How to Become Decisive In the Face of Paralyzing Fear | Colin O'Brady on Impact Theory

i'm a human with all of the range emotions ups downs fears insecurities doubts all that kind of stuff however i've also figured out how to program my body to perform or at least acknowledge go like oh i'm afraid right now because like if i let go of this tent like i could die however that fear could either be paralyzing meaning oh my god and that's where i make a mistake because i'm so afraid and i'm shaky and i'm like what do i do where i go like oh i'm afraid right now that's my body's response telling me like the stakes are real this is the time in your brain we need to take that fear and channel the strength from that fear and go oh this is what means you need to focus right now you need to double check that knot you need to really make sure your systems are dialed you need to take a breath and slow down and all that and so it's not about being fearless as in not having fear but it's being able to assimilate fear to not let it paralyze you and using that as strength to focus or whatever the situation may be [Music] [Music] hey everybody welcome to impact theory today's guest is one of the most accomplished mountaineers and endurance athletes the world has ever seen he set two all-time records in the explorer's grand slam which saw him climb the seven highest mountain peaks on each of the seven continents as well as trekking to both the north and the south poles fewer than 50 people in all of human history have ever accomplished the feat and he did it in a record-shattering 139 days he also holds the record for the fastest scaling of the 50 u.s high points which he managed to do in just 21 days and additionally he competed in 25 triathlons on six different continents and holds the mind-blowing distinction of being the first human ever to cross the entire continent of antarctica solo completely unsupported and unaided a nearly 1 000 mile death-defying journey that he did in just 54 days now all of this would be impressive no matter what but what makes his tale even more extraordinary is that he did all of this after being horribly burned in a tragic accident and being told that he may never walk normally again proving the power of the human mind however just 18 months later he won the largest triathlon in the u.s so please help me in welcoming the first person to snap from mount everest to an audience of 22 million people one of the biggest badasses in the world of human achievement colin o'brady thanks for having me man it's great to be here it's fantastic to be here what you've done is so insane dude and like as somebody who for a while i boarded on almost phobic of the cold so the thought of walking across by myself in an area where you can throw boiling water into the air and watch it turn into ice yes indeed that's uh that's insane man so what is it about those kind of journeys that like makes you want to do it it just seems so freaky yeah it's a good question what is freaky uh you know it's fun to talk about the external obviously you know antarctica average temperature minus 25 degrees like you said boiling water into ice in an instant so to be out you know in those conditions alone like you said unsupported unaided which meant i had to have all my gear and supplies in a sled so no resupplies throughout the entire time it's just me mono imano no kites or dogs pulling me along just me pulling my sled um you know that's hard in itself the physical preparation you know we can get into that but what really inspires me to do these types of things is the journey into the mind is sort of the depths that i can discover about myself and for me you know having an endurance athlete and as you mentioned setting some other world records previously i loved doing that but what really attracted me to antarctica specifically was the fact of this kind of clean blank white canvas for lack of a better word you know you're talking about a place that basically has nothing on the horizon during the time i was down there to antarctica summer so our winter so 24 hours of daylight and i thought what place plays better than to push myself as an endurance athlete try to do something that no one in history has ever done people been trying for 100 years but more so the curiosity and my personal why was around what happens into the mind what is the sort of soulful journey that you can get into where can you find flow states and moments of high performance as well as battle your own demons when there is just this you know endless white landscape and nothing to distract you when you're out there you've talked about these endurance feats becoming like art for you and that your canvas is the endurance sport i want to talk about like so when i think about artistic expression it's an active process for me where i feel um stephen king said it best when he said you when it's you're really in a flow state you feel like you're channeling like something's just happening through you yeah so that is a fun wave for me to ride as a writer and that's where you're sort of going you're you're really experiencing something and it's fascinating to me the characters that pop into my head or the things that they say because you know it's some part of you which really gets interesting so what is that sort of running dialogue that you're having when you're out there that's led you to say that this is like an artistic expression you know for me i have to go back a little bit in my life you know i was a great athlete throughout my life you know i was a collegiate swimmer and raised triathlon professionally as you mentioned and these other world records and through that i kind of you know in the sort of the world the way people identified me the way i identified myself was i'm an elite athlete i'm a professional athlete that's what i am um and i think of art at least in my younger age i don't know but a thing of art is like being able to draw well or be able to compose music both things i'm terrible at to be perfectly honest um and so i was like oh i'm not an artist i'm an athlete um and then a couple years ago actually when i was at burning man um it was the first time really where with all of the sort of art that goes on there that's collaborative that you can touch that involves all the senses the huge installations and everything and the whole kind of environment in itself is this sort of collaborative art piece i was like oh art art isn't the way i frame the word in my mind creativity is a whole other thing and actually what i'm doing through my projects is my canvas just happens to be endurance sports that's my craft that's what i've beat on for years and years and years but what i'm actually trying to do in the world is tell stories show my story and showcase it in a way that isn't about people watching the athlete in the arena compete some world record but more so how can we create stories to have this ripple effect of positivity and impact throughout the world so start a non-profit that was focused on inspiring kids to get outside move their bodies with active healthy lives through our sort of storytelling and creative mediums you mentioned snapchatting from the summit ever it's really sharing these stories in a way not that someone who can be like dude colin you're a badass that's awesome i'm kind of like okay like that's you know semi-interesting what's interesting to me is when someone's like holy i've been talking about starting that business for the last 10 years but like you actually went out there and did the thing thank you for doing that because i'm actually now starting that business or the way my wife and i have kind of really built and co-created this together a huge part of this story i'll talk more about her for sure but you know when someone says like hey because of what you guys have demonstrated i'm leaning into my relationship in a way that i never have before or you know i i am gonna you know dance or create or whatever that is in their own life and so for me i started to think of myself less as an athlete and more as an artist and really this was just my creative platform for doing that to hopefully have my creative expression into the world and i think for you is what you're doing here with impact theory the storytelling i know a little bit of your story about your dreams and aspirations around movie studios and things like that which is incredible um is just the same idea right it's like the power of storytelling the power to move people through action um and so that's how i've sort of reframed in my mind of thinking of this as the sort of art expressions and me being out there walking across antarctica or whatever i you know happen to do next with my body is just my expression of that in the world i think i'm accurately quoting you to say that you said something very close to we are the story that we tell ourselves talk to me a little bit about self-narrative especially in light of that day one when you started the journey to cross antarctica where you hit real doubt right off the bat like what what were you saying to yourself and how did you manage to keep going yeah i mean i i love that phrase we are the story we tell ourselves i'm such a such a big believer that um you could have a pessimistic an optimistic standpoint you can sort of like i said for the longest time i was like i'm an athlete i'm terrible at art and now i'm like wait i'm an artist like this is creative it's just if it's just reframing in my mind but that first day literally um you know my wife and i planned this project for well over a year and kind of been out in the zeitgeist of exploration as being an impossible project a couple years prior to me a guy died attempting this crossing a couple years later one of the most prolific polar explorers went out there and after 54 days ran low on food and supplies and actually had to be rescued out of there before he fully ran out of food and people were like look this project's impossible because it's this math equation of you can't carry enough in your sled without being resupplied because it's too heavy to move it at first to get across the continent but if you take too little you're going to run out of food somewhere on the other side trying to make this traverse so it's a square weird math equation people like it's impossible so we literally jenna and i decided to name our project the impossible first not as a song like cocky ploy like people call us impossible like we're so much better we can do it it was like literally like this might be impossible but i saw on your wall over there you know you you miss a hundred percent of the shots that you don't take it's like but we're willing to try like we're willing to engage this process and if we fail in trying something that is seemingly impossible well we're sure gonna learn a lot along the way along this incredible journey so like let's go after it let's call it the impossible first and if we happen to figure out how to get the other side heck yeah even better um but you know you know kind of getting back to that i mean for me that story that we tell ourselves that first day you know i literally land there after all this planning all this preparation media press storytelling around this and i get out there i put my sled and i strap in the first day and like i can't pull my sled like i'm like uh like uh like i mean i can move it a little bit but not in any sort of sustainable way at all and a little bit of context in the story is that another british explorer actually was attempting this crossing at the exact same time um not not like sort of at the same time like literally we were dropped off one mile equal distance away from each other so not only racing history but now we're racing each other head to head because the logistics are so complex that it meant we literally had to take the same plane the same drop-off point on the same day like ready go and so you know he's this sort of you know grizzled polar veteran um older than me but way more experienced than me as well he's you know he's crossed more you know miles in antarctica than any living explorer pulling a sled and on that first day i can barely pull my sled and this is this captain lou i see him on the horizon just like chilling just like taking off just like he's like smooth ski stroke day one like looking behind me like oh this kid does he can't even move on the first day and so that question like where are the stories we tell us what do i tell myself in that moment do i go like wow i am an epic failure i'm alone in antarctica my competition is way more prepared than me what did i get myself into you called your project the impossible first duh like i literally pick up the satellite phone to call jenna my wife she knows she's in the details of the whole project plans and she's like why are you calling me so soon you just got out there and i'm like so it seems like we named our project the right thing it appears that it's um impossible um and she's like wait what i was like yeah i can't really pull the sled so to me it's that moment and i think we have a lot of these moments both in the you know large sense in this case or many millions ones throughout the day small decisions of you get to choose how to act in that moment what i've realized is our minds are flooded with doubt we're flooded with fear we're flooded with setbacks right but in those moments like we actually get to choose and i've realized to me i say the only question that truly matters when facing those kind of obstacles is how will we respond i'm literally crying at this moment when it's minus 25 what happens when you cry your tears freeze to your face it's a pathetic sight like all around um but i said to myself and actually with the guidance of jenna who's certainly been you know a huge guiding force to me if i haven't mentioned her enough already i'll continue to um and she goes look how far away are you from the first waypoint and you know on my gps i've got these ps4 markings on the map and at the time i'm like you know i'm .54 miles away from the phrase there's millions of miles like okay so you're half a mile away from the first waypoint forget about the thousand mile journey forget about captain lou that's like already beating you in this race forget about the media the press the students falling all in the classrooms forget about that you need to set an incremental step right there half a mile like i can see for 10 miles so i can literally see the point i'm trying to go half a mile she's like get to the first waypoint that will make it feel like you've made some sort of progress around this like forget about tomorrow forget about the next day and to me that was just that that mindset shift so instead of you know two things the story i tell myself wasn't you're a failure you always knew this wasn't going to go right it was like oh i'm the type of person that does hard things to push myself and learn and i know it's going to be hard in fact i know i'm on the edge of failure and inch from failure a lot of the time but that's when i thrive because we can i can lean into my support system i can reprogram in my mind tell myself a different story so the story i told myself that day was like oh you're the guy who's gonna make it to the first waypoint today and then tomorrow morning like we're gonna figure out tomorrow tomorrow and that and that's kind of where the journey began not in the not in the way i hoped it would start but uh in a way that uh you know forced me to really start learning and growing right out of the gate i love that and to me like reading about your story and listening to you talk about it that was the part that made it so interesting to me was not that it came easily because talk about the story you tell yourself you could also be telling the story of oh well this is a guy who's a two-state champion in swimming and soccer and he's you know been athletic his entire life and like just has this history of getting momentum going especially when it's like a physical thing and so yeah of course he is able to do this yeah but when it's a story of no there's literally this external um show of me not being prepared that i don't have the experience that somebody else has they're they're you know disappearing off into the distance and my journey has to be one of overcoming my own mind yeah and i found that really interesting in your ted talk you said the biggest obstacle you're ever going to have to overcome is your mind yeah i thought that was really interesting what's your relationship to fear i mean i love what you say there i would take it back one step which is the sort of external experience of others when you've had success so like you said it's easy to sit for me to sit here i'm like yeah i have four world records you know collegiate athlete this that and the other thing like of course you're gonna do this i gotta sit here i don't know you very well but i do know a bit of your story it's like yeah man you're a super successful business you must just like crush business like you know about cpg supply chain that like all these sorts of things right like that should do but like i know because i've sat with enough successful people to be like actually you probably didn't know what you were doing when you started and you probably failed thousands of times along the way the reason you've been successful is because you figured out those incremental steps those shifts those adaptations those oh moments it's all gonna blow up and putting out a fire here and there right like that is the road to success is managing all these little failures along the way and so for me in sharing my story it's like you know i i like watching the olympics just like anyone right um there's certain sports i'm interested not interested in but like curling for example not a sport i know a ton about but if a guy's like i won the gold medal on that i'm like oh okay fine but give me his whole backstory about how he started throwing stones on a pond in canada when he was four years old and the whole process like i'm interested like the journey is interesting to me so for me sharing it as authentically and candid as i have it's easy to be like yeah i've walked across antarctica no one in history had ever done it people been trying for years like oh i'm so amazing like no it's like actually like i set this massive goal and on hour one day one like i literally thought about giving up like that's how hard it was um and we figured it out and so i don't know that that piece of it the mind in terms of the mind and fear fear is very real i think that one of the external perceptions of me if you read you know a two sentence bio is oh that guy's a thrill seeker that guy's you know a risk taker adrenaline junkie you know that kind of stuff he's putting his life on the line whereas i actually think about it very differently which is the things that i'm doing yes there is some implicit danger in you know climbing a mount everest or being alone in antarctica for two months absolutely but i also think that i can mitigate a lot of that fear by training and preparation actually being prepared for what i'm doing even though i wasn't fully fully prepared clearly i didn't have the math equation quite right in terms of the weight of my sled of figuring out that preparation but also saying fear is real but again not having to react to it so was i afraid a lot being alone in antarctica a hundred percent so i couldn't take a single day off because i would have run out of food which meant that when the winds were blowing 50 60 70 mile per hour minus 80 degree wind chill would give you frostbite within 10 seconds of having exposed skin like i still had to be out there not for a minute not for two minutes for 12 13 14 hours and then at the end of that day what i have to do i'd have to set up my tent now i couldn't bring any extra weight with me it was too heavy basically what it was so i literally didn't bring an extra pair of underwear with me like no extra change of clothes so i clearly didn't have an extra tent right no extra tent that means if i'm setting up a tent 50-60 mile per hour winds i tie one not wrong i clip something in wrong it's not peg the ground i let go boom tent's gone i'm alone in the snowstorm in the coldest windiest harshest place no hope for rescue like game over like the stakes are real am i afraid in those moments yes i absolutely felt fear like i'm a human with all of the range of emotions ups downs fears insecurities doubts all that kind of stuff however i've also figured out how to program my body to perform or at least acknowledge go like oh i'm afraid right now because like if i let go of this tent like i could die however that fear could either be paralyzing meaning oh my god and that's where i make a mistake because i'm so afraid and i'm shaky and i'm like what do i do where i go like oh i'm afraid right now that's my body's response telling me like the stakes are real this is the time in your brain we need to take that fear and channel the strength from that fear and go oh this is what means you need to focus right now you need to double check that knot you need to really make sure your systems are dialed you need to take a breath and slow down and all that and so it's not about being fearless as in not having fear but it's being able to assimilate fear to not let it paralyze you and using that as strength to focus or whatever the situation may be that's so interesting what would you say is the most important thing that you did to train for this was it the learning to tie knots with your fingers frozen which some of that stuff that you were doing you know getting your hands really cold and then having to do stuff that required dexterity was it the vipassana meditation like what was the thing that you said like if i could just hand the next person this skill what would that skill be that's going to get him to the other side alive you know it's it's fun certainly that i had this amazing coach a guy named mike mccaskill um who's this you know he's a four-time world record holder himself he's done 5 840 pull-ups in 20 hours something crazy like 30 pound weight but i mean this guy's like the real deal like jack you know dude um and i needed to like get stronger and put on more weight than i'd ever had before for this he was the best guy to train me and he came up with some really inventive things like you had like you know i had my hands in ice buckets like you said but it's like okay your hands need to be cold my heart rate's jacked up because i've been doing you know push-ups or running right before that but then he has me pull my hands out and he's like having me solve math equations or tie knots so that i'm like you know mind is engaged fingers and dexterity engage this like that training was crucial however to your question was that the most important thing no the most important thing that i have experienced in my life in terms of true training that i feel like that i could transport to other people as a suggestion a hundred percent has been the pasta meditations that i've done uh which for those who aren't familiar with that basically it's a meditation practice um but the best way to sort of learn it is to go to these 10-day courses so 10 days of silence no reading no writing no eye contact and then yes i learned how to control my mind better for high performance in sports but to me that practice um of sitting alone of being quiet observing your breath you know i whether it's in antarctica for 54 days alone is like the longest the pasta meditation ever um or you know in a course which by the way is like completely free to go like it costs you nothing other than 10 days of your time and for me i always tell people that's the best you know 10 day roi that i've ever seen i've gone multiple times um the impact is really you know it's it's amazing so like getting into what you can learn through vipassana meditation is very interesting to me i've never done it i'm super intrigued more so after hearing your story than i've ever been and what i want to know because people listening right now they don't understand what the journey inside the mind is and this is one of the reasons that the matrix is the perfect movie to me in terms of being a metaphor for human life because morpheus says the very true quote no one can tell you what the matrix is you have to see it for yourself like there's just no way to explain it right he tries at the beginning he says all around you it's everything you see but like you don't really understand what it means so like when you say that vipassana meditation has taken you inside the mind it's this incredibly transformational thing that it helps you develop awareness for somebody who is sitting at home thinking i have no interest in doing that i'm convinced they have no interest because they don't understand what it means how would you describe it all right i love that question it's a fantastic question one thing i think is beautiful about it is that because our brains as you said are malleable or that neuroplasticity the experience is different for every person as well as it's different every time you go so i've sat um three 10-day possible courses i try to go every year every other year um as well as some shorter ones after that but you got to kind of start with the 10-day and um it's not as if like the first time i was like i'm getting better at this and the second time i was like i'm pretty good at this the third time i was like i'm awesome at this it was like you know even any given day in one of those 30 days that i've done it or any different moment it's ups and downs you're right in the cycle which is a great metaphor for life but trying to drill down a little more specific in in rich detail for for a person which is maybe to help frame that so when you're having these ups and downs in the day is it something like i'm at this my mind is just running all over the place and i have no control and i can't empty my thoughts and i'm worried about then focusing and then when you get into sort of a a zone of really being engaged in the here and now that's when it feels like you're doing it well is that so i think in general uh it sounds like i imagine you have a little experience with meditation in some format which is there's no like being good at meditating like that's like a total fallacy in itself which is the entire practice of papasana teaches you to not have either craving nor aversion which means if you have like this beautiful warm flow state vibration through your body it'd be like i'm good at this now like whatever but the second that goes away if you start craving that good positive flow sensation you're actually craving for something that's not there the same conversely as like you're sitting there like your back hurts your knee hurts you're this and you're like oh my god i'm terrible at this my mind's racing all these things you're like i'm bad at this you have aversion to the pain of that circumstance versus once you go through a full 10 day what you start to realize is both of those things are going to come and go there's going to be good moments there's going to be hard moments but both those moments are actually just objective so take it into antarctica terms for a second where the meditation completely applied to this lesson which is i got to a place in my mind towards the end where i could tap into flow states for a really long period of time um and as storms were raging on the outside of the external there you know like i said 50 60 mile per hour ends it's blowing it's crazy normally be like it's crazy out here i can barely walk the wind's blowing it's so cold i could get frostbitten in a second like whatever or i found the place in my mind for pasta and go like oh it's really windy right now the average temperature is minus 80 degrees i'm out here all alone objectively not wishing i was warm not wishing i was cold not wishing i was somewhere else just like it is it is yes my knee hurts right now while i'm sitting here yes i'm experiencing a beautiful flow throughout my body but being able to being objective about that allows you to react on an even plane with that but one of the descriptions i think is useful for people in sort of thinking about that exercise which i just think is tremendously valuable or just interesting if nothing else and i experienced it both in antarctica as well first of my experience it was in in the past in meditation which was the memories inside my brain these lucid details of memory inside my brain what i mean by that is when you sit in the stillness like i could say to you hey tom um do you remember your high school graduation and for a second something's gonna a memory pops into your mind right but we're gonna keep talking and we're gonna continue this dialogue and like you know pretty quickly like you're not there anymore but when you're alone for that long particularly in antarctica when you can't see anything but in of a pasta meditation like no one's talking no one's disturbing you like you go back to a memory but then you're there for a minute and it's not because your iphone's not dinging you have no distraction whatever then you're there for two minutes five minutes 10 minutes 20 minutes i've gone back through memories in my life not just significant moments but mundane moments like driving to school with my sister you know just like little walks around my neighborhood when i was a kid my first swim race but i can feel the wind on my face i can see my mom across the pool deck i can see you know exactly what the person next to me was this is me five years old remembering rich lucid detail almost like being inside the matrix like i'm there fully implanted in that moment and why i think that that's interesting because i don't think this is a unique experience to me is that it's a reminder that we are all those memories think oh maybe i forgot about that from childhood or that trauma or that good thing that happened to me or that person i met or i can't remember that person's name you know we can't recall these things always but it's all in there like we are really a product of all of these experiences that we've had both good and bad and in between and mundane and all of that and so vipassana connected me back to that realization of not just i am the story that i tell myself but i'm a product of this entire path that i've walked in life and each day moment to moment to moment is important whether i can recall that in my daily life and lose a detail or it takes me to a meditative place to feel that to be fully immersed in your own journey through life and be able to reflect on that i think is an empowerful tool not just to go into the past but to be certainly in the present and then to think about the future in the way that you want to sort of create um your own life so to me it's just uh i don't know if that's a full description of what the matrix looks and or feels like but it's a fascinating exploration the truth is like i'm no buddha i'm no like enlightened person i haven't like figured it all out but what i do know the same way i said about why i wanted to do antarctica was this curiosity which is just like you i'm fascinated about the journey inward and like i have not learned all a lesson i probably have learned you know 0.001 percent of the lessons but like it's fascinating and so setting myself and putting myself in environments like a 10-day vipassana like a you know like a daily practice like a antarctica where i get to go deeper into the mind that's fascinating for me because it's such rich and fertile ground and we're just beginning to understand like the top top top surface layer of what's possible from within what drives you why like so i get the the move towards the going inward and and having that relationship with yourself and beginning to discover that but i think there are far far far easier ways to do it and certainly less dangerous so what is it that um drives you so i see life as there's two forces you've got light and dark so there's the beautiful things you want to do the kids you want to inspire the relationship that you have with your wife and how you guys are doing this together and all of that's amazing and extraordinary um but also there's the darkness that often pushes people for for me for sure like even though what i want to do in my life is have this tremendous impact and i focus on that a lot and it really is what drives me on the days where i'm my most fatigued i'm i'm just spent i don't have any more those moments i dip into the darkness and i think about all the people that want me to fail i think about my own self-doubt and um in very acute moments because i think it's dangerous to be there too long but in very acute moments it is more powerful and it will push me forward what cocktail of things do you have that brought to you you know it's interesting i uh have been asked this question a few different times in different formats and i feel like someone said disappointment people with this answer so but it's my true answer i suppose um you know i don't think of myself as someone who's had a massive chip on my shoulder you know like i grew up i grew up poor um so i didn't have a lot of things but i also wasn't like a huge like you know negative thing that i wore throughout my life just kind of like my circumstance and whatever um i haven't really i think i don't like my parents are divorced but also i have this like really amicable family which is like my parents got divorced and then quickly remarried and my step parents are like huge influences in my life and they brought step siblings where i don't even call them step siblings usually siblings and the hawaiian word my dad lives in hawaii with a hawaiian word for family is ohana but it's not just blood relatives but it's in the larger context of family and so literally this is bizarre to most people but we have what's called ohana weekend where it's my mom my stepmom my dad my stepdad my sisters from both marriages and everyone and nephews and nieces and everyone all in one room and if you didn't know any of you walk in that room you'd be like oh this is just a family but actually it's like people who were divorced and they're supposed to hate each other and all this kind of stuff but we just created family around sort of that so i don't have this like again even with like a you know lower income background divorce parents it's not like i'm like oh i have this like the you know weight of the world on me from that darkness what i will say one of my darker moments for sure which you you know mentioned in brief in the intro is me being severely burned in this fire so just after college um i was traveling in thailand and i thought jumping a flaming jump rope looked like a great idea um and you know rope wrapped around my legs let my body on fire to my neck and i had to jump in the ocean to extinguish the flames which ultimately jumped into the ocean saved my life but uh salt water when you've burned off skin from 25 of your body is obviously extremely painful and the worst thing was i was in a tiny little island where there was no hospital so i had a you know moped ride down a dirt path one room nursing station you know cat running around my bed and across my chest in the icu i mean like pretty much the worst place that you want to find yourself in a situation like this but the worst thing i mean the physical trauma we've talked a lot about the mind here and the physical trauma was immense but what really pushed me over the edge in terms of the dark dark dark place was the doctors walking in on about day two or day three of this ordeal and this you know makeshift hospital in the middle of nowhere in thailand and through this broken english this thai doctor saying to me like hey you'll probably never walk again normally and you're like you know like i said i'd identified myself as this sort of active athlete throughout my life i'm 22 years old kind of you know bridging the gap between college and embarking on adulthood um and you know in an instant i made one stupid decision being you know a precocious 22 year old kid thinking you know jumping a flaming jump rope looked like a fun idea on the beach in thailand one day to boom like life is you know it's over um and that that moment is full of so much darkness for me um but i'm not sure if it's because i choose to have a rather optimistic perspective on the world i don't i don't know exactly what the wiring is or that or the sort of the nurture elements of this but the heroine of this story is my mother who flies all the way over to thailand sits with me in this hospital bed and she's you know she's in the hallway she's crying with the doctors you know she's pleading them for good news saying your diagnosis must be wrong all this kind of stuff but every day she walks into my hospital room with this huge smile on her face with this air of positivity this this this daring me to dream for like your life's not overcalling what do you want to do just this resonant vibration of positivity positivity positivity positivity to kind of compound the yang of my darkness darkness darkness as i'm downward spiraling further and further and ultimately she gets me to focus my mind she's like let's set a goal anything whatever you dream up will you picture yourself visualize yourself in the future and i close my eyes that day and picture myself oh one day i'm going to race a triathlon and instead of her being like hey i said set a goal like look at your legs and the doctors and all this kind of stuff she's like she's like yeah cool like that's your goal why don't we start training right now within a couple hours i have this thai doctor bringing in these weights for me i'm bandaged from the waist down i haven't taken a step in months but i'm starting to lift weights going like hey doc i'm training for a triathlon i know i can't move my legs right now but one day i'm going to race a triathlon and you know fast forward in my life you know 18 months i finally applied back to the united states i learned how to walk again through this sort of prolonged process my mother kind of goaded me to take my first step into the chair in front of me getting out of a wheelchair and all this but i get to chicago and i race my first triathlon and to spread the heck out of myself not just finishing the race but actually winning the entire race um and it's a long form story but you know in the interest of time to answer your question about the darkness is i was in a really dark moment in time and through my mother's guidance she showed me actually that in these dark moments like i said we have a choice and she somehow convinced me and i'm internally grateful for her to convince me to say like focus your mind on a positive outcome this is the bottom you're bottoming out right now but can only go up from here like let's get better let's focus on like great you want to raise a travel i could have said i want to do anything i want to write a book i want to do this i want to just you know whatever it could have been anything and she'd been like great but she was there supporting me which made all the difference but what i took from that and the ultimate lesson of winning this triathlon was going like wow like i don't think of myself as some like superhuman athlete or something something's like wow like not me but all of us as humans have these reservoirs of untapped potential that we can you know extract from when we focus our mind on these positive outcomes so for me the darkness or like the way you describe those hard moments i go through all sorts of hormones i'm out there in antarctica but i have this ability to go back and go like in terms of pain like i felt as like burn accident is one of the most painful injuries you can have you know nerve endings exposed on your full body you're afraid you're in the middle of nowhere no one's speaking english there's cat you know like it doesn't get i mean you can get bad a lot of people i don't pretend to know people's everyone else's pain but for me like that is a depth of despair um that is a pretty low low but then knowing and having the experience to have gotten through that in those hard moments i can go like oh i'm experiencing another hard moment but this too shall pass this too shall pass particularly it'll be they'll pass in an expedited way if i can refocus my energy in that positive direction and find those incremental steps to move forwards with so for me that's been the darkness but that is also you know and i i i don't know your story enough but i i would i would surmise that you've learned some of your greatest lessons through some of your greatest failures right by you know and so it's the same thing where it's like yeah i made a stupid mistake people go well do you regret jumping the rope and i'm like i wouldn't take it back for anything like i wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy either to go through that but for me now that lesson has given me so much strength coming out the other side of the side of that with this curiosity about unlocking human potential in the other things that i pursued in my life yeah i love that but i'm gonna push you more because i know give it to me in your um the crossing you start off behind our boy yep and he's winning yep and it would have been extraordinary for you to have finished anyway but you had kobe bryant in your head yep telling you i'm gonna outwork everybody yeah and you want to talk about somebody who knows how to leverage the darkness totally maybe that's not what you were doing this is not me trying to say yeah i'm just saying there's a competitive drive in you that i want to understand and i want to understand it through the lens of one i want to be able to use that so i want to internalize the lessons you've learned yeah and i want to pass it on to people that are watching this that's awesome to me the fact that you were like all right if this guy does 11 hours i'm doing 12 if he does 12 i'm doing 13. and you end up winning like you beat him by two and a half three days or something crazy so that mentality is so intoxicating to me i just want to understand like where that comes from like how does one cultivate that in their life that's actually what i'm asking you yes okay um a hundred percent there is a super competitive side of me um and completing the crossing was always my goal even though we didn't know if it was possible or impossible and the fact that yes i ultimately won this race but the fact that after a hundred plus years no one completing it we both completed it and i think it's actually fascinating and it's a cute and i waited at the finish for lou to congratulate him because although yes i worked my ass off to make sure that i was first and i won this race like it's an extraordinary accomplishment to finish this because the amount of people that have tried and failed and died et cetera like that two people could do it within a couple of days with each other is is amazing and i think it's probably a testament to both of us uplifting one another in that competitive spirit and so i do believe that in the sort of vein of competition that that actually drives innovation i mean if you take it in the business context like some of the best innovation has come out of people going like trying to get a competitive advantage over their over their peers you know whether that's whatever industry that is it's not like you guys you didn't create the nutrition industry like that existed but you're like looking like well what's a better way to do this like what's a better way to optimize that what's better way to market this what's a better way of this and i imagine you thrived off of that competition in some way um and for me being a curious person about you know we can talk with you know we talk a lot with inward journey but the curious person like what are my edges like what is this i'm like i see somebody else out there and i'm going yes he's more experienced than me he clearly has a lighter it was very obvious from day one that he had about a 50 at least pound lighter sled than me because i had erred on the side of bringing more and more food per day and like all this kind of stuff um but i'm going like but he's human like he's human too i was very intimidated by him but i was also like but he's human too and so can he actually go longer than me like your kobe bryant example which was really relevant for me i happen to be listening to a podcast about kobe bryant at the time i'd listen to almost nothing out there but it was a day where i did listen to uh i think it was a lewis house podcast um and he had kobe on and he's talking about outworking people he's like i wasn't the best basketball player i wasn't at this but i would you know come to the gym an hour before them i would stay an hour later and for me i was like okay like let let me see what i can push i'm exhausted out here but i'm racing another human being like because i don't elevate myself on some superhuman platform so i certainly don't do that with others either like i'm like okay that's that's a human like so let me see what the limits and our edges are and so the curiosity is yes i wanted to win but more than even wanting to win i wanted to find what my potential was in that moment and i felt that i had more to give and that commitment in my mind the same way that i committed to saying i can't walk right now but i want to race a triathlon was the same in a microcosm of that day on the sixth day when i passed lieu of saying like okay i caught up to him thank god because i thought he was long gone but now i'm not gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna take advantage of this moment like i'm gonna like great like i'm gonna take advantage of this moment this is where i don't just go like oh great you caught up to him how nice it's like now you pass them now you can see if you can stay in front like i make that a game in my mind which is both you know i suppose in a small sense at the expense of the expense of the person you're competing against but i really frame it in my mind more as like this person this competition is actually bringing out the best in me like oh i have more i have more to give and i'm just like great like man i actually when i started i thought i could only go 10 hours per day literally i was like 10 hours per day like that is a long time all alone in a freezing cold place dragging a 375 pound sled that's ridiculous but then that one day when i passed him i ended up going 12 hours and then after that 12 hours i went every single day for the next 50 days and in day 5 and day 6 12 hours seemed unfathomable then because of this daily competition i proved that i could do it once and then i go well if i can do it once i can surely do it twice five days then i go well let me do it for the next five days then i'll back it off to 10. that's what i told myself but of course once i got five days down the path of 12 i was like what can i do 12 and a half hours can i do you know and that's where i started playing with that and ultimately my final push in antarctica on my very last day was you know 77 miles straight 32 hours without stopping uh and so you know it's it's definitely there is a competitive side for me um and in harnessing that competition i think it's it's looking within i think it's it's really pursuing things that you are passionate about i know that to get maybe gets thrown around too much but for me it was like i ca i didn't end up in antarctica by like oh maybe i should go to antarctica or i should like go here or a desert or like doing something this next couple months would be cool like i was all in on this with my family with my wife i certainly care about the impact that i can drive in the world and i knew that i could have a much more significant impact be that with my non-profit work be that with even things that pay me well but actually the impact that i have in the world the voice the platform would be more significant i'm sitting here with you right now having this conversation probably because i was first and in the back of my mind i'm aware of that i'm aware i'm going like oh like me doing that allows me to do more of what i love but we chose antarctica because it was a medium or a place that i was deeply curious about so when those two things are combined which is the outcome of being competitive or winning if you will is in line with your core vision or mission into the world as well as what you're actually doing in the day-to-day of the journey a lines of like oh i wasn't just trying to get to the end goal so i could be sitting here in this chair having an interesting conversation it was like i went to antarctica because like i wanted to go to antarctica and like see what that was like and those two things combining wanting the end outcome but also wanting to be super deep immersed in the journey when the journey got hard it was like yeah man like this is what you signed up for like this this is where the growth happens i am way out far in my comfort zone right now and lou is pushing me to my absolute brink but like wow like this is also really really cool and i'm i mean i energetically excited just talking about it because i remember that moment and how much you know now i've grown from that challenge i love that i love that so much there's a there's another side to you that i am just beyond drawn to uh and will smith has a quote that'll lead us there which is he said the reason that i've won in my life is because i'm prepared to die in the treadmill and most people are not and i always love that and he gets to have when he's playing muhammad ali he gets to you know put on screen this moment where he says the opponent that i'm facing right now will never win because what they don't understand is that i will die in the ring before i'll leave i thought oh god that's so powerful like i i really do aspire to that in my life because of my value hierarchy like pushing myself to really see how much my potential i can wring out is my highest value and so seeing people that are driven like that i find very interesting you had a moment when you were climbing mount everest i believe where um you thought you had frostbite on your hands so severe that you were almost certainly going to lose your hand and you say to yourself okay well i'm probably going to lose my hand anyway put it back in the glove and you keep going because you said well if i'm gonna lose my hand i'd rather lose it having summited than you know turning around and going back and i thought that was so rad it turns out that it was a mistake and your hand was just fine but the fact that you were willing to keep going so so my my real question is what is your relationship to death like how do you think about it and is there something in your value system that's like look i obviously want to always always always take every precaution in the world to avoid it and i know that you want to die warm and surrounded by people that you love i'm sure that's got to be the the desired outcome but like how do you conceptualize death and the dance that you do with it hmm that's a great question i love the will smith quilt by the way so good very powerful very powerful um i actually i don't know if he meant this by saying it but i like the treadmill metaphor because i i love the idea of you know yes i'm crossing antarctica the news and the press are following this whatever but like the only reason i'm there is because of the 10 or 20 years when no one was watching that i was like showing up to the swimming pool you know i love the phrase chop wood carry water so i picture you know the to me the treadmill is evocative of like the guy alone just grinding grinding and working towards that um so i love that but in terms of in terms of death um you know i'm aware of it in the sense that i know that the things that i do or have done or certainly perceived as risky people have died attempting them the day that i summited mount everest that you describe as i the hand story it's funny i haven't thought about that story in quite some time you do your research man i'm impressed i'm very impressed oh this is a great interview you're awesome um the uh the three people died that day on everest that i summoned it uh not anyone that i knew i didn't know it at the time i didn't know until i was off the mountain but you know to put into perspective like the thing that i was doing on the day that it was done three human beings lost their life up there that day um and that's you know terribly sad obviously um the thing for me is that in terms of death i'm not seeking a young death i like you said i'd rather than old and in a warm bed and um i have also visualized that outcome so i'm i'm hopefully certain that that'll be the outcome that it will be um but i also embrace living i want to live a full life and so for me we talked about fear before my biggest fear um i think about the spectrum of emotions and human experience in a kind of a one to ten vertical so i guess one we'll call it's called one the worst day of your life and ten you know pure hedonistic euphoria of like you know whatever that is for you and i think that oftentimes people try to stay at five you know on the maslov's hierarchy of needs or whatever that is they're not trying to be self-actualized or anything like that but they're just kind of going like you know shelter food you know basic things are taken care of you know maybe i'm not married to the perfect person but like they're fine and like you know whatever it's just kind of like they're they're good um and i think our society and culture definitely drives people towards that middle in a lot of ways um and you know maybe your best day you know a fun saturday with your buddies or something is a six and then like a day where your boss yells at you is like a four but like you're kind of range bound in this like sort of like four to six like kind of like the middle of the road and for me that's my biggest fear my biggest fear and as that pertains you know to living life fully and not not being afraid of death if you will um although i am not like generally if i'm staying on a cliff and it drops off five thousand i'm like oh this is so chill i mean i'm not alex donald um my biggest fear is that is sort of bottoming out at that plateau of comfortable complacency if you will uh my mind i guess is is very visual um and some of this will make any sense but instead of sort of thinking of that one to ten on a linear plane you know this kind of like bad and best case scenario i've actually bent that in my mind to be kind of like a u-shape and i've got one here and i've got ten on the side of this u-shape and i've got four to five and six down at the bottom here and i'm actually trying to avoid that bottom i'm happy to be at a one meaning that i am confronting something that's so challenging or so sad or so full of fear or so exaggerating that i'm crying and i'm afraid like but i'm feeling something like i'm up actually it's the same as feeling the hedonistic pleasure of the most beautiful you know sexy profound moment if you will because in both senses like i'm engaged i'm living i'm right there and so for me the the fear is not death specifically but the curiosity is how can i do things in my life where i experience more ones and i experience more tens and i spend fewer of my moments in the four to five and you have to pass through four different i mean a lot of my days are affordable you had to pass the four to five you get to one and ten i don't think you can live in one in ten either but not being afraid of either outcome so not hedging so much against being afraid to die that you don't fully live that is such a great answer i just wanna just like sit in silence for a minute that was really really awesome man um yeah i've never thought about it like that but you're right like the sense of being alive even in moments of pain is far more interesting than the numbness of the middle yeah so that's really rad tell people where they can find you and follow this crazy journey of yours instagram and social is kind of my main platforms my name at colin o'brady c-o-l-i-n-o-b-i-a-d-y um i'm on there pretty active my website is callingbrady.com i have a book that's going to come out early next year so that'll all be up on my instagram and website and stuff like that so check that out when it comes out in 2020 hopefully and got some inklings about some other expeditions and things like that nothing ready to announce yet but my my next art pieces will be coming to life um here at some point so uh come say hi come follow along i love it when people say hello and send a direct message on instagram stuff like that i love to hear about everyone's life hope fears dreams goals passions um i love hearing about all that's what inspires me is the other folks engage with me so come say hello and uh yeah that's super cool all right what is the impact that you want to have on the world um for me i'm going to answer it in actual relationship what i just said which is i'm going to use social media as an example actually even though there's things that i really dislike about social media um when i do one of these art pieces when i do one of these projects and someone writes to me and says you know hey i'm in a bad spot in my life i'm battling depression i can barely get out of bed i've gotten you know several people say hey i was thinking about committing suicide or something like that and someone writes me and says the way you're living your life has allowed me to change something in my body in my brain that i can now get out of that bed i can now take that first step out of the wheelchair like you did when you were you know burning a fire in thailand and begin a long road of process towards a better life that impact for me is significant but i want to have that impact at scale infecting one person like that is deeply profound and if i can infect just one amazing it's a life well lived but what i've started to realize is that i can't i can't account for nor do i need to what the impact that one person turning around their life is with the 10 people in their immediate community and the 10 people in the community around that and so if i can start to impact others through what i'm doing that ripple effect of positivity throughout the world i want to see people in a time when it's easy to be at a four or five and a six step outside that comfort zone create innovate you know be be fully resonant with positivity in the world the thing that i'll close with i suppose is when i was out in antarctica alone for that long people say oh what all the lessons were this you know we i could sit here we talked hours and hours about all the different crazy wrinkles and things but two words kept coming into my head over and over and over again which was infinite love infinite love infinite love so much so that when i was in the middle of antarctica on some of my darkest moments i'm alone completely alone i actually felt more connected to humanity than i'd ever been before so much so that i actually put my arms out like this into the air and could feel the warmth and radiation of people sending me positive energy and cheering me along in my pursuit and this sounds maybe a little woo-woo i don't know but i felt like i could take that energy in and i literally here's me in the middle of an article doing this taking the energy in and then sending it back out in the world and that's the impact that i want to have i want to take that infinite love in but send it out in a scalable way that magnifies these ripple effects of positivity throughout the world yes dude thank you so much for coming yeah man my pleasure extraordinary pleasure guys needless to say follow this man it is just beyond extraordinary you will see in yourself that you can do the same kind of things that he's doing that you can have a life full of tens and ones if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care keep calling hell man going to work on myself and saying i don't know how to do this but i know that to get over there that side i gotta grind myself into a fine powder and i did it

Channel: Tom Bilyeu

Views: 126,370

Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, ImpactTheory, TomBilyeu, Inside Quest, InsideQuest, Tom Bilyou, Theory Impact, motivation, inspiration, talk show, interview, motivational speech, Colin O'Brady, Colin O'Brady & Tom Bilyeu

Id: Amt5qR3BP98

Length: 52min 13sec (3133 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 23 2019