(PART 2) The Climb Out of Pain is Taller Than Everest with National Geographic photographer Cory Richards

0:00Please be aware that in this episode, Simon and Corey have a discussion about suicide. Check the show notes below for the time code. I was sitting there and I ended up just sobbing and screaming into my sleeping bag at the top of my lungs because I didn't want the camp staff to hear what was happening. I walked into the cook tent and I was like, I'm done. And they're like, with the expedition? And I was like, no, I'm like done climbing and taking pictures. In the last episode of A Bit of Optimism, I sat down with Corey Richards. He's the climber and photographer whose selfie, after he survived an avalanche, made it to the cover of National Geographic.

0:38His journey is nothing short of extraordinary. And, as powerful as our first episode was, our conversation went even deeper. Corey's story is not just about surviving the mountains. It's about confronting the personal battles that follow, the moments of clarity and chaos that shape who we all are. This is a bit of optimism. Our minds do this thing called splitting. When we feel under threat, we get more binary, which you see proliferating in extreme ways across America. For good reason, by the way. There's no time for nuance when there's a threat. Am I going to get eaten or am I not going to get eaten?

1:15But there is time for critical thinking. Right. To be able to slow yourself down and move into a response mindset. And this is something I actually speak about. This whole system is something I came up with. largely because I was so heartbroken that I was like, how the fuck do I get through this? You know? And basically, if you can master the skill of slowing yourself down, which comes down to learning how to self-regulate, you can make that shift really quickly. From binary to critical. From binary to critical, out of sympathetic into parasympathetic. It reminds me of pilots. Yeah. I mean, if you've ever heard air traffic control tapes.

1:58Right. of a really bad emergency on an aircraft. Yeah. To me, the most extreme one is a very famous plane crash back in Sioux Falls. Sioux Falls or Sioux City, I can't remember. But basically, the plane's full-on on fire. Yeah. The engines are on fire. You know, the plane's on fire. They've lost hydraulics, which is like literally the worst thing that can happen. Yeah. And they're controlling the plane with the engines, like left and right with thrust, right? There's video footage of it, of the plane coming in for landing on fire. And it hits, it crash lands, it somersaults. And miraculously, half the people survived, including the pilot.

2:35But when you go listen to the air traffic control chatter, it's like, we're on fire right now. I'm going to make an emergency landing, you know? Yeah. And you can hear the tension in their voice, but they're calm and they're thinking. And they saved the lives of many because they could think critically. And it's everything you're saying. Which is in time of tension, they go calm, they self-regulate, they think about the problem, and they have options as opposed to black and white and panic. Right, right. The key component, I think, of resilience is the jumping off point and goes back to my dad is agency.

3:12Because if you're looking at why did this happen, this happened to me, if you're in a place of victimhood or if you're in a place of blame, you are quite literally backwards looking. There's no forward focus there. You're, I mean - This happened to me. This happened to me, not this is the current situation. Right. I can figure out, I can go to my therapist and figure out - There's a time and place for that. There's a time and place for that. But in those critical moments, it's about taking agency of the situation. I mean, we saw it with the fires, nine of my friends, overnight, homeless. I mean, they're my whole core men's community.

3:49They all lived in the Palisades. And it's a natural response. when we are in threat, when we are in pain, we naturally look for places to put blame. Of course. It helps us feel better. It helps us feel better. It's an outsourcing of pain. The friends who did that, they didn't recover as well as the ones who basically said, it happened. My house burned down. Now what do I do? I can figure out the fire hydrants and the reservoirs later. Right now, I need to slow it down to speed up. Slow is fast. And that is a resilience mindset. There is an element of survival mode, but you're not outsourcing it.

4:30So go back to your model. It starts with self-regulation. It starts with agency. I mean, yes, self-regulation. But basically, the sort of four key components are agency is everything. So taking ownership over the situation. Which is the opposite of victimization. A hundred percent. Agency is everything. Discovery demands discomfort, meaning you have to lean in to the discomfort of the situation and not try to escape it. The third is certainty kills curiosity, meaning as soon as you're certain about something, growth is done, right? And then adaptation leads to evolution, which is about not trying to remake something, but trying to reimagine something from the ground up.

5:13You can take pieces from the past so long as you're not married to it, but you can't remake the past. You just can't functionally. Can you give me a specific story that you have gone through where you were able to apply those four elements and manage through something that you may have not have been able to in the past? It's a beautiful question because it leads to this moment right here. In 2021, height of COVID, I had been training for a new route on Everest to climb something that had never been climbed before by anybody, do it without oxygen. And we had tried in 2019 and failed or not gotten to the top.

5:48We can get back to failure because I don't believe in it. In the history of the universe, not one single thing has ever failed. Yeah. We'll get back to that. Yeah, we'll get back to that. So it's 2021 and the Everest season from the North side, which is where we were climbing from, the Tibetan side, gets canceled. And so we have all this money saved. We're making a film about my dying father and this climb and mental health. And we decided to go to a mountain called Dalagiri, which is the seventh highest mountain in the world. It's sort of like a dry run. And we ended up at base camp and I had not been sleeping well.

6:24I had not been eating a lot. I was very emotional. I was teary. We flew to base camp in a helicopter. So we jumped elevations really quick. And then we exerted ourselves for three days trying to build a base camp. Because there's no infrastructure. There's no infrastructure there, especially that time of year, those seasons. Again, we were trying a new route. So there's this hyper stress going on. And the team went out to sort of recon a way onto the face because nobody had ever climbed it. I stayed in my tent and my brain started to speed up. And I started to cry uncontrollably. I was trying to read, but I really couldn't make sense of the words.

7:04I was reading, I think, Autobiography of a Yogi or something like that. And all I kept coming back to was this word, love, love, love. But then it was countered by this idea of like sort of grandiosity and dying. I couldn't make sense of it. Later on, it would be, I think, reasonably diagnosed as a very extreme mixed bipolar episode, which is where you're experiencing crushing depression and hypomania in my case all at the same time. So it's incredibly hard. Anyway, I was sitting there and I ended up just sobbing and screaming into my sleeping bag at the top of my lungs because I didn't want the camp staff to hear what was happening.

7:46Team came back and I walked into the cook tent and I was like, I'm done. And they're like, what do you mean you're done? And I was like, I'm done. And they're like, with the expedition, I mean, dude, hundreds of thousands of dollars, sponsors, like all of it. And I was like, no, I'm like done climbing and taking pictures. And their jaws dropped. I'm crying, sobbing at the time. They're like, what are you going to do? And I'm like, move to LA and make movies. You know, so there was like, there was this amplified grandiosity going on. Next day I get up, I leave, I walk down the valley, I get on a helicopter, I fly back to Kathmandu, I get on a plane, I fly home.

8:33And now I'm getting really depressed. You know, there's a sense of freedom in it. I'm like, oh, I freed myself from this, whatever it was. But I get home and then I get this email. My mom texts me really early in the morning and she said, did you get the email from Tommy, who was part of the team. And it was just this scathing interpretation of what had happened, you know, vast manipulation, hiding behind mental health, like all of these things. And I was so depressed at the time. I was like, well, fuck it. I'll just kill myself. Like I'm done. Peace out. Like, and it wasn't the first time I'd had that thought in my life.

9:11and so I prepared myself and did all you know I like took a shower and pulled out a climbing rope and tied a noose and hung it from the ceiling and got up on the stool and and I and I was I almost accidentally did it and um anyway it was I ended up obviously not dying and and and reaching out for help and really dove in very deep into the mental health world. I knew all the words. I knew all the ideas by that point, but I contextualized it. People who think a lot do that. And they think that the knowledge is the healing and the healing isn't the knowledge at all. It's like wisdom can't be taught, but knowledge can.

9:57Wisdom is the embodiment. And then I didn't know what I was going to do. I had built this identity as a photographer and as a climber and National Geographic this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And now none of those things existed. And there was a stark reality and a very deep probing of who am I as a human being? If I don't have these anchors and my value can no longer be tied to an external expression, What does that mean for my humanity? So now you see like taking agency over the situation. What is the truth? The truth is not - Who am I not? Who do others think I am? Exactly. Like, and here's the reality.

10:45I now am stepping into an unknown future. Then you get into this, like, I don't, I'm not climbing anymore. I'm not taking photographs. I'm not working for National Geographic. I am not, none of these things. So now here I am. These are the hurdles that are impacting me that are from my past. I need to take care of those. I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't have limitless money. How am I going to sort this out? Boom. You've got agency. Then you move into discovery demands endurance. That is a very uncomfortable place to be. You've got financial stresses. You've got long-term life path stresses.

11:24you've got identity stresses and I'm sitting there going, this is the most uncomfortable I've ever been. During that time, I went through a very, very toxic and also formative, beautiful relationship where I was dating this gal and again, if you really look at it, I had anchored myself to her beauty. I just thought she was the most beautiful thing in the world and maybe if I'm standing next to her, that can make up for all the other things that I've let go. And then we moved to Thailand. And then I come to find out that she had actually been, and I write about it in the book, so I feel square talking about this with, she knows.

12:08She approved the chapter, but come to find out that she had been escorting during our relationship. So now there's this heartbreak involved in this now too. And that is a deeply uncomfortable place. So there's loss, there's heartbreak. and I just had to sit in it and I just had to sit in it and explore it. Then you get to, well, let's get curious about this. What are the stories that I'm telling? Where's my certainty in this? And are those certainties true? And what stories are those certainties driving that are anchoring me in beliefs? What is my story? Is that story true? Exactly. Is that story really true?

12:42Is that story really? And if it's not true, what does that mean? So now you're in curiosity versus certainty. And out of that came the book because it was the mining of all of this that led me to writing what became the first book. And that starts to be an adaptation, right? What's interesting is, and I've said this before, I did not start writing that book from a place of service at all. I actually started writing from a place of victimhood. Look at all the things that happened to me. And that went back to the curiosity part where I'm like, wait a minute. You know, like the story with my brother, he did all these things.

13:26Well, wait a minute. Was it just him or were you getting something from this? And as soon as I started asking those questions and being willing to write them out, despite all the discomfort, I started discovering that there was a deeper truth to all of this that allowed me to take more and more and more agency, which allowed me to expand the discomfort, which allowed me to be more curious. And then the words start coming out. And it transformed the book from a sob story into an act of service that says, this is my life. You've seen it from this side. Now let me tell you what's going on. And I hope the lessons I've learned are valuable to you so you don't have to go through what I've gone through.

14:06Even if we don't know each other, you are not alone. You're not the first person to go through this. You're not the first person. It doesn't mean it's not unique and special to you. It feels like it's the only thing. But I just want you to know. It turns a vicious cycle into a virtuous one. Exactly. And so just really recently, all of this solidified where I was like, oh, it was really about the discovery of values, which came through my men's work. Because it was like, people are like, oh, you've been so resilient in your life. And I'm like, mm-mm. I was living in survival, which is why I was doing all of the things that were so dark behind the surface.

14:44I was just grabbing for candy, you know? Okay, so that's where you learned it. Yeah, that's where I learned it. Tell me an experience where you were able to apply it consciously. You're like, ah, okay, I've got these four things. I'm going to do it. Or is it not like that? No, no, no. Because it sounds prescriptive. This is where it gets back to us right now. So 2025, I was in Hawaii with now my ex-partner for the holidays. We get a call from my mom. She says, dad has an internal bleed. He's been sick for five years. You need to come home. It's happening. So we get on a plane. We land on New Year's Eve.

15:21I go see my dad. He bounces back, but it's like, okay, this is coming. We come home on the 6th. The fires happen on the 7th. my entire community gets thrust into triage mode, which amplifies everybody's nervous system. My ex and I break up. She's my best friend at the time. I mean, this is very recent, by the way. This is why it's like, give me some whiskey. My ex and I break up and she's been my best friend for over a year. So the thing goes away. Not by design, it was not in any way overlapping, but there was a woman that came into my life at basically at that exact same moment. And it was the first time in my life that I had a deep internal knowing.

16:09I was like, this is, oh, oh, this is like, this is, this is the thing that people talk about. It was like, I felt something in my gut, in my body that knew. It was like I had found my mirror. I'd found the person. Mom calls again. Now you really got to come home. I get on a plane. She calls on Saturday morning. I get on a plane. I arrive and dad is definitely dying. My brother who I hadn't seen, I think, four years shows up. It's totally amicable. We're here in this together. We sit on my dad's bed that night with my cousin and his wife. And we were giving my dad like little drawing the syringe, the little syringe, little shots of Jameson, sort of in between his moments of lucidity.

17:03And we're all just laughing and telling stories. And the next day we had a conversation just about, hey, how long is this going to last? And the hospice people just said, hey, just make him comfortable. Make him comfortable. And that night, it was clear that he was dying. And we were all exhausted. I went to lie down for a little bit. My mom went to take out the recycling or something. And when everybody was out of the room, he died.

17:40and I mean I'm still very much processing that and then and then this gal that I was so deeply falling in love with truly falling in love in a way that I've never imagined is even possible and she she said you know she was like look I'm still talking to some other people. And I said, okay, like I can handle that. All I need is communication. And she was going out of town and I knew she was going to go on a date. And I said, just look, it was going to be hard for me, but like, please just communicate. And she didn't text or communicate for nine or 10 days. And then when we finally communicated again, it was, I'm going to pursue this other thing.

18:24And, um, and then the totality of everything kind of crashed into me. The fires is a backdrop. Even though the relationship needed to end, she was still my best friend. It wasn't like, wasn't bad. Dad dies, the rocket ship of love and the fall to earth of heartbreak. and I was sitting there on an airplane going, any one of these events is life-altering and I'm trying to juggle four at the same time. Every day I wake up now and I try to take agency. What do I really know? I know my dad's dead. I know it hurts. I know I tasted something so sweet, but that's not here anymore for now. Maybe it comes back.

19:30Maybe it doesn't. It doesn't even matter. So I take agency and I sit in the place of discomfort every day. Today's been a terrible one. Terrible. Sometimes I sit in my car and I scream as loud as I fucking can and just cry because it just hurts so fucking much. So I'm in the place of just profound discomfort. And every day as I start to make up new stories about my lack of value or why she left or what the other guy has or whatever it is or what my ex is doing now or how I've, whatever. Anytime I start to come up with a story, it's like there's an elbow block of something so deep in me that says, uh-uh, you're trying to create certainty, which is a grasp for comfort, which you know is not what you need because it will erase your agency.

20:34You're giving all the power away. And so there's the deep curiosity of, well, now what? You know, now what? And I don't know what the adaptation is, but I know that if I stick to my values, I stay in my integrity, I watch the crutches, I know that what's on the other side of this is profound. And this conversation in some small or large way is the adaptation or a piece of it that will lead to the evolution. anyway

21:14thanks for sharing Jesus it's just so man it hurts the whiskey's good who's sitting with you in this through this

21:36right now you are like and this is i think

21:44obviously this is a more curated environment but

21:51when people sit and don't try to change it and they just allow you to be sad without silver lining it without at least this way you know at least they just sit and they say that that's got hurt. Those people are the most valuable. They're not trying to change it. When you try to change somebody's pain, you are rejecting it. And so I have this group of men here that I have great female friends too, but this group of men, Treehouse, we talk every day. And you have that. I have that. Yeah. It doesn't mean it hurts less. It's just, I know that I have a foundational group of people that will always show up.

22:35The part that needs to be underlined here is that group. Totally. As I said about the story from Johnny Quest, which is, he said, I'm with you. Yeah. And then I had the strength to keep going. Right. Because it's definitely not internal fortitude. I'd already decided I was quitting. Right, right. You're not looking for anybody to fix anything. You said it's agency. Yeah. You're not looking for anybody to convince you that everything's fine. Everything is not fine. And what you're going through is awful. And this is where I think agency is so fascinating or the ability to be okay with discomfort and all your four things.

23:13The question I would raise is, does any of us have the internal fortitude to do any of those four things alone? Or the only reason you can do those four things is because you have a person or a network that when you say, this is what's happening to me, they simply say to you, yeah, that sucks. And validate the way you feel so that you have the strength of feeling not alone in taking agency, sitting in discomfort, being curious. Yeah. I wonder if the foundation of all those four things is the love that people have of you. when you almost ended it, who did you call? At that moment, I called my then therapist, now friend, dear friend.

24:02And I just said, help, just help. I don't know what to do. And then my friend Lori came over and I remember I was in my underwear. I was just laying on the floor and she just laid down on top of me and put her head on the small of my back. I remember very distinctly first feeling her hair and then feeling that kind of like stickiness because I knew she was crying. Yeah, yeah. The salt on salt. The salt on, yeah. Yeah. And I remember she just said, don't go.

24:40And, you know, in this situation now, it's never been, I haven't gotten to that place because I have this incredible group of people that exemplifies and amplifies love and support. And they can't do anything. They can't do functionally anything aside from - They can't bring your dad back. They can't bring the girl back. There's nothing to solve. There's nothing to solve. And so I think your question is, something that I would say I am certain of is that we can do fantastic things alone. And ultimately the road that you take is your own. You have to do the work. You have to do the steps, but those steps are made possible by the community we keep.

25:30There's an irony in all of your story. There's a deep irony in all of it, which is the glory, the individual glory that comes with climbing a mountain and taking a picture from the top and yet somebody else took the picture of you or somebody else prepped your climbing gear or somebody else helped get you the sponsor or or and and and this team of people so that one person can have glory and it's the same with those olympic medalists which is they stand on the podium with the gold medal and say look what i did and yet the scores of relationships and friends and family and coaches and nutritionists who devoted their lives so that this one person could achieve their dream.

26:09Yeah. And I think the selfishness, what I'm learning, the selfishness is not the desire to climb the mountain and win the gold medal. That's not the selfishness. The selfishness is standing on the top of the mountain or standing on the podium with the gold medal and not saying thank you. Yeah. Yeah. It's the lack of acknowledgement. It's the lack of gratitude is the selfishness. It's not the drive or the accomplishment or the desire to conquer. all of that I'm realizing is fine. It's that you stupidly thought you did it alone. Well, it's easy to erase it at that time. Look what I did. Look what I did.