The Rich Roll Podcast - Turia Pitt Unmasked – How Choosing Gratitude Turned This Burn Victim Into A Global Inspiration

Episode Date: May 8, 2017

Close your eyes and imagine yourself running a trail ultramarathon in the beautiful Australian outback. You're enjoying the experience when suddenly you find yourself trapped in a gorge, surrounded by a raging brushfire. The flames quickly close in until you're surrounded on all sides. No escape. This is how it ends, you think. Then darkness. Against all odds, death is averted. Instead, you lie comatose. Months pass in dormancy. Finally your eyes open, awakening to discover you're miraculously alive, yet somehow less than whole. A glance at your left hand reveals several fingers missing. On the right? No thumb. And the reason you can't move? 65% of your body is covered in life threatening burns. Overwhelmed, you allow your eyes once again close, welcoming the comfort of darkness. 200 operations follow. Over the next two years, you will die three times during surgery. Miraculously, you somehow survive. Not as a victim, but as a hero. This is the powerful story of Turia Pitt – humanitarian, athlete, and beacon of inspiration and female empowerment to millions across the world. One of Australia’s most admired and widely recognized people, Turia has been profiled everywhere from 60 Minutes to Women's Weekly. She has scaled the Great Wall of China, competed in the Ironman World Championships and walked the Kokoda Track. A sought-after public speaker, Turia has mentored thousands through her online programs, raised funds and awareness for a variety of philanthropic concerns and authored two books — the recently released Unmasked* (available in the US in audiobook format* only) and Everything To Live For*. This is a conversation about turning tragedy into opportunity. Adversity into advocacy. And experience into service. It's a conversation about the importance of putting others before yourself and serving those less fortunate. But most of all, this is a powerful conversation about facing life head on — about taking risks, facing your fears and believing in yourself. It was an honor to spend a couple hours with Turia and her fiancé Michael during my recent visit to Sydney. My hope is that our exchange will leave you feeling inspired, empowered and grateful. Or as Turia says, no whinging! Peace + Plants, Rich

Actually two years after the fire I was playing my life pretty safe and one of the guys from the fire was riding his bike, he was training for an adventure race and he got hit by a truck and passed away. And that for me just really reinforced that there's no benefit to playing your life really safe because I thought because I'd been through that fire, I'd be immune to further tragedy. But now I think if you don't live your life big, live it on your terms, take risks, bet big, believe in yourself. I don't really know if that's much of a life. It's not much of a life for me anyway. That's Tariya Pitt, this week on the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast.

I want you to imagine yourself running a trail ultramarathon in the beautiful Australian outback. Maybe close your eyes and try to really visualize the experience, unless, of course, you're driving a car or running on a treadmill, but you're doing your thing. You're enjoying the experience. You're just running along when suddenly, completely out of the blue,

you find yourself surrounded by a raging brush fire, completely out of the blue, no notice whatsoever, no escape. You're surrounded by flames on all sides. It's all closing in on you. And this is it, you think. This is how it's all going to end, the irony, the fear, until darkness descends upon you. But you don't die. Instead, you come out of months in a coma to discover seven fingers missing, and you can't move because 65% of your body is covered in life-threatening burns. You suffer through 200 operations. You die three times on the operating table.

You spend two years in recovery. This is the incredible story of this week's guest, Taria Pitt. And she's an extraordinary woman, a woman who didn't just survive this brushfire against overwhelming odds. She has gone on to defy all expectations to become one of the most admirable, one of the most inspirational people you're ever going to come across, certainly that I've ever come across. Terea's struggle has been long. It's been hard-wrought. But today, she finds herself in the role of humanitarian, of athlete, of motivationalist. She's one of Australia's most admired and widely recognized people.

And amongst many of her amazing accomplishments in 2016, she completed two Ironmans, including the Ironman World Championships in Kona. She has mentored over 6,000 people through her online program. She is widely sought after for public speaking. She's active in fundraising and philanthropy. And she just released her second book. It's called Unmasked. I think it's only available in Australia. I'm not positive about that, but pretty sure. But her first book, which is called Everything to Live For, that's available in the US and I would assume most places. All right, Taria. Taria. I think I'm saying it right. Yeah, it's Taria. She was just great. We had gone back and forth for a while at this point, I think almost a year trying to schedule

this interview. I started following her story from afar, maybe a year and a half ago. And we've been trying to get together for a long, long time. I was trying to figure out when she would be in the United States. So when I headed to Australia several months ago, she reached out again. I'm glad she did. And it was great to get together. She and her fiance, Michael, came over to our Airbnb in Bondi Beach. And we spent, I don't know, a couple hours together. She was just super warm, funny, self-effacing, completely at ease with herself and who she is and what she represents. And that, I think, was the most compelling and inspirational thing about her for me. Just that she is standing up with a smile on her face, engaged in her life.

It was just really, really cool. Anyway, we get into all of it today in this conversation. Her story, of course, her extraordinary relationship with Michael, who has stood by her throughout this entire ordeal. He comes on the mic a few times with his perspective, which is great. So this is really about turning tragedy and adversity into opportunity. It's about personal daily choices we all make every day, about how we want to live our lives. And it's about the importance of putting others before yourself and serving those less fortunate. But mostly, this is a conversation about facing life

head on. It's about taking risks. It's about facing your fears. And it's about believing in yourself. Taria is extraordinary. She's a beacon of fears and it's about believing in yourself. Taria is extraordinary. She's a beacon of hope and strength for millions of people all over the world. And it was just amazing to spend a couple hours with her. And at the very least, I think this is going to leave you feeling grateful for your own life and with perhaps a different perspective on the personal problems that you face, that we all face in our own lives. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Taria Pitt. So nice to talk to you. Thank you for coming over.

This has been a long time coming, and I'm just super psyched to talk to you. Yeah, I'm pretty excited too. Michael and I were going before, oh, we get to be in a troll suit. So we're pretty pumped yeah thank you for having us of course i we were talking before the podcast and you know we've been going back and forth now for i don't know six or nine months you came on my radar around like a couple months before kona yeah and a bunch of people texted me or emailed me and said hey you got to check out this story it's unbelievable and then yeah i got in touch with you and we were trying to figure out like if we were ever going to be

in the same city because i was in the states i was in the states where you would know over uh christmas but you weren't there you were but you were you were on the east coast yeah new york yeah new york yeah you're on the other side of the country right yeah yeah it's still 3 000000 miles away. So we couldn't make that work. And then when I was coming here, I thought about getting in touch with you, but I knew that you didn't live in Sydney or Melbourne. I knew you lived somewhere else.

So you just happened to be here. So here we are. Well, I saw on your Instagram that you were here, so I just thought I'd hit you up. I appreciate that. Yeah. And now we're talking. So what are you doing here in Sydney?

Well, I do a lot of speeches. I'm a motivational speaker, I do a lot of speeches. I'm a motivational speaker, online programs and all of that. So I'm just up in Sydney for work. Right. My work is mainly Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane. But we live kind of in the country on the coast about four hours south. Right.

So it's like farmland. What is it like there? Oh, it's kind of like farmland it's it's got really good surf really good fishing really good diving uh-huh and it's a real like if you think bondi is relaxed like my town is so relaxed you would fall asleep sort of thing yeah bondi is pretty relaxed but i'm pretty into it yeah I'm really happy to be here. My hometown is next level relaxed. Right. So you got to come up here for a little energy. Well, I mean, when I'm up in Sydney, I'm working. And then when I'm home, I'm just cruising, relaxing.

Yeah. So tell me a little bit about what that work looks like. Like you get up in front of audiences and you tell your story, I would imagine. Yep. So I get up in front of audiences. I share my story. I don't really talk much about the fire. So I was burned during an ultramarathon.

We're going to get into that. Don't worry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just, I think when I get asked questions about, you know, maybe journalists say, you know, tell me about what, tell me about that day and tell me what it was like. And it's not that I'm uncomfortable with answering those questions. I just feel I've covered most of it. And I feel that it's not that interesting

because anyone can have a really bad accident, which turns their life upside down. But I think what I've done with it, how I've reinvented myself, how I've rebuilt my life, I think that's the fascinating part. So that's the stuff I talk about in my speeches, about challenging yourself, getting outside of your comfort zone. That's how we grow. And because you can only speak to so many people doing speeches, I've started doing online programs too. So it's kind of the same thing when I talk about my speeches. Right. Well, I think you're correct in pointing out that there's certainly no shortage of people

that suffer accidents and sort of tragedies in their life. I mean, those people are everywhere, but it is the rare individual who can take that experience and channel it into a, not just a message, but a life work that can be positively transformative for others. Yeah. And that's certainly what you've done. And there's a lot to be respected and admired about that. about you that allowed you to, you know, create a different kind of experience than perhaps what most people might have expected in the wake of what occurred? I think it all starts with a choice. And I mean, I kind of make that choice every morning, you know, is that you can choose to have a bad day, you can choose to be in a bad mood, you can choose to look

at things in a really positive way, be upbeat, be happy have a lot of energy and i really think it all starts just with that choice and i think i think a lot of people don't understand that as well does that make sense yeah it does but i'm also like i'm just thinking of myself right like i understand that intellectually and i know that i can make that choice, but I don't always make that choice. In fact, quite often I don't make that choice. Yeah, me too. So like there's that gap between the understanding and the implementation.

Yeah, yeah. Like this morning I woke up and I was in the worst mood ever. But I think I just said to myself, look, you can change this if you really want to do, but obviously I didn't want to change it that much. Sometimes it's kind of nice to be in a bad mood. Does that make sense? Well, it's your human being. I don't trust people that are always telling you they're super duper all the time. Oh, like, it doesn't feel, yeah, it doesn't feel real or authentic. I feel like I'm being put upon. So of course, yes, you should feel lousy once in a while or you're not, you're, you can't like look in the mirror and do that every, and pretend to be something that you're not. But I would imagine for you and, you know, people in Australia know you,

and when you, you know, when you walk outside that you know people are going to notice you and there's there's a certain kind of thing that you probably have to like carry with you because people are like oh that's her and this is who she is and you have to like be that person yeah but i i also remind myself that i've chosen this life so sometimes if i get frustrated that people recognize me i say to myself well you've actually chosen to live a public life you chose to be a motivational speaker you've chosen to write books about your experiences and if you if you didn't want people to know who you were then change your job change what you do for a living because after 10 years people are going to forget as well. So I think when we say, I didn't have a choice and I was forced to do it,

and when we talk like that, I feel it's really disempowering. And I think it's good for us to remind ourselves that, yeah, we're in control and we make the choice and ultimately it comes down to our decisions and so what do you do like are there practices in your when you give talks or in your programs like what are the actual like what are the strategies and strategies that you employ to you know shift that mindset okay i mean so one of my strategies is reframing. So I get my students to, when they're struggling with a situation, I get them to write down what the very worst thing that could happen would be. And then I get them to write down what the very best thing that could happen could be.

And then I just ask them to choose between the two. It sounds really simple as well when I explain it. People are like, oh, is that your secret? Is that it? But I think that's where the beauty is as well when I explain it people are like oh is that your secret is that is that it but I think that's where the beauty is as well and I think we try to make things more complicated more complex than they really are yeah I think that goes back to also that that distinction between the understanding and the doing because there's something about actually getting a pen out and writing it down and then just saying well I get that so I've already done it no you actually haven't done it do the work that's what i say too i think so and

i think also when you write down like what's the worst thing that could happen and you realize like well actually that's not that bad yeah you know it takes the fear away from it and makes you more kind of empowered to like maybe take something that seemed like a bigger risk than it actually is yeah and that's what you know when you just think oh this could happen and that could happen and this could happen and you kind of go around and round and round in circles in your head and i think that might confuse you and so i think if you just get pen and paper write it down make two lists i'm a list maker by the way i love i love writing lists and then you look at it and it's it's not that scary once you've done that right yeah and then so then beyond that then what like what's

the next what's this what's the step after that well they choose you choose all right so does anybody choose like the worst case scenario no hey hey I would love to see the day when that happened no one has yet. It might. Hey, they might. You got to be ready for that person. And I'll be like, well, hey, if you choose that, go for it. Own it.

Be the most miserable person on the planet. Like, just as long as you're aware that you're choosing that. I think people, there's a lot of people that subliminally are making that choice. They may tell you like oh i'm choosing like the goal that i want but actually their actions belie that and the choice they're actually making is the worst case scenario or the victim yeah the victim identity or you know what have you and that's why i talk a lot about um you know getting rid of your excuses because i think i've probably got one of the better excuses going around yeah

your excuse is pretty good look I don't want to get into a competition here but I think mine is pretty good and I could use that I could say no I can't do that because I've been burned and I don't have all my fingers and people would say oh I didn't realize I'm so so yeah of course you can't do that and I thought about and I thought I don't want to live a life where people just allow me to cop out just because of what happened to me and so I try not to make excuses and I think that's that's a really good example for others because I think well if Terea doesn't make excuses my excuse about not having enough time doesn't really compare and that's what I really love about i do these fundraising adventures for interplast every year we're doing base camp in two months explain

what interplast is yeah i probably should have done that it's okay so interplast they provide free surgery to people who need it in developing countries so kids who are born with cleft lip cleft palate, women who've had acid thrown on them, pretty much everything and anything that can be remediated with surgery. It's like plastic surgery for its best, most intended purpose. Yeah, and I mean, I don't like to say plastic surgery because people think, oh, you're fixing like chicks' breasts overseas. So that's why I never call it plastic surgery.

But yeah, like for people who actually legitimately desperately need it and they live in a country where there is no medical system so i fundraise for interplast i've helped raise over a million dollars so far and you know that helps a team go to a developing country like bangladesh perform surgeries on people who need it for two weeks straight. And those doctors work bloody hard, you know, and they're not doing it for the accolades or for people to give them a pat on the back or anything. Yeah.

And they have a skill set that they could easily be in Beverly Hills doing exactly what you just mentioned. I found out about it because my surgeon actually volunteers for them. And in hospital, he used to disappear for two weeks on end and I'd ask him where he went and he told me all about Interplus and I just thought, you know, this guy is so busy, so insanely skilled, could make a mozza giving people plastic surgery, but instead he chooses to volunteer overseas and i think that was a really good lesson for me in terms of giving back

as well yeah i think uh in in kind of researching your story you know giving back and the service component of what you do yes is very much you know first and foremost and and in the present so it actually even written down like what does that mean to you and how important is that in terms of keeping you kind of in the mindset and you know frame of mind to like continue to do what you do i think when you we can get in we can become too introspective and we can always think about what's happening to me and what's happening in my life and what about my problems and what's going on with with my personal life and when you you can get into a pattern where you're you're just thinking about yourself and when it's all about me me mean you don't think about others i think that doesn't help you at

all and it's only when you help others and you help others who aren't as fortunate as you I think that gives you a lot of perspective so I went on these interclass trips and I saw people who had these horrific injuries I just didn't get any medical attention and it really reinforced to me how lucky I was to live in a country like Australia where I've had access to literally the best medical care that money can buy so I think helping others definitely gives you perspective because when we're too introspective we we can't see the forest from the trees yeah I mean you when you it just gets you outside of yourself and your ego and your little world and gives you a more expansive perspective. It's so easy for us to be all about me, me, me.

Of course. I'm the champion of that. So am I. I'm the biggest expert on me, and it's not a path to happiness. No, it's not. It's not a path to humility and all these things that actually will make you happy. It's doing the opposite of what your mind is telling you. Yeah.

So, for example, with this base camp trip, my thought pattern is I'm so busy. Like, I've got so much on and I'm doing this. And it's, I don't know, like, I don't know why I'm fitting it all in. But as soon as I go and I meet some of the patients that we've raised money for and I see the shit that they have to go through, I'll just think, man, it'll just put things in perspective for me and I'll be really grateful for that experience. Yeah, I watched the 60 Minutes story on you. Yeah, so there's all this amazing footage of you with these patients

and it's heartbreaking to see these kids. But this is the thing about patients in developing countries. They are so grateful for any type of medical attention at all. It's heartbreaking to see these kids. But this is the thing about patients in developing countries. They're so grateful for any type of medical attention at all. So the doctors are putting them under the worst amounts of pain, and they've just got a huge smile ear to ear the day after because they know they've been fixed. Beautiful. That's what I mean.

I've got a big smile on my face just thinking about it. It's so beautiful. I think to put all of this in proper context, I hope that you will indulge me and we can go back and kind of tell the story a little bit. I know you've told it a million times and maybe you think it's not relevant, but I think there's a lot of people listening who haven't heard of you and don't know.

For sure. And so I think it would be great if we could do that. So in 2011, I was running an ultra marathon. So an ultra, probably your listeners would know what an ultra is. Yeah, well explained. It's larger than a marathon. So a marathon is 42 kilometers, 26 miles. Is that?

26.2. Okay, 26.2 miles. We're not on the metric system yet. When I was a kid, they kept telling us we're going to be on the metric system. Here I am. I'm 50 years old. Why are you guys on the metric system? Because we're. I'm 50 years old. We're still not. Why are you guys on the metric system?

Because we're all messed up in the US. Yeah. You guys have it right. Yeah. Anyway, keep going. And so I was a quarter of the way through the ultra marathon. How old were you at the time? I was 24.

And was this your first ultra? That was my first ultra marathon, yeah. But had you run marathons? Yeah. And this was like in the bush, right? Well, I mean, it's been portrayed in the media as being like an outback desert ultramarathon. It was kind of like that. Like it was a pretty remote area.

So I was a quarter of the way through the ultramarathon. There was no phone reception on a trail. And I heard what I thought were trucks coming down the highway because i knew that the next checkpoint was really close to the highway so i actually started running a little bit faster because i just wanted to get to the checkpoint have water some food and you know cool down a bit it's pretty hot in the kimberleys that's in western australia it's pretty hot in the Kimberleys. That's in Western Australia. It's pretty hot at the time of year when the ultramarathon was on. And I was stuck in a – I came into a little gorge. There was six people in the gorge, and we could see a fire quickly approaching.

Now, that was the sound of the trucks. The fire trucks. That was what I thought – I'll go back. of fire trucks that that was this that was what i thought i'll go back when i say i thought i had trucks it was actually the rumbling of the fire now i don't know if you know of the venturi effect so when hot air is funneled into a smaller space like the gorge it actually sucks the fire through it increases increases the speed of the fire. So it's like sucking the air into it, right? Yeah, so we were at the start of the gorge and we saw the fire.

We were like, oh, shit, like, what do we do? And so we all tried to run. So you just run back the way you came from? Well, this is the thing. Because it's weird. It's it's like trying to understand like how do you get caught up in this thing without being able to run away from it yeah yeah well so don't forget that a fire can move at around 100 kilometers an hour so i don't think that even you'd be able to no run away from it and it's also weird because it's it's a day in my life close to six years ago. So my memory is a little bit patchy.

But we were running through shoulder-high grass, dry spin effects. So I thought that would be perfect fuel for the flames. Or the side of the gorge, it was really rocky. There was less vegetation. But I also knew that the speed of fire accelerates going up a hill so you had to make a decision like in the moment like which way are we going to go yeah yeah so i chose to run up the hill run up the side of the gorge and you there were six other people there and so did they go with you or well we So two of them ran back the way we came from

and they didn't get burnt. Two guys jumped through the fire. Yeah. And what happened to those guys? They got burnt. They weren't as badly burnt. And Kate and I, Kate was the other woman who was badly injured. We got burnt to 65% of our body.

Wow. And so you're running up this gorge, right? Yeah. And what, it encapsulates you? It just surrounds you all of a sudden? It just surrounds me and I just remember looking down my hands and arms. I was both ablaze. And I just thought, this is it.

I'm never going to see Michael again. Now, once the fire had passed, I was... So how long did that go on for yeah i i think a couple of seconds five seconds uh-huh i'm not sure did you pass out or how do you get the roll on the rounder how did i get the flames out yeah i don't know don't know you go into like a fugue state, right? Like some kind of crazy. Total shock. Like did that, is this a dream? Did that really just happen? You know?

And then I actually got this sense of elation because I was like, I've survived. Like I'm going to be all right. I'm going to go to hospital. They'll bandage me up. I'll be back at work on Monday. I was in that semi-delusional state of mind, which is probably just my body's reaction to try and save my life.

Well, yeah, like the adrenaline rush probably. Oh, adrenaline and I was just off my head. I had no grasp on time or space. Right. So we actually were stuck on that hillside for four hours wow yeah and that we like all six of you all six of us and there were some other competitors as well because people coming up from behind are discovering you right yeah yeah yeah so we end up waiting for four hours a helicopter comes the helicopter has to balance on one skid. First, they take Kate, and I was like, hello.

Right. I'm here. Like, why aren't you taking? I got you a little help. Hello. Four hours. That whole ego thing. Why did it take so long?

They didn't know what was going on? Yeah, I think just due to the location. You know, there was not very good communication. Like I said, there was no mobile phone reception, that type of thing. So. How many people were in this ultra? There was, I think around 50 people. Yeah.

So it wasn't huge. Right. It wasn't huge. So when I got picked up in the helicopter, I went to hospital. I said to the doctors. For those, hold on a second though. For those four hours, do you remember, like, what were you doing? Like, were you alert or were you passed out or do you remember? Like, For those, hold on a second though. For those four hours, do you remember? Like, what were you doing? Like, were you alert or were you passed out?

Or do you remember? Like, I mean, that's a long time. It is, but when you don't have a firm grasp on reality, four hours could have been four minutes. It could have been 40 minutes. It could have been, well, it couldn't have been four days. But, you know, I had no idea. I mean, the survival instinct must have kicked in pretty powerfully,

but there's only so long you can keep that adrenaline coursing through your veins before you kind of. So I think towards that end of the four hours, I was like starting to pass out. And the people who I was with were like, no, Tariya, wake up. They would talk to me about work or just something really mundane. Just to keep you awake. Just to keep me lucid, yeah.

And I think, though, if the helicopter wasn't able to extricate Kate and myself, I don't think we would be here. Right. Yeah, because we were starting to would be here. Right. Yeah. Because we were starting to swell quite badly. We didn't have any water, no pain medication. I think the helicopter got there just on dark too. And I mean, full credit to that helicopter pilot though. He wasn't a medical helicopter.

He was just a normal. Just like an average helicopter a regular pilot guy not that helicopter pilots that you know ever average but he was just he's not a paramedic though he wasn't a paramedic because he was his a regular bloke he had a wife at home he had a six-week-old baby they're not supposed to balance on one skid you know right so he he risked his life to save me wow yeah it gets you in again another example of someone doing something completely selfless and you know even when i was trapped by the fire i was really scared and i said to one of the blokes who i literally just met in that life and death situation he had his his son there, and he saw that I was upset,

and he took precious seconds to comfort me. Again, another act of total selflessness. Right. That made a huge difference. I mean, I would imagine your life is very much in the balance. I mean, four hours with the extent to which you were burned. Yeah, totally. So the helicopter landed in a little town of Kununurra.

I walked from the helicopter into hospital. You walked? I walked. Well, they were kind of like stuffing around, like trying to get the ambulance around. And in the end, I just thought, stuff this. All right, you know. I like hopped out of the helicopter and started walking into into the hospital because in my head i was fine uh-huh i was going to be back at work in a couple of days

wow that's the power of denial bandage me up and you know i want to go yeah i want to go home and in in the hospital they weren't really taking my taking me seriously i was like can someone call michael like i need to get out of here i want to get going wow you were really not tapped into what was no i was adamant that i was out of there like uh-huh and then did they have a burnt like a burn unit no so the town is really small kind of narrow there's probably about 5 000 people who live. So they put a needle in me and I woke up a month later in a hospital in Sydney. They induced a coma?

They induced a coma, yeah. Induced a coma, yeah. So behind the scenes, I'd been flown to Darwin, been flown to Sydney. Michael had literally flown all over the country to make sure he was with me they flew in skin from america whoa yeah how does that work so with burns patients because you are such such a large proportion of me was burnt they needed graft you they couldn't grab from no so what they normally

do is if you get burnt they take a you know a skin graft from your back and they put it on your arm but because i've been burnt to the majority of my body they didn't have it they didn't have enough skin to take from anywhere and so what they did is they got donor skin from the u.s and that skin flew to to australia and does the does it have to be like a – is there like a matching process like with an organ? No, no, no, because the skin is only used as a temporary bandage. I see. Yeah.

Just to prevent infection until your own skin can grow over it. So the thing is that when the skin landed in Australia, customs wouldn't let it through because that was the first time skin had ever been imported to australia what is this yeah and so my surgeons were on the phone saying look if we don't get this skin by this afternoon this patient will be dead how much skin was it like i don't know but cover a large portion was very just 65% of my body so I don't know like half of me but the interesting thing was it was all different colors Wow yeah so it was from multiple donors multiple donors it actually when I went to the US I found out that there was actually 16 different

donors oh my god yeah and how And how does somebody contribute that? Is it because they've perished and they've contributed their organs? Yeah, so I guess this is why it's really important for people to be registered as an organ and tissue donor, yeah. Uh-huh. So 16 people. And so explain to me basically the situation that yourself and somebody who, you know, has suffered like you have is in when you're in an induced coma and what you're like

a couple of weeks, you know, or maybe even a week or two out of this burn event. I mean, what, you know, your, your, your, you know, your tissue is exposed. Obviously, infection is huge. That's a major thing, right? But like what exactly is going on? In my mind? No, just like physically. Oh, physically? Yeah.

I mean, you weren't awake yet, so there's nothing going on in your mind, right? I was having a lot of crazy dreams. Yeah. I was on morphine. They're probably crazy drugs, right? Yeah, yeah. I was on a crazy amount of drugs. Like what's going on behind the scenes yeah like i just want to understand like how you know the the sort

of situation of somebody who's been burned so extensively like what they're actually looking at yeah i'm not quite sure about that because i was asleep and i haven't really investigated it thoroughly but you know i know i had multiple operations you know they would graft skin areas sometimes it didn't take so i'd have to go back in for another operation i think i've had over 200 operations now. Mm-hmm. You know, they had to empty. 200? Yeah. Since, and this was like fall 2011? Yeah, 2011. And I, so when you get put under anesthetic,

they could do maybe five things on you. Uh-huh. So maybe like 50 general anesthetics. Right. Yeah. So they just, they can't overdo it or they put your life in peril, right? So they have to space these out.

Yeah. Well, actually, I passed away three times. I actually did die three times on the operating table. Wow. Is that while you were in the induced coma or something like that? Yeah, that was in the early stages. And so, you know, for Michael and my family, that would have been tremendously hard because, you know, for Michael and my family, that would have been tremendously hard

because, you know, my family, they're realist, but they're also pretty positive as well. And to hear the doctor say, well, I don't know, she might not make it, like I can't really tell you anything more than that, that would have been pretty heartbreaking. Yeah, and flatlining for how long, do you know? I don't know. I don't know.

What's flatlining? Like when your heart stops beating. do you know? I don't know. I don't know. Probably, what's flatlining? Like when your heart stops beating. Ah, yeah, I don't know. I won't find that out. That is a good question. You should ask your doctor. Yeah, I'll ask my doctors. But just to kind of, for people that are listening,

who are unfamiliar with the story, so what, 65% of your body is a third degree? Yes, third degree. How do you describe it? And you've lost some some digits some fingers um it's across your arms your face your legs your torso yeah that's essentially it yeah um and so skin grafting and the healing process and all the surgeries that go into like trying to you know yeah put toria back together yeah and i guess i think the the hardest thing about being in hospital

was you know recovering from a burns injury it's it's really long so a lot of people go to hospital they get fixed up they leave and they're all better but when you have a really big burn like mine, it's a really long, long process. So years, not months. And it's also really painful. It's out of this world, excruciating, all-encompassing. Takes over your mind and body. Like you can't move at all, right, without pain? Well, you can't move at all.

And then they have to change your bandages every day. Right. And that's like a torture ritual that would be inflicted on me every day so you're in the induced coma for did you say a month about a month about a month so when you come to what you know and you come into an awareness of what had actually happened like what's going on with you mentally at that point i think probably there's an aspect of denial there too like why am i still in the hospital well i remember you know the nurses were saying it would be good for you and michael to plan a holiday after this is all over and my accident happened in september so i would just harass michael every. I'd say, I want to go to Antarctica.

Like, book that trip. We've got to go on that holiday. And he'd be like, oh, yeah. Maybe we'll, like. He was thinking, you're not going to be out of here by Christmas time. But I was just so adamant that. So you just weren't. It's almost like the defense mechanism in you was so strong.

Like, you weren't able to hear what the doctors and everybody was telling you yeah and i guess i'm not i'm not putting putting blame on my doctors or the medical staff because they are phenomenal they're amazing they've put me back together but i also think it's not in their interests to be positive because they don't want to tell someone, yeah, you'll be running again, you'll be active again, you'll be able to do everything that you used to do because maybe sometimes that won't happen. And the patient could get really angry.

So they said, you won't be able to run again. You'll need to care for the rest of your life. You'll have to readjust your expectations. But then they'd say, oh, on the bright side, you know, you might get a job again, you might drive again, you might get married. And I'm not belittling those things, but it pissed me off because I'd always been such a high achiever and a go-getter

and I felt because i'd had this accident everyone's expectations of me had just plummeted so no one expected anything from me anymore so was that your reaction immediately upon hearing that news like a refusal to accept that that would be your fate or did you have like a period of like yo-yos up and down so some days i think you don't know what you're talking about. I'm going to prove everyone wrong. I'm going to rebuild myself. I'm going to be the biggest, baddest person on the planet.

And then the next day I'd say, oh, no, this is too hard. I can't do it. I would imagine you had to have moments of like, why me? How is this happening? I can't believe this. Like my life is over. And people always want to know like what the pivotal moment was. of like why me how is this happening i can't believe this like my life is over and people always want to know like what the pivotal moment was but there was no pivotal moment it's not like

one morning i woke up and i said oh i'm going to be super strong for the rest of my life it was just day in day out working towards walking 50 meters working towards being able to do a flight of stairs just i think it was really about and you would know this with all your training and the same thing with training for ironman it's about consistency so just doing something every day some days you feel like you're going good some days you don't know if you're making any progress at all. But over the long term, you see results. Yeah, true in sport and truer in life. Yeah, and I think I guess I was blessed in some ways because the people around me, Michael, my mom, my dad, my brothers,

they were all believers. So when I said to them, I'm going to do an Ironman one day, they didn't say, well, come on, Taria, be really sick. The doctor said you won't be able to run again and you'll need to care for the rest of your life. They just said, oh, cool. How long after the burn did you announce that you wanted to do an iron man this is about i think about maybe two months i had no idea what an iron man was i had no idea

you've run an ultra you must have and you're an australian you must know what i do because i wasn't really and i remember a couple of guys at work used to do iron man events and i'd think in my head why would you want to do that that sounds really boring that's what this is coming from someone who does ultras but anyway well they aren't some they can be really boring oh yeah I found that out yeah so I just I think obviously I had I've got I'm very determined I had a lot of self-belief and I'm quite a resilient person. Where does that come from? I think it's just my mindset.

Is it the way you were raised? Definitely. Is it just something you came out of the womb like this? No, I don't think anyone is just naturally. So how did your parents raise you so that you can view the world in this positive way? Okay, so for example, my mom had four kids at home. She had a full-time job and she wrote novels. And every night when I'd go to sleep, I could hear her typing away on her keyboard.

That's amazing. Her first book got rejected 14 times. And as you do when you get rejected 14 times you write another book and her second book became a commercial success it was published all over the world translated in wow yeah around 10 different languages so that lesson to me it showed me that if you work hard for something and you're persistent and you persevere and you believe in yourself you see results my dad was really old school he had a really tough love approach so he had two rules when we were kids the first one was no whinging what does that mean no whinging oh like that's like an australian yeah it's australian it's like uh no no complaining uh-huh and his second rule was no bloody whinging that's a really that's a really australian it's australian it's like uh no no complaining uh-huh and his second rule was no

bloody whinging that's a really that's a really australian thing hard to please dude yeah no but it was just like if you're not you either change your circumstances and if you're not willing to do that i don't want to hear about it i don't want to hear you whinge or complain so when i was a kid my brother and i we missed the bus to school so we wagged school do not wag what does that mean we skipped school we didn't go to school australians have a nickname for everything yeah we do don't we we're unique like that and then uh dad found out and he was furious he dug a trench in the backyard my brother and i had to run from our house 10 minutes down to the beach,

grab a handful of sand, run the 10 minutes home, put it in the trench, and we weren't allowed to finish until that. Until the trench was full? Until the trench was full. That's intense. That's intense, but like, yeah, his style of parenting was really intense, but I'm grateful for that because it's part of what makes me who I am. You know, it's why I don't whinge.

It's why I don't whinge it's why i don't complain that's why i've got a well you know you've got to get up and go and proactive approach to things persistence and no complaining that's uh you know that's a pretty powerful combination to combat what you were facing exactly yeah but i would also did he ever say all right you can complain a little bit like it's okay never. Even in the wake of all of this? Oh, sorry. He never gave you a minute where he said, it's okay, you can complain for five minutes? After my accident? No, well, that was sort of more mom's job.

My mom's from Tahiti. She's a beautiful woman. She's very loving. Everyone who meets her falls in love with her. And they say, oh, your mom is so awesome. falls in love with her and they say oh your mom is so awesome so i would i would you know cry to mom when dad came to the hospital it was like very serious right we've got to go get you doing squats or whatever and moving forward looking forward yeah well we can't do anything about it you've been burnt so what what else can we do and michael my partner was probably the best out of all of them

he was amazing michael can you go he's sitting over here can you come over here yeah i should have set up a third mic for you he was there he was there with me every day pull up a chair for a second because i'm i want to know like what it was like you know here hand him the mic for for a second like i want to know what this was like for you you know i mean it's a it's an extraordinary thing that you were able to show up for taria and and be by her side you know throughout the entire thing and and then you know you guys are you're married now or you're engaged no we're engaged you're engaged right congrats on that that's awesome yeah but it had to be you know know, traumatic and terrifying. It was. Everything you said, like it was, it's heartbreaking. But the thing is,

like with something like this, and I realize it's not only Tariya and I that go through accidents, like, you know, accidents happen every day and every family experiences them. So, you just have to sort of step up to the plate. And the way we did it, you know, we just sort of believed in each other. And, you know, I was such a realist and I was like, you know, this has happened and there's no point crying about it, but what we can do is we can help Terea to walk and hold her hand while she walks up a flight of stairs and every day you'd see a little bit of improvement and that would make you

and your heart feel like you're actually doing a job and you're achieving something. So it was a team effort, but, yeah, it was very bloody hard and a lot of like i said a lot of families go through it and they obviously don't get the recognition that terrier and i have because the media in australia found it a fascinating um incident and that and they were really positive towards us and they've shown a a beautiful light upon terrier which was amazing so i do thank them for that but also the media can be terrible as you know so well like the paparazzi side of it yeah right like being too sort of up in your business about everything that's going on

yeah well they just shone a light for everybody to see what had happened but i mean if it didn't happen as an ultra marathon out in the desert nobody would know about terria being burnt so you know what i'm trying to say is these things happen and we've just had a positive feedback a spotlight from the media which you know it's helped terria to sort of keep moving forward and and so you and terria you were in the hospital for how long six months and so during that period michael i would imagine your life had to be put on hold completely right so i'm sure you were in sydney during that yeah or no oh okay all right i see yeah uh-huh and so you and so you and you were like a police officer yeah right and so did you have to take time like extensive so i resigned

i resigned and then the accident happened and then i just dropped everything and i thought you know if she could get through the rehabilitation and the physiotherapy that was asked upon her it was quite easy for me to be alongside her every day and help her like i mean all i had to do was be there so the doctors were quite ruthless they said you know she's going to be here for six months and it's two years of rehabilitation and then in five years time she won't know herself she'll be you know going great so i was i just believed in them and you know i just put myself there for her to rebound off and you know to be honest looking from the outside i can

see it might be sort of a big thing but it was quite easy at the at the time that happened yeah what was the what was the hardest part for you the hardest part was when i saw her walk for the first time uh because before that i remember her running long distances i used to go running with her 20k's of an afternoon and then to see her in hospital and the nurses get her up and she can't even walk three steps and she's just howling in pain i mean that that broke me as a man and i had to walk away and actually had a few tears in the corner at that stage and that that really hurt me and so what what did you have to do like for yourself to be able to kind of deal with this on a daily basis, like, you know, just to be the support that you know that she needed you to be.

Yeah, well, it's, I mean, everybody's got their own sort of therapy and remedy in situations like this. And for me, it was the ocean. Like I would go down for swims and jump in there and, you know, I could scream underwater and sometimes I would just catch a wave and that would be a relief for me to get in there and have the salt on my skin and the wind in my hair. And so that was my remedy.

Some people get counseling, some people they do exercise. My remedy was the ocean and that was very therapeutic throughout the whole process and it did help me. Was there any aspect of this where sometimes they create like community where there's other people that are going through the same thing, like or talk to this guy he's going through it or like i mean they have like cancer survivors have that there's a lot you know look i think the rehabilitation for anybody that's bad here in australia it's pretty it's it's unfortunate that it's pretty poor there's not that many services that support and there was a chaplain that came

around and tried to talk to me but to be honest i didn't have any interest in speaking to him i could speak to my family and my friends and that was my way of a release and you know like i'd go for runs as well and that was really good the exercise and to keep my mind healthy and swimming that swimming was probably the best exercise i could do because you know you go for an hour swim as you know you get out and you feel invincible and you start fresh again absolutely well i think you you know it would be no surprise to you and i'm sure you've now you work with all these other people that are experiencing things similar to what you you guys have endured collectively as a couple and i would imagine you've seen relationships dissolve or break up over this sort of thing right so it's either gonna it's gonna go one of two ways either gonna bring you closer or it's gonna

blow you apart right so how do you why do you and i'm interested in both of your perspectives on this like how do you what did what did you why do you think you guys it brought you guys closer together like what did you do that allowed you to kind of weather this and get to this place where you have this great relationship and you're getting married whereas you've seen other people like splitting up that's uh i can't really speak for anyone else i can just sort of say that you know it was tough and like it's i know people have seen us to be happy and smiling all the time but there is downtime down you know times when you're sad and you know you do you do sort of fight with one another but i think that's generally a healthy relationship if i mean i'm sure

you and your you have arguments all the time you know yeah anybody who tells says they don't fight that's not that's not a good sign i mean they're not they're either lying or they're not being honest they're not like being honest with each other right yeah so i i'm very honest with michael and so housing did involve all that like you know there was arguments there was times i i wanted to walk away and you know there was times terry wanted to walk away from me and it was tough and you know i think sometimes people always say to me you know bad things sometimes happen to people who you know have to be tested and i think you know for some reason this unfortunate accident happened to terria and it tested her and it tested our relationship immensely and you know we've come out shining

at the end of the of the journey and we're pretty stoked where we are at the moment and we're pretty proud of how we've sort of kept our relationship together through such a traumatic event yeah and it's given you an opportunity to be able to be of service to other people in a really profound and and meaningful way so when you look at when you look upon this you know sort of like the universe puts this in front of you and you can be a victim or you can, uh, yeah, he's standing around. No, I might want you back. Sit down. Uh, you know, you can shrink from it and be the victim or you can rise to the challenge and understand that perhaps there is, you know, there is a, there is a silver lining in this and something to be learned that can be shared when you look on it. Now, do you, are you able to like access that kind of gratitude for it like

do you wish it if you could do it all over again do you wish i wish that never happened or do you look at it and say this is a gift because now i get to do this thing that i didn't think i was going to be able to do with my life like how do you perceive it yeah well i think that comes back to that reframing technique that i was talking about earlier I could look at it and say I wish it never happened it changed my whole life or I could say this traumatic thing happened to me but it's given me so much it's made my relationship with Michael way more profound and deeper it's given me a new appreciation for my family and friends and community, they're all so awesome. I'm able to travel all around the world now and do what I love to do. I can compete in crazy events such as Ironman Kona. I've got a profile on a platform.

So if I talk about Interplus, I'm able to galvanize people to raise money for that. And when you look at those two options, I know which one I would choose. What was the plan before like what was the career path i was a mining engineer and engineering is a very male dominated industry and mining engineering even more so so in my class i was 80 blokes and four girls and i really loved it i really because you got to work in cool places in Australia in the middle of nowhere with nothing around you. I love places like that. And I was really happy with my career.

I wanted to be a mining manager or move my way up through the company. But at the same time, it wasn't emotionally fulfilling either. And I recognize that after only working. I was only working as an engineer for about a year. I studied at uni for about five years. And even after a year, I became a little disillusioned with it because I thought I've started my ass off to get here. I don't really know if here is where I want to be.

Yeah. Right. But the connection that you get with what you do now in terms of like, you know, how it impacts people. I feel like everything's magnified. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, of course.

I would assume that you feel like a responsibility because this happened and because you have this experience and because you've been able to kind of transcend it, you know, with the accomplishments that you have done that packed into that is this sort of call to action to be this beacon of, you know, strength for other people that are struggling. Do you feel that? Yeah, I guess I do feel a little bit of responsibility,

but I also don't take myself too seriously and if you if you follow me on instagram or whatever i've got a pretty wicked sense of humor and do you have that expression take the piss yeah i know what that means yeah that's the one thing i do yeah yeah so like i like to take the piss and you know pay myself out because i think as well we can get into the habit of taking everything so serious and we're all so busy and we're all so important. And I think when you just have a laugh with your mates and relax and remember that we only get one laugh and we've got to enjoy it as well as making a difference.

We've also got to enjoy. But I think that's that's important also in terms i think of of disarming people when you first meet them like because people don't know how to act or they're like people right yeah yeah people might be a little um awkward maybe and so i just probably do crack a few jokes just to let them know that I'm still a human. It's okay. You can relax. Yeah.

And, you know, people always ask if I've had such a good sense of humor. And I reckon I have. It's just that perhaps it's developed more because of what I've been through because I realize that if I want to disarm people and I want to break through to them, I need to get them a bit relaxed. Does that make sense? It does. But when you say that, I can't help but think that's –

I think I see an amazing person in that because a lot of people would just become bitter and angry and resentful. Yeah, but I chose not to be. But again, it goes back to that like how do you make that choice i make that choice every day every morning or throughout the day but they're saying that you're going to do it and then actually like like feeling it like embodying yeah there is a different practicing that there is a difference for sure is there an act as if like you do it until you feel it or do you honestly feel it?

No, I say it out loud because, you know, it's easy to think, yeah, okay, I'm going to be grateful. I'm going to be happy. But there's a huge difference in actually verbalizing it, saying it out loud, and saying it like you mean it. So I say to myself, is today going to be a good day or a bad day, Tariya? Like it's your choice, your call. You choose. And do you ever say, yeah, it's going to be a bad day or a bad day to rear like it's your choice your call you choose and do you ever say yeah it's going to be a bad day yeah sometimes i do and then i said to myself well

if you want it to be a bad day or a bad morning we'll just go with it be in a bad mood but then don't complain about being in a bad mood yeah don't complain to me that you're in a such a bad mood and why can't you fix me because i'm in a bad mood and i need you to cheer me up right yeah all right so so back to the rehabilitation you're you know you're trying to as as michael explained like the painful you know first steps of trying to learn how to walk again and all of that like is that the skin is just so taut and and damaged or is the muscles atrophy the muscles are atrophied the skin is damaged it's a skill that i haven't practiced in a month so if you're lying flat for a month your muscles and just that

skill that balance that sense of balance it's going to be lost and so when i i was in this state of delusion i'm going to be fine everything's going to be okay then when i stood up to walk i was like no things aren't going to be fine things are actually going to be really really bloody long and really bloody tough and what people have been saying to me they might actually be on the right track do you think that your experience as an ultramarathoner played into your ability to kind of approach the rehabilitation? I think for sure, because I've always loved sports and loved challenging myself. So I think if you don't, if you're not someone who's involved with sports, you might never have experienced that sensation when you're uncomfortable. You want to quit, but you just keep going so i think 100 it played a huge role and when you were when you were doing that were you thinking like

someday i'm gonna run a marathon again or i'm gonna run like i used to run like you had that you held that vision for yourself i would be walking like a grandma saying to myself yeah one day you're gonna you're gonna be running a marathon you're gonna be doing this you're gonna be doing that and are you somebody who sorry like i want to get to kind of behind the the you know pull the pull the covers back a little bit more on this like are you somebody who lets everyone in on that goal or are you somebody who kind of covets that quietly and says i'll show them but you know i'm going to keep that's my secret and that's you know i hope that's why it's powerful for me or do you you just tell everyone and then it just becomes real because everyone has been notified i like to tell everyone so like even my first iron man in australia i literally told every single person that i came

across that i was doing it and then i was like, shit, I actually have to. Right. Because it creates an external accountability. Exactly, yeah. And for me, the fear of being embarrassed or looking like a goose. Do you have that? No. Okay, well, looking like a bit of a kook, you know, you say you're going to do something and then you don't do it. I don't like being that person.

So I like to say I'm doing something and then follow through. Yeah. But for sure, a lot of people like to hold it internally and stew on it and they make it happen that way. Right. Yeah. So, all right. So this rehabilitation is going on for two years?

Yeah. Two years, right? Do you have moments where you just feel like, okay, like I broke through or is it just a gradual progression? I think, yes, I've overcome everything. just feel like okay like i broke through or is it just a gradual some days i think yes i've overcome everything i've broken through and then the next day i'd feel really crap and i'd go okay maybe i haven't broken through and i always thought i would get to a stage where i'd be over it and actually two years after the fire i, I was playing my life pretty safe

and one of the guys from the fire was riding his bike. He was training for an adventure race and he got hit by a truck and passed away. And that for me just really reinforced that there's no benefit to playing your life really safe because I thought because I'd been through that fire I'd be immune to further tragedy but now I think if you don't live your life being live it on your terms take risks bet big believe in yourself I don't really know if that's much of a life it's not much of a life

I don't really know if that's much of a life. It's not much of a life for me anyway. Yeah, I mean, you could, you know, you could cower and stay at home and watch daytime television and everyone would say, oh, that's fine. Like nobody is going to. No one would pull me up. Exactly. Everyone would say, well, she's been really badly burnt in a fire. That's why she's like that and she's really fragile

and you have to be sensitive. And I hated that how people would walk around on their tippy toes around me. And it just, it really frustrated me because I felt, you know, I was like, I'm a grown woman. I'm an independent person. I know what's going on. And so when do you decide you're going to do this? The first Ironman you did was Ironman Australia, right?

Australia, yeah. So how long after i decided that in hospital you did you fill out did you like sign up for it and stuff no i decided that in hospital and i said oh so i did a cycle in australia i walked to the great wall of china oh so the great wall was before the iron man that was before the iron man and i thought that would build up my legs right for the marathon. And you did that as a fundraiser. That was a fundraiser for Interplast, and I did a swim in Kununur, which is where the fire happened. Right.

Yeah, I saw some video of that as well. That was like a 20-kilometer swim. Yeah, but I— I wasn't sure which came first in the timeline. No, no, that was earlier on. I see. And I did it in a team, So I didn't swim 20 times. Right, but you did it with the other burn victims, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's amazing. So it was cool. We came dead last. Like literally. Yeah, but it's like in the class of people that have been devastatingly burned in a fire, you came in first. So like two of the guys didn't get burnt.

Sorry, one of the guys didn't get burnt and he was the worst. He was the worst. He was the worst. He was so bad. He told me he couldn't swim. That's unacceptable. Yeah, I was really annoyed. I was like, we're going to come last because of you. That's so funny.

So you must be really close with those people, though, after having heard. Yeah, and I guess it's a strange closeness because we don't – we love extreme events, and that's why we're in the ultra marathon but we're not that similar in other aspects but but you were in it's like being in battle like you were you survived this crazy thing yeah only you guys know what that was like yeah exactly so we are really close um and then so those built up some confidence that you were going to be able to. That was building up confidence. So in my mind, I thought that's preparing me for the Ironman. And then I texted one of the blokes from the fire because he'd done about 10 Ironman events.

And I said, who was your coach? He put me onto the coach. I saw the coach. I sort of walked in there like acting like I was way fitter than what I was. And Michael was like, Tariq, you've just got to be really honest like you're on your furthest you can run at the moment it's four kilometers and you know you can probably swim a kilometer without stopping and you can't even ride a bike without cleats so just be really honest so i was

and then he gave me a program and how long what how long was the time period leading up to the race like 15 months 15 months okay so yeah but like still to go from not being able to run more than four kilometers to being able to do an ironman that's a that's a mountain to climb yeah yeah but it was i felt it was a really cathartic process for me because I've written books and people have asked if they've been cathartic and they haven't really been that cathartic. But I think the process of training for something, when you get up every morning and you just do it

and there's an internal battle that goes on every day with your training. and there's an internal battle that goes on every day with your training. And, yeah, I think the Ironman did a lot for me. It's interesting that you found catharsis in the training and not in the sort of divulging through the books and the writing. Because the book was all looking backwards. And I was thinking, I don't want to go through it again like so the catharsis is in kind of shedding you know to like it was a terrible metaphor to shed another skin right yeah and it was like who are you like like this is your chance to prove yourself this is

where you have to step up you know people think you're just a a burns victim and this is your opportunity to show no did you have a sense that you're getting a lot of press right so you had this idea like people are paying attention and you have an opportunity to like be this inspirational figure so how much of it is oriented around that versus for yourself all of it was for myself yeah the whole the whole journey it was it's a so it's i was gonna say it's a selfish sport it was a selfish sport for me because it was all consuming it took over everything and michael how was that when she was training all the time for

were you like supportive or you like she's insane or it was amazing i was supportive because it was good to see her rehabilitating and body back to where she was before so that was a beautiful thing and looking forward and looking forward so i mean she like i said that she i would have way rather watch her do be rehabilitated and trained for the iron man than sit in a corner and cry so it was beautiful yeah but man we had some huge blow-ups yeah you know because some days my bike wouldn't be working properly and i'd be like you've got to fix it i've got to i have to train i need to do this and yeah well you get you get kind of stressed and anxious and i'd get annoyed if there wasn't...

Michael's got to take care of this for me, right? But like during the rehabilitation process, you literally had to dress her, right? It was a very hands-on, full-blown job situation. I remember once he was getting my clothes ready for the morning and I was like, no, I don't want to wear that. Don't't want to wear that don't want to wear that don't want to wear that i was being a real yeah god damn i just get dressed i was being really difficult and finally he just snapped he like pulled all of my clothes out of the closet threw them down to the bed and said you do it i'm out of here

well at some point you gotta like learn how to do it. Yeah, I thought catering. You've probably taken things a little too far this time. Good. Well, I'm actually glad to hear stories like that. Yeah, well, it's real, isn't it? Yeah. It's real. Yeah. So you're having to sort of be her.

I was her carer. But there was a stage, though, where I didn't have to do a toiletries for her. And that did help in a big way. But I was a carer and I was comfortable doing that. And I took that upon myself. We could have got nurses and physiotherapists and that around to the house. But we didn't need to. I was more than happy to do that.

Because every day I would see an increase in her rehabilitation. She would be able to do something. She'd put a bra on, for instance, and I'd be like, oh, you couldn't do that yesterday. And before I knew it, she was dressing herself and I walked away from that position. Right. I mean, it's the cool thing about, I don't know,

I actually don't know if it's cool, but even five years on, there's still things that I'm learning to do all over again. So even using hair scrunchies, like I just figured out how to do that a couple of months ago and I was like, Michael, look what I can do now. How awesome is this? It's weird because it's so simple, but I think we're always reminded not to take those things for granted.

Well, beyond the kind of dexterity with your hands and and the you know kind of atrophy of the muscles that you had to combat and the you know sort of tensile strength of your skin and all of that is there like internal organ damage that you have to deal with or all of that is like all no it's all fine internally the one thing about being burnt is you can't regulate your body temperature. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Well, that's a big deal in Ironman, especially in Kona.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kona was so hard. Right, because you don't sweat the same way, right? That's what they made. One of the functions of your skin is if you're hot, you sweat to cool yourself down. I don't sweat on 65% of my body. That's a problem.

Yeah, that is a problem. As an endurance athlete, as any kind of athlete. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. But this is how I looked at it too. Yeah, it's a problem, but I had to be creative enough and imaginative enough to think of solutions. So what are the solutions to that?

So, for example in iron man it was really simple each aid station i'd stop pour water over myself douse myself with cold water and that took made made the race take longer because i had to continually stop i wore a heart rate monitor so i could monitor my heart rate and if there was and if it started going too high, I would know that I just have to slow down and back off the pace. Right. So those things compromise my athletic abilities, but it still does mean that I can do them.

So instead of saying, well, I can't do endurance events, I've been burnt, can't do it, I just saw it as my, I guess, my my job to you know yeah try and think of solutions and that's the one i would have not thought of but that's probably the biggest limiter that was a bit well the swim was really hard yeah because you know your hand is your paddle uh-huh my hands are a lot smaller right so that was it's like you know when you do swimming drills with fists yeah yeah a bit like that yeah so that was hard the bike was hard because you know going up a hill i can't get out of my saddle uh-huh so that and also you have a very tenuous grip on the handlebars right yeah dangerous if i go too fast i'm like okay just slow down to rear you're not trying to break the land speed record right like that descent from

javi yeah yeah i was just kawaii high with the winds the sideways winds had to be really scary but i thought like i did the exercise what's the worst thing that can happen i wrote it down like the worst thing that could happen on that descent was that i got picked up by the wind and thrown into the the rock cutting might have meant that I would maybe break a bone, maybe not be able to finish the race. It's not much of a disincentive to not try. Yeah. And you didn't fall.

No, I didn't fall, but I was riding like a grandma. Yeah. Like I was pretty cautious. You would have to. I mean, it's even for the most experienced riders, it's hair raising. Well, also as well, I'm not a cyclist. I haven't touched my bike. Well, actually you are a cyclist because you've done two Ironmans.

So you can own that. I haven't touched my bike since Kona. It's like still in the garage with the number on it and everything. That's all right. So did you have doctors that were supportive or telling you, like, this is dangerous? Or were they constructively trying to help you come up with these solutions? Or were you just doing your- Not really my doctors because they're pretty busy. They've got burns patients coming out of it.

You can't be bothered with your Iron Man. There is. They're like, look, if you want to go do something stupid and crazy, knock yourself out. We can't stop you. Knock yourself out, Tariq. We know we can't stop you. One of my doctors was so annoying.

He was always on at me to put on weight. And I was, you know, I was arguing with him because I was like, I'm training for an iron man. Like I can't actually put on weight at the moment. So he was a little bit annoying. Yeah. You know the one I'm talking about. But also they didn't really care at hospital.

They were just like whatever. So 15 months and you go to Ironman Australia. Yeah. And you tow the starting line. Yeah. I was freaking out make it through like what's what's the hardest part that you had yeah like it had to be oh the hardest part of that whole day was waiting to start yeah it's like with anything you know like when you're

nervous or anxious before you do a presentation or whatever that that period before you're actually about to start is the worst uh But you put the training in. Did you go in confident that you were going to be able to manage it? Look, my coach was there on the day he came with me, and he's a really, really beautiful man. He was really helpful for me throughout the whole process, and he just said, look, you've done the work. You're not trying to break any record.

Just go out and enjoy it. Yeah. You got all day. You got all day, yeah, and, you've done the work. You're not trying to break any record. Just go out and enjoy it. Yeah. You got all day. You got all day, yeah, and like 500 meters into the swim, I just thought, oh, you've got this in the bag. Like, you'll be able to do this, which was not my experience in Kona. So, all right, well, I want to get to that. So you basically cruised through this Ironman?

Well, no, I say cruise. Like, it's a walk in the park. You had it in the bag? Yeah, there was some tough points for sure, but the whole day I was just frothing out because I was finally doing something which I'd trained so hard for. And you got it done, right? You did like 13, 14 hours?

I did 13 and a half, 13 and a half, yeah. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, so I was pretty proud of myself. That's incredible and so kona how does kona come into the picture after that did you were you always thinking like if i do this i'm gonna figure out how to get to kona i tell people that i wasn't and i'm like oh i got invited to kona what a big surprise but that was the plan all along i was telling my team i was like i want to get to kona like you have to you have to make this happen like

i want to you know i really want to do kona so we get to hawaii it's out of this out of the out of this world hot you know the temperatures over there are insane it was like we landed yeah it was like being in a microwave and i straight away started to think, okay, you've probably bitten off more than you can chew here. Just because of the heat and the conditions, it's so windy. Michael came on a few training rides with me. Don't want to say anything? Yeah. But you're starting to second guess,

like whether this might be a little bit too much. I'm starting to second guess myself, yeah. Yeah, and just knowing that even like, you know, when you hear Chris McCormick talk about how he could not figure out how to get his hydration sorted out, you know, because of the heat, like it fells even the best of the best. Yeah, and so that whole day from about halfway through the swim, you know, halfway through the swim i was throwing up

on my bike i couldn't keep any of my fluids down or any of my food and as i was riding back into town i was just in a really delirious incoherent state on the run course halfway through the run i was asking volunteers to take off my helmet did you wow so so you were super out of it i was out of it you weren't able to keep anything down obviously i was right but you're still having stomach issues the entire time yeah i kept throwing i think that was because of the heat yeah yeah yeah your body's ability to absorb those things is completely different and if you're not able to you know cool your body temp down through through perspiration like you're just getting hotter and hotter and hotter that was another thing when i came back from that descent they actually ran out of water at the aid stations

and that was part of my heat oh my god management plan yeah and all the wind like from that descent is you're not getting the relief of the cooling no of the right because you're not you don't have the sweat yeah the air against the sweat that's what cools you down right yeah and you don't you don't get to have that experience no and then i get to an aid station i ask for water and they're like oh man we don't how do they not have water? It's Ironman World Championships. Well, yeah, okay, well, look, I was probably a lot slower than most of the people. You weren't that much slower. Listen, there are people coming in at, you know, midnight all the time.

I think for most competitors, they'd say, okay, no worries, I'll have a Gatorade or whatever. But I was using the water to cool myself down, which was a large difference between me and the other competitors. And so when we got to the bottom of the descent, I saw a police officer and I stopped him and I said, man, I need water. And he ran to his car. He gave me like three bottles of super cold water.

That's cool. Yeah. But you had to find a cop to do that. Yeah, I know. Wow, that's amazing. amazing well the other thing i think people that have not been to kona don't don't realize people think it's just like hawaii like it's people say i've been to hawaii it's not that hot and they watch the iron man world championships on television and it all looks super fun and awesome and beautiful and all that and and that

queen k just goes on forever like it is the least like after a while like you're like i get it the scenery doesn't change you know for hours and hours and hours yeah and there's no support the majority of the day you're by yourself that i didn't know is that true wow yeah and when you're running out to the energy lab it's just you there is no one there is no one on the sidelines screaming that was the thing about australia there was so many supporters and there were so many people screaming my name and i felt like you know i was i was doing it for everyone there was no one you're just on your own on my own you're asking people to take your helmet off when you're running yeah and i was running in the dark thinking you're an idiot to ria why do you do you do these things to yourself? Just berating myself.

So how did you get it done? How did you overcome all that? Being in that mindset definitely did not help me. So being in that really negative state of you're an idiot, this is stupid, that didn't help me. I tried to use gratitude to think of things that I was grateful for and that didn't work because I was like, well, why would I be grateful on this stupid course and this bloody hard and I'm all by myself.

And so I just mentally broke it up. I just took it on the run, aid station by aid station, so it's two kilometers. Just break it down into its tiniest components. Tiniest, yeah. Yeah, I think also it helps to in my experience um to understand like when you're entertaining those thoughts that they're just they're just thoughts like that you can disassociate with your thinking mind and understand that you could become

if you could become the observer of those thoughts then you have a choice to entertain them and allow them to impact you or or to try to get the upper hand and dismiss them. So I probably should have done more mental training because when you're tired, it's really hard to think those sorts of things. You train so much that you're an autopilot, but I didn't do as much training for my brain right which if i ever did kona again i would definitely do so you're not making an official announcement about that i don't want to i don't want to do kona again you don't that was it i don't want to do it again so but

you ended up finishing in like 14 plus right so you weren't even that much slower than you were in in for the hour slower all right but you know when you consider the wind and the heat and all of that like yeah i mean i was way more proud of myself after kona because throughout the whole day i just wanted to quit throughout the whole day i was so uncomfortable i just thought I just I want someone to run me over with a car so I don't have to do this race I don't want to be here and I I just found it in me to keep taking that next step did you were you still doing it for yourself or were you able to kind of tap into the strength of understanding like I'm carrying a message for other people

and I can allow that to like you know yeah for sure there was a lot of reflection there like I'm carrying a message for other people and I can allow that to like you know yeah for sure there was a lot of reflection there like I thought a lot about the donors who ultimately saved my life and I thought a lot about Interplus and all the work that they do and thought a lot about Michael my family and my mom and I thought this is I want my mom to know that I'm okay that she doesn't need to worry about me anymore so yeah I think it's it's you know it's easy to for someone like myself or somebody who comes across your story to just imagine it's about you and you're the one who's had to endure and suffer this but everybody that is in your life has had to participate in this with you it's very much

a group kind of and i think in some parts it's been almost harder for them because you know being the person who's injured you get get all of the sympathy and the attention and everything's about you. And it's really traumatic for us to see people that we love in pain. You know, you'd give anything not to have someone that you love in pain. And so when you reflect on your story and the things that you've been able to achieve, you know, in light of being told you, you know, may never walk again. You know, what is the, what is the message that you want people to hear from you? Like, what is it that you want people to get from you and your story? I think it's just that if they understand their mindset and they use it to their advantage,

they can do absolutely anything. But the one thing that I'm most proud of is that my relationships with Michael and my family and friends are so much deeper and so much closer. I think that's really beautiful. And Michael, what has been the impact of you seeing toria conquer these events like what is the impact of that on how you kind of perceive your own you know goals for your life and how you live on a daily basis or maybe it hasn't at all i don't know i don't want to put words in your mouth but it has um it's obviously made me a lot more

empathetic for people who go through accidents, whereas before I thought we were invincible and it doesn't ever happen to you, and it has, and we've lived through it. So, yeah, I'm a lot more passionate about seeing people recover and sort of seeing them be happy again. So to see Tariq happy and that makes me happy, very simple like it's it's hard to sort of talk about but when you see someone that you love in such despair and you know on their deathbed and then you see them happy and laughing again that's just that melts your heart it

makes you really happy and you know you feel invincible again and life you know is there to be lived again so that's what we're doing and sometimes I get a bit of a kick up the ass from Tariq because all the things she's doing I feel a bit lazy but you know we're both fit and healthy and that's all I could ask for and you know we're living life to its to the full at the moment yeah that's beautiful so Tariq you know a lot of people look you know derive strength from your story they look at you and they say look at what she's done if she's done that then i need to rethink this or i can look at this thing differently so who do you look to for that kind of inspiration like do you have mentors or people that have inspired you in

that kind of way i think if you're using the just one person as your entire source of inspiration, you might be a little disappointed. So during my recovery, I read a book by Sam Bailey. He's a farmer who had a car crash and became a quadriplegic and now he flies helicopters. And when I read that book, I thought, this guy hasn't let what happened to him define him so i found that really inspirational um and i i really love ted talks so whenever i feel a bit flat i watch like

a quick 10 minute ted talk what's your favorite ted talk um my favorite one have you watched the one about orgasms i don't think so, I think I would remember that one. It's pretty good. Yeah, it's really, really good. All right. And there was a TED Talk. I forgot who it's by, but he doesn't speak for like 10 years. Oh, wow.

Yeah. So there's just crazy. People that have done interesting things. Outside the box. Yeah, outside the box. Yeah. Right. And you did, we were talking before the podcast, you did Tony Robbins' Date the box yeah right and you did uh we

were talking before the podcast you did uh tony robbins date with destiny right tony robbins so and julie was like did you walk on the coals well look a lot of people bag out tony robbins especially here in australia really oh yeah they make fun of him he's amazinganges a lot of lives. Like Australians aren't really comfortable with a big American bloke saying, you know, you can change your life. It doesn't sit well with a lot of Australians for sure. He has so many Australian fans because his seminars always sell out. So I love Tony Robbins. He's extremely, I wouldn't say inspiring,

but whenever I go to one of his conferences i get a real kick up the ass to to become more and so yeah i did the i went to his upw the organizers were like oh we want you to walk on fire so we can get photos or whatever and i was like nah man i man, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. That's stupid. And then as the conference went on, I started, you know how when you're really scared of something, you also know that it would be really good for you at the same time?

Yeah, a way of revisiting it to perhaps ultimately overcome and transcend the post-traumatic stress that has to be associated with you enduring that experience yeah for sure so that's why i did i went straight after tiny so he did he's like you know make your move right like it perhaps most of anybody there like it was most important that you of anybody do it like i would look at it like that like you're the one person everybody here who's at date with destiny don't worry about walking on coals but to real like that's perhaps maybe a really important thing for you to do so that you can do that and be on the other side of it like you see it that way or well i also i think sometimes

we can build things up in our mind to be scarier than what they are so t Tony Robbins, have you been to UPW? No, Julie has though. Yeah, yeah, she's a fan, hey. So like he's got the coals on the screen. He's got the crackle of the fire. It was all really sadistic, sadistic stuff, man. And I was so uncomfortable. I was like, I don't know why I'm here. This is, I don't think this is for me. But then I followed Tony.

We went outside. There was a huge fire pit full of coals. It was about 10 meters long. And I thought that was what we did the fire walk over. And then we went around the corner. There was this tiny little two-meter long, sparsely covered walkways of coals. And I thought, yeah, I can do that. I could do that. Yeah could do that, yeah.

And you did it. I did it. So when you look back on this whole experience now and what you endured and kind of where you're sitting now, how do you conceptualize it? How do you bring words to what it means to you and how it informs how you you know do what you do and work with the people that you work with

i think it's really taught me that life is too short not to take risks and try new things and believe in ourselves and just have a crack have have a go. I was like that before the fire, but I reckon even more so now. And just, you know, that life is so precious and so we also have to enjoy it. You know, we've got to spend time with our family and friends and do what makes us happy and mess around with our mates as well. I don't know if that's a deep insight that you were hoping for. No, I mean, I get it. You know, I think it's honest.

You know, I think that... Yeah, I don't have any like amazing... No, but I think I'm trying to... It's sort of like you're living your life. This thing happened and, you know, you have to reckon with it. But now you're sitting here with me and you have the opportunity to reckon with it um but now you're sitting here with me and you have the opportunity to go and get in front of groups of people and share share your story and story is very powerful storytelling is the most basic yeah and there are a lot of

people that have suffered things akin to what you have suffered but there's a lot more people that suffer a much kind of like lower grade yeah continual version of suffering where they're just sort of dissatisfied with their lives and they feel trapped or they feel unfulfilled or they're in relationships that aren't serving them or they're in careers that they feel unfulfilled in or what have you so how do you connect with that person i think the only way you can make a difference to someone's life because i can get out there on the stage i can pump everyone up i can do my motivation whatever but if someone isn't willing to to make the change in their life and do the work it doesn't matter i can't help them yeah they've got to be willing they've got

to a recognize that they're in control of their own lives and b say yeah i want to put in the yards and i want to i want to improve my life and i want to have more fulfillment and i want a better relationship and i want you know but i also think it comes back to reflecting on what we do have in our lives because it's very easy for us to become dissatisfied that we don't have X or Y or someone's been mean and this isn't working out in my life, isn't how it's supposed to be. And I think everyone's got problems. We all do.

And I think if you want a life without problems, what's that saying? If you want a life without problems, go to the cemetery. Oh, is that what it is? Yeah, there's a saying like I think we've all got problems we've all got minor little dramas throughout the day and I think if you just accept that as part of the journey that is life instead of thinking that there's something wrong with your life and you shouldn't have any problems or suffering at all and if there's something amiss in your life awry like you have to take responsibility for it

and take the actions to change it as opposed to putting that on somebody else and then giving them excuses as to why that's not going to work. Yeah, use my dad's advice. Right. No whinging. I think I just found the title to this podcast episode. No whinging.

How do you spell that? Whinging? Yeah. W-H-I-N-G.g i-n-g i gotcha yeah cool i think that's a good place to uh to wrap it up awesome i appreciate it thanks man you are uh an inspiration and a beautiful example of um empowerment especially in a culture that is too quick to celebrate women who perhaps I would not be so keen for my daughters to aspire to, you know, and I say this all the time, but I think it's worth repeating that, you know, people say, where are all the female role models?

Where are all the inspirational women? And I always say they're all around us, but we just don't do a good enough job of shining a light on them and celebrating them. And so I appreciate what you're doing. And it's an honor and a privilege to put a microphone in front of you to help share your message. And I wish you all the best in your impending wedding and marriage and all the amazing things that you are no doubt going to be doing do

you have a another challenge or what is what's on the horizon for you other than tying the knot look we want to have a family so that i'd be i don't know what that would be like actually you'll know when it happens. Maybe I'll have kids and I'll think, oh shit, I don't want this. Probably not. And just, I've been really busy with Ironman and everything. And so I just want to take some time to obviously work and do seminars and coaching, but also just spend time with my family and friends.

Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. So if you're digging on Taria, the best place to connect with her, TariaPitt.com and at Tariaitt on all the social media places that we all go to right and uh are you giving any talks coming up soon or is that's all on your website i would presume yeah it's all on my website meet see you in person yeah cool oh actually i've got an ebook

mindset magic okay we're gonna get it's really. It's got some of the strategies that we talked about today, such as reframing and things like that. Awesome. And you can get that on your website? Yeah, I get that on my website. All right. Thank you. No worries.

That was delightful. Legend. Peace. Lance. You're a good interviewer. Thanks. All right, we did it. What did you guys think?

Are you feeling grateful? Did you dig it? I hope you dug it. I really enjoyed her and Michael as well. They're just, they're very genuine, really, really cool people. And thanks for listening. Please share your thoughts with me and with Taria.

You can find her on Twitter, at Twitter, at Taria Pitt, two Ts. Pick up her new book, Unmasked, which again, I think is only on sale in Australia, but you can also find her other book, her first book, Everything to Live For. And that's on Amazon. Use the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com to do that. I'd appreciate that. A couple of quick announcements. Plant Power Ireland is coming up soon, July 24th through 31st, 24th through 31. It's at this beautiful manor home called Bally Valane. It's like this James

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