Smile, Or You're Doing It Wrong: Andy Glaze On Relentless Positivity, PTSD, & The Healing Power Of Movement

31:12You know, your story is one that really illustrates the idea that like sobriety is not a linear thing. You know, it's like you've had all these fits and starts and you've been sober and not sober and have been high functioning while using. And I think that's really the more typical story with people who eventually find their way towards long term sobriety. Yeah. Well, I mean, when I first started going to the gym, I would use it. You were still using, right? Yeah, I would use it as a carrot. I would go, all right, we're not going to smoke weed right when we wake up. We're going to go to the gym.

31:46We're going to lift. Delay it until after. We're going to go for a run. Then we'll smoke, go eat lunch, you know, and, you know, have a nice rest of your day. So it was like, in the beginning, it was like a delayed gratification of the drugs. And then that became, you know, wider and wider and wider. but yeah i was yeah so you have these two incompatible things it's like growing interest in like fitness and running etc uh and then you know that quietly on the other side like you're continuing to like use right and i did that for you know a couple years and then i ended up getting a divorce well it's more than that i mean there were like three crazy things that happened in a 24-hour period which you're talking about like getting hit by a car that whole yeah yeah i mean I got hit by a car and almost died.

32:36I mean, I, you know. You were riding your bike. Yeah, I was riding my bike. And, you know, now I'm a paramedic. And so, like, I know a lot about trauma and just how dangerous that situation was. And, of course, like, I didn't go to a doctor. I didn't, you know, I woke up. I had missing teeth. I was on the side of the road. My bike's mangled. I'd been hit from behind. And they just left me. So. Like a hit and run. Yeah, like a hit and run. Like you landed on your head. Yeah, I don't, I mean, I think I face planted because I knocked out a couple of my front teeth, although, you know, I could have hit the actual handlebars.

33:10I'm not really sure what exactly went down, but because I have no memory of it, which is like concussion and, you know, all the, you know, traumatic brain injury type stuff. and so then i had to have all this emergency dental work i luckily didn't have any broken bones but like was bruised and you know maybe i'd broken some ribs but nothing that needed like a cast or anything like that and um yeah and then my wife decided that was a good time to let me know that that she was going to leave me and um so yeah so then i had to like transition into okay like i mean it's we had grown apart so it wasn't like this huge like i wasn't not expecting it but i guess the timing just was like kind of bad you know in the aftermath of that bike accident you're basically self-medicating with weed right and your wife's like i'm done with this oh yeah yeah i mean i leaned into it hard yeah and then your grandfather passes away yes yes um and so i I went back to California and went to his funeral.

34:18And at that point I was like, I need to do something with my life that is not what I'm doing. I need to do like a hard pivot, a hard shift. I started taking some fire classes and, and EMT classes and, and I, and I liked them. And so I kind of leaned into becoming a firefighter EMT and that led to me being a firefighter paramedic. But, It was that funeral with my grandpa that really changed my perspective on where I wanted to go with my life. I mean, do you call this like a rock bottom moment? I mean, it is like a, you know, kind of a flashpoint that changes everything in your trajectory. The rock bottom moment kind of was I was lying in bed.

35:03My wife came in and told me she was leaving me. You know, I had like my teeth were all messed up. I'm sore. you know and she left and i smoked a big joint and got super high and then immediately had like a panic attack just like i did years before i started working out and i was like oh my god i never want to feel like this again and that was the last time i've smoked weed or done any illicit drugs, you know. What is your definition of rock bottom? For me at that moment, that was like a rock bottom moment as an adult. You know, I had rock bottom moments when I was a kid, obviously like running away, getting found all methed out.

35:51That was a rock bottom moment. But as an adult, when you're extremely injured, your wife's leaving you, then you smoke weed and you feel the same way you did years earlier, even after all this growth and like trying to like make things better. And you're right back to that point. I mean, that was a rock bottom moment. And that's where I was like, I don't want to feel like this anymore. Not doing this ever again. I'm going in a different direction. And then the thing with my grandfather happened, which that's pushed me even further in that, you know, different direction. So I think, you know, whether you want to call it rock bottom or the springboard that I jumped off of and continued to move upward, that was definitely it.

36:35Yeah, I think rock bottoms are when the pain of your circumstances exceeds your fear of doing something different. Yeah. And these events or circumstances in which you think it couldn't get any worse, like this is my lowest moment, in retrospect, often turn into being like these springboards, to use your word, like these catalysts for reimagining and rebuilding your life. Everything that happens is neutral until you apply your perspective. And if the perspective you apply to it is like, oh, this is an opportunity for change and transformation, and then you put on your smile hat and adopt the Andy Glaze positive affect, then it could end up being the best thing that ever happened to you.

37:26Right. Yeah. I mean, I don't hate that it happened to me because I think now I'm able to live to my full potential and I'm a lot happier. How did the ultra thing kind of come into the picture? The thing is, I didn't even know about ultras or any of that stuff until I was in my mid-30s. I didn't know anything about any of it. And I went down that rabbit hole and that's how I got into ultras. I essentially signed up for 50K. the dopamine yeah it's going on it's like what is the deal with people uh like sober people like recovering addicts and alcoholics and ultras there's there's a lot of us like what is your do you have like a theory of mind about that like disproportionately high yeah i mean there's definitely a lot of people like you know significant trauma in their lives that then go on and like want to continue to do hard things i mean one it's like if you're going to do anything to an extreme Our personalities tend to like push us in that direction, but voluntary suffering, you know, it's like you're putting yourself into a situation that you're suffering, but you always have the ability to tap out if you want to is something that we can't do in real life that we could never do when we were like in the addiction like phase of our lives.

38:50And so it's like, it's a safe way to really push ourselves without like huge consequences. Because at the end of the day, you can quit. You can't quit if you're like in life and all these horrible things are happening to you. So what do you say to the person? I'm sure people have come up to you and said, well, you've just traded one addiction for another. Like weed, crystal meth, now it's just running. I think that a lot of my running is because I love to run. I don't know if I love to do drugs. I love the feeling that drugs gave me, but I don't know if I love to do drugs. But I love to run. And I love to be in nature and I love to be surrounded by trails and all these things.

39:43I don't, you know, drugs gave me a feeling that I liked and it gave me an escape that I enjoyed, but I don't think I loved, loved them. I mean, I was addicted to them for sure. And I'm obviously still addicted to them if I, if I ever went down that rabbit hole again, but the it's, I think it's, it's, it's different because I truly just love to run. And so, yeah, I'm sure my addictive personality. I mean, anything I do in life though, it's like running, spending time with my family. I'm a beekeeper, all these little things. I have a huge garden. I have a grove. Anything I do, I do on an addictive level.

40:27You found healthier outlets for your addictive tendencies. But I think it's like, I asked this question to lots of people who are in recovery who do ultras and stuff like that. And it's almost like a litmus test because if they just deny their addictive relationship with it, there's something dishonest going on. Clearly, the fact that so many people in recovery gravitate towards this world, there's something going on there. And I think that if you're really being honest, it's like, yeah, it satisfies some kind of addictive craving that I have inside me. It's a worthy investment because it's in the interest of my personal growth and it makes me a better person and it's a journey of self-discovery and there's all these good reasons but that doesn't mean that it absolves you from having like an obsessive compulsive relationship with it i have an obsessive compulsive relationship with like anything i do anything yeah it can be anything like it like like sugar you know like i i have to like refrain from eating sugar because i just love it so much i would eat candy ice cream everything vegan ice cream but yeah yeah But there's no relationship with sugar that's about becoming a better person.

41:41You know what I mean? So with running, you could insert anything else, bow hunting or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you using it to run towards something or are you using it to run away from something? All of these pursuits can be distractions from some other discomfort. And because running, especially at such long distances, is so painful, you have to sustain a degree of discomfort for such an incredibly long period of time. It can be an effective way to mask whatever other discomfort you really don't want to deal with. Or it can be a way of confronting that so that you can heal it and become more whole.

42:18You brought up earlier, I do suffer from PTSD, mostly from my job, just from years and years of seeing the most horrific things you can possibly imagine from being a paramedic. Like, you know, in the last five years, I've really had like pretty bad symptoms and stuff. And I've been able to utilize the ultra running, especially the long distance ultra running as a way to quiet the symptoms of the PTSD. I think probably because it overrides the nervous system. You know, like when you're like 80 miles into an ultra, like your nervous system kind of gives up and you just kind of go into that survival mode where you're like, a lizard brain.

43:02You're like, I need to eat. I need to drink. I need to keep moving forward. And you don't really think about anything else. And that has been very like beneficial for my PTSD, like being able to like manage it. The problem is that in the last few months, it has stopped like working. And so I'm kind of in like a weird spot where I've always used running as a way to like deal with this sort of, uh, you know, emotional trauma that I have that I don't have control over. And now it's not working the same way that it's worked for years. And so, you know, I've started going to a therapist and, um, I'm trying to get to the point where you do like, it's called EMDR.

43:50Um, we're doing like CPT right now, um, which, uh, just these ways to help like reprogram the brain for these traumatic moments that I, it's like, it's almost like the brain can't recognize that certain memories are in the past. And, and so you have to like, you have to figure out how to like get those memories in the past. And, you know, I'm not a therapist, but you know, there's, there's, there's very proven techniques. And I've talked to a lot about it online and I've had a lot of positive feedback from people that have said like EMDR is like a really good thing. And so I'm sort of in this like thing, it kind of reminds me, and I don't want to like, you know, trivialize your, your, your, your injury or your, your back surgery, but like I've used running as a way to deal with my trauma and now I can't use it as a way to deal with it.

44:42And it's like definitely a weird, weird place to be in, You know, because it's like, I want to escape the PTSD symptoms, but I don't have the way to do it like I used to. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. It seems to me like you found your way into running and running was so effective at helping you manage your mental health. Yeah. And it was almost like this epiphany, like, oh my God, like this is what I've been looking for all along that's been missing in my life and doubling down, doubling down, doubling down. And then realizing that it's really just helping you manage the symptoms. You know, like there's the underlying root of all of this that's still sitting there.

45:31And at some point you develop a tolerance, you know, and it's like, okay, now I have to go from 50K to 50 miles to 100 miles. to 250 miles to 300 miles. I'm doing 100 mile weeks for 300 weeks in a row. Yes. And your trauma or the root of that is now so acclimated to that. Like that's your resting state now. Yeah. And until you go deeper and begin to untie the knot, like the actual source of all of this, it's not surprising. And like, I'm not a mental health professional either. I don't mean to like armchair psychologize any of this, but it makes sense. And again, I think this is like, you got very emotional a moment ago.

46:16This is a beautiful opportunity. What a gift. Now you can go deeper and get to the source of this and really heal it rather than go to such great lengths to just mask it or manage it. Well, I mean, the trauma stacks, right? So that's the hard part is like it was probably manageable but like the more that stacks on top it just eventually becomes a pile that just tips over right and firefighters police officers military whatever like they just are exposed to stuff on a daily basis over and over and over again and and if they don't deal with it like right now we have like a huge like suicide problem with with with firefighters and we don't talk about it because, you know, we don't, I don't, I don't know why we don't talk about it, but we don't.

47:07And, um, I I'm hoping that by me being honest and talking about it on my platforms and whatnot, that I'm helping like sort of break that stigma. Like, Hey, you know, we, we got to go get help. We can't just, you can't just mask it. And unfortunately a lot of firefighters and police mask it with drugs and alcohol, you know? And so it's just not a good combo it's a weird thing because i feel i feel like weak talking about it even though it's like i'm telling people like hey we got to break the stigma i still feel weak having to like get emotional about the fact that i have something i literally have something wrong with my brain that's that's the way i look at it you know and it's like it's frustrating not being able to control, you know, that, that part of your brain where you're like, why, why can't you just be normal?

48:00You know, like I have a great life, you know, and things, things are going so great. And then like my brain won't let me just be normal.

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50:36What was the decision to share this stuff publicly? It's one thing to say, I want to try these ultras and get into this world. It's another thing to take people along with you. I've always kind of like filming my life, but I never really had the ability to edit it. You know, like you'd have a GoPro. And when I first started doing my ultras, I'd like film myself. But then I didn't have a computer that could like edit the GoPro footage because GoPro would make, you know, it was just, I'd have to buy like a$6 ,000 computer in order to edit, you know,$100 GoPro. And then when reels and TikTok came out, it allowed me to edit videos on my phone with no barrier to entry.

51:23So I just started making videos and they went viral. From the get-go? I mean, there was the one where you were like, I'm going to run 100 miles, come with me kind of thing that went nuts on TikTok. But yeah, that was kind of the beginning of TikTok. I mean, the first reel I ever made got 70 ,000 views. And I was like, what is going on? Like, you know, you don't, back then 70 ,000 views was like insane. So I kind of stumbled into it. I never, when I started thought to myself, oh, I'm going to have all these followers or, you know, this is like the future. If you had told me five years ago, like if we went back into a time machine and said, Hey Andy, you're going to have millions of followers and all this stuff.

52:08I would been like, what are you talking about? Millions of followers. I have a thousand followers. They're all friends and family and people I went to college with. So what is your sense of why what you were sharing connected with people? Well, it started just like the humors of running. I mean, there's so many funny aspects of being a runner and there's so many runners. and then i think it got into nobody had ever like really shown the nitty-gritty aspects of running a hundred mile race you see these beautiful movies that people make on youtube and you know they're polished and yeah you know there'd be like you know some stuff but it was just beautiful it's like watching a movie and then all of a sudden i'm showing like all this like kind of lo-fi footage and talking about hallucinating and doing all this stuff.

53:01And nobody had ever really seen or heard about that before. And like I said, those platforms just made it so easy to share and consume it. And once you start getting millions of people watching your stuff, it's just like, it's a game changer. Where does the smile or you're doing it wrong mantra come from? so you know what strava is yeah okay so strava has come on dude well i mean strava's an app yeah there's segments right you could like make a segment and there's a trail by my house called you're either smiling or you're crying and um it's like i love running it and one day i was running it and i was like who would be crying on this this is like amazing and i like in my head said something like if if somebody's not smiling.

53:52They're like, they're doing it wrong. And I said it to my friend and then it just, I mean, this is probably 10 years ago. I started just saying it, putting it in my Instagram. This is back when there was just pictures and no videos or anything. And it just sort of, it blossomed from there into like a whole life philosophy. But it really was just the idea that, yeah, like this trail, right? If you're running up it, I guess you could be crying. And if you're running down it, you could be smiling, but either way you're still running, you're still like out in nature and you're on this beautiful trail.

54:26So again, it was just that like mental, like you really should be smiling in a situation like this. And what is the life philosophy then? Well, just, you know, always looking for the positive aspects of life and also trying to reach other people because a smile, if you're smiling by yourself, that's great. But if you smile at somebody else, a lot of times they'll smile back at you, which, you know, will give them a chemical reaction in their brain. And maybe that will help them. You know, like when you smile, you have like a chemical reaction in your brain. So if I smile at you and you smile back, you know, maybe you're at a horrible point in the race or you're at a horrible point in life, but that smile might be the thing that just changes your brain chemistry just enough to get you into a different direction, that springboard, right?

55:19I know it sounds very minimal and small, but I've seen it work and people have done it to me and it's worked. I want to talk about change and transformation. What are some of the biggest lessons that you've learned about the potential that we all have to change our lives, to transform our lives that you've learned from your life experiences and from all of these ultra running races that you've done? I think it's my acknowledgement that like, it's a good thing to fail. When I was younger, I definitely did not see the value in failure and I was embarrassed by it. And I was like scared that people would make fun of me or people would talk poorly behind my back if I failed.

56:17And now it's a recognition that in order to succeed, I have to do things that have a high chance of failure. And so if I do fail, then that's okay. But I have to then take that failure and figure out what went wrong and then try to fix it. I've done that in ultras. I do it in life. um i taught you know i i have a lot of dnfs and races that i didn't that i wasn't successful in and then i think a lot of times people like are so scared that they're going to fail that they don't do it and that that's everything in life but ultras really helped me with that because i fail so much in ultras it's so hard right and there's so many things that can go wrong that it's helped me like bring that into my my normal life of like it's okay so when you get an email from somebody or a DM or a text from somebody who saw some of your content and they say to you, as I'm sure they do, uh, you're so inspiring.

57:18Uh, I wish I could do what you do. I want to be better. I want to be, I want to get off drugs or I want to, you know, enter a race, but insert X, Y, Z. How do you respond to that person? I mean, normally I just, I just tell them to like, you know, you got to just, you had to do one small thing a day. I, I, I, a lot of times go on like a tangent about doing 30 minutes a day and how it, it seems like nothing, but if you look at it over like a huge amount of time that adds up to a lot. And sometimes that's when people are in those really dark moments and they feel like they can't get out. They just need like a small little light at the end of the tunnel to know that if they keep heading in this direction, they'll get there.

58:10And sometimes that's just 30 minutes of something, whatever it is. If they need to go for a walk for 30 minutes, if it's reading a book, whatever they need to do, but 30 minutes a day, everybody's got 30 minutes a day. I don't care how busy you are. You can find 30 minutes, 30 minutes in a month. I mean, how many hours is that? Right. I mean, it's 15 hours times a year. You know, you're talking days. I think it's like five and a half days of doing something. And what I know is that if they do 30 minutes a day, that will end up being an hour a day, which will end up being an hour and a half a day.

58:48And, you know, it'll form a pattern and the consistency will build and build and build and they'll be able to get out of that hole. But that's normally what I do. I mean, if it's like really drugs and alcohol related, then I, you know, encourage them to, to, to like find an AA meeting. Cause I think like we've, we've had people at our department that have had issues and like, you know, I'm always, I think when you're in a dark hole, I think, you know, encouraging people to go to a meeting is always like a good way to start. And, you know, at least they can maybe find a sponsor or do something to help them pull themselves out.

59:23Cause they probably can't do it themselves. They're going to need that help. um those are probably the two two main things i i push what year was it when you were first encouraged to go to the gym probably like 2002 maybe right so 24 years ago yeah and i asked that knowing that it was a long time ago to kind of underscore like these things don't happen overnight. I feel like people are in a, they see what you're doing and they want to be there right away. And they don't appreciate or understand that this is 24 years in the making. And I think we would all benefit from a little dose of patience when it comes to this sort of thing.

1:00:14Like when you went into that gym, it was probably no more than 30 minutes the first time that you went in and these things build upon each other. And it's really a tortoises race. You know, if you're playing the long game and you start to fall in love with movement, whatever that looks like, you'll go on some journey and maybe 24 years later, you're running a hundred miles a week for the 300th odd week in a row. And you're writing books and on a podcast. But the point is, you know, in my life, like I've never accomplished anything that I've accomplished was at least a decade in the making. And I think everybody is over indexing on what they can do in a period of a few months or maybe even a year because we're not wired to think in decades.

1:01:03But truly, all of these things happen very slowly over time. I like setting lofty goals that are really far away, like decade goals or 20-year goals, things like that. Cause then you're always kind of focused on something, but it's also very far away. And then you have to like break it up and be like, all right, well that's a 20 year goal, but what's a one year goal that I can work on that will get me to that 20 year goal. The one year goal is the little step. Right. But like, but far, far away, I'm like, I really want that. But in order to get that, I have to do all these steps. So let's just focus on the first step.

1:01:43But yeah, you're right. I mean, I started with running that mile and a half. Now I run a lot, but like even before I started doing ultras, I probably ran for, you know, 15 years before I started doing ultras. I wasn't running all that far, you know, half marathons, 10Ks, 5Ks, stuff like that. I mean, I was just normal running. You didn't set a goal to run an ultra when you first walked into the gym. Like these things happen they percolate out organically yeah from what your curiosity is finding interesting true or false transformation is available to everybody it's always within your power um but like you said it takes time you have to be very patient um and you can't rush it i i love to use the analogy about you know water through a stone right it's like does water go through a stone yes it does How does it do it?

1:02:39Very, very slowly. It just slowly goes over that stone. And over 100 years, all of a sudden you have two stones, right? I mean, that's really accomplishing most things in life. When you try to rush it, it's not going to really work. And why is it worth it, all the effort and the toil and the failure and the hardship and the suffering? Well, hopefully because the goal is going to make you or someone a better person. and that would be the reward. I mean, most people don't set goals that are not a positive thing in their life. So if you work and work and work and reach that goal, then you're working towards either making yourself better or making something else better, whether it's the world or your local community or your family or whatever it is.

1:03:31The key is that you have to keep setting goals. You can't just set a goal, get there and be like, all right, well, we're done. I did it. I mean, life is always about just improvement and change. So you just always have to be working on those two things. One of the things I appreciated the most about your book is that you couch personal transformation as an act of service. When you make that investment in yourself, you are positively impacting the people around you. so it takes it out of this self-obsession paradigm that i think we see a lot of online like it's just all about me and my routine and my i'm gonna get what i'm gonna get you know for my own you know kind of ingratiation or whatever and you're like no this is this is not really about you it's about how you can impact the people you care about and your community well and i get a lot of messages is obviously like, hey, you inspire me.

1:04:32And that's great. My response normally is, great, go inspire somebody else. Let's pass it along, right? If I inspire you, then you go inspire somebody else, then they'll go inspire somebody else and we'll have this ripple effect, butterfly effect, whatever you want to call it. And in the end, the world will be a better place, right? And wherever it starts, it doesn't matter. Three people down the line will have never heard of me. That's great. I don't care. I just want them to get inspired and do something great with their lives. The most effective way to inspire other people is to up-level your own though, right?

1:05:09Yeah. And you got to walk that talk. You can't just pull a camera out and talk it. You actually have to do something. Yeah. Well, I do do things. Yeah. No, you do. I'm just saying for other people out there, Like if you're just talking your talk, but you're not doing it, it's a fool's errand, right? Like, and it's transparent. People see through that. Like you, you have to actually, you know, put in the work and then you then are like vibrating at a different like resonance, you know, and people can feel that they know that. Well, I can, I mean, I can inspire more people because of what I'm doing, but like, say I inspire this guy over here and he goes, you know what?

1:05:50I'm going to train and run a marathon. Okay. Now he's training and running a marathon and he's going to of course talk about it because we all, you know, Hey, did you, did you hear I'm running a marathon? You know, maybe he inspires some people at work. Hey, you know what? I want to run a marathon too. Maybe he's got kids at home and they're watching their dad doing hard work and he doesn't know it. But in 10 years when they're older, they're going to like, remember that when they're, you know, that their dad was doing this. I mean, it just, you just don't know. It won't be as big as like my splash, but it might only be two people at work and maybe a random uncle that, you know, follows him on Facebook.

1:06:26They're like, oh wow, Joe's running a marathon. You know, maybe I will too. And it's, it's still possible to make a small ripple, even if you're not doing as much, you know, I think the size of the ripple doesn't matter. It's, you know, it, it's, it's still, it's still going to move it on. And like people are still going to get inspired. Even if it's smaller, you know, maybe it's a 5k, maybe, maybe Joe's overweight and he's like trying to lose weight and he's just going to run a 5k. It's going to be a big thing that can be really inspiring to people. Like, Hey, if Joe can do a 5k, I can do a 5k.

1:07:01What am I doing? You know, Joe's 300 pounds, like, and he's out there training, like, you know, and, and, and maybe that's the ripple effect. You just, you just never know. Yeah. All right. One final banger before I release you back to your life. The magic of life lives between I can't and I did. Yeah. What does that mean? I mean, you never know if you can do it until you try. A lot of times everything seems impossible until somebody does it. Right. So it's like I've done a lot of things where people would say, oh, that's that's impossible. Nobody can do that. And then I do it. And then people are like, oh, maybe I'll try that too.

1:07:43Maybe that sounds like a good idea. But until somebody does it, it's an impossible feat. So yeah. Which a perfect example of that might be what happened at the London Marathon this past weekend. Nobody's broken two hours in a sanctioned marathon. Ever. And then two guys do it in the same day. Can you imagine being somebody who runs 159 and gets second place? I know, it's so crazy. Like the idea that that barrier got broken, you know, in the same race by those two guys at the same time. I mean, we all know like once Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile barrier, then suddenly, you know, once it was broken, other people did it.

1:08:24This illustrates your point. But the fact that, you know, two people in that race and you can super shoes. Yes. You know, Morton gels or, you know, you can deconstruct all of this, but like, honestly, until this past weekend, it had never happened. And now it has. And like now how many people are going to run under two hours? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the more we get, like, like you said, the shoes, the, I mean, all that plays a factor, the shoes, the nutrition, all that. when you get that more and more dialed in and everything becomes you know it's an engine so yeah if it can if you can do it somebody will figure out how to do it and emulate it and you know replicate it next it'll be like who's gonna be break 155 you know i mean all that's impossible and then someone will do that so what's the barrier that you're looking to break next for yourself?

1:09:16Maybe like getting into hard rock. I'd love to, I'd love to do hard rock really, really bad and, and, and try that race out. Um, I have a race in June called the summer spine that's in the UK. It's a 268 miles from England to Scotland. Whoa. And it's, um, sell, there's no crew, no pacers, and there's only five aid stations. Wow. So each age station. It's like Speed Project UK. Well, each age station is like 50 to 65 miles apart. So that's my big race of this year. And I'm horrified of it, like so scared, but you know. That's why you got to do it. That's why I'm doing it. That's why I'm excited.

1:09:59But yeah, it's going to test me for sure. What is the one thing that you want people to get out of reading your book? Well, I hope people in a low point can read my book and realize that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but that it might take a while to get there. And just to be patient with the process, but through time and consistency, they should be able to get themselves out of it. I wrote it hoping that, because I know not everybody's in the same spot, right? And there's a lot of people that are in low points, like going through divorces, maybe just getting out of jail, maybe just getting sober, whatever, and reading my book and going, well, here's somebody that's pretty successful.

1:10:52And here's the messy, curvy road he took to get here. It's not a straight line. It's a lot of this, a lot of mistakes, and then coming back, a lot of mistakes. you know like you said in the beginning like my sobriety hasn't been this like perfect oh i got sober and then never did anything again i mean even there's even a point where after my divorce a doctor prescribed me medication and i just took it and it you know and i shouldn't have because it was you know it was anti-anxiety medicine and you know sleep aids and then you know then my body's like oh these are amazing like we should just keep taking these you know and that's that's what an addict does, right?

1:11:35They like, oh, this, I feel so good. Like it makes me feel so, I don't, I don't feel anxious anymore. I can sleep perfectly, but yeah, you're going to keep making mistakes. And the key is just to keep failing forward. So I say, if you know, fail forward, you know, and for the person who is listening to this or watching and feels stuck, they're inspired by what you've shared today, but they just, they're stuck. They don't know. what do I do first? How do I break this pattern? How do I get out of this rut that I'm in? What is the advice? Start fresh every Monday, pick a 30-minute goal, try to do 30 minutes of something every day, whatever that is.

1:12:18If it's walking, if it's jogging, if it's riding a bike, swimming, some sort of movement. If you're injured and you can't move, then pick something that uses your brain, write a journal, read a book, do something to try to improve yourself and do it 30 minutes every day. And put a smile on your face. Yeah. And put a smile on your face. When you're doing it wrong. Yeah. Try to find that positive. Yeah. Thanks, man. Yeah. No, thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. This is great. Super nice to meet you. Your book is fantastic. Everybody pick it up right away. Your favorite independent bookseller, Amazon or wherever you - Unfortunately, I self-publish.

1:12:57Oh, that's right. So Amazon is the place to get it. I mean, you can get signed copies on my website, but yeah, Amazon has me on a chokehold right now. And get yourself one of these smile hats. Yes. There you go. Cool, man. We'll come back and share more of your adventures. I will. I'm sure we could talk for another couple hours. But I'm a fan and I'll be cheering for you. Thank you. I'm a fan as well. Thanks, Andy. Thank you. Peace. Peace. The Plants.

1:13:31Thank you.