How to Become Decisive In the Face of Paralyzing Fear | Colin O'Brady on Impact Theory

I'm a human with all of the range of emotions, ups, downs, fears, insecurities, doubts, all that kind of stuff. However, I've also figured out how to program my body to perform or at least acknowledge like, "Oh, I'm afraid right now." [music] Because like, if I let go of this tent, like I could die. However, that fear could either be paralyzing, meaning, "Oh my god." And that's where I make a mistake cuz I'm so afraid and I'm shaky and I'm like, "What do I do?" Or I go like, "Oh, I'm afraid right now. That's my body's response telling me like the stakes are real." This is a time in your brain where you need to take that fear and channel the strength from that fear and go, "Oh, this is what means you need to focus right now. You need to double-check that knot. You need to really make sure your systems are dialed. You need to take a breath and slow down and all that." And so it's not about being fearless as in not having fear, but it's being able to assimilate fear to not let it paralyze you and using that as strength to [music] focus or whatever the situation may be. [music] Hey everybody, welcome to Impact Theory. Today's guest is one of the most accomplished mountaineers and endurance athletes the world has ever seen. He set two all-time records in the Explorers Grand Slam, which saw him climb the seven highest mountain peaks on each of the seven continents, as well as trekking to both the North and the South Poles. Fewer than 50 people in all of human history have ever accomplished the feat, and he did it in a record-shattering 139 days. He also holds the record for the fastest scaling of the 50 US high points, which he managed to do in just 21 days. And additionally, he competed in 25 triathlons on six different continents and holds the mind-blowing distinction of being the first human ever to cross the entire continent of Antarctica solo, completely unsupported and unaided, a nearly 1,000 mile death-defying journey that he did in just 54 days. Now, all of this would be impressive no matter what, but what makes his tale even more extraordinary is that he did all of this after being horribly burned in a tragic accident and being told that he may never walk normally again. Proving the power of the human mind, however, just 18 months later he won the largest triathlon in the US. So, please help me in welcoming the first person to snap from Mount Everest to an audience of 22 million people, one of the biggest badasses in the world of human achievement, Colin O'Brady. [applause] My man. What's up, dude? Thanks for coming in. [music] Most of the show. Thanks for having me, man. It's great to be here. It's fantastic to be here. What you've done is so insane, dude. And like as somebody who for a while I bordered on omisophobic of the cold, so [laughter] the thought of walking across by myself in an area where you can throw boiling water into the air and watch it turn into ice. Yes, indeed. That's uh that's insane, man. So, what is it about those kind of journeys that like makes you want to do it? It just seems so freaky. Yeah, it's a good question. What is freaky? Uh you know, it's fun to talk about the external, obviously. You know, Antarctica, average temperature minus 25°, like you said, boiling water into ice in an instant. So, to be out, you know, in those conditions alone, like you said, unsupported and unaided, which meant I had to have all my gear and supplies in a sled, so no resupplies throughout the entire time. It's just me mano a mano. No kites or dogs pulling me along. Just me pulling my sled. Um you know, that's hard in itself, the physical preparation. You know, we can get into that, but what really inspires me to do these types of things is the journey into the mind. Is sort of the depths that I can discover about myself. And for me, you know, having been an endurance athlete and as you mentioned setting some other world records previously, I love doing that, but what really attracted me to Antarctica specifically was the fact of this kind of clean, blank, white canvas for lack of a better word. You know, you're talking about a place that basically has nothing on the horizon. During the time I was down there, it's Antarctica summer, so our winter, so 24 hours of daylight. Um and I thought what place place better than to push myself as an endurance athlete, try to do something that no one in history has ever done. People have been trying for 100 years, but more so the curiosity and my personal why was around what happens in the the mind. What is the sort of soulful journey that you can get into? Where can you find flow states and my moments of high performance as well as battle your own demons when there is just this uh you know, endless white landscape and nothing to distract you when you're out there. You've talked about these endurance feats becoming like art for you and that your canvas is the endurance sport. I I want to talk about like so when I think about artistic expression, it's an active process for me where I feel um Stephen King said it best when he said you when it's you're really in a flow state, you feel like you're channeling, like something's just happening through you. Yeah. So, that is a fun wave for me to ride as a writer. And that's where you're sort of going your you're really experiencing something and it's fascinating to me the characters that pop into my head or the things that they say because you know it's some part of you, um which really gets interesting. So, what is that sort of running dialogue that you're having when you're out there that's led you to say that this is like an artistic expression? You know, for me I have to go back a little bit in my life. You know, I was a great athlete throughout my life. You know, I was a collegiate swimmer and race triathlon as you mentioned and these other world records. And through that I kind of you know, in the sort of the world the people way people identified me, the way I identified myself was I'm an elite athlete. I'm a professional athlete. That's what I am. Um and I think of art, at least in my younger age, I don't now, but I think of art is like being able to draw well or be able to compose music. Both things I'm terrible at. To be perfectly honest. Um and so I was like, oh, I'm not an artist, I'm an athlete. Um and then a couple years ago actually when I was at Burning Man, um it was the first time really where with all of the sort of art that goes on there that's collaborative, that you can touch, that involves all the senses, the huge installations and everything, and the whole kind of environment in itself is a sort of collaborative art piece. I was like, "Oh, art isn't the way I frame the word in my mind. Creativity is a whole other thing. And actually, what I'm doing through my projects is my canvas just happens to be endurance sports. That's my craft. That's what I've beat on for years and years and years. But what I'm actually trying to do in the world is tell stories, show my story, and showcase it in a way that isn't about people watching the athlete in the arena compete some world record, but more so, how can we create stories that have this ripple effect of positivity and impact throughout the world? So, started a nonprofit that was focused on inspiring kids to get outside and move their bodies to have active, healthy lives through a sort of storytelling and creative mediums. You mentioned Snapchatting from the summit ever. It's really sharing these stories in a way, not that someone who can be like, "Dude, Colin, you're a badass. That's awesome." I'm kind of like, "Okay, like that's, you know, semi-interesting." What's interesting to me is when someone's like, "Holy [ __ ] I've been talking about starting that business for the last 10 years, but like you actually went out there and did the thing. Thank you for doing that cuz I'm actually now starting that business." Or the way that my my wife and I have kind of really built and co-created this together. A huge part of this story. I'll talk more about her, for sure, but you know, when someone says like, "Hey, because of what you guys have demonstrated, I'm leaning into my relationship in a way that I never have before." Or, you know, I I am going to, you know, dance or create or whatever that is in their own life. And so, for me, I started to think of myself less as an athlete and more as an artist. And really, this was just my creative platform for doing that, to hopefully have my creative expression into the world. And I think for you is what you're doing here with Impact Theory, the storytelling. I know a little bit of your story about your dreams and aspirations around movie studios and things like that, which is incredible. Um is just the same idea, right? It's like the power of storytelling, the power to move people through action. Um and so, that's how I've sort of reframed in my mind of thinking of this as the sort of art expressions and me being out there walking across Antarctica or whatever I, you know, happen to do next with my body is just my expression of that um in the world. I I think I'm accurately quoting you to say that you said something very close to we are the story that we tell tell ourselves. Um talk to me a little bit about self-narrative, especially in light of that day one when you started the journey to cross Antarctica um where you hit real doubt right off the bat. Like what what were you saying to yourself and how'd you manage to keep going? Yeah, I mean I I love that phrase we are the story we tell ourselves. I'm such a such a big believer that um you can have a pessimistic, you can have an optimistic standpoint. You can sort of like you said, for the longest time I was like, I'm an athlete. I'm terrible at art. And now I'm like, wait, I'm an artist. Like this is creative. It's just it was just reframing in my mind. But that first day literally um you know, my wife and I planned this project for well over a year. Um it had kind of been out in the zeitgeist of exploration as being an impossible project. A couple years prior to me a guy died attempting this crossing and a couple years later one of the world's most prolific polar explorers um went out there and after 54 days ran low on food and supplies and actually had to be rescued um out of there before he fully ran out of food. And people were like, look, this project's impossible because it's this math equation of you can't carry enough in your sled without being resupplied cuz it's too heavy to move it at first to get across the continent. But if you take too little, you're going to run out of food somewhere on the other side trying to make this traverse. So it's this sort of weird math equation. People were like, it's impossible. So we literally Jenna and I decided to name our project the impossible first. Not as this sort of like cocky play like people call us impossible like we're so much better we can do it. It was like literally like, this might be impossible, but I saw on your wall over there, you know, you you miss 100% of the shots that you don't take. It's like, but we're willing to try. Like we're willing to engage this process. And if we fail in trying something that is seemingly impossible, well we're sure [ __ ] going to learn a lot along the way along this incredible journey. So like, let's go after it. Let's call it the impossible first. And if we happen to figure out how to get to the other side, heck yeah, even better. Um but, you know, you know, kind of getting back to to that I mean, for me that story that we tell ourselves that first day, you know, I literally land there after all this planning, all this preparation, media, press, storytelling around this, and I get that out there. I put my sled and I strap in the first day, and like, I can't [ __ ] pull my sled. Like, I'm like, uh like uh like, I mean, I can move it a little bit, but not any sort of sustainable way at all. And um a little bit of context in the story is that another British explorer actually was attempting this crossing at the exact same time. Um not not like sort of at the same time, like literally we were dropped off 1 mile equidistant away from each other. So, not only racing history, but now we're racing each other head-to-head cuz the logistics are so complex that it meant we literally had to take the same plane to the same drop-off point on the same day, like, ready, go. And so, you know, he's this sort of you know, grizzled polar veteran, um older than me, but way more experienced than me as well. He's you know, he's crossed more, you know, miles in Antarctica than any living explorer pulling a sled. And on that first day, I can barely pull my sled. This is this Captain Lou. I see him on the horizon just like chilling, just like taking off, just like he's like smooth ski stroke day one, like looking behind me like, "Oh, this kid is he can't even move on the first day." And so, that question like, where are the stories we tell ourselves? What do I tell myself in that moment? Do I go like, "Wow, I'm an epic failure. I'm alone in Antarctica. My competition is way more prepared than me. What did I get myself into? You called your project the impossible first, duh." Like, I literally pick up the satellite phone to call Jenna, my wife. She knows I know she's in the details of the whole project plans. And she's like, "Why are you calling me so soon? You just got out there." And I'm like, "So, it seems like we named our project the right thing. It appears that it's um impossible." Um she's like, "Wait, what?" And I was like, "Yeah, I can't really pull the sled." So, to me, it's that moment, and I think we have a lot of these moments both in the, you know, large sense in this case or many of millions once throughout the day small decisions of you get to choose how to act in that moment. What I've realized is our minds are flooded with doubt. We're flooded with fear. We're flooded with setbacks, right? But in those moments like we actually get to choose. And I've realized to me I say the only question that truly matters when facing those kind of obstacles is how will we respond? I'm literally crying at this moment when it's minus 25, what happens when you cry? Your tears freeze to your face. It's a pathetic sight like all around. Um, but I said to myself and actually with the guidance of Jenna who's certainly been, you know, a huge guiding force to me if I haven't mentioned her enough already I'll continue to. Um, and she goes, "Look, how far away are you from the first waypoint?" And, you know, on my GPS I've got these like four markings on the map. And I had the time like, you know, I'm .54 miles away from the first it's just a millions of miles. She's like, "Okay, so you're half a mile away from the first waypoint. Forget about the thousand mile journey. Forget about Captain Lou that's like already beating you in this race. Forget about the media, the press, the students following all the questions. Forget about that. You need to set an incremental step right there. Half a mile like I can see for 10 miles. I can literally see the point that I'm trying to go half a mile." She's like, "Get to the first waypoint." That will make it feel like you've made some sort of progress around this. Like forget about tomorrow, forget about the next day. And to me that was just that that mindset shift. So instead of, you know, two things. The story I told myself wasn't you're a failure, you always knew this wasn't going to go right. It was like, "Oh, I'm the type of person that does hard things to push myself and learn. And I know it's going to be hard. In fact, I know I'm on the edge of failure an inch from failure a lot of the time. But that's when I thrive because we can I can lean into my support system. I can reprogram in my mind, tell myself a different story. So the story that I told myself that day was like, "Oh, you're the guy who's going to make it to the first waypoint today. And then tomorrow morning like we're going to figure out tomorrow tomorrow." And that and that's kind of where the journey began. Not in the not in the way I hoped it would start, but uh in a way that uh you know, forced me to really start learning and growing right out of the gate. Mhm. I love that. And to me, like reading about your story and listening to you talk about it, that was the part that made it so interesting to me was not that it came easily cuz talk about the story you tell yourself, you could also be telling the story of oh, well, this is a guy who's uh a two-state champion in swimming and soccer and he's, you know, been athletic his entire life and like just has this history of getting momentum going, especially when it's like a physical thing. And so, yeah, of course he is able to do this. Yeah. But when it's a story of no, there's literally this external um show of me not being prepared that I don't have the experience that somebody else has. They're they're, you know, disappearing off into the distance and my journey has to be one of overcoming my own mind. Yeah. And I found that really interesting. In your TED Talk, you said the biggest obstacle you're ever going to have to overcome is your mind. Yeah. That that was really interesting. What's your relationship to fear? I mean, I love what you say there. I'm going to take it back one step, which is the sort of external experience of others when you've had success. So, like you said, it's easy to sit here for me to sit here and be like, yeah, I have four world records, you know, collegiate athlete, this, that, and the other thing. Like, of course you're going to do this. I got to sit here, I don't know you very well, but I do know a bit of your story. It's like, yeah, man, you're a super successful business. You must just like crush business. Like, you know about CPG, supply chain, da da da, like all these sorts of things, right? Like, that's the deal. But, like I know because I've sat with enough successful people to be like, actually, you probably didn't know what you were doing when you started and you probably failed thousands of times along the way. The reason you've been successful is because you figured out those incremental steps, those shifts, those adaptations, those oh [ __ ] moments, it's all going to blow up and putting out a fire here and there, right? Like, that is the road to success is managing all these little failures along the way. And so, for me, in sharing my story, it's like, you know, I I watching the Olympics just like anyone, right? Um there's certain sports I'm interested and not interested in. But like curling for example, not a sport I know a ton about, but if a guy's like, "I won the gold medal on that." I'm like, "Oh, okay, fine." But give me his whole backstory about how he started throwing stones on a pond in Canada when he was 4 years old and the whole process, like I'm interested. Like the journey is interesting to me. So for me, sharing it as authentically and candidly as I have, it's easy to be like, "Yeah, I walked across Antarctica. No one in history had ever done it. People have been trying for years." Like, "Oh, I'm so amazing." Like, no, it's like actually like I set this massive goal and on hour one, day one, [laughter] like I literally thought about giving up. Like that's how hard it was. Um and we figured it out. And so, I don't know. That that piece of it. The mind in terms of the mind and fear, fear is very real. I think that one of the external perceptions of me, if you read, you know, a two-sentence bio, is, "Oh, that guy's a thrill-seeker. That guy's, you know, a risk-taker, adrenaline junkie, you know, that kind of stuff. He's putting his life on the line." Whereas I actually think about it very differently, which is the things that I'm doing, yes, there is some implicit danger in, you know, climbing a Mount Everest or being alone in Antarctica for 2 months, absolutely. But I also think that I can mitigate a lot of that fear by training and preparation, actually being prepared for what I'm doing, even though I wasn't fully fully prepared. Clearly I didn't have the math equation quite right in terms of the weight of my sled, of figuring out that preparation, but also of saying fear is real, but again, not having to react to it. So was I afraid a lot being alone in Antarctica? 100%. So I couldn't take a single day off cuz I would have run out of food, which meant that when the winds were blowing 50, 60, 70 mph, -80° wind chill would have given you frostbite within 10 seconds of having exposed skin, like I still had to be out there. Not for a minute, not for 2 minutes, for 12, 13, 14 hours. And then at the end of that day, what did I have to do? I'd have to set up my tent. Now, I couldn't bring any extra weight with me. It was too heavy, basically what it was. So I literally didn't bring an extra pair of underwear with me. I had no extra change of clothes. So I clearly didn't have an extra tent, right? No extra tent, that means if I'm setting up a tent 50, 60 mph winds, I tie one knot wrong, I clip something in wrong, it's not pegged to the ground, I let go, boom, tent's gone. I'm alone in the snowstorm in the coldest, windiest, harshest place, no hope for rescue, like game over. Like, the stakes are real. Am I afraid in those moments? Yes, I absolutely felt fear. Like, I'm a human with all of the range of emotions, ups, downs, fears, insecurities, doubts, all that kind of stuff. However, I've also figured out how to program my body to perform or at least acknowledge go like, "Oh, I'm afraid right now." Because like, if I let go of this tent, like, I could die. However, that fear could either be paralyzing, meaning, "Oh my god." And that's where I make a mistake cuz I'm so afraid and I'm shaky and I'm like, "What do I do?" Or I go like, "Oh, I'm afraid right now. That's my body's response telling me like, the stakes are real. This is the time in your brain where you need to take that fear and channel the strength from that fear and go, 'Oh, this is what means you need to focus right now. You need to double-check that knot. You need to really make sure your systems are down. to take a breath and slow down and all that.' And so, it's not about being fearless as in not having fear, but it's being able to assimilate fear to not let it paralyze you and using that as strength to focus or whatever the situation may be. Mhm. That's so interesting. What would you say is the most important thing that you did to train for this? Was it the learning to tie knots with your fingers frozen, which some of that stuff that you were doing with, you [laughter] know, getting your hands really cold and then having to do stuff that required dexterity? Was it the Vipassanā meditation? Like, what was the thing that you said, like, "If I could just hand the next person this skill, what would that skill be that's going to get them to the other side alive?" You know, it's it's fun certainly that I had this amazing coach, a guy named Mike McCastle, um who's this, you know, he's a four-time world record holder himself. He's done 5,840 pull-ups in 20 hours, something crazy, like, 30-lb weight. But, I mean, this guy is like the real deal, like, jack, you know, dude. Um and I needed to like get stronger and put on more weight than I'd had had before for this. He was the best guy to train me, and he came up with some really inventive things. Like you had like you know I had my hands in ice buckets like you said, but it's like okay, your hands need to be cold. My heart rate's jacked up cuz I've been doing you know push-ups or running right before that. But then he has me pull my hands out and he's like have me solve math equations or tie knots so that I'm like you know mind is engaged, fingers and dexterity engaged. This like that training was crucial. However, to your question, was that the most important thing? No. The most important thing that I have experienced in my life in terms of true training that I feel like that I could transport to other people as a suggestion, 100% has been the Vipassana meditations that I've done. Which for those who aren't familiar with that, basically it's a meditation practice, but the best way to sort of learn it is to go to these 10-day courses. So 10 days of silence, no reading, no writing, no eye contact. And then yes, I learned how to control my mind better for high performance in sports. But to me that practice of sitting alone, of being quiet, observing your breath. You know I whether it's in Antarctica for 54 days alone is like the longest Vipassana meditation ever. Or you know in a course which by the way is like completely free to go. Like it costs you nothing other than 10 days of your time. And for me I always tell people that's the best you know 10-day ROI that I've ever seen. I've gone multiple times. The impact is really you know it's it's it's amazing. So like getting into what you can learn through Vipassana meditation is very interesting to me. I've never done it. I'm super intrigued more so after hearing your story than I've ever been. And what I want to know because people listening right now they don't understand what the journey inside the mind is. And this is one of the reasons that The Matrix is the perfect movie to me in terms of being a metaphor for human life. Because Morpheus says the very true quote, "No one can tell you what The Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself." Like there's just no way to explain it, right? He tries at the beginning of the movie he says it's all around you. It's everything you see. But like you don't really understand what that means. So like when you say that Vipassana meditation has taking you inside the mind, this is incredibly transformational thing that it helps you develop awareness. For somebody who is sitting at home thinking I've no interest in doing that. I'm convinced they have no interest cuz they don't understand what it means. How would you describe it? All right. I love that question. It's a fantastic question. One thing that I think is beautiful about it is that because our brains as you said are malleable or that neuroplasticity, the experience is different for every person as well as it's different every time you go. So I've sat three 10-day Vipassana courses. I try to go every year, every other year, as well as some shorter ones after that. But you guys kind of start with the 10-day. And it's not as if like the first time I was like, "I'm getting better at this." And the second time I was like, "I'm pretty good at this." And the third time I was like, "I'm awesome at this." It was like, you know, even any given day in one of those 30 days that I've done it or any different moment, it's it's ups and downs. You're right in the cycle, which is a great metaphor for life. But trying to drill down a little more specific in in rich detail for a for a person, which is to help frame that. So when you're having these ups and downs in the day, is it something like I'm [ __ ] at this. My mind is just running all over the place and I have no control and I can't empty my thoughts and I'm worried about and focusing. And then when you get into sort of a zone of really being engaged in the here and now, that's when it feels like you're doing it well. Is that what you So I think in general when it sounds like I imagine you have a little bit experience with meditation in some format, which is there's no like being good at meditating. Like that's like a total fallacy in itself, which is the entire practice of Vipassana teaches you to not have either craving nor aversion. Which means if you have like this beautiful warm flow state vibration through your body, it'd be easy to be like, "I'm good at this now." Like whatever. But the second that goes away, if you start craving that good positive flow sensation, you're actually craving for something that's not there. The same conversely is like you're sitting there and like your back hurts, your knee hurts, your this and you're like, "Oh my god, I'm terrible at this. My mind's racing." All these things you're like, "I'm bad at this, you have a version to the pain of that circumstance. First is, once you go through a full 10-day, what you start to realize is, both of those things are going to come and go. There's going to be good moments, there's going to be hard moments, but both those moments are actually just objective. So, taking into Antarctica terms for a second, where the meditation completely applied to this lesson, which is, I got to a place in my mind towards the end where I could tap into flow states for a really long period of time. Um, and as storms were raging on the outside of the external, that, you know, like I said, 50, 60 mph winds, it's blowing, it's crazy. Normally, you'd be like, it's crazy out here, I can barely walk, the wind's blowing, it's so cold, I could get frostbitten in a second, I could whatever. Or, I found a place in my mind where I could possibly go like, oh, it's really windy right now. The average temperature is minus 80°. I'm out here all alone. Objectively, not wishing I was warm, not wishing I was cold, not wishing I was somewhere else, just like, it is. It is. Yes, my knee hurts right now when I'm sitting here. Yes, I'm experiencing a beautiful flow throughout my body. But, being able to being objective about that allows you to react on an even plane with that. But, one of the descriptions I think is useful for people in sort of thinking about that exercise, which I just think is tremendously valuable, or just interesting if nothing else, and I experienced it both in Antarctica as well, the first time I experienced it was in in the possible meditation, which was the memories inside my brain. The these lucid details of memory inside my brain. What I mean by that is when you sit in the stillness, like I could say to you, hey Tom, um, do you remember your high school graduation? And for a second, someone's going to a memory pops into your mind, right? But, we're going to keep talking, and we're going to continue this dialogue, and like, you know, pretty quickly, like, you're not there anymore. But, when you're alone for that long, particularly in Antarctica when you can't see anything, but in a possible meditation, like, no one's talking, no one's disturbing you, like, you go back to a memory. But, then you're there for a minute, and it's not because your your iPhone's not dinging, you have no distractions, whatever, then you're there for 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes. I've gone back through memories in my life, not just significant moments, but mundane moments like driving to school with my sister, you know, just like little walks around my neighborhood when I was a kid, my first swim race, but I can feel the wind on my face. I can see my mom across the pool deck. I can see, you know, exactly what the person next to me was. This is me 5 years old remembering in rich lucid detail, almost like being inside the matrix, like I'm there fully implanted in that moment. And why I think that that's interesting, cuz I don't think this is a unique experience to me, is that it's a reminder that we are all of those memories and think, "Oh, maybe I forgot about that from childhood." Or that trauma or that good thing that happened to me or that person I met or what I can't remember that person's name, you know, we can't recall these things always. But it's all in there. Like we are really a product of all of these experiences that we've had both good and bad and in between and mundane and all of that. And so Vipassanā connected me back to that realization of not just I am the story that I tell myself, but I'm a product of this entire path that I've walked in life and each day moment to moment to moment is important whether I can recall that in my daily life in lucid detail or it takes me to meditative place to feel that. To be fully immersed in your own journey through life and be able to reflect on that, I think is an empowering tool not just to go into the past, but to be certainly in the present and then to think about the future in the way that you want to sort of create um your own life. So to me it's just uh I don't know if that's a full description of what the matrix looks and or feels like, but it's a fascinating exploration. The truth is like I'm no Buddha. I'm no like enlightened person. I haven't like figured it all out, but what I do know, the same way I said about why I wanted to do Antarctica was this curiosity, which is just like you, I'm fascinated about the journey inward. And like I have not learned all the lesson. I probably have learned, you know, 0.001% of the lessons, but like it's fascinating. And so setting myself and putting myself in environments like a 10-day Vipassanā, like a, you know, like a daily practice, like a Antarctica, where I get to go deeper into the mind, that's fascinating for me because it's such rich and fertile ground and we're just beginning to understand like the top top top surface layer of what's possible from within. What drives you? Why like So, I get the the move towards the going inward and and having that relationship with yourself and and beginning to discover that, but I think there are far far far easier ways to do it. Um certainly less dangerous. So, what is it that um drives you? So, I see life as um there's two forces. You've got light and dark. So, there's the beautiful things you want to do, the kids you want to inspire, the relationship that you have with your wife and how you guys are doing this together and all of that's amazing and extraordinary. Um but also there's the darkness that often pushes people. For For me, for sure. Like even though what I want to do in my life is have this tremendous impact and I focus on that a lot and it really is what drives me. On the days where I'm my most fatigued, I'm I'm just spent. I don't have any more. Those moments I dip into the darkness and I think about all the people that want me to fail. I think about my own self-doubt and um in very acute moments cuz I think it's dangerous to be there too long, but in very acute moments it is more powerful and it will push me forward. What cocktail of things do you have that drives you? [snorts] You know, it's interesting. I uh have been asked this question a few different times in different formats and uh I feel like some of that disappoint people with this answer. So, [clears throat] but it's my true answer, I suppose. Um you know, I don't think of myself as someone who's had a massive chip on my shoulder. You know, like I grew up I grew up poor. Um so, I didn't have a lot of things, but that also wasn't like a huge like, you know, negative thing that I wore throughout my life. Just kind of like my circumstance and whatever. Um I I haven't really I I think I don't like I my parents are divorced, but also I have this like really amicable family, which is like my parents got divorced and then quickly remarried and my step parents are like huge influences in my life and they brought step siblings or I don't even call them step siblings. Usually they're siblings and the the Hawaiian word My dad lives in Hawaii. but the Hawaiian word for family is Ohana, but it's not just blood relatives, but it's in the larger context of family. And so literally, this is bizarre to most people, but we have what's called Ohana weekend, where it's my mom, my stepmom, my dad, my stepdad, my sisters from both marriages, and everyone, and nephews, and nieces, and everyone all in one room. And if you didn't know any of you walk in that room, you just be like, oh, this is just a family, but actually it's like people who were divorced, and they're supposed to hate each other, and all this kind of stuff, but we just created family around sort of that. So, I don't have this like again, even with like a, you know, lower income background, divorced parents, it's not like I'm like, oh, I have this like the, you know, weight of the world on me from that darkness. What I will say, one of my darker moments for sure, which you, you know, mentioned in brief in the intro, is me being severely burned in this fire. So, just after college, um I was traveling in in Thailand, and I thought jumping a flaming jump rope looked like a great idea. Um and, you know, rope wrapped around my legs, lit my body on fire to my neck, and I had to jump in the ocean to extinguish the flames, which ultimately, jumping in the ocean saved my life, but uh salt water when you've burned off skin from 25% of your body is obviously extremely painful. Um and the worst thing was, I was in a tiny little island where there was no hospital. So, I had a, you know, moped ride down a dirt path, one-room nursing station, you know, cat running around my bed and across my chest in the ICU. I mean, like, pretty much the worst place that you want to find yourself um in a situation like this, but the worst thing, I mean, the physical trauma, we've talked a lot about the mind here. I mean, the physical trauma was immense, but what really pushed me over the edge and turned to the dark, dark, dark place was a doctor walking in on about day two or day three of this ordeal in this, you know, makeshift hospital in the middle of nowhere in Thailand, and through this broken English, this Thai doctor saying to me like, "Hey, um you'll probably never walk again normally." And you're like, what you know, I like I said, I had identified myself as this sort of active athlete throughout my life. I'm 22 years old, kind of, you know, bridging the gap between college and embarking on adulthood. Um and, you know, in an instant, I made one stupid decision being, you know, a precocious 22-year-old kid thinking, you know, jumping a flaming jump rope looked like a fun idea on the beach in Thailand one day to boom, like life as you know it over. Um, and that that moment is full of so much darkness for me. Um, but I'm not sure if it's because I choose to have a rather optimistic perspective on the world. I don't I don't know exactly what the wiring is or that or the sort of the nurture elements of this, but the heroine of this story is my mother who flies all the way over to Thailand, sits with me in this hospital bed, and she's, you know, she's in the hallway. She's crying with the doctors, you know, she's pleading them for good news saying your diagnosis must be wrong, all this kind of stuff. But every day she walks into my hospital room with this huge smile on her face, with this air of positivity, this this this daring me to dream for like, your life's not over, Colm. What do you want to do? Just this resonant vibration of positivity, positivity, positivity, positivity to kind of compound the yin and yang of my darkness, darkness, darkness as I'm downward spiraling further and further. And ultimately, she gets me to focus my mind. She's like, let's set a goal, anything, whatever you dream up. Will you picture yourself, visualize yourself in the future. I close my eyes that day and picture myself, oh, one day I'm going to race a triathlon. And instead of her being like, hey, I said set a goal, but like look at your legs and the doctors and all this kind of stuff. She's like, she's like, yeah, cool. Like that's your goal. Why don't we start training right now? Within a couple hours, I have this Thai doctor bringing in these weights for me. I'm bandaged from the waist down. I haven't taken a step in months, but I'm starting to lift weights going like, hey doc, I'm training for a triathlon. I know I can't move my legs right now, but one day I'm going to race a triathlon. And, you know, fast forward in my life, you know, 18 months, I finally fly back to the United States. I I learn how to walk again through this sort of prolonged process of my mother kind of goading me to take my first step into the chair in front of me, sort of getting out of a wheelchair and all this. But I get to Chicago and I race my first triathlon and surprise the heck out of myself not just finishing the race, but actually winning the entire race. Um, and it's a long-form story, but you know, in the interest of time, to answer your question about the darkness is I was in a really dark moment in time. And through my mother's guidance, she showed me actually that in these dark moments, like I said, we have a choice. And she somehow convinced me, and I'm eternally grateful for her to convince me to say like, "Focus your mind on a positive outcome. This is the bottom. You're bottoming out right now, but you can only go up from here. Like, let's get better. Let's focus on something." Great, you want to race a triathlon. I could have said I want to do anything. I want to write a book. I want to do this. I want to just, you know, whatever. It could have been anything, and she would have been like, "Great." But she was there supporting me, which made all the difference. But what I took from that, and the ultimate lesson of winning this triathlon, was going like, "Wow, like I don't think of myself as some like superhuman athlete." It's something that's like, "Wow, like not me, but all of us as humans have these reservoirs of untapped potential that we can, you know, extract from when we focus our mind on these positive outcomes." So, for me, the darkness, or like the way you describe those hard moments, I go through all sorts of hard moments. I mean, I'm out there in Antarctica, but I have this ability to go back and go like, in terms of pain, like I felt as like burn accident is one of the most painful injuries you can have. You know, nerve endings exposed on your full body. You're afraid. You're in the middle of nowhere. No one's speaking English. There's cat You know, like it doesn't get I mean, it can get bad. A lot of people I don't pretend to know people's everyone else's pain. But for me, like that is a depth of despair um that is a pretty low low. But then knowing and having the experience to have gotten through that, in those hard moments, I can go like, "Oh, I'm experiencing another hard moment. But this too shall pass. This too shall pass, particularly and it'll be the they'll it will pass in an expedited way if I can refocus my energy in that positive direction and find those incremental steps to move forward with. So, for me, that's been the darkness, but that has also, you know, and I'm I I I I don't know your story enough, but I I would I would surmise that you've learned some of your greatest lessons through some of your greatest failures, right? By you know, and so it's the same thing where it's like, "Yeah, I made a stupid mistake." People go, "Well, do you regret jumping the rope?" And I'm like, "I wouldn't take it back for anything. Like, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, either, to go through that. But for me, now, that lesson has given me so much strength coming out the other side of the side of that with this curiosity about unlocking human potential and the other things that I've pursued in my life." Yeah, I love that. But I'm going to push you more, because I know that me. in your um the crossing, you start off behind our boy, Yeah. and he's winning, Yeah. and it would have been extraordinary for you to have finished anyway, but you had Kobe Bryant in your head Yeah. telling you, "I'm going to outwork everybody, motherfucker." Yeah. And you want to talk about somebody who knows how to leverage the darkness. And maybe that's not what you were doing. This is not me trying to say you must have. I'm just saying there's a competitive drive in you that I want to understand, and I want to understand it through the lens of one I want to be able to use that. So, I want to internalize the lessons you've learned. Yeah. Um and I want to pass it on to people that are watching this. That's [ __ ] awesome to me. The fact that you were like, "All right, if this guy does 11 hours, I'm doing 12. If he does 12, I'm doing 13." And you end up winning. [clears throat] Like, you beat him by two and a half, three days, or something crazy. So, that mentality is so intoxicating to me. I just want to understand like where that comes from. Like, how does one cultivate that in their life? That's actually what I'm asking you. Yes, okay. Um 100% there is a super competitive side of me. Um and completing the crossing was always my goal, even though we didn't know if it was possible or impossible. And the fact that yes, I ultimately won this race, but the fact that after 100-plus years no one completing it, we both completed it, and I think it's actually fascinating, and it's a cute and I waited at the finish for Lou to congratulate him, because although yes, I worked my ass off to make sure that I was first and I won this race, like, it's an extraordinary accomplishment to finish this, because the amount of people that have tried and failed and died, etc. Like, that two people could do it within a couple of days with each other is is amazing and I think it's probably a testament to both of us uplifting one another in that competitive spirit. And so I do believe that in the sort of vein of competition that that actually drives innovation. I mean, if you take it in the business context, like some of the best innovation has come out of people going like trying to get a competitive advantage over there over their peers, you know, whether that's whatever industry that is. It's not like you guys you didn't create the nutrition industry. Like that existed but you were like looking like, well, what's a better way to do this? Like what's a better way to optimize that? What's a better way to market this? What's a better way to this? And I imagine you thrived off of that competition in some way. And for me being a curious person about you know, we can talk about the you know, we talk a lot about the inward journey but the curious person like, what are my edges? Like what is this? I'm like, I see somebody else out there and I'm going, yes, he's more experienced than me. He clearly has a lighter It was very obvious from day one that he had about a 50 at least pound lighter sled than me because I had erred on the side of bringing more and more food per day and like all this kind of stuff. But I'm going like but he's human like he's human too. I was very intimidated by him but I was also like, but he's human too. And so can he actually go longer than me? Like you your Kobe Bryant example which was really relevant for me. I happened to be listening to a podcast about Kobe Bryant at the time. I didn't listen to almost nothing out there but it was a day where I did listen to uh I think it was Lewis Howes' podcast um and he had Kobe on and he's talking about outworking people. He's like, I wasn't the best basketball player, I wasn't the this but I would you know, come to the gym an hour before them, I would stay an hour later. And for me I was like, okay, like let let me see what I can push. I'm exhausted out here but I'm racing another human being. Like cuz I don't elevate myself on some superhuman platform so I certainly don't do that with others either. Like I'm like, okay, that's that's a human. Like so let me see what the limits and our edges are. And so the curiosity is, yes, I wanted to win, but more than even wanting to win, I wanted to find what my potential was in that moment, and I felt that I had more to give. And that commitment of mine, the same way that I committed to saying, "I can't walk right now, but I want to race a triathlon." was the same in a microcosm of that day on the sixth day when I passed Lou of saying like, "Okay, I caught up to him. Thank God, cuz I thought he was long gone. But now, I'm not going to I'm going to I'm going to take advantage of this moment. Like, I'm going to like great. Like, I'm going to take advantage of this moment. This is where I don't just like, 'Oh great, you caught up to him. How nice.' It's like, now you pass him. Now you can see if you can stay in front." Like, I I make that a game in my mind, which is both, you know, I suppose in a small sense at the expend of at the expense of the person you're competing against, but I really frame it in my mind more as like, "This person this competition is actually bringing out the best in me." Like, "Oh, I have more. I have more to give." And I'm just like, "Great. Like, man, I I actually though when I started, I thought I could only go 10 hours per day. Literally, I was like, "10 hours per day like, that is a long time all alone in a freezing cold place dragging a 375-lb sled. That's ridiculous." But then that one day when I passed him, I ended up going 12 hours. And then after that 12 hours, I went every single day for the next 50 days. And in day five and day six, 12 hours seemed unfathomable. Then because of this daily competition, I proved that I could do it once. And then I go, "Well, if I can do it once, I can surely do it twice." Five days then I go, "Well, let me do it for the next five days then I'll back it off to 10." And that's what I told myself. But of course, once I got five days down the path of 12, I was like, "Well, can I do 12 and a half hours? Can I do you know?" And that's where I started playing with that. And ultimately, my final push in Antarctica on my very last day was, you know, 77 miles straight 32 hours without stopping. Uh and so, you know, it's it's definitely there is a competitive side for me um and and harnessing that competition I think it it's it's looking within. I think it's it's really pursuing things that you are passionate about. I know that to get maybe it's thrown around too much, but for me it was like I can like I didn't end up in Antarctica by like, oh, maybe I should go to Antarctica or I should like go here or a desert or like doing something this next couple months would be cool. Like I was all in on this with my family, with my wife. I certainly care about the impact that I can drive in the world and I knew that I could have a much more significant impact, be that with my nonprofit work, be that with even things that pay me well, but actually the impact that I have in the world, the voice, the platform would be more significant. I'm sitting here with you right now having this conversation probably because I was first. And in the back of my mind I'm aware of that. I'm aware I'm going like, oh, like me doing that allows me to do more of what I love, but we chose Antarctica because it was a medium or a place that I was deeply curious about. So when those two things are combined, which is the outcome of being competitive or winning, if you will, is in line with your core vi- vision or mission into the world, as well as what you're actually doing in the day-to-day of the journey aligns of like, oh, I wasn't just trying to get to the end goal so I could be sitting here in this chair having an interesting conversation. It was like I went to Antarctica cuz like I [ __ ] wanted to go to Antarctica and like see what that was like. And those two things combining, wanting the end outcome, but also wanted to be super deep immersed in the journey. When the journey got hard it was like, yeah, man, like this is what you signed up for. Like this this is where the growth happens. I am a way out far in my comfort zone right now and Lou is pushing me to my absolute brink, but like wow, like this is also really, really cool. And I'm I mean I energetically excited just talking about it because I remember that moment and how much, you know, now I I've grown from that challenge. Mhm. I love that. I love that so much. There's There's another side to you that I am just beyond drawn to and Will Smith has a quote that will lead us there, which is he said the reason that I've won in my life is because I'm prepared to die in the treadmill and most people are not. Mhm. And I always loved that and he gets to have when he's playing Muhammad Ali, he gets to, you know, put on screen this moment where he says, "The opponent that I'm facing right now will never win cuz what they don't understand is that I will die in the ring before I'll leave." Mhm. I thought, "Oh god, that's so [ __ ] powerful." Like I I really do aspire to that in my life because of my value hierarchy. Like pushing myself to really see how much my potential I can ring out is my highest value. And so, seeing people that are driven like that I find very interesting. You had a moment when you were climbing Mount Everest, I believe, where you thought you had frostbite on your hand so severe that you were almost certainly going to lose your hand. And you say to yourself, "Okay, well, I'm probably going to lose my hand anyway. Put it back in the glove and you keep going cuz you said, "Well, if I'm going to lose my hand, I'd rather lose it having summited than, you know, turning around and going back." And I thought that was so rad. It turns out that it was a mistake and your hand was just fine, but the fact you were willing to keep going. So, so my my real question is, what is your relationship to death? Like how do you think about it? And is there something in your value system that's like Look, I obviously want to always always always take every precaution in the world to avoid it and I know that you want to die warm and surrounded by people that you love, I'm sure. That's got to be the the desired outcome, but like how do you conceptualize death and and the dance that you do with it? Mhm. It's a great question. I love the Will Smith quote, by the way. So good. Very powerful. Very powerful. Um, I actually I don't know if he meant this by saying it, but I like the treadmill metaphor because I I love the idea of you know, yes, I'm crossing Antarctica, the news and the press are following this, whatever, but like the only reason I'm there is because of the 10 or 20 years when no one was watching that I was like showing up to the swimming pool. You know, I love the phrase chop wood, carry water. So, I picture, you know, the to me the treadmill is evocative of like the guy alone just grinding, grinding, and working towards that. Um, so I love that. But in In of in terms of death, um you know, I'm aware of it in the sense that I know that the things that I do or have done are certainly perceived as risky, and people have died attempting them. The day that I summited Mount Everest that you describe as I the the hand story, it's funny. I haven't thought about that story in quite some time. You do your research, man. I'm impressed. I'm very impressed. Um this is a great interview. You're awesome. Um the uh the Three people died that day on Everest that I summited. Um not anyone that I knew. I didn't know it at the time. I didn't know it till I was off the mountain, but you know, to put into perspective like the thing that I was doing on the day that it was done, three human beings lost their life up there that day. Um and that's, you know, terribly sad, obviously. Um The thing for me is that in terms of death, I'm not seeking a young death. I Like you said, I'd rather die when I'm old and in a warm bed, and um I have also visualized that outcome, so I'm I'm I'm hopefully certain that that that will be the outcome that it will be. Um but I also embrace living. I want to live a full life. And so for me, we talked about fear before. My biggest fear um I so I think about the spectrum of emotions and human experience in a kind of a a one to 10 vertical. So I guess one will call it's called one, the worst day of your life, and 10, you know, pure hedonistic euphoria of like, you know, whatever that is for you. And I think that often times people try to stay at five. You know, on the Maslow's hierarchy of needs or whatever that is, they're not trying to be self-actualized or anything like that, but they're just kind of going like, you know, shelter, food, you know, basic things are taken care of, you know, maybe I'm not married to the perfect person, but like they're fine, and like, you know, whatever. Just kind of like they're they're they're good. Um and I think our society and culture definitely drives people towards that middle in a lot of ways. Um and you know, maybe your best day, you know, a fun Saturday with your buddies or something is a six and then like a day where your boss yells at you is like a four, but like you're kind of range bound in this like sort of like four to six like kind of like the middle of the road. And for me, that's my biggest fear. My biggest fear, and as that pertains, you know, to living life fully and not not being afraid of death, if you will, um although I am not like generally if I'm standing on a cliff and it just drops off 5,000 ft, I'm like, "Oh, this is so chill." I mean, I'm not Alex Honnold. Um my biggest fear is that is sort of bottoming out at that plateau of comfortable complacency, if you will. Uh my mind, I guess, is is very visual. Um it sounds as if this will make any sense, but instead of sort of thinking of that one to 10 on a on a linear plane, you know, that's kind of like bad and best-case scenario, I've actually bent that in my mind to be kind of like a U-shape. And I've got one here and I've got 10 on the side of this U-shape and I've got four to five and six down at the bottom here. And I'm actually trying to avoid that bottom. I'm happy to be at a one, meaning that I am confronting something that's so challenging or so sad or so full of fear or so anxiety-inducing that I'm crying and I'm afraid like but I'm feeling something. Like I'm up actually it's the same as feeling the hedonistic pleasure of the most beautiful, you know, sexy profound moment, if you will, because in both senses like I'm engaged. I'm living. I'm right there. And so for me, the the fear is not death specifically, but the curiosity is how can I do things in my life where I experience more ones and I experience more 10s and I spend fewer of my moments in the four to five. And you have to pass through four to five. I mean, a lot of my days are four to five. You have to pass through four to five to get to one and 10. I don't think you can live in one and 10 either, but not being afraid of either outcome. So not hedging so much against being afraid to die that you don't fully live. That is such a [ __ ] great answer. Like [laughter and clears throat] I just wanted to just like sit in silence for a minute. That was really really awesome, man. Um yeah, I've never thought about it like that, but you're right. Like the sense of being alive even in moments of pain is far more interesting than the numbness of the middle. Yeah. So, that's really rad. Tell people where they can find you and follow this crazy journey of yours. Instagram and social is kind of my main platform. It's my name @colinobrady c o l i n o b r a d y. Um I'm on there pretty active. My website is colinobrady.com. Have a book that's going to come out early next year. Um so, that'll all be up on my Instagram and website and stuff like that. So, check that out when it comes out in 2020, hopefully. And uh got some inklings about some other expeditions and things like that. Nothing ready to announce yet, but my my next art pieces will be coming to life um here at some point. So, uh come say hi. Come follow along. I love it when people say hello and send a direct message on Instagram, stuff like that. I love to hear about everyone's life, hopes, fears, dreams, goals, passions. Um I love hearing about it all. That's what inspires me is is the other folks engage with me. So, come say hello. And uh yeah. That's super cool. All right. What is the impact that you want to have on the world? Um for me I'm going to answer it in actual relation to what I just did, which is I'm going to use social media as an example actually, even though there's things that I really dislike about social media. Um when I do one of these art pieces, when I do one of these projects and someone writes to me and says, you know, "Hey, I'm in a bad spot in my life. I'm battling depression. I can barely get out of bed. I've gotten you know several people say, 'Hey, I was thinking about committing suicide or something like that.'" And someone writes to me and says, "The way you're living your life has allowed me to change something in my body, in my brain that I can now get out of that bed. I can now take that first step out of the wheelchair like you did when you were you know burned in the fire in Thailand and begin the long road of process towards a better life." That impact for me is significant. But, I want to have that impact at scale. Infecting one person like that is deeply profound. And if I can infect just one, amazing. It's a life well lived. But what I've started to realize is that I can't I can't account for nor do I need to what the impact that one person turning around their life is with the 10 people in their immediate community and the 10 people in the community around that. And so if I can start to impact others through what I'm doing, that ripple effect of positivity throughout the world. I want to see people in a time when it's easy to be at a four or five or six, step outside that comfort zone, create, innovate, you know, be be fully resonant with positivity in the world. The thing that I'll close with I suppose is when I was out in Antarctica alone for that long, people said, "Oh, what are all the lessons? What are this?" You know, we I could sit here and we talk hours and hours about all the different crazy wrinkles and things. But two words kept coming into my head over and over and over again, which was infinite love. Infinite love. Infinite love. So much so that when I was in the middle of Antarctica, on some of my darkest moments, I'm alone, completely alone, I actually felt more connected to humanity than I'd ever been before. So much so that I actually put my arms out like this into the air and could feel the warmth and radiation of people sending me positive energy and cheering me along in my pursuit. And this sounds maybe a little woo-woo, I don't know, but I felt like I could take that energy in and I literally I'm Here's me in the middle of Antarctica doing this, taking the energy in and then sending it back out in the world. And that's the impact that I want to have. I want to take that infinite love in but send it out in a scalable way that magnifies these ripple effects of positivity throughout the world. [ __ ] Yeah. Dude, thank you so much for coming on the show. Yeah, man. My pleasure. My pleasure. Guys, needless to say, follow this man. It is just beyond extraordinary. You will see in yourself that you can do the same kind of things that he's doing, that you can have a life full of 10s and 1s. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Colin, [applause] [ __ ] hell, man. Going to work on myself and saying, "I don't know how to do this, but I know that to get over there, that [ __ ] side, I got to grind myself into a [ __ ] fine powder." And I did it.