Secrets to Unlocking Your Superhuman Potential | Colin O'Brady EP 411

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

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1:12Every time you do one of these experiences, you have a strategy. You don't just say, okay, I'm going to just push through until I'm dead. You have a strategy, and it sounds like Jenna's really helping you craft this strategy. How do people push through these mental or physical challenges when it seems like, gosh, it's going to take me 10 years to launch a podcast like what Lewis has or 10 years to build this business or to do this thing? How do people push through that barrier? And how do you do it? You know, for me, people love to ask me about my physical training. How do I get strong? There's some fun stories about the crazy training that I did to prepare for this and whatnot.

1:44But I believe that it's the muscle six inches between your ears. It's about flexing your mind is really what it comes down to. and I described that moment of Jen and I writing our dreams onto this whiteboard. Sadly, as you know, that's where 99.9 % of dreams die as an idea because all of a sudden we have these doubts in our mind. Oh, I can't, or it's going to take 10 years, or I could never catch up to this person or that person or this metric or that metric. But it's about showing up. It's about getting out there every single day. So in Antarctica, my first day in Antarctica, I think, is really emblematic of that.

2:13I get out there. We've been planning this project for well over a year. It's a world first. No one's ever done it. There's so many doubters and naysayers. Someone actually died 100 miles from the finish line three years ago trying this project. Another one of the best explorers in the world went out there the following year. And after 52 days, ran out of food and had to be picked up and didn't make it. So there's a lot of people. There's a lot of print articles and big magazines saying it's physically impossible to do this thing. And so, like, I know that going in. And so we build this strategy.

2:41And the unsupported nature means you can't take any extra supplies with you. Basically, what you have in your sled to start, no one can give you anything. So that case like weight is of the essence and so I pack my sled as much of food and as much fuel the fuel I melt the ice into water and I don't bring extra anything I literally don't even have an extra pair of underwear with me for 54 days because like I can't I'd rather have a hundred more Calories in my sled of food same underwear same underwear 54 days, but I get out there I fly this plane lands me on the edge of the Antarctic continent takes off I'm all alone out there right like I'm dropped off alone another British explorer, one of the, actually the most experienced in the world in terms of amount of miles traversed in Antarctica on various other projects, he also decides that he wants to try to be the first.

3:22So not only am I now racing history, this guy's a British Navy SEAL equivalent, you know, special forces guy, his name's Lou Rudd. Plane drops us off, we're at a mile apart from each other, equidistant from the first waypoint, the first like GPS marker on the map. And I get out there and I've got this video of me being like, it's a blue sky day, it's great, after all year of planning it's finally time for me to like try to cross an article I'm taking the first step and I bend down and I pull the strap on my sled to tighten it for the first time and ping the strap breaks literally the strap breaks like it's minus 25 and the plastic can handle it breaks so right out of the gate I'm like wow this is gonna be a long journey this before the first step so then I strap into my sled and the sled's the heaviest on the first day 375 pounds to start was about the maximum I thought I could pull so I put as much food as I could even though I knew I was gonna to burn 10 ,000 calories per day, and I factored I could carry about 7 ,000 calories, so I was going to lose weight every single day straight from the get-go, even eating 7 ,000 calories.

4:16That's how intense and cold it is. And so I start pulling my sled. About one hour in, I'm sweating, and I'm like, wait, this sled's so heavy, but I can't not pull it without sweating. And so I start sweating. Then I realize I actually don't think I can pull the sled, and I start crying. I literally start crying. But what happens when you cry when it's minus 25 It freezes to your face. So I have frozen tears to my face, and I'm one hour, two hours into this journey. And so I do the only thing I could think of is I call home to Jenna. Wow. And so I pick up the phone and I go, hey, babe, yeah, we may have named our project the right thing.

4:51It appears to be impossible because we had called it the impossible first. And meanwhile, I'm seeing Lou disappear on the horizon with this beautiful, like, ski stroke, like, totally knows what he's doing. like strong and steady out there. And like at this point, I can't even think about the fact that there's a race in place. I mean, I'm just trying to like get through the first day. And so she says to me, Colin, how far are you from the first waypoint? She knows the route. We've studied it. She knows everything. The first waypoint is only a few miles from the drop off point. And I'm like, I'm 0.63 miles from here.

5:22It's as if I'm saying it's a million miles. But she's like, OK, so you're half a mile from the first waypoint. Like this goes back to your original question of strategy, right? And she's like, do me a favor. Whatever you do, I know it's heavy. I know you're sweating. I know you're exhausted and you're probably a little bit afraid, understandably. Get to the first waypoint. Get to that first waypoint. And you'll have felt like you got somewhere on the first day. So for the next hour, I struggled and battled and get to that first waypoint, set up my tent, get inside my tent. And I say to Jenna, I call her again, it's kind of our safety check at night off the sat phone.

5:52She's like, how are you doing? I was like, obviously I'm stretched. She says, look, tomorrow do me a favor. Try to find the flow, even if just for a minute or two minutes. It's going to be a hard day. So just those words, I went to sleep and I was like, okay, I made it to the first way point. I'll get up tomorrow and kind of regroup. And then I woke up and I'm big on mantras, but this mantra had never been with me before this and just came to me out loud as my alarm went off to wake me up on my first real full day out there. I said out loud to myself, I said, Colin, you are strong. You are capable.

6:19You are strong. You are capable. And that ended up being my mantra every single day, waking up for the rest of the entire 54 day journey. And sure enough, that next day, was it stupid challenging? Yes. But instead of two miles, I made it eight miles. And I found that flow state for a minute. The next day was nine miles. And I found that flow for two or three minutes. And so we had a strategy. It went out the window on day one. Had to refocus, refocus on the mind, adjust a few things with our strategy. Because I was hoping to go further distances in that. She's like, well, like maybe it's not shorter distances at this at first.

6:55But as it gets lighter, maybe it'll go longer and all this kind of stuff. And so, you know, how do you strategize and plan for something that's been told is impossible? You're stepping into the unknown. It's by being adaptable and ultimately realizing that these things are happening in our minds. These doubts, these fears, that's a human thing. I don't care who you are. I still have them. I have four world records and I've had some a bit of success in my life through challenges. But like I wake up every day with doubts and fears and challenges. But it's a being able to quiet that in my mind and continue to get to that first waypoint or get to that next step forward in whatever you're doing.

7:28What did you do to get into flow every day then? Besides the mantra, how did you get into flow and how did you stay into it? Yeah, so that's something that I've just been fascinated with. So I grew up as a kid, as a swimmer. My sisters and my parents would always be like, you're always talking all the time. You're always this. Like I was trying to hang out with them, follow my sisters into the room, like always like chatting and all this kind of stuff. But what I realized is I spent four hours a day as a kid swimming, two hours before school, two hours after school, putting in those reps of quiet.

7:54Swimming is this weird sport where you're staring at a black line like you can't talk. There's no eye contact. There's no, you know, really can't really chat to your teammates even. You're kind of in this zone. And so before I knew the word flow state or high performance, this is me as a kid, I realized I was sort of tapping in and out of those states. And I became more conscious of that as I went through my life and became a professional triathlete after a whole other crazy tangent of my life, being severely burned in a fire in Thailand and being told I would never walk again. More so, what happened when I was racing triathlon is a friend of mine came to me and she said, I don't know much about sports, but just by observing this, I see that this is all in your guys' minds out here.

8:31And I was like, yeah, absolutely. And she said, I'd recommend that you go to these meditation retreats. And I was like, cool. I'm interested in meditation, but I don't know a lot about it. I haven't done this since 2011. And she's like, yeah, if you've heard of a pasta meditation, it's these 10-day silent meditation retreats, 10 days, no reading, no writing, no eye contact, deep meditation. She's like, you should try it. And I was like, well, don't I need a little background in meditation before this? And she's like, no, Just do it. It's free. There's centers around the world. It's completely free to go.

8:57Like, go. And so me being the kind of, like, jump in head first type of person, as you can probably tell here, I was like, great, I'll go. So my off season in triathlon that year, I signed up for this meditation retreat. My stepdad, he drives me up to the retreat. He goes, hey, Colin, like, I pretty much never heard you shut up for a minute in your life. And so I'm going to wait here in the parking lot for an hour because once you realize this is a terrible idea, I'll be here waiting to drive you home. So sure enough, I stayed for those 10 days and it had just a profound impact on my life of learning about that self-awareness in my mind, in my brain, etc.

9:28And so from that practice, which I've gone back to the 10-day retreat, I try to go every single year if I can. I've done several as well as have a daily practice with it. I've kind of taken that into my canvas, into my artwork, into my sport. And this curiosity of the mind and where we can go in our mind and brain. And so one of my deep curiosity about Antarctica was, yes, unlocking the physical potential inside of me, but as a gateway to do that, exploring the mind. And what better place to be alone in this endlessly white landscape? The sun never sets. There's no change of days. There's no dark.

10:00There's no dark. It's a blank white canvas. And like I said, I literally deleted almost all the media from my iPhone. There was very few. I spent 80, 90 percent of the time in complete silence. It was a beautiful thing to explore that. So how did I tap into that flow? like I said, some of the times it was 30 seconds. Some of the times it was a minute or two. But as I kept on these repetition of days exploring this place in my mind, sometimes it was days, two days, three days, where the sequence of days would come through in high performance. And the stakes are high. It's 50, 60 mile per hour winds.

10:30If I let go of my tent, I have no shelter. It's gone. It's 80 degrees wind chill, minus 80 degrees wind chill. But I'm finding the space in my mind that is locked in and calm. And the most kind of most profound experience of that was actually on my very last day. So it's worthy of mentioning after the sixth day, I did catch up to Mr. Captain Lou Rudd and surpassed him and ended up in front of him the rest of the time. On the 52nd day, I woke up and I'm 77 miles away from the finish. And I'm thinking it's about three days, probably give or take that. It's Christmas morning and I wake up and I get outside of my tent and the deepest flow state of my entire life just comes over me.

11:07I just realized I recognize it. I say my mantra, I tap in and I I start exploring when I'm in the deepest flow of states, I'm also hyper aware. And so I start thinking like, how many more miles do I have to go? How much time would that take? Oh, it's three days, but what if I did it back to back? What if I did it in one big final push? I'd never gone more than 33 miles in an individual day, and I average about 15 to 17 miles a day. So I'm 77 miles away from the finish, and I'm 53 days in this expedition. But I get into this place in my mind that's so deep where I feel this strength and this power and this flow that I start to say to myself, whoa, we have this capacity as humans.

11:44Not me, not me, but as humans. And I'm tapped into the vibration of my family and friends and the school kids that are following along and just this radiant positivity that I'm shining out and receiving back in such a significant way that I tap into this flow. And for the next 32 hours, I don't stop. Wow. I continue onwards. I have to stop at hour 18 to put up my tent to melt a little bit of snow to get some more water because I'd ran out of water. Call home to my family. It's Christmas night. 7 p.m. for them on Christmas night. They're all gathered together. They're like, you did your best day ever.

12:1518 miles, 18 hours. I can't believe it. You're almost a day or two from the finish. And I was like, I'm not stopping. I'm still going. And my mother, who's been a huge influence in my life, and certainly Jenna, my sister, these strong women who have just been like these amazingly positive influences on my life. They hear it in my voice. And of course, as a mother or as a wife or as a sister, you're a little bit worried. Your person is out there in this intense environment. But they reflect now as they've told me the story from their point of view and they have it recorded on Christmas Day You know this this conversation that we had and they were like we could hear it in your voice You were more focused and more clear than you've ever been and they just said I can't wait to hear from you in 12 hours You're gonna cross this finish line and create history Wow go live your destiny And it was just this beautiful beautiful moment of the mind and I think I mean I'll say that you know coming back home and is asked all these questions in the medium perhaps were just super humbling and this question that kept coming up and it keeps coming up, which is, Colin, are you superhuman?

13:11And my question is simple. It's like, yeah, I'm superhuman. And so are you. And so are you. Like what I'm tapping into in my mind is accessible to all of us. And like, yes, you may not want to walk across Antarctica by yourself. In fact, I don't blame you for not wanting to do that. Whatever it is, you talk about business, entrepreneurship, innovation, music, art, love, creation, positivity, whatever that is, like that is within us. And that's what I tapped into out there, which is the most special thing for me to come back and be able to share is that resonant positivity and the power that we all have within us.

13:49Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation. And I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. that will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

14:39Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.