables but that's not the all in all you know let's let's talk about the title why this title and why is it important well i'll tell you originally the way that it came down because we were trying to call it something else i was getting ready to call it the go green road to health longevity and time fucking business partner was like dude who are you? Fucking Dr. Oz?

Motherfucker, you're John Bloodcloth from the street. Like, so, and it always happened between me and Todd. Like, we'd be spitballing and then- Todd's your business partner. Yeah, Todd Irwin, he played, he's a big time, played drums in a lot of bands. He put out both the books. He's like my fucking brother

dude coolest dude ever and we've been on this whole journey together and you know what you got to do the right thing so when the book did get picked up i gave him fucking half the advance i'm like that's how you do shit when people do things for you and and are there with you on the journey and spending their money to make shit happen, you don't forget people, you know? So the thing was, before we even came up with the title, I was in the gym one day and I'm telling my friend like, yo, you know, you got to, you know, talking about the whole plant-based thing.

And some fucking like meathead overheard it and was like, yeah, all those motherfuckers are the fucking pussies with their fucking tofu. And I was like, excuse me, motherfucker. I'm like, dude, I've been vegetarian and plant based for fucking 33 fucking years, bro. pants and fucking like you know gold gym tank top and fucking weight belt you know doing like looking at himself in the fucking mirror for two hours you know but then todd was like dude you and you need to throw it i told him what happened and todd's like you need to throw it back in their fucking face all these motherfuckers that are like you know vegans vegetarians are fucking pussies and all this shit fuck that i go you vegetarians, or fucking pussies and all this shit. Fuck that.

I go, you know what? Meat's for fucking pussies. Fuck them motherfuckers. And he was like, dude, that's the title. That's got to be the title of the book. Meat is for Pussies. And really, it's a catchy title, but even if you open up that book

and read the first thing I say is if you continue to lead these sedentary lifestyles sedentary lifestyles and you're sitting on your ass and eating all this genetically modified food and meat and dairy and all this shit you'll become a pussy dependent upon you know the drug companies to keep your ass alive if that's what you want put the fucking book back it's not for you. Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, episode 97 with Dan Harris. This guy's impressive. He was a young, ambitious journalist. Dan joined ABC News in 2000, year 2000, and under the mentorship of legends, Peter Jennings, Diane Sawyer, he quickly rose through the ranks. And today he's co-anchor of ABC News' Nightline and co-anchor of the weekend edition of Good Morning America.

This guy's done it all. He's filed reports for World News with Diane Sawyer, also Good Morning America throughout the week, ABC News Digital, ABC News Radio. And for four years, he anchored World News Sunday. And along the way, this guy's covered huge stories. He reported on mass shootings in Newton, Connecticut, Aurora, Colorado, Tucson, Arizona. And he's anchored natural disasters from Haiti to Miramar to Hurricane Katrina. And he's also been an overseas war correspondent covering combat in Afghanistan, Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. The guy has made six visits to Iraq. So I think you can gather that this job, his job, is quite the pressure cooker.

His coverage of conflict-ridden areas in the Middle East started taking a serious toll on his health. And this is where kind of the story begins for us and where things get really interesting. In 2005, Dan suffered a panic attack on national television on Good Morning America in front of 5 million people. We're sitting here today and I wanna talk about your book, but I can't help the fact

that right off of your right shoulder, I'm staring at the cover of a book that looks remarkably like your book, except it says, instead of saying 10% happier, it says 11% happier by Ron Claiborne. So maybe I should be sitting with Ron. So Ron is one of my colleagues who's on the weekend Good Morning America show with me. And he's the newsreader on the show. I'm one of the hosts. So this may be a little bit in the weeds, the positions. Anyway, he's another guy on the air on the show. And when my book came out in March, the book's called 10% Happier, he did a little bit on the show where he said, I want to

congratulate my colleague, Dan Harris, for his new book, 10% Happier. No big deal, but I wrote a sequel. It's called 11% Happier. And if you're only going to buy one book, you do the math. Yeah. And actually, you know, that joke, I could see it. It drove my Amazon rank up significantly. I mean, like, making that joke on the air did remarkable things. Uh-huh. That's very cool. I spent a lot of time in Iraq. And when I got home after one of those trips to Iraq in July of or in the summer of 03, I got depressed.

And I did a very, very dumb thing, which was that I self-medicated with cocaine and ecstasy. And that produced a panic attack on live television on Good Morning America in June of 2004. The doctor explained to me that even though I wasn't doing it every day and it was, you know, for a pretty short period of time, it was enough to raise the level of adrenaline in my brain. And so I was on Good Morning America, reading some headlines, and I just freaked out, melted down, couldn't talk anymore, and had to quit right in the middle of my newscast. If you watch it, and I know you've seen it, and I said this at Revitalize, it's not like, I mean, it's embarrassing, but it's not like

broadcast news and Albert Brooks, you know? Right, it's not quite i mean it's embarrassing but it's not like broadcast news and albert brooks you know right it's not quite like if you once you know and you watch it you can see what's going on and you can see yourself unraveling but if you were just casually watching it you might not really notice so it's not right yeah you don't have the albert brooks flop sweat so here's here's why because i had the opportunity to cut it short and toss it back to Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson, who were the anchors of the show. If, like Albert Brooks, I was stuck and marooned as the only person who was the anchor of the show, it would have been an epic disaster. So there's no question that it was worse in my head than it is on television, but it's not good on television. You can definitely tell that that's a news anchor who's struggling, which we're not supposed to do. So, I mean, that was really embarrassing and scary and raised all sorts of existential questions about whether

I could keep doing the job. It's this beautiful irony, though, that you got assigned to cover faith and being the skeptic that you are, just whatever your preconceived proclivities were, and being the skeptic that you are, just whatever your preconceived proclivities were, that catalyzed this journey that allowed you to come to this place. It's fascinating. I mean, that's the stuff of novels. Yeah. Did you say it was beautiful irony? Mostly in the book, what I realize is that time and again, I'm like the anti-blink.

You know that Malcolm Gladwell talks about the wisdom of our subconscious minds. For me, the quick decisions that I make are almost always very stupid. Right. You're just pounding on your head for endless times before you're realizing, like, oh, okay, this is the direction I need to go. Yes. Or, you know, it's just like I reflexively write off things. You know, I reflexively wrote off faith, right? Didn't want to do it.

I thought it was all just kind of dumb and you know and uh i reflexively wrote off something like meditation uh i you know um uh i haven't reflexively written off a plant-based diet but i'm right somewhat we're getting there yeah this is the first step this is this is my real agenda today you do make a good case i should tell your listeners that we talked about it before the podcast. But anyway, so maybe it's a beautiful novelistic irony, but mostly for me, the way I look at it is that time and again, I rush to judgment and then I'm proven wrong spectacularly. I like that. wrong spectacularly. I like that. Welcome to the Rich Wall Podcast, episode 99 with Robin Arzon. So who's Robin? A self-proclaimed ambassador of sweat, Robin is the inspirational powerhouse behind Shut Up and Run, her blog.

I love that name. She's a New York City-based urban running force of nature. She's an ultra-marathoner, including that time she ran five marathons in five days across Utah. What? She's a running coach, a cycling instructor, and she's a brand ambassador, consultant, and social media producer for some of the biggest brands out there, brands like Nike, and I believe Reebok and others. And now she's a magazine publisher even. She founded the newly released Undo magazine, which can be found worldwide in places like Urban Outfitters. which can be found worldwide in places like Urban Outfitters. Hailing from Cuban and Puerto Rican parents, I would call Robin a modern day warrior.

She's a powerhouse of female empowerment who never sacrifices style for function. She totally brings the bling and the swagger and the fashion and the fun back into sweating and running and fitness with a vivacious energy and a personal style that's totally unique, totally her own, quintessentially urban, completely New York City, totally hip, impossibly infectious, and completely inclusive, fueled by the ethos that there is no finish line. I was just in a bar in the East Village with my friends, and this guy walks in with a gun and happened to walk into the bar that I was in, shot this man lying on the ground. Well, sorry, let me backtrack.

This guy walked in who had already been shot. Then the man who shot him followed him in. Then he shoots him a second time, grabs me. I was just sitting on a stool by the doorway, drinking a glass of wine, a few months before my 21st birthday, but whatever, I think that's besides the point. The statute of limitations.

Yeah, whatever. And then he grabbed me by my hair, and it was a really, really narrow, tiny wine bar. And he's just, I mean, explet really narrow tiny wine bar and he's just I mean expletives flailing like he's I mean he's basically saying that people are leaving in body bags and I really didn't in those moments like time actually slows down and you're like what is actually happening here I mean your body's trying to process it and then it's in shock and then it's just these really base like base emotions of um survival kick in and that's when um he hands me garbage bag ties or throws them at me and he tells me to start tying people up so i'm tying people up with these like slide

plastic garbage bag ties trying to make it loose enough so no so they can't um so they can get out if they need to but not so loose that he can tell that I'm doing that. And then he starts spraying us with this flammable liquid. He's spraying us with kerosene. And I had literally chunks of my hair ripped out from how forcefully he yanked me. So he shot this guy outside of the bar. The guy is injured and runs into the bar. He follows him, but the guy has spray kerosene on his person?

Later I found out he had multiple guns. He had swords, like full-on samurai swords underneath his clothing. He had a catheter. I can't do this. He had a catheter on him because he planned for this takeover to take days so

I mean that was like I mean thankfully I didn't know any of that at the time I saw the gun felt the gun and then he starts

spraying us with this flammable liquid and then busts out a barbecue lighter and starts flicking it in people's faces. It was in that moment that I was like, okay, this isn't a robbery. This is like he wants people to die. Yeah, this is a psychopath straight up.

Straight up. And he grabs me and he proceeds to use me as his main hostage, like as a human shield, essentially, body to body. I was right in front of him. The NYPD are now outside of the bar. It's a tiny bar, so this, I mean, this couldn't have been, it wasn't that many feet, maybe like a few hundred feet away, if that. And he wants to talk to the police outside. So then I became this, like, pseudo-negotiator where I'm calling 911 on my cell phone and then negotiating between this guy, Stephen Johnson, and the NYPD outside. And I'm asking for his demands.

He has none. Then he starts speaking to me in Spanish. Somehow he was able to tell that I'm Hispanic, I'm Puerto Rican and Cuban. And so then I'm like, all right, maybe I can humanize the situation. So in Spanish, I started talking to this guy about his son, about his family, about his life. And trying to really figure out, like, what it is that he was doing there and how to salvage this. And, you know, he really didn't have, I mean, he was just so disturbed. And the only intelligible parts of the conversation were when he was talking about his kid.

And at the time, his son was 10 years old. And his wife had just died of AIDS. And I just think he was an unhinged racist. He wanted to kill white people. He wanted all white people to die. Very explicitly said that multiple times. And it was, I just remember, like, the refrain in my mind, I'm sure there were many things, but what I remember so distinctly was thinking, this is not my story.

story. And it was one of the first moments that I understood, um, my life as sort of the story that I was putting out into the world. I think before then, like, um, yeah, I dealt with stuff, but pretty, pretty uneventful life, I think until then. And then at 20, when you're kind of dealing with your own mortality, and then the mortality of 20 other people, because you don't want to set this guy off. Yeah, I think major is an understatement. Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, episode 101, with Brendan Brazier. The best place to start is with the food on our plate, what you put in your mouth. If you can change that vibration, you just might be amazed

at what might follow. That's my story. And it's also the story of today's guest, a guy who had a passion for healthy, clean, performance-enhancing nutrition that catalyzed a pretty amazing, unexpected journey for this guy, a guy who ultimately has become recognized as one of the most prominent voices, athletes, and entrepreneurs in the health, fitness, and nutrition worlds. Brendan Brazier. For a lot of you guys out there, he needs no introduction. In many ways, he is the guy. He's the guy. He's that guy. He's the guy leading the charge in the plant-based athletic performance kingdom. Recognized as one of the world's foremost

authorities on plant-based nutrition and sports performance, I think it's pretty fair to say that Brendan is really, not only is he the guy, he was like the first guy who lit or continues to light the path for so many people who are exploring this nexus between performance and athleticism on a diet that's fueled either entirely or at least predominantly on plants. I was at a Mets game fairly recently, and that was interesting. You know, it's kind of the blue collar baseball team, and you get there, and I was doing this thing. So, the folks at Beyond Meat, I don't know if you've heard of them. Right. Yeah, I know Ethan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, they've created this burger, this plant-based burger that's really nutrient-dense. And it's not a fake meat.

It's just- It's pea protein. Yeah, it's not that processed. It's all natural ingredients. Right. So yeah, I'm on the advisory board for them, the nutrition advisory board. And we were there outside giving it out to these blue-collar baseball fans. And it was really interesting because you get the kind of standard thing like, oh,

if it doesn't have legs, I'm not going to eat it and that kind of thing. And then I hope you guys were filming this. Do you film it? We actually, yeah, we did. We do have a bit of footage and it was actually reported on by the wall street journal as well. And there's an article you can, you can search that and it has a few, a few of the quotes in there from some of the people. But it was interesting because, you know, if they actually give you a few minutes to explain it to them, they're quite open, I find. But it is that initial bit of time. And what I think is interesting, too, is really just taking the argument away from, or even discussion arguments may be too harsh for it, but just the discussion away from what's better and just talking about transparency.

And it's like, do you want to know where your food comes from? And when you buy this, what are you voting for? What are you saying that, that you like, um, or,

or what are you spending money on that maybe, maybe you don't know a lot about. And one thing I think beyond meat did that was really smart too, is they, they took the conversation away from is meat good or is meat bad or any of that. And they just made it a transparency argument. So they challenged Purdue and the other chicken producer is just to put streaming video in their production facility. And they said, we'll do the same.

So, right, of course. Like that would ever happen. Exactly. right of course that would ever happen you know exactly and that was their their point is that they're not these companies don't want you to see what goes on whereas they're fully open because they're just putting together these proteins from plants um so then it becomes a discussion about transparency and what ought the consumer know or be able to know when making food choices and you got to think if the producer of food doesn't want you to see how it's produced, then... What was the guiding principle that led you to sort of discovering that plant-based was an advantage as opposed to a disadvantage?

Well, it really just comes down to efficiency. I found that you could spend less energy digesting and assimilating food and getting more nutrition in return. So less energy out, more nutrition in. And I was under the impression for years, as I think a lot of people are for obvious reasons, that a calorie is a measure of food energy. So you would assume the more calories you ate, the more energy you would have.

And of course, that's not the case, because if it were people who ate a big 3,000 calorie fast food meal, they'd have tons of energy. And the opposite is true. They fall asleep. So there was obviously a disconnect there. And I found it had to do with net gain. So something I call high net gain nutrition in my book, whereas you want to spend the least amount of digestive energy

to get the most amount of nutrition. And when I say nutrition, I'm not talking about calories. I'm talking about vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, antioxidants. So for example, I swapped out starchy refined carbs, pasta, white rice, these foods that had quite a lot of calories, but didn't have a lot of nutrition for things like pseudo grains, amaranth, quinoa, buckwheat, wild rice, more nutrient dense foods.

So you spend less energy. So therefore you have more of it because you're spending less and you're getting more nutrition while expending less energy. So it just really comes down to efficiency. And then because you have more energy, you can use that to rebuild and repair. We all have a finite amount of energy. It's not something that is just this endless supply. So

if we come up with efficiencies on how to spend it more wisely, such as eating foods that take less energy to digest, then it's going to be an advantage. And I wasn't hungry all the time too. After a while, I used to just fill up on these refined foods. I was vegan, but just wasn't doing it right. So I had a lot of calories, but not a lot of nutrition. And it's a funny time we're in today where food is no longer synonymous with nutrition. You can eat a lot of food,

doesn't mean you're well-nourished. And a lot of obese people actually show symptoms of malnourishment, which is crazy. It's insane, right? It's like, are we starving or are we fat?

We can't decide. We're actually both. You know, like it's just, it's completely mind boggling. Yeah. So, so that's one thing.

And then another thing too, you mentioned biological debt. That's something that, you know, a lot of North Americans, I think, um, become caught up in a cycle where they're tired,

they wake up tired, so then they crave coffee and sugar. Caffeine, of course, is a stimulant, sugar is a stimulant. So you get energy right away through stimulation, which treats the symptom of fatigue, but it doesn't treat the cause. The cause is you haven't slept deeply enough or you haven't slept enough in general. And so that is brought about by high cortisol.

So cortisol is a stress hormone that whenever we're stressed, it goes up. So stress can come from traditional stress, too much work, not enough rest. It can come from breathing polluted air. It can come from worrying about things we have no control over. It can come from low quality food.

It can come from overtraining, just training more than your body can actually rebuild and repair from. So you don't wanna cut back on your training because then you slow your rate of progress. So you wanna find other ways to reduce stress without reducing the ability to train a lot and improve. So you can create and find some of those efficiencies

through better food. So when you eat more nutrient dense foods, cortisol, the stress hormone goes down. You sleep more deeply. So you wake up, you're fresh, you're rested. You don't crave coffee. You don't have to wake up and borrow energy. Welcome to the Rich World Podcast episode 103

with Preston Smiles. But the Preston that I know is a pretty unlikely evolution from a very different guy not too many years ago. He was raised in less than stellar circumstances, a hyperactive dyslexic gang member prone to beatings and beating others, an angry, disenfranchised young man who was looking at an almost certain future of violence and drug abuse and jails and institutions. But Preston was able to escape this somewhat predetermined future. predetermined future. An emotional and a spiritual transformation so profound, it produced a man who is now, you know, full of life, a man devoted to serving others and a man who's really not afraid to embrace and exude this crazy four-letter word called love, which is, you know, hardly the most popular subject among men in our society. I mean, when was the last time a group of men sat down and talked about love? You know, it's just not really hardwired into our culture as something that's kind of, I don't know, acceptable or encouraged for,

you know, the masculine society to really speak about in public. speak about in public? It's all energy, man. You know, I'm saying a lot before I ever say anything because my energetic field is speaking before me. Right. And that's the first thing you gauge, like when you're taking that inventory of your environment, you can read that on an unconscious level. Totally. Yeah. So we ground everybody. Like when we met up, you know, I had everybody circle up and we talked about the intention. Why are we here? What are we up to? What is this about? Because this isn't just about screaming and being wild.

This has a thing behind it. And that thing is love is all there is. And our planet right now is in a nightmare. planet right now is in a nightmare. And it's going to take people like myself and like you and anybody else who understands that we're asleep to speak to people's listening in a way in which they can actually understand it. And for me, what I 100% understand is touch and like human connection trumps everything. You can have the biggest intellect in the world and that doesn't mean anything if you're not, if energetically, you're not actually with me. So grounding everybody and why we're there and what the

intention is, people feel that. So when I say up top, high five, you know, they assess it very quickly, but they see what my energy is. My energy is loving. My energy is connected. So they do it or they don't do it. And then they turn around and they kind of look back and they're like, wait, oh, they're just like loving people. And they'll, you know, say a little something to their spouse and maybe on the way back, then they'll high five or they'll ask a question. So what is this? What is this about? You know, and we'll tell them, you know, it's awesome. Right. And so did you have some cool experiences with sort of passers by or, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you have an example of that? Yeah, we had some, some Arab young kids that were there. And, uh, we start, we, we created this town, uh, town hall council meeting towards the end of it, where we just had a giant circle. And then whatever you wanted to

say, you step in the circle and you say it right. And, uh, you know, a couple of us started it out and I stepped in the circle and I said, I know I appear to be this six, two beautiful chocolate man. And everybody starts laughing. It's like, but in reality, I'm vibration and energy in a space. And I know the same for you. And I know that underneath all of our stories about white, black, gay, straight, Christian, Muslim, Israeli, Palestinian, Democrat, Republican, any of that stuff under all of that is our truth. Our humanity is who we are. And the crowd goes wild and all that stuff and a couple of those happen and then these uh arab kids jumped in the circle and they said i don't speak much

english but i feel what happened here and i know you see me too and like he's saying all this brokenings but it was all exactly what our intention was which was to have people feel seen and feel heard, you know? And he stuck around. He stuck around for hours, hours, holding signs. He joined the mob, not just him, but his crew. It was awesome. I was in a popular copy machine place, which I will not name. You can name it you get in trouble so i'm in a kinkos right and i get there and it's one of those days where nothing is working so i get on the on the computer and i need to print something ever works it can't go this is true yeah um i get on there and i need to print something up and uh, uh, they, they, after like 45 minutes,

someone comes over and they're like, I'm like, can someone help me? I can't get on the Yahoo. Oh yeah. You can't log on to Yahoo on these computers. I'm like, wait a minute. This is a computer with internet. Where's their assignment says I can't get on Yahoo. Now. Oh yeah. We just didn't put it up. Well, they have some corporate deal or whatever that blocks it. Yeah. Right. Awesome. Right. So now I'm really frustrated. So I end up, you know, doing the dance and sending it to a Gmail account, then printing it. And then I need to go fax.

So at this point, I'm really frustrated and I'm late. I walk over to the fax machine. I see this woman and there's a line and I'm waiting for the line. I see this woman on one particular fax machine. There's two machines. And she's taking forever. And her card keeps coming in and out. She barely speaks English.

And I'm like, are you serious? This is the kind of stuff that makes me insane. Uh-huh. Yeah. I was pacing. I was like, I'm going to choke her. I'm going to jump over there and choke her. So either way, it gets to my point, my turn, on the other fax machine.

And I do my thing, and as I'm about to take my stuff away, I notice that her card is saying, canceled. And she's really embarrassed, and she's trying to play it off, and the woman, the attendant, who's trying to help her, is like, well, maybe we'll just step over here. And in that moment, I came back to big questions, which is what good is here that I presently cannot see? And at that point, I said, well, ma'am, I can just send that for you. She looked at me and kind of paused like, wait, what? I said, I'll just send it for you. It's no big deal.

It's a couple dollars. Here, give it here. And I did it without her even saying yes or no. It's a couple of dollars here. Give it here. And I did it without her even saying yes or no. And what I noticed was, was that every single person that was in the line prior to that moment was completely upset. And as soon as I did that one act, it affected the entire line. Everybody started talking to each other. Everybody started smiling. The energy changed in the room just based on one act.

And I've been playing that game all over my life, asking myself, well, what would love do now? Welcome to the Rich World Podcast, episode 107 with Tim Van Orden. If you're a longtime listener to the show, then you may recall my conversation with Tim back in the early days, episode 15. We talked about Tim's trajectory from relatively aimless and unhealthy junk food vegetarian into a raw food beast, a journey in food and athleticism that transformed Tim, who is then a non-athlete, into a 10-time US Masters trail running national champion. That's right. And we talked about his holistic approach to life and how he makes it all work on a 100% raw plant-based diet. I realized even then, even though I wasn't talking about it yet, I realized then that this is just the first step. And I made a video recently where

I talked about the gas that we put in our cars. You know, we gas up the car. Yeah. I had to fill up the tank to come out here to see you. And I didn't think about the gas. As soon as I swiped the credit card, that was it. My conversation about gas ended and I got in the car and I drove. But with food, for some reason, we keep thinking about the gas. We keep talking about the gas and people get stuck there. You know, they change their diet and then they're stuck and they haven't moved to the next step, which has changed your life now. What's important to you? What matters? Okay. You filled up the tank. Great. It's high quality gas, but what are you going to do with it? Right. What kind of life

do you want? Do you want a life where you just talk about food? You know, is that what's important to you? Or do you just want to use that fuel to do things in a way that you haven't been able to before, because now you're more properly nourished. You're not numbed out by the food. You've gotten rid of many degenerative diseases caused by malnutrition, in a sense, eating a standard American diet. And now you're operating at a higher level. What are you going to do with that? When you're really, really struggling, you've got to get present to the tools that are at hand. Really come into the moment and say, okay, I don't feel well. I don't want to get out of bed. So what can I do? Well, I'm in bed and the covers are on me. So I'm going to pull back the covers. That's it. That's it. That's the one

thing I'm going to focus on right now. I don't have a lot of energy, but I probably have enough energy for that. So let's do that. And I do. Okay. What's next? All right. Let's slide our legs over the side of the bed. Put them on the floor. Sit up. Okay. How are you doing? Well, I don't really, I don't feel great. I still, I'm not excited, but all right. Okay. Let's get up, find a pair of shorts. All right, put a pair of shorts on, find a shirt. All right, let's start walking towards the kitchen. And I don't have a goal yet. I'm simply now out of bed with some clothes on. Taking the next right action. The next right action.

You're not looking any further than what is the next action. No, because that's scary. Because a depressed person or somebody that's really challenged, if they start thinking into the future, they start comparing themselves and how they feel to that future. And the gap is too wide. Okay. If I have to be a raw foodist or if I have to be a vegan, and that's this identity that I have to strictly hold onto, that's too much, way too much pressure. But if I can just walk towards the kitchen, all right, well, there's no identity there. There's no real pressure there. Yeah, even though I'm depressed, I can walk towards the kitchen.

I get there, all right, grab a banana, peel it. That's it. That's all you're doing. You're peeling a banana, all right? Put it in the blender. Okay, peel another one. Get some frozen blueberries. Put them in the blender.

Open the fridge, get some kale. Put it in the blender. And I just focus in the blender. And I just focus on the steps. I'm not telling myself anything. I don't have, okay, I've got to do a 30 day juice challenge or smoothie challenge, or I've got to lose 50 pounds. You know, whatever people tell themselves, they set these big goals. Again, they're flying above the city looking down, but they're not on the ground. So I just put myself through the steps until there I am drinking a green smoothie, but I never told myself I had to because a green smoothie is a concept. It's holding the banana in your hand and peeling it. That's the reality.

And then when I'm done, I walk into my room, put whatever clothes on I need one step at a time. I walk out the door. I start my watch. I pick up my foot. I take a single running step. And then, you know, off I go. I don't tell myself how far I have to go. I don't tell myself how hard I have to go. I simply focus on the tiniest of steps.

And not only does it get me in action regardless of how the day started, and my days often start pretty rough, but I always get into action with that method. And it's got me really present, which has changed who I am as a person. It's really caused me to just be present to my surroundings. So when I am running or when I'm doing anything now, I'm really present to it. And I'm not thinking about these fantasies and these goals. I'm here. Mm-hmm, and it's changed everything I published a video a week and a half ago about a fight I broke up I Biked up Mount Greylock in the Massachusetts the highest point and there's a lot of tourists on top because it's an access road

And there was this huge fight these guys fighting and hurting each other. And it was blood and it was ugly. And everybody was just watching and people in our videotaping it going to pop it up on YouTube, I'm sure. And I'm like, this is not okay. And I really don't like conflict. Conflict makes me really, really uncomfortable. Being a shy person, conflict is the last place that I want to be. But as a compassionate man... Don't go to law school. Yeah, right? Yeah.

Oh, wow. I can't even imagine that. But, you know, here I am and seeing these men fighting and bloodying each other. And I just, I couldn't stand by and let it happen. And I couldn't be one of those people that just watched. So I walked over and I said, hi, I'm Tim. They looked at me like, what the hell? They're in the middle of a fight and here's a guy walking and we're saying, hi, I'm Tim. And it stopped them. One of the things that I've started practicing,

and this is a tool that I've learned from modern neuroscience studies, whenever I feel that dopamine desire coming in, I pause for a moment. And it takes practice. It's a muscle that you can build. It's not an instant fix. But I pause, I stop, and I say, okay, what is it you're feeling right now? What are the physical sensations that you're feeling?

Because I can feel myself being drawn to something. And okay, what is it? Where is it in the body? What does it feel like? And what is your brain telling you right now? Like what desire is it promising? Okay. Is it real? Have you had this thing before? And if you have had that thing, does it deliver on the desire promised? And the answer is almost always no. So once I get present to that first, what am I physically experiencing? So that gets me out of my thoughts for a moment and into my body. I'm now using like a mindfulness practice, like tuning in,

checking in with everything. And then, okay, what is my brain telling me I'm going to be rewarded with? And is it true? And if I think about it for just a second, it's like, you, what is my brain telling me I'm going to be rewarded with? And is it true? And if I think about it for just a second, it's like, you know what? Yeah, I did that before and I actually felt worse after. And then, boom, it's off. Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, episode 112 with Bryant Terry. Episode 112 with Bryant Terry. Bryant is an echo chef. He's a cookbook author. He's an educator. And most interesting to me,

and kind of what we focus on during today's conversation, is that Bryant is a renowned social justice activist. He's a guy who's focused on promoting and creating healthy, just, and sustainable food systems to make them more widely available and affordable to all people, particularly those living in underserved urban communities. His mission is to bring awareness to people living in basically food deserts, these kind of urban locations, places where fresh, healthy, sustainable food is difficult or maybe even impossible to obtain. Why does he do this? Because good food should be an everyday right and not a privilege. Eating healthy should not be an elitist ideal. The other thing that's cool too is,

I mean, going through your cookbooks, these recipes are extraordinary and amazing, but they're kind of core. Yeah, I mean, they're phenomenal and they're unlike anything you're ever gonna find in any other cookbook, plant-based or otherwise. So thank you for putting these books out. But this idea that the recipes are supposed to be a launchpad for the reader's own creativity, like this idea that the kitchen is this place where you can experiment and be creative and

kind of go off script and go off page. And I know that's how you work with food. And that's a big kind of way that my wife also comes up with her recipes. And I know that's how you work with food. And that's a big kind of way that my wife also comes up with her recipes. And I think it intimidates people, but I think that's where the magic happens, right? I agree. I mean, it's this tricky position being an educator, as well as the kind of cookbook author who fashions himself as an artist, because I just have like the work that I want to put in the world. And I want these beautiful books with the recipes the way that I like them. But, you know, I do think you're right. It's just like spontaneity, creativity, using what's on hand is the magic place in the kitchen. But I realize a lot of people

are kitchen novices, you know, we're so disconnected from cooking in our industrialized food system that a lot of people need those kind of rudimentary skills just to be able to feel comfortable in the kitchen. And so, you know, you just can't put a handful or pinch. People are like, what is a handful? Can you be more specific? And so I try to just balance just me wanting to just like have these recipes where I say, hey, if you're growing Swiss chard in your home and the recipe calls for kale, don't go buy kale. Use the Swiss chard. But also realizing that a lot of people just need to be for you to be very specific for them to feel comfortable. I encounter a lot of people who it's like in this culture, we fetishize food and cookbooks and food related shows.

But then so many people still don't cook. You know, a lot of people are like, I don't know. These people, they have TV shows and they go on restaurants, and I just don't know if I can cook like that. And so as corny as it may sound, I really try to get people to bring out their inner chef and not get too caught up in all the hype and the corporatizing of this very exciting moment in food culture and thinking about all these issues. Yeah. I mean, it brings up one of the most maybe compelling kind of avenues of

your advocacy, which is, you know, combating this notion that eating healthy, being healthy is an elitist ideal. You know, it's the purview of, you know, the upper middle class and the upper class white people shopping at Whole Foods, and it's just inaccessible to everybody else. And so I'm interested in, you know, the work that you do and kind of the messaging that you put out there vis-a-vis the socioeconomic issues that face the underclass, you know, the African American population, et cetera, and kind of the role that you play as a mouthpiece to try to change this entrenched concept and get people to understand and embrace the idea that healthy eating, healthy living is accessible to all of us, irrespective of what class you find yourself in.

Yeah. I mean, for me, I understand that our runaway food system is having a negative impact on everyone across the board. I mean, if you consider, like, the multinational food corporations and the way in which they're destroying the very foundation of a healthy food system, you know, poisoning the air, poisoning the water, poisoning the soil. I mean, in many ways, you could argue they're destroying the very foundation for a habitable earth. Right. Have you seen Cowspiracy yet? No. Is there going to be Cowspiracy? I'll get you a DVD.

Oh, I should have brought one. Oh, I want to check that out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's a new documentary that speaks to all of these issues that you're talking about. So, you know, at the end of the day, I'm really invested in transforming the food system for everyone. And I understand that when we think about communities that have the least access to healthy, fresh, affordable, culturally appropriate food, I understand that so many of those communities are low-income communities of color that often don't have a voice, that often are powerless in many ways. And although, and this is something I had to come to terms with when I first

started doing this work, you know, I grew up a privileged life, and I can't say that I relate to all the issues that people of color living in low-income urban centers are dealing with, but I do understand the power that I have as a person of color, as an African-American man, speaking about these issues. Thug Kitchen was a blog started in fall of 2012, and it's, you know, profanity-laced memes that are kind of geared towards getting people to make plant-based recipes. So, you know, their whole tagline is, eat like you give a boop, F-U-C-K. Can I curse on this one?

Yeah, you can curse whatever you want. So, eat like you give a fuck. WCK. Can I curse on this one? So eat like you give a fuck. And, you know, it was interesting because given the work that I've done, I was like, oh, wow. Like this nameless thug. Is this like some young person of color who lives in a low income urban community trying to actually do some culturally and linguistically appropriate outreach to get like, you know, other young quote unquote thugs thinking about eating more healthfully. And I thought it was brilliant. You know, I'm just like, okay, yeah. Like this is a very exaggerated stereotype of African-American street vernacular, but some, some of the language that they were using in the beginning of the blog was clearly, you know, lifted from black films and black comedies and black hip hop artists and the kind of lingo and phrases that they were using. And so for a lot of people, especially people who are doing this work around impacting, you know, folks of color thinking about eating more healthfully, there was this hope like,

okay, this, this could be interesting. This could be like a very culturally appropriate way of getting people to think differently about it. And then fast forward to what a month to two weeks ago, um, before a week before the, their book, because they got a book deal. The blog is hugely popular, a massive audience. Half a million followers on Facebook, very rabid fans. To be clear, they have a very diverse fan base. It's not like, okay, it's just white folks. They have a lot of people of color who are really into the blog. Even after the reveal that the blog, the people behind the blog and the book

are a white couple living in Hollywood. And that was revealed maybe a week before the book came out. Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, episode 113 with David Clark. I came upon photos of a guy pushing 320 pounds, a bloated face, cocktail in hand. And if I know anything, I know what an alcoholic looks like when I see one. And David fit the bill, I know what an alcoholic looks like when I see one. And David fit the bill top to bottom. He was a guy who looked like hell, redlining towards death and creating a wide path of destruction in his wake. I continued to poke around. And then I saw a picture of a fit and slim 165 pound athlete crossing the finish line at Badwater, a 135 mile run across Death Valley,

the hottest place on earth, widely considered to be the world's toughest foot race. The change was so astounding. My first thought was like, can this be real? The 320 plus pound guy who looked like some kind of menacing Archie bunker you're scared to talk to, decades older than his biological age, bore almost no resemblance to that runner achieving something even the most accomplished runners find absolutely terrifying. But when I look closely at the faces, I could indeed tell that this was the same guy. I needed to know more about how he did it. So I reached out, David sent me his book. It's called Out There, A Story of Ultra Recovery. And to say that I was amazed by what this man has

endured, overcome, achieved, and the astounding extent to which he had transformed his life would be a complete understatement. After reading the first page of his book, I just identified so completely and I knew that I had to have him on the show. identified so completely and I knew that I had to have him on the show. Yeah. I think that the picture that a lot of people have of the alcoholic is, is, is woefully in or inaccurate, you know, like, like you said, it's, you know, it's not the, the bomb sitting on the street corner, you know, you know, drinking and sitting around in his own filth. Although we, we can all end up there if we stay on long enough. It's heading that way. But no, it's the guy that's, you know, doing a pretty reasonable job at creating an illusion of what his life looks like, you know, and getting farther and farther away from that

illusion as he goes, you know, deeper and deeper in. Right. There's this great disconnect. And there's this growing awareness that, yeah, this is a problem. You know, you're getting into trouble. I mean, you know, you know that this is not good. You're powerless to stop. And to compensate for that, you go overtime on work and all those other things because that helps put the facade up that your life is actually functional.

Yeah, and it gives you, you know, proof that you are okay. You know, it's like, hey, well, at least I'm doing this, you know, and I'm okay. You know, when I started to write the book, I made a deal with myself that I wasn't going to hold anything back that I thought would be too embarrassing or, you know, things I wrote about like, you know, driving drunk and stuff like that. I didn't want to put that in there because I didn't want, I know the stigma that's attached to that and I didn't want people chasing after me, but I was like, you know, I'm going to put what's in there. And then if it's too much, I just won't release the book, but I'll have a accurate product when I'm done. And so you go through all these moments, these low moments,

you know, and, and I chose a handful of thousands, you know, and I tend to choose the ones that were for whatever reason, I was present enough at that time to remember it. But the reality is most of them I didn't remember, and I had no idea what happened the night before. But of all the things that I talked about in the book, the other addicts that I talked to always point out the Christmas present story and not some of the other ones like, you know, it's that one. And I think because we've all just been in that place where you're so drunk, you're so out of it that you can't do this stupidly easy task. And your brain knows you should be able to do it,

and it becomes more and more frustrating and more and more shameful and humiliating and everything all wrapped into one. And if I would have written the story as a script, that would have been my low. That would have been the moment that I rose up from the ashes and created a new life because I don't know that I've ever felt less of a human being than I did that Christmas morning, but I kept going. of a human being than I did that Christmas morning, but I kept going. So what was that moment in August that tipped the scale for you?

You know, it was just, I think it was, we kind of talked about before, you know, alarm bells, you know, and I kind of was aware of each time my drinking and my use was going to a new level of destruction. And that morning, there was just something really heavy about it. And I think that that was going to be a significant day for me one way or the other. And I think I was going to either entirely give up and just go go about the process of of ending it you know maybe slowly maybe quickly or I was going to stand up and start to fight and um and I just felt like I had that that one one one shot that one little glimpse and I just jumped on before I could think about it I've related it to jumping out of a car you know like I was driving in a car and I

thought I was driving the car and taking it to all these nice places. And one day I realized I was in the passenger side and I had no control over where the car was going. And I kind of hung out there for a while too. And it's like, okay, well, I'll just see where this thing's going. And then that, that day I just opened the door and I jumped out and before I could even think about it, like all the times I tried to, you know, wrap it into this perfect thing that made sense and, you know, wrestle every demon down to a perfectly, you know, understandable thing, and it never worked, obviously.

So I had to trust the process. And, you know, it's kind of just like talking about running 100 miles or something like that. You can't get to that place where you're doing some run and trying to convince yourself why it's a good idea because it's not a good idea. Right, right. You just got to run. And that's what I did with the recovery. I just took the moment and kept moving forward. When I finally addressed the spiritual problems, what was causing me to live

this way, and once I had to tackle some of those issues, I had this tremendous amount of mental energy and time available to me that I could have chosen to do anything with. I could have chosen to write music or poetry or go camping or go running. And that's what I chose. But it was very much after the fact. And that's the only way it would have ever lasted for me. Because I could go to the gym, you know. How many times have I sat on a piece of equipment at the gym reeking of alcohol, you know, and still smelling like Big Macs because I vomited when I woke up in the morning. And that's real.

And that wasn't going to work. It was never going to work. I had to figure out a way to have a healthy relationship with food. And I had to work. I had to figure out a way to have a healthy relationship with food, and I had to eat. And that was really difficult because I totally linked up losing weight with not eating, obviously, or just eating or eating in some extreme way to trick my body. The Atkins thing is 100% protein is what I used the last five or six times. And it's funny because— Which is very effective at losing weight, but, you know, people have a hard time staying on it.

Oh, absolutely. And I talk a lot about weight loss now and whenever I have a group in front of me, I say, how many people have been on a successful diet and people raise their hand and I'm like, good, keep it up there. So your idea of a successful diet, gaining weight, losing weight, gaining weight, losing weight,

because if it's not, you should put your hand down. Right. So, I mean, but just the word diet alone sort of infers temporary. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So, I changed the way that I ate and, you know, the glycemic index to me made a lot of sense just because I knew that there was a way that food was affecting my body outside of just calories in and calories out. I knew that there was something bigger in play. And we used to – I think in 50, 100 years ago, whatever, or longer, that the way that you would be overweight is by being gluttonous, right? I mean, you had to just eat all the time. And certainly I was guilty of that. But it seemed like there was so much more in play now with the types of foods that we have that are causing us to crave things that we wouldn't normally crave. And that we're just

kind of in this cycle, that our biology wasn't working for us. We were kind of working against us. And so I became a real student of the glycemic index and how my blood sugar was affected. And I became an absolute stickler on it. And, I mean, I wouldn't have anything with sugar in it at all. And just to paint the complete picture, I mean, when you were tipping the scales at 320, not only were you overweight, you had a heart condition, you had extremely high blood pressure, and you had been diagnosed with diabetes, right? Yeah. So this is not just fat guy.

This is like sick fat guy. Yeah, no. The last time I was at the doctor and my blood pressure was so high, and I wish I could remember the numbers. I'll have to go back and get them, but there was a two in there. But they didn't want me to leave the doctor's office. I mean, they were like, you're going to have a stroke. I'm not telling you you might have a stroke. You are going to have a stroke.

It could be in three minutes. You need to be on medication. You need to be on now. And I didn't like that, you know, so I, I never, and my, my reasoning was, I never went on, on medication because I'd read that medication is unhealthy. And I didn't want to be on that blood pressure medication and that shit will kill you. Your brain, you're still perceiving the world through a warped brain at this point. Absolutely. So, of course, I left there.

The smart thing would have been, I'm on that medication right now. I'm going to work my way off it, but let's not have a stroke in three minutes. Yeah, I was not capable of the smart thing. In fact, I had to go. I was meeting my friend at the bar, and that's a fact. I had someone, my buddy Dan, was waiting for me at the bar while I was at the doctor's office. You're like, yeah, I can't hang out in this doctor's office. Yeah.

And of course, I told him. It's pretty good to be done. Yeah, we sat and laughed about it and, you know, drank ourselves to it. Oh, my God. Because you're right. Like, a lot of people, you know, they have these passive, passive-aggressive reach out for help kind of thing. And I did it. You know, I remember I called an AA meeting one time.

And I was like, you know, when is your next meeting? And they're they're like i don't know let me find someone who knows and this and that and i was like you know you should be ready to take someone's fucking call when they call you know and i hung up and now they were just laughing their ass off at me you know they're like yeah look at this drunk you know but i think a lot of people do that they'll reach out and they expect you to be able to you know like make something happen it It's like, I'll share with you every corner of my soul and everything that I've ever been through, but that's all I can do. I don't have any secret pieces of wisdom. It's on them to actually, you know, take what's in the book or what's out there and actually implement it into their lives. And that's,

that's the hard piece. Right. Um, I mean, looking back, you know, put yourself back at 320 pounds at the end of your drinking career and just imagine that you would be somebody who had not only run bad water, done all these crazy races that you've done, have written this book, you know, be a source of inspiration to other people, be actually, you know, coaching and training other people. I mean, is that, could you have possibly imagined that? No. Well, I don't know. No.

No. No. I mean, where did you, you know, what would have your, what would your dream have been? Like what was the farthest I could see? Like where, yeah, like where did you, you know, what would your dream have been? Like what was the farthest I could see? Yeah, like where did you, you know, what were you aspiring to? I wanted to run the New York City Marathon one day, I thought. You know, and it's funny because, like, I remembered seeing the Ironman Triathlon when I was a kid. And I couldn't quite get to the point where I could ever see myself doing that.

But I had this idea, like, I wonder if I could train for it. Like not actually do it, but could I just train for it? Do the training. Could I just like. Like what a weird thought though. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think that's about? Like doing the race would actually mean that you would be accountable to other people or.

I just don't think that i could put it out there i i think that i saw that as a certain type of person that could do that and i wasn't that person but maybe i could be the type of person who might be able to train for training yeah interesting all right so you get the marathon done and then where does the idea of like taking it to the ultra level start to creep into the consciousness? I read Dean's book. And actually, before that, even right after I finished the marathon, my ex-wife, I was sitting there. I was still like still jacked up, you know, walking downstairs backwards and stuff.

And I don't think I'd taken my blue Denver Marathon hoodie off yet. You know, I think it was like 30 days before I stopped wearing that every single day. And my ex came and said, oh, yeah, there's this guy. He ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days. And I was like, no, he didn't. I mean, I didn't even hesitate. You were like, are you trying to make me feel like shit? I was like, no, he did not.

I just ran a marathon. You read that wrong. There's no way. And I just remember being just like, there wasn't anything more insane someone could have said. You know, I mean, like, I don't even know. I don't even know how to respond to that. You know, so I like Googled Dean Karnasas and I read Ultra Marathon Man and I saw Running on the Sun. And Running on the Sun just, man, I don't know.

It's a documentary about Badwater for people that don't know. Is it online? Yeah, I think it's still out there. If it is, I'll find a link. I'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, sorry about that. But no, go ahead. Yeah, man, it really, it really, it really touched something like that scared me.

It scared me because I thought that I was probably going to want to do that one day. And that scared the effing shit out of me. So you see this movie and you read Dean's book. You know, the movie is about just how insane this bad water race is. The seeds planted. And this is 2007? Yeah. No, 2006.

2006 still, right? Yeah. And your first bad water is 2013. Yep. So we're talking about a seven-year span here, during which period of time you run the Leadville 100 twice. Yes. And a bunch of other crazy stuff too yeah so you're creating this you know it's not the narrative the easy narrative is you know 320

pounds to bad water you know that'll probably be the title of my blog post but we get a subtitle i know because well that's know, it's, it sounds so crazy dramatic and, and it is, but we're talking about many years of, of brick by brick, a lot of miles. Yeah. I, I never really exercised any level of patience in my past life. So I've been trying, you know, and I didn't want to do the same thing and just say, just like with the marathon, I didn't want to go, okay, well, how can I go fake bad water? You know, I didn't even know that you couldn't fake bad water. That was really hard just to get in it.

They won't let you fake it. They'll weed you out. How much is race day registration? But yeah. And then reading about Dean's book and just reading about such a thing as an ultra marathon, I found out that the Leadville 100 was right in my backyard. And it just seemed kind of, um, kind of shitty to get on a plane and fly somewhere else to do an ultra when you have one of the most iconic ones right in your backyard. Right. And in certain respects, maybe even, I mean, harder in a different way with that crazy

elevation and thin air and everything else. I mean, what was that first Leadville like? It was, you know, when I wrote the book, the finish line of my first Leadville was the finish line of the book. And I actually, I had to, it was a huge process of, you know, I'm getting ahead of myself, but Leadville, my first Leadville finish was really the true birth of me as

a runner. Not that anything else I did before wasn't, you know, running, but it was that moment that I really accepted that I wasn't going to dismiss anything that I'd ever done or that I, that I did. And I wasn't going to live that life anymore, but because up to that point, like I did the marathon and I was like, okay, what's next? And then I did, you know, started doing triathlon, like, okay, what's next? And I was, I was still searching. And, and so I think I stopped searching at that point. Um, I just, I decided that I, I was here and then I just needed to be here as much as I could. I needed to be in that moment and be.

And just own it. Yeah. All right, you guys, that's it. We did it. Two parts of the best of 2014 anthology. What do you think? Where does that leave you guys? Has this given you some things to think about?

How have these little clips of all these conversations over the course of 2014 informed or maybe changed or positively reinforced how you're perceiving and walking into 2015? So the assignment for this week is to get out a journal and I want you to write down what it is that you want to express in 2015. What is it that you want to welcome into your life? What is it that you want to experience? And I'm not talking about material things. Oh, I need a new car or whatever. I'm talking about emotions. I'm talking about adventures. I'm talking about experiences. I'm talking about qualities of life'm talking about experiences. I'm talking about qualities of life. What do you want to experience in your relationships, for example?

How do you want to feel throughout your day? And how have these conversations informed or maybe altered or helped define what those are for you. How's that? Anyway, I don't wanna get too heavy. I just wanna thank you guys. I'm so grateful to have you guys on board with what we're doing here. I'm so excited for 2015. It's gonna be an incredible year

and I'm so pumped to just get started on it. So enjoy your new year's break and I will catch you next week. Peace and plants. I'm out. See you later.