#881: Tales of Overcoming The Odds, and How to Turn Losses Into Wins — Tim McGraw, Terry Crews, Dax Shepard, and More

26:16Be confident in your decisions. Listen. Of course, you want to listen to people and listen to people that know what they're doing. But ultimately, you have to make the decisions. You have to make your choices, and you have to make the right choices for you. And nobody can do that but yourself. And if you just coast, you might have a career for a little while, but if you want a long career, you're going to have to take charge and ownership of it. And you're going to have to guide it. and you're going to have to be have your finger on the button all the time and you're going to have to say yes and you're gonna have to say no and you're going to have to use your skills to manage people you're going to have to use your skills to be managed and now both of those things can happen simultaneously and they have to happen simultaneously you have to listen to smart people but if you don't have a vision about what you want to do, if you don't have a plan about what you want to do, if you don't act on it every day, it's not going to happen.

27:12It's just not going to happen. And you can do all those things and it's still not happening. Next up, Jessica Leahy. Jessica Leahy is an educator and the New York Times bestselling author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation. so i wrote the gift of failure it was my first book i didn't know how to write a book knowing how to write a book is a learned skill right so the idea that a journalist who's used to writing 1200 words could suddenly write 70 000 and do it perfectly the first time around i had it in my head my fantasy was i would hand my first draft in and my editor would come back to me and she'd say well there's no edits here i mean this this is it this we could publish early this is perfect.

27:56What happened instead was this. I turned my book in on time on October 31st. And on November 1st, I went on a horseback ride with my husband. My friend of mine has horses that she lets me borrow sometimes. And I was thrown from the horse and I landed on my head and I lost my memory and lost my ability to read for a little while. It was bad. It was really bad. Didn't remember that I'd finished a book the day before, all that sort of stuff. So I had some post-concussion syndrome that was really depression and stuff. And then I got a call from my editor. Actually, I got an email from my editor asking me to come to New York for a talk.

28:31Uh-oh. No, yeah, that's not good. And my editor is like, I just idolized her. She's like a grand dame in publishing. She's amazing. So this wasn't going to be good. And I went, and what she said was this. Oh, God, it still makes me want to throw up. She said, this book is unpublishable. And then she said the worst part. That wasn't the worst part. What she said was, we need to think about bringing in a ghost. Now, a ghost means a ghost writer. I am a professional writer, and she wants to bring in a writer to help me write my book. So I didn't throw up. I was actually very proud of myself for that.

29:12But I said, look, and I didn't cry, which was also a huge thing. I said, before we do that, I needed some extra time anyway because of the head injury that really got in my way for a while. So we had some extra time to play with. I said, give me two chapters. Give me a probationary two chapters and tell me everything I did wrong and what you want this to look like. And I filled a notebook. I sat in her office for, I was in there for over an hour listening to how bad I was. to how much I stank as a writer, essentially. Luckily, she was also lovely and she said things like, this happens with a lot of journalists.

29:53You're used to writing in short bursts. And so you end up writing this very fragmented, large thing that doesn't hold together as a whole. And your writing is fine. It's your organization that sucks and that's what you need help with. So she gave me those two chapters. And I went home and I read over a notebooks full of how badly I suck as a writer. and I digested it and I turned it into essentially a checklist of what not to do again. And those two chapters turned into four, which turned into six, which turned into the whole book, no ghostwriter, which turned into a New York Times bestselling book.

30:32That's not the best part of the story. The best part of the story for me was that when she bought my second book, I turned that book in on time. My agent was a little nervous because she knew I'd been a lot to handle the first time, right? My editor's having to line edit an entire book. I'm a ton of work. But I had run my second book through the what not to do again to-do list filter. And the book was so clean that she wanted to move up my publication date. Wow. So it's not that I'm a great writer. It's that I was humble enough to say, teach me how to be better. I will take it to heart and I will be able to be objective about it and I will use it and I won't make these same mistakes again.

31:20So when I handed in not only Gift of Failure, but then the next book, I was able to show my editor that I learned from my mistakes. And it was really sweet as she referred to me in a recent email as a dream author because I learned from my mistakes. Next up, Dax Shepard. Dax Shepard is an actor, writer, and director, and the co-creator and host of the hit podcast, Armchair Expert.

31:48Tim Ferriss:You know, you've been very forthcoming with a lot of your challenges over time. You do something that I respect a great deal, which is not leading with solely the highlight reel. I think that that's real service to people who are suffering as we all are in various ways, often self-inflicted wounds. And I wanted to know if you have perhaps a favorite failure. And what I mean by that is a mistake or something at the time that you viewed as a failure that in some way set you up for success later. If there's anything that you gained from tremendously that at the time seemed like a shortcoming or a failure or a mistake.

32:28Tim Ferriss:I mean, the one that jumps out immediately and is most relevant to this conversation is I was heartbroken when Chips didn't open because back to my identity crisis, I had a three-year stretch where in my mind, I decided I wasn't an actor anymore. I was a writer director and I liked that. It felt loftier. Well, substantively, I feel a lot more pride over having written a script than having acted. I do think it's harder. So some of it's worthwhile. But I had decided I was a writer-director, and that was going to be the next 10 years of my life. Chips had tested really high at Warner Brothers, and they immediately put me on another movie that I took over from some other people.

33:10And so I was doing that. And then overnight, that ended. I did not have that identity anymore. And they had already commissioned Chips 2. I was already beginning to write that. and I got very depressed. Like for three, four months, maybe more, I started doing math and thinking, okay, could I retire now? Like, could I be done now? Live on this amount of money, blah, blah, blah. That's what I was spending most of my time thinking about is whether I was completely done. And that's when I wanted to do the podcast. I was ruminating on so much stuff. I was thinking about my own life and identity and trajectory and the failure.

33:53And I started it in the wake of that. And I think because I was so interested in failure at that time, I say often on the podcast, I have nothing to learn from someone holding an Emmy over their head. I'll never be holding an Emmy over my head. But I can relate if that person cheated on someone they loved and regretted. I can relate to the failures that led up to that. That's something I can learn from. And that's how I learned from people in AA. I don't ever learn from someone telling some victory story. It's always how they fucked up and realized it. And so now in hindsight, you know, had I had the thing I wanted, which was a being a writer director, it's so time consuming.

34:34My kids were, uh, one in three when I finished that movie, maybe two and four. And I would have been gone. I would have taken bigger movies. I would have been way more into that. Ironically, I would have ended up making less money. So this thing that I had no desire to do and this complete collapse of this identity I had and desire turned out to be something that allows me to be with my kids a ton. I'm at home all the time. My wife can take work out of town if she wants. I can travel and do this. Like this life that came out of this epic failure, this 20 year pursuit turned out to be something better than I had even thought to imagine.

35:17I didn't even know that this could exist. So that's a very obvious one for me now that I look back and go like, fucking thank God that thing failed. I would have been writing that movie, then directing that movie, then trying to get them to give me a hundred million to do this one. And by the way, movie business is collapsing. So I would have been doing all that in a time. It's almost impossible to do that. So yeah, I got so lucky in that thing not performing crazy enough.

35:43Tim Ferriss:What a story. That makes me think of something a friend of mine said. I can't recall who it was, but sometimes you need life to save you from what you want. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, what a great story. Well, you go through your own life, right? And you think of the times you got exactly what you wanted and then the times you didn't get the thing you wanted. And what I know most is that I don't know what's best for me. The things I got that I wanted did not turn out or result in anything I had forecast or dreamt of. And yet all these things I didn't want to do. I didn't want to be on TV. I had decided in my egotistical mind I was a movie actor.

36:19I didn't want to be in TV. I reluctantly was on this show Parenthood because I was at a lull in my career. Best experience I've ever had as an actor. Opened up the doors for me to act and so many other things. Without question, the best thing that ever could have happened to me as an actor. And it was the thing I didn't want to do. and you know i got to do the exact thing i want to do ride wheelies on motorcycles in a movie i directed and it fucking didn't turn out

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37:56Next up, Kathy Lanier. Kathy Lanier is the NFL's chief security officer and the first woman and longest-serving chief to lead Washington, D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department. So I went from, you know, a talented and gifted student with straight A's to failing literally every subject the first quarter of seventh grade. So I was chronically truant. I think I was averaging 19 days a quarter that I was actually showing up for school. My mother didn't know because the school never notified her. And by the time she got home from work at 6 p.m., we were all sitting around like pretending to do our homework.

38:35So my poor mother had no idea until about midway through the eighth grade. I was so chronically truant that I was failing all of my major subjects. So meanwhile, while I'm skipping school, I'm hanging out with the wrong people. Much older crowd, friends of my older brother and older, you know, just an older crowd and just getting in trouble. And I fall in love with a much older boyfriend at the time, you know, think I'm in love and we want to get married and run away and get married. And so by the time I was in the ninth grade, I'm 14 years old, found myself pregnant. My boyfriend at the time had given me a diamond ring.

39:10We were engaged. We're going to get married. So we run away. he was 26 at the time I was 14 my mother when she finds out was gonna have him arrested she was gonna put him in jail so I run away from home and think well we got this we're gonna get married and we're gonna have the baby and everything's gonna be great the mind of a 14 year old obviously things didn't work out that way so interestingly I went to my father who had been out of the picture most of my life and asked for him to sign for me to get married because of my age one of my parents had to legally sign over my legal guardianship to my husband so they literally signed over my legal guardianship to my husband so my dad thinking he would have one less child to pay child support for because once he signed over my guardianship he cuts the child support bill paid 100 left a month in child support so he signed over my legal guardianship to my husband.

40:08We got married the day after my 15th birthday. I was eight months pregnant at the time. So I guess fast forward a little bit, a year and a half later, I was back at home. My mother was taking me to GED classes at night. I was sneaking to go to GED classes when I was still married. My husband didn't approve of me going to school. So once we separated, my mom made sure I stayed in school, got my GED, and she would bring her typewriter home from work. and she taught me how to type on the kitchen table. So she taught me how to type and take a little shorthand and I went and got a job as a secretary.

40:41I lied about my age. I went and got a job as a secretary when I was 16. So started working as a secretary and then worked as a waitress in the evening in a bar. Also lied about my age to get into, to work in a bar. That was the only option up in my, the area where I was working. So for the next several years, I worked two jobs as a secretary and a waitress. And my motivation really was my son. It was kind of a significant moment for me. And I've had a few in my life. When my son was born, I had never babysat before. I'd never held a baby. I didn't know anything about babies or children. And when he was born, he was such a good baby.

41:21His crib was at the end of my bed in my bedroom. And I'd wake up in the morning and he'd be awake. He'd just be looking at me, waiting for me to wake up. Not crying, not nothing. he would just be looking at me. So about three weeks into this experiment, I'm looking at him one morning and it just dawns on me for the first time that I'm a parent. And that helpless little baby was completely relying on me. And my mother was always stressed the importance of education and work to us. And here I was, my husband didn't allow me to go to school. I would never be able to get a job. And I'm looking at this poor little innocent baby and I'm thinking his whole life depends on me.

42:01And what am I going to be able to provide with a ninth grade education? And not much. That was an aha moment.

42:08Tim Ferriss:I'm going to resist the temptation to ask 300 questions about the last few minutes that you shared because we'll end up spending all of our time there if I do that. But I am curious for you, I'm trying to put myself in your shoes at that young age. When you, and we don't need to get into the details unless you'd like to share, but when you separated from your then husband, when that happened, what did you think was going to become of you? What did you envision your path would be at that point? I have to imagine that it would have just been incredibly challenging. I don't know. You can't believe everything you read on the internet, but I read that when you were a young girl, you dreamed of being a lawyer.

42:56Tim Ferriss:I don't know if that's true or not. And then flash forward, you go through this entire tumultuous experience and you land back at home. Where did you think your life was headed? Where did you think you were headed at that point? I knew that with a ninth grade education and a single mom that I had zero chance of being able to do what I thought was most important in the world and that's take care of my son and when I first moved back home I got my GED but I still was not able to easily find a job at my age I was you know 16 I was 17 I had to wait till I was 16 in nine months to take the test to get the GED Interestingly, you needed 255 to pass the test.

43:40I got 256.

43:41Tim Ferriss:I passed it by one point. Oh my God. Just another little footnote of my life. These sliding door moments. Holy cow, right? My mother had always stressed the importance of education and work. So I knew I had to go back to school. And I wanted to go to college. I didn't want my son to be subject to the same crappy neighborhoods and the same crappy schools that I went to. I wanted him to have a real chance. and I knew if I was going to do that, I had to go back to school and get a college education. If I didn't do that, I was standing in the same food stamp line my mother stood in with me. I remember the first day I went to get food stamps, going to the big white building, by Prince George's Plaza right near my home and standing in the same line with my son that I stood in with my mom when I was a kid and I was like, this is not my path.

44:24This can't be my path. So I just, when I got my job as a secretary, they offered tuition reimbursement to go to college. So I started a community college. I just started taking one class a semester. And that's where it started, one class a semester. And they reimbursed me for it.

44:38Tim Ferriss:I recall, I mean, for people who don't have contacts, we've been trying to schedule this for a while. And understandably, you got a lot of balls to juggle. And I remember hearing just pieces of your story. This was, God, it has to be, what, more than a year ago now, I'm sure. Time flies, but it's been a long while. And I just remember thinking to myself, God, I hope someday that we can have this conversation on the podcast. So I want to thank you again for doing it. How do you then go from there? What is the connective tissue, sort of the catalyzing events that ultimately get you into law enforcement?

45:20Tim Ferriss:What are the first few dominoes that get tipped over that start to push you in that direction? So to be fair, my family is a public service family. My father was a firefighter. My oldest brother had become a firefighter right out of high school. My other brother was a police officer. I was working as a secretary. I was taking that one class this semester, working as a secretary, trying to get my son in private school. I wanted him in private school. I did not want him going to those schools. I was still living in the same crappy neighborhood. But I wanted my son in a good school. And I saw an ad.

45:50I was 23 years old. I saw an ad in the Washington Post for the Metropolitan Police Department. They were hiring. And what caught my attention is the full page ad in the Post. The half of the page was the tuition reimbursement. I'm like, oh, my God, tuition reimbursement. I'm paying for one class a semester. I'm going to take me 30 years to get a degree. So I went with a friend and we went and stood in line. They were hiring a thousand cops. This was during the crack cocaine wars in Washington, early 1990. 90. So 500 murders a year, DC was known as the murder capital of the world at the time. So I just went and stood in line with a thousand other people, went and took the test.

46:29And I came out, I want to say I came out like 60 out of a thousand people on that test. So they called me right away. I was the only white female in the room. This is back in the early nineties, Washington, DC was about 89 % African-American, right? So I felt the same drive my mother felt taking care of us is that I have a son that needs me. He needs me to provide for him. And the only way I'm going to do this is get a good job, government job, not a bad option, and go back to school and get my degree. So I got hired by the Metropolitan Police in 1990, started walking a footbeat. My first day out of the academy was the Mount Pleasant riots.

47:07So my first day out of the academy, I went to work and didn't come home for five days. It was great. Next up, Jan 11. Jan Levin is a theoretical cosmologist, the Claire Tao Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College, a Guggenheim Fellow, a pen-winning author, and the founding director of sciences at Pioneer Works. Let's use this as a segue to an answer that you provided very graciously in my last book, Tribe of Mentors.

47:42Tim Ferriss:I asked a question in the last five years, what new belief behavior or habit has most improved your life? So I'm just going to read this and then we'll dive into it. So these are your words. I used to resent obstacles along the path thinking if only that hadn't happened, life would be so good. Then I suddenly realized life is the obstacles. There is no underlying path. Our role here is to get better at navigating those obstacles. I strive to find calm, measured responses to see hindrances as a chance to problem solve. Often I fall back into old frustrations, but if I remind myself this is a chance to step up, I can reframe conflicts as a chance to experiment with solutions.

48:18Tim Ferriss:What led to this realization? Oh man, it is one of my, we might all have these certain boulders we nail into the wall to cling to. This is one of them for me, very much so. I think we struggle with the idea of who's privileged and who's not privileged. What opportunities have you been given? What have you earned? And we all have a different balance of that. I definitely had feminist parents. I had intellectual parents. I had a lot of ups and advantages. And when I came to blocks in the road, I really didn't like that I had people to stand up on me and demand, what do you have to say about being a woman in science?

49:11Like it really bugged me. And I thought, but you're not talking about all these leg ups I had from all these other people and how I look around and I don't see, you know, a lot of diversity. Why should I only talk about the hardship in my road? Like it bugged me instinctively. And I think that what I realized was I had been sold because of my kind of comfy childhood an idea that life is great and just don't screw it up. And that's false. Life is not great for most people and they have to do a hell of a lot more than not screw it up. they have to build bridges and pave ways and do things no one's ever thought of and fight poverty and find solutions.

50:07And I just thought the people that have taught me the most have done those things and that we have to stop fantasizing. You know, my dad always said, you know, my dad was from a tougher upbringing and he always said, life isn't fair. He told me that all the time. Oh my God, it's so hilarious. I can totally hear him saying it. Why it's not there?

50:30Tim Ferriss:It's not about fairness. Nobody told you you were owed fairness. No such thing. And it really taught me to think that, oh, life is a series of obstacles. It's not a paved path. And the obstacles are what make you. And, you know, when I've really screwed up with something like that, I felt really deep shame. Nobody had to tell me to be ashamed. I felt really ashamed. And when I've succeeded in that, I felt really good and nobody needed to tell me I should feel good about it. It's just obvious. And so I started to see life as a series of obstacles that were tests, trials, teaching modules of how to be a better person and to pave the way behind you, not in front of you.

51:35and it's really been a pretty important principle for me, I guess, that when I see something happen, I don't think, this is so unfair. Why are they doing this to me? That I think instead, okay, am I able to rise to figure out a solution to this? And I'm not always able to do that, you know but when I do I feel like it's genuine progress well it's an enabling lens of agency

52:08Tim Ferriss:we talked about a little bit before recording but I mean there's certainly whoever you are and some people certainly much more than others you're going to run into boots in the face yeah and then the question is what do you do when you run into a boot in the face Yeah, so I think it's very interesting that certain people with privilege are enraged by a boot in their face because they were told that they had the road paved ahead of them. And it's an advantage to not think that. So that when the boot is in your face, your immediate reaction isn't like, how dare you? I deserve this. I'm owed this opportunity.

52:50that your reaction is instead, oh, that's who you are. You're the guy with the boot. And what can I do to go around you? What can I do to go over your head? And to be okay with that. I think a lot of us cling to the degrees and the accolades. And trust me, it's helped me in my life to have those things. So I'm not dismissing them and I'm really grateful for them. But if you're not going to get that accolade, big deal. Learn how to pivot, move away from the boot. The boot actually has no power unless you insist on continually pushing against it. Unless you consider it your only avenue forward. And you're just going to keep pushing until the boot and convince the boot.

53:38Forget it. Move to the left and figure out something else and go over their heads. That's really, really liberating. That took me much longer to realize, and it's super liberating. Suddenly, they got no power over you if you're not interested in the avenue that they offer.

53:57Tim Ferriss:I loved your answer in the book, and I love your explanation. Life is the obstacles. There is no underlying path. It's actually very relieving in a way. And it makes you less resentful. Like, why did this happen to me? And this is so unfair. No, it's not. It's an opportunity to develop yourself. You know, it's exciting. Last but not least, Boyd Vardy. Boyd Vardy is a lion tracker, wildlife activist, TED speaker, and author of The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life. I want to bring up one of the lines from The Line Tracker's Guide to Life that certainly pops to mind quickly when I think about this book.

54:47Tim Ferriss:I'm sure it's a line that a lot of people bring up. I know it's a line that Josh has brought up. And I'd love to just hear you explain why this is in the book and why it matters. Quote, I don't know where we're going, but I know exactly how to get there. I love that, don't you? I love it, absolutely. It really, if you take a moment to pause and contemplate it, the implications are pretty profound. So I'd love to just hear you riff on this and why and how this ended up in the book. Well, there were two things that Rhenius used to say regularly. The one is, Hishatikuma, Hishatikuma, we will get, we will get it.

55:28And it was almost like this kind of incredible self-talk that he would have when the track was cold or the track was, you know, we weren't making progress. I would look at him and he'd say, Ah, Hishatikuma, we're going to get this. And then often he would say to, I don't know where I'm going, but I know exactly how to get there. And what he's saying, he's talking to the dynamic of tracking, which is, it's an interesting energetic dynamic. He is profoundly committed to finding that animal, but he hasn't allowed that commitment to become a burden of some kind. He is working moment to moment on the signs that he's getting.

56:02And you can think in a vast wilderness, as trackers, we also talk about the first track. In a vast wilderness, 360 degrees of wild terrain, all he needs is the next first track, and then the next first track, and then the next first track, and the next first track. and he's able to dial down the infinite possibilities of where that animal could have gone to a moment of knowing and a moment of presence and then another moment of knowing and another moment of presence. And all he needs is that next sign. So he doesn't know where it's going, but he knows how to get there. The next moment of presence, the next thing I know to do.

56:39And it might be a good segue there into just telling you a little bit about how the tracking process changed for me over the years, but let me know if you want to go. So I had these encounters, Tim, whereby I had a childhood following animals and learning this art form and really the dynamics and the psyche of the tracker, how a tracker approached the process of finding an animal in the middle of nowhere. And then watching how consistently good trackers delivered an outcome. They found the animal they were looking for. And at that time as a young child, I thought I was learning that skill. and then through my early 20s I had a series of pretty traumatic encounters and the result of that was that by the time I was about 23 or 24 years old I had found myself frozen by trauma I felt I was depressed I was uncertain how to move forward and in the way that trauma limits options I felt myself extremely limited I did not have access to you know a lot of emotionality I I did not have access to different choices.

57:42I was stuck. And at that time, I was very lucky to meet a woman who came on safari. She became my first mentor. And the reason I guided her was because Alex, my friend who also features in the book, he had guided her a year before. And he said to me, she's a martial artist. And I was very interested in martial arts, as I know you are. And so I went into the guide room. And in the guide room, there was this board where every guide got their name put next to the clients who were coming in. And I rubbed off someone else's name and I put my name next to her to guide her. And that moment absolutely changed my life.

58:17Her name was Dr. Martha Beck. And she arrived on the safari and we went out the first two days. And she said something on the second day that I felt something in me really moved. We were driving along and I was telling her about the restoration of the land. And she said, I really understand this. And I believe the restoration of the planet will come out of a transformation in human consciousness. And the minute she said it, you know, whatever my grandfather knew or my father knew or my uncle knew when he saw that leopard, I felt that thing move inside of me. That kind of, that idea struck me very deeply.

58:53And then on about the fourth day, I'd driven back to the camp and, you know, I'm in my safari gear. I got my rifle. You know, I'm the guide. I'm a rugged guy. I'm out there tracking lines. And she turned and she looked at me and she said, I'm ready to talk to you. And I was sort of taken aback. I said, well, what do you mean? She said, I can see what you're carrying and I can see how stuck you are. And I want you to know that I can help you and I'm here. And I don't know if you've ever had one of those instances where someone sees you when you're in one of those places, but I felt myself becoming really uncertain.

59:27And then I felt tears starting to come to my eyes. And then there was this moment where this woman is hugging the safari guide and just consoling me. And she was an incredible healer and she was exceptionally adept at transformational processes. And so she started to teach me how to move through the trauma and the suffering that I was stuck in. And as that happened, my relationship to tracking started to change. And I started to see this art form in a different way. And I realized that I was looking for something. And all of the skills and the mentality of the tracker was highly adept to being in a transformational process.

1:00:09The first thing that you will have to do if you want to go track a lion in the wild is you will have to become super uncomfortable with unknowns. You will have to give up all the ways you tried to know what to do and say, I don't know how to do this. All trackers operate using unknowns to almost bring them to life. You will need to develop your track awareness. Track awareness is teaching yourself to be attuned to a very specific set of signs, metrics, but self-generated. When I was a kid, Rhenius would take me out to a game path and he would say, walk down that game path and tell me what you see.

1:00:45And I would come back and I would say to him, I saw a herd of impala walk there. And he would say, hey, I'm fine. young boy go look again and as i was walking away he would say put your head down like like the way an animal drinks put your head right down against the trail and look like you're drinking water like an animal and i would come back and i would say i can see where the herd of impala walked but they actually walked over the tracks of a leopard and i can see where a mouse ran across the path and then an owl swooped down and its wing touched the ground and each time i walked down that path Under his guidance, there was more information.

1:01:22And that idea became very important to me, the idea that there is information in your life if you are looking for transformation, but you have to teach yourself to attune to it. And so, you know, what do you need to attune to in transformational processes? Things that make you feel expansive, things that make you feel alive, letting go of your rational idea of what you should do and noticing what you move towards, noticing what you're curious about, noticing the people who energize you, the activities that make you feel more alive. So I started to see through the eyes of the tracker, the first track, you know, the first track being the next thing you know to do, letting go of where that animal might be or letting go of where you think you should be and just doing the next thing you know to do and the next thing you know to do.

1:02:06If you watch great trackers, they drop into what I call the following state. And it's so beautiful. If you watch Alex and Reneas in the following state, the following state could be defined almost this constant creative response to what is occurring. If the track cuts left, Alex will click and he'll say, I'm on the track. If it cuts right, Rhenius will be on it. They're getting a sense of the mood of the animal. They're using their own body to attune to the way the animal is moving. And in that way, like almost feel the animal as it's walking out ahead of them. At the same time, they are vectoring and they are getting a sense of their bearings using waypoints of marula trees up ahead.

1:02:43When you watch them, they're almost having fun in it. They're playing. They're playing on that track. And so you will need to develop the following state in your own transformational process. How can you play? How can you be creative with not knowing what you're trying to create or this place you're trying to get to, but being open and willing and aware and attuned? You will almost certainly lose the track. And sort of saying this to see how the tracker came to me in a different way as I got into my own journey of healing. You will lose the track. You'll be in the middle of it thinking I'm deep in the following state.

1:03:15I'm right on track. And then suddenly it'll be gone. And you will need to build community around you of other great trackers, people who are willing to move with you, follow with you. And the core of it is really that there is something inside of you that knows. There is a part of you, you might call it your wild self, you might call it the track of your life, or as native people call it your medicine way. A part of you that beyond rational thought reacts when you become more in tune with yourself. and sifting away the layers of socialization, all the things you should do, all the things you have to do to start to be able to follow the trail of that place inside of you became really what the core of my own journey to healing was.

1:03:55I live like that to this day as a tracker, trying to be present, resting into the unknown, attuning and trying to fall into the following state with what energizes me, makes me curious and pulls me forward.

1:04:08Tim Ferriss:Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. and that is 5 Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called 5 Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.

1:04:51Tim Ferriss:And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog.com. Type that into your browser, tim.blog.com. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.