The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: E254: How To TRANSFORM Your Life At Any Moment: The Alcoholic Lawyer That Became "The Fittest Man On The Planet"!! Rich Roll

How much pain are you willing to tolerate

before you're willing to course correct?

A California lawyer turned himself

into one of the fittest men on the planet.

Rich role.

Globally recognized ultra endurance athlete.

New York Times bestseller.

And host of one of the biggest podcasts on the planet.

You sat down with 800 of the world's smartest people.

Is there one overall takeaway?

This theme of transformation.

So my story, I graduated top of my class.

The world ranked swimmer and then I was working as a lawyer.

So on the outside, it looked like I was doing pretty well.

Inside, I was dying.

My first escape was through drugs and alcohol.

My family didn't want anything to do with me.

The marriage that ended on the honeymoon, went to jail,

could barely make it up a simple flight of stairs

without being winded.

And that was a harsh dose of reality.

I needed to overhaul my life.

I needed to do something that was going

to be hard and uncomfortable.

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

We all want to be this idealized version of ourselves.

And yet, we still don't do it.

We are in a culture that prioritizes

comfort and luxury and the impatience that we all have.

We overestimate what we can accomplish in a year

and completely underestimate what we could do in a decade.

We don't have to suffer.

We don't have to be in pain.

It's our emotional lives that hold us back

from accessing that potential.

So how do people in that situation

take that first step in transformation?

What worked for me after trying many different things was...

Why should you listen to this episode?

All in all, this conversation is fundamentally

about transformation.

How you transform yourself from where you are now

to where you want to be and rich his life

is the personification of human transformation.

This guy has been down and out.

He suffered with addiction, failure, and turmoil

that most of us will thankfully never have to endure.

But he says in this episode, and he'll prove to you

that pressure, that discomfort, can be

and should be your privilege.

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.

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.

We have more potential than we allow ourselves to believe.

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.

We tend to think of addiction as he says junkies

or people that are ingesting or taking drugs.

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

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.

How do we alleviate ourselves of that addiction

to distraction?

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

And most importantly of all,

Rich has sat down with 800 of the world's smartest,

wisest, and most successful people.

And from doing that, he has learnt a lot.

This is one of the episodes that you honestly should not miss.

Enjoy.

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

Who are you and what mission are you on?

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 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.

And that experience taught me

that we're all capable of so much more

than we allow ourselves to believe.

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 late

and potential athletically for so long,

there must be other blind spots.

And I wanted to explore those.

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.

You know, you've got millions and millions of people

listening to your show all over the world.

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

So 150 podcast episodes or something,

which is staggering.

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?

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.

I think that's super important

because I think it's so easy to passively

or reactively live our lives.

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 wanna feel

a sense of belonging and identity

with whatever group that we're aligned with.

And I think that that comes with very good things

of feeling wanted and needed, but also negative aspects

which create blinders to the greater possibilities

that are available to us.

Everybody is conditioned in some way or another.

And that conditioning starts fairly early.

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.

When did you start being conditioned?

And what was that condition?

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?

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

Grades were very important.

Academic achievement in my household was paramount.

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.

And my first escape was through drugs and alcohol.

And bullying?

Bullying, yeah.

Well, take me into the mind of that young guy

that's being bullied.

What is he thinking?

What is he scared going to school?

Is he trying to escape who he is?

Is he trying to fit in in certain ways?

What is he doing?

And what is the experience of bullying like for him

in detail?

Yeah, to take myself back.

I think I just wanted to feel like I belonged.

And I always felt different than other than the sense

of not being comfortable in my own skin.

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

And just not having the social skills

or the confidence to be able to make friends

or feel like I was part of anything.

And then eventually you cite alcohol and drugs

as being the thing that made you feel

other than yourself in a good way?

Well, initially it made me feel like myself.

It was like this miracle self

where suddenly all of the unconscious anxiety

and sense of difference between myself and others

seemed to vanish.

And that discomfort in my own skin turned into comfort.

Like I suddenly felt like,

oh, maybe this is how everyone else feels all the time.

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.

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.

And I just remember feeling so at home with that

and just wanting to feel like that all the time.

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.

Addiction comes in many forms

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?

So some people have it with food 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.

What is it doing for us?

Is it like an escape?

Is it, in your case, it was like the self

that made you feel, as you said, yourself.

What is that thing?

Yeah, I think that this is something

I've spent a lot of time thinking about.

As somebody who's been in recovery since 1998,

I've been to thousands of AA meetings.

I know so many people in recovery.

And over the course of 10 years of hosting my podcast,

I've had so many experts in the realm

of addictions, variety and recovery.

And I've come to believe that this notion of addiction

lives on a much broader spectrum than we may realize

when we think of addiction, we think of the junkie

or the gutter drunk.

But in between 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

to distract ourselves from ourselves

because we are experiencing discomfort

with whatever emotion is coming up.

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.

And I think that any kind of recurring,

repeated behavior pattern that mimics that

could be characterized as an addiction,

it may be mild, but I think nonetheless,

it's qualitatively the same thing

as the person who can't stop drinking.

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 triggered or any number

of kind of emotional impulses that might arise.

What is the cost of not learning to be with myself?

So I'm looking at all these things, phone addiction,

I'm definitely addicted to my phone,

all of these addictions,

I've got some of them in varying degrees.

So what?

What's the cost?

Well, time will tell, right?

Maybe there isn't a cost that is so significant

that it mandates that you rectify that behavior.

Again, it's a spectrum, right?

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 address that.

For somebody else, it might destroy their life.

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

and you can make a course correction.

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 upside of that?

I say this because I think I live in a generation

that have become so used to distracting ourselves

and the thought of like meditating

or not having our phone on us is actually,

I mean, it's like a phobia.

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.

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.

That is the juice of creativity.

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.

Otherwise, you are not gonna be doing your best work

and you are going to be depriving your audience

of the best version of yourself.

The other thing is connection.

It's definitely robbed me of connection.

Well, it's pernicious in that way

because at least with social media,

it gives you the illusion of connection.

And we're sitting here together because of social media.

Like you reached out to me, I reached out to you.

So it's not a binary.

There are amazing things about it.

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

And they're very important to how I kind of navigate

the world, but at what point does that meter

kind of toggle over into the red zone

where I'm being used by it and it's robbing me

of my humanity and it's deluding me into this idea

that I'm connecting with other people.

But in the analog world, I'm just at home all the time

and I'm not actually interacting in the real world.

And I think one thing we share, Steven,

is our show is all about the in-person experience.

Like I tried to do the zoom thing.

I can't do it.

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

I'm not getting, it feels transactional and weird.

And as much as these tools, which are phenomenal,

have given us the ability to connect in a certain way,

it's not true connection.

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.

When I look at your story, I see multiple chapters

and there's transformation in every chapter,

sometimes for better, sometimes for worse,

but it's always forward.

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

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.

What's the next chapter?

Yeah, so awkward, insecure kid, difficulty making friends,

but I found solace in the swimming pool

and that was really my safe haven.

Perhaps my first addiction and in lockstep

with my improvement in that space came better grades.

I started to perform better athletically.

So by the time I was 18 and 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

collegiate swimming program in the country.

So basically anything I wanted to do

was like laid out in front of me.

I arrived in California for college,

I grew up in Washington DC,

so traveled 3,000 miles away to go to school,

enter alcohol 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 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.

And those were the good times.

And I would say that initially alcohol really saved me.

It taught me how to be a social person.

Like I enjoyed going to parties

and I enjoyed figuring out how to talk to people

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.

I've taken some of those skills

and I'm now able to apply them without alcohol,

but very slowly over time,

the quality of my life just sort of declined

and declined and declined.

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.

I was immediately sneaking drinks.

I was the one who was throwing up and blacking out

when everyone else knew what time it was to go home.

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.

And there was nothing really sexy or romantic

or rock and roll about it.

It was just really kind of sad and pathetic

to the point where at the end,

I was alone, alienated from my friends.

My family didn't want anything to do with me

until I sorted this out.

I was on the precipice of,

somehow I got through law school,

but I was working as a lawyer.

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.

And it was very dark for a very long period of time.

When did you get married?

Your first marriage in 1995?

20 must've been 20.

No, that was, so it would've been 90,

96, I think, yeah.

You took roughly 20 late times.

So I did ill-fated marriage that ended on the honeymoon.

That's a sordid 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.

Incredibly painful, embarrassing chapter of my life.

That marriage took place after I'd gotten the two DUIs,

but I was endeavoring to get sober.

And I think my fiance, not quite my wife,

because we didn't sign the marriage certificate,

which is a whole other aspect of the story.

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 wanna be married to me.

And it all kind of came to head on the honeymoon,

which is the last time that I saw her.

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, I was gonna 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?

That then?

It was a long time ago.

I think it was about six more months

of my life kind of circling the drain

before I finally decided that I needed

to really take responsibility for my behavior.

At that point, what are the people around you

that love you doing and saying?

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 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 if and when you're ready to make a change,

or to really entertain sobriety in a real way,

we're here for you, we're your parents, and we love you,

but until that point,

like we really don't wanna hear from you anymore.

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 how I was actually behaving.

And I think it was an important step

in helping me realize just how dire

the circumstances were for me at that time.

When your father said that, what did you hear?

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

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

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.

And they had tried the other way,

which is loving me and being supportive

and kind of offering up a soft landing pad,

and that was not working.

And I think they needed to do that for themselves,

to protect themselves as well.

And I respect that choice.

I've been in many situations trying to help people get sober

and it's a very delicate, difficult thing to do.

It's just really challenging

because if somebody's not ready

and they don't wanna get sober,

there's very little that you can do

to try to create that epiphany in them.

Willingness is a self-generated response

that you can't instill in somebody externally.

And until somebody's really willing

to confront their demons,

you can't compel them to do so.

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.

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 this out, et cetera, et cetera.

But after 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.

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

and let them go to the bottom?

Let them go to that rock bottom?

There is a logic in that.

You don't wanna coddle that person.

You certainly don't wanna be codependent in their behavior.

In other words, making excuses for them

that makes it easier for them to continue

down that destructive path.

And there is wisdom in just saying,

hey man, I love you, I'm available

when you're ready to get help.

But you're on your own thing, man.

And I just, I can't be part of it.

So call me when you're ready, but until then,

good luck to you because the addiction elevator

is always going down.

It's a progressive disease.

It only moves in one direction.

The best case scenario is that person's life stays the same,

but in almost every case, it continues to decline.

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.

And that is where willingness is born.

And again, it's not something

that you can instill in that person.

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.

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

It is an internally generated thing.

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.

You can't get sober for somebody else.

I'm getting sober for my spouse or my kids

or I'm getting sober because if I don't,

my boss is gonna fire me.

Those are, 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 gonna last over the long haul

and it's confusing.

And when you love that person,

it puts you in a very treacherous position

because if 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?

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

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

becomes strained and then when your relationship

becomes strained and you become frustrated

with the lack of sort of effectiveness of your support,

then arguments start.

You might say some things that you regret.

Further, you're tarnishing that person's self-esteem,

self-worth or whatever's triggering them

to try and escape themselves

through whatever addiction they might have

and it actually can make their situation

significantly worse.

Sure.

Destroy the relationship.

Which is why it's important to interface with that

from a place of neutrality,

to not get emotionally agitated or activated by 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.

And if this person is acting in their disease,

that's not the person.

They're not a bad person.

They're afflicted by something so powerful

that they're unable to override it

and be that friend that you remember.

And I think 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 acting out of animus towards you.

They're suffering from something that's so powerful

that they're unable to control it.

Quick one, before we get back to this episode,

just give me 30 seconds of your time.

Two things I wanted to say.

The first thing is a huge thank you

for listening and tuning into the show week after week.

It means the world to all of us

and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had

and couldn't have imagined getting to this place.

But secondly, it's a dream where we feel

like we're only just getting started.

And if you enjoy what we do here,

please join the 24% of people

that listen to this podcast regularly

and follow us on this app.

Here's a promise I'm gonna make to you.

I'm gonna do everything in my power

to make this show as good as I can now and into the future.

We're gonna deliver the guests that you want me to speak to

and we're gonna continue to keep doing

all of the things you love about the show.

Thank you, thank you so much, back to the episode.

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.

I am hardwired for extremes.

This has been both a superpower and an Achilles heel.

It's the thing that has fueled me

and allowed me to achieve some pretty cool things

but it's also been the thing that 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 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

and that's part of what addiction is.

Like you're just searching for those peak experiences

in unhealthy ways and also in healthy ways

through athletics and through creativity

and other avenues, but I always felt guilty about that.

Like other people seem to be telling me

that I shouldn't be doing this.

And yet this is where I feel like myself.

And finally I got to the place where I was like,

fuck this whole balance thing.

Like this is who I am.

And I decided to embrace it.

Now that doesn't mean that you just blindly pursue

these obsessions to the point of self-destruction.

What it means is for me, again, not giving advice,

in my experience, when I allow myself

to immerse myself in something 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.

Because we all have buckets in our life

of values that we need to nourish.

So a creative project, for example,

I'm gonna go, I'm gonna 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.

So balance in the macro, but not balance in the micro.

So on a day-to-day basis or a week-to-week basis,

my life is wildly out of balance.

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.

Super interesting, I think using that example

of the swing, is it called the pendulum?

In society, we started by glorifying hustle culture,

I guess, and being out of balance.

And then there was kind of a movement towards that toxic.

Right.

And now I feel like-

The 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 balance is such a subjective thing

and work is completely different for everybody.

Like this is my work.

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.

Every individual is clearly different

and it is wide to find the fulfillment in different ways.

So work-life balance in and of itself

is a pretty ridiculous concept

to think that there is a balance.

There really must be a,

as you kind of describe it, a subjective balance,

where there's a balance for Steve.

And as long as I don't fall in sacrifice,

social connection, isolation and all the other things,

then I'm balanced.

My balance could look much different from yours.

For whom and when, right?

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.

You have no other responsibilities.

You have the time, you have the freedom

to do that in that moment.

But that 22-year-old, 20 years later

with kids and a mortgage and whatever,

it's a different time.

That person's in a different place.

These things can't be, they have to be contextualized, right?

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.

You may even need to be obsessed

if you're living an entirely balanced life

where you're home at five o'clock

and you're always at dinner.

And it's like you're making it very difficult

to achieve something extraordinary.

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.

If you're going to feel uncomfortable with that,

because you have other priorities in your life,

then maybe that's not for you.

And being out of balance to pursue something great,

in my opinion, is perfectly fine.

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.

So it's a very specific thing.

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.

And you can't be a hundred percent

for all of the things that are important to you

in your life in every single day.

So it's about conscious awareness and intentionality

about where you're rowing that boat.

You can only row your boat in one direction.

Are you rowing the Stephen boat towards Stephen today?

Are you going to row it towards your girlfriend?

Well, you're going to have to do a lot of rowing

in a lot of different directions.

It's just knowing that you're making a conscious choice

and doing that with that understanding and appreciation

I think is really important.

But all of this is to put the light of the idea

that anybody is living a balanced life

on a minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day basis.

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.

You can't have it all.

You left rehab in September 1998.

And early on when you were talking about transformation

you described someone who goes from being

a fairly ordinary person to running a marathon.

That was one of the sort of examples you gave

of something that intrigues you, like how did they do that?

That's pretty much in many respects

what you went on to do upon leaving rehab

as your life slowly moved towards ultra-athletic sports.

Yes and no.

I mean, I think that the shorthand kind of Google version

of my story makes it look like all this stuff happened

in a very compressed period of time.

But actually when I left rehab,

which is where I live 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.

I had to repair my relationships.

I had to become trustworthy to other people again.

I had to be somebody who was reliable

and would show up on time when they said they would.

All those sort of like normal things that normal people do.

I had to rebuild for myself.

So for 10 years, I immersed myself

in the recovery community in Los Angeles.

And I tried to become that corporate lawyer

that I thought that I wanted to be,

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.

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 wanna do for myself

that felt like an indulgence.

And so the ultra stuff came much later.

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

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 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 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?

You might be doing it because your mom wants you to be a doctor

or 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 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?

Are you really on the path that you wanna be on?

Did you choose this path?

Are you here because of external pressures

or expectations that you didn't ask for?

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 latticework or an understanding

of what those mechanics are sets you on a trajectory

to making better decisions for yourself.

So it's not like maybe that banker is supposed

to be a banker, maybe he's super happy, that's fine.

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

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, 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

kind of triggers that are built into you.

I think developing an awareness of that is really important

in trying to understand that question.

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

I don't think it's a simple process.

I think it's different for everybody.

It can come in the form of talking to a therapist

or meditation, there is no one modality for that.

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.

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 the childlike nature

that is perhaps lost as we grow older

and kind of 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?

How do you truly feel?

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?

But like, how do you actually feel, you know?

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

but really I'm going through a fucking shit time internally.

And I'm tuning into that voice of like, how do I feel?

And tuning out of the like, how do people feel about me?

It has really helped me in those moments

where I've got to make a big decision to quit.

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

Well, they may ask themselves that question

but the answer is flippant, right?

It's like, I'm good, cool, I feel good.

You know, I feel I slept good last night.

No, like, how do you really feel?

And then continuing to peel back the layers

until it gets really uncomfortable.

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

That's where the juice is.

I've peeled them back.

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

I realized them in the wrong place.

But I'm 39 years old and I've got kids,

I've got a house, we live in this part of London

so I can get to work quickly.

We've built our lives around this, you know,

person I thought I wanted to be.

And I'm held in place by my friendship group

and my mother's down.

People have that fear.

They think, how do I break out of that?

How do I shed?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, first I would say to that person, congratulations.

Like you created a life for yourself.

Like on some level, even if you wanna leave that career path

or you're unfulfilled in that,

you still are somebody who is deserving of acknowledgement

for building something.

And, you know, that's an amazing thing.

So it's not about casting that aside

or disrespecting it.

For me, I would say to that person,

what is it that gets you excited?

Like what is it that you feel is unnourished in your life?

Do you have a creative itch?

Is there something calling you?

Or something, again, that you used to do as a kid

that you really enjoyed?

And for some reason unbeknownst to you,

you don't do it anymore.

Maybe it's- Music.

Like, yeah, it could be music or stand up

or you play football, right?

Like being on a football team or doing something,

just having coffee with your friend or what have you,

finding a way to build that back into your life

in a way that isn't going to derail your current life.

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.

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.

These are very subtle energies

that you have to be present for

in order to notice them when they appear.

But I think those are the subtle energies,

that's like those are the waves you wanna be surfing.

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

They don't have to be mutually exclusive.

And over time, maybe you start moving

a little over this way.

Five years later, your life is unrecognizable.

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

We all want to be this idealized version of ourself,

happier, fitter, thinner, richer, whatever it is overnight.

And we overestimate what we can accomplish in a year

or maybe in a couple of years

and completely underestimate what we could do in a decade.

We're not wired to think in decades.

It seems too intangible.

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 gonna 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.

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

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.

So if you were on the outside looking in,

it looked like I was doing pretty well.

Inside, I was dying because my soul, my spirit was unheard

and undernourished, 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.

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 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.

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.

Had to stop halfway up the flight,

winded out of breath, tightness in my chest,

like wheezing, thinking, I swam at Stanford.

Like I was a world ranked swimmer.

I'm like 39 about to turn 40.

I feel like shit.

I'm fat.

And it just broke that spell of denial

about how I was living,

where it became intolerable to continue along that path.

And it was very much like the day

that I decided to go to rehab,

like this moment back to willingness,

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.

And because the decision that I had made 10 years prior

when I went to rehab had been so transformational,

like I could have woken up that day

and made a different decision.

What would my life look like?

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.

And I know that these moments are fleeting

and they require kind of immediate action or they pass.

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.

That's so vague.

I knew that that wasn't gonna 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.

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.

I think about this a lot in like businesses

and organizations, they almost need to stage a crisis,

I call it, to make change happen.

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, I'm fine.

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

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,

terrify their team about the prospect of not changing.

It's almost like staging a rock bottom

because it will be the frog in the frying pan.

It will slowly creep upon you if you don't,

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,

but he needs to stop and stage a crisis,

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 I wanna solve it with you,

but it's a deal breaker for me.

You see what I mean?

Yeah, I get what you're saying.

Basically, short of sleepwalking yourself

towards the cliff's edge,

do staging an intervention on your life

by concocting a crisis that's gonna compel you

to confront the elephant in the room

that is the thing that is holding you back.

That's obvious to everyone else

and yet you're refusing to look at it.

Yeah, because as you said earlier,

we want to avoid discomfort.

So if we can just sweep discomfort under the carpet

and procrastinate it into tomorrow, we do.

We do that in businesses, we do it in our own lives.

So how do we maximize the discomfort today

by presenting what the future will look like

if we don't take action right now?

And there is often a point of no return

in relationships and in business for sure, for sure.

So yeah.

Yeah, I think that's a very kind of pragmatic,

three-dimensional, actionable way to look at it.

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.

Like maybe you're out telling lies or whatever it is.

Like you're just not, you're not living your life

in integrity, like in alignment with your own values.

And we all do this, right?

We're not all living perfect lives.

So when you do that, like there'll be nudges

and those nudges will be very graceful at first.

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

Yeah, yeah, that's fine.

I can deal with that.

The knocks start to get more intense, more intense,

more intense, more intense.

And then you get two DUIs in six months

and you're in jail or your partner leaves you

or whatever it is, right?

Like how much pain are you willing to tolerate?

How loud does the knock have to be

before you're willing to course correct?

Change is very difficult.

We don't want to make change or 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 gonna 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?

How loud does the knock have to be?

How low does the elevator have to drop?

And I think that that answer is different for everybody,

but the amazing and confusing thing about it

is that the possibility of change exists in all moments.

We can make that choice at any time.

We don't have to suffer.

We don't have to be in pain.

And yet we still don't do it.

So unlocking that mystery, yeah.

I mean, well, there's your book.

You can answer that question.

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

There was a chapter I was gonna write about time, right?

So I wanted to write something about time and time management.

So I thought the best place to start is talking about death

because that kind of puts time in context.

It's finite.

So I started writing about that.

If you're 35 years old, you've got 17,000 days left.

I'm trying to find all these ways

where people can visualize the cause of what you said.

People can't think of decades.

We can't think of finality.

We can't think of infinity.

We can't think of long periods of time.

I'd also, at some level,

don't believe we know we're going to die.

We don't live our lives accordingly.

We think it happens to other people.

Yeah, yeah, deep down we're like,

somehow I'm going to sidestep this thing.

It's not actually going to happen.

Yeah.

And you see that in our decisions,

like the things we pour our attention into.

Clearly, we don't think we're on a clock here.

Right.

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.

ChatGTP.

Went on ChatTSpeed, talked 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?

And then I arrived at this sort of discipline equation

in my head where I kind of believe when you want,

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.

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

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

I finally made the decision I wanted to do it.

Why do I want to do it?

Absolutely love music.

Love the thrill and how energized I am from performance.

Plus the psychological engagement and enjoyment

I get from the pursuit.

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

So you go upstairs into my kitchen,

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.

So what does it cost me to pursue DJing?

And I think that is roughly my discipline equation.

So if you think about these three elements,

how bad you want it, how enjoyable it is,

what does it cost?

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

And if it somewhat fits into what you said about

when the pain of staying the same becomes greater

than the pain of making a change,

then people make the change.

When they really, really want it

and it's more enjoyable than it is painful

to go in that direction, behavior changes.

Right.

Well, I would take it one step further,

but first let me say this.

I would say that you're already a DJ.

You're making an assumption around

what it means to be a DJ or to pursue DJing.

That comes with a lot of baggage.

It means success.

Maybe you're envisioning a big crowd of people

who are listening to your music.

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

because it nourishes your life.

So that's what I mean when I was talking

about the banker, right?

Like just DJ your kitchen table.

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

If you're finding so much joy in it,

then you can recalibrate that equation

about how much energy, resources,

and time you're gonna invest in it.

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?

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?

So I'm not saying there's an answer to that question,

but it's something to think about.

The reason I gave the DJing example is

because it was something I was able to stick at.

I was able to quote unquote, essentially change.

And my health was the same thing.

It fits into that discipline equation of,

at some point in my life, I saw this pandemic happen.

I saw the fragility of this thing called health

in my young 25 years.

I'd never even knew was there.

I never even knew I had health

because mine had fortunately always been well.

And then upon seeing the pandemic play out

and hearing the doctors and scientists say that

your current health, how 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.

And I haven't missed more than two days

since pretty much in a week for the last three years.

That was my behavior change.

Before then I was the guy with the fast food.

Right, so that was the moment.

That was the line in the sand moment.

That piece of information created willingness in you.

Which is the first part of that equation,

which is the why.

Like why do I care about my health?

Right.

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

But discipline is easy when you have that why answered.

Right, so if it was just that easy,

I think that more people would be able

to make positive changes in their life.

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.

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 gonna 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.

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 gonna take you so far.

So you became an ultra endurance sports athlete.

From that point of where you couldn't walk up the stairs

without losing your breath, what was that transformation?

So after that moment,

I decided to take responsibility for my wellbeing

and thus began a pretty long and in elegant

and non-linear process of first trying to figure out

how to eat in a way that would allow me

to feel good in my body.

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.

Like I needed to do something

that was gonna be hard and uncomfortable

and not eating and just drinking juice

seemed like a good way to accomplish that.

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

And that was an experience

where I was incredibly uncomfortable

and I felt horrible for a couple of days,

but on the seventh day, I felt amazing

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.

And that made me wanna figure out a way

to feel like that all the time.

And so I ended up trying a bunch of different diets

and what worked for me ultimately

after trying many different things

was going entirely plant-based.

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.

And 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.

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 move my legs on a trail at dawn

and I really loved it.

And I felt like that was a journey towards

answering these questions that I was having

on the existential front about what I was gonna do

with my life, cause I had a lot of confusion at that time

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.

I just wanted to feel good.

I wanted to like lose this gut, you know,

frankly for vanity reasons.

I didn't like how I looked in the mirror

and the way it came off really quickly

and I felt like I was making incredible progress

athletically week after week after week.

And then one day I went out like maybe six months

into this experience and I was just gonna 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 the 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 feel this good,

certainly not at age 40.

And that got me thinking about potential.

And I had never really realized my potential

as an athlete in college because alcohol

really destroyed my swimming career.

And so there was a sense of unfinished business there,

but I just wanted to see what I was capable of.

And so that set me on this journey

to find experiences where I could tap into that.

And that's where I discovered this whole world

of ultra endurance and these crazy races.

And I became fascinated with that

and ended up competing in this race called Ultraman,

which is a three day double Ironman race.

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

And really the instigating point in that

was reading an article where David Goggins

had done that race back in 2006, I think.

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.

And that set in motion me training for this race

and competing in it a couple of times.

I've had two guests come here and tell me

that we're in a comfort crisis.

And what they mean by that is they say

that we're optimizing our way away from comfort

in every sense of the word.

We live in these 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 and in fact discomfort and pressure

is where our growth, our health

and all of these things are fulfillment

in many cases comes from.

Doing an ultra endurance race is for me,

one of the epitomies of pressure and discomfort

and sitting with that and accepting it.

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?

I think about it when I hear like,

if I can't see why not get on my bike

and just ride and just see and push myself,

see where I can take it.

100%, you don't grow unless you go out of your comfort zone

and that's in every facet of your life.

If you want to become smarter, you have to read books

or go to school, like that's not always comfortable.

There's a million different varieties of this, but yes,

we are in a culture that prioritizes comfort and luxury

and it's all about making our lives easier.

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

and we're grappling with obstacles

and we're overcoming them.

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

We feel more ourselves, we feel more alive

and we experience growth and connection with self

and connection with other people.

This is the stuff of life.

And yet it is not the way that society is constructed.

We have to go out of our way now.

We have to seek the, it used to be,

this was everyday life to survive, right?

And now we actually have to pay money

and travel to places to have these experiences.

What's so amazing is that when I started doing

these ultra races, they're all very low-key

under the radar.

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

You know, it's a subculture that has been around for a while,

but in the last decade, we've seen an explosion in interests,

in like doing 100 mile races.

Like there's lotteries now to get into a race

where you have to run 100 miles.

Like if you told somebody in 1800

that this was gonna be the case,

they would think you were insane, right?

So what does that say?

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.

And yes, we have to consciously extract ourselves

from the comforts of our environments

and put ourselves in those positions.

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

It's insane how many marathons,

the London Marathon was the other way.

How many thousands of people ran it?

And then there's a Spartan race

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.

And we have too long deprived ourselves

of these types of scenarios.

That doesn't mean that you wanna 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 because succeed or fail,

you have an experience that's gonna teach you

more about who you are, what your limitations are

and what your capabilities are.

The popularity of these endurance races

and even things like ice plunge pools and stuff,

all of these things that make us feel really uncomfortable.

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,

so bowling alleys and in real life events have increased

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.

You said, I didn't get into ultra-endurance sports

to win races, beat others or stand atop a podium.

I got into it because it's the perfect template

for self discovery.

What did you discover about yourself?

And also I think it's probably important to say to people,

you're really, really good at this ultra-endurance stuff.

Like we haven't quite gone through your CV yet,

but I mean, I've got a list of accolades

that you've achieved and you're one of the best at this.

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

Yeah, thank you for that.

I mean, I've learned so much.

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 is just uncomfortable enough

where you're sitting in that discomfort

and you have to develop a tolerance for that.

So what it does is it teaches you how to suffer,

how to manage pain, but also how to be with yourself.

Like when I was training for these races,

I would go out like all day alone.

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

And at that time, I really was trying to figure out like,

I can't be this lawyer anymore.

Like what am I gonna do?

Like all I know is I really like doing this.

This is not a career path.

This is not, I'm not gonna support four kids

doing this thing that I love,

but it is bringing so much value to me

that I just know I wanna keep doing it.

And I'm going to pay attention

and pull whatever threads show up.

And what I learned through this journey of training,

most importantly, the training,

the races are just a demonstration

of what you put into getting to that point,

was on a surface level, as an athlete,

I had a lot more to say than I ever believed that I could.

I was able to do things

that 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.

So that was huge.

And like I said earlier,

that opened up the possibility of tapping into potential

in other areas of my life.

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.

When I put on the running shoes for the first time

and just thought, I love doing this,

could I have imagined that I'd be sitting across from you

right now having a conversation?

It's ridiculous.

It's preposterous.

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 prioritized before.

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 a life that I could have never imagined for myself.

Metaphorically, it sounds like you almost ran away

from your little career in law.

Yeah, I guess so.

Yeah, I guess so.

I guess so.

The law and me, like-

How did that-

I don't like conflict.

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

Like I just, 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.

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

Like I probably walked away from it

over a very extended period of time.

It wasn't a very dramatic split.

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 role podcast.

You've got this law job, you start ultra racing,

this financial hardship.

Is that because you quit the law job or is that because-

No, so, yeah, because I was a bad lawyer.

Oh, okay.

No, no, what happened was,

so I did exit like the big law firm thing

but I continued to practice law as a solo practitioner

and then in a couple of different incarnations

of partnerships with a couple of people.

But as I got more and more immersed in the ultra world,

my enthusiasm and interest in my law practice

continued to dwindle and I was my own boss

at that point practicing law.

So not a lot of new clients coming in.

I was still doing it, making just enough money to get by

but wasn't doing great because I just wasn't into it.

But I held onto it for a very long time

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.

But making that transition was very challenging.

Even after finding ultra came out,

I completely severed my ties with the law at that point

but the phone wasn't really ringing that much

and there wasn't a lot of opportunities coming my way

and it took a lot of patience and faith.

And I did the podcast for years before

we were able to monetize it

or do any kind of ads or anything like that.

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.

You almost lost your house,

couldn't pay a lot of your bills,

had your cars repossessed.

Yeah, it was very difficult.

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.

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.

And without her strength, her faith, her conviction,

I definitely would have abandoned the path.

But she was in all the way.

And she would say, these things are just things.

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

I can see that and I want that for you.

And if we lose the house, we lose the house,

cars are cars, this stuff comes and goes,

but we're together and we're gonna walk this path.

This is what we're here to do,

which is a fucking amazing thing for a partner to say to you

to have that kind of belief in you

is such a gift.

So I just can't emphasize enough how powerful she has been

like in this whole thing.

Of all the things you've accomplished in your life,

of all the things you've done, what does she mean to you?

I mean, she is my partner in all things.

She's my North Star.

She's my spiritual counsel.

She's my mirror.

Yeah.

And we're normal people with kids who 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.

It is such a gift.

You know, they say the greatest gift you can give somebody

is your attention, 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.

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

They're saying, I believe in you and I trust you

to find your way towards that person.

And I am holding that for you in my daily consciousness,

in my sleep and my thoughts and my prayers.

They manifest a very powerful energy, yeah.

So it's a curious idea that someone else can manifest

your life for you in a kind of inadvertent way.

I've experienced that as well.

There's been moments in my life where my partner

has said something to me.

I've heard what she said.

I didn't believe it necessarily myself,

but because she believed it, that I could do that.

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

and she's telling me that I can do this thing.

So maybe it is possible.

I can remember so many conversations over 15 years

where someone said something to me

about what my future will look like.

And because I trusted them,

I think it helped that future become a reality.

Sure, I mean, just imagine the young person

who has the opportunity to be with a certain teacher

and that teacher says, you know, you can do this.

Like you're good at that.

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.

And, you know, those are really powerful gifts

that we can give to other people.

He believes that if you follow your true path,

the universe will support you.

Quite I read about you as well.

Yeah, I do believe that.

That's been my life experience.

I've seen that manifest in many people

that I know over the years, a lot of people in recovery.

And that doesn't mean that it's easy or convenient

or on your timetable.

I would say that the path that I've pursued

has been the hardest path I could have imagined.

It's the most meaningful and fulfilling,

but it didn't happen overnight.

It happened over the course of more than a decade.

And it required a lot of conviction and faith

and patience and pain.

We have to, you know, we had to lose a lot,

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.

I'm a Big Manchester United fan.

And I know that's slightly a contentious thing to say

because not everybody here is a Manchester United fan,

but right now we're not doing great,

so we shouldn't threaten you too much.

But in June, I will be playing at Old Trafford,

which is Manchester United's home ground

for a charity match called SoccerAid.

Honestly, if I'm being completely 100% with you,

it is an absolute dream come true,

regardless of my performance on the day,

just getting to run out on that pitch

as a childhood lifelong fan of that club is a huge honor.

So I've been playing football

about four times a week in preparation to get my fitness up.

And one of the most important things when you are training

is to be nutritionally sound.

That is where Huell's RTDs have played a role

in my life over the last couple of weeks.

Every time I train, I have my Huells that day

to make sure that I'm getting all of the essential vitamins

and minerals into my body

so that my body can convert it into what I need

to be successful on and off the football pitch.

If you're getting in shape, if you're trying to be healthy

and you've not tried Huell's RTD ready to drink,

give it a shot.

My health is always gonna be my first priority.

So when my life becomes hectic,

Huell, ready to drink, is my companion.

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 all you,

I know, you know, it's funny

because when people ask me this,

my instinctive answer is I don't know,

but I'm gonna 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,

what do you think the next chapter is for you?

That's a great question.

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.

And what would it feel like if you didn't push

but you still did the thing?

Would you still be you?

Would you feel like you left something on the table?

Because you didn't suffer to create the thing

that you share with the world.

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?

Because we both know if I go out and I push really hard,

I can do something and I can make it great.

And I'm pretty sure what the result of that is gonna be.

But what if you created out of a sense of joy

and you didn't have to exhaust yourself in doing it

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.

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

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

Why do you wanna climb that mountain though?

Because I think that there's a lot of wisdom

in being more in flow as opposed to willfulness.

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.

And because it's new territory to be explored.

I know what it's like to do this other thing

and it's exhausting and it's not sustainable.

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

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 of life

could be better by this different way of approaching things.

Has there been personal symptoms

that have encouraged you to seek out another way of being?

Sure, yeah.

I have tiptoed up to burn out a couple of 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

to try 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.

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.

And if you're not in pain, you didn't try hard enough

and it would have been better if you suffered more.

And I think that's a lie.

And I wanna find out if it's a lie or if it's true.

Thinking back to endurance racing,

it seems to be that it might be true.

You know, you achieve that through pain.

Sure.

Discomfort seems to be the first hurdle

to all the good places we were.

But actually, that's very comfortable for me.

The real discomfort is to see what it would be like

without the suffering.

That's harder to do.

Yeah.

It's harder to do for me, aren't you?

I often ask my guests, are you driven or are you being dragged?

Cause 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.

And I'm portraying in this-

So what would an example of that be?

Even the podcast, you know?

Do I have to be so like neurotic and obsessed

with everything and every detail?

You said it before we started.

You're very obsessed about the detail.

The fact that when we do the podcast in LA,

we have every book is the same in the same order.

You know, that's insane.

I mean, it's a great story.

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

But for me, it's, I mean,

I'm probably going to try and justify it here.

But for me, it's about, I know that the small stuff

is the stuff that most people don't think about.

So it's my place.

It's where we find the opportunity.

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.

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.

And then I lose 30 minutes in despair,

like silent despair to myself and my head.

I just kind of, I leave the dinner table.

That's not a great way to live.

Right.

I relate to that deeply.

So I'm right with you and lockstep with that.

But what if you were to say, okay.

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

Then everything, the whole house of cards

and the caves on top of itself

and all the good things in your life disappear.

Yeah, that's what I think.

Right, yeah.

Yeah, I know.

And I'll say, well, all our ancestors,

they built these skyscrapers and this AI stuff

and these cameras that we're using.

So we're innately meant to struggle forward.

That's hardwired into us.

It's why I'm here.

My ancestors struggled forward.

They built buildings and civilizations

and they left that in my genetic code

as a little message saying,

you too shall struggle forward, Stephen.

You too shall be wired to climb upwards.

Do you feel that

to enjoy your life

is an indulgence that's fine for other people,

but you're on a mission.

So you can like have a different relationship

with those aspects of life

that other people find important.

I think so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Is that bullshit?

Do you think I'm bullshit?

No, I'm like, I'm just seeing if you see the world

the way that I do.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

But what are you, 30?

How old are you?

I just turned 30, yeah.

Yeah, so I'm 56, dude.

So check in with me and-

What advice did you give me?

We've got the same mindset.

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

And I just wanna say for the record,

I shared it with your team earlier,

I think that what you have built here is extraordinary.

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 the quality is fantastic.

So I've been a fan.

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

And I see that in you.

And I think there's something beautiful and wonderful

about that.

The trick is to not allow it to become toxic

to the point where it starts to denigrate

the quality of your life.

So can you toggle it

such that you're still pursuing what's important to you

in a way that's sustainable?

Because you wanna be doing this

for a long period of time, right?

So after five or six years or 10 years,

like what is your relationship to this thing going to be?

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.

Look at the model and figure out how you can tweak it

so that you can stay in love with the process.

And I think for me,

it's all about enjoying it for what it is

and detaching from all the externalities.

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?

I shouldn't be comparing myself to other people.

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.

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 closing piece of advice

is something that will resonate with everybody.

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 everything else can wait,

including relationships, social relationships,

romantic relationships, family.

Well, I get this thing, getting the thing

and realizing that the thing just moves forward

off into the distance like a mirage.

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?

And this is one of them.

This is one of the systems.

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.

And also not just for me,

but for all the people that work here as well.

And everyone can relate to that,

especially people that are being dragged.

Sure. In some way.

Beautiful.

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.

You get a 60-second phone call

with a previous version of yourself.

What do you say?

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.

What do you say?

What do you say?

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 can do

and what you can do to help yourself.

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.

And the corollary to 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.

And then I would say, put your mother on the phone,

and I would tell her, I know you love your son,

but you gotta leave him alone and let him be him.

Why would you say that?

How many hours do you have?

I understand.

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.

I mean, that's why I reached out to you

and wanted to have you on the show,

so I'm so privileged and honored that you said yes.

I freaked out a little bit when you responded

because I've spent a lot of time watching

a lot of your episodes.

I'm so proud of you.

I'm so proud of you.

I'm so proud of you.

I'm so honored because I've spent a lot of time

watching a lot of your episodes.

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.

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.

So thank you for the inspiration

and thank you for the kindness and generosity today.

I really appreciate that, Steve, and that means a lot.

I have crazy respect for your mission

and what you guys are doing here,

and I've loved watching your trajectory,

and it was a real honor to come and talk to you today,

and man, you're good.

You're really good at this, man.

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

Quick one.

Some of you will know that this podcast

is now sponsored by the incredible Airbnb.

I'm a huge user, lover, and customer of Airbnb.

Every time I go away on a trip,

whether that's work related or it's a holiday,

Airbnb is always my go-to.

But have you ever considered,

have you ever thought about making some extra cash

to cover some bills or to help pay off a holiday?

Let me explain further.

Perhaps people are coming to your town or city

for a music festival, for an event or a holiday,

and you have a spare room.

Why not Airbnb it?

Or your home office is free right now.

You're working away from home during the week.

You could Airbnb it.

Honestly, the possibilities are endless.

I've Airbnb'd one of my apartments before,

and it's a great way to make extra cash.

I'd highly recommend you all to at least check it out.

That extra space you have, that extra room,

it might be worth more than you think.

So to find out just how much it's worth,

search Airbnb.co.uk slash host.

That's Airbnb.co.uk slash host.

Check it out.

Quick one.

As you guys know, we're lucky enough

to have Blue Jeans by Verizon as a sponsor of this podcast.

And for anyone that doesn't know,

Blue Jeans is an online video conferencing tool

that allows you to have slick, fast,

high quality online meetings without all the glitches

you might normally find with online meeting tools.

And they have a new feature called Blue Jeans Basic.

Blue Jeans Basic is essentially a free version

of their top quality video conferencing tool.

That means you get an immersive video experience

that is super high quality, super easy,

and super basically zero fast.

Apart from all the incredible features

like zero time limits on meeting calls,

it also comes with high fidelity audio and video,

including Dolby Voice, which is incredibly useful.

They also have enterprise grade security

so you can collaborate with confidence.

And it's so smooth that it's quite literally

changing the game for myself and my team

without compromising on quality.

To find out more, all you have to do is search

bluejeans.com and let me know how you get on.

Thanks for watching.

I'll see you in the next one.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.