Speaker 1: If you had a goal for yourself, if you're a parent,
Speaker 1: if you want to be the best dead you can be,
Speaker 1: or you want to stay healthy, you want to run
Speaker 1: a half marathon, or do background with your kids, or
Speaker 1: whatever you is, why would you not support yourself? What
Speaker 1: would you sabatize.
Speaker 2: Yourself or what can you mad man welcome creating Vito.
Speaker 1: I have been referred to as the mad sideist. I'll
Speaker 1: take it as a bench of honor. I think that's okay.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you a big work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you are a mad scientist, but not in the
Speaker 3: way that people think about. So you're a scientists, you're
Speaker 3: a pharmacist by trade, right, but you've also been done
Speaker 3: bit a building. You've been a property developer, an entrepreneur,
Speaker 3: you're a public speaker. I met you on the circuit.
Speaker 3: But you have this kind of hobby of doing mad shit.
Speaker 1: I think that's a technical phrase. Yeah, that's the best
Speaker 1: foot on here.
Speaker 3: It is so talk to. So you do trio running,
Speaker 3: claiming all sorts of stuff, and you've done expeditions on
Speaker 3: seven different continents, which is pretty faky cool. Talk us
Speaker 3: through the highlights of those.
Speaker 1: Where do you start look to give people some context
Speaker 1: I think to begin with is that I'm not an
Speaker 1: elite athlete. I like to get that clear out front,
Speaker 1: like the glasses are fairly thick, I'm below average height.
Speaker 1: I'm a nerd like fall through and through chess club,
Speaker 1: debate club, theater club, the whole lot in high school,
Speaker 1: like you name it. And I really got into running
Speaker 1: purely because it was the only sport I could do.
Speaker 1: I was in high school where you had to do
Speaker 1: competitive sport, train two nights a week, compete in the weekends.
Speaker 1: I'm too small for footy, too short for basketball, too
Speaker 1: on co for cricket, so you do cross country running
Speaker 1: and that got me into running. Flash forward, you know,
Speaker 1: into a career and you do the usual thing. You know,
Speaker 1: you're building businesses, doing all the things, and the health
Speaker 1: gets pushed to the side, push to the side, push
Speaker 1: to the side, until you get a wake up call
Speaker 1: one day we go, hey, guess what happens if you
Speaker 1: with the most money, you don't win. You're just did
Speaker 1: and that's it. So I decided that I really needed
Speaker 1: to do something about that because it was going to
Speaker 1: have an ending that wasn't really great. Like I was
Speaker 1: very successful, but what else well, my life had no
Speaker 1: other dimension or color to it. So I went and
Speaker 1: did a very basic trek in Nepaul, purely as a
Speaker 1: way for escapism from the corporate world. And I loved
Speaker 1: it and loved how it maybe feel. And I came
Speaker 1: back and went, well, what's next. And I went and
Speaker 1: did the Kakoda track. My grandfather fought and rebell and
Speaker 1: New Britain just north of there in World War Two,
Speaker 1: so it retraced his footsteps. I did the co Coda track.
Speaker 1: I loved it, went what's next, and just started to iterate,
Speaker 1: no plan, just well, the next hardest thing would be this,
Speaker 1: and the next hardest thing would be that, and a
Speaker 1: few years down the track, next thing. And I was
Speaker 1: catching a flight on this this Russian Eleutian military cargo
Speaker 1: jet out of the southern end of They are there,
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, and we're not talking. Oh'm mister Watkins.
Speaker 1: Twelve b you know, three rows down the left. It's like,
Speaker 1: get in, find a wooden bench seat on the right,
Speaker 1: you know, between all the cargo that's strapped in the middle,
Speaker 1: and hang on. And we flew six hours from Puntarenas
Speaker 1: in southern South America into Patriot Hills and Antarctica, and
Speaker 1: I've got my passports stamped at Patriot Hills and Antarctica.
Speaker 1: Caught a flight on a twin out to base camp.
Speaker 1: It was myself, three other people and a lead guide
Speaker 1: and we were there to climb the Vincent Massive, the
Speaker 1: highest peak on the Antarctic continent, unsupported. Just us and
Speaker 1: what you brought. Yeah, I was a complete move. I
Speaker 1: said to the guide, you know, what's the time zone here?
Speaker 1: And he's like, mate, the sun never goes down here,
Speaker 1: like there is no there is no there is no
Speaker 1: time zones. We climb for twelve hours, we sleep and
Speaker 1: we eat, and we get up and we do it
Speaker 1: again until the job's down. And this was way back
Speaker 1: when it was wasn't very commercial. There was no fixed ropes,
Speaker 1: there was no like. It was just we're going to
Speaker 1: tackle that headwall. Yeah nothing. It was just we're going
Speaker 1: to tackle that headwall until we get to the top
Speaker 1: of it. And it takes as long as it takes.
Speaker 3: And how much claim experience.
Speaker 1: I'd only done two our three reasonable climbs have done
Speaker 1: Mer Peak in Nepal, which is a mountain but the
Speaker 1: Nepalese referred to as like a small hill, like it's
Speaker 1: about six thousand meters but very basic, really touristy kind
Speaker 1: of thing. You can walk up and down it. That's fine.
Speaker 1: I don't kill him a jar in Africa, And I'd
Speaker 1: had a failed attemp on Akin Kagua in South America,
Speaker 1: which is seven thousand meters above sea level, which is
Speaker 1: a different kettle affairs. And I've done some training in
Speaker 1: New Zealand. I've been over to South Island, done some
Speaker 1: cravas rescue stuff and just tried to fill the talk
Speaker 1: kid with the skills. But like I was on that plane,
Speaker 1: that Russian military plane, and I'm looking around at the
Speaker 1: guy's next to me, like on their sweating bullets, and
Speaker 1: the guy next to me is asleep. And this guy
Speaker 1: summoned ever six times, and this guy's on his third
Speaker 1: trip to McMurdo, And I'm like, what am I doing?
Speaker 1: You're an idiot, You are so out of your death.
Speaker 1: But then we spend nearly the best part of the month,
Speaker 1: like we had about forty fifty kilos a year per
Speaker 1: man just and you're just hauling it just to be
Speaker 1: the backpacking it or hauling it in a sled, and
Speaker 1: we literally get to a point and we got out
Speaker 1: of base camp and the guy had got his GPS
Speaker 1: out and he walked us around. He said, dig a
Speaker 1: hole there. So you dig a hole, and here's all
Speaker 1: the supplies that he'd left there last year, food, everything,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, just leave it here, and he's like,
Speaker 1: who's going to nicke it? Mate, Like there's no one here, likes.
Speaker 3: No wildlife, and it's not good.
Speaker 1: It's not going to go off. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: bring home. We come back and he's pulling out like
Speaker 1: these yead lamb sunks and red wine that have been
Speaker 1: free cryovacked and froze it up, and he stashed them there,
Speaker 1: and he's got his tents and his cooking year and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. He said, we just bear
Speaker 1: it in the ice. We'll come back next year. I'll
Speaker 1: get you goons to dig it up, and we're good
Speaker 1: to go. So yeh, God, fair enough. So you just
Speaker 1: you end up finding yourself in weird places, meeting really
Speaker 1: interesting characters, doing things that you never thought you would
Speaker 1: ever do. And I think for me, that's really been
Speaker 1: the line that's gone through all of them. Just it's
Speaker 1: not about telling other people what you did. It's about
Speaker 1: I went to do that because I wanted to have
Speaker 1: that experience in that place for me. And if no
Speaker 1: one ever knows, that's fine, and that really adds color
Speaker 1: to it, I think invadues to it.
Speaker 3: And so talk us through. What were the conditions alike?
Speaker 3: You were obviously there are at a good time of year,
Speaker 3: but good time of year and Antarctica can be a
Speaker 3: little different, right, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was minus forty pretty much twenty four to seven.
Speaker 1: Now we had we had three men to a tent.
Speaker 3: And when I'm no, no, I'm sorry, I've got some
Speaker 3: American listeners on this podcast. So minus forty categret.
Speaker 1: Minus forty seven grade, it's minus forty fahrenheit. It's the
Speaker 1: same that the graph crosses, yeah, which is very convenient.
Speaker 1: But about minus forty is the same in both, which
Speaker 1: is nice and handy. So it's about minus forty most days. Now,
Speaker 1: we had we had three men in a tent. Now
Speaker 1: in the tent, the amount of room is if PT
Speaker 1: needs to go for a leak and a toweling outside
Speaker 1: and you can't go, then the other two of us
Speaker 1: are just going to roll over and give him a
Speaker 1: little bit of room. To deal with it has to do,
Speaker 1: and then we'll all roll back and have a really
Speaker 1: uncomfortable conversation. But if we slept in that tent for
Speaker 1: eight hours, the warmest we got to the tent was
Speaker 1: minus eighteen. I think we got the inside of the
Speaker 1: tent to minus eighteen. And we operated in that for weeks.
Speaker 1: And you just part of me loves the discipline of
Speaker 1: doing that because you can never turn off. You have
Speaker 1: to be conscious of what you're doing all the time.
Speaker 1: You know, you drop a glove down a glacier, may
Speaker 1: you're you're in trouble, like you have you got the
Speaker 1: right gear? You can't just pop into the local arii
Speaker 1: and buy another glove. That's not happening. You've got to
Speaker 1: be Have you got the right gear on? Have you
Speaker 1: got the fluid being managed? You're overheating, undercooked? You always
Speaker 1: have to be paying attention every month. Are you going
Speaker 1: for a leak? Okay? Have you got your boots on properly?
Speaker 1: Do you know where you're going? If it's a white act?
Speaker 1: Do you know how to get back? Just everything minus
Speaker 1: simple things require total focus twenty four to seven. And
Speaker 1: I find that really fascinating, just as a scientific experiment
Speaker 1: to see can you have your mind in that space
Speaker 1: all the time. So you're twenty four hour sunlight, which
Speaker 1: sounds really great until like day four or five and
Speaker 1: your brain is like, what the hell is going on?
Speaker 1: Like this? It really started to throw your brain out
Speaker 1: after a while, Like it seemed really cool the first night,
Speaker 1: but after a few days it was just I can't sleep.
Speaker 1: You don't know what time of date it is. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't know what day it is. It became quite
Speaker 1: quite weird to have your system completely utterly thrown out
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And what most people don't realize is you're lots
Speaker 3: of yourselves were on off certainty and cycles, and you've
Speaker 3: been bill if you're getting up in the middle of
Speaker 3: the eight and it's bright, us, tell me this what
Speaker 3: for something like that? What's more challenging? Is it the
Speaker 3: physicality or the mental side of things?
Speaker 1: I always revert to the mental side of things. Physically,
Speaker 1: it's extremely difficult, as you would expect, and in all
Speaker 1: those expeditions, you know that there will be a point
Speaker 1: where your body says, you can get stuffed. We're not
Speaker 1: doing this, like we're just bur We're not doing it anymore.
Speaker 1: And then it really is about having the mindset and
Speaker 1: the framework upstairs to go, well, no, we still have
Speaker 1: to execute because we're still here. Particularly in an expedition
Speaker 1: like that, you can't leave, you can't go home, you
Speaker 1: can't quit.
Speaker 3: I was supposed to say, when you have no opdate,
Speaker 3: it's amazing what human beings are when they can't say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, and like you can say you're done, but
Speaker 1: you're like, well, particularly for us, we're doing in both
Speaker 1: that expedition and in Denali in Alaska, you're roped up
Speaker 1: for glacier travel, so you're in rope teams of three
Speaker 1: or four people. There's no eye. There's just neither we
Speaker 1: can all do it or we all can't do it,
Speaker 1: but there's no Well Steve can do it, but Paul can't,
Speaker 1: so Paul will sit down and wait. No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: We're together, everyone who is focused on everyone else. And
Speaker 1: I know you guys met each other in an airport hangar,
Speaker 1: you know, talketner in Alaska a week ago, but now
Speaker 1: you're tied together, and if one of you screws up,
Speaker 1: someone might die. So I really need you to pay
Speaker 1: attention and I really need you to trust each other
Speaker 1: because we're not this isn't again anymore. So I find
Speaker 1: it is a very delicate balance. You've got to bring
Speaker 1: the talk kit physically to be prepared, but you have
Speaker 1: to have your mental point, really your mental game really
Speaker 1: on point, and it has to stay on point all
Speaker 1: the time. And that doesn't mean you're David Goggins the
Speaker 1: whole time. There's a lot of gallows humor and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of there's a lot of dark laughter and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff because you have to balance
Speaker 1: it out so no one's getting up and going, you know,
Speaker 1: full Goggans all the time. It's really a balance of
Speaker 1: we've got to respect the environment. We've really all got
Speaker 1: to deliver. We're allowed to have a laugh along the
Speaker 1: way as long as we all know we're doing what
Speaker 1: we need to do.
Speaker 3: And that gallual humor is extremely important right in those
Speaker 3: dark situations and people if you go I remember doing
Speaker 3: helicopter starch and rescue and turn my first gig and
Speaker 3: putting dead bodies into the aircraft. That the gallus humor
Speaker 3: was a little bit shocking to me initially, but then
Speaker 3: you know, it's a copying strategy, right for that sort
Speaker 3: of stuff. And particularly when you're in shitty situations, the
Speaker 3: ability to just laugh at each other and laugh at
Speaker 3: the ridiculousness of your situation, and the fact that you
Speaker 3: choose to be there, right. It's the stuff that just
Speaker 3: keeps you.
Speaker 1: We're acking Kagar, which I mentioned in South America the
Speaker 1: second time I was there. We got to a camp
Speaker 1: and there's a camp three, which is the second highest
Speaker 1: camp is called helicopter camp. And when you get there,
Speaker 1: there's two parts of hell. There's two helicopters just strewn
Speaker 1: across the landscape and everyone ties the tents down to it.
Speaker 1: So what had happened a few years earlier, Polish team
Speaker 1: had got stuck called the ranges for help. The Rages
Speaker 1: sent a chopper up, the chopper crashed, everyone died. They
Speaker 1: sent a second chopper that crashed, and then the ranger said, stuff,
Speaker 1: you're on your own, you know, figure it out. We're
Speaker 1: not sending anyone else up there. So you're up there,
Speaker 1: and you know six thousand there's probably five and a
Speaker 1: half thousand meters by sea level. They camp tying your
Speaker 1: tent down to like road of blades and half an
Speaker 1: engine block and just you're doing that, going this is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: You go, but these are the environments you're in, and
Speaker 1: I love part of the fact that it is so
Speaker 1: removed from everyone else's sense of normal. But when you
Speaker 1: come home, you've been completely recalibrated. And maybe that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you integrate to the society well when you get
Speaker 1: on quickly, but your perspective of what's normal and what's
Speaker 1: difficult and what constitutes hard has now been completely recalibrated.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what serves you extremely well for
Speaker 1: the rest of your life, whether you go do something
Speaker 1: like that again or not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred percent. The other thing I wanted to
Speaker 3: tap on that you mentioned was that level of trust.
Speaker 3: I remember having a conversation with Red Crawford, who's a
Speaker 3: good better mine. He's ex Lieutenant Colonel Sas and we
Speaker 3: were talking about a high performance teams model for pat
Speaker 3: Lend Chilney and right at the bottom of its trust
Speaker 3: and he had introduced me to it and he said, Peter,
Speaker 3: you're going to love this because he says, you'll see
Speaker 3: so much of what we had in the military as
Speaker 3: a nut model, that level of deep trust. Right. So
Speaker 3: in organizations, I often say, if we've worked together for
Speaker 3: a decade. We have what's called predictive trust in that
Speaker 3: I kind of know how you're going to behave in
Speaker 3: certain situations, and you know how I'm going to be heaving.
Speaker 3: That gives that level of trust, But this deeper trust
Speaker 3: is based on you know, healing back the layers of
Speaker 3: the onion and seeing into somebody else's soul, right, And
Speaker 3: I think probably the experience that I had was combat
Speaker 3: survival and Resistance to interrogation training and the guys that
Speaker 3: I was on that course with a particular guy, I
Speaker 3: was buddied up with, like just the depth of trust
Speaker 3: and the connection, the human connection that comes out of that,
Speaker 3: Like is that something that you found that those people
Speaker 3: that you've been on those expeditions that you could then
Speaker 3: see them twenty years later and it's just like yeah.
Speaker 1: Two wise. I mean, one is I can predict how
Speaker 1: you're going to behave, but I also get a feeling
Speaker 1: for when you're not behaving within those bands. So I
Speaker 1: got something's wrong with Pete. That's not a normal action
Speaker 1: for him, so that I can then intervene to go, hey, mate,
Speaker 1: you all right, like is everything okay? Do we need
Speaker 1: to or do we need to pull you out of
Speaker 1: this scenario, like you not only know how you'll react,
Speaker 1: I can identify when you're out of bounds, and I
Speaker 1: know that, hey, you might need to make to step
Speaker 1: in and give you a hand here and see how
Speaker 1: you going. And I've seen that on expeditions where we've
Speaker 1: had early in the expedition, the guide will absolutely flog
Speaker 1: us like and people are like, what is going on here?
Speaker 1: Like we're not we're not late for a meeting, like
Speaker 1: why we gave absolutely gun? And you realize it kind
Speaker 1: of I need to see what happens when you're exhausted
Speaker 1: and you're not happy about life. I need to know
Speaker 1: who's going to crack it, who's going to go, well,
Speaker 1: that was a rough day and be fine. We need
Speaker 1: to kind of sort a little week from the chaff,
Speaker 1: because we are only together for say a month on
Speaker 1: this hill, but the second half of that month is
Speaker 1: going to be deadly serious. So I need to sort
Speaker 1: out a few things before we go. So it's interesting
Speaker 1: to see how those people operate because they don't have
Speaker 1: ten years to figure us out. They've been handed a
Speaker 1: bunch of randoms and they need to assess them very quickly.
Speaker 1: From both the physical capabilit and a mental and psychological
Speaker 1: capability very quickly. So what do they do. They put
Speaker 1: you through a hard time quickly and see what you're like.
Speaker 1: We can quickly assess Okay, who's got the physical fortitude,
Speaker 1: but how are you going to react mentally? And then
Speaker 1: I could go, okay, well that team's going to be
Speaker 1: that team, and that team's going to be that team,
Speaker 1: and you and I are going to sit down and
Speaker 1: have a very hard chat about with your going any
Speaker 1: further on this hill at all. And it's interesting. I
Speaker 1: love that because you realize the guides are running a
Speaker 1: commercial operation, but they're not treating you like, oh, you're
Speaker 1: the customer, and the customer is always right. Love guides
Speaker 1: rip clients to shreds because they did one stupid thing,
Speaker 1: and they're like, well, you just endangered all of us,
Speaker 1: and I don't give a shit how much money you paid.
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you when you won, because that
Speaker 1: was just not in line with what we must do
Speaker 1: to execute what we need to do here, and that
Speaker 1: was that was a great wake up call for me too,
Speaker 1: just to see how people at that level operate. You're right,
Speaker 1: it's a fascinating insight.
Speaker 3: I remember a conversation with doctor Stanley Beacham stand the
Speaker 3: man who I love, and we were talking about discomfort,
Speaker 3: and he said that he said, what most people don't
Speaker 3: realize is that in order to live your really best life,
Speaker 3: every now and then you need to walk right to
Speaker 3: the edge of yourself and stir into the abyss and
Speaker 3: work out what the abyss tells you and take it
Speaker 3: on board. I assume you've stirred into the abyss once
Speaker 3: or twice. Talk us through. Give me, give us an
Speaker 3: example where you were right at the edge of yourself
Speaker 3: and and sort of took something on board or learned something.
Speaker 1: I describe it as you have to go all the
Speaker 1: way to the very back of Ukrainium, all the way
Speaker 1: to the darkest little spot. And if you go all
Speaker 1: the way back there, there's a little room and there's
Speaker 1: something in it that you've kept locked away for a
Speaker 1: long time, and every now and then liveful demand that
Speaker 1: you have to open that room and let that guy
Speaker 1: out and let him do what he's got to do.
Speaker 1: And that I refer that as the lost Savage, like
Speaker 1: they're just the barberia and up the back in the
Speaker 1: cave that you've locked away, and every now and then
Speaker 1: you need to let that guy out. So I had
Speaker 1: I had an ultra marathon in the Canadian Arctic in
Speaker 1: twenty Yeah, of course it's it.
Speaker 2: Not just an ultra marathon, but an ultra martha.
Speaker 1: Didn't give it. You're any pt Do you want to
Speaker 1: give you the specs? Six hundred and fourteen kilometers single stage,
Speaker 1: single stage. I put you on the start line points
Speaker 1: at north and we start an eagle planes in the
Speaker 1: Yukon and then they send you north six hundred and
Speaker 1: fourteen kilometers to the little Inuit village of Tuck, which
Speaker 1: is on the very northern end of Canada. Like there's Tuck,
Speaker 1: there's the North poland then there's Norway and that's it.
Speaker 1: Now it's single stage, so you operate twenty four to seven.
Speaker 1: There's no stopping overnight. You operate day and night. You
Speaker 1: want to sleep, get you give your bag out, light
Speaker 1: out on the ice and have a snooze. We don't
Speaker 1: really care. And it's self supported, so you can take
Speaker 1: anything you want.
Speaker 3: You can everything.
Speaker 1: You've got to drag it, you gotta carry it. So
Speaker 1: there's you. There's six hundred fourteen kilometers there's a twenty
Speaker 1: five kilo sled and there's you know, two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifteen hours to get the job done. Have had it,
Speaker 1: young man, And the average file rates eighty percent. So
Speaker 1: in the first seven years that they ran the race,
Speaker 1: eleven people finished in total. So yeah, totally, so it
Speaker 1: has There's only been six winners up until that point
Speaker 1: because most of years no one finished. There was just
Speaker 1: like one hundred percent no one, no one made it
Speaker 1: to the finish line. So I'd attempted it in twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen and DNF to two hundred and fifty k's in
Speaker 1: like just battered, broken, frozen, starving, hallucinating. This is so
Speaker 1: beyond me. I'll never oh my god. And I went
Speaker 1: back in twenty nineteen to reattempt it and that's another story.
Speaker 1: But I got three quarters of the way through that
Speaker 1: race and had really reached a point where you know,
Speaker 1: you're completely for I was, I averaged. I was getting
Speaker 1: twenty minutes sleep mid morning, twenty minutes in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: and forty minutes at night. And that was on purpose.
Speaker 1: That was my structured sleep plan. And that's that's in
Speaker 1: a divvy in the snow. So you do that and
Speaker 1: you do that every day, seven days a week until
Speaker 1: the job gets done. Now you can do that for
Speaker 1: a period of time, but towards the end, I would
Speaker 1: just start your body would just start packing it in.
Speaker 1: We we'll wake up. They kick in kind of day two,
Speaker 1: day three, but we're day day five and day six.
Speaker 1: And the guy who was coming behind me, he said
Speaker 1: to me after the race, we had a chat and
Speaker 1: he said, I could see your sledge tracks in the snow,
Speaker 1: and he said I would watch them and they'd be
Speaker 1: straight and then they'd waver and then you'd do circles
Speaker 1: and then you fell over, didn't you. And I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I'd black out. I'd just wake up and I'd
Speaker 1: be just face down in the snow, so you'd get
Speaker 1: up and you'd just charge your head. And I reached
Speaker 1: a point in that race going your body's completely shot.
Speaker 1: But I actually had an opportunity to win it, like
Speaker 1: I was at the front of the field. So you
Speaker 1: had to have that whole conversation with yourself going how
Speaker 1: important is it to you to win this? Because where
Speaker 1: you've done everything right, We've got to this last little point,
Speaker 1: but we're going to have to do some things that
Speaker 1: are beyond uncomfortable to finish this and to get over
Speaker 1: the line in time. So what I talk about is
Speaker 1: I split my mind into there's the mind and the
Speaker 1: body that's kind of seeing and experiencing the operation of
Speaker 1: the race, and then there's the other mind that sits
Speaker 1: up the top here, and that mine's in charge, and
Speaker 1: it looks down at the meat wagon and says, the
Speaker 1: meat wagon's going to do what it's told and we
Speaker 1: don't really care what happens, but we're getting the job done.
Speaker 1: And that is the mind that you have to listen to,
Speaker 1: and it just tells you to do what to get done.
Speaker 1: And so I crossed that finish line. It took me
Speaker 1: one hundred and ninety five hours to get from start
Speaker 1: to finish. I at sixteen hours sleep. I got to
Speaker 1: the finish line. I couldn't feel anything from the back
Speaker 1: of my neck to the top of my butt because
Speaker 1: I've been dragging a sled. You just have that little
Speaker 1: bit of flexion all the time because you're leaning forward
Speaker 1: to drag a sled, and over time the muscles have
Speaker 1: got tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter, until that
Speaker 1: actually blocked the nerve transmission because just on the surface Laider,
Speaker 1: all the musculars are there. And I said to the medic,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I can't film a spine that is that okay?
Speaker 1: He's like, totally fine, totally normal. Three to six months,
Speaker 1: don't worry about you. You'll be fine. She'll be good.
Speaker 1: He was right. It took me nearly six months to
Speaker 1: get full feeling back. But that was a case where
Speaker 1: I really stared into the abyss and went, well, how
Speaker 1: bad do you want it? Because you're just you're going
Speaker 1: to have to break a lot of stuff and not
Speaker 1: all of that stuff will repair. How far do you
Speaker 1: want to go? And I'm like, I'll burn to the ground.
Speaker 1: I don't care. Like, let's go. This is my one
Speaker 1: chance to do something that insane, and so I did.
Speaker 1: I stared in the byss, I went all the way
Speaker 1: to the back. I dug to the bottom of the
Speaker 1: well and opened that door and let that guy out
Speaker 1: and said have at it and do your worst, mate,
Speaker 1: Let's just do it. And we did. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: dragged that slid for one hundred ninety fty one minutes
Speaker 1: and I was the second Australian to ever finish that
Speaker 1: race and the first Australian to win it. But you
Speaker 1: had to let the air, you had to let the
Speaker 1: savage guy out of the back to get it done.
Speaker 3: You've won the freaking rest. That is ridiculous. I mean,
Speaker 3: they're stirring into.
Speaker 1: The They're throwing yourself into.
Speaker 4: Stirring into the well, they're stirring into the Paul Watkins
Speaker 4: the Best, which I think is just orders of magnitude
Speaker 4: removed from me.
Speaker 1: Now here's an indication of how how wrong I can be.
Speaker 1: That I finished that race, and then a year later
Speaker 1: I went so I won that. Now I'm a scientist,
Speaker 1: So did I figure out the equation? So the hypothesis was,
Speaker 1: did I figure out an equation on how to win
Speaker 1: those kind of you know, super long, super technical, super
Speaker 1: cold races, or did you just have a lucky day.
Speaker 1: Now you're a scientist, you know the only way you
Speaker 1: can test a hypothesis is to run an experiment. So
Speaker 1: I went to Sweden in twenty twenty three and did
Speaker 1: a very similar race with the sole purpose of trying
Speaker 1: to win it to see did I figure out the equation? Like,
Speaker 1: am I good enough? Do I know how to do this?
Speaker 1: Or did I just have one of those days where
Speaker 1: everyone else fellow. So I went into a five hundred
Speaker 1: and three kilometer ultra of the Arctic in northern Sweden
Speaker 1: last year and tested the hypothesis. And you burnt a
Speaker 1: few neurons and did some synaptic pruning with way excessive
Speaker 1: sleep deprivation and dragged my slip for eight days and
Speaker 1: still in the podium.
Speaker 3: So again that's that's another same thing as just you
Speaker 3: sleep when you want, but you Yeah, it was a different.
Speaker 1: Race in the sense that it was full back country wilderness.
Speaker 1: So this was in the Laplandian Arctic, so full back
Speaker 1: country wilderness like here, there's no map, here's your GPS.
Speaker 1: You know, figured it out as you go. And they'd
Speaker 1: said to us, I said, look, if you get into serious,
Speaker 1: serious trouble. You were crossing huge frozen lakes and trying
Speaker 1: to get over frozen rivers. They said, if it really
Speaker 1: goes wrong, hits your emergency button. But understand that the
Speaker 1: first person to rescue you will be you. It could
Speaker 1: be a day before we can get a snowmobile out
Speaker 1: to you, so figure it out until we get there.
Speaker 1: So this was a slightly different environment in case of
Speaker 1: going even if you wanted to sleep. Some times you're
Speaker 1: in areas where you can't just put the BV down
Speaker 1: because you're on a frozen lake. You can't stop here.
Speaker 1: You must get to the other side of the lake,
Speaker 1: which will take you most of today or tonight or
Speaker 1: whatever it is. So sometimes the case, if you want
Speaker 1: to sleep that cool story, you literally can't. You must
Speaker 1: stay awake until you get to an area where it's
Speaker 1: going to be safer to do that. So that logistically
Speaker 1: was a slightly different scenario. And I'd gone there attempting
Speaker 1: to win it. That original race in twenty nineteen, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to finish it, but ended up winning it.
Speaker 1: This I went through with the mindset of I'm going
Speaker 1: to win this, and that is a very different mental
Speaker 1: toolkit to bring, and it's a very different set of
Speaker 1: pressures to place on yourself right from the starting gun
Speaker 1: to play it out, and I had a very different experience.
Speaker 1: I came second in the end, but had a very
Speaker 1: different experience mentally. I ended up in a very dark
Speaker 1: hole early on because the race had gone not well
Speaker 1: for me individually. I was getting whipped and found myself
Speaker 1: way down the back of the pack and just in
Speaker 1: all kinds of diustrates, and then had to figure out
Speaker 1: a way to dig myself out of it hole and
Speaker 1: get myself back in a position where I could operate
Speaker 1: in the manner that I wanted to and execute the
Speaker 1: way I wanted to. And that was a that took
Speaker 1: a long time. That was there were some dark nights
Speaker 1: in that. I can tell you. Yeah, when it's you know,
Speaker 1: minus thirty and you completely exhausted and starving, you're like,
Speaker 1: this is this is not happy to This was not
Speaker 1: on the brochure or when I signed up.
Speaker 3: So, Matt, what sort of techniques do you have for
Speaker 3: overcoming this? Because most people really struggle with getting out
Speaker 3: of bed at six o'clock in the morning to go
Speaker 3: and do a workout, and they have this internal dialogue
Speaker 3: going on in this internal fight, and sometimes they win
Speaker 3: and sometimes they lose. But somebody who has has taken
Speaker 3: human endurance, both physical and mental to the end degree,
Speaker 3: what sort of things have you learned about the self talk?
Speaker 3: You know, the mental models, how all of this place
Speaker 3: that some people could actually use for them miseage.
Speaker 1: This is I love this. So you can you can
Speaker 1: go as deep down the rabbit hole as you want
Speaker 1: on this. So We'll start with the easy stuff and
Speaker 1: we'll direct to some of the deeper stuff if people
Speaker 1: want it. Some of the easy stuff is, let's talk
Speaker 1: about getting out of bed early and staying healthy. People
Speaker 1: think discipline is I've got to be Jocko or Goggins,
Speaker 1: or I've got to get up and at four point
Speaker 1: thirty and run a marathon and cold share and have
Speaker 1: a kal shake, and you know that's here discipline. I
Speaker 1: like to reframe discipline as an act of self love.
Speaker 1: If you had a goal for yourself, if you're a parent,
Speaker 1: if you want to be the best dad you can be,
Speaker 1: or you want to stay healthy, you want to you
Speaker 1: want to run a half marathon or do park round
Speaker 1: with your kids or whatever it is. Why would you
Speaker 1: not support yourself, Why would you sabotage yourself? Well, it
Speaker 1: should be an active self love. I'm going to get
Speaker 1: up at six or five point thirty and go for
Speaker 1: a walk with a dog or do this or whatever
Speaker 1: it is because it's in my best interest. Because I
Speaker 1: love myself. I want to be the best version of me,
Speaker 1: and I want to have that run with the kids,
Speaker 1: or I want them to look up to me, or
Speaker 1: a want a wife to go, wow, you look fantastic,
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't have to be heart angry and sad.
Speaker 1: It could be about celebrating the fact that you really
Speaker 1: want to be your best own champion. So for I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people, if you rephrase it that way,
Speaker 1: it reframes it in a manner they can understand, and
Speaker 1: it becomes a little bit more workable than what a
Speaker 1: lot of people are sold on social media about what
Speaker 1: being discipline needs to be.
Speaker 3: And I love this because then it's not a chore. Right.
Speaker 3: So when people are framing, and this is what often happens,
Speaker 3: whether it's weird, most are getting in cheap and their
Speaker 3: goal to do it is that I don't want to die,
Speaker 3: I don't want to get this chronic disease and all
Speaker 3: of this, and it's not it's not the right why,
Speaker 3: and then the action becomes a chure. I often talk
Speaker 3: about connecting stuff to your values, so you know what
Speaker 3: are your value and I think you're very similar. So
Speaker 3: it's self love and it's linking into values that are
Speaker 3: impotant to you at a deep Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And if you want to go, if you're looking
Speaker 1: at it from an expedition race, So why am I
Speaker 1: am I connected with myself to achieve those things is
Speaker 1: understanding how you got there in the first place. So
Speaker 1: when it comes to like big mountaineering or big races,
Speaker 1: I have a two step model for how I decided
Speaker 1: when I'm going to do those things. So let's say
Speaker 1: I see a race like I'd love to go do that.
Speaker 1: The first thing is you can't tell anyone for thirty days.
Speaker 1: Just think about it, and at the end of the
Speaker 1: thirty days, reflect how much did you think about it?
Speaker 1: And if it only popped up once or twice, it's
Speaker 1: not the thing. If you thought about it every day, okay,
Speaker 1: it's a thing. And then the next question is the
Speaker 1: hard one that you have to be really really honest about.
Speaker 1: If you could do it and no one would ever
Speaker 1: know and you can never tell us all, do you
Speaker 1: still want to do it? And you have to You've
Speaker 1: got to be honest because then when you go, it's
Speaker 1: for you. So when it's shit and it's you're at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the well, you'll go because you wanted
Speaker 1: to be here and there's no one You're like, I
Speaker 1: put myself here because I wanted this. Well, guess you're
Speaker 1: now getting that. So away we go, and if you're
Speaker 1: really honest with yourself, you avoid doing dumb stuff that
Speaker 1: you don't need to do. So I've used that for
Speaker 1: every expeditions. I've been invited to climb every three times,
Speaker 1: and three times I've said no. First question was a yes,
Speaker 1: I thought about it all the time. Second question was
Speaker 1: a no. Why do you want to go? Because when
Speaker 1: I do keynotes and stuff and people ask you, I
Speaker 1: wanted to be the guy that said, yes, I climbed it. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a terrible reason to go. That's probably the worst
Speaker 1: reason to go, because when the chips are down, you
Speaker 1: don't have any drive Internally, it's all about seeking validation
Speaker 1: from others, and that will not work. So the answer
Speaker 1: has to be no. You have to say no, sorry,
Speaker 1: I would be doing it for the wrong reasons, and
Speaker 1: the flipper is, of course, wouldn't.
Speaker 3: Just before you dive enery further. This is a little
Speaker 3: bit like the stoic philosophers who they talk about being
Speaker 3: good even when nobody is looking right, and it's because
Speaker 3: that internally it's ket intrinsic to actually good and have
Speaker 3: good character, and when no one's looking doing that stuff,
Speaker 3: and that's why I really love that.
Speaker 1: Sorry, So, yeah, Hamberway, because we can go down some
Speaker 1: really interesting rabbit holes and then you can get really
Speaker 1: into that. I mean, I recently read Dr Schwartz's book
Speaker 1: The Mind and the Brain. I know we've read that.
Speaker 1: It was fascinating. So he was he was a guy's
Speaker 1: treating O c D and then dys lecture, and he
Speaker 1: got deep down the rabbit hole of you know, the
Speaker 1: quantum state of the mind in terms of the fact
Speaker 1: that your thoughts. He was proving that your thoughts can
Speaker 1: actually have physical changes in the brain that he could
Speaker 1: measure through scans. So it really comes to that.
Speaker 3: It's just Jeffery swats Yeah, yeah, yeah from l I
Speaker 3: saw I saw him tap. That's that. I think he
Speaker 3: wrote a book called Brian Locke as well. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: boad all CD because I think he has all CD. Like,
Speaker 3: as he was talking, I'm like, do you you solved
Speaker 3: the rub?
Speaker 1: He did? He did. He was fascinating. His book was fascinating,
Speaker 1: but he was he was really getting down that rabbit
Speaker 1: hole of and look, he got deep into the quantum
Speaker 1: physics and mechanics of it. But the high level is
Speaker 1: this the talk that you have in your brain actually
Speaker 1: will physically change the structures of your brain. So if
Speaker 1: you're having the kind of discussions you want, then you're
Speaker 1: going to get the outcome you want. So for me
Speaker 1: in those races, simple things like any time we came
Speaker 1: past a medic crew or you know, a local, or
Speaker 1: any time anyone asked you how you were, the answer was,
Speaker 1: I'm fantastic. This is great, regardless of how deep in
Speaker 1: the hole you were. The discussion must be positive at
Speaker 1: all times. And it's true, like you've just got to
Speaker 1: keep telling yourself, I've got to be disciplined. You've got
Speaker 1: to put the zips back in the same spot every time,
Speaker 1: because day seven, when you have the IQ of a
Speaker 1: small rock, you need to know that the zips are
Speaker 1: there because that's as far as you can get. So
Speaker 1: every time I do that and force yourself, and every
Speaker 1: time you force yourself to eat, I'm doing this for
Speaker 1: future me. Future means is going to go. Thank god
Speaker 1: that guy kept subtling calories in even when he was
Speaker 1: frozen in his hands didn't work. Thank god he put
Speaker 1: this in the spot because now we're at a blizzard
Speaker 1: and we're freezing. When you the bivvy out, I don't
Speaker 1: have time to figure out where you left the zip
Speaker 1: last time, Like you've got to have that discipline because
Speaker 1: you are pre paying it for yourself later to come
Speaker 1: back and go, thank God yesterday me did that because
Speaker 1: I'm loving him now. So it's just there's a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of tool kits. You can put little things you
Speaker 1: can put in the toolkit and you pick them and
Speaker 1: you use them and they stack. There's no one big
Speaker 1: ticket item. It's a million little ones and you stack
Speaker 1: them up and they all start coming to play when
Speaker 1: you need them.
Speaker 3: There's two things I wanted to talk about there, and
Speaker 3: one with you seeing when people ask you how are
Speaker 3: you feeling, it's going to be fantastic. This I think
Speaker 3: is something everyday life right. And I've been telling my
Speaker 3: kids this is that when people say to you, you know,
Speaker 3: how are you doing, a lot of people go oh good,
Speaker 3: I oh tired. It's like I remember made the mind
Speaker 3: Jeremy who said this crazy professor who actually hired me
Speaker 3: at usf Wels guy. The first time I met him,
Speaker 3: I said, oh, Jeremy, hey you do and he says.
Speaker 1: I'm fabulous, and I was here we go.
Speaker 3: That's fucking awes like this guy, right, yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 3: just that you know, it's like, I'm fucking awesome, right,
Speaker 3: It's it's it's so much better than the kookie cutter.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I'm good. Or you start to complain, which
Speaker 3: is even friggin worse because your brain is going to
Speaker 3: commit sales to whatever you're paying attention to, and your
Speaker 3: thoughts as you say that, repetitive stuff. So that that's
Speaker 3: something that's really interesting. Right, even when you were in
Speaker 3: this ship storm and feeling awful, you're still going, I'm
Speaker 3: fucking awesome. I'm awesome. So that that's that's one thing
Speaker 3: and the other one and this is a this is
Speaker 3: a little rabbit hope we can go down. You talked
Speaker 3: about future me right, really interesting research from hal Hirshfield.
Speaker 3: And I don't know whether this is where you got
Speaker 3: it from, where you just came up with this by yourself,
Speaker 3: but he was a a psychologist who was looking at
Speaker 3: human behavior and took a bunch of people in the
Speaker 3: States who had their first job and they had to
Speaker 3: fill out the four to one nine K, which is
Speaker 3: where they commit part of their savings or not to
Speaker 3: their version of superannuation. Right, So it's voluntary over there,
Speaker 3: unlike mandatory here. And what he did was everybody went
Speaker 3: through that scenario but had to wear virtual reality reality goggles,
Speaker 3: and they saw themselves actually going up to the counter
Speaker 3: to fill out the form. Half of them saw themselves
Speaker 3: through the goggles as a hologram of them right now,
Speaker 3: and half of them saw themselves as a hologram of
Speaker 3: them at retirement age. And the people who saw themselves
Speaker 3: at retirement dage committed more than double the amount to
Speaker 3: their savings of the people who actually saw them as themselves.
Speaker 3: And it was that whole idea of a udgining your
Speaker 3: future self and doing good for your future self. So
Speaker 3: that was really interesting that you talked about doing the
Speaker 3: zeps and eating for future me. Where did you come
Speaker 3: up with that concept and just dig into it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a bit of both. I partially came up
Speaker 1: with it through training for ultra marathons, and part of
Speaker 1: it I completely stole from someone else. So the ultra
Speaker 1: marathon stuff is I look at training as a pre
Speaker 1: payment of hurt for future events. The more hurting I
Speaker 1: get done in training turn up to the events, I've
Speaker 1: already pre paid the pain. Thanks, and I paid earlier,
Speaker 1: so I've only got a little bite.
Speaker 3: And hard and hard competing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can only fight like your train mate. So
Speaker 1: for me, I'm out running and I'm pre paying so
Speaker 1: much stuff here. This will be great future. But it's
Speaker 1: gonna be really happy. And then I heard it and
Speaker 1: I it was on. It was Chris Willimson's pot and
Speaker 1: I can't remember who was interviewing, might have even been
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carr. Just you know, do something today that future
Speaker 1: you will thank you for. So tomorrow you will wake
Speaker 1: up and go, I'm so glad he went to bed early.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad he didn't eat that, or I'm so
Speaker 1: glad that he got that job done that we've avoided
Speaker 1: for ages. So just that idea of do something today
Speaker 1: that future you is going to thank you for. You
Speaker 1: just stack them. You just keeps stacking those things up,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, every day you waken up
Speaker 1: going we're ahead, We're already ahead. I haven't ever done
Speaker 1: anything yet and I'm ahead, And it becomes a very
Speaker 1: different mental discussion. And that going back to that mental
Speaker 1: discussion of saying you're fabulous and what have you. The
Speaker 1: other advantage of that is it becomes a weapon that
Speaker 1: you can use if you're a competitive athlete. So I
Speaker 1: had a case in one of those races where I
Speaker 1: had caught the lead bunch and I looked at the
Speaker 1: guy in front of me, and his harness was just
Speaker 1: slightly off. And we the sleds that we use that
Speaker 1: we have clips that hold the sled bag in place.
Speaker 1: One of his was undone and just trailing behind the sled,
Speaker 1: and I looked at it when I'd never accept that
Speaker 1: that's undisciplined. He's tired, right, that's a different discussion. So
Speaker 1: now I know that when I catch up to him
Speaker 1: and speed and look him by to eye, I am
Speaker 1: going to put on an absolutely show of how good
Speaker 1: I feel because and you'll believe it because you've been
Speaker 1: saying it to yourself the whole way. You'd have to
Speaker 1: make it up. But now you can actually use it
Speaker 1: as a tool on the offensive. And this guy's gonna
Speaker 1: be going crap. He looks great, and he's all it's
Speaker 1: a tool in the toolkit that you can use to
Speaker 1: bolster yourself proactively, or you can use offensively if you're
Speaker 1: competitive to go, we can use this. Our competitors see
Speaker 1: nothing but cohesive discipline. From the outside, regardless of what's
Speaker 1: happening under the water, all they see is that cohesive
Speaker 1: discipline and it just it annihilates them. It leaves you
Speaker 1: streaks ahead. So it really is that mental discussion and
Speaker 1: then reframing some of that hard stuff as this, you're
Speaker 1: going to be really happy about this tomorrow, and in fact,
Speaker 1: if you do even more, you're going to be even
Speaker 1: happier tomorrow. Happy do you want to be tomorrow? Let's
Speaker 1: just stack it up and we'll go from there.
Speaker 3: And do you tend to bring that mindset into your
Speaker 3: personal life no as well? Or do you just bring
Speaker 3: that out as a really sharp to use when you
Speaker 3: need it the most.
Speaker 1: I think if you're serious about it, you can't separate
Speaker 1: the two, and I don't think you should. I think
Speaker 1: you either that's your philosophy of how you operate or
Speaker 1: it's not. Because it's not the kind of thing you
Speaker 1: can just flick on and off. It's a continue that
Speaker 1: you will turn the dial up or down. But if
Speaker 1: you're serious about it, if you really practiced it and
Speaker 1: embedded it, you can't turn it off. You can put
Speaker 1: it down to one. And sometimes you've got to turn
Speaker 1: it to eleven. But it's not something you just go, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll be disciplined when I need to. That's not that's
Speaker 1: not how that works, as you would well know, Like
Speaker 1: it's it's either how you operate or it's not so
Speaker 1: for me, I try.
Speaker 3: And mold to supperround that exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's how you operate. And that's if it's
Speaker 1: such an effective tool for the times that are difficult,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't you embed it all the time the easier
Speaker 1: times easier? Like it's the you know, that's the tie
Speaker 1: that rises all boats. Like it's the tool you bring
Speaker 1: to every job. So why wouldn't you have it operating
Speaker 1: all the time and just adjust the die Like you know,
Speaker 1: if you're having fun with your kids, in your home,
Speaker 1: with your wife, whatever, you probably don't need to go
Speaker 1: full discipline mantra. But you can still be aware that
Speaker 1: my kids watch me every day and they see how
Speaker 1: I talk to myself, to them, to my wife. Dad's
Speaker 1: getting sweaty on the bike again because he does it
Speaker 1: every day. So my kids will come out and they'll
Speaker 1: hang off the they'll throw a kettlebell around, or they'll
Speaker 1: hang off the bike or they'll do whatever, and I
Speaker 1: don't mind that, but they go, oh, it's normal that
Speaker 1: we do something hard and sweaty every day. That's normal.
Speaker 1: And if we're frustrated, we go outside into the sun.
Speaker 1: Dad does that every day when he gets getting blowy top.
Speaker 1: He goes outside with a cuppa and yells at the
Speaker 1: dog or something because oh, okay, so if I'm feeling
Speaker 1: that way, I go outside. Yeah, that's that's what we do. Okay,
Speaker 1: So they pick it up.
Speaker 3: Our kids don't do some what's what we say. They
Speaker 3: do what they do, what we.
Speaker 1: Do, and they see everything, they miss nothing at.
Speaker 3: All, that's right. Yeah. So all the people, all the
Speaker 3: parents who are concerned about their kids being lazy and
Speaker 3: undisciplined and mental health issues, is like, examine your own behaviors.
Speaker 3: Examine your own behaviors around around exercise, around nutrition, around
Speaker 3: screen time, around your sleep paging, because as you say,
Speaker 3: they peck everything up everything normally.
Speaker 1: Whatever you tell your kids it is normally is whatever
Speaker 1: they say. And if they think, well, normally is you know,
Speaker 1: we don't sit at the dinner table every night. We
Speaker 1: see on the couch and we need this, that or
Speaker 1: the other, and we've got the TV on it, what
Speaker 1: have you. That's not our kids normally is family dinner
Speaker 1: seven nights a week at a table, no devices, no
Speaker 1: screens and anything. That's normal. That's just what we do.
Speaker 1: That's that's how we act and how we operate. They
Speaker 1: don't miss anything in that regard. I had another point
Speaker 1: and it's disappeared from them. But yeah, that was that
Speaker 1: was really sorry.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about a word that we both love, anti fragility.
Speaker 1: We just warm up.
Speaker 3: I'd tell you what I'd tell you. That is the
Speaker 3: word that I wish that I had come up with, antichid. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you're so talk us through your view of anti fragility?
Speaker 3: Is it in need? Is it learned? You know what?
Speaker 1: Is it hard?
Speaker 3: Does it extend into life? Just just give give us,
Speaker 3: give us that that Paul Watkins rant free reign on
Speaker 3: anti fragility that the guard reels are off right.
Speaker 1: So welcome to Peter's five hour podcast on any fragility.
Speaker 1: Prepare yourself. Let's go. So let's I like to use
Speaker 1: an example that people can wrap their heads around, because
Speaker 1: it's a weird concept for some people, they can't get it.
Speaker 1: So let's not talk about any fragility for a sec
Speaker 1: and let's talk about Let me give you a model,
Speaker 1: So let's think about health. Okay, So imagine a continuum
Speaker 1: from left to right. So one end we've got sick,
Speaker 1: and in the middle we've got well, and on the
Speaker 1: other end of the spectrum we've got fit. So we
Speaker 1: go from sick to well to fit. And you can
Speaker 1: map on that continuum any number of biomarkers, you know,
Speaker 1: blood pressure, resting, heart rate, cholesterol, whatever you want to
Speaker 1: put on there. Now, if I'm fit, for me to
Speaker 1: get sick, I have to go through well, if that
Speaker 1: makes sense, I have to almost degrade to being well
Speaker 1: before I can gets sick. If I'm just well, only
Speaker 1: one step away from being sick. So you want to
Speaker 1: be as far up that continue of this end to
Speaker 1: give you a buffer in the middle. So let's keep
Speaker 1: that continuum and change the words on it. On the
Speaker 1: left is fragile. If I drop you, you break. In
Speaker 1: the middle, I put resilient. If I drop you, you
Speaker 1: won't break, You'll just be okay, you won't move up
Speaker 1: or down. You'll retain the integrity you had before. But
Speaker 1: that's not the opposite of fragile. The opposite of fragile
Speaker 1: is I drop you and not only do you not break,
Speaker 1: you actually get stronger because of the experience. And so
Speaker 1: that's where I want to be. I want to be.
Speaker 1: How do I get in that cohort of people who
Speaker 1: the harder it gets, the better they get. And most
Speaker 1: people have that buffer for them to be fragile, I
Speaker 1: have to go all the way through being resilient and
Speaker 1: get all the way back. So my argument is that
Speaker 1: resilience is really important, but it's leaving an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of money on the table. We've missed the entire upside
Speaker 1: of the discussion of it's not enough to survive. You
Speaker 1: want to be thriving, because if you're resilient, you're only
Speaker 1: one step away from being fragile. And it's a continuum
Speaker 1: because you move. And that's okay. There will be times
Speaker 1: when you're anti fragile and times when you're just resilient,
Speaker 1: and times will we're fragile, and that's part of the
Speaker 1: human condition. That's okay. But if you're continuum only goes
Speaker 1: from fragile to resilient, you've cut off half of the
Speaker 1: opportunity for who you could be and what you're capable of,
Speaker 1: And the discussion is very different. If I'm having a
Speaker 1: discussion with PT about being resilient and I'm capping it
Speaker 1: you can survive this, versus having a discussion about what
Speaker 1: is the toolkit, what does the mental and behavioral models
Speaker 1: look like that you will thrive in hard environments. That's
Speaker 1: a whole different discussion. And then you start having a
Speaker 1: whole different discussion in your head about what am I
Speaker 1: capable of? What's at the other end of that spectrum
Speaker 1: that I haven't even considered yet that I need to
Speaker 1: open myself up to. So that's where I like Andy fragility.
Speaker 1: It really takes us away from this just the well
Speaker 1: being and resilient conversation to the no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 1: There's a whole other end of the spectrum here. So
Speaker 1: the discussion isn't I phrase it this way. The uncomfortable
Speaker 1: conversation that people won't have is people don't want their
Speaker 1: lives to be easier. They actually just want to be stronger.
Speaker 1: That's what they really want. But will you spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time going I wish this was easier, or
Speaker 1: in a corporate environment, how do we make it easier
Speaker 1: for PT? How do we make his job easier. He
Speaker 1: doesn't want it to be easier. He wants to be stronger.
Speaker 1: He wants to be better at it. And if you
Speaker 1: have that conversation with him, now we're having an entirely
Speaker 1: different model, an entirely different framework and discussion around that,
Speaker 1: And suddenly PT is not going. I got better at
Speaker 1: it because they made it easier and they lowered the bar.
Speaker 1: I got better at it because I'm better at it.
Speaker 1: So give me some more. Let's go, let's see what
Speaker 1: I can do next. So for me, I think it
Speaker 1: just opens up this massive conversation about where we go
Speaker 1: beyond resilience.
Speaker 3: That's yeah, no, no, basically yeah, Now admit you are.
Speaker 3: I'm going to give you a new nickname. You are
Speaker 3: the harmatic cure.
Speaker 1: Does that make me stupid?
Speaker 3: Not not at all? So hor me say so, are
Speaker 3: you familiar with the science of me that sub lethal
Speaker 3: exposure to stressors or toxins, which at very at high
Speaker 3: levels can kill you, but at low to moderate levels
Speaker 3: induce stress resistance. And this is what we're talking about, right,
Speaker 3: aren't The fragility is stress resistance. It's and I like
Speaker 3: to talk to people like the athlete doesn't go and
Speaker 3: trainin to stay the same or to bounce back and
Speaker 3: be the same. They trained to get bigger, faster, stronger,
Speaker 3: and that's that, that's that stress adaptation that anti fragility
Speaker 3: really encapulates. And I mean we are in violent agreement
Speaker 3: on this. I think resilience should not be the end game.
Speaker 3: The end game should be anti fragility, stress adaptation, or
Speaker 3: meat harmetic response, whatever, whatever terminology you want to use.
Speaker 3: Post traumatic growth, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, there is a lot
Speaker 3: of literature out there about post traumatic growth, but everybody
Speaker 3: talks about post traumatic stress to sort of. But I
Speaker 3: think the critical thing for people, and you know, we've
Speaker 3: talked about it a lot, is your mindset when you're
Speaker 3: going into it right, and that you know that comes
Speaker 3: out of the hardiness research about viewing things as challenges
Speaker 3: rather than read and loss and looking for the opportunity
Speaker 3: for growth and actually leaning into discomfort. It's so well
Speaker 3: summed up, and you are the kind of walking poster
Speaker 3: boy for this. But Epictetus said we must all undergo
Speaker 3: a hard winter training and not enter into lightly that
Speaker 3: for which we have not prepared, and he was talking
Speaker 3: about life.
Speaker 1: I remind myself that I'm running the rind Any in
Speaker 1: the Southwest Coast. Two degrees of Advice. Yes, Epytus would be.
Speaker 3: Proud of me. Okay, Bunny, absolutely. But and as you
Speaker 3: say you're investing in your future, you're prepaying the heart.
Speaker 3: But that I think what a lot of people don't realize,
Speaker 3: and this is the thing I've been thinking a moment more,
Speaker 3: is that it's a combination of two things to get
Speaker 3: to a point of anti fragility, which is where we
Speaker 3: should all be. Is it's a combination of a mindset
Speaker 3: and all the stuff that you talked about, but it's
Speaker 3: also about knowing that you can achieve that stuff, and
Speaker 3: in order to do that, you have to do hard stuff.
Speaker 3: This is where I believe and I think you'll be
Speaker 3: connected with this, is that so many parents are fucking
Speaker 3: up their kids' lives because they're helicopter parent in them.
Speaker 3: They're trying to save them, they're rescuing them from discomfort.
Speaker 3: And you do not grow in the absence of stress.
Speaker 3: That is not an environment for personal growth. You know,
Speaker 3: if people think about the stuff that they're really proud of,
Speaker 3: it's stuff that is freaking difficult, that's hard, that we
Speaker 3: overcome that's the.
Speaker 1: Best chapters in your story, and we should. I always
Speaker 1: try and point out from talking to parents, like you
Speaker 1: know asterix On that to do parenting well, it's freaking hard,
Speaker 1: Like it is really really hard. So trick yourself, guy.
Speaker 3: Ah.
Speaker 1: The parents that have you got screen time, ountder control
Speaker 1: and got their kids well behaved, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: The lucky Yeah, how do you get you behave like that?
Speaker 1: I can tell you how relentless parenting like that's what
Speaker 1: I do. It's freaking hard and it's soul crushing some days,
Speaker 1: but that's your job, like you owe it to them
Speaker 1: to put in that effort. So put in that effort.
Speaker 1: And it is really difficult, and it's saying no a lot,
Speaker 1: and it's being not liked a lot, like I say that.
Speaker 1: You know, my oldest, my job isn't to be your
Speaker 1: best friend like some days, it's to be your worst enemy.
Speaker 3: Mate.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but the answer is no. Do it all,
Speaker 1: my well, youngest, I'm bored, Dad, good, what am I
Speaker 1: going to do? Figure it out? Mate? You've got a
Speaker 1: room for the toys. If we live on five acres,
Speaker 1: go talk to the sheep. I don't know, I mate,
Speaker 1: Go figure it out. I'm busy, Well, I'm being bored.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like that, that is that is the exact response.
Speaker 1: That congratulations, Now go away, go.
Speaker 3: And get curious.
Speaker 1: Right, That's the thing.
Speaker 3: But also, and I love that concept of relentless parenting
Speaker 3: because it is frigging hard to reis will. And I
Speaker 3: think it's harder than it used to be because there
Speaker 3: are yeah, there are so many more challenges, you know.
Speaker 3: I also say, and every parental say, jeez, life is
Speaker 3: so much harder when we were growing up, right, And
Speaker 3: it was in a sense because we all had to
Speaker 3: walk thirteen miles the school, yeah, through snow, yeah and burfoot.
Speaker 3: But we never had all of these temptations, right, We
Speaker 3: never had all of this ultra process food that just
Speaker 3: hijacks kids' brains and once they've had it, that's all
Speaker 3: they want, like drug addicts. We never had the whole
Speaker 3: social media stuff, the video games that are just unbelievable
Speaker 3: that once a kid does those, they don't want anything else. Like,
Speaker 3: we never had that stuff. Our parents never had to
Speaker 3: deal with that, And that's why I think you're right.
Speaker 3: We have to be the relentless pont to. And I
Speaker 3: always say that you're not their friend, you're that parent.
Speaker 3: And I think that's an issue. That are an error
Speaker 3: that a lot met and it's hard.
Speaker 1: You've got to respect that. Like you said, with all
Speaker 1: the video games and social media and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff that's nefariously stacked against you. That's not just oh,
Speaker 1: it's something in the environment that we've got to deal with. No,
Speaker 1: that's that's targeting people and a lot of the kids
Speaker 1: to pull them down the rabbit hole. Like it's actually
Speaker 1: working against you. So you need to be active. Like
Speaker 1: our kids wanted to get on YouTube, so we will
Speaker 1: do YouTube. Kids will have a look at that. You
Speaker 1: think that'd be fine. And I look at it and
Speaker 1: I'm watching the kids watching it with the kids, and
Speaker 1: it was chock full of ads and they're all food
Speaker 1: ads and the food was horrendous. I'm like, we're done.
Speaker 1: And the games it was promoting, We're out. We're done.
Speaker 1: Nahe like, it's just I'm sorry, that is not healthy
Speaker 1: for you. And I always argue that we're not. I
Speaker 1: guess we're not depriving our kids of social media. Okay,
Speaker 1: kids have screen time because I need them to learn
Speaker 1: how to self regulate on social media and on technology
Speaker 1: because that is the world they live in. See the
Speaker 1: world as it is, not how you want it to be.
Speaker 1: My kids will grow up with technology in social media,
Speaker 1: so my job as a parent is to teach them
Speaker 1: how to self regulate in that environment, and we have
Speaker 1: to expose them to that, but do it in a
Speaker 1: manner where they understand, where when they get frustrated, Hey, mate,
Speaker 1: you're looking a bit angry about that game. What do
Speaker 1: we do when we feel like is it making you
Speaker 1: feel good?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Dad? So what do we do? We turn it off
Speaker 1: on a guy outside and yell at the dog. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's go outside and yell at dog. You needed to
Speaker 1: kind of have You've got to have those discussions, let
Speaker 1: them get to that point and then work through it
Speaker 1: with them and go, okay, what are your strategies? Mate?
Speaker 1: What do we do and we don't feel is it
Speaker 1: making it feel good? No? Turn it off and then
Speaker 1: it's gone. Oh I can turn it off down and
Speaker 1: walk away. Yeah, you're in charge, mate, But that's parenting.
Speaker 1: You've got to be there to do that.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. I mean I've had something very very
Speaker 3: similar recently with Oscar being on his video game because
Speaker 3: we were eight and he was on for heaps of
Speaker 3: time and we came home and he was just in
Speaker 3: a shitty mood. He was grumpy, and then he realized
Speaker 3: that it was being on the screen right, and we
Speaker 3: had that exact conversation. Let's come back to the stuff
Speaker 3: that you've been going through, so talk us through the
Speaker 3: third man effect.
Speaker 1: This is terrify. So I did not know what this
Speaker 1: was until two weeks ago and my wife sent me
Speaker 1: this article about the third man effect and she's like,
Speaker 1: that's what happened to you last year. Oh so how
Speaker 1: to read this? So I'll tell you what happened and
Speaker 1: I'll explain the third man effect. So this was in
Speaker 1: this race in Sweden in March last year. So up
Speaker 1: in the lap landing Arctic, I got to about four
Speaker 1: or five days in super sleept a proble. We're way
Speaker 1: past hallucinations. Like I know, as when I do these races,
Speaker 1: part of me, the scientist's brain, part of me loves
Speaker 1: watching my body devolve as it goes through the experience.
Speaker 1: So I know, night one you're going to hear stuff.
Speaker 1: It's not night two. Here come the visuals, the lights.
Speaker 1: You see some weird things. We know they're not real.
Speaker 1: Night three. Everything's real. It doesn't matter. There's a dragon, giraffe,
Speaker 1: people are trying to kill me like you name it,
Speaker 1: it's all happening. I got you about day five, and
Speaker 1: I was really pushing her because I was trying to
Speaker 1: get up from the field and trying to survive. The
Speaker 1: conditions were horrendous, and I remember one night having this
Speaker 1: overwhelming belief that there was a lady behind me. I
Speaker 1: couldn't see her, but I knew she was there. I
Speaker 1: felt quite calm about it, like I wasn't worried, you know.
Speaker 1: I wondered like is this the wood sprite spirit of
Speaker 1: the lapland an Arctic or something. But it got to
Speaker 1: the point where I would stop and make a freeze
Speaker 1: dried meal and I'd be halfway through it and I'd go, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, and I'd turn around to offer a food
Speaker 1: and feel like I was a terrible host. That's how
Speaker 1: real she seemed to me. Strong, and it had some
Speaker 1: longevity to it. Look. I got to a checkpoint and
Speaker 1: there was a wooden bench seat, and I grabbed two
Speaker 1: hours sleep on this wooden bench seat, and I woke
Speaker 1: up and The first thought in my mind was, she's
Speaker 1: still outside. You didn't ask her in. Get outside and
Speaker 1: make sure she's okay. Like it. It's not like you
Speaker 1: got some sleep. And the whole thing went away, and
Speaker 1: I got ever, said to my wife and my dad said,
Speaker 1: for three days, I felt like there was a woman
Speaker 1: following me. She was not protecting me, but I just
Speaker 1: felt comfort that she was there anyway. The year lady,
Speaker 1: she sends me this article third Man effect. So polar
Speaker 1: explorers get this a lot.
Speaker 3: And what it is.
Speaker 1: Your brain gets to a point in an extreme duress,
Speaker 1: psychological duress, it will create and manifest a third person,
Speaker 1: another entity that will the idea being that it provides
Speaker 1: you comfort so that you will sustain and continue on.
Speaker 1: So rather than just stopping and freezing to death in
Speaker 1: the snow, your brain says, there's someone Here's it's all right,
Speaker 1: there's someone here that your friend. We're going to be okay,
Speaker 1: keep going, keep going, it's all right, there's a friend
Speaker 1: with you. We can feel positive, feel that positive energy
Speaker 1: and move for it. So looking back, yeah, my brain,
Speaker 1: I knew she wasn't real, but she also seemed very
Speaker 1: real to me. But that's what it was my brain
Speaker 1: had constructed this, this entity as a last ditch psychological
Speaker 1: protective mechanism to go, keep going. It's going to be okay,
Speaker 1: there's someone here.
Speaker 3: Jesus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't know what it was at the time,
Speaker 1: but apparently it's it's the third man effect. It's and
Speaker 1: and polar Explorers on you know people trudge into the
Speaker 1: South Pole of the North Pole or whatever. Said, yeah,
Speaker 1: they've they've experienced it. When you really bottom of the well,
Speaker 1: the brain's going, We've got to do something here. What
Speaker 1: do we do? Let's get an imaginary friend away you go.
Speaker 3: That's amazing. I have hallucinated on Day SAVEN of combat
Speaker 3: Survival and Resistance to Interrogation training, but nothing like that there.
Speaker 3: I was probably on your day two because it was tough,
Speaker 3: but not not freaking tough, and it's fascinated.
Speaker 1: I have memories that I know are not true, like
Speaker 1: I very vivid, clear memories that I know are false.
Speaker 1: And I have had experiences out there that I can't verify,
Speaker 1: like I've had interactions from like I have. Because you're alone,
Speaker 1: you don't see another human for days sometimes because you're
Speaker 1: so sparsely separated, Like I have no way of telling
Speaker 1: whether that person that I spoke to was real or
Speaker 1: that thing that I saw was real, I've got no
Speaker 1: I could argue either way. I can't verify.
Speaker 3: It must be really interesting for me as a scientist
Speaker 3: to be observing this stuff, right, it's like, wow, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's really good.
Speaker 4: I had.
Speaker 1: I did a full complete interview mid race at a
Speaker 1: checkpoint with a German TV crew in Northern Canada, right
Speaker 1: in like I was. I was at a checkpoint, chatting
Speaker 1: the guys at a film guy camera guy do with
Speaker 1: a mic, blah blah blah. No one can verify it.
Speaker 1: Everyone who was there is like there was no one there, mate,
Speaker 1: Like I've never found the interview. I can't find eve
Speaker 1: when I was smoking to you you who else saw that?
Speaker 3: Did do?
Speaker 1: I get interviewed by the German film crew and everyone's like,
Speaker 1: well this is awkward, Like okay, this is very awkward.
Speaker 1: Like I to this day, I don't actually know whether
Speaker 1: it happened or not because I can't verify it, like
Speaker 1: no one else saw them. I've never found the interview.
Speaker 1: But to my like I can, I can picture the
Speaker 1: three guys there like we were the Checkbob was a
Speaker 1: shipping container in the Arctic, and I was there getting changed,
Speaker 1: eating the freeze dried, and the cameraman. I'll go to
Speaker 1: my graves not knowing if that happened or not. I
Speaker 1: have no idea. I don't know. Maybe why were they
Speaker 1: doing I don't know, Like what's going on in my brain.
Speaker 3: Is brellidant. So man, this stuff can can be addictive, right,
Speaker 3: what is next to you for you? And and like
Speaker 3: what's your thought process about this sort of stuff? And
Speaker 3: and is there an end game? You know what? What
Speaker 3: kind of goes through your head when you think about
Speaker 3: the future.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a it's a really important question. Hung
Speaker 1: my boots up from Higltitude mountaineering because you know, I
Speaker 1: got to the point where I was watching them longline
Speaker 1: the bodies off and you're like you you're going up
Speaker 1: there next, and you're like, how far a dore you
Speaker 1: need to go here? Like when you're a single guy,
Speaker 1: it's different. You can just keep pushing the chips all
Speaker 1: in all the time. But you get married, you have kids,
Speaker 1: and I always explain to people like, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: doing keynotes and these photos look amazing, but I got
Speaker 1: the photo. But back home there's all this cast of
Speaker 1: people who are not getting cool photos for Instagram, who
Speaker 1: are working their ass off, so I can go get
Speaker 1: that because you know I'm away, which my wife works
Speaker 1: full time. She's a school principal, so she's now juggling
Speaker 1: full time work and two kids. And you know, my
Speaker 1: parents are helping out. Her parents are helping out. Like
Speaker 1: You've done all this training, and I do a lot
Speaker 1: of my training at night. Logistically it works, but there's
Speaker 1: still sacrifices that you're not at home because you're off
Speaker 1: doing epic training runs and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So there are people now paying costs for you to
Speaker 1: do some of this stuff. So hung the boots up going,
Speaker 1: I can't just keep pushing the chips all in. But
Speaker 1: then found out had a weird skill set, very good
Speaker 1: in cold where the very good hauling heavy loads can
Speaker 1: go very long periods of time doing that. Is there
Speaker 1: a place I can use that in? Yeah, Arctic ultras.
Speaker 1: Oh cool, didn't even know that was a thing. And
Speaker 1: away you go. And then part of it is why
Speaker 1: do you do these things? Well? I do them for
Speaker 1: me because they're the only vehicle I've found where I
Speaker 1: can dig all the way to the bottom of the
Speaker 1: well and see who's there. But for me, it's a
Speaker 1: very almost spiritual kind of thing. It's a physical thing
Speaker 1: and it's a mental thing. But it just reminds you
Speaker 1: when you go out there. Mountains don't care about your
Speaker 1: business card. You know, the Arctic doesn't care what you earn.
Speaker 1: It doesn't give us stuff how many followers you've got.
Speaker 1: It's just did you do the work to earn the
Speaker 1: right to even attempt this, And then when you're in
Speaker 1: the middle of it, let's see what you're worth and
Speaker 1: see what you've got. So for me, there's that experience,
Speaker 1: But then you get into that thinking, well, now I'm
Speaker 1: doing these races and I'm pushing to get to the
Speaker 1: very end, like there's international fields and I'm pushing to
Speaker 1: get right on the podium, and that comes at a cost.
Speaker 1: I got back from that Sweden race last year and
Speaker 1: for a few months I had trouble with people's names,
Speaker 1: Like I'd get a surname or a first name, but
Speaker 1: not a full name. So you're like, I think we
Speaker 1: might have earn a few too many neurons out that's
Speaker 1: the decoration.
Speaker 3: And that extreme I would like to see mri Skut
Speaker 3: would impulse.
Speaker 1: It's an empty cabin. So you do you go, well, okay,
Speaker 1: why do you do these things? You're like, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: to push yourself and to have that experience in that
Speaker 1: place that's really important. But you know, I'm forty nine
Speaker 1: now and I'm in good nick. I think I can
Speaker 1: still operate at the thin end of the wedge for
Speaker 1: a period of time. But I'm also starting to think
Speaker 1: now about you need to have a strategy to transition
Speaker 1: to go. You need to still go and enjoy them
Speaker 1: and come away with some gratitude and have an experience
Speaker 1: that justifies your sacrifice and the sacrifice of those around
Speaker 1: you for you to do these things. So there's that
Speaker 1: that balancing act, and I'm still navigating that. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the answer is. I will continue to do stuff,
Speaker 1: much to my mother's She's like, what's next. There'll be something,
Speaker 1: There's always something. You're always planning something, you ought to
Speaker 1: be something. But for me, it's a case of make
Speaker 1: sure that the reason that you're going to make sacrifices
Speaker 1: and other make sacrifices is a valid one. It's good enough.
Speaker 1: So for example, to do another cold race, for me,
Speaker 1: doesn't really stack up. I've done three major ones, I've
Speaker 1: podium two of them. What am I going back to prove?
Speaker 1: Are you going to learn? Well? Probably not. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to learn much more doing that. Okay, If you're
Speaker 1: going to go through to that level again, do it
Speaker 1: in a different environment so that we're back learning again.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you're actually going to sound silly if I go
Speaker 1: to another six hundred klometer arctic ultra. That's a comfort
Speaker 1: zone for me almost because I know what to expect
Speaker 1: and how to operate. So you should go somewhere and
Speaker 1: do something different because that's where you'll learn. And that's
Speaker 1: your job to keep learning and discovering stuff about yourself.
Speaker 1: So try a different hard thing. So for me, I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to navigate that. What's the next hard thing
Speaker 1: that's the right hard thing and a work wild hard
Speaker 1: thing but respects everyone in my circle, And I'm trying
Speaker 1: to navigate that. I don't know what that looks like yet,
Speaker 1: but I'm enjoying that process, you know, love the process.
Speaker 1: I always say the start line is a celebration. It's
Speaker 1: a celebration of all the work that you did to
Speaker 1: get there. So enjoy, find the love and the enjoyment
Speaker 1: and the value in the work. And then when you
Speaker 1: get to the start line, that's that's the celebration. You
Speaker 1: aren't the right to be here. Celebrate that and then
Speaker 1: go execute.
Speaker 3: Very cool, very cool. Indeed, last question, how do you
Speaker 3: still down?
Speaker 1: Very very valid question.
Speaker 3: PT You've got to plead.
Speaker 2: I'll let you know.
Speaker 1: I'll let you know. I don't know. I always joke going,
Speaker 1: you know, I give people who journal and do cold
Speaker 1: pungers and they say I give them a hard time,
Speaker 1: you know, tongue in cheek. I don't, you know. I
Speaker 1: post up the day like you know, I didn't write
Speaker 1: my journal yesterday. That's now seventeen, three hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: three days I've missed, you know, in a row. But
Speaker 1: some people journal with pen and paper. I journal with
Speaker 1: a pair of runners and VO two. That's my journaling.
Speaker 1: So for me, sometimes the training isn't just training. That's
Speaker 1: what I do. That's part of my identity. I get
Speaker 1: out and I go for a run every day. And
Speaker 1: sometimes that's very focused because I've got an event coming up,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's because that's how I best operate as
Speaker 1: a human. That's my operating system. So I journal outside
Speaker 1: with a pair of shoes. Other people journal with a
Speaker 1: pen and paper. That you find your thing, that's okay.
Speaker 1: So for me slowing down, do.
Speaker 3: You find just a distance where the runners high kicks
Speaker 3: in for you?
Speaker 1: Not particularly?
Speaker 3: No, you know that that kind of casar chic like
Speaker 3: chilled out stuff that a lot of runners talk about.
Speaker 3: I don't run anywhere near enough to find that.
Speaker 1: No, for me, it's more it's more the environment. So
Speaker 1: for me, I love like if I head out, you know,
Speaker 1: pre dawn getting it because I'm in a rural area.
Speaker 1: You get out and the sun's coming up and you're
Speaker 1: running through you know, paddocks and cows and sheep and
Speaker 1: all that, and you're like, damn it is this Like
Speaker 1: you get to do this? You have a functioning body.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, I joked that I'm not elite,
Speaker 1: like you know, I've got chicken stick legs and thick
Speaker 1: glasses or whatever. But imagine how many people would give
Speaker 1: anything to be in a position where they could go
Speaker 1: out and walk that or run that, and you can
Speaker 1: do it for your own free will? How do you
Speaker 1: not do that? So for me, it's more about I
Speaker 1: get to do that, and the sun's coming up and
Speaker 1: it's and it's it's a beautiful part of the world.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of parts of the world that
Speaker 1: aren't they beautiful. Shit, it's pretty cool hearing it. So
Speaker 1: for me, it's really just there's no if I do
Speaker 1: twelve k's I hear, you know, harps and violins. Now
Speaker 1: I just get out and some days ship and some
Speaker 1: days you're like, how good's this? Like that? I don't
Speaker 1: know whether it gets much better than this, you.
Speaker 3: Know where we go?
Speaker 1: How lucky are we?
Speaker 3: Very cool? Matt, you are definitely the epetome of anti fragile.
Speaker 3: We could talk for the herculean hormatic human, but what
Speaker 3: I really love is the filhilosophical insights that the a
Speaker 3: that you have learned from being an addict of stirring
Speaker 3: into the abyss. Right, THEO used to do it once
Speaker 3: or twice in their life, but you do it routinely.
Speaker 3: But just how you've actually taken that and and and
Speaker 3: formulated a whole philosophy. But also for helping others with
Speaker 3: with corporates and with school kids. So if there's any
Speaker 3: principles out there, if there's any corporates out there, Paul
Speaker 3: Watkins is the guy for your next event? Or can
Speaker 3: people find out more about you and the crazy ship
Speaker 3: that you do, but also any any any offers and
Speaker 3: lessons that you have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Paul Watkins dot com dot IU that's my website.
Speaker 1: You can find the high level details there. I'm on
Speaker 1: LinkedIn a lot like a lot, so I post, I
Speaker 1: write a lot there and I write on sub steck
Speaker 1: as well. But look find primary Paul Watkins dot com
Speaker 1: that I use. Find me there or find me on LinkedIn,
Speaker 1: and from there you can pick your rabbit hole and
Speaker 1: go from there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this has been absolutely awesome, so thank you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. I don't really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, it was a It was a wonderful conversation.
Speaker 3: Absolutely loved it. So I think I think we'll have
Speaker 3: to do this again at some stage. If we mustn't
Speaker 3: go down a rabbit hop.
Speaker 1: If we might, we'll solve all the world's problems. Make
Speaker 1: give us another hour, we'd have most of its sort.
Speaker 3: And already indeed, all right, man, thanks for your time
Speaker 3: and have a great text.
Speaker 1: But I love it. Thanks