Experience Your Ultimate Potential with Rich Roll

very vividly recall this one guy saying you have a case of alcoholism that we only see in 65 year old lifelong drinkers and if you don't get this right you're gonna go back out into the world and you're gonna die I was able to hear that and as somebody who was that guy who had so much promise you know it was a pretty precipitous fall and I never wanted to have to go back and so I thought I'm gonna stay here and I'm gonna make sure that I get this right [Music] rich wall is in the house everybody super pumped you're here man good to see you good to see you nice haircut thank you for coming to my home yes yeah we've switched sides I know people that are just listening I'm sitting in Louis's chair and four people on YouTube it's gonna be a little jarring I think that I've never had took over the seat exactly you know to join you but it's good to see you I wanted to say that at the outset before we even get into it that I really appreciate you having me on I think this is my third time third time a podcast yeah and as we talked about on my show like we go way back we started around the same time and I know how it is when past guests kind of hit you up and say hey can I come back on again and it could be awkward so it's no small thing you're having me back on and I questioned it I appreciate you yeah you were on in 2013 you were episode 10 yeah 2013 then 2015 episode 169 and now 600 sometimes 600 Wow so I'm at 356 so yeah that's a second Wow yeah that's interesting it's been a fun evolution for both of us you're a little more than five years you're like five and a half years I think so about five and a half yeah I'm five and three months I think it is because if it was five at the end of January so it's been a crazy journey right you know just I look over at the wall like some of the people I've had on we got to get a photo you up there now you don't have one up there and it's just like so many lessons learned and it sounds like it sounds like to me they're a lot of lessons you've learned since you wrote the first edition of finding ultras you know now coming out with a hundred new plus pages and a lot of lessons where you're talking about before you know after the book came out the first time you want to lost your house you were saying which I don't even know that and and there was another challenge just what were the other challenges you've learned in the last five years since her originally in this book coming out so many you know setting aside everything I've learned as a result of doing the podcast as you know like having these amazing people sit across from you and you get to hold them hostage and ask them anything you want to ask them I mean I can't even begin to unpack like how much that's impacted me in a positive way I mean it's just been an insane journey I don't think either of us could have ever predicted that a we probably we'd still be doing this you know I didn't know that I would still be doing this or that you know what we've sort of built with our respective you know audiences would have grown to the extent that it is so super grateful for that journey and yeah you know I started the podcast shortly after this book came out which was in this book came out in May of 2012 I started the podcast and November of that year it was really my intention you know I didn't even know if I do a second episode but once I kind of got rolling it was an opportunity to just continue the conversation that I think this book began and one of the kind of you know core themes of this book you know a lot of people sort of mistook it as a book about running or how to be a better trial it's really not about that it's about how to basically better self actualize how to become you know the best most authentic version of yourself however that looks for you and my story is intended really as a metaphor for you know I think the unlimited potential that we all have but one of the themes is that when your heart is true that the universe will conspire to support you yeah and when this book came out I put everything in into like pushing it out into the world and let go of practicing law my background is in corporate law and I thought okay I'm going all-in on trying to sort of create some kind of profession out of promoting these ideas that are important to me whether it's speaking or writing another book or whatever that may look like I wasn't really sure at the time but I thought okay my heart is pure you know this is the theme of the book I'm putting myself out there hangout and I'm waiting for that universal signal of support and I got to tell you like it didn't really come it was like phone's not ringing okay so I gonna do money was running out and you know I could go do a speaking gig for free or maybe do a little thing here or there trying to slip some books or whatever yeah the bad you know and you know I have four kids I've got a mortgage so we went through a very difficult extended period of time that lasted a number of years I mean really like five or six years touch-and-go Julie calls it my wife calls it our divine moment where we were really brought to our knees and forced to really confront our attachment to material things like our house and our cars we had two cars repossessed well after this book came out I mean it's like it was the weirdest juxtaposition because I was getting a bunch of attention and I was sort of in the you know in the media and yet at the same time there was a lot of kind of suffering that we had to experience around you know how to how to kind of navigate what we were trying to accomplish and do in the material world and ultimately you know we really had to burn in that fire in order to kind of come out and I think that you know it required a tremendous amount of faith and persistence and really just being in the moment like day to day to try to figure out what the next step would be but I think emerging from that I mean now everything's great like my life is an embarrassment of riches and I have so much opportunity and it's insane like I you know I it's it's hard looking back to even imagine what it was like back then but I think it it allows me to communicate you know with the people that are tuning in to my channel and my frequency with a level of humility and an honesty and and just realness really yeah because I know what it's like to kind of be in that place yeah and that was one of the reasons why I wanted to rewrite the book as I wanted to tell that story of what happened after finding ultra came out from 2012 to present because I think those events are equally dramatic if not more dramatic and certainly more relatable to the average person than some of the ultra endurance feats you know that are chronicled I original version yeah what would you say is the biggest personal challenge for you over the last five or six years I think and this is a theme that you're you know that you know well like it really challenged my idea of what it means to be a man like as a masculine human being as a head of household not profess somebody who is supposed to be a provider but somebody who's supposed to have all the answers somebody who's supposed to make their kids feel safe and all of that was called into question because I was in a position where for a period of time providing for my family was a tremendous challenge and I would not have made it through without the strength and support of my wife I mean there were many times where I was like forget it I'm going back to being a lawyer I mean I'll get a job at a corporate law firm whatever like we got a like you know we got to like take care of business here and she's like no you cannot do that like you can you've come so far you cannot retreat that's a that's a move backwards like the only way you would have out of this is through yeah and I have your back and if we have to say goodbye to our home like we're together we're in love you know we're with our kids it's all gonna be fine and you know it's easier it's easy to kind of say those things but to actually live those things and and weather that storm is a different matter altogether and so it was because of her in in large part that you know I even get to sit here and talk to you today it's pretty powerful woman yeah it's inspiring yeah she's she's my biggest teacher for sure really what's the big lesson she's taught you she just has I mean she is somebody who has all who has committed herself from the get-go to always like pushing the boundaries of her own personal evolution like personal growth so whether it's spiritual mental emotional like incredibly well-read person and just somebody with an extreme amount of personal fortitude like she's just an incredibly strong person and and very convicted and her ideas and so to have her as my partner who not only I mean she's the reason I even wrote this book and to begin with because you know I was a junk food addict recovering alcoholic like very unhappy in my professional career but she was always able to kind of see through that facade that like heaviness that I was carrying around to this better more actualized person within and she held the space for me to to find that within myself and that's a whole other story that's part of the book as well but I think just you know that ability to kind of see the best in somebody and not in a lip service kind of way but in a very real fundamental way is is rare yeah that's cool do you see your story different now than when you first wrote the book yeah in so many ways it's a weird thing and I'm sure you can relate to this as well Louis when when you get asked to get on a stage and tell your story or go on podcast and you know tell me what happened and you know you know you you get into this space where you tell the story so many times that suddenly you think and I don't know if you have this experience but I certainly have you think like it's a story even true like I've told it so many times it's easy to kind of like distance yourself from it yeah and just spit it out because you've done it so many times and so I've had that experience where I've really had to think okay let me what is the heart of the matter like what is really true about this and what is just something I've said so many times that I think it's true so I'm constantly in the process of like deconstructing that and trying to examine it and I think the the process of getting up on stage and sharing my story with groups of people large and small has helped tell me what it is about my story that connects with people and I think when I wrote the original version of the book I thought the story was one thing and in the process of telling it I've realized so much more about myself and so it's changed and morphed not with respect to the facts of that experience but I think what the emotional heart it is yeah do you think how old were you when you wrote the book 45 46 I think I was 40 when I was writing it I was 44 45 when it came out in 46 so in 2012 that was seven years ago I'm 51 now so yeah whatever are out there yeah do you think your forty-five year old self would be proud of your 51 year old self oh for sure you know I I mean I've far exceeded my expectations for you know not just the books that I've written that the the level of impact that I've been able to have I mean my desire really was only to figure out a way to impact the most number of people in the most meaningful way possible and I didn't know like I said exactly what that would look like or how I would manifest that but to sit here today you know as a fellow podcaster and author like I just you know I can't even believe that I get to do what I what I want to get to do everyday like you know I work really hard as I know you do it's like I'm working all the time but it doesn't feel like work I get is this we're working right now right like doesn't feel like work I would come over and hang out with you and do this you know anyway if I had another job so very blessed to be able to to do what I love and and also provide for my family and impact people in a positive way I mean I I can't think of anything there would rather do with my life but it's certainly not anything I would have dreamed that I would be doing like if you asked me when I was 30 like I I mean I couldn't even imagine like I thought I was gonna be like a ball or lawyer or a producer or something you know yeah so it's weird what do you think you would be most proud of that you've done if it was your 45 year old self again meaning of all the stuff you've been able to do in the last seven years yeah what's the thing you're most proud of the thing I'm most proud of is is that I know in my heart of hearts that I have shaped and impacted the way people leave to leave their it's in a meaningful way that's one person a hundred people a thousand people however many people it is just the feedback that I get I know and I know you get emails like this as well you know to receive really intimate [Music] heartfelt letters from people saying you know I tuned in your podcast or I read your book and this is where I was and these are the obstacles I faced and hereand here's where I am today and thank you I mean that's a gift from the universe you know it's like it there's nothing there's nothing more meaningful or valuable to me and like I said you know it's it's a blessing yeah you've been doing the podcast for over five and a half years do you think you'll be doing it for another five years I don't know you know I the promise I made to myself was I would do it until I started to get stale or sick of it you know and and I actually ran up against that around December January this year where I was starting to feel a little bit burned out for the very first time and I had to hit pause and really reflect on whether I wanted to keep doing it and if so you know how to configure reconfigure the way that I was doing it so that I wouldn't have that approach because I want to approach every every interview every episode that I do with enthusiasm and excitement so you've always been really good about delegating of this amazing team of people helping you and and we've had this conversation a lot of times where my Achilles heel is that I'm a bit of a control freak and I and I try to like you know I get to in the weeds on the details and so I've done a better job of delegating and building my own team and and also you know focusing on the things that are most important that only I can do and letting other people handle the rest and then batching the work like I wasn't very systematic in my approach to it so I ended up sort of working on it a little bit every single day and I felt like I was just drowning you know so I've now created a schedule that allows me some flexibility with my time and that's improved my perspective on the interview so cancer your question yeah I'll do it as long as I feel like on adding value and I'm into you know the minute I start to feel like another one like man it's probably time to either take a break or or you know retire but it's a real identity we're all gonna be doing this when we're 70 right so at some point it's gonna yeah I guess you do it he's at sixty thousand yeah yeah but he's D takes breaks have you ever taken a break me no not in five years yeah so I've never missed a week I took a break I went to Hawaii last week with no phone and no computer yeah that's good and what I'd worked enough to be calm yeah then you got to work a lot before you go exactly yeah to batch it ahead and now I got to get caught back up again so it's not like even needing something for tomorrow we're getting leave we always build like that though because we're doing two episodes a week anyways so you could get a banked but then they're gone the next month in Bordeaux you did this race last year right that's crazy endurance race mm-hmm was like 46 miles though but it was through like the Galapagos Islands or something this year with the Galapagos it was the water would have been a little bit warmer if it was a yeah I hadn't I hadn't done an endurance challenge since epic five in 2010 which is a really big part of this book and because in those intervening years I was going through this dismantling period and trying to figure out like how to make my way and I was very intent on I'm creating a sustainable professional approach to what I was doing and so I achieved that because before you're eating bad having fast food well you part of that like when I was yeah I mean a story leading up to it just to kind of catch people up who have no idea who I am I was a corporate lawyer at age 39 50 pounds overweight junk food addict you know basically classic couch potato sliding into middle age on a crash course with lifestyle disease depressed about my life and had a and also like having an existential crisis about like my career in my profession and I was here to do and that existential crisis sort of collided with a health scare shortly before I turned 40 where I had like a heart episode walking up a simple flight of stairs that really brought into focus this desire to change how I was living and and the inner in this sort of following months and years I overhauled my diet adopted a plant-based diet started getting fit again went on and conquered all these crazy ultra endurance challenges wrote this book and like all this crazy stuff happened that story that true anymore yes that's a good thing like I just told you that it's your thumbnail and I've said a million times and you know we can dissect it if you want but it's probably outside the bounds of this but then it was about like okay I'm doing the podcast I'm building I'm trying to create you know something kind of one of the audience that you can also like you know on that on that theme of like you know my approach has always been like how can I have the most impact and if I'm out on my bike for eight hours or you know training all the time then there's no podcast there's no you know I'm not I'm not serving my my main you know sort of mission statement but I turned 50 last year and I thought this is a good moment to race again because I wanted to prove that a 50 year old you know dude they also happen to be vegan or plant-based could still go out and kill it and I thought that that would also that would serve the mission statement because there was a service aspect of that so I committed to this race in Sweden called Americans would call a pillow the Swedish pronounce it today which means island to island and it's a race it's a seventy five kilometer race that traipsed is across 52 Islands spread wide across the Stockholm archipelago on the Baltic Sea and leading up to this race I trained for it for about I don't know nine or ten months I decided I was going to share every single workout on Strava and on Instagram story so people could join along and they could see like I have bad days some days I didn't make training because something else happened and just be totally transparent about the whole thing which was super fun and then showed up in Stockholm and this race its water weirdest thing it's called swim run this is called though this is the World Championships of something called swim run which is an emerging sport mostly in northern Europe it's starting to find its way to the US but nobody knows about it here and essentially what you do is you swim and you run and you do the whole thing in a wetsuit with your running shoes on it's sort of a challenge swimming across these waterways and and crawling up on rocks on all fours and scurrying across these little islands and then jumping back in the water and swimming again he does 52 transitions it was like a 10-hour race and you do it in teams of two so I did it with my coach Chris house my longtime coach you have to stay within 10 meters of your teammate the entire time you can't get too separated and it was the hardest one day race of my life I mean just the distance alone was challenging and the terrain was way more difficult than I imagined because on these islands you're not really running it's more like an obstacle course thing you're falling down on rocks and the conditions that day were insane that were sideways rain just crazy rain the swells it was like six feet swells in the water it was bananas and freezing cold frigid water in the Baltic there was one a scary you could drown well this race they would they would have never allowed this race to take place in the United States like no insurance company went under write this thing it's only like the Vikings right who are like what's the big deal you know the craziest part of that race was about two-thirds of the way through there's a swim section it's one of the longest swim sections it's called the pig swim and it's about a kilometer across this water weight it's the most exposed area of water on the whole race where there's no more ions there's this Baltic Sea to your right and the swells were so crazy the boats that were out in the water who are sort of charged with making sure everyone's light boats like these boats [ __ ] they're gonna capsize like it was crazy and I just remember halfway through I kind of pulled up and looked around like it's so disorienting because you're getting washed around like a washing machine and suddenly you're swimming the wrong way and you know it's like you don't know where you are I start laughing I was like what am I even doing out he doesn't go see 50 year old dude like I'm in the middle of the Baltic I'm getting water it's like what do I try to keep and believe what what is going on in my life that I'm here it was just this moment of realization like that all these things that I had done and all the challenges that I had overcome had put me in this position to be in the midst of this this totally insane advantage race that was just crazy and it was great I didn't have the greatest day to be honest with you yeah you struggled yeah I definitely struggled was your coach partner was he come on let's go no he was cool I was like from the get-go I didn't sleep well it's a whole thing but like you know he was mellow he's like okay well just is what it is you know he could have he could have been two hours faster really well he's a Yoshi old class machine yeah but we were still the fastest American team and you know we finished I don't even remember where we finished like 30th place or something like that but you know it wasn't about that it was just about having this experience and it was incredible it was incredible to do it as a 50 year old man and to show like I can still mix it up with you know these world-class athletes and do something that scared me because I hate cold water everything I don't Pryor was in Hawaii and warm water and and it was epic and the best part of it was just that I got to share that whole experience with the people you know that follow me on the various platforms and and just demonstrate like hook I showed you exactly what I did every single day leading up to this there's no magic there's no mystery you know you saw the whole thing and my hope with that is that it it you know inspires other people to rethink their own limits and their own boundaries about when they're capable of yeah it's powerful they you think they'll do it in ten years at sixty I don't know we'll see that would be sweet yeah yeah well every time I do one of these things I'm like okay I'm good for a while you know I'm not like racing all the time but I am looking for I'm on that cusp of committing to something you need a challenge every couple months every couple years you need a challenge probably I think you always need a challenge I think when I'm committed to something like that it gives my life structure and focus and it allows me to prioritize you know where I'm where I'm spending my energy and my attention and when I don't have a goal like that it's easier to just kind of go with the low and I'm not as productive so even though there's a huge time commitment with something like that I tend to be more productive and everything else that I'm doing I have a goal isn't it funny when we put you know bigger goals on our plate everything else becomes productive because we have a structure we have time commitments and we can get things done and it seems like even if we have more on our plate as long as we have big goals that we're focused on we just work around that and when we have less on our plates or no goals we kind of feel like we're lazier we're not as structured and organized yeah there's no question about it I mean when you have a goal it's an important goal to you then you're more likely to create boundaries over what you agree and don't agree to do right and so although like I said like okay that goal is gonna require so much of my time and energy it draws focus on everything else that you're doing so then you don't you're like you're not on Facebook in the middle of the night you're not binge watching Netflix you're not just going out to lunch and whatever like you're like okay this is what I'm doing and I'm just a happier more productive person when I have that in my life you know what I think you should do what I think should cook I think you should create your own race yeah I thought about that you should create like the but it's different than the obstacle course races and just a marathon but it's like your own spiritual journey that people go on that it's still extremely physically demanding maybe there's a swim there's a bike there's a run and there's a partner stuff or whatever it is but something that you get to be creative with and creating experience but also get the train forward practice or so and then bring the life for your audience yeah that's a good idea it'd be like an annual thing once a year the only circumstances under which I would do that Lois is if you agree to participate I will park that's how long it's not gonna be under ten miles sometime on how much your audience would enjoy you for caring for some college yeah I just gotta lose more weight though like just a big guy what if Ben asked how many miles would be I don't know I haven't even thought about there's a lot that thing is like there's a lot of people that are doing that and they're not you know I got it's not your experience you have my fans that would be every year did it once a year yeah that's we like this monthly thing and travel but do once a year where was like an event in experience kind of like what's the name Jessie did Jessie its Larry yeah like starting this new thing where he hundred climbs up yeah he runs up the mountains and all that did you do that or no no but something like that where he's going over to talk to me about it like I think next week or something like that but I you know I'm Keaton had a friend who did it he was like it was you know painful and challenging but also really coolest Brice I think there's a Killington the first one that he did and then you just run you run up and down the mall until until you've achieved the elevation Everest or Everest right right where yeah it's cool it's cool no I think it I think it's a good idea fun to do yeah so if you all support it right okay check it out first see how the first year goes and then alright well if you're watching on YouTube leave a comment below if you don't think that it looked like well you know I think it'd be amazing cuz because I know you're doing retreats now yeah which is different more like transformation right but imagine creating a transformational race right experience a journey I would potentially I'd be open to doing it be very careful what are the open to doing it there's nothing else that I've wanted to do uh-huh like the LA Marathon my my buddy Matt he's like let's do it every year and I'm like I just could care less yeah there was something that was differently unique and I turn right right right it's just the long endurance stuff is like hard for me yeah like three months that's what that's what attracted me to ultra endurance to begin with because as difficult as those challenges are physically they're really spiritual Odysseys right at that point in my life I was looking to connect with myself I was looking to learn more about who I was and what made me tick and when you train for these super crazy long races you're just strip down to your core like until there's no like all that it's almost like an ayahuasca trip like all the all the artifice like all that that shell that you walk around with your masks you know and become naked describe yeah and you're confronted with yourself in a really profound way and I learned so much about myself as a result of doing those but on the other side of that it's like okay I learned lessons do it like do I still need to like go and do it like yes no I don't know you know what I mean well I think yes and no yes you can keep doing it because there's always another evolution of where you can grow into and I think when you stop it when you stop experiencing pain you know a certain type of pain I think you become very complacent in your life and you become lazier that's why what you do do is I think inspiring to me because I try to do something every single day that's painful like lately I've been getting up at 5:30 a.m. I don't want to do it it's painful yeah the lifting in the morning it's painful I don't like it I'd rather sleep in you know ten hours a day I'd rather do it but I feel so much more productive when I inflict some type of pain in my life every single day of course something I don't want to do uncomfortable and that's why you know I think you inspire so many people with doing these endurance long endurance races at the age you're at and you know running circles around people my age yeah well the thing that the thing though that's so funny is that like I'll share like on Instagram stories I go here's the workout I did today and people would be like that's so inspiring you got me out of that and I'm like Utah I'm like actually I just prefer to do it like I choose to do it like I enjoy it you know what I mean and yeah it's painful but that's how you connect with yourself and that's how I feel alive by pushing myself in that way I think you'd be more impactful in the world when you have something a challenge every couple of years that you're tackling it doesn't have to be a 50-mile Balkan sea race or whatever you know that that crazy but something you're just doing I think you're to be more impactful in the world than if you're just hey guys this is what I did ten years ago yeah of course of course yeah I totally I totally agree with you you know and in many ways like this book it's like these are most of the stuff in here stuff I did a long time ago yeah you know yeah I think you should do it all right I'd be interested all right and that puts all blocks of the first year and then maybe do it this is I gave you like I said be very careful it would be a stream gonna be man we talk a lot about exercise meditation and diet both of us the guests we have on if someone is looking to improve their life and transform their life and they wanted to get started with one aspect diet nutrition physical exercise and meditation which one do you think should be obviously all of them are equally important but if they could only start with one for whatever reason which one you think is the most important to start with meditation nutrition physically it's hard because they're so intertwined with each other and it's hard to parse one from the other so I'm reluctant or reticent to say one versus the other but if you're forcing me to do that I would say focus on your diet at first you know I think changing your plate and cleaning up the the the vibration of what you're putting into your body is a portal to the soul and if you are intentional about that and you know really focus on trying to eat real foods as close to their natural state you know in my case I hunt plant-based diet if you're not ready to take that entirely just try to eat mostly fruits vegetables nuts seeds legumes and beans things like that I think that that will be a catalyst for future growth in those other areas and that was my experience like I wasn't ready to meditate or to you know return to becoming an athlete or any of those things I started with changing my relationship with food and I think when you change that frequency of what you're putting into your body it impacts you on every level not only emotionally spiritually etc and it is a catalyst for progressive growth from there so I would start with that and the more you kind of refine that then suddenly you get interested because you suddenly have a whole sense of vitality you're like oh I feel like going out and moving my body I haven't felt like that way but so the fitness will naturally follow and then you're like wow my body feels good and I'm taking care of it in this way like how do I tend to my spirit and my emotions in my mind well I guess I'll start exploring the world meditate mm-hmm yeah I was watching this thing on Netflix called chef's table have you ever heard of this yeah yeah never watch it or now I have yeah my wife is obsessed with it I watch it for the first time last night and just happened to turn on a recent episode it was of a woman who's a monk oh it's in South Korea is how it is yeah so she's a she's she is a little genius it was amazing I forget her name but she is basically a nun in this Buddhist monastery in I believe it's an I believe it's in believe it's in South Korea yeah and she's like a food magician this is all holy a plant-based but she grows all her herbs in her own foods and it is the most artistic beautiful food that you've ever seen and her approach to it is so mindful and and so with so much grace that it is impossible to not be inspired and the food that she prepares in this monastery I guess and you would know because you just watched the episode it's called a temple food right which is like the spiritual food for your soul and your vine exactly I believe it's a hundred percent plan based on the so it is yeah yeah but if they kept calling it she kept calling a temple food mm-hmm how it's going to like infuse your body with this like spiritual awareness and enlightenment and they would even had like enlightened tea with like this special flower you know thing and there was a New York Times critic food critic who said he went to this collage yeah she had and he was like it was life-changing and then I had to go to Korea or wherever was variants it for 30 days and learn about it that guy's name is Jeff Gordon yay that New York Times writer and he did a story on me and my family that was in New York Times called vegans it was called vegans go glam it came out a couple of years ago and when he came to our house to interview us he had just come from that experiment I was like I gotta tell you about he told us the whole story and I was like okay like I didn't really get it until that chef's table episode came out and I was like oh now I get it but but he wrote an incredible piece for the New York Times about her in her work that I'm sure people can find yeah that's interesting but food does something to our physical makeup and there's no question about it yeah I mean you transform your physical body and your energy transformed when you transform the food you've ate it yeah and like you know I don't want to sound like a crazy whoo hippie but I believe that you sleep dance oh yeah there's a whole thing we were talking about that if you want when you take like high vibration live foods into your body it's gonna it's gonna have an impact that's different from taking in something that is that is dead you don't know and heavy yeah I hear ya it was my direct experience an N of wine experiment it's so funny though there's other people you know there's this guy Mark Bell I'm you seen you know this is you know it's got a podcast and he's on Instagram YouTube he's a big bodybuilding guy used to be like really overweight not overweight just a big massive guy he's a leaner than ever he's still huge and strong he's unlike a the carnivore diet which is like all healthy meats but he looks healthier and younger than ever mm-hmm and a leaner than ever and I'm just like there's so many different diets out there but I'm a big believer in a plant-based diet and ever since moving to LA I've been surrounded by you and my other friend bill Glazer who's just like but yeah overall about it it's been vegan for a while and you know I just I go to more vegan restaurants and I just start to eat more vegan foods but it's just like God it's like a switch like to fly the switch to go to turn it off about meat and it wasn't until I watched oka John you watch the time yeah okay yeah what if I watch no Joe where I actually had a full emotional connection to to meat but it only lasted for about a month and then I don't know I can justify it some other way there's other doctors who talk about you know how meat is good for you when you have a certain types whatever so it's challenging but you gave me some good advice you said you know if you're gonna eat meat at least don't eat dairy yeah that's what you told me I think it's like dairy is one of the worst things in your mind yeah cut out dairy dairy cut out dairy and just and limit your me intake if you're not ready to go 100% plant-based so right now even if you're the most informed and diligent consumer and you're poking around the internet it can be very very confusing there's so much debate and acrimony when it comes to this conversation that we're having about what is the optimal human diet but I think all or most of the experts and certainly the ones that I respect the most will agree upon one fundamental fact which is that a diet high in fiber fruits vegetables nuts seeds legumes beans these things is really the path forward and when you kind of look at the Blue Zones and the people that live the longest and the happiest these are people who are eating a very small amount of meat at most maybe some fish and their diet is basically consists of of you know what I just mentioned and so I think there's wisdom in that and we want to overcomplicate it we want to say we want to be reductionist about it it's not that so for anybody who's listening who's struggling because they are confused by all of that like if you're not ready to cut meat out you know just make it a side dish and make the main entree 8,200 vegetables so you know so you're cut your you are a recovering addict right how long were you uh alcoholic before so I was now I was an alcoholic I probably my first drank around 17 and I got sober 31 I am a recovering alcoholic alcoholism took me to some some pretty dark higher places you know at age 30 31 you know I was somebody who who had really squandered a lot of potential on top you know when I was a senior in high school I got it in every college I applied to I was hopeful I was good enough to be an Olympic hopeful maybe I was with an emphasis on hope oh yeah I was I was world I was world right swimmer I swam at Stanford in the late 1980s we 1/2 inch to a championships when I was there yeah I was a benchwarmer though wasn't clear about that and Alcoholism really you know destroyed destroyed my potential as an athlete it undermined every aspect of who I was it stripped me of all my ambitions and potential and by the time I was 31 I was a pretty broken human being you know I was alienated from my friends and my family I was you know the guy who just never showed up and would lie to you and you know sleeping on a bare mattress in a shitty apartment with no furniture in it about to get fired from my job at two duis and I just could not stop drinking I could not stop drinking of course I knew I was an alcoholic and I just had that moment of clarity you know one day that you hear about with people that are in recovery where I was like I just can't I can't live this way anymore I ended up going to a treatment center in Oregon where I thought I was gonna go for you know the 28-day deal and whose people do and I ended up living there for a hundred days which is kind of a long time did you feel like he needed to stay and because you weren't ready to leave and go back to the real world of what happened was I got there and and I started telling people how it was actually living and what I was doing for the very first time and the counselors there were like dude like I know you think you're gonna spin out of here in a couple weeks but we really think that you need to stay like you have very vividly recall this one guy saying you have a case of alcoholism that we only see in 65 year old lifelong drinkers and if you don't get this right you're gonna go back out into the world and you're gonna die and I see it all the time and I was able to hear that and I was very aware that my best thinking had me essentially in a mental institution and as somebody who was that guy who had so much promise you know it was a pretty precipitous fall and I never wanted to have to go back and so I thought I'm gonna stay here and I'm gonna make sure that I get this right you know and that's what I did you know and then in the wake of that you know came back to Los Angeles and my priority was to build the strongest foundation of sobriety that I could and that was my number one thing going to a meetings and immersing myself in the community here the recovery community in Los Angeles and then tried to repair all the wreckage that I'd created as relationships relationships and just professionally and and really I was like I used to be here I fell this far I got to get back up on top and in retrospect looking back I wasn't really aware of it at the time I took a lot of that compulsive addict energy and I put it into my work you know I was like I and I and I justified it by saying look you know I have this potential I got a regain it you know I have to repair this and and it worked you know by the time I was 39 I had succeeded I repaired those relationships you know it succeeded in business s --fill lawyer-like partnership track a law firm had a portion the drive I had all the stuff you know but that's when that existential crisis started to percolate up because I I never really thought like is this what I want to do I just it was more like I need society to perceive me in this way and this is what somebody of my education is supposed to do without ever really taking a beat to say well what is it that that I want to do like what's unique to meet what gets me excited and out of bed in the morning that was never part of the inner mental dialogue and nothing that I ever really considered in a real way hmm and that just played it out played itself out as long as it could until you know I had that second bottom you know on that staircase which was very similar to that bottom that I had with drinking know where I realize like my life is unsustainable like I need to make some significant changes what did you get married I got married about 17 years ago no actually well Julie and I have been together about 20 years but we didn't get married for a long time so we got married my daughter's 14 we got married about 15 years ago you met her after you went to rehab I met her when I had a year sobriety job yeah because I was I was celibate during year because when I left rehab they were like look your relationship with women is very intertwined with your drinking and we think emotionally it pause on that and take this time to really figure out who you are and and that was another thing that I took seriously and that was a very empowering thing to be celibate for a year well and and really kind of opt out of dating altogether because you really don't force to like deal with yourself and then at the end of that year I met Julie and then like that was it Wow yeah do you think you guys would be together if you didn't met two years prior no way I would have been a wreck and she was married no what am I happened I wouldn't happen and like you know I'm paper like Julie was not the person for me and I wasn't the person for her it didn't really make she was older she she was coming out of a marriage yet two young boys like I was thinking my next girlfriend's gonna be you know five years younger than me and like really just no drama you know no complications or anything like that but you know the heart wants what the heart wants right how was that evolved in the last twenty years since you've known and it's been incredible you know I mean prior to meeting her I couldn't sustain a relationship I couldn't be honest that couldn't be faithful and I was really scared to be in a relationship with her especially since she had two boys and you know we're going on almost 20 years now it's been incredible and it's been you know it's been an evolution you know of trying to figure out how to cohabitate with another human being for that long period of time is challenging and I think one of the things that's allowed us to to continue to grow alongside of each other is that she is very independent and I'm independent and you know I'm not looking at each other it's like it's like you complete me it's like it's not that like we're on our own journeys you know our personal growth trajectories are between ourselves and and our version of God really and I don't rely on her to fix me and she's not looking to me for the same and so we can come together and like make magic and you know we work together too we write cookbooks together we do retreat so we're professionally enmeshed as well as we are personally in mesh and you know as parents of four kids I think it's easy to allow a relationship to then be defined by what you guys are doing together in a career context you know like all your conversations are about like okay we got it did you email that person back and what are we doing about this and so we've had to be very diligent about making sure that we know when we're working together and when it's like personal family or yeah that's cool and what has being a recovering addict taught you about compassion for others oh it's been huge it's been huge you know all the the all the tools that I've learned to navigate the world began with what I learned in rehab and what I continued to learn in recovery and it's it's made me much more compassionate towards other people because I've come to understand that that you know we all have our own pain you know when you're in the recovery community you're constantly meeting people and hearing their stories you know what it was like for them what happened and what it's like now and and you become very connected with that journey of how life can be very difficult and and I think whether you're an addict or not we're all walking around in the world with our masks on and it's easy to just presume or project on other people that they have it easy or that they're not you know having the same struggles that you are having but in truth I've come to understand and learn and really take to heart that that you know you don't know what people are going through and I've gone through a lot and I've been in a very dark low place and so I don't really judge other people's experiences you know and that's a perspective I brought into the podcast too even when I have people on that I don't agree with or don't see the world in the same way I'm able to have empathy for them and I'm able to kind of find a way to you know respect or sometimes you're wrong yeah well what's the big lesson that you try to teach your kids now I think the big lesson well it's it's multifold but but I think at the core of it is is teaching them that the most important thing well as parents the most important thing I want to instill in them is a sense of self-assuredness and self-confidence belief in themselves a belief in themselves yeah and then with that I try to encourage them to find something that they care about and I don't really care what that is you know I just want them to have something that excites them and then my job and my wife's job is to find a way to fuel that and support that because I think that's the engine that will propel an individual to success later in life rather than saying you should have this career you should have that career like whatever it is that they're naturally gravitating towards like I try to pay attention to that and then find a way to be a support system for that so for example my my 14 year old daughter started painting when she was like four years old five years old she sold paintings too you know our friends when she was a little girl she moved away from it for a while and then she came back to it and then she decided on her own that she wanted to apply to get into the performing arts school here in Los Angeles it was very difficult to get into so we got her a mentor this young girl who had gone to art school and she worked with her for over a year helping her learn how to paint putting a portfolio together she applied to this school and she just got in Sakura siting and and you know so the the analogy is it took me a very long time to find something that I cared about that I could invest myself in and my message that I put out in the books and what I write about and the podcast and all of that is like you know find what what is true to your heart and pursue that with everything that you have so I have to believe that if that is true for myself and the people that I'm communicating with it has to be true with my children yeah yeah what's the biggest challenge of being a the biggest challenge is is understanding that you you can't control their environment you know that you have to allow them to have their own experiences and come to their own conclusions even if you know what's best you your job is to kind of guide them gently in a direction that you see fit but when they stumble or they end up making a bad decision you have to sometimes step back and allow that to unfold without getting overly involved in it that's got it which is so challenging for a control freak what's it gonna be like do this yeah but like you know I've learned from the way that I grew up that you know it's important to to provide a little bit of space in the flow you know and and and you can't you can't insulate them from the pain that life is inevitably going to deliver so your job isn't to make sure that they avoid that at all costs but to make sure that they're loved and supported when something like that inevitably occurs yeah I know your parents don't rock mm-hmm yeah was in Washington DC yeah yeah they're still together yeah what's the biggest lessons you learn from both of them that's a good question my father is a gentleman's gentleman he's a he's a he's a very successful lawyer in Washington DC and now he's become an author himself so we're both writing books and we can run over that it's cool I think what I learned from him is is and from my mom as well who's an educator is the importance of learning and education like that was something that was impressed upon me at a young age probably not in the healthiest way maybe a little tick too much but better respect for the importance of learning not just in school but throughout throughout your life mm-hmm that's cool and what's the biggest challenge you're faced with right now hmm I think the biggest challenge that I'm faced with right now is learning what to say no to mm-hmm because my life is big opportunity yeah as you know I'm sure you're in this situation all the time you're on the receiving end of a lot of cool opportunities and it's because life was so hard not so long ago like now I'm in a position to take advantage of things that were not being offered to me then and it's all awesome like I want to say yes to everything because it's all super cool so the challenge is being clear on what it is that I'm actually doing and making sure that the decisions I'm making are driving that forward rather than using those opportunities as distractions that ultimately prevent me from being as impactful or successful yes I know that I can be its instead of being good at lots of things being greater than a few things and staying focused right well for example like somebody says hey we want to pay you a bunch of money to come and speak at this conference and it's um that's some really cool resort and we'll put you up and all of that and it's like yeah I want to do that then you're like but if I do that then that's all this time away and I'm gonna fall behind in this other project that I'm working on so in the balance of things like what is most important for me to do yeah you know oh yeah so saying no having boundaries that's that's difficult for me and you know I'm a I'm a people pleaser at heart you know yeah so it's difficult for me to say no to anything oh yeah make sure not to ask you know you get it before I ask the final few questions and make sure you guys get the new book or the updated book finding ultra rejecting middle-age becoming one of the world's fittest men and discovering myself it's very powerful updated expanded a hundred plus new pages nutritional stuff in there as well make sure you guys check this out very powerful story journey insights all the things you got a new cookbook out to yeah that's right so this second edition of finding ultra just came out super excited about it and I appreciate the fact that you had it was there this was sitting up there yeah well I could see it in all your videos and I really just pulled it out I was waiting for you I was how long is that gonna sit up there before he swaps it out but I I it's not lost on me that you had that there and I appreciate it we but we get rid of lots of books keep the favorites yeah thank you I wanted to take the opportunity to rewrite it for the reasons I already mentioned to bring it up to speed but it's about a hundred pages longer it's got a brand new prescriptive chapter that has all the tools and the resources and the strategies that I employ to transform my life it's got a new forward it's got beefed up appendices it's got a recipe section there's all kinds of bells and whistles so even if you read it originally and enjoyed it there's plenty there for you to enjoy the second time around and then yes on April 24th we have a new cookbook coming out called the plant power wait it's hell yeah we had my wife and I wrote a book several years ago way this is yeah Delia Italy Louis Ohio boy this book is like next-level 125 plant-based recipes the Italian everything's Italian it's informed by these retreats that we do every year and the Tuscan countryside working with chefs there and taking groups of people through a week-long transformation and we took all of that put it in this amazing book and super excited that's pretty cool yeah it's it's good like the photography everything is like it's like a coffee table book you're gonna want to leave out you're gonna want to use it all the recipes are very family-oriented family friendly delicious they're gonna fill you up it's not just salads like it's all the good stuff amazing love about Italian food Wow sounds amazing and I heard a rumor that if you preorder a copy of that you're entered into a contest to potentially get a free ticket to the next retreat is that what I heard yeah that's a WoW you did your homework so yeah we just announced this contest well we do we're going back to Italy in May 19 through 26 and we're taking a group of about 35 people it sold out but somebody a woman had to back out for some reason so we have this extra smooth this open spot and we were thinking well just we'll sell it and then we thought well let's use this opportunity this pre-order campaign to like offer this spot to somebody who wants it so yes that's it's only four it's a woman only because it's in a shared female arena so it's only available to women but you're interested in learning more about that go to my website and I have a blog post up that has a form to fill out and all that good stuff yes you got to buy the book and enter the form exactly yeah so that's rich roll com mm-hmm for that very cool final couple questions this one is called the three truths I think I asked it to last time but I'll ask it again if this was your final day for you many years from now and you've achieved everything you want it became your greatest self and tackled everything every challenge any dream you had you may come true wrote all the books everything but for whatever reason you had to take everything with you on your last day so nothing could stay for us to have access to these books or the content you put out there it's all with you in the grave and gone into another spiritual realm but you did have the opportunity to leave behind one piece of paper with the three things you need to be true about all your lessons in life all your experiences that you would share with the world and this is the only thing that we would have to have access to your words and wisdom what would you say are your three truths Wow man that's tough let's see you did not ask me this before so this is new I would say live true to yourself give freely to others and love deeply not much more than that is important there you go powerful own acknowledge you for a moment rich for constantly showing up I mean you're 51 you put me to shame with your health your abilities everything but your compassion towards humanity and wanting to just love on people in the sense of not judging people making people wrong I think that's one of your biggest superpowers is your ability to lead through humility while putting yourself through any type of challenge or adversity and just share your story and I think the art of storytelling has been lost for a lot of us we don't think we are who are we to share our story publicly and your ability to do it and continue to show up and share it even though it's not perfect every day for you is really inspiring and powerful so I acknowledge you for that man thank you my friend course a privilege and honor to sit across from you once again and mad love and respect for everything that you're doing has run what you've built here in the service that you provide is so many people so always always good to see you and we should appreciate a final question what's your definition of greatness my definition of greatness is really probably a variation on what I would leave behind you know it's like to be great is to live in a way that is that has fidelity to who you truly are like are you fully self actualized so to be great is to is to live in that second self actualized way and to give away freely the wisdom that you've accumulated as a result of trudging that road hmm ritual the legend is friend appreciate it man push it you

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 44,804

Rating: 4.9384613 out of 5

Keywords: lewis howes, the school of greatness, rich roll, podcast, interview 2018, finding ultra, ultimate potential, entrepreneur, success, business, alcoholic, recovery, mask of masculinity, as seen on ellen, motivation, health, body, successful people, inspirational, motivational, gary vaynerchuck, how successful people think, tom bilyeu, mel robbins, diet, vegan

Id: IdIu2VQA37g

Length: 59min 23sec (3563 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 25 2018