The Avalanche Was Easier Than Facing Myself | Cory Richards on Addiction, Bipolar & Self-Acceptance

29:53And then I went back to it trying to just, like, feel belonging and connection and value. Well, I also guess when you're that young, you don't have the emotional awareness to be able to speak about your emotions freely. I mean, at 16, I didn't have the immaturity to be able to express it. And I guess, you know, there's an interesting line that you say about Everest, where you say, I became the story people wanted from me. I kept climbing because I didn't know who I was if I stopped. Kind of relates to this moment. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, you're doing this because you want somebody to accept you and feel worthy.

30:29If you stand up at 16 and say, I don't know if I like this. Yeah. Are you worthy? Are you worthy? And what's the, because our main drive in all of this is to survive, right? Because we're social beings. So we look for ways to belong. Belonging gives us security and safety. And so to stand up and say, no, I don't like this is in some ways threatening that survival on a very deep level, not consciously. It's just saying, well, I'm going to be rejected. And rejection from a social construct is what we fear absolutely the most. I've watched the science of adaptogens grow personally over the last few years.

31:08And I've become more curious in their role in nervous system support, focus and resilience. because adaptogens basically buffer the cortisol that gives us that stress and anxiety. But here's the thing, quality is everything. Most adaptogens on the market don't actually contain enough of the active compounds that you see in clinical studies to make a difference. That's why I've partnered with London Nootropics. These guys only use clinical studied standardized extracts. This is really, really important to get the benefits that you're seeing in clinical research. And they work with Hifas Deterra, Europe's leading mushroom bioscience company.

31:42They have high bioavailability, they use incredible ingredients like KSM-66 ashwagandha and radola life and these are the active ingredients that you need to see the difference. They have lots of different blends. Flow gets me into deep focus with Lion's Mane, Zen helps support my calm and steady my clarity with ashwagandha and Mojo gives a clean lift, no crash. And Mush Love made with fantastic fungi with three hefastaterra mushrooms to elevate your day. Enjoy 20 % off and use code live well be well they come in these fantastic little sachets and they're great for traveling too massively and i guess kind of you've already you beautifully thank you for taking us through the context where you were institutionalized you were diagnosed with bipolar 2 something i hadn't actually heard i have to say until we sat down in la and you said i have bipolar 2 and i had to go home and be like what's bipolar 2 yeah yeah and there's a difference between mania and hypermania Is that correct?

32:36Correct, yeah. And it's hypermania that you get with bipolar 2, and it's mania that you get with bipolar 1. Right. And it's very spectrum-y. Similarly, you were like, some of these... People-pleasing, rejection. A lot of this feels that it all starts to make sense... Yeah. ...on your navigation towards doing something that most people would feel is impossible. Well, it comes down to one thing. Love me. just love me and yourself yeah both but see we search for it externally before we understand that this is one of the most interesting things that i've learned recently actually and it happened amidst a breakup that there was there was the it was when i gave my heart to somebody for the first time ever it's just a recent it was recent yeah not live in the book Not live, no.

33:32I mean, yeah, this happened very recently. But there was this understanding that, oh, shit, all love is self-sourced. The experience of love is entirely self-sourced. People, the dynamic between people creates an environment in which we can feel the love inside of us. But love does not come externally. They might feel love for us, but that's self-sourced from them. And in that, that love can then resonate with, but it's all self-sourced. But it's very normal when we don't feel valuable, we don't feel like we belong, we feel like we're unwanted, like we don't matter, to seek externally for that, what we're misunderstanding as somebody else loving us.

34:21But that can never fill the bucket. Ever. It never will. and once I started to go, oh wait, it's all self-sourced, meaning that when I, back to the empathy thing, I can actually generate that feeling within myself and if it's hard to, all I have to do is think about the love that I felt or feel towards my mom, the, you know, past people that I've been in relationships with, that genuine, that is, and I can feel that and And then I can flip it and face it towards myself. It's fascinating, but we tend to think of love as coming from someplace else. Always. And it's not. It's all self-trust built inside.

35:08And I think it's so interesting because people would probably think that you have so much that in the States that you've done climbing extraordinary mountains. That kind of... that... I don't wanna say lack of fear, because obviously when I was reading those books, you do have a lot of fear in you. You say that you're shit scared. Always. Right? This goes back to the male-female conversation. Men... I hurt for men because... we don't know how to ask for help. We're not taught how to do it. We're taught that it's weakness. and so that step you know simon simon said something so it's funny too i want to just stop because i cry quite a bit and people listen to these podcasts and they hear about the trauma and like these crazy you know institutionalized being homeless and then they're like are you okay i get these messages that are like i want to help you you know i want to be very clear i'm great crying and talking about these things, I'm just touching what it feels like.

36:20It's not like I'm... I want people to know I'm not in crisis, you know what I mean? I'm actually really glad you said that, because I didn't... I didn't want to bring it up. But there was parts when I was looking at the comments under Simon, Simon Sinek, just so people can understand, who we're talking about here, and Rich Roll. Yeah. And they were like, is he okay? Right. You know, like, Rich, you were like a therapist. And it kind of made me sad because I thought, you're not... I know you personally right now in this moment. Yeah. As a friend. Yeah. And I know that you're in a good space. Yeah.

36:56And it made me kind of want to think, is it that people are uncomfortable seeing the messiness and vulnerability? And even watching Rich Roll say, I read the book and it was, you could see that he was trying to digest everything in it, similarly to how I started it, right? Yeah. I even reflected on myself after I'd read that and was like, why do I feel so uncomfortable reading these parts? But also, why can't I stop? It's like a train wreck. You don't want to look away. It's a messy train wreck. Yeah. How did you get to that? Like, how did you... So, the reason why I say this is because it's amazing for men to watch this and see the raw, beautiful messiness.

37:38That's how I got to know you so quickly, right? You were just like, it's all about the messiness, Sarah. And you just forget, we just got straight in. Yeah. The moment we met, right? So men will be watching this, seeing, you know, the beautiful colors of all the emotions that come out, of who Corey is. Who Corey is sat here is the Corey I know, off mic, which is the beauty of this conversation, by the way. Right. How did you get to the strength of being like that, and being vulnerable, and writing so openly without going, oh fuck this is going out to the world well there were moments of oh fuck this is going out to the world and i'll also say this that it's very because i've done it both ways i've always just been i don't hide well there are certain things that i've hidden well and they're very very deep but even those now i don't i don't so it's it's like muscle memory it's a practice but there are people, and I have been one of those people, that overshare in order to hijack intimacy and connection, right?

38:49So they'll give everything like right out of the gate. And what that does is it creates a false sense of connection. And trust, I guess. And trust, right? So it's very dip. And they might say exactly the same thing as they say when it's coming from a deeply authentic place of just security. And it's hard for other people to discern whether they're sort of trauma dumping to hijack connection or they're just being themselves and they're just, it's how they operate in the world. For me, it's now, it's just very much how I operate in the world. And in some ways, I hate to say this, but because it's kind of shitty language, but I don't want this to sound bad.

39:36It's going to sound bad. it's kind of on brand. Does that make sense? Like, this is just me. But my hope was always that the person people read about in the book would be the person that they met. That there would not be this separation, right? Because that's honesty. And I think the value in telling stories, the value in being as open about the mess as the accomplishment is that it helps other people feel less alone in their own mess. When you offer your mess, not from a place of, poor me, look what happened, but this is complicated. Life is crazy. These are some of the reasons we do the things we do.

40:18It's not okay to do those things, but it's okay that we're messy. When we do that, the wholeness of a human comes into focus, and it allows others to relax into their wholeness. And so the reason I'm so passionate about sharing the mess is because we live in a culture of hyper comparison. And perfectionism. Perfectionism. You look at it on - Optimization. Optimization across all social media platforms. Look at the best piece of me. And it makes us think that these incredible people are not deeply, I don't want to say even flawed, just human. And so for me, the whole thing is just, nah, this...

41:02It's fucking messy. It's messy and it's okay. And that's sort of the compassion component. I find it crazy that I sit here with you after knowing you and still haven't asked you this question. Yeah. I've watched your film twice, cold. Yeah. And this didn't happen at Everest. I'm not gonna be able to pronounce it. Gashabrum. Gashabrum. Gashabrum 2. 2. Yeah. Now, for context, 8 ,000 meters. Your dad, who was also an experienced climber, told you one day that people just don't survive avalanches. Not big ones. Not big ones. Yeah. I am gonna ruin the film, because we're gonna talk about it. Yeah. But I did show my parents this.

41:47Simon showed me this film first, and then I went to show my parents it. And my mum's reaction when the avalanche hit you, coming down from the summit, was, oh, my God, he's died. Didn't know I was gonna speak to you. And then I watched her reaction to see that you were alive. Yeah. And she was amazed. You really shouldn't be sitting here today. Don't shud on me. You're like a cat with nine lives. I'm a cat. I'm a bit of a cat. Tell me about this. Well, it was the most famous picture on National Geographic magazine. But tell me, just tell me about that moment. So quick context, real quick for people.

42:36There's 14 8 ,000 meter peaks on the planet. Nine are in India, Nepal, Tibet, one in India, and then five that are in Pakistan. And after all of them had been climbed in the 80s, the Polish started going back to them in the winter to try to climb the highest peaks in the winter. For whatever reason. Seems questionable. But all of the ones in the south had been climbed, but the five in Pakistan had not by 2010. And so 16 expeditions, 26 years, had tried. We went to Gashabram II, myself and two other climbers, Simone Morrow and Dennis Arubko, and we did the first winter ascent. And we summited on February 2nd.

43:24And we... And I didn't know this at the time, but I became and still am the only American to summit an 8 ,000-meter peak in winter. And we threaded this very narrow weather window, about 12 hours where the jet stream moved off the top of the peaks just enough that we could get up. And then it closed back in, and as we were descending, the storm got... or the storm got bigger and the mountain got hit by quite a big storm. And we made it back down to Camp 1 on February 3rd, 2011. And on February 4th, we woke up, we started to go down this massive glacial valley, and now you've got several feet of snow that has blanketed the sides.

44:11There's heavy winds, which creates very hazardous avalanche conditions. and we got hit by a massive avalanche. Now, it's impossible to know how big it really was, right? Because we're in what's called the deposit zone. So we're actually on pretty flat ground. And as soon as the snow hits flat ground, it slows down. But also what happens in these big avalanches is they create an air blast that moves out in front of them. And so it's quite likely that what threw us and what buried us or partially buried us She has to go under it, right? Well, you go under the side of the mountain, but then as the snow comes down and it pushes that air out in front of it, that air is enough to snap full-grown trees in half.

44:59It's very powerful. And so looking back, my sense is, my belief is that what picked us up and threw us about 500 feet across flat ground is that it was mostly the air blast and big chunks of ice so i just remember hearing it i remember watching simona in front of me and he's in waist deep snow and and just trying to move and feeling so uncomfortable because i knew from our when we had come up that there was a lot of avalanche debris in this area and i heard it and i looked over my right shoulder and then i saw it and and it was just this huge cloud coming towards us and i you know i said somebody said avalanche somebody said run and i always make the joke on stage that like yeah try running and you know waist deep snow it And then it just picked us up.

46:02And then it gets very chaotic and loud and somehow silent and timeless. And I remember just being fucking furious. I was so mad. I was mad that I was dying and I was mad that I had done this and I was mad at, I was just angry. The primary emotion was not loss or even fear anymore. It was just pure rage. You put yourself there. I put myself there. Things that I was ashamed of. I was just angry. And then I kind of just was like, well, you know, sort of resignation. And then right at the last moment, I threw myself sort of in the best way I could, because you're very much weightless, but what's happening is your body's getting sucked into the snow.

47:02The weight of your body is pulling you down. And you never know how you're gonna end up buried. You could end up buried, you know, vertically with your head down, if that happens. And people think, well, you just move around. You can't move. The snow is packed. You're packed in. And then slowly what happens is you start to breathe if you're packed and you can't move. and you'll create basically a shield of ice around your face and then the air will just run out suffocates death yeah and so i ended up mostly buried with my head and one arm out of the snow and my first thought was well yeah like they're dead and i was horrified i mean the the calculations going on in my head were so fast okay i have to move as fast as i can before i start to my body heat starts to freeze me in place so i start moving and then i'm like i'm gonna have to i remember thinking i have to get my knife i'm gonna have i'm gonna pull the rope as far as i can and i'll dig to where it but i'm not gonna be able to get them out in time because i don't have a shovel um and and so i start to move and then i heard simone who's got a very distinct voice i don't have you ever done that for you no he told ladies he's a man he's very very high very high pitch voice italian taking me back to the film yeah yeah yeah yeah i didn't tell you that's in the book but he one time he's like cory you must come to italy see the most beautiful bitches in the world.

48:41I was like, homie, you can't say that. And he's like, most beautiful beaches. I'm like, dude, you can't. And he's like, and then I was like, oh, he's talking about beaches, Italian beaches. So I hear his voice and then I feel him on me and I'm like, oh, okay. Like, he's not dead. And then of course, Dennis, who's very Russian, is like, Simone, I do him okay. very like stoically right and so long story short we all survived and um and then i turned the camera on as soon as i was kind of out of the snow and i just wept into it and then later i don't know it was an hour or something like i i felt my face and i turned i turned the camera on again and i just i took a picture of myself my face and that's what ended up on the cover um it's a very complicated relationship that's where i start the book is you know with that experience because that's a complicated moment in in a sort of in a complicated life as everybody's is but uh it was it was a fracture and also a fusing inshallah inshallah if god wills i noticed that a lot yeah in the book yeah um i love that word i love that word it's beautiful but i also loved it because Because it's a phrase that's often rooted in surrendering and letting go.

50:06And there's this kind of illusion of control that went in that moment of avalanche. Yeah, because you come into... I came into confrontation with my finitude. and the reality that there's a sense, a necessary sense that we are somehow immortal for a time, especially when we're young. And there was the realization that that just wasn't true, that we do die, and it's very real, and you don't get to escape that. And the truth is we don't know when that's coming. And so the idea that we're in control all the time is just a falsehood that we live by. And the surrender of that control is one of the most powerful shifts we can make, but also one of the most troubling.

51:07Because if you're not in control, then how do you navigate, you know? And that's sort of, you know, That's what I mean when I say resilience is not about holding on, it's about letting go. Just take the next question from me. Well, you can... No, you literally segued me perfectly. Yeah. Because it was interesting. That was a really prominent word that kept coming up, especially in that chapter. And I've used that word a lot, inshallah. And I resonate with it quite a lot. that I'm talking that I'm very religious, but there's just something about that term. And for me, it felt that that became your kind of companion.

51:53That word, that phrase. That's interesting. It's kind of been my companion since that moment. Huh. I've never put that together. That's fun. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. I mean, it's, you know, it's, but yeah, Inshallah. Yeah. But that's how I felt. It was your companion, your partner in that climb. Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. And I would say too that the more I lean into that, if God wills, and I'm not religious either, but I believe very strongly in God, but I'm very careful with that word because it... It has a lot of meaning. It has a lot of meaning. But yeah, what I'm learning anyway, what I've found is that when you relax, and it's sort of a, it is, it's a somatic experience.

52:52When you relax into the flow of what's happening around you, there's an immediate nervous system decompression. it's it's almost as if your your your soul if you want to call it that takes a breath and it's also scary there's there's a um truncpa quote that says truncpa rinpoche was one of the people who he started naropa university in boulder colorado he says the bad news is you're falling the good news is there's no bottom and it's like it's scary to let go to really let go that's part of why love is so scary because you are letting go and we're not evolutionary wired no way no we're evolution why to survive survival that's where we most of our and survival is not letting go it's do you think that's what you learned the most from that from yeah from the avalanche from the from some of the hardest climbs you've done i didn't learn them from the climbs i learned it afterwards in sort of a examination of my life like actually i was not very resilient i was very good at survival but would i which is under which you can see very clearly because I wasn't living in a values-based system.

54:25It was survival mechanisms, survival adaptations, ways to, and that some of those were very, very beneficial and very positive and really, really generative. And at the same time, they weren't underwritten by my values. Which are? You want me to list some of them? Yeah. Sure. Great. Let's do it. What are your values? is empathy honesty compassion curiosity um a willingness to be not right i'm trying to think of single words i mean above above all i i value my values are love and acting with love and leading with love as much as i can that doesn't mean it's always the case right and i mean integrity right which means living in alignment with your values.

55:18And that can be very hard. And that's what I would say I lacked a lot of the time because survival is not, it doesn't demand integrity at all. The only thing there is survive, survive, survive, survive. And as is evidenced by so much in the world, when we live in survival mode, we will discard pretty much everything and everyone aside from those closest to us. And even then, people will cast those special things aside in order to survive.

55:50And the world asks that of us right now, which is one of the reasons why I sort of see what's going on in the world as a survival versus resilience question. Because with social media, with the 24-hour news cycle, with everything going on, we are constantly told that we are under threat, right? We believe that we are under threat when truth 99.9 % of the time we are not. We're not under threat. And so that nervous system response is survival, survival, survival, survival. And the way I say it is everybody believes they're getting chased by a bear in the woods, but there's no bear there. The bear is in the woods, but it's not right behind you.

56:33And the more we can calm that and regulate and go, wait, the only bear that's here is the one I'm carrying on my back. And I can just set that bear down, and it's not that scary. But yeah, so when we're living in that system, then we see decisions and policy and all of these things being made out of a sympathetic nervous system response that is just reactionary. Because survival is reaction. Resilience is response. And so part of it is the fabric of society and culture that's telling us that we're all fucked, everything is messed up, and we should all be really scared. And that's how Macy will feel right now.

57:20I agree. I agree. And the truth is that it's not to diminish the very real social issues that we're facing. We're watching things get gutted that shouldn't be. We're watching, I mean, we are watching in some ways a very catastrophic or cataclysmic change, cultural shift. But the net reality of what's going on is things are actually pretty okay. That doesn't mean, like, look, I'm not saying everything's okay in Gaza. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying that everything's okay in Ukraine. I'm saying that overall, most people are living safely, even in the most horrible of circumstances. If we go back to that moment by moment level, we actually have the capacity to reset our nervous systems.

58:18And in doing that, we can become more resilient and step out of survival. We can think, we can be, we're back in our prefrontal cortex. We're no longer hijacked in our amygdala, and our prefrontal cortex is offline. We can think rationally. But it takes an awareness to say, wait a minute, is everything really fucked? This comes from a man who loves to live on the edge. Yeah, sorry, that was a very long answer. No, because it ties into, I mean, it ties into so many of these contexts that we've spoken about a lot of, Mike, which I loved your analogy of the resilience letting go, because we think about grit holding on.

58:57And I'm sure everyone says to you, gosh, Corey, you must have so much resilience to summit Everest without oxygen. How many have you summited? How many mountains? Mountains, I don't know. But Everest twice, once without oxygen. The second time, very close. I put it on the third step, which is very, very high. um the 14 000 or the the 8 000 meter peaks i've only done gash broom two lotsy and everest sorry only yeah but i mean there's so many more talented there's so many more talented climbers who have done them all and i mean no you can't you there's that you cannot compare yourself in that way it's an it's an it's an incredible achievement to have done what you've done so many people will look up to the resilience that you've done.

59:50And that's why I think it's really important of how you define resilience. You know, everyone has their own understanding of what certain words mean to them. And for you, resilience is one that I think many people will turn to, to want to know what it means to you. Yeah. And you explained to me, and you just did a minute ago, that it's about letting go. And so much of the book, when I was reading it, was about you trying to escape all of the messiness, all of the madness that was in your mind, that was going on. The noise. The noise, the constant noise. And it feels like where you got to was the acceptance and letting go.

1:00:34Yeah. When you have a traumatic childhood, and there was a lot of violence in my childhood, and then there was homelessness, and then there was the institutionalized years, And when you have complex post-traumatic stress, it's far more likely that you're going to have an episode of an acute PTSD episode if you have a big event. And so the avalanche was that. And that's sort of when my internal life really started to unravel. And yet at the same time, my external life started to amplify until there was this tension between the two where the person that I was or thought I was inside and the person the world saw was so different that there was that they broke.

1:01:12Right. They collapsed. and and so when i think about resilience now the letting go component is in well the way and i was sort of working this out live with simon and the way i understand resilience now is there are four sort of sticky sayings. First of all, agency is everything. Secondly, discovery demands discomfort. Third, certainty kills curiosity. And the last, I used to think it was adaptation, but that's actually the net result. The last is simply trust. It's just one word. So when we think about letting go in those contexts, agency is about full ownership. of the situation and it has nothing to do with blame or how you got there or who did what or why it's just this is what the situation is um you can get back to that stuff it's not to say that it's not important but blame is backwards looking blame is is is living in victimhood right blame is this happened to me agency is this happened this is the state of play there is no blame because it doesn't matter even if you were horrifically wronged it really doesn't matter in terms of the step into resilience because it's it's a distraction so you're letting go of the stories of why it is the way it is and embracing it simply is the way it is.

1:03:01So now I have ownership. You're no longer in victim mode. And that's where I think everything starts, agency. Secondly, discovery demands discomfort. To uncover any new thing, it's going to be uncomfortable. To learn any new thing, it's going to be uncomfortable. And And the sooner we can let go of comfort, which is a grab for survival, a grab for understanding, right? When we think about, we go through a terrible breakup. We're blaming, we're blaming, we're blaming, right? We're upset. We're telling this terrible story about what happened to us and why. And then we go into Discovery Demands Discomfort, and we start looking for ways to comfort ourselves through different stories, right?

1:03:50And different adaptations and sort of prescriptive ideas about what love is and what love is. That's just one example. Well, if you're gonna discover a new way, you have to let go of all of those prescriptive ideas. And you have to sit in the space of, I don't know. I just don't know. People find that hard. It's very hard, right? because we want to outsource our pain. It never works, but we want to outsource it. And then that leads directly into the next, you know, certainty kills curiosity. That's my favorite. Yeah. As soon as we're certain about something, we're done. We're done learning. It's over.

1:04:29And we want to be certain because, again, certainty provides some sense of safety. And stability. Stability. I know this to be true. I know this to be true. the more you can let go of your certainties about everything about the black and the white and the this and that all of a sudden you're invited into curiosity and then you're you see it's working backwards and then you get to discover and then you're taking more agency so it's a virtuous circle and then the last one is just trust because you don't know where you're going and as soon as you just trust that the outcome is going to be exactly as it's meant to be there is no right and wrong in this.

1:05:10Trust is the complete surrender to it. It doesn't mean you don't try to do things. It doesn't mean you don't have some sort of steadfast pursuit of something that you feel strongly about. It just means you just trust the process. That's what leads to the adaptation. All of that is underwritten by your values. When you know your values, when you can state them, then every single step along the way, you're clear on, is this the right, am I in the right, Am I in the most generative place? Authentic. Authentic place in this process. So every step you're letting go. And I love that when we spoke about this before, when you told me this analogy at 1am, wherever we were.

1:05:53I think we were in my house. We were in the roof gardens, I think. It's when you were in London. Oh, that's right. That's right. Do you remember? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I said self-trust. Self-trust, yes. Like there's something about putting self in part of that trust because I think we can trust, but I think what so many of us lose is the self-trust within us. That's such a deep part of it. And I would go back to similar to love. Trust is all self-sourced. That leads me on to compassion. I can't not have this conversation without having this in. No, I love it. So you wrote, you can't bypass the fuck you on the road to forgiveness.

1:06:32Yeah. I really found that. Yeah. You can't bypass the fuck you on the way to forgiveness. Compassion is where my work sits. Self-compassion. It's something that for me has been my own journey. It would be something that has probably been my biggest life lesson. To turn self-criticism into self-compassion. And to really understand what that meant. Because for a very long time, it felt very monk-like-ish to me. very... The concept felt so far, I'm English, to tell someone to love yourself gives you this horrific cringe. Yeah, it's so cringe. It's so hard. And I still find it hard, even though I write about it, even though my work is sourced in it.

1:07:19I know it's part of your journey. I know it's kind of the bringing together of everything in the book. I want to know what compassion means to you. I think it's acceptance without judgment. It's letting go of the stories, which leads you to, again, agency, acceptance without judgment, compassion. And for me, my purpose is defined as a single word, which is compassion. it's not what i do what i do is an extension of of of that purpose right and so compassion to me is about sharing ourselves generously so that we can be reflected back in the world and understand that we aren't fundamentally flawed we're human and and in that reflection if we're paying attention to how people respond to us as we show up fully as ourselves, we see that there's a tremendous amount of compassion and we can, again, feel that.

1:08:31And then we're self-sourcing it. And I think it's acceptance without judgment. It's the letting go of the stories that keep us trapped. It's allowing ourselves to be messy. It's looking at ourselves in the same way that we would look at our loved ones. when they make a mistake how do we respond compassionate care so what do we do for ourselves when we make a mistake compassionate care compassionate accountability but more than anything it's a it's a sense in me of an ever-expanding capacity to love without condition or want that doesn't mean you're going to be in a relationship with this person doesn't mean you have to even be close to somebody it means you you might not even like them but compassion makes space for all of it.

1:09:31It makes space for all of us in all of our complexity. The tricky thing, the hard thing is that compassion is very easily extended to close people that we love and people sort of laterally. It's much easier to extend sort of down people who have less. It's much harder to extend compassion up. Compassion in its totality is omnidirectional. So when we look at the people that are making policy decisions that we abhor, or whatever it is, people have way more money, whatever it is,

1:10:13they also are worthy of the exact same compassion. And once we shift into a compassionate mindset, you see leaders who are in a compassionate mindset. Their decisions are totally different than those who are not. They're not exclusive, they're inclusive. They're more resilience-based, because compassion is based in resilience. Motivation. Yeah. I mean, that's it. It's a big answer. I mean, we could keep going. I know we have to quit, so let's do episode two. We will do episode two. It's something that is, I think, so beautiful to hear for the full story of what you've been through. And I really would love everyone to read your book, to take it somewhere where they have time to feel.

1:10:59It brings up a lot of emotions. Somebody in any context will see a part of themselves in that book because it's so, so raw, so open, so beautifully imperfect. And that's something that I cherish so much about having you as a friend in my life is to show me that the messiness is where the goodness is. The mess is where it's marvelous. It's amazing. And I can't believe this is the first time I've spoken to you about your climbs and about the avalanche. That says so much about you. Oh, yeah. And, you know, when I was reading in the book and you touched upon the narcissism quote that you're not, but that we all have within us, the first time that you've ever spoken about these amazing things that you've done is today.

1:11:51So thank you for sharing that. Yeah, it's my pleasure. It leads me with my last question, which is what does Live Well, Be Well mean to you? I don't want to repeat myself too much, but it's just lead with love. The more you can lead with love, the more well you will be, the more whole you will be, and the more you'll invite other people into that space. you know and then we start to see this chain reaction lead with love let put down the armor put down the swords somebody has to put their sword down first um that's how you live well and that's how you be well i love it everything rooted in love it's all love it's all love it's true it's the hardest thing and if honestly if you haven't listened to the the pre-interview five questions with Corey on The Compassionate Cure.

1:12:52Please go and listen to them because that's the first thing you said. I struggle with intimacy. Yeah. It brings us back to the very start. Those callbacks, you're brilliant. Look at you tying it all in a knot. I love it. You kind of do it for me. It's great. Tying it in a weave. I love it. I love it. Um, Corey, we're going to have to do round two. Please. We're going to have to like dive into the compassion empathy conversation, which is, which is maybe what we'll do when my book comes out. I would love that. I'll sit in your seat. Okay. I love it. Have we just made a deal? I love it. I'm serious.

1:13:27We'll do it. Thank you. Thanks for having me.