Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / The Science and Philosophy of Antifragility with Paul Watkins
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: If you had a goal for yourself, if you're a parent,
- 0:03Speaker 1: if you want to be the best dead you can be,
- 0:05Speaker 1: or you want to stay healthy, you want to run
- 0:07Speaker 1: a half marathon, or do background with your kids, or
- 0:09Speaker 1: whatever you is, why would you not support yourself? What
- 0:13Speaker 1: would you sabatize.
- 0:14Speaker 2: Yourself or what can you mad man welcome creating Vito.
- 0:29Speaker 1: I have been referred to as the mad sideist. I'll
- 0:31Speaker 1: take it as a bench of honor. I think that's okay.
- 0:33Speaker 1: I'll tell you a big work.
- 0:35Speaker 3: Yeah, you are a mad scientist, but not in the
- 0:39Speaker 3: way that people think about. So you're a scientists, you're
- 0:41Speaker 3: a pharmacist by trade, right, but you've also been done
- 0:45Speaker 3: bit a building. You've been a property developer, an entrepreneur,
- 0:48Speaker 3: you're a public speaker. I met you on the circuit.
- 0:50Speaker 3: But you have this kind of hobby of doing mad shit.
- 0:57Speaker 1: I think that's a technical phrase. Yeah, that's the best
- 0:59Speaker 1: foot on here.
- 1:00Speaker 3: It is so talk to. So you do trio running,
- 1:04Speaker 3: claiming all sorts of stuff, and you've done expeditions on
- 1:07Speaker 3: seven different continents, which is pretty faky cool. Talk us
- 1:11Speaker 3: through the highlights of those.
- 1:13Speaker 1: Where do you start look to give people some context
- 1:16Speaker 1: I think to begin with is that I'm not an
- 1:17Speaker 1: elite athlete. I like to get that clear out front,
- 1:20Speaker 1: like the glasses are fairly thick, I'm below average height.
- 1:23Speaker 1: I'm a nerd like fall through and through chess club,
- 1:26Speaker 1: debate club, theater club, the whole lot in high school,
- 1:28Speaker 1: like you name it. And I really got into running
- 1:32Speaker 1: purely because it was the only sport I could do.
- 1:34Speaker 1: I was in high school where you had to do
- 1:36Speaker 1: competitive sport, train two nights a week, compete in the weekends.
- 1:40Speaker 1: I'm too small for footy, too short for basketball, too
- 1:42Speaker 1: on co for cricket, so you do cross country running
- 1:45Speaker 1: and that got me into running. Flash forward, you know,
- 1:48Speaker 1: into a career and you do the usual thing. You know,
- 1:50Speaker 1: you're building businesses, doing all the things, and the health
- 1:54Speaker 1: gets pushed to the side, push to the side, push
- 1:56Speaker 1: to the side, until you get a wake up call
- 1:58Speaker 1: one day we go, hey, guess what happens if you
- 2:00Speaker 1: with the most money, you don't win. You're just did
- 2:02Speaker 1: and that's it. So I decided that I really needed
- 2:04Speaker 1: to do something about that because it was going to
- 2:06Speaker 1: have an ending that wasn't really great. Like I was
- 2:08Speaker 1: very successful, but what else well, my life had no
- 2:11Speaker 1: other dimension or color to it. So I went and
- 2:13Speaker 1: did a very basic trek in Nepaul, purely as a
- 2:16Speaker 1: way for escapism from the corporate world. And I loved
- 2:20Speaker 1: it and loved how it maybe feel. And I came
- 2:21Speaker 1: back and went, well, what's next. And I went and
- 2:24Speaker 1: did the Kakoda track. My grandfather fought and rebell and
- 2:27Speaker 1: New Britain just north of there in World War Two,
- 2:30Speaker 1: so it retraced his footsteps. I did the co Coda track.
- 2:33Speaker 1: I loved it, went what's next, and just started to iterate,
- 2:37Speaker 1: no plan, just well, the next hardest thing would be this,
- 2:40Speaker 1: and the next hardest thing would be that, and a
- 2:43Speaker 1: few years down the track, next thing. And I was
- 2:45Speaker 1: catching a flight on this this Russian Eleutian military cargo
- 2:49Speaker 1: jet out of the southern end of They are there,
- 2:53Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, and we're not talking. Oh'm mister Watkins.
- 2:56Speaker 1: Twelve b you know, three rows down the left. It's like,
- 2:59Speaker 1: get in, find a wooden bench seat on the right,
- 3:02Speaker 1: you know, between all the cargo that's strapped in the middle,
- 3:04Speaker 1: and hang on. And we flew six hours from Puntarenas
- 3:09Speaker 1: in southern South America into Patriot Hills and Antarctica, and
- 3:13Speaker 1: I've got my passports stamped at Patriot Hills and Antarctica.
- 3:16Speaker 1: Caught a flight on a twin out to base camp.
- 3:20Speaker 1: It was myself, three other people and a lead guide
- 3:23Speaker 1: and we were there to climb the Vincent Massive, the
- 3:25Speaker 1: highest peak on the Antarctic continent, unsupported. Just us and
- 3:29Speaker 1: what you brought. Yeah, I was a complete move. I
- 3:32Speaker 1: said to the guide, you know, what's the time zone here?
- 3:34Speaker 1: And he's like, mate, the sun never goes down here,
- 3:37Speaker 1: like there is no there is no there is no
- 3:39Speaker 1: time zones. We climb for twelve hours, we sleep and
- 3:43Speaker 1: we eat, and we get up and we do it
- 3:44Speaker 1: again until the job's down. And this was way back
- 3:47Speaker 1: when it was wasn't very commercial. There was no fixed ropes,
- 3:50Speaker 1: there was no like. It was just we're going to
- 3:52Speaker 1: tackle that headwall. Yeah nothing. It was just we're going
- 3:54Speaker 1: to tackle that headwall until we get to the top
- 3:56Speaker 1: of it. And it takes as long as it takes.
- 3:58Speaker 3: And how much claim experience.
- 4:01Speaker 1: I'd only done two our three reasonable climbs have done
- 4:04Speaker 1: Mer Peak in Nepal, which is a mountain but the
- 4:06Speaker 1: Nepalese referred to as like a small hill, like it's
- 4:09Speaker 1: about six thousand meters but very basic, really touristy kind
- 4:12Speaker 1: of thing. You can walk up and down it. That's fine.
- 4:14Speaker 1: I don't kill him a jar in Africa, And I'd
- 4:16Speaker 1: had a failed attemp on Akin Kagua in South America,
- 4:19Speaker 1: which is seven thousand meters above sea level, which is
- 4:21Speaker 1: a different kettle affairs. And I've done some training in
- 4:23Speaker 1: New Zealand. I've been over to South Island, done some
- 4:26Speaker 1: cravas rescue stuff and just tried to fill the talk
- 4:29Speaker 1: kid with the skills. But like I was on that plane,
- 4:31Speaker 1: that Russian military plane, and I'm looking around at the
- 4:33Speaker 1: guy's next to me, like on their sweating bullets, and
- 4:36Speaker 1: the guy next to me is asleep. And this guy
- 4:38Speaker 1: summoned ever six times, and this guy's on his third
- 4:41Speaker 1: trip to McMurdo, And I'm like, what am I doing?
- 4:44Speaker 1: You're an idiot, You are so out of your death.
- 4:48Speaker 1: But then we spend nearly the best part of the month,
- 4:50Speaker 1: like we had about forty fifty kilos a year per
- 4:52Speaker 1: man just and you're just hauling it just to be
- 4:55Speaker 1: the backpacking it or hauling it in a sled, and
- 4:58Speaker 1: we literally get to a point and we got out
- 5:01Speaker 1: of base camp and the guy had got his GPS
- 5:03Speaker 1: out and he walked us around. He said, dig a
- 5:06Speaker 1: hole there. So you dig a hole, and here's all
- 5:09Speaker 1: the supplies that he'd left there last year, food, everything,
- 5:12Speaker 1: And I'm like, just leave it here, and he's like,
- 5:15Speaker 1: who's going to nicke it? Mate, Like there's no one here, likes.
- 5:18Speaker 3: No wildlife, and it's not good.
- 5:21Speaker 1: It's not going to go off. I'm not going to
- 5:23Speaker 1: bring home. We come back and he's pulling out like
- 5:26Speaker 1: these yead lamb sunks and red wine that have been
- 5:29Speaker 1: free cryovacked and froze it up, and he stashed them there,
- 5:32Speaker 1: and he's got his tents and his cooking year and
- 5:34Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. He said, we just bear
- 5:35Speaker 1: it in the ice. We'll come back next year. I'll
- 5:37Speaker 1: get you goons to dig it up, and we're good
- 5:39Speaker 1: to go. So yeh, God, fair enough. So you just
- 5:43Speaker 1: you end up finding yourself in weird places, meeting really
- 5:47Speaker 1: interesting characters, doing things that you never thought you would
- 5:50Speaker 1: ever do. And I think for me, that's really been
- 5:53Speaker 1: the line that's gone through all of them. Just it's
- 5:57Speaker 1: not about telling other people what you did. It's about
- 6:00Speaker 1: I went to do that because I wanted to have
- 6:01Speaker 1: that experience in that place for me. And if no
- 6:05Speaker 1: one ever knows, that's fine, and that really adds color
- 6:07Speaker 1: to it, I think invadues to it.
- 6:09Speaker 3: And so talk us through. What were the conditions alike?
- 6:12Speaker 3: You were obviously there are at a good time of year,
- 6:15Speaker 3: but good time of year and Antarctica can be a
- 6:18Speaker 3: little different, right, Yeah, it was.
- 6:21Speaker 1: It was minus forty pretty much twenty four to seven.
- 6:24Speaker 1: Now we had we had three men to a tent.
- 6:27Speaker 3: And when I'm no, no, I'm sorry, I've got some
- 6:30Speaker 3: American listeners on this podcast. So minus forty categret.
- 6:34Speaker 1: Minus forty seven grade, it's minus forty fahrenheit. It's the
- 6:37Speaker 1: same that the graph crosses, yeah, which is very convenient.
- 6:40Speaker 1: But about minus forty is the same in both, which
- 6:43Speaker 1: is nice and handy. So it's about minus forty most days. Now,
- 6:47Speaker 1: we had we had three men in a tent. Now
- 6:50Speaker 1: in the tent, the amount of room is if PT
- 6:53Speaker 1: needs to go for a leak and a toweling outside
- 6:55Speaker 1: and you can't go, then the other two of us
- 6:57Speaker 1: are just going to roll over and give him a
- 6:58Speaker 1: little bit of room. To deal with it has to do,
- 7:00Speaker 1: and then we'll all roll back and have a really
- 7:02Speaker 1: uncomfortable conversation. But if we slept in that tent for
- 7:06Speaker 1: eight hours, the warmest we got to the tent was
- 7:08Speaker 1: minus eighteen. I think we got the inside of the
- 7:11Speaker 1: tent to minus eighteen. And we operated in that for weeks.
- 7:15Speaker 1: And you just part of me loves the discipline of
- 7:18Speaker 1: doing that because you can never turn off. You have
- 7:20Speaker 1: to be conscious of what you're doing all the time.
- 7:23Speaker 1: You know, you drop a glove down a glacier, may
- 7:26Speaker 1: you're you're in trouble, like you have you got the
- 7:29Speaker 1: right gear? You can't just pop into the local arii
- 7:31Speaker 1: and buy another glove. That's not happening. You've got to
- 7:34Speaker 1: be Have you got the right gear on? Have you
- 7:35Speaker 1: got the fluid being managed? You're overheating, undercooked? You always
- 7:40Speaker 1: have to be paying attention every month. Are you going
- 7:42Speaker 1: for a leak? Okay? Have you got your boots on properly?
- 7:45Speaker 1: Do you know where you're going? If it's a white act?
- 7:47Speaker 1: Do you know how to get back? Just everything minus
- 7:50Speaker 1: simple things require total focus twenty four to seven. And
- 7:54Speaker 1: I find that really fascinating, just as a scientific experiment
- 7:57Speaker 1: to see can you have your mind in that space
- 8:00Speaker 1: all the time. So you're twenty four hour sunlight, which
- 8:02Speaker 1: sounds really great until like day four or five and
- 8:05Speaker 1: your brain is like, what the hell is going on?
- 8:08Speaker 1: Like this? It really started to throw your brain out
- 8:11Speaker 1: after a while, Like it seemed really cool the first night,
- 8:14Speaker 1: but after a few days it was just I can't sleep.
- 8:17Speaker 1: You don't know what time of date it is. You know,
- 8:19Speaker 1: you don't know what day it is. It became quite
- 8:22Speaker 1: quite weird to have your system completely utterly thrown out
- 8:25Speaker 1: like that.
- 8:26Speaker 3: Yeah, And what most people don't realize is you're lots
- 8:29Speaker 3: of yourselves were on off certainty and cycles, and you've
- 8:31Speaker 3: been bill if you're getting up in the middle of
- 8:34Speaker 3: the eight and it's bright, us, tell me this what
- 8:38Speaker 3: for something like that? What's more challenging? Is it the
- 8:42Speaker 3: physicality or the mental side of things?
- 8:46Speaker 1: I always revert to the mental side of things. Physically,
- 8:49Speaker 1: it's extremely difficult, as you would expect, and in all
- 8:53Speaker 1: those expeditions, you know that there will be a point
- 8:55Speaker 1: where your body says, you can get stuffed. We're not
- 8:57Speaker 1: doing this, like we're just bur We're not doing it anymore.
- 9:00Speaker 1: And then it really is about having the mindset and
- 9:03Speaker 1: the framework upstairs to go, well, no, we still have
- 9:05Speaker 1: to execute because we're still here. Particularly in an expedition
- 9:09Speaker 1: like that, you can't leave, you can't go home, you
- 9:11Speaker 1: can't quit.
- 9:11Speaker 3: I was supposed to say, when you have no opdate,
- 9:15Speaker 3: it's amazing what human beings are when they can't say.
- 9:20Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, and like you can say you're done, but
- 9:21Speaker 1: you're like, well, particularly for us, we're doing in both
- 9:25Speaker 1: that expedition and in Denali in Alaska, you're roped up
- 9:28Speaker 1: for glacier travel, so you're in rope teams of three
- 9:30Speaker 1: or four people. There's no eye. There's just neither we
- 9:34Speaker 1: can all do it or we all can't do it,
- 9:37Speaker 1: but there's no Well Steve can do it, but Paul can't,
- 9:40Speaker 1: so Paul will sit down and wait. No, no, no, no, no.
- 9:42Speaker 1: We're together, everyone who is focused on everyone else. And
- 9:45Speaker 1: I know you guys met each other in an airport hangar,
- 9:48Speaker 1: you know, talketner in Alaska a week ago, but now
- 9:51Speaker 1: you're tied together, and if one of you screws up,
- 9:53Speaker 1: someone might die. So I really need you to pay
- 9:55Speaker 1: attention and I really need you to trust each other
- 9:58Speaker 1: because we're not this isn't again anymore. So I find
- 10:01Speaker 1: it is a very delicate balance. You've got to bring
- 10:03Speaker 1: the talk kit physically to be prepared, but you have
- 10:06Speaker 1: to have your mental point, really your mental game really
- 10:09Speaker 1: on point, and it has to stay on point all
- 10:11Speaker 1: the time. And that doesn't mean you're David Goggins the
- 10:14Speaker 1: whole time. There's a lot of gallows humor and there's
- 10:16Speaker 1: a lot of there's a lot of dark laughter and
- 10:18Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff because you have to balance
- 10:20Speaker 1: it out so no one's getting up and going, you know,
- 10:23Speaker 1: full Goggans all the time. It's really a balance of
- 10:26Speaker 1: we've got to respect the environment. We've really all got
- 10:28Speaker 1: to deliver. We're allowed to have a laugh along the
- 10:31Speaker 1: way as long as we all know we're doing what
- 10:33Speaker 1: we need to do.
- 10:34Speaker 3: And that gallual humor is extremely important right in those
- 10:40Speaker 3: dark situations and people if you go I remember doing
- 10:44Speaker 3: helicopter starch and rescue and turn my first gig and
- 10:48Speaker 3: putting dead bodies into the aircraft. That the gallus humor
- 10:52Speaker 3: was a little bit shocking to me initially, but then
- 10:55Speaker 3: you know, it's a copying strategy, right for that sort
- 10:58Speaker 3: of stuff. And particularly when you're in shitty situations, the
- 11:02Speaker 3: ability to just laugh at each other and laugh at
- 11:06Speaker 3: the ridiculousness of your situation, and the fact that you
- 11:10Speaker 3: choose to be there, right. It's the stuff that just
- 11:13Speaker 3: keeps you.
- 11:14Speaker 1: We're acking Kagar, which I mentioned in South America the
- 11:17Speaker 1: second time I was there. We got to a camp
- 11:19Speaker 1: and there's a camp three, which is the second highest
- 11:22Speaker 1: camp is called helicopter camp. And when you get there,
- 11:25Speaker 1: there's two parts of hell. There's two helicopters just strewn
- 11:28Speaker 1: across the landscape and everyone ties the tents down to it.
- 11:31Speaker 1: So what had happened a few years earlier, Polish team
- 11:33Speaker 1: had got stuck called the ranges for help. The Rages
- 11:36Speaker 1: sent a chopper up, the chopper crashed, everyone died. They
- 11:39Speaker 1: sent a second chopper that crashed, and then the ranger said, stuff,
- 11:42Speaker 1: you're on your own, you know, figure it out. We're
- 11:45Speaker 1: not sending anyone else up there. So you're up there,
- 11:48Speaker 1: and you know six thousand there's probably five and a
- 11:50Speaker 1: half thousand meters by sea level. They camp tying your
- 11:52Speaker 1: tent down to like road of blades and half an
- 11:55Speaker 1: engine block and just you're doing that, going this is ridiculous.
- 11:59Speaker 1: You go, but these are the environments you're in, and
- 12:02Speaker 1: I love part of the fact that it is so
- 12:05Speaker 1: removed from everyone else's sense of normal. But when you
- 12:09Speaker 1: come home, you've been completely recalibrated. And maybe that doesn't
- 12:13Speaker 1: mean you integrate to the society well when you get
- 12:15Speaker 1: on quickly, but your perspective of what's normal and what's
- 12:19Speaker 1: difficult and what constitutes hard has now been completely recalibrated.
- 12:24Speaker 1: And I think that's what serves you extremely well for
- 12:27Speaker 1: the rest of your life, whether you go do something
- 12:28Speaker 1: like that again or not.
- 12:29Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred percent. The other thing I wanted to
- 12:31Speaker 3: tap on that you mentioned was that level of trust.
- 12:35Speaker 3: I remember having a conversation with Red Crawford, who's a
- 12:39Speaker 3: good better mine. He's ex Lieutenant Colonel Sas and we
- 12:42Speaker 3: were talking about a high performance teams model for pat
- 12:46Speaker 3: Lend Chilney and right at the bottom of its trust
- 12:49Speaker 3: and he had introduced me to it and he said, Peter,
- 12:51Speaker 3: you're going to love this because he says, you'll see
- 12:53Speaker 3: so much of what we had in the military as
- 12:56Speaker 3: a nut model, that level of deep trust. Right. So
- 13:01Speaker 3: in organizations, I often say, if we've worked together for
- 13:04Speaker 3: a decade. We have what's called predictive trust in that
- 13:07Speaker 3: I kind of know how you're going to behave in
- 13:09Speaker 3: certain situations, and you know how I'm going to be heaving.
- 13:12Speaker 3: That gives that level of trust, But this deeper trust
- 13:17Speaker 3: is based on you know, healing back the layers of
- 13:20Speaker 3: the onion and seeing into somebody else's soul, right, And
- 13:25Speaker 3: I think probably the experience that I had was combat
- 13:27Speaker 3: survival and Resistance to interrogation training and the guys that
- 13:30Speaker 3: I was on that course with a particular guy, I
- 13:33Speaker 3: was buddied up with, like just the depth of trust
- 13:37Speaker 3: and the connection, the human connection that comes out of that,
- 13:42Speaker 3: Like is that something that you found that those people
- 13:45Speaker 3: that you've been on those expeditions that you could then
- 13:48Speaker 3: see them twenty years later and it's just like yeah.
- 13:51Speaker 1: Two wise. I mean, one is I can predict how
- 13:53Speaker 1: you're going to behave, but I also get a feeling
- 13:55Speaker 1: for when you're not behaving within those bands. So I
- 13:58Speaker 1: got something's wrong with Pete. That's not a normal action
- 14:00Speaker 1: for him, so that I can then intervene to go, hey, mate,
- 14:03Speaker 1: you all right, like is everything okay? Do we need
- 14:05Speaker 1: to or do we need to pull you out of
- 14:07Speaker 1: this scenario, like you not only know how you'll react,
- 14:10Speaker 1: I can identify when you're out of bounds, and I
- 14:12Speaker 1: know that, hey, you might need to make to step
- 14:14Speaker 1: in and give you a hand here and see how
- 14:15Speaker 1: you going. And I've seen that on expeditions where we've
- 14:19Speaker 1: had early in the expedition, the guide will absolutely flog
- 14:22Speaker 1: us like and people are like, what is going on here?
- 14:25Speaker 1: Like we're not we're not late for a meeting, like
- 14:27Speaker 1: why we gave absolutely gun? And you realize it kind
- 14:30Speaker 1: of I need to see what happens when you're exhausted
- 14:32Speaker 1: and you're not happy about life. I need to know
- 14:34Speaker 1: who's going to crack it, who's going to go, well,
- 14:35Speaker 1: that was a rough day and be fine. We need
- 14:38Speaker 1: to kind of sort a little week from the chaff,
- 14:40Speaker 1: because we are only together for say a month on
- 14:42Speaker 1: this hill, but the second half of that month is
- 14:44Speaker 1: going to be deadly serious. So I need to sort
- 14:46Speaker 1: out a few things before we go. So it's interesting
- 14:49Speaker 1: to see how those people operate because they don't have
- 14:51Speaker 1: ten years to figure us out. They've been handed a
- 14:54Speaker 1: bunch of randoms and they need to assess them very quickly.
- 14:58Speaker 1: From both the physical capabilit and a mental and psychological
- 15:01Speaker 1: capability very quickly. So what do they do. They put
- 15:05Speaker 1: you through a hard time quickly and see what you're like.
- 15:07Speaker 1: We can quickly assess Okay, who's got the physical fortitude,
- 15:11Speaker 1: but how are you going to react mentally? And then
- 15:12Speaker 1: I could go, okay, well that team's going to be
- 15:14Speaker 1: that team, and that team's going to be that team,
- 15:16Speaker 1: and you and I are going to sit down and
- 15:18Speaker 1: have a very hard chat about with your going any
- 15:20Speaker 1: further on this hill at all. And it's interesting. I
- 15:22Speaker 1: love that because you realize the guides are running a
- 15:24Speaker 1: commercial operation, but they're not treating you like, oh, you're
- 15:27Speaker 1: the customer, and the customer is always right. Love guides
- 15:31Speaker 1: rip clients to shreds because they did one stupid thing,
- 15:34Speaker 1: and they're like, well, you just endangered all of us,
- 15:36Speaker 1: and I don't give a shit how much money you paid.
- 15:38Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you when you won, because that
- 15:41Speaker 1: was just not in line with what we must do
- 15:44Speaker 1: to execute what we need to do here, and that
- 15:46Speaker 1: was that was a great wake up call for me too,
- 15:48Speaker 1: just to see how people at that level operate. You're right,
- 15:51Speaker 1: it's a fascinating insight.
- 15:53Speaker 3: I remember a conversation with doctor Stanley Beacham stand the
- 15:58Speaker 3: man who I love, and we were talking about discomfort,
- 16:02Speaker 3: and he said that he said, what most people don't
- 16:06Speaker 3: realize is that in order to live your really best life,
- 16:10Speaker 3: every now and then you need to walk right to
- 16:13Speaker 3: the edge of yourself and stir into the abyss and
- 16:18Speaker 3: work out what the abyss tells you and take it
- 16:20Speaker 3: on board. I assume you've stirred into the abyss once
- 16:24Speaker 3: or twice. Talk us through. Give me, give us an
- 16:28Speaker 3: example where you were right at the edge of yourself
- 16:32Speaker 3: and and sort of took something on board or learned something.
- 16:36Speaker 1: I describe it as you have to go all the
- 16:38Speaker 1: way to the very back of Ukrainium, all the way
- 16:40Speaker 1: to the darkest little spot. And if you go all
- 16:43Speaker 1: the way back there, there's a little room and there's
- 16:45Speaker 1: something in it that you've kept locked away for a
- 16:47Speaker 1: long time, and every now and then liveful demand that
- 16:51Speaker 1: you have to open that room and let that guy
- 16:53Speaker 1: out and let him do what he's got to do.
- 16:56Speaker 1: And that I refer that as the lost Savage, like
- 16:58Speaker 1: they're just the barberia and up the back in the
- 17:01Speaker 1: cave that you've locked away, and every now and then
- 17:03Speaker 1: you need to let that guy out. So I had
- 17:06Speaker 1: I had an ultra marathon in the Canadian Arctic in
- 17:10Speaker 1: twenty Yeah, of course it's it.
- 17:17Speaker 2: Not just an ultra marathon, but an ultra martha.
- 17:20Speaker 1: Didn't give it. You're any pt Do you want to
- 17:22Speaker 1: give you the specs? Six hundred and fourteen kilometers single stage,
- 17:27Speaker 1: single stage. I put you on the start line points
- 17:29Speaker 1: at north and we start an eagle planes in the
- 17:32Speaker 1: Yukon and then they send you north six hundred and
- 17:34Speaker 1: fourteen kilometers to the little Inuit village of Tuck, which
- 17:39Speaker 1: is on the very northern end of Canada. Like there's Tuck,
- 17:42Speaker 1: there's the North poland then there's Norway and that's it.
- 17:44Speaker 1: Now it's single stage, so you operate twenty four to seven.
- 17:47Speaker 1: There's no stopping overnight. You operate day and night. You
- 17:51Speaker 1: want to sleep, get you give your bag out, light
- 17:53Speaker 1: out on the ice and have a snooze. We don't
- 17:55Speaker 1: really care. And it's self supported, so you can take
- 17:58Speaker 1: anything you want.
- 18:00Speaker 3: You can everything.
- 18:01Speaker 1: You've got to drag it, you gotta carry it. So
- 18:04Speaker 1: there's you. There's six hundred fourteen kilometers there's a twenty
- 18:08Speaker 1: five kilo sled and there's you know, two hundred and
- 18:11Speaker 1: fifteen hours to get the job done. Have had it,
- 18:13Speaker 1: young man, And the average file rates eighty percent. So
- 18:16Speaker 1: in the first seven years that they ran the race,
- 18:19Speaker 1: eleven people finished in total. So yeah, totally, so it
- 18:23Speaker 1: has There's only been six winners up until that point
- 18:26Speaker 1: because most of years no one finished. There was just
- 18:28Speaker 1: like one hundred percent no one, no one made it
- 18:30Speaker 1: to the finish line. So I'd attempted it in twenty
- 18:33Speaker 1: seventeen and DNF to two hundred and fifty k's in
- 18:37Speaker 1: like just battered, broken, frozen, starving, hallucinating. This is so
- 18:41Speaker 1: beyond me. I'll never oh my god. And I went
- 18:44Speaker 1: back in twenty nineteen to reattempt it and that's another story.
- 18:47Speaker 1: But I got three quarters of the way through that
- 18:51Speaker 1: race and had really reached a point where you know,
- 18:55Speaker 1: you're completely for I was, I averaged. I was getting
- 18:58Speaker 1: twenty minutes sleep mid morning, twenty minutes in the afternoon,
- 19:01Speaker 1: and forty minutes at night. And that was on purpose.
- 19:04Speaker 1: That was my structured sleep plan. And that's that's in
- 19:06Speaker 1: a divvy in the snow. So you do that and
- 19:09Speaker 1: you do that every day, seven days a week until
- 19:12Speaker 1: the job gets done. Now you can do that for
- 19:14Speaker 1: a period of time, but towards the end, I would
- 19:16Speaker 1: just start your body would just start packing it in.
- 19:20Speaker 1: We we'll wake up. They kick in kind of day two,
- 19:24Speaker 1: day three, but we're day day five and day six.
- 19:28Speaker 1: And the guy who was coming behind me, he said
- 19:30Speaker 1: to me after the race, we had a chat and
- 19:31Speaker 1: he said, I could see your sledge tracks in the snow,
- 19:35Speaker 1: and he said I would watch them and they'd be
- 19:37Speaker 1: straight and then they'd waver and then you'd do circles
- 19:41Speaker 1: and then you fell over, didn't you. And I said, yeah,
- 19:43Speaker 1: because I'd black out. I'd just wake up and I'd
- 19:46Speaker 1: be just face down in the snow, so you'd get
- 19:48Speaker 1: up and you'd just charge your head. And I reached
- 19:51Speaker 1: a point in that race going your body's completely shot.
- 19:54Speaker 1: But I actually had an opportunity to win it, like
- 19:56Speaker 1: I was at the front of the field. So you
- 19:58Speaker 1: had to have that whole conversation with yourself going how
- 20:01Speaker 1: important is it to you to win this? Because where
- 20:04Speaker 1: you've done everything right, We've got to this last little point,
- 20:08Speaker 1: but we're going to have to do some things that
- 20:10Speaker 1: are beyond uncomfortable to finish this and to get over
- 20:12Speaker 1: the line in time. So what I talk about is
- 20:15Speaker 1: I split my mind into there's the mind and the
- 20:17Speaker 1: body that's kind of seeing and experiencing the operation of
- 20:20Speaker 1: the race, and then there's the other mind that sits
- 20:23Speaker 1: up the top here, and that mine's in charge, and
- 20:26Speaker 1: it looks down at the meat wagon and says, the
- 20:28Speaker 1: meat wagon's going to do what it's told and we
- 20:30Speaker 1: don't really care what happens, but we're getting the job done.
- 20:33Speaker 1: And that is the mind that you have to listen to,
- 20:35Speaker 1: and it just tells you to do what to get done.
- 20:38Speaker 1: And so I crossed that finish line. It took me
- 20:40Speaker 1: one hundred and ninety five hours to get from start
- 20:43Speaker 1: to finish. I at sixteen hours sleep. I got to
- 20:46Speaker 1: the finish line. I couldn't feel anything from the back
- 20:49Speaker 1: of my neck to the top of my butt because
- 20:51Speaker 1: I've been dragging a sled. You just have that little
- 20:53Speaker 1: bit of flexion all the time because you're leaning forward
- 20:56Speaker 1: to drag a sled, and over time the muscles have
- 20:58Speaker 1: got tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter, until that
- 21:00Speaker 1: actually blocked the nerve transmission because just on the surface Laider,
- 21:04Speaker 1: all the musculars are there. And I said to the medic,
- 21:06Speaker 1: I'm like, I can't film a spine that is that okay?
- 21:10Speaker 1: He's like, totally fine, totally normal. Three to six months,
- 21:14Speaker 1: don't worry about you. You'll be fine. She'll be good.
- 21:18Speaker 1: He was right. It took me nearly six months to
- 21:20Speaker 1: get full feeling back. But that was a case where
- 21:24Speaker 1: I really stared into the abyss and went, well, how
- 21:26Speaker 1: bad do you want it? Because you're just you're going
- 21:28Speaker 1: to have to break a lot of stuff and not
- 21:29Speaker 1: all of that stuff will repair. How far do you
- 21:31Speaker 1: want to go? And I'm like, I'll burn to the ground.
- 21:32Speaker 1: I don't care. Like, let's go. This is my one
- 21:35Speaker 1: chance to do something that insane, and so I did.
- 21:39Speaker 1: I stared in the byss, I went all the way
- 21:40Speaker 1: to the back. I dug to the bottom of the
- 21:42Speaker 1: well and opened that door and let that guy out
- 21:44Speaker 1: and said have at it and do your worst, mate,
- 21:46Speaker 1: Let's just do it. And we did. And yeah, I
- 21:48Speaker 1: dragged that slid for one hundred ninety fty one minutes
- 21:51Speaker 1: and I was the second Australian to ever finish that
- 21:53Speaker 1: race and the first Australian to win it. But you
- 21:56Speaker 1: had to let the air, you had to let the
- 21:57Speaker 1: savage guy out of the back to get it done.
- 22:00Speaker 3: You've won the freaking rest. That is ridiculous. I mean,
- 22:04Speaker 3: they're stirring into.
- 22:05Speaker 1: The They're throwing yourself into.
- 22:07Speaker 4: Stirring into the well, they're stirring into the Paul Watkins
- 22:11Speaker 4: the Best, which I think is just orders of magnitude
- 22:16Speaker 4: removed from me.
- 22:19Speaker 1: Now here's an indication of how how wrong I can be.
- 22:21Speaker 1: That I finished that race, and then a year later
- 22:25Speaker 1: I went so I won that. Now I'm a scientist,
- 22:29Speaker 1: So did I figure out the equation? So the hypothesis was,
- 22:32Speaker 1: did I figure out an equation on how to win
- 22:34Speaker 1: those kind of you know, super long, super technical, super
- 22:38Speaker 1: cold races, or did you just have a lucky day.
- 22:41Speaker 1: Now you're a scientist, you know the only way you
- 22:42Speaker 1: can test a hypothesis is to run an experiment. So
- 22:45Speaker 1: I went to Sweden in twenty twenty three and did
- 22:48Speaker 1: a very similar race with the sole purpose of trying
- 22:51Speaker 1: to win it to see did I figure out the equation? Like,
- 22:54Speaker 1: am I good enough? Do I know how to do this?
- 22:56Speaker 1: Or did I just have one of those days where
- 22:58Speaker 1: everyone else fellow. So I went into a five hundred
- 23:02Speaker 1: and three kilometer ultra of the Arctic in northern Sweden
- 23:04Speaker 1: last year and tested the hypothesis. And you burnt a
- 23:09Speaker 1: few neurons and did some synaptic pruning with way excessive
- 23:13Speaker 1: sleep deprivation and dragged my slip for eight days and
- 23:17Speaker 1: still in the podium.
- 23:18Speaker 3: So again that's that's another same thing as just you
- 23:21Speaker 3: sleep when you want, but you Yeah, it was a different.
- 23:23Speaker 1: Race in the sense that it was full back country wilderness.
- 23:25Speaker 1: So this was in the Laplandian Arctic, so full back
- 23:29Speaker 1: country wilderness like here, there's no map, here's your GPS.
- 23:33Speaker 1: You know, figured it out as you go. And they'd
- 23:35Speaker 1: said to us, I said, look, if you get into serious,
- 23:37Speaker 1: serious trouble. You were crossing huge frozen lakes and trying
- 23:40Speaker 1: to get over frozen rivers. They said, if it really
- 23:42Speaker 1: goes wrong, hits your emergency button. But understand that the
- 23:46Speaker 1: first person to rescue you will be you. It could
- 23:49Speaker 1: be a day before we can get a snowmobile out
- 23:51Speaker 1: to you, so figure it out until we get there.
- 23:55Speaker 1: So this was a slightly different environment in case of
- 23:57Speaker 1: going even if you wanted to sleep. Some times you're
- 24:00Speaker 1: in areas where you can't just put the BV down
- 24:02Speaker 1: because you're on a frozen lake. You can't stop here.
- 24:04Speaker 1: You must get to the other side of the lake,
- 24:06Speaker 1: which will take you most of today or tonight or
- 24:09Speaker 1: whatever it is. So sometimes the case, if you want
- 24:11Speaker 1: to sleep that cool story, you literally can't. You must
- 24:15Speaker 1: stay awake until you get to an area where it's
- 24:17Speaker 1: going to be safer to do that. So that logistically
- 24:20Speaker 1: was a slightly different scenario. And I'd gone there attempting
- 24:23Speaker 1: to win it. That original race in twenty nineteen, I
- 24:25Speaker 1: just wanted to finish it, but ended up winning it.
- 24:28Speaker 1: This I went through with the mindset of I'm going
- 24:29Speaker 1: to win this, and that is a very different mental
- 24:33Speaker 1: toolkit to bring, and it's a very different set of
- 24:35Speaker 1: pressures to place on yourself right from the starting gun
- 24:39Speaker 1: to play it out, and I had a very different experience.
- 24:42Speaker 1: I came second in the end, but had a very
- 24:45Speaker 1: different experience mentally. I ended up in a very dark
- 24:47Speaker 1: hole early on because the race had gone not well
- 24:49Speaker 1: for me individually. I was getting whipped and found myself
- 24:52Speaker 1: way down the back of the pack and just in
- 24:55Speaker 1: all kinds of diustrates, and then had to figure out
- 24:58Speaker 1: a way to dig myself out of it hole and
- 25:01Speaker 1: get myself back in a position where I could operate
- 25:03Speaker 1: in the manner that I wanted to and execute the
- 25:05Speaker 1: way I wanted to. And that was a that took
- 25:07Speaker 1: a long time. That was there were some dark nights
- 25:10Speaker 1: in that. I can tell you. Yeah, when it's you know,
- 25:12Speaker 1: minus thirty and you completely exhausted and starving, you're like,
- 25:17Speaker 1: this is this is not happy to This was not
- 25:19Speaker 1: on the brochure or when I signed up.
- 25:21Speaker 3: So, Matt, what sort of techniques do you have for
- 25:26Speaker 3: overcoming this? Because most people really struggle with getting out
- 25:32Speaker 3: of bed at six o'clock in the morning to go
- 25:34Speaker 3: and do a workout, and they have this internal dialogue
- 25:39Speaker 3: going on in this internal fight, and sometimes they win
- 25:42Speaker 3: and sometimes they lose. But somebody who has has taken
- 25:47Speaker 3: human endurance, both physical and mental to the end degree,
- 25:51Speaker 3: what sort of things have you learned about the self talk?
- 25:57Speaker 3: You know, the mental models, how all of this place
- 26:00Speaker 3: that some people could actually use for them miseage.
- 26:03Speaker 1: This is I love this. So you can you can
- 26:04Speaker 1: go as deep down the rabbit hole as you want
- 26:07Speaker 1: on this. So We'll start with the easy stuff and
- 26:10Speaker 1: we'll direct to some of the deeper stuff if people
- 26:12Speaker 1: want it. Some of the easy stuff is, let's talk
- 26:15Speaker 1: about getting out of bed early and staying healthy. People
- 26:17Speaker 1: think discipline is I've got to be Jocko or Goggins,
- 26:20Speaker 1: or I've got to get up and at four point
- 26:22Speaker 1: thirty and run a marathon and cold share and have
- 26:24Speaker 1: a kal shake, and you know that's here discipline. I
- 26:28Speaker 1: like to reframe discipline as an act of self love.
- 26:30Speaker 1: If you had a goal for yourself, if you're a parent,
- 26:35Speaker 1: if you want to be the best dad you can be,
- 26:36Speaker 1: or you want to stay healthy, you want to you
- 26:38Speaker 1: want to run a half marathon or do park round
- 26:41Speaker 1: with your kids or whatever it is. Why would you
- 26:44Speaker 1: not support yourself, Why would you sabotage yourself? Well, it
- 26:48Speaker 1: should be an active self love. I'm going to get
- 26:50Speaker 1: up at six or five point thirty and go for
- 26:52Speaker 1: a walk with a dog or do this or whatever
- 26:54Speaker 1: it is because it's in my best interest. Because I
- 26:57Speaker 1: love myself. I want to be the best version of me,
- 26:59Speaker 1: and I want to have that run with the kids,
- 27:01Speaker 1: or I want them to look up to me, or
- 27:03Speaker 1: a want a wife to go, wow, you look fantastic,
- 27:05Speaker 1: Like it doesn't have to be heart angry and sad.
- 27:08Speaker 1: It could be about celebrating the fact that you really
- 27:11Speaker 1: want to be your best own champion. So for I
- 27:14Speaker 1: think a lot of people, if you rephrase it that way,
- 27:16Speaker 1: it reframes it in a manner they can understand, and
- 27:19Speaker 1: it becomes a little bit more workable than what a
- 27:22Speaker 1: lot of people are sold on social media about what
- 27:24Speaker 1: being discipline needs to be.
- 27:26Speaker 3: And I love this because then it's not a chore. Right.
- 27:30Speaker 3: So when people are framing, and this is what often happens,
- 27:35Speaker 3: whether it's weird, most are getting in cheap and their
- 27:38Speaker 3: goal to do it is that I don't want to die,
- 27:41Speaker 3: I don't want to get this chronic disease and all
- 27:43Speaker 3: of this, and it's not it's not the right why,
- 27:47Speaker 3: and then the action becomes a chure. I often talk
- 27:51Speaker 3: about connecting stuff to your values, so you know what
- 27:55Speaker 3: are your value and I think you're very similar. So
- 27:57Speaker 3: it's self love and it's linking into values that are
- 28:00Speaker 3: impotant to you at a deep Yeah.
- 28:03Speaker 1: Absolutely, And if you want to go, if you're looking
- 28:05Speaker 1: at it from an expedition race, So why am I
- 28:08Speaker 1: am I connected with myself to achieve those things is
- 28:11Speaker 1: understanding how you got there in the first place. So
- 28:14Speaker 1: when it comes to like big mountaineering or big races,
- 28:16Speaker 1: I have a two step model for how I decided
- 28:19Speaker 1: when I'm going to do those things. So let's say
- 28:21Speaker 1: I see a race like I'd love to go do that.
- 28:23Speaker 1: The first thing is you can't tell anyone for thirty days.
- 28:25Speaker 1: Just think about it, and at the end of the
- 28:27Speaker 1: thirty days, reflect how much did you think about it?
- 28:30Speaker 1: And if it only popped up once or twice, it's
- 28:32Speaker 1: not the thing. If you thought about it every day, okay,
- 28:34Speaker 1: it's a thing. And then the next question is the
- 28:37Speaker 1: hard one that you have to be really really honest about.
- 28:39Speaker 1: If you could do it and no one would ever
- 28:41Speaker 1: know and you can never tell us all, do you
- 28:44Speaker 1: still want to do it? And you have to You've
- 28:46Speaker 1: got to be honest because then when you go, it's
- 28:49Speaker 1: for you. So when it's shit and it's you're at
- 28:52Speaker 1: the bottom of the well, you'll go because you wanted
- 28:55Speaker 1: to be here and there's no one You're like, I
- 28:57Speaker 1: put myself here because I wanted this. Well, guess you're
- 29:00Speaker 1: now getting that. So away we go, and if you're
- 29:03Speaker 1: really honest with yourself, you avoid doing dumb stuff that
- 29:06Speaker 1: you don't need to do. So I've used that for
- 29:09Speaker 1: every expeditions. I've been invited to climb every three times,
- 29:12Speaker 1: and three times I've said no. First question was a yes,
- 29:15Speaker 1: I thought about it all the time. Second question was
- 29:17Speaker 1: a no. Why do you want to go? Because when
- 29:21Speaker 1: I do keynotes and stuff and people ask you, I
- 29:24Speaker 1: wanted to be the guy that said, yes, I climbed it. Well,
- 29:26Speaker 1: that's a terrible reason to go. That's probably the worst
- 29:28Speaker 1: reason to go, because when the chips are down, you
- 29:30Speaker 1: don't have any drive Internally, it's all about seeking validation
- 29:33Speaker 1: from others, and that will not work. So the answer
- 29:36Speaker 1: has to be no. You have to say no, sorry,
- 29:39Speaker 1: I would be doing it for the wrong reasons, and
- 29:42Speaker 1: the flipper is, of course, wouldn't.
- 29:43Speaker 3: Just before you dive enery further. This is a little
- 29:45Speaker 3: bit like the stoic philosophers who they talk about being
- 29:50Speaker 3: good even when nobody is looking right, and it's because
- 29:56Speaker 3: that internally it's ket intrinsic to actually good and have
- 30:00Speaker 3: good character, and when no one's looking doing that stuff,
- 30:04Speaker 3: and that's why I really love that.
- 30:05Speaker 1: Sorry, So, yeah, Hamberway, because we can go down some
- 30:10Speaker 1: really interesting rabbit holes and then you can get really
- 30:12Speaker 1: into that. I mean, I recently read Dr Schwartz's book
- 30:16Speaker 1: The Mind and the Brain. I know we've read that.
- 30:18Speaker 1: It was fascinating. So he was he was a guy's
- 30:20Speaker 1: treating O c D and then dys lecture, and he
- 30:23Speaker 1: got deep down the rabbit hole of you know, the
- 30:25Speaker 1: quantum state of the mind in terms of the fact
- 30:27Speaker 1: that your thoughts. He was proving that your thoughts can
- 30:31Speaker 1: actually have physical changes in the brain that he could
- 30:34Speaker 1: measure through scans. So it really comes to that.
- 30:37Speaker 3: It's just Jeffery swats Yeah, yeah, yeah from l I
- 30:41Speaker 3: saw I saw him tap. That's that. I think he
- 30:44Speaker 3: wrote a book called Brian Locke as well. Yeah, I
- 30:46Speaker 3: boad all CD because I think he has all CD. Like,
- 30:49Speaker 3: as he was talking, I'm like, do you you solved
- 30:53Speaker 3: the rub?
- 30:54Speaker 1: He did? He did. He was fascinating. His book was fascinating,
- 30:57Speaker 1: but he was he was really getting down that rabbit
- 30:59Speaker 1: hole of and look, he got deep into the quantum
- 31:01Speaker 1: physics and mechanics of it. But the high level is
- 31:03Speaker 1: this the talk that you have in your brain actually
- 31:06Speaker 1: will physically change the structures of your brain. So if
- 31:08Speaker 1: you're having the kind of discussions you want, then you're
- 31:11Speaker 1: going to get the outcome you want. So for me
- 31:13Speaker 1: in those races, simple things like any time we came
- 31:17Speaker 1: past a medic crew or you know, a local, or
- 31:20Speaker 1: any time anyone asked you how you were, the answer was,
- 31:23Speaker 1: I'm fantastic. This is great, regardless of how deep in
- 31:28Speaker 1: the hole you were. The discussion must be positive at
- 31:32Speaker 1: all times. And it's true, like you've just got to
- 31:35Speaker 1: keep telling yourself, I've got to be disciplined. You've got
- 31:37Speaker 1: to put the zips back in the same spot every time,
- 31:40Speaker 1: because day seven, when you have the IQ of a
- 31:43Speaker 1: small rock, you need to know that the zips are
- 31:45Speaker 1: there because that's as far as you can get. So
- 31:48Speaker 1: every time I do that and force yourself, and every
- 31:50Speaker 1: time you force yourself to eat, I'm doing this for
- 31:52Speaker 1: future me. Future means is going to go. Thank god
- 31:54Speaker 1: that guy kept subtling calories in even when he was
- 31:57Speaker 1: frozen in his hands didn't work. Thank god he put
- 31:59Speaker 1: this in the spot because now we're at a blizzard
- 32:02Speaker 1: and we're freezing. When you the bivvy out, I don't
- 32:04Speaker 1: have time to figure out where you left the zip
- 32:06Speaker 1: last time, Like you've got to have that discipline because
- 32:09Speaker 1: you are pre paying it for yourself later to come
- 32:11Speaker 1: back and go, thank God yesterday me did that because
- 32:14Speaker 1: I'm loving him now. So it's just there's a whole
- 32:18Speaker 1: bunch of tool kits. You can put little things you
- 32:20Speaker 1: can put in the toolkit and you pick them and
- 32:22Speaker 1: you use them and they stack. There's no one big
- 32:25Speaker 1: ticket item. It's a million little ones and you stack
- 32:27Speaker 1: them up and they all start coming to play when
- 32:29Speaker 1: you need them.
- 32:30Speaker 3: There's two things I wanted to talk about there, and
- 32:33Speaker 3: one with you seeing when people ask you how are
- 32:35Speaker 3: you feeling, it's going to be fantastic. This I think
- 32:38Speaker 3: is something everyday life right. And I've been telling my
- 32:43Speaker 3: kids this is that when people say to you, you know,
- 32:46Speaker 3: how are you doing, a lot of people go oh good,
- 32:48Speaker 3: I oh tired. It's like I remember made the mind
- 32:52Speaker 3: Jeremy who said this crazy professor who actually hired me
- 32:56Speaker 3: at usf Wels guy. The first time I met him,
- 32:59Speaker 3: I said, oh, Jeremy, hey you do and he says.
- 33:00Speaker 1: I'm fabulous, and I was here we go.
- 33:03Speaker 3: That's fucking awes like this guy, right, yeah, yeah, and
- 33:09Speaker 3: just that you know, it's like, I'm fucking awesome, right,
- 33:12Speaker 3: It's it's it's so much better than the kookie cutter.
- 33:16Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I'm good. Or you start to complain, which
- 33:19Speaker 3: is even friggin worse because your brain is going to
- 33:23Speaker 3: commit sales to whatever you're paying attention to, and your
- 33:26Speaker 3: thoughts as you say that, repetitive stuff. So that that's
- 33:30Speaker 3: something that's really interesting. Right, even when you were in
- 33:33Speaker 3: this ship storm and feeling awful, you're still going, I'm
- 33:37Speaker 3: fucking awesome. I'm awesome. So that that's that's one thing
- 33:41Speaker 3: and the other one and this is a this is
- 33:44Speaker 3: a little rabbit hope we can go down. You talked
- 33:46Speaker 3: about future me right, really interesting research from hal Hirshfield.
- 33:52Speaker 3: And I don't know whether this is where you got
- 33:54Speaker 3: it from, where you just came up with this by yourself,
- 33:56Speaker 3: but he was a a psychologist who was looking at
- 34:01Speaker 3: human behavior and took a bunch of people in the
- 34:05Speaker 3: States who had their first job and they had to
- 34:08Speaker 3: fill out the four to one nine K, which is
- 34:12Speaker 3: where they commit part of their savings or not to
- 34:17Speaker 3: their version of superannuation. Right, So it's voluntary over there,
- 34:20Speaker 3: unlike mandatory here. And what he did was everybody went
- 34:26Speaker 3: through that scenario but had to wear virtual reality reality goggles,
- 34:30Speaker 3: and they saw themselves actually going up to the counter
- 34:35Speaker 3: to fill out the form. Half of them saw themselves
- 34:38Speaker 3: through the goggles as a hologram of them right now,
- 34:42Speaker 3: and half of them saw themselves as a hologram of
- 34:45Speaker 3: them at retirement age. And the people who saw themselves
- 34:50Speaker 3: at retirement dage committed more than double the amount to
- 34:53Speaker 3: their savings of the people who actually saw them as themselves.
- 34:57Speaker 3: And it was that whole idea of a udgining your
- 35:00Speaker 3: future self and doing good for your future self. So
- 35:06Speaker 3: that was really interesting that you talked about doing the
- 35:09Speaker 3: zeps and eating for future me. Where did you come
- 35:12Speaker 3: up with that concept and just dig into it.
- 35:14Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a bit of both. I partially came up
- 35:17Speaker 1: with it through training for ultra marathons, and part of
- 35:19Speaker 1: it I completely stole from someone else. So the ultra
- 35:21Speaker 1: marathon stuff is I look at training as a pre
- 35:24Speaker 1: payment of hurt for future events. The more hurting I
- 35:27Speaker 1: get done in training turn up to the events, I've
- 35:30Speaker 1: already pre paid the pain. Thanks, and I paid earlier,
- 35:33Speaker 1: so I've only got a little bite.
- 35:35Speaker 3: And hard and hard competing.
- 35:37Speaker 1: Yeah, you can only fight like your train mate. So
- 35:39Speaker 1: for me, I'm out running and I'm pre paying so
- 35:42Speaker 1: much stuff here. This will be great future. But it's
- 35:44Speaker 1: gonna be really happy. And then I heard it and
- 35:46Speaker 1: I it was on. It was Chris Willimson's pot and
- 35:48Speaker 1: I can't remember who was interviewing, might have even been
- 35:51Speaker 1: Jimmy Carr. Just you know, do something today that future
- 35:54Speaker 1: you will thank you for. So tomorrow you will wake
- 35:57Speaker 1: up and go, I'm so glad he went to bed early.
- 36:00Speaker 1: I'm so glad he didn't eat that, or I'm so
- 36:02Speaker 1: glad that he got that job done that we've avoided
- 36:04Speaker 1: for ages. So just that idea of do something today
- 36:08Speaker 1: that future you is going to thank you for. You
- 36:10Speaker 1: just stack them. You just keeps stacking those things up,
- 36:12Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, every day you waken up
- 36:15Speaker 1: going we're ahead, We're already ahead. I haven't ever done
- 36:17Speaker 1: anything yet and I'm ahead, And it becomes a very
- 36:20Speaker 1: different mental discussion. And that going back to that mental
- 36:23Speaker 1: discussion of saying you're fabulous and what have you. The
- 36:26Speaker 1: other advantage of that is it becomes a weapon that
- 36:28Speaker 1: you can use if you're a competitive athlete. So I
- 36:31Speaker 1: had a case in one of those races where I
- 36:33Speaker 1: had caught the lead bunch and I looked at the
- 36:35Speaker 1: guy in front of me, and his harness was just
- 36:38Speaker 1: slightly off. And we the sleds that we use that
- 36:41Speaker 1: we have clips that hold the sled bag in place.
- 36:45Speaker 1: One of his was undone and just trailing behind the sled,
- 36:47Speaker 1: and I looked at it when I'd never accept that
- 36:50Speaker 1: that's undisciplined. He's tired, right, that's a different discussion. So
- 36:54Speaker 1: now I know that when I catch up to him
- 36:56Speaker 1: and speed and look him by to eye, I am
- 36:58Speaker 1: going to put on an absolutely show of how good
- 37:01Speaker 1: I feel because and you'll believe it because you've been
- 37:03Speaker 1: saying it to yourself the whole way. You'd have to
- 37:05Speaker 1: make it up. But now you can actually use it
- 37:07Speaker 1: as a tool on the offensive. And this guy's gonna
- 37:10Speaker 1: be going crap. He looks great, and he's all it's
- 37:15Speaker 1: a tool in the toolkit that you can use to
- 37:17Speaker 1: bolster yourself proactively, or you can use offensively if you're
- 37:20Speaker 1: competitive to go, we can use this. Our competitors see
- 37:23Speaker 1: nothing but cohesive discipline. From the outside, regardless of what's
- 37:28Speaker 1: happening under the water, all they see is that cohesive
- 37:31Speaker 1: discipline and it just it annihilates them. It leaves you
- 37:35Speaker 1: streaks ahead. So it really is that mental discussion and
- 37:39Speaker 1: then reframing some of that hard stuff as this, you're
- 37:43Speaker 1: going to be really happy about this tomorrow, and in fact,
- 37:46Speaker 1: if you do even more, you're going to be even
- 37:48Speaker 1: happier tomorrow. Happy do you want to be tomorrow? Let's
- 37:52Speaker 1: just stack it up and we'll go from there.
- 37:54Speaker 3: And do you tend to bring that mindset into your
- 37:58Speaker 3: personal life no as well? Or do you just bring
- 38:02Speaker 3: that out as a really sharp to use when you
- 38:07Speaker 3: need it the most.
- 38:08Speaker 1: I think if you're serious about it, you can't separate
- 38:10Speaker 1: the two, and I don't think you should. I think
- 38:13Speaker 1: you either that's your philosophy of how you operate or
- 38:16Speaker 1: it's not. Because it's not the kind of thing you
- 38:19Speaker 1: can just flick on and off. It's a continue that
- 38:22Speaker 1: you will turn the dial up or down. But if
- 38:25Speaker 1: you're serious about it, if you really practiced it and
- 38:27Speaker 1: embedded it, you can't turn it off. You can put
- 38:31Speaker 1: it down to one. And sometimes you've got to turn
- 38:33Speaker 1: it to eleven. But it's not something you just go, oh,
- 38:37Speaker 1: I'll be disciplined when I need to. That's not that's
- 38:40Speaker 1: not how that works, as you would well know, Like
- 38:43Speaker 1: it's it's either how you operate or it's not so
- 38:46Speaker 1: for me, I try.
- 38:47Speaker 3: And mold to supperround that exactly.
- 38:50Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's how you operate. And that's if it's
- 38:53Speaker 1: such an effective tool for the times that are difficult,
- 38:56Speaker 1: why wouldn't you embed it all the time the easier
- 39:00Speaker 1: times easier? Like it's the you know, that's the tie
- 39:05Speaker 1: that rises all boats. Like it's the tool you bring
- 39:08Speaker 1: to every job. So why wouldn't you have it operating
- 39:11Speaker 1: all the time and just adjust the die Like you know,
- 39:14Speaker 1: if you're having fun with your kids, in your home,
- 39:16Speaker 1: with your wife, whatever, you probably don't need to go
- 39:18Speaker 1: full discipline mantra. But you can still be aware that
- 39:22Speaker 1: my kids watch me every day and they see how
- 39:25Speaker 1: I talk to myself, to them, to my wife. Dad's
- 39:29Speaker 1: getting sweaty on the bike again because he does it
- 39:31Speaker 1: every day. So my kids will come out and they'll
- 39:33Speaker 1: hang off the they'll throw a kettlebell around, or they'll
- 39:36Speaker 1: hang off the bike or they'll do whatever, and I
- 39:38Speaker 1: don't mind that, but they go, oh, it's normal that
- 39:41Speaker 1: we do something hard and sweaty every day. That's normal.
- 39:45Speaker 1: And if we're frustrated, we go outside into the sun.
- 39:48Speaker 1: Dad does that every day when he gets getting blowy top.
- 39:51Speaker 1: He goes outside with a cuppa and yells at the
- 39:54Speaker 1: dog or something because oh, okay, so if I'm feeling
- 39:56Speaker 1: that way, I go outside. Yeah, that's that's what we do. Okay,
- 40:00Speaker 1: So they pick it up.
- 40:01Speaker 3: Our kids don't do some what's what we say. They
- 40:04Speaker 3: do what they do, what we.
- 40:05Speaker 1: Do, and they see everything, they miss nothing at.
- 40:07Speaker 3: All, that's right. Yeah. So all the people, all the
- 40:11Speaker 3: parents who are concerned about their kids being lazy and
- 40:17Speaker 3: undisciplined and mental health issues, is like, examine your own behaviors.
- 40:22Speaker 3: Examine your own behaviors around around exercise, around nutrition, around
- 40:26Speaker 3: screen time, around your sleep paging, because as you say,
- 40:30Speaker 3: they peck everything up everything normally.
- 40:33Speaker 1: Whatever you tell your kids it is normally is whatever
- 40:35Speaker 1: they say. And if they think, well, normally is you know,
- 40:38Speaker 1: we don't sit at the dinner table every night. We
- 40:40Speaker 1: see on the couch and we need this, that or
- 40:41Speaker 1: the other, and we've got the TV on it, what
- 40:43Speaker 1: have you. That's not our kids normally is family dinner
- 40:47Speaker 1: seven nights a week at a table, no devices, no
- 40:49Speaker 1: screens and anything. That's normal. That's just what we do.
- 40:52Speaker 1: That's that's how we act and how we operate. They
- 40:55Speaker 1: don't miss anything in that regard. I had another point
- 40:57Speaker 1: and it's disappeared from them. But yeah, that was that
- 40:59Speaker 1: was really sorry.
- 41:00Speaker 3: Let's talk about a word that we both love, anti fragility.
- 41:06Speaker 1: We just warm up.
- 41:07Speaker 3: I'd tell you what I'd tell you. That is the
- 41:12Speaker 3: word that I wish that I had come up with, antichid. Yeah,
- 41:18Speaker 3: you're so talk us through your view of anti fragility?
- 41:24Speaker 3: Is it in need? Is it learned? You know what?
- 41:27Speaker 1: Is it hard?
- 41:28Speaker 3: Does it extend into life? Just just give give us,
- 41:31Speaker 3: give us that that Paul Watkins rant free reign on
- 41:35Speaker 3: anti fragility that the guard reels are off right.
- 41:39Speaker 1: So welcome to Peter's five hour podcast on any fragility.
- 41:43Speaker 1: Prepare yourself. Let's go. So let's I like to use
- 41:47Speaker 1: an example that people can wrap their heads around, because
- 41:49Speaker 1: it's a weird concept for some people, they can't get it.
- 41:51Speaker 1: So let's not talk about any fragility for a sec
- 41:53Speaker 1: and let's talk about Let me give you a model,
- 41:55Speaker 1: So let's think about health. Okay, So imagine a continuum
- 41:59Speaker 1: from left to right. So one end we've got sick,
- 42:02Speaker 1: and in the middle we've got well, and on the
- 42:04Speaker 1: other end of the spectrum we've got fit. So we
- 42:08Speaker 1: go from sick to well to fit. And you can
- 42:11Speaker 1: map on that continuum any number of biomarkers, you know,
- 42:14Speaker 1: blood pressure, resting, heart rate, cholesterol, whatever you want to
- 42:16Speaker 1: put on there. Now, if I'm fit, for me to
- 42:21Speaker 1: get sick, I have to go through well, if that
- 42:25Speaker 1: makes sense, I have to almost degrade to being well
- 42:27Speaker 1: before I can gets sick. If I'm just well, only
- 42:31Speaker 1: one step away from being sick. So you want to
- 42:34Speaker 1: be as far up that continue of this end to
- 42:36Speaker 1: give you a buffer in the middle. So let's keep
- 42:38Speaker 1: that continuum and change the words on it. On the
- 42:41Speaker 1: left is fragile. If I drop you, you break. In
- 42:44Speaker 1: the middle, I put resilient. If I drop you, you
- 42:47Speaker 1: won't break, You'll just be okay, you won't move up
- 42:50Speaker 1: or down. You'll retain the integrity you had before. But
- 42:55Speaker 1: that's not the opposite of fragile. The opposite of fragile
- 42:58Speaker 1: is I drop you and not only do you not break,
- 43:01Speaker 1: you actually get stronger because of the experience. And so
- 43:06Speaker 1: that's where I want to be. I want to be.
- 43:07Speaker 1: How do I get in that cohort of people who
- 43:08Speaker 1: the harder it gets, the better they get. And most
- 43:12Speaker 1: people have that buffer for them to be fragile, I
- 43:15Speaker 1: have to go all the way through being resilient and
- 43:16Speaker 1: get all the way back. So my argument is that
- 43:19Speaker 1: resilience is really important, but it's leaving an enormous amount
- 43:23Speaker 1: of money on the table. We've missed the entire upside
- 43:26Speaker 1: of the discussion of it's not enough to survive. You
- 43:30Speaker 1: want to be thriving, because if you're resilient, you're only
- 43:33Speaker 1: one step away from being fragile. And it's a continuum
- 43:35Speaker 1: because you move. And that's okay. There will be times
- 43:38Speaker 1: when you're anti fragile and times when you're just resilient,
- 43:40Speaker 1: and times will we're fragile, and that's part of the
- 43:42Speaker 1: human condition. That's okay. But if you're continuum only goes
- 43:45Speaker 1: from fragile to resilient, you've cut off half of the
- 43:48Speaker 1: opportunity for who you could be and what you're capable of,
- 43:52Speaker 1: And the discussion is very different. If I'm having a
- 43:55Speaker 1: discussion with PT about being resilient and I'm capping it
- 43:59Speaker 1: you can survive this, versus having a discussion about what
- 44:04Speaker 1: is the toolkit, what does the mental and behavioral models
- 44:07Speaker 1: look like that you will thrive in hard environments. That's
- 44:11Speaker 1: a whole different discussion. And then you start having a
- 44:14Speaker 1: whole different discussion in your head about what am I
- 44:17Speaker 1: capable of? What's at the other end of that spectrum
- 44:20Speaker 1: that I haven't even considered yet that I need to
- 44:22Speaker 1: open myself up to. So that's where I like Andy fragility.
- 44:26Speaker 1: It really takes us away from this just the well
- 44:30Speaker 1: being and resilient conversation to the no, no, no, no no.
- 44:33Speaker 1: There's a whole other end of the spectrum here. So
- 44:36Speaker 1: the discussion isn't I phrase it this way. The uncomfortable
- 44:40Speaker 1: conversation that people won't have is people don't want their
- 44:43Speaker 1: lives to be easier. They actually just want to be stronger.
- 44:46Speaker 1: That's what they really want. But will you spend a
- 44:48Speaker 1: lot of time going I wish this was easier, or
- 44:51Speaker 1: in a corporate environment, how do we make it easier
- 44:53Speaker 1: for PT? How do we make his job easier. He
- 44:55Speaker 1: doesn't want it to be easier. He wants to be stronger.
- 44:58Speaker 1: He wants to be better at it. And if you
- 45:00Speaker 1: have that conversation with him, now we're having an entirely
- 45:04Speaker 1: different model, an entirely different framework and discussion around that,
- 45:08Speaker 1: And suddenly PT is not going. I got better at
- 45:11Speaker 1: it because they made it easier and they lowered the bar.
- 45:13Speaker 1: I got better at it because I'm better at it.
- 45:16Speaker 1: So give me some more. Let's go, let's see what
- 45:18Speaker 1: I can do next. So for me, I think it
- 45:20Speaker 1: just opens up this massive conversation about where we go
- 45:24Speaker 1: beyond resilience.
- 45:26Speaker 3: That's yeah, no, no, basically yeah, Now admit you are.
- 45:34Speaker 3: I'm going to give you a new nickname. You are
- 45:36Speaker 3: the harmatic cure.
- 45:39Speaker 1: Does that make me stupid?
- 45:42Speaker 3: Not not at all? So hor me say so, are
- 45:45Speaker 3: you familiar with the science of me that sub lethal
- 45:48Speaker 3: exposure to stressors or toxins, which at very at high
- 45:52Speaker 3: levels can kill you, but at low to moderate levels
- 45:55Speaker 3: induce stress resistance. And this is what we're talking about, right,
- 45:57Speaker 3: aren't The fragility is stress resistance. It's and I like
- 46:01Speaker 3: to talk to people like the athlete doesn't go and
- 46:04Speaker 3: trainin to stay the same or to bounce back and
- 46:07Speaker 3: be the same. They trained to get bigger, faster, stronger,
- 46:10Speaker 3: and that's that, that's that stress adaptation that anti fragility
- 46:15Speaker 3: really encapulates. And I mean we are in violent agreement
- 46:20Speaker 3: on this. I think resilience should not be the end game.
- 46:26Speaker 3: The end game should be anti fragility, stress adaptation, or
- 46:30Speaker 3: meat harmetic response, whatever, whatever terminology you want to use.
- 46:35Speaker 3: Post traumatic growth, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, there is a lot
- 46:38Speaker 3: of literature out there about post traumatic growth, but everybody
- 46:42Speaker 3: talks about post traumatic stress to sort of. But I
- 46:44Speaker 3: think the critical thing for people, and you know, we've
- 46:48Speaker 3: talked about it a lot, is your mindset when you're
- 46:51Speaker 3: going into it right, and that you know that comes
- 46:54Speaker 3: out of the hardiness research about viewing things as challenges
- 46:59Speaker 3: rather than read and loss and looking for the opportunity
- 47:03Speaker 3: for growth and actually leaning into discomfort. It's so well
- 47:09Speaker 3: summed up, and you are the kind of walking poster
- 47:11Speaker 3: boy for this. But Epictetus said we must all undergo
- 47:16Speaker 3: a hard winter training and not enter into lightly that
- 47:20Speaker 3: for which we have not prepared, and he was talking
- 47:23Speaker 3: about life.
- 47:23Speaker 1: I remind myself that I'm running the rind Any in
- 47:25Speaker 1: the Southwest Coast. Two degrees of Advice. Yes, Epytus would be.
- 47:29Speaker 3: Proud of me. Okay, Bunny, absolutely. But and as you
- 47:34Speaker 3: say you're investing in your future, you're prepaying the heart.
- 47:38Speaker 3: But that I think what a lot of people don't realize,
- 47:43Speaker 3: and this is the thing I've been thinking a moment more,
- 47:45Speaker 3: is that it's a combination of two things to get
- 47:48Speaker 3: to a point of anti fragility, which is where we
- 47:52Speaker 3: should all be. Is it's a combination of a mindset
- 47:57Speaker 3: and all the stuff that you talked about, but it's
- 48:00Speaker 3: also about knowing that you can achieve that stuff, and
- 48:05Speaker 3: in order to do that, you have to do hard stuff.
- 48:09Speaker 3: This is where I believe and I think you'll be
- 48:13Speaker 3: connected with this, is that so many parents are fucking
- 48:18Speaker 3: up their kids' lives because they're helicopter parent in them.
- 48:22Speaker 3: They're trying to save them, they're rescuing them from discomfort.
- 48:26Speaker 3: And you do not grow in the absence of stress.
- 48:30Speaker 3: That is not an environment for personal growth. You know,
- 48:34Speaker 3: if people think about the stuff that they're really proud of,
- 48:37Speaker 3: it's stuff that is freaking difficult, that's hard, that we
- 48:40Speaker 3: overcome that's the.
- 48:41Speaker 1: Best chapters in your story, and we should. I always
- 48:43Speaker 1: try and point out from talking to parents, like you
- 48:46Speaker 1: know asterix On that to do parenting well, it's freaking hard,
- 48:50Speaker 1: Like it is really really hard. So trick yourself, guy.
- 48:56Speaker 3: Ah.
- 48:56Speaker 1: The parents that have you got screen time, ountder control
- 48:58Speaker 1: and got their kids well behaved, all that kind of stuff.
- 49:02Speaker 1: The lucky Yeah, how do you get you behave like that?
- 49:06Speaker 1: I can tell you how relentless parenting like that's what
- 49:09Speaker 1: I do. It's freaking hard and it's soul crushing some days,
- 49:13Speaker 1: but that's your job, like you owe it to them
- 49:16Speaker 1: to put in that effort. So put in that effort.
- 49:19Speaker 1: And it is really difficult, and it's saying no a lot,
- 49:23Speaker 1: and it's being not liked a lot, like I say that.
- 49:26Speaker 1: You know, my oldest, my job isn't to be your
- 49:28Speaker 1: best friend like some days, it's to be your worst enemy.
- 49:31Speaker 3: Mate.
- 49:31Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but the answer is no. Do it all,
- 49:35Speaker 1: my well, youngest, I'm bored, Dad, good, what am I
- 49:39Speaker 1: going to do? Figure it out? Mate? You've got a
- 49:42Speaker 1: room for the toys. If we live on five acres,
- 49:44Speaker 1: go talk to the sheep. I don't know, I mate,
- 49:46Speaker 1: Go figure it out. I'm busy, Well, I'm being bored.
- 49:50Speaker 2: You know.
- 49:50Speaker 3: It's like that, that is that is the exact response.
- 49:54Speaker 1: That congratulations, Now go away, go.
- 50:00Speaker 3: And get curious.
- 50:02Speaker 1: Right, That's the thing.
- 50:03Speaker 3: But also, and I love that concept of relentless parenting
- 50:09Speaker 3: because it is frigging hard to reis will. And I
- 50:13Speaker 3: think it's harder than it used to be because there
- 50:16Speaker 3: are yeah, there are so many more challenges, you know.
- 50:22Speaker 3: I also say, and every parental say, jeez, life is
- 50:26Speaker 3: so much harder when we were growing up, right, And
- 50:29Speaker 3: it was in a sense because we all had to
- 50:30Speaker 3: walk thirteen miles the school, yeah, through snow, yeah and burfoot.
- 50:34Speaker 3: But we never had all of these temptations, right, We
- 50:40Speaker 3: never had all of this ultra process food that just
- 50:44Speaker 3: hijacks kids' brains and once they've had it, that's all
- 50:47Speaker 3: they want, like drug addicts. We never had the whole
- 50:50Speaker 3: social media stuff, the video games that are just unbelievable
- 50:55Speaker 3: that once a kid does those, they don't want anything else. Like,
- 50:58Speaker 3: we never had that stuff. Our parents never had to
- 51:01Speaker 3: deal with that, And that's why I think you're right.
- 51:03Speaker 3: We have to be the relentless pont to. And I
- 51:06Speaker 3: always say that you're not their friend, you're that parent.
- 51:10Speaker 3: And I think that's an issue. That are an error
- 51:13Speaker 3: that a lot met and it's hard.
- 51:15Speaker 1: You've got to respect that. Like you said, with all
- 51:16Speaker 1: the video games and social media and all that kind
- 51:18Speaker 1: of stuff that's nefariously stacked against you. That's not just oh,
- 51:21Speaker 1: it's something in the environment that we've got to deal with. No,
- 51:24Speaker 1: that's that's targeting people and a lot of the kids
- 51:28Speaker 1: to pull them down the rabbit hole. Like it's actually
- 51:30Speaker 1: working against you. So you need to be active. Like
- 51:32Speaker 1: our kids wanted to get on YouTube, so we will
- 51:34Speaker 1: do YouTube. Kids will have a look at that. You
- 51:36Speaker 1: think that'd be fine. And I look at it and
- 51:38Speaker 1: I'm watching the kids watching it with the kids, and
- 51:40Speaker 1: it was chock full of ads and they're all food
- 51:44Speaker 1: ads and the food was horrendous. I'm like, we're done.
- 51:47Speaker 1: And the games it was promoting, We're out. We're done.
- 51:50Speaker 1: Nahe like, it's just I'm sorry, that is not healthy
- 51:54Speaker 1: for you. And I always argue that we're not. I
- 51:58Speaker 1: guess we're not depriving our kids of social media. Okay,
- 52:00Speaker 1: kids have screen time because I need them to learn
- 52:03Speaker 1: how to self regulate on social media and on technology
- 52:06Speaker 1: because that is the world they live in. See the
- 52:09Speaker 1: world as it is, not how you want it to be.
- 52:10Speaker 1: My kids will grow up with technology in social media,
- 52:13Speaker 1: so my job as a parent is to teach them
- 52:14Speaker 1: how to self regulate in that environment, and we have
- 52:18Speaker 1: to expose them to that, but do it in a
- 52:20Speaker 1: manner where they understand, where when they get frustrated, Hey, mate,
- 52:24Speaker 1: you're looking a bit angry about that game. What do
- 52:26Speaker 1: we do when we feel like is it making you
- 52:27Speaker 1: feel good?
- 52:28Speaker 3: No?
- 52:28Speaker 1: Dad? So what do we do? We turn it off
- 52:31Speaker 1: on a guy outside and yell at the dog. Okay, well,
- 52:33Speaker 1: let's go outside and yell at dog. You needed to
- 52:37Speaker 1: kind of have You've got to have those discussions, let
- 52:39Speaker 1: them get to that point and then work through it
- 52:41Speaker 1: with them and go, okay, what are your strategies? Mate?
- 52:43Speaker 1: What do we do and we don't feel is it
- 52:44Speaker 1: making it feel good? No? Turn it off and then
- 52:48Speaker 1: it's gone. Oh I can turn it off down and
- 52:49Speaker 1: walk away. Yeah, you're in charge, mate, But that's parenting.
- 52:53Speaker 1: You've got to be there to do that.
- 52:55Speaker 3: One hundred percent. I mean I've had something very very
- 52:59Speaker 3: similar recently with Oscar being on his video game because
- 53:02Speaker 3: we were eight and he was on for heaps of
- 53:04Speaker 3: time and we came home and he was just in
- 53:07Speaker 3: a shitty mood. He was grumpy, and then he realized
- 53:10Speaker 3: that it was being on the screen right, and we
- 53:12Speaker 3: had that exact conversation. Let's come back to the stuff
- 53:17Speaker 3: that you've been going through, so talk us through the
- 53:20Speaker 3: third man effect.
- 53:22Speaker 1: This is terrify. So I did not know what this
- 53:25Speaker 1: was until two weeks ago and my wife sent me
- 53:28Speaker 1: this article about the third man effect and she's like,
- 53:30Speaker 1: that's what happened to you last year. Oh so how
- 53:33Speaker 1: to read this? So I'll tell you what happened and
- 53:35Speaker 1: I'll explain the third man effect. So this was in
- 53:37Speaker 1: this race in Sweden in March last year. So up
- 53:40Speaker 1: in the lap landing Arctic, I got to about four
- 53:44Speaker 1: or five days in super sleept a proble. We're way
- 53:46Speaker 1: past hallucinations. Like I know, as when I do these races,
- 53:50Speaker 1: part of me, the scientist's brain, part of me loves
- 53:52Speaker 1: watching my body devolve as it goes through the experience.
- 53:56Speaker 1: So I know, night one you're going to hear stuff.
- 53:59Speaker 1: It's not night two. Here come the visuals, the lights.
- 54:02Speaker 1: You see some weird things. We know they're not real.
- 54:05Speaker 1: Night three. Everything's real. It doesn't matter. There's a dragon, giraffe,
- 54:09Speaker 1: people are trying to kill me like you name it,
- 54:11Speaker 1: it's all happening. I got you about day five, and
- 54:14Speaker 1: I was really pushing her because I was trying to
- 54:16Speaker 1: get up from the field and trying to survive. The
- 54:18Speaker 1: conditions were horrendous, and I remember one night having this
- 54:23Speaker 1: overwhelming belief that there was a lady behind me. I
- 54:26Speaker 1: couldn't see her, but I knew she was there. I
- 54:30Speaker 1: felt quite calm about it, like I wasn't worried, you know.
- 54:33Speaker 1: I wondered like is this the wood sprite spirit of
- 54:35Speaker 1: the lapland an Arctic or something. But it got to
- 54:38Speaker 1: the point where I would stop and make a freeze
- 54:40Speaker 1: dried meal and I'd be halfway through it and I'd go, oh,
- 54:43Speaker 1: I'm sorry, and I'd turn around to offer a food
- 54:45Speaker 1: and feel like I was a terrible host. That's how
- 54:48Speaker 1: real she seemed to me. Strong, and it had some
- 54:53Speaker 1: longevity to it. Look. I got to a checkpoint and
- 54:55Speaker 1: there was a wooden bench seat, and I grabbed two
- 54:58Speaker 1: hours sleep on this wooden bench seat, and I woke
- 55:00Speaker 1: up and The first thought in my mind was, she's
- 55:03Speaker 1: still outside. You didn't ask her in. Get outside and
- 55:06Speaker 1: make sure she's okay. Like it. It's not like you
- 55:08Speaker 1: got some sleep. And the whole thing went away, and
- 55:10Speaker 1: I got ever, said to my wife and my dad said,
- 55:12Speaker 1: for three days, I felt like there was a woman
- 55:15Speaker 1: following me. She was not protecting me, but I just
- 55:18Speaker 1: felt comfort that she was there anyway. The year lady,
- 55:22Speaker 1: she sends me this article third Man effect. So polar
- 55:24Speaker 1: explorers get this a lot.
- 55:26Speaker 3: And what it is.
- 55:26Speaker 1: Your brain gets to a point in an extreme duress,
- 55:29Speaker 1: psychological duress, it will create and manifest a third person,
- 55:34Speaker 1: another entity that will the idea being that it provides
- 55:38Speaker 1: you comfort so that you will sustain and continue on.
- 55:42Speaker 1: So rather than just stopping and freezing to death in
- 55:46Speaker 1: the snow, your brain says, there's someone Here's it's all right,
- 55:49Speaker 1: there's someone here that your friend. We're going to be okay,
- 55:53Speaker 1: keep going, keep going, it's all right, there's a friend
- 55:56Speaker 1: with you. We can feel positive, feel that positive energy
- 55:59Speaker 1: and move for it. So looking back, yeah, my brain,
- 56:02Speaker 1: I knew she wasn't real, but she also seemed very
- 56:05Speaker 1: real to me. But that's what it was my brain
- 56:07Speaker 1: had constructed this, this entity as a last ditch psychological
- 56:11Speaker 1: protective mechanism to go, keep going. It's going to be okay,
- 56:15Speaker 1: there's someone here.
- 56:17Speaker 3: Jesus.
- 56:19Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't know what it was at the time,
- 56:20Speaker 1: but apparently it's it's the third man effect. It's and
- 56:23Speaker 1: and polar Explorers on you know people trudge into the
- 56:26Speaker 1: South Pole of the North Pole or whatever. Said, yeah,
- 56:28Speaker 1: they've they've experienced it. When you really bottom of the well,
- 56:33Speaker 1: the brain's going, We've got to do something here. What
- 56:35Speaker 1: do we do? Let's get an imaginary friend away you go.
- 56:41Speaker 3: That's amazing. I have hallucinated on Day SAVEN of combat
- 56:47Speaker 3: Survival and Resistance to Interrogation training, but nothing like that there.
- 56:52Speaker 3: I was probably on your day two because it was tough,
- 56:57Speaker 3: but not not freaking tough, and it's fascinated.
- 57:00Speaker 1: I have memories that I know are not true, like
- 57:02Speaker 1: I very vivid, clear memories that I know are false.
- 57:05Speaker 1: And I have had experiences out there that I can't verify,
- 57:09Speaker 1: like I've had interactions from like I have. Because you're alone,
- 57:12Speaker 1: you don't see another human for days sometimes because you're
- 57:14Speaker 1: so sparsely separated, Like I have no way of telling
- 57:17Speaker 1: whether that person that I spoke to was real or
- 57:20Speaker 1: that thing that I saw was real, I've got no
- 57:23Speaker 1: I could argue either way. I can't verify.
- 57:25Speaker 3: It must be really interesting for me as a scientist
- 57:28Speaker 3: to be observing this stuff, right, it's like, wow, yeah,
- 57:32Speaker 3: it's really good.
- 57:32Speaker 4: I had.
- 57:33Speaker 1: I did a full complete interview mid race at a
- 57:36Speaker 1: checkpoint with a German TV crew in Northern Canada, right
- 57:40Speaker 1: in like I was. I was at a checkpoint, chatting
- 57:42Speaker 1: the guys at a film guy camera guy do with
- 57:44Speaker 1: a mic, blah blah blah. No one can verify it.
- 57:47Speaker 1: Everyone who was there is like there was no one there, mate,
- 57:49Speaker 1: Like I've never found the interview. I can't find eve
- 57:52Speaker 1: when I was smoking to you you who else saw that?
- 57:55Speaker 3: Did do?
- 57:55Speaker 1: I get interviewed by the German film crew and everyone's like,
- 58:01Speaker 1: well this is awkward, Like okay, this is very awkward.
- 58:06Speaker 1: Like I to this day, I don't actually know whether
- 58:09Speaker 1: it happened or not because I can't verify it, like
- 58:12Speaker 1: no one else saw them. I've never found the interview.
- 58:15Speaker 1: But to my like I can, I can picture the
- 58:17Speaker 1: three guys there like we were the Checkbob was a
- 58:20Speaker 1: shipping container in the Arctic, and I was there getting changed,
- 58:23Speaker 1: eating the freeze dried, and the cameraman. I'll go to
- 58:26Speaker 1: my graves not knowing if that happened or not. I
- 58:28Speaker 1: have no idea. I don't know. Maybe why were they
- 58:32Speaker 1: doing I don't know, Like what's going on in my brain.
- 58:39Speaker 3: Is brellidant. So man, this stuff can can be addictive, right,
- 58:44Speaker 3: what is next to you for you? And and like
- 58:47Speaker 3: what's your thought process about this sort of stuff? And
- 58:51Speaker 3: and is there an end game? You know what? What
- 58:54Speaker 3: kind of goes through your head when you think about
- 58:57Speaker 3: the future.
- 58:58Speaker 1: It's a it's a it's a really important question. Hung
- 59:02Speaker 1: my boots up from Higltitude mountaineering because you know, I
- 59:04Speaker 1: got to the point where I was watching them longline
- 59:07Speaker 1: the bodies off and you're like you you're going up
- 59:09Speaker 1: there next, and you're like, how far a dore you
- 59:12Speaker 1: need to go here? Like when you're a single guy,
- 59:13Speaker 1: it's different. You can just keep pushing the chips all
- 59:15Speaker 1: in all the time. But you get married, you have kids,
- 59:18Speaker 1: and I always explain to people like, you know, I'm
- 59:20Speaker 1: doing keynotes and these photos look amazing, but I got
- 59:23Speaker 1: the photo. But back home there's all this cast of
- 59:26Speaker 1: people who are not getting cool photos for Instagram, who
- 59:29Speaker 1: are working their ass off, so I can go get
- 59:31Speaker 1: that because you know I'm away, which my wife works
- 59:34Speaker 1: full time. She's a school principal, so she's now juggling
- 59:37Speaker 1: full time work and two kids. And you know, my
- 59:39Speaker 1: parents are helping out. Her parents are helping out. Like
- 59:41Speaker 1: You've done all this training, and I do a lot
- 59:43Speaker 1: of my training at night. Logistically it works, but there's
- 59:47Speaker 1: still sacrifices that you're not at home because you're off
- 59:50Speaker 1: doing epic training runs and all this kind of stuff.
- 59:52Speaker 1: So there are people now paying costs for you to
- 59:55Speaker 1: do some of this stuff. So hung the boots up going,
- 59:57Speaker 1: I can't just keep pushing the chips all in. But
- 1:00:00Speaker 1: then found out had a weird skill set, very good
- 1:00:02Speaker 1: in cold where the very good hauling heavy loads can
- 1:00:05Speaker 1: go very long periods of time doing that. Is there
- 1:00:07Speaker 1: a place I can use that in? Yeah, Arctic ultras.
- 1:00:09Speaker 1: Oh cool, didn't even know that was a thing. And
- 1:00:11Speaker 1: away you go. And then part of it is why
- 1:00:14Speaker 1: do you do these things? Well? I do them for
- 1:00:15Speaker 1: me because they're the only vehicle I've found where I
- 1:00:18Speaker 1: can dig all the way to the bottom of the
- 1:00:20Speaker 1: well and see who's there. But for me, it's a
- 1:00:23Speaker 1: very almost spiritual kind of thing. It's a physical thing
- 1:00:26Speaker 1: and it's a mental thing. But it just reminds you
- 1:00:28Speaker 1: when you go out there. Mountains don't care about your
- 1:00:30Speaker 1: business card. You know, the Arctic doesn't care what you earn.
- 1:00:34Speaker 1: It doesn't give us stuff how many followers you've got.
- 1:00:36Speaker 1: It's just did you do the work to earn the
- 1:00:39Speaker 1: right to even attempt this, And then when you're in
- 1:00:42Speaker 1: the middle of it, let's see what you're worth and
- 1:00:44Speaker 1: see what you've got. So for me, there's that experience,
- 1:00:47Speaker 1: But then you get into that thinking, well, now I'm
- 1:00:49Speaker 1: doing these races and I'm pushing to get to the
- 1:00:51Speaker 1: very end, like there's international fields and I'm pushing to
- 1:00:54Speaker 1: get right on the podium, and that comes at a cost.
- 1:00:56Speaker 1: I got back from that Sweden race last year and
- 1:00:59Speaker 1: for a few months I had trouble with people's names,
- 1:01:01Speaker 1: Like I'd get a surname or a first name, but
- 1:01:03Speaker 1: not a full name. So you're like, I think we
- 1:01:05Speaker 1: might have earn a few too many neurons out that's
- 1:01:08Speaker 1: the decoration.
- 1:01:08Speaker 3: And that extreme I would like to see mri Skut
- 1:01:12Speaker 3: would impulse.
- 1:01:15Speaker 1: It's an empty cabin. So you do you go, well, okay,
- 1:01:20Speaker 1: why do you do these things? You're like, okay, okay,
- 1:01:22Speaker 1: to push yourself and to have that experience in that
- 1:01:24Speaker 1: place that's really important. But you know, I'm forty nine
- 1:01:27Speaker 1: now and I'm in good nick. I think I can
- 1:01:30Speaker 1: still operate at the thin end of the wedge for
- 1:01:32Speaker 1: a period of time. But I'm also starting to think
- 1:01:36Speaker 1: now about you need to have a strategy to transition
- 1:01:38Speaker 1: to go. You need to still go and enjoy them
- 1:01:41Speaker 1: and come away with some gratitude and have an experience
- 1:01:46Speaker 1: that justifies your sacrifice and the sacrifice of those around
- 1:01:49Speaker 1: you for you to do these things. So there's that
- 1:01:53Speaker 1: that balancing act, and I'm still navigating that. I don't
- 1:01:55Speaker 1: know what the answer is. I will continue to do stuff,
- 1:01:59Speaker 1: much to my mother's She's like, what's next. There'll be something,
- 1:02:02Speaker 1: There's always something. You're always planning something, you ought to
- 1:02:04Speaker 1: be something. But for me, it's a case of make
- 1:02:07Speaker 1: sure that the reason that you're going to make sacrifices
- 1:02:10Speaker 1: and other make sacrifices is a valid one. It's good enough.
- 1:02:13Speaker 1: So for example, to do another cold race, for me,
- 1:02:16Speaker 1: doesn't really stack up. I've done three major ones, I've
- 1:02:20Speaker 1: podium two of them. What am I going back to prove?
- 1:02:24Speaker 1: Are you going to learn? Well? Probably not. I'm not
- 1:02:27Speaker 1: going to learn much more doing that. Okay, If you're
- 1:02:29Speaker 1: going to go through to that level again, do it
- 1:02:32Speaker 1: in a different environment so that we're back learning again.
- 1:02:35Speaker 1: Otherwise you're actually going to sound silly if I go
- 1:02:38Speaker 1: to another six hundred klometer arctic ultra. That's a comfort
- 1:02:41Speaker 1: zone for me almost because I know what to expect
- 1:02:43Speaker 1: and how to operate. So you should go somewhere and
- 1:02:46Speaker 1: do something different because that's where you'll learn. And that's
- 1:02:48Speaker 1: your job to keep learning and discovering stuff about yourself.
- 1:02:52Speaker 1: So try a different hard thing. So for me, I'm
- 1:02:55Speaker 1: just trying to navigate that. What's the next hard thing
- 1:02:57Speaker 1: that's the right hard thing and a work wild hard
- 1:03:00Speaker 1: thing but respects everyone in my circle, And I'm trying
- 1:03:04Speaker 1: to navigate that. I don't know what that looks like yet,
- 1:03:06Speaker 1: but I'm enjoying that process, you know, love the process.
- 1:03:08Speaker 1: I always say the start line is a celebration. It's
- 1:03:12Speaker 1: a celebration of all the work that you did to
- 1:03:13Speaker 1: get there. So enjoy, find the love and the enjoyment
- 1:03:17Speaker 1: and the value in the work. And then when you
- 1:03:19Speaker 1: get to the start line, that's that's the celebration. You
- 1:03:23Speaker 1: aren't the right to be here. Celebrate that and then
- 1:03:26Speaker 1: go execute.
- 1:03:26Speaker 3: Very cool, very cool. Indeed, last question, how do you
- 1:03:30Speaker 3: still down?
- 1:03:31Speaker 1: Very very valid question.
- 1:03:32Speaker 3: PT You've got to plead.
- 1:03:39Speaker 2: I'll let you know.
- 1:03:39Speaker 1: I'll let you know. I don't know. I always joke going,
- 1:03:43Speaker 1: you know, I give people who journal and do cold
- 1:03:46Speaker 1: pungers and they say I give them a hard time,
- 1:03:48Speaker 1: you know, tongue in cheek. I don't, you know. I
- 1:03:50Speaker 1: post up the day like you know, I didn't write
- 1:03:52Speaker 1: my journal yesterday. That's now seventeen, three hundred and eighty
- 1:03:55Speaker 1: three days I've missed, you know, in a row. But
- 1:03:58Speaker 1: some people journal with pen and paper. I journal with
- 1:04:02Speaker 1: a pair of runners and VO two. That's my journaling.
- 1:04:05Speaker 1: So for me, sometimes the training isn't just training. That's
- 1:04:10Speaker 1: what I do. That's part of my identity. I get
- 1:04:13Speaker 1: out and I go for a run every day. And
- 1:04:15Speaker 1: sometimes that's very focused because I've got an event coming up,
- 1:04:17Speaker 1: and sometimes it's because that's how I best operate as
- 1:04:20Speaker 1: a human. That's my operating system. So I journal outside
- 1:04:24Speaker 1: with a pair of shoes. Other people journal with a
- 1:04:26Speaker 1: pen and paper. That you find your thing, that's okay.
- 1:04:29Speaker 1: So for me slowing down, do.
- 1:04:32Speaker 3: You find just a distance where the runners high kicks
- 1:04:35Speaker 3: in for you?
- 1:04:35Speaker 1: Not particularly?
- 1:04:36Speaker 3: No, you know that that kind of casar chic like
- 1:04:40Speaker 3: chilled out stuff that a lot of runners talk about.
- 1:04:42Speaker 3: I don't run anywhere near enough to find that.
- 1:04:45Speaker 1: No, for me, it's more it's more the environment. So
- 1:04:48Speaker 1: for me, I love like if I head out, you know,
- 1:04:50Speaker 1: pre dawn getting it because I'm in a rural area.
- 1:04:53Speaker 1: You get out and the sun's coming up and you're
- 1:04:54Speaker 1: running through you know, paddocks and cows and sheep and
- 1:04:57Speaker 1: all that, and you're like, damn it is this Like
- 1:05:00Speaker 1: you get to do this? You have a functioning body.
- 1:05:03Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, I joked that I'm not elite,
- 1:05:05Speaker 1: like you know, I've got chicken stick legs and thick
- 1:05:08Speaker 1: glasses or whatever. But imagine how many people would give
- 1:05:11Speaker 1: anything to be in a position where they could go
- 1:05:13Speaker 1: out and walk that or run that, and you can
- 1:05:16Speaker 1: do it for your own free will? How do you
- 1:05:18Speaker 1: not do that? So for me, it's more about I
- 1:05:21Speaker 1: get to do that, and the sun's coming up and
- 1:05:23Speaker 1: it's and it's it's a beautiful part of the world.
- 1:05:26Speaker 1: And there's a lot of parts of the world that
- 1:05:27Speaker 1: aren't they beautiful. Shit, it's pretty cool hearing it. So
- 1:05:30Speaker 1: for me, it's really just there's no if I do
- 1:05:33Speaker 1: twelve k's I hear, you know, harps and violins. Now
- 1:05:36Speaker 1: I just get out and some days ship and some
- 1:05:38Speaker 1: days you're like, how good's this? Like that? I don't
- 1:05:40Speaker 1: know whether it gets much better than this, you.
- 1:05:42Speaker 3: Know where we go?
- 1:05:43Speaker 1: How lucky are we?
- 1:05:45Speaker 3: Very cool? Matt, you are definitely the epetome of anti fragile.
- 1:05:50Speaker 3: We could talk for the herculean hormatic human, but what
- 1:05:56Speaker 3: I really love is the filhilosophical insights that the a
- 1:06:02Speaker 3: that you have learned from being an addict of stirring
- 1:06:07Speaker 3: into the abyss. Right, THEO used to do it once
- 1:06:11Speaker 3: or twice in their life, but you do it routinely.
- 1:06:13Speaker 3: But just how you've actually taken that and and and
- 1:06:18Speaker 3: formulated a whole philosophy. But also for helping others with
- 1:06:23Speaker 3: with corporates and with school kids. So if there's any
- 1:06:26Speaker 3: principles out there, if there's any corporates out there, Paul
- 1:06:30Speaker 3: Watkins is the guy for your next event? Or can
- 1:06:34Speaker 3: people find out more about you and the crazy ship
- 1:06:39Speaker 3: that you do, but also any any any offers and
- 1:06:43Speaker 3: lessons that you have.
- 1:06:44Speaker 1: Yeah, Paul Watkins dot com dot IU that's my website.
- 1:06:47Speaker 1: You can find the high level details there. I'm on
- 1:06:50Speaker 1: LinkedIn a lot like a lot, so I post, I
- 1:06:53Speaker 1: write a lot there and I write on sub steck
- 1:06:56Speaker 1: as well. But look find primary Paul Watkins dot com
- 1:06:59Speaker 1: that I use. Find me there or find me on LinkedIn,
- 1:07:02Speaker 1: and from there you can pick your rabbit hole and
- 1:07:04Speaker 1: go from there.
- 1:07:06Speaker 3: Yeah, this has been absolutely awesome, so thank you.
- 1:07:10Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. I don't really appreciate it.
- 1:07:13Speaker 3: Yeah, No, it was a It was a wonderful conversation.
- 1:07:15Speaker 3: Absolutely loved it. So I think I think we'll have
- 1:07:19Speaker 3: to do this again at some stage. If we mustn't
- 1:07:21Speaker 3: go down a rabbit hop.
- 1:07:22Speaker 1: If we might, we'll solve all the world's problems. Make
- 1:07:24Speaker 1: give us another hour, we'd have most of its sort.
- 1:07:26Speaker 3: And already indeed, all right, man, thanks for your time
- 1:07:31Speaker 3: and have a great text.
- 1:07:32Speaker 1: But I love it. Thanks