From Addiction & Rock Bottom to Redemption & Purpose - Rich Roll (4K)

at what age did you start sorting your life out it's a good question I think the moment where I began to really look Inward and take stock and inventory of my life legitimately for the first time was probably when I was 31 and found myself in a treatment center in rural or again uh faced with confronting uh a decade plus uh problem with drugs and alcohol uh nowhere to escape just a bunch of counselors and a bucolic Countryside and a 100 days to really start to understand why I had ended up in this place which certainly was not the plan for my life I can tell you uh and what I was going to do about it in order to create a new life for myself that would be more in alignment with a truer version of who I was I didn't know the answer to that question but that's where that very long journey probably began consciously it seems to me that a good chunk of your story is a series of rein inventions yes I think that we are all Reinventing ourselves all the time I've said this before but I think the great delusion that we walk around with is that we are in some kind of Perpetual stasis We Are The Way We Are The World is the way that it is this person behaves this way they're always going to behave that way uh but the reality is that everything is changing all the time from the subat level all the way to you know the vastness of the universe there is no stasis everything is in flux and and is in motion um the question is how much are you directing that change versus uh reacting to the world around you um and yes my life has been punctuated by a couple kind of significant Rubicon changes or or reinventions uh to be sure um but I'm always in the process of trying to evaluate where I'm at where I want to be where I want to head to uh but yeah I've had a couple sort of uh moments in my life that uh were sort of uh Line in the Sand moments for sure yeah you have this really famous tweet talking about all of the things you've done successfully and the fact that you didn't do them before a particular age hadn't started my podcast until I hadn't run my first endurance race until I didn't write my first book until and I think in a an age where social media allows us to see successes from people very young um it gives a good bit of Solace to people who are feel like I'm 40 now I've missed I'm in the I'm on the back nine and I haven't even started swinging the golf club yet I know what that feels like you know I was that guy certainly you can always reinvent yourself there's always hope there's always opportunity I think now more than ever with all the tools that are available to people to craft their own career paths to find ways to support themselves through uh Pursuits that that they're curious about or that light them up I think this is a real golden age in terms of that uh but that didn't exist when I was your age or when I was younger and I grew up in a very traditional household education was Paramount expectations were set very high and I learned early and often how to play that game of upward Mobility I was an awkward insecure kid who had difficulty making friends but at some point I locked in on the sport of swimming and that's a whole story I'm happy to go into and what I learned in the swimming pool transferred into the classroom and I became a better student I had always struggled in school but by the time I graduated from high school I was top of my class and got very good at playing the game of getting into all the colleges and going to the right place and getting the right job without ever any self-reflection on what it was that I wanted to do or what excited me or what was unique about me or how I wanted to show up in the world or express myself uh I was just trying to Excel and that path was very narrow at the time like go to this school get this job show up early work late you know sort of climbed that corporate ladder went to law school was on the partnership track and a law firm did all of that and had to basically suffer an existential and Health crisis as a reckoning in order to look inward on myself and reflect upon the the reasons why I made those decisions why they were leading me astray and begin the process of opening the aperture of my vision to to allow space for something new and different what do you think people get wrong about reinvention like what is it that the people who fail to turn their life around do I think people think it's a magic trick they snap their fingers they make a decision and their life is different overnight I think there's a lack of appreciation of everything that goes into the moment where you change your mind and you do something different and then all of the work that goes in to that rebuilding phase in the aftermath of making that decision that ultimately creates the new life I think people are impatient they want results too quickly they don't appreciate the amount of hard work that goes into actually crafting the life of your desires and I think as a result of that when they don't see results immediately they burn out and Retreat to what's safe and what they know versus welcoming failure welcoming uncertainty getting comfortable with risk and remaining persistent in their Vision to create something more in alignment with their authentic self I think one of the big problems especially when it comes to reinvention is in the Rocky movies the Montage of training is 2 and a half minutes in reality it can be a decade MH and I think getting really visceral with what tough times feel like helps people who are going through them to not feel so personally cursed while they're going through them you're not sure that the difficult thing that you're struggling with at the moment the the um breaking of habits of hanging around with people who don't want the best for you who you're getting out of a bad relationship you maybe want to move and leave home and your parents don't want you to whatever it might be you don't even have the reassurance that there's going to be glory on the other side of this and it doesn't feel as polished or as triumphant or even as Noble it just feels like confusing and dark and messy and like destitute and you know even in portrayals of alcoholism and of of addiction it's really difficult to capture in popular Cinema just how like mundanely desperate it is there like there's not even any glory in the demise so to speak and I think that hearing about the challenges that people go through during reinvention helps everybody to feel less incapable of doing it that's why we love personal Stories We love hearing stories of people who uh met a certain fate and figured out how to rebuild their life um I think they're they're is something infectious about that that does give people hope for themselves but I think you're correct when you look in the rearview mirror everything looks like it lined up perfectly to create this situation where I'm sitting across from you right now but I can tell you as somebody who has weathered more than a few large personal changes in my life it is a very confusing protracted time and it takes a lot longer than people realize there's a lot of confusion there's a lot of self-doubt there's a lot of judgment from other people if you're breaking outside of a social expectation or a familial expectation if you're trying something new your peers your friends are going to look at you a little bit differently perhaps they're not going to be as supportive as you might have expected so there's a loneliness I think that that that um is part of it as well and I think with that is this testing process around your level of willingness around your level of trust in yourself and it's like being burned in a cauldron like you have I've said as I've said many times like if you're going to be a phoenix you have to burn first and I don't know if there's an end run around that burning process because that is the process that you know creates the new version of yourself it's almost mandatory that one goes through their version of that so I've been tested financially emotionally mentally physically um and I think I'm wired for it as a result of my background the way I was raised my experiences in swimming I feel I feel like I'm well equipped to kind of handle that but I've been brought to my knees more than once and I can tell you in those moments all you feel is fear and this overpowering impulse to retreat back to what you know and it is in those moments those are the moments of truth that no one sees uh where you're at your breaking point and that's where faith comes in honestly you have to believe in yourself you have to be able to hold that Vision uh for for the better life of your aspirations and you have to also have an almost Transcendent self transcend you have to have an almost Transcendent sense of some other Force at play that has your best interest at heart such that if your heart is true and you are truly engaged in the process of trying to align your actions with your values and you have excavated soul and done the interior work to try to really get honest with yourself and you're Earnest in that regard I do believe that the universe will at some point conspire to support you it's not going to be on your timeline it's not going to be convenient the results aren't going to look like you think they're going to look um but I've seen this play out in my life many times and and in the lives of of many people that I'm close with yeah there's a a cool quote from Naval that says Karma doesn't need Quantum energy your spiritual woo to be real karma is just you repeating your patterns virtues and flaws until you finally get what you deserve and I think that you know it doesn't matter how secular you want to get with it that if you continue to stack the deck against yourself the only way that you end up winning is purely by fluke and that chance of fluke begins to get increasingly minuscule and the reverse is true as well one of the challenges especially when it comes to reinvention is you're fighting uphill battle it's the most difficult time and you have the least amount of evidence to have faith in yourself you've never done this before MH you've never actually stuck to the diet for seven days you've never actually been able to go sober or stay loyal to a partner or turn up on time to a job pick whatever it is or take it all the way up to the top you've never been able to truly have a difficult conversation with somebody you know at your business you've never really been able to sit with your business partner at this big company that you've built for 15 years and tell them that this isn't working you've kind of sort of nudged towards it and blah blah blah reinvention I think happens on really small and really large scales well it happens small until it happens big uh the reinvention occurs in the micro actions that you're taking every single day uh the tiny little things that that perhaps no one even notices that are creating muscle memory around new behaviors that perhaps are very uncomfortable to you like hey I'm going to engage with this person in a different way that I than I usually do by being more direct or more honest or I'm going to put down a boundary or I'm going to say no to this and yes to this tiny little things repeated over time is what produces dramatic change and it's like this curve you know it's like this very slow curve until it Asmat toes up and everyone wants to talk about the pivot moment when it goes Skyward but the truth is the real work is in the drudgery correct and the difficult Anonymous work of shoveling every single day um in sobriety they say don't leave before the miracle and I take that as a lesson in in persistence whatever it is that you're you're pursuing to achieve or or create or Express in the world I think a lot of people back out before that happens and I think you're right now you're a perfect example of this you're experiencing this with your show you're having some large growth at the moment um and I think you even shared something about the fact that you've been doing this for a very long time and most people may have backed out a long time ago backed out before the miracle occurs or the growth spurt or whatever it is so for me it always comes back to perseverance persistence uh High pain tolerance um and ability to suffer through discomfort a welcoming of doing hard things and uh and willingness really you know and that's a lesson that I learned in sobriety sobriety isn't for people that need it it's for people that want it and one of the first things someone will be asked when they enter the the kind of ecosystem of recovery is what are you willing to do what are you willing to do different how willing are you are you willing to make this your number one priority and a lot of people will put words to that but only time will tell whether those words are followed up by the action that demonstrates the level of willingness that is required to actualize anything of meaning in this world with respect to nal's quote the only push back I would give to that is this idea that um that one is deserving or that one is entitled to anything you're not entitled to anything you don't necessarily deserve anything all you have control over is how you direct your attention and how you comport yourself what are the actions that you're taking how you're responding to the world around you and when you drill that down into the tiniest little things that you're doing every single day and try to repeat that with just rigorous Relentless um consistency that is how you move mountains that's how you build mountains that's how you change your life and that is not something that's going to trend on Twitter it's not sexy there's nothing sexy about it it sucks and I wish it wasn't that way and throughout all of my reinvention and the changes um that I've made in my life I didn't do them willingly I did them because I was in so much pain that I was boxed into a corner and felt like the only way out was through in other words when the pain of my circumstance exceeded the tremendous amount of fear that I was harboring about doing something different doing something that would change the the outcomes because if you're if you're doing something in a certain way and you're always getting the same outcome another recovery Trope uh that's the very def definition of addiction right like until you start doing things differently you're always going to get the same result and yet we're so um calcified around who we are and what we're doing and this is my identity and this is who I am that it becomes very difficult to break free of that and to live in a more fluid state where where you are in the process of always trying to deconstruct the beliefs that you hold uh and and and and really get honest with yourself about the fallacy of the identity that you hold so dear what are lower companions lower companions is another term uh from recovery uh As the adage goes uh as you pursue your drinking or using career uh it starts out fun drugs work right it's a good time drinking is pretty reliable it's going to produce a certain kind of effect right and alcoholics and drug addicts um they don't become addicts because it's dysfunctional on day one they do it because it's filling a need it is doing something positive in their life in my case it made me feel like myself it was like wrapping myself in a warm blanket where all my insecurities and my fears would vanish and I was able to be a social person in Social settings which was something that was very difficult for me my whole life and it functioned that way for quite some time until it didn't and then your life slowly starts to degrade you start making decisions that you rationalize that aren't in your best interest it becomes a little lonelier the chaos Factor starts to increase the uh negative repercussion of your behavior start to stack and escalate uh it starts to get uncomfortable your higher companions your good friends the people that love you who have your best interest at heart start to flee from the hills and you begin to search out other people who are vibrating at your wavelength who are not going to give you a hard time for your behavior and are more than happy to do the thing that you want to do which is to get loaded or get high so you find yourself in really compromising strange sometimes scary situations with people you would not ordinarily hang out with because you share this one thing which is you just want to lose yourself in this substance or perhaps with people who are addicted to um a certain Behavior it could be gambling it could be you know it's like anything you're going to find people who are going to cosign whatever Behavior it is uh and then as the addiction escalates even more you start to run through those people even they don't want to hang out yeah you get lower and lower and lower and lower until there's maybe that one guy and if not you're just home alone in a dark room with the shades pulled down um and that's how it ended for me for sure we'll get back to talking to rich in one minute but first I need to tell you about element element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't it's a healthy alternative to sugary electrolyte drinks it's got a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium potassium and magnesium you might ask what do I want with an electrolyte drink well it'll regulate your appetite it'll curb Cravings it'll help improve your brain function best of all it tastes phenomenal first thing in the morning this orange element salt in water is outstanding your adenosine system that caffeine acts on isn't even active for the first 90 minutes of the day so it's pointless having a morning coffee your adrenal system which is what salt acts on is active so this will make you feel more alert more awake and improve your hydration best of all they've got a no BS no questions asked refund policy so you can buy it and if you do not like it for any reason they will give you your money back that's how confident they are that you'll love it head to drink LM nt.com slod wisdom to get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box that's drink lnt.com slod wisdom the idea of lower companions although not uh super romantic I think is really useful and the first time I'd ever heard of it was from you and I think that even for the people that don't have a substance addiction dependency the idea of of people who don't have your best interests at heart who don't make you show up as your better self the self that you wish that you were more of the time I think there's something to take from that and you know I met across my nightclub promoting career I met about a million people face to face stood on the front door of nightclubs sure you met a lot of alcoholics and drug addicts correct yeah and a lot of people that and and in that position 1 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. outside of a nightclub it's all the romance and none of the destitution right because it's full of energy they've got the girls on their arm or the their girl friends are with them and you see them go in upright and you see them come out horizontal um who's the guy who comes out last yeah I was that guy yeah well yeah theide IDE of lower companions I just think there's a lot of people that listen to the show and this is one of the things like if you want to make me cry by sending me a message this isn't a request but the messages that I get that make me weep or tear up the most are ones where people say something like hey man like I'm a a ice hockey player from rural Canada and I'm 23 and none of my friends understand me and when I listen to your show I feel less Alone um I can't talk to any of my friends about like what I'm interested in all that they want to do is keep doing the same thing every weekend the idea of self-actualization is getting a bag in with the boys on the weekend right and that is you know it's a even more in some ways maybe an even more pernicious type of lower companion because there's not there's even the red flag flying above the head do you know what I mean yeah it's not necessarily a bad influence it's just uh at best neutral or perhaps somebody who's um insidiously but very gradually undermining the quality of that companion life like you I also get a lot of those types of messages and it's very meaningful to me and I think what you're speaking about is super important of course there's that added you're the average of the five people oh sorry average of the five podcasts you listen probably right but I think it it is worthy of examination this topic because most people just end up in the environment that they're in and they never try to be in the in the Pilot chair of how they're directing their Community there's a lot of talk about mentors I want this person to be my mentor I want Tony Robbins to be my mentor Gary ve or you know choose your choose your person um but the truth is each and every one of us in our community is surrounded by people that are wiser than us in various ways people that can help us and the nature of that Community can be crafted and cultivated by you with a little mindful intention people are good they want to help people I know that I feel good when I'm helping somebody that is the my primary purpose as a sober um person is to help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety and that is the source of um my greatest sense of self when I'm in that process uh so I think to the extent that you can engage with the people around you from a place of Greater mindfulness and and exercise some discretion about the people that you're spending time with and not just go with the flow because these are the dudes in the locker room or what have you I think you're you're getting yourself way ahead of the game and listen not everybody has a lot of high-minded people around them and I think it's you know important to to you know note that and that's why shows like yours and podcasts that are out there I think are so important when I was your age and when I was younger I mean when I was a young man trying to figure out my way in the world and who I wanted to be there was no internet I couldn't dial up a podcast and listen to people tell stories about their careers or or how they overcame hardship or how they did what they did and and and I'm a guy who's embarrassingly well educated and yet that was not available to me so when I'm creating a show and I know you do this as well I'm very conscious of that person who lacks community in their respective region um and trying to make tools available to that person that they ordinarily wouldn't have access to and it's incredibly powerful it's such a gift there's an enormous library of people sharing their stories about how they did what they did or why they chose this career and why it's important to them and and how they think about their relationships and and what it means to you know be a man or be a woman and and you know walk the planet with integrity and those are the things that I'm always thinking about in terms terms of the conversations that I'm having like I want to put out that high vibration but to your point choose your companions wisely and if your friends are not raising the vibration of what you're trying to achieve or they're just giving you and making fun of you and whenever you're Earnest and share a goal or a dream they put you down it might be time to upgrade and that's harsh uh and there's gracious ways of doing that but I think it's important to seek out people who support you and find older people who are a little bit further down the path who can say here's how I did it or I see where you're struggling um plenty of those people are around and it doesn't have to be one person I think everybody should have a board of advisers or a council of directors like I don't call um when I'm having a an issue in my marriage uh I will call one person but when I'm having a professional issue or an issue around sobriety that's going to be an entirely different person everybody comes with their own unique set of experiences and and wisdom and you know AC crude knowledge as a result of how they live their life uh and these are not famous people they're just people in my community they're friends that I've chosen simply you know in many ways because of the vibration that they carry and and the way that they hold themsel out into the world and I can tell you as somebody who's been prac practicing that for a very long time it's improved my life in ways I couldn't possibly tabulate like it is incredibly important who you spent your time with I uh tweeted this a little while ago saying I'm in the very fortunate position where most of my friends are also my role models and that's not that my role models are my friends right it's the other way around it's that the people that I have I'm friends with in the UK in America people that are Beyond mundanely normal do things that on a dinly basis I look at and I go that's extraordinary like the way that they dealt with a difficult conversation that they had to have the way that they made an awkward decision with regards to their business where somebody wasn't fitting and they said it in the the the right way early with courage and bravery uh you know right up to my housemate had his uh a clip from his YouTube channel shared on Rogan a couple of days ago so like he's fired up for that I'm like you know each of these different people like extraordinary in some ways and unbelievably normal in many many more ways um and I understand you know if this is if you're listening to this and it's triggering a little bit of something inside of you going well must be nice you know living in Austin Texas or Calabasas or whatever and you're surrounded by all these people and you know you've got interest in blue ticks knocking on your door asking to be friends I I I I do get that but the bottom line is that you will devolve to the lowest common denominator amongst the friend group that you're in and if you have the luxury of being able to sit and listen to pontificating podcasts for like two hours you are probably built to take charge of that situation and I would bet you that there are a really non- insignificant number of people that live within 3 miles of you who all would love to do the same thing and yeah I met about a million people across my nightlife career and had a handful of friends um that's because a lot of the guys that worked with us came and went they moved on to different careers Club promo isn't a typically a long-term career um and I realized that my funnel exposure to conversion friend ratio was off your funnel to conversion friend ratio so think about how wide that's such like a bro science term right this welcome welcome to my podcast welcome to my podcast Rich um the size of people that I was reaching compared with the number of friends that I had understood was so I couldn't believe it right and I was like okay suming up like this is the I something is up and what it was largely my fault fault and the reason that it was my fault was that I was behaving in a way that I thought would make other people like me and what that meant was the people who did like me I didn't actually truly like in large part and the people who I would have liked saw this person that wasn't yeah you become you're unlikable to those people yes I'm unlikable to the people that I would like right for precisely the reason I'm playing this person and role right um water rises to its own level and you can't transmit something you haven't got another recovery adage which basically means it basically means if you're trying to befriend somebody because they have something that you want um and you try to pretend that you're at their level to say whatever it is you think they want to hear from you so that they feel comfortable befriending you it's very uh transparent that that is a false and shallow gesture right like you can't if you're sitting behind a microphone and you're pontificating about a whole bunch of but it's not a result of earned experience in your own life then it's not going to have the resonant effect that you think it would have because you you didn't earn it right so in recovery it means walking your talk basically and when you walk your talk and that talk and that walk is integrated with a value system that is slowly improving your life then the water in your glass raises and the level of your companions will raise in locked up with that so I think it's important that if you want to attract a certain caliber of person into your life then you have to live your life in accordance with the kinds of values that would be attractive to that person and as somebody who's spoken a lot about dating like this is the same thing with relationships right you're not going to attract that mate who is living a more aspirational life than you until you can level up your own life there's a quote from Alex hosi that says people are attracted to authenticity but it's hard to Define for me here's my best attempt true alignment of what you think what you say and what you do the hardest part is realizing that our thoughts are and that we have to fix them instead of Faking the next two M what we think what you say and what you do and a lot of the time you do and say things that you don't think in an attempt to try and be liked I know that you had a background in school of bullying and this is something that I still need to dig into more but that was like that was childhood for me largely that was school and um like loneliness like again there wasn't even any Glory or Triumph in the in the loneliness or in the in the like solitary nature it was very mundane very vanilla sadness yeah right and I think what the undertone that that taught me was fundamentally the world won't love you unless you can offer it something because before you didn't have anything to offer it and it didn't love you so now you need to offer it something which is why if I look back on the career that I went through in my 20s every single thing that I did had a ton of social uh monetary value on the other side of it so I became a model before I came to UNI then I kept working as a commercial model and then moved into editorial then I became a club promoter because people like models people really like Club promoters you want to get in VIP you want to skip the queue you want to know where the prettiest girls are you want a free bottle of champagne you got to come through me okay then I became a DJ DJ literally makes the crowd have this Collective FF Ence all together then I go on two reality TV shows right two reality TV shows Blue Tick on Twitter free chocal toothpaste full works because maybe if I can ACR sufficient social Capital the world will actually feel believe that I'm worth something and where and at what point did you have a Reckoning with that like where did the bottom fall out on that for you so I got to this second reality TV show and what I'd been doing for a long time was playing a Persona like my business partner knew who I was truly and the guys that worked with me knew who I was truly but largely the public facing Chris wasn't honest about his curiosity about the person he was but I was always able to sedate myself with distraction with YouTube and social media and partying and girls and stuff right and then I go on this TV show and they take everything away from you there's no books there's no calls home there's no internet no phone no TV no nothing and all that you have to do for a month is talk to people who are the hyper extroverted party people that I thought I was so I got delivered what I call a fatal dose of contrast I saw staring me in the face inescapable a team of 13 other people who were the person that I'd been pretending to be for a decade and I realized that I wasn't that and I thought okay I I literally can't escape this and it wasn't like and the skies opened and then I realized that my true path was to become a podcaster and talk into a microphone wasn't like that but it did make me think right there's something up here like there is a in congruence between the person you say you are and who that that sort of person actually is and that really was the beginning of it rolling downhill but again even with that you said it before like life needs to be lived forward but only makes sense in Reverse mhm and when you're staring into a bunch of unknown it's there's no romance there is no glory medal like real that he got some cool like Jamie Fox motivational quote over the top of it telling you about where you're going to go no and you can't put it on a calendar you know the end point of this because you don't even know which direction you're heading you're flailing before you find any kind of trajectory for yourself and I think it requires you know a deep level of commitment to self and again Faith to walk a path where you don't know what the the next brick is going to look like that's getting laid down in front of you and I think a lot of people want to know what the destination is before they take that first step and that's why they never get out of the gate uh but I think um you know your story makes perfect sense mine is certainly analogous uh um I was bullied but it was very vanilla there's nothing like super interesting about that other than it was pretty much as you would expect it but I think as a result of that my interior experience was to feel like being myself was not safe or okay I was already insecure and so as a survival mechanism you have to figure out a costume or a mask to wear to avoid the pitfalls of being bullied and just survive and navigate the day that's certainly what I did and like you it showed up in people pleasing I'm a chronic people pleaser only in recent years have I really worked hard to try to deconstruct that um and it's something that that is also pernicious because um the lie you tell yourself is like I'm a nice guy like I just want everyone to be happy and so you got out of your way to make everyone else happy but as a result of that that none of your own needs are getting met met you're developing resentment you're disconnected from who you are it's also you're not bothered about making them happy you're just desperate for them to like you yes that's the fuel underneath the whole thing and it's an empty fuel because then you get it it never Sates the appetite though there's a quote from aubre marccus where he says the Persona is incapable of receiving love it can only receive praise and what he means by that is if you're playing a role any of the accolades that you get and any of the care that people give toward you isn't going to hit you existentially it's like people don't love Russell Crow they love Gladiator people don't love Chris Hemsworth they love Thor and this is how you can feel alone in a crowd and Hollow in Victory because if you do a thing without genuinely putting yourself into it whenever people praise it and I can promise you I have tried I have been there I've achieved the things that haven't been existentially connected to me mhm and I didn't feel satisfied right i' I'd achieved in my 20s pretty much all of the things that Society tells a young man that he should take pride and pleasure and and fulfillment from right like Renown and girls and and money all this stuff not a I'm Dan bills Arian but like just a just an acceptable normal person amount of that that would put you close to the top of the tree didn't fulfill me it didn't fulfill me and I could have done it for eons and it still wouldn't have fulfilled me I love and I'm proud of all of the things I did in terms of the business but that's not that's not what Society told me it wasn't about I was never told you are going to a door working until 3 in the morning with your business partner trying to get this copywriting exactly right so that you can do a thing that's that's cool in your business what they said was you should leave at 1:00 a.m. and go to the cool Afterparty because that's where people are going to see you and that's and that wasn't the case and I it was really really tough I'm glad you know thinking about the time when you were that age and my age now had it not have been for influences that that I did get access to on YouTube and podcasts and stuff like that I don't know where I would have been given a different frame I don't know how I would have been ripped out of it so that hole that you were trying to fill what does that look like now it's a good question I I I ask myself sometimes in my more uncertain moments whether I've replaced offering people my Instagram followers and Q jump in a night club for uh cool quotes and photos of me with Jordan Peterson I ask myself that sometimes the difference is when I do this all I feel is is joy and excitement and that's the lead indicator I think that I'm doing something right I'm not thinking about look at how many plays this is going to get I'm fired up because I get to sit down with Rich and have a cool conversation about this thing and I it's genuinely how I feel I did this three-hour podcast with hosi yesterday and I'm sat there grinning to myself like a idiot just thinking this is so much fun like if you ask me to do anything else right now anything you could offer me to do anything and I wouldn't I wouldn't leave leave for a family emergency but if it was something else that was supposed to be better or more fun I wouldn't leave and I don't know like that just using that as a heuristic seems like a good start and I think a lot of the time especially young guys lost young guys they do things that they think other people will think are cool or will think are impressive and when you actually ask themin how much joy do you take from this don't really have a particularly satisfactory answer I think that's astute I'm glad that you found this thing it certainly wasn't something that you could have whiteboard in the aftermath of of being on that reality show um it's a process you know and it's a fluid thing and I would suggest to you that that there's more and I think the more um that you can bring a sensibility of service uh to what you're doing that um sense of of of wholeness uh and Oneness and um and sense of uh of meaning in your life will only escalate because truly for me it's all it's it's all about service you know what I do as a commercial Enterprise surprise of course but um when I get away from the service aspect of it and into the ego part of it is when I Stray From my values and that hole starts to gnaw you know on my soul and just to kind of go back um to you know my version of your story you mentioned uh that Aubrey quote about praise and love and I think for me as a young person those two things were one and the same I lived in a house where love was essentially conditioned upon achievement and I got good at achievement but I did it unconsciously in search of love and it was never enough no matter how much I achieved no matter how fast I swam uh I was always just shy of getting it and it wasn't until adult hood that I could reflect back on that and have some self-awareness around it because when you're young your brain is formed you don't know why you're I'm competitive I'm ambitious uh but in truth um I just wanted to be loved unconditionally but that was never going to happen because I was a sensitive artistic kid who had all these weird interests and would rather hide in the corner and read a book but I adopted the Persona of an athlete and and academically inclined person and I got the accolades and I got into all the schools and perpetuated on that that hamster wheel as long as I could until it you know the axle broke and the whole thing collapsed on top of it of me in order to you know have a Reckoning with it and understand that we don't have to earn love like love is unconditional I've got this idea called insufficiency adaptation like imposter adaptation I'm going to read you this one of the most common tensions I talk about at the moment is between a desire for success and a desire to feel like we're enough success is a strange thing presumably we want success because we think a more successful life will bring us more happiness meaning and fulfillment here's the problem we sacrifice the thing we want happiness for the thing which is supposed to get it success failure can make you miserable but I'm not sure success will make you happy one of the most common Dynamics I see amongst High performers is this parents want their child to do well parents encourage their child to do well by praising when they succeed and criticizing when they fail the child learns that praise and admiration is contingent on succeeding that lesson metastasizes through early adulthood into I am only worthy of love acceptance and belonging if I succeed now powered by an internal feeling of sufficiency this person is driven to achieve many things they're prepared to outwork out hustle and outs suffer everybody else because they're not just running toward a life they want they're running away from a life that they fear success and progress ameliorates the feelings of insufficiency therefore success and progress become prioritized above everything else that sums it up uh I'm certainly uh somebody who would fall into that category um I've pursued success in a variety of areas as an athlete then as a lawyer that was a disaster um then again as an athlete now as a podcaster it's it's funny you know I I I went through like a seven-year Financial dismantlement like we almost had our house repossessed I had our cars repossessed I couldn't pay for the garbage bins like it was bad and I think with that was a tremendous amount of em mascul emasculation um protect a provider yeah and a huge um Resurgence of all the insecurities and fears that I harbored as a as a as a child and I became utterly convinced that I was incapable of success at least financial success I just I just didn't believe that it was possible for me when I was a drunk I could never pay my bills I ruin my credit then I get sober and I can't figure out this career thing and I was as broke as ever and then I'm trying to not even drunk this time trying to I'm not even drinking and I can't figure it out and then I'm like oh I'm going to go be an ultra athlete when I have little kids in a mortgage there's no career path in that and I just thought maybe I'm insane like I I honestly thought like I found I would find myself you know at times on a weekday afternoon at the park with my small children pushing them on the swings and having this dual this tension between these two ideas on the one hand recognizing that by leaving the Comforts of the partnership track on a at a big Law Firm I had the privilege of being able to spend time with my young children in the middle of a weekday afternoon at this park where there was a bunch of moms and I'm the only guy while also believing at the same time that I was an utter failure because I didn't know what I was doing with my life I didn't have a sense of what I should do or shouldn't do and really starting to believe that nothing was ever going to happen for so this is one of the problems that I have with the modern move of asceticism right of of recanting worldly success because I believe that inbuilt in almost all humans is a requirement for the world to validate them genuinely through actual achievement and this is another nval quote where he says it is far easier to achieve our material desires than to renounce them and the difference is had you have had the material success now then how much more present would you have been with your children pushing them on the swing well had I had material success earlier I wouldn't have grown and evolved mentally emotionally spiritually and physically and yeah had to endure that process to be worthy of the growth curve that I've been on and frankly you know the the success that I have now is is embarrassing because I never would have thought it possible uh so my relationship with success now is is very different than it would have been had I had I achieved it earlier or or easier I guess in other news this episode is brought to you by levels one of the single biggest predictors of how long you're going to live and how good you will feel whilst living is your metabolic Health the single best way to understand how your daily decisions are impacting your longevity and Your vitality is by tracking your glucose this is why I wear a continuous glucose monitor from levels it allows me to understand in real time whether the foods that I'm eating are having a positive or A negative impact on my health the levels app interprets your glucose data and provides a simple score after you eat a meal so that you can see how different foods impact your health and develop a diet which is custom and personalized perfect effect for your body the main realization that I had was eating cereal at any time of the day spikes my glucose through the roof but if I took a walk for about 15 minutes I could bring that back down I would have never realized this if I hadn't been wearing a continuous glucose monitor right now levels has a special offer for my listeners by going to the link in the description below or heading to levels. lmod wisdom that's levels. link modern wisdom I've heard you say I still find myself with this sense that success has to be earned and the only way to earn it is to inflict pain on yourself and if you're not in pain you didn't try hard enough and it would have been better if you'd suffered more and I think that's a lie and I want to find out if it's a lie or if it's true that resonated with me so much tell me what you meant by that I don't think that I'm particularly gifted in any kind of traditional way I don't think I'm that much smarter than anyone else I don't think that I'm uh a super talented athlete uh but if I do if I had to identify a talent it would be a capacity to suffer a willingness to do hard uh and a very high pain tolerance and I learned this as a young swimmer entering into uh the kind of Club ecosystem of swimming in the Northeast where I lived and realizing quickly as a 13-year-old that I was not the most talented swimmer that there were a lot of young gifted swimmers who are much better than me but I also realized very quickly that there was an equation between work and results and that equation was pure arithmetic for me and the more I worked the narrower that Gap that Talent deficit Gap became to the point where as a senior in high school I was one of the best swimmers in the United States getting recruited everywhere and was able to match all of those peers that previously I thought were much more talented than me so the message that got inculcated in my mind was Talent does doesn't matter you have the ability to outwork everyone in the room that is your gift and your job is to double down on that in all areas of your life and this is what is going to create a trajectory for you and the truth is it worked it worked in the pool it worked in the classroom and I was able to achieve some pretty amazing things as a young person outsized results beyond your talent I was World ranked in the 200 meter butterfly I went on to St I said no to Harvard University and went to Stanford where I was a member of uh a two-time nc2a championship Squad where every single day I trained with world record holders American record holders nc2a Champions and Olympic gold medalists these were my athletic Heroes and by sheer force of will I told myself I was able to manifest a situation in which now I was a member of a team in which I got to spend five hours a day every single day with the greatest swimmers in the sport what does that do to a young mind it tells it you're capable of anything but the only way that you're going to get there is by suffering suffering is your success equation and I would do things in the pool in high school that my coaches to this day still talk about they're like remember when you did this set in 1984 like 40 times 200 fly on you know like I would do insane sets that no one else would do because I knew no one else would do them and I picked the hardest the event that creates the most suffering because that was the easiest to distinguish myself in and that was a success equation and so I've carried that my entire life and to this day as somebody who doesn't believe they're particularly talented it's all the more important that I outwork everyone in the room and I believe that in many ways I've done that and I kind of continue to do it I've done it with the podcast I've done it with books that I've written if I don't suffer if I'm not completely depleted at the end of a project and I turn it in whether it's a book or whatever creative thing that I'm working on then it's not good enough you have to bleed in order for it to be the highest expression of what you're capable of and the truth is through a lot of therapy a lot of work I have realized that that is in fact a lie now untangling that knot and trying to create new neural Pathways is extremely uncomfortable what does it feel like if you sit down and you write something and you do it from a place of of ease and presence and awareness and you turn it in and it didn't cause you to suffer and you didn't experience pain I'm instantly going to feel like well that's I didn't work hard enough for it I didn't earn it give me that back and let me rewrite it until 4 in the morning you know and I've done this many many times and then I'll look at it with Clear Eyes the next day and and realize you made it worse first draft was better yeah you made it worse it's a hard pill to swallow it's been a very difficult lesson for me to learn it's certainly not something that I've mastered but I have created systems in my life that make that process of ease um more accessible and and conducive in my daily schedule to try to disabuse me of these old patterns that that are reliable But ultimately uh are short-term strategies because they lead to exhaustion and burnout and disaffect and all of these things that are at Cross purposes with the goal of having any kind of longevity or continual growth and what whatever it is that you're trying to do what are the systems I surround myself with a team of very talented people so for a long time I did my podcast which I've been doing 11 years almost 11 years at this point for many years I did almost every single aspect of it myself my stepson Tyler would edit it but other than that I handled everything about it and I was very resistant to letting go of any aspect of it and letting any you're laughing letting anybody come in to help see some of my team over your show well you have an amazing team here right yeah but they know that they have to rip tasks out of my hand nail my nail I would rather forgo uh nights of sleep correct than let any invite anyone else in because you know what I'm the only one who knows how to do it I'm the only one who can get it the way that I want it to be I'm the only one who's qualified to make it as good as I know it can be and I'm the only one who's going to care enough to go that extra mile to make it great right and the reason why you're I know but the reason why that is so romantic and Powerful is that there is some truth in it because no one is going to care about modern wisdom as much as you it doesn't matter how much you pay people or how how talented the people are that that are around you so you're faced with a choice either you loosen the Reigns you let people in you find people who are better at the respective skill sets than you are you train them you Empower them and you get out of the way and then you are freed up to do the work that only you can do which is to prepare for and conduct the conversations to the best of your ability everything else can be handled by someone else in my case I did the show for years before I I was kicking and dragging in order to let go but as a result of going through that process I now am able to focus on those things that are most important and as to the freedom Point um the systems that I have in place create the added time for the headp space required to contribute to the creative work that only I can do and I create rules for myself like you have to stop after two hours or you're not allowed to you know edit while you're writing or you know you have to put this away and not look at it for a week like I have to create stop gaps like a crazy puss yeah exactly because I am a crazy person yeah Chris I don't know if you know but I have spent quite a bit of time in a mental institution so yeah I am certifiable my equivalent of what of the story that you told with regards to swimming was with my first business in NTI so I didn't draw the correlation between practice and game day ability throughout my entire athletic careers I played at a very high level of cricket because I'm a gentleman and I'm refined yes uh I played that game that no one understands or cares about in the United States well I mean look if you Wen such Philistines if you weren such Philistines maybe you would be able to get on board um I never once I trained a lot but I trained a lot because it's how I found my friends and it's what I did it was habit I never ever had it taught to me no one ever sat me down and said if you train you get better and I just I I didn't feel that lesson I knew that it was what you was supposed to do but I just didn't I didn't anyway so I get to University and we start this events company and it's the first thing that I've ever really felt like I excelled at and got social Renown for so very quickly I begin to attach my sense of success to the SE success of the business a lot of young especially guys who want to be accepted if you do have a business and you do find some success with it you will do this and it's a pitfall that you need to be aware of and I imagine it's the same for girls too MH you do a thing the world tells you that you are enough or that you it Praises you because you do the thing therefore you become the thing so it wasn't just I run I ran a good or bad club night last Saturday it was I am a good or bad person no you're self-identifying with the achievement as a referendum on who you are as a person correct and because I'm British I've got a Puritan work ethic and what I did was this was the pentious bit and this is the pitfall that people really need to watch out for I realized that reliably my the quality of my work was better if I suffered therefore if I suffered I usually got better outcomes and you feel good about yourself because you suffered you worked for it you earned so the lead indicator of what would be a lagging measure the lead indicator was suffering the lagging measure would be success then this is the thing that I did I shortcut the success part and went straight to the suffering part and if success came without suffering I felt like it wasn't worthy I felt like I hadn't worked hard enough to get it and I then had two things that I needed to do so not only did the event need to be good not only did it need to run well if it wasn't a success I was a failure and if the success came and I hadn't suffered I was also a piece of so there was two ways well that's that's sort of akin to impostor syndrome right like it was successful I didn't really work for it I don't really deserve this people are going to find out that I don't really know what I'm doing or is that something different perhaps I feel like there's probably a a veneer of of imposter syndrome in there too but this felt it felt more visceral than imposter syndrome and it wasn't anxiety around it not happening well next time I me not being good enough it was just that I needed to suffer and that's what this Puritan work ethic thing does man and it's a hell of a drug especially if you're if you're from one of the Imperial Colonial powers that you can imagine you know in the Middle Ages these priests and they're howing the ground and the sun's beating down on their back and they're doing it in service of God it's not about the work it's about the suffering you know and they've got a cat and Ninetails and they're flating themselves we're Sinners we're bad people we need to be punished let's fog ourselves let's do it in the context of our work and make that a spiritual practice but without the spiritualism without any of the spiritual payoff and that was where I got to and you you also said two other things that I thought was really really interesting and this I thought about this when I I spent a bit of time in CrossFit and I saw a lot of people in CrossFit talk about uh suffering and discomfort and stuff but if I told them to sit on the couch for a full week and not train they would have completely gone crazy and you said the real discomfort is to see what it would be like without the suffering and Tim has this what if it was easy yeah uh line yeah that's that's the discipline people always say to me like how do you do these Ultra distance events and how do you have the motivation to get up every day and train and the the math in their mind is that that's where the discipline comes into play what they don't realize is like that's what I want to do that's what I prefer to do actually certainly there's days you don't want to do it and you have to call on a little bit of discipline but that's my joy the discipline comes in when yes you're like today's a rest day you're not allowed to go do that thing that you enjoy doing or you know you're going to sit and meditate for third for 30 minutes or you're going to write something and you know you're going to walk away from it and not edit it or you're gonna maybe only spend half the time you would ordinarily preparing for a podcast you know what I mean that's hard doing that going the extra mile is rote that's second nature to me yeah yeah I it's it's it's fascinating I I find this this quk of a particular type of human very very fascinating but I think a way to a weigh in is to think of it in the context of flow States and by that I mean can you inhabit a state of allowing can you be an open Channel and in uh a disposition of surrender where you are receiving almost like an Anna as opposed to willing things trying to make them happen uh again I'll take it back to recovery I mean one of the first things you learn is your powerlessness over drugs and alcohol and that the solution is not going to come as a result of you applying your will to this problem which or taking drugs and alcohol it's like self-will run Riot is what yeah it's like s it's like I read that book you guys I get whatever I'll figure it out don't worry about it and you're trying to solve a problem of the mind with the mind that created it and you're going to do it by applying this incredible self-will that you have only to discover that you're digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper until you're so broken you let go and you give up and you say I can't do this alone please help me not only do I need help I want help I'm willing to receive help and I will take the uh instruction that's given to me which requires a tremendous amount of humility so are you in self-will is that self-will out of balance with your life and what would it feel like and look like to release your attachment to that self-will as an engine of identity and instead be in that very uncomfortable state of being and allowing you've talked about your relationship ship to endurance racing mutual friend of ours will gu recently ran across America yeah what you make of will gu I love will G I think he's great I think he is an interesting and compelling breath of fresh air into the ultr running Community um just by way of background I have some experience in Ultra endurance events I've done a bunch of hard races over the years um so I have uh a connection to that Community I know a lot of people in that Community I have a lot of friends in that Community um Wills BFF in in ultr running is our mutual friend Robbie Ballinger who ran across the United States has done a lot of hard things set the record the F the uh fkt for the central how many laps of the C how many miles you can run around the loop and Central Park in one day like he's done a lot of crazy wild stuff and those guys couldn't be more different uh and yet are the closest of friends train together race together they crew each other's Endeavors and it's a really beautiful friendship that I I've been sort of privy to to witnessing and observing um I know Robbie a lot longer than I know will uh but I followed will it was Robbie who introduced me to will originally uh so I started following will online and uh I just found him to be so unique as uh a figure in this strange little subculture of ultr running because that is a culture that historically has been populated with you know guys that uh you know live in the van down by the river know how to grow a nice beard um it's a granola crowd it's a very it's a very it's a very in a beautiful way it's a Grassroots Community uh that has um that has uh you know participated in and helped grow a sport where typically there's no media coverage there's no prize money nobody's doing this for Glory or media attention you pitch a tent at the starting line the night before you wake up you do your 100 miles and you go home and and nobody else in the world knows what you did except for you and there's something really pure and and amazing about that and and and uh and that's sort of woven into the fabric of what this sport is about here comes will gge male model six-pack abs looks a lot more like a rugby player than an ultra Runner he's got you know the shaved torso and the uh skin care routine that he's happy to share with you he's walking the catwalks he loves a nice bathrobe and a five-star hotel and tea Service uh he enjoys the Finer Things in life good British gent yes at the same time he's an absolute beast when it comes to ultr running uh fueled by a desire to make peace with the early passing of his mother who who died of cancer and to raise money and awareness around cancer research he begins participating in these Ultra runs uh mostly I think he started doing some marathons and he he did the the Jon o' groz run he did a couple hard things but then created some self-styled Adventures for himself ran around Lake comoo and this past summer ran across the United States no small feat 3,000 miles Robbie was there every single day supporting him uh reys Robinson uh was the guy who created the weekly Vlog on the audacious report which is the YouTube channel that they have Reese used to work for me he lived at my house he created videos for me so I know these guys really well and it was super fun to watch will throw down day after day 52 miles 54 miles 56 miles and do it with a smile and a certain flare and a passion for fashion this guy looks good and as hard as that was there's something inside me that was thinking he he's kind of making it look easy and this in turn ruffled some feathers out in the ultra running Community I love this I I want to know about these feathers that you know there's a certain idea of of of what an ultra Runner looks like how they're supposed to be and will isn't will is very different from that and I think people don't like different and so there was a a sort of who is this guy and what is he doing um and then on message boards people started uh taking shots at him and there was a little uh movement about whether or not he was actually doing this legitim okay so skepticism around the actual skepticism yeah so much so that one guy flew from the United Kingdom and showed up they were I don't know where they were in the middle of the Navajo Nation or something like that convinced that Will was cheating and that he was there to root him out it's a story that will shares on my podcast I don't know when this is going up and I'm not sure when my conversation with will is going up but um and will had to kind of weather that on top of the difficulty of just actually competing this very difficult task uh and so which he did and he did it again with flair do you have a I think it's a British record perhaps it's not a world record but I think I don't even I don't remember offand I could have looked that up y um I think that was part of what ruffled feathers that he was going to be the fastest British guy but there was this other guy it's like who cares like will doesn't even care yep you know he just wanted to go do this hardart thing and raise money and um experience it with his friends and you can watch the weekly Vlog on the audacious report and see how it all went down but I respect will for his conviction and his sense of self to just be who he is unapologetically do you know he reminds me of Ross Edgley a little bit uh I love Ross Ross is great my my not so much in the way he looks or the way he dresses Ross is like permanently in Ross is Ross is a lot sillier he's an absolute animal in the way that he trains mad respect for Ross and and and his accomplishments I think he's just an you see his one in uh Italy yes yeah and now he's back in Byron Bay Training um but Ross is Ross is I think Ross has a a more childlike nature to him that's very endearing uh but yes similar in that they've cut their own path in Endurance Sports not So Much by participating in other people's races or sanctioned events but by creating their own self-styled Adventures what's the endurance community's response to Ross Bean because he did he for the people that don't know Ross swam for about 200 days six hours on six hours off without stopping right all circumnavigated the UK the first man to ever swim around the UK he has recently tried twice unsuccessfully in combination with Jim shock to complete the longest ever single duration swim uh first time in loch nest too cold second time in Italy too hot yeah uh this African Heat Wave comes in and the water temperatur is 32 de the air temperatures 40 de it's unbearable anyway what was the endurance community's response to this guy who trains Chris Hemsworth looks like a bodybuilder crossed with a salty old Sea Dog but is a always laughing I didn't see any any uh negative stuff about him but I wasn't looking for it either I don't know surpris as me yeah I mean he's a he's a very affable guy um people especially in Open Water Swimming can get very particular about rules and how these things are conducted there's a whole controversy around uh Diana niad when she uh did her Cuba swim to Florida some people say she broke the rules it shouldn't count Etc so there's there's some personnic kind of you know attitude around these types of things I don't have a sense of negative blowback on Ross um maybe there is maybe there isn't but I think to your point of the similarities between will and Ross like Ross doesn't look like an endurance athlete either he's built like a tank and yes he trained uh Chris Hemsworth for Thor he's just an absolute unit this guy which is not the kind of uh uh physique that you want to have for long-distance Open Water swimming and I've told him I'm like why are you putting on all this bulk you're making this harder for yourself if you lost 20 pounds of muscle your shoulders wouldn't get tight you lose a little bit of power in your stroke but when you're going for uh Ultra endurance that's not important what's important is efficiency and your ability to conserve energy but he is who he is and uh I I love him to death I just think he's a delight to watch and I'm always cheering for him yeah I uh I've really enjoyed watching Ross his book uh the art of resilience for anybody that's going through a bit of a tough time if you've read or listened to the obstacle is the way enjoyed it and thought I want more like a spiritual successor to that book is the art of resilience from Ross So stoic Sport Science I think he called it yeah yeah um and it's this sort of semi- autobiographic IAL Diary of his swim around the UK where he applies both stoic philosophy lessons and sports science to the narrative awesome and he's a great writer he contributor to GQ like he's been writing for a long time I think he has a sports science degree um and he's done a lot of crazy stuff like he did a long Triathlon like K yeah log swim he pulled a car you know like he's done a lot of kind of Jack Lan type stunts over the years this episode is brought to you by a product I used every single day for over 3 years now and that is ag1 it's a foundational nutrition supplement that covers whole body Health helps with my energy my digestion and is a staple every single day in my supplement regime you don't need a handful of pills or potions one tasty drink every single day that covers all of your nutritional bases this is why Andrew hubman and Lex Friedman and Joe Rogan and Rich R all are massive fans of ag1 they've upgraded the recipe 52 times over the last decade constantly improving to make make sure that they create the number one foundational nutrition supplement on the planet also they've got a 90-day money back guarantee so you can buy it and try it for a full 3 months with one pouch per month and if you do not like it on day 89 they will give you your money back that's how confident they are that you'll love it if you're looking for a simpler effective investment for your health try ag1 and get five free ag1 travel packs a year supply of vitamin D and that 90-day money back guarantee head to the link in the show notes below or go to drink a1.com wisdom that's drink a1.com wisdom I've heard you say before the prize doesn't go to the fastest guy it goes to the guy who slows down the least that pressure of potential and pressure of consistency to me in all areas of life you know you were specifically not talking about racing you were talking about this uh onoff uh burn and Coast workload thing in professional life how do you deal with that you you've got this engine inside of you I want to work I I I care about the work that I do I care about the things that I do I want to serve all the rest of it how have you learned to switch yourself off and what's the journey being like to releasing that right foot from the accelerator pedal it's it's it's been an interesting lesson uh that I have reluctantly embraced I guess I would say um but you can't serve to your maximum effect if you're not also serving yourself so you have to tend to the vessel if you want to be a vessel of good in the world and when you're a workaholic or you're someone who's prone to suffering and feels like your self-worth is tied up up and going the extra mile being in that place of Letting Go and allowing yourself to take time and step back is the most counterintuitive thing that you can possibly do again that's the discipline but the truth is to the point of that quote the prize doesn't go to the fastest it goes to the person who slows down the least that was originally said to me by my coach my endurance coach in Ultra endurance there's nothing about it that's fast you could go out and run a mile right now faster than any of these Ultra Runners but if you were to run a 10-minute mile which is easy for most fit people uh 130 times over then you would crush the bad water and probably break the record so it's not about fast it's about the ability to Pur persist and your ability to persist is correlated with your capacity to conserve you have to be able to meet out your energy in small bits in order to go the full distance I'm somebody who's always thinking about the long term I'm not somebody who's trying to create a viral hit or make a big splash tomorrow I just do my daily work every single day and I trust that as I continue to get better at what I do that I hone my craft and that my focus is squarely placed on the things that are most important that the success will come eventually and as a result of that as opposed to engineering success in some kind of FastTrack way I think that's misguided it may be effective in the short term but what are you doing 10 years later and I want to be somebody who can continue to do this thing that you and I both do for as long as possible I've been doing it 11 years as you know it's taxing it's a lot I don't think it's is is uh easy as people think I think there's so much work more work that goes into it than people realize and in order run that Marathon you have to take breaks and it's scary to take breaks because if you're not doing then who are you the world is passing you by you're going to miss out all this uh forward momentum suddenly gets arrested but I have learned that taking that time ultimately becomes a growth accelerator because that time is necessary to not only recharge your battery but also to develop Clarity around the half how what and why of what the you're doing so about four years ago uh I decided to take a month off sabatical terrifying I went to Australia for an entire month and yeah it was terrifying I mean it was great too I was in Australia what's not to love uh but to not open the laptop to not edit the blog post to not engage in any of that was perhaps the most uncomfortable I'd ever been and it's not a switch that can just get switched off and it's not something that um gets easier even a week later like you really do need a lot of time like I needed that entire month like it wasn't even actually until the last week where I started to feel a little bit more grounded what did you do uh I kept it really simple I mean I have friends I was in syney that year I've gone I've gone to Australia twice so I've done this every year I've gone to Hawaii twice and all those places I have lots of friends lots of opportunity to do fun stuff and see lots of people and blah blah blah but I really treat it like a retreat and so I live those days quite monastically I do what I enjoy I'm in a tropical location I get up I make my morning smoothie and then I go out and I train I ride my bike for four hours I go to the ocean and swim um I I push myself physically and then I come back I eat I would I go to the beach I read watch a movie go to bed at 8 o'clock and and try actually not to talk to anybody and to not be online um if there's any output at all it's just in journaling with intention and those pages ultimately creating the foundation for an idea or something later but besides that no work what have you learned about your direction or your goals or yourself through these manaries well on a very tactical level I've learned to trust my team and that I can let go so that in and of itself that you can take a step back and the whole castle doesn't cave in on itself and the world continues to spin and the work gets done um is incredibly comforting and empowering um because it taught me that I can step away and it's not going to be a disaster uh I don't think that you can have the level of clarity on who you are and what you're doing when you're in the minations of the creative process there's a myopia like you're what you're doing six interviews in four days or something like that and then I mean you're on a hustle grind right when you're on the hustle and you're on the grind there's a a sort of euphoric feeling that comes with that and a sense of Pride and and a lishment that that's all good but you're not seeing the forest for the trees because you're staring at the leaves on one particular tree uh and so in order to have that perspective you have to stop and if you don't you're robbing yourself of the greater opportunity that's right in front of you because you've created your own treadmill for yourself and it becomes very easy especially if you're getting success to just keep doing that thing but sometimes you have to pattern interrupt in order to identify the greater opportunity or the orthogonal uh opportunity that you can't see when you you're in the midst of the grind there's a cognitive bias I guess a a framework a mental framework called Direction Over speed and the lesson is that if you are going in in the precise right direction regardless of how quickly or slowly you're always making progress mhm if you're not going in the right direction very quickly you can actually push yourself further away from the goal that you ultimately want there's another Insight from Chris Sparks who is a world champion poker player and a productivity expert uh and he says there can be no growth without goals and it's a really nice counterbalance he he came out with it just after James clear's Atomic habits and I think I would love to get those two guys together to talk about this um they don't conflict they they they mesh nicely but I do think it's an important redress um as soon as James said you do not rise to the level of your goals you fall to the level of your systems as soon as he said that I think that and the success of the book which was phenomenal and is in one of my top five still it's still like the number one yourk Times bestseller it's phenomenal yeah it's it's a it's a Powerhouse and rightly so right it's it's one of my books on my 100 book list that you have to read as soon as he said you do not rise to the level of your goals you fall to the level of your systems I think people stopped thinking about goals and he made a really great argument which was everybody at the start line of the 100 meter race has the same goal it's to win so it's not the person who has the best goals it's the person who has the best systems and preparation and that's true as you dig in a little deeper it forgets about Direction Over speed and this this is what there can be no growth without goals that Chris meant which is that it is just personal goal mental masturbation for you to phenetically do self-improvement not in service of a thing or not in service of even a direction that you're going toward and it was a really important reframe for me and I think that it plays into what you're talking about why would you take a sabatical if not that there was some dire that you were going in I think that the discomfort of relinquishing control over the day-to-day work uh especially if you enjoy even if you don't enjoy what you do like it butresses your selfworth in a lot of ways and uh yeah taking um taking the manuary holiday that would be I I think that would be my equivalent of an ultra endurance event I hate running I hate running I got invited on a gym shark run we're out here in uh LA and I got invited on a gym shark run with Noah Olsen and like some other cool people that I'd probably love to meet I couldn't think of anything worse I don't want to go running but I would rather do an I would I would genuinely rather prepare for an ultra race than try and take a full month off which is exactly why you need to do it or you can ride this Pony until you fall off and you're about to crack and break you're young you're robust uh I'm sure your capacity to handle a lot of stress and an extreme workload is is very large uh but I think there's a Breaking Point to all of that and I guess my point is that you don't need to get to that point to recognize the value of stepping back and I think if you reframe it as as not a break but as Call It Whatever you want that makes you feel better about what it is that you're doing um I think it's important to do that short of now I do it whether I feel like I need it or not it's a prophylactic against burnout and stress dude the only Ripple I would say before let me finish this thought uh to the the kind of James Clear thing that you were that you were talking about just to be clear like I'm not using that month to set goals per se I may but that's not the intent that I'm bringing to it the intent that I'm bringing to it is to step back look at my life in all the categories and ask myself what the are you doing like why are you doing this and to really deconstruct that why and to figure out if there's a more evolved way of doing what I do or maybe a new Direction Al together I don't set fiveyear goals I'm not somebody who's like I'm trying to do this thing I'm trying to be nimble and responsive in the moment to what is happening and the more I am in connection with myself then the more trustworthy my instincts are about that directionality and I've learned over time to trust and rely upon that as the barometer of not just the the TAC that I'm taking um but the steps that I'm executing on to get there and I think that served me well and has allowed me to Pivot and to uh not be afraid to experiment try new things play with the format with the p it's like it's successful don't change it just keep doing the same thing right but if I'm doing what I'm doing in the exact same way I was doing it six months ago then I'm not growing so it's an Embrace of experimentation a healthy relationship with failure um and holding things looser not holding on so tight it's the tight hold that I think you probably have right now uh that you're so resistant to releasing it's way what you're talking about and I'm glad that you clarified it's way bigger picture than gold it's way further up what's important to you what are your values what is the quality of the relationships that you have where were you six months ago or six months ago where did you think that you would be now and is that lining up and if not why what's the missing piece in your life what's the thing that brought you Joy as a kid that you've pushed aside what what is the most uncomfortable conversation with yourself that you've been running away from your entire life do you have the courage to engage with that are you willing to do a little bit more work can you pull back another layer on who you are are you man enough to do that we all have stuff we don't want to deal with stuff we compartmentalize or we think well I just put that one away and I'm not going to worry about that I'm good true growth true expansion and ultimately your highest expression and the manifestation of your greatest potential is inextricably connected to and linked to that willingness and courage to do that stuff that you don't want to do I've heard you say do you feel that to enjoy your life is an Indulgence that's fine for other people but you're on a mission so you can have a different relationship with those aspects of life that other people find important yeah I can fall into that trap and have uh it's convenient it's also ego satisfying uh I don't need to take a break take a day off that's for other people I'm doing this thing and this thing is important and people care about it and I'm willing to sacrifice my personal health and the short term so that I can get that person on at the last minute and put that episode up and so many people are going to be impacted by that there is a uh outsized sense of self that gets packed into that kind of naris yeah there's a there's a maniacal narcissism with that um I like that I like that yeah and so you're not really that important the internet's not going away nobody's waiting for your content they may enjoy it they may get a lot out of it it might be very meaningful to them it might have changed their life but ultimately that narrative that story that you're telling yourself is really just a convenient excuse for avoiding a level of self-honesty and self-connection that will ultimately create a stronger better version of that person you're diluting yourself you already are yeah I I really think that you take your endurance athlete perspective it definitely seems like you're applying it to most of your other Pursuits as well and you know in the same way as doing a a race for 250k no one's going to do it in one goal okay so when are you going to break and for how long what's that going to look like and what are you going to do during it um one of the things that I've been thinking about a lot is protect ing your passion um you can continue to put your nose against the grindstone and sacrifice on the Altar and flagellate yourself for the thing that you see as your calling but it becomes progressively harder as you erode your passion and protecting that just tempering that foot on the gas can allow you to use a much more potent fuel which is the passion side of it which is getting fired up and being excited to go and do the thing and I got this conception of a an hourglass shape to a lot of independent creation Pursuits so at the very beginning uh everything is kind of easy because there's no expectation you're doing it exclusively For the Love of it you're only doing it when you want and nobody cares and then as you start to achieve success you get squeezed more and more and more because there is expectation and maybe you're making money from it or maybe people your sense of self- Worth's attached to it or maybe it's your identity it squeezes and squeezes and squeezes and squeezes and then it gets to this point in the middle of The Hourglass and I do think that as you break out onto the other side that is largely a function of Revenue but can be a function of other things as well including experience that you can afford to delegate that you can learn to delegate that you can learn to relinquish and as you come through the other side you go okay well now maybe I don't need to do absolutely everything maybe I can have somebody that can keep everything taking over while I'm away and this can happen in business this can probably happen I would imagine that mothers feel this with children when they need to have faith that the father they can go out with their uh girl friends you know 12 months deep into the baby being born and they can leave it with the father and the father knows which way up the baby's supposed to be and how to change an nappy and when it needs feeding and so on and so forth there are a lot of things that I think within this sure what I would say to that is you can be on the upper end of that uh hourglass um metaphor and you could still be a and be fueled by anger and resentment and Spite and ego yes if you have a successful Enterprise and you have enough Revenue you can hire people you can delegate you can create convenience for yourself um that's all fantastic and it's something that I'm doing now and I'm reaping the benefits of that and I highly recommend it but I'm getting at something deeper which is what is your fuel source there are lots of different sources of energy and motivation for why we do what we do most people I'm convinced are are navigating the world reactively completely decoupled from who they are without any self-awareness of why they're responding and reacting to the externalities of their environment in the way that they do and I think a lot of people live their life that way there are other people who invest in themselves enough to try to understand like hey when I do that this happens maybe I shouldn't do that I wonder why it is that I do things that way that excavation can lead to a healthier um uh way of responding to the world world and and decision making Etc uh but you can still be acting out of resentment and ego Etc this process never ends it's the worst it's the most annoying thing there's no end to the amount of self-standing and and kind of Behavioral modification that we can engage with but I think for me that top end of The Hourglass is a situation in which one has transcended the lower energies of motivation because they're unhealthy and also they're unsustainable anger is a very powerful fuel source and it will catalyze a lot of activity and in some cases a lot of success but at some point that fuel source is going to either run you into a pit or you're going to run out of that fuel I had this exact conversation with Alex yesterday saying he he's a big proponent of use what you have and most people have way more resentment and anger than they do hope yeah I do agree for activation energy to get yourself out of whatever the zero to one stage is you need to use what you have because 0o to one is the hardest the first thousand subscribers the first blog post the first whatever it is that you do is always the most difficult one so use what you have the problem is if you find that that fuel source is potent you can end up relying on it over time and the problem is it's toxic when BEC its own addiction correct yeah correct um and it has its own eoric byproduct when you engage with that anger there's something exciting about that and when you have success doing that you're going to go back to it and you're going to go back to it and you're going to have to to run into an obstacle before you decide to change that way yeah I called this the vestigial pattern bias it's technically referred to as the Ein Stelling effect but basically the thing that you did when you started that gave you success you refuse to let go of when you no longer are served by it and a lot of people find success by grasping on really really tightly but the delusion or the LIE is that that is the source of the success in the same way that a lot of people a lot of creative people when they get sober think they're never going to be able to write another song or be able to perform in front of people or you know paint a picture or whatever it is because it was the drug that was giving them the inspiration and the spark that that um allowed them to be their best most artistic self it's the same lie whether it's anger or resentment and the fear is if I clear that out out if I transcend my anger if I make peace with the people in my life and I let go of these resentments and I'm in a place of forgiveness then I'm G to have no ambition what's my fuel yeah and I my business will crater and my life will be over and I think that's a very real fear that a lot of people have and I under I understand that um as counterintuitive as it may sound my experience has been quite the opposite and I've been lucky enough to witness people's lives Blossom and explode in the best way in miraculous Ways by overcoming those character traits or Character defects that they once thought were sources of fuel only to learn that they were hindrances and and anchors when liberated from that there is a sense of capacity that expands uh that then creates a life that's ultimately bigger than the one they could have imagined for themselves what would you say to a person listening to this podcast or your podcast who spend a lot of time in their head that enjoys the power of their thoughts and being able to rang Wrangle the world using cerebral horsepower and cognitive effort and feels like I probably need to kind of get out of this head and kind of down into this heart and be able to actually hear me not just hear my thoughts Sam Harris talked about uh having ideas and systems and the uh equivalent of someone who is reliant on their cognitive horsepower letting go of those would be the equivalent of them being hit over the head with a hammer and say I love my ideas and my systems you would your life would you should try them you should your life would be amazing if you only had systems and ideas like mine what what do you say say to that person that's kind of praying at that altar of cerebral horsepower I think there's so much to be learned and gained from engaging with the heart mind I myself as somebody I you know I lock myself in my head I'm very uh enamored of my own ideas and my ability to articulate them and write them down and my ego loves it when I turn a certain phrase Etc I get that I understand that and our brains are pattern-making machines and our intellectual capacity is what we leverage and rely upon in order to make sense of the world around us and who we are we create rules through our perception that gets processed through our mind and that becomes the definition of ourselves and what the world is and the expectations that we have of others to mute or quiet that and instead attune your attention to the heart is a very esoteric and um challenging notion to even understand like what does that mean or what exact what's the tactic like how do I do that there you're back in your mind already right was there a page in tools of Titans about this yeah I know right so what's interesting about this is my my wife is like all in her heart heart and I think with certain men I'm perceived as somebody who is very heart-c centered but my wife looks at me as as a guy who lives entirely in my head like because the contrast between us is pretty significant and she's been an amazing teacher and helping me to to make that connection that I find so difficult and in times of Stress and Anxiety I will inevitably default back to because it's so hardwired but I found that when I'm when I give myself permission to get quiet through meditation through mindfulness practices uh to listen to myself and do and try to if there is a practice to it it's really um not necessarily like a rebirthing but trying to connect with that child you know what is your earliest memory what is it that brought you Joy as a young person what did you like to do that you even that you forgot you even liked doing and the more you can kind of ground it in that context and learn to listen and be silent and get out of the way as opposed to allowing your your ego to intervene or to make people understand that you're here and you have something to say um quiet can you get quiet can you be with yourself are you good company for yourself self are you haunted by your brain is your brain working on overdrive what would it feel like to let go of that and listen to the subtle energies that internal voice that you know lives inside of you but you're so quick to Snuff out because you have stuff to do and you're an important person and you got to call that guy and you got to check your bank balance and you got to go online and see how much that car Le is or when am I going to be able to upgrade my condo to this house all that is just getting in the way of that authentic real version of yourself it's kind of down there going hey buddy I'm here don't forget me that feels very feminine and I think it's probably challenging for a lot of guys it just feels antithetical to what it means to be a man or their notion of masculinity But ultimately I think is just an unbelievable source of strength and growth and capacity and creativity [Music] um that when nourished uh really might surprise you and I know that when I it's it's counterintuitive for me Chris like I like to live in my head but when I allow myself to do that those are the moments that have been fundamental and critical in these um Transformations that I've had in my life they have not been functions of the intellect they have been functions of the heart and appreciating what that aspect of myself is trying to tell me about who I am heeding it taking action on it those have been that is at the foundation of every Quantum Leap that I've made as a human being rich I love it let's bring this one home man uh it's been a very long time coming I'm really really really glad that you came to see me today I feel like I uh letting go of that cerebral horsepower is something that very very many people myself included listening to this podcast probably need to take heed of I'm really really glad that you've got this other side of you this other contribution where should people go they want to keep up to date with the stuff you're doing what's coming up next uh everything I do is at rich roll.com Rich Roll podcast on all the places Rich Roll on YouTube Etc and uh that's it check out my podcast similar to Chris's but different uh and I really appreciated this today I really thought you asked amazing questions and and uh you for me into some uncomfortable places so I hope I acquitted myself uh adequately but I appreciate the opportunity thanks man I appreciate you cheers thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode with Rich then press here for my full 2hour podcast with David Goggins