- Hey everybody what's up? It's Chase, welcome to
another episode of the show. Chase Jarvis LIVE Show
here on CreativeLive and you know this show,
this is where I sit down with amazing humans and
I do everything I can to unpack their brains with the goal of helping you in your
hobby, career and, or life. My guest today is many
things an ultra-marathoner, an endurance athlete, a
number one New York Times best seller and the host
of one of the top podcasts out there in the world
called the Rich Roll Podcast. My guest is no longer a secret, it's Rich Roll in the house
welcome to the show buddy. (upbeat music) - So good to be here man. - Thank you. - You are like the OG in the space. - Yes. - I mean I don't know when
you started your stuff - Long, long time ago.
- But it was a long time ago. And I've been a subscriber
to your newsletter and a watcher of your, everything you've put out for
like I don't even remember when it didn't exist. - Yes, yes.
- So as somebody who now kind of travels in a similar space that you do
- Yeah I just wanna thank you. - Thank you.
- For being an inspiration and setting an example for
like high quality content man. - Oh stop, stop. (Rich laughs) - No I'm really happy to be here and it's super cool to finally meet you. - Thanks and we were just talking before the camera started
rolling about we're planning for the exchange of ideas and well I will be on the Rich Roll
Podcast soon, we're scheming. It's a super treat to have you on the show and I also have noticed
your hard work from afar. Starting one of the
first things I realized was when you ran five Ironmans or you did because it's more than running there is biking and swimming. Five in, was it five or seven
days or something like that in Hawaii on all the different islands? - I did this thing... - This is freakish by the way. - Yeah. - This is no like, this is--
- It was a while ago. Well it was in 2010 so the
story is my buddy Jason Lester who's an incredible endurance athlete, an inspirational figure. A training partner of mine from many, an Ultraman competition, I would do these double
Ironman competitions. He came up with this harebrained scheme, this idea to try to complete five Ironmans on five Hawaiian Islands in five days. Literally an Ironman a day, traveling island to island to island. - Tell people who don't know
what an Ironman actually is. - Yeah, for those that don't know an Ironman a very long triathlon. Widely considered the ultimate
test of human endurance. Where in over the course of
one day, you swim 2.4 miles. You ride your bike 112
miles and then you celebrate that by running a marathon, all at once. Super difficult and hard. - And you wanted to stack five of those? - Jesus, decided we should
do five of those in a row and in between get on airplanes and try to schlep our gear from
island to island to island. So we took a stab at it in 2010 on May 5th, I might add. So it was five five on the day that we started it.
- Wow, bam bam. - We ran into all kinds of
crazy logistical problems. It was quite the in
certain respects a debacle but also an amazing
challenge and adventure. So it took us a little
bit longer than five days but we got it done, it was crazy. - You're making it sound
like it was two years but it was actually like seven days or-- - It was like six and a half days. - Yeah I mean we were
like losing bike parts, like we had some people,
some beautiful people who volunteered to help us. - [Chase] Yeah. - But we didn't have a
whole crew situation dollar we didn't know we were doing
- Yeah, infrastructure. No private flights.
- The crazy thing was that the logistics were just as challenging, it was almost a relief to just
be out on your bike doing it because we knew we have
to finish by this time because the last plane leaves the island. And we have to get on that and we have to bring all our gear, and then we would get to the next island and have to get to our hotel. And by the time we ate and took a shower it was the middle of the night and we had two or three hours of sleep. So the sleep deprivation
started to catch up to us and we're, I mean it was
bananas the whole thing that. - I remember that being widely reported - Yeah.
- And oh my God who is this guy?
- Right. - I gotta meet this character man. So and here we are whatever years later.
- We're here. - Well A, thanks for starting off with the kind words around content. You have been putting out a ton of high-quality content as well. The areas of focus that
I wanna talk about today that it's my goal to assemble
world-class performers from a whole bunch of disciplines. And you have both achieved an amazing physical feats, you've also had built a
really interesting business. But mostly your ideas
around what's possible, see the story we just talked about, plant-based diet something
I'm fascinated by. The storytelling of your book. And I think you have two books, right? You have a cookbook that you did with your wife is that right? Or sort of a plant-based, you've got your memoir.
- We've got yeah. I wrote a memoir called Finding Ultra, and then we have three cookbooks actually. - Three cookbooks, cool. Not being an only
plant-based eater I have not, my confession here for you is that I have not consumed the cookbooks. But Finding Ultra is an
amazing narrative of your life and it's not just about plant-based diet, it's about your life. So I'd like to start, let's
go back in time we can. You're an endurance athlete,
what made you want to be that? What part of you, this is a
strange part of the human brain. - Yeah.
- That clicks into saying, I wanna run a marathon plus 120 mile plus a marathon, bike 120 miles and swim two and a half, that's nuts. And you've done crazier
stuff too by the way. - Yeah I've done a bunch of stuff. I mean I look at it all, not to put too woo of a point on it but for me it's like
all a spiritual journey of personal growth, and
these crazy endurance races are like a vehicle for self-discovery. In the same way that an
artist might find that in a photograph or in
pursuing a photograph or a painting or making a film. The medium for me is the outer limits of what my body is capable of. And I think it was originally inspired by a couple things. First of all I was a swimmer in college. So I had a background as an athlete, I swam at Stanford in the late 1980s. We won two NCAA Championships
when I was there. I was a benchwarmer I was by no means a big point scorer or star on that team, but I competed as an athlete
at a very high level. Drugs and alcohol destroyed that career and it really cut the head off me achieving my potential as an athlete. So I feel like later in life I
still had unfinished business that I wanted to pursue to see
what I would be capable of. And also athletics aside when I hit around 40, 41
I was having a little bit of an existential crisis about what I was doing with my life. There's a longer story baked into that but basically I've been
pursuing this career in law. I was on the partnership track at a big prestigious law firm. - Went to law at Cornell. - I went to law at Cornell. In the wake of problems
with drugs and alcohol I got sober at 31 and then
spent the next nine years trying to repair all the
wreckage that I'd created as a result of my drinking and using, was successful in that regard
and was very much blindly just looking at that traditional equation of success. Partnership, car, house, brass ring, the whole like traditional notion of what it means to be a
successful male in America. - [Chase] Yeah. - And played that out to
the point where I realized that there was some emptiness in that. And had this confused state about what I was doing with myself because I wasn't doing it out of a passion for the law or any of that, I was doing it to prove to myself and to others that I
could be a responsible, respectful person after being such a train wreck for so many years. And I think trying to process
what that meant for myself created this this sense of confusion. And I found myself back into fitness as a way of spending time
alone to process all of this, to try to find a way forward. There was never some conscious decision that I was gonna become
this competitive athlete in my forties and go back and
revisit unfinished business. - [Chase] Yeah. - It was really an organic
outgrowth out of trying to, out of wrestling with and
trying to answer these questions for myself about what I
was gonna do with my life. - Now I would... Is there a relationship
between your addiction to drugs and alcohol and your passion, would you call it an
addiction to exercise. Was it, were trading one thing for, a destructive thing for a healthy thing? Or was there a reconciliation process 'cause I think trauma and
we all have trauma in life and we all expressed it in different ways, and I'm just curious how you thought about it.
- Yeah. I think it's a little bit of both. What you find in the
ultra-endurance community is a lot of people who are in recovery from some form of abuse
or substance addiction. And I think it would be
intellectually dishonest to say no. I was addicted to drugs and alcohol but my relationship with these, doing these crazy things
is completely healthy. Of course there's some
compulsive aspect to that. - [Chase] Yeah. - But I found my healthier self through those pursuits. Like for me taking the drink
was always the easy way out. And getting up in the morning
to put your running shoes on or staring down the barrel of
some crazy difficult workout, that's a harder choice. That requires a little bit
of backbone and character. So for me it's been a learning experience and it's been a positive thing. But I do have to keep
those tendencies in check. I'm married, I've got four kids like-- - Four? Congrats.
- Left unchecked, like I'll move into a herd
and just train all day. And just think about myself. Like I'm naturally a
selfish self-seeking person. And recovery for me is
about balancing that out against everything else in my life, that's truly important. So the pendulum is always swinging and I always have to kind
of be doing an inventory about how I'm relating to the world and is that in a healthy way or is that in a very
unhealthy or compulsive way. - I love that you said
unfinished business. I think that it's a beautiful descriptor, and do you feel that
you've been able to redeem some of that business
that was that was undone? - Certainly I mean now I look back on it, and the idea that I needed to redeem anything is sort of silly. But certainly I have done that, I mean I've been more successful and more lauded for things
I've done athletically than I ever was when I was
truly at my athletic peak. - [Chase] Yeah. - So that's been
fascinating and unexpected and completely bizarre. I got into these events like I said as a sort of spiritual odyssey to learn more about what made me tick. The fact that anybody
else would care about that other than maybe my wife
has been a strange journey. And a story I'm happy to now tell but one that was not intended
and very much unexpected. - Well let's keep telling it. So you, there's this desire to pursue some spiritual awakening, 40s you can call it a midlife crisis. Why I wanna pull on this is,
it's not not a surprise here. There are a lot of people
who have pursued a path, often the path whether
it was law or medicine or doing what your father or
mother did because it was easy. There's a lot of people who are listening and watching right now,
who are playing this out and saying, oh my gosh this is me. I'm in the middle of my life
and thinking, what have I done? I've been living the
dream than somebody else had for me, I'm pursuing
somebody else's script it's time I gotta write my own. So share with us your version. How do you reconcile those things and get started with the next chapter. - I wish I could give you
the three bullet points. Here's how you do it.
- There is three points you need to know kids. - For me it was a long
drawn-out painful experience. And like I said getting out of my bike or getting out on the trail to run or jumping in the pool or the ocean, were almost ways of, of connecting with myself the
in the best way that I could. Like that time alone. I wasn't at the time an active meditator, and I wouldn't say that
those training sessions were meditation proper but
they were an active meditation that allowed me to connect
with myself in a deeper way. In a way that I wasn't used to that allowed me the space and the time and the bandwidth to really
sit with my discontent and really ponder what a
future might look like. And what I get to do
now was not the result of some grand scheme that I
concocted while out on the bike, it's really been an organic outgrowth of me making it a fundamental decision to just start doing what felt right to me. - [Chase] Yeah. - To follow my instincts in my intuition irrespective of whatever
the peanut gallery had to say about it or whether society was gonna launder me with
social approval or not. To just say, look I don't care. I like what it feels
like to jump in the pool. I like what it feels like to
have the sun on my shoulder on a trail run at dawn and I'm
gonna just keep doing that, in a very childlike way, it's like play. And as we grow up we're taught, well this is things we don't do any more. This is mature, respectful adult. - Immature or not responsible. - Exactly and I just decided
that I was gonna do it. And I was gonna listen to that music and I was gonna entertain it. Not because I thought that I would find some career path baked into
this, but just because. And I think by continuing
to double down on that ultimately the path has
sort of been laid forward in front of me, brick by brick to figure out what to do next. But it's been very
difficult like financially incredibly insecure we
almost lost our house. I've had cars repossessed, like it was not this upward trajectory to having this podcast and getting to sit and talk to you today. There were a lot of
dark moments of the soul and a lot of questioning
whether I was an insane person. Because everyone around me
was saying what are you doing? You could be practicing law, you could be doing all these things, you could be making all this money like what you're chasing
this crazy fool's errand, you have kids, you're being irresponsible. So it took a lot of faith and really conviction in order to kind of stay true to the path. - Was that a muscle that you'd always had? - No, definitely not.
- Or was that a muscle that you had to develop? And if you had to develop
it what was your process? - Definitely not a
muscle that I always had. I wouldn't consider myself an entrepreneur type personality. I was reared very much as a safety seeker, like just get into the best school and like take that path,
that well trodden path. That is laid out for men, respectable men of your pedigree. Like I grew up upper-middle class, I went to really nice schools. I have parents that took
care of all of my needs that are still together,
I wanted for nothing and this was kind of the trajectory that all my peers were on. It never occurred to
me to veer off of that until I was really like almost soul sick. And felt like I had no
other choice but to do that. So for me it was very unfamiliar. It was almost like I had to shed a skin and grow a new one. And my process was hardly methodical but I would say that my wife really was my greatest teacher
through this process. Like she just had my back even when things just looked crazy.
- That's so powerful. She was like, and I was like,
I gotta go make some money like the way that I know how to. She'd say, "No, like
you need to keep doing "what you're doing, we
will figure this out. "But the path forward and the way through "all of these difficulties
is not to retreat "and trace your steps backwards "but to continue to blaze forward." And I think without that
support in the home, I don't know that I would
have been able to keep going. So great credit to her.
- Do you think is, she important for you as the person that she is or is it important that when people are trying to go in the same journey that you've been through,
that there are people that are in their corner. Is that mentors, is it a
partner, is it a buddy? - [Rich] Yeah. - Of course ideally it's your spouse because it sounds like she's she was, is very powerful force for you. But I'm thinking to everyone that doesn't, what's your wife's name? - [Rich] Julie. - Okay to everybody who
doesn't have a Julie at home, can you give a-- - I think it's super
critical and important to find like-minded souls who support your vision for yourself and hold that space for your best self and believe in you. I think you need to balance that with other people who can
give you the hard feedback about when you're going
off-track or being a crazy person who can give you the hard truth. 'Cause cheerleaders alone
are not gonna get you there, you need both. You need the tension
between the aspiration and the grounded reality
in order to find yourself. And I think if you, I think we all need, I think the word mentor
I find to be problematic because there's a formality to it. And everyone chases the fancy name people, I want you to be my
mentor I think everybody has people in their community who can be a source of truth and education for-- - And if you don't you gotta find those people right away.
- Yeah right, you should find, seek them out. They are all around you, and if you can't find
them in your neighborhood you can find them online and you can have a virtual relationship with somebody. But I think it's super important to have a board of directors. I have people in my life
as I'm sure you do too that I call and rely
upon for every facet of-- - [Chase] I was on the
phone this morning-- - Whether it's marriage or
parenting or profession, all of these things. I think it's important
to surround yourself with people who are living the life that you aspire to have
in certain categories. And are further down the path in than you. - You found both the tough love and the cheerleader in Julie? - Yeah.
- Sounds like. Tell me what are some of the things that you heard from her
that were surprising. You just shared one which is like, now is not the time to retreat, now it's the time to go through. - [Rich] Right. - What were some other,
was there some themes or some commonalities that you were like, okay she's got my back? This is what she said this
to me four or five times now and I know, fill in the black. - We were just getting
crushed financially. I mean it was, looking back on
it now, it's almost comical. Like we-- - It's only comical because
you came back on it, right? Exactly because we're
on the other side of it, but like I said like cars repossessed and we had our trash bins taken away. I mean really like embarrassing,
demoralizing stuff. And what Julie taught me through this whole process was how to maintain your equanimity. She would say your job is
to be completely neutral like can you, because that
is like the Jedi path, right? That is like true power to be a warrior in the eye of a storm like that when everything's coming
at you and you feel like life is out of control. If you can be neutral and
maintain your integrity, your peace of mind your equanimity, that's like a superpower. So that was something
that I observed in her that I tried to hone within myself. I remember when the repo guy
came to take my truck away, and she came out and
greeted him in the driveway. And she said, "Oh hey I'm Julie. "Would you like some tea,
do you want to come in?" She was super nice to him
and he was so confused. He's like what?
- He's like, wait a minute? - Yeah I know so-- - Are they're gonna murder me if I go there and have
tea with these people, who are these crazies? - The other thing, - It's amazing.
- Is to understand that if you're being visited with these kinds of
difficulties in your life. To detach from the notion
that this is failure or a referendum on who
you are as a person, but rather to look upon
it as an opportunity. This is your divine moment
we are here on earth to grow, to expand and these are lessons for us. So our job is to pay attention and to find the nugget
of wisdom within that and to grab onto that and
figure out the path forward. - Wow.
- Yeah. - So I can't overstate the thread throughout the
hundreds of interviews that I've personally done
with you and folks like you and and others that have listened to on your show and others,
that that having community, a few or the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You looked around and looked at who you're spending time with I think that is such a common thread. I also will jump on the same bandwagon like the whole mentor thing now you have people asking me to be their mentor all the time. And it's just like sorry
I don't even know you but here's a community
and creating a community and a community atmosphere
where you can learn the fact that we're in a world where this information is available for free. To me I think that's
just I wanna restate that because I think you said it
much more eloquently than I did but it's really, really powerful to have there not necessarily a person but just a set of people
that you are inspired by, that you respond to,
that you want to emulate. And the question I have out of all this is if you're around these people, they're all have their own identities and you're learning
from this person online or this person in your life, how did you find the part
of you in all of that? How did you not just become
a reflection of Julie if she was your rock in this time. How did you find you? - Wow that's a great question,
that's a hard question. - [Chase] It's my job. I mean I think I'm...
(laughs) Yeah, that's a good one. I think I'm still trying to find that. I don't know that I have
arrived in that place, I don't know if anybody
truly arrives in that place. Like if I had to say Chase who are you, defined yourself?
- Don't do this. I said you're such a such a great guest you can grab the show and you can do--
- I'm flipping on you. - Let me try and answer it. - Okay.
- No actually no, I want you to go first and I will follow, but you should try and answer it, don't deflect, you go. Do you smell that, it's like--
- It's like a bakery or something downstairs. - Someone just kicked on the,
- I know, smell like cinnamon buns.
- The pancakes or the cinnamon buns, oh my goodness. If you're at home listening and watching I'm so bummed you can't smell how good it smells in
this this beautiful spot that we're in here, in hoe Ace hotel. - There was a defining moment
for me in this whole journey and it was after I had done the five Ironman thing. And I was noticing that the
media was taking an interest in what I was doing which
as I mentioned earlier was kind of a bizarre thing. 'Cause I was just doing this for myself. CNN, Sanjay Gupta came to my
house did like a piece on me and they asked, the people at CNN asked me to write a guest blog posts for cnn.com. Which I did and it's the
little like here's my story and that got published and
it was tracking so well that they put it on the CNN homepage. And it became like the most emailed story for you know 48 hours or 72
hours something like that. Like it just hit a nerve and
it like track really well. And I just got shellacked
with emails all of a sudden. I mean this was really like, I had never been like a
public person in any regard. And some of these emails that came in were just so touching and unbelievable, like I told my story in a vulnerable way and it gave people permission
to then tell me their story. And I got these long you
know multi paragraph emails like this is what happened to me and this is what I went through and here's my struggles and my pain. And I was just so touched at the feeling of trust that these people had. And I think it was very emotional for me to like read all these emails. And it made me realize that
the path forward for me and where I can really
serve is to be a cipher for these people on the
path to transformation. If I can be like a home
base or a safe place for them to come to, to
confide in or to look to for inspiration and guidance
for what the next step for them might be, that
perhaps I had something to say in that regard. And so building upon that has really been what I've done ever since that moment. - It's interesting that there
is a true north inside of you. You access that through
vulnerability, right? You wrote your story out
and people responded to it, and that gave you a feeling and it was the feeling that you looked at like wait a minute, this is a sign. - [Rich] Yeah. - That I'm doing the thing, you talked to earlier about intuition. Is that the same feeling,
this awareness that you had once you'd put your, you had to take the first step obviously. - Right.
- Because CNN says you wanna write this you say no, then you might not have captured it. But you did and then
there was that response and the response was just like, oh my God, A I'm not alone. B, I like this feeling probably. - Right.
- And maybe it sounds like that's one of the things
that clued you off to like I can be a home base, maybe I can be a home base. - Well I was very aware
that the vulnerability was the thing that people
were connecting with. And when I got the
opportunity to write a book I understood that that had to be the key sort of through line throughout
the entire narrative. Because let's face it I'm not, it's not like I won
some World Championship. I've never won a race,
I've done some crazy things in ultra-endurance but there's plenty of athletes out there
they're a lot better than me, that are more talented than me, then are more accomplished than me. So why am I being given an
opportunity to write a book? Like it's weird, right? It doesn't, on paper it didn't
really seem to make sense. And so I was very aware
that the only reason that people would connect with my story was going to be directly
related to the extent to which I was willing to be vulnerable and talk about things
that aren't so comfortable and that I'm not that proud of. So the process of writing it really was one of just getting into the mindset of private journaling. I had to make it like a diary
that no one was gonna read. And then I would have
these moments where-- I can't believe--
- Oh my God wait, this is gonna be a book? I would freak out and be
paralyzed for several days. But in retrospect looking back, I know that that's why the
book has been successful because it's the humanity. Because everybody can find some aspect of their own journey in my
pain points or my struggles. My story isn't that remarkable, the things that I've gone through. Many people have gone through far worse than what I've had to
endure to get to this place. But I think there's there's
an integrity in that honesty, and I think people respond to that. They know when it's real. - Do you think that that true north or that beacon that thing that's inside of in this case we're talking about you, that was inside of you, is
that inside of everybody? Or is that something you have to find, is it natively there do
you have to create it? How do people understand their true north? - I don't know that there's only one true north. Maybe there's many for people
but I think the process of trying to unlock that or
discover that within oneself is a journey of
self-discovery that requires rigorous self-honesty and rigorous adherence to one's personal truth. And I think a lot of
people are walking around not understanding what
that is for themselves. Like what do you mean my personal truth like I'm just going to work
man, I'm trying to like-- - Make buck bro.
- Yeah exactly. So in order to really connect with that I think it's an inside job. You can go out and ride your bike all day or do jiu-jitsu or lose a bunch of weight, but ultimately it's about
your relationship with you. And that will be revealed to you only in the moments in which you are allowing yourself to get quiet enough. Where you can shut off the thinking brain or you can become an
observer of your own thoughts and connect with your own consciousness. And in that relationship as it develops through meditation or mindfulness practice or whatever strategy you employ. I think that your higher
conscious will tell you who it is and what it wants to be. And your job then becomes
piecing that together, slowly over a very long period of time. - For you is that-- - Does that sound too obtuse? - Not only is that not obtuse, it's poetic, it was beautiful. Kind of just like letting it land there. So for you was that the trail, was that moment of quiet,
the time the reflection, was that the trail and
the ocean and the path? - It was all of those things
and it was meditation, and it was connecting with my body for the first time in a really long time. Again it was about learning how to connect with my instincts and then trust them. - Yeah. - And these are all things that I originally started to learn about as a result of getting
sober and being in 12-step and understanding that
we're spiritual beings having a human experience. Like these were all crazy
foreign concepts to me. I had a decade spent in church basements and with fellow alcoholics
and drug addicts to acquaint me with some of these concepts that I then started to delve deeper into. And the physical aspect of these things that I've done are just one
avenue of exploration for that, but I think there's many and it's different for everybody. - You talked about meditation, mindfulness, exercise, a church basement, any others come to mind? - It can be your faith-based community, it can be your relationship
with your kids. It can be sitting in a cave, it can be of a personal retreat. It can be like I just
said, learning jiu-jitsu, it can be going out in nature and taking photographs,
it could be what you do. I think it's about finding
what lights your own spark and then trusting your instincts enough to pull on that thread
and continue to follow it with the understanding that more will be revealed to you in time. - So was it a Rumi quote I don't remember we're gonna botch this
but it's a fair to say I'm gonna try and summarize
but someone else's quote. That you don't have to
see the whole staircase you just have to find the first stair. - I think that's super profound. I think so many people especially in this kind of self-help
rubric or universe that we're kind of part of, everybody wants to know all
the steps before they begin. - Because then they're gonna decide, they're gonna say hmm. - [Rich] Yeah. - First to get hard and
I have to sweat and cry. - Right.
- And bleed for this, I'm not sure I want it so can you show me what it looks like around the corner. And most people that I
know that are already good they're like sorry there that's just, you've got to take the first... - You gotta take the first step. I mean use running as
an example like well, what watch do I need? What shoes do I need? I need my training plan, is
that the right training plan or should I do this training plan? Which race should I sign up for? Its analysis paralysis that
keeps people stuck forever because they wanna
understand the entire journey from beginning to end. - [Chase] Yeah. - And what they're failing
to realize or understand or embrace is that the beauty
of the whole experience is in the unknowing, that's
where the faith comes in. You take that first step and it's just fog in front of you, you don't
know and you have to trust. And you have to be willing
to take that leap of faith into the unknown and believe
that you will be caught, that you will be cradled
somehow and that's scary. - Yeah
- It's frightening. It was frightening for me but that's the magic man. And I don't wanna deprive
somebody of that experience because that's where all the beauty and the self understanding and the faith and the sense of self comes from. - You have four kids. How are you, how or what are you doing to imprint some of this
just gold into their lives? Is there parenthood,
(Rich coughs) now this is parenting advice or it's just a comment or sort of trying to understand humanity, but are you? - Well. - The chance of them
listening to this are low. - Trust me they're not gonna listen. (Rich laughs)
- Yeah, exactly. - They couldn't be less interested in anything that I'm doing, but-- - What are their ages? - So-- - Unless if you're... - So I've got two boys,
they are my stepsons that I've lived with since
they were three and four but they're now 22 and 23. And they've moved out of the house, they're musicians and a band
with my nephew, their cousin. And they're working on their first album, so they're pursuing their dream and they're incredibly talented. I have no doubt that they'll be successful they're kind of embedded
into the music scene of East Los Angeles and it's super cool to see them fully engaged in what they wanna be
doing with their lives. Then I've got two daughters
that are 15 and 11. 15 year old daughter it's a tricky, that's a tricky universe. And she's a visual artist and she goes to an Arts High School
in downtown Los Angeles. That's required our family
to kind of reconfigure how we live because it's very
far from our other house. So my wife and I are now splitting time, staying in an apartment that we rented that's approximate to the school so that we can be in full
support of her dream. - Wow.
- So putting our money where our mouth is as we were saying before the podcast started. - I was like well that a
big move, man it's like... - I was telling Chase how how I've spent half the week in downtown LA which is where we're
recording this right now to be in support of our daughter. And I can't be somebody who
is a public-facing individual telling people to pursue
what's in their heart if I'm not actively engaged in supporting my own daughter and doing that. So that's made our lives a little bit complicated right now, but it's been cool. And then our other daughters 11 and she goes to school
back near our other house. So life is not simple
but it's also beautiful and I can't say that I have
all the parenting answers. I think if there's one
piece of parenting advice that I would give that has been helpful and has worked for us, it's that we have chosen to treat our kids like conscious
sentient individuals from a very young age. Rather than talk down
to them like little kids to give them a sense of
sovereignty and respect at an early age in an effort to urge them or prompt them to develop their own
personal sense of self and self-esteem at an early age. And I think that that has
worked out quite well so far. - Agency. - Agency correct that's
the word I was looking for. - Yeah it's weird that that's not a, that that's not a product
that is widely taught. - [Rich] Right. - The school system if you look at the traditional and I was-- - It's quite the opposite. - Yeah, I was raised in middle
lower, middle class family. I didn't also want for
much but I also had Nikes that are upside-down Nike shoes and I didn't really
understand the difference until I did one day I was like, wait a minute how come
my Nikes are upside down. How come my Adidas have more stripes. But as far as the basics I had them. But the concept of, and not my parents, my
parents are amazing loving, they're still together I was an only child so I basically had the
attention of my parents. But it wasn't like I was, hey man this is a thing you
have agency you can do whatever. They're very practical,
they're very supportive even when I told them what I wanted to do but it's weird to me that we
don't have culturally embedded the idea of agency and choice
and autonomy and sovereignty, some of the words that
you used right there. What are we doing wrong? - We're doing so many things wrong. I mean our whole education
system needs to be upended. It was founded on these, in era of industrialization, ideas about how to create a
healthy worker for the system. - [Chase] Yeah. - And now we're all
carrying supercomputers around in our pockets that
can tell us the answer to any question that we have and yet we have an educational system that's founded upon memorization
and like rote skills that I think the relevancy have now been called into question. And what we need to do
is teach children agency, teach them how to think for themselves, teach them how to be creative in their problem-solving skills. How to be team members and team leaders. Like all of these things
that I think are essential to being successful in our modern life, are just not even part of the conversation when it comes to education. And I find that disheartening, it puts more pressure on the parents to instill those things in the kids and kids that have solid
parents are gonna get that. But I think it should
be the responsibility of our educational system to be teaching the life skills that I never
learned when I was growing up. - That's part of the reason
that CreativeLIVE exists because I didn't see that in the world. - Right, can you imagine
being like 12 or 13 years old and being able to open up a laptop and like learn about the world with all this free content of amazing wise people teaching you. Whatever it is that you wanna learn, like that was not available to me. And what is the impact of
that on culture and society and a young person's mind. Is college relevant anymore? For certain people it is but I think for a lot of people, it isn't. There are so many new and
innovative ways to learn and I think we're becoming
more and more a skill-based and a freelance based economy. And that's very different from
the traditional programming of the typical university
or collegiate structure. And yet those institutions have yet to kind of mature, to what's actually happening right now. - For sure they're they're
actually disincentivized - [Rich] Yeah. - They have billions of
dollars with a real estate they need you to physically
come and stand there. Sure there's benefits
for in-person community. - [Rich] Of course. - IRL you know all about
it but not everything and not all the time. You're speaking my language for sure when you're saying these things that systems based on the factory which was a Prussian system that was invented in the 1800s for moving people
effectively through a line and training whether they're soldiers or the Industrial Revolution. You wanna a factory,
it aims produce widgets that all look the same, act the same and go do a rote job 99% of those which don't exist anymore. - [Rich] Right. - All that is so true. You said something
interesting it's like the job of you know, a job of parents is to teach their kids these things. And I think there's a lot of people just like clicked for me while you were talking that
it's not just the parents and the kids because the
people who are listening to this most of them are the adults. And there's the same
mentality is present in well you is 41, right and
so if you're listening and any of this is resonating with you, it's not just about your
13 year old daughter. This is could be about you as well. And I know we happily
skirted my personal story but I'm gonna bring it back here as I did all of the same
stuff you're talking about. The same track that's culturally approved. Go to college I also was an
athlete, soccer scholarship. All the right things check the boxes, got up high fives from the right people. And yet at early 20s felt so lost, so confused and it was actually the deep shame that I felt by letting down all of the people in my life that I had basically been telling a lie to for years. And I did not have a rough
or a sad, I mean it was fine. But I was definitely not doing my thing, I was doing somebody else's thing. And it was the shame and the guilt and the ultimate
overcoming of those things that as soon as I had
said, hey you know what this whole like a doctor thing I could give two shits
about being a doctor. In fact it sounds terrible. - Right.
- Remember all those volunteer hours that I had to do to
get into medical school, they do those for a reason because you need to really love it and I hated it every second, every second I was at the
hospital I hated it and-- - And the moment that you
decide to trust yourself and follow your gut and your instincts you're overwhelmed with guilt that you're letting other people down. - For sure and-- - That you're not entitled to be able to do that for yourself. - And I did a lot of extra
school outside of it, I went to graduate school
and did a lot of things that were dancing around the thing that I knew is my truth and
I was basically juggling and hopping on one leg and being a monkey for the other people in my
life, who are lovely people, beautiful, supportive, I
mean it's not like they're, no one was holding a gun to
my head no one was saying. But it was just like
culture and I'll also say I'm born white, I'm born male. - [Rich] Yeah. - Born in America. - Lets just straight
acknowledge the privilege. - Radical privilege and
so if I'm sitting here like boo-hooing poor me how hard this was to just finally realize that I
was living someone else's lie and tell the people
that remember that money you spent for me in
graduate school or whatever like that's all wasted. - [Rich] Yeah. - Because I never wanted
to do it from day one. I had to do it to figure it out probably. But like that for every
one of those aspects of me there's more guilt and shame around. And you know what imagine if
I didn't have both my parents, or if I was actually poor. And came from a, I wasn't white and male. And all these advantages, so I had all kinds of guilt
and stuff piled on to that. And I will what I'll confess here is that it was in playing through that. Just actually okay I just told my parents I'm not gonna do that. And I'm looking at my student loan debt and it's $67,000 dollars. And you sit in that for a little bit, like you know what I can
actually be okay with this. It wasn't like that honest, I don't wanna go plate this thing because it was a lot of pain. But I wanna know a little bit about yours. That was mine, how are you, did you have to sit,
you mentioned 10 years in church basements, was that the sitting with the fact that you
disappointed all those things that helped you find your true north. You talked about it being on the trail, you talked about not knowing everything but knowing one thing, can you tell me what it was like to? - Yeah it's been kind of
up and down like this. I mean I grew up in a very education focused household. Was definitely a top priority and I struggled
academically for a long time and then finally figured it out when I was in high school and-- - What was it that you figured out. I figured out that although I wasn't academically gifted, I realized that I had a capacity to be a workhorse. And that's something that
I've used as well in the pool and in sports that I'm not the smartest, I'm not the most gifted athletically but I know how to fucking work, and I know how to suffer
and I'll get it done. I cannot work that guy next to me, and that that served me in the classroom served me in swimming pool and all these other areas of life. And and I was able to
kind of stake my claim on that character trait. So by the time I was
graduating high school, top student in my class I got into like every college I
applied to all the fancy schools. And was also a top swimming
recruit, so I had my pick. And I went to Stanford which
was like number one school, number one swimming program, the world was my oyster. It was just this clear skies ahead, upwardly mobile trajectory for me. And then enter drugs and alcohol and that just completely screwed me up. Sent me down a dark path
for many, many years until I met my maker with that
and was forced to get sober. But along the way had really destroyed a lot of relationships and
trust with a lot of people. Had decimated my career, basically there was a lot
of wreckage in my path. So I went from this guy who is like this guy's gonna be a senator.
- Clear skies. To you know to two dirtbag status and then had to inch my way
back to regain that trust. So even, so when I got sober and I'm being introduced
to these spiritual concepts and I'm being forced to confront
the truth of my actions. And I'm trying to connect with myself for the very first time. I mean when you medicate
throughout your entire adolescence and twenties you're creating a barrier between you and your
consciousness the entire time. - [Chase] Yeah. - When you finally remove that
you're this bundle of nerves you don't know who you are, it's very confusing and disorienting and it took many years of
me trying to figure out who am I, what makes me tick? And during that process
I still was very attached to this idea of the American dream. Not because I had some passion for it but it was really an external pressure of like I need to prove that I can, that I'm not this dirtbag, that I can be this respectful person. That that person that I was in high school that I can show my
parents and everybody else that that's truly who I am,
but that was all bullshit. - [Chase] Yeah that was
still law school path. - Right and it took me
a decade to understand that for myself and to let go
of that which is terrifying. Let go of this idea that you
promised your entire life on for as far back as you can remember is a sense of free fall, I'm sure it's what you experienced. And when you're a safety seeker like I wa you always know what the
next thing is gonna be. You're kind of going from here and then this is what you do and then this is what
happens to let go of that and have no true north or not no sense of what that next step is gonna be is, was scarier than going to rehab. It was scarier than any
of the endurance races that I've done, it's a
sense of disorientation that is really hard to describe. - Thanks for being so vulnerable and for sharing that, that's-- - I don't know if I
answered your question. - You nailed it oh man like in spades. That I love the journey
of moving from there into your the physical fitness and in Finding Ultra, your memoir, let's talk about the plant-based diet. I think that's a huge
part of what I understand externally as something you identify with. Can you give me, is it
a personal philosophy? Is it a health-based philosophy that all those things, some none. Give me the little plan. Man.
(Rich coughs) 'Cause I'm like Rich Roll
plant-based everything and you've got great merchandise and-- - Right well I would say, rather than slap a label on it and say this is how I identify, it's probably better to just tell a story. - [Chase] Great. - And that story is very wedded to the story that I've been telling you, which is throughout my 30s, sober trying to repair
my life and establish myself as this respectful person. I had taken a lot of those
addictive alcoholic tendencies and placed them not on
fitness but on work. I was very much a workaholic and um, so much so that by the time I was 39 I was 50 pounds overweight. I was never like a big morbidly obese guy, but I was like a hefty heavy guy who was essentially a
couch potato like I hadn't, despite the fact that I had
been this athlete in college I was not taking care
of myself physically. I was just working and
subsisting on fast food and shitty lifestyle habits and the like. So by the time I was 39 I was kind of like a wreck physically. and that's when I was having
this existential crisis. So I'm confused about what
I'm doing with my life and this kind of perfect storm percolated that in which this existential crisis that I was having collided
with a health scare, where I was walking up a
simple flight of stairs to go to bed after a long day at work one evening and had to pause. I don't want to be
overly dramatic about it but I'd tightness in my chest. And as somebody who thought
of himself as an athlete to have to like take a break walking up a flight of stairs because
you're out of breath was like this is, I'm 30.
- What's happening here? - I'm not that old I'm 39. Sweat on my brow and kind of buckled over and it was a symbolic
moment in which I realized that the way I was living
my life was just untenable. I needed, it was another bottom for me. It was similar to the day
that I decided to get sober. I had this palpable strong sense that once again I was
having one of those moments that if I had the awareness and the presence of mind to really feel in that moment could be a catalyst for
another major lifestyle change. I was very aware of that in that moment and I didn't know what that meant. All I knew is that I needed to jump on it and take advantage of it
right away or it would pass. Like that day that I went to rehab if I decided well maybe tomorrow who knows what would have happened. I knew that there was an urgency to it and that urgency required
some specific actions that needed to be undertaken. And for me that translated into, I went immediately into this seven day juice fast cleanse thing. Not because, I felt like I needed to I had toxins that, whatever. I just needed to do something hard. - Yeah massive action. Tell me about it.
- I'd never gone a day without eating food. I was like this is like going to rehab for food and lifestyle. And it was hard it was very difficult but at the end of that seven-day period of basically just subsisting on juice, fruit juice and vegetable juice. I had this resurgence in vitality
that was kind of amazing. Like I couldn't believe that
after a week of not eating I suddenly felt better than I'd felt and as long as I could remember. And that triggered me into this journey to try to find a way of eating that would allow me to
feel that way all the time. And that was a messy
experience of many months of trying lots of different things but ultimately settling into
eating a plant only diet. That was the one thing that I tried that actually allowed me to feel vital throughout the day in
a very balanced manner in a way that I surprised
me, I wasn't expecting that. So my adoption,
- You didn't seek. I wasn't like no I'm
gonna be this vegan now. Like I was just trying to
find a way to feel good. - [Chase] Yeah. - It was very much a selfish
health oriented goal. Eating plants worked and so I've just been
doing that ever since. - Yeah when you find
something that works for you- - Yeah and so it's important to me that people understand that I'm not coming from this super dogmatic place. I've been doing it now for 12 years and it still works great for me. And I promised myself that if at any point I came to a crossroads
where I wasn't feeling good or it felt like something
was awry or amiss that I would be intellectually honest about that and address it. And if that meant that I needed to go and eat other types of foods that I had to entertain that possibility. I mean that day hasn't come yet. - [Chase] Yeah. - I still feel great, 52 I'm still able to go out and kill it. And what this journey has taught me has, this journey has taught me so much like now my interest in this lifestyle and way of eating has
expanded beyond the parameters of just my waistline and my
personal sense of vitality to our collective responsibility to care for the well-being of our planet and all of these sentient animals. I think we can all agree
we don't treat so great particularly in a factory farming context. And to help people kind
of better understand that and create a connection between the foods that we're eating and
where they come from. Because the whole system is erected to prevent us from
really being emotionally and intellectually
connected to that process. - I think that arc is
really cool and natural. And it's not like everyone comes into, probably for their own reasons and on their own path. Yours that moment walking up the stairs, so it's such a focused moment. What about those of us I'll
put myself in this category knock on wood no health scares, feel good. How do you tap into a thing that you don't even know you're missing? - Yeah I mean that's the
secret sauce right there. And again I wish I had
a pithy answer for that 'cause for me pain is really been, when I'm in enough pain like
then I can move the needle and I can make the changes, right? And the big changes that
I've made in my life have been a result of being in
a tremendous amount of pain. But let's square that
with the understanding and the realization that those changes and those choices are
always available to us. We need not suffer in
order to avail ourselves of what they have to offer. So how can we make the choice
without the suffering, right? - [Chase] Yeah.
(Rich laughs) Yes, it's very proactive of you. I don't know. - That's hard, yeah like who does that? You know what I mean? - [Chase] Tim Ferriss. - Right yeah certain alien
humans that are able to do that. But I think it's about, it goes back to that mind,
body, soul connection. It's about being present with who you are and I think meditation is really the superpower skill that can create a sense of awareness to be in a situation to make that choice. - [Chase] Yeah. - Because I think we're all visited with like whether it's the
moment I decided to go to rehab or that line in the sand
moment of like I'm changing my, who would have thought
that a staircase episode and a decision to like change my diet would deliver me to sitting
next to you to do this? It's like it's insane
right you can't imagine or predict these things, but I think that we're all
visited with these moments. And if you're paying attention if you're present with yourself you're more likely to
be aware when they are, when they descend upon you as opposed to blindly reacting to your environment and just bumping up
against what is happening. And then missing the gift
and allowing it to pass. - Yeah that self awareness, mindfulness, meditation that whole space has been transformational
for me personally. I think it's as you said earlier I think you described it as a vehicle or a path or a grounding element to be able to be attuned
to all that stuff. - Well I think a better, yeah agreed. And I think maybe a more
concrete way of putting it is if you're on the wrong path for yourself, the universe is gonna let you know. It's gonna knock softly at first and if you're not listening and it's gonna start to knock
louder and louder and louder. And if you continue to not pay attention to not have the wherewithal
or the mindfulness to course-correct then you're
gonna end up in a car crash a metaphorical one. There's gonna be some situation that arises or cataclysm
that is gonna force you to finally confront this thing that you're refusing to look at. So the question becomes
like can you course-correct when the knock is gentle? And again it goes back to being aware. The more aware you are the more present, the more mindful you are of
your surroundings and yourself the more likely you're going
to be able to take notice. - Can I ask a couple more questions about the plant-based diet? - [Rich] Sure. - What about blood type stuff. Is that shaky science or I'll just-- - I'm not a doctor, I'm not a nutritionist and I'm not a scientist and I don't play one on the internet. But I will tell you that I'm Type O which, - Yeah.
- From what I understand is the is the type that is supposed to eat meat.
- Meat. Yeah, I had never heard this. I find myself craving protein and I have protein, animal-based
protein I feel better. And again this would be a psychology, I have not, I've done some
plant-based only for some time or I haven't done like the master cleanse or anything, I've had
some small versions of it. I'm intrigued by the
footprint on the planet. I'm intrigued by just balance
and doing what's right, but also I can't get
out of the cycle of like - Yeah.
- Craving hardcore dose of protein so. - Cravings are unreliable
narrators though at times. I mean there is undoubtedly a connection between the quality of your microbiome and the signals that are
being sent to your brain that get translated into cravings. So sometimes that craving is real, it's because your body
really does need something. Sometimes it's because your microbiome is saying this is what we like or it is just habit that gets triggered where you're uncomfortable
not setting it in that way. And I think to really
understand the difference you have to weather those
cravings for a period of time, whether it's 30 days
or something like that, to see how legitimate they really are. And only you know and
everybody's different. I'm the first person to say like, look I can only speak
from my own experience. I'm sharing from a place of personal experience only.
- Yeah, it worked for me. Yeah, it's great.
- Right, so. - Tell me a little bit about the cookbooks I want people to be able to
find them on the internet. - Yeah so in the wake
of writing Finding Ultra and telling my story it seemed natural that the next book ought to be about food. Because food plays such a big role in my own personal evolution and what I've been able to do athletically and people were interested
and how that works. So we wrote a cookbook
called The Plant Power Way which is very family-friendly
introductory primer to eating a plant-based diet, with recipes that are super traditional. Like potato salad and lasagna. There's this sense that if
you're eating a plant-based diet you're gonna be crawling
around in your yard chewing grass out of it.
(Chase laughs) Or just eating salad and celery and that's certainly
not the way that I eat. - [Chase] How do you eat? - I push my body like I'm
very physically active and I have a huge appetite,
I need a lot of food. And I wanna feel like those, what I'm putting in my in my mouth is gonna stick to my ribs. So this book is sort of
intended to serve that, and my wife is incredible
cook they're all her recipes. And then we wrote another cookbook called The Plantpower Way: Italia. We do these retreats in the
Italian countryside every year. We take groups of 30 to 40 people through a seven-day experience
that involves meditation and trail running and mindfulness and a lot of intense workshops. But of course also food and collaborating with the chefs of that region
produced this amazing cookbook that is a plant-based spin on your favorite Italian recipes. - Best place for people to find and track you down on the internet? - Easy to find just
you can google my name, there is richroll.com is my website where everything it goes on.
- Home base. - The podcast it's just
The Rich Roll Podcast, wherever you listen to find podcasts. And they're available on YouTube as well. - Amazing.
- So yeah. As is this, thank you so much for being a guest on my podcast, think speaking of podcast.
- Appreciate it man. - And I'm looking forward
to being on yours, we've already agreed it's happening. - [Rich] Yeah, yeah, yeah cool. - Thank you so much
for sharing your story. The insights, the vision. It's an incredibly inspiring.
- Thanks man. And I got work to do. (laughs) I know about that. But I can tell you it is an honor to meet you and be on your show as a longtime fan of
everything that you do and put out into the world with the highest degree of integrity. It's been a pleasure man. - Thank you so much and for everybody out there listening check out Rich's stuff
everywhere on the internet and thank you for tuning in. Hopefully see you, hear from you, you'll see me or whatever
on the internet, tomorrow. (gentle music)
