How To TRANSFORM Your Life At Any Moment: The Alcoholic Lawyer That Became "The Fittest Man On The Planet"!! Rich Roll

[0] How much pain are you willing to tolerate before you're willing to course correct?

[1] A California lawyer turned himself into one of the fittest men on the planet.

[2] Rich role.

[3] Globally recognized ultra endurance athlete.

[4] New York Times bestseller.

[5] And host of one of the biggest podcasts on the planet.

[6] He sat down with 800 of the world's smartest people.

[7] Is there one overall takeaway?

[8] This theme of transformation.

[9] So my story, I graduated top of my class.

[10] The world ranked swimmer.

[11] And then I was working as a lawyer, so on the outside, it looked like I was doing pretty well.

[12] Inside, I was dying.

[13] My first escape was through drugs and alcohol.

[14] My family didn't want anything to do with me, the marriage that ended on the honeymoon.

[15] Went to jail.

[16] I could barely make it up a simple flight of stairs without being winded, and that was a harsh dose of reality.

[17] I needed to overhaul my life.

[18] I needed to do something that was going to be hard and uncomfortable.

[19] You can't be a phoenix if you don't burn in the flames first.

[20] We all want to be this idealized version of ourselves, and yet we should.

[21] still don't do it.

[22] We are in a culture that prioritizes comfort and luxury and the impatience that we all have.

[23] We overestimate what we can accomplish in a year and completely underestimate what we could do in a decade.

[24] We don't have to suffer.

[25] We don't have to be in pain.

[26] It's our emotional lives that hold us back from accessing that potential.

[27] So how do people in that situation take that first step in transformation?

[28] What worked for me after trying many different things was Why should you listen to this episode?

[29] All in all, this conversation is fundamentally about transformation, how you transform yourself from where you are now to where you want to be.

[30] And Rich's life is the personification of human transformation.

[31] This guy has been down and out.

[32] He's suffered with addiction, failure and turmoil that most of us will thankfully never have to endure.

[33] But he says in this episode, and he'll prove to you that pressure, that discomfort can be and should be your privilege.

[34] And if you lean into that, if you understand that pressure is your privilege and discomfort is the pathway to all the good things that you want in your life, then and only then can you reach your potential.

[35] And one of the things I really got from this conversation is this idea that all of us are much more capable than we believe we are.

[36] We have more potential than we allow ourselves to believe.

[37] And also, one of the big things Rich will leave you with in this conversation, which blew my mind, if I'm honest, is this idea that addiction is on a spectrum.

[38] We tend to think of addiction as, as he says, junkies or people that are ingesting or taking drugs.

[39] But if you think about it, we're all addicted.

[40] We're addicted to distraction, whether that's our phones, whether it's pornography, whether it's food, whether it's alcohol, as is the case in Rich's case, or whether it's our work.

[41] How do we alleviate ourselves of that addiction to distraction?

[42] That's what you'll find out in this conversation.

[43] And most importantly, of all, Riches sat down with 800 of the world's smartest, wisest, and most successful people.

[44] And from doing that, he has learnt a lot.

[45] This is one of the episodes that you honestly should not miss. Enjoy.

[46] Rich, this is a broad question, but it's intentionally broad.

[47] Who are you?

[48] And what mission are you on?

[49] coming out of the gate hot that's a very difficult question to answer i would say that i am a spiritual being having a human experience endeavoring attempting to learn and grow in a number of ways i had an experience uh in my early to mid 40s where i was able to tap into potential that I didn't know existed, and I expressed that athletically.

[50] And that experience taught me that we're all capable of so much more than we allow ourselves to believe.

[51] And it motivated me to go on this journey to grow and expand in other areas of my life, because I realized if I had been sitting on this latent potential athletically for so long, there must be other blind spots, and I wanted to explore those.

[52] And so my mission has been to grow in the public sphere, learn in the public sphere by having these conversations on my show, and then share that wisdom with other people for the purpose of elevating consciousness and activating positive change in others.

[53] You know, you've got millions and millions of people listening to your show all over the world.

[54] You've interviewed, I think almost 800 people, right?

[55] 70 broadcast episodes or something, which is staggering.

[56] On an individual level, what is it that you hope to impart or what impact is it you hope to have on the individuals that listen to your show?

[57] I want everybody listening or tuning into the show to believe to their core that they are capable of more than they may realize that there is a greater possibility for every single person, regardless of circumstances, and there are tools available for accessing that.

[58] I think that's super important because I think it's so easy to passively or reactively live our lives.

[59] We're all on some level in a routine, in a rut, and we have blinders on because we're in a certain social environment where there's unstated dictates about what's okay and what's not, and we're all creatures who want to feel a sense of belonging and identity with whatever group that, you know, we're aligned with.

[60] And I think that that comes with very good things of feeling, you know, wanted and needed, but also negative aspects, which create blinders to the greater possibilities that are available to us.

[61] Everybody is conditioned in some way or another.

[62] And that conditioning starts fairly early.

[63] What you're talking about there, at least in how I heard it, is to try and undo some of that conditioning so we can live more aligned to whatever worthy causes right for us.

[64] When was the, when did you start being conditioned and what was that condition?

[65] What was the first sort of, what's the first context or moment where your conditioning began, the conditioning that led you on the journey that you lived?

[66] I went to a high school that was very achievement oriented.

[67] Grades were very important.

[68] Academic achievement in my household was paramount.

[69] and it was a situation in which no matter what I did, you didn't quite get the validation that you were seeking, so you're always chasing it a little bit more, a little bit more to the point where unbeknownst to me or on an unconscious level, like I needed to escape that paradigm.

[70] And my first escape was through drugs and alcohol.

[71] And bullying.

[72] Bullying, yeah.

[73] Take me into the mind of that young guy that's being bullied.

[74] What is he thinking?

[75] What is he Is he scared going to school?

[76] Is he trying to escape who he is?

[77] Is he trying to fit in in certain ways?

[78] What is he doing?

[79] And what is the experience of bullying like for him in detail?

[80] Yeah, to take myself back.

[81] I think I just wanted to feel like I belonged.

[82] And I always felt different than other than the sense of not being comfortable in my own skin.

[83] Like other people had a rule book for life that I lacked.

[84] and just not having the social skills or the confidence to be able to make friends or feel like I was part of anything.

[85] And then eventually you cite alcohol in drugs as being the thing that made you feel other than yourself in a good way?

[86] Well, initially it made me feel like myself.

[87] It was like this miracle self where suddenly all of the unconscious anxiety and sense of difference between myself and others seem to vanish, and that discomfort in my own skin turned into comfort.

[88] Like I suddenly felt like, oh, maybe this is how everyone else feels all the time.

[89] I've discovered this thing where now I feel like, okay, like I can exhale and I can be around other people without feeling anxious about it.

[90] and I can look somebody in the eye and have a conversation or, like, flirt with a girl, or do all these things that seem to come naturally to other people that seemed alien to myself.

[91] And I just remember feeling so at home with that and just wanting to feel like that all the time.

[92] And it got its claws in me. And that's how that kind of journey begins for many people who've had their version of my experience with alcohol.

[93] Addiction comes in many forms.

[94] And the role that addiction was playing, the role that alcohol was playing, in your life at that stage can also be substituted for other things, right?

[95] So some people have it with food or with, um, or with work from sitting there and interviewing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, what have you learned about the nature of really like the role that alcohol was playing for you, but also like the role that maybe for me like being a workaholic or for some people eating is playing?

[96] What is it doing for us?

[97] Is it like an escape?

[98] Is it, um, in your case, it was like the salve that made you feel as you said, yourself.

[99] But what is that thing?

[100] Yeah, I think that this is something I've spent a lot of time thinking about.

[101] As somebody who's been in recovery since 1998, I've been to thousands of AA meetings.

[102] I know so many people in recovery.

[103] And over the course of 10 years of hosting my podcast, I've had so many experts in the realm of addiction, sobriety, and recovery.

[104] And I've come to believe that this notion of addiction lives on a much broader spectrum than we may realize.

[105] When we think of addiction, we think of the junkie or, you know, the gutter drunk.

[106] But in between, you know, that polarity, there's a whole spectrum of addictive and I would even weave in obsessive, compulsive behavior that ranges from continuing to get into the same bad relationship to being unable to put the phone down, where we are seizing moments and opportunities through behavior or substance.

[107] to distract ourselves from ourselves because we are experiencing discomfort with whatever emotion is coming up.

[108] And it's easier to divert to something that will give us a sense of ease and comfort or distraction than to sit with that sense of dis -ease.

[109] And I think that any kind of recurring repeated behavior pattern that mimics that could be characterized as an addiction.

[110] It may be mild, but I think nonetheless, it's not, you know, it's qualitatively the same thing as the person who can't stop drinking.

[111] And it all goes back to this inside job of trying to understand what makes us tick, the nature and origin of those discomforts, what triggers those, and trying to find a way to not only sit with those, but confront them and work through them so you can ultimately transcend them and liberate yourself from the behavior or the substance or whatever it may be that is the kind of go -to default thing that you do when you start to feel like out of control or nervous or anxious or insecure or perhaps, you know, triggered or or any number of kind of emotional impulses that might arise.

[112] What is the cost of not learning?

[113] to be with myself.

[114] So I'm looking at all these things, phone addiction.

[115] I'm definitely addicted to my phone.

[116] All of these addictions.

[117] I've got some of them in varying degrees.

[118] So what?

[119] What's the cost?

[120] Well, time will tell, right?

[121] Maybe there isn't a cost that is so significant that it mandates that you rectify that behavior.

[122] Again, it's a spectrum, right?

[123] So for you, you might be able to engage in a certain behavior without having negative ramifications in your life that are significant enough for you to redress that.

[124] For somebody else, it might destroy their life.

[125] But I think developing an awareness around those behaviors and paying attention enough such that if you start to find yourself experiencing negative life ramifications as a result of those behaviors, you're not in denial over that.

[126] And you can make a course correction.

[127] And what's the upside then of just learning to sit with yourself as opposed to reaching for the phone or for the cake or for the beer what is the what is the upside of that you know i say this because i think i live in a generation that have become so used to distracting ourselves um and the thought of like meditating or not having our phone on us is actually i mean it's like a it's like a phobia um we we haven't learned to sit with ourselves in silence with our thoughts if you can't sit silently with yourself with your thoughts, then you are not living an intentional examined life.

[128] And I think to be addicted to your phone or to be living in that reactive mode where you're constantly distracting yourself robs you of something that we need as human beings, which is rumination and boredom.

[129] That is the juice of creativity.

[130] And as a creative person, somebody who does this show and talks to amazing people and is writing a book and is very much in a space where your creativity is really the driver of everything that you do, I would say to you, it is of paramount importance to protect your boredom, to protect your quiet time, to put boundaries around those distractions.

[131] Otherwise, you are not going to be doing your best work and you are going to be depriving your audience of the best version of yourself.

[132] The other thing is connection.

[133] It's definitely, it's definitely robbed me of connection.

[134] Well, it's pernicious in that way because at least with social media, it gives you the illusion of connection.

[135] And, you know, we're sitting here together because of social media.

[136] Like, you reached out to me, I reached out to you.

[137] So it's not a binary.

[138] There are amazing things about it.

[139] And my entire career has been built on these digital tools.

[140] And they're very important to, you know, how I kind of navigate the world.

[141] But at what point does that meter kind of toggle over into, you know, the red zone where I'm being used by it and it's robbing me of my humanity and it's diluting me into this idea that I'm connecting with other people.

[142] But in the analog world, I'm just at home all the time and I'm not actually interacting in the real world.

[143] And, you know, I think one thing we share, Stephen, is our show is all about the in -person an experience.

[144] Like, I tried to do the Zoom thing.

[145] I can't do it.

[146] It's like, this is not why I'm doing this.

[147] It feels transactional and weird.

[148] And, you know, as, as much as these tools, which are phenomenal, have given us the ability to connect in a certain way, it's not true connection.

[149] And I think, you know, in order to really feel like we're part of the human race, we're hardwired to be with people in real world settings.

[150] story, I see multiple chapters.

[151] And there's transformation in every chapter, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, but it's always forward.

[152] It seems like it was the path that you had to go on.

[153] You talk there about the first chapter of your life, which is you're young, there's bullying, there's this feeling of sort of inadequacy and there's isolation.

[154] What's the next chapter?

[155] Yeah, so awkward, insecure kid, difficulty making friends.

[156] But I found solace in the swimming pool.

[157] And that was really my safe haven, perhaps my first addiction.

[158] And in lockstep with my improvement in that space came better grades.

[159] I started to perform better athletically.

[160] So by the time I was 18 in graduating high school, had my pick of going to any college I wanted to, got into Harvard, Princeton, ended up going to Stanford, which in addition to just being a premier university, also happened to have the number one collegious swimming program in the country.

[161] So basically anything I wanted to do was like laid out in front of me. I arrive in California for college.

[162] I grew up in Washington, D .C., so I traveled 3 ,000 miles away to go to school, enter alcohol.

[163] And that began the sort of slow decline of my ability to express my potential, not only as an athlete and as a student, but as a human being.

[164] because it just gradually denigrated all of my values and sort of dented my aspirations to the point where I no longer really cared about my trajectory or where I was headed with my life and was solely concerned with rooting out where my next good time would be.

[165] And those were the good times.

[166] And I would say that initially, alcohol really saved me. It taught me how to be a social person.

[167] Like, I enjoyed going to parties and I enjoyed figuring out how to talk to people.

[168] And it was really this fuel that transformed me from this naval gazing, insecure kid into somebody who felt like I could comport myself in a social situation as long as I was using alcohol.

[169] I've taken some of those skills and I'm now able to apply them without alcohol.

[170] But very slowly over time, you know, my life, the quality of my life just sort of declined and declined and declined.

[171] So I was a functional alcoholic for many years, but I knew very early on that my relationship with alcohol was different from that of my peers because I would be the last person to leave.

[172] I was immediately sneaking drinks.

[173] I was the one who was throwing up and blacking out when everyone else knew what time it was to go home.

[174] I started going out like more and more nights every single week and then fast forwarding through later years, hiding my drinks, sneaking my drinks, hiding the empties, and doing kind of all the dark stuff that one does when they fall prey to this condition.

[175] And there was nothing really sexy or romantic or rock and roll about it.

[176] It was just really kind of sad and pathetic to the point where at the end I was alone, alienated from my friends.

[177] My family didn't want anything to do with me until I sorted this out.

[178] I was on the precipice of, you know, somehow I got through law school, but I was working as a lawyer.

[179] I was on the precipice of getting fired, was living in a shitty apartment with barely any furniture, sleeping on a mattress on the floor.

[180] And it was, it was, it was very dark for a very long period of time.

[181] When did you get married, the first, your first marriage in 1995, 20, 20?

[182] No, that was, so it would have been 90, 95, no, that was, so it would have been, 95, 96 I think yeah it's roughly 20 so I did an ill -fated marriage that ended on the honeymoon that's a sorted story that would take a very long time to untangle and explain a marriage that ended in the honeymoon it ended on the honeymoon yeah uh incredibly um painful embarrassing chapter of my life that that marriage took place after i'd gotten the the two DUIs but i was endeavoring to get sober.

[183] And I think my fiancé, not quite my wife, because we didn't sign the marriage certificate, which is a whole other aspect of the story.

[184] I think that she realized that I would be problematic as a partner, but didn't have the courage to call the whole thing off and allowed the wedding ceremony to take place, even though she didn't want to be married to me and it all kind of came to head on the honeymoon, which is the last time that I saw her.

[185] And that was really my bottom as an alcoholic, even though I drank for a period of time after that because it was so emotionally devastating and painful, that was really the nadir where I realized that my life had hit the skids in just a way that I could have never imagined for myself post that um that i was going to call it i guess it was a wedding post that wedding and everything that happened you returned to drinking again you relapsed because of the pain of that experience absolutely how long does that last it was a long time ago i think it was about six more months of my life kind of circling the drain um before i finally decided that i needed to really take responsibility for my behavior.

[186] At that point, what are the people around you that love you doing and saying?

[187] Friends slowly stepping backwards from me, distancing themselves from me. My parents were terribly worried and concerned, and they had sought out counsel of their own and started attending Al -Anon and I believe they had seen a therapist as well and and the advice that they got was like you need to cut ties with this guy like you can't will him into doing what you know is in his best interest you have to detach and I recall very vividly a conversation that I had with my dad where he's like I know what you're doing it's very clear this path that you're on and we just can't be part of it anymore and And if and when you're ready to make a change or to really entertain sobriety in a real way, we're here for you.

[188] We're your parents and we love you.

[189] But until that point, like, we really don't want to hear from you anymore.

[190] So that was a brutal pill to swallow, incredibly painful, but also catalytic because it snapped me out of whatever denial I was harboring about getting over on people or them not really knowing.

[191] how I was actually behaving.

[192] And I think it was an important step in helping me realize just how dire the circumstances were for me at that time.

[193] And your father said that, what did you hear?

[194] I heard, you're a failure and you are unlovable.

[195] Do you think that was the right thing for him to say?

[196] I think in my case, and I'm only speaking from, you know, my perspective in this particular set of circumstances, it was the right thing to do because it effectively moved me in the direction that I needed to be moved in.

[197] And they had tried the other way, which is loving me and being supportive and kind of offering up a soft landing pad.

[198] And that was not working.

[199] And I think they needed to do that for themselves, to protect themselves as well.

[200] And I respect that choice.

[201] You know, I've been in many situations trying to help people get sober, and it's a very delicate, difficult thing to do.

[202] It's just really challenging because if somebody's not ready and they don't want to get sober, there's very little that you can do to try to, you know, create that epiphany in them.

[203] Willingness is a self -generated response that you can't instill in somebody externally.

[204] and until somebody's really willing to confront their demons, you can't compel them to do so.

[205] So that's why I think sobriety or addiction is so baffling and so painful for the loved ones of people that suffer who can so clearly see you're killing yourself, you need to do this, and yet that person won't make that choice.

[206] it's not just addiction and sobriety in that sense that I was thinking about when I asked that question because I've got people in my life that I've tried to help in various ways and I've got one friend who has struggled with pretty severe addiction and your natural inclination is to try and jump in there and give them advice and help them and pay for this and sort sort this out etc etc but after you know years and years of it never working what do you do then and I'm thinking of one particular example of a friend of mine who struggled with addiction and slowly everybody has just fallen away the person's management has fallen away their friends have fallen away um and i wonder sometimes i wonder to myself is that what you have to do is that do you have to basically give them a void enough space and stop holding them up in like sort of artificially suspending them uh and let them go to the bottom let them go to that rock bottom there is a logic in that you know you don't want to coddle that person, you certainly don't want to be codependent in their behavior.

[207] In other words, making excuses for them.

[208] That makes it easier for them to continue down that destructive path.

[209] And there is wisdom in just saying, hey, man, I love you.

[210] I'm available when you're ready to get help.

[211] But you know, you're on your own thing, man, and I just, I can't be part of it.

[212] So call me when you're ready.

[213] But until then, good luck to you.

[214] Because the addiction elevator is always going down.

[215] It's a progressive disease.

[216] It only moves in one direction.

[217] The best case scenario is that person's life stays the same, but in almost every case, it continues to decline.

[218] And it will decline to the point where the pain experienced by the person who is the addict or the alcoholic becomes more unbearable than the fear of the change.

[219] And that is where willingness is born.

[220] And again, it's not something that you can instill in that person.

[221] And you could, you could like, hijack your friend and throw him in the back of a car and drop him off in a rehab, but he might escape from the rehab or he'll sit in the back and just bite his time until he or she gets out and they can go back to whatever they're doing.

[222] That's why this is such a difficult problem to solve.

[223] It is an internally generated thing.

[224] The people that I know that have been able to get sober and stay sober are the people that shoulder responsibility for their own sobriety.

[225] You can't get sober for somebody else.

[226] I'm getting sober for my spouse or my kids or, you know, I'm getting sober because if I don't, my boss is going to fire me. Those are those, you might be able to do that for a short period of time, but for the true addict, unless you're doing it for yourself and you're making it your number one priority, chances are you're not going to, you're not going to last over the long haul.

[227] And it's confusing.

[228] And when you love that person, it puts you in a very treacherous position because if you, if you, you're not going to last over the long haul.

[229] you do create that boundary and that person goes off and something terrible happens, will you feel responsible or will you feel like you didn't do enough or if you had just done this or that, that wouldn't have happened?

[230] And that's a very real predicament to put yourself in.

[231] There's something quite counterproductive in the sense that when you're trying to help that person, what often happens is your relationship with them become strained.

[232] And then when your relationship become strained and you become frustrated with the lack of sort of effectiveness of your support, then arguments start.

[233] You might say some things that you regret.

[234] Further, tarnishing that person's self -esteem, self -worth, or whatever's triggering them to try and escape themselves through whatever addiction they might have.

[235] And it actually can make their situation significantly worse.

[236] Sure.

[237] Destroy the relationship.

[238] Right.

[239] Which is why it's important to to interface with that from a place of neutrality, right?

[240] To not get emotionally agitated or activated by.

[241] it and a good way of kind of recalling that or reinforcing that is to understand that there is the person, your friend, and there is this disease, this addiction, right?

[242] And if this person is acting in their disease, that's not the person.

[243] They're not a bad person.

[244] They're afflicted by something so powerful that they're unable to override it and be that friend that you remember.

[245] and I think when you when you kind of approach it through that lens you can have a little bit more compassion for that person rather than take it personally because they're not they're not acting out of animus towards you they're suffering from something that's so powerful that they're unable to control it okay so this was a quote I found about your opinion of balance he finds balance extremely difficult and believes that if something is good then the more the better he believes balance is for ordinary people and he wants to be extraordinary he says this can be a blessing and a curse yeah definitely a blessing and a curse um i am hardwired for extremes uh this has been both a superpower and in achilles heel it's the thing that has fueled me and allowed me to you know achieve uh some pretty cool things but it's also been the thing that um has almost killed me so it's that love hate thing but i think behind it this notion of living a balanced life that we get served up like you need to be balanced and you know the best way to kind of pursue your life is in a balanced way everything in balance and the social conditioning around that idea is so powerful that for years I just felt like a terrible person or like less than because I just could never figure out that equation to make everything feel like it was even adequately balanced because I feel most alive in those extremes.

[246] And that's part of what addiction is.

[247] Like you're just searching for those peak experiences in unhealthy ways and also in healthy ways through athletics and, you know, and through creativity and other avenues.

[248] But I always felt guilty about that.

[249] Like other people seem to be telling me that I shouldn't be doing this.

[250] And yet this is where I feel like myself.

[251] And finally I got to the place where I was like, fuck this whole balance thing.

[252] Like this is who I am.

[253] And I decided to embrace it.

[254] Now that doesn't mean that you just blindly pursue these obsessions to the point of self -destruction.

[255] What it means is for me, again, not giving advice, in my experience, when I allow myself to immerse myself in something.

[256] that fascinates me, whether it's an ultra -distance race or writing a book or whatever it is, giving myself permission to really focus on that and take it all the way to the wall is where I do my best work, but that is only acceptable as long as that pendulum that's swinging all the way up over here, swings back, goes this way, and comes to the center.

[257] because we all have buckets in our life of values that we, you know, need to nourish.

[258] So a creative project, for example, I'm going to go, I'm going to do that, and that's fine as long as I come back and my family is nourished, my relationship is nourished, my friendships are nourished, all these other areas that are important to me don't fall by the wayside for too long.

[259] So balance in the macro, but not balance in the macro.

[260] micro.

[261] So on a day -to -day basis or a week -to -week basis, my life is wildly out of balance.

[262] But if you look at it over the course of a year, you telescope out, I think it's much more in balance than one might suspect.

[263] Super interesting.

[264] I've, I think using that example of the swing, is it called a pendulum?

[265] In society, we started by glorifying hustle.

[266] culture I guess and being out of balance and then there was kind of a movement towards that's toxic right and now I feel like new pride is like I don't set my alarm clock yeah yeah and I feel like a little bit it's coming back the other way where people are going fuck work life balance like that's it's such balance is such a subjective thing and work is completely different for everybody like this is my work this is not I'm not you know for someone else their relationship with that work might be tedium it might be depressing they might be doing something that really doesn't fill them up But I think there needs to be nuance in the fact that all work is different.

[267] Every individual is clearly different and it is wired to find the fulfillment in different ways.

[268] So work life balance in and of itself is a pretty ridiculous concept to think that there is a balance.

[269] There really must be a, as you kind of describe, a subjective balance, where there's a balance for Steve.

[270] And as long as I don't fall in sacrifice, social connection, isolation, and all the other things, then I'm balanced.

[271] My balance could, you know, look much different from yours.

[272] for whom and when, right?

[273] If you're 22 years old and you've got this idea for a startup and you're a coder and you want to code like a maniac, like knock yourself out.

[274] You have no other responsibilities.

[275] You have the time.

[276] You have the freedom to do that in that moment.

[277] But that 22 year old, 20 years later with kids and a mortgage and whatever, it's a different time.

[278] That person's in a different place.

[279] These things, you know, can't be, they have to be contextualized.

[280] Right.

[281] And yes, if you want to achieve something great, you are going to have to work very hard and you're going to have to get out of your comfort zone.

[282] You may even need to be obsessed.

[283] If you're living an entirely balanced life where you're home at five o 'clock and you're always at dinner.

[284] It's like you're making it very difficult to achieve something extraordinary.

[285] That extraordinary thing is going to require an extraordinary commitment, which means in the social construct of balance, you are going to be out of balance.

[286] If you're going to feel uncomfortable with that, because you have other priorities in your life, then maybe that's not for you.

[287] And being out of balance to pursue something great, in my opinion, is perfectly fine.

[288] Again, as long as you allow that pendulum to swing back and those other things in your life that are important are nourished and attended to.

[289] So it's a very specific thing.

[290] It depends on who you are, what stage of life you're in, what you're seeking, and having the self -awareness to understand that you can't be everywhere, all the time.

[291] And you can't be 100 % for all of the things that are important to you in your life in every single day.

[292] So it's about conscious awareness and intentionality about where you're rowing that boat.

[293] You can only row your boat in one direction.

[294] Are you rowing the Stephen boat towards Stephen today?

[295] Are you going to row it towards your girlfriend?

[296] Well, you're going to have to do a lot of rowing in a lot of different directions.

[297] It's just knowing that you're making a conscious choice and doing that with that understanding and appreciation, I think is really important.

[298] But all of this is to put the light of the idea that anybody is living a balanced life on a minute -to -hour, day -to -day basis.

[299] It's a construct that I think makes people feel guilty and bad about themselves because none of us are adhering to that idealized version of a balanced life that we have a mental picture of.

[300] You can't have it all.

[301] You left rehab in September 1998.

[302] And earlier on when you were talking about transformation, you described someone who goes from being a fairly ordinary person to running a marathon.

[303] That was one of the sort of examples you gave of something that intrigues you.

[304] Like, how did they do that?

[305] That's pretty much in many respects what you went on to do upon leaving rehab as you, your life slowly moved towards ultra -athletic sports.

[306] Yes and no. I mean, I think that the, the shorthand kind of Google version of my story makes it look like all this stuff happened in a very compressed period of time.

[307] But actually, when I left rehab, which is where I lived for 100 days, and resumed my life in Los Angeles, I spent the next 10 years trying to solve the dilemma of my life that I had self -created.

[308] I had to repair my relationships.

[309] I had to become trustworthy to other people again.

[310] I had to be somebody who was reliable and would show up on time when they said they would.

[311] All those sort of like normal things that normal people do.

[312] I had to rebuild for myself.

[313] So for 10 years, I immersed myself in the recovery community in Los Angeles.

[314] And I tried to become that corporate lawyer that I thought that I wanted to be.

[315] to be kind of approved of by my parents and by society without really grappling with who I wanted to be because I was so caught up and so ashamed of my past and embarrassed of how I had screwed my life up that I wanted to prove to myself and to everyone else that I could be that person that I was at 18 when I had all of these opportunities and choices.

[316] and I was blind to kind of the inner journey, despite sobriety, the blind to like really trying to figure out like what made me tick and what I might want to do for myself.

[317] That felt like an indulgence.

[318] And so the ultra stuff came much later.

[319] That came like so I got out of rehab at 31.

[320] It wasn't until I was turning 40 that I had another bottom where I had to reckon with my lifestyle choices with diet and movement, et cetera, because I'd, put on 50 pounds and was just pursuing this corporate life to the point of of of of illness honestly like I was although I'd been this athlete I just could barely make it up a simple flight of stairs without being winded tightness in my chest heart disease runs in my family and just had a second situation in which I realized I needed to overhaul my life so there was a whole 10 year period in between those those kind of moments of awakening that 10 year period is a 10 year period that a lot of people listening to this right now can relate to where you found yourself in a professional context or professional endeavor without asking yourself the question of like who am I and what am I actually interested in and you might be doing it because your mom wants you to be a doctor sure you have the Indian parents and they came over here and they want you to be a lawyer whatever it might be I hear that story a lot what is the question people in that situation should be asking themselves and how do they take that first step in transformation from becoming the banker that's in the city with a suit and tie on right now listening to this to the person that like would make them whole and full and love themselves in their life like what is the first step is it a question is it a retreat they need to go on yeah it's a great question i think that question is probably different for everybody but how about just asking yourself who are you and i mean that in the broadest sense, perhaps the most unanswerable spiritual sense, but I also mean it in the very tangible sense of like, what are you doing?

[321] Are you really on the path that you want to be on?

[322] Did you choose this path?

[323] Are you here because of external pressures or expectations that you didn't ask for?

[324] And I think when you turn inward and start exploring your interior to try to grapple with what is making you tick, what is impulsing the decisions that you're making, the big decisions and the small decisions, and developing a lattice work or an understanding of what those mechanics are sets you on a trajectory to making better decisions for yourself.

[325] So it's not like maybe that banker is supposed to be a banker, maybe super happy, that's fine.

[326] I'm not here to tell people they should quit their jobs.

[327] I'm just saying that an examined life, meaning that inward glance into understanding why you're making the decisions that you're making, historically, you know, the way in which you were raised that might have set you up to make decisions you think you're making for yourself but are actually in reaction to unconscious, you know, kind of triggers that are built into you.

[328] I think developing an awareness of that is really important in trying to understand that question.

[329] And it took me a very long time to untangle that knot.

[330] I don't think it's a simple process.

[331] I think it's different for everybody.

[332] It can come in the form of talking to a therapist or meditation.

[333] There is no one modality for that.

[334] But I think simply the commitment to try to understand that, I think, is the process of gaining that understanding to help you make more intentional decisions for yourself.

[335] And maybe it starts with an easy prompt like, what did you enjoy doing when you were eight years old that you don't do anymore and why don't you do it anymore re -engaging with you know the childlike nature uh that is perhaps lost as we grow older and kind of um get into the flow of our professional lives one of the most important questions i think i would add as well is how do you feel we very rarely ask ourselves that and i think we all have this sort of internal compass which we've been given by life which is like, how do you feel in this situation?

[336] How do you truly feel?

[337] Not like how do you feel in the context of, is your mother happy or is your father happy or is society impressed by you?

[338] But like, how do you actually feel?

[339] You know?

[340] And I think that sometimes for me has sat apart from the accomplishment so I could be achieving something great and know that people are impressed and happy.

[341] But really, I'm going through a fucking shit time internally.

[342] Right.

[343] And tuning into that voice of like, how do I feel and tuning out of the like, how do people feel about me?

[344] Right.

[345] has really helped me in those moments where I've got to make a big decision to quit.

[346] And I don't think people ask themselves that question enough.

[347] Well, they may ask themselves that question, but the answer is flippant, right?

[348] It's like, I'm good.

[349] Cool, I feel good.

[350] You know, I feel I slept good last night.

[351] No, like, how do you really feel?

[352] And then continuing to peel back the layers until it gets really uncomfortable.

[353] And then you know you're in the sweet spot, right?

[354] That's where the juice is.

[355] I've peeled them back.

[356] And I've done, you know, I've raised my awareness.

[357] I realize them in the wrong place.

[358] But I'm 39 years old.

[359] And I've got kids.

[360] I've got a house.

[361] We live in this part of London so I can get to work quickly.

[362] We've built our lives around this, you know, person I thought I wanted to be.

[363] And I'm held in place by my friendship group and my mother's down.

[364] People have that fear.

[365] They think, how do I, how do I break out of that?

[366] How do I shed?

[367] Yeah.

[368] Yeah.

[369] Well, first I would say to that person, congratulations.

[370] Like, you created a life for yourself.

[371] Like, on some level, even if you want to leave that career path or you're unfulfilled in that, you still are somebody who is deserving of acknowledgement for building something.

[372] And, you know, that's an amazing thing.

[373] So it's not about casting that aside or disrespecting it.

[374] For me, I would say to that person, what is it that gets you excited?

[375] Like, what is it that you feel is unnourished in your life?

[376] Do you have a creative itch?

[377] Is there something calling you or something, again, that you used to do as a kid that you really enjoyed?

[378] And for some reason unbeknownst to you, you don't do it anymore.

[379] Maybe it's like, yeah, it could be music or stand up or you play football, right?

[380] Like being on a football team or doing something, you know, just having coffee with your friend or what have you.

[381] Finding a way to build that back into your life in a way that isn't going to derail your current life.

[382] but I think just breathing on that, like giving space to the things that bring you joy in the most primal sense, like the simplest things that just you remember made you happy that you've forgotten and recapturing that and finding a way to respect that, protect it, nourish it, and inject it into your life.

[383] And I think the more that you kind of tend to that garden, suddenly, oh, a little opportunity over here pops up or something is telling me I should move this way.

[384] These are very subtle energies that you have to be present for in order to notice them when they appear.

[385] But I think those are the subtle energies.

[386] Those are the waves you want to be surfing.

[387] And you can do that while you're working at the bank.

[388] They don't have to be mutually exclusive.

[389] And over time, maybe you start moving a little over this way.

[390] Five years later, your life is unrecognizable.

[391] And I think this goes to the impatience that we all have.

[392] We all want to be this idealized version of ourself, happier, fitter, thinner, richer, whatever it is overnight.

[393] And we overestimate what we can accomplish in a year, or maybe in a couple years, and completely underestimate what we could do in a decade.

[394] We're not wired to think in decades.

[395] It seems too intangible.

[396] but if all you do is make tiny little changes to build in habits into your life that bring you joy or fulfillment or happiness or purpose in incremental micro -allotments that don't disrupt the rest of your life you do that for 10 years straight your life is going to be different and I can promise you that 10 years after rehab you have what you describe as your second rock bottom you're a workaholic you're trying to sort of appease the perception of people in your life to make them proud i guess um just before your 40th birthday this is when that sort of reckoning in your life takes place what is that reckoning in your life what did you realize and what did you see as the solution to that confrontation yeah so i had spent the better part of 10 years uh people pleasing and doing my best to be successful living somebody else's life, unbeknownst to me, doing all the right things, checking all the boxes, becoming successful.

[397] So if you were on the outside looking in, it looked like I was doing pretty well.

[398] Inside, I was dying because my soul, my spirit was unheard and undernourished.

[399] Like I didn't know how to pay attention to myself or the signals of my soul who were telling me, I don't think you're that happy doing this and repressing that year after year after year to the point where I couldn't do it anymore.

[400] So I was harboring a bit of an existential crisis about how I was living my life, being this lawyer and kind of showing up in the world in a certain way that always felt like a costume that didn't fit me. Meanwhile, although sober from drugs and alcohol, I sort of transferred a lot of that addiction energy into food and was eating, you know, a terrible fast food diet, gained a lot of weight, was inactive, even though I'd been a swimmer in college, wasn't really moving my body in any meaningful way for a number of years.

[401] This existential crisis that I was having collided with this health scare shortly before I turned 40, where I was going up a flight of stairs after a long day at work, and couldn't even make it all the way up.

[402] Had to stop halfway up the flight, winded, out of breath, tightness in my chest, like wheezing, you know, thinking, I swam at Stanford.

[403] Like, I was a world -ranked swimmer.

[404] I can't, I'm, I'm like 39 about to turn 40.

[405] I feel like shit.

[406] I'm fat.

[407] And it just broke that spell of denial about how I was living where it became intolerable to continue along that path.

[408] And it was very much like the day that I decided to go to rehab, like this moment, back to willingness.

[409] Like, suddenly out of the blue, I was blessed with this realization, not only that I needed to change my lifestyle habits, but that I had the willingness to actually take action on that.

[410] And because the decision that I had made 10 years prior when I went to rehab had been so transformational.

[411] Like, I could have woken up that day and made a different decision.

[412] What would my life look like?

[413] And I had this palpable sense that once again, this was just such a moment where if I could make a decision like I had 10 years ago, maybe I could change the trajectory of my life.

[414] And I know that these moments are fleeting and they require kind of immediate action or they pass, right?

[415] You could say, maybe I should eat better or go to the gym once in a while, like I'm tired of feeling like shit.

[416] That's so vague.

[417] I knew that that wasn't going to work for me. And I needed to do something immediate that was also difficult that would mimic the experience of going into a treatment center for drugs and alcohol.

[418] Like I needed to have a structured situation that would snap me out of my comfort zone and kind of create a new trajectory upon which I could build something different.

[419] I think about this a lot in like businesses and organizations.

[420] They almost need to stage a crisis, I call it, to make change happen.

[421] Because when you're in an organization and there's maybe thousands of people and let's say it's AI or an innovation comes along, people will go, yeah, that's a problem, but you know, it's fine.

[422] And then they'll kind of carry on, keep on keeping on.

[423] The organization almost needs to stage a crisis, like get everyone in a room and say, we're changing today and really sort of terrify their team about the prospect of not changing.

[424] It's almost like staging a rock bottom because it will be.

[425] the frog in the frying pan it will slowly creep upon you if you don't right at some point as i call it like stage a crisis which is to really get clear on where this is heading and where we're sleepwalking ourselves into whether it's with our health our relationships i actually had this conversation with a friend of mine in his relationship because he's now in a sexless relationship and he's really unhappy but he's not saying anything about it he's kind of bringing it up sort of quietly once in a while and his unhappiness in the relationship and resentment is coming out in other ways in the relationship like arguments and fighting where he needs to stop and like stage a crisis like not allow it to be brushed under the carpet anymore and sit down and say listen if we can't solve this I have to leave this relationship and like I want to solve it with you but it's a deal breaker for me see what I mean yeah I get what you're saying basically short of of like sleepwalking yourself towards the cliff's edge yeah do staging an intervention on your life by, you know, like concocting a crisis that's going to compel you to confront the elephant in the room that is the thing that is holding you back.

[426] It's obvious to everyone else and yet you're refusing to look at it.

[427] Yeah, because we, as you said earlier, we want to avoid discomfort.

[428] So if we can just sweep discomfort under the carpet and procrastinate it into tomorrow, we do.

[429] We do that in businesses.

[430] We do it in our own lives.

[431] So how do we maximize the discomfort today by presenting what the future will look like if we don't take action right now.

[432] And there is often a point of no return in relationships and in business, for sure, for sure.

[433] So, yeah.

[434] Yeah, I think that's a very kind of pragmatic, you know, three -dimensional, actionable way to look at it.

[435] Perhaps a more mystical way to approach this is to say that when you are living your life out of alignment with your best self, the universe comes knocking and it knocks gently.

[436] Like, you're, maybe you're out telling lies or whatever it is.

[437] Like, you're just not, you're not, you're not living your life in integrity, like, in alignment with your own values.

[438] And we all do this, right?

[439] We're not all living perfect lives.

[440] So, and, and so when you do that, like, there'll be nudges.

[441] And those nudges will be very graceful at first.

[442] And if you ignore them, a little bit louder, right?

[443] Yeah.

[444] Yeah, that's fine.

[445] I can, you know, I can deal with that.

[446] The knocks start to get more intense, more intense, more intense, more intense, more intense.

[447] And then you get two DUIs in six months and you're in jail or your partner leaves you or whatever it is, right?

[448] Like, how much pain are you willing to tolerate?

[449] How loud does the knock have to be before you're willing to course correct?

[450] Change is very difficult.

[451] We don't want to make change or look if if if change were easy or it was a logical thing like here's the answer do this and if everybody just did it there would be no self -help industry there wouldn't need to be any books you just tell somebody what to do and they do it so why don't they do it right we don't like to be out of our comfort zone we have a certain way that we live our life and until that is so disruptive disrupted we're going to continue on that path right so The question becomes, how much pain do you have to be in before you're willing to walk through the fear of the unknown that the change presents?

[452] How loud does the knock have to be?

[453] How low does the elevator have to drop?

[454] And I think that that answer is different for everybody.

[455] But the amazing and confusing thing about it is that the possibility of change exists in all moments.

[456] make that choice at any time.

[457] We don't have to suffer.

[458] We don't have to be in pain.

[459] And yet we still don't do it.

[460] So unlocking that mystery.

[461] Yeah.

[462] I mean, well, there's your book.

[463] You can answer that question.

[464] Well, I've been playing around with this idea in my book.

[465] There was a chapter I was going to write about time.

[466] Right.

[467] So I wanted to write something about time and time management.

[468] So I thought the best place to start talking about death, because that kind of puts time in context.

[469] It's finite.

[470] And so I started writing about that.

[471] You know, if you're 35 years old, you've got 17 ,000 days left.

[472] I'm trying to find all these ways where people can visualize the con...

[473] Because of what you said, people can't think of decades.

[474] We can't think of finality.

[475] We can't think of infinity.

[476] We can't think of long periods of time.

[477] I also, at some level, don't believe we know we're going to die.

[478] We don't live our lives accordingly.

[479] We think it happens to other people.

[480] Yeah, deep down, we're like, somehow I'm going to sidestep this thing.

[481] It's not actually going to happen.

[482] Yeah.

[483] And you see that in our decisions.

[484] Like the things we pour our attention into.

[485] clearly we don't think we're on a clock here right um a clock we can't see so that's how i started the chapter then i went into time and i was like okay time management techniques i looked i was thinking about my own time management techniques i then was like i'll google it chat gt p went on chat t speed talk to me about time management techniques there's so many of them and i thought to myself the reason why there's so many is the same reason there are so many fad diets because none of them work unless you have discipline so that people just keep making new ones and they keep selling because none of them work without this thing called discipline so what causes discipline.

[486] And then I arrived at this sort of discipline equation in my head where I kind of believe when you once, I'm going to say this in a super vague way, Broadway, when your perception of how meaningful the goal is, plus the enjoyment and psychological engagement you get from the pursuit towards the goal.

[487] So for me, I really want to be a DJ.

[488] I've played around with the idea for a long time.

[489] I finally made the decision I wanted to do it.

[490] Why do I want to do it?

[491] Absolutely love music, love the thrill and how energized I am from performance.

[492] plus the psychological engagement enjoyment I get from the pursuit.

[493] It's like meditation, DJing and the practice of it, right?

[494] So you go upstairs into my kitchen.

[495] I spend hours listening to my favorite music and merging it with other songs I love for hours, forgetting about the whole world, minus the perceived psychological cost of the pursuit.

[496] So what does it cost me to pursue DJing?

[497] And I think that is roughly my discipline equation.

[498] So if you think about these three elements, how bad you want it, how enjoyable it is, what does it cost?

[499] You can kind of think of why people might or might not change.

[500] And it somewhat fits into what you said about when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of making a change than people make the change.

[501] When they really, really want it and it's more enjoyable than it is painful to go in that direction, behavior changes.

[502] Right.

[503] Well, I would take it one step further.

[504] But first, let me say this.

[505] I would say that you're already a DJ.

[506] You're making an assumption around what it means to be a DJ or to pursue DJing.

[507] That comes with a lot of baggage.

[508] It means success.

[509] Maybe you're envisioning a big crowd of people who are listening to your music.

[510] But the fact that it brings you joy and you found a way to carve time out to nourish that, it doesn't matter how far it goes or doesn't go as long as you are kind of cultivating that out of that purity of spirit.

[511] because it nourishes your life.

[512] So that's what I mean when I was talking about the banker, right?

[513] Like just DJ at your kitchen table.

[514] Like it doesn't have to be any more than that.

[515] If you're finding so much joy in it, then you can recalibrate that equation about how much energy, resources, and time you're going to invest in it.

[516] But right now, if it fits into your life and it's making your life better, then the question would be, does it need to be more than that?

[517] Do you need it to be attached to some external validation or monetary reward or recognition in order for you to believe that you actually are a DJ?

[518] So I'm not saying there's an answer to that question, but it's something to think about.

[519] The reason I gave the DJing example is because it was something I was able to stick out.

[520] I was able to, quote unquote, essentially change.

[521] And my health was the same thing.

[522] It fits into that discipline equation of at some point in my life, I saw this pandemic happen.

[523] I saw the fragility of this thing called health in my young 25 years.

[524] I'd never even knew was there.

[525] I never even knew I had health because mine had fortunately always been well.

[526] And then upon seeing the pandemic play out and hearing the doctors and scientists say that your current health, you know, obesity is linked to your chances of suffering, having sort of worse effects of this disease, that was enough for me to put me in the gym for the next three years.

[527] And I haven't missed more than two days since pretty much in a week for the last three years.

[528] That was my behavior change.

[529] before then I was the guy with the fast food.

[530] Right.

[531] So that was the moment.

[532] That was the line in the sand moment.

[533] That piece of information created willingness in you.

[534] Which is the first part of that equation, which is the why.

[535] Like, why do I care about my health?

[536] Right.

[537] It added so much weight to me caring about my health.

[538] But discipline is easy when you have that why answered, right?

[539] So if it was just that easy, I think that more people, would be able to make positive changes in their life.

[540] But I think where it gets more complicated is when we understand beneath the surface, that it's our emotional lives that are truly the things that hold us back from accessing that potential.

[541] You can be incredibly disciplined, but if you think you're a piece of shit or you don't deserve good things in your life or you're being impulsed by some trauma that happened to you, you were abused as a young person, that's going to show up in your life, as a barrier or an impediment from you doing the thing that you know you need to do to become the person that you could potentially become.

[542] So the head discipline can drive us so far, but if we don't sort out the heart and what is making the heart beat, what is making us move in one direction versus another, and untangling or detaching or transcending the emotional baggage that is the true impediment to our growth, discipline is only going to take you so far.

[543] So you became an ultra -endurance sports athlete.

[544] From that point of where you couldn't walk up the stairs without losing your breath, what was that transformation?

[545] So after that moment, I decided to take responsibility for my well -being and thus began a pretty long and in elegant and nonlinear process of first trying to figure out how to eat in a way that would allow me to feel good in my body.

[546] That began with a seven -day juice detox cleanse that I did, not because I felt like I needed to detox anything, but I needed to recreate the experience of detoxing off alcohol that I had in rehab.

[547] Like I needed to do something that was going to be hard and uncomfortable and not eating and just drinking juice seemed like a good way to accomplish that.

[548] I'd never gone a day without eating food before.

[549] And that was an experience where I was incredibly uncomfortable and I felt horrible for a couple days.

[550] But on the seventh day, I felt amazing.

[551] And I couldn't believe that only drinking juices for seven days could result on day seven in this boost of vitality and mental acuity that I hadn't experienced in a long time as somebody who was eating cheeseburgers every day.

[552] And that made me want to figure out a way to feel like that all the time.

[553] And so I ended up trying a bunch of different diets.

[554] And what worked for me ultimately after trying many different things was going entirely plant -based.

[555] I'm not here to tell everyone that that's what they should do, but that's what agreed with me. And that's the way I've eaten for the last 16 years.

[556] and, you know, this approach to nutrition restored my vitality and gave me a renewed sense of energy so much so that I had difficulty sitting still and finally wanted to, like, move again and pulled out an old pair of running shoes from the closet and just started moving my feet again, and I went back to the pool for the first time in a very long time, and was just connecting, frankly, with these things that brought me joy as a young person.

[557] Like I was a swimmer and I hadn't done it in a long time and I'd forgotten what it feels like to jump into a swimming pool on a sunny day and feel the water and connect with my breath and, you know, move my legs on a trail at dawn.

[558] And I really loved it.

[559] And I felt like that was a journey towards answering these questions that I was having on the existential front about what I was going to do with my life because I had a lot of confusion at that time.

[560] And just the mental space of like being alone with my breath in the pool or on a trail running was very healing for me. And I had no aspirations of becoming a competitive athlete with it.

[561] I just wanted to feel good.

[562] I wanted to like lose this gut, you know, frankly, for vanity reasons.

[563] I didn't like how I looked in the mirror.

[564] And the weight came off really quickly.

[565] And I felt like I was making incredible progress athletically week after week after week.

[566] And then one day I went out.

[567] like maybe six months into this experience and I was just going to run for like an hour and I had one of those days you're an athlete you know those days where you just feel like you just are bulletproof and you can go go go and I just kept running and ended up running the better part of a marathon that day like 24 miles and I'd never done anything like that before despite having been a swimmer I'd never been a runner and that was a real watershed moment where I thought wow like I feel really good I didn't know that you could this good, certainly not at age 40, and that got me thinking about potential.

[568] And I had never really realized my potential as an athlete in college because alcohol really destroyed my swimming career.

[569] And so there was a sense of unfinished business there, but I just wanted to see what I was capable of.

[570] And so that set me on this journey to find experiences where I could tap into that.

[571] And that's where I discovered this whole world of ultra endurance and these crazy races.

[572] And I became fascinated with that and ended up competing in this race called Ultraman, which is a three -day double Iron Man race.

[573] And that's the race that I ended up distinguishing myself in.

[574] And really the instigating point in that was reading an article where David Goggins had done that race back in 2006, I think.

[575] And it was the story of how he got through that race that really inspired me. and because he wasn't the traditional endurance athlete, triathlete, I was able to convince myself that if he could do it, that maybe I could.

[576] And that set in motion, me training for this race and competing in it a couple times.

[577] I've had two guests come here and tell me that we're in a comfort crisis.

[578] And what they mean by that is they say that we're kind of optimizing our way, away from comfort in every sense of the word.

[579] We're like, you know, we live in these sort of room temperature rooms where we can go on a piece of glass and get someone to bring us our food in a metal car right to our doorstep.

[580] And we're, and in fact, discomfort and pressure is where our growth, our health and all of these things, our fulfillment in many cases comes from.

[581] Doing an ultra endurance race is for me, you know, one of the epitomies of pressure and disqualification.

[582] comfort and sitting with that and accepting it.

[583] Do you believe that more of us should be making ourselves uncomfortable in that context more often and that there's tremendous value in that?

[584] I think about it when I hear like, fuck, I'll see why don't I get on my bike and just ride and just see and push myself?

[585] See where I can take it.

[586] 100%.

[587] You don't grow unless you go out of your comfort zone.

[588] And that's in every facet of your life.

[589] If you want to become smarter, You have to read books or go to school, like, that's not always comfortable.

[590] There's a million different varieties of this.

[591] But yes, we are in a culture that prioritizes comfort and luxury, and it's all about making our lives easier.

[592] Ironically, what makes us happy is putting ourselves in difficult situations, not so difficult that they capsize our lives, but difficult enough that we're testing ourselves.

[593] And we're grappling with obstacles and we're overcoming them.

[594] And on the other side, we feel a boost in self -esteem.

[595] We feel more ourselves.

[596] We feel more alive.

[597] And we experience growth and connection with self and connection with other people.

[598] This is the stuff of life.

[599] And yet it is not the way that society is constructed.

[600] We have to go out of our way now.

[601] We have to seek the...

[602] It used to be this was everyday life just to survive, right?

[603] And now we actually have to pay money and travel.

[604] to places to have these experiences.

[605] What's so amazing is that, you know, when I started doing these ultra -races, they're all very kind of like low -key, under the radar.

[606] There's not a lot of media attention on them.

[607] You know, it's a subculture that has been around for a while.

[608] But in the last decade, we've seen an explosion in interests in, like, doing 100 -mile races.

[609] It's like there's lotteries now to get into a race where you have to run 100 miles.

[610] Like if you told somebody in 1800 that this was going to be the case, they would think you were insane, right?

[611] So what does that say?

[612] It tells us that we feel nourished by doing hard things, that we are extracting value from those experiences that we don't get in the mundanity of our everyday lives.

[613] And yes, we have to consciously extract ourselves from the comforts of our environments and put ourselves in those positions.

[614] But the good news is there's lots of those things right now.

[615] It's insane how many marathons, the London Marathon was the other way, like how many thousands of people ran it?

[616] And then there's a Spartan race.

[617] And there's just a million of these things now that didn't used to exist because the human spirit needs it, it demands it.

[618] and we have too long deprived ourselves of these types of scenarios.

[619] That doesn't mean that you want to be unsafe or put yourself in peril, but I just don't see any other way or any other path towards becoming the better version of yourself without placing yourself in scenarios in which you're tested.

[620] Because succeed or fail, you have an experience that's going to teach you.

[621] more about who you are, what your limitations are, and what your capabilities are.

[622] The popularity of these endurance races and even things like ice plunge pools and stuff.

[623] All of these things that make us feel really uncomfortable.

[624] Again, it reminded me of what I said earlier about the, because there's been a real rise in sort of social media and the digital screens and all of these things, now people are looking for places for communities.

[625] So bowling alleys and in real life events have increased.

[626] And in the same way, because we've optimized our lives to be more comfortable and easy, now there's a booming industry around things that make us feel uncomfortable.

[627] You said I didn't get into ultra -endurance sports to win races, beat others, or stand atop a podium.

[628] I got into it because it's the perfect template for self -discovery.

[629] What did you discover about yourself?

[630] And also, I think it's probably important to say to people, you're really, really good at this ultra -endurance stuff.

[631] Like, we haven't quite gone through your CV yet, but I mean, I've got a list of accolades that you've achieved.

[632] and you're one of the best at this.

[633] So I think that's worth saying before we proceed.

[634] Yeah, thank you for that.

[635] I mean, I've learned so much.

[636] The amazing thing about endurance athletics is you have to spend a lot of time with an elevated heart rate that's not so uncomfortable that you can't perpetuate it for hours and hours and hours, but it's just uncomfortable enough where you're, sitting in that discomfort and you have to develop a tolerance for that.

[637] So what it does is it teaches you how to suffer, how to manage pain, but also how to be with yourself.

[638] Like when I was training for these races, I would go out like all day alone.

[639] And it's just you, your breath and your mind.

[640] And at that time, I really was trying to figure out like, I can't be this lawyer anymore.

[641] Like, what am I going to do?

[642] Like, all I know is.

[643] I really like doing this, this is not a career path.

[644] This is not, I'm not going to support four kids doing this thing that I love.

[645] But it is bringing so much value to me that I just know I want to keep doing it.

[646] And I'm going to pay attention and pull whatever threads show up.

[647] And what I learned through this journey of training, most importantly the training, the races are just, you know, a demonstration of what you put into getting to that point.

[648] was on a surface level, as an athlete, I had a lot more to say than I ever believe that I could.

[649] I was able to do things I never would have thought possible and do it in my 40s, which is an age where people think you're way past your prime.

[650] So that was huge.

[651] And like I said earlier, that opened up the possibility of tapping into potential on other areas of my life.

[652] life.

[653] But I also learned that when you cultivate and nourish that thing that is bringing you joy and you pay attention to the subtle voices that are telling you, this feels right, when you commit to that completely, that will set you on a journey that will lead you to a place you can't possibly imagine.

[654] When I put on the running shoes for the first time and just thought, I love doing this.

[655] Could I have imagined that I'd be sitting across from you right now having a conversation?

[656] It's ridiculous.

[657] It's preposterous.

[658] So what I learned was the power of connecting with the heart as somebody like yourself who lives in their mind and prides themselves on their intellect and their analytic abilities, understanding the limitations of that and finding a way to really pay attention to those kind of more ephemeral, ethereal messages that one will receive when you're really quiet, you're really honest with yourself, and you're committed to taking actions that are in alignment with that in a way that maybe you never prioritize before.

[659] And that has been a path that I've blazed for many years at this point that has caused suffering and hardship, but also beautiful creative offerings and, you know, a life that I could have never imagined for myself.

[660] Metaphorically, it sounds like you almost ran away from your little career in law.

[661] Yeah, I guess so.

[662] Yeah, I guess so.

[663] I guess so, you know, the law and me, like, how did that I don't like conflict.

[664] I don't know how I became a lawyer in the first place.

[665] Like, I just, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I could will myself to be the lawyer that I was, but it never felt right to me. And I knew that I wasn't in the right situation for myself.

[666] And it took me a really long time to walk away.

[667] Like, I probably walked away from it over a very extended period of time.

[668] It wasn't a very dramatic split.

[669] I was trying to figure out from the point of when you start doing the ultra endurance racing to the point where you get into sort of financial hardship, 45 years old, you launch your rich roll podcast you've got this law job you start ultra racing there's financial hardship is that because you you quit the law job or is that so because i was a bad lawyer oh okay what happened was so i i did exit like the big law firm thing right i continue to practice law as a solo practitioner and then in a couple different um incarnations of partnerships with a couple people.

[670] But as I got more and more immersed in the ultra world, my enthusiasm and interest in my law practice continued to dwindle.

[671] And I was my own boss at that point, practicing law.

[672] So not a lot of new clients coming in.

[673] I was still doing it, making just enough money to get by, but wasn't doing great because I just wasn't into it.

[674] But I held onto it for a very long time.

[675] And when you're holding onto it, it's hard to get into the new thing until you're really willing to let go of the other thing.

[676] But making that transition was very challenging.

[677] Even, you know, after Finding Ultra came out, I completely severed my ties with the law at that point.

[678] But the phone wasn't really ringing that much.

[679] And there wasn't a lot of opportunities coming my way.

[680] And it took a lot of patience and faith.

[681] And I did the podcast for years before we were able to monetize it or do any kind of ads or anything like that.

[682] I just did it as like a fun hobby or project what was it like for Julie during that period between sort of 2008 and 2015 things are really tough financially um you almost lost your house couldn't pay a lot of your bills had your cars repossessed yeah it was very difficult um she was really the strength in that equation because there were multiple occasions where I couldn't take it anymore and I thought this is ridiculous I need to go back and get a law job what kind of head of household or man of the house am I if I can't even pay the bills and I'm chasing this fool's errand in this direction of trying to do these creative projects or be this athlete like who the hell do you think you are and Julie was the one who was like no we've come too far for you to move backwards and the answers that you are seeking and the solutions to the problems we face are only going to be found by continuing to blaze the path that you've established for yourself.

[683] And she had a conviction and a belief and an ability to see the more kind of developed, actualized version of myself that I couldn't at that time.

[684] And without her strength, her faith, her conviction, I definitely would have abandoned the path.

[685] But she was in all the way.

[686] And she would say, these things are just things.

[687] You're definitely on a path that you should be on.

[688] I can see that.

[689] And I want that for you.

[690] And if we lose the house, we lose the house.

[691] Cars are cars.

[692] This stuff comes and goes.

[693] But we're together.

[694] And we're going to walk this path.

[695] This is what we're here to do.

[696] Which is a fucking amazing thing for a partner to say to you.

[697] to have that kind of belief in you is such a gift.

[698] So I just can't emphasize enough how powerful she has been, like, in this whole thing.

[699] Of all the things you've accomplished in your life, of all the things you've done out, what does she mean to you?

[700] I mean, she's, she is my, you know, partner in all things.

[701] She's my North Star.

[702] She's my spiritual counsel.

[703] she's my mirror yeah and you know we're normal people with kids who you know bicker and argue and have the same kind of issues everyone else does but she's a really special person really special it's really something when someone can see the potential in you in a way that maybe you can't see it at that moment in time or maybe you don't quite believe it?

[704] It is such a gift.

[705] You know, they say the greatest gift you can give somebody is your attention.

[706] But if you have somebody in your life who believes in you so thoroughly that they can see past whatever situation you're in or whatever faults you have or things that trip you up and holds a vision for that better version of you and not only holds it for you says, I believe in you.

[707] They're not telling you what to do or how to do it.

[708] They're saying, I believe in you and I trust you to find your way towards that person.

[709] And I am holding that for you in my daily consciousness, in my sleep, in my thoughts, and my prayers.

[710] They're manifesting it for you.

[711] It's a very powerful energy, yeah.

[712] So it's a curious idea that someone else can manifest your life for you in it in a kind of in an inadvertent way.

[713] I've experienced that as well.

[714] There's been moments in my life where my partner has said something to me. I've heard what she said.

[715] I didn't believe it necessarily myself.

[716] But because she believed it, that I could do that.

[717] Maybe it did change something in me. Maybe it did make me go, I trust her, and she's smart, and she's usually right.

[718] And she's telling me that I can do this thing.

[719] So maybe it is possible.

[720] I can remember so many conversations over 15 years where someone said something to me about what my future will look like.

[721] And because I trusted them, I think it helped that future become a reality.

[722] Sure.

[723] I mean, just imagine the young person who, you know, has the opportunity to be with a certain teacher.

[724] And that teacher says, you know, you can do this.

[725] Like, you're good at the, like, there's countless stories of people who win Oscars and get up and thank their whoever who said, you know, you should keep doing that thing.

[726] And, you know, those are, those are really powerful, you know, gifts that we can give to other people.

[727] He believes that if you follow your true path, the universe will support you.

[728] Quote I read about you as well.

[729] Yeah, I do believe that.

[730] That's been my life experience.

[731] I've seen that manifest in many people that I know over the years, a lot of people in recovery.

[732] And that doesn't mean that it's easy or convenient or on your time.

[733] table.

[734] I would say that the path that I've pursued has been the hardest path I could have imagined.

[735] It's the most meaningful and fulfilling, but it didn't happen overnight.

[736] It happened over the course of more than a decade.

[737] And it required a lot of conviction and faith and patience and pain.

[738] We have to, you know, we had to lose a lot.

[739] But there's that adage like you can't, you know, you can't be a phoenix if you don't burn in the flames first right and i feel like we had to burn in the flames or burn off you know the residue of whatever in order to be reborn to do something different and i think when you have run that type of gauntlet and you emerge on the other side of it what you have to share with other people is all the more kind of poignant because it's your own lived experience and it's authentic and real so many chapters in your life rich so many of them we've been through pretty much all of them so far and we arrive now at today now if i was to ask julie what the next chapter looks like or or you i know it's funny because when people ask me this my my instinctive answer is i don't know but i'm going to you know do my best at what i'm doing now but if you were to try and if you think back to your mission the mission you described at the start of this conversation.

[740] What do you think the next chapter is for you?

[741] That's a great question.

[742] I think for me, the challenge and the opportunity comes from learning how to let go of striving and step into a place of allowing rather than being this animal of self -will who's pursuing and achieving and pushing and really kind of in their ambition to manifest something for financial security, for legacy, whatever it is, to ease off that gas pedal and just be in a place of ease with everything where it doesn't have to be hard.

[743] And what would it feel like if you didn't push, but you still did the thing?

[744] Would you still be you?

[745] Would you feel like you left something on the table?

[746] Because you didn't suffer to create the thing that you share with the world.

[747] And I think that is so hard for me. And I imagine it might be a difficult thing for you to digest for yourself, right?

[748] Because we both know if I go out and I push really hard, I can do something and I can make it great.

[749] And I'm pretty sure what the result of that is going to be.

[750] But what if you created out of a sense of joy and you didn't have to exhaust yourself in doing it?

[751] And you could enjoy your friends and your family and live a rich life without the stress that you place upon yourself or the pressure or the people pleasing or the need for any kind of external validation?

[752] So that's the mountain that I'm trying to climb right now.

[753] And I would say that I'm not doing it very well.

[754] Why do you want to climb that mountain though?

[755] Because I think that there's a lot of wisdom in being more in flow as opposed to willfulness.

[756] And I think that there's a peace and a happiness to be found there that I'm, probably missing in my life right now.

[757] And because it's new territory to be explored.

[758] I know what it's like to do this other thing and it's exhausting and it's not sustainable.

[759] And I believe that there is a better way over here.

[760] So am I in enough pain with this where I'm willing to entertain the possibility of trying something different, or am I holding on too hard to this old modality and unwilling to embrace the possibility that the result and the fullness and the fullness of life could be better by this different way of approaching things?

[761] personal symptoms that have encouraged you to seek out another way of being?

[762] Sure, yeah.

[763] I have tiptoed up to burn out a couple times with the podcast, and that's been ameliorated by now having a staff of really talented people to help me because I was a control -free perfectionist who tried to do everything myself for too long to the point of it just being completely unsustainable, to now having people that I empower to do a lot of the work that I used to do and who now do it very well, which has freed up my time.

[764] And I still find myself with this sense that success has to be earned, and the only way to earn it is to inflict pain on yourself.

[765] And if you're not in pain, you didn't try hard enough, and it would have been better if you suffered more.

[766] And I think that's a lie.

[767] And I want to find out if it's a lie or if it's true.

[768] Thinking back to your endurance racing, it seems to be that it might be true.

[769] You know, you achieve that through pain.

[770] Sure.

[771] Discomfort seems to be the first hurdle to all the good places we want to go.

[772] But actually, that's very comfortable for me. The real discomfort is to see what it would be like.

[773] without the suffering that's harder to do yeah it's harder to do for me and you i often ask my guess are you driven or you're you're being dragged because saying you're driven is a nice way to frame yourself that's like an intentional person but so often we're actually being dragged by the insecurity the shame that desire to be enough we're like we're strapped to the end of the lorry and it's flying down the highway we think we're in the driving seat you know and i think in so many facets of my life right now i know i'm well I suspect I'm being dragged, but I think I'm being driven.

[774] And I'm portraying an...

[775] So what would an example of that be?

[776] Even the podcast.

[777] You know, do I have to be so, like, neurotic and obsessed with everything and every detail?

[778] You said it before we started.

[779] You're very obsessed about the detail.

[780] The fact that when we do the podcast in L .A., we have every book is the same in the same order.

[781] You know that's insane.

[782] I mean, it's a great story.

[783] It's very entertaining, but it's fucking bananas, dude.

[784] But for me, it's...

[785] I mean, I'm probably going to try and justify it here, but for me, it's about...

[786] I know that the small stuff is the stuff that most people don't think about.

[787] So it's my place.

[788] It's where we find the opportunity.

[789] But generally, of course, I think about all the things I do, all the businesses, all the details to the point of some level of suffering.

[790] There's definitely a cost to my personal relationships when at Sunday, when I'm on a date with my partner and I get a message and something's not quite right.

[791] And then I lose 30 minutes in despair, like silent despair to myself in my head.

[792] I just kind of, I leave the dinner table.

[793] That's not a great way to live.

[794] Right.

[795] I relate to that deeply.

[796] So I'm right with you and lockstep with that.

[797] But what if you were to say, okay.

[798] But then, okay, so let me try and justify that.

[799] Then everything, the whole house of cards caves on top of itself and all the good things in your life disappear.

[800] Yeah, that's what I think.

[801] Right.

[802] Yeah.

[803] I know.

[804] And I'll say, well, all our ancestors, they built these skyscrapers and this AI stuff and these cameras that we're using.

[805] So we're innately meant to struggle forward.

[806] That's hardwired.

[807] into us.

[808] It's why I'm here.

[809] My ancestors struggled forward.

[810] They built buildings and civilizations and they left that in my genetic code as a little message saying, you two shall struggle forward, Stephen.

[811] You two shall be wired to climb upwards.

[812] Do you feel that to enjoy your life is an indulgence that's fine for other people, but you're on a mission.

[813] So you can, can, like, have a different relationship with those aspects of life that other people find important.

[814] I think so.

[815] Yeah.

[816] Yeah.

[817] Yeah.

[818] Yeah.

[819] Is that bull, do you think I'm bullshit?

[820] No, I'm like, I'm just, I'm just seeing if you see the world the way that I do.

[821] You know what I mean?

[822] But, uh, what are you 30?

[823] How old are you?

[824] I just turned 30.

[825] Yeah.

[826] So I'm 56, dude.

[827] You know, so check in with me and in, in, in, what advice did you give me?

[828] We've got the same mindset.

[829] Look, I think it's great that I'm all about the details.

[830] And I just want to say, for the record, I shared it with your team earlier.

[831] I think that what you have built here is extraordinary.

[832] I have so much respect for not only the show, the way you comport yourself, the way that you are curious about the people that you talk to, and the fact that you've built this incredible audience in such a short period of time and the integrity and that, you know, the quality is fantastic, you know, so I've been a fan.

[833] And a lot of that is because you are attuned to the details.

[834] And I see that in you.

[835] And I think there's something beautiful and wonderful about that.

[836] The trick is to not allow it to become toxic to the point where it starts to denigrate the quality of your life.

[837] So can you, you know, toggle it such that you're still pursuing what important to you in a way that's sustainable because you want to be doing this for a long period of time, right?

[838] So after five or six years or 10 years, like, what is your relationship to this thing going to be?

[839] And if it's not sustainable now where you feel drained at the end of the week rather than energized, then maybe you're a brilliant business person.

[840] Look at the model and figure out how you can tweak it so that you can stay in love with the process.

[841] And I think for me, it's all about enjoying it for what it is and detaching from all the externalities.

[842] Like if I start looking on Spotify or Apple, where the ranking, all that kind of stuff, like I know that I'm in a dark place, right?

[843] I shouldn't be comparing myself to other people.

[844] I should just be present for the experience of having these conversations and trying to deliver value to the people who are taking time out of their day to listen.

[845] and that's it doesn't have to be any more than that when I get caught up in that other stuff is when I start to make decisions that begin to become out of alignment with the mission thank you thank you for that advice and thank you for such a rich wonderful conversation I think especially that that closing piece of advice is something that will resonate with everybody.

[846] And I've thought a lot actually, starting up my career as an insecure young man that wanted to make millions and thinking that life was this kind of sprint where you can sack everything else can wait, including relationships, social, you know, relationships, romantic relationships, family.

[847] Well, I get this thing, getting the thing and realizing that the kind of, the thing just moves forward off into the distance like a mirage.

[848] And then I've read Simon's book about infinite games and thinking, okay, how would I design every system in my life so that I could run those systems for 40 or 50 years in a sustainable way.

[849] And this is one of them.

[850] This is one of the ones, this is one of the systems.

[851] This podcast is one of the ones where I need to continue to remind myself that I need to design it in a way that is sustainable for 40 years of my life, including the period where I have seven kids and a mortgage and a wife that needs me to be there.

[852] And also, not just for me, but for all the people that work here as well.

[853] And everyone can relate to that, especially people that are being dragged.

[854] Sure.

[855] in some way.

[856] We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they are leaving the question for.

[857] You get a 60 second phone call with a previous version of yourself.

[858] What do you say?

[859] You then get to pass the phone to someone who is in your life at that moment, and you get 60 seconds to speak to them too.

[860] What do you say?

[861] What'd you say?

[862] I think I would call up the 18 -year -old version of myself and tell him that it's okay to be who you are, that you don't have to live up to anybody's expectations, that you don't need to earn love, and the best gift that you could give to yourself would be to find out what you love, to discover the animating force within you, and above all, to nurture that, to mute out all the noise of the external world, the social and familial pressures, and to just find a way to be comfortable with who you are, because who you are is 100 % fine, and you don't need to be anyone else in order to be accepted or loved.

[863] And the corollary of that would be to not get caught up in trying to make decisions about the rest of your life or your career path at such a young age, but to instead explore and invest in as many experiences as you possibly can to live lean and to be adventurous.

[864] And then I would say, put your mother on the phone.

[865] And I would tell her, I know you love your son, but you got to leave him alone and let him be him.

[866] Why would you say that?

[867] How many hours do you have?

[868] I understand.

[869] Rich, thank you so much for an incredibly, very life -changing conversation in many ways, but for your honesty and your vulnerability and for all the work you do because it's people like you that pave the way for what I do here, and we're big fans of yours.

[870] I mean, that's why I reached out to you and wanted to have you on the show.

[871] So I'm so privileged and honored that you said yes.

[872] I freaked out a little bit when you responded because I've spent a lot of time watching a lot of your episodes.

[873] I love the way you do what you do, the integrity in which you do it shines through, and everything you've said to me today about authenticity and being more aligned with yourself now makes perfect sense.

[874] It makes sense as to why what I've seen from your content and the way you've lived and the man that I've met today, I see the alignment.

[875] So thank you for the inspiration and thank you for the kindness and generosity today.

[876] I really appreciate that, Steve, and that means a lot.

[877] I have crazy respect for your mission and what you guys are doing here.

[878] And I've loved watching your trajectory and it was a real honor to come and talk to you today.

[879] And man, you're good.

[880] I'm really good at this.

[881] You were like, I was like, wow, what do we talk about?