WHOOP Podcast - Changing Your Life Through Meditation, Growth, and Connection with Rich Roll

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

This week on the WHOOP Podcast, WHOOP Founder & CEO Will Ahmed sits down with ultra endurance athlete, best-selling author, and renowned podcast host, Rich Roll, who opens up about the path that led him to become one of the most influential voices in health and wellness today. From addiction struggles and to the practices of meditation and non-dualism, Rich shares his wisdom on living with purpose.Rich and Will explore Rich’s approaches to interviewing, the motivation for growth, and ways to find opportunities for transformation. Rich dives into the deeper questions—what fulfillment, happiness, and balance really mean, and how we can all take an honest inventory of our lives to prioritize what matters most?The episode looks ahead at the future of innovation, with Will and Rich offering their thoughts on the future of technology in health and wellness. Rich combines the importance of staying grounded, while leveraging the incredible tools technology has to offer. (00:42) Rich Roll on Interviewing and Inspiration Behind His Podcast(07:02) Rich’s Background And Drive For His Career(08:29) Addiction Recovery and Lessons from 12-Step(12:25) Rich's Guide to Meditation: Active Meditation, Non-dualism, and Perception (23:28) Consciousness in Meditation: Aligning With Your True Self(31:12) Living In Extremes: Knowing Where To Grow(35:12) The Growth Curve: What Motivates Growth? (39:14) Interpreting and Defining Fulfilment, Happiness, and Purpose(44:31) What is Balance?: Taking Inventory of Your Life and Prioritization(52:21) The Future of Technology in Health and WellnessWill Ahmed on the Rich Roll Podcast:YouTubeSpotifyAppleFollow Rich Roll:InstagramYouTubePodcastWebsiteSupport the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, and the pain of my circumstances exceeded the fear that I had always harbored around doing something different. At that moment, I had the willingness to take action. What I learned was a whole set of tools that have changed the trajectory of my life. You learn to gain clarity over your behavior to take accountability for your actions by cleaning up the wreckage of your past, by making amends. And most importantly, you give it back. And that's the way you get to keep it. And that was my introduction to service as a way of life that I think underscores everything that I do professionally today.

All right, Rich, welcome back. Great to be here. We were just talking about Charlie Rose, who we've admired in different ways and also been critical of. But an interesting thing about interviewing is like the moments leading up to an interview. Now, you and I just obviously did a podcast. So it was like, we've had like a two and a half hour build for this one. When I did the Charlie Rose interview, this was like 2016 or 17, obviously before he had been canceled.

And you go into this like little closet. And I of course was very nervous because I grew up watching a ton of Charlie Rose. And my parents were like obsessed with Charlie Rose. So it was like a big deal that I was going on this thing. And I remember vividly sitting down and him walking in and not even acknowledging my ignition. existence. And I was like, hi, Charlie, great to meet you, you know. And he was like, save it. And it was this whole like mantra of, I don't want to hear anything until we're on. Yeah. You know, what's your? I have a, I have a thing about that too. I have this fantasy of

being able to do that. But it always comes into conflict with the person actually arriving. And of course, you want to be a gracious host and welcome them and do this. small talk. But inevitably, you end up doing this mini podcast before the podcast that doesn't get recorded. And then there's the afterward when you're done. And then suddenly something comes up in some incredible story. And you're like, that was better than anything that happened during the podcast. So I'm sympathetic to that. Like, I would like to be the person who does that, but it doesn't feel like an act of kindness, you know, to greet your guests that way. And for what I do, like, I'm inviting these people over because I can't wait to get to know them.

And on some level, whether that's like neediness or not, like, I want this person in my life. Like, I'm intentional in inviting them there because I want to feel connected to them. And that's why I don't do Zoom. I only do in-person stuff. And so it's impossible to create that level of emotional connectivity if you're going to, you know, kind of do that crass thing of like, I'm not going to talk to you until we stop. I will say, I've done Joe Rogan's podcast twice, and he does do that. Like, you're sitting there for a while with, like, Jamie over there, and he comes in and sits

down and you to start, so you don't have any interaction with him in advance. But he's able to do it in a way where you don't feel like it's off-putting in that kind of way that it feels like maybe, you know, it was with Charlie. You've become, like, a huge podcaster and obviously a well-known voice in the space. Who are other interviewers that you kind of look to for inspiration? The original inspiration for me and the guy who I still think is the goat is Mark Merritt, like he was my model. And the reason for that is that he's so authentic and vulnerable.

And there's something magical about the way that he's able to connect with his guests. And I have a very specific approach to the way I do what I do, which is, that my primary directive is to figure out how to emotionally connect with the guests. Like, how are we going to get, like, locked in? Like, what's my in? How am I going to become simpatico with that person so that there's a vibe? And if I can do that, I've done a ton of prep, but the most important thing is that connection. And if I can establish that, the information will come.

So it's different than a lot of people who put the information first. and to me that's secondary because if I'm not connected the audience isn't going to be connected and if they're not connected it doesn't matter what the information is it's going to pass through them rather than be something that stays with them and I think Mark models that really well but you know there's lots of incredible interviewers out there and to your point about Charlie Rose like I grew up watching him and obviously you know there's controversy swirling around him But he was sort of the original podcaster, like the smart man's intelligent deep dive type of interview well before podcasts ever existed.

And I'd be lying if I didn't say that I intentionally kind of crafted the aesthetic of my studio under the influence of the set that, you know, he kind of so historically had back in the day. The brilliance to that set is that you really felt like you were alone with him because it was all blacked out all around you. and all the cameras were hidden behind black screens. And in fact, the table, which looked somewhat big on television, was actually really small. I mean, it was even smaller than this table that were sitting around. As you were describing connections with people, I was thinking actually about Howard Stern, who in some ways, I feel like invented podcasting, too, because he, for all his craziness and bizarre sex stuff that he did,

when he had like a celebrity on and he would sit with them for an hour or two hours or three hours, the connection was so deep. And I remember being struck by that conversation, like that format and what felt like a period before podcasting, you know. I agree. Yeah, I grew up listening to him. He was a, he was the morning, morning drive DJ in Washington, D.C. on D.C. 101 when I was in high school. So I've, I've had a, him in my life like my whole life. And there's something magical about the way that he puts his guests at ease and gets them to open up and say things that they would never say anywhere else. Like, what is that? That creates that unlock. I think it's something really special.

What do you think it is? I think it's his honesty, you know, and his lack of fear. Like, he's fearless. And I think when you model that, you create a space. where it makes the guest feel that way. And I can't expect a guest to open up and be vulnerable and, you know, share something deep unless I lead with that and model that myself in the show. And so I think about that a lot as well. For someone who doesn't know you, which feels like an unusual thing, how would you introduce yourself? That's always such a hard question to answer. I mean, listen, I'm a former lawyer turned writer, podcaster, and ultra-endurance athlete. I'm most known for having made some life transitions that I write about initially in my first book,

Finding Ultra, later in cookbooks, and a book that I'm working on now. I have an addiction and recovery story. I have a weight loss story, and I have a kind of middle-aged, find yourself, reinvent yourself, ultra-endurance athlete narrative. So I sort of speak to a variety of different audiences, depending upon people's interests. And my podcast, which I started way back in 2012, I've been doing this for 13 years, is really a way of continuing my growth progression by staying curious and understanding that my life transformations were a functional.

of having blind spots that I was able to overcome and a recognition that I still have blind spots and that, you know, growth is a lifelong commitment. And I want to continue to learn and improve and evolve and share what I learn along the way with an audience of people who are similarly interested. The blind spot for you around alcoholism, was that a blind spot or was that something that you just couldn't control? Or are those the same thing? Well, it's a little both. You know, alcoholism is fueled by denial. So it's a sort of willful blind spot. Like I think deep down and early on, I was well aware that I had a dysfunctional relationship with alcohol that at some point matured into a recognition that I would never

admit that I was indeed an alcoholic, but that didn't mean that I was going to do anything about it. It took many years of, you know, grappling with this condition that still requires I grapple with in order to get to the other side of it. And you've been now in that community for quite some time. What have you gotten from it? I mean, it changed my life. It saved my life. When I got sober at 31 in 1998, I was a pretty broken, lonely person. And my drunken log isn't anything spectacular. It's pretty banal. There's nothing really sexy or rock and roll about it. It's a pedestrian story of somebody who drank too much and lost their way. And the emotional experience was one of desperation, really. I had my scrapes with the law and DUIs and car crashes.

and, you know, all kinds of chaos and drama. But at the end, I was in a situation where I knew I was going to get fired from my law firm job. I was a young lawyer at the time. My parents didn't want anything to do with me. I lost friendships. And it was just a tremendous sense of hopelessness and loneliness. But one day, I was struck with a willingness to do something about it.

Like, I had reached that point where I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, and the pain like the incredible emotional pain of my circumstances exceeded the fear that I had always harbored around doing something different. And, you know, at that moment, I had the willingness to take action. I ended up in a treatment center where I was in voluntary incarceration basically for 100 days, which is a long time to be in treatment. And spent many years thereafter in Los Angeles us building a really strong foundation of sobriety. And what I learned was a whole set of tools that have changed the trajectory of my life. It's a spiritual program, but it's also an action-based program. It's a program in which you learn to gain clarity over your behavior, to take accountability

for your actions by inventorying them, by cleaning up the wreckage of your past, by making amends, and by having a spiritual connection. And most importantly, and I think this speaks to the mission that you're on and with whoop, it's service-based. You give it back, and that's the way you get to keep it. And that was my introduction to service as a way of life that I think underscores everything that I do professionally today. Yeah, I mean, in many ways, the act of interviewing people and telling their stories

is also an act of service. So I can see how that thread keeps pulling. through. What's up, folks, if you are enjoying this podcast or if you care about health, performance, fitness, you may really enjoy getting a whoop. That's right. You can check out whoop at whoop.com. It measures everything around sleep, recovery, strain, and you can now sign up for free for 30 days. So you'll literally get the high performance wearable in the mail for free. You get to try it for 30 days, see whether you want to be a member. And that is just at whoop.com.

Back to the guests. When along the way did you find meditation? I was begrudgingly sort of dragged into meditation. I was a very reluctant meditator for a long time. My introduction to it is in the 12 steps. Like meditation is one of the steps. Sought through prayer and meditation to have a conscious contact with a higher power.

But meditation, you know, in the kind of quote-unquote rooms is very much, you know, treated as an afterthought, like 60 seconds of quiet meditation, very different from, you know, a conscious and deliberate meditation practice. That evolved into what I would consider to be active meditation through endurance training. Something that I convinced myself for many years was a sufficient and adequate, like, sort of replacement for a deliberate practice of meditation. I just thought, well, I don't need to meditate because, like, I'm with myself and I'm out on the bike or, you know, on the trails, and that's my meditation. And it took me a long time to realize that there is a very real qualitative difference between that.

I mean, I think that form of active meditation has its benefits, but it's not the same as TM, which is what you do, or any kind of more traditional meditation practice. And for years, I had kind of bouts with it. I would do it for a little while. I would abandon it. But I'm really invested in it now, and it's had a dramatic impact on my life in a very meaningful way. Describe what active meditation is? Active meditation is more of a mindfulness practice where you're drawing attention to the nature of your thoughts, but you're doing it in the context of doing something else. And I think what's great about endurance sports is that you're out,

training in a very kind of low state of exertion where you're not like so exhausted that you're that you're distracted and you can't think about anything you're you have this like elevated heart rate you're very conscious of your breath you're alone most of the time by yourself and I think it gives you like space like this this capaciousness to reckon with yourself and I think a big part of my midlife athletic journey was really kind of a spiritual journey of like trying to figure out who I was and who I wanted to be. And the only way I could do that was by creating space for me. And so that active meditation piece that is endurance sports and training was incredibly healing and beneficial for me that gave me kind of clarity to make

different types of decisions about what I wanted my life to be like. The formal meditation practice that I'm in is really about the nature of the mind and trying to, you know, with reality and what it is, you know, kind of this waking up from the dream of what we think is reality. And I've really been focused lately on non-dualism, like this idea that's so difficult to disabuse ourselves of that we're living inside of our head, that our consciousness is behind our eyes, when in fact, like, there is nothing but experience. And the feeling that you're behind your eyes, the you that is you, is really just another expression of consciousness that you're experiencing and isn't, in fact, real, which is a real pretzel, like that's a,

you know, it's very difficult to get your head around that. But when you get glimpses of it, there is a sense of peace and calm and a kind of connection that you feel with everything, that sense of like oneness that people speak about that I've had flirtations with, that has changed the way that I think about life and the world and time and everything. You know, I've had some sort of mind-bending experiences with it. I love that. As you were talking about it, I was thinking about this story I read about Einstein and a famous Indian mystic.

The two met and it was kind of a big collision between mathematics and religion or mathematics and spirituality. And they start talking about reality. And then the mystic spiritual leader asks Einstein, you know, do you think the Taj Mahal is beautiful? Einstein says yes. Einstein then asked the spiritual leader, well, do you think it would be beautiful if it wasn't being observed by a human? And the spiritual leader says no. And Einstein's like, the beauty can exist without humanity. And they have this, you know, huge disagreement about it. And it essentially ends with Einstein saying, well, that's my religion and I'm sticking to it.

But it was this sort of, you know, profound moment of this question around reality. And I love what you were describing there. So how have you settled into what you feel of reality today? I don't know that I could provide a definition of reality. but I'm fairly certain that our perception of it is extremely limited. Our brains are wired in a way, not such that we see reality as it is, but that we filter what we need in order to feed ourselves and procreate and survive. Those are two different things.

So the more you dip your amateur toe into things like quantum physics, and things like that, you realize, like, there are other dimensions, like, we just can't perceive them and we walk around with this hubris that our brains are capable of, like, understanding everything. And I think, in fact, they're quite limited. I think that the science around trying to understand what consciousness is is one of the most fascinating kind of vanguards, that I think is really captivating, the more you learn about it. And I'm becoming increasingly convinced that consciousness is not a product of the material world, but in fact, the other way around. Everything is consciousness and the material world is like a product of a conscious experience, which is

difficult to understand. But what it means basically is that consciousness is not something inside of the material world. The material world is like an extension of consciousness. And we are in a human body such that we can experience consciousness but it really is like just one thing like this field that the human brain somehow is able to like tap into which is wild so in a sense the the material world wouldn't exist without consciousness yeah I think in in a reductive sense that's accurate yeah I think that's part of the idea that's a simpler way for me to think about it because I think that it does kind of go back to that Einstein story, which is, is anything real if it weren't for us to say it is perceived to be there?

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know that we're going to get to the bottom of that. Yeah. But it's a good thing to, it's a good thing to meditate on, I think. Well, so that's a more like, let's call it, that's a very broad sort of examination to be playing with. What have you found, though, more from the standpoint of using meditation as a tool in your life to be something that's driving you forwards or increasing your happiness levels or making you a better you? There are very practical benefits that extend to, you know, the very minor kind of day-to-day interactions that I have with people and the way interface with circumstances all the way to kind of the more mystical and profound.

So on a base level, if you are engaged in your meditation practice, you are developing the capacity to be an objective observer of your thoughts and to not self-identify with them. And what this allows you to do is to greet the world with a greater degree of calm and equanimity, such that when you're in a high stress situation or somebody says something to you that triggers you that you typically just react to without thinking, you have an extra moment to pause and to assess and to reflect and to make a decision about how you want to respond. And that is always going to drive better decisions and better outcomes. So that alone is like, you know, that's like, okay, there's a reason for everybody to do it right there. Because we all say things we wish we hadn't

or made a decision spontaneously in the moment because we're impulsed that led us astray, that we regret and wish we could get a do-over. So meditation is almost like giving you a do-over for everything. It allows you to kind of review the landscape, assess, and make a decision from a place of greater consciousness. Also, I think it gives you the space, to connect with yourself, to develop a relationship with yourself, and to allow space for your intuition to speak to you so that you can hear it. And I think that's super powerful. And then there's sort of the health benefits, like lower stress, lower blood pressure, all of that kind of stuff that whoop measures very well. And then, you know, there's no end to the kind of mystical

journey that you can go on with, on with it, you know, in a philosophical kind of way. And I I think that's a, you know, something that is, you know, a lifelong journey that you can be on with it. But it is often said in, you know, eastern strains of philosophy and spirituality that the greatest thing you can do is to know yourself, right? And meditation is a way to know yourself. And the more you meditate, you realize how deep and profound that question is. Because if you're truly knowing yourself, then you are gaining clarity. on the nature of consciousness itself. And if you get a glimpse of what I have,

which is that consciousness is a field and that this notion of the self and identity is purely an illusion that we are all connected in ways that we can't really conjure, that is like, you know, know thyself like played out, you know, to the end.

And I think about that a lot. It's funny. Know yourself was a marketing campaign we had once at Whoop. So it's like an expression. like I've heard and thought about a lot. The idea of what you experienced around feeling consciousness and how you interact with it and this idea that we're all connected, is that something that you find on a daily or weekly basis you're dropping into when you meditate to try to explore? Does it just

come up at random times when you're meditating and you sit with it? I wish that, you know, I could just sort of conjure it. You know, you get these glimpses of it and flirtations with it. And then I return to my grumpy, aggravated, ego-driven self, and I drive my, you know, life into, you know, off a cliff or what, you know, it's like, that's the human conundrum, right? So I'm no, I'm no more evolved than anyone else. And I have to, you know, practice hard to even experience the marginal gains of it. But I think the real, the real breakthrough for me was that in December, for the very first time, I did a medically supervised psychedelic. experience, which really flipped a switch for me and was something that I was very reluctant

and resistant to doing for many, many years because I'm a person in recovery, I'm in 12-step, I'm sober, I've crafted an identity around that, and I'm very much indoctrinated into the, you know, strict rules of that program that saved my life for better and for worse. Like, the idea that a mind-altering drug could perhaps hold answers to all of my problems is a very alluring, you know, notion for somebody who is addicted to drugs and alcohol. You're like, please tell me more. Like, how much can I do this, right? And that's scary. So I was like, I can't go there.

But then over the years, like, the research was coming out, all these studies and books. and it just became undeniable that there was something really meaningful going on here. And then I would have guest after guest after guests come on my podcast, not to talk about this at all, but it would come up and they would share some. As an experience. Yeah. And I just realized, like, I need to change my mind about this thing. And circumstances just arose where I wasn't like planning to do it, but a variety of things kind of came together and this opportunity came up. And my wife was supportive, which was important to me.

And she came with me. And, you know, she didn't do it with me, but, like, she was there. And I had never done psychedelics before. And I did this six-hour MDMA plus psilocybin adventure, you know. And I thought, like, I went into it thinking, I've got some unhealed childhood trauma stuff. Like, maybe, you know, I'll be able to talk to my mom or, you know, like something like that was in my mind, you know? And instead what I got was just my, you know, my whole frame of reality exploded and it's impossible to give words to it. But I had that experience of transcending the self where all the boundaries kind of fell away and, you know, time collapsed, you know, past, present and future all became one and life, death, and birth and all this sort of stuff.

And I explain it as like inception meets interstellar. Like it's all happening at the same time. Like, you know, it was wild. And you can say, well, you had a trip and like you have this mind-altering experience. Or maybe you got a glimpse of greater clarity of what reality really is. And either way, like I have used the neuroplasticity in the wake of that experience to really double down on my meditation practice to really deepen it and by doing that I've been able to I've been able to like stay in contact with like the visceral experience that I had yeah and it's

it's been incredibly beneficial like it really was the most profound like single event experience of my life and I'm not saying that because I'm recommending that people do it like it was really scary at times two. And it, you know, there were, it's a, you're flirting with madness. Like, there were moments where I thought, like, I'm in a padded room and I've never left my mind or, you know, like, it's, it really pushed me all the way to the edge. So it wasn't exactly fun. But it was helpful to me in a very material way. The moments before making that decision or the process for making that decision, I mean, you're someone who cares about intuition. You're obviously someone who cares deeply about your relationship with drugs and alcohol, like, what, what got you there?

It was. I think a lot of people actually are right on the cusp of making that decision, but don't for a variety of reasons. Yeah. I mean, this was like, it probably was a seven-year period of it coming up and thinking about it, dismissing it. So some signs. Yeah, there were a lot of signs.

There were just too many podcast guests who were like, I had them on for totally different reasons and then they would just launch in this and I'd be like again you know like and then here here was an incredible incredible clincher so this happened in Mexico City and it was a friend of a friend this this medical doctor who lived in Mexico City that I got connected with and I was in Mexico City already because I was doing this shoot with on with Elmo like I they rebuilt my podcast studio in a in a warehouse in Mexico City and we like shut got a podcast with Elmo for this campaign for On, which was like bizarre and surreal enough, you know, being sober to do that, but like very cool.

Like I got to hang out with Elmo or whatever. And then the next day I go to this woman's, you know, house to do this thing. And she's very kind. And I feel comfortable because she's a friend of a friend who, you know, like who I care about a lot. And he was like, you're going to be in great hands. And I go into the room where she's going to do this thing. It's just, you know, a nicely appointed bedroom or whatever, and she's showing me around.

And I lay down on the bed, and then there's a, there's a, there's a like a credenza or like, you know, shelves or whatever on the far side, painting on the wall. And then on the shelf were like two little small, like hand drawings. And I got up and I looked at them closely. And I called my wife and I was like, Julie, look at these paintings. She's like, what? And I go to the doctor. I said, are those paintings by Brian O'Hara? And she goes, yeah.

So Brian O'Hara is an artist in Los Angeles, who is a very good friend of my wife and I. He designed the logo for my podcast. He designed the logo for Julie's company. We have his paintings on our wall. And he, when we were in Mexico City, was staying at our house, taking care of our dogs. And this woman who I'd never met before, and he's not like some famous art. Like, yeah, I love it. And I was like, oh, my, you know, I can't.

It's meant to be. Yeah. So, anyway, take from that as you will. You're invited to join the wait list for WOOP Advanced Labs. Advanced Labs delivers clinician reviewed lab results right into your Woop app for the most complete view of your biomarkers and biometrics and the most comprehensive understanding of your health. Unlike other tests, WOOP integrates your lab results with your Woop data.

See how your habits and behaviors. influence your biomarkers, and get clear guidance on what to change to improve your results. To join the wait list, visit our website or the health tab in the Woop app. Do you find that you have signs like that in big moments or all the time, or was that just a one-off? No, I don't, you know, I'm not somebody who is trying to connect dots in everything that you see. Like, that's another flirtation with madness. And I think we're seeing a little bit of that societally right now. Everything has a deeper, you know, meaning and all of that.

So I'm not someone who's prone to do it and that kind of thing. But I have had moments. And I think most people do where things feel a little bit more than circumstantial or random. And I think, you know, the more aware you are, the more you can begin to see those things. easy to do it in the rearview mirror and like connect the dots and make sense of things. It's harder to do it in the present moment. Well, that's a powerful experience that you had right before doing something that objectively maybe could have gone either way for you in your life.

And obviously it was so impactful it sounds like it's an experience. And I think that made me feel a little bit more comfortable. Totally. I would imagine, yeah. I mean, given the relationship and the unlikely of it and all these things. Is that type of experience something you recommend for people? I am not in the business of recommending that. I don't think it's incumbent upon me to say one way or another,

whether somebody should do that. I think for the wrong person, it could be psychologically shattering. Like, it's not something to take lightly. And I do think that there is not enough discussion around caution with these things. It's sort of like everyone's microdosing and people are doing it. You know, it's like, these things are incredible. I mean, this thing rocked me, you know. And I went into it having done a great deal of, like, work around my intention for it and being prepared for it.

And so I just don't think it's something to be considered casually or taken cavalierly. But again, I've had one experience. You know, it's like, and so, you know, I'm hardly an expert in this. You mentioned earlier that you were wearing your loop when you had surgery. Were you wearing your whoop during these? Oh, I was. Yeah, I definitely was. I mean, there were moments of high stress.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then moments of like incredible calm. Like it was kind of all over the place. It was pretty interesting to take a look at that. You strike me as someone who can create real highs and lows for yourself on whoop. I mean, probably in all concepts. I mean, you're someone who does these incredible endurance runs and probably can put massive strain on your body, but you're also someone who can drop deeply.

into meditation and lower your stress levels? Like, is this a fair sort of assessment from a hundred? I think that's very charitable. I think a more accurate description is, you know, I'm prone to extremes. And I think that my strengths are also my greatest weaknesses. I know how to push myself. I know how to suffer. I know how to, like, just buckle down and, like, get it done and, you know, put blinders

on. And the older I get, like, the more I'm realizing that this is now much more of an Achilles heel or an impediment of growth than it is a strength. And that's sort of like in this moment now, I'm, you know, I just had back surgery and I've got to kind of stop. Like, this is what I'm really trying to explore, like how to how to have a little bit more ease in my life and how to open myself up for a deeper level of connection and intimacy to make myself available for experiences rather than just being like, you know, losing myself

in work or running away from whatever thing is making me uncomfortable and making excuses around it. Like I think this is the growth curve that I need to be on right now. So that's interesting. So like I have a frame that I find useful, which is all like all around this idea of pain can be a path towards growth and like pain, obstacle, suffering. I mean, you can use these things a little bit in a synonymous way, but okay, I find myself in an incredibly difficult business circumstance and it's a bit of a crisis and I got to navigate it and my back's up against a wall and I don't want to be going through this thing. But then when I take an appreciation of it and say, okay, if I can figure out how to navigate this, it's going to be a little bit of a level up for

myself. I'm going to learn something about myself or I'm going to be able to do these other things in the future. So that's a frame that I've found personally helpful. Now, of course, it's also a little bit of a coping mechanism in the sense that it therefore allows you to deal with the suffering while you're in it so that you can push yourself through to get on the other side. But it sounds like you've developed maybe something even more profound than that or you've gone a layer deeper. So help me reconcile that. Yeah, I mean, I think everything that you said is true and I would agree with it completely. There's different kinds of pains of pain, of course. There's like pain that descends upon you, you know, unexpectedly. You know, you're in a business

situation. A crisis happens. And then there's pain that visits you because, you know, you did something to invite it into your life. I am somebody who believes wholeheartedly that, like, pain is an amazing teacher. It's been my greatest teacher. I'm very stubborn. The changes that I've made in my life, I've done begrudgingly, and only because, you know, I got so backed into a corner that I had no choice. Like, I couldn't continue to, you know, live the way that I was living as an alcoholic,

and it became so painful that I needed to change. And similarly, with lifestyle decisions that I've made, and then I've been able to channel pain and my pain tolerance and my willingness to suffer and, like, dance with pain to, you know, advance my life in very meaningful ways that I'm proud of, whether it's in an athletic context or the podcast of just, like, you know, navigating, like, very difficult financial times in my life and sticking with it and just building and being focused on it and being willing to, you know, sit with the discomfort and the uncertainty. Like, I'm very good at that. But a lot of that is is driven by self-will and there's an ego piece to that and what's really uncomfortable is to say

well what if it didn't have to be painful you know Tim Ferriss talks about this all the time like what if this was easy like that's scary to me like I'm working on a book right now and I have this belief that's lodged in my brain has been there my whole life which is that this book is not going to be good unless I just bleed out on every page and by the time I'm done I'm like you're going to have to put me in the hospital. That's the only way that I can feel like I really like did it justice. And that's not really how creativity works. In fact, you're getting in the way of something. And it doesn't have to be that way. It can be a different way. So that's what I mean where like my relationship with pain as a teacher can actually begin to interfere with my life.

And I think the other piece that I'm trying to lean into right now is this idea that my self-worth or my value or my entitlement to love and approval is tied to like what I do or what I accomplish or what I can achieve. And doing all of those things requires like toil and sacrifice. But, you know, what if that's an illusion and you're okay with who you are and you can just be who you are and you can experience, give and receive love and it doesn't have to be something that you have to suffer for, you know? Yeah, and there's a lot of beauty in that as a concept.

And I think I'm someone at a stage in my life where there's sort of this, I think, this balance of whether you're seeking happiness or you're seeking fulfillment. And if you think of happiness in maybe a sort of a lower frequency sense, which is like the idea that it's a feeling of great contentment or, you know, satisfaction. action and you think of fulfillment as being, you know, a deeper sense, so to speak, of, of, you know, gratitude and growth. The, in simple terms, you know, happiness is maybe the margarita on the beach and fulfillment is being able to, you know, sit back in the chair after you've written the book or launched the thing or did the guy kind of over the hurdle. And so I find

myself much more drawn to that sort of sense of fulfillment. Now, what you're suggesting is also quite interesting, which is, is all of that in a way, sort of an illusion? And there's, there's like a sense of, uh, of love and giving that you can sort of take and receive and, and give back. And that in turn creates some sort of sense of harmony. Yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's difficult to talk about these things because words, at least for me, like fulfillment, happiness, purpose, meaning, like, I get tripped up on them. Yeah, I did too.

Don't they all kind of mean the same thing? Like, which one is which here? You know, it's sort of this weird jenga, right? So the way I think about it is fulfillment is what I get when I invest, you know, all of myself into something that, you know, is meaningful to me. Like, it's a book. It's my podcast. It's whatever.

And when it's tied to. something greater than yourself, like Whoop is or my podcast, like on some level, these are commercial enterprises, but they're acts of service. There's something deeply fulfilling and satisfying about that that engenders a sense of happiness, I suppose. And I think that's definitely been my fuel. And what I'm realizing, though, is that sometimes that can put you on a trajectory where because you're so committed to it and because it gives you that sense of purpose and fulfillment, meaning whatever word you choose, it can result in you declining or missing out on opportunities for joy.

You know, like I have found myself saying no to experiences with friends or going on trips or doing some cool thing where I could be with my old college buddies or something like that because like this thing that I'm doing is giving me meaning I don't need anything more than that. Like I'm good. Like other people might need that, I'm cool. And the older I get, the more I realize like, no, that's the real stuff. You know, I've said no to the things that are the most nourishing. And so how can I have a little bit more joy, a little bit more grace?

How can I hold on to this thing that gives me meaning and fulfillment? a little bit more lightly. So I'm not missing out on the richness of life because I want to feel connected to the people I care about. And I want greater intimacy with my wife. And I really want the deepest relationship that I possibly can have with my kids. And that's the stuff that really matters at the end of the day the most. And we give a lot of lip service to it. But when I do an inventory of how well I'm actually practicing it, I realize, like, I have a lot of work to do on that. And I think anybody who's a highly motivated, successful, driven person who has created opportunities for others on some level must be able to relate to this because it's impossible to give birth to anything that's great without making sacrifices. Like we were talking about this earlier, the price that elite athletes pay for that level of greatness comes at a cost.

But I think there's a lower grade cost that a lot of us pay, but because that cost isn't so severe, it's easy to just kind of keep going on that trajectory until, you know, your kids are all out of the house and gone. And then it's just you and your wife. And then you're like, okay, I spent all this time doing this for this, like only to realize that story that we've all heard a million times at the end of the day, which is like, I wish I hadn't spent so much time at work and I wish I had this relationship with my kids and all. it's like, all right, well, what are we doing about that right now, you know, that we can control today? And, and so that's, you know, kind of, I guess, what I'm talking about when we're talking about this subject. Yeah, and leaning more into that balance. There's a great quote. I think it was like Michael Jordan's trainer or something, someone who said, the cost to greatness changes every day. It's a high price. Like, you have to pay it, but it's going to change every day.

His point was just like, some days it's easy to go try to chase greatness. And other days, it's a enormously hard and there's all these other reasons why you shouldn't do it. And I think really cost also means sacrifice there because the sacrifice is the time that you're not spending with your family or your loved ones or whatever if you're deeply committed to sort of one specific cause. Just back to this idea of you wanting to seek more of that in your life. Is there a way or a practice where you sort of take inventory of, you know, how much am I choosing to suffer in the sense of greater good for my business?

versus how much am I spending with my family and just absorbing that? Like, is there any practice that you use there? I don't know that I have any kind of discrete practice. I mean, I do essentially a daily inventory, you know, like, okay. You know, the thing is, like, I hate this word balance. Like, I think that this word balance, like, is sort of violent, you know, like, it makes us feel bad about ourselves, honestly, because nobody's life is in perfect balance on a day-to-day basis. And if you are somebody who is living in a high stakes or high stress environment or like yourself, you're running this huge company.

Like there's all kinds of demands upon you and you're not going to be able to satisfy everybody's needs every single day in some perfect alchemy of balance. So I like to think of it more as like a pendulum that swings. Like to do something great, you have to be fundamentally and by definition out of balance. Like for me, I don't know how to do it. any other way than to just like go all in and give it my all. And that's fine. And I don't want to feel guilty about it. I actually think I do my best work when I'm in that space. Society wants me to feel like I'm out of balance and I shouldn't be doing that. And I'm like, fuck that. Like this is how you get good stuff done, at least for me. Maybe there's a better way.

I haven't figured it out yet. But that pendulum has to swing back, you know, and it can't come at a long-term cost to any of these other like, you know, buckets in your life that are important, these other values that need to be nourished. I heard it described once as work-life harmony, which I liked. To me, that's a more elegant way of thinking about it, which is similar to what you described, which is sometimes it's going to be 99-1 your work versus everything else, and sometimes it's going to be more your family and, you know, turning down the dials on your work, but that it creates some notion of a harmony because it's just, it's working for what

your needs are. And how well are you communicating with the people in your life around that? How transparent are you? Do you have buy-in from that? Like, I think that's a big piece as well that has to be, you know, handled consciously in order to, you know, create those opportunities where you can do that. And, you know, you don't have a bunch of people like resenting you or angry at you for doing that. You're a deeply thoughtful person. I mean, we've talked a lot about intuition, but you've also been a partner for a while.

you wear this wearable on your body that tells you things that you may or may not agree with? Like, how do you think about that relationship with whoop and health data? I mean, it's benefited my life tremendously to be able to have those insights. And I would plead guilty, like most people, to having a somewhat unhealthy and compulsive relationship with my phone at times in my life. So I'm always trying to catch myself and make sure that I'm holding these things at arm's distance. Long before I ever had a whoop, though, I've had a career as a swimmer and that is an ultra endurance athlete and, you know, being much older than you, like I came up when there

weren't any devices and you had no choice but to develop that like deep intuitive relationship with yourself. And so as far back as I could remember as a kid, as a swimmer, like you could, I could, you know, do repeat one hundreds on an interval. And I could tell you when my hand hit the wall what my time was for each repeat without looking at the clock. Like you develop that like deep relationship where you just know exactly where you're at and you could say this is my heart rate. You know, I know what my exertion level is. I think I'm grateful for being able to do that before all of these devices. It's like sort of learning how to, you know, drive around Los Angeles before there's GPS. Like, you know, it's like a life skill, you know, right? But then these tools come

along and you're like, oh my God, like I can dial this in and I can perfect this and I can make these changes. So it's been incredibly helpful, particularly with the non-intuitive insights that are, you know, not something that you can accurately kind of intuit in your own body, like the ratio relationship between sleep quality and HRV, which doesn't correlate, you know, always so, so evenly or as much as you would expect, stress levels throughout the night. like all these things have been incredibly helpful. But I tend to try to avoid getting caught up in the day to day of it. You know, like I didn't sleep great last night, just like you.

And it's like, oh, we're going to have a long day of this. You know, it's like, like, I don't want to wake up and like look at this thing that's going to tell me like, you're not 100%. Like, I already know I'm not, you know. So I look at it for trends, you know, and try to make life adjustments one variable at a time and see what the impact is. Like one thing I've learned is just how. messed up I get if I do delayed eating and just wait until dinner and eat like a big dinner and then go right to bed. Yeah, that's correct. Like my stress levels throughout the night and like just it wreaks havoc and it makes it very clear when you look at WOOP like this is a bad idea. Like don't do

this again. Yeah, eating close to bed is one of those things that I never would have appreciated how bad it was to my body until I started using WOOP. Yeah. Like if you're in that two to three hour range before we're going to bed and you eat dinner, it will affect your sleep quality pretty profoundly. One of the things that I wanted to ask you during our podcast is it's another insight that's been helpful to me, which is sleep consistency, which I think it's talked about the least in the kind of broadening conversation around sleep. I will have an amazing night of sleep, eight hours, like just two and a half and deep and two and a half and a half and I was like, I'm nailing it. And then my score will be low because,

it was off the mark from a consistency point of view. And I feel like Woop is really over-indexing on consistency. And I'm curious, like I should have asked you this in my podcast, but what's behind that piece? Well, sleep consistency actually has some of the most powerful medical literature supporting how profoundly it improves your overall physiology. So sleep consistency for people who aren't familiar is like going to bed and waking up at the same time. And the same time anchored to the time zone, so to speak. So Eastern time, like if you went to bed at 9 p.m. And, you know, woke up at 5 a.m. on the West Coast, that would be, you know, 6 p.m. and waking up at 3 a.m. And so it's like, it's actually looking at how closely you continue to wake up and go to bed at

exact at the same time relative to that circadian rhythm. And there were studies that would show, like, for example, with students, they did a big study on a bunch of students. And they found that looking at just hours of sleep got versus sleep consistency. Sleep consistency was a much more important predictor of their grades and of their overall intellectual performance. And I thought that was pretty fascinating because sort of intuitively you would think, well, if someone's just getting more sleep, they're going to be more likely. So sleep consistency has a lot of medical research around it. And again, the idea is trying to go to bed and waking up at a very similar time. Now, if you're like me and you travel a lot, it's kind of a buzzkill on the Woop app. I'm not going to

lie. Like I was in the Middle East or whatever. It's like good luck with sleep consistency. You're going to be at a 30% or something just given the time difference. Yeah. That's super interesting to now. So it sounds like you've gotten a value out of Wube. You've enjoyed the experience. Is there, is there anything else related to how you think about health data in general? Are you excited about this sort of brave new technological future that we may be entering, or do you find yourself kind of apprehensive? I would say, like, writ large in the conversation around AI, there are certainly many things that it is very rational to be deeply concerned about, like on an existential, you know, dystopic kind of level. Like, I have real fears about it. But at the same time,

there are undeniably some remarkable advances and benefits that we're already beginning to see with the advent of this technology. And I think the clearest and best use case that I have been able to see is the application of this technology in health and medicine. Like there's just no question that this is going to revolutionize how we think about health care and how we as individuals are taking agency over preventing ourselves from falling prey to so many of the lifestyle illnesses that are easily avoidable. Like everyone, when you talk about wearables or whoop or these things, like there is this discourse, this obsessive discourse around optimization.

But in truth, in reality, like most people are dying from a few things, like heart disease, heart attacks, stroke, high blood pressure, like these are the chronic elements that are really wreaking havoc on lives across the modern developed world. And WOOP, AI technology, early scanning, detection, all these technologies that are giving us real and accurate feedback in real time are incredibly revolutionary in helping people connect the reality of their health with themselves and with their health care practitioners to be able to see what's on the horizon well in advance of a problem becoming so advanced that it's already too late to deal with it. And I think that that is fantastic.

I feel like we're just at the very beginning of what is really just going to be an absolute revolution in health. Well, I'm so glad that you feel that way and that you see that future. I mean, I admire your opinion on a lot of these things. things. And of course, that's a, that's a future that we're trying to build at whoop. And I think it is one of the most exciting potentials of artificial intelligence in this new era that we're entering. I'm a proud, uh, whoop wearer. I always will be. Like, I never take this thing off. It's crazy. And I don't imagine I will take it off. And, you know, I just applaud this mission

that you're on. I think it's really meaningful and important. And, uh, obviously so many people are benefiting from it. And it's an exciting time to be you and at Woop. Like, who would have known that you would be on the cusp of this kind of technology when you founded this company? And it's going to blow everything wide open. And you're positioned, you know, beautifully to take advantage of that for the benefit of the millions of people who are wearing these things all over the world. Well, thank you, man. And grateful for our partnership. And I appreciate you doing this today. Yeah, it was an honor. Thanks, man. Thank you. Cheers. If you enjoyed this episode of the WOOP podcast, please leave a rating or review. Check us out on

social at Woop at Will Ahmed. If you have a question to us answered on the podcast, email us, podcast to WOOP.com. Call us 508-443434952. If you think about joining WOOP, you can visit whoop.com, sign up for a free 30-day trial membership. New members can use the code Will W-W-I-L to get a $60 credit on W-W-A accessories when you enter the code at checkout. A wrap, folks. Thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next week on the WooP podcast. As always, stay healthy and stay in the green.