How Facing Your Fears Can Help You Conquer Them

23:52What is clickbait? You click on it. You know, the article doesn't even match it, but once you click, they get paid. So today the media is not designed to inform or educate you. It's designed to startle you. if i startle you you respond well most people that follows them it's in their pockets around them all the time now after covid where people thought they're going to die by breathing and now we're finding out a lot of different truths that we didn't know back then and you know then you throw on top of that an economy that looks incredibly difficult most people live don't remember or never experienced inflation i started my business when interest rates were 18 it was 18 right now people are marching on the white house you know i mean they're like freaking out because it's seven.

24:32So we're in a place where people have so much unknowns. So we want to learn it's take chaos and understand what's really going on. You and I've talked about this before. You know, I've got five kids and five grandkids. I think about these jobs disappearing the next 15 years. And how do I prepare my kids and grandkids? You do it by understanding those three skills you and I've talked about. One, anybody that's the best in the world at something has pattern recognition power. They see things other people see as chaos and they go, no, no, this has happened before. This is how it works. And they're allowed to anticipate where it's going instead of reacting.

25:07It's like playing a video game against the child. The child always wins. It's not because they're younger or faster. It's because they go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, because they played this game so many times. You shoot and you're dead in 10 seconds. Your next turns after 30 minutes of their play, right? They know where all the bad guys are. They can anticipate, not react. Well, losers react, leaders anticipate. So if I can recognize patterns, if I'm good in investment, I recognize investment patterns. If I'm good in business, I know business patterns. And I'm good in my own life. I start realizing, oh, there's patterns that get me angry and patterns that get me excited.

25:38And I learned to direct my own patterns. The second step is learning to use those patterns. And the third step of mastery is when you start creating them. That's what a great musician, that's what a great business person does. They recognize patterns, so they're not reacting, they use them, and then they start creating their own. And those three skills, if you get those three skills, it won't matter what jobs change, you'll be a dominant player, because you'll see what other people don't see. It's the fear comes from the unknown. So that's why I'm a student of history. When you study history, you can say what's happening right now happens about every 80 years like clockwork.

26:13And you can read 1000 years of Roman history and about every century, the same cycle. And once you know that, it gives you an unshakable feeling. You go, okay, I know what this is, and I know how to take advantage of this, and I don't need to be fearful of this. But then you still have to manage your mind, and you still have to make sure you cut off the media's influence, because some people are saturated in that. And, you know, whatever you feed in your brain is what you're going to experience. I want to ask you about that, too. By the way, I just want to remind everybody, because you can be at any point in the podcast, if you go to join Tony 100.com.

26:45You can get five free days with Tony. I can't believe I'm saying that out loud. Five free days with Tony Robbins. That would be, you know, 25 years ago. I wish you were doing that for me back in those days. It's just unbelievable that you're doing this, but, but I want to talk from your home. You don't have to travel or do anything else. Thanks to zoom and everything. It's pretty awesome. It's so awesome.

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27:45When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. Next up is a little song from CarMax about selling a car your way. You wanna sell those wheels? You wanna get a CarMax instant offer? So fast. Wanna take a sec to think about it? Or like a month?

28:25Wanna keep tabs on that instant offer? With OfferWatch. Wanna have CarMax pick it up from your driveway? You wanna get it done to it? You wanna do it all? So, wanna drive? CarMax. Pickup not available everywhere. Restrictions and fee may apply. That was a great conversation. And if you want to hear the full interview, be sure to follow the Ed Milet Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. The reason you're going to learn a bunch is I have a very uniquely qualified man to visit with you. Rich DeVinney was a Navy SEAL, but he was also, and I can't say what group he was a part of, but let's just call it a very elite group of SEALs without using the name.

29:08So Rich, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. Thank you, Ed. It's an honor to be here. So thanks for having me. First things first, I talk a lot about peak performance. You make a distinction in the book between optimal performance and peak performance. So any of you listening to this that are leaders of groups or just want to perform at a high level consistently, I think this distinction is really powerful. So give us the difference. Yeah, absolutely. And it really came to me as I left the military and people were asking me a lot about peak performance. And what I realized was I wasn't comfortable with the term in defining what Navy SEALs or spec operators do.

29:44And the reason is because peak, at least to me, peak is an apex. And it's an apex from which you can only come down. And it usually has to be planned for and prepared for and scheduled. So, for example, the professional athlete or the NFL player uses the entire week to prepare and plan to peak for three hours on Sunday. right? And so it really didn't apply to what we were doing every day. Because when I thought about, for example, myself in some combat situations, or even SEAL training, when you're freezing in the surf zone, there was nothing peak about my performance, right? We were just kind of moving through.

30:19And so I really started thinking about it in terms of optimal performance. Optimal performance is really, what's the very best I can do in the moment, whatever that best looks like, So sometimes that best looks like peak and it looks like flow states and everything's clicking. Other times that's like, hey, I am head down and I'm just taking step by step and that's all I got. And it's dirty and it's gritty and it's muddy and it sucks. And that's really, in my opinion, what it's not only spec ops. I try to take all the stuff I learned in spec ops and apply it to life. But that's really what life is.

30:53I mean, life, it's unrealistic and probably unhealthy to try to peak at all times during life. It's just not going to happen, right? So optimal performance allows us to be comfortable with this modulation and be comfortable with the fact that sometimes if you're just head down, just taking step by step, just grinding it out, that's okay. You're actually performing the best you can, right? And I would say COVID, you know, 2020 for all of us, I would imagine that most of us in 2020 didn't say that we were performing at our peak for most of 2020, right? We were doing the best we could. It's really just a more realistic, more practical way to think about performance, I think.

31:28That's real-world stuff. As I reflect on it, I think about the most successful people I know or the people that perform at a high level. Really, the key is they do it more consistently than other people. They do it under pressure, which we're going to talk about in a little while as well. Whether you're an athlete or a dad, it's under pressure. How do you perform? How do you respond to certain conditions? You were in charge of the selection process. And you make a distinction in the book. And by the way, when you're listening to this, everybody, these are attributes you wish to embody if you're going to be happier and a higher performer.

32:01It's also attributes you want to find in people you want to surround yourself with as friends, as associations, colleagues, business partners, et cetera. You make a distinction, though, that's awesome between skills and attributes. Because this is something I think most people discount themselves. Well, I don't have these incredible natural talents or skills, so I'm discounted from performing at a high level. He makes the case, guys, in the book. SEALs are regular guys. And I have to say, I've got to know a few. And I don't know that I disagree with that necessarily. I think there are extraordinary things about a few of them.

32:37But I tend to agree with you as an outside observer. So what's the difference between skills and attributes? Yeah, it's a distinction that I had to make when I was running the assessment selection because we were, our particular program, we were bringing in very experienced SEALs and we were putting them through our process and we were still getting about a 50 % attrition rate, which is natural and okay. But the problem was we weren't able to effectively articulate why. And we weren't able to say why to ourselves to be comfortable with that. We weren't able to tell our senior leadership why, but most importantly, we weren't able to tell the candidates why they weren't making it.

33:14And these are guys who are coming in and they really, they were kind kind of all-stars and rock stars. And to be able to tell them something like, well, you couldn't shoot very well or you couldn't do this very well, it just didn't seem to fit right. So I had to really break it down. And in a very general basic sense, skills are not innate. They're not inherent to our nature, right? None of us are born with the ability to ride a bike or throw a ball or shoot a gun in the military sense. We can be taught them. We can sometimes sit down in a class and learn them. They direct our behavior in known situations.

33:47So here's how and when to ride a bike, throw a ball, shoot a gun. And because they're visible and because they're set up that way and kind of steps that you can learn and teach, they're very easy to assess, measure and test. And this is why most teams, especially business teams who are kind of putting together dream teams, make the mistake of focusing only on skills, the best salesperson, best graphic designer, best marketing, whatever it is. Um, what the problem with skills is, is that it doesn't, skills don't tell us how we're going to operate when things go South and sideways and the environment turns completely uncertain, right?

34:20Um, because you can't necessarily apply a known skill to an unknown environment. This is where attributes come in. Attributes are innate, right? All of us are born with levels of adaptability of situational awareness of discipline of resilience, right? Um, they don't direct behavior. They inform our behavior. So they tell us how we're going to show up to a situation. So my level of adaptability and resilience, for example, informed the way I showed up when I was learning how to ride a bike and I was falling off a dozen times. OK, because they're hidden, though, because of their background, they're very difficult to assess, measure and test.

34:54And the most visible and visceral environments that you can see these things are in environments of challenge, uncertainty and stress, which is why the laboratory I had, which was SEAL training and whether it's basic, whether it's BUDS or the SEAL training I was running, it's all about throwing guys into challenge, uncertainty, and stress. It was just showing these qualities. And I always joke, you know, when I take it back to BUDS, you know, which is basic underwater demolition SEAL training, the basic course for a guy to become a Navy SEAL, you spend hundreds of hours running with boats on your heads.

35:27You spend hundreds of hours PTing with 300-pound telephone poles and freezing in the surf zone. And, you know, over a 20-year career, I've been on hundreds of combat missions, and I've done thousands of training evolutions, and never on any one of them did I carry a boat on my head or a telephone pole on my shoulder, right? So what they were doing to us in BUDS wasn't training us to be a Navy SEAL, right? It wasn't teaching us the skills to be a Navy SEAL. What it was doing was just teasing out these attributes. It was seeing if we could do the job, right? And so this is where we have to start thinking about making distinctions when we're putting together teams, and even in our own performance.

36:02Our performance, especially in challenge, uncertainty, and stress is driven by these attributes. And that's really important to know. Well, I think also when I hear that, I think of so many things. I think of even with our own children. We're always evaluating their skill set, but if they're really going to be flourishing their life, why not help them identify what their giftedness or attributes are, from what you call it? Then I'm thinking of all the people I've recruited into different businesses I've had. And I think you get these people with these perfect skills, perfect background. You're like, they're going to just crush this.

36:31They're such a great speaker. They're going to be great in sales, except you don't know how they're going to respond under pressure. That's right. Failure. And it's these attributes. And I have seen people with frankly, far lower skill levels with exemplary attributes, long-term have this optimal performance. I always use Tom Brady because people think I'm a whack job, but like, I think of Brady, not tremendous skillset, but some of these attributes that you write in the book, I was actually thinking of him from From an athlete standpoint, give us a little bit of a gift. There's 25 of them in the book, guys.

37:05When you were selecting, and I'm sure all 25 were important, were there two or three that really were requisite or stood out that were, you know, you really look for in people? Because I don't want to give away the entire book. But what are a few of them that you could share with us that are attributes that are just, they're almost mandatory for optimal performance? Well, so first, so I'll answer that question because I know people are curious. But the first thing I want to caveat is that the list of attributes to be a Navy SEAL is going to be different than the list of attributes required to be an athlete or a salesperson or a teacher or whatever.

37:42Right. So that list changes. So it's incumbent on you as a team leader or a leader, if you want to understand what attributes you need for your team to figure out what that list looks like. And this is how we also position ourselves properly in the environment, right? Sometimes some people have a better makeup for being a nurse than they have for being an AD seal, right? And that's because the attributes they come to the table with. If we were to talk about buds, you know, SEAL training, I would say the most important attributes are the grit attributes. So you're talking about courage, perseverance, adaptability, and resilience, and then probably the drive attributes, which, you know, there are five.

38:18There's self-efficacy, there's discipline, there's open-mindedness, there's cunning, there's narcissism, which we can get into that later if we want. Narcissism is an attribute. Narcissism is an attribute, yes. Okay, no, you're not doing that later. I got to know this. That's fascinating to me. Cunning and narcissism. Just give me a little flavor, then you go right back into that. Absolutely, yeah. And it's the most asked about one anyway, which is good. It was probably one of the most fun to write. Let's start with narcissism. Narcissism is obviously a pejorative word, and narcissistic personality disorder is a bad thing, right?

38:47The DSM-5, which is a psychology Bible, will state nine criteria which will define, I think if you have five or more, then you have narcissistic personality disorder. However, when you read those nine, what happens is when I read it, I was like, wait a second, Okay, I don't have that, but sometimes I kind of have a little of that, right? And it really kind of made me think about why I became a Navy SEAL in the first place. And think about when my friends would talk about why they became Navy SEALs. Certainly, we were patriots. Certainly, we loved our country. But we really, we just kind of wanted to be badasses, and we wanted to see if we could do something very few people could do.

39:24There's nothing wrong with that. And that's a little bit of narcissism talking. This is biological, right? When we're paid attention to by our parents as infants, we are getting hits of dopamine, which is a very powerful, feel-good chemical, serotonin, which is kind of a bonding, trust, I'm protecting you chemical, and then oxytocin, which is another bonding chemical. So that combination is powerful when we're getting paid attention to. This translates to adulthood. All of us, to some extent, want to, at some point, feel special, feel loved, want to be paid attention to. Okay. That's a natural thing.

39:59And if you, if you have an audacious goal to be a, a rock star, a Navy seal, an entrepreneur, very successful to stand out to be special, there's nothing wrong with that. That's a little bit of narcissism speaking and it can drive you. And that's why I put it in. I love it. So I gotta, I gotta be honest with you. I'm thinking of all these friends of mine that are what I called peak performers, but to your point, optimal performers, because they don't just peak, they do it consistently. And there is a little bit of a quality of that. and um and even a little bit of self-thinking meaning you know I want to get this attention I want to do something significant I want to prove something to myself yes uh that's special and so I I really I really want to acknowledge that I agree with you on that and I kind of jumped in there I think you were on a little bit of a roll before I did that but you all inside that answer you were giving you create this mind gym you also talk about resilience I'm surprised that wasn't what you went to first, but obviously it's, you know, it's, it's where you went, but resilience is, was one of them across the board.

40:59Is it not? It is. Although we have to recognize resilience is just the ability to bounce back, right? You still have to get through it first. Yeah. But you make a distinction in the book. I'm not interrupting you, but you make a distinction. It's not just, you make a distinction about how you bounce back, when you bounce back. I'd love for you to go into that a little bit, because this is huge. When you get rejected in sales, if you get knocked down, that's fine. it's oftentimes it's the length of time you're looking the length of time you lick your wounds that's right can you talk about that it's one of my favorite parts of the things you teach because we have it's so true and it's subtle almost nobody would make this distinction other than someone like yourself so speak to that a little bit absolutely so so resilience again resilience is the ability to get knocked off baseline right um and then get back to baseline which is extraordinarily important in any factor of human development whether it's weight lifting whether it's physical, whether it's mental, whether it's environmental, right?

41:52Then there's, and so just to give another distinction, we were also really interested in what's called anti-vergility, which is a great book by Nassim Tlaib, right? That's the ability to get knocked off baseline. When you come back, you're stronger, right? You've moved, you've shifted your baseline. To be able to do either, all right, you need to have the ability to reflect appropriately and for the right amount of time. And so the example I give in the book, which you probably enjoyed, was a former CEO of mine used to tell us what his grandfather told him, which was the two-minute rule. And basically, a two-minute rule was this.

42:25Anytime that you have something bad happen, okay, something negative, bad, it's awful, it's horrible, you have two minutes to wallow, to mourn, to do whatever you need to do, okay? After that two minutes, you know, you stop and you get back on track. You're back in it, okay? Same thing happens when anything good happens, right? Any big success or all that stuff, promotion, whatever, two minutes to rest on your laurels, pat yourself on the back, feel like you're the big man or woman, get back to normal and then get back to baseline. So it's a mental exercise to help get back on baseline. Now, obviously certain trauma, it's gonna take more than two minutes, but I think the concept still remains.

43:06To be able to reflect enough about something that happened and ask the right questions, so frame it properly, allows us to get back to that baseline and many times grow from it and then move on. And this is the crux of optimal performance and in fact, growth, because we can't grow, we can't move on until we, or we can't take those steps unless we shed that trauma. I think this should give people hope. You know, I think some people think they're weaker than they are sometimes. Like I get knocked down. And guys, this is a guy who led and selected the biggest group of badasses that walked the planet.

43:42He's saying they get knocked down. the question mark is can you get back to baseline or an anti-fragility can you get even better than baseline and there is a time factor so those of you that are knocked down or get knocked down you need to begin to evaluate how quickly this two-minute rule and whatever however that manifests itself for you because we all do but i do feel like and i would say i don't have a lot of attributes but one of mine has been um the pace at which i get back up to baseline or then eventually exceed it. And in Mind Gym, what you created, I guess, in the SEALs, it sounds to me like you believe resilience can be developed and built, that even though it's an attribute, it can be expanded.

44:23True or false? And how do we do that? Absolutely true. And so the idea is develop a working relationship with our brain, which was really the goal of the Mind Gym was to help guys begin to figure out this gray matter between their ears and try to access that and more proactively use that gray matter. Because again, we're just from a basic standpoint, I mean, and our nervous system, which is, it's all connected, which we all know, but the sympathetic response versus the parasympathetic response, this is active doing something versus recovery. Recovery is one of the key elements required. In fact, probably the key element required in any type of resilience or anti-fragility.

45:09You have to take time for recovery. We know this intuitively. When you lift weights, you tear the muscle, right? The only way you grow muscle is to rest, okay? If you lifted the same weight every day, you just keep on tearing, you'd go into entropy. So you have to tear it, and then you have to allow it to grow back, which is what recovery is. Accessing or kind of understanding our neurology a little bit better allows us to more actively and proactively shift into parasympathetic and initiate some recovery more effectively, more often, and in some cases on demand. And that was really the key kind of goal of the mind gym was to teach guys, begin to teach guys how to do that more effectively, more efficiently, and more quickly.

45:58So I used to call, you know, sometimes, you know, recover in between gunfights, because honestly, resilience, we talk about the two minute rule, and you know this, and I think a lot of your audience knows this, when you're really kind of performing at a high level, whether it's optimally or peak, whatever that looks like, sometimes the situation, the environment doesn't allow for recovery in the moment, okay? And so this is, you can watch any war movie, right, where the guy who's, the guy's next to his buddy, his buddy gets shot, and he, and you'd spend the next two minutes while the guy's, you know, in the movie is crying over his buddy and mourning all that.

46:34That doesn't happen in the real world. You don't have time to mourn. You have to win the gunfight, right? Which means it's incumbent on us. And obviously combat's an extreme case, but it's incumbent on us that if the recovery is not available in the moment, you have to, have to, have to make it a priority later. All right. So if you're in the moment and something bad happens and you're just like, okay, I got to block that out and I'm just going to move forward and make this, I got to finish the mission. I got to win the fight, finish the mission. And once that's all done, you need to go back and you need to find time to recover.

47:04This is very hard for top performers to do because we're so kind of seduced by the performance part of it. We love breaking through, like getting through. But recovery is huge. Just think of it in the terms of if you don't recover effectively, it's like you're benching three times a day every day, right? Yeah, I've seen this take out more people than most people realize. I've seen people have really good careers and whatever it is they do for a window of time and they don't recover. They don't recover. Then what happens is they're fatigued and they make huge mistakes or they fry. They just fry out.

47:40And so this is a huge thing. By the way, I don't know that we've done an interview that in 20 minutes has had this much stuff in it this quickly. I think everyone, this is like crap, like, you know, pulling over the side of the road and writing things, but on recovery, is there anything other than sleep? Cause sleep's the go-to. any other things you'd offer say hey this is a recovery technique well some of the quicker ones uh can be breathing and i know you you've had um dr andrew huberman on i was thinking of him when you've been talking it's like and and he and i have been well and he's in the book he and i've been friends now for gosh four years and we've we've been working on a lot of this together and so uh so a lot of my neuroscience comes from just geeking out with him and hanging out with him and his friends.

48:23But, but, you know, breathing techniques, so we can do certain breathing techniques will help us shift into parasympathetic. There's vision techniques, which, which Huberman talks about open gaze, for example, real fast way for your audience, open gaze is just it's, it's different than focusing instead of focusing on something in front of you, just go soft and start noticing your peripheries, right? That open gaze has been proven to start shifting your nervous system into parasympathetic and start going that way. So those are some micro techniques. A little bit more macro techniques is really start to think about anything that produces relaxation and joy in your life.

49:01Think about doing more of, okay? This doesn't have to be meditation. Some people like meditation. Meditation I find difficult personally. And so I had to find different ways. For me, my meditation is I go running. I go running in the woods here in Virginia. I don't wear headphones. I don't time myself. And I just think and I just let my mind wander, right? That is recovery for me. Visualizing, visualizing is a hugely powerful technique, because the brain, if you visualize correctly and deeply, the brain doesn't recognize the difference between real experience and visualized experience. So you can create the same neurotransmitters and hormones that you would in the real experience just through visualization.

49:45So for example, I, you know, I have two boys, they're, they're teenagers now, but you know, when they're, when they're babies, I used to, you know, they used to nap on my chest, right? Such a wonderful feeling as a parent, just to have your, your kid sleeping on you. And what I would do sometimes is I would just visualize that. And, and as I visualize that deeply, those, all those feelings would come back. All those, all those chemicals would be flooding me. That's recovery as well. So, so think about, think about some breathing, think about vision, think about visualization. and then you can do things like, I mean, yoga, meditation, the float.

50:17I'm a big fan of float tanks. I don't know if you've ever tried that. I love those things. And so, and then of course, sleep is the kind of the coup de grace of recovery. Yeah. I want to go back through that. So guys, we've talked about float tanks on the show before, and I've recommended it to friends of mine that even are struggling with some depression and mental, even minor mental illness. So float tanks are big for me, the things that you've listed, Rich, you know, for me is float tanks. I do. Open gaze is something that I did as a child rather naturally. And so it's something I go back to.

50:51And the visualization stuff that he's talking about, guys, you can almost call it like awake dreaming. And it's something that I do. And one of the things is I'll repeat the same ones over and over again that had given me a previous good feeling. So for me, it's a very random moment in my life that when my daughter was a little girl, we're on a boat, and she asked me, Daddy, can I drive the boat and she sits in my lap and just the way her, just my little girl felt, you know, I had my arms around her. It was a little bit windy and cold. And it was like one of the, my favorite moments of my life.

51:20Well, I've played that video thousands and thousands of times guys. And so that when I get into an anxiety or stress state or fatigue state, I go right to that video and it takes me back to that moment. I do it guys with silly things. Like before I do my labs, my blood draws with 10 vials of blood, I'll look away and I go back to the boat with Bella and I, because it's become reflexive. Those neurotransmitters, those synapses have been so connected now that I can go there anytime I want. These are real things that you can be doing to recover and also to perform at an optimal level. I love that you talk about this because it's very rare.

51:53I'm listening to you, I'm thinking, were you a little bit, pun intended, fish out of a water in the seals, the way you talk and think around the other guys? Not every dude I know is like you. Gosh, I got to tell you something. I wish we'd been recording our pre-show conversation here because it's been so good. And I kind of knew in having this woman on the show that today would be special. And I already have a sense that it's going to be based on our conversation before we started recording. Her new book is called Be Seen. Find your voice, build your brand, live your dream. We're going to have a remarkable conversation with Jen Gottlieb.

52:26Jen, welcome to the show. Ed, I am so excited about this. I don't think you have any idea. The fear thing. Let's talk about that because this is content of the book. I want to give them some Some of the stuff in the book, because I want them to know how good this is. There's a disease we all suffer from called fear. But you illustrate what some of the symptoms of that disease are. So you actually know whether you're suffering from it. So what are a few of those symptoms that you have in here? So most of the time, people think about fear of anxiety and their stomach does a backflip. And they're scared.

52:55Their heart's beating. They've got a panic attack. I've experienced it so many times. But there are other symptoms of fear that show up. And you don't necessarily realize that they're fear. Things like perfectionism, comparisonitis, FOMO. But I like to call FOMO not FOMO like fear of missing out, but fear of missed opportunity. So you know when you're scrolling, we just talked about this. You're scrolling social and you're like, oh man, that person's getting all the likes and the follows and they're growing their business or they were featured in the media. And you're like, oh, that should be me.

53:22And then this other voice comes in, I can't do that. They've already done it. So then you spiral down comparisonitis and then perfectionism and then analysis paralysis, which is another symptom of fear. where you're like, oh, there's just so many options, so many people doing this. They're already doing it. I'm not as good. And then you've got imposter syndrome and then it's like, you know what? I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait till next month. Maybe I'll have a better idea next month. Maybe in the next month comes around. You know what? I'm going to wait until maybe Friday. And fear's whole job is to keep us exactly the same.

53:54So it's going to sneak in and it's going to tell us all of these lies and we can either listen and negotiate with fear. You're right. You know what? I'm going to wait till Friday because Friday seems like a much better day for me to do that first Instagram live or for me to start the podcast. It'll be much better than I'll feel better. Maybe, you know, I'll get this great, brilliant idea. What I have learned over a lot of experience of being seen when I was absolutely petrified to do so in every way, shape and form and every single symptom of fear screaming at me in the back of my mind. Don't do it now.

54:21Don't do it now. is that if you can learn how to talk to fear and embrace it and put your arm around it and understand and know that you're not going to be fearless, you're not going to be able to kick it out of the car, but if you can drive with it there in the passenger seat of your car and do the thing with it there anyway, you take away the power that it has over you. Really good. So I'll tell you a story, Ed. So this is really when I learned how to talk to fear for the first time, and it's with one of our friends, Lewis. So that was the first podcast, first mastermind that I ever did was with Lewis Howes.

54:52And I was in this mansion in Malibu. It was like my very first experience learning from somebody, getting mentors. I was like, this is amazing. Like, I love this. I am vibing. I am here. I am outside of my comfort zone, but I love it. Lewis comes down and he's like, all right, everybody, we're going to go to the second floor because I've got a surprise for you. And I'm like, oh, yes. I love surprises. Let's go. I'm like down. We walk up and I see all of these buckets of ice in front of us, like these big tubs of ice. Now, this is way before anybody was doing cold plunges. Okay, so now everyone that's listening, you scroll your Instagram now, you will see 85 ,000 people doing cold plunges.

55:26It's very trendy. At this point in time, no one was doing this for fun. And I see this lady pouring these buckets of ice into these tubs, and I'm like, oh, that's a lot of beverages for this party. I literally did not understand what was happening. And he's like, we're going to do ice baths. And Ed, I had a panic attack. Like full on, full body. I'm sure you've had, I have anxiety sometimes, full on crying tears. I just, I don't know what it was about that, but I did not want to do this. And so I sat on a bench and I watched all of my friends get in the ice bath, very scared and get out of the ice bath.

56:05Like they're like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, like a different person. And I'm sitting there watching all these transformations happen and I'm still crying and I'm still not okay with this. And fear is saying, you can just tell them that you're allergic to cold or whatever. You know, I was negotiating with myself why I didn't have to do it. And then I had this thought and I was like, how do you want to feel tonight when you get in your bed? Because no matter what, you're going to get in your bed tonight. Like no matter how uncomfortable you are today, whether you do it or not, whether you sit in the ice bath for two minutes and it sucks and it's so painful or you don't, you're going to end up in your bed and it's going to be two seconds later.

56:41And are you going to be proud of yourself for what you did today and how you showed up? Or are you going to feel like, man, I should have just done that. I should have just been able to withstand the uncomfortableness for 2.5 seconds. So I was like, you know what? All right, I'm going to talk to fear. And at that time, I was reading this book called Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. I know the book. And in the book, she says, go on a road trip with fear and talk to it and put in the passenger seat. So I'm sitting there in this robe and my bathing suit because I was going to take the photo, but I wasn't going to get in the ice bath.

57:08So I'm like, all right, fear, shut up. I'm like, shut up. I'm going to do this. And I'm like, you're going to sit there and I'm going to drive and you're going to come and you can yell at me and you can tell me that this is not OK, but I'm going to tell you that you are not in charge here. I am. I love it. And I drove me and fear. We drove together into the ice bath and it sucked and it was painful and I hated it. But I sat in there for two minutes and I got out of the ice bath. And Ed, you want to know what I did right after I got out? I got back in again. You did it again. Wow. Because this is where I learned.

57:39And when you do the thing you're afraid to do, you take away the power that fear has over you. It doesn't mean it goes away. You just take away its power. I got to tell you, I wish I knew you when I was younger. This idea, there's the brilliance of that. I want to say something. I want to acknowledge when something's unbelievably, like I got goosebumps right there. Look at it. On my hairless arms, I got goosebumps. When you actually put fear with you in the passenger seat, you actually separate you from it. And it actually, you actually begin to understand that that is not you, that it's an outside influence and you begin to separate yourself from it.

58:14I'm going to say something I've never said out loud before right now, since you were that vulnerable. When I was really young, Tony Robbins saw me speak and he thought, he actually said to me that day, he goes, I think you may be the greatest speaker I've ever seen. And this is when I was young and raw. And, uh, and then he goes, let me correct that. He goes, you're the most talented speaker I've ever seen, but there's things you would need to do to improve. Come to my event. And I come to this event and there's a firewalk. So it's my version of the ice bath for you. And we're in the line and I'm terrified.

58:46I'm terrified. Now I'm watching hundreds of people walk down this firewalk, you know, the burning coals thing. Yeah. I'm watching all of them do it. I can't believe I'm telling everybody this, but I think it'll give you hope. And I'm getting more scared and more scared and more scared. But you got your peer group. They're like, you can do it. You can do it. Yeah. I felt like, you know, I'm in an Adam Sandler movie. And I finally get up there and I lost state. Fear took over. So I started to do it and my feet start to burn halfway through. And I jump off and I get off about a quarter of the way down the hot coals.

59:16I get off and I was like, oh, they're like, you can go back again. And I go, okay. And I pretend to go to the back of the line and I left the event. You did. I left the event. I was gone. It was the first night of a three-day event and I left it. Wow. and I let fear kick my ass. And that kicked my ass for about three years because I didn't. I got into bed that night because you are going to get into bed, and I got into bed that night. Here's what's crazy. The event was still going on in the hotel when I got into my bed, defeated, and let fear kick my butt. That's right. I tell everybody that story for two reasons, to illustrate how brilliant and right you are, and two, to give you hope.

59:57If maybe one of the top people in the world in personal development at one point couldn't walk down Tony Robbins firewalk and left the event. And now I'm doing what I do with you now today. You ought to have hope if you've had some of these events in your life where fear beat you, that it doesn't define you long term, that I ended up being, you know, arguably the Tony Robbins of this generation or one of them. And I couldn't even do his 50 foot firewalk. And I left his event that ought to give all of you hope. And then she's given you the strategy. Jen just gave you the strategy. You had a piece of content.

1:00:28I think it was this week. That's brilliant. I want I ask you, because I think people, this is a fair question. How do you distinguish between when something is fear and your intuition talking to you saying you should not do this? So how do you know it's not intuition instead of fear? This is a tough one because fear is really sneaky and it's really, really, really good liar. And it'll come in and it'll convince you like, oh no, no, no, this is your intuition. You really shouldn't do this. What has helped me, and this has helped me every single time, I heard this from somebody and I don't even remember who it was.

1:00:56I wish I could quote them. I don't remember who told me this, but I was really battling through, is this in my intuition? Is this like my gut telling me that I should do this thing or I shouldn't do this thing or is this fear? And the question is that I ask myself now is whose voice is that? Whose voice is telling you that you should or shouldn't do it? Is it your voice or is it your parents' voice? Is it your husband's voice or your wife's voice or your friend's voice or the random people on the internet's voice? You don't even know who they are. A lot of the times it's that for people. What they will think.

1:01:28And we don't even know who they are, right? It's like, what will they think? Or Susie from college, right? Or, you know, my cousin from ages ago, that they're going to think of me on the internet. And we care so much about that. And it's a normal human experience to care what other people think. We want to be liked. We want to be approved of. We want people to say good job. We do, and that's okay. And if you're sitting here listening like, oh, that's a bad thing. I don't want to care what people think. We're going to. I do. Yeah, we all do. But here's the thing. We don't want to wake up. I love how you talk about, you think about death often.

1:02:00I don't want to wake up on my deathbed one day, my 100th birthday, and say, oh, I let all the random people on the internet or people that I didn't care about dictate my actions. And I let the fear of what they would think of me override my gut intuition of what I knew I was meant to do on this planet. And so I ask myself, is it my voice or is it the voice of somebody else? And when I hear my own voice in there, you know, you know your voice. But when I hear like, oh, that's my husband Chris's voice, you know, and even though I love Chris and I care so much what he thinks. And this is for everybody with a partner out there.

1:02:38Like I've done it before where I have made lots of decisions based on somebody that I was in a relationship with and what they would think of me. But now I know better. And I'm like, that's Chris's voice. Chris, that was your voice telling me that I shouldn't. But my voice, who I will be proud of myself at the end of this night when I get in my bed and I look up at the ceiling, I'm like, did I squeeze all the juice out of the lemon today? Did I do it all? Did I lay it out all in the field? Or did I phone it in today? As long as I listen to my voice and I stay true to who I am, I'm always okay with myself at the end of the night.

1:03:09So good, Jen. I love this idea of we're going to get into the bed at the end of the day. Well, so I have time on my wrist. So I tattooed this on my wrist, not because I wanted a tattoo. It's my only tat. And it's actually fading off, which is crazy. I don't even know how that happens. But I tattooed this on my wrist to remind me that no matter what, time never stops. Discomfort is only temporary all the time, no matter what. We're both going to end up tonight in our bed. This interview is going to be done no matter what, no matter if it was amazing or if it was bad or if it was scary or if we were uncomfortable, no matter what happens today.

1:03:44This too shall pass. You will end up in your bed. But the person that you become through the uncomfortable moments, through the wins, through the losses, through the hard times, through the ice baths, through the fireworks, through all the stuff, the hard conversations you have to have, or maybe, oh, my God, the face plant that you made in front of all those people. No matter what, you being able to withstand all of that stuff and get into your bed at night and understand, wow, I can do this. No matter what, I'm going to end up here. That's what powers me through. That's what makes you who you are.

1:04:14And that growth that comes with that, that's permanent. Okay. If you're driving your car right now, just check the miles per hour because you're going too fast. I can just tell you. You get that fired up listening to somebody. So just slow down a little bit so that you don't run off the road. That's so good. You're such wisdom for such a young woman. It's like I wish I had it when I was your age because it's profound what you're saying. When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter. You're the expert because you know what fits your life. And getting it right starts with good information.

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1:05:36very short intermission here folks i'm glad you're enjoying the show so far don't forget to follow the show on apple and spotify links are in the show notes now on to our next guest i'm so excited to have this man here today i've wanted to do this with him for a long time but it was the universe's timing i think that we did it now he's incredible he's constantly ranked as one of the top three, four, five leadership experts in the world. Robin Sharma, welcome to the show. Real blessing, Ed. Nice to finally meet you. Yeah, pleasure. You strike me. It's interesting. You have such modern information you give, yet you are sort of counterculture to the modern world in the sense that you do live, I do sense this about you, that you do live a simple life, that you do take time for yourself, that you aren't chasing every shiny thing that comes your way.

1:06:21I think that makes you very, very unique. So you actually hit on one of the questions I had to ask you before we leave because I think it holds so many people back from becoming this hero, from revealing their genius, which is fear. And so just talk a little bit about how you do lean into fear every single day. So there's a chapter in the Everyday Hero Manifesto called Hug the Monster. And it starts with a story and there's a grandmaster walking up a Himalayan mountain leading a crowd of people. And they're going to this great temple looking for great answers. and as they go higher and higher, more people start to follow the Grandmaster and they go higher and higher and more people start to follow this little movement up the mountain.

1:06:59Once they get to the temple, Ed, they notice there's a courtyard. And before they can get into the entryway to meet the Supermaster, they see there's three violent dogs on leashes. So the group starts to move into the courtyard, but all of a sudden the dogs break free of their leashes and they start running towards the group. they start to run faster and all the other people start running down the mountain terrified the grandmaster does who is leading them does something very interesting he starts to smile and then he yawns and then he starts running towards dogs and dogs start running even faster grandmaster picks up his space his pace looks at them starts running even more quickly yawns again for good measure dogs run even faster he runs even faster now he starts to dance a little dance, a little TikTok dance along the way.

1:07:49Eventually, these dogs get frightened because they feel his power and they run away. And I think as human beings, we construct a reality of these straw monsters that have been taught to us. If you love too deeply, you will be hurt. If you build a great business, you will be attacked. If you try to change the world, cynics will laugh that's you. I mean, our job is to take the stones that people throw at us and build monuments to mastery that stand the test of time. I mean, that's what the troll deconstruction is about. I mean, you know, you're doing very well when you're being laughed a lot. Every visionary was initially ridiculed before they were revered.

1:08:29So the point is, you know, someone said to me the other day, but this all sounds so hard. And you know what? I went back to my hotel room. You know what I thought about? Misery and unfulfilled promise is a lot harder. And I think the discomfort of growth is always to be preferred to the illusion of safety. So what I would say is the things that all of us are scared about, that's where your growth lives and your freedom lies. Very good. And I think, you know, it starts with an awareness and then it begins with daily bravery practice. Let's call it micro bravery practice, but consistently doing difficult things, getting good at consistently leaning into the things that make our palms sweat and our hands shake.

1:09:13And that becomes a practice. And if you practice it long enough, you get brilliant. Like it's just like being a chess master. So it's almost like every day you go down the steps to the cellar, you turn on the light and you hug the monster. And if you hug your monsters, guaranteed, you'll realize they were much smaller than you thought they were. so damn good. That is absolutely a billion percent right. Oh my gosh. The price you'll pay for not becoming the hero you're capable of becoming is far smaller than the one that you will pay if you never become that person. It's worth hugging that monster every single day.

1:09:44How do you do it? I lean into it. I actually do what I call feared things first, and it is a habit that I do. I like to get something done early in my day habitually that I'm a little bit afraid of, that I'm a little bit uncomfortable with, that I have some anxiety with. I find that once I hug that monster, it was usually smaller than I thought and it creates unbelievable momentum for the rest of my day, oftentimes for the rest of my month. And so I do do that. I also have become familiar with these monsters and the more you familiar, I think you become with hugging them on a regular basis, the more they sort of lose their power over you.

1:10:13I've seen this guy before. He's not so bad. I've seen this one before. So the more you face them and you do these difficult things, the more you become familiar with them. It's just like, I think it's someone in the NBA who's got to hit a shot with two seconds left. The first time you do it, there's a lot of work. Kobe Bryant hit a whole bunch of them by the end of it, he was pretty comfortable hitting that shot under that pressure. And I think the more you put yourself under pressure or duress, you become comfortable in it. And you find what I call equanimity in those moments, which is the ability to be calm and to function at a high level in it.

1:10:41So I love it. That's one of my favorite conversations ever. I was going to be honest with you. I've loved today and I know everybody else has. I think you're remarkable, man. I really enjoy your company as well. You have this thing that I just, I love about most of my good friends, which is that I think they have this nuance between real confidence and presence about themselves, but yet combined with a huge dose of humility at the same time. I think people that have a ton of confidence, one of that humility, sometimes it's off-putting and they're not curious enough to keep growing and learning because they think they know everything.

1:11:10And then our friends that have this tremendous humility, but they just never step forward with some confidence and build that hug the monster mentality in their life. Sometimes they're tough to be around too, but that combination is what you really, you nuance that so well. I sense you're a good person. Thank you. Thank you. You know, and that really comes through in the conversation. Thank you. And that doesn't come easily. It's like hard, hard one, hard one effort to get to a place where you're living your values the way it feels like you're living your values. I appreciate that, brother. And that's mutual.

1:11:43Thank you. Last question. I mean, I really appreciate that coming from you. So we've covered a lot. What an honor it is to be with this gentleman here today and to share him with all of you. Most of you are probably familiar from him for the first time from The Secret. He's one of the stars, if not the star of The Secret. So I have John Assaraf here with me today. John, thanks for being here, brother. And it's so good to be here. And thank you for giving me the honor to be here with you. Could you talk about fear and some help that you could provide people in that regard? Sure. If everybody can imagine for a moment, you're driving a car and everything's going great.

1:12:18and all of a sudden a light pops up on your dash. Now, the average person won't take a hammer and hit the light to turn it off. An average person will take a look at what is that light? Am I low on windshield wifery fluid? Am I low on air in my tires? Is my back trunk open? What's going on? So just like the signal in a car is meant to make you aware, fear is a trigger in our subconscious mind that real or imagined danger has percolated in our brain. And so fear, there's nothing wrong with fear. We can actually use fear as fuel. Now, I like to, you know, give people visuals. So imagine if you have, you know, two parts of your brain, there's many more, but imagine these two, we have the Einstein brain, and we have the Frankenstein brain.

1:13:08And when fear gets activated, let's assume that that's our Frankenstein brain going, what if, what if you get hurt? What if you lose money? What if you die? What if you get embarrassed, ashamed, ridiculed, or judged? And so why does Frankenstein even get activated? Because we're not born with those fears. And so if we're not born with those fears, that means that something in our brain is triggering this reaction automatically without our thought. And that is what we call is the fear response. And we also know that that fear response causes something called the sympathetic nervous system to activate, which causes us to want to fight, freeze, or run away.

1:13:56That's just the absolute reaction at a biological level of what is happening. Now, when we want to deactivate that sympathetic nervous system, there's several of what I call our inner sizes that we can do that actually gives us more control, more power, and the ability to reactivate the Einstein part of the brain. So inner size number one is really, really simple. It's called take six, calm the circuits. So as soon as you catch yourself in a state of doubt, fear, worry, anxiety, stress, that means that Frankenstein's activated. If you just took six deep breaths in through your nose as slowly as you could, and then you exhaled as if you're exhaling through a straw in your mouth, if you just did that six times, that very simple inner size would deactivate the Frankenstein brain and allow you to reactivate your thinking, imagination, Einstein part of your brain.

1:15:02And then you can do the second inner size, which puts you right back in control. And that one I call is AIA, A-I-A, which is now a matter of awareness, awareness of my thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations, or the behaviors that I've just taken or the one I'm afraid to take. And in a pure state of awareness without judgment, blame, shame, guilt, or justification. Let me repeat, without any judgment, blame, shame, guilt, or justification of the feeling or the thought of the behavior, now I'm empowered again because now I can observe. And now in this observational mode, I could say, okay, what's my intention, let's say for the next 10 minutes?

1:15:45Well, my intention is to be happy. Great. My intention is to be productive. Great. My intention is to, you know, take action on this one thing that's going to help me towards my goal and dream. So in the awareness and in the intention, then if I say what's one small action step I could take towards what I want instead of what I don't want. So all of a sudden I've interrupted a fear pattern. I've created this state of awareness. I've set an intention and now I'm taking action towards what I want versus being paralyzed by what I don't want and a fear that may or may not be real. So awareness is what actually gives us choice and choice is what actually gives us freedom if we make the right choices.

1:16:30So good. So, guys, the reason I wanted John on was because these are actionable steps that you could take. You need to go get energized because these are actual exercises that will change your life. and I love how John arrived at this space. I want to go back. So we just got pretty heavy there. And now I want to go to a little bit of a lighter space, but both of you and I have had mentors that have entered our life. We didn't come from perfect families, loving families, both of us, but not perfect families. And by the way, I don't know that that exists. Yeah. I think that, you know, a dysfunction is normal.

1:17:05That's normal. If you had a functional family, that's not normal. That's not normal. Right. And I guess to the extent that the dysfunction you experience is probably part of these things we have to undo. And we'll talk about beliefs in that regard in a minute. But you're this guy, Mr. Brown. I've heard about Mr. Brown for years. But it's hard to imagine a man who's become a multimillionaire. Just so you know, John's built five, six different multimillion dollar companies. One of them is$4 billion in revenue. He's taken a company public on NASDAQ. I mean, he's a very accomplished man here. Have you ever thought about running a marathon?

1:17:38because I've thought about it. I'm like, there's an Ironman in Coeur d 'Alene where I spent my summers. Just the marathon part of it, I was like, that's bananas, 26 miles, you know? Have you ever thought about doing that or ever watch one of these Ironmans and go, man, I'm gonna do that someday. Then I want you to contemplate thinking about doing it 30 freaking days in a row. How about 50 days in a row? How about 100 days in a row? Guess what? I got the dude here today who did it a hundred in a row in a hundred days. His name is Iron Cowboy, James Lawrence. Welcome to the program, brother. Hey, Ed, man, I, I got to tell you, huge, huge love, adoration and respect for you.

1:18:24So he's, by the way, the reason I started with 30 and 50 is he's done that. And then when you do the 50 and 50, I'm like, bro, I like you're out of your damn mind. Right. And then to go do the Conquer 100. But I'm reading about both, you know, both of those last two. It's inspiring. Right. But this time, like day five, your shins start exploding. Right. Like you're on day five. Talk, talk us through that. Did you think of quitting then? So two really cool things happened that took me a little bit of time to realize. I went into it knowing that you can't train for 100 consecutive. You have to adapt and evolve along the way.

1:19:02And I knew, look, the first 15 and 20 of these are going to be hell because you've got to get to the point where you're broken physically, mentally, and then push through that. And that's where everybody quits. And if I can push through that, my body's going to adapt and evolve and it's going to become the new normal. Everybody, I want you to write this down. Pull over, adapt and evolve. That's in your business. That's in your family. That's in your fitness. That's the key. Go ahead. Keep going. Yeah. And so when I went into it with an ankle problem that I didn't tell anybody about and it immediately exploded into my shin to where we developed a stress fracture in the bone and super long story, but a miracle happened.

1:19:42we ended up getting a carbon plated shin brace that allowed us to offload the shin and continue on to heal that stress fracture by doing the marathon portion every single day. It was a total miracle, but a complete testament to me that you give the body the tools and assets that it needs to recover, it can still do so under stress. And that was amazing to me to watch the body heal like that. Now the, the, the shin and the, and the imbalance that created a hip problem became so painful. Some of my worst days, I don't remember them, but we have the video footage where I would be trying to move and the pain would get to a point that I could no longer manage it.

1:20:35And And my, my, uh, we called him the wingman. My wingman would catch me. I'd come back to, and he would do a 10 second countdown and then say, here we go. And we would repeat that until I got to the, I'm going to be emotional, but until I got to the finish line that night. And, um, again, it's just a testament to how powerful the mind is. Now I, I was angry because, I wanted to showcase how strong our team was mentally and physically. And I wanted to make the hundred look easy. I believed we could do that. And I was angry that I couldn't run and that I was forced to walk.

1:21:28and it turned out to be the biggest blessing of the entire campaign why my my my pain and discomfort forced me to walk and every single day we had people from around the country fly in and locals to support us. And without fail, they said, I'm so grateful you're walking because I wouldn't have been able to join you if you, if you weren't walking. And, uh, and I was hard on myself because I was like, look, I'm an athlete. I want to destroy this. And as, as I, as I got deeper into it, I was like, I'm so grateful for this injury. I'm so grateful I'm walking and, and my, my pain has turned into a blessing that other people can join and have an experience.

1:22:33And every single day, somebody did their first 10 K with me or their first marathon or their first full distance or their first hundred a hundred mile bike ride. And every single day I got to experience somebody else's first. And it was humbling and it was, um, yeah, humbling. Wow. I mean, by the end of this, you guys, a couple hundred people riding the cyclists with them and you, I actually, for you, I'm grateful that it didn't look easy because I think you connected at least with me watching you struggle. I'm on Instagram every night watching these videos when it was happening. And like, there were literally times for me watching you, like I'm in tears, like not wondering the next day, just, but it's one of the most, I don't even like to say one of the most, because when I say that, then I have to think of something that I think is more, it's just insanely inspiring and I can't think of something mentally or physically I've ever seen close to this because of the adversity because of all the people that got caught up in it with you also though there's another element of this that you know this idea of adapting man I'm just so glad that you said that for everybody's sake but I I'm curious of all of them the one time you did the 50 or this time was there a moment where you're like i'm out i'm going to tap like you're literally blacking out right so that's insane to me but was there a time when you just consciously went i'm in too much pain i'm in too much because guys these are icy roads snowy sometimes you imagine shin issues on a snowy ice oh my gosh like like was there a point or are there lots of points where you're like i'm out was there one particular bro where you're like no no no like this time I'm really out.

1:24:25So, um,

1:24:29my team is world-class. Um, and, and there's, there's the core four of us. It's my wife, Sunny, Joe, um, and then the two wingmen Casey and Aaron, and they were, they were the four of us thick and thin through the 50. And then, and then I brought those boys back on for the hundred and they played massive roles. And Sunny is obviously the head of this, this entire thing. Um, And we just know from experience that it's okay to feel. It's not okay to quit. It's okay to problem solve. It's not okay to quit. And it's okay to process. And I think that's what a lot of people don't do, especially men, is they don't allow themselves to feel and process before they hunker down and keep going.

1:25:18at no point in time was ever any of us saying you know we're quitting we got to be talked back into it but every single one of us had moments where we just needed to cry to feel be supported to where we said okay I've had my two minutes I'm not going to dwell on it we're going to we're going to quickly turn this around and we're going to get back to work and and and that's the reason the four of us are so strong together because all four of us have that mindset and I will tell you this, the closest that I ever came to even considering it was somewhere between 15 and 20, where we were at the peak of that pain, where I had a couple of days where I was blacking out.

1:26:03I don't remember portions of it. And I remember standing in the shower and I kind of just shrugged my shoulders at Sonny. And I said, I don't know how many more days I can manage the pain at that level because when you've got 85 more days to go, that is so, it's so daunting. And when you're broken, you, it's hard to conceptualize what it's like. And I'll never forget what she said. She said, you're done today and you don't have to do anything else. And all you have to do is now trust in the team, get out of the shower, go lay on the table and let them take care of you. and then we will face whatever comes tomorrow together.

1:26:50And I think that's what a lot of people don't do is, is you've, you've got this today's mentality of the people that do decide to show up that it's like, I got to go in all the time. I got to go all in all the time. I got to hurt more than he does. And they don't take two seconds to reset mentally. And I can't tell you how important that was. And the valuable lesson that I learned was you've done enough today to take two seconds and reset. And as soon as I got into that rhythm, knowing, and again, it takes putting the right team together. And then it takes letting go and trusting the team that you have put together to do their job, to do their part.

1:27:37And that's hard too, as a, as a man to let go of like control of every piece of that puzzle and to go, I surrender and I trust you to do your part. And it's hard to find good people nowadays that are willing to do their part. And I have that team. And so when Sonny said, you've, you've done enough today. Beautiful. And I think that's so important because we go through life and I think we're so hard on ourselves. We see ourselves differently. And how many times in our lives on our journeys do we take a minute and say, you're enough. You've done enough. And I think it's so important, especially as men to be vulnerable and just say, I've done enough today.

1:28:22I'm going to take on tomorrow when tomorrow comes. I have someone on the show this week that is, I've never had anybody like him on my show in the 400, 500 shows I've done. And I think the reason for it is there's nobody like him actually on the planet Earth. And so to get this one dude on the show today, it's just an honor for me. Let me give you a little bit of background on this guy. It's pretty incredible. Number one, May 27, 2016, he ends up setting a world record. He conquered what they call the Explorer's Grand Slam Challenge, which means this. Listen to this, you guys. he summited the tallest peak in each of the seven continents, including Everest, skied the last degree of the North and South Pole.

1:29:01Less than 50 people have ever done this in the history of the planet Earth. Only like a handful have ever done it in less than a year. This dude does it in 139 days. And he's like, yeah, the other thing. Then he decides he's going to go all the way across Antarctica, unmanned, like with no assistance, does that in a record time. And this is after, by the way, years before burning his feet and legs to the point where he was told he may never walk again. This dude's bananas. And I cannot wait to get in his head and his heart to share his insights about how you can change your life. So, Colin O 'Brady, welcome to the show, brother.

1:29:40Ed, thanks for being here. Appreciate it, man. What if you had never pushed yourself to an extreme? I'm just curious. You burned your legs and your feet. And by the way, he's in this hospital. It's unsanitary. There's a cat walking over his body. Like, and again, his mom comes. And what if after that, because he decides, by the way, I just got to give this away to everybody. It blows my mind. He's like, his mom says, what's your Everest? Basically, while he's laying there. And he's like, I don't know. I'm never going to get out of here. I'm never going to walk again. And I'll just speak at four call.

1:30:08And Colin says, I'll do a triathlon. 18 months later, this dude does a triathlon after he was told he could never walk again. And he freaking wins it. he freaking wins the triathlon. It's insane. And then you've gone on. What if you had never pushed yourself, never known what you were capable of? Cause there's a lot of people calling that go through this whole life and the five, six range, never knowing what they're capable of. What if you would have never done that in your life? How much different do you think you would be? Your marriage would be you as a person would be just, I mean, I don't know if you ever sit back and think about that.

1:30:46What if I'd have never seen what I was capable of? It, it's such a powerful and important question. And it just, I'm smiling because it just strikes at the heart of the, what I'm passionate about sharing, what I've shared about those ones and tens, you know, people have asked me, and it's a different question, but it's come from the same place of, I was 22 years old. The reason I got burned in this fire was I was, I jumped a flaming jump rope. I was on a beach in Thailand, 22 years old, clearly not a fully formed prefrontal cortex. And I saw a couple of guys with a kerosene soaked jump rope. And I was like, gee, that looks like fun.

1:31:19What could possibly go wrong here? Right. And I wrapped that rope around my body, lit my fire completely on, lit my body on fire to my neck. And I thankfully was near the ocean, jumped in the ocean, saved my life, but not before about 25 % of my body was burned. As you mentioned, predominate my legs and feet. And doctors thought I would never walk again. And I spent months in rural Thai hospitals. I was in a wheelchair, all these things. Right. And people have asked me, well, if you could go back in a time machine and whisper to your 22 year old self, would you tell him not to jump the jump rope.

1:31:49And it's an interesting question because the knee jerk response is, of course, don't jump the jump rope. Don't, don't light your body on fire. And I wouldn't wish the physical pain of that injury on my worst enemy. And I'll tell you what was worse than the physical pain was the emotional trauma. Not only that I suffered my mom, thank God she saved me from that mess, but she also had to stare and see her child severely burned in a place where no one spoke the language in the middle of nowhere that she couldn't move and the hurt that that caused her and my family. So on one hand, I wouldn't want to cause that hurt to anyone in my family.

1:32:22But here's the thing. I learned some of life's most valuable lessons from the resilience gained to recover from that, from having that specific goal, at least for me, which was a triathlon. And so that's all to say, I sit here with 10 world records and we're not talking about the 10 world records that I set before I stupidly burned myself in a fire and screwed up my entire life. I set those records after that burn. And I only could have walked across Antarctica if I had burned myself in the fire and forget about the external achievement. I love that you brought up marriage into this. I show up for my wife with love and compassion and grace.

1:33:01And I don't always get it right. I'm not perfect, but I am a better person because I have sought out what, what, what, uh, the limitations and the challenges and I've, I've suffered some. And so it's a weird thing. I know, I know you were, uh, uh, I was just listening to your most recent episode with, uh, Eric, the hip hop preacher. Love that dude. What a guy. And you're saying, you're saying to him, he's like, you know, he's, he's been homeless and he's been in the four seasons, you know, uh, you know, he's been illiterate and he's got a PhD. There is something about pushing the edges of what we're capable of in any given moment that teaches us so much about life.

1:33:41And that's why people ask me, even after I share a story about five of my friends dying, five of my friends dies. There's not a day that goes by. I tear up often still 18 months later thinking about the tragedy of that moment that I share. And people sometimes ask me, they say, hey, Colin, aren't you afraid of dying? I think about it. Yeah, I'm afraid of dying. I'm super afraid of dying. And this life is such a gift. I am afraid of dying, but you know what I'm more afraid of? I'm afraid of not living. I'm afraid of not living and just sitting there in that five day after day after day and never seeing what you're capable of and never seeing what you can create and never feeling into your full potential.

1:34:23Even if to feel into that hurts a little bit for a moment in time, those ones, those twos, those threes, that is the juice of life. That's the spice. And the 12 hour walk, even the walk itself is a metaphor for this experience. Guess what? If you walk for 12 hours, even if you take a ton of breaks, your feet are going to get tired at some point. You might be a little bit out of your comfort zone in terms of bring some food with you, bring some water. You might be a little dehydrated. You might get a blister on your foot. You might be tired. You might think to yourself, I hate being alone. This is uncomfortable.

1:34:52Yes, you are likely going to experience some ones and twos and threes on that day. But how many five days over the last 365? Can you not even remember? What'd you do last Tuesday? What'd you do a month ago? What'd you do two months ago? There are so many days in our life that don't even imprint and register in our memory because they're just, eh, because you're not alive. You're not fully living. You take this 12-hour walk, you are gonna seek some discomfort. It is going to be challenging at times, but I guess you what? If I ask you a year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, have you ever walked very far?

1:35:25You know what? 10 years ago, I did walk by myself alone in silence. It's not going to be a five day. You're going to feel some ones, some twos, some threes. But every person I know to get back to their front door, every person I know that wakes up in their bed the following day with a few sore muscles, it's a seven, it's an eight, more often than not, a nine, a 10. Thank you. I felt alive. I am not as afraid of dying as I am afraid of not living. Oh, my gosh, Colin. Again, I just have to tell you, I'm so grateful I'm sharing this time with you, brother. I feel the exact same, man. So fun to be here with you.

1:35:59When you're talking, I think about this thing I say often, which is extremity expands capacity. When you do something to what you think is an extreme, you expand your capacity to do extreme things, even if they don't seem very significant to you. And then I think about this might be an ironic thing I just wanted to tell you when I was prepping. But take this the right way. And I know that I just say it the way I mean it. I don't know. Grain of salt. This is a dude who struggled to jump rope with some fire. Right. I know you're a college swimmer. But the same dude who couldn't jump rope with fire that almost ended his life is now doing world records across Antarctica, climbing peaks, doing the Grand Slam.

1:36:39So it's amazing. I think oftentimes we think, well, I'm not very good at something now, so I'll never be good at it. Well, this is a dude who didn't even jump rope correctly when he was 22 years old. I know there was fire with it and all that. But then to think that same dude is now the dude shattering all these records that literally no physical living human being has ever done before is a dude who couldn't get the jump rope thing right when he's 22 in Thailand. Do you ever think about that? Like that proves extremity expands capacity. Right. I'll go one step further, which is after the Antarctica crossing, I had a lot of doors open to me.

1:37:11There was so much press media, 2 billion media impressions, most widely viewed expedition in modern history. And of course, that's going to open some doors, right? And it was a beautiful experience, a beautiful moment in time that I'm deeply humbled and grateful for. We was able to build a very successful and lucrative series of businesses on the back of that, et cetera, et cetera. But I decide at Perizons, what's your next expedition? And I get this idea to row a boat across Drake Passage. So a rowboat, tiny little rowboat for people who don't know Drake Passage is the most treacherous stretch of ocean in the entire world.

1:37:43So from the southern tip of South America, all the way to Antarctica, 750 miles is where the Atlantic and Pacific and Southern Ocean all converge. And that convergence of those ocean currents creates like 40 foot waves and there's icebergs. It's freezing cold. I mean, it's insane. There's been a laundry list of thousands of boats that have shipwrecked in Drake Passage, but not just like 100 years ago. Ten years ago, a cruise ship sunk in the middle of Drake Passage. Like that's how crazy, like that's a modern time cruise ship still sunk in Drake Passage. And I'm thinking I'm going to get a couple of buddies and we're going to row a boat, no motor, no sail, 28 foot long, three foot wide, two feet off the water's edge and open hole.

1:38:21So we're getting crashed the entire time. So I go to discuss discovery channels. Like, I want to film your next thing, whatever it is, tell me what it is. And so I go to them and I say, well, my next thing is a rowboat crossing a straight passage. No one's ever done it. And they said, great, great, great. They signed this big, you know, seven figure check to produce the whole thing and pay, you know, whatever. Great, great, great. It's going to be awesome. i'm leaving in three months this is a pretty quick turnaround and i finally i feel all the paperwork signed everything's down ready to go i turn to the producers my family knows this but most people don't realize this i'm rowing a boat across drake passes that's great and i said but i got some one thing i gotta tell you i've actually never rowed a boat anywhere come on man anywhere literally not at summer camp not it not oh my gosh come on dude not at uh you know not in college not like ever i've never i mean i've also not spent you know it's like i'm a sailor so i don't know like everything about ocean and seafrangle i this is a 100 fully unfamiliar thing that's the thing that's not unfamiliar is pushing my body right or pushing my mind or taking on big goals or things of that nature but i have literally never rode a boat anywhere ever and so i reach out to a buddy of mine who's a rowing coach in portland oregon where i grew up and i said i need you to come meet me down at these, this dock and teach me a little bit about rowing.

1:39:44And so he's like, yeah, sure. And I kind of explained the whole thing. He thinks you're out of your freaking mind, maybe five years from now. When are you doing this? I said, well, I'm leaving in three months. And so he gets me on this one man's single rowing school. You may be seeing people do that or pictures of it or whatever. And I get in there, I'm in six inches of water on the dock. I try to take my first stroke and I fall flat on my face. I literally fall out of the boat and I'm like flailing around in six inches of water and I stand up soaking wet. And this is that moment where you go like, either I am an idiot.

1:40:18And of course, this is an extreme example. I'm never going to be a rower, but here's the thing I said to him, I look at him and I go, well, I guess I'm not a rower, but one word changes that. I guess I'm not a rower yet, yet. I'm not a rower yet. We've got three months for that. And that is everything, right? We talk about goat mindset. That is it. I'm not, whatever you are right now, no matter what age you are, you're listening to this podcast, wherever you are, your hopes, your dreams, your Mount Everest, what's your Everest? You haven't reached the summit of your Mount Everest yet. Here's the thing.

1:40:55Kobe Bryant had to shoot his first hoop at some point. Stephen King had to sit down and write the first paragraph of his first novel before he could write 65 of the best-selling books of all time. Meryl Streep had to try out for her school play. All of these people were not at the top of their game when they came out of the womb. But at some point, they chose to stay in their identity, in their own confidence, in their own strength, in the story that they are writing about themselves. I am not this yet, but I can be and become anything I set my mind to. And three months later, I became the first person in history to row a boat successfully across the most stretcherous stretch of ocean in the world.

1:41:34You can see the documentary Discovery Plus as it's called The Impossible Row if you want to see me get bashed around in some crazy ass situation in the middle of the ocean. But we can be and become anything we set our minds to. And that's the truth. That's just unbelievable. And the way you tell the story and weave in the point, it's just so freaking good. I really do believe this too. The people that I know that are the most happy and successful or just one or the other have a lower threshold of how good or how prepared they think they have to be before they actually start something. And the people that aren't very happy or that aren't very successful have this massive threshold of what they think they have to know to just begin.

1:42:14And so they don't begin to your point. Now, that is rather mind blowing. It's like Rob O 'Neill was on my show, Kill Bin Laden. He couldn't even he didn't know how to swim weeks before becoming a Navy SEAL. Then I have you on and you're telling me I've never rode a boat and you're doing something that freaking bananas. It just blows my mind, though. This is the Ed Myron Show.