#685 - Rich Roll - Stop Making Excuses & Transform Your Life

28:47And that's not that my role models are my friends, right? It's the other way around. It's that the people that I'm friends with in the UK, in America, people that are beyond, mundanely normal do things that on a I look at it and I go, that's extraordinary. Like the way that they dealt with a difficult conversation that they had to have, the way that they made an awkward decision with regards to their business, where somebody wasn't fitting, and they said it in the right way early with courage and bravery, right up to my housemate had his clip from his YouTube channel, Shadon Rogan, a couple of days ago.

29:34So like he's fired up for that. I'm like, you know, each of these different people, like extra ordinary in some ways and unbelievably normal in many many more ways. And I understand, you know, if this is, if you're listening to this and it's triggering a little bit of something inside of you going up, well, it must be nice, you know, living in Austin, Texas or Calabasas or whatever and you're surrounded by all these people and, you know, you've got interest in blue ticks knocking on your door asking to be friends. I do get that, but the bottom line is that you will,

30:05devolve to the lowest common denominator amongst the friend group that you're in. And if you have the luxury of being able to sit and listen to pontificating podcasts for like two hours, you are probably built to take charge of that situation. And I would bet you that there are a really non -insignificant number of people that live within three miles of you who all would love to do the same thing. And yeah, I met about a million people across my nightlife career and had a handful of friends. That's because a lot of the guys that worked with us came and went and they moved on to different careers.

30:47Club promo isn't typically a long -term career. And I realized that my funnel exposure to conversion friend ratio was off. Your funnel to conversion friend ratio. So think about how wide. That's such like a bro -science term. We're right. This welcome to my podcast. Welcome to my podcast, Rich. The size of people that I was reaching compared with the number of friends that I had. I understood. Was so, I couldn't believe it. Right. And I was like, okay, something's up. Like this is, I, something is up. And what it was largely my fault, and the reason it was my fault was that I was behaving in a way that I thought would make other people like me.

31:36And what that meant was the people who did like me, I didn't actually truly like in large part, and the people who I would have liked saw this person that wasn't any... you become, you're unlikable to those people. Yes, I'm unlikable to the people that I would like. Right. For precisely the reason that I'm playing this persona in role. Right. Water rises to its own level and you can't transmit something you haven't got. Another recovery adage, which basically means, it basically means if you're trying to befriend somebody because they have something that you want and you try to pretend that you're at their level to say whatever it is you think they want to hear from you so that they feel comfortable befriending you.

32:32It's very transparent that that is a false and shallow gesture, right? Like you can't, if you're sitting behind a microphone and you're pontificating about a whole bunch of bullshit, it, but it's not a result of earned experience in your own life, then it's not going to have the resonant effect that you think it would have because you didn't earn it, right? So in recovery, it means walking your talk, basically. And when you walk your talk and that talk and that walk is integrated with a value system that is slowly improving your life, then the water in your glass raises, and the level of your companions will raise in lockstep with that.

33:23So I think it's important that if you want to attract a certain caliber of person into your life, then you have to live your life in accordance with the kinds of values that would be attractive to that person. And as somebody who's spoken a lot about dating, like this is the same thing with relationships, right? You're not gonna attract that mate who is living a more aspirational life than you until you can level up your own life. As a quote from Alex Homozi that says, people are attracted to authenticity, but it's hard to define for me. Here's my best attempt, true alignment of what you think, what you say, and what you do.

34:06The hardest part is realizing that our thoughts are fucked and that we have to fix them instead of faking the next two. Mm -hmm. What we think, what you say and what you do. And a lot of the time you do and say things that you don't think in an attempt to try and be liked. I know that you had a background in school of bullying and this is something that I still need to dig into more, but that was like, that was childhood for me, largely, that was school. And like loneliness, like again, there wasn't even any fucking glory or triumph in the In the loneliness or in the in the like solitary nature.

34:49It was very mundane very vanilla

34:56Sadness yeah, right and I think what the undertone that that taught me was fundamentally the world won't love you unless you can offer it something. Because before you didn't have anything to offer it and it didn't love you. So now you need to offer it something, which is why if I look back on the career that I went through in my 20s, every single thing that I did had a shitton of social monetary value on the other side of it. So I became a model before I came to uni. Then I kept working as a commercial model and then moved into my tutorial. then I became a club promoter because people like models, people really like club promoters.

35:36You wanna get in VIP, you wanna skip the queue, you wanna know where the prettiest girls are, you wanna free bottle of champagne, you gotta come through me. Okay, then I became a DJ, DJ literally makes the crowd have this collective FFS and so on together. Then I go on two reality TV shows, right? Two reality TV shows, Blue Tick on Twitter, free charcoal toothpaste, full works. Because maybe if I can accrue sufficient social capital, the world will actually feel, believe that I'm worth something. And where and at what point did you have a reckoning with that? Like where did the bottom fall out on that for you?

36:13So I got to this second reality TV show. And what I'd been doing for a long time was playing a persona. Like my business partner knew who I was truly and the guys that worked with me knew who I was truly but largely the public -facing Chris wasn't honest about his curiosity about the person he was. But I was always able to sedate myself with distraction with YouTube and social media and partying and girls and stuff, right? And then I go on this TV show and they take everything away from you. There's no books, there's no calls home, there's no internet, no phone, no TV, be, no nothing, and all that you have to do for a month is talk to people who are the hyper -extraverted party people that I thought I was.

37:05So I got delivered what I call a fatal dose of contrast. I saw staring me in the face, inescapable, a team of 13 other people who were the person that I'd been pretending to be for a decade. And I realized that I wasn't that and I thought, okay, I literally can't escape this. And it wasn't that, and the sky's opened and then I realized that my true path was to become a podcaster and talk shit into a microphone, wasn't like that, but it did make me think, right, there's something up here. Like there is an incongruence between the person you say you are and who that sort of person actually is. And that really was the beginning of it rolling downhill.

37:46but again, even with that, you said it before, like life needs to be lived forward, but only makes sense in reverse. And when you're staring into a bunch of unknown, it's, there's no romance. There is no glory, medley fucking like real, that you've got some cool like Jamie Foxx motivational quote over the top of it, telling you about where you're gonna go. Now, when you can't put it on a calendar, you know, the endpoint of this because you don't even know which direction you're heading, you're flailing before you find any kind of trajectory for yourself. And I think it requires, you know, a deep level of commitment to self and again, faith to walk a path where you don't know what the next brick is going to look like that's getting laid down in front of you.

38:43And I think a lot of people want to know what the destination is before they take that first step, and that's why they never get out of the gate. But I think, you know, your story makes perfect sense. Mine is certainly analogous. I was bullied, but it was very vanilla. There's nothing like super interesting about that other than it was pretty much as you would expect it. But I think as a result of that, my interior experience was to feel like being myself was not safe or okay. I was already insecure. And so as a survival mechanism, you have to figure out a costume or a mask to wear to avoid the pitfalls of being bullied and just survive and navigate the day.

39:31That's certainly what I did. And like you, it showed up in people pleasing. I'm a chronic people pleaser only in recent years have I really worked hard to try to deconstruct that and it's something that that is also pernicious because The lie you tell yourself is like I'm a nice guy like I just want everyone to be happy and so you got a your way to make everyone else happy But as a result of that none of your own needs are getting met met you're developing resentment you're disconnected from who you are It's also, I think you're not bothered about making them happy. You're just desperate for them to like you.

40:08Yes, that's the fuel underneath the whole thing. And it's an empty fuel because then you get it. It never seats the appetite though. There's a quote from Aubrey Marcus where he says, the persona is incapable of receiving love. It can only receive praise. And what he means by that is if you're playing a role, any of the accolades that you get and any of the care that people give toward you isn't going to hit you existentially. It's like people don't love Russell Crowe, they love Gladiator, people don't love Chris Hemsworth, they love Thor. And this is how you can feel alone in a crowd and hollow in victory because if you do a thing without genuinely putting yourself into it, whenever people praise it.

40:49And I can promise you, I have tried, I have been there, I have achieved the things that haven't been existentially connected to me. Mm -hmm. And I didn't feel satisfied. Right, I'd achieved in my 20s pretty much all of the things that society tells a young man that he should take pride and pleasure and fulfillment from. Right, like renown, girls and money, all this stuff. Not at a fucking Dan Bill's area, but like just an acceptable normal person amount of that that would put you close to the top of the tree. I didn't fulfill me. I didn't fulfill me. And I could have done it for eons, and it still wouldn't have fulfilled me.

41:32I love and I'm proud of all of the things I did in terms of the business. But that's not what society told me. It wasn't about, I was never told you are going to a door working until three in the morning with your business partner, trying to get this copyright and exactly right so that you can do a thing that's cool in your business. what they said was you should leave at 1 a .m. and go to the cool after party because that's where people are going to see you and that's and that wasn't the case and it was really really tough. I'm glad you know thinking about the time when you were that age and my age now had it not have been for influences that I did get access to on YouTube and podcasts and stuff like that.

42:13I don't know where I would have been given a different frame. I don't know how I would have been ripped out of it. So that whole That you were trying to fill what does that look like now? It's a good question. I I I ask myself Sometimes in my more uncertain moments whether I've replaced offering people My Instagram followers and Q jump in a nightclub for or cool quotes and photos of me with Jordan Peterson. I ask myself that sometimes. The difference is, when I do this, all I feel is joy and excitement. And that's the lead indicator I think that I'm doing something right. I'm not thinking about, look at how many plays this is going to get.

43:05I'm fired up because I get to sit down with Rich and have a cool fucking conversation about this thing. And it's genuinely how I feel. I did this three hour podcast with Homozi yesterday, and I'm sat there grinning to myself, like an idiot. Just thinking this is so much fun. Like if you asked me to do anything else right now, anything, you could offer me to do anything, and I wouldn't, I wouldn't leave. You'll leave for a family emergency, but if it was something else that was supposed to be better, I'm off fun, I wouldn't leave. And I don't know, like that. Just using that as a heuristic, seems like a good start.

43:39And I think a lot of the time, especially young guys, lost young guys, they do things that they think other people will think are cool or will think are impressive. And when you actually ask them, how much joy do you take from this? And we really have a particularly satisfactory answer. I think that's astute. I'm glad that you found this thing. It certainly wasn't something that you could have whiteboarded in the aftermath of being on that reality show. It's a process, you know, and it's a fluid thing. And I would suggest to you that there's more. And I think the more that you can bring a sensibility of service to what you're doing, that sense sense of of of the wholeness and oneness and and sense of of meaning in your life will only escalate because truly for me it's all it's all about service.

44:55You know what I do is a commercial enterprise, of course, but when I get away from the service aspect of it, and into the ego part of it is when I stray from my values and that whole starts to naugh on my soul. And just to kind of go back to my version of your story, you mentioned that Aubrey quote about praise and love. And I think for me as a young person, those two things were one in the same. I lived in a house where love was essentially conditioned upon achievement. And I got good at achievement, but I did it unconsciously in search of love. And it was never enough, no matter how much I achieved, no matter how fast I swam, I was always just shy of getting it and it wasn't until adulthood that I could reflect back on that and have some self awareness around it because when you're young your brain is informed.

46:02You don't know why you're I'm competitive, I'm ambitious, but in truth I just wanted to be loved unconditionally, but that was never going to happen because I was a sensitive artistic a kid who had all these weird interests and would rather hide in the corner and read a book, but I adopted the persona of an athlete and an academically inclined person. And I got the accolades and I got into all the schools and perpetuated on that hamster wheel as long as I could until the axle broke and the whole thing f**king collapsed on top of it, of me in order to have a reckoning with it. And understand that we don't have to earn love.

46:51Like love is unconditional. I've got this idea called insufficiency adaptation, like imposter adaptation. I'm going to read you this. One of the most common tensions I talk about at the moment is between a desire for success and a desire to feel like we're enough. Success is a strange thing. Presumably we want success because we think a more successful life will bring us more happiness, meaning, and fulfillment. Here's the problem. We sacrifice the thing we want, happiness, for the thing which is supposed to get it, success. Failure can make you miserable, but I'm not sure success will make you happy.

47:22One of the most common dynamics I see amongst high performers is this. Parents want their child to do well. Parents encourage their child to do well by praising when they succeed and criticizing when they fail. The child learns that praise and admiration is contingent on succeeding. That lesson metastasizes through early adulthood into, I am only worthy of love, acceptance, and belonging if I succeed. Now, powered by an internal feeling of sufficiency, this person is driven to achieve many things that are prepared to outwork, outhouse soul, and outsoffer everybody else because they're not just running toward a life they want, they're running away from a life that they fear.

47:56Success and progress ameliorates the feelings of insufficiency, therefore, success and progress become prioritized above everything else. That sums it up. I'm certainly somebody who would fall into that category. I've pursued success in a variety of areas as an athlete. Then as a lawyer, that was a disaster. Then again as an athlete, now as a podcaster, it's funny. I went through like a seven year financial dismantlement. Like we almost at our house repossessed, our cars repossessed, I couldn't pay for the garbage bins. Like it was bad. And I think with that was a tremendous amount of a masculine...

48:48Protect a provider. Yeah, and a huge resurgence of all the insecurities and fears that I harbored as a child. And I became utterly convinced that I was incapable of success, at least financial success. I just didn't believe that it was possible for me. When I was a drunk, I could never pay my bills, I ruined my credit, then I get sober, and I can't figure out this career thing, and I was as broke as ever. And then I'm trying to... Not even drunk this time. I'm not even drinking, and I can't figure it out. And then I'm like, oh, I'm gonna go be an ultra -asslee when I have little kids in a mortgage.

49:25There's no career path in that. And I just thought maybe I'm insane. Like I honestly thought, like I found, I would find myself, you know, at times, on a weekday afternoon at the park with my small children pushing them on the swings and having this dual, this tension between these two ideas on the one hand, recognizing that by leaving the comforts of the partnership track on a big law firm, I had the privilege of being able to spend time with my young children in the middle of a week day afternoon at this park, where there was a bunch of moms and I'm the only guy, while also believing at the same time that I was an utter failure because I didn't know what I was doing with my life, I didn't have a sense of what I should do or shouldn't do, and really starting to believe that nothing was ever going to happen for me.

50:27So this is one of the problems that I have with the modern move of asceticism, of recanting worldly success, because I believe that inbuilt in almost all humans is a requirement for the world to validate them genuinely through actual achievement. And this is another Navarco where he says it is far easier to achieve our material desires than to renounce them. And the difference is, had you had the material success now, then how much more present would you have been with your children pushing them on the swing. Well, had I had material success earlier, I wouldn't have grown and evolved mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically in the way that I have.

51:26Yeah, I had to endure that process to be worthy of the growth curve that I've been on. And frankly, you know, the success that I have now is embarrassing because I never would have thought it possible. So my relationship with success now is very different than it would have been had I had I achieved it earlier or or easier I guess. In other news this episode is brought to you by levels. One of the single biggest predictors of how long you're going to live and how good you will feel whilst living is your metabolic health. The single best way to understand how your daily decisions are impacting your longevity and your vitality is by tracking your glucose.

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52:40Right now, levels has a special offer for my listeners by going to the link in the description below or heading to levels .link -slash -modem -stim. That's levels .link -slash -modem -stim. I've heard you say, I still find myself with this sense that success has to be earned, and the only way to earn it is to inflict pain on yourself. And if you're not in pain, you didn't try hard enough and it would have been better if you'd suffered more and I think that's a lie and I want to find out if it's a lie or if it's true. That resonated with me so much. Tell me what you meant by that. I don't think that I'm particularly gifted in any kind of traditional way.

53:31I don't think I'm that much smarter than anyone else. I don't think that I'm a super talented athlete, but if I do, if I had to identify a talent, it would be a capacity to suffer, a willingness to do hard shit, and a very high pain tolerance. And I learned this as a young swimmer entering into the kind of club ecosystem of swimming in the Northeast where I lived and realizing quickly as a 13 -year -old that I was not the most talented swimmer, that there were a lot of young gifted swimmers who were much better than me. But I also realized very quickly that there was an equation between work and result.

54:25And that equation was pure arithmetic for me. And the more I worked, the narrower that gap, that talent deficit gap became to the point where, as a senior in high school, I was one of the best swimmers in the United States, getting recruited everywhere and was able to match all of those peers that previously I thought were much more talented than me. So the message that got inculcated in my mind was talent doesn't matter. You have the ability to outwork everyone in the room. That is your gift and your job is to double down on that in all areas of your life. And this is what is going to create a trajectory for you.

55:10And the truth is, it worked. It worked in the pool. It worked in the classroom. And I was able to achieve some pretty amazing things as a young person. Outside the results beyond your talent. I was world ranked in the 200 meter butterfly. I went on to Stanford. I said no to Harvard University and went to Stanford where I was a member of a two time NC2A championship squad where every single day I trained with world record holders, American record holders, NCAA champions, and Olympic gold medalists. These were my athletic heroes, and by sheer force of will, I told myself I was able to manifest a situation in which now I was a member of a team in which I got to spend five hours a day, every single day, with the greatest swimmers in the sport.

56:01What does that do to a young mind? It tells it you're capable of anything, but the only way that you're going to get there is by suffering. Suffering is your success equation. And I would do things in the pool in high school that my coaches to this day still talk about. They're like, remember when you did this set in 1984, like 40 times 200 fly on, you know, like I would do insane sets that no one else would do. because I knew no one else would do them. And I picked the hardest event that creates the most suffering because that was the easiest to distinguish myself in. And that was a success equation.

56:41And so I've carried that my entire life. And to this day, as somebody who doesn't believe they're particularly talented, it's all the more important that I outwork everyone in the room. And I believe that in many ways, I've done that. And I kind of continue to do it. I've done it with the podcast. I've done it with books that I've written. If I don't suffer, if I'm not completely depleted at the end of a project, and I turn it in whether it's a book or whatever creative thing that I'm working on, then it's not good enough. You have to bleed in order for it to be the highest expression of what you're capable of.

57:18And the truth is, through a lot of therapy and a lot of work, I have realized that that is in fact a lie. Now untangling that knot and trying to create new neural pathways is extremely uncomfortable. What does it feel like if you sit down and you write something and you do it from a place of ease and presence and awareness and you turn it in and it didn't cause you to suffer and you didn't experience pain. I'm instantly going to feel like, well, that's shit. I didn't work hard enough for it. I didn't earn it. Give me that back and let me rewrite it until four in the morning. You know, and I've done this many, many times and then I'll look at it with clear eyes the next day and and realize you made it worse First draft was better.

58:01Yeah, you made it worse It's a hard pill to swallow. It's been a very difficult lesson for me to learn It's certainly not something that I've mastered but I have created systems in my life that make that process of ease more accessible and conducive in my daily schedule to try to disabuse me of these old patterns that are reliable, but ultimately are short -term strategies because they lead to exhaustion and burnout and disaffaction and all of these things that are at cross -purposes with the goal of having any kind of longevity or continual growth and whatever it is that you're trying to do. What are the systems?

58:54I surround myself with a team of very talented people. So for a long time, I did my podcast, which I've been doing 11 years, almost 11 years at this point. For many years, I did almost every single aspect of it myself. My steps on Tyler would edit it, but other than that, I handled everything about it. And I was very resistant to letting go of any aspect of it and letting any your laughing letting anybody come into help see some of my team Nothing to me right Yeah, but they know that they have to I would pass out of my hand I would rather forgo Knights of sleep correct then let any invite anyone else in because you know what?

59:41But I'm the only one who knows how to do it. I'm the only one who can get it the way that I want it to be. I'm the only one who's qualified to make it as good as I know it can be. I'm the only one who's going to care enough to go that extra mile to make it great. And the reason why you're... I know you're... Constant grinning. But the reason why that is so romantic and powerful is that there is some truth in it because no one is going to care about modern wisdom as much as you. It doesn't matter how much you pay people or how talented the people are that are around you. So you're faced with a choice.

1:00:21Either you loosen the reins, you let people in, you find people who are better at the respective skill sets than you are, you train them, you empower them, and you get out of the way. And then you are freed up to do the work that only you can do, which is to prepare for and conduct the conversations to the best of your ability. Everything else can be handled by someone else. In my case, I did the show for years before I was kicking and dragging in order to let go. But as a result of going through that process, I now am able to focus on those things that are most important. And as to the freedom point, the systems that I have in place create the added time for the headspace required to contribute to the creative work that only I can do.

1:01:21And I create rules for myself. like you have to stop after two hours or you're not allowed to, you know, edit while you're writing or, you know, you have to put this away and not look at it for a week. Like I have to create stopgaps. Like a crazy person. Yeah, exactly. Because I am a fucking crazy person. A crazy person. Chris, I don't know if you know, but I have spent quite a bit of time in a mental institution. So I am certifiable. My equivalent of what, of the story that you told with regards to swimming was with my first business in nightlife. So I didn't draw the correlation between practice and game day ability throughout my entire athletic career.

1:02:12I played at a very high level of cricket because I'm a gentleman and I'm refined. Yes. I played... That game that no one understands or cares about in the United States. Well, I mean, look, if you want such philestines, maybe you would be able to get on board. I never once, I trained a lot, but I trained a lot because it's how I found my friends and it's what I did. It was habit. I never, ever had it taught to me. No one ever sat me down and said, if you train, you get better. And I just, I didn't feel that lesson. I knew that it was what you were supposed to do. I just didn't, I didn't, anyway.

1:02:46So I get to university and we start this events company and it's the first thing that I've ever really felt like I excelled at and got social renown for. So very quickly, I begin to attach my sense of success to the success of the business. A lot of young, especially guys who want to be accepted if you do have a business and you do find some success with it, you will do this. And it's a pitfall that you need to be aware of. And I imagine it's the same for girls too. You do a thing. the world tells you that you are enough or that it praises you because you do the thing, therefore you become the thing.

1:03:19So it wasn't just, I ran a good or bad club night last that today. It was, I am a good or bad person. No, you're self identifying with the achievement as a referendum on who you are as a person. Correct. And because I'm British, I've got a Puritan work ethic. And what I did was, this was the penicious bit. And this is the pitfall that people really need to watch out for. I realized that reliably, the quality of my work was better if I suffered. Therefore, if I suffered, I usually got better outcomes. And if you and you feel good about yourself because you suffered, you worked for it, you earned it.

1:03:59So the lead indicator of what would be a lagging measure, the lead indicator was suffering, the lagging measure would be success. Then this is the thing that I did. I shortcoded the success part and went straight to the suffering part. And if success came without suffering, I felt like it wasn't worthy. I felt like I hadn't worked hard enough to get it. And I then had two things that I needed to do. So not only did the event need to be good, not only did it need to run well, if it wasn't a success, I was a failure. And if the success came and I hadn't suffered, I was also a piece of shit. So there was two ways that that's sort of a can do imposter syndrome, right?

1:04:40Like it was successful. I didn't really work for it. I don't really deserve this. People are gonna find out that I don't really know what I'm doing. Or is that something different? Perhaps, I feel like there's probably a, a veneer of imposter syndrome in there too. But this felt, it felt more visceral than imposter syndrome and it wasn't anxiety around it, not happening well next time. I mean, not being good enough. It was just that I needed to suffer and that's what this Puritan work ethic thing does man And it's a hell of a drug especially if you if you're from one of the imperial colonial powers That you can imagine you know in the middle ages these priests and they're hoeing the ground and the sons beating down on their back And they're doing it in service of God.

1:05:25It's not about the work. It's about the suffering You know and they've got a cat and nine tails and they're flagulating themselves We're sinners. We're bad people. We need to be punished Let's vlog ourselves. Let's do it in the context of our work and make that a spiritual practice. But without the spiritualism without any of the spiritual payoff and that was where I got to and you also said two other things I thought was really really interesting and this I Thought about this when I spent a bit of time in CrossFit and I saw a lot of people in CrossFit talk about Suffering and discomfort and stuff But if I told them to sit on the couch for a full week and not train, they would have completely gone crazy.

1:06:10And you said the real discomfort is to see what it would be like without the suffering. And Tim has this, what if it was easy? Yeah. Line. Yeah, that's the discipline. People always say to me, like, how do you do these ultra -distance events and how do you have the motivation to get up every day and train? and the math in their mind is that that's where the discipline comes into play, but they don't realize it's like, that's what I want to do. That's what I prefer to do. Actually, certainly there's days you don't want to do it and you have to call on a little bit of discipline, but that's my joy.

1:06:48The discipline comes in when, yes, you're like, today's a rest day, you're not allowed to go do that thing that you enjoy doing or you're going to sit and meditate for 30 minutes or you're going to write something and you're going to walk away from it and not edit it or you're going to maybe only spend half the time you would ordinarily preparing for a podcast. You know what I mean? That's hard. Doing that, going the extra mile is wrote. That's second nature to me.

1:07:24Yeah, it's fascinating. I find this quirk of a particular type of human very, very fascinating. But I think a way to weigh in is to think of it in the context of flow states. And by that, I mean, can you inhabit a state of allowing? Can you be an open channel and in a disposition position of surrender, where you are receiving almost like an antenna as opposed to willing things, trying to make them happen. Again, I'll take it back to recovery. I mean, one of the first things you learn is your powerlessness over drugs and alcohol, and that the solution is not going to come as a result of you applying your will to this problem, which is very good.

1:08:15Well, taking more drugs and alcohol. It's like, self -will run riot. It's like, I read that book. You guys, I get it, whatever. I'll figure it out. Don't worry about it. You're trying to solve a problem of the mind with the mind that created it. You're going to do it by applying this incredible self -will that you have only to discover that you're digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper until you're so broken. and you let go and you give up and you say, I can't do this alone, please help me. Not only do I need help, I want help, I'm willing to receive help and I will take the instruction that's given to me, which requires a tremendous amount of humility.

1:09:01So, are you in self will, is that self will out of balance with your life? And what would it feel like and look like to release your attachment to that self -will as an engine of identity and instead be in that very uncomfortable state of being and allowing. You've talked about your relationship to endurance racing, mutual friend of ours, Wilgouge, recently ran across America. Yeah. What you make of Wilgouge. I love Wilgouge. I think he's great. I think he is an interesting and compelling breath of fresh air into the ultra -running community. Just by way of background, I have some experience in ultra -endurance events.

1:09:50I've done a bunch of hard races over the years. So I have a connection to that community. I know a lot of people in that community. I have a lot of friends in that community. Will's BFF in ultra running is our mutual friend Robbie Ballinger who ran across the United States has done a lot of hard things set the record, the FKT for the central, how many laps of the central, how many miles you can run around the loop in Central Park in one day like he's done a lot of crazy wild stuff. And those guys couldn't be more different and yet are the closest of friends trained together, raised together, they crew each others endeavors and it's a really beautiful friendship that I've been sort of privy to witnessing and observing.

1:10:38I know Robbie a lot longer than I know Will, but I followed Will. It was Robbie you introduced me to Will originally. So I started following Will online and I just found him to be so unique as a figure in this strange little subculture of ultra running because that is a culture that historically has been populated with You know guys that You know live in the van down by the river know how to grow a nice beard It's a granola crowd. It's a very it's a very it's a very in a beautiful way. It's a grassroots community that has that has participated in and helped grow a sport where typically there's no media coverage, there's no prize money, nobody's doing this for glory or media attention.

1:11:39You pitch a tent at the starting line the night before you wake up, you do your 100 miles and you go home and nobody else in the world knows what you did except for you. So, and there's something really pure and amazing about that. And that's sort of woven into the fabric of what this sport is about. Here comes Will Gouge, male model, six pack abs. Looks a lot more like a rugby player than an ultra runner. He's got the shaved torso and the skin care routine that he's happy to share with you. He's walking the catwalks. He loves a nice bathrobe and a five -star hotel and tea service. He enjoys the finer things in life.

1:12:19At the same time, he's an absolute beast when it comes to ultra running, fueled by a desire to make peace with the early passing of his mother who died of cancer and to raise money and awareness around cancer research. He begins participating in these ultra runs Mostly I think he started doing some marathons and he did the the John O 'Grott's run He did a couple hard things, but then created some self -styled adventures for himself ran around Lake Como And this past summer ran across the United States no small feet three thousand miles Robbie was there every single day supporting him Reese Robinson was the guy who created the weekly vlog on the audacious report, which is the YouTube channel that they have.

1:13:12Reese used to work for me. He lived at my house. He created videos for me. So I know these guys really well. And it was super fun to watch Will throw down day after day, 52 miles, 54 miles, 56 miles, and do it with a smile and a certain flair and a passion for fashion. This guy looks good. And as hard as that was, there's something inside me that was thinking, he's kind of making it look easy. And this, in turn, ruffled some feathers out in the ultra running community. I fucking love this. I want to know about these feathers. That, you know, there's a certain idea of what an ultra runner looks like, how they're supposed to be, and Will isn't, Will is very different from that.

1:14:04And I think people don't like different. And so there was a sort of who is this guy and what is he doing? And then on message boards, people started taking shots at him. and there was a little movement about whether or not he was actually doing this legitimately. Okay, so skepticism around the actual achievement. A lot of skepticism, yeah. So much so that one guy flew from the United Kingdom and showed up, they were, I don't know where they were in the middle of the Navajo nation or something like that, convinced that Will was cheating and that he was there to root him out. It's a story that Will shares on my podcast.

1:14:43I don't know when this is going up and I'm not sure when my conversation with Will is going out, but and Will had to kind of weather that on top of the difficulty of just actually competing this very difficult task. And so which he did and he did it again with Flair. Do you have a British record? Perhaps it's not a world record, but I don't even remember offhand. I could have looked that up. I think that was part of what ruffled feathers that he was going to be the fastest British guy, but there was this other guy. It's like who cares? Like Will doesn't even care. You know, he just wanted to go do this hard thing and raise money and experience it with his friends and you can watch the weekly vlog on the audacious report and see how it all went down.

1:15:31But I respect Will for his conviction and his sense of self to just be who he is unapologetically. Do you know he reminds me of Ross Edgley? A little bit, I love Ross. Ross is great. Not so much in the way he looks, all the way dresses. Ross is like permanently in - Ross is a lot sillier. Yes, great. He's an absolute animal in the way that he trains. Matt respect for Ross and his accomplishments. I think he's just in - You see, isn't he one in Italy? Yes, yeah. And now he's back in Byron Bay training. But Ross is, I think Ross has a more childlike nature to him. That's very endearing. But yes, similar in that they've cut their own path in endurance sports, not so much by participating in other people's races or sanctioned events, but by creating their own self -styled adventures.

1:16:30What's the endurance community's response to Ross being? because he did, he's for the people that don't know, Ross swam for about 200 days, six hours on, six hours off without stopping. Right. All around the UK. He circumnavigated the UK. The first man to ever swim around the UK. He has recently tried twice, unsuccessfully, in combination with Jim Shock, to complete the longest ever single duration swim. First time in Loch Ness, too cold. Second time in Italy, too hot. Yeah. This African heat wave comes in and the water temperatures 32 degrees, the air temperature is 40 degrees. It's unbearable.

1:17:12Anyway, what was the endurance community's response to this guy who trains Chris Hemsworth, looks like a bodybuilder, crossed with a salty old sea dog, but is it always laughing? I didn't see any negative stuff about him, but I wasn't looking for it either. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, he's a very affable guy. People, especially in open water swimming, can get very particular about rules and how these things are conducted. There's a whole controversy around Diana and I add when she did her Cubus swim to Florida. But some people say she broke the rules, it shouldn't count, etc. So there's some personality kind of attitude around these types of things.

1:18:01I don't have a sense of negative blowback on Ross. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. But I think to your point of the similarities between Will and Ross, like Ross doesn't look like an endurance athlete either. He's built like a tank. And yes, he trained Chris Hemsworth for Thor. or he's just an absolute unit, this guy, which is not the kind of physique that you want to have for long distance open water swimming. And I've told him, I'm like, why are you putting on all this bulk? You're making this harder for yourself. If you lost 20 pounds of muscle, your shoulders wouldn't get tight. You lose a little bit of power in your stroke, but when you're going for ultra endurance, that's not important.

1:18:44What's important is efficiency and your ability to conserve energy. But he is who he is. And I love him to death. I just think he's a delight to watch. And I'm always cheering for him. Yeah, I have really enjoyed watching Ross. His book, The Art of Brazilians, for anybody that's going through a bit of a tough time. If you've read or listened to the obstacle is the way, enjoyed it, and thought I want more, like a spiritual successor to that book is the art of resilience from Ross. So Stoic Sports Science, I think he called it. Yeah, yeah. And it's this sort of semi -autobiographical diary of his swim around the UK where he applies both Stoic philosophy lessons and sports science to the narrative.

1:19:34Fucking awesome. And he's a great writer. He's not a contributor to GQ. He's been writing for a I think he has a sports science degree. And he's done a lot of crazy stuff. Like he did a triathlon, like yeah, log swim, he pulled a car, you know, like he's done a lot of kind of jackal and land types stunts over the years. This episode is brought to you by a product I've used every single day for over three years now, and that is AG1. It's a foundational nutrition supplement that covers whole body health, helps with my energy, my digestion, and is a staple every single day in my supplement regime.

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1:20:38That's how confident they are that you'll love it. If you're looking for a simpler, effective investment for your health try AG1 and get 5 free AG1 travel packs are yours supply a vitamin D and that 90 day money back guarantee head to the link in the show notes below or go to drink AG1 .com slash wisdom that's drink AG1 .com slash wisdom. I've heard you say before, the prize doesn't go to the fastest guy. It goes to the guy who slows down the least. That pressure of potential and pressure of consistency to me in all areas of life. You know, you were specifically not talking about racing. You were talking about this on -off, of burning coast, workloads, in professional life.

1:21:29How do you deal with that? You've got this engine inside of you. I want to work. I care about the work that I do. I care about the things that I do. I want to serve all the rest of it. How have you learned to switch yourself off and what's the journey being like to releasing that right foot from the accelerator pedal? It's been an interesting lesson that I have reluctantly embraced, I guess I would say, but you can't serve to your maximum effect if you're not also serving yourself. So you have to tend to the vessel if you want to be a vessel of good in the world. And when you're a workaholic or you're someone who's prone to suffering and feels like your self -worth is tied up and going the extra mile, being in that place of letting go and allowing yourself to take time and step back is the most counterintuitive thing that you can possibly do.

1:22:40Again, that's the discipline. But the truth is, to the point of that quote, the prize doesn't go to the fastest. It goes to the person who slows down the lease. That was originally said to me by my coach, my endurance coach. In ultra endurance, there's nothing about it that's fast. You could go out and run a mile right now faster than any of these ultra runners. But if you were to run a 10 -minute mile, which is easy for most fit people, 130 times over, then you would crush the bad water and probably break the record. So it's not about fast. It's about the ability to persist. And your ability to persist is correlated with your capacity to conserve.

1:23:35You have to be able to meet out your energy in small bits in order to go the full distance. I'm somebody who's always thinking about the long term. I'm not somebody who's trying to create a viral hit or make a big splash tomorrow. I just do my daily work every single day and I trust that as I continue to get better at what I do that I hone my craft and that my focus is squarely placed on the things that are most important that the success will come eventually and as a result of that as opposed to engineering success in some kind of fast track way. I think that's misguided. It may be effective in the short term, but what are you doing 10 years later?

1:24:22And I want to be somebody who Can continue to do this thing that you and I both do for as long as possible. I've been doing it 11 years As you know, it's taxing. It's a lot. I don't think it says is is easy as people think. I think there's so much work, more work that goes into it than people realize. And in order run that marathon, you have to take breaks and it's scary to take breaks. Because if you're not doing, then who are you? The world is passing you by. You're gonna miss out. All this forward momentum suddenly gets arrested. But I have learned that,

1:25:08taking that time Ultimately becomes a growth accelerator Because that time is necessary to not only recharge your battery, but also to develop clarity around the how, what, and why of what the fuck you're doing. So about four years ago I decided to take a month off sabbatical terrifying. I went to Australia for an entire month And yeah, it was terrifying. I mean, it was great too. I was in Australia, what's not to love. But to not open the laptop, to not edit the blog post, to not engage in any of that, was perhaps the most uncomfortable I'd ever been. And it's not a switch that can just get switched off.

1:26:01And it's not something that gets easier even a week later. Like you really do need a lot of time. Like I needed that entire month. Like it wasn't even actually until the last week where I started to feel a little bit more grounded. What did you do?

1:26:20I kept it really simple. I mean, I have friends. I was in Sydney that year. I've gone Australia twice. So I've done this every year. I've gone to Hawaii twice. And all those places I have lots of friends, lots of opportunity to do fun stuff and see lots of people and blah blah blah. But I really treat it like a retreat. And so I live those days quite monastically. I do what I enjoy. I'm in a tropical location. I get up. I make my morning smoothie. And then I go out and I train. I ride my bike for four hours. I go to the ocean and swim. I push myself physically. And then I come back. I eat, I would go to the beach, I read, watch a movie, go to bed at 8 o 'clock, and try actually not to talk to anybody and to not be online.

1:27:17If there's any output at all, it's just in journaling with intention and those pages ultimately creating the foundation for an idea or something later. But besides that, no work. What have you learned about your direction or your goals or yourself through these manuaries?

1:27:43One a very tactical level, I've learned to trust my team and that I can let go. So, that in and of itself, that you can take a step back and the whole castle doesn't cave in on itself and the world continues to spin and the work it's done is incredibly comforting and empowering because it taught me that I can step away and it's not going to be a disaster.

1:28:19I don't think that you can have the level of clarity on who you are and what you're doing

1:28:31when you're in the machinations of the creative process. There's a myopia, like what you're doing six interviews in four days or something like that, and then I mean, you're on a hustle grind, right? When you're on the hustle and you're on the grind, there's a sort of euphoric feeling that comes with that, and a sense of pride, and accomplishment that's all good. but you're not seeing the forest for the trees because you're staring at the leaves on one particular tree. And so in order to have that perspective, you have to stop. And if you don't, you're robbing yourself of the greater opportunity that's right in front of you because you've created your own treadmill for yourself.

1:29:19And it becomes very easy, especially if you're getting success to just keep doing that thing. But sometimes you have to pattern interrupt in order to identify the greater opportunity or the orthogonal opportunity that you can't see when you're in the midst of the grind. There's a cognitive bias, I guess a framework, a mental framework called direction over speed. The lesson is that if you are going in the precise right direction, regardless of how quickly or slowly, you're always making progress. If you're not going in the right direction very quickly, you can actually push yourself further away from the goal that you ultimately want.

1:30:07There's another insight from Chris Sparks, who is a world champion poker player and a productivity he expert and he says there can be no growth without goals and it's a really nice counterbalance. He came out with it just after James Clears' atomic habit and I would love to get those two guys together to talk about this. They don't conflict. They mesh nicely but I do think it's an important redress. As soon as James said, you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. As soon as he said that, I think that and the success of the book, which was phenomenal, and is in one of my thoughts.

1:30:46It's still like the number one New York Times best seller. It's phenomenal. It's a powerhouse and rightly so, right? It's one of my five books on my hundred book list that you have to read. As soon as he said, you do not rise to the level of your goals you fall to the level of your systems. I think people stopped thinking about goals. And he made a really great argument, which was everybody at the start line of the 100 meter race has the same goal. It's to win. So it's not the person who has the best goals, it's the person who has the best systems in preparation. And that's true. As you dig in a little deeper, it forgets about direction of a speed.

1:31:23And this is what there can be no growth without goals. The Christmas, which is that it is just personal goal, mental masturbation for you to to phonetically do self -improvement, not in service of a thing, or not in service of even a direction that you're going toward. And it was a really important refrain for me. And I think that it plays into what you're talking about. Why would you take a sabbatical if not that there was some direction that you were going in? I think that the discomfort of relinquishing control over the day to day work, especially if you enjoy, even if you don't enjoy what you do, like it buttresses yourself worth in a lot of ways.

1:32:14And taking the manuary holiday, that would be, I think that would be my equivalent of an ultra -engirant event. I hate running. I hate running. I got invited on a gym shark run. We're out here in LA and I got invited on a gym shark run with Noah Olson and some other cool people that I'd probably love to meet. I couldn't think of anything worse. I don't want to go running. I would rather do, and I would genuinely rather prepare for an ultra race than try and take a full month off. Which is exactly why you need to do it. Or you can ride this pony until you fall off and you're about to crack and break.

1:32:52You're young, you're robust. I'm sure your capacity to handle a lot of stress and an extreme workload is very large. But I think there's a breaking point to all of that. And I guess my point is that you don't need to get to that point to recognize the value of stepping back. And I think if you reframe it as not a break, but as call it whatever you want that makes you feel better about what it is that you're doing, I think it's important to do that. Short of, now I do it, whether I feel like I need it or not. It's a prophylactic against burnout and stress. Dude, I think the only ripple I would say before, let me finish this thought to the kind of James Clear thing that you were talking about.

1:33:47Just to be clear, like, I'm not using that month to set goals per say. I may, but that's not the intent that I'm bringing to it. The intent that I'm bringing to it is to step back, look at my life in all the categories and ask myself, what the fuck are you doing? Like why are you doing this? And to really deconstruct that why and to figure out if there's a more evolved way of doing what I do or maybe a new direction altogether. I don't set five -year goals. I'm not somebody who's like, I'm trying to do this thing. I'm trying to be nimble and responsive in the moment to what is happening. And the more I am in connection with myself, then the more trustworthy my instincts are about that directionality.

1:34:46And I've learned over time to trust and rely upon that as the barometer of not just the the tack that I'm taking, but the steps that I'm executing on to get there. And I think that served me well and has allowed me to pivot and to not be afraid to experiment, try new things, play with the format, with the pie. It's like, It's successful. Don't change it. Just keep doing the same thing, right? But if I'm doing what I'm doing in the exact same way I was doing it six months ago, then I'm not growing. So it's an embrace of experimentation, a healthy relationship with failure, and holding things is looser, not holding on so tight.

1:35:41It's the tight hold that I think you probably have right now that you're so resistant to releasing. It's way what you're talking about, and I'm glad that you clarified, it's way bigger picture than goals. It's way further up. What's important to you? What are your values? What is the quality of the relationships that you have? Where were you six months ago, or six months ago? Now, where did you think that you would be now? And is that lining up? And if not, why? What's the missing piece in your life? What's the thing that brought you joy as a kid that you've pushed aside? What is the most uncomfortable conversation with yourself that you've been running away from your entire life?

1:36:32Do you have the courage to engage with that? Are you willing to do a little bit more work? Can you pull back another layer on who you are? Are you man enough to do that? We all have stuff we don't want to deal with. Stuff we compartmentalize or we think, well, I just put that one away and I'm not going to worry about that. I'm good. True growth, true expansion, and ultimately your highest expression and the manifestation of your greatest potential is inextricably connected to and linked to that willingness and courage to do that stuff that you don't want to do. I've heard you say, do you feel that to enjoy your life is an indulgence that's fine for other people, but you're on a mission so you can have a different relationship with those aspects of life that other people find important?

1:37:31Yeah, I can fall into that trap and have it's convenient. It's also ego satisfying. I don't need to take a break, take a day off. That's for other people. I'm doing this thing and this thing is important and people care about it and I'm willing to sacrifice my personal health in the short term so that I can get that person on at the last minute and put that episode up and so many people are going to be impacted by that. There is a outsized sense of self that gets packed into that. It's kind of noses. Yeah, there's a maniacal narcissism with that. I like that. I like that. Yeah, and so you're not really that important.

1:38:16The internet's not going away. Nobody's waiting for your content. They may enjoy it. They may get a lot out of it. It might be very meaningful to them. It might have changed their life, but ultimately, that narrative, that story that you're telling yourself is really just a convenient excuse for avoiding a level of self -honesty and self -connection that will ultimately create a stronger, better version of that person you're deluding yourself you already are. Yeah, I really think that you take your endurance athlete perspective. It definitely seems like you're applying it to most of your other pursuits as well.

1:39:06And in the same way as doing a race for 250K, no one's going to do it in one go. Okay, so when are you going to break? And for how long? What's that going to look like? And what are you going to do during it? One of the things that I've been thinking about a lot is protecting your passion.

1:39:27You can continue to put your nose against the grindstone and sacrifice on the altar and flageulate yourself for the thing that you see as you're calling. But it becomes progressively harder as you erode your passion and protecting that, just tempering that foot on the gas can allow you to use a much more potent fuel, which is the passion side of it, which is getting fired up and being excited to go and do the thing. And I got this conception of an hourglass shape to a lot of independent creation pursuits. So at the very beginning, everything is kind of easy because there's no expectation. You're doing it exclusively for the love of it.

1:40:11you're only doing it when you want and nobody cares. And then as you start to achieve success, you get squeezed more and more and more because there is expectation. And maybe you're making money from it or maybe people, your sense of self -worths attached to it or maybe it's your identity. It squeezes and squeezes and squeezes and squeezes and then it gets to this point in the middle of the hourglass. And I do think that as you break out onto the other side, that is largely a function of But it can be a function of other things as well, including experience that you can afford to delegate, that you can learn to delegate, that you can learn to relinquish.

1:40:47And as you come through the other side, you go, okay, well now maybe I don't need to do absolutely everything. Maybe I can have somebody that can keep everything ticking over while I'm away. And this can happen in business. This can probably happen. I would imagine that mothers feel this with children when they need to have faith at the father, that they can go out with the girl friends, you know, 12 months deep into the baby being born, and they can leave it with the father, and the father knows which way up the baby is supposed to be, and how to change an api, and when it needs feeding, and so on and so forth.

1:41:20There are a lot of things that I think occur within this. Sure. What I would say to that is, you can be on the upper end of that hourglass.

1:41:34Metaphor and you can still be a fucking asshole and be Fueled by anger and resentment and spite and ego Yes, if you have a successful enterprise and you have enough revenue you can hire people you can delegate you can create convenience for yourself that's all fantastic and It's something that I'm doing now and I'm reaping the benefits of that and I highly recommend it But I'm getting at something deeper, which is what is your fuel source? There are lots of different sources of energy and motivation for why we do what we do. Most people, I'm convinced, are navigating the world reactively, completely decoupled from who they are without any self -awareness of why they're responding and reacting to the externalities of their environment in the way that they do.

1:42:31And I think a lot of people live their life that way. There are other people who invest in themselves enough to try to understand like, hey, when I do that, this happens. Maybe I shouldn't do that. I wonder why it is that I do things that way. That excavation can lead to a healthier way of responding to the world and decision -making, et cetera. But you can still be acting out of resentment and ego, et cetera. This process never ends. It's the worst, it's the most annoying thing. There's no end to the amount of self -understanding and kind of behavioral modification that we can engage with. But I think for me, that top end of the hourglass is a situation in which one has transcended the lower energies of motivation, because they're unhealthy, and also they're unsustainable.

1:43:31Anger is a very powerful fuel source, and it will catalyze a lot of activity, and in some cases a lot of success. But at some point, that fuel source is going to either run you into a pit, or you're going to run out of that fuel. I had this exact conversation with Alex yesterday saying, he's a big proponent of use what you have. And most people have way more resentment and anger than they do hope. Yeah. I do agree for activation energy to get yourself out of whatever the zero to one stage is. You need to use what you have because zero to one is the hardest. The first thousand subscribers, the first blog post, the first whatever it is that you do is always the most difficult one.

1:44:22So use what you have. The problem is if you find that that fuel source is potent, you can end up relying on it over time. And the problem is it's toxic when you use the fuel. It comes its own addiction. Correct. Yeah. Correct. And it has its own euphoric byproduct. But when you engage with that anger, there's something exciting about that. Well, the end when you have success doing that, you're going to go back to it and you're going to go back to it. And you're going to have to run into an obstacle before you decide to change that way. Yeah. I called this the vestigial pattern bias, technically referred to as the iron -stelling effect.

1:45:05But basically, the thing that you did when you started that gave you success, you refused to let go of when you no longer are served by it. And a lot of people find success by grasping on really, really tightly. But the delusion or the lie is that that is the source of this success. In the same way that a lot of people, a lot of creative people, when they get sober, think they're never going to be able to write another song or be able to perform in front of people or you know, paint a picture or whatever it is, because it was the drug that was giving them the inspiration and the spark that allowed them to be their best most artistic self.

1:45:47It's the same lie, whether it's anger or resentment. And the fear is, if I clear that out, if I transcend my anger, if I make peace with the people in my life, and I let go of these resentments and I'm in a place of forgiveness, than I'm gonna have no ambition. Was my fuel? Yeah, and my business will crater, and my life will be over. And I think that's a very real fear that a lot of people have. And I understand that. As counterintuitive as it may sound, my experience has been quite the opposite. And I've been lucky enough to witness people's lives, blossom and explode in the best way, in miraculous ways, by overcoming those character traits or character defects that they once thought were sources of fuel only to learn that they were hindrances and anchors.

1:46:41When liberated from that, there is a sense of capacity that expands, that then creates a life that's ultimately bigger than the one they could have imagined for themselves. What would you say to a person listening to this podcast or your podcast who spends a lot of time in the head that enjoys the power of their thoughts and being able to wrangle the world using cerebral horsepower and cognitive effort and feels like I probably need to kind of get out of this head and kind of down into this heart and be able to actually hear me, not just hear my thoughts. Sam Harris talked about having ideas and systems and the equivalent of someone who is reliant on their cognitive horsepower letting go of those would be the equivalent of them being hit over the head with a hammer.

1:47:44I'm saying, I love my ideas in my systems. Your life would, you should try them. You should mind your life would be amazing if you only had systems and ideas like mine. What do you say to that person that's kind of praying at that altar of cerebral hospital? I think there's so much to be learned and gained from engaging with the heart mind. I myself as somebody, I lock myself in my head. I'm very enamored of my own ideas and my ability to articulate them and write them down and my ego loves it when I turn a certain phrase, etc. I get that. I understand that. And our brains are pattern making machines.

1:48:28And our intellectual capacity is what we leverage and rely upon in order to make sense of the world around us and who we are. We create rules through our perception that gets processed through our mind. And that becomes the definition of ourselves and what the world is and the expectations that we have of others to mute or quiet that and instead attune your attention to the heart is a very esoteric and challenging notion to even understand like what does that mean? What exactly? What's the tactic? How do I do that? You're back in your mind already, right? Was there a page in Tools of Titans about this?

1:49:18So what's interesting about this is my wife is like all in her heart. And I think with certain men, I'm perceived as somebody who is very heart centered, but my wife looks at me as a guy who lives entirely in my head. Because the contrast between us is pretty significant. And she's been an amazing teacher and helping me to make that connection that I find so difficult. And in times of stress and anxiety, I will inevitably default back to, because it's so hardwired. But I found that when I give myself permission to get quiet through meditation, through mindfulness practices, to listen to myself, and doing and try to, if there is a practice to it, it's really not necessarily like a rebirth thing, but trying to connect with that child.

1:50:16You know, what is your earliest memory? What is it that brought you joy as a young person? What did you like to do that you even forgot you even liked doing? And the more you can kind of ground it in that context and learn to listen and be silent and get out of the way as opposed to allowing your ego to intervene or to make people understand that you're here and you have something to say quiet. Can you get quiet? Can you be with yourself? Are you good company for yourself? Are you haunted by your brain? Is your brain working on overdrive? What would it feel like to let go of that and listen to the subtle energies that internal voice that you know lives inside of you, but you're so quick to snuff out because you have stuff to do and you're an important person and you got to call that guy and and you gotta check your bank balance and you gotta go online and see how much that car lease is or when I'm gonna be able to upgrade my condo to this house.

1:51:26All that bullshit is just getting in the way of that authentic, real version of yourself. That's kinda down there going, hey buddy, I'm here, don't forget me. That feels very feminine and I think it's probably challenging for a lot of guys. It just feels antithetical to what it means to be a man or their notion of masculinity. But ultimately, I think is just an unbelievable source of strength and growth and capacity and creativity

1:52:08that when nourished really might surprise you. And I know that when I, it's counterintuitive for me, Chris, like I like to live in my head, but when I allow myself to do that, those are the moments that have been fundamental and critical in these transformations that I've had in my life. They have not been functions of the intellect. they have been functions of the heart and appreciating what that aspect of myself is trying to tell me about who I am, heating it, taking action on it. Those have been, that is at the foundation of every quantum leap that I've made as a human being. I love it. Let's bring this one home, man.

1:53:05It's been a very long time coming. I'm really, really, really glad that you came to see me today. I feel like I are letting go of that cerebral horsepower is something that very, very many people myself included listening to this podcast probably need to take heed of. I'm really, really glad that you've got this. On the side of you, there's other contribution. Where should people go? Do you want to keep up to date with the stuff if you're doing what's coming up next. Everything I do is at Richroll .com, Richroll podcast on all the places, Richroll on YouTube, et cetera. And that's it. Check out my podcast, similar to Chris's, but different.

1:53:45And I really appreciated this today. I really thought you asked amazing questions and you forced me into some uncomfortable places. So I hope I acquitted myself adequately. But I appreciate the opportunity, thanks, man. I appreciate you. Cheers.